A “Presidential Coup,” The Continuity Of Government, And Blackwater Watching Midtown Manhattan

A “Presidential Coup,” The Continuity Of Government, And Blackwater Watching Midtown Manhattan
By: Naomi Wolf

blackwatergraphic1.jpgI have argued that in the closing stages of a `fascist shift’, events cascade. I am hearing about them, even across the globe. Here in Australia I hear from the nation’s best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer’, she told TSA agents. `Ma’am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,’ they replied. `You have not entered the United States.’

Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States’ — though it is squarely inside the airport — so the laws of the US do not apply. (This assertion, by the way, should alarm any US citizen who is aware of how the White House argued that Guantanamo is not `in the United States’ - is a legal no-man’s land — so the laws of the US do not apply.) Toward the end of her second five-hour detention she asked, `Why am I being detained?’ `Lady, this is not detention,’ the TSA agent told her. `Detention is when I take you to the cells out back and lock you up.’

Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared’ for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.

A friend emails me a story from USA Today about a 24-year-old college graduate who testified before Congress about her family of immigrants and the difficulties they face; shortly afterward, the entire family was arrested by immigration agents. Another online piece reports that Blackwater is setting up operations along the US/Mexico border and an insightful post on Daily Kos describes how the TSA list will revert from the airlines to the management of the Department of Homeland Security shortly and that by February we may well face the need to apply to the State for permission to travel. If this proposed regulation goes through, we will move from 1931 to about 1934—when the borders started to close— with the stroke of a pen. Jews in America have hardwired into their DNA a sense of the distinction between those who got out before the borders closed and those who waited a moment too long.

more . . . http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/11/04/a-presidential-coup-the-continuity-of-government-and-blackwater-watching-midtown-manhattan/

If the constitution is really the basis from which all American legal authority flows, and the constitution doesn't reach into that "zone" then how can an authority that by definition derives ultimately from that same constitution reach into the magic constitution free zone?

Just askin...

If not the US, then within what, or whose jurisdiction are these agents operating?

Is Congress aware of the role of these Blackwater-type people?

note who is being rounded up. :(

Is how * & minions already have such tyrranical power WHILE they have such low ratings and are under investigation, and may be impeached!!! WTF--- are they fighting for their lives or are they actually pulling off an effing coup?
Reminds me of *senior who kept saying "I am not a wimp' to feign weakness, and this administration has *junior to feign stupidity while the dictatorship goes forward!!

Hitler never had majority support, and neither did Stalin or Mussolini

That is why your thugish class is so damn critical

If the woman is "not yet in the USA", how does the TSA have any authority over her?