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2 MINUTE VIDEO

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Bush Orders Military To Begin Jailing
 All Civilian Protesters To War

By Socha Faal

and as reported to her Western Subscribers

In yet another shocking prelude towards becoming a Total Police State, Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that the American War Leaders have issued orders to the United States Military Northern Command authorizing the jailing, and military tribunals, for any American citizen critical of the ‘war effort’.

These reports state that the American President has ‘lost his confidence’ in the American Judicial System and has further ordered his War Cabinet to begin attacking civilian judges, and as we can read as confirmed by the MSNBC News Service in their article titled "Gonzales: Judges unfit to rule on terror policy", and which says:

The American War Leaders have further launched attacks against their own civilian judiciary from the Pentagon, and as we can read as reported by the Jurist Legal Research and News Service in their report titled "US law deans 'appalled' by Stimson criticism of law firms for representing detainees", and which says:

Furthering the complete destruction of the rights of the American people to ‘due process’ and ‘fair trials’, the American War Leaders have passed a new law subjecting their citizens to Military, instead of Civilian trials.

According to reports from the United States, this little known law was ‘slipped into’ a large spending bill unbeknownst to US Congressional Leaders, and though ‘seemingly’ applying to American contractors in fact subjects all American citizens to Military Arrest and Trials.  

The most destructive of these ‘new’ laws ‘slipped into’ much larger legislation, and bypassing the notice of US Lawmakers, has overturned over 200 years of American procedures for appointing US Federal Prosecutors, and who are, according the American Constitution, charged with being ‘politically neutral’ so as to afford the citizens of the United States protection against prosecution by a vengeful government, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled "2 U.S. Attorneys in Calif. quit, critics say Bush forced them out", and which says:

Russian Legal Analysts familiar with American Law state in these reports that the significance of these actions being taking against American citizens by the US War Leaders shows the ‘complete ascendancy’ to ‘total power’ of the American President, and who now is free to rule his Nation by decree free from interference by either the US Congress, or the American people themselves.

So powerless have the US Congress and American people become, that as outrage continues to build within the United States against the expansion of the war in Iraq, and the planned US attack upon Iran, the spokesman for the American War Leader has stated in response to a US Congressional move to block further war making:

Russian Intelligence Analysts in these reports to President Putin have asked, “If President Bush feels that he is not constrained by either the elected representatives of the American people, or the American people themselves, we must then consider that he, and his Administration, have become powers unto themselves and that the United States should therefore be considered a dictatorship, not a democracy.”

To the American people themselves, they remain in abject denial of the dark Fascist forces descending around them; but soon, and much sooner than they could believe, and with their families and neighbors disappearing into the vast American Gulag, what they once believed in as the American Dream, will soon be shown for what it really is, an American Nightmare. 

© January 18, 2007 EU and US

 [Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one.  No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors to protect their safety.]

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

WASHINGTON - U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said.

"I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country.

President George W. Bush has stressed he is seeking a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

But he has not taken the military option off the table and his recent rhetoric, plus tougher financial sanctions and actions against Iranian involvement in Iraq, has revived talk in Washington about a possible U.S. attack on Iran.

The Bush administration and many of its Gulf allies have expressed growing concern about Iran's rising influence in the region and the prospect of it acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Middle East expert Kenneth Katzman argued "Iran's ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible" if one understands the Islamic republic's many vulnerabilities.

Tehran's leaders have convinced many experts Iran is a great nation verging on "superpower" status, but the country is "very weak ... (and) meets almost no known criteria to be considered a great nation," said Katzman of the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service.

The economy is mismanaged and "quite primitive," exporting almost nothing except oil, he said.

Also, Iran's oil production capacity is fast declining and in terms of conventional military power, "Iran is a virtual non-entity," Katzman added.

The administration, therefore, should not go out of its way to accommodate Iran because the country is in no position to hurt the United States, and at some point "it might be useful to call that bluff," he said.

But Katzman cautioned against early confrontation with Iran and said if there is a "grand bargain" that meets both countries' interests, that should be pursued.

 Related Stories:

http://choiceamericanetwork.blog.com/1447931/

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http://choiceamericanetworkonline.blog.com/1463928/

http://choiceamericanetworkonline.blog.com/1444861/

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http://choiceamericanetworkonline.blog.com/1422754/
 
 

A little-noticed change in federal law packs an important change in who is in charge the next time a state is devastated by a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina.

To the dismay of the nation’s governors, the White House now will be empowered to go over a governor’s head and call up National Guard troops to aid a state in time of natural disasters or other public emergencies. Up to now, governors were the sole commanders in chief of citizen soldiers in local Guard units during emergencies within the state.

A conflict over who should control Guard units arose in the days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. President Bush sought to federalize control of Guardsmen in Louisiana in the chaos after the hurricane, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) refused to relinquish command.

Over objections from all 50 governors, Congress in October changed the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to empower the hand of the president in future stateside emergencies. In a letter to Congress, the governors called the change "a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters that could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states' ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders."

The change adds to tensions between governors and the White House after more than four years of heavy federal deployment of state-based Guard forces to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, four out of five guardsmen have been sent overseas in the largest deployment of the National Guard since World War II. Shortage of the Guard’s military equipment -- such as helicopters to drop hay to snow-stranded cattle in Colorado -- also is a nagging issue as much of units’ heavy equipment is left overseas and unavailable in case of a natural disaster at home.

A bipartisan majority of both chambers of Congress adopted the change as part of the budget-busting, 439-page, $538 billion 2007 so-called Defense Authorization Bill signed into law last October.

The nation's governors through the National Governors Association (NGA) successfully lobbied to defeat a broader proposal to give the president power to federalize Guard troops even without invoking the Insurrection Act. But the passage that became law also "disappointed" governors because it expands federal power and could cause confusion between state and federal authorities trying to respond to an emergency situation, said David Quam, an NGA homeland security advisor.

"Governors need to be focused on assisting their citizens during an emergency instead of looking over their shoulders to see if the federal government is going to step in," Quam said.

Under the U.S. Constitution, each state's National Guard unit is controlled by the governor in time of peace but can be called up for federal duty by the president. The National Guard employs 444,000 part-time soldiers between its two branches: the Army and Air National Guards.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids U.S. troops from being deployed on American soil for law enforcement. The one exception is provided by the Insurrection Act of 1807, which lets the president use the military only for the purpose of putting down rebellions or enforcing constitutional rights if state authorities fail to do so. Under that law, the president can declare an insurrection and call in the armed forces. The act has been invoked several times in the past 50 years, including in 1957 to desegregate schools and in 1992 during riots in south central Los Angeles after the acquittal of police who were caught on videotape beating Rodney King.

Congress changed the Insurrection Act to list "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident" as conditions under which the president can deploy U.S. armed forces and federalize state Guard troops if he determines that "authorities of the state or possession are incapable of maintaining public order."

Mark Smith, spokesperson for the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said local and state emergency responders know what their communities need during a crisis better than officials in Washington.

"The president should not be able to step in and take control of the National Guard without a governor's consent. The Guard belongs to the states, has always belonged to the states and should remain a function of the states," Smith said.

John McCain

From Bad to Worse

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CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

Bush asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

Bush's move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Easily-Abused Powers

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into."

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Construed Exception

Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority.

"In certain circumstances -- such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' -- the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches," she said.

Bush, however, cited "exigent circumstances" which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency.

Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime.

But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances on a judge saying no while a terror attack is looming, national security experts agreed.

Martin said that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.

© 2007 Daily News, L.P.

Is the Pentagon spying on Americans? --  http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd1205/10051214gdd.htm

Big Brother, the scofflaw -- http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd1205/20051220gdd.htm

The South is risin' agin, y'all -- http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd1205/20051227gdd.htm

Darkness over the "shining city on a hill" -- http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd1205/20051229gdd.htm

In plain words why Bush's spying is bad and illegal -- http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd1205/20051231gdd.htm  

The law, the Constitution, and George Bush -- http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd0206/20060208gdd.htm  

The Conyers report and the "I" word -- http://www.eurolegal.org/greendogdem/gdd0106/20060107gdd.htm

 Many thanks to the GreenDog Democrat

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Gloria Williams and her twin sister Bobbie Jennings are 60 years old. They are two of the over 4000 families who lived in public housing in New Orleans before Katrina struck who are still locked out of their apartments since Katrina. Their apartments are two of 4534 apartments that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced plans to demolish. Demolition is planned even though it will cost more to demolish and rebuild many fewer units than it does to fix them up and open them. Ms. Williams and Ms. Jennings, and thousands of families like them, are fighting HUD, they want to return.

Gloria and Bobbie started working early. As children they picked cotton, strawberries, snap beans and pecans before and after grade school every day in rural Louisiana. “We were raised up to work,” they said.

They moved to New Orleans after their father drowned. Their home was marked by regular domestic violence. A few years later, their mother was murdered by a boyfriend.

As teens they moved in with an abusive relative. They ran away, came back, and stayed with other relatives. They can even remember nights when they slept under their aunt’s bed in a hospital while waiting for her to recuperate.

As young women they continued working. They worked in restaurants before starting careers as Certified Nursing Assistants. Then they worked for years in nursing homes and in private homes caring for the elderly and disabled. They fed people, cleaned people, bathed people, cared for people. Each married and raised children and grandchildren. Like 25% of the households in New Orleans, neither owned a car.

Both sisters are now 60. In the past few years, their years of physical work took its toil and they could not longer work. Ms. Jennings had back surgery and suffers with high blood pressure. Ms. Williams has heart and lung problems, high blood pressure, and clots in her legs that prevent her from standing or walking for long periods. Each lives solely on about $600 a month from disability. No pensions.

When Katrina hit, they had been living in the C.J. Peete apartments for years. Ms. Bobbie Jennings had been there for 34 years. Her twin sister, Ms. Gloria Williams lived there for over 18 years.

Their combined families, 18 in all, evacuated to Baton Rouge to ride out the storm. When it was clear they would not be going home any time soon, their host family told them it was time to move on. In September 2005, the family of 18 moved into one daughter’s damaged home in Slidell, about 30 miles away from New Orleans – all sleeping on the first floor because the roof was still damaged.

One of their sisters, Annie, was in the hospital with cancer when Katrina hit. It took the family weeks before the finally found her in a hospital in Macon, Georgia.

When the city opened, they got rides into town and checked on their apartments. No water had entered their apartments at all. But their doors had been kicked down and all their furnishings were gone. The housing authority told them they could not move back in for a couple more months while their apartments were secured and fixed up. The housing authority started fixing up and painting apartments in her complex, but abruptly stopped after a few weeks.

Slidell was getting tight, so they accepted an offer to relocate to California. After a month, they returned. Being 3000 miles apart from family was too heartbreaking. A four day bus ride brought them back to Slidell in January 2006. After hitching rides into New Orleans, Ms. Williams found a subsidized apartment. The only way the landlord would accept her, though, was if she paid him an extra $400 under the table. Otherwise, he would rent it to someone else who would.

So Ms. Williams paid the extra money and moved in with her grandchildren while she waited for her old apartment to reopen. She used FEMA money to buy new furniture.

In late February 2005, Ms. Williams was hospitalized for three weeks for surgeries on her legs.

In June 2005, HUD announced they were not going to let any residents back in her apartment complex and three others (Lafitte, St. Bernard and BW Cooper) because they were going to be demolished. Over one hundred maintenance and security workers for the housing authority were let go. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago and all these decisions are being made in Washington DC.

The demolished buildings would make way for much newer and many fewer apartments which would be built by private developers. The demolition and private development would be financed by federal funds and federal tax breaks designed to help Katrina victims!

Nearly $100 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds were designated for the private developers. Another $34 million in Katrina Go-Zone tax credits were also donated to the developers.

In July 2005, Ms. Williams apartment caught fire and again she lost everything. Her landlord did not want to let her out of her lease. He told her that she and her grandson could still live there, all they had to do was clean the soot off the walls and ceilings.

At this, Ms. Williams broke down and went back into the hospital.

Ms. Jennings got an apartment and allowed her daughter and her grandchildren to live there because they have no place to stay. She also took her in her little sister, Annie, who was dying of cancer. Annie died on August 17, 2005.

Both sisters have severe problems every month making ends meet. Utility bills eat up most of their monthly checks. With no car and their apartments across the river from New Orleans, they cannot get to the doctor.

Christmas was very tough. Ms. Williams said "We didn't have a Christmas. We didn't have food to put on the table." Her grandson went to her sister’s house to get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Ms. Jennings cried as she said “Behind Katrina and my little sister dying, my life just stopped. This is the second year we didn’t have a Christmas. It is so hard to try to start over. I let my daughter and her two grandchildren sleep on the bed. I sleep on a pallet on the floor. Before Katrina I was on blood pressure medicine once a day. Now I take 4 blood pressure pills three times a day. I also take pills for depression, nerves and stress.”

“We just want to go home,” Ms. Williams said. “People knew us in our neighborhood. They never messed with us. I could leave my back door open when I went to the grocery. People don’t understand that was our home. We want to go home.”

Why would people want to go back into public housing? Aren’t the developments dangerous and crime-ridden? Isn’t this an opportunity to start over and make something better?

Public housing residents know full well the problems of public housing, but still they want to return.

Why? Start with the fact that New Orleans is in the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War. Tens of thousands of houses still remain in ruins after Katrina. Rents for the rest have gone up 70-80 percent since Katrina. Even before Katrina, there was a waiting list of 18,000 families seeking to get into public housing – now it is much, much worse.

HUD’s demolition plans target 4,534 apartments of public housing in the community. They plan to demolish 1546 apartments in BW Cooper, 723 in C.J. Peete, 1400 in St. Bernard, and 865 in Lafitte.

These are not the dense high-rise towers. Public housing in New Orleans is made up of development clusters of mostly two and three story buildings with six to eight apartments in each.

New York Times Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, criticized plans to demolish these apartments, saying on November 19, 2006: “Modestly scaled, they include some of the best public housing built in the United States….Solidly built, the buildings’ detailed brickwork, tile roofs and wrought-iron balustrades represent a level of craft more likely found on an Ivy League campus than in a contemporary public housing complex.”

Most of the public housing apartments rented for very modest rents tied to the resident’s incomes. Most did not pay separate utility charges. Leases were essentially for life, unless someone in the family was caught breaking the law.

HUD initially said they had to demolish because the buildings were so damaged they were dangerous to the residents.

That was not true.

John Fernandez, an Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, inspected 140 of these apartments and concluded in papers filed in court that “no structural or nonstructural damage was found that could reasonably warrant any cost-effective building demolition…Therefore, the general conclusions are: demolition of any of the buildings of these four projects is not supported by the evidence of the survey, replacement of these buildings with contemporary construction would yield buildings of lower quality and shorter lifetime duration; the original construction methods and materials of these projects are far superior in their resistance to hurricane conditions than typical new construction and with renovation and regular maintenance, the lifetimes of the buildings in all four projects promise decades of continued service that may be extended indefinitely.”

Residents promise to fix up their apartments themselves if given the chance. “I clean for a living,” said one young woman resident at a recent public hearing where 100% of the residents opposed demolition. “I clean for a living and I am proud of it. I clean every body else’s houses, I will sure clean up my own house – just let me back in to do it!”

After it the public understood that the buildings were not actually in such bad shape, the authorities then said it would cost much more to repair the buildings than to demolish and start over.

That too was not true.

The housing authority’s own documents show that Lafitte could be repaired for $20 million, even completely overhauled for $85 million while the estimate for demolition and rebuilding many fewer units will cost over $100 million. St. Bernard could be repaired for $41 million, substantially modernized for $130 million while demolition and rebuilding less units will cost $197 million. BW Cooper could be substantially renovated for $135 million compared to $221 million to demolish and rebuild less units. Their own insurance company reported that it would take less than $5000 each to repair each of the CJ Peete apartments.

HUD suggests that less-dense “mixed income” communities are the way to go.

But residents and the community knows that if HUD has its way, only about 20% of the families who lived in these developments will be allowed to return.

New Orleans has suffered through the experience of HUD’s “mixed income” policies before. The St. Thomas housing development, once home to 1510 families, was demolished with promises that people would be returning to a beautiful redeveloped community. Instead, there is now a Wal-Mart on the site and hundreds of cute gingerbread pastel houses. How many of the 1510 families who used to live in St. Thomas have been allowed to move back in? About a hundred. A few of these families have had to force their way in with litigation by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. The demolition of St. Thomas is hailed as a mostly-good outcome by nearby developers and some of the young professionals who moved into the surrounding neighborhood knowing what was coming. What do the 1400+ families who were moved out and not allowed to return think? Don’t ask – no one else is.

HUD has the same plans for the neighborhoods where they are trying to demolish housing. According to documents filed with the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency:

• St. Bernard will go from 1400 apartments to 595 apartments, only 160 of which will be for low-income public housing residents. There will be 160 tax credit mixed income and 145 market rate units;

• CJ Peete will go from 723 units to 410, 154 will be public housing eligible, 133 mixed income and 123 market rate;

• BW Cooper will go from 1546 to 410, 154 public housing eligible, 133 tax-credit mixed income, and 123 market;

• And Lafitte will downsized in the same way.

As a result HUD plans to spend tens of millions of Katrina assistance funds to end up with far fewer affordable apartments.

The new Congress is looking into this. Representatives Barney Frank and Maxine Waters chair the committee and subcommittee with oversight of HUD. There is also a federal class action lawsuit filed by the Advancement Project, Jenner & Block, and local attorneys.

Residents of the St. Bernard housing development and their allies plan are not waiting any more. On Martin Luther King day, January 15, 2007, they are going in with or without permission. “What better way to celebrate Martin Luther King day than to risk going to jail for justice?” says Endesha Jukali, a neighbor who lived and worked in St. Bernard for years.

But the clock is still ticking. HUD, who has not “officially approved” its own announcement, says the demolition needs to get started to take advantage of the Katrina tax credits. Neither the Congress nor the federal courts have yet stepped in to stop the demolitions.

What do the sisters think about this? Ms. Jennings says: “I lived there for 34 years. That is my home. I just cannot afford to live outside the development. I don’t know how else to explain it. I have the tears, but I do not have the words.” Her twin sister, Ms. Williams cries and says: “That was my home for over 18 years. I never gave them no trouble. My home never flooded. I will clean it myself, just please let me back in. I wish I could make people understand. I just want to go home.”

For more information about this matter see www.justiceforneworleans.org or contact the Advancement Project at (202) 728-9557.

Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill is one of the lawyers representing thousands of families who want to return to their apartments in New Orleans. You can contact him at Quigley@loyno.edu