BLUF: "Therefore, in any comparison of who has placed the U.S. in greater danger – Julian Assange is a piker compared to Sy Hersh. True. But there are worse possibilities, not to give anyone cause for concern for Sy, as, (hopefully) his high visibility will give him some protection against other extreme measures being taken against him on the grounds that he has become an “enemy belligerent. And, he’s not Palestinian, as this possible assassination victim was: https://www.mintpressnews.com/cognitive-warfare-israel-targets-journalists-threaten-reality/281178/ But per the USG’s definition, he is an “unprivileged belligerent,” as absurd, and odious, as that sounds. Just like Sophie Scholl and the White Rose group in Nazi Germany were. Not to flatter myself but I laid out the operative “legal theory” of the USG back in 2015, and its been confirmed ever since. |
BLUF: "When the U.S. Department of Defense published a new Law of War Manual (LOW) this past summer, editorialists at the New York Times sat up and took notice. Their concern was that the manual stated that journalists could be deemed “unprivileged belligerents.” The editorial explained that as a legal term “that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war.” In fact, it is far more insidious than that innocuous description. "Here is the manual’s definition: “‘Unlawful combatants’ or ‘unprivileged belligerents’ are persons who, by engaging in hostilities, have incurred one or more of the corresponding liabilities of combatant status (e.g., being made the object of attack and subject to detention), but who are not entitled to any of the distinct privileges of combatant status (e.g., combatant immunity and POW status).” . . . "One does not need to speculate that the U.S. government no longer sees First Amendment activities as protected. Government arguments, which were made in the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit, revealed that the Justice Department, speaking for the Executive Branch, considers protection of the Bill of Rights subordinate to the claim of “war powers” by the Executive. One can only be willfully blind to fail to see this. "By the Justice Department’s court arguments and filings, the protections afforded by the U.S. Bill of Rights are no more secure today than they were to Japanese-Americans when Western District military commander General DeWitt decided to remove them from their homes on the West Coast and intern them in what were initially called, “concentration camps.” "The American Bar Association Journal reported in 2014 that Justice Antonin Scalia told students in Hawaii that “the Supreme Court’s Korematsu decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong, but it could happen again in war time.” But contrary to Scalia stating that Korematsu had been repudiated, Korematsu has never been overruled. "The court could get a chance to do so, the ABA article stated, in the Hedges v. Obama case “involving the military detention without trial of people accused of aiding terrorism.” But that opportunity has passed." And it should go without saying, for anyone with a “thinking mind,” that Trump explicitly reaffirmed that “authority,” as did, presumably, Biden. But I tracked this legislation in 2011 as it was being passed, and looked at the floor debate transcripts, and guess who led the “floor fight” in passing this bi-partisan legislation, though overwhelmingly supported by our “beloved Republicans?” John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman, the “Three Amigos,” the precursors to the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” who have already arrived throughout much of the world which bear the burdens of “U.S. Perpetual War!"
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