WALL STREET'S MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITY FRAUD DESTROYED BOTH THE US AND EU ECONOMIES!

Fed Opens Books, Revealing European Megabanks Were Biggest Beneficiaries

by Shahien Nasiripour - Common Dreams

NEW YORK -- The Federal Reserve on Wednesday reluctantly opened the books on its monumental campaign to save the financial system in the midst of the recent crisis, revealing how it distributed some $3.3 trillion in relief.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood (to cover fraudulent derivative sales? - ed.)

The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood. Two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities (also known as "toxic derivatives" - ed.)

The Fed's dollars also flowed to major American companies that are not financial players, including McDonald's and Harley-Davidson, through unsecured short-term loans.

The measure, initiated in Jan. 2009 to stimulate the flow of credit and keep household borrowing costs low, led the nation's central bank to purchase more than $1.1 trillion in mortgages packaged into the form of securities. The mortgage bonds are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin mortgage giants now owned by taxpayers.

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.

The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers' desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.

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As detailed in "Bankers Gone Wild", mortgages were cranked out by unscrupulous mortgage brokers, then bundled together into mortgage securities, which were in turn re-sold to investors as triple-A investments, even though the bundles included sub-prime mortgages already defaulting as US jobs were shipped overseas.
These mortgage-backed securities are a Wall Street invention! And at first they appeared to be immensely profitable, so not only were US financial corporations, investment houses, and pension funds buying them, but so too were non financial corporations and major foreign banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.

But those early profits were a fiction, and we now know that many of the sellers of mortgage backed securities were engaging in Ponzi scheme activity, using proceeds from sales of mortgage backed securities to pay "earnings" to earlier investors, while the same SEC that had turned a blind eye to Bernie Madoff's $65 billion swindle looked the other way!
Worse, we now know that individual mortgages were pledged as collateral to multiple security bundles, which is illegal! This is briefly mentioned at 3:48 in the next video.

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The criminal fraud even went further than that! In the case ofCountrywide (now part of Bank of America) the actual titles were never really transferred, leaving the investment bundles entirely unsecured!
What appears to have happened is that the European banks realized that the American investment firms selling those mortgage-backed securities were engaging in fraud! Greenspan has admitted to such.

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As the banks of Europe began to feel the major losses from the fraud, they turned to their local governments for financial assistance. In turn, those governments were forced to apply for loans from the International Monetary Fund, plunging their people deeper into debt, and the governments under the control of the private bankers!Indeed one must wonder if this multinational financial fraud had as its ultimate objective the forcing of the entire western world under the control of a giant private bank!.

Obviously, the people of Europe are refusing to be chained to a global bank and seem far more worried about their freedoms than their American counterparts. Yet a quick Google search shows the media encouraging the nations hit with this massive financial fraud to apply to the IMF for more loans, never mentioning that in their indebtedness lies the end of their national sovereignty!
Ultimately the European banks are never going to sit still for fraud, even from Wall Street, and even from the USA! In order to reduce their losses and avoid more IMF entanglements, the European banks demanded a refund on those fraudulent investment packages. No doubt the Wall Street mortgage fraudsters refused, suggesting that the bankers of Europe dump their losses on their populations just as the American banks were being forced to do. That some European banks did so explains why so many European nations are in financial trouble.
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However, the larger European banks may have decided to "get tough" with the Americans, and this may explain the mysterious electronic run on the US financial system in February 2009, which almost crashed the US economy. Strangely, the American people were never informed who had initiated the financial transfers, even though obviously this information is recorded in the transactions on the computer systems.

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This "attack" may have been a warning from the European main banks to the US to make good on the bad investments, or risk full public exposure for the mortgage backed securities fraud!
Soon after, we learned that the Federal Reserve was handing out trillions and trillions of dollars, loans which the American people are expected to repay, only the Federal Reserve refused to say who was getting the money, and even implied that exposure of the recipients of these trillions of dollars might pose a threat to the US economy. Now, nearly two years later, we find out that the Federal Reserve was buying back the mortgage-backed securities from European banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suiss.

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The reason this was kept secret was that the American people were being told that all these "bailouts" would be repaid, yet common sense tells us that profit cannot be made from an exposed fraud! The Fed could not admit to owning all those mortage-backed securities without being forced to answer the question of just exactly why they were not producing any earnings, with the usual "it was all the borrowers' fault" excuses wearing thin even then! As cash left the nations financial system to cover the repurchase of the fraudulent mortgage backed securities, banks found their balance sheets slipping into the red.

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The banks were being driven into insolvency making good on the bad paper and this is what triggered the epidemic of fraudulent foreclosures. Banks needed real assets on their balance sheets as quickly as they could to get their balance in the black and their banks out of insolvency. So shortcuts were taken which became known as "foreclosuregate". For some banks, it was too late. Hundreds of banks either dragged down by the fraudulent mortgage securities or made insolvent buying back the bad paper, have been shut down. For other major banks and financial institutions, the tactic worked and they stayed afloat, for which making millions of Americans homeless seemed a small price to pay! Indeed one might explain the hitherto unexplained reluctance by the Federal Government to stem the offshoring of American jobs as a deliberate policy of setting up Americans to lose their homes in order to preserve the 

capital structure of the banks!.

In other words, the American people were looted to make good on the fraud perpetrated by Wall Street not only against American financial institutions, but bankers in the Eurozone as well.
The Wall Street Fraudsters should have gone to jail. But they walk free and clear, saved from the FDIC and prison, heading into a wonderful holiday with record-setting bonuses to spend while ordinary Americans have been made jobless, homeless, and hungry to keep the criminals out of prison.
The Mortgage Backed Securities fraud is the biggest fraud in the history of the United States, and as today's revelations make clear, we still do not know the full scale of the financial rape this nation has suffered..

.http://whatreallyhappened.com/.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/289/458/Ever_wonder_why_European_banks_were_so_angry_with_us:_Something_about_not_making_good_on_some_toxic_garbage_we_sold_them_-_until_The_Bailout.html

Jerome Corsi's First Interview Post-Release of "Where's the Birth Certificate?

Video: Dr. Jerome Corsi's first interview post-release of "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to be President". The interview was conducted by WOR's Steve Malzberg and aired on 5/17/2011. Dr. Corsi's first interview was first scheduled to be on Sean Hannity's radio show but Hannity left his spine at home today and cancelled at the last minute. Feel free to shoot Hannity an email and let him know what a coward he is. [hannity@foxnews.com]



Photoshop Expert & Author Mara Zebest Declares Obama's Latest Hawaiian Birth Certificate A Complete Phony -Details here.

Irrefutable Proof Obama's New Birth Certificate Forged Using Nordyke Birth Certificates -Details here.

Comparative Analysis By Pro Graphics & Special Effects: Trump Vs. Obama; Birth Certificate Fraud -Details here. 

Busted: White House Now Claims They Ordered Short-Form COLB From Hawaii Department Of Health In 2008 Yet COLB Is Date Stamped 2007 -Details here. 

Confirmed: Democratic Party of Hawaii would not certify in 2008 that Obama was constitutionally and legally eligible for the Office of President -Details here. 

Notre Dame Professor Charles Rice: Obama's eligibility could be biggest political fraud in the history of the world; time for a new approach -Details here. 

Attorney Mario Apuzzo: All presidents born after 1787, except for Chester Arthur and Barack Obama, met the “natural born Citizen” criteria. -Details here. 

Commander Charles Kerchner: List of U.S. Presidents - Eligibility under Article II Grandfather Clause (GFC) or Natural Born Citizen (NBC) Clause or Seated due to Election Fraud -Details here. 

Jack Cashill Discusses Obama's Fraudulent Social Security Number Reserved for Connecticut Applicants -Video here. 

Detailed reports on Obama's SS# can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here and here. Visit the Birther Vault for the long list of evidence against Hawaii officials and all of the people questioning Obama's eligibility; [http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2010/08/video-ltc-terry-lakins-attorney-on-cnn.html].
News Realease: Legal proof that President Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth is a forgery.
Yes Virginia-There is a Usurper in the White House-Obama Long Form BC Forged! Wash Times NW 20110516 pg 5

Senate Bill Gives Feds Power to Order Blacklisting of Piracy Sites

• By David Kravets
www.wired.com

Senate antipiracy legislation introduced Thursday would dramatically increase the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites “dedicated to infringing activities.”

A major feature of the Protect IP Act, introduced by 11 senators of all stripes, would grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against these websites, and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them.

“Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the bill’s main sponsor.

The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.

Under the old COICA draft, the government was authorized to obtain court orders to seize so-called generic top-level domains ending in .com, .org and .net. The  new legislation (.pdf), with the same sponsors, narrows that somewhat.

Instead of allowing for the seizure of domains, it allows the Justice Department to obtain court orders demanding American ISPs stop rendering the DNS for a particular website — meaning the sites would still be accessible outside the United States.

Either way, though, the legislation amounts to the holy grail of intellectual-property enforcement that the recording industry, movie studios and their union and guild workforces have been clamoring for since the George W. Bush administration.

“As the guilds and unions that represent 400,000 creators, performers and craftspeople who create the multitude of diverse films, television programs and sound recordings that are enjoyed by billions of people around the world, we unequivocally support this bill which, by providing protection for our members’ work, clearly shows that our government will not condone or permit the wholesale looting of the American economy and American creativity and ingenuity — regardless of how that looting is disguised on the internet to fool the American consumer,” (.pdf) a host of unions said Wednesday, including the American Federation of Musicians, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Directors Guild of America.

The new bill also gives content owners more rights than the old bill. It would allow rights holders to seek court orders instructing online ad services and credit card companies from partnering with the infringing sites — a power the government is granted in either legislative version.

Only the government gets the DNS blocking powers. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already grants rights holders the ability to demand search engines to stop displaying search results linking to infringing sites.

Despite the new bill watering down the United States’ reach, the government has been invoking an asset-forfeiture law to seize generic top-level domains of infringing websites under a program called Operation in Our Sites.” It began last year, and the Department of Homeland Security has targeted 120 sites.

Abigail Phillips, a copyright attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said because of Operation in Our Sites, the DNS changeover “doesn’t seem all that meaningful.”

Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director at Public Knowledge, noted that the measure does not narrowly define the websites that could be targeted.

“The bill still defines a site as ‘dedicated to infringing activities,’ if it is designed or marketed as ‘enabling or facilitating’ actions that are found to be infringing,” he said. “In other words, even if the site isn’t itself infringing copyright, if its actions ‘enable or facilitate’ someone else’s infringement, the government can tell ISPs to blacklist your site, and copyright holders can sue to cut your funding.

”UPDATE!!! I found the name of the bill and it is S.968. Start calling all your representatives to vote no on the S-968 Senate Bill. It is urgent unless you rather not be legally allowed to get the truth out. If you want to get the truth out then please keep calling and faxing your senators that you want S-968 t0 be thrown in the trash can..

A new bill being supported by the Obama Administration and being sponsored by at least 11 senators of all stripes is being introduced that will threaten news aggregation, truth blogs, documentary filmmakers, political websites, and any website that uses portions or snippets from mainstream media websites or any portion of any copyrighted content.

The bill titled ‘Protect IP Act‘ with the bill number ‘GRA11400′ hosted on Senator Patrick Leahy’s website tells a story that what this bill will do is grant the U.S. Government the power to bring lawsuits against any blog or website that uses any portion or excerpt of any copyrighted materials and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them. If you don’t believe me then read the bill yourself which is 30 pages long right now. In fact I will embed this scary bill from Scribd for any of you who wish to read this bill to confirm what I am saying.
Protect IP Act by Obama Administration and 11 senators – Read this crazy bill!

This bill is yet another bill that will further give the U.S. Government even more power to shut down any website which criticizes the Establishment or any mega fascist Corporation all under the guise of further protecting copyright. The problem with this new copyright bill is that it violates Fair Use Exemptions. This bill also violates the U.S. Constitution because of the fact that they can sue websites and demand that search engines can censor any website that the Obama Administration or the Supreme Court thinks is committing copyright infringement. This bill also means you cannot post any copyrighted images on your website even if it is for an educational purpose because the Federal Government will view your site as willfully infringing another persons content and use that as an excuse to shut down your site and sue you in Federal Court.

While copyright is necessary to a certain extent, we cannot trade our civil liberties and our 1st amendment for more corporate copyright controls.

In fact this isn’t the only time the U.S. Government has attempted using copyright or some other do-good method to shut down or control the Internet. The U.S. Government has seized many domains under the guise of stopping pirated video streaming websites, Obama attempted to pass a ‘kill-switch’ bill plus giving Joe Lieberman the power to shut down any website he wishes with just a phone call, and U.S. authorities have shut down a WordPress host with around 73,000 blogs.

If the U.S. Government has attempted to control and censor the Internet before it will most likely happen again. The establishments agenda is on the wall that they want to either control the Internet to be more like cable TV or have it shut down. The one that told that agenda is non other then Jay Rockefeller.

In fact here is a quote from Wired about this bill threatening bloggers and their 1st amendment rights.

“Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the bill’s main sponsor. The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.”

Of course they tell you they want to stop counterfeit goods and commercial piracy but what they won’t tell you is that they wish to criminalize bloggers for using excerpts and quotations, video embeds of portions of copyrighted videos, news aggregation websites (Even those that use very few paragraphs), and documentary filmmakers since they often reference copyrighted content for their educational documentaries.

This new copyright bill is just another attempt to give Obama the power to shut down any website he wishes under the noble deed of protecting copyrights and putting a stop to the selling of counterfeit goods.

Criticism of intellectual property.The term itself.

Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that, although the term intellectual property is in wide use, it should be rejected altogether, because it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues" and that it creates a "bias" by confusing these monopolies with ownership of limited physical things, likening them to "property rights". Stallman advocates referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warns against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term.

Lawrence Lessig, along with many other copyleft and free software activists, have criticized the implied analogy with physical property (like land or an automobile). They argue such an analogy fails because physical property is generally rivalrous while intellectual works are non-rivalrous (that is, if one makes a copy of a work, the enjoyment of the copy does not prevent enjoyment of the original).

Limitations
Some critics of intellectual property, such as those in the free culture movement, point at intellectual monopolies as harming health, preventing progress, and benefiting concentrated interests to the detriment of the masses, and argue that the public interest is harmed by ever expansive monopolies in the form of copyright extensions, software patents and business method patents.

Some libertarian critics of intellectual property have argued that allowing property rights in ideas and information creates artificial scarcity and infringes on the right to own tangible property. Stephan Kinsella uses the following scenario to argue this point:

Imagine the time when men lived in caves. One bright guy—let's call him Galt-Magnon—decides to build a log cabin on an open field, near his crops. To be sure, this is a good idea, and others notice it. They naturally imitate Galt-Magnon, and they start building their own cabins. But the first man to invent a house, according to IP advocates, would have a right to prevent others from building houses on their own land, with their own logs, or to charge them a fee if they do build houses. It is plain that the innovator in these examples becomes a partial owner of the tangible property (e.g., land and logs) of others, due not to first occupation and use of that property (for it is already owned), but due to his coming up with an idea. Clearly, this rule flies in the face of the first-user homesteading rule, arbitrarily and groundlessly overriding the very homesteading rule that is at the foundation of all property rights.

Other criticism of intellectual property law concerns the tendency of the protections of intellectual property to expand, both in duration and in scope. The trend has been toward longer copyright protection (raising fears that it may some day be eternal). In addition, the developers and controllers of items of intellectual property have sought to bring more items under the protection. Patents have been granted for living organisms, (and in the US, certain living organisms have been patentable for over a century) and colors have been trademarked. Because they are systems of government-granted monopolies copyrights, patents, and trademarks are called intellectual monopoly privileges, (IMP) a topic on which several academics, including Birgitte Andersen and Thomas Alured Faunce have written.

In 2005 the RSA launched the Adelphi Charter, aimed at creating an international policy statement to frame how governments should make balanced intellectual property law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property 

Illustration: richard winchell/Flickr”.

Please Call, Fax, and send letters to your senators and Congresspeople to Vote NO on Protect IP Act aka S.968.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=208764875830611.

http://uswgo.com/protect-i p-act-threatens-the-internet-blogs-that-tell-the-truth-site-operators.htm

http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/2011/05/eff-protect-ip-act-coica-redux.html

http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2011/05/16/protect-ip-act-s-968-threatens-the-internet/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/protect-act/

Congress To Vote On Declaration Of World War 3 – An Endless War With No Borders, No Clear Enemies

Posted by Alexander Higgins - May 15, 2011 at 4:24 pm  

The United States Congress is set to vote on legislation that authorizes the official start of World War 3.

The legislation authorizes the President of the United States to take unilateral military action against all nations, organizations, and persons, both domestically and abroad, who are alleged to be currently or who have in the past supported or engaged in hostilities or who have provided aid in support of hostilities against the United States or any of its coalition allies.

The legislation removes the requirement of congressional approval for the use of military force and instead gives the President totalitarian dictatorial authority to engage in any and all military actions for an indefinite period of time.

It even gives the President the authority to launch attacks against American Citizens inside the United States with no congressional oversight whatsoever.

Just to recap, because that was a mouthful:

• Endless War – The war will continue until all hostilities are terminated, which will never happen.
• No Borders – The president will have the full authority to launch military strikes against any country, organization or person, including against U.S citizens on U.S soil.
• Unilateral Military Action – Full authority to invade any nation at any time with no congressional approval required.
• No Clearly Defined Enemy – The US can declare or allege anyone a terrorist or allege they are or have been supporting “hostilities” against the US and attack at will.
• Authorization To Invade Several Countries – The president would have full authority to invade Iran, Syria, North Korea, along with several other nations in Africa and the Middle East and even Russia and China under the legislation all of which are “know” to have supported and aided hostilities against the United States.

The Hill writes:

House Dems protest GOP’s plans for permanent war against terror

Nearly three dozen House Democrats are calling on Republicans to withdraw a section of the 2012 defense authorization bill that they say would effectively declare a state of permanent war against unnamed Taliban and al Qaeda operatives.

A Tuesday letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and 32 other Democrats argues that affirming continued war against terrorist forces goes too far, giving too much authority to the president without debate in Congress.

Their letter cites language in the authorization bill that incorporates the Detainee Security Act, which affirms continued armed conflict against terrorists overseas.

“By declaring a global war against nameless individuals, organizations and nations ‘associated’ with the Taliban and al Qaeda, as well as those playing a supporting role in their efforts, the Detainee Security Act would appear to grant the president near unfettered authority to initiate military action around the world without further congressional approval,” Democrats wrote. “Such authority must not be ceded to the president without careful deliberation from Congress.”

The specific language in the bill is found in section 1034 of H.R. 1540, which affirms that the U.S. is “engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.” It also affirms that the president has the authority to detain “certain belligerents” until the armed conflict is over.

“Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces still pose a grave threat to U.S. national security,” the bill says. “The Authorization for Use of Military Force necessarily includes the authority to address the continuing and evolving threat posed by these groups.”

The America Civil Liberties Union writes:

New Authorization of Worldwide War Without End?

Congress may soon vote on a new declaration of worldwide war without end, and without clear enemies. A “sleeper provision” deep inside defense bills pending before Congress could become the single biggest hand-over of unchecked war authority from Congress to the executive branch in modern American history.

President Obama has not sought new war authority. In fact, his administration has made clear that it believes it already has all of the authority that it needs to fight terrorism.

But Congress is considering monumental new legislation that would grant the president – and all presidents after him – sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere. Unlike previous grants of authority for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the proposed legislation would allow a president to use military force wherever terrorism suspects are present in the world, regardless of whether there has been any harm to U.S. citizens, or any attack on the United States, or any imminent threat of an attack. The legislation is broad enough to permit a president to use military force within the United States and against American citizens. The legislation contains no expiration date, and no criteria to determine when a president’s authority to use military force would end.

Of all of the powers that the Constitution assigns to Congress, no power is more fundamental or important than the power “to declare War.” That is why, in 2002, when Congress was considering whether to authorize war in Iraq, it held fifteen hearings, and passed legislation that cited specific harms, set limits, and defined a clear objective. Now, Congress is poised to give unchecked authority to the executive branch to use military force worldwide, with profoundly negative consequences for our fundamental democratic system of checks and balances. Once Congress expands the president’s war power, it will be nearly impossible to rein it back in. The ACLU strongly opposes a wholesale turnover of war power from Congress to the president – and all of his successors.

Coalition Memo to the House Committee on Armed Services Regarding a Proposed New Declaration of War

Comparison of 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and Proposed Expanded Authorization.

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The offending text (Here In The Full Text Of H.R. 1540 – section 1034) uses doublespeak to declare World War 3. Specifically, the text uses the phrase “affirms” “armed conflict” which is the terminology used by congress declare war in every war since World War 2..

Congress affirms that —

(1) the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces and that those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad;

(2) the President has the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note);

(3) the current armed conflict includes nations, organization, and persons who—

(A) are part of, or are substantially supporting, al‐Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or

(B) have engaged in hostilities or have directly supported hostilities in aid of a nation, organization, or person described in subparagraph (A); and

(4) the President’s authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes the authority to detain belligerents, including persons described in paragraph (3), until the termination of hostilities..

A joint letter regarding the proposed legislation has been sent to congress condemning the proposed legislation.

MEMORANDUM

TO:	All Members of the House Committee on Armed Services
FROM:	American Civil Liberties Union Appeal for Justice Brave New Foundation Center for Constitutional Rights CREDO Action Defending Dissent Foundation High Road for Human Rights Human Rights First International Justice Network Just Foreign Policy Leadership Conference of Women Religious MoveOn.org Muslim Public Affairs Council New Security Action Pax Christi USA Peace Action Physicians for Human Rights Psychologists for Social Responsibility Shalom Center Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society USAction Win Without War
DATE:	May 9th, 2010
RE:	Oppose Section 1034 and Any Similar New Declaration of War or New Authorization for Use of Military Force in the National Defense Authorization Act

The undersigned organizations strongly oppose the new Declaration of War, which is in Section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”). We urge you to oppose the provision and any other similar new Declaration of War or new Authorization for Use of Military Force (“AUMF”) in the NDAA.

While we have written separately, and met with many of you and your military legislative assistants, on our concerns with other provisions of the Chairman’s mark, we are writing on this new Declaration of War specifically because it is a provision that has received almost no review, despite its likely tremendous effect on almost every facet of United States national security policy. At minimum, Congress should hold hearings andfollow regular order before even considering such sweeping legislation.

This monumental legislation–with a large-scale and practically irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the President–could commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without any geographical boundaries (the use of military force within the United States could be permitted), and without any boundary relating to time or specific objective to be achieved. Unlike the AUMF that authorized the Afghanistan War and the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, the proposed new Declaration of War does not cite any specific harm, such as the 9/11 attacks, or specific threat of harm to the United States. It appears to be stating that the United States is at war wherever terrorism suspects reside, regardless of whether there is any danger to the United States.

Under the guise of a “reaffirmation” of authority, Section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the NDAA would give the President unchecked authority–and if the section constitutes a declared “war,”¹ possibly the unchecked duty²–to use military force worldwide against or within any country in which terrorism suspects reside. The proposed new Declaration of War would be without precedent in the scope of war authority or duties transferred by Congress to the President:

• The President would be able to use this authority–or might be required to use this authority–regardless of whether there has been any harm to United States citizens, or any attack on the United States or any imminent threat of any attack. There is not even any requirement of any threat whatsoever to the national security of the United States.
• There is no geographical limitation–the new Declaration of War has no specification of countries against which military force could be used, and no specification of countries where U.S. armed forces could be deployed with or without the permission of the host country. Military force could even be used within the United States and against American citizens.
• There is no specific objective for the new Declaration of War, which means that there is no clear criteria after which the President’s authority to use military force would expire. Although the proposed new Declaration of War lists “al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces” as the “threat,” there is no definition for any of these entities, which historically have been amorphous, with shifting names, memberships, and organizational relationships.
• If Congress broadly turns over to the President the power that Article I of the Constitution provides to Congress to declare war, it very likely will never get the power back. The broad terms of the proposed new Declaration of War could last for decades.
• Whether Congress realizes it or not, the proposed new Declaration of War would authorize the President to use the United States military against countries such as Somalia, Iran, or Yemen, or send the American military into any of the scores of countries where suspected terrorists reside, which include not only nearly all Middle East, African, and Asian countries, but also European countries and Canada–and of course, the United States itself. Under the expansive terms used for organizations in the proposed new Declaration of War, targets could include suspects having no connection to the 9/11 attacks or to any other specific harm or threat to the United States. The President would have the power to go to war almost anywhere, at any time, and based on the presence of suspects who do not have to pose any threat to the national security of the United States.
• If Section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the NDAA constitutes a declaration of war–which Congress has not declared since 1942–the declaration would trigger various exemptions from federal statutes and even broader authority for the President to control more aspects of both government and private businesses. The March 17, 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications,” lists all of the statutory provisions, ranging from exemptions from budgetary limitations to new government claims over oil and mineral resources, that are triggered by a declaration of war.
• Of course, if Congress believes that there is a significant new threat to the national security of the United States that requires significant military force as a response, it can declare war or enact a new AUMF, but Congress should, at minimum, follow what it did in 2002 with the AUMF for the Iraq War, where it held fifteen hearings on the proposed war and passed an AUMF that cited specific harms, set limits, and defined a clear objective that, if met, would effectively terminate the AUMF. A specific declaration of war or a specific AUMF would better preserve the system of checks and balances and make an endless, worldwide war less likely.

To be clear, President Obama has not sought enactment of the proposed new Declaration of War. To the contrary, his Administration has made clear its position that it believes it already has all of the authority that it needs to fight terrorism. But if the proposed new Declaration of War becomes law, President Obama and all of his successors, until and unless a future Congress and future President repeal it, will have the sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere.

Of all of the powers that Article I of the Constitution assigns to Congress, no power is more fundamental or important than the power “to declare War.” We urge you to use this power carefully, and to oppose this wholesale turnover of war power, without any checks–and without even holding a single hearing. Thank you for your attention to this issue, and we would be pleased to meet with you or your staff to discuss our concerns further.

¹ The most critical sentence of section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the NDAA is “Congress affirms that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces and that those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad.” If “affirms” is replaced with the synonym “declares” and “armed conflict” is replaced with the synonym “war,” the result is “Congress declares that the United States is in a war with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces . . . “, which is very similar to the declaration of war clauses of the eleven declarations of war made by Congress, from the War of 1812 through World War II. Since 1942, Congress has passed several authorizations for use of military force, but has not made any declarations of war.

² Although the question of whether a declaration of war imposes a duty on the President to carry out the war has only rarely come up in court decisions, at least one federal court, in comparing the legal consequences of a declaration of war with an authorization for use of military force, stated, “If war existed why empower the President to apprehend foreign enemies? War itself placed that duty upon him as a necessary and inherent incident of military command.” Gray v. United States, 21 Ct. Cl. 340, 373 (1886) (emphasis added)..

The bill has many other shocking elements as well, such as the requirement that all arrests related to terrorism be treated as military arrests (section 4), thus circumventing the constitution. Furthermore, legislation introduce under the McCain bill would make it illegal for military prisoners in US overseas torture prisons to be returned to US Facilities.

Indeed, the moment we all feared has come before us as the Congress meddles giving the President absolute power over the military, including the authority to launch military strikes within the United States against U.S. Citizens. With the assassination of Osama Bin Laden on Pakistan soil many of were naïve in believing that the War on Terror would come to an end.

Instead,  the reported success of the raid is being used as a crutch to push through new legislation in the defense bills up for vote before congress which literally authorize World War 3, which will be declared as an endless war with no defined enemies and no borders. Short of committing genocide the termination of the hostilities will never come and as such the war will never come to end.

We have already learned that officials falsified reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq for the “prize” of oil. If a whole government of top officials can not be trusted then surely a single president cannot be trusted either.

We have seen the U.S Government turn Nazi and buy and burn every copy of a book that had evidence of a 9/11 coverup. The Department of Justice has already published a memo calling constitutionalists and survivalist as potential terrorists.

Is it not bad enough that the U.S courts have already legalized the abduction of U.S Citizens along with their indefinite detention and torture in overseas prison camps? Or that the U.S Government openly admits to gunning down, kidnapping and torturing American college students?

Under the definition of the legislation, the President could authorize the military to attack the ACLU building because they have supported the “terrorists” by arguing for their civil rights.

It will not be long before they are assassinating activists. The have already labeled conspiracy theories as “dangerous thoughts that could lead to violence” and have even specifically called The Intel Hub, which routinely publishes my articles, as an echo chamber pushing out these “dangerous thoughts that could lead to violence”.

Uncle Sam openly admits to turning its multi-billion dollar espionage network against U.S Citizenswhich has produced such great fruits as innocent activists exercising their first amendment rights being placed on the terrorist watch list by the FBI and DHS.

Seriously, this is so out of control and it is only a time that the World War 3 is being fought against you and me. Just remember as long as we are in a state of war your civil liberties and constitutional rights are pretty much null and void, only enforceable if the Government allows you to have them. Even then, they can declare you as a terrorist, enemy combatant or a threat to national security to revoke your constitutional rights anyway. Then they can play the national security card when they are asked to explain their allegations.

All around this is rotten and the first step to getting our rights back is to end the perpetual wars.

Contact your congressman and tell them No Way To this egregious bill!.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Now sign the ACLU Petition and share this post to get the word out so we can stop this before it happens..

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 http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/05/15/congress-vote-declaration-world-war-3-endless-war-borders-clear-enemies-22785/