Target Private Ownership, Not Politics • Monopoly Media Contributes to Hysteria
• The Wall Street Bailout and the Threat of Dictatorship• The Rich Are Staging a Coup this Morning ... a Message• Growing Integration of Military and Civilian Forces for Greater Repression Inside the Country
• Why is a US Army Brigade Assigned to the “Homeland?"
• USNorthCom & Fusion Centers
• Electronic Frontier Challenges Homeland Security’s Border Spying Operations
Target Private Ownership, Not Politics
Monopoly Media Contributes to Hysteria
One of the features of the deepening crisis is the desperation of the ruling circles as they fight to preserve themselves and their rotten system. And in their desperation, they are making every effort to disorient the people by creating hysteria and discrediting politics and politicians. This is part of their effort to immediately secure more than $1 trillion of the public treasury to save themselves. The monopoly media, far from informing the public and contributing to discussion on alternatives to the bail out, are contributing to fanning the flames of the hysteria. Instead of targeting the financiers and their private ownership, the monopoly media is targeting the public and what they call the problem of “democracy in action.” Echoeing the disinformation of the rich, the media claims the public does not understand why failure to turn over the hundreds of billions to the most powerful will also hurt the “average person.”
The public in their millions broadly expressed their anger with the proposed government bail out of the rich. They understand directly that the direction of the economy, with its war funding and bail outs, is harmful to the public here and abroad. Petitions, faxes, phone calls and hundreds of actions took the stand: Defend the Rights of the People! Let Wall Street Fail and Send Them to Jail! An action on Wall Street organized by the New York City Labor Council was representative of many others across the country. Signs read, No Bail, Send ‘Em to Jail! Bailout = Bush-t. Let me get this straight: $700 billion for Wall St; $700 billion for Iraq War; No money for healthcare, schools, housing.
The public is clear that the bailout is not in the interests of the public good, it is serving the narrow interests of the most powerful monopolies. The people are demanding that public dollars serve the public and that public officials serve the public, not the private monopolies. In part what is coming to the fore is the battle over just whose economy this is — the peoples’ economy or that of the rich? We say, Whose Economy? Our Economy! Who Decides? We Decide! It is precisely this spirit the rich and their media are trying to block with their hysteria. They are trying to paint the public and politics as the problem.
Following the initial defeat of the bailout plan in the House of Representatives on September 29, President George W. Bush, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, and leaders of the Senate and House, all denounced the House vote and stepped up their arm-twisting to secure passage of the bailout. The country’s major business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers also joined in imposing the dictate of the private monopolies over public dollars.
The monopoly media echoed the tirades of the rich. The San Francisco Chronicle headline was, “Politics Sinks Bailout.” It said, “It would have been helpful for our leaders in Washington to do a better job of outlining the rationale and detail of this calculated risk. We needed them to explain to the public what is happening — why the average person, not just a wealthy banker, will be hurt by bank failures, credit freezes and a (possibly large) uptick in interest rates and unemployment” (September 30). The Los Angeles Times said, “When [Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernake] say the situation is dire, it’s not as if a couple of flightless birds were saying the sky is falling. So why did the House vote down the rescue package Monday…? Blame haste, partisanship, timidity and brinkmanship — they all played a role. More important though was Washington’s failure to convince taxpayers that a dramatic bailout was vital to their health, not just Wall Street’s,” (September 30). The New York Times added that a flawed bail out was better than nothing when “the survival of the nation’s financial system” is at stake (September 30). The Dallas Morning News headline was “Want to Save the Economy or Play Politics?” Again the threats, “The consequences of stalemate could be catastrophic,” and said the House refusal to pass the bailout was “indefensible…at a time when leadership, not partisanship,” is urgently needed (September 30). The Star Tribune of Minneapolis added, “The outrage [of the public] was understandable, but it was limited in scope. Lawmakers should have listened but risen above it for the greater good of the nation and quite possibly the world.” (September 29).
The problem is not public understanding nor is it politics. The U.S. financial oligarchy, rather than addressing the banking and other Wall Street failures with economic renewal, is instead focused on saving themselves from harm. The self-centered interests of the rich compel them to look at narrow solutions that “save” their particular ownership rights while passing the burden of the crisis onto the working class, small farmers and businesses, other middle strata, and countries worldwide. These piranhas have been feeding off the mortgage and credit markets for years. They are demanding that government further contribute to their disgusting orgy of greed and parasitism by handing over more than $1.5 trillion. The people are having none of it and rightly so.
The stand required is to block the parasites and defend the rights of the people. Stop Paying the Rich! Restricting monopoly right to use public monies to save their private corporate interests is what is needed. The response required of government must be to serve the public good. If not, as a worker at one of the rallies put it, reflecting the politics of the working class, “We’ll kick them out” of government. It is not the elimination of politics and elected politicians that is needed. What is necessary is the smashing of these efforts by the rich and their media to further lower the level of politics. Stepping up the work for politics of empowerment is the way forward. To kick the politicians of the rich out, it is necessary to organize to put worker politicians in.
Danger of a Fascist Political Coup
One aim of the attacks on “politics” is to discredit the existence of politicians and elected legislative bodies. The rich are finding such bodies an obstacle to rapidly securing all the resources of society to supply their drive for world empire. Targeting “politics” is a means to prepare the grounds for elimination of legislative bodies. It is a means to paint all politics as the problem, when the politics of the working class are in fact required to bring about the changes needed.
The economic coup currently being organized by the most powerful monopolies threatens to become a political coup — a fascist takeover of government by the most powerful. To justify such an action, Congress, and “politics” more generally, must be seen to be endangering the “fundamentals of our economic system.” The public is supposedly too ignorant to know what is best for the country. Some representatives of the financiers are already openly speaking in this manner. Michael Gerson, a former senior advisor to Bush and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “It is clear that American political elites have lost the ability to quickly respond to a national challenge by imposing their collective will.” He goes on to say that Congress represents a “weak government populated by small men,” and that this is more frightening than bank failures. George Will in the Washington Post says, “Congress should disconnect from a public that cannot be blamed for being more furious about than comprehending this opaque debacle.” An opinion piece in the London Times went still further with its headline, “Congress is Best Advert for Dictatorship.” The columnist said, “The most flattering reading of the turmoil in Congress this week has been that this is democracy in action.” She added, “Personally, I have never felt more attracted to benign dictatorship.”
It is no mistake that the mouthpieces of the rich are openly talking against “weak government” and in favor of “benign dictatorship.” Ground is being prepared for just such a fascist coup. Use of military force to impose it is also being prepared, as the U.S. Northern Command gets a dedicated combat brigade and begins training for repressing “civil unrest” inside the U.S.
What is required in the situation is to reject the hysteria by organizing together to continue the fight to Stop Paying the Rich! and Empower the People! It is necessary to organize and discuss alternatives that take as their starting point defending the rights of the people. The government needed is one of the workers themselves and working together now to advance this struggle is imperative.
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The Wall Street Bailout and the Threat of Dictatorship
Recriminations have continued to reverberate internationally over the vote in the House of Representatives Monday to reject a $700 billion bailout package for the Wall Street banks.
Much of the opposition in the 228-to-205 vote to defeat the bailout was attributed to representatives — Democratic and Republican alike — who face tight races for their seats in November and fear being tarred by their opponents as shills for Wall Street who handed over hundreds of billions in taxpayers’ money to the CEOs and speculators who are responsible for the crisis.
In this sense, the overwhelming hostility of ordinary working people toward this massive transfer of public resources to the super-rich found its expression, highly distorted as it was, in the measure’s temporary demise.
What is the lesson drawn by much of the political establishment, as reflected in media commentary? That the American government is too susceptible to the will of the people to respond as required to the demands of finance capital.
This is the theme sounded in a number of commentaries, some of them penned by individuals with significant ties to ruling circles.
Representative of this ideological trend is a column in Wednesday’s Washington Post by Michael Gerson, George W. Bush’s former chief speechwriter and senior advisor, who is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Entitled “Too Small for a Big Crisis,” the piece portrays a dysfunctional Congress.
Gerson begins by characterizing the vote with a lurid historical metaphor. “The Bastille of establishment opinion has been stormed and taken, at least temporarily,” he writes. “But the revolution has irresponsibility in its soul.”
He notes that the vote came despite the overarching unanimity within the ruling elite in support of the bailout. “[S]eldom has America’s governing elite been more united in response to a national challenge,” he writes, with the administration, the leadership of both major parties and both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates all supporting the bailout proposal.
After apportioning blame between “partisan” Democrats and Republicans wedded to “ideological purity,” Gerson gets to the heart of his concerns.
“Though some compromise may eventually be passed,” he declares, “it is now clear that American political elites have lost the ability to quickly respond to a national challenge by imposing their collective will. What once seemed like politics as usual now seems more like the crisis of the Articles of Confederation — a weak government populated by small men. And this must be more frightening to a world dependent on American stability than any bank failure.”
Gerson’s second historical analogy drawn from the age of the great bourgeois revolutions is as potted as the first. The crisis of the Articles of Confederation gave rise to the House of Representatives and the U.S. Constitution that created it. Neither was crafted with the aim of allowing “political elites” to quickly impose their “collective will.”
The Constitution’s Article 1 created Congress as the first branch of the U.S. government, meant to most closely reflect the will of the people. This was true, in particular, of the House, with its members subject to popular election every two years. Those who drafted the Constitution envisioned the body as a bastion against tyranny, endowing it with the power to oust presidents through impeachment and the exclusive ability to initiate legislation raising revenues, thus enabling it to exert decisive power over the national purse.
Of course, such principles and powers have been steadily eroded over the course of many decades, with the consolidation of ever-greater power in the hands of an imperial presidency. Over the last eight years, this process has accelerated dramatically, with Congress accepting the imposition of a president installed in office by means of electoral fraud and the diktat of a Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, then rubber-stamping a criminal war and collaborating in sweeping attacks on basic democratic rights. Those who fill the House seats are indeed “small” men and women, dominated by concerns for their political careers and subservient to the big business interests that control both major parties.
Yet, to the extent that these miserable politicians are still influenced even in the most limited manner by mass sentiments that run counter to the interests of America’s corporate and financial rulers, the present set-up is deemed to have become intolerable.
“This is dangerous,” writes Thomas Friedman, the senior foreign policy columnist for the New York Times, in a column published Wednesday. “We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls. I appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can’t deal with this crisis this way.”
In short, the opposition of the majority of the American people cannot be allowed to stand in the way of a “complex rescue package” designed by “experts” like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs’s former CEO, for the purpose of bailing out his colleagues on Wall Street and rescuing the fat portfolios of individuals like Friedman.
George Will, the Washington Post’s pompous right-wing columnist, had a few choice words of advice: “Congress should disconnect from a public that cannot be blamed for being more furious about than comprehending this opaque debacle.” So much for the “House of the People.”
Across the Atlantic, where furor reigned in financial circles over the bailout’s defeat, media reaction was even more blunt. The Times of London carried a prominent column entitled “Congress is the Best Advert for Dictatorship.”
“The most flattering reading of the turmoil in Congress this week has been that this is democracy in action,” wrote columnist Camilla Cavendish Wednesday. “Personally, I have never felt more attracted to benign dictatorship.”
This provocative language, drawing the logical conclusion of the anti-democratic sentiments being expressed more widely, ultimately expresses the objective ramifications of the economic and social crisis that is eating away at U.S. and world capitalism.
The crisis is being utilized to effect an ever more immense concentration of economic power that is incompatible with political democracy. Three banking behemoths–Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase–are gobbling up their failing competitors and now control fully a third of U.S. bank deposits.
At the same time, the crisis is intensifying the social inequality that pervades every aspect of life in America, a country where the top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Layoffs and foreclosures are mounting, while workers are suffering sharp cuts in real wages. It is under these conditions that the ruling elite is attempting to ram through the greatest transfer of wealth to the financial oligarchy in history.
These intense social antagonisms cannot be contained within America’s existing political set-up. The furor over the vote in the House serves as a warning that capitalism in crisis will inevitably move toward new forms of rule capable of defending the economic dictatorship of finance capital by means of an open political dictatorship against the working class.
This threat cannot be confronted within the framework of the existing two-party system. It demands an irrevocable break with the Democratic Party and the organization of a new, independent political movement of the working class fighting for the socialist reorganization of society.
Bill Van Auken is the vice presidential candidate for the Socialist Equality Party, www.socialequality.com
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The Rich Are Staging a Coup this Morning ...
a Message
Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.
No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:
“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.
“Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.
“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.
“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”
Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.
The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he does not know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he cannot figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.
And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Falling for whom? NOTHING in this “bailout” package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.
Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What’s this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?
It has everything to do with it. This so-called “collapse” was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage “crisis” may never have happened.
This bailout’s mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It’s to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It’s to make sure their yachts and mansions and “way of life” go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!
I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something — NOW! Here’s what you can do immediately:
1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they’ve made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what’s the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.
2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).
3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. Tell them what you told Senator Obama.
When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.
P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Democrats are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we’ll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say “NO!”
NorthCom Gets Dedicated Combat Brigade
Growing Integration of Military and Civilian Forces for Greater Repression Inside the Country
Beginning October 1, 2008, the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division will be assigned to active duty inside the country. The nearly 4,000 troops of the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Northern Command (USNorthCom), specifically its Army North section. USNorthCom is part of the government’s military arrangements to secure its annexation of Canada and Mexico and for repression at home. Its responsibilities include all of North America and specifically providing “command and control” for federal “homeland defense efforts.” This includes greater control of and interference in civilian authorities. The new mission of the 1st BCT on U.S. soil is to participate in these “homeland defense efforts.”
Active-duty units previously have been used against Americans inside the country, such as the combat-equipped troops deployed against people in New Orleans, which was effectively placed under martial law in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, this marks the first time that an Army combat unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom in which U.S. soil constitutes its “battle zone.” The new arrangement will be permanent, with different units rotated into the assignment on an annual basis. The combat brigade will be designated as the Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF, pronounced “sea-smurf”).
NorthCom is based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but soldiers with the 1st BCT will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The unit — known as the “Raiders”— is among the Army’s most blood soaked in its aggression against the Iraqis. It has spent nearly three out of the last five years deployed in Iraq, leading the assault on Baghdad in 2003 and carrying out house-to-house combat in the suppression of resistance in the city of Ramadi. It was the first brigade combat team to be sent to Iraq three times.
The Army Times reports that soldiers will “use some of the skills they acquired in the war zone” and “may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”
As part of their training, soldiers will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded.” The “nonlethal” weapons include notoriously lethal tasers, as well as use of “beanbag” bullets, which are shotgun- sized bullets. Some of the weapons have already been used in Iraq against civilians. Many of the protesters at both the Republican and Democratic Convention also suspected that the conventions were used to test elements of the package, such as the tasers, long batons and shields. NorthCom openly participated in the DNC and are thought to have also been part of the spying against RNC activists. The package also includes equipment to stand up a hasty roadblock and spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic.
Some members of the brigade will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. The unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission. The “at-home mission” does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called “dwell time” a unit gets to reset and regenerate. The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010.
“The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package,” says the Army Times. “Active-duty soldiers,” the Times explains, “will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.” In this manner, the brutal dehumanizing of the soldiers to make them capable of repressing and killing civilians, in Iraq and at home, will continue.
The combat brigade will also engage in joint exercises. At a recent two-week “mission rehearsal” organized at Fort Stewart, many different branches and units of the military engaged in “joint exercises.” For example, elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, North Carolina participated in the joint exercises. Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency also took part in the “joint exercises.” Army Colonel Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations, said that the military will be looking carefully at its “communications capabilities between the services.” The two-week mid-September “mission rehearsal” was directed by the “Joint Task Force Civil Support,” a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Virginia, that coordinated and evaluated the “interservice event.”
The growing militarization of civilian forces is leading to a situation where local police and other first-responders no longer enforce the law or “serve and protect” but instead act as an extension of the military under the authority of the president. The only need for a combat unit is for repression of the people and increasing preparations of the soldiers to accept imposing a possible fascist coup against the people.
No Use of the Military Against the Peoples Abroad and at Home!
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Why is a US Army Brigade Assigned to the “Homeland?”
For more than 100 years – since the end of the Civil War – deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the “War on Drugs”), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored – until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, “expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.”
After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly agitating for what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of the key prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the President to deploy U.S. military forces inside the U.S. basically at will. As usual, they were successful as a result of rapid bipartisan compliance with the Leader’s demand (the same kind of compliance that is about to foist a bailout package on the nation).
An April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American Conservative detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction of this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:
“The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on September 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident,” if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order,” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.”
It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from Insurrection Act to Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act. The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition” – and such “condition” is not defined or limited. [. . .]
The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it . [. . .]
Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Senator John Warner (R-Va.). Senator Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. [. . .]
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that “we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law,” but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: “Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it “was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”
As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of this, let alone discussed it. Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article at the time detailing the process and noted that “despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.” Stein also noted that while “the blogosphere, of course, was all over it . . . a search of the Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms ‘Insurrection Act,’ ‘martial law’ and ‘Congress,’ came up empty.”
Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor – including Republicans – joined in Leahy’s objections, as they perceived it as a threat from the Federal Government to what has long been the role of the National Guard. But those concerns were easily brushed aside by the bipartisan majorities in Congress, eager – as always – to grant the President this radical new power.
The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade inside the U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the fruit of the Congressional elimination of the long-standing prohibitions in Posse Comitatus (although there are credible signs that even before Congress acted, the Bush administration secretly decided it possessed the inherent power to violate the Act). It should not take any efforts to explain why the permanent deployment of the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as the President’s police force, is so disturbing. Bovard: “Martial law” is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. [. . .] Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation, something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree.
As the recent militarization of St. Paul during the GOP Convention made abundantly clear, our actual police forces are already quite militarized. Still, what possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United States – under the command of the President – for any purpose, let alone things such as “crowd control,” other traditional law enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the President’s sole discretion? And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?
Glenn Greenwald was a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York and is author of the book “How Would a Patriot Act?” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006.
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Integrating Civilian Forces Under Military Command
USNorthCom & Fusion Centers
As part of USNorthern Command’s (NorthCom) efforts to develop a single integrated force under military command, it regularly conducts joint exercises that include police agencies at the federal, state and local level and various civilian forces from all levels of government and first responders, like firefighters and hospital workers. It is also regularly deployed for “command and control” functions at any event designated a National Security Special Event, such as the Democratic and Republican Party conventions, the presidential inauguration and state of the union addresses, the G-8 summit, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership meetings.
For the Democratic National Convention this year, Colorado’s “Fusion Center” was used to infiltrate organizing efforts, spy on activists and organize the provocations and repression during the convention. NorthCom was present and “shared” information with the center. It was staffed 24 hours a day, with police accessing numerous databases and tracking “suspicious activity.” Police repeatedly subjected participants in actions at both conventions to arbitrary searches of bags, unprovoked arrests, and the violence of pepper spray and gang arrests, claiming “reports of suspicious activity.” Much like the lies fed to Iraq soldiers, that every civilian is a potential terrorists, the Fusion Centers and information from NorthCom are used to create an atmosphere where every protester is a potential terrorist to be targeted for police violence.
These fusion centers, like the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are both mechanisms being used across the country to eliminate any distinction between local, state and federal police forces and bring them under the command of the Department of Homeland Security and NorthCom. They are also serving to transform the policing agencies from a local police force doing law enforcement, to a federal agency used to spy on and repress public dissent. The fact that youth at the Republican National Convention, for example, were charged with “conspiracy to further terrorism,” is an indication of this.
USNorthCom’s joint exercises have also included Canadian armed forces and civilians. One exercise involved a potential flu pandemic, anther had several “incidents of mass destruction” occurring at the same time in more than one location.
The exercise known as TOPOFF2 for Top Officials 2, in 2003 involved USNorthCom, the Department of Homeland Defense (DHS) and the State Department in what USNorthCom described as “the most comprehensive terrorism response exercise ever undertaken in the U.S.” That same year USNorthCom presented the “first Homeland Defense Symposium,” in partnership with the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce and Rocky Mountain Chapter National Defense Industrial Association.” (USNorthCom is based in Colorado Springs.) The purpose was to promote USNorthCom and its mission. The symposium now occurs annually, as do the TOPOFF exercises.
In 2004, USNorthCom and DHS involved more than 50 federal, state and local organizations in an exercise headed by the military known as Exercise Unified Defense. It was organized simultaneously in Alaska, Colorado, Texas, Virginia and D.C.
In May of 2006, USNorthCom organized Exercise Ardent Sentry 06 involving federal, provincial, state and local agencies from Canada and the U.S. According to USNorthCom, “The exercise required participants to respond to simulated terrorist activities and manage the consequences of a range of simulated man-made and natural disasters.” Exercises of this type are organized regularly, including another one in the nation’s capitol that involves NORAD jets flying low across the city day and night over several days.
More recently, on March 21, 2008, USNorthCom organized its third hurricane preparation conference. This also brings together various military and civilian forces, including military generals from states on the East and Gulf coasts, representatives from the National Guard Bureau, Coast Guard, Navy, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Army North, Air Force North and Canada Command. According to USNorthCom, the goal of the two-day conference “was to facilitate discussion and strengthen relationships among the attendees.” NorthCom was used in the recent hurricanes.
In addition USNorthCom has established a “Homeland Security/Defense Education Consortium, (HSDEC)” This is done together with the University of Colorado, the University of Denver and the Naval Post graduate School. HSDEC is a “network of teaching and research institutions” focused on “supporting the homeland security and defense missions,” of USNorthCom. About 50 educational institutions are currently at its disposal.
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Electronic Frontier Challenges
Homeland Security’s Border Spying Operations
New documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus revealed that the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection “reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U.S. citizens.”
After suing DHS under the Freedom of Information Act, the civil liberties organizations received 661 pages of heavily redacted files from the department and will be seeking withheld documents as well as the blacked-out material in federal district court this fall.
Antifascist Calling has reviewed many of these files; in some cases 50 percent or more of the documents have been censored. One might call it DHS’ lame attempt at remaking the 1980 hit thriller Fade to Black!
In 2007, CBP quietly loosened 1986 federal guidelines restricting the examination of travelers’ documents and papers. More than 20 years earlier a lawsuit, Heidy v. U.S. Customs Service, was filed by a group of solidarity activists targeted by the government after returning from Nicaragua. Their suit, charging the state with an illegal seizure of books, documents and personal papers led to the Reagan administration guidelines.
During the 1980s Nicaragua was a target of U.S. destabilization programs and a “dirty war” waged by the CIA and their drug-dealing Contra allies against the leftist Sandinista government. Reagan-era Customs agents claimed they had a right to seize “subversive literature” at the border.
Based on dubious legal authority, agents confiscated diaries, datebooks and other personal papers and photocopied the files. U.S. Customs then shared the activists’ personal details with the FBI on the grounds that the government was engaged in a “counterintelligence operation” against a “hostile power,” according to the Washington Post. “Essentially they were using that as a pretext to do intelligence gathering on critics of our policies on Nicaragua,” said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who was then a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing the activists suing the government in Heidy v. U.S. Customs Service.
As the Center for Constitutional Rights documented, “Pretrial discovery revealed a broad pattern of Customs abuses, including the use of Customs authority to gather intelligence about returnees from Nicaragua and the entry of that information into a nationwide Customs computer.”
The Heidy decision, in other words, specifically barred Customs officials from rifling through traveler’s files in pursuit of so-called “actionable intelligence.” The state was specifically barred from sharing the spoils of these illegal searches with other federal agencies. Fast-forward 22 years. As EFF revealed, the documents show that in 2007, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) loosened restrictions on the examination of travelers’ documents and papers that had existed since 1986. While CBP agents could previously read travelers’ documents only if they had “reasonable suspicion” that the documents would reveal violations of agency rules, in 2007 officers were given the power to “review and analyze” papers without any individualized suspicion. Furthermore, whereas CBP agents could previously copy materials only where they had “probable cause” to believe a law had been violated, in 2007 they were empowered to copy travelers’ papers without suspicion of wrongdoing and keep them for a “reasonable period of time” to conduct a border search. The new rules applied to physical documents as well as files on laptop computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.
In keeping with an avalanche of rule changes governing the expansive reach of America’s intelligence agencies, the “quaint” notion of “probable cause” — that a targeted individual is suspected of a crime — is now a thing of the past, replaced by the Orwellian concept of “thought crimes” where everyone is miraculously transformed into a “suspect” by securocrats.
Under the guise of “keeping America safe,” counterterrorism is the new stand-in for what covert operators once referred to as countersubversive operations that targeted left-wing political groups for destruction. As America’s constitutional guarantees circle the drain awaiting only the final flush into oblivion, the religious and political beliefs of citizens and legal residents re-entering the country are now considered “fair game” by Bushist spooks.
Asian Law Caucus staff attorney Shirin Sinar denounced these patently illegal moves by the administration saying, “For more than 20 years, the government implicitly recognized that reading and copying the letters, diaries, and personal papers of travelers without reason would chill Americans’ rights to free speech and free expression. But now customs officials can probe into the thoughts and lives of ordinary travelers without any suspicion at all.”
It appears that simply attempting to legally cross the border constitutes “suspicious behavior” and is an occasion for state security agencies to have access to all our personal details, regardless of their relevance to an “ongoing terrorism investigation.” Or, as is more likely in America’s “new normal” regime, border crossings now serve as a pretext for future “terrorism investigations.”
In a further move to subvert the 1986 guidelines, ALC and EFF noted that “CBP’s wide latitude to collect this data attracted significant attention from other law enforcement agencies that sought to access it.” In other words, under cover of conducting “counterterrorist” border searches, dodgy outfits such as the CIA, FBI, and the NSA are now asserting a “right” to have access to data seized from travelers’ cell phone directories, laptops, financial data or confidential business records stored in CBP databases “available” for their perusal.
DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told the Post “the updating of policies reflects an effort to be more transparent.” Or cover DHS assets since they were forced to release the files in the first place! The policy change according to Kudwa “reflects the realities of the post- 9/11 environment,” that is, an unaccountable Executive branch that has assumed “plenary” (unlimited) powers “during a time of war” (of their own choosing).
All is not well in Homelandia, however.
As the Washington Post reported two weeks ago, “In the five years since it was created, the Department of Homeland Security has overseen roughly $15 billion worth of failed contracts for projects ranging from airport baggage-screening to trailers for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, according to congressional data.”
The contracts wound up over-budget, delayed or canceled after millions of dollars had already been spent, according to figures and documents prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security. A panel of experts is to testify today before the House Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight on how to fix problems with the DHS acquisitions process. ...
The experts are to talk about a series of problem projects: About $351 million was wasted and not properly overseen in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater program after ships were built and then scrapped, according to Homeland Security committee staffers and oversight agency reports. A $1.5 billion Boeing program to help secure U.S. borders with electronic sensors and other equipment is being shelved after it was over-budget, late and had technology problems.
While $15 billion may seem like chump change in today’s climate of trillion dollar financial bailouts for Washington’s favorite grifters in the banking and securities industry, neither Congress nor DHS have a “fix” for these wasteful programs, unless that is, the fix is already in and taxpayers not privy to information available to various “wise men” peacefully ensconced in their “secure, undisclosed locations” remains “classified.”
But I digress...
Documents revealed that a July 11, 2007 email originating from Customs and Border Protection’s New York office noted the “wide interest among other government agencies in CBP’s ability to collect information.” Indeed, the nameless CBP bureaucrat wrote, “As we all know, CBP’s data collection capabilities have been widely discussed in the law enforcement community and we have been asked by many various agencies to copy and transmit documentation being carried by travelers for legitimate law enforcement reasons.”
And under current rule changes enacted in July, DHS is allowed to share data obtained at the border with other agencies if there is a “suspicion” a law is being violated. Last year, documents revealed that the Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations wrote:
There may be situations where an agency or entity, in furtherance of its respective mission, wishes to retain or disseminate copies of the information provided to it by CBP for technical assistance. Any such retention and/or dissemination will be governed by that agency or entity’s existing legal authorities or policies, including periodic reviews of retained materials to evaluate and ensure continued relevance.
What these “situations” are that might merit sharing personal information with the CIA, FBI or NSA (or the Main Core database for that matter) and what would constitute “continued relevance” is not specified by the Assistant Commissioner.
As the civil liberties groups noted, ALC received more than two dozen complaints from U.S. citizens, particularly those who were Muslim, South Asian, or Middle Eastern. Those illegally detained “were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad.”
Since “traveling while Arab” is apparently an enforceable offense, these individuals had their books, hand written notes, personal photos, laptop computer files and cell phone directories scrutinized and copied. Indeed, as EFF/ALC averred “CBP appears to have no policy constraining agents from questioning travelers on their religious practices or political views, in spite of the fact that many travelers have complained about being grilled on such First Amendment-protected activities.”
Nor will CBP agents be “constrained” from violating our constitutional rights. While some will chalk it up to America’s “enhanced security environment” where Bushist cronies reap the spoils of their ill-gotten wealth, “business as usual”--as always--is standard operating procedure in post-Constitutional America.
Oh, and by the way, Welcome to the United States!
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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