IAHF Webmaster: Breaking News, Whats New, What to Do, Codex Emergency
IAHF List: Please read the Reuters article below my comments about how a Federal Appeals court just obliterated Habeas Corpus, Due Process, and the Presumption of Innocense in the ruling they just made which allows Bush to detain Jose Padilla as an alleged "terrorist" WITHOUT A TRIAL.
This, and the way the Feds have been taking guns from lawful gun owners in New Orleans scares me folks, and I'm going to tell you why:
In '97 I had an FBI visit due to an email I sent to the HQ of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in Rome, Italy. In this email, I expressed the opinion that if the German Codex proposal were ever shoved down the throats of the American people, that blood would probably flow in the streets.
The FBI agent who visited me told me that he could "run me in" for stating this opinion, and that I had violated "Title 18" by making "Illegal threats." I told him that all I'd done was express an opinion, that my statement was protected speech under the first amendment, that I don't WANT to see a bloody revolution occur over the codex vitamin issue, but that I think one COULD unless congress reins in the FDA which is clearly attempting to set us up for a genocidal policy.
Recently I've come under fire from some voicers on the IAHF list who have characterized me as a "liberal" and as a "democrat" for questioning things such as the courts suspension of Habeas Corpus, Due Process, the Presumption of Innocense, and the Neocons Agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm not a "liberal". I'm just a person who cares about LIBERTY and FREEDOM, and I don't like TREASON when I see it going down right in front of my eyes.
In '92 I was hired by a vitamin company in Utah to assist a Republican congressional candidate named Mark Robbins to challenge Democratic incumbent Henry Waxman who has always been a staunch ally of the FDA and the drug companies. The main plank of our platform was health freedom. We weren't given a chance against this deeply entrenched incumbent, but we did knock his winning percentage down to the lowest of his career and that forced him to cosponsor DSHEA 2 years later even though he was its biggest opponent in congress.
Some who've read my recent attacks on Bush assume wrongly that BY DEFAULT I "must be" a supporter of Hilary Clinton's (for example), but nothing could be further from the truth. She wants to repeal DSHEA as evidenced by her current cosponsoring of S.729 (THE SAFE FOOD ACT) http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00729:@@@P which would gut DSHEA by creating a new Federal Food Agency that would regulate foods like drugs.
I am neither a Republican or a Democrat. The only political party I've ever belonged to is the Libertarians. I stand with Congressman Ron Paul and the 8 other Republicans who opose the Iraq War and wish to bring the troops home holding the view that we got into this war under false pretenses http://www.reopen911.org, that the Neocons are actually COLLECTIVISTS and followers of Leon Trotsky, the murderous founder of the Red Army.
I am a member of Freedom Force International http://www.freedomforceinternational.org which was founded by G.Edward Griffin, author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island- Secrets of the Federal Reserve" and he's HARDLY a "liberal".
With the suspension of Habeas Corpus, I have to wonder how long it will be before those who oppose the FDA's tyranny as I have been since 1989 also become political prisoners as Jose Padilla is? Given that FBI visit I had in '97 for merely expressing an opinion that is supposedly protected speech under the first amendment, this is not such a far fetched question and is hardly a "groundless" concern.
Paul Roberts asserts here http://antiwar.com/roberts/ that America Has Fallen to a Jacobin Coup.
Based on his article, my own experience in this movement, and on the suspension of Habeas Corpus documented in the Reuters article below, I'd say he's correct. Please forward this widely to help wake more people up before we see our country be completely destroyed and forced into a hemispheric version of the EU Dictatorship via the FTAA, because thats what our would be rulers are trying to do, and this is how they're trying to force CODEX upon us.
Please donate to IAHF and buy the DVD "We Become Silent". I'm selling it plus the one hour audio tape of the talk I gave in July at the PANLA conference for $30. inc shipping. Your donations will assist us in doing more public speaking such as the talk I did last week at Tunies Health Food Store in Florida. We must awaken more people rapidly or we won't stop FTAA or Codex. We're seeing ALL of our most cherished freedoms being destroyed before our eyes under the guise of "protecting us" from "terrorism." See the address for IAHF at the end of this email.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_1903.shtml
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10210.htm
Court upholds detention without trial for U.S. Citizens
By Reuters
09/09/05 --WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court ruled on
Friday that U.S. President George W. Bush has the power to detain
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held for more than three
years as a suspected enemy combatant without any charges being
brought against him.
"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the
president of the United States possesses the authority to detain
militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with
al Qaeda," appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote for the three-
judge panel.
"We conclude that the president does possess such authority," said
Luttig, a conservative who has been under consideration by the Bush
administration for a possible Supreme Court nomination.
Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam,
initially was suspected by U.S. officials of plotting with al Qaeda
to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.
On May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare
International Airport after returning from Pakistan. Bush then
declared him an enemy combatant, and Padilla has been held in
solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina.
The appeals court reversed a decision by a federal judge in South
Carolina who ruled in February that Bush has no authority to have
Padilla held as an enemy combatant. The judge said Padilla must be
released if he is not charged with a crime.
Note : The decision by a three-judge panel was written by Judge J.
Michael Luttig, who sources have said is under consideration by
President Bush for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
© Reuters 2005.
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Another view on the same concept:
Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty
"The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of
separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at
the will of theExecutive." Judge Antonin Scalia
By Mike Whitney
09/10/05 "ICH" -- -- I had to sit down when I heard the Padilla case
had been settled. I literally felt sick to my stomach, like I was
gasping for air. The case of Jose Padilla is quite simply the most
important case in the history of the American judicial system.
Hanging in the balance are all the fundamental principles of
American jurisprudence including habeas corpus, due process and "the
presumption of innocence". All of those basic concepts were
summarily revoked by the 3 judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court.
The Court ruled in favor of the Bush administration which claimed that
it had the right to indefinitely imprison an American citizen
without charging him with a crime.
The resulting verdict confers
absolute authority on the President to incarcerate American citizens
without charge and without any legal means for the accused to
challenge the terms of his detention. It is the end of "inalienable
rights", the end of The Bill of Rights, and the end of any
meaningful notion of personal liberty.
I remember reading 3 or 4 years ago, in Zbigniew Brzezinski's, "The
Grand Chessboard", of a strategy to dominate the world that would
result in the loss of freedom for American citizens. Brzezinski
recognized the inherent threat that liberty posed to the development
of empire. He stated:
"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be
autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power,
especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has
a populist democracy attained international supremacy.
But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except
in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense
of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense
spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among
professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to
democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial
mobilization." (p.35)
Brzezinski's prescient forecast has proved to be astonishingly
accurate. The determination of the neocons, the Federalist Society,
the far-right radio giants, the Olin, Scaife, Coors and Bradley
foundations, and the entire stable of right-wing, quasi-fascist
groups that operate openly within American society, have pounded the
final wooden stake into the heart of the personal freedom. The basic
legal protections that safeguard the citizen from the arbitrary and
hostile action of the state have been rescinded. We all stand naked
before the absolute power of the President.
The government has no case against Jose Padilla, a hapless Chicago
gang-banger who allegedly visited Pakistan before he was arrested at
O'Hare airport 3 and a half years ago. He is simply an unwitting
victim of circumstance; a convenient scapegoat for eviscerating the
rule of law. The Bush administration has used its extraordinary
influence in the media to demagogue the case and keep him locked-
away without producing one shred of evidence against him. The entire
affair has been a grotesque mockery of justice. The hard-right
groups that engineered this plot know exactly where the fault-lines
in American jurisprudence lie; in the inalienable protections of its
citizens.
Padilla became the test-case for shattering the Bill of Rights with
one withering blow. It has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest
expectation.
There's no chance that the Supreme Court will retry the case and
draw more attention to the shocking details of this judicial-coup;
they already punted once before preferring to pass it along to the
lower court. Rather, the meaning of the case will be ignored until
the president needs to exercise the newly-bestowed powers of supreme
leader. That authority is now firmly rooted in the legal precedent
established by the Padilla ruling.
No Longer the Land of the Free
Americans seem unaware of the great loss we've all suffered by the
Padilla verdict. If the President is allowed to arbitrarily decide
who has "inalienable rights", than those rights become the
provisional gifts of the government rather than a reliable shield
against the abuse of state power. It means that every American
citizen is as vulnerable to the same violation of human rights as
the men currently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. It also means that
the legal wall that shelters the citizen from the random violence of
the political establishment has been reduced to rubble.
The Padilla ruling is the blackest day in American history. The
icons of American liberty; the Washington Monument, the Lincoln
Memorial, the Statue of Liberty; are empty shrines if they are not
underscored by the guarantee of freedom. The Vietnam Memorial, the
Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the 4th of July, the
Federalist Papers, and the American flag; all gratuitous expressions
of a principle that has vanished from the political landscape.
Every man and woman who ever wore an American uniform and died in
the service of their country, died in vain. Their sacrifice has been
rendered completely worthless by the action of the 4th Circuit
Court.
George Bush has now extinguished every meaningful part of the
American dream. The last vestige of the social contract has been
defiled and desecrated by the administration and their court.
Personal freedom is dead in America; it was impaled by the verdict
against Jose Padilla. How many thousands or, perhaps, millions of
Americans will die or endure incalculable suffering to regain what
we have lost on this tragic day?
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney@msn.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10223.htm
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am6
Amendment VI - Right to speedy trial, confrontation of witnesses.
Ratified 12/15/1791.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district
shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of
the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the
witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining
witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for
his defence.
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec9
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Attainder
attainder n. The loss of all civil rights by a person sentenced for
a serious crime. [< OFr. attaindre, to convict] Source: AHD
In the context of the Constitution, a Bill of Attainder is meant to
mean a bill that has an negative effect on a single person or group
(for example, a fine or term of imprisonment). Originally, a Bill of
Attainder sentenced an individual to death, though this detail is no
longer required to have an enactment be ruled a Bill of Attainder.
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