by Stephen Lendman

Post-9/11 repressive laws transformed America into a police state. US prisons already overflow with political and other unjustly incarcerated victims.

It's a short leap to filling concentration camps with dissidents - anyone publicly opposing America run by monied interests and warlords, governed lawlessly, waging endless wars of aggression abroad, persecuting its own people, leaving anyone potentially vulnerable to abuse.

FEMA detention camps were established years ago. Perhaps many more are planned. They're used to incarcerate undocumented immigrants before deportations to countries of origin. In 2002, Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft called for Americans designated "enemy combatants" to be detained indefinitely - extrajudicially, uncharged and untried unless ordered otherwise.

In January 2003, the Fourth Circuit US Court of Appeals upheld the ruling in a case involving a US citizen.

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (renewed annually) authorizes indefinite detentions of US citizens at home and abroad.

America's military may arrest and imprison them uncharged - holding them without trial based on suspicions, hearsay, secret evidence, or none at all.

Presidential diktat authority has final say. Everyone is vulnerable. No one anywhere is safe.

Due process, civil protections, and judicial fairness no longer apply. Presidents may order anyone arrested and imprisoned for life without charge or trial. Abuse of power replaced rule of law protections.

Are greater mass incarcerations coming than already? Maybe so if retired General Wesley Clark has his way. Interviewed on MSNBC, he said the following:

"We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We've got to cut this off at the beginning."

"There are always a certain number of young people who are alienated. They don't get a job. They lost a girlfriend. Their family doesn't feel happy here and we can watch the signs of that."

"And there are members of the community who can reach out to those people and bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here."

But I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists. They do have an ideology."

"In World War II, if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn't say that was freedom of speech. We put him in a camp. They were prisoners of war."

"So, if these people are radicalized and they don't support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle fine."

"It's their right and it's our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict."

"And I think we're going to have to increasingly get tough on this, not only in the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures."

Clark advocates indefinite internments for anyone called "radicalized (or) disloyal" based on judgment, not evidence, for the duration of the phony war on terror established for fear-mongering to continue longterm.

What better definition of a police state - mass political imprisonments targeting anyone against fascist rule demanding constitutionally guaranteed rights.

America is infested with lunatics like Clark - on the one hand wanting nuclear war with Russia. On the other, enforcing homeland police state rule.

Big Brother watches everyone to decide who lives, dies, stays free or is interned potentially forever uncharged and untried.

Obama's America is unfit to live in. Nor will things change under a new administration when inaugurated in January 2017.

-###-

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs