Citing Religious Freedom, Native Americans Fight To Take Back Sacred Land From Mining Companies | ThinkProgress

For generations, members of the Apache Native American tribe have viewed Oak Flat as a holy, sacred place. Located about an hour due east of Phoenix, Arizona, the land has long served as a site for traditional acorn gatherings, burial services, and rite of passage ceremonies for young women. The flat is tucked inside Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, and has historically been protected by the federal government.

“It’s our sacred land — it’s where we come to pray,” Carrie Sage Curley, an Apache woman, told ThinkProgress.
But last year, the land quietly became something else: A proposed site for a massive copper mining project spearheaded by Resolution Copper, an organization run by two multinational corporations based in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The aggressive mining operation resulted from a last-minute addition to the National Defense Authorization Act, a “must-pass” military spending bill pushed through in December 2014. The language, which was inserted at the 11th hour by Arizona Senators John McCain (R) and Jeff Flake (R), essentially traded Resolution 2,400 acres of Arizona (including Oak Flat) in exchange for 5,300 acres of private land they already own. The swap is believed to be one of the first instances of federal land being given to a foreign corporation.

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The religious connections to Oak Flat are so powerful that mining the land could constitute a violation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. That law, which was passed in 1978, stipulates that the federal government has an obligation to protect the religious liberty of Native Americans — including guaranteeing access to sites they hold sacred.

“It’s the same thing as a church,” Curley said. “We protect these temples, why can’t we do the same for our sacred land?”

Citing Religious Freedom, Native Americans Fight To Take Back Sacred Land From Mining Companies | ThinkProgress

U.S. Senate Gives Black Eye to House Fundamentalist Christians

I have been staring at the same three articles for about an hour now trying to make sense of them.  I am failing miserably.

This first piece is in regards to John Flemming's reaction to the failure to pass his version (the Flemming Amendment) of the NDAA. "that essentially seeks to give military service members the right to engage in anti-gay discrimination under the guise of protecting religious liberty.."

Warning that liberal activists are seeking to "expand secularism, humanism, atheism to limit your First Amendment right of speech not only in the military but elsewhere," Fleming said that conservative Christians must remain vigilant and work to expand protections for their religious liberty.

"With the next NDAA, we hope to strengthen our language even more," he said, "because we'll have both a Senate and a House Republican majority. So we'd really like to expand upon the language we already have in the NDAA that protects First Amendment speech and also protects atheist chaplains"

The second article is a 2013 piece by Senior Research Director Chris Rodda of MRFF, who gives some much needed background on the NDAA fight (FY 2014) and who** is behind this drive for legislating discrimination in the military

The attached is from MRFF's Mikey Weinstein.  It is his reaction to the failure of the Flemming Amendment passing:

The U.S. Senate has courageously just stood up to the Christian-supremacist bullies in the House of Representatives. Oh yes, the Senate has just completely ripped away from their religiously bigoted, House counterparts a would-be treasured bible-thumping bonanza of immeasurable, unconstitutional proselytization.  This erstwhile prize of legislative plunder had been specifically designed by these Congressmen and Congresswomen from the House, in nefarious collaboration with their legions of fundamentalist Christian parachurch allies, to be embedded deep within the confines of the 2015 Pentagon authorization/funding act.

Fortunately, the plan by these Christian crusader Members of the House failed. Please let me briefly explain, my friends.

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In what we can only describe as an amazing early holiday present for servicemembers, Constitutional loyalists, and those who value the separation of Church and State, an obscure, but extremely detrimental amendment to the House-passed H.R. 4435 version of the bill “miraculously” disappeared from the final version of the Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (FY2015 NDAA). If the House had its way, next year’s Federal roadmap for America's armed forces would have included the following painfully ugly provision designated as "Section 525” in the Hoped-for House version:

“…if called upon to lead a prayer outside of a religious service, a military chaplain may close the prayer according to the traditions, expressions and religious exercises of the endorsing faith group.”

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As I have said many times in many places for many years, in the U.S. armed forces you may have mandatory formations and you may have religious formations but you CANNOT have mandatory, religious formations.

Luckily for us, the United States Senate took the side of the U.S. Constitution, its construing Federal and state case law in conjunction with DoD directives, instructions and regulations. Further, the Senate obviously and carefully considered U.S. national security as well as the compelling governmental interest in optimizing the unit cohesion, mission readiness, good order, morale, and discipline of our valued armed forces members.

U.S. Senate Gives Black Eye to House Fundamentalist Christians 
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**(American Family Association, American Values, Alliance Defending Freedom, Center for Military Readiness, Center for Security Policy, Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, Citizens for Community Values, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Family PAC Federal, Freedom Alliance, Freedom X, Heritage Foundation, International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers (ICECE), Judicial Watch, Liberty Center for Law and Policy, Liberty Counsel, Liberty Institute, Media Research Center, Military-Veterans Advocacy, Ohio Faith and Freedom Coalition, Patriotic Veterans, Stand Up America, Thomas More Law Center, The Oak Initiative, Traditional Values Coalition

Chris Hedges: We're Losing the Last Shreds of Legal Rights to Protect Ourselves from Oligarchy | Alternet

When really smart people start "tossing" out terms like oligarchy, fascism, and tyranny I have a tendency to listen and read what they think. I may not always understand the "real" issues (as in this case I have not followed the NDAA stuff maybe like I should), but I try to stay informed and re-think my biases in the process.

The following is from Chris Hedges who offers his take on a case he is involved with. Besides what is highlighted, two things stood out to me. 1] "There is little left of judicial review of presidential action during wartime.” To which I ask, is this NDAA issue only "important" during war-time? And 2] Hedges mention the Snowden debacle. Do I need to re-think my bias? In other words even though "good" may be coming about because of what he did, I still believe how he did it and his actions after the fact are wrong.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision to refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government is legal. It means that the courts, like the legislative and executive branches of government, exclusively serve corporate power — one of the core definitions of fascism. It means that the internal mechanisms of state are so corrupted and subservient to corporate power that there is no hope of reform or protection for citizens under our most basic constitutional rights. It means that the consent of the governed — a poll by OpenCongress.com showed that this provision had a 98 percent disapproval rating — is a cruel joke. And it means that if we do not rapidly build militant mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose our liberty.

“In declining to hear the case Hedges v. Obama and declining to review the NDAA, the Supreme Court has turned its back on precedent dating back to the Civil War era that holds that the military cannot police the streets of America,” said attorney Carl Mayer, who along with Bruce Afran devoted countless unpaid hours to the suit. “This is a major blow to civil liberties. It gives the green light to the military to detain people without trial or counsel in military installations, including secret installations abroad. There is little left of judicial review of presidential action during wartime.”

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Judge Forrest, in her 112-page ruling against the section, noted that under this provision of the NDAA whole categories of Americans could be subject to seizure by the military. These might include Muslims, activists, Black Bloc members and any other Americans labeled as domestic terrorists by the state. Forrest wrote that Section 1021(b)(2) echoed the 1944 Supreme Court ruling in Korematsu v. United States, which supported the government’s use of the military to detain 110,00 Japanese-Americans in internment camps without due process during World War II.

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The goals of corporate capitalism are increasingly indistinguishable from the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient to corporate profit. Debate between conventional liberals and conservatives has been replaced by empty political theater and spectacle. Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the process.

The government, by ignoring the rights and needs of ordinary citizens, is jeopardizing its legitimacy. This is dangerous. When a citizenry no longer feels that it can find justice within the organs of power, when it feels that the organs of power are the enemies of freedom and economic advancement, it makes war on those organs. Those of us who are condemned as radicals, idealists and dreamers call for basic reforms that, if enacted, will make peaceful reform possible. But corporate capitalists, now unchecked by state power and dismissive of the popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting. The Supreme Court ruling on our challenge is one more signpost on the road to dystopia.

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It is capitalism, not government, that is the problem. The fusion of corporate and state power means that government is broken. It is little more than a protection racket for Wall Street. And it is our job to wrest government back. This will come only through the building of mass movements.

“It is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism,” George Orwell wrote. “Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism.”



Chris Hedges: We're Losing the Last Shreds of Legal Rights to Protect Ourselves from Oligarchy | Alternet

NDAA Signed Into Law By Obama Despite Guantanamo Veto Threat, Indefinite Detention Provisions

I will admit, I do not understand the NDAA completely,,,but based on numerous postings, especially in regards to the so-called FEMA camps, think I may need to do some more reading,,,

Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. Just as he did with last year's version of the bill, however, Obama decided that the need to pass the NDAA, which also sets the armed forces' $633 billion budget for the 2013 fiscal year, was simply "too great to ignore," according to a presidential signing statement released in the early morning hours Thursday.

[,,,]  "President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”

[,,,]  Obama's signature caps an intense sequence of events for opponents of indefinite detention. In November, a bipartisan group of senators amended their chamber's NDAA bill to prohibit the military from detaining American citizens on American soil. But when the House and Senate met to reconcile their versions of the NDAA, that amendment was stripped out behind closed doors.

[,,,]  Outside of Congress, civil liberties groups are pushing forward with a lawsuit against the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA on the grounds that they are unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg denied their efforts to reinstate an injunction against indefinite detention on Dec. 14, but the case against the law is still proceeding in the Second Circuit Court.

NDAA Signed Into Law By Obama Despite Guantanamo Veto Threat, Indefinite Detention Provisions