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“Belief is the absence of fact.”
“Politics are for the rich, revolution is for the poor, and most revolutionaries are closet aristocrats.”
“Are your feet tired, because you’ve been running through my mind all day long.”
“I think I might be tapped out.”
Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds. – democracynow.org/2008/9/22/headlines#10
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the “Homeland”? – Glenn Greenwald – Good overview of the situation, he amends it to be a bit less alarmist at the end. -
“There’s no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a single brigade and it’s unlikely in the extreme that they’d be announcing these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future.”
Posse Comitatus Act – wiki
The Myth of Posse Comitatus – Major Craig T. Trebilcock, U.S. Army Reserve
HR5122 also known as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act was signed by the president on Oct 17, 2006 John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. Section 1076 Text of Hr5122 is titled “Use of the Armed Forces in major public emergencies”. Removing the legalese from the text, and combining multiple sentences, it provides that: The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. The actual text is on page 322-323 of the legislation. As of 2008, these changes were repealed, changing the text of the law back to the original 1807 wording, under Public Law 110-181 (H.R. 4986, Section 1068,) however in signing H.R. 4986 into law President Bush attached a signing statement which indicated that the Executive Branch did not feel bound by the changes enacted by the repeal. – wiki
The Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz in German) was passed by the Reichstag (Germany‘s parliament) on March 23, 1933 and signed by President Paul von Hindenburg the same day. It was the second major step, after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which Adolf Hitler obtained plenary powers using legal means. The Act granted the Cabinet of Germany the authority to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag for four years.
The formal name of the Enabling Act was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (“Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation”). – wiki
No-knock police raids and warrantless invasions of property in Minneapolis prior to Republican Convention.
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On the weekend before the Republican National Convention, law enforcement agencies detained dozens of people and issued a series of search warrants aimed at groups believed to be organizing demonstrations while delegates and Republican officials are in town. - NY Times
Coverage on Salon
Via BoingBoing
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“We will not fear any longer. We will not fear the international terrorists, and we will thwart them. We will not fear the recognition of the manipulation of our yearning for safety, and we will call it what it is: terrorism. We will not fear identifying the vulgar hypocrites in our government, and we will name them. And we will not fear George W. Bush. Nor will we fear because George W. Bush wants us to fear.”
Transcript: Keith Olbermann special commentary On FISA and telecom immunity. 2/14/08
Captures from the video. Play video below:
A proposed city regulation would make certain commong uses of a camera in New York City illegal without obtaining a permit and insurance. The rally highlights this and other laws that make it difficult to gather in public and dance in clubs. The video features Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, The Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Norman Siegel, and Juliana Luecking. Sign petition here: pictureny.org
Laura Newman, soloist in the Stop Shopping Choir, on the left.
Blog Soup got there at just about the time I left, see Malatron’s coverage here.
New flash video by White Noise, “Be Careful What You Say†on the making of the US KGB, which is taken from ‘Who’s Afriad of Osama Wolf?’ — the first chapter in the new edition of Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast.
Canadian artist, Frederic Guimont is adapting a comic adaptation of Orwell’s 1984. The novel is in the public domain in Canada. Chapter three will be online in April. Via Boing Boing
Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.
In Think Progress
Transcript:
Thanks. I think I was able to put out some of my basic ideas on how we need to be engaging Iran diplomatically. They’re, you know, expounded on in greater length on paper. I wanted to say something briefly about the administration, and where it is.
I have been extremely pessimistic that this administration is inclined or capable of genuinely rethinking its approach to Iran in the way that we need it to at this point, and I’ve had an unfortunate experience this week that has only confirmed that for me. As I do with all of my publications, the Century Foundation paper, I showed to the CIA, for whom I used to work, to verify that I was not revealing classified information. They did so, as they have with 30 other things that I’ve published since leaving government. Didn’t ask to change a word.
I prepared an op-ed for the New York Times off of this paper, which is ready to go, ready for publication. The CIA says that as far as they’re concerned, there’s not any classified information in it. But the White House has intervened, claiming that there is classified information in the op-ed, even though it’s already been cleared. It’s all published. It’s all based on stuff that Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, Deputy Secretary Armitage have talked about publicly. It’s been extensively reported in the media. But the White House is saying I can’t publish an op-ed in the New York Times that lays out the argument. I’ve been doing this for three and a half years since leaving government, and I’ve never had to go to the White House to get clearance for something that I was publishing as long as the CIA said, ‘Yeah, you’re not putting classified information.’
Why this week — after the Baker study group, when pressure is on them to rethink their position on Iran — why do they not want this op-ed, based on my experiences in government, my experience dealing with Iran, with Iranian officials, after I left government? Why do they not want this op-ed going in the New York Times this week? I think it says something, and I think it says something about just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration’s policy.
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