Update on the Plans for a National ID

Either government controls the people or the people control the government

Once again, security for the country is what we are told is the motivation for allowing the government the capability to listen to phone calls or monitor our emails. We are asked to believe that agencies and departments of the federal government will not use all the tools in the technological cookie jar that Congress has provided.

I am bewildered as to why anyone would trust that the NSA, FBI or DHS will start obeying the law. The FBI scripted their own version of FISA (which eavesdropped on American citizen's phone calls, intercepted emails and monitored financial transactions). The FBI abused National Security Letters. DHS's Mocny conceded that the DHS can and will ignore federal privacy laws.

The Stop Real ID Coalition and the Constitutional Alliance work around the clock attempting to stay current on the laws, initiatives and programs that impact our freedom.

If as a country, we make a conscience decision not to accept risk but rather "at all costs" institute any and all measures that might protect us from a terrorist attack, we will not remain a free country. We must be willing to accept some risk if we are to preserve our liberty, rights and freedom.

Make no mistake about it. As a country we are giving the federal government the laws and tools (technology) to control us. We have not learned the lessons of the McCarthy era. We also have not learned from our experience while J. Edgar Hoover was the Director of the FBI. We have not learned from the abuses of power witnessed under the Bush administration or those already taking place under the Obama administration.

I do not know what the "trigger" will be the provides government with the "excuse/reason" to take full control. The trigger might be an economic collapse, a terrorist event, a pandemic or even a natural disaster. The fact is a number of possibilities real or imagined exist that can be the trigger. What I do know is once government has power it does not relinquish it.

We at the Stop Real ID Coalition and the Constitutional Alliance fully support the people in law enforcement, our military and our intelligence community. We recognize the federal government has a responsibility to protect the citizens of the United States. That being said, protecting does not equate to controlling. We support state driver's licenses with document integrity. We do not want to see counterfeit driver's licenses used to facilitate any criminal activity including acts of terrorism. We have an alternative to the Real ID Act 2005, PASS ID Act and the REAL ID Repeal and Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2009

UPDATE ON SB1261 AND HR3471

There have been some articles about SB1261 (Providing for Additional Security in States' Identification Act of 2009) or the PASS ID Act. Very few people if any are talking about HR3471 (REAL ID Repeal and Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2009, short title).

What is important for all citizens to realize is the Real ID Act, PASS ID Act and the REAL ID Repeal and Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2009 all either do or will require that Americans be enrolled into a single global biometric identification system. If one supports any of these bills then they support the federal government intervening in the issuance of state driver's licenses.

I am absolutely besides myself attempting to understand why we are so blind about the power we are giving to the federal government. The federal government has set 29% as being an acceptable rate to catch people and goods entering our country illegally through authorized Customs Border Patrol checkpoints.

If our government has the biometric information of terrorists then why not focus on terrorists at our checkpoints instead of all U.S. citizens? If we do not have the biometric information of terrorists then why are we collecting the biometric information of American citizens?

I get emails and telephone calls everyday asking me about the status of the aforementioned legislation.

1) PASS ID Act has passed with an amendment added, in committee (Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee). It is my opinion that the PASS ID Act will be attached to other legislation before being heard by the full senate. The Real ID Act 2005 was attached to other legislation (military spending and tsunami relief). I believe PASS ID will be attached to an appropriations spending bill. I do not believe the senate will take the time to debate PASS ID on its own merits. Some will see the attachment of PASS ID to other legislation as a way to avoid debate or at least limit debate on PASS ID. Others will argue attaching PASS ID to other legislation is a logical thing to do in order to best utilize the time the senate has to hear legislation. In either case the result will be the PASS ID Act will pass in the senate.

2) REAL ID Repeal and Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2009 (HR3471) has been referred to two house committees, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary. HR3471 repeals Title II of the Real ID Act 2005 just as the PASS ID Act does. HR3471 will reinstitute section 7212 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

Not confused yet? The Pass ID Act calls for a non negotiated rulemaking process while HR3471 calls for a negotiated rulemaking process.

The point is there is no way most people are going to understand the many nuances that are a reality when speaking about the path legislation can take to become law. It is equally true that the rulemaking process is not easily understood.

While the country is focused on healthcare, cap and trade, immigration and other issues the federal government is pulling the rug right our from underneath our feet. The federal government has gone from protecting citizens to now wanting to control citizens.

I have been on the phone all morning working with our contacts to open the door to my testifying in opposition to HR3471. I have been put in contact with the people on "the Hill" that can make my testifying a reality.

If we need the support of citizens to make calls we will put out an Action Alert.

On a final note-HR3174, Photo Identification Security Act has been referred to the Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization, and Procurement. HR3174 mandates that all federal agencies/departments and financial institutions require a Real ID compliant driver's license. If Real ID (Title II) is repealed then HR3174 will be amended to change from Real ID to PASS ID or whatever replaces Real ID, compliant driver's license.


Source: Campaign For Liberty: Update on the Plans for a National ID

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The CHRC is ethically challenged

Recently, Canadian Human Rights Commission chief Jennifer Lynch criticized me for relying on "one source that is full of misinformation," in my parliamentary study of the CHRC ( "Canadians 'misinformed' on hate speech," June 22). It may surprise Ms. Lynch to learn that the source of my "misinformation" is her own commission and its companion body, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

Every question I raised in committee about the lack of due process and an ethics code for commission employees, and the absence of rules of evidence, came from commission and tribunal documents, many of which are currently available on the commission's own website ( www.chrc-ccdp.ca).The transcripts of tribunal hearings provide telling evidence of the wayward approach the commission's investigators take in prosecuting their cases. Recent hearings, such as the Marc Lemire case, have revealed that current CHRC investigator Dean Steacy and former CHRC investigator Richard Warman regularly posted neo-Nazi diatribes under assumed names on white supremacist web-sites. Further, uncontradicted expert evidence presented before the hearing demonstrated that investigator Steacy illegitimately used an unsuspecting private citizen's wireless Internet service to post his offensive comments.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the commission asked the tribunal to exclude the media from the hearing that day. Fortunately, for the sake of accountability, a secret hearing was rejected and we know more about the CHRC's inner workings.

However, other hearings have been held in secret, as Ms. Lynch has admitted, supposedly for the "safety" of a witness but contrary to the ancient right of being able to face one's accuser in court. Indeed, in the ongoing case of beachesboy@aol.comvs. drumsaremybeat@aol.com,the commission hasn't even revealed the identity of the complainant. Interestingly, the commission's website does name the complainant for 12 of the 14 hate speech cases that have come before the tribunal in the last eight years: Richard Warman. Ms. Lynch's deputy appeared before my committee in Parliament recently and admitted that the commission does not have to follow rules of evidence or legal procedure, but merely has "operating procedures" that identify the timelines for addressing complaints. To put that in plain English: defendants have no guarantee of a fair hearing.

A 2003 internal government review of the CHRC found that the commission scored only 2.5 out of five on an ethics test. The review recommended the commission adopt an ethics code, which it has still not done. Given the questionable activities of its investigators, perhaps it is time for Ms. Lynch to revisit this recommendation.

I'll let the readers decide who is "misinformed." - Russ Hiebert is the Conservative Member of Parliament for South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale.

Source: The National post

Obama’s Embrace of a Bush Tactic Riles Congress

WASHINGTON — President Obama has issued signing statements claiming the authority to bypass dozens of provisions of bills enacted into law since he took office, provoking mounting criticism by lawmakers from both parties.

President George W. Bush, citing expansive theories about his constitutional powers, set off a national debate in 2006 over the propriety of signing statements — instructions to executive officials about how to interpret and put in place new laws — after he used them to assert that he could authorize officials to bypass laws like a torture ban and oversight provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

In the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called Mr. Bush’s use of signing statements an “abuse,” and said he would issue them with greater restraint. The Obama administration says the signing statements the president has signed so far, challenging portions of five bills, have been based on mainstream interpretations of the Constitution and echo reservations routinely expressed by presidents of both parties.

Still, since taking office, Mr. Obama has relaxed his criteria for what kinds of signing statements are appropriate. And last month several leading Democrats — including Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and David R. Obey of Wisconsin — sent a letterto Mr. Obama complaining about one of his signing statements.

“During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of Congressional statutes he was required to enforce,” they wrote. “We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude.”

They were reacting to a statement Mr. Obama issued after signing a bill that expanded assistance to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank while requiring the administration to pressure the organizations to adopt certain policies. Mr. Obama said he could disregard the negotiation instructions under his power to conduct foreign relations.

The administration protested that it planned to carry out the provisions anyway and that its statement merely expressed a general principle. But Congress was not mollified. On July 9, in a bipartisan rebuke, the House of Representatives voted 429 to 2 to ban officials from using federal money to disobey the restrictions. And in their July 21 letter, Mr. Frank and Mr. Obey — the chairmen of the Financial Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee — asked Mr. Obama to stop issuing such signing statements, warning that Congress might not approve more money for the banking organizations unless he agreed.

In March, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent Mr. Obama a letter criticizing a signing statement that challenged a statute protecting government whistle-blowers who tell lawmakers privileged or “otherwise confidential” information. He accused Mr. Obama of chilling potential whistle-blowers, undermining the intent of Congress in a way that violated his campaign promises. The White House said it intended only to reaffirm similar reservations made by previous presidents.

Other laws Mr. Obama has said he need not obey as written include format requirements for budget requests, limits on whom he may appoint to a commission, and a restriction on putting troops under United Nations command.

After Mr. Bush transformed signing statements from an obscure tool into a commonplace term, Mr. Obama’s willingness to use them has disappointed some who had hoped he would roll back the practice, not entrench it.

“We didn’t think it was an appropriate practice when President Bush was doing it, and our policy is such that we don’t think it is an appropriate practice when President Obama is doing it,” said H. Thomas Wells, who just stepped down as president of the American Bar Association.

In 2006, the association called the practice unconstitutional and said presidents should veto legislation if it had flaws, giving Congress a chance to override the pronouncements.

But other legal experts argued that signing statements were lawful and appropriate because it was impractical to veto important bills over small problems. Among them, Walter Dellinger, who helped develop the legal framework for signing statements as a Clinton administration official, said Mr. Obama was using the mechanism appropriately, and the problem with Mr. Bush’s statements was that he cited dubious legal theories.

“The fact that a previous or subsequent president might refuse to comply with laws that are valid is not a reason for this president to decline to assert his authority with regard to laws that are invalid,” Mr. Dellinger said.

Mr. Dellinger signed a 2006 essay defending signing statements with other former Clinton officials, including David Barron and Martin Lederman, who now run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. They work with White House lawyers Daniel Meltzer and Trevor Morrison, along with Office of Management and Budget officials, to produce Mr. Obama’s statements.

Since the 19th century, presidents have occasionally signed bills while calling a provision unconstitutional. But the practice was rare until President Ronald Reagan. He and his successors, including Bill Clinton, began issuing signing statements much more frequently and challenging far more provisions.

The practice peaked under Mr. Bush, who challenged nearly 1,200 provisions of bills over eight years — about twice the number challenged by all previous presidents combined, according to data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio professor.

Mr. Obama has attached signing statements to 5 of the 42 bills he has signed, focusing on 19 specific provisions. He also challenged, without listing them, “numerous provisions” in a budget bill requiring officials to obtain permission from a Congressional committee before spending money. It contained dozens of such requirements.

In the presidential campaign, the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, promised never to issue a signing statement. By contrast, Mr. Obama said it was a legitimate way “to protect a president’s constitutional prerogatives” when used with greater restraint than Mr. Bush.

“Restraint,” Mr. Obama and his campaign said then, included not issuing “signing statements that undermine the legislative intent” or “nullify or undermine Congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

But in March, when he issued a presidential memorandum on signing statements, Mr. Obama defined restraint as citing only “interpretations of the Constitution that are well founded,” a subtle shift that provides greater leeway.

Still, unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has not mentioned the Unitary Executive Theory, an expansive view of executive power that conflicts with Supreme Court precedent. His only invocation of his commander-in-chief authority was limited, taking aim at a requirement that he get permission from a military subordinate before taking an action.

“He has not pushed the envelope as far as the Bush administration in making the kind of claims that Bush made,” said Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University professor who studies signing statements. “But he is still using it in ways that were controversial before George W. Bush came to office.”

Source: New York Times

Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?

There are dangerous currents running through America's politics and the way we confront them is crucial.

All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?

And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History, Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere. It's odd that I haven't been asked for quite a while; but if you asked me today, I'd tell you that if we're not there right now, we've certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space. Either way, our fascist American future now looms very large in the front windshield -- and those of us who value American democracy need to understand how we got here, what's changing now, and what's at stake in the very near future if these people are allowed to win -- or even hold their ground.

What is fascism?
The word has been bandied about by so many people so wrongly for so long that, as Paxton points out, "Everybody is somebody else's fascist." Given that, I always like to start these conversations by revisiting Paxton's essential definition of the term:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Elsewhere, he refines this further as

"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

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Jonah Goldberg aside, that's a basic definition most legitimate scholars in the field can agree on, and the one I'll be referring to here.

From proto-fascism to the tipping point
According to Paxton, fascism unfolds in five stages. The first two are pretty solidly behind us -- and the third should be of particular interest to progressives right now.

In the first stage, a rural movement emerges to effect some kind of nationalist renewal (what Roger Griffin calls "palingenesis" -- a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes). They come together to restore a broken social order, always drawing on themes of unity, order, and purity. Reason is rejected in favor of passionate emotion. The way the organizing story is told varies from country to country; but it's always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture's traditional myths and values, and purging society of the toxic influence of the outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.

Fascism only grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis. Paxton suggests that the Ku Klux Klan, which formed in reaction to post-Civil War Reconstruction, may in fact be the first authentically fascist movement in modern times. Almost every major country in Europe sprouted a proto-fascist movement in the wretched years following WWI (when the Klan enjoyed a major resurgence here as well) -- but most of them stalled either at this first stage, or the next one.

As Rick Perlstein documented in his two books on Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, modern American conservatism was built on these same themes. From "Morning in America" to the Rapture-ready religious right to the white nationalism promoted by the GOP through various gradients of racist groups, it's easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it's blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn't have a moment's shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables...are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."

That description sounds eerily like the dire straits our Congressional Republicans find themselves in right now. Though the GOP has been humiliated, rejected, and reduced to rump status by a series of epic national catastrophes mostly of its own making, its leadership can't even imagine governing cooperatively with the newly mobilized and ascendant Democrats. Lacking legitimate routes back to power, their last hope is to invest the hardcore remainder of their base with an undeserved legitimacy, recruit them as shock troops, and overthrow American democracy by force. If they can't win elections or policy fights, they're more than willing to take it to the streets, and seize power by bullying Americans into silence and complicity.

When that unholy alliance is made, the third stage -- the transition to full-fledged government fascism -- begins.

The third stage: being there
All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It's also our very last chance to stop it.

The fail-safe point
According to Paxton, the forging of this third-stage alliance is the make-or-break moment -- and the worst part of it is that by the time you've arrived at that point, it's probably too late to stop it. From here, it escalates, as minor thuggery turns into beatings, killings, and systematic tagging of certain groups for elimination, all directed by people at the very top of the power structure. After Labor Day, when Democratic senators and representatives go back to Washington, the mobs now being created to harass them will remain to run the same tactics -- escalated and perfected with each new use -- against anyone in town whose color, religion, or politics they don't like. In some places, they're already making notes and taking names.

Where's the danger line? Paxton offers three quick questions that point us straight at it:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?

2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?

3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

By my reckoning, we're three for three. That's too close. Way too close.

The Road Ahead
History tells us that once this alliance catalyzes and makes a successful bid for power, there's no way off this ride. As Dave Neiwert wrote in his recent book, The Eliminationists, "if we can only identify fascism in its mature form—the goose-stepping brownshirts, the full-fledged use of violence and intimidation tactics, the mass rallies—then it will be far too late to stop it." Paxton (who presciently warned that "An authentic popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black") agrees that if a corporate/brownshirt alliance gets a toehold -- as ours is now scrambling to do -- it can very quickly rise to power and destroy the last vestiges of democratic government. Once they start racking up wins, the country will be doomed to take the whole ugly trip through the last two stages, with no turnoffs or pit stops between now and the end.

What awaits us? In stage four, as the duo assumes full control of the country, power struggles emerge between the brownshirt-bred party faithful and the institutions of the conservative elites -- church, military, professions, and business. The character of the regime is determined by who gets the upper hand. If the party members (who gained power through street thuggery) win, an authoritarian police state may well follow. If the conservatives can get them back under control, a more traditional theocracy, corporatocracy, or military regime can re-emerge over time. But in neither case will the results resemble the democracy that this alliance overthrew.

Paxton characterizes stage five as "radicalization or entropy." Radicalization is likely if the new regime scores a big military victory, which consolidates its power and whets its appetite for expansion and large-scale social engineering. (See: Germany) In the absence of a radicalizing event, entropy may set in, as the state gets lost in its own purposes and degenerates into incoherence. (See: Italy)

It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

Source: Alternet

Rein In the Human Rights Bureaucracy

In a column in the National Post Ezra Levant, who has been battling Alberta human rights zealots, identified seven individuals who work for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) who also joined neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, or white hate groups.

It's not that these individuals are Nazi sympathizers or racists who've infiltrated the hallowed halls of human rights activists. They aren't. What they are, are provocateurs, using the Internet to join suspect hate groups in order to collect evidence against them.

In other words, it's a form of entrapment.

Intelligence agents joining (penetrating) a group to assess possible treason or subversion, is vastly different from enticing, provoking or encouraging a racist reaction by pretending to be more extreme than the extremists -- which is what CHRC provocateurs do.

Levant, has been summoned before human rights tribunals (accused of "hate" for publishing Danish cartoons mocking Islamic terrorism), as has Mark Steyn, for exercising free speech, in a book in which he contends the high birthrate among Muslims will change the demographics of western countries.

In both the above cases human rights bureaucrats have looked foolish to despicable -- and have lost credibility among Canadians. At least, one hopes this is the case. The CHRC is, arguably, an often bigoted and unnecessary institution in our country.

As Levant says, "CHRC employees have been active members of neo-Nazi organizations for years, and have published countless anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black comments online." Such as referring to Jews, gays or Muslims as "scum," etc.

Jennifer Lynch heads the CHRC. I took a swipe at her views a while back when she advocated "tolerance and open-mindedness," and then proceeded to show her own intolerance and closed-minded approach, in my view, towards issues she disagrees with.

"Tolerating" views you agree with is not tolerance at all. It's "echoing."

Levant depicts Lynch as cowardly for refusing to appear before a Parliamentary committee.

To many (including me) the CHRC is unnecessary and a direct threat to free speech -- a kangaroo court more intent on lynching (no pun intended) than seeking truth or justice.

CHRC investigators likely see themselves as crusaders, exposing suspect or dangerous organizations and gathering evidence to protect society. Hardly.

Canadian democracy is not threatened by white supremacists or anti-Semites.

Democratic countries generally show repugnance toward extremism.

One gets the feeling the CRHC sets up targets to knock down, thereby justifying its existence. For more details on CRHC mischief, try going to the blog ezralevant.com, or other sites giving details about provocateurs pretending to be racists in hopes of catching racists. Try RichardWarman.com or Google Dean Steacy, and see for yourself.

Short of disbanding the CRHC, Section 13 of the Human Rights Act must be scotched. It "empowers the Commission to deal with complaints regarding the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet ... any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination."

That's pretty broad, especially when the Criminal Code already allows for legal action in many cases where human rights vigilantes seem intent on waging vendettas.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should rein in the human rights bureaucracy that too often offends the very essence of due process and democracy.

Source: The Toronto Sun

The ADL Thought Police

Facts have since proven it was largely pro-Israelis who fixed the intelligence that manipulated the US to invade Iraq. That same network has now mobilized to expand that war to Iran, notes Jeff Gates.

When sociology Professor Bill Robinson stared down the Anti-Defamation League, it looked like a victory for academic freedom. Yet was it? Robinson was portrayed as an anti-Semite because he sent an email to students featuring a photo essay critical of Israel that had circulated online for weeks. While University of California administrators dallied, the ADL and its international network turned up the heat—signaling academics worldwide they could be next.

It looked like progress when the faculty at UC Santa Barbara urged “changes in procedures to avoid improprieties and abuses in the future….” But was it? By then the ADL campaign had created the intended chilling effect. This silencing campaign was featured news for five time-critical months while a newly elected US president was reassessing US-Israeli relations. How can anyone calculate the full extent of the damage—not only to Robinson’s reputation and to the stature of the University of California but also to national security?

So where’s the victory? Clearly Robinson deserves acclaim for resisting pressure as the ADL deployed its most seasoned operatives, including Marvin Heir, a rabbi at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Only an investigation can identify who mobilized the donor community that threatened UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang with the withdrawal of funds.

What was the motivation for this high profile intimidation campaign? Was the ADL driven simply by the discomfort that two students voiced on their receipt of his email criticizing Israeli policy? Or did the ADL network have its sights on a broader strategic goal?

Facts have since proven it was largely pro-Israelis who fixed the intelligence that manipulated the US to invade Iraq. That same network has now mobilized to expand that war to Iran. A key barrier: the global condemnation of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. How does Tel Aviv limit the public relations fallout? On what leverage points should Israel focus to contain the censure while continuing to obscure Israel and pro-Israelis as the common source of this manipulation?

Aiding An Enemy Within?

The Founders faced a similar challenge during the Revolutionary War. How could they distinguish patriots from those loyal to a foreign nation? Knowing the vast risks that accompany betrayal, they lowered the evidentiary standard for treason. Guilt still required proof beyond a reasonable doubt but a conviction only required evidence of “adhering” to an enemy or giving them “aid and comfort.” To remove all doubt about the gravity of this capital offense, they even included those relaxed standards in Article III of the US Constitution.

Fast-forward two centuries to the Information Age and consider the challenge of distinguishing friend from foe. With a new president sworn into office on a platform promising change, how should Tel Aviv continue to conceal the fact that it was pro-Israelis who deceived the US to wage war in Iraq for the expansionist goals of Greater Israel?

During the Democratic presidential primaries, Senator Barack Obama promised no change in US-Israeli relations. But that pledge was made while he and Hillary Clinton were vying for the pro-Israeli vote. What about now—particularly now that he knows Israel scheduled its assault on Gaza between Christmas and the Obama inaugural—knowing that interval would ensure Tel Aviv could operate largely free of official criticism?

Campaigning for president is one thing. Serving as commander in chief is another. What became of the prospects for change after this professor of constitutional law took a constitutional oath that obliged him to defend the US from all enemies—both foreign and domestic?

Based on the success of pro-Israelis in inducing the US to invade Iraq, how does this international network best expand this war to Iran? To succeed again, how can Tel Aviv best control the risk that facts unhelpful to its agenda find their way into the marketplace of ideas?

How about this for a psyops strategy: launch an intimidation campaign on a high-profile campus and portray a critic as an anti-Semite for sharing photos that had been circulating for weeks on the Internet. Then threaten his job, smear his reputation, put him in fear of his physical safety and threaten to withhold critical funding. Then see if on-campus critics still dare to speak out.

While the Faculty Senate should be commended for its stance, one must ask: what took so long? And what will be done to ensure that never again is a professor on any University of California campus subjected to such abuse with the complicity of university administrators? What steps will be taken to ensure this conduct does not recur on campuses nationwide?

Where was UC President Mark Yudof as this intimidation campaign progressed with such well-timed success? What role was played by the pro-Israeli bias of his wife, Judith, the immediate past president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism representing 760 synagogues?

Where was the Board of Regents while this silencing campaign advanced between the invasion of Gaza and President Obama’s White House meeting with Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Did Board of Regents chairman Richard Blum harbor an undisclosed bias that precluded him shutting down this ADL operation? How about his wife, pro-Israeli US Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee? What role did bias play in a community-wide smear campaign led by Arthur Gross-Schaefer, a Santa Barbara rabbi?

Was this only an offense against a courageous professor who fought on while university administrators retreated? Or was this assault more strategic? The Faculty Senate cannot on its own correct these wrongs because key offenders remain beyond their reach. What they can—and must—do is dismiss any faculty member complicit in this operation, condemn any university administrator who failed to act promptly and rebuke complicit operatives in the community.

The reputation of Prof. Robinson was only grist for the same mill that churned out the phony intelligence required to induce the US to war in Iraq. That same network of deceit now seeks to catalyze war with Iran. Robinson was not the target. His reputation was collateral damage. The target was the mindset of academics that—because of this assault—hesitated to criticize Israel.

Until steps are taken to deter future offenses, these psychological operations (psyops) will continue and the reputation of the US will continue to be collateral damage. Most ominous of all, those who wage war “by way of deception” (the motto of the Israeli Mossad) will continue to displace the facts on which self-governance depends. Progress must be measured by how many educators grasp that what was done to one could be done to all.

Education – The Ultimate Battlefield

In unconventional warfare, the battlefield is the shared field of consciousness. Where does a “consensus” reside? That’s where battles are now waged for public opinion. Those who targeted University of California, Santa Barbara Professor Bill Robinson know that victory flows to those most adept at influencing the consensus mindset. Few know that better than the Anti-Defamation League.

For seasoned combatants, the psyops challenge lies in how best to displace facts with beliefs. The only modern component of this ancient craft is the means for taking such manipulation to global scale. The duplicity is the same regardless whether the operation creates a shared belief in Iraqi WMD, a shared consensus in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets or a shared opinion that Israel is a democracy and an ally. All false yet all widely believed to be true.

Robinson was smeared as an anti-Semite for sharing a photo essay with his students that was critical of Israeli policy. That essay first appeared in Adbusters, a magazine subtitled The Journal of the Mental Environment. That essay has since been posted on a website maintained by UCSB students in defense of academic freedom: http://sb4af.wordpress.com/robinson-case/

Kalle Lasn, founding editor of Adbusters, is a graphic artist who eventually awoke to the harm he was doing as an advertising executive. An Estonian, he saw firsthand how the Soviets exerted virtual control by manipulating the mental environment. In March 2004, Lasn published an article in Adbusters pointing out that, whereas less than two percent of Americans are Jewish, 26 of the top 50 neoconservatives advocating war in Iraq are Jewish (52%).

He titled the article: “Why Won’t Anyone Say They’re Jewish?” By ADL standards, that meant he was an “anti-Semite”—just for asking the question. What’s since been confirmed is that the bulk of those who fixed the intelligence around that predetermined goal were either Jewish or assets developed by operatives who were Jewish.

Displacement is how warfare is waged in the Information Age: displacing facts with beliefs. Why would anyone expect otherwise? Jewish critics of Israeli policy are “self-hating.” Non-Jewish critics are anti-Semites, Jew haters and/or Holocaust deniers. Although those charges are fast losing their potency from overuse, their toxicity still retains enough force to silence critics—as shown by the global traction gained by this thought control operation on a University of California campus.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, British founder of Independent Jewish Voices, uses his position as a Member of Parliament to criticize Israeli policy. Members of his family perished at the hands of the Nazis and in the Holocaust. As one of the U.K.’s harshest critics of Israeli policies, he routinely compares the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews—the same analogy for which Robinson (also Jewish) was smeared as an anti-Semite.

Kaufman’s heartfelt speech on Israel’s incursion into Gaza, given on the floor of the House of Commons, is a must-see for those concerned that criticism of Israeli policy remains absent on the floor of the US Congress. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8 [Readers can draw their own conclusions as to who would be motivated to corrupt this YouTube version of his remarks.]

The psyops specialists who coordinated this on-campus silencing campaign know where modern wars are waged: in the shared mindset. The war fought to invade Iraq was waged in the mental environment long before US troops invaded Iraq. Now the US appears guilty by its association with an extremist enclave infamous worldwide for its prowess at waging war by way of deception—and for its aptitude at deceiving the US to fight those wars.

The US invaded Iraq only after facts were displaced by manipulated beliefs. The litany of manufactured beliefs is long and varied: Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague, Iraqi acquisition of yellowcake uranium from Niger and the list goes on. None were factual; all were deployed to deceive. And to advance an Israeli agenda.

Remember the campaign to discredit Joe Wilson overseen by (Jewish) White House operative Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff? A former US Ambassador to Iraq, Wilson was targeted by Libby for exposing the phony intelligence on uranium from Niger. Campaigns to deceive and discredit have long been key weapons in the Israeli arsenal of deceit.

Remember how Colin Powell was dispatched by pro-Israeli war-planners to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the March 2003 invasion? Why Powell? To associate his hard-earned credibility with what we now know was false intelligence about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons laboratories. At every turn we find the displacement of facts with beliefs to manipulate decision-makers. That operation successfully discredited not only Powell and the US but also the U.N., an organization that Tel Aviv fears may yet hold Israel accountable for its conduct under international law.

Intelligence on which the US relied was fixed by pro-Israelis in pursuit of a predetermined agenda: the expansionist goals for Greater Israel. Phony intelligence persuaded Washington decision-makers to dispatch the US military to wage a preemptive war not for American interests but for Tel Aviv. When waging unconventional warfare, by the time you see troops on the ground, those complicit are often pre-staging the next venue—as now with the Israeli push to attack Iran.

The ADL-coordinated intimidation campaign launched on the UCSB campus reflects the face of fascism in the Information Age. To respond effectively, the Senate Faculty must provide the tools that enable those targeted to grasp how facts are displaced with induced beliefs—in plain sight and, to date, with legal impunity. No one likes to be deceived. Once “the mark” grasps how they were manipulated, they will see for themselves who is complicit and why. That’s when long overdue accountability can begin.

To focus only on the means (such as the attack on Robinson) leaves the end obscure. And leaves the mark—including UC students—without the tools required to defend against such duplicity. For educators, that shortcoming would transform this potential triumph into an academic tragedy.

Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. Gates’ latest book is Guilt By Association—How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008). His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. For two decades, he was an adviser to policy-makers worldwide.

Source: Middle East Online

URGENT: The Bill We Warned You About

Subject: The bill we warned you about

THIS IS AN URGENT ACTION ITEM... We've been told a vote is likely to occur Wednesday.

When we first launched our Freedom to Farm campaign back in April, we mentioned that House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman said "he intends to pass a strong food safety bill soon."

This bill we warned you about, the 109-page H.R. 2749, is Waxman's promise.

The good news is that some of the most egregious trial balloons from earlier bills such as H.R. 875 have gone by the wayside . . .

* There will be no new Food Safety Administration bureaucracy
* The bill seems to define "farm" in such a way that backyard gardens won't be included in the regulations
* Direct farm-to-consumer, farm-to-restaurant, and farm-to-grocery store transactions will be exempt
* There is no implementation or incorporation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS)

YOU are to be thanked for this. DC Downsizers were part of a large army of concerned citizens that killed earlier bills.

But the bad news is very bad. This bill . . .

* authorizes warrantless searches of farms
* imposes a $500 tax (or "registration fee") of all operators in all steps of the food production chain
* imposes civil penalties up to $20,000 per individual for each violation
* creates a food trace-back system, burdening farms and small businesses with reams of new paperwork
* empowers the Dept. of Health and Human Services to micro-manage the raising and harvesting of crops (you might have assumed that Congress would've handed the U.S. Dept of Agriculture this terrible power).

In essence, Congress wants to punish the innocent and protect the guilty. It is not small farms and businesses that were the source of contaminated food scares, but rather the processing facilities of large corporations. Yet this bill will only drive small farms out of business, which means reduced competition and higher prices in an already-bad economy.

Please use DownsizeDC.org's proprietary Educate the Powerful System to send a letter to Congress telling them to defeat H.R. 2749. Tell them the bill will only hurt competition and put undue burdens on small farmers. Let's send enough messages to frighten Congress and kill this bill.

And due to the urgency of this vote, if you have time, please call your local House Representative as well. His or her contact info is presented on the campaign page, once you're logged in.

Source: DownSizeDC.Org

Bumbling Big Brother: What Americans can learn from the British experience with government surveillance

Last October several British newspapers reported that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government was working on a plan to monitor every phone call, website visit, text message, and email in the country, entering the information into an enormous database that would be used to catch terrorists, pedophiles, and scam artists. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, called it “a substantial shift in the powers of the state to obtain information on individuals” and warned that “any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.”

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith later gave a speech in which she said the electronic dragnet would be limited to data transmitted through websites and information about the identities and locations of senders and recipients. She said investigators would still need ministerial warrants, a kind of administrative subpoena, to listen to or read the contents of communications. The speech apparently did not reassure Ken MacDonald, director of public prosecutions for England and Wales. In late October, shortly before stepping down from his post, MacDonald warned that “decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the state may use these [surveillance] powers, and to what extent, are likely to be irreversible,” adding, “We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom’s back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security state.”

The episode illustrated two points that are reinforced by British journalist Ross Clark’s wry, revealing book The Road to Big Brother: One Man’s Struggle Against the Surveillance State. First, despite the U.K.’s reputation as one of the most watched societies in the world, with more surveillance cameras per capita than any other country, its citizens, notably including law enforcement officials, still care about privacy. Second, their complaints are more easily ignored than similar objections in the United States, where the Fourth Amendment and various statutes prevent the executive branch from unilaterally changing the rules regarding government snooping.

In the U.S., implementing a data collection program like the one contemplated by the British government would require not only the “public discussion” demanded by Dominic Grieve but congressional authorization. The legislation, in turn, would be reviewed by the courts, which are unlikely to allow so much heretofore private information to be gathered on so many innocent people, let alone bless routine wiretapping based on administrative subpoenas. Nor would American courts approve mandatory DNA sampling of every citizen and visitor, as a British appeals court judge has suggested, or let police stop people and search their pockets and bags at will, a policy Clark says is in the offing.

Still, there is much Americans can learn from the British experience with surveillance. Take all those cameras. So far in the United States, they have been limited mainly to detecting traffic violations, generating heated debate about whether they reduce or increase accidents and whether municipalities are sacrificing public safety for the sake of revenue (by reducing the duration of yellow lights, for example). But provided they focus only on public areas, there is no constitutional barrier to erecting surveillance cameras throughout the United States, until our country is as thick with them as the U.K. After all, the government could, in theory, post police officers on every corner, and they would be free to look and listen without violating anyone’s Fourth Amendment rights. Looking and listening from a distance does not change the constitutional question.

Yet there is something to be said, fiscal concerns aside, for not having a cop on every corner. The sense of being constantly watched tends to put a damper on things, potentially affecting the topics people discuss, the way they dress, the businesses they visit, even the books they read while sitting on park benches.

By Clark’s account, this cost is not worth paying. He says the evidence that the government’s surveillance cameras are effective at either deterring or detecting crime is thin. Facial recognition software aimed at catching known suspects has been a bust, easily foiled by poor lighting, hats, sunglasses, even a few months of aging. Clark argues that Britain’s cameras, which he describes as frequently unmonitored or out of order, are appealing as a relatively cheap way of seeming to do something about crime. He finds that “electronic surveillance is not always augmenting traditional policing; it is more often than not replacing it, with poor results.” Likewise, he says, huge collections of information gleaned from private sources such as phone companies, banks, and credit bureaus (along the lines of America’s renamed but not abandoned Total Information Awareness program) are unmanageable and rife with errors. Clark notes that “there is a fundamental rule about databases: the bigger they are, the more useless they become.”

Again and again, Clark finds, high-tech systems that seem at first to be outrageous invasions of privacy turn out to be outrageous boondoggles that not only don’t succeed at their official goals but actually get in the way of catching genuine bad guys and protecting public safety. “The excessive collection of data tends to act as a fog through which authorities struggle to find what they are looking for,” he writes. “The more Big Brother watches, the less he seems to see.”

As Clark emphasizes, an excessively nosy government poses many dangers, including exposure to fraud and blackmail, unjustified interference with freedom of travel, and mistaken incrimination. But it is reassuring to realize that government is not competent enough to be omniscient.

Source: Reason Online

You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal

With all the attention that's been paid lately to long federal sentences for drug offenders, it's surprising that a far more troubling phenomenon has barely hit the media's radar screen. Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison.

What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.

We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.

Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like.

Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.

Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal."

Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who will testify at today's hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.

Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.

Krister's lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother's home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal.

The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong.

The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man.

Two years after arresting him, the feds brought an entirely new criminal prosecution against Krister on entirely new grounds. They used the fact that before Krister moved back to Wasilla to care for his 80-year-old mother, he had safely and securely stored all of his fuel-cell materials in Salmon, Idaho.

According to the government, when Krister was in jail in Alaska due to the first unjust charges, he had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials in Idaho. Unfortunately for Krister, federal lawmakers had included in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act a provision making it a crime to abandon "hazardous waste." According to the trial judge, the law didn't require prosecutors to prove that Krister had intended to abandon the materials (he hadn't) or that they were waste at all -- in reality, they were quite valuable and properly stored away for future use.

With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice, and it convicted him. He spent almost two years locked up with real criminals in a federal prison. After he testifies today, he will have to return to his halfway house in Idaho and serve another week before he is released.

The other hardened criminal whose story members of Congress will hear today is retiree George Norris. A longtime resident of Spring, Texas, Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements -- before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business. What was Norris's goal? To earn a little investment income while his wife neared retirement.

The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous overbreadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.

Facing 10 years in federal prison, Norris pled guilty and served almost two. His wife, Kathy, describes the pain of losing their life savings to pay for attorneys and trying to explain to grandchildren why for so long Poppa George couldn't see them.

Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll overcriminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law. Today's hearing is an excellent first step.

Source: FOX News

Bush, Cheney knew they were violating law

Torture instigators George Bush and Dick Cheney should not be allowed to evade prosecution on grounds they acted in good faith on their lawyers’ advice because they told their lawyers what advice to give, a law school dean says.

“Could Al Capone or ‘Lucky’ Luciana receive immunity for acting in accordance with the advice of counsel when they told counsel what to advise?” asks Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .

“(Vice-President) Cheney and (President) Bush knew that they were ordering violations of law,” Velvel points out. “The fact that they were doing so, and were well aware they were doing so, was one of the reasons why they, like a significant number of CIA officials who knew the same, demanded that lawyers produce legal cover for them in the form of Office of Legal Counsel memos authored by the likes of (John) Yoo and (Steven) Bradbury.”

Lower level CIA and military personnel that did not read the supposedly exculpatory memos, Velvel said, also cannot claim reliance on legal counsel because “they had to know that torture was forbidden no matter what some lawyers said. You could not grow up in America and not know this” any more than a person could claim murder was lawful because some lawyer told him so, Velvel writes.

“People who grew up in America cannot realistically claim that they thought it was lawful to beat people mercilessly, to smash their heads against walls, to kill about one hundred of them apparently, to hang them from ceiling hooks, to make them freeze, to deny them sleep for weeks on end, and so forth,” Velvel writes in an essay in his new book “America 2008” from Doukathsan Press.

“They knew what they were doing was wrong,” he continued. “FBI…guys on the scene knew it regardless of what lawyers like Yoo said, and it was knowledge that what they were doing was wrong that caused some lower level CIA guys too to want a ‘get out of jail free card,’” Velvel writes.

“That realization is why CIA officials, from 2002 to 2006 or 2007 demanded memoranda from the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, falsely claiming that the abuse and torture were not criminal acts,” Velvel said. “The officials wanted these OLC memos so that they could later avoid or defeat prosecutions by claiming that the decision-making office of the DOJ had approved the legality of what they were doing. The officials wanted a ‘golden shield,’” he added.

Those who claim they were ordered to torture, like those who said they had a legal opinion that to do so was okay, are guilty of an effort to “escape the Nuremberg principles by saying that others said what the culprits were doing was okay,” Velvel continues. The Nuremberg tribunal that judged accused Nazi war criminals after World War Two concluded they could not evade guilt by asserting they were only following orders.

“But claiming that their actions were immune because others okayed them is precisely what Cheney, Bush, their whole crowd…have been attempting to do… They knew what they were doing was illegal, as evidenced by the extreme secrecy they practiced lest it be learned they were practicing, and lest they be accused of practicing, the crimes they were in fact practicing. Morality, decency, and Nuremberg alike forbid this.”

“By now it seems beyond serious doubt that George Bush and company committed numerous war crimes,” Velvel wrote. “It is evident that if these things can be done, then there is an end of law where the truly wealthy and powerful are concerned. Whether it is Al Capone or Dick Cheney, the filthy rich or obscenely powerful will have it in their power to do the most awful things yet escape the law by using contributions or power to obtain immunity from preexisting law and to buy the opinions of immoral lawyers. That is the moral and philosophical basis why these things can’t be permitted,” Velvel said.

Velvel is dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, founded in 1988 for the express purpose of providing a quality, affordable legal education to minority students, immigrants and students from low-income backgrounds who would otherwise not be able to afford law school. Tuition at the school is only about half that charged by other New England area law schools. Velvel has been honored for his contributions to legal education reform by the National Law Journal and has also received a number of awards from the book publishing industry for his essays.

Sherwood Ross

Source: RINF News

U.S. carrying out “targeted killings”

Media reports recently exposed efforts by the Bush administration to create a CIA “assassination squad” so secret that former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the agency to keep Congress in the dark about it. The Wall Street Journal called it a secret plan to “capture or kill al Qaida operatives”; on Thursday, the Washington Post said the program was about to be activated when CIA director Leon Panetta pulled the plug.

But the blaring headlines, and the buzz in the blogosphere, are not just due to more evidence of the ex-veep’s addiction to executive power and behind-the-scenes machinations. It’s that word “assassinate.” Most observers assume that assassination is specifically proscribed by U.S. policy. Except it isn’t, exactly, and while the secret CIA assassination program canceled by Panetta may never have claimed a victim, the U.S. is already carrying out actions that look nearly exactly like assassinations, and doing so within the guidelines of domestic and international law. The United States has had plenty of legal latitude to carry out targeted killings during the so-called war on terror — and has been exercising that option vigorously for the past eight years.

The United States, in fact, has been targeting and eliminating specific al-Qaida and Taliban operatives ever since Congress authorized the use of force against them in September 2001. Just the other day, what were probably unmanned CIA drones killed 43 militants in Pakistan as part of the still unsuccessful effort to assassinate just one man, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Early last year, Salon reported from the Middle East on targeted killings carried out by the U.S. Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan. That article explored the sometimes-excruciating process, assisted by military attorneys, of trying to decide who could be killed from the air and under what circumstances, while simultaneously trying not to kill innocent civilians. The military officials at the installation Salon visited were definitely engaged in targeted killing — yet they objected to the use of the term “targeted killing,” much less “assassination.”

Gary Solis, an expert on military law at Georgetown University, said the Bush administration — and now the Obama administration — would take umbrage at characterizing the ongoing CIA drone attacks on specific targets as assassinations. “‘Assassination’ is a civilian term for a politically motivated murder,” Solis said. “Soldiers don’t assassinate. They kill.”

Whatever phrase we use to describe the process, clearly the U.S. has been engaged in targeted killing during the past eight years. So what about those U.S. policies that expressly forbid assassination? It may generate flashbacks to the tortured debate over torture, but it all comes down to semantics. Assassination is OK — as long as you don’t use the word “assassination.”

In 1975, the U.S. Senate formed an 11-member commission called the Church Committee, led by Idaho Sen. Frank Church, to investigate the activities of the CIA. The Church Committee’s many reports detailed efforts by the agency to assassinate such foreign leaders as Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo. Reacting to the committee’s findings, Gerald Ford was the first president to issue what would become a series of executive orders limiting targeted political killings. Ford’s Executive Order 11905 of Feb. 18, 1976, included a specific prohibition of assassination that said, “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” Jimmy Carter reaffirmed that executive order with his own, as did Ronald Reagan; their versions of the order dropped the modifier “political” from “assassination.” There is no public indication that any president since has rescinded Reagan’s order, so it likely remains in place.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way. When the state wants to kill someone, it has to come up with a rationale for describing that killing as something other than assassination. There are effectively three rules the U.S. government must follow in order to be able to argue that a killing is in accordance with both domestic and international law, and is not an “assassination.” First, the killing must be a military act, an act of war. Second, the target must be definable as military or a civilian engaging in hostile acts against the United States. Third, if the killing takes place within a state with which the U.S. is not at war, the U.S. must have the permission of that country’s government to carry out the hit. The U.S. pursuit of Taliban and al-Qaida targets follows those rules — for the most part — and is compliant with domestic and international law — in theory.

The United States is at war with al-Qaida. The president has the authority to conduct limited military action without congressional approval, but for sustained military action the executive branch needs to be granted legal license by the legislative branch. On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress passed a resolution authorizing “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” The president then signed a secret intelligence “finding” authorizing the CIA to hunt and kill just those kinds of “persons.”

Internationally, the Law of Armed Conflict, that web of treaties including the Geneva Conventions, allows the killing of enemy combatants or even civilians engaged in hostile acts against the United States. Legally, it does not matter where the hit occurs. As long as the U.S. government has the permission of the government where the killing takes place, the killing can occur anywhere in the world. It also does not matter that the people “pulling the trigger” — deploying the drones — are civilian CIA agents, not soldiers. “That is the CIA’s involvement in an armed conflict,” Solis explained. “We have the CIA flying drones killing people who we conceive to be combatants” with the permission of the country where the strikes occur.

But fighting a war against a stateless organization is complicated. The “war on terror” is conducted against anybody deemed the enemy anywhere in the world. The tricky part comes in trying to decide who fits the definition of somebody carrying out hostile acts against the United States. A suspected bomb maker with no uniform? What if he hasn’t made a bomb in a week? A month? A year? Solis said most attorneys would view President Clinton’s 1998 cruise missile strike aimed, in part, at Osama bin Laden as a military operation short of war, not as an assassination attempt. It was undertaken in response to al-Qaida’s attack on the USS Cole, which was clearly a hostile act.

The killing of a person engaged in hostile acts, even by an “assassination squad” of secret agents, would not violate international law — specifically U.N. charter provisions on sovereignty — unless the United States carried out an assassination in a foreign country without the foreign government’s consent. “International law says the U.S. can’t go into country X and do military operations without that country’s consent,” explained David Koplow, a professor specializing in international law and national security law at Georgetown University. “Internationally, so long as you are doing it with the permission of the host country, it is no problem.”

Given this legal framework, Pakistan’s complaints about U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan probably reflect domestic political considerations there, observers speculate, rather than any lack of consent. Pakistan likely quietly gave the CIA the green light. Similarly, U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan documented in the Salon article last year passed legal muster since the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan consented.

Koplow and other experts on international law said while few details of Cheney’s alleged assassination squad are publicly available, legally at least, it’s doesn’t sound like a far stretch from current CIA activities. Ironically, the attorneys add, Cheney could theoretically face stiffer legal consequences under U.S. law for failing to inform Congress about plans for CIA assassinations than he would have had he carried them out. Cheney’s reported decision not to inform Congress might have violated the 1947 National Security Act, which requires that the intelligence committees in Congress are “kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.”

However, as the Washington Post article states, the intelligence finding that gave rise to the program “imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions.” That raises the possibility that the program would have violated sovereignty. Solis speculated that Cheney’s assassination squad could have been conceived to go a step further and send civilian agents into foreign countries without permission to kill individual people. “Other countries would take a very dim view of that,” he said.

Did the Cheney assassination ring contemplate assassinations in other countries without that country’s permission, which would violate international law? Even if it did, Cheney would likely have escaped sanction, provided he didn’t try to use his passport much. United States domestic law contains no enforcement mechanism for violating a foreign country’s sovereignty, attorneys say. In short, there is no domestic tool to hold Cheney legally liable even if he set up and ran an assassination squad that was taking out al-Qaida operatives in Canada. “Would there be a domestic prosecution?” noted Scott Silliman, an expert on international law at Duke Law. “No. There is nothing there.” But perhaps, like Augusto Pinochet, Cheney could’ve found himself unable to travel abroad without fearing arrest.

Mark Benjamin

Source: RINF News