National Defense Authorisation Act

The National Defense Authorisation Act is a piece of legislation in the USA that passes through Congress every year and allows the government to go ahead with its annual spending on Defense - this year $662 billion. The bill for 2012 was passed by in the Senate last week and now goes to the House of Representatives for approval before the president's signature. This year it has become controversial because slipped into the bill is an inclusion of a provision allowing military custody of anyone suspected of being a terrorist, believed to be a member of Al Qaeda or any of its affiliates and involved in attacks anywhere in the USA. The provision would allow anyone suspected of being a terrorist to be incarcerated indefinitely without legal advice and without being charged or brought before a court. Many libertarians are up in arms about the prospect of American citizens being locked up without any charges being brought and with no time limits. America is already stuck with the Homeland Security Bill that has brought massive surveillance on the People of the USA via an administration — George W Bush — with a parnoid obsession about terrorism. This latest piece of nonsense is yet another step down the road to an authoritarian police state — as if we didn't have enough of those in the world already. The arguments will go on and President Obama has indicated that he is minded not to sign off the bill but it is a bad sign of things to come.

We will have to wait the outcome but it is yet another sign that the world's rulers, while becoming increasingly inadequate to the point of total incompetence, are determined to eliminate opposition and criticism. In Europe as the manoeuvrings on the fate of the euro go on, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sakozy try to fathom a way of re-organising Europe to give more power to the undemocratic Council of Ministers and the European Commission via "treaty" changes that will not require democratic approval via referendums — which are notoriously prone to giving the Wrong answers. The governments in Greece and Italy have been replaced without any elections — that in Italy is made up of a Prime Minister — formerly employed by Goldmann Sachs and the European Union — who has never been elected for anything and he has chosen a cabinet of ministers who also have never been elected. I am opposed to the whole principle of the single currency and the sooner it disappears down the plughole the better. But the present activities are all about denying that the European Union got the idea of a single currency wrong in the first place. The Commission carries on in its own sweet way, year after year failing to get its accounts approved as it chucks billions of euros down the drain in the cause of corruption or the promotion of its own existence. There is no control, there is no responsibility — so many people appear to be in charge that it is impossible to establish where responsibility lies. There is, of course, a European Parliament which costs money and gives veneer of respectability without having any control whatsoever.

Our leaders are in competent but hey give themselves ever more authority to plunge down the next disastrous road to oblivion. They really have got to be stopped!

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