Friday, 12 October 2012 15:30
Another Obama Executive Order Allows Seizure of Americans’ Bank Accounts
Written by Bob Adelmann
The latest executive order (EO) emanating from the White House October 9 now claims the power to freeze all bank accounts and stop any related financial transactions that a “sanctioned person” may own or try to perform — all in the name of “Iran Sanctions.”
Titled an “Executive Order from the President regarding Authorizing the Implementation of Certain Sanctions…” the order says that if an individual is declared by the president, the secretary of state, or the secretary of the treasury to be a “sanctioned person,” he (or she) will be unable to obtain access to his accounts, will be unable to process any loans (or make them), or move them to any other financial institution inside or outside the United States. In other words, his financial resources will have successfully been completely frozen. The EO expands its authority by making him unable to use any third party such as “a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, subgroup or other organization” that might wish to help him or allow him to obtain access to his funds.
And if the individual so “sanctioned” decides that the ruling is unfair, he isn't allowed to sue. In two words, the individual has successfully been robbed blind.
But it’s all very legal. The EO says the president has his “vested authority” to issue it, and then references endless previous EOs, including one dating back to 1995 which declared a “state of emergency” (which hasn’t been lifted): Executive Order 12957.
EO 12957 was issued by President Bill Clinton on March 15, 1995, which was also obliquely related to the Iran “problem”:
I, William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of the Government of Iran to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.
Clinton’s EO further delegated such powers as were necessary to enforce the EO to the secretaries of the treasury and state “to employ all powers … as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government.”
Such EOs are the perfect embodiment of what the Founders feared the most: the combining of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions into one body. Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution says: “All legislative powers herein shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” As Thomas Eddlem, writing for The New American, expressed it, “then it stands to reason [that] none is left for the president.”
But Joe Wolverton, also in The New American, pointed out the particular piece of language the Founders used to limit the powers of the president which totalitarians have twisted to allow such powers to expand: the “take care” clause, to wit: Article II, Section 3: he [the president] shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…
With every EO, the president avoids the cumbersome constitutional safeguards spelled out by the Constitution, and uses them to implement policies he "knows" are right. Says Wolverton: "With every one of these … executive orders, then, the president elevates his mind and will above that of the people, Congress and the courts."
The current administration has had a lot of help in justifying and codifying the legitimacy of executive orders, going all the way back to President George Washington who in 1793 issued his “Neutrality Proclamation,” which declared that the United States would remain neutral in the current conflict between France and Great Britain, and would bring sanctions against any American citizen who attempted to provide assistance to either party. The language of Washington is eerily similar to that used by President Obama in the present case:
I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid toward those powers respectively, and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition…
I have given instructions to those officers to whom it belongs to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war, or any of them.
When James Madison protested Washington’s usurpation of powers not intended for the president, Congress acquiesced and passed, retroactively, the Neutrality Act of 1794, validating Washington’s usurpation.
President Lincoln engaged in similar usurpations, using presidential “directives” to run the early months of the Civil War, presenting Congress with, as Todd Gaziano put it,
the decision either to adopt his [directives] as legislation or to cut off support for the Union army.
Within his first two months in office, on April 15, 1861, Lincoln issued a proclamation activating troops to defeat the Southern rebellion and for Congress to convene on July 4.
He also issued proclamations to procure warships and to expand the size of the military; in both cases, the proclamations provided for payment to be advanced from the Treasury without congressional approval.
These latter actions were probably unconstitutional, but Congress acquiesced in the face of wartime contingencies, and the matters were never challenged in court.
President Franklin Roosevelt often overlooked the niceties of constitutional restraints as well. As Gaziano expressed it, “FDR also showed a tendency to abuse his executive order authority and [to] claim powers that were not conferred on him in the Constitution or by statute.”
As far as numbers of executive orders issued, Obama is a piker. At the moment, although the list is growing, his administration has issued only 900 or so executive orders. President Theodore Roosevelt issued 1,006 while President Woodrow Wilson issued 1,791. Even President Calvin Coolidge used the EO “privilege” 1,253 times.
The granddaddy of them all, FDR, issued an astounding 3,728 executive orders, but of course he was in office longer than Obama.
President Bill Clinton issued only 364 executive orders, but he made the most of them, using this extra-legal power to, among other things, wage war in Yugoslavia without congressional approval. Cliff Kincaid collated the numerous EOs issued by Clinton in 1998 and 1999, and concluded:
Clinton waged his war on Yugoslavia through executive order and presidential directive. Clinton used executive orders to designate a "war zone," call up troops, proclaim a "national emergency" with respect to Yugoslavia, and impose economic sanctions on the Belgrade government.
Clinton claimed war-making presidential authority through his "constitutional authority" to conduct "foreign relations," as "Commander in Chief" and as "Chief Executive." Under this self-designated authority, Clinton delegated command-and-control of U.S. forces to NATO and its Secretary-General Javier Solana, who decided when the air war would be discontinued…
The most outrageous executive order of all time was that issued by President Roosevelt that allowed the enforced internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans: 9066.
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) called EOs patently unconstitutional. When asked about them by Fox News’ Megan Kelly, Paul responded:
The Constitution says that only Congress passes laws. The executive branch is not allowed to pass laws, nor should the judicial system pass laws. So it is clearly unconstitutional to issue these executive orders.
They’ve been done for a long time, both parties have done it, but the Congress is careless. They allow and encourage and do these deals … to get the president to circumvent the Congress. If something’s unpopular and he can’t get it passed, well, let’s just sign an executive order. So I think that is blatantly wrong. I think this defies everything the founders intended. I think it’s a shame that Congress does it, and I think it’s a shame that the American people put up with it.
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Thursday, October 11, 2012
9/11 Criminals Running Romney Campaign: Analyst
Rejecting US President Barack Obama administration’s official account that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terror incidents in 2001, Osama Ben Laden, was killed by American forces and then dumped in the ocean, Kevin Barrett said in a Press TV article, “Real perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are still at large.”
“And what's worse is that they control most of the United States Federal Court system and mainstream media, and are running the campaign of presidential candidate Mitt Romney,” he adds.
The analyst further added that Zakheim, who was appointed on May 4, 2001 as the Comptroller of the US Defense Department, was responsible for the loss of over USD 2.3 trillion in Pentagon funds - equivalent to five times its annual budget - which was announced by the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 10, 2001, just a day before the 9/11 events.
The huge and mysterious loss of funds was actually estimated to be USD 9.1 trillion by CIA whistleblower Susan Lindauer, the article added.
“So what happened to the Pentagon's missing 2.3 trillion dollars (or 9.1 trillion dollars if you believe Susan Lindauer)?” Barrett asked. “The one thing we know for sure is that it has never been found...at least not officially. Lindauer says insiders know it was embezzled by agents of Israel. Interestingly, the Comptroller of the Pentagon - the man who was running the Pentagon's finances - was a known Israeli agent, Rabbi Dov Zakheim. (Yes, he really is a rabbi!)”
Quoting a recently-retired senior military affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, Barbara Honegger, Barrett said, “The 9/11 attack on the Pentagon targeted the accountants who were on the trail of the missing trillions” and were killed in a “surgical bombing” that was carried out under the cover of “a nonexistent hijacked 757 crash at the Pentagon.”
Zakheim, according to the article, is not the only “9/11 suspect” tied to Romney's presidential campaign. “Another is Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas mafia kingpin, who gave 100 million dollars to Romney, thereby buying Romney's eternal enslavement to the looney-tunes Likud faction in Israel.”
Adelson, the article added, “is reputedly linked to the same Likudnik crime mob that includes most of the key perpetrators of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, including ‘Lucky Larry’ Silverstein, Frank Lowy, and Lewis Eisenberg - the mobsters who stepped forward to take the money-hemorrhaging, asbestos-ridden Twin Towers off of New York City's hands, and set up an extralegal demolition, ‘urban renewal by other means,’ to be blamed on Israel's enemies.”
Furthermore, the US analysts added that “the Likud crime mob that orchestrated and carried out 9/11” does not merely run the Romney campaign and the US federal courts, but are also in control of vast majority of American and global media outlets as well. “It isn't just that the people who own and run the media tend to be Jewish and pro-Zionist, as CNN's Rick Sanchez observed shortly before he was fired.”
“The problem is that only six corporations control 90% of the media in America. And whether or not those six corporations are entirely owned by the Rothschilds, the founding family and true owners of Israel, they are obviously owned and controlled by the Zionists, as anyone who follows media coverage of the Middle East can see. By far the single most powerful force behind the 9/11 cover-up is the complicity of big media, which have taken every available opportunity to hide the true facts of 9/11, and trumpet the genocidal myth that Muslims were responsible.”
MFB/HMV
Source: 9/11 criminals running Romney campaign: Analyst
Friday, October 12, 2012
Switzerland arming in preparation for European meltdown
In September, the Swiss military conducted exercises dubbed ‘Stabilo Due,’ with scenarios involving violent instability across the EU.
Switzerland has maintained an avowedly neutral stance for decades, and refused to join the eurozone when presented with the opportunity.
Bern’s biggest fear is likely the disorganization of neighboring nations’ armies that would follow general instability; the eurozone crisis and the severe austerity measures in the EU are forcing member-states to significantly slash their military budgets. If protest continues to spread across Europe, police and armed forces may find themselves ill-equipped to manage the unrest.
"I will not rule out that we will need the army in the coming years,” Swiss Defense Minister Ueli Maurer said last Sunday.
The Swiss Defense Ministry has pressed ahead to modernize the country’s army despite political opposition. With its multibillion-Franc military budget and an army of around 200,000 soldiers, the country also plans to purchase new ‘Saab Gripen’ jet fighters.
“Minister Maurer, accompanied by whispers from the top uniformed leadership in Switzerland, is trying to raise awareness that Europe’s massive fiscal-cum-political crisis could get very unpleasant,” John R. Schindler, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College wrote in an article for the XX Committee website.
The Chief of the Swiss Armed Forces, Lieutenant General André Blattmann, likewise revealed plans to deploy an additional four battalions of military police (1,600 soldiers) to protect strategic points across the country. Blattmann is expected to present the plan in December.
Professor Schindler predicts that, “if the next Anders Brievik were to target Muslims, not fellow Europeans, things could get unimaginably ugly very quickly,” which could trigger widespread Muslim uprisings in Europe.
Switzerland, however, stands in stark opposition to the multicultural policies and thinking now common in other European nations. In 2009, Switzerland passed a national referendum banning the construction of Islamic mosques.
And while the global economic crisis has forced several European nations to cut military expenditures, Switzerland has maintained relatively consistent levels of defense spending.
Source: Switzerland arming in preparation for European meltdown? — RT
VIA WhatReallyHappened.com