Obama’s National Emergency Powers

As financial markets struggle with repeated failures by our central planners in ‘managing’ the crisis in the Eurozone, a recent statement by President Barack Obama is worth highlighting.  On September 13, 2011, in a speech addressing criticism of his jobs plan, Obama stated in part:

“I get fed up with that kind of game plan, and we’ve been seen it for too long.  Too long.  We’re in a national emergency.� 

Granted, this has been the worst recession, and worst jobs recovery from a recession, since the Great Depression.  But a national emergency?  Are we talking nuclear attacks, poison in the water supply, or a new and unstoppable infectious disease?

What is a ‘national emergency,’ anyway?  Might those words carry legal meaning?

In fact, they do, and speaking of the Great Depression and financial markets, well, history matters.

When Obama was giving his speech back in early September, the flare-up in the crisis in the Eurozone was just getting started.   Stock prices for large financial services firms in the US exposed to their counterparts in Europe were falling anew, while the CBOE “VIX� index (a volatility index, also called the ‘market fear index’) was spiking sharply higher.   Money market funds in the US were also exposed, with European investments comprising a surprisingly large share of their assets. 

Was this financial backdrop one component of Obama’s ‘national emergency?’  Correlation is not necessarily causation, the saying goes in econometrics.  In other words, it could have just been a coincidence.

But it is worth recognizing as well the tinderbox underneath that phase.  There is a very important area of constitutional law called ‘national emergency powers.’  The area deals with assertions of extraordinary Presidential and executive branch authority during a crisis, including any formally declared state of national emergency or a ‘time of war.’  Read more È

Now it is confirmed and official: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirms that it intends to develop guidelines for how officials go about collecting intelligence from the sites. Yes. The Department of Homeland Security is not going to take a second seat to the FBI or NSA. It is flexing its muscles. It is stomping its feet, and it is determined to get its way. It is all set and ready to create its own policies and operations for monitoring social network media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook:

Caryn Wagner, undersecretary of the DHS, told an audience Monday at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense in Colorado Springs that the agency began to draw up guidelines for monitoring social networking sites after the sites were heavily used during government uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa this year.

According to an Associated Press report Tuesday, federal agents are still mulling over how to best pull intelligence from social media sites and determine whether it is valid or Web chatter.”We’re still trying to figure out how you use things like Twitter as a source,” said Wagner, according to the AP report. “How do you establish trends and how do you then capture that in an intelligence product?”

…

Oh, let’s add this idiotic comment by Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group as well:

“Some users might be disturbed, but what would they expect?” Olds asked. “The info they post online is essentially in the public domain in most cases and it’s easy to understand why the government would look for any edge they can find vs. terrorists.”

…

Please, someone contact this ‘yoyo’ and ask him: Since when does the government distinguish between public domain, private and those that fall in the middle? Is he high on something? Or maybe shows signs of an onset of dementia? Hello? Read more È

‘Two’:I am reading the new sensational headlines on Honduras’ now internationally recognized status as the Western Hemisphere’s major Cocaine Hub:

Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.”Honduras is the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the U.S.,” said a U.S. law enforcement official who could not be quoted by name for security reasons. A U.S. State Department report released in March called Honduras “one of the primary landing points for South American cocaine.”

Almost half of the cocaine that reaches the United States is now offloaded somewhere along the country’s coast and heavily forested interior — a total of 20 to 25 tons each month, according to U.S. and Honduran estimates.

Here is a brief video clip for a general idea of Honduras’ now recognized Narco State Status:

 
‘Another Two’: Remember the illegal military coup in June 2009? I am talking about the one our President vehemently and actively supported while recognizing it as illegitimate and unconstitutional? Our president not only continued financial aid and support to the illegitimate new government of Honduras, but actually increased it, and continues to increase it. This, despite of a whole host of human rights violations, such the killing of more than 3000 people including journalists, lawyers and activists by the US supported illegitimate government.

‘Next Two’: Have you read the Nation magazine’s recently uncovered close relationship between the corporate drug lords and private paramilitaries and the Obama administration?  Wealthy landowners with ties to the cocaine trade, like Miguel Facussé, who actively supported the 2009 military coup, and who has met with the State Department numerous times, and met with Obama in Washington DC in the first week of October. How about that, huh? And the results?

Obama has allocated $45 million in new funds for military construction, including expansion and improvement of the jointly operated Soto Cano Air Force Base at Palmerola (supplied now with US drones) and has opened three new military bases, Police and military funding, almost $10 million for 2011, rose dramatically in June with $40 million more under the new $200 million Central American Regional Security Initiative, supposedly to combat drug trafficking in Central America.

“More Two’s�: With Honduras’ ascending status in the drug trade and associated violence and corruption, why has the Obama administration been vehemently supporting the illegitimate and criminal Honduran regime and its top-tier drug lords? Huh, doesn’t this sound very familiar? Think about Afghanistan’s drug lords and operators. I’m talking about the pawn government we have planted there. You know, the Karzai Heroin Clan?

You may also throw in the following ‘two’ provided to you by Boiling Frogs EyeOpener Video Report with James Corbett: Morbid Addiction: CIA & the Drug Trade

Okay. Now, shall we go ahead and add the two and two and two and two …What does it add up to? You tell me.

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What if this Halloween was exported to other parts of the world where horror and atrocities are woven into the people’s lives? What if this ritual was adopted by the children of the war-torn nations? What if these children who’ve been seeing, hearing and experiencing daily horrors and fear were to concoct their own Halloween characters? Would they solely rely on imaginary and made-up monsters and boogiemen, or would they designate real-life boogiemen as their Halloween characters and symbols?

I think the children of war-torn countries with mighty oil, or the kids in the nations on the mighty oil path, would not have to resort to a concocted, fictional and generic boogieman. You see, they have known, seen or heard of a real one. Their boogieman would have a name and a face. He’d be known for his ritualistic map combing, where he’d bend over a map, run his fingers over the page while humming:

 Eeny, meeny, mighty oil

Get that country by sheer force

If it fights back, fry by drone

Eeny, meeny, mighty oil

He’d keep humming until his finger, remotely controlled by the shadowy powers behind him, would come to a halt, on top of a nation- the chosen one for his coming round. If you happen to be one of the children in that nation …well, then may God help you; because no one else can.

The Boogieman with a name and a face would be coming after you with his man-less extension.

He’d be frying babies and mothers without having to hear the sound of their sizzling skin.

His man-less driven bombs would be hitting unknowing children at dinner tables or in bed.

Why man-less? Well, because it would take a certain type of man, a rare kind, to do it in person, to be able to stand the sound of those sizzling skins or the screams of the frying mother and her child, and keep doing it. But man-less is how it is done when a boogieman and a ruthless coward become one. And this kind of a coward boogieman with a face and a name is far scarier than any boogieman that can be concocted by any fiction. Just ask the children of the chosen Eeny- meeny- mighty oil nations. They’d tell you.

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Has it ever occurred to you that there seems to be no positive actions or accomplishments associated with this rogue-criminal agency? Really, think of one positive accomplishment or contribution by this well-funded and legitimized terrorist entity? We all know of the need and longing for praise and gloating when it comes to government agencies and bureaucrats. You would think that for every awful and scandalous incident that is leaked there would be several glorified and flowery ones. No? Come on; it’s human nature, and even more so, an inherently present government bureaucracy pattern.

I kept thinking, and thinking more, and tried hard to come up with one positive attribute of this rogue agency called the CIA. And I found one. Kind of. I think it is more appropriate to consider it an ‘unintended positive externality’ rather than a plain and straight forward positive. Well, here it is:

Let me start with a general concept as a framework. Are you familiar with the general concept of Penal Colonies? If not, here is a very general, macro definition: A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. I am going to use penal colonies just as a general concept since these colonies were designed and implemented for a wide range of purposes targeting an even wider range of people or groups as the colonies inhabitants, the prisoners.

Next, I want to briefly talk about the list of ‘desired qualifications’ for the CIA operative selection process. A few years ago one of my former CIA operative sources made the following comment: Read more È