UN Security Council resolution 2178 on “foreign terrorist fighters” targets democratic rights

By Joseph Kishore
25 September 2014

The United Nations Security Council passed a broadly worded resolution on Wednesday targeting the flow of “foreign terrorist fighters” internationally. While presented as a response to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the resolution is aimed at legitimizing a raft of antidemocratic measures as part of a renewed “war on terror.”
Significantly, the resolution does not purport to authorize the bombing of Syria that began early Tuesday morning. The United States and other imperialist powers, together with their allies among the Gulf monarchies, have launched the new war—directed ultimately at the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—without even seeking UN sanction.

On Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama defended these actions in a bellicose speech before the United Nations General Assembly, pledging not only an intensified military campaign in the Middle East, but also issuing fresh threats against Russia.
Security Council Resolution 2178, passed in a unanimous 15-0 vote, directs all countries in the UN to

“prevent and suppress the recruiting, organizing, transporting or equipping of individuals who travel to a State other than their States of residence or nationality for the purpose of the perpetration, planning, or preparation of, or participation in, terrorist acts or the providing or receiving of terrorist training, and the financing of their travel and of their activities.”

The resolution was adopted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, making it legally binding on all member countries. Chapter 7 governs the Security Council’s response to any “breach of the peace or act of aggression,” including authorizing military or nonmilitary action. While the resolution does not explicitly mention military action, it will no doubt be cited in the future for this purpose.

To this end, the definition of “terrorism” is left for individual countries to determine. In her own comments before the Security Council, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, citing unrest in Europe, insisted that ISIS was not the only target. This was a clear reference to Ukraine, where the right-wing government installed by the US and Germany earlier this year has called pro-Russian separatists in the east “terrorists.” In August, Grybauskaite declared that Russia was in a “state of war against Europe” over the conflict in Ukraine.

At the same time, under the guise of opposing “extremism,” all the major powers are intensifying the assault on democratic rights within their borders. Obama, who personally chaired the Security Council meeting, said the resolution “must be followed by tangible commitments” and urged all countries to take “concrete steps…to counter extremist ideologies in our own countries.”
The passage of the resolution comes as the media in the US, Europe and Australia is engaged in a nonstop propaganda campaign over supposed terrorist threats against the “homeland.” In the United States, news programs have been filled with scare-mongering over Khorasan, a group that US military officials claim is in the “advanced stages” of planning a terrorist attack in the US or Europe. The police presence in New York and other major cities was beefed up on Wednesday in response to these unsubstantiated threats.

Already, a number of countries, including France, Australia, Canada and Britain, have proposed or begun implementing measures to strip individuals of citizenship and take away their passports on the basis of allegations of participating in terrorist or “extremist” organizations. There are ongoing discussions within the United States over similar proposals.
Last month, following the beheading of US journalist James Foley by ISIS, British Prime Minister David Cameron laid out a series of proposals, including the seizure of passports and the removal of citizenship. Government actions, he said, would target “all types of extremism,” which a British government agency has defined as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”—a definition that could be used to cover almost any opposition group.

The UN resolution is also part of efforts to utilize ISIS to strengthen state spying powers and deflect public outrage over the illegal and unconstitutional National Security Agency (NSA) programs revealed over the past year. In his remarks before the Security Council, Obama said that the resolution “will strengthen cooperation between nations, including sharing more information about the travel and activities of foreign terrorist organizations.”

An article published in Foreign Policy on Wednesday spelled out part of the motivation behind the resolution. Under the headline, “The Islamic State Makes Electronic Surveillance Respectable Again,” columnist Colum Lynch noted that the resolution “would require governments to grant law enforcement authorities wider scope to monitor and suppress the travel and other activities of suspected local jihadists.”

The article states that Congressional legislation on NSA spying, which includes token restrictions that nevertheless allow the spying to continue, has stalled. Moreover, Lynch notes, “The debate in France and other European countries reflects the degree to which discussions about surveillance on the continent no longer fixate on the NSA’s massive electronic spying that contractor Edward Snowden revealed when he leaked the spy agency’s internal documents.”

The Foreign Policy article cites Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch, who says the UN resolution is “rampant” with potential violations of due process. “Nowhere does it articulate by what process would [suspects] be denied their right to travel,” she says. Some provisions, moreover, “promote the idea that people can be prosecuted for their thoughts and their beliefs, but not their actions. It does not articulate any actual criminal conduct as a prerequisite for detention.” 

“...people can be prosecuted for their thoughts and their beliefs, but not their actions. It does not articulate any actual criminal conduct as a prerequisite for detention.”

As in the “war on terror” launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the real targets of all of these measures are not Islamic fundamentalist groups (in this case ISIS, which is a direct product of the civil war incited by the CIA in Syria), but any opposition to the foreign and domestic policies of the imperialist ruling classes. 

The "Risk" of Terrorism,,,

Don't know how this was calculated or if it's correct, but the point is the odds of being a victim of a terrorist are so ridiculous there shouldn't be so many resources  devoted to preventing terrorism. I'd rather be the victim of a terrorist attack than have my freedoms ignored and/or taken away...

Suspicious behavior at hotels is terrorism indicator; Hidden cameras used by Cops on Private Property w/o warrants

DHS-FBI bulletin on suspicious behavior at hotels adds to already long list of terrorism indicators

Madison Ruppert | Activist Post

According to the United States government, just about every single thing one can do is an indicator of terrorism. Everything from complaining about bias and believing in government conspiracies to ordinary bodily movements to bumper stickers to traveling long distances can be considered an indicator of terrorist activity.

That list can be expanded even further thanks to a joint Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bulletin dated July 26, 2010 (PDF courtesy of Public Intelligence).

According to the bulletin, there are a wide range of activities and behaviors that can be construed to be an indicator of terrorist activity, many of which are completely innocuous.

Most of the supposedly suspicious behaviors surround privacy, such as “Not providing professional or personal details on hotel registrations—such as place of employment, contact information, or place of residence.”

According to the FBI and DHS, “Refusal of housekeeping services for extended periods” is suspicious, along with “extended stays with little baggage or unpacked luggage.”

In other words, if you’d rather not run the risk of having your personal belongings rifled through by housekeeping staff or if you travel light, you just might be a terrorist.

“Non-VIPs who request that their presence at a hotel not be divulged,” are also apparently suspicious, although one must wonder who makes the decision about who is a VIP and non-VIP.

Some of the points clearly involve a great deal of assumptions on the part of the observer.

“Using payphones for outgoing calls or making front desk requests in person to avoid using the room telephone,” is apparently suspicious as well, although it is unclear how someone working at a hotel would know why exactly someone chooses to make calls on one phone instead of another.

On that same note, “Interest in using Internet cafes, despite hotel Internet availability,” is seen as suspicious. This completely ignores the fact that some people might not actually have a computer with them on vacation, thus requiring the hardware provided at an Internet café.

Apparently, choosing not to lug one’s computer around on vacation is a sign of “possible terrorist behaviors at hotels,” an assertion which is patently absurd.

Also suspicious, according to the FBI and DHS, is the “use of cash for large transactions or a credit card in someone else’s name.” This means that if you choose to use cash whenever possible, as many people do, you just might be a terrorist. On the other hand, if you use your spouse’s credit card to pay for your room, you also might be a terrorist.

“Requests for specific rooms, floors, or other locations in the hotel” is also seen as suspicious since apparently requesting to have a room that doesn’t overlook a parking lot means you might be a terrorist.

The FBI and DHS also seem to believe that using a travel agent could mean you’re a terrorist since “use of a third party to register” is listed as a potential indicator of terrorist activity.

Among other absurd indicators is, “Abandoning a room and leaving behind clothing, toiletries, or other items,” or in other words, forgetting something in your room.

That being said, some of the listed indicators could indeed be seen as suspicious, such as, “Unusual interest in hotel staff operating procedures, shift changes, closed-circuit TV systems, fire alarms, and security systems.”

Yet the sad reality is that the vast majority of the supposedly suspicious activities can hardly be characterized as such by any thinking person.

The truly suspicious activities are far outweighed by the completely laughable potential indicators listed in bulletins such as these, which is in no way constructive and just serves to create an irrational culture of paranoia.

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Federal court approves use of hidden surveillance cameras on private property without warrants

Madison Ruppert | Activist Post

Yet again, a federal judge undermined the Constitution in a wholly disturbing fashion, this time by allowing police to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant.

This is especially troubling since the federal government has conducted more warrantless surveillance over the past two years than the entire previous decade. This court decision can only be expected to increase that already troubling number.

Let us not forget that the Obama administration has fought vigorously to hold on to their ability to conduct warrantless wiretapping while also claiming that cell phone location data is not protected by the Constitution and the Supreme Court recently refused to review a lawsuit challenging the warrantless surveillance program of the National Security Agency (NSA).

According to CNET, U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled “that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission — and without a warrant — to install multiple “covert digital surveillance cameras” in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana [plants] were being grown.”

Griesbach’s decision was actually based on a recommendation issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan on October 9.

Callahan’s recommendation claimed that the DEA actually did not violate the Fourth Amendment by conducting warrantless surveillance.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the use of technology as a substitute for ordinary police surveillance,” wrote Callahan in his recommendation.

The case surrounds Manuel Mendoza and Marco Magana of Green Bay, Wis. Both Mendoza and Magana have been charged with federal drug crimes that carry potential fines of up to $10 million along with life in prison.

Steven Curran, a DEA agent, claimed he discovered over 1,000 marijuana plants on a 22-acre heavily wooded property owned by Magana. The defendants called on Callahan to throw out the video evidence collected by the DEA based on the fact that there were “No Trespassing” signs posted throughout the property along with a locked gate, thus making the evidence collected a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Around four days after the DEA installed the surveillance cameras on Magana’s property without a warrant, a magistrate judge granted a warrant for surveillance. Mendoza and Magana’s attorneys rightfully pointed out that the surveillance took place long before the warrant was actually granted.

Callahan made his recommendation based on Oliver v. United States, a 1984 Supreme Court case in which the majority of justices ruled that “open fields” could indeed be searched without obtaining a warrant. They based this decision on their claim that open fields are not actually covered by the Fourth Amendment.

If the land is immediately surrounding a residence, on the other hand, it has greater privacy protections based on a legal concept known as curtilage.

“Placing a video camera in a location that allows law enforcement to record activities outside of a home and beyond protected curtilage does not violate the Fourth Amendment,” Department of Justice prosecutors James Santelle and William Lipscomb told Callahan.

“That one’s actions could be recorded on their own property, even if the property is not within the curtilage, is contrary to society’s concept of privacy,” argued Magana’s attorney Brett Reetz in a legal filing.

“The owner and his guest… had reason to believe that their activities on the property were not subject to video surveillance as it would constitute a violation of privacy,” Reetz added in last month’s legal filing.

Writing for CNET, Declan McCullagh paints a quite disturbing picture of where this precedent could lead.

“As digital sensors become cheaper and wireless connections become more powerful, the Justice Department’s argument would allow police to install cameras on private property without court oversight — subject only to budgetary limits and political pressure,” McCullagh writes.

The ugly reality is that legal precedents such as these serve to reinforce the constant erosion of our most essential rights. So long as judges continue to support the consistent undermining of our Constitutional rights, this disturbing trend will undoubtedly continue and will likely get significantly worse.

Entrenching Murder as the American Way

The Age of Hell

by CHRIS FLOYD

 

The Washington Post has just laid out, in horrifying, soul-slaughtering detail, the Obama Administration’s ongoing effort to expand, entrench and “codify” the practice of murder and terrorism by the United States government. The avowed, deliberate intent of these sinister machinations is to embed the use of death squads and drone terror attacks into the policy apparatus of future administrations, so that the killing of human beings outside all pretense of legal process will go on, year after year after year, even when the Nobel Peace Laureate has left office.

They have even come up with a new euphemism for state murder: “disposition.” The new “counterterrorism matrix” is “designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects beyond the reach of American drones,” the Post reports.

In other words, it involves expanding and varying the menu of arbitrary murder, mixing the blunderbuss of drone blasts and night raids with more selective “bullet-in-the-brain,” “bomb-in-the-car-engine,” “polonium-in-the-pea-soup,” and “doping-and-defenestration” approaches. Arbitrary murder by unaccountable elites and their spies, paid for by money taken from ordinary citizens who have no say in and no knowledge of what is being done in their names (and who will be the victims of the inevitable blowback from the state terror and murder campaign): this is now being “codified,” officially, formally, as the American way.

To be fair — and by all means, let us be fair with these butchers — the term ‘disposition’ is also stretched to cover a multitude of sins: kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, turning captives over to proxy torturers. But it is worth remembering that all of these dispositions — including the murders, wholesale and retail — involve “alleged” terrorists, terrorist “suspects,” people who have found themselves, for whatever reason (or no reason at all) on one of the innumerable “lists” gathered by whatever method (or no method at all) by the many fatly-funded agencies now involved in “counter-terrorism.”

But that’s not all, not by a long shot. These codified murders are also being inflicted on people who are not on any list whatsoever: their names, affiliations, beliefs, intentions — indeed, their dispositions — are completely unknown to those who kill them. They are the faceless targets of “signature strikes,” which allow American death squads to kill people based on “patterns of activity” which may — or may not — signal some possible malign intent — or none — toward someone — or no one — somewhere — or nowhere. This rigorous process rests entirely on in the magical mind-reading abilities of drone jockeys ogling a computer screen. If the armchair warrior doesn’t like the cut of someone’s jib, then he squeezes his joystick and turns the stranger into “bug splatter,” to use the term favored by our bold defenders of civilization.

Like last year’s NY Times piece that first detailed the murder racket being run directly out of the White House, the new Washington Post story is replete with quotes from “senior Administration officials” who have obviously been authorized to speak. Once again, this is a story that Obama and his team WANT to tell. They want you to know about the murder program and their strenuous exertions to make it permanent; they are proud of this, they think it makes them look good. They want it to be part of their legacy, something they can pass on to future generations: arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder.

Perhaps this fact should be borne in mind by all those anguished progressives out there who keep telling themselves that Obama will “be different, that he will “turn to the left,” if we can only get him a second term. No; the legacy of arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder is the legacy he wants. It is the legacy he has been building, with remarkable energy and meticulous attention to detail, day after day, week after week, for the past four years. This is what he cares about. And it is this — not jobs, not peace, not the environment, not equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities, not the poor, not the middle class, not education, not infrastructure, not science, not diplomacy — that he will apply himself to in a second term. (Along with his only other political passion: forging a “grand bargain” with Big Money to gut the remaining shreds of the New Deal.)

There is little point in going through the Post story and offering detailed comment. The sickening nature of this perpetual-motion death-machine — and the husk-like inhumanity of those who operate it and the sycophants who applaud it — are all too plain. Just read the whole thing, and see for yourself. See how these butchers — our bipartisan elites, our whole respectable, self-righteous establishment — have trapped us all in an Age of Hell.

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The war on terror is a bogus system put in place to expand the American Empire while stuffing  the coffers of the corporate military industrial complex. There aren't enough terrorists left opposing us to even worry about, much less put forth such an effort at quashing them. They got lucky once because the Bush administration had their thumbs up their asses in spite of several warnings what was coming. Had anyone else been in office, no 9-11 per se, but there would still be this endless expenditure of money in the war on drugs (another farce) or expanding the empire just because that's what empires do. But keep killing whole families with drone strikes and we'll create a new generation of people who hate us and oppose the American Empire so that the corporate military industrial complex will have more victims for their high tech/high kill ratio meat grinders...like it or not, fellow citizens. We aren't the good guys. History will judge us harshly for the crimes we commit on our fellow humans every single day. The best evidence we aren't the good guys: the US armed forces average more than 1 suicide per day. They kill themselves more than the enemy does. If what they were doing were righteous, would they be killing themselves in such staggering numbers? May their god bless them and forgive them for whatever drove them to such a sad ending.

911, Terrorism and the TSA

Stop-and-Frisk at the Airport Checkpoint
by ALAN FARAGO

I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports lately as a retail traveler. A lot of time waiting in lines to pass through TSA security checkpoints. Time watching a heavy-handed, cumbersome, Department of Motor Vehicles mentality that is the insistent marker of TSA checkpoints.

It is time to change how Americans are being herded into a national security landscape on the retail level, that seems hopelessly driven by a down-market bureaucracy.

True, there have been no airline hijackings in the US since 9/11/2001. But there would have been no 9/11 if our elected officials had been vigilant.

It was all there: the information, the data, the intel that al Qaeda was coordinating a major attack on US soil, as a New York Times editorial on the 9/11 anniversary, reminds us.

The other day my wife was singled out for a random security check at LAX. My wife is in her sixth decade. The check involved a TSA screener not only feeling her body, but also putting fingers along inside the waist hem of her blue jeans. Excuse me?

The 9/11 OPED in the New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald reminds that it was political incompetence in the months leading up to 9/11 that changed America. Today, what worries is that there is no road map for dialing back the unprecedented assault against American freedoms. Also, on the retail level, every time I travel through an airport I am reminded by the TSA how America became captives of its own political incompetence.

I am saying a couple of things. The explosion of domestic surveillance by the US national security apparatus has a very high likelihood of identifying terrorist plots within the United States before they are executed. Hopefully, top elected officials are more clued in than the Bush White House in the early months of 2001 when the signals were clear and ignored.

Meanwhile, the chance of the TSA stopping a determined and sophisticated terrorist attack is, in my opinion, very small. So why are we all being herded in long lines like cattle in chutes?

The probability of identifying every plot against citizens may never be better than predicting the weather. So why do we behave as though we can, under the bureaucratic gaze of the TSA?

The problem that overshadows even those threats that are real and present is that a ponderous, wealthy and cosseted security infrastructure is now self-sustaining. How do Americans back it down? I am waiting for Congress and the White House to say, “We’ve proved our point with the TSA: now it is time to be vigilant and focused on airline security, but no more waiting in lines at airports.”

Is it even possible to ratchet back, when every vested interest in national security spending and infrastructure has set its alarm bell to ring, at the first hint, scent or indication of a calamity averted or caused?

I don’t mean to minimize the facts of 9/11, the desperate costs, and tragedy imprinted on families and nation. But every time I travel, part of me surveys the TSA security checkpoints and thinks, the bad guys won.

The bad guys not only put us on the defensive, they have apparently done so permanently. Al Qaeda used box cutters to rearrange the playing field so our democratic freedoms now conform with the same instinct that organizes their hatreds. We are victims, too, taking off our shoes, belts, and removing all coins from our pockets.

On the one hand, I understand that the TSA security checkpoints are a price we pay for a world made small by technology and freedom of access and movement to anyone with an airline ticket and identification. How would I like being on a passenger flight commandeered by terrorists because we “let down our guard”? Not at all. On the other hand, we are fully invested in the dark arts of identifying and killing terrorists around the world.

Tear down those TSA checkpoints, Congress.

Keeping America safe from terrorism depends, in the end, on a few elected officials paying attention and not falling asleep or declaring the wrong missions, accomplished, when they weren’t even identified to being with. Stopping the next 9/11 is consuming billions if not hundreds of billions of tax dollars. TSA security checkpoints are as effective as putting your seat in the upright position on take-off and landing. They make us do it so we will be conditioned to accept the next words of authority. It is the same, with the TSA whether we know it or not.

Wiretap Suits OKd Against US, Not Telecoms

Friday, December 30, 2011 by The San Francisco Chronicle
by Bob Egelko

The nation's telecommunications companies can't be sued for cooperating with the Bush administration's secret surveillance program, but their customers can sue the government for allegedly intercepting their phone calls and e-mails without a warrant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

In a pair of decisions, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a 2008 law immunizing AT&T and other companies for their roles in wiretapping calls to alleged foreign terrorists, but revived a suit that accused the government of illegally intercepting millions of messages from U.S. residents.

That lawsuit was partly based on testimony in 2003 by former AT&T technician Mark Klein about equipment in the company's office on Folsom Street in San Francisco that allowed Internet traffic to be routed to the government.

'Dragnet' surveillance

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights organization representing AT&T customers, claimed the company had similar installations in other cities and used them for "dragnet" surveillance of everyday e-mails and phone calls, which the National Security Agency purportedly screened electronically for connections to terrorism.

"We look forward to proving the program is an unconstitutional and illegal violation of the rights of millions of ordinary Americans," said Cindy Cohn, the foundation's legal director.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined comment.

President George W. Bush acknowledged in 2005 that his administration had eavesdropped on calls to suspected foreign terrorists without the warrants required by federal law, but his Justice Department denied the existence of a dragnet surveillance program.

Dozens of suits challenging the surveillance were transferred to San Francisco. In one case, then-Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in March 2010 that federal agents had illegally wiretapped an Islamic organization, which was accidentally sent a copy of the surveillance documents. The Obama administration, which inherited the case, is appealing the ruling.

Obama backed law

Walker also allowed suits against telecommunications companies that allegedly took part in illegal surveillance, but Bush then signed a law, supported by then-Sen. Barack Obama, that immunized companies cooperating in presidentially approved antiterrorism intelligence-gathering.

The appeals court upheld that law in a 3-0 ruling, rejecting arguments that Congress had interfered improperly in ongoing lawsuits and had delegated excessive power to Bush's attorney general, who certified the companies' eligibility for immunity in a confidential filing.

The Obama administration defended the law and also sought to dismiss the customers' suit against the government, arguing that it was based on speculation about wiretapping and involved political and national-security issues that were exempt from judicial review. The appeals court disagreed.

"Although the claims arise from political conduct and in a context that has been highly politicized, they present straightforward claims of statutory and constitutional rights" of customers who allege their messages were intercepted, said Judge Margaret McKeown in the 3-0 ruling.

The Drug War Transformed

Connie Mack and the "Terrorist Insurgency" in the Americas

by TOM BARRY

 

“This is a terrorist insurgency,” says Connie Mack, the Republican who chairs the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mack, who introduced the Enhanced Border Security Act in mid-December, believes that the Merida Initiative has failed and that the administration needs to revamp the counterdrug assistance program to include a “counterinsurgency plan.”

Explaining why his Enhanced Border Security bill is needed, Mack said: “The Mexican drug cartels have evolved into what some call the greatest national security threat faced by the United States with the ability to severely damage the U.S. economy.”

Adopting the language of the Obama administration’s new strategy to “combat transnational organized crime,” Mack warns that both Mexico and the United States are facing a “terrorist insurgency” waged by transnational criminal organizations “along our southern border, with operations across Mexico and Central America as well as in over 1,000 U.S. cities.”

Five years after President Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s drug war in December 2006 and three years into the Merida Initiative counterdrug assistance program, there is widespread anxiety in Mexico that the government is not gaining the upper hand on the drug cartels and that the drug-related violence, which has left a toll of 50,000 dead, will continue into the next sexenio, the six-year presidential term.

Whatever their politics, most close observers of the drug war in Mexico would agree with the Republican firebrand from Florida that the last five years of Mexico’s drug war have done little to increase governmental security and social stability. Most assessments of the Merida Initiative’s impact on Mexico and Central America are similarly negative.

The basic facts of the drug-related crisis in Mexico are clear enough, but what’s not so evident is its character and identity.

As President Calderón’s sexenio draws to an end and as the U.S. government evaluates its involvement in Mexico’s drug war and its border policy, new questions are being asked about drug threat and about the proper response.

Mack insists that traditional counternarcotics strategies are insufficient and out of step with the changing character of the drug trade in Mexico and in Central America.

What we are seeing in the region is not simply the business and violence of drug-related crime, says Mack. Instead, Mexico and the drug transit countries of Central America are facing insurgency and terrorism that threatens the security of region and of the United States.

Mexico has vociferously rejected Mack’s contention that the drug cartels represent an existential threat to state power.

But the basic facts of the drug war – widespread territorial loss of effective governing power, the involvement of local drug bosses in politics, the massive deployment of the military, the increasing firepower of the cartels, the war-level loss of life, and the use of horrific violence to make statements – seem to support Mack’s contention that Mexico is facing what he variously calls a “terrorist insurgency” and a “criminal insurgency.”

The inability of the Obama administration’s expanded border-security operations to significantly obstruct the crossborder flow of drugs from Mexico also points to the inadequacy of the U.S. response, whether at home or in Mexico.

Mack is, of course, not alone in his characterization of the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) as insurgents and narcoterrorists. Nor is he the only major public figure who is raising alarm about an increased threat to U.S. national security.

Two retired U.S. generals, including the former chief of the U.S. Southern Command, came to similar conclusions in a recent report commissioned by the Texas state government alarmingly titled Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment.

There’s no disputing the severity of the drug-related violence in Mexico and Central America. Yet the increasing discussion of the security implications of illegal drug trade also relates to the Obama administration’s own attempt to redefine the domestic and international drug problem as a battle against transnational criminal organizations.

The Transformed Drug Threat
The U.S. government has traditionally referred to Mexican and other Latin American drug cartels as drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). But the Obama administration has altered the nomenclature of the drug trade, and the DTOs are now routinely categorized as transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).

By newly designating the Mexican DTOs as transnational criminal organizations, the Obama administration has opened new political room for foreign policy hawks and anti-drug hardliners like Connie Mack to credibly argue that the U.S. needs to respond differently and more aggressively to the evolving drug trade scenario in the hemisphere.

Obama counternarcotics officials have dropped the term “war on drugs.” Instead, the four-decade war has been superseded by the newly organized “combat against transnational crime” and transnational organized criminal organizations – as spelled out this year by the White House in the Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.

The shift in the terminology to describe the U.S. national and international enforcement of its drug control laws – shedding an embarrassing military metaphor and adopting a more appropriate law-enforcement one – was long overdue.

Wars, after all, are fought to win not to flounder — with nary a sign of victory after four decades of drug war-fighting. In contrast, crime-fighting is accepted as a constant slog where no final victory is ever expected.

President Obama, however, insists, that the combat against the drug-trafficking TCOs is a matter of urgent national security, promising to prioritize the targeting of TCOs that represent a “high national security risk.”

In keeping with new parlance of the administration, Connie Mack, who chairs the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, contends that the U.S. and Mexican governments no longer simply confront drug trafficking organizations but now face powerful transnational criminal organizations that threaten not only the region’s security but also U.S. national security.

In contrast to Mack, other critics, apart from those of the right wing, lambast the Merida Initiative for contributing to widespread human rights violations by the Mexican military and for continuing drug war strategies that are based on failed drug prohibition policies.

Counting on Connie Mack
During his seven years in Congress, Mack has won strong support from his conservative constituency for his hardline positions on U.S. Latin America policy, particularly with his shrill anti-communist critiques of Castro in Cuba, Chávez in Venezuela, and Zelaya (removed by military-backed coup) in Honduras.

As chairman of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee, Mack has won a larger megaphone for a view of hemispheric relations in which U.S. hegemony persists. In language reminiscent of the imperial era politics in Latin America, Mack states: “You can count on me to challenge these tyrants wherever they are and always stand on the side of freedom, security and prosperity.”

Mack’s hawkish views on Mexico represent an ideological continuity in that he regards the TCOs as insurgents who challenge the established order. Yet his new focus on Mexico and the border security also have more immediate political origins – including an opportunity to bash the Obama administration and an attempt to assuage anti-immigrant constituents outraged over Mack’s criticisms of the repressive Arizona immigration law as threat to “freedom-loving conservatives.”

Mack may see his hawkish stances on border security and on the Mexico drug war as restoring the trust of his conservative constituents and helping him in his likely bid to to unseat Democratic Senator Bill Nelson.

In a Sept. 16 letter to the State Department complaining about the failures of the Merida Initiative, Mack wrote that “the transformation of drug cartels into TCOs and their attempts to undermine the Mexican government through tactics labeled as characteristics of an insurgency” required an overhaul of the Merida Initiative to address the new security environment.

Mack told the State Department:

The failure of this Administration to set performance measures, target dates or tangible goals to measure the success of U.S. programs has made it impossible to claim ‘success’ on the initiative itself. Meanwhile, the Mexican drug cartels have capitalized on the United States’ sluggish assistance to actively undermine the Mexican state through insurgent activities such as violence, corruption, and propaganda.

Both the Calderón and Obama administrations insist that the battle against the cartels – called drug war in Mexico and combat against transnational crime in the U .S. – is making steady progress toward the goal of reducing the threat of the drug-trafficking organizations.
Responding to Mack’s letter, the State Department wrote:

We believe the [Merida] Initiative is already having a positive impact. Through its bold efforts, with U.S. support, the Mexican government has successfully dismantled drug smuggling routes, seized major amounts of illicit drugs and jailed drug kingpins.

Critiquing the Merida Initiative, Mack says, “If we are unable or unwilling to identify the problem correctly, then we are unable to properly put a policy forward to combat the issue at hand.  The security and safety of the American people depend on it.”

That’s exactly right. But it is not a problem that began with the Merida Initiative or with the Obama administration.  Mack only compounds the problem of incorrectly identifying the issue at hand in Mexico and at the border by introducing new identifiers such as “terrorist insurgency” and “criminal insurgency.” Such terms confuse tactics and methods with objectives and goals, while leading both countries down the path of increased militarization.

The Obama administration also confiscates the drug-related crisis in Mexico by raising the specter of transnational crime as a national security threat and by identifying the Mexican drug trafficking organizations as the cause of the crisis rather than as largely a product of America’s own drug war and drug prohibition policies.

Local police stockpile high-tech, combat-ready gear

Published December 21, 2011 - Center for Investigative Reporting

By: Andrew Becker,  | G.W. Schulz,

If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.

In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. Until that day, however, the menacing truck is mostly used for training runs and appearances at the annual Fargo picnic, where it’s been displayed near a children’s bounce house.

“Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,” said Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. “There’s no terrorism here.”

Fargo, like thousands of other communities in every state, has been on a gear-buying spree with the aid of more than $34 billion in federal government grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The federal grant spending, awarded with little oversight from Washington, has fueled a rapid, broad transformation of police operations in Fargo and in departments across the country. More than ever before, police rely on quasi-military tactics and equipment, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

No one can say exactly what has been purchased in total across the country or how it’s being used, because the federal government doesn’t keep close track. State and local governments don’t maintain uniform records. But a review of records from 41 states obtained through open-government requests, and interviews with more than two-dozen current and former police officials and terrorism experts, shows police departments around the U.S. have transformed into small army-like forces.

Interactive: How much has your state spent on local homeland security?

Since Occupy Wall Street and similar protests broke out this fall, confusion about how to respond has landed some police departments in national headlines for electing to use intimidating riot gear, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse demonstrators. Observers have decried these aggressive tactics as more evidence that police are overly militarized.


Among them is former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, who today regrets his “militaristic” answer in 1999 to the infamous “Battle in Seattle” protests.

Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list of equipment bought with the federal grants reads like a defense contractor catalog. High-tech gear fills the garages, locker rooms and patrol cars in departments across the country.

Although local officials say they have become more cautious about spending in recent years, police departments around the country are continually expanding the equipment and tactics of their jobs, despite, in many cases, the lack of an apparent need.

The share of federal grants for Fargo and the county it anchors is more than $8 million, a considerable sum for terrorism defense given its remote location and status as one of the safest areas in America. Fargo has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there have been no prosecutions of international terrorism in the state for at least a decade, if ever.

North Dakota’s biggest city is a humble place set on plains so flat that locals like to say you can watch your dog run away for two weeks. Yet all patrol officers in Fargo now carry an assault rifle in their squad car.

Fargo police Lt. Ross Renner, who commands a regional SWAT team, said the world is a dangerous place, and the city wants to be ready for anything.

With that in mind, Renner pushed for military-style assault rifles to become standard issue in department patrol cars.

“It’s foolish to not be cognizant of the threats out there, whether it’s New York, Los Angeles or Fargo. Our residents have the right to be protected,” Renner said. “We don’t have every-day threats here when it comes to terrorism, but we are asked to be prepared.”

Other communities also have ramped up as well. In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department owns a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone. In Garland County, Ark., known for its pleasant hot springs, a local law enforcement agency acquired four handheld bulletproof protective shields costing $600 each. In East Baton Rouge, La., it was $400 ballistic helmets. In Augusta, Maine, with fewer than 20,000 people and where an officer hasn’t died from gunfire in the line of duty in more than 125 years, police bought eight $1,500 tactical vests. And for police in Des Moines, Iowa, it was two $180,000 bomb robots.

Homeland security and law enforcement officials say the expenditures and modern training have helped save civilian and police lives. Do the armored vehicles and combat dress produce a sort of “shock and awe” effect? Lt. Jeremy Clark of the West Hartford Police Department in Connecticut hopes so. He said it can persuade suspects to give up sooner.
“The only time I hear the complaint of ‘God, you guys look scary’ is if the incident turns out to be nothing,” said Clark, who organizes an annual SWAT competition.

But the gear also can be used for heavy-handed – even excessive – tactics. In one case, dozens of officers in combat-style gear raided a rave in Utah as a police helicopter buzzed overhead. An online video shows the battle-ready team wearing masks and brandishing rifles as they holler for the music to be shut off and pin partygoers to the ground.

Arizona tactical officers this year sprayed the home of ex-Marine Jose Guerena with gunfire as the man stood in a hallway with a rifle that he did not shoot [PDF]. He was hit 22 times and died. Police had targeted the man’s older brother in a narcotics-trafficking probe, but nothing illegal was found in the younger Guerena’s home, and no related arrests had been made months after the raid.

Police say greater firepower and more protective equipment became increasingly necessary not only as everyday criminals obtained deadlier weapons, but also in response to 9/11 and other terrorist attacks. They point to a 1997 Los Angeles-area shootout with heavily armed bank robbers and the bloody 2008 shooting and bombing attack in Mumbai, India, which left 164 people dead and 300 wounded.

Every community in the country has some explanation for why it needs more money, not less, to protect against every conceivable threat. It could be a shooting rampage at an amusement park, a weapon of mass destruction hidden at a manufacturing plant, a nuclear device detonated at a major coastal port. Nothing short of absolute security seems acceptable.

“The argument for up-armoring is always based on the least likely of terrorist scenarios,” said Mark Randol, a former terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service.

“Anyone can get a gun and shoot up stuff. No amount of SWAT equipment can stop that.”
Law enforcement leaders nonetheless bristle at the word “militarization,” even if the defense community itself acknowledges a convergence of the two.

“I don’t see us as militarizing police; I see us as keeping abreast with society,” said former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, now chairman of Kroll Inc., the security consulting firm. “And we are a gun-crazy society.”

SWAT competition underscores training
They appear on a grainy video in slow motion, wearing battle fatigues, helmets and multi-pocketed vests.

Figures move through the scene as though on a mission. One large man with a pistol strapped to his hip swings a battering ram into a door. A colleague shoots a flash-bang grenade into a field. A third man points an assault rifle into the distance, peering at his target through a scope. A fourth, holding a pistol and wearing a rifle strapped to his back, peeks cautiously inside a bus.

The images unfold to the pulsing, ominous soundtrack of a popular video game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.”

These are not soldiers in a far-flung warzone. They are members of the Massachusetts State Police competing at a SWAT team competition in Connecticut. The video, posted on YouTube, underscores the training and devotion tactical officers bring to their jobs. It also illustrates the level of force police units across the country can now deliver.

The annual Connecticut SWAT Challenge, hosted by the West Hartford Police Department, is one of numerous contests and exercises that have flourished since the terrorist attacks, as ultra-equipped, better-trained units sought to enhance their skills. The number of participating units more than doubled in five years, to nearly 40 teams by 2009, and dozens of sponsors seek to ensure their products and logos are on display.

One such sponsor sells ThunderSledge breaching tools for smashing open locked or chained doors. Another, Lenco Armored Vehicles, assembles black, bulletproof box-like trucks on oversized wheels that can fit up to 15 officers. Options include radiation detectors and hydraulic rams. KDH Defense Systems markets body armor to police that matches protection “used by some of the world’s most elite warfighters.”

Clark, of the West Hartford police, says he started the competition precisely because of the new counterterrorism spending. State and local governments weren’t willing to match it with costly training necessary for the gear to be used effectively and safely. Clark is startled by the number of SWAT teams falling below the 16 hours of minimum monthly training recommended by the National Tactical Officers Association. Without proper maintenance, only luck remains.

“Luck is not for cops. Luck is for drunks and fools,” Clark said. “Invariably, what happens with a police officer is he slips and falls, he breaks his back, he’s paralyzed for the rest of his life. Some suspect gets shot with an M4 (assault rifle) through the neck, and he’s out of the hospital in a day. Police officers and military guys never seem to have that kind of stubborn luck.”

Competitions in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston use grant cash to create realistic and elaborate challenges, said Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern, who created the Urban Shield event in 2007.

In one scenario, officers with goggles, rifles and fatigues swept through the cabin of a boat. Flames poured from an exploded vehicle during another. Video of the 2009 Urban Shield – with its own heart-thumping doomsday music – depicts tactical teams moving carefully through darkened quarters, roping down the sides of buildings and leaping from a van.

Images of 9/11, the Columbine shootings and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California appear with the words “train, adapt, overcome.”

Special ops supplier Blackhawk Industries – founded by a former Navy SEAL – was among several elite Urban Shield sponsors this year.

Ahern points to a real-life recent case that tested area responders. A gunman killed three people and injured seven others in October at a Cupertino, Calif., cement plant where he reportedly clashed with co-workers. These incidents aren’t infrequent, Ahern insists.

“When you say low probability, I think we deal with these issues on a fairly regular basis,” Ahern said, adding that police “identify infrastructure, potential targets, in our area and try to have our teams train at those actual sites.”

No one knows for sure the number of SWAT teams nationwide. But at a time when the crime rate has been dropping, the number of police associated with SWAT duties has gone up. The National Tactical Officers Association, which provides training and develops SWAT standards, has about 1,650 team memberships, up from 1,026 in 2000, according to Executive Director John Gnagey.

“What we’ve always said is if you don’t have a specific need, you shouldn’t have one,” Gnagey said, referring to SWAT units.

Convention showcases latest tactical gear
The giant showroom in Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center provided a vivid picture of how the nation's law enforcement agencies are arming and armoring themselves. Chicago hosted the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in late October. Some 800 exhibitors set up booths in 180,000 square feet of noisy space, many displaying military-style gear as thousands of police and other law enforcement professionals wandered the expo, dazzled by the latest gadgetry.
The sights and sounds are bewildering for a casual observer.

Electronic blasts and booms pour from the IES Interactive Training booth, where attendees chose among a shotgun, handgun and assault rifle with realistic recoil to aim at uncooperative suspects and inanimate targets on a life-size screen. Other booths offered combat-style apparel, such as one vest with a “Never Forget” patch, stirring up the memory of 9/11. At the Blackhawk booth, a mannequin was dressed head to toe in heavy-duty dark attire, a rifle slung from its neck and an additional sidearm strapped to its thigh. Another mannequin wore a full-face black mask.

Then there was the panoply of weapons. Colt’s Manufacturing Co. offered a selection of assault rifles. The most popular among cops? An M4 semi-automatic, “closest to what the military issues,” a salesman said.

Elsewhere, police officials admired a jumbo armored vehicle in camouflage green emblazoned with the words, “Greater Salt Lake.” It was built by Massachusetts-based truck maker Lenco, which also assembled the beefy BearCat that the Fargo-area SWAT team began using last year. The display vehicle had a battering ram affixed to the front. A man who answered questions about it showed off a remote gas delivery system that can be attached to the ram for spraying tear gas into a building from a long steel spear.

Advertising materials throughout the expo send a uniform message: The world is fraught with peril, and new high-tech gear is a solution.

“As criminal organizations are increasingly armed with military-style weapons, law enforcement operations require the same level of field-tested and combat-proven protection used by soldiers and Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan and other high-risk locations,” reads one brochure for the Oshkosh Corp.’s burly “tactical protector vehicle.” Minus passengers and cargo, it weighs more than two standard F-150 pickups built this year.

Colt makes its own appeal for a family of assault rifles: “The fundamental law enforcement mission profile has undergone drastic changes since the days of Sam Colt’s ‘gun that won the West.’ … Colt’s current law enforcement products have benefitted from decades of field and combat experience.”

Security market for state, local agencies growing
Security analyst Dilip Sarangan of Frost & Sullivan, which tracks the homeland security industry, said security spending by governments and the private sector is “event-based.” Both are suddenly willing to budget more when tragedy ignites new anxieties, such as after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, the 2005 London train bombings, the Mumbai terrorist attacks and, most of all, the 9/11 hijackings.

“That’s what their business is, unfortunately – anytime something bad happens, they make money,” Sarangan said.

The homeland security market for state and local agencies is projected to reach $19.2 billion by 2014, up from $15.8 billion in fiscal 2009, according to the Homeland Security Research Corp.

New opportunities are making major defense corporations more a part of our domestic lives.
Lenco, manufacturer of the BearCat and other SWAT vehicles, has sold more than 300 of its trucks to law enforcement agencies around the country. It also markets vehicles to the Defense Department, some for use in fighting improvised explosive devices.  The company does not disclose sales figures, but a spokesman said more have been sold since 9/11.

In 2007, British defense giant BAE Systems spent $4.5 billion to buy a company called Armor Holdings, which had subsidiaries that made and supplied police equipment, such as riot shields, hard-knuckle gloves, Delta 4 tactical helmets and laser sight mounts for AR-15 assault rifles.

Minnesota-based Alliant Techsystems, the Army’s primary provider of small-caliber ammunition, acquired in recent years two major tactical equipment suppliers, Blackhawk Industries and Eagle Industries. Company executives told shareholders that Blackhawk was a “highly profitable business,” with $115 million in predicted sales this year.

While such companies also outfit sporting enthusiasts and the military, law enforcement agencies are cast by Alliant as essential customers “in the rapidly growing security market.”

Local officials assert that homeland security grants, used to pay for the type of equipment showcased in Chicago, have slowed. But the grants still add up to a lot of spending: The Department of Homeland Security awarded more than $2 billion in grants this year, and President Barack Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act pumped more than a half-billion dollars into existing grant programs.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is largely responsible for distributing homeland security grants. It operates a website known as the Responder Knowledge Base, which serves as a sort of war-on-terror catalog listing what local governments are allowed to buy with readiness funds.

One item featured is an armored bulldozer with a thick front shield and propelled by “tank-like, all-terrain tracks.” The manufacturer, Dolmen Corp., says police operate in an increasingly violent world, where the arms race between good guys and bad guys is constantly escalating.

The firm says the military-style vehicle allows police to “gain the edge on crime.”

Gnagey, of the tactical officers association, said there’s a sense among some local police that the price increases when makers know it’s being paid for with federal funds. The minute new equipment arrives, he joked, “if it’s painted black and called SWAT, the price doubles.”

But the evolution continues. In the Phoenix area, Sheriff Joe Arpaio claimed this year to have his own air armada of private pilots he could dispatch to monitor illegal border crossers. He called it Operation Desert Sky. Arpaio also picked up a full-size surplus Army tank, complete with treads.

The city of Ogden, Utah, is about to launch a 54-foot, remote-controlled “crime-fighting blimp” with a powerful surveillance camera affixed to its belly by the end of the year.
Standard-duty officers seen daily on the streets of Los Angeles were retrained to break in and kill terrorists without negotiating, under an assumption that the attackers could have a death wish and not be interested in resolving matters peacefully. Many officers were also equipped with assault rifles.

Bratton, the former police chief, said in an interview that terrorism had been a low priority early in his career. By the time he retired in 2009, it consumed a significant part of his workday. After the Mumbai attacks, Bratton believed he had to act fast to prepare for such an event.

“We were not structured for that type of attack,” he said. “Within six months, we were.”
Las Vegas rushed forward as well. Everyday patrol officers were given additional training, and each shift now has “in-the-box” squads that can meet at a pre-determined location and respond as a group to would-be campus or casino attackers. Squad members carry additional gear in their cars, including gas masks, body armor and high-powered rifles.

“When you go to a substation now at a police department and you see someone walk out to their car to start their shift, no longer are they just walking out there with a briefcase,” said Las Vegas Sheriff Doug Gillespie. “They’ve got other equipment they’re taking with them that if the situation arises, they put that on and they use it.”

Charles Ramsey, who was police chief in Washington, D.C., during 9/11, said officers in the nation’s capital began to train for multiple simultaneous attacks. The Mumbai bloodshed, which took place after Ramsey headed to Philadelphia in 2008, also served as a spur for him to make further changes and spend more money to up-armor his force.

Some 1,500 beat cops in Philadelphia have been trained to use AR-15 assault rifles – akin to the high-powered weapons issued to war fighters.

“We have a lot of people here, like most departments, who are ex-military,” Ramsey said in an interview. “Some people are very much into guns and so forth. So it wasn’t hard to find volunteers.”  

Preventative measures critical, Fargo police say
Fargo is not a place anyone associates with crime or terrorism. Its combination of friendly folk, low housing prices and high employment has garnered it recognition as one of the best places in the country to live. It is home to one of Microsoft's largest campuses and North Dakota State University.

Officials in Cass County, which includes Fargo, began buying gear in 2002. The spending on police gear rose from tens of thousands a decade ago to millions.

Police there said such spending is more than justified as a preventative measure. North Dakota has what could be perceived as targets, and the FBI established in Fargo one of its 104 Joint Terrorism Task Forces. Critical energy and agriculture sectors drive the booming economy in the remote border state. Drones used in the war on terror and homeland security are stationed at or operated from air bases in Grand Forks and at the local Fargo airport.

In addition, they say, some right-wing militias and white supremacists have been long-standing threats.

Fargo police justify the purchase of their SWAT truck, saying that with regular maintenance and low miles, it could serve the force for 30 years. They point to past shootings, like a 2004 incident in which a former Army ranger shot at SWAT team members and pinned down one officer who could have been aided by the truck.

In their minds, if it saves even one life, it’s worth the cost.

Other purchases, like the bomb-detection robots, are shared with federal agencies in Fargo that have outposts, but not the resources. The local police also say they’ve taken a regional approach to spend wisely, leveraging federal grants to buy equipment that has multiple uses.

“It doesn't make sense if we only use it for terrorism activity, and it doesn’t make sense if we only use it for criminal activity,” said Fargo police Capt. Patrick Claus, a former SWAT commander.

Some residents agree. Tim Kozojed, a corn and soybean farmer in Hillsboro, 40 miles north of Fargo, said he believes police ought to have the equipment they need. But he also believes they must spend money wisely. He’s not certain that’s happened with the grants.
“I’m very reluctant to get anxious about a terrorist attack in North Dakota,” Kozojed, 31, said. “Why would they bother?”

Claus, who was responsible for buying some of Fargo's military-style gear, including the BearCat truck, understands such thinking. But he contends it’s misguided, and he and other law enforcement authorities are obliged to prepare as well as they can.

“We prepare for the worst and hope it never happens,” he said. “But how many fires do you have to have before you buy a fire engine?”

Unconstitutional National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Pisses All Over the Bill of Rights (5 articles)

(Where to begin with covering this ridiculous fiasco...how about the facts first?--jef)

Senate passes National Defense Authorization Act
Thursday, December 15, 2011

WASHINGTON — The US Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill Thursday that also freezes some Pakistan aid, imposes sanctions on Iran’s central bank, and approves the indefinite imprisonment of suspected terrorists.

The Democrat-led Senate voted 86-13 for the Defense Authorization bill, which was passed Wednesday by the House. President Barack Obama was expected to sign it as early as this weekend after dropping a veto threat.

The measure, which also sets high hurdles for closing Guantanamo Bay, had drawn fire from civil liberties groups that strongly criticized its de facto embrace of holding alleged extremists without charge until the end of the “war on terrorism,” which was declared after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Obama, who had threatened to veto earlier versions of the yearly measure, will sign it despite lingering misgivings, his spokesman Jay Carney said before the House vote on Wednesday.

The legislation, a compromise blend of rival House and Senate versions, requires that Al-Qaeda fighters who plot or carry out attacks on US targets be held in military, not civilian, custody, subject to a presidential waiver.

The bill exempts US citizens from that fate, but leaves it to the US Supreme Court or future presidents to decide whether US nationals who sign on with Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups may be held indefinitely without trial.

The bill also freezes roughly $700 million in aid to Pakistan, pending assurances that Islamabad has taken steps to thwart militants who use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Earlier Thursday, Pakistan angrily criticized US moves to freeze the aid money — the latest rifts in a fraying alliance that has been in deep crisis since air strikes by US-led forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last month.

“We believe that the move in the US Congress is not based on facts and takes a narrow vision of the overall situation; hence, wrong conclusions are unavoidable,” said foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit.

The legislation also brings tough new sanctions to Iran, with the aim to cut off Tehran’s central bank from the global financial system in a bid to force the Islamic republic to freeze its suspect nuclear program.

The goal is to force financial institutions to choose between doing business with the central bank — Iran’s conduit for selling its oil to earn much-needed foreign cash — or doing business with US banks.

The legislation meanwhile calls for closer military ties with Georgia, including the sale of weapons that supporters say would help the country, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, defend itself.

It also included an amendment ensuring the United States would not hand over sensitive information to Moscow on the US missile defense system, a measure to win over hold-out senators who have been blocking the pending nomination Michael McFaul as US ambassador to Russia.

After Obama lifted his veto threat, rights groups chastised the US leader for his changing stance on holding prisoners without trial.

“It is a sad moment when a president who has prided himself on his knowledge of and belief in constitutional principles succumbs to the politics of the moment to sign a bill that poses so great a threat to basic constitutional rights,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

“In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side,” Roth said.

Obama had warned he could reject the original proposal over the military custody issue, as well as provisions he charged would short-circuit civilian trials for alleged terrorists.

The lawmakers crafting the compromise measure strengthened Obama’s ability to waive parts of the detainee provisions, and reaffirmed that the custody rules would not hamper ongoing criminal investigations by the FBI or other agencies.

The measure meanwhile forbids the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to US soil and sharply restricts moving such prisoners to third countries — steps that critics of the facility say will make it much harder to close down.

The bill passed by a wide margin, with only six Democrats and six Republicans voting against the legislation, along with the lone Independent of the chamber, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday, December 15, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English

US House Passes 'Indefinite Detention' Bill
House of Representatives approves defense bill including moves to allow terror suspects to be detained indefinitely.

WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives has voted in favor of controversial proposed legislation that would deny terror suspects, including US citizens, the right to trial and permit authorities to detain them indefinitely.

The bill, said Christopher Anders of the ACLU, "Would authorize the president to order the military to capture civilians and put them in indefinite detention without charge or trial, with no limitation based on either geography or citizenship.". The proposed changes were included in a $662bn defence bill passed on Wednesday by the Republican-controlled House after White House officials withdrew a threat to block the bill over concerns it would undermine the US president's authority over counterterrorism activities.

In a statement, Jay Carney, a White House spokesman said "several important changes" had been made, which meant that presidential advisers would not recommend Barack Obama veto the bill.

The bill, which also endorsed tougher sanctions against Iran's central bank and freezing $700 million in aid to Pakistan, must still pass through the Senate, which is expected to vote on Thursday.

If approved, the bill would require the US military to take custody of terror suspects accused of involvement in plotting or committing attacks against the United States.

But in changes introduced under pressure from the White House, the bill was amended to say that the military cannot interfere with FBI and other civilian investigations and interrogations. The revisions also allow the president to sign a waiver moving a terror suspect from military to civilian prison.

Carney said the new bill "does not challenge the president's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the American people."


'Lack of clarity'But some officials had some objections to the clause. FBI Director Robert Mueller criticized the provision for its lack of clarity on how the changes would be implemented at the time of arrest.

The White House said that some of those concerns remained.

"While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counter-terrorism professionals, the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented," added Carney.

But the bill has also attracted criticism from civil rights campaigners.

Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the bill was a "big deal".

"It would authorize the president to order the military to capture civilians and put them in indefinite detention without charge or trial, with no limitation based on either geography or citizenship," he told Al Jazeera.

"The military would have the authority to imprison persons far from any battlefield, including American citizens and including people picked up in the US."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Obama Reverses Himself: Administration Won't Veto 'Global Battlefield' Indefinite Detentions Measure
President Obama is expected to sign a defense policy bill allowing the military to arrest and indefinitely hold terrorism suspects -- even Americans arrested on U.S. soil. 
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on December 14, 2011

The Obama administration Tuesday reversed itself and said it would not veto a major 2012 defense bill that expands the American military’s authority to arrest suspected terrorists anywhere in the world—including Americans on U.S. soil—and hold them indefinitely without charge or the right to a civilian trial.

“We have concluded that the [defense bill’s] language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a written statement. “The President’s senior advisers will not recommend a veto.”

Only two weeks ago Carney told reporters that Obama stood by his veto threat. The reversal by the White House will now subject the president to an unprecedented lobbying campaign by retired generals, intelligence officers, and myriad civil rights organizations to reject the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

The 1,844-page conference committee report was passed by the House 283-136 on Wednesday night and now goes to the Senate where an earlier version passed 93-7. While dealing with innumerable aspects of military policy, its counterterrorism section states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror. It expands the U.S. military’s authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

“This is a worldwide authority provision,” said Christopher Anders, the ACLU’s senior legislative counsel. “No corner of the world is off limits… With United States citizens, the hope would be that there would be constitutional protections that would apply. But that kind of challenge is still very uncertain under U.S. law, and it would take years [for such litigation] to work its way through the courts.

In a press briefing earlier this week, Anders and top attorneys from Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and the National Security Network explained the implications of the defense policy bill heading toward President Obama’s desk. The legislation does not fund troops fighting in America's overseas conflicts; that is another bill also heading to his desk.
In sum, the very policies that candidate Obama pledged to end by closing the military’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he is now not only supporting, but expanding onto U.S. soil, the civil rights lawyers said. Besides giving the military authority for indefinite detention without trying suspects, the bill would require military detention for many terrorism suspects. And it would all but ban transferring any exonerated prisoners from Guantanamo, where 88 of the 171 prisoners held there have been cleared of terrorist involvement.

“It would, if enacted into law, significantly change the way the U.S. approaches detentions in a so-called ‘law of war’ context,” Andrea Parsow of Human Rights Watch said, concluding it would lead to the expansion of Guantanamo, not its closure. The legislation envisions the military’s role in current and future conflicts.

Other experts, such as Heather Hurlburt, National Security Network executive director, said no one in senior national security or domestic law enforcement positions—including the FBI director, CIA director, National Intelligence director, and Secretary of Defense—wanted the military detention authority in the bill, and national security officials repeatedly told Senate and House Armed Services Committee members that the provisions were unworkable.
“The national security establishment comprehensively rejects these provisions as representing the militarization of our justice system,” she said, noting that on Monday the New York Times had an unprecedented op-ed co-written by Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, both retired four-star Marine generals, calling for a presidential veto. They said that inserting military forces into domestic anti-terror operations would vastly complicate law enforcement, undermine constitutional rights and boost Al Qaeda’s recruiting.

Hurlburt pointed out that the Senate and House Armed Service Committee chairs could not even agree on what the military detention provisions would mean, with the House chair saying it was a dramatic expansion of domestic military authority, and the Senate chair saying it was not. That scenario would lead to the Supreme Court having to clarify the legislation’s intent and defense policy sometime in the future, she said.

Consider the case of a Nigerian man, the so-called underwear bomber, arrested last Christmas Eve in Michigan after he failed to detonate a bomb on an airline flight from Amsterdam. Under the law, Hurlburt said, the FBI or local law enforcement would have to turn him over to the military, even though there is no military prison in Michigan. The White House would have to approve a waiver in order for a terror suspect not to be held by the military, which is an unduly complicated procedure. Interrogation time would be lost, Hurlburt said, explaining why so many senior law enforcement and military officials oppose the provision.

None of those arguments, however, are new to Senate or House members who support the expanded military detention powers. After intense debate in the Senate, where all amendments to remove or change the detention provisions failed, the House did not change a single word, the ACLU’s Anders said. Instead it added murky language saying that nothing in the law was intended to interfere with domestic law enforcement.

The White House’s statement saying it would not veto the law ignored these concerns, even as the FBI director again warned senators on Wednesday about the military detention provisions.

“While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals,” Carney’s statement said, “the most recent changes give the President additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength.”

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The Indefinite Detention Bill DOES Apply to American Citizens on U.S. Soil 

Source: Washington’s Blog
December 14, 2011

Even at this 11th hour – when all of our liberties and freedom are about to go down the drain – many people still don’t understand that the indefinite detention bill passed by Congress allows indefinite detention of Americans on American soil.
The bill is confusing. As Wired noted on December 1st:

It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”

A retired admiral, Judge Advocate General and Dean Emeritus of the University of New Hampshire School of Law also says that it applies to American citizens on American soil.
The ACLU notes:

Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.
But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

Another sponsor of the bill – Senator Levin – has also repeatedly said that the bill applies to American citizens on American soil, citing the Supreme Court case of Hamdi which ruled that American citizens can be treated as enemy combatants:

“The Supreme Court has recently ruled there is no bar to the United States holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant,” said Levin. “This is the Supreme Court speaking.“

Levin again stressed recently that the bill applies to American citizens, and said that it was president Obama who requested that it do so.

Under questioning from Rand Paul, another co-sponsor – John McCain – said that Americans suspected of terrorism could not only be indefinitely detained, but could be sent to Guantanamo:


U.S. Congressman Justin Amash states in a letter to Congress:

The Senate’s [bill] does not even distinguish between American citizens and non-citizens, or between persons caught domestically and abroad. The President’s power, in his discretion, to detain persons he determines have supported associated forces applies just as strongly to Americans seized on U.S. soil as it does to foreigners captured on a far away battlefield.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – General Colin Powell’s chief of staff – says that the bill is a big step towards tyranny at home.  Congressman Ron Paul says that it will establish martial law in America.

Indeed, Amash accuses lawmakers of attempting to intentionally mislead the American people by writing a bill which appears at first glance to exclude U.S. citizens, when it actually includes us:

Pres. Obama and many Members of Congress believe the President ALREADY has the authority the bill grants him. Legally, of course, he does not. This language was inserted to keep proponents and opponents of the bill appeased, while permitting the President to assert that the improper power he has claimed all along is now in statute.

***

They will say that American citizens are specifically exempted under the following language in Sec. 1032: “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.” Don’t be fooled. All this says is that the President is not REQUIRED to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial. It still PERMITS him to do so.

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Obama Reverses Himself: Administration Won't Veto 'Global Battlefield' Indefinite Detentions Measure

President Obama is expected to sign a defense policy bill allowing the military to arrest and indefinitely hold terrorism suspects -- even Americans arrested on U.S. soil.

December 14, 2011  |  

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The Obama administration Tuesday reversed itself and said it would not veto a major 2012 defense bill that expands the American military’s authority to arrest suspected terrorists anywhere in the world—including Americans on U.S. soil—and hold them indefinitely without charge or the right to a civilian trial.

“We have concluded that the [defense bill’s] language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a written statement. “The President’s senior advisers will not recommend a veto.”

Only two weeks ago Carney told reporters that Obama stood by his veto threat. The reversal by the White House will now subject the president to an unprecedented lobbying campaign by retired generals, intelligence officers, and myriad civil rights organizations to reject the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

The 1,844-page conference committee report was passed by the House 283-136 on Wednesday night and now goes to the Senate where an earlier version passed 93-7. While dealing with innumerable aspects of military policy, its counterterrorism section states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror. It expands the U.S. military’s authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

“This is a worldwide authority provision,” said Christopher Anders, the ACLU’s senior legislative counsel. “No corner of the world is off limits… With United States citizens, the hope would be that there would be constitutional protections that would apply. But that kind of challenge is still very uncertain under U.S. law, and it would take years [for such litigation] to work its way through the courts.

In a press briefing earlier this week, Anders and top attorneys from Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and the National Security Network explained the implications of the defense policy bill heading toward President Obama’s desk. The legislation does not fund troops fighting in America's overseas conflicts; that is another bill also heading to his desk.

In sum, the very policies that candidate Obama pledged to end by closing the military’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he is now not only supporting, but expanding onto U.S. soil, the civil rights lawyers said. Besides giving the military authority for indefinite detention without trying suspects, the bill would require military detention for many terrorism suspects. And it would all but ban transferring any exonerated prisoners from Guantanamo, where 88 of the 171 prisoners held there have been cleared of terrorist involvement.

“It would, if enacted into law, significantly change the way the U.S. approaches detentions in a so-called ‘law of war’ context,” Andrea Parsow of Human Rights Watch said, concluding it would lead to the expansion of Guantanamo, not its closure. The legislation envisions the military’s role in current and future conflicts.

Other experts, such as Heather Hurlburt, National Security Network executive director, said no one in senior national security or domestic law enforcement positions—including the FBI director, CIA director, National Intelligence director, and Secretary of Defense—wanted the military detention authority in the bill, and national security officials repeatedly told Senate and House Armed Services Committee members that the provisions were unworkable.

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“The national security establishment comprehensively rejects these provisions as representing the militarization of our justice system,” she said, noting that on Monday the New York Times had an unprecedented op-ed co-written by Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, both retired four-star Marine generals, calling for a presidential veto. They said that inserting military forces into domestic anti-terror operations would vastly complicate law enforcement, undermine constitutional rights and boost Al Qaeda’s recruiting.

Hurlburt pointed out that the Senate and House Armed Service Committee chairs could not even agree on what the military detention provisions would mean, with the House chair saying it was a dramatic expansion of domestic military authority, and the Senate chair saying it was not. That scenario would lead to the Supreme Court having to clarify the legislation’s intent and defense policy sometime in the future, she said.

Consider the case of a Nigerian man, the so-called underwear bomber, arrested last Christmas Eve in Michigan after he failed to detonate a bomb on an airline flight from Amsterdam. Under the law, Hurlburt said, the FBI or local law enforcement would have to turn him over to the military, even though there is no military prison in Michigan. The White House would have to approve a waiver in order for a terror suspect not to be held by the military, which is an unduly complicated procedure. Interrogation time would be lost, Hurlburt said, explaining why so many senior law enforcement and military officials oppose the provision.

None of those arguments, however, are new to Senate or House members who support the expanded military detention powers. After intense debate in the Senate, where all amendments to remove or change the detention provisions failed, the House did not change a single word, the ACLU’s Anders said. Instead it added murky language saying that nothing in the law was intended to interfere with domestic law enforcement.

The White House’s statement saying it would not veto the law ignored these concerns, even as the FBI director again warned senators on Wednesday about the military detention provisions.

“While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals,” Carney’s statement said, “the most recent changes give the President additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength.”