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Another Step Towards US Dictatorship

Comment by Larry Ross, August 7, 2007

The US Congress and mass media is meekly complying with every step Bush takes toward imposing a dictatorship on American citizens.

Only a few publications, like the San Francisco Chronicle article that follows, expose the latest Bush threat to American democracy.

Again, Bush is demonising Iran by accusing them of wanting nuclear weapons, and accusing them of aiding terrorism in his illegal Iraq War.

Although it's all lies, any opposition to Bush's war on Iraq and presumably to his planned war on Iran based on his lies and conspiracy, is defined as helping terrorism and therefore subject to the US government seizure of the suspects property.

Americans are behaving like lambs to the slaughter doing the bidding of their war criminal regime.

It's quite amazing how many draconian new laws the Bush Administration has put in place - and how easily they have passed by the US Congress to become law. Future generations will marvel and joke about this sheep-like behaviour by the people in the land of the free and the brave. That is - if there are future generations, and they have not been thoroughly brain-washed by the Bush machine.

The tendency will be for Americans to deny it is happening, and say Bush will be gone in 2009. But if Bush launches a new major war against Iran, perhaps based on a false flag attack, and declares a state of emergency, he may also postpone the 2008 elections 'because of the crisis and new war' and keep his present inflated powers indefinitely. The US Congress, media and public have generally followed Bush's indoctrination and adopted Iran as the new 'feared' enemy. It there is an alleged terrorist attack on the US, the people will believe whatever Bush and his media blitz tells them. If Bush claims Iran attacked, they will believe that and follow Bush into a new war. If they dissent or object, Bush's new laws will be invoked to silence them. This story is a deepening nightmare with no happy ending.

People who wish to preserve American democracy must stop Bush, probably with impeachment, and expose the truth about him before he starts the machinery of war. There is little point in claiming you will wait and do something if the worst happens. It will then be much too late.

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In Bush we trust - or else

by John Diaz, August 5, 2007

It doesn't require a subpoena of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or a brave whistle-blower to find President Bush's latest affront to the U.S. Constitution. It's in plain view on the White House Web site: "Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq."

This far-reaching order of July 17 may be Bush's most brazen defiance of the Constitution, which is no small feat for an administration that thinks it can set its own rules on electronic surveillance, torture, kidnapping, rendition, and the designation of "enemy combatants" who can be arrested on U.S. soil and held indefinitely without judicial review.

This one is a frontal assault on the Fifth Amendment, which decrees that the government cannot seize an individual's property without due process.

Under Bush's executive order, the U.S. government has endowed itself with the authority to freeze the American assets of anyone who directly or indirectly assists someone who poses "a significant risk" of committing a violent act that has the purpose or effect of threatening the Iraqi government, the "peace and stability" of the country or the reconstruction effort.

The White House has claimed the order is targeted at people or groups that are helping the insurgents, particularly in Syria or Iran, but the language of the order is far broader than its stated intent.

The order's liberal use of the word "or" and inclusion of the highly subjective term "significant risk" are particularly troubling in the hands of a White House that has suggested that domestic war critics are emboldening U.S. enemies in Iraq.

"On its face, this is the greatest encroachment on civil liberties since the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II," said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer who was a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration and author of an article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

Fein said the sanctions against suspected violators would amount to "a financial death penalty." The executive order not only calls for the freezing of assets of anyone who directly or indirectly aids our enemies in Iraq, it prohibits anyone else from providing "funds, goods or services" to a blacklisted individual. In other words, a friend or relative could have his or her assets seized for trying to help someone whose bank account is suddenly frozen. An attorney who offered legal help could risk of losing everything he or she owned.

Then again, there's not much need for lawyers in the world of this executive order. The blacklist would be drawn up by the "secretary of treasury, in consultation with the secretary of state and the secretary of defense."

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