George Bush can now take all your property and assets....

The President of the United States today just made a new Executive order, allowing the government to hold, freeze, and take all property and financial assets of any group, individual, or company whom they feel are undermining the reconstruction efforts of Iraq.

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

... all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq ...


"threatening the peace or stability of Iraq."

So, if somebody protested, didn't Our president say that strengthens the resolve of our enemies, therefore threatens the peace of Iraq?

Thought crimes abound, your no longer to use your first amendment rights freely, because you'll never know if they decide to freeze all your assets.

I think its time for me to buy a gun and some ammunition.

Just like COMMUNISM

How do you like him now????

Havent i been saying this till i'm blue in the face and nobody beleives me?

Ladies and Gentlemen, i give you....COMMUNISM

Some people are just a little bit to excitable. On any given day, there are at least 10 really screwed up things about the Bush administration to talk about, so why conjure up an 11th out of pure sensationalism?

This order is designed to block transactions which could be used to materially support operations against the Iraqi government, persuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Familiarize yourself with the law before you assume the worst.

IEEPA only allows the president to prevent currency exchanges and financial dealings with foreign entities pending investigation when it comes to American citizens. Only the holdings of foreign entities are subject to seizure (Section 1702 a 1).

This executive order does exactly nothing if all you do is protest. On the other hand, if you become financially involved with any organization or individual currently classified as a terrorist, you will have to turn over your financial records for investigation and you will be prevented from making any overseas transactions until the investigation is complete. Even then, if you are an American, they can't take anything from you unless they can tie those assetts to a crime.


There have been unrelated violations. They've gone after people who were covered by the exceptions in Section 1702 b 4 in the past, but as far as I know ended up getting them on 6 other charges, but not the charge that was proscribed by the afforementioned portion of the law. They have also taken actions against distrubtors of Al Manar (Hizbollah news service) with dubious adherence to the 1st amendment and IEEPA exceptions.
That, however, was under a separate invocation of IEEPA, and still has little if any bearing on your run of the mill protester. On this one, it's wait and see.

Ahhh yes, but.......

The Democrats and others who resist, fight, or argue against the 'reconstruction of Iraq' as it presently 'exists', are regularly called 'traitors' and accused of 'giving aid and comfort' to the terrorists, insurgents, or al-qaeda.....(this occurring even on the floor in congress, by other congressmen, and shown on the nightly news........not to mention talk radio.

How long before they are seen to fall under the purview of this order??

And then those of us who support them??

To The Vagabond,

But does Bush and his company really follow anyone elses order? Cheney even stated he's not part of the executive branch! They make it up as they go along.

Don't be surprised when we become a communist nation. We've been slowly heading there for almost 100 years (Federal Reserve ring a bell?). The Soviets jumped to communism to fast, so the 'powers that be' are doing it slower with the EU, and then much slower with the NAU (North American Union). They're just testing the water. But eventually, the NWO will take over.

[edit on 7/21/2007 by Arcane Demesne]

Originally posted by frayed1
Ahhh yes, but.......

The Democrats and others who resist, fight, or argue against the 'reconstruction of Iraq' as it presently 'exists', are regularly called 'traitors' and accused of 'giving aid and comfort' to the terrorists,

IEEPA doesn't cover "aid and comfort". It covers financial transactions. Unless the democrats give aid and comfort and money to terrorists, nothing can happen from this order. And even then all that can happen is that the transaction will be stopped pending investigation.

How long before they are seen to fall under the purview of this order??

And then those of us who support them??

How long? The answer is, "however long it would take for a Democrat congress to ammend IEEPA to allow that". In other words, when In and Out changes their burger of the month, when candy corn and fruitcake come back into style, when you finally get an email for something that really can make your love life better, when my little brother sobers up- in other words, when hell freezes.

Arcane Demesne

This has nothing to do with the EU, the NAU, etc. Yes, they are making it up as they go along and it makes no sense at all. Point being?

We're talking about whether or not this executive order heralds a totalitarian regime in America. If Bush is gonna do that he's got about a year and a half to make it happen.

That's hardly subtle. Bush can sign any executive order he wants, Cheney can proclaim himself to be part of the Super Galactic Uber Decider Branch of Government if he wants (I doubt any of us would put it past him either). But all of that means spit if nobody obeys.

Words don't make it so, men with guns make it so. Will the men with the guns fall in line and follow orders if Bush tells them to start seizing the property of his political opponents? He'd never pull that off on such a truncated time table.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Just like COMMUNISM

How do you like him now????

Havent i been saying this till i'm blue in the face and nobody beleives me?

Ladies and Gentlemen, i give you....COMMUNISM

Ermmm...nope. Communism is nothing like as bad as this At least you had a guaranteed job and a university education paid for by the state for giving up all your freedoms under communism. You guy's don't even get that!

J.

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Arcane Demesne

This has nothing to do with the EU, the NAU, etc. Yes, they are making it up as they go along and it makes no sense at all. Point being?

We're talking about whether or not this executive order heralds a totalitarian regime in America. If Bush is gonna do that he's got about a year and a half to make it happen.

That's hardly subtle. Bush can sign any executive order he wants, Cheney can proclaim himself to be part of the Super Galactic Uber Decider Branch of Government if he wants (I doubt any of us would put it past him either). But all of that means spit if nobody obeys.

Words don't make it so, men with guns make it so. Will the men with the guns fall in line and follow orders if Bush tells them to start seizing the property of his political opponents? He'd never pull that off on such a truncated time table.

There is ONE assumtion you are making here though - the assumption that Bush & his crew will be leaving the White House in a year and a half. In a totalitarian state, you don't HAVE TO leave Two fixed elections later - it wouldn't suprise me at all if Dick & Bush stick around for another 8 years...'for the good of the country' of course, you understand...

J.

That doesn't work Jimbo. Bush constitutionally has to be gone in about a year and a half, therefore he has that long to defeat the constitution. If he fails he doesn't get any more time. If he succeeds he doesn't need any more time.

He can't do it subtly. The only way he'd ever pull it off is to stage a nuclear terrorist attack on D.C. that did not leave a congressional quorum alive and killed the president elect.

At that point legally the states would be able to replace their representatives, and once a quorum was reestablished in congress they would have the right to select an interim president. Bush would have to stop this. Some states might go for it, but I think others would do the right thing: which is call up their national guards and dare Bush to stop them from putting congress back together.

The best Bush could likely do is get himself an extra six months, followed by a civil war.

Originally posted by The Vagabond


IEEPA doesn't cover "aid and comfort". It covers financial transactions. Unless the democrats give aid and comfort and money to terrorists, nothing can happen from this order. .......

The order itself reads, in part ( I added the bolding for emphasis ):

...... any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

It then goes on to finally include.....

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial ....logistical, technical support for, or goods or services in support of .....any person whose property and interests are blocked in pursuant to this order.....

Text of full doc. here:
www.whitehouse.gov...

My 'legalese' is not terribly fluent, but to me this suggests it could well be interpreted to include more than just financial contributions......

Doesn't the protestors Embolden the enemy?

That means if you protest, your helping aid and drive the terrorists, who are using force to destabilize Iraq.


Oh, there goes all your assets.

For the people calling this communism, communism is where the people work for the land in support of the land and the land comes before everything else, its an ideology that actually works if led by the right people (which is never the case since there are always power hungry people finding themselves a way into the controlling bodies of these idealistic constructs of society).

With Bush & Co, they want the people to work for the good of Bush & Co, support of Bush & Co's illusions of grandeur, and Bush & Co's wants and needs come before anything and everyone else.

The only thing that counts for these people is themselves.

What you have in the US is the same as I stated what usually happens with communist nations, a group of power hungry monsters has taken control over an otherwise sound and solid idealistic construct of a society (aka a democratic union of states)

Originally posted by frayed1
The order itself reads, in part ( I added the bolding for emphasis ):

The order itself reads, in part ( I added the bolding for emphasis):

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA)

.

Amidst the legalese you find standard language like this explaining what gives him the right, and carrying with it the implicit implication that he is not to claim rights not given to him. That should settle things, and that doesn't then a judge will.

As for the subsections you quoted, with the exception of violence they all deal with supply. None of that even remotely sounds like protesting. It all talks about providing goods, technical support for the transfer of goods, etc etc.

I appreciate where people are coming from on this, so I don't think less of anyone who is wary, cause God knows not much can be considered beyond the ambition of this president, but this particular order is such specious grounding for any attempt to tyranize the average citizen that I don't worry about it. There are far more compelling legal arguments to be made in support of oppression. So why would he bring this petty stuff for any purpose but the expressed purpose?

Originally posted by The Vagabond
The best Bush could likely do is get himself an extra six months, followed by a civil war.

This might seem pessimistic, and odd...But I almost think I might want that to happen. It would not be fun, but it could possibly help restore our republic from whence it came. Or it could lead to MUCH worse things. I'm not even sure if this is America anymore...

[edit on 7/21/2007 by Arcane Demesne]

Where one would want to stand on that would be heavily dependent on his values. I'm a bit conflicted about it myself.


On one hand, if one is happy with the current economic regime (and won't mind seeing current trends continue and probably accelerate) then he should find the idea of a revolution fairly disagreeable. We've got a decent setup as far as most things are concerned.

The culture war is primarily abstract- there's not a whole lot of serious damage being inflicted on anyone (which is why the future described by John Titor never made me as happy as it seemed to make some people).

The violations of our rights so far have in most respects been immaterial- egregious none the less I concede, but I think the average person would tollerate them grudgingly if given fool-proof assurance that they will not grow. Afterall, most of us aren't ashamed of what we check out of the library, etc. (lest I catch an earful I reitterate that I don't condone it)

We've got less control than we like but it is within our power to shape our government without resorting to violence at present.

Those things and others considered, many would say that a war would be a bit rash at the moment.


On the other hand, the cornerstone of vitually all tyranny- the economic exploitation of the common man- is as present here as virtually anywhere.

How much do you get in return for the work you do? You're better off measuing how much you earn in terms of hours instead of dollars, because anything you don't spend isn't really yours anymore because our banking system makes your future access to and the future value of your money a matter of speculation, and the cost of goods you have purchased is misleading because of the gap between price and value, not to mention the fact that the primary benefit of many of the things we pay for is not in having the item itself, but the work they save us.

When you think about it in those terms, it's easy to get fighting mad. In my case, car ownership costs 15 dollars for every hour of bike riding it saves me, for 30 hours. Electricity is harder to figure, but considering the cooking, dishwashing, laundering, wood chopping, more frequent shopping, and library time it saves me, maybe 10 dollars an hour for 25 hours. Fast food instead of cooking would be roughly 20 dollars an hour for 6 hours a month if you did it on a daily basis. Long story short, if you added everything up, I bet just doing more of our own work for ourselves would take us half as much time as working to earn money to buy our way out of our daily work.

Granted these things are necessary for human civilization as we have come to know it. I'm not demonizing technology. But realize that for the categories I listed above, if your hourly wage is lower than the combined average cost of a saved hour of work that your purchases give you, then you are losing time, and that defies the whole purpose of division of labor in an economy, which is efficiency and the provision for a greater number of our wants from the use of our limited resources. If it proved to be the case that the majority of people are "losing time" as I put it, then the economy is failing because wages and prices are out of balance.

Keep in mind that to really make the above accurate you'd also have to account for the hidden costs both in work/money and quality of living- the taxes that make it possible, living with pollution, living with nationalism and militarism, social stratification (including racism in many cases- American racism has always been closely connected to economics, vis a vis slavery, immigration and job competition, tax costs of progressivism, etc) and a host of other ills.


So depending on which of the two presentations of reality resonates more with a person (and I don't claim those are the only two by the way, just a couple of examples), that person's view on the positive or negative nature of the government finally pushing us too far and inspiring popular resistance would be quite different.

the usurpation of private property if you are opposed to the rebuilding of Iraq obviously has alterior motives. Maybe to force the US populus to pay for New Babylon. Iraq = Babylon.

Originally posted by Arcane Demesne

This might seem pessimistic, and odd...But I almost think I might want that to happen. It would not be fun, but it could possibly help restore our republic from whence it came. Or it could lead to MUCH worse things. I'm not even sure if this is America anymore...

[edit on 7/21/2007 by Arcane Demesne]

I definitely see it leading to worse things. Anybody who wants a civil war in America needs to look as far as Iraq to see what it will actually consists of- radicals with unchangeable beliefs setting off roadside bombs that kill more civilians than they do military personel. And of course there would be the kidnappings of priminent local officials and media figures. I can tell you right now that I don't like what the administration is doing as much as the average ATSer, but I can tell you I would support the current government before I did some crackpot "Resistance" that caused more problems than it was trying to fix.

And if this "Resistance" ultimately lost, it would have just given the government the excuse it needed to implement all the doom-and-gloom ultra-totalitarian policies they were whining about in the first place.

IN the begining, Vagbond I felt the same way you did.
This is purely a law put foward to stop anyone coming between a democratic Iraq and its people.

BUT
after reading :
ia.rediff.com...

I have become VERY VERY Worried.

The order further authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to designate for blocking those persons determined to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person designated pursuant to this order, or to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order."

The wording is so vague, and leaves so much to the 'imagination' that theoretically, if your under-mining the US Governments efforts in Iraq, you can have your assets frozen.

"Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited."

Conspiracy's? So now you dont even have to have material actions, but theoretical understandings can also be drawn into this ?

As the article states, your fifth amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

So, being there's no Grand Jury, and your activley having your liberty/propoerty stripped from you I find it suspicous they had to cover their own buts

"This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person."

Your government KNOWS it is tearing the fabric of your constitution, why else would they have a clause to cover them selves from litigation?

Why dont you prove us wrong though, take to the streets with a banner RIGHTFULLY Reading

'' Iraq war - Illegial, our government LIED,and are still lying ''

and see how far you get!