[wvns] Australia Astonished as US OKs Secret Trials
Secret trials for Muslims, says US judge
David Nason, Chicago
The Australian
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,21986986,00.html
A TOP-RANKING US judge has stunned a conference of Australian judges
and barristers in Chicago by advocating secret trials for terrorists,
more surveillance of Muslim populations across North America and an
end to counter-terrorism efforts being "hog-tied" by the US constitution.
Judge Richard Posner, a supposedly liberal-leaning jurist regarded by
many as a future US Supreme Court candidate, said traditional concepts
of criminal justice were inadequate to deal with the terrorist threat
and the US had "over-invested" in them.
His proposed "big brother" solutions flabbergasted delegates at the
Australian Bar Association's biennial conference, where David Hicks's
lawyer, Major Michael Mori, is to be awarded honorary life membership.
"We have to fight terrorism with our strengths, and our strengths
evolve around technology, including the technology of surveillance,"
said Justice Posner, a prolific legal scholar who sits on the US Court
of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
"Are there terrorist plots that are at a formative stage among the
large US Muslim community of two to three million people? In the
600,000 Canadian Muslim population, are there people planning attacks
on the US?
"What we have to do is discover the extent of the terrorist threat to
the US. There is a danger, and it demands a rethinking of some of our
conventional views on the limits of national security measures.
"We should think of surveillance as preventative, not punitive. We
should think of controls that have nothing to do with warrants or
traditional criminal justice to prevent abuses."
Judge Posner said the US temper and culture could not sustain repeated
terrorist attacks.
Melbourne QC Tim Tobin said it was a shock to hear such hard and
isolationist positions coming from a judge known as a liberal thinker.
While he was disturbed by the judge's proposed crackdown on US and
Canadian Muslims, he suspected the sentiment would be welcomed by the
Howard Government.
Judge Posner raised the prospect of secret trials as a "tailored
regime" to prosecute terrorists in cases where there was a concern
about classified information going public.
Queensland SC Glenn Martin said he had been "jolted" by the address:
"I hope we never have secret trials in Australia."
Judge Posner said the US was "a law-saturated society where even
non-lawyers tend to think ofproblems in terms of legal categories".
"Criminal justice and war are the two responses we have to terrorism.
Each comes with its own legal institutions and doctrines and regimes
but the struggle against international terrorism doesn't fit either
very well."
He said it was "quite misplaced" to suggest national security measures
in force or contemplated in the US could endanger liberty and
undermine the political system. This was because governments could no
longer conceal what they did: "We have a very aggressive media and a
huge and complex government where many people in the government are
quite willing to talk to the press."
===
July 19, 2007
Bush Outlaws All War Protest In United States
Sorcha Faal
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1023.htm
In one of his most chilling moves to date against his own citizens,
the American War Leader has issued a sweeping order this week
outlawing all forms of protest against the Iraq war.
President Bush enacted into US law an `Executive Order' on July 17th
titled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten
Stabilization Efforts in Iraq", and which says:
"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States of America, including the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et
seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et
seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find
that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national
security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of
violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining
efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in
Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is
in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with
respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of
May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28,
2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order
13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004."
According to Russian legal experts, the greatest concern to the
American people are the underlying provisions of this new law, and
which, they state, are written `so broadly' as to outlaw all forms of
protest against the war. These provisions state:
"(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial,
material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services
in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose
property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or
(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but
are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of
funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person
whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this
order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds,
goods, or services from any such person.
(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen,
permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the
United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including
foreign branches), or any person in the United States.
All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to
take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the
provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the
Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken."
To the subsection of this new US law, according to these legal
experts, that says "...the making of any contribution or provision of
funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit...", the
insertion of the word `services' has broad, and catastrophic,
consequences for the American people in that any act deemed by their
government to be against the Iraqi war is, in fact, supporting the
`enemy' and therefore threatens the `stabilization of Iraq'.
In an even greater affront to the American people are the provisions
of a law called The Patriot Act, and that should they run afoul of
this new law they are forbidden to allow anyone to know about it, and
as we can read as reported by the Seattle Times News Service:
"The [Patriot] act also expands the use of National Security Letters,
which are a kind of warrant that the Justice Department writes for
itself, authorizing its agents to seize such things as records of
money movements, telephone calls and Internet visits. Recipients of a
National Security Letter are not allowed to tell anyone about them,
and so cannot contest them."
It is interesting to note, too, that this is not the first time that
the United States has unleashed the brutal power of their government
against its citizens to further their war aims and stifle domestic
dissent, as during the European conflict of World War I they enacted a
law called The Sedition Act of 1918 and which "...forbade Americans to
use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the
United States government, flag, or armed forces during war."
It is curious to note that after the enactment of this new law there
has been no protest by any of the other political leaders in the
United States, with the exception of the only Muslim member of the
United States Congress, Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, and who
compared President Bush to the Nazi War Leader Adolph Hitler by
stating the attacks upon the World Trade Center could be likened to
the burning of the Reichstag.
Today, as the United States faces an imminent economic collapse, while
at the same time its war bill has reached the staggering amount of
$648 billion, one of the last freedoms the American people have had to
protest their leaders actions against them, and other peoples in the
World, has now been taken away from them, the freedom to speak and
write in opposition to what is being done to them.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people
what they do not want to hear.", said the great British writer George
Orwell, but, and sadly, liberty has been lost to the once free people
of the United States who are no longer allowed to tell their leaders,
or each other, what they don't want to hear.
With this being so, the American people should, likewise, contemplate
their `new' future, and as, also, stated best by George Orwell, "If
you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human
face - forever."
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