Foreign Policy – President Obama issued an executive order Friday evening that imposes immediate sanctions on Libyan ruler Muammar al Qaddafi, his sons and his accomplices in the slaughter of civilians. In a letter accompanying the order, Obama declared a national emergency over the situation.

“I have determined that the actions of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, his government, and close associates, including extreme measures against the people of Libya, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. The order declares a national emergency to deal with this threat,” Obama wrote in the letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

The executive order itself condemns the “wanton violence against unarmed associates” perpetrated by Qaddafi, his sons, his government, and his close associates. Effective immediately, all U.S.-based assets of Qaddafi and his four sons are to be frozen and transactions intended to move those assets are prohibited. The order allows the measures to be expanded to include any member of the Libyan government who are determined to be complicit in Qaddafi’s brutality.

In a personal statement issued by the White House at the same time as the order, Obama referenced what he called the Libyan government’s continued violation of human rights, brutalization of its people, and outrageous threats.

“By any measure, Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government has violated international norms and common decency and must be held accountable,” the statement read. “We will stand steadfastly with the Libyan people in their demand for universal rights, and a government that is responsive to their aspirations. Their human dignity cannot be denied.”

Earlier Friday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that more punitive measures against the Qaddafi regime were on the way. “The steps we take in the near future are not the only steps we are prepared to take, if further steps are necessary,” Carney said.

Possible next steps include a no fly zone over Libya, as has been advocated by senators, Washington experts, and over 200 Arab organizations.

The last members of the U.S. embassy staff in Libya were evacuated Friday and the embassy building was shuttered, although the Obama administration still has not broken off relations with the Qaddafi regime or publicly called for Qaddafi to step down.

“The flag is still flying, the embassy is not closed, but operations are suspended,” said Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy. “We did not break diplomatic relations.”

There’s no word yet on how the sanctions will affect the $100 million investment by Al-Saadi Qaddafi, one of the sons, in a film company that’s producing a movie entitles “The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer,” with Mickey Rourke.

A Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that the top US Federal Judge for the State of Arizona was assassinated barely 72-hours after he made a critical ruling against the Obama administrations plan to begin the confiscation of their citizen’s private retirement and banking accounts in order to stave off their nations imminent economic collapse, and after having the US Marshals protecting him removed.

According to this SVR report, Federal Judge John McCarthy Roll [photo 2^nd left] was the Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Arizona who this past Friday issued what is called a “preliminary ruling” in a case titled “United States of America v. $333,520.00 in United States Currency et al”[Case Number: 4:2010cv00703 Filed: November 30, 2010] wherein he stated he was preparing to rule against Obama’s power to seize American citizens money without clear and convincing evidence of a crime being committed.

The case being ruled on by Judge Roll, this report continues, was about bulk cash smuggling into or out of the United States that the Obama administration claimed was their right to seize under what are called Presidential Executive Orders, instead of using existing laws.  The Obama administration used as support for their claim before Judge Roll, the SVR says, the seizing of all American citizens’ gold, in 1933, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 6102, which was ruled at the time to be constitutional.

Should the Obama administration win their argument to seize their citizen’s money by Executive Order without having to abide by the law was made more chilling this past week when reports emerged from the US stating that President Obama and his regime allies were, indeed, preparing to rule America by decree since their loss this past November of their control over the US House of Representatives, and in the words of the Washington Posts columnist Charles Krauthammer: “For an Obama bureaucrat … the will of the Congress is a mere speed bump.”

Since taking office in early 2009, Obama has completely overturned the once free United States through his use of Executive Orders that asserts his power to put anyone he wants in prison without charges or trial forever and his right to assassinate any American citizen he deems a threat.

The most chilling of these powers Obama has asserted for himself, however, are contained in Executive Order 13528 he signed nearly a year ago (January 10, 2010) creating a Council of  Governors he has hand-picked to rule over the United States in place of its elected representatives when their next “disaster” strikes and orders them to begin “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

Going from the chilling to the outright scary, about whatever “disaster” the American regime is preparing their people for, is Obama’s Homeland Security Department, through their Ready.Gov organization, beginning to air this past week a public service television commercial titled “World Upside Down” that shows a typical family sitting in their home suddenly losing all of its gravity and warning all who watch it to begin preparing.

Note: In our previous reports US Descends Into Total Police State As 2012 ‘Solar Chaos’ Fears Grow, Pole Shift Blamed For Russian Air Disaster, Closure Of US Airport and Poisonous Space Clouds Slamming Into Earth Cause Mass Bird And Fish Deaths we had detailed some of fears the US government are most worried about, but which they still will not be truthful to their citizens about.

Interesting to note about the assassination of Judge Roll is that it is being blamed on a “lone gunman” said to be mentally unstable (aren’t they all) said directed at a US Congresswoman named Gabrielle Giffords [photo 3^rd left], who survived this mass killing, and that killed at least 5 other innocent people, including a 9-year-old girl named Christina Taylor Green “curiously” born on September 11, 2001 (9/11).

Equally interesting to note about the assassin, a 22-year-old man named Jared Loughner, is that he is being described by the propaganda media organs in the US as an “anti-government” type individual who prior to this mass killing is said to have left “crazed rantings” on the Internet, but whose “handler”, described as a white male between 40-50 years old with dark hair, is still being sought after.

The circumstances surrounding Judge Roll’s assassination by Loughner, also, mirror those of Farouk Abdulmutallab (aka The Underwear Bomber) who “used cash to buy a one-way ticket to the United States at the last minute while carrying no luggage and being on a terrorist watch list. Incredibly, his father had communicated to the US Embassy in Nigeria in November that Abdulmutallab had been radicalized and may be planning a terrorist attack.

At least one witness—passenger Kurt Haskell—claimed that a well-dressed Indian man had escorted Abdulmutallab to the ticket counter and told a ticket agent that Abdulmutallab didn’t have a passport but needed to get on the plane.”

To if this Loughner is able to join the long list of CIA/US Military “mind controlled” assassins there appears to be no doubt as his actions, past, present and future, shows his fitting the “profile” of these maniacs as detailed in the massive lawsuit currently wending its way through the US Federal Court system [United States District Court Northern District Of California, San Francisco Division Case: CV-09-0037] filed against the US government by hundreds of veterans, and as we can read as reported by the Raw Story news service:

“It’s well known that the CIA began testing substances like LSD on soldiers beginning in the 1950s but less is known about allegations that the agency implanted electrodes in subjects. A 2009 lawsuit claimed that the CIA intended to design and test septal electrodes that would enable them to control human behavior. The lawsuit said that because the government never disclosed the risks, the subjects were not able to give informed consent.”

To if the American people will ever be told the truth about Loughner and his assassination of Judge Roll there seems little doubt as the Obama regime is fighting with everything it has to keep the information on these “mind controlled” assassins secret, and as we can read as reported by the Courthouse News service:

“The Central Intelligence Agency in January (2011) will argue for dismissal of Vietnam veterans’ claims that the CIA must provide them with information about the health effects of chemicals used on them during Cold War-era human experiments. The CIA also claims it is not obligated to provide the veterans with medical care for side effects of the drugs. It’s the CIA’s third attempt to get the case dismissed.

“In a 2009 federal lawsuit, Vietnam Veterans of America claimed that the Army and CIA had used at least 7,800 soldiers as guinea pigs in “Project Paperclip.” They were given at least 250 and as many as 400 types of drugs, among them sarin, one of the most deadly drugs known to man, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas, phosgene gas and LSD.

Among the project’s goals were to control human behavior, develop drugs that would cause confusion, promote weakness or temporarily cause loss of hearing or vision, create a drug to induce hypnosis and identify drugs that could enhance a person’s ability to withstand torture.

The veterans say that some of the soldiers died, and others suffered grand mal seizures, epileptic seizures and paranoia. The veterans say the CIA promised in the 1970s to compensate those who were made guinea pigs, but the 2009 complaint states that the government “never made a sincere effort to locate the survivors.”

In its 32-page motion to dismiss the group’s third amended complaint, the CIA claims it has no legal obligation under the Administrative Procedures Act to provide the veterans with notice of the drugs’ health effects and that the veterans’ notice claim “rests solely on state common-law duty.”

The CIA claims that the law on which the veterans base their claim for health care compensation stems from the Department of Defense and Army regulations, “which do not purport to have a binding affect on the CIA.” And it claims that the Defense Department “never intended nor committed to providing medical care for service member participants in the test programs.”

Based upon the CIA’s assertion that the US Defense Department “never intended nor committed to providing medical care for service member participants in the test programs” clearly shows their knowing of the existence of these “mind control” assassins, like Loughner, leading one to wonder how many more of them are out there, and even worse, when they will strike next.

One can only hope that there is some “power” in America today able to stop the madness currently taking over that once great nation before all is truly lost, we hope it is much sooner than later for all of the worlds sake.

© January 9, 2011 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

Executive Order Seeks to “Synchronize and Integrate”

by Tom Burghardt. Global Research.

In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year’s Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11.

Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an “advisory panel” chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a “national emergency.”

According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created “to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards.”

“When appointed” the announcement continues, “the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

Clearly designed to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which bars the use of the military for civilian law enforcement, EO 13528 is the latest in a series of maneuvers by previous administrations to wrest control of armed forces historically under the democratic control of elected state officials, and a modicum of public accountability.

One consequence of moves to “synchronize and integrate” state National Guard units with those of the Armed Forces would be to place them under the effective control of United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), created in 2002 by Bushist legislators in both capitalist parties under the pretext of imperialism’s endless “War on Terror.” At the time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called USNORTHCOM’s launch “the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946.”

The real-world consequences of those changes weren’t long in coming.

Following their criminal inaction during 2005′s Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, the Bush regime sought, but failed, to seize control of depleted Gulf Coast National Guard units, the bulk of which had been sent to Iraq along with equipment that might have aided the recovery. Bush demanded that then Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco sign over control of the Guard as well as state and local police units as the blood price for federal assistance.

At the height of the crisis, Bush cited presidential prerogatives for doing so under the Insurrection Act, a repressive statute which authorizes the President to federalize National Guard units when state governments fail to “suppress rebellion.” How the plight of citizens engulfed by Katrina’s flood waters could be twisted into an act of “rebellion” was achieved when Orwellian spin doctors, aided and abetted by a compliant media, invented a new criminal category to cover traumatized New Orleans residents: “Drowning while Black.”

Fast forward five years. Given the serious implications such proposals would have for a functioning democracy, the media’s deafening silence on Obama’s Executive Order is hardly surprising. Like their role as cheerleaders in the escalating wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, media self-censorship tell us much about the state of affairs in “new normal” America.

Like his predecessors in the Oval Office, stretching back to the 1960s with Pentagon “civil disturbance” plans such as Cable Splicer and Garden Plot, both of which are continuously updated, our “change” President will forge ahead and invest the permanent National Security bureaucracy with unprecedented power.

Under color of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, an unsavory piece of Bushist legislative detritus, “The President shall establish a bipartisan Council of Governors to advise the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House Homeland Security Council on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions.”

The toothless Council, whose Executive Director will be designated by the Secretary of Defense no less, “shall meet at the call of the Secretary of Defense or the Co-Chairs of the Council.”

Will such a Council have veto power over administration deliberations? Hardly. They are relegated “to exchange views, information, or advice with the Secretary of Defense; the Secretary of Homeland Security” and “the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.”

Additional entities covered by the EO with whom the Governors Council will “exchange views” include, “the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement; the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs; the Commander, United States Northern Command; the Chief, National Guard Bureau; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; and other appropriate officials of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and appropriate officials of other executive departments or agencies as may be designated by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

In other words, right from the get-go, the Council will serve as civilian cover for political decisions made by the Executive Branch and the security apparat. EO 13528 continues, “Such views, information, or advice shall concern: (a) matters involving the National Guard of the various States; (b) homeland defense; (c) civil support; (d) synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and (e) other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

When news first broke last summer of Obama’s proposal to expand the military’s authority to respond to domestic disasters, it was opposed by the National Governors Association (NGA).

Congressional Quarterly reported that a letter sent on behalf of the NGA opposed creation of the Council on grounds that it “would invite confusion on critical command and control issues, complicate interagency planning, establish stove-piped response efforts, and interfere with governors’ constitutional responsibilities to ensure the safety and security of their citizens,” Govs. Jim Douglas, R-Vt., and Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., wrote.

According to their August letter to Paul N. Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, Douglas and Manchin III argued that “without assigning a governor tactical control” of military forces during a natural disaster such as a flood or earthquake, or an unnatural disaster such as a terrorist attack or other mass casualty event, the “strong potential exists for confusion in mission, execution and the dilution of governors’ control over situations with which they are more familiar and better capable of handling than a federal military commander.”

With slim prospects of congressional authorization for the scheme, in fact the 2008 language was removed from subsequent Defense spending legislation, other means were required. Playing bureaucratic hardball with the governors, this has now been accomplished by presidential fiat, further eroding clear constitutional limits on Executive Branch power.

These maneuvers as I have previously written, have very little to do with responding to a catastrophic emergency. Indeed, EO 13528 is only the latest iteration of plans to expand the National Security State’s writ and as such, have everything to do with decades-old Continuity of Government (COG) programs kept secret from Congress and the American people.

Derided by neocons, neoliberals and other corporatists as a quaint backwater for “conspiracy theorists” railing against “FEMA concentration camps,” Continuity of Government, and the nexus of “civil support” programs that have proliferated like noxious weeds are no laughing matter.

Indeed, even members of Congress are considered “unauthorized parties” denied access “to information on COG plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities,” according to a Pentagon document published by the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks, as are the classified annexes of National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (NSPD 51/HSPD 20). In a new twist on administration promises of transparency and open government, even the redacted version of these documents have been removed from the White House web site.

As Antifascist Calling previously reported (see: “Vigilant Shield 09: A Cover for Illegal Domestic Operations?“), the Congressional Research Service issued a 46-page report in 2008 that provided details on the COG-related National Exercise Program, a “civil support” operation that war games various disaster scenarios.

Among other things, the document outlines the serious domestic implications of military participation in national emergency preparedness drills. CRS researchers pointed to the Reagan-era Executive Order 12656 (EO 12656) that “directs FEMA to coordinate the planning, conduct, and evaluation of national security emergency exercises.” EO 12656 defines a national security emergency as “as any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.”

Such programs, greatly expanded by the Bush-era Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 (HSPD-8), also removed from the White House web site, established “a national program and a multi-year planning system to conduct homeland security preparedness-related exercises.” CRS avers, “The program is to be carried out in collaboration with state and local governments and private sector entities.”

The Defense Department’s role during such emergencies were intended to focus “principally on domestic incident management, either for terrorism or non terrorist catastrophic events.” DoD would play a “significant role” in the overall response. Such murky definitions cover a lot of ground and are ripe with a potential for abuse by unscrupulous securocrats and their corporate partners.

The primary DoD entity responsible for “civil support,” a focus of Obama’s EO is USNORTHCOM and its active combat component, U.S. Army North. However, as with almost everything relating to COG and current plans under EO 13528 that propose to “synchronize and integrate State and Federal military activities,” USNORTHCOM’s role is shrouded in secrecy.

As researcher Peter Dale Scott revealed in 2008, when Congressman Peter DeFazio, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Carney sought access to classified COG annexes, their request was denied by the White House. Scott wrote: “DeFazio’s inability to get access to the NSPD Annexes is less than reassuring. If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.”

One hammer blow followed another. In 2008, Army Times reported, that the “3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team [BCT] has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they’re training for the same mission–with a twist–at home.”

Analyst Michel Chossudovsky commented, “What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a ‘war theater’ thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.” According to Chossudovsky, “The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.”

“It is noteworthy, the World Socialist Web Site commented, “that the deployment of US combat troops ‘as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters’ … coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

“Justified as a response to terrorist threats,” socialist critic Bill Van Auken averred, “the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America’s borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability.”

Since USNORTHCOM’s deployment of a combat brigade on U.S. soil, the capitalist crisis has deepened and intensified. With unemployment at a post-war high and the perilous economic and social conditions of the working class growing grimmer by the day, EO 13258 is a practical demonstration of ruling class consensus when it comes to undermining the democratic rights of the American people.

After all, where the defense of wealth and privileges are concerned corporate thugs and war criminals have no friends, only interests…

President Obama may have preached change, but the reality on the ground is rather different. Following in Bush’s footsteps, the Obama administration is modifying laws as it pleases.

From WSWS: Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions

The Obama administration is drafting an executive order that would give the US president the power to arrest without charge, and imprison indefinitely without trial, foreign nationals it accuses of being terrorists, according to several senior government officials who spoke with the Washington Post and a reporter for non-profit news source ProPublica on condition of anonymity.

The order, should it be released, would likely reuse arguments made by the previous administration of George W. Bush that the laws of war allow the executive branch to disregard the established judicial system and domestic laws and rights, such as those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

Behind Obama’s turn toward indefinite detention is the quandary he faces over the prison camp at the US military naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Shortly after entering office in late January, Obama issued an executive order-to great media fanfare-calling for the closure of the Guantánamo prison by January 2010. But the debate that has ensued in Washington, while nominally focused on what to do with the remaining Guantánamo inmates, has developed into a discussion of the broader anti-democratic methods of the “war on terror.”

The Obama administration hopes an executive order will resolve the legal fate of the 229 remaining Guantánamo prisoners-as well as future prisoners in the “war on terror”-by allowing the president to incarcerate them indefinitely, likely at military installations in the US.

From The Examiner:

President Barack Obama is actively considering issuing an executive order authorizing the continued, indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, without trial, according to the Washington Post and Pro Publica. The news is widely being treated as a shocking about-face for a president who has criticized his predecessor’s harsh tactics in dealing with alleged terrorists. But for anybody paying attention, this is just one more step along a path the president has has already traveled, with indefinite detention hinted at in a May speech and even championed by the Obama administration in legal papers filed in March.

According to the Washington Post report: Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.