[News] How to Avoid Being Labeled an Enemy Combatant

Thu Jan 10 12:20:35 EST 2013

*HOW TO AVOID BEING LABELED AN ENEMY COMBATANT
by Susie day
*

Remember when President Obama promised to close the Guantánamo detention 
camp? Remember when he didn’t? Years later, we grow old and decrepit, 
and there remain some 166 detainees at Guantánamo in much worse shape. 
One hundred of these men have not been charged with a crime, and all of 
them will probably remain at Gitmo without trial.

This is largely because Congress passed the National Defense 
Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012, which not only prevents transfer of 
prisoners out of Guantánamo; it also specifies that anyone, including 
U.S. citizens, can be indefinitely detained anywhere without trial.

In case you thought the year was starting out too pleasantly, Congress 
recently passed the NDAA again for 2013, in pretty much the same 
version, and President Obama signed it. Given that Guantánamo won’t 
close for years now, and that many law-abiding people stand a greater 
than ever chance of being labeled “enemy combatants,” it becomes 
necessary to forgo lofty “human rights” ideals and make altruism work 
for /us/. Here, then, are some tips on proving to the feds that you are 
not the enemy:

✌ BECOME A FAMOUS MOVIE STAR

Hollywood celebrities rarely, if ever, spend years in Guantánamo without 
charges, surrounded by barbed wire and vicious dogs. Their movies may 
bomb, but they never do, thanks to the virulent Red Scares that purged 
the motion picture industry of all terrorists, with the possible 
exception of Mel Gibson.

When you become a famous movie star, you will receive: a dazzling smile, 
affordable health insurance, and a rock-hard sense of self-esteem that 
comes from millions of greedy, free-market consumers knowing who you 
are. Push comes to shove and you are sent to a detention camp, guards 
will treat you better. “Hey, isn’t that Angelina Jolie on that gurney? I 
loved her in /Girl, Interrupted/. Maybe I’ll let her call her attorney.”

✌ EMIT NOXIOUS FUMES

No one will ever accuse you of Islamofascism as you proudly stand in 
solidarity with our great multinational corporations and spew harmful 
chemical, radioactive, and industrial waste into our ecosystem. By 
polluting rivers, the air, and low-income neighborhoods, you’ll garner 
lots of government perks, too, including military contracts and 
tax-breaks you could only dream of as an ordinary, “stop-global-warming” 
citizen. Best of all, your carcinogenic emissions will increase chances 
that, among the thousands of people who die each year from 
environmentally caused cancer, one or two will be terrorists.

✌ SCAPEGOAT SECULAR HUMANISTS

Stuck-up, egghead Secular Humanists like Chris Hayes and Katrina vanden 
Heuvel say that Islamic extremists are not the real problem. They’re 
right! The real problem is stuck-up, egghead Secular Humanists!

Secular Humanists have caused every major disaster for the last 5,000 
years – and it’s our duty to stop them before they TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

/FACT/: These intellectual malcontents have turned from God and 
home-schooling to the golden calf of “Humanities”!

/FACT/: Since the Crusades, Secular Humanists have stood at the center 
of a vast, satanic plot to STOP God-ordained conquest and unite 
humankind through Logic, Science, and Enlightenment!

/FACT/: Much of our U.S. Constitution was written by these depraved, 
happiness-pursuing, library-card-holding “Enlightenati”! Would you want 
one of these “created equal” degenerates to marry your sister?

Labeling these people terrorists and getting them sent to Guantánamo 
will guarantee that /you /will never be sent there. Let’s show the world 
that the only way to prevent another Third Reich is with another 
Inquisition.

✌ DEVELOP AGORAPHOBIC CATATONIA

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do 
nothing.” A wise man said that in the 18th Century – a wise, 
/stupid/ man. This man never looked ahead to the 21st Century, to see 
that doing nothing would become the apogee of cutting-edge activism!

Remember the Afghanistan invasion? The Iraq invasion? All those meetings 
and lectures you went to, where you became “informed” and had “doubts” 
about WMD and Al Qaeda connections? All that peace marching – once, with 
10,000,000 people all over the world, so the destruction of 
millennia-old cultures and the slaughter of innocents wouldn’t happen? 
It happened anyway.

It happened because /you/ left the house.

To prevent further mayhem, it is necessary to effect social change at 
home, by nonviolently reading your email. Uh-oh: look at all those 
listserves on torture and drone attacks and indefinite detention. They 
force you to devise a new activist strategy: You must play Minesweeper 
and Angry Birds for the next four hours.

Now, for direct action! Using psychological skills honed at your 
computer, it is time to emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually 
“shut down.” This allows you to do radical civil disobedience while 
lying on your couch. As you remain in staunch protest, let global crises 
simply wash over you.

While they are washing, turn on the TV. Look, there’s a /Law and Order 
/rerun. Regard the state-of-the-art world of /us /vs. /them/;/ /good vs. 
evil. Isn’t it comforting to see that cop punch in that wino’s face? 
Weird, how Puerto Rican /independentistas/ and Occupy activists are 
portrayed as unstable and dangerous.

No matter. All good. Now, try to picture some Gitmo interrogator 
water-boarding Sam Waterston. You can’t.

At last: you have effected social change.

References:

Update on 166 prisoners at Guantánamo:

http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo

Facts & Figures for Guantánamo Detainees:

http://www.hrw.org/features/guantanamo-facts-figures

NDAA 2013 passes House, Senate:

http://fcw.com/articles/2012/12/21/ndaa-passes-house-senate.aspx

Lingering indefinite military detention provisions in 2013:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111357/the-war-terror-has-different-name-the-legal-justification-remain-the-same

Text of NDAA 2013:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4310/text

General conflict over Guantánamo Detainees:

http://theweek.com/article/index/237154/can-obama-still-close-guantanamo

ACLU Description/Criticism of NDAA:

http://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/ndaa

Susie Day <suzetski at gmail.com>

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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