The Emperor's Seven Signing Statements
By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/43996
Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it. But central to the power of an emperor, and the catastrophes that come from the existence of an emperor, is the elimination of any other force within the government. Signing statements eliminate congress. Not that congress objects. Asking congress to reclaim its power produces nervous giggles.
Look at how the latest war supplemental funding bill was passed. The Emperor's people wrote most of the bill. The Emperor combined it with the IMF banker bailout. The Emperor threatened and bribed his way to deals with enough congress members to pass it. The Emperor preemptively told other nations the bill would pass and then badgered congress with the claim that this nation (He, the nation) would be damaged if he turned out to have lied. The Emperor lied to congress members and the public that this would be the last war supplemental bill. Congress members claimed to back it because it was the last one (not that this made the slightest sense), and others openly, proudly, and obliviously declared that they were switching their votes to yes in order to please the Emperor.
When the bill came to Emperor Barack he signed it and released his sixth and only legal signing statement announcing that he'd signed it. Two days later (Fridays being the favored day for signing statements) Obama released his seventh signing statement, claiming to have signed the same bill on that day as well, but perhaps beginning to establish the precedent that "signing statements," like "executive orders," can be issued at any time. The seventh signing statement did what the first five had done: it illegally and unconstitutionally altered the law in favor of bestowing illegal powers on the Emperor. The seven statements are posted here. Here's the heart of the seventh statement:
"[P]rovisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403 and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations."
An executive would be someone who executed the laws of congress, suggesting that a different capitalized E word is actually intended, that "Executive" is now a stand-in for "Emperor." Similarly, "constitutional" in this context refers to dictionary.com's third definition of "constitution", namely "the aggregate of a person's physical and psychological characteristics." In other words, "constitutional authority" is "imperial authority" derived from the character of the Emperor. We know this because the U.S. Constitution does not create any presidential authority to conduct foreign relations (only to "receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers") but does require the advice and consent and two-thirds approval of the Senate in order to make treaties, and does give congress the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign nations" as well as complete power over the raising and spending of public funds, not to mention the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The sections of this latest law tossed out by Obama were ploys to win the bill's passage, including requirements that he work to strengthen labor and environmental standards at, and report to congress on the activities of, the IMF and the World Bank. Unlike an emperor, an executive would be required by the U.S. Constitution to "take Care that the Laws by faithfully executed," stated by candidate Barack Obama thus:
"I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law."
Obama's first signing statement made part of the law his right to use the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated in that bill in "new" and "far-reaching" ways that he would "initiate," as well as the understanding that an "oversight board" created by the executive branch -- rather than congress -- would oversee the activities of the executive branch, or as Obama calls it "the Federal Government."
Obama's second signing statement declared his intention to violate dozens of sections of the law he was signing, including sections providing for the spending of funds, sections related to the creation of international treaties, and sections restricting retaliation against whistleblowers.
Obama's third signing statement, on the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009," announced his intention to violate requirements in the law related to the appointment of a government commission.
Obama's fourth signing statement, on a bill creating a "Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission" threw out a requirement that the Emperor provide that commission with information.
Obama's fifth signing statement was applied to a bill that created a commission and included on it six members of congress. The signing statement declared that those six commission members Š
"will be able to participate only in ceremonial or advisory functions of [such a] Commission, and not in matters involving the administration of the act."
Is it time to stop endlessly being "shocked" by these yet? Obama, like Bush, argues in his signing statements that the sections of law he intends to violate are unconstitutional. The problem is not that either one of these presidents is necessarily always wrong or that such questions can ever be decided to everyone's satisfaction. The problem is that the Constitution requires the president to veto a bill or sign and faithfully execute it. The time to argue against the constitutionality of a provision is before a bill is passed or upon vetoing it. Such an argument can even be made upon signing a bill. It just can't be accompanied by a declaration of the power to violate the law.
Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton made innovations in the abuse of signing statements without which Bush Jr. could not have done what he did. Now Obama is further advancing the genre. At some point, of course -- as Germans once learned (and learned before nukes or climate crises were on the table) -- it can become too late to act.
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David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Robert Sheer: Obama's $1.5 trillion plus bailout isn't working
oreclosure Fiasco Continues:
The Bush-Obama Strategy of Throwing Billions at Banks Doesn't Work
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on June 27, 2009, Printed on June 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
It's not working. The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust. The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.
As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, "The Mortgage Bankers Association cut its forecast of home-mortgage lending this year by 27% amid deflating hopes for a boom in refinancing." The same association said that the total refinancing under the administration's much ballyhooed Home Affordable Refinance Program is "very low."
Aside from a tight mortgage market, the problem in preventing foreclosures has to do with homeowners losing their jobs. Here again the administration, continuing the Bush strategy, is working the wrong end of the problem. Although President Obama was wise enough to at least launch a job stimulus program, a far greater amount of federal funding benefits Wall Street as opposed to Main Street.
State and local governments have been forced into draconian budget cuts, firing workers who are among the most reliable in making their mortgage payments--when they have jobs. Yet the Obama administration won't spend even a small fraction of what it has wasted on the banks to cover state shortfalls.
California couldn't get the White House to guarantee $5.5 billion in short-term notes to avert severe cuts in state and local payrolls, from prison guards to schoolteachers. Compare that with the $50 billion already given to Citigroup, plus an astounding $300 billion to guarantee that institution's toxic assets. Citigroup benefits from being a bank "too big to fail," although through its irresponsible actions to get that large it did as much as any company to cause this mess.
How big a mess? According to the Federal Reserve's most recent report, seven straight quarters of declining household wealth have left Americans $14 trillion poorer. Many who thought they were middle class have now joined the ranks of the poor. Food banks are strapped and welfare rolls are dramatically on the rise, as the WSJ reports, with a 27 percent year-to-year increase in Oregon, 23 percent in South Carolina and 10 percent in California. And you have to be very poor to get on welfare, thanks to President Clinton's so-called welfare reform, which he signed into law before he ramped up the radical deregulation of the financial services industry, enabling our economic downturn.
Citigroup, the prime mover for ending the sensible restraints of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, is now a pathetic ward of the state. But back in the day President Clinton would tour the country with Citigroup founder Sandy Weill touting the wonderful work that Weill and other moguls were doing to invest in economically depressed communities. It wasn't really happening then, and now millions of folks in those communities have seen their houses snatched from them as if they were just pieces in a game of Monopoly that Clinton and his fat-cat buddy were playing.
Once Weill got the radical deregulation law he wanted, he issued a statement giving credit: "In particular, we congratulate President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, NEC [National Economic Council] Chairman Gene Sperling, Under Secretary of the Treasury Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretaries Linda Robertson and Greg Baer."
Summers is now Obama's top economic adviser, Sperling has been appointed legal counselor at Treasury, and Gensler, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, is head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he once attempted to prevent from regulating derivatives when it was run by Brooksley Born. Robertson worked for Summers in pushing through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the derivatives market from adult supervision and contained the "Enron Loophole," permitting that company to go wild. Robertson then became the top Washington lobbyist for Enron and was recently appointed senior adviser to Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke. Baer went to work as a corporate counsel for Bank of America, which announced his appointment with a press release crediting him with having "coordinated Treasury policy" during the Clinton years in getting Glass-Steagall repealed. As a result of deregulation, B of A too spiraled out of control and ended up as a beneficiary of the Treasury's welfare program.
Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted? Please, Obama, prove me wrong.
Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of Truthdig and author of a new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
© 2009 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
The Bush-Obama Strategy of Throwing Billions at Banks Doesn't Work
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on June 27, 2009, Printed on June 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
It's not working. The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust. The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.
As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, "The Mortgage Bankers Association cut its forecast of home-mortgage lending this year by 27% amid deflating hopes for a boom in refinancing." The same association said that the total refinancing under the administration's much ballyhooed Home Affordable Refinance Program is "very low."
Aside from a tight mortgage market, the problem in preventing foreclosures has to do with homeowners losing their jobs. Here again the administration, continuing the Bush strategy, is working the wrong end of the problem. Although President Obama was wise enough to at least launch a job stimulus program, a far greater amount of federal funding benefits Wall Street as opposed to Main Street.
State and local governments have been forced into draconian budget cuts, firing workers who are among the most reliable in making their mortgage payments--when they have jobs. Yet the Obama administration won't spend even a small fraction of what it has wasted on the banks to cover state shortfalls.
California couldn't get the White House to guarantee $5.5 billion in short-term notes to avert severe cuts in state and local payrolls, from prison guards to schoolteachers. Compare that with the $50 billion already given to Citigroup, plus an astounding $300 billion to guarantee that institution's toxic assets. Citigroup benefits from being a bank "too big to fail," although through its irresponsible actions to get that large it did as much as any company to cause this mess.
How big a mess? According to the Federal Reserve's most recent report, seven straight quarters of declining household wealth have left Americans $14 trillion poorer. Many who thought they were middle class have now joined the ranks of the poor. Food banks are strapped and welfare rolls are dramatically on the rise, as the WSJ reports, with a 27 percent year-to-year increase in Oregon, 23 percent in South Carolina and 10 percent in California. And you have to be very poor to get on welfare, thanks to President Clinton's so-called welfare reform, which he signed into law before he ramped up the radical deregulation of the financial services industry, enabling our economic downturn.
Citigroup, the prime mover for ending the sensible restraints of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, is now a pathetic ward of the state. But back in the day President Clinton would tour the country with Citigroup founder Sandy Weill touting the wonderful work that Weill and other moguls were doing to invest in economically depressed communities. It wasn't really happening then, and now millions of folks in those communities have seen their houses snatched from them as if they were just pieces in a game of Monopoly that Clinton and his fat-cat buddy were playing.
Once Weill got the radical deregulation law he wanted, he issued a statement giving credit: "In particular, we congratulate President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, NEC [National Economic Council] Chairman Gene Sperling, Under Secretary of the Treasury Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretaries Linda Robertson and Greg Baer."
Summers is now Obama's top economic adviser, Sperling has been appointed legal counselor at Treasury, and Gensler, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, is head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he once attempted to prevent from regulating derivatives when it was run by Brooksley Born. Robertson worked for Summers in pushing through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the derivatives market from adult supervision and contained the "Enron Loophole," permitting that company to go wild. Robertson then became the top Washington lobbyist for Enron and was recently appointed senior adviser to Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke. Baer went to work as a corporate counsel for Bank of America, which announced his appointment with a press release crediting him with having "coordinated Treasury policy" during the Clinton years in getting Glass-Steagall repealed. As a result of deregulation, B of A too spiraled out of control and ended up as a beneficiary of the Treasury's welfare program.
Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted? Please, Obama, prove me wrong.
Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of Truthdig and author of a new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
© 2009 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Roger Shuler: Memo to Eric Holder: Don Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Roger Shuler's piece, below, lays out in harrowing detail the gross instances of
prosecutorial misconduct in Don Siegelman's case.
Read it, send it out--and call/fax/email Eric Holder and the White House,
calling on to dispense some justice at long last (as that would be a "change" indeed).
MCM
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking firm steps to deal with prosecutorial misconduct during the George W. Bush era. And that's a good thing.
But the beneficiaries of Holder's reviews, so far, have all been Republicans. And that is not a good thing--especially when you consider that perhaps the most egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bush years came in the case against Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.
How corrupt were the actions of prosecutors in the Siegelman case? We can point Mr. Holder and his staff in several directions:
* The Paul Weeks affidavit--Holder's reviews have focused largely on Alaska corruption cases involving former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott. In each case, federal prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. And William M. Welch, chief of the U.S. Public Integrity Section, was involved in each case.
Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson says Welch also was involved in the Siegelman case. And as happened in Alaska, Welch apparently withheld key information from the defense. Simpson says Welch came to Alabama when defense attorneys in the Siegelman case moved for the recusal of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller. Welch's role, Simpson says, was to defend Fuller--and he succeeded in keeping the judge on the case.
But Simpson says Welch should have been aware of an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Weeks, charging Fuller with misconduct, perhaps of a criminal nature. A copy of the affidavit was hand delivered to the Public Integrity Section, and Simpson says Welch had a duty to disclose the contents of the affidavit to the Siegelman defense team. Simpson says there is no indication that the affidavit ever was disclosed.
* The Nick Bailey notes--Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey was the key prosecution witness, testifying essentially that Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy had struck a deal where Scrushy would be appointed to a hospital-regulatory board in exchange for his contribution to an education-lottery campaign. But 60 Minutes reported that prosecutors interviewed Baily some 70 times in order to get his testimony straight--and even had him write down key portions of his statement. Bailey's notes should have been turned over to the defense, but they were not.
Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, reported that Bailey even mentioned the notes during the trial:
In fact, Bailey brought the proceedings to a stop by referring openly to the written notes he prepared at the prosecutor?s behest. The defense demanded to see them, and in a chambers hearing, Judge Fuller directed the prosecutors to turn them over. The prosecutors denied their existence. Bailey stated that he was required to prepare the notes on paper supplied by the prosecutors, and they were placed in a binder that the prosecutors or an FBI agent working with them retained.
* The mysterious check exchange--Nick Bailey testified that he saw a check change hands at a meeting involving Siegelman and Scrushy. But there was a slight problem with Bailey's story: The check was cut days after the meeting. It could not have changed hands the way Bailey testified. Scott Horton sums up this episode succinctly:
Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy?s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.
* The Lanny Young bombshells--Another key witness for the prosecution was former lobbyist and landfill operator Lanny Young. According to a report in Time magazine, Young provided some damaging information about Siegelman. But Young also told prosecutors that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to prominent Alabama Republicans Jeff Sessions and William Pryor. That information should have been turned over to the Siegelman defense team. It was not.
* Leura Canary's "recusal"--According to Justice Department whistleblower Tamarah T. Grimes, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary remained involved in the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes supported her story with e-mails showing that Canary was involved in the case well after her "recusal."
* Hanky Panky Between Jurors and Prosecutors--Grimes also provided e-mails that revealed previously undisclosed contact between jurors and the prosecution.
As we reported here at Legal Schnauzer:
Grimes also provided e-mails that show previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and the Siegelman jury.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans.
And that was not the only hanky panky between jurors and the prosecution:
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct ? apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
The prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case clearly dwarfs that in the Alaska cases. So why has Eric Holder, so far, refused to look in the direction of Alabama?
prosecutorial misconduct in Don Siegelman's case.
Read it, send it out--and call/fax/email Eric Holder and the White House,
calling on to dispense some justice at long last (as that would be a "change" indeed).
MCM
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking firm steps to deal with prosecutorial misconduct during the George W. Bush era. And that's a good thing.
But the beneficiaries of Holder's reviews, so far, have all been Republicans. And that is not a good thing--especially when you consider that perhaps the most egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bush years came in the case against Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.
How corrupt were the actions of prosecutors in the Siegelman case? We can point Mr. Holder and his staff in several directions:
* The Paul Weeks affidavit--Holder's reviews have focused largely on Alaska corruption cases involving former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott. In each case, federal prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. And William M. Welch, chief of the U.S. Public Integrity Section, was involved in each case.
Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson says Welch also was involved in the Siegelman case. And as happened in Alaska, Welch apparently withheld key information from the defense. Simpson says Welch came to Alabama when defense attorneys in the Siegelman case moved for the recusal of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller. Welch's role, Simpson says, was to defend Fuller--and he succeeded in keeping the judge on the case.
But Simpson says Welch should have been aware of an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Weeks, charging Fuller with misconduct, perhaps of a criminal nature. A copy of the affidavit was hand delivered to the Public Integrity Section, and Simpson says Welch had a duty to disclose the contents of the affidavit to the Siegelman defense team. Simpson says there is no indication that the affidavit ever was disclosed.
* The Nick Bailey notes--Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey was the key prosecution witness, testifying essentially that Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy had struck a deal where Scrushy would be appointed to a hospital-regulatory board in exchange for his contribution to an education-lottery campaign. But 60 Minutes reported that prosecutors interviewed Baily some 70 times in order to get his testimony straight--and even had him write down key portions of his statement. Bailey's notes should have been turned over to the defense, but they were not.
Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, reported that Bailey even mentioned the notes during the trial:
In fact, Bailey brought the proceedings to a stop by referring openly to the written notes he prepared at the prosecutor?s behest. The defense demanded to see them, and in a chambers hearing, Judge Fuller directed the prosecutors to turn them over. The prosecutors denied their existence. Bailey stated that he was required to prepare the notes on paper supplied by the prosecutors, and they were placed in a binder that the prosecutors or an FBI agent working with them retained.
* The mysterious check exchange--Nick Bailey testified that he saw a check change hands at a meeting involving Siegelman and Scrushy. But there was a slight problem with Bailey's story: The check was cut days after the meeting. It could not have changed hands the way Bailey testified. Scott Horton sums up this episode succinctly:
Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy?s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.
* The Lanny Young bombshells--Another key witness for the prosecution was former lobbyist and landfill operator Lanny Young. According to a report in Time magazine, Young provided some damaging information about Siegelman. But Young also told prosecutors that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to prominent Alabama Republicans Jeff Sessions and William Pryor. That information should have been turned over to the Siegelman defense team. It was not.
* Leura Canary's "recusal"--According to Justice Department whistleblower Tamarah T. Grimes, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary remained involved in the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes supported her story with e-mails showing that Canary was involved in the case well after her "recusal."
* Hanky Panky Between Jurors and Prosecutors--Grimes also provided e-mails that revealed previously undisclosed contact between jurors and the prosecution.
As we reported here at Legal Schnauzer:
Grimes also provided e-mails that show previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and the Siegelman jury.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans.
And that was not the only hanky panky between jurors and the prosecution:
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct ? apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
The prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case clearly dwarfs that in the Alaska cases. So why has Eric Holder, so far, refused to look in the direction of Alabama?
Saturday, May 9, 2009
AFP- Victor Thorn: Inconsistencies Arise in CFO Suicide Story
Inconsistencies Arise in CFO Suicide Story
By Victor Thorn
Reminiscent of the ongoing microbiologist body count that AMERICAN FREE PRESS has reported on, a new wave of suicides is plaguing the financial industry, culminating in the recent death of Freddie Mac CFO David Kellermann.
The 41-year-old husband and father, described as having a life-of-the-party personality, was found dead in the basement of his $900,000 Vienna, Va. home at 4:48 a.m. on April 22. Initially, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that Kellermann hanged himself.’
Other news agencies ran with this account, but then Sabrina Rock, a Fairfax County police spokesman, confirmed to the AP that Kellermann was dead, but she could not confirm that he committed suicide despite WUSA reporting that Fairfax police told them it was suicide.
Stranger yet, police spokesman Lucy Caldwell told All Headline News editor Linda Young via telephone on April 22 that “other people were present at the home at the time of Kellermann’s death, and that there was a gun and a gunshot wound.”
If true, this final variable is explosive for one obvious reason. How often does a suicide victim hang himself, then shoot himself; or shoot himself first, then hang himself? Considering these conflicting accounts, conspiracy theorists almost immediately began speculating.
Some compared this scenario to the murder of Vince Foster; while others claimed Kellermann became a fall guy for Sen. Christopher Dodd, Rep. Barney Frank, or the architects behind Barack Obama’s economic plan.
To determine whether this conjecture is valid, first examine Kellermann’s role at Freddie Mac. Employed at this government-sponsored mortgage firm since 1992, Kellermann served as a financial analyst, principal accounting officer, corporate controller, senior vice president, and was then finally promoted to CFO in September 2008. Loyal, driven, and working strenuously long hours, he typified the ultimate “company man.”
Unfortunately, Freddie Mac came to be recognized as a primary catalyst for the ill-fated housing bubble’s collapse where perilously risky loans led to record-setting defaults. Matthew Barakat and Alan Zibel of the Associated Press noted on April 23 that “the company lost $50 billion last year, and the Treasury Department has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat.”
To make matters worse, Freddie Mac is the subject of federal investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Justice Department. The focus of their probes revolved around the accounting practices used for their 13 million mortgages. With serious doubts surfacing about the validity of Obama’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have come under increased scrutiny; especially since, as Christine Seib of the Times UK wrote in April 22, they “lend or guarantee half of America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.”
The stress at Freddie Mac became so pronounced that Barakat and Zibel reported, “Last month, David Moffett, the government-appointed chief executive, resigned in frustration over strict oversight.” To complicate matters, the public’s fury over CEO bonuses directly affected Kellermann. CNBC on-air editor Charlie Gasparino summarized the situation on April 22.
“In March, Kellermann was one of a handful of senior Freddie Mac people to have received a bonus, in his case $850,000, which prompted criticism and outrage.”
The blowback alarmed Kellermann, as Clusterstock editor Joe Weisenthal documents. “Reporters and camera crews showed up at his home in an affluent Washington suburb. Fearing that someone might attack his house, his wife or their five-year-old daughter, he asked the company to provide a security detail.”
The question remains: what was Kellermann’s role in Freddie Mac’s meltdown? Being a key insider with access to highly sensitive material, did he help facilitate the accounting gimmicks that brought about his company’s demise? Or, could Kellermann have been one of the good guys who refused to perpetrate this ruse being foisted on American taxpayers? To his credit, Barakat and Zibel indicate that “Kellermann was neither a target nor a subject of the [U.S. Attorney’s] investigation, and had not been under law enforcement scrutiny.”
Freddie Mac had been subpoenaed, however, for documents relating to its accounting and disclosure improprieties. Was the entire house of cards beginning to crumble, and instead of covering it up, Kellermann instead intended to come clean? What makes this matter suspicious is that only one day prior to his death, the Associated Press reported on April 23 that “a human resources officer met with Kellermann and told him he needed a break because he had been working so hard.”
Faced with a much-needed vacation to spend time with his wife and daughter, why would Kellermann suddenly choose to kill himself? Or, was Freddie Mac clandestinely trying to push their top executive out the door in a roundabout way?
The most pressing issue on the table at this time was Freddie Mac’s first-quarter financial reports, which Kellermann proposed to release at the end of May. Matters became extremely complicated because “Freddie Mac executives recently battled with federal regulators over whether to disclose potential losses on mortgage securities tied to the Obama administration’s housing plan” (Zibel & Barakat, April 22).
The crux of this subject is now apparent. A massive battle ensued between federal regulators who were trying to cover up catastrophic economic news, and those who refused to further cook the books. Zachary Goldfarb and Jonathan Mummolo of the Washington Post provided an invaluable insight on April 23.
“Kellermann figured in several recent controversies at Freddie Mac. He and a group of company attorneys tussled with regulators in early March as the firm prepared to file its quarterly earnings report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The group insisted that Freddie Mac inform shareholders of the cost to the company in helping carry out the Obama administration’s housing recovery plan. The regulators urged the company not to do so.”
An industry veteran who wished to remain anonymous offered the following assessment for Housing Wire. “This isn’t the story of a guy who was trying to cover something up. It’s the story of a guy who was trying to do the right thing. Kellermann and his cohorts insisted on reporting Freddie Mac’s financial status as they believed it should be reported, disclosing all of its obligations.”
Was the smoking gun information held by Kellermann (and other top CEOs who’ve been “suicided” in recent months) what ultimately cost him his life?
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.
(Issue # 19, May 11, 2009)
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Politico: Legal Left cools toward Obama
Legal left cools toward Obama
By: Josh Gerstein
April 13, 2009
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A198ED30-18FE-70B2-A89F0D7D4E8ACBEE
It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore.
A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror.
“Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.
“During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, argued strongly against the Bush administration’s use of executive authority, including its self-justification, its rationalization of the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens,” Olbermann said on his show last week. “That was then. This is now. ... Welcome to change you cannot believe in — or sue over.”
Obama is also under withering attack from an attorney who was one of the most widely read critics of Bush’s legal strategy in the war on terror, Glenn Greenwald. He recently blasted Obama administration moves as “extremist” and “bizarre.”
“Reading this brief from the Obama DOJ is so striking — and more than a little depressing — given how indistinguishable it is from everything that poured out of the Bush DOJ regarding secrecy powers in order to evade all legal accountability,” he wrote on Salon last week, before calling his fellow civil libertarians to rise up. “It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior,” he said.
The new wave of criticism was triggered by two actions in recent weeks by the Justice Department.
First, earlier this month, the department presented an expansive series of arguments urging a federal court in San Francisco to throw out a lawsuit over warrantless surveillance first filed against Bush. The department’s brief not only asserted the state secrets privilege, which has long infuriated civil libertarians, but also made a sweeping assertion that Americans have no rights to challenge surveillance that violates the law unless the information is improperly released.
See Also
3 judge panel declares Franken winner
Avast, ye pirates! The U.S. has won
The battle over the absentee ballots
Then, on Friday, the department issued similarly broad arguments against a court ruling giving legal rights to some detainees held by the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The government motion said the decision could aid “enemies of the United States” by allowing them to use “the U.S. court system as a tactical weapon.” The filing led to a New York Times editorial Monday sharply criticizing Obama for positioning Bagram as “the next Guantanamo.”
Obama administration officials insist that critics are jumping the gun. A Justice Department official said some of the recent arguments are essentially intended to buy time for a review Obama has ordered of procedures and policies regarding detainees.
The official, who asked not to be identified, said Obama deserves credit for announcing the closure of Guantanamo and banning the use of torture. The aide also pointed to Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement to CBS News last week that he soon expects to reverse the Bush administration assertion of the state secrets privilege in at least one case.
But liberal attorneys, who set up groups such as “Habeas Lawyers for Obama” during the campaign, complain that Obama is walking away from statements he made as a senator and presidential candidate rebuking the Bush administration for putting prisoners beyond the reach of the law.
“Obama has said no place should be out of reach of the law. Now, he’s done precisely that,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “You have this administration routinely stating principles as a precursor to violating those very same principles.”
Several organizers of Habeas Lawyers for Obama declined to be quoted or interviewed by POLITICO.
However, one who spoke but asked not to be named because he regularly deals with top Obama officials, said he understands the growing skepticism. “I can understand people’s concern and frustration and I am concerned myself,” the lawyer said. “The tone of the Bagram filing was more strident than I certainly would have hoped.”
The Obama supporter said he is confident that Obama’s senior legal team at the Justice Department and the White House will translate in time to vastly different policies.
“There just a world of difference between the people who are handling those legal areas and those who were before,” the attorney said, though he added that he thought the Obama legal team was “absolutely overwhelmed” by the amount of work it faces.
Still, critics such as Greenwald insist that the recent Obama administration acts on secrets and Bagram need to be publicly denounced.
“It would require a virtually pathological level of tribal loyalty and monumental intellectual dishonesty not to object just as vehemently as we watch the Obama DOJ repeatedly invoke these very same theories and, in this instance, actually invent a new one that not even the Bush administration espoused,” he wrote.
“When Bush asserted the power to abduct people and put them in prison for life with no charges, he was a Constitution-hating tyrant. When Obama does it, he’s being really careful and cautious and doing it to protect us for really good reasons even if we can’t know what they are and he won’t tell us,” Greenwald wrote, mockingly summarizing the arguments of Obama defenders.
Holder has set a speech Wednesday night at West Point, which would be a logical forum to lay out the administration's views in more detail. Aides would not discuss specifics of his speech but said it would address "rule of law" issues.
Still, the anger could intensify Thursday when more Bush administration memos are expected to be released in connection with an ACLU lawsuit. An earlier release of similar memos put the focus on perceived transgressions of the Bush administration. Now, activists may hone in instead on how the Obama White House is following in Bush’s legal footsteps.
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
By: Josh Gerstein
April 13, 2009
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A198ED30-18FE-70B2-A89F0D7D4E8ACBEE
It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore.
A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror.
“Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.
“During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, argued strongly against the Bush administration’s use of executive authority, including its self-justification, its rationalization of the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens,” Olbermann said on his show last week. “That was then. This is now. ... Welcome to change you cannot believe in — or sue over.”
Obama is also under withering attack from an attorney who was one of the most widely read critics of Bush’s legal strategy in the war on terror, Glenn Greenwald. He recently blasted Obama administration moves as “extremist” and “bizarre.”
“Reading this brief from the Obama DOJ is so striking — and more than a little depressing — given how indistinguishable it is from everything that poured out of the Bush DOJ regarding secrecy powers in order to evade all legal accountability,” he wrote on Salon last week, before calling his fellow civil libertarians to rise up. “It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior,” he said.
The new wave of criticism was triggered by two actions in recent weeks by the Justice Department.
First, earlier this month, the department presented an expansive series of arguments urging a federal court in San Francisco to throw out a lawsuit over warrantless surveillance first filed against Bush. The department’s brief not only asserted the state secrets privilege, which has long infuriated civil libertarians, but also made a sweeping assertion that Americans have no rights to challenge surveillance that violates the law unless the information is improperly released.
See Also
3 judge panel declares Franken winner
Avast, ye pirates! The U.S. has won
The battle over the absentee ballots
Then, on Friday, the department issued similarly broad arguments against a court ruling giving legal rights to some detainees held by the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The government motion said the decision could aid “enemies of the United States” by allowing them to use “the U.S. court system as a tactical weapon.” The filing led to a New York Times editorial Monday sharply criticizing Obama for positioning Bagram as “the next Guantanamo.”
Obama administration officials insist that critics are jumping the gun. A Justice Department official said some of the recent arguments are essentially intended to buy time for a review Obama has ordered of procedures and policies regarding detainees.
The official, who asked not to be identified, said Obama deserves credit for announcing the closure of Guantanamo and banning the use of torture. The aide also pointed to Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement to CBS News last week that he soon expects to reverse the Bush administration assertion of the state secrets privilege in at least one case.
But liberal attorneys, who set up groups such as “Habeas Lawyers for Obama” during the campaign, complain that Obama is walking away from statements he made as a senator and presidential candidate rebuking the Bush administration for putting prisoners beyond the reach of the law.
“Obama has said no place should be out of reach of the law. Now, he’s done precisely that,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “You have this administration routinely stating principles as a precursor to violating those very same principles.”
Several organizers of Habeas Lawyers for Obama declined to be quoted or interviewed by POLITICO.
However, one who spoke but asked not to be named because he regularly deals with top Obama officials, said he understands the growing skepticism. “I can understand people’s concern and frustration and I am concerned myself,” the lawyer said. “The tone of the Bagram filing was more strident than I certainly would have hoped.”
The Obama supporter said he is confident that Obama’s senior legal team at the Justice Department and the White House will translate in time to vastly different policies.
“There just a world of difference between the people who are handling those legal areas and those who were before,” the attorney said, though he added that he thought the Obama legal team was “absolutely overwhelmed” by the amount of work it faces.
Still, critics such as Greenwald insist that the recent Obama administration acts on secrets and Bagram need to be publicly denounced.
“It would require a virtually pathological level of tribal loyalty and monumental intellectual dishonesty not to object just as vehemently as we watch the Obama DOJ repeatedly invoke these very same theories and, in this instance, actually invent a new one that not even the Bush administration espoused,” he wrote.
“When Bush asserted the power to abduct people and put them in prison for life with no charges, he was a Constitution-hating tyrant. When Obama does it, he’s being really careful and cautious and doing it to protect us for really good reasons even if we can’t know what they are and he won’t tell us,” Greenwald wrote, mockingly summarizing the arguments of Obama defenders.
Holder has set a speech Wednesday night at West Point, which would be a logical forum to lay out the administration's views in more detail. Aides would not discuss specifics of his speech but said it would address "rule of law" issues.
Still, the anger could intensify Thursday when more Bush administration memos are expected to be released in connection with an ACLU lawsuit. An earlier release of similar memos put the focus on perceived transgressions of the Bush administration. Now, activists may hone in instead on how the Obama White House is following in Bush’s legal footsteps.
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Friday, April 10, 2009
Glenn Greenwald et al: Obama as bad as (or in some cases worse than) Bush when it comes to invoking state secrets to block criminal activity
Glenn Greenwald
April 9, 2009 19:32 EDT
TPM: "Obama Mimics Bush on State Secrets"
[Updated below - Update II - Update III (Sen. Feingold's statement) - Update IV - Update V]
I wasn't able to post today, but TalkingPointsMemo has done an excellent job in advancing the story of the Obama DOJ's inexcusable embrace of some of the most radical Bush/Cheney secrecy doctrines. First, here is the top headline at TPM right now:
The first TPM post then says this:
Working the Dark Side
Why is Obama following Bush's lead on state secrets?
That post, in turn, links to this excellent and comprehensive article on the controversy by TPM's Zachary Roth, which reports this:
Is the Obama administration mimicking its predecessor on issues of secrecy and the war on terror? . . .
Coming on the heels of the two other recent cases in which the new administration has asserted the state secrets privilege, the motion sparked outrage among civil libertarians and many progressive commentators. Salon's Glenn Greenwald wrote that the move "demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann called it "deja vu all over again". An online petition -- "Tell Obama: Stop blocking court review of illegal wiretapping" -- soon appeared.
Not having Greenwald's training in constitutional law (and perhaps lacking Olbermann's all-conquering self-confidence), we wanted to get a sense from a few independent experts as to how to assess the administration's position on the case. Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies' obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?
In a word, yes.
That's rather definitive (my legal analysis of the Obama position was set forth here, on Monday). The TPM article then quotes numerous experts lambasting the Obama administration, including -- most amazingly -- Ken Gude, a national security law expert of the Center for American Progress (CAP). That's John Podesta's CAP, one of the most pro-Obama organizations in the country (Podesta was Obama's transition chief).
Speaking to Marc Ambinder, Gude himself actually defended (or at least excused) Obama's first invocation of the state secrets privilege in the Jeppesen/rendition case back in February at a time when most civil libertarians were furious, insisting back then that the new Obama DOJ officials "deserve the benefit of the doubt" because they had been in office too short of a time to warrant any judgments being made. But so extreme and inexcusable are Obama's actions here that, now, even Gude pronounced Obama's position "disappointing" and described himself as "frustrated" and "uncomfortable" with the DOJ's actions. Moreover, to TPM, Gude "confirmed that the Obama-ites were taking the same position as the Bushies on state secrets questions" and added: ""There's going to be people who are very unhappy, and justifiably so."
This controversy is clearly growing, as well it should. These radical theories were not ancillary to the liberal critique of Bush/Cheney lawlessness but central to it. Last night on CBS News, Katie Couric repeatedly asked Eric Holder about this issue, and -- as The Washington Independent's Daphne Evitar noted -- Holder was forced to say that he has reviewed the cases where the Obama administration invoked "state secrets" and agreed with virtually everything the Bush administration did in those cases with regard to that doctrine, making clear (as Evitar put it) "that the Obama administration [with the possible exception of one unnamed case] is unlikely to depart dramatically from the Bush administration’s position on the use of the state secrets privilege."
The Bush administration's use of the "state secrets" privilege was the linchpin of its efforts to shield its criminality from judicial review and -- as Democrats, progressives and other Bush critics repeatedly argued -- was one of the principal prongs of its lawlessness and radicalism. Yet here is the Obama administration doing exactly the same thing and now admitting that they intend to continue to do so. Relatedly, Jim White digs up some election year Obama quotes to underscore what a betrayal of Obama's constant commitments these actions are.
Finally, Keith Olbermann continued his excellent and rather tenacious coverage of this issue last night by asking Nancy Pelosi about the Obama position on state secrets and sovereign immunity and he extracted a muddled though still unambiguous decree that she found it objectionable and would engage in efforts to limit Obama's asserted powers (we'll see how true that ends up being). Last night, Olbermann also had on EFF's Kevin Bankston, who -- along with Olbermann -- excoriated Obama for not merely embracing, but surpassing, some of the worst Bush/Cheney abuses on secrecy and legal immunity for lawbreaking. On Monday afternoon, I asked the office of Russ Feingold -- who was endlessly vocal on these matters when Bush was President -- why he has been silent on this matter and whether he had any comment, and I've heard nothing back. In fairness, though, there is one impressive ally for the Obama DOJ: the highly prestigious and very well-regarded blog, RedState, which vigorously supports their position here.
Ultimately, the responsibility to check executive power and secrecy abuses by the President lies with the Congress. In February, numerous members of both the Senate and House -- including Feingold and Arlen Specter -- re-introduced legislation that would substantially limit the President's ability to assert "state secrets" as a means of blocking judicial review of his conduct. When Bush was President, that legislation attracted numerous Democratic co-sponsors -- including Obama's Vice President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Clearly, and quite regrettably, that law is needed as much now as it was in 2006 and 2007. Accountability Now, hopefully in conjunction with others, should have a campaign very soon to help bring this about as well as impose limits on Obama's recklessly broad assertions of legal immunity.
* * * * *
One brief correction: in yesterday's post on my Cato report on drug policy, I provided the wrong link to a piece reporting on that event by Stop the Drug War's Scott Morgan. The correct link is here.
UPDATE: In addition to Roth's TPM article, also very worth reading is this analysis from The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, who says there "there is something utterly un-American" about Obama's position. As Roth concludes: "That looks like a pretty broad consensus in opposition to the Obama administration's position. And it's the opposite of change we can believe in."
UPDATE II: Just in case anyone had any doubts about whether Obama himself personally approves of what his DOJ is doing, Robert Gibbs dispelled those at today's Press Briefing (h/t CarolynC and Sam Stein):
Q. Last Friday, the Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege in asking a judge to dismiss a civil suit filed against the National Security Administration regarding its domestic surveillance program. And in its brief, the Justice Department argued that Americans have no right to sue the government for alleged illegal surveillance.
Does the President support the Justice Department's positions in that case?
MR. GIBBS: Yes, absolutely. It's the -- absolutely does. Obviously, these are programs that have been debated and discussed, but the President does support that viewpoint.
That was followed by this amazing exchange:
Q. Before he was elected, the President said that the Bush administration had abused the state secrets privilege. Has he changed his mind?
MR. GIBBS: No. I mean, obviously, we're dealing with some suits, and the President will -- and the Justice Department will make determinations based on protecting our national security.
Q. So he still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege?
MR. GIBBS: Yes.
Given that Obama is doing exactly what Bush did in this area, Gibbs' claim that Obama "still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege" must be one of the most incoherent and intellectually dishonest claims to come from the White House since the Inauguration -- either that, or Obama believes that Bush abused the privilege and that he, Obama, is also doing so.
UPDATE III: Last night (Thursday), Sen. Feingold's office emailed me a statement from the Senator in which he said: "I am troubled that once again the Obama administration has decided to invoke the state secrets privilege in a case challenging the previous administration’s alleged misconduct." He added that "it is clear that there is an urgent need for legislation to give better guidance to the courts on how to handle assertions of the state secrets privilege," and that he is now working "to pass the State Secrets Protection Act [which I wrote about here] as soon as possible." Feingold's full statement is here.
UPDATE IV: ABC News' Jake Tapper has a good write-up on this controversy and Obama's history of violating his own commitments when it comes to surveillance, accountability and secrecy powers, with this headline: "On 'State Secrets,' Meet Barack W. Obama."
UPDATE V: Jake Tapper has more, here, on the still-growing controversy. I have requests in to numerous key Democratic members of Congress who vehemently opposed the Bush version of the state secrets privilege -- including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, as well as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse -- for comment on what the Obama DOJ is doing. I will post those as I receive them. There is simply no legitimate excuse for members of Congress who objected to Bush's secrecy and executive power abuses to remain silent (or, worse, to offer excuses) when Obama does exactly the same thing.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Xymphora: Zionists work to destroy international law
The planned destruction of international law
Monday, April 06, 2009
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
George Bisharat on the ongoing Israeli plan to weaken international law in order to allow for the atrocities necessary to build Anti-Assimilation-Land:
"Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to re-classify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances.
While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war - including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects - the standard permits far greater uses of force.
Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced "targeted killings" since the 1970s - always denying that it did so - but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile.
President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.
Today, most observers - including Amnesty International - tacitly accept Israel's framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel's actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel's lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations."
and (the money quote by Daniel Reisner; it will presumably be used at his war crimes trial in the post-sea-bathing period):
"Israel's campaign to rewrite international law to its advantage is deliberate and knowing. As the former head of Israel's 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General's office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries ... International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."
In the Gaza fighting, Israel has again tried to transform international law through violations. For example, its military lawyers authorized the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony, killing at least 63 young Palestinian men. Under international law, such deliberate killings of civilian police are war crimes. Yet Israel treats all employees of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as terrorists, and thus combatants. Secretaries, court clerks, housing officials, judges - all were, in Israeli eyes, legitimate targets for liquidation.
Israeli jurists also instructed military commanders that any Palestinian who failed to evacuate a building or area after warnings of an impending bombardment was a "voluntary human shield" and thus a participant in combat, subject to lawful attack. One method of warning employed by Israeli gunners, dubbed "knocking on the roof," was to fire first at a building's corner, then, a few minutes later, to strike more structurally vulnerable points. To imagine that Gazan civilians - penned into the tiny Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, and surrounded by the chaos of battle - understood this signal is fanciful at best."
There are many, many reasons why we should single out Israel and its JIZ supporters for their crimes, but the intentional destruction of all the norms of international law - a destruction which will deny protection to civilians all over the world until the norms are reconstructed, a difficult process which will take decades and will be ongoing long after the last Israeli Jew is sea bathing - would by itself be sufficient to damn them all for eternity. The difference between Israel and its disgusting supporters and, say, some slaughterers in Central Africa is that the African slaughterers:
do not have a master plan to to destroy international law in order to allow their slaughtering; and
could not destroy international law if they wanted to.
The Human Rights Industrial Complex is completely Jew-dominated, a dominance that would not be a problem but for the fact that human rights protections are constantly perverted for the purposes of building Anti-Assimilation-Land. Note the dance known as the Human Rights Watch (or Amnesty International) shuffle, where an inconsequential Palestinian or Lebanese reaction to terrible provocation - as little as a Palestinian child throwing a stone in the general direction of a group of illegally-stationed Israeli soldiers brutally manning an illegal Israeli checkpoint - is regarded as the moral equivalent of a terrible Israeli counterattack, perhaps the bombing of an entire household. The shuffler then throws up his hands and says everybody committed atrocities, so who is to judge who is right and who is wrong. The new UN investigation will follow this route: it will not absolve Israel, but will hide Zionist atrocities under this fraudulent moral equivalence. Another in the long list of the sins of Zionism: destroying the credibility of all official advocates for human rights.
Monday, April 06, 2009
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
George Bisharat on the ongoing Israeli plan to weaken international law in order to allow for the atrocities necessary to build Anti-Assimilation-Land:
"Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to re-classify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances.
While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war - including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects - the standard permits far greater uses of force.
Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced "targeted killings" since the 1970s - always denying that it did so - but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile.
President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.
Today, most observers - including Amnesty International - tacitly accept Israel's framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel's actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel's lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations."
and (the money quote by Daniel Reisner; it will presumably be used at his war crimes trial in the post-sea-bathing period):
"Israel's campaign to rewrite international law to its advantage is deliberate and knowing. As the former head of Israel's 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General's office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries ... International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."
In the Gaza fighting, Israel has again tried to transform international law through violations. For example, its military lawyers authorized the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony, killing at least 63 young Palestinian men. Under international law, such deliberate killings of civilian police are war crimes. Yet Israel treats all employees of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as terrorists, and thus combatants. Secretaries, court clerks, housing officials, judges - all were, in Israeli eyes, legitimate targets for liquidation.
Israeli jurists also instructed military commanders that any Palestinian who failed to evacuate a building or area after warnings of an impending bombardment was a "voluntary human shield" and thus a participant in combat, subject to lawful attack. One method of warning employed by Israeli gunners, dubbed "knocking on the roof," was to fire first at a building's corner, then, a few minutes later, to strike more structurally vulnerable points. To imagine that Gazan civilians - penned into the tiny Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, and surrounded by the chaos of battle - understood this signal is fanciful at best."
There are many, many reasons why we should single out Israel and its JIZ supporters for their crimes, but the intentional destruction of all the norms of international law - a destruction which will deny protection to civilians all over the world until the norms are reconstructed, a difficult process which will take decades and will be ongoing long after the last Israeli Jew is sea bathing - would by itself be sufficient to damn them all for eternity. The difference between Israel and its disgusting supporters and, say, some slaughterers in Central Africa is that the African slaughterers:
do not have a master plan to to destroy international law in order to allow their slaughtering; and
could not destroy international law if they wanted to.
The Human Rights Industrial Complex is completely Jew-dominated, a dominance that would not be a problem but for the fact that human rights protections are constantly perverted for the purposes of building Anti-Assimilation-Land. Note the dance known as the Human Rights Watch (or Amnesty International) shuffle, where an inconsequential Palestinian or Lebanese reaction to terrible provocation - as little as a Palestinian child throwing a stone in the general direction of a group of illegally-stationed Israeli soldiers brutally manning an illegal Israeli checkpoint - is regarded as the moral equivalent of a terrible Israeli counterattack, perhaps the bombing of an entire household. The shuffler then throws up his hands and says everybody committed atrocities, so who is to judge who is right and who is wrong. The new UN investigation will follow this route: it will not absolve Israel, but will hide Zionist atrocities under this fraudulent moral equivalence. Another in the long list of the sins of Zionism: destroying the credibility of all official advocates for human rights.
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