Yoo and the Subversion of Liberty Narrowly Averted

Published on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 by Huffington Post
Yoo and The Subversion of Liberty Narrowly Averted
by Naomi Wolf

If history gets this recent era right, future textbooks will have to show that the US narrowly averted a carefully planned but thorough and unmistakable conspiracy to subvert the rule of law and the process of democracy from 2001-2008. For three years, since writing End of America, I have been arguing that the Bush team sought irretrievably to subvert our liberty. Fortunately, this appalling and conceivably irrevocable subversion of the tenets of freedom was narrowly averted by citizens at every level -- from the grassroots to the courts -- resisting in time. But the release this week by the Justice Department of the "secret memos" sought valiantly by the ACLU confirms that Bush's legal architects were building up the framework for something even scarier than our most anguished projections.

You can see the documents themselves online -- but, as usual, there is a gap between the cautious journalistic interpretation of the event and the dense legalese in which they are written, and no one yet has really explained to citizens who are not attorneys what these memos claimed to give Bush the right to do. This is my initial reading of these documents:

Most dramatically, one memo asserts that Bush can deploy the military within the United States -- all of the military if he so wishes -- overriding Posse Comitatus, which has kept us safe from military policing for over a century. As many heard me warn in October and November of last year, when the first troops were sent to US streets, history shows that once the military is deployed domestically to "keep order" in a civil society, it is over. This memo is especially galling, since last fall's red alert from us was met with alarm by citizens but by ridicule by mainstream media outlets. Turns out we were right. This `deployment' memo proves that Bush indeed, as we feared, wanted the power to deploy military for domestic policing purposes, a mission that Northcom spokesmen denied -- apparently falsely -- when a few critics from non-mainstream platforms raised the alarm last November about the deployment of the First Brigade from Iraq to the US. This memo shows that Bush sought the power to deploy any number of U.S. military into the U.S. itself for any reason he chose; direct them to rip through your home without a warrant, even if you have not been charged with anything; seize material and documents; and even gave Bush the power to use deadly force against you -- yes, you, innocent US citizen -- "in self-defense." In your homes and streets -- not on a faraway battlefield. Major David Antoon confirmed that this power -- to send US military to control, arrest and even shoot US civilians in self-defense -- was in Bush's hands last fall when I asked Antoon about it. Turns out this memo shows Bush indeed wanted to have that power.

Another memo would give the power to Bush -- at his discretion -- to close down or censor newspapers, radio and the Internet - override the First Amendment in the interest of "national security." So if he had deployed, say, ten brigades -- 37,000 warriors -- in key cities (he deployed three before the election and 20,000 are due to be deployed domestically by 2012 unless we stop it), you would not be able to hear about it through the news media if he invoked this power to suspend free speech. And if you protested -- if you dared -- well, his actions would have been -- thanks to John Yoo and others, who will go down in history along with the criminal Nuremberg lawyers as one of Satan's willing attorneys -- perfectly legal.

Yet another memo gives Bush not only the right to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant" and hold him or her indefinitely - a danger we knew about, and one that we have tried hard to alert citizens to, a warning that has seemingly penetrated collective consciousness. The newly released memo demonstrates that was the very surface of the powers over US citizens Bush claimed. For three years when I have cautioned citizens about this power Bush invoked to seize US citizens as "enemy combatants" I reassured them that he did not yet have the power to torture US citizens, "only" drive them mad through prolonged isolation in a navy brig. Well, this memo asserts Bush's right to do whatever he wants to innocent US citizens in this kind of custody, and rejects the notion that Congress would have any role in how US citizens are held or treated -- say, by the hypothetically deployed military - on US soil. It seems also to claim the right to hold innocent US citizens in domestic military custody while Bush has the right to do anything he wants to them. Anything he wants. Remember this is an administration in which Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney have now been proven by Jameel Jaffer's revelations in Administration of Torture to have known about and okay'd not just waterboarding as a policy but ok'd the discretion for interrogators to use tactics such as electrodes attached to genitals, sexual assault, threats against family members, suffocation, the beating of prisoners' legs to "pulp," and in some cases the covering up of their murders. This memo gives Bush the authority to do those things if he wants to innocent US citizens.

Still another memo gives Bush the right to ignore any international treaties -- to take over any country, say, or render and citizen anywhere, and do whatever he wants to the citizens of any country against any law, without consent of Congress.

The Washington Post called these memos "legal errors." We need to stare them in the face and understand them: they are evidence that the groundwork was laid out that gave the president the legal power effectively subvert the Republic. We need to understand the full darkness of what we narrowly escaped -- for now, our work is hardly begun. We need to build these lessons into our history and to use the terror they represent to dismantle the last of Bush's evil legacy -- a legacy that could have been activated by any US president in the future, including Obama or McCain -- and see these memos for what they are: the revealed architecture of an intended edifice of what amounts to treason again our republic and against all of us, regardless of belief, station of life, or political party.

© 2009 Huffington Post
Naomi Wolf is the author of The New York Times bestseller "The End of America" (Chelsea Green) and is the co-founder of the American Freedom Campaign.

Bush memos show blueprint for police state

Memos Provide Blueprint for Police State

Wednesday 04 March 2009
by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t Perspective
http://www.truthout.org/030409A
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2006. (Photo: Ron Edmonds / AP)

Excerpts from article
Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the president with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide "legal" rationales for the president to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of US citizens; lock up US citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

Who wrote these memos? All but one were crafted in whole or in part by the infamous John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the so-called "torture memos" that redefined torture much more narrowly than the US definition of torture, and counseled the president how to torture and get away with it. In one memo, Yoo said the Justice Department would not enforce US laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants .

... The same day that Attorney General Eric Holder released the memos, the government revealed that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of harsh interrogations of Abu Zubaida and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, both of whom were subjected to waterboarding. The memo that authorized the CIA to waterboard, written the same day as one of Yoo/Bybee's torture memos, has not yet been released.

Meanwhile, John Yoo remains on the faculty of Berkeley Law School and Jay Bybee is a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. These men, who advised Bush on how to create a police state, should be investigated, prosecuted and disbarred. Yoo should be fired and Bybee impeached. Read entire article ...
http://www.truthout.org/030409A

Videos: Human Rights March in Phoenix

Video coverage of the February 28, 2009 Human Rights March in Phoenix

March against racist Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Over 5,000 Peoples participating
Barriozona, grassroots journalism: http://www.barriozona.com/
Video #1 shows the march and starts by showing day laborers at the street corner on the morning of Saturday February 28 supporters clash around him at immigration's ‘ground zero’
http://barriozona.com/immigrants_counterculture_groups_rally_against_sheriff_arpaio_VIDEO.html Video #2 has interviews with participants in the march
http://barriozona.com/immigrants_counterculture_groups_rally_against_sheriff_arpaio_opinions_VIDEO.html Photo gallery with 123 photos
http://www.photoshopshowcase.com/ViewFlashMedia.aspx?AID=209012&AT=3
Human League 002 (Dennis Gilman), includes Akimel O'Otham member Shannon Rivers "welcoming all migrants"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PmhbUdGSvI
Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/02/protesters-take-on-americ_n_171091.html

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13th, 2007
Article 36
1. Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.
2. States, in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, shall take effective measures to facilitate the exercise and ensure the implementation of this right.
Related Links:
http://www.puenteaz.org/
http://www.indigenasinfronteras.org/
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/declaration.html
http://www.tonatierra.org/
http://www.cumbrecontinentalindigena.org/
Tupac Enrique Acosta
chantlaca@tonatierra.org

Another view of Wounded Knee 1973

Another view of Wounded Knee 1973

By Bill Means, Lakota

Each year I have to respond to the annual negative interpretation of Tim Giago against Wounded Knee 1973. I do respect his journalism work but I also have to respectfully disagree.
We both come from the same reservation and we both were on different sides of the liberation in 1973. I too knew the Gildersleeve family and got to know them in a more personal way during the Wounded Knee occupation. Remember the Gildersleeves told Senators McGovern and Abourezk, when they visited Wounded Knee, that they agree with the issues the Oglala Civil Rights Organization and AIM were presenting. People should also remember the overwhelming number of people inside Wounded Knee were Oglala People who supported the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization led by Vern Long and Pedro Bissonette.
The Gildersleeve family also told the Federal authorities that they were not hostages. They actually stayed in Wounded Knee for several days and eventually left when the government refused to take down the roadblocks. Tim and I do agree that the Gildersleeves were good people however, some things came out later in the trial such as selling guns and ammunition without a federal license or taking peoples' lease checks and cashing them but taking out their monies owed and giving them the change which came to be defined as servitude.
I also have a story. My uncle Henry Young Bear from Porcupine was a well known Lakota singer and drum maker and one time he took us to the Wounded Knee store to sell a drum he made tanning the hides himself and spending many hours making this drum. He sold the drum at the store for twenty dollars but the next day the drum was on sale for $100.00 in the museum at the store. I feel proud that I was able to serve the Lakota People at Wounded Knee in 1973 and I served as a pall bearer for my friend Buddy Lamont who was shot in the back by the FBI in Wounded Knee after they shot tear gas into the bunker where he was. The Chiefs and Headsman of the Lakota were there at the burial of Buddy Lamont and he was spoken of as a Warrior of the Lakota and the special warrior songs were sung on his behalf.
Earlier during that time in Wounded Knee Frank Clearwater was killed and half of his head was destroyed by a bullet from the FBI and US Marshals. Many of the young warriors in Wounded Knee were wounded in firefights with the Federal Forces and over seventy unsolved murders were documented between 1973 and 1977 in the aftermath of Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee represents a renaissance and a historical turning point for the struggle of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world.
To see a coalition of many Indian Nations led by the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization and the American Indian Movement stand up against the policies of the United States Government and the ongoing violation of Treaties was an inspiration to Indigenous Peoples all over the World. We have been told this by Indigenous Peoples, Presidents and government officials at the United Nations many times.
I say these things to show that there was sacrifice by many families on all sides of the issue and to say the overwhelming majority of Oglala Lakota supported Wounded Knee 1973. It is now celebrated as a National Holiday on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Even the US Federal Courts under Judge Fred Nichol dismissed the case in the leadership trials of AIM leaders Means and Banks stating in part...."the FBI has polluted the waters of justice."
Pelamaye!
.
Read Giago's column and Steve Hendricks response to the column:
http://www.indianz.com/News/2009/013410.asp
.