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[ by Charles Cameron — on various instances of citizens “taking the law into their own hands” in attempts to arrest the Queen, two Popes, Harper of Canada and Tony Blair ]
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I am not really up on the sovereign citizen movement here in the US, perhaps because it is not overly religious — we’ll talk about that in part II. What interests me in this first part is the sense that the sovereignty of nations is being questioned by citizens.

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It sees to me that what we’re witnessing in these two “leading indicators” is an unraveling of trust in the state itself.

My first instance comes from the Arrest Blair movement, which is basically a blog site with a bank account…

This site offers a reward to people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, for crimes against peace. Anyone attempting an arrest which meets the rules laid down here will be entitled to one quarter of the money collected at the time of his or her application.

Money donated to this site will be used for no other purpose than to pay bounties for attempts to arrest Tony Blair. All the costs of administering this site will be paid by the site’s founder.

The site is not without supporters, and there are at least a few people willing to attempt the arrest. The site’s Attempts made so far page records four payments thus far totaling £10,971.56, or roughly $16,700 US. Notably, it appears that at least three out of the four claimants have paid all or a major part of the funds they received to charities.

I would note as an aside that the suggestion that Tony Blair should be tried for war crimes has a number of supporters who are not AFAIK connected in any way with the “citizen arrest” attempts described here.

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My second instance is that of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, which appears to be largely the brainchild of one Rev Kevin D Annett MA, MDiv, a one-time minister of the United Church of Canada.

I’d suggest that anyone who takes Kevin Annett at all seriously should consider that he purports to be involved with an international legal entity with competence to try the Pope — and yet gives his signature to paragraphs like these:

When the Bloody Emperor stands naked, only our illusions keeps him protected and immune from the final accounting that is coming.

The tornado that followed my first exorcism outside the Vatican in 2009, and the lightning that struck it on the day of Benedict’s resignation, were not accidental. Joe Ratzinger should know from the history of his own former SS buddies that criminal institutions can run, but they can’t hide – even behind all the wealth and pomp in the world.

Prepare for Easter! Flush the Rat from the Vat!

With such strident rhetoric and with exorcism a feature of his own activities, it’s hard to take him altogether seriously.

The court’s view of its own status, independent of other jurisdictions, is expressed thus:

It is understood by our Court that its decisions, based as they are on Natural and Common Law, supersede and invalidate all statutes and statutory laws which conflict with the decisions of the Court, particularly when those statues uphold crimes or their concealment, or the protection of the guilty. Similarly, our Court does not recognize the jurisdiction or authority of any contending legal systems, such as the so-called “Canon Law”, or any form of personal, diplomatic or legal immunity governing any person or institution, including heads of states, churches and corporations.

Here, FWIW, is the opening of a recent posting on their site of a Public Banning Order to be issued by the Common Law Court of Justice against Pope, Cardinals, and Archbishop Wilfrid Napier for aiding and encouraging child rape in the case of some First Nations children:

After evading arrest by lawful Common Law Court officers, over thirty officials of church and state now face permanent banishment from their communities during Easter Week for being wanted criminals who are a danger to children everywhere.

These officers include Pope Francis I and former Pope Joseph Ratzinger, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Queen Elizabeth Windsor of England, all of whom were ordered detained by Citizen Arrest Warrants issued by the International Common Law Court of Justice on March 5 and 15, 2013.

“They have defied the law and lawful arrest, so therefore they are declared to be public enemies who are no longer welcome or allowed in our communities” explained Rev. Kevin Annett, who presented the evidence to the Court that convicted the guilty.

Here I would note for the record that I am entirely uninformed and take no sides in those issues which form the basis of Annett’s acute disgust with various churches, churchmen and politicians.

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By way of context, but without suggesting any direct connection between the two instances above and the widely-documented Sovereign Citizens, here’s a brief overview of that movement.

From a WECT special report:

Hundreds of thousands of sovereign citizens currently live throughout the United States.

The FBI calls them “domestic terrorists.” They’re also known as extremists, radicals and defenders of freedom.

According to experts, sovereign citizens are Americans who think the laws don’t apply to them.

Most of them have their own constitution, bill of rights and government officials.

Sovereign citizens can be dangerous and violent. There have been a number of cases where sovereigns took matters into their own hands by killing members of law enforcement.

From the Montgomery Advertiser, today:

Self-proclaimed president of sovereign citizen nation convicted

After a five-day trail, a federal jury in Montgomery has convicted Tim Turner, the self-proclaimed president of the Sovereign Citizen Nation, on a variety of charges relating to defrauding the government.

The jury convicted the 57-year-old Skipperville resident on conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, attempting to pay taxes with fictitious financial instruments, attempting to obstruct and impede the Internal Revenue Service, failing to file a 2009 federal income tax return and falsely testifying under oath in a bankruptcy proceeding, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The FBI began an investigation after Turner and three other individuals sent demands to all 50 governors in the United States ordering each governor to resign within three days or be “removed,” according to a news release from Sandra J. Stewart, acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama.

The investigation found that Turner was the self-proclaimed president of the so-called sovereign citizen group “Republic for the united States of America (RuSA).” As president, Turner traveled the country in 2008 and 2009 teaching others how to defraud the IRS by preparing and submitting fictitious “bonds” to the U.S. government in payment of federal taxes.

An estimate of the group’s size was posted in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report a few years back:

Not all tax protesters are sovereign citizens, and many newer recruits to the sovereign life did not start out as tax protesters. But based on the available evidence, a reasonable estimate of hard-core sovereign believers today would be 100,000, with another 200,000 just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges, for a total of 300,000. As sovereign theories go viral throughout the nation’s prison systems and among people who are unemployed and desperate in a punishing recession, this number is likely to grow.

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Finally, it’s worth comparing the attempts to make citizen’s arrests of sundry heads of state, present and former, monarchic, papal and democratic, with the methods employed by the International Criminal Court at the Hague — which has a question in its FAQ:

Who has to execute the warrants of arrest?

The responsibility to enforce warrants of arrest in all cases remains with States. In establishing the ICC, the States set up a system based on two pillars. The Court itself is the judicial pillar. The operational pillar belongs to States, including the enforcement of Court’s orders.

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As I say, I’m not “up” on the theory or history of loss of faith in government and it’s corollary, taking the law into one’s own hands” — but it presumably ties into such notions as hollow states, prerevolutionary states, and vigilantism.

I’d appreciate a little history, a little context… not just in terms of the US sovereign citizen movement, but in broad enough scope to include vigilantism, non-violence, and the current attempts to arrest the Queen, the Popes (Francis regnant and Benedict emeritus) and Tony Blair.

Your comments and insights?

Someone for reasons unknown last week leaked the classified Department of Justice “White Paper” on targeting with drone attacks the numerically tiny number of US citizens overseas who have joined al Qaida or affiliated groups. The leak set off an outburst of public debate, much of it ill-informed by people who did not bother to read the white paper and some of it intentionally misleading by those who had and, frankly, know better.

Generally, I’m a harsh critic of the Holder DOJ, but their white paper, though not without some minor flaws of reasoning and one point of policy, is – unlike some of the critics – solidly in compliance with the laws of war, broader questions of international law and the major SCOTUS decisions on war powers. It was a political error to classify this document in the first place rather than properly share it with the relevant Congressional committees conducting oversight

Here it is and I encourage you to read it for yourself:

Lawfulness of Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qa’ida

Much of this white paper debate has been over a legitimate policy dispute (“Is it a good idea if we use drones to kill AQ terrorists, including American ones?”) intentionally being mischaracterized by opponents of the policy (or the war) as a legal or constitutional question. It is not. The law is fairly settled as is the question if the conflict with AQ rises to a state of armed conflict, which SCOTUS dealt with as recently as Hamdi and for which there are ample precedents from previous wars and prior SCOTUS decisions to build upon. At best, framed as a legal dispute, the opponents of the drone policy would have a very long uphill climb with the Supreme Court. So why do it?

The reason, as I discern it, is substituting a legalistic argument and judicial process (“FISA court to decide drone killings”) to conceal what is really a debate over American war policy   and the President’s war powers in order to accrue domestic political advantage or at least avoid paying the costs of advocating a potentially unpopular position. Otherwise, opponents have to argue on the merits that the US should not as a matter of policy kill al Qaida terrorists sheltered by Pakistan or beyond the reach of government control in Yemen. Or that we are not “really” at war or that Federal judges are better suited for picking bombing targets than Air Force and CIA analysts and that “due process” should apply to enemy combatants on the battlefield. Many of these arguments are valid ones to raise and debate but are unlikely to be persuasive to the public or Congress; if they were, they would have prevailed in 2010 (drones) or 2001 (“are we at war?).

[ by Charles Cameron — enforcement of moral codes in the UK, US, Israel and KSA, unofficial and official, worsening, continuing and improving, quite the smörgåsbord ]
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Moral vigilantism appears to be on the rise in parts of London, according to this first-person piece by Jane Kelly, consulting editor of the Salisbury Review, which identifies itself as “seriously right” — ‘I feel like a stranger where I live’ [Telegraph, 29 January 2013]:

“When you go swimming, it’s much healthier to keep your whole body completely covered, you know.” The Muslim lady behind the counter in my local pharmacy has recently started giving me advice like this. It’s kindly meant and I’m always glad to hear her views because she is one of the few people in west London where I live who talks to me.

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More worryingly, I feel that public spaces are becoming contested. One food store has recently installed a sign banning alcohol on the premises. Fair enough. But it also says: “No alcohol allowed on the streets near this shop.” I am no fan of street drinking, and rowdy behaviour and loutish individuals are an aspect of modern British ”culture’’ I hate. But I feel uneasy that this shopkeeper wants to control the streets outside his shop. I asked him what he meant by his notice but he just smiled at me wistfully.

Perhaps he and his fellow Muslims want to turn the area into another Tower Hamlets, the east London borough where ”suggestive’’ advertising is banned and last year a woman was refused a job in a pharmacy because she wasn’t veiled.

On the other hand, maybe I should be grateful. At least in Acton there is just a sign in a shop. Since the start of the year there have been several reports from around London of a more aggressive approach. Television news footage last week showed incidents filmed on a mobile phone on a Saturday night, in the borough of Waltham Forest, of men shouting “This is a Muslim area” at white Britons.

The video commentary stated: “From women walking the street dressed like complete naked animals with no self-respect, to drunk people carrying alcohol, we try our best to capture and forbid it all.”

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It also appears to be present in parts of Brooklyn, according to Modesty in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Is Enforced by Secret Squads, [New York Times, January 29, 2013]:

In the close-knit world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, community members know the modesty rules as well as Wall Street bankers who show up for work in a Brooks Brothers suit. Women wear long skirts and long-sleeved, high-necked blouses on the street; men do not wear Bermuda shorts in summer. Schools prescribe the color and thickness of girls’ stockings.

The rules are spoken and unspoken, enforced by social pressure but also, in ways that some find increasingly disturbing, by the modesty committees. Their power is evident in the fact that of the half dozen women’s clothing stores along Lee Avenue, only one features mannequins, and those are relatively shapeless, fully clothed torsos.

The groups have long been a part of daily life in the ultra-Orthodox communities that dot Brooklyn and other corners of the Jewish world. But they sprang into public view with the trial of Nechemya Weberman, a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn, who last week was sentenced to 103 years in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing a young girl sent to him for counseling.

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The details were startling: a witness for Mr. Weberman’s defense, Baila Gluck, testified that masked men representing a modesty committee in the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, N.Y ., 50 miles northwest of New Y ork City, broke into her bedroom about seven years ago and confiscated her cellphone.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, who prosecuted the Weberman case, has now received allegations that members of a modesty committee forced their way into a home in the borough, confiscating an iPad and computer equipment deemed inappropriate for Orthodox children, officials say.

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“They operate like the Mafia,” said Rabbi Allan Nadler, director of the Jewish studies program at Drew University in Madison, N.J.

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And in Israel — from the same report, although perhaps more widely known? I’ve certainly seen mentions…

In Israel, there have been similar concerns. Though no modesty committee was overtly involved, there has been anger over ultra-Orthodox zealots who spit on and insulted an 8-year-old girl for walking to school through their neighborhood in a dress they considered immodest.

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Meanwhile, the Saudis seem to be decreasing the scope of their official equivalent, according to Saudi limits powers of the notorious religious police [Al Arabiya, 30 January 2013]:

Saudi Arabia has set new limitations on the powers of its notorious religious police, charged with ensuring compliance with Islamic morality but often accused of abuses, its chief said on Tuesday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice “once had much expanded powers, but with the new system… some of these powers, such as interrogating suspects and pressing charges,” will be restricted to the police and public prosecution, Shaikh Abdul Latif Abdel Aziz Al Shaikh told AFP.

The religious police may still arrest those carrying out “flagrant offences such as harassing women, consuming alcohol and drugs, blackmail and the practice of witchcraft,” Shaikh said of the new law approved by the cabinet.

and:

Relatively moderate Al Shaikh, appointed last year, has raised hopes that a more lenient force will ease draconian social constraints in deeply conservative Islamic country.

Two weeks into his post, Al Shaikh banned volunteers from serving in the commission, which enforces the kingdom’s strict Islamic rules.

H/t John Burgess at Crossroads Arabia.

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All these articles are worth reading in full, and you’ll be enriched by reading them together, comparatively — food for thought!

The Center for Combating Terrorism at West Point released a report on domestic terrorism that raised hackles for a number of reasons. Despite the dismissals of liberal political pundits, the reasons for objections to the CTC report are legitimate but they did not need to arise in the first place and might have been avoided with a slightly different editorial approach or appropriate caveats (I just finished reading the report, which is primarily focused on the usual suspects). Here’s why I think the normally well-regarded CTC stumbled into a hornet’s nest:

First, in this foray into domestic terrorism analysis, the center chose to concentrate only on the threat of violence of the Far Right while ignoring other threats coming from the Far Left, infiltration by criminal insurgent networks from Mexico, notably the ultraviolent Zetas whose reach has stirred gang violence in Chicago and Islamist terrorism, either homegrown “lone wolves” or from foreign infiltration or subversion. In itself, this is understandable if the CTC plans a series of reports with a separate focus on different domestic threats; but without that context, it is a myopic analytic perspective, particularly given the demonstrated capabilities of various AQ affiliates or just south of the border, the criminal–insurgency of  the narco-cartels. Had all of these been addressed in one omnibus report, any complaints from conservatives were likely to have been muted or nonexistent. This is not to say that the radical American Far Right does not have a violent threat potential of it’s own worth studying; it does and it is real. But available evidence indicates it to be the least organized, least operationally active and least professionally competent in terms of terrorist “tradecraft” of the three.

The second and most problematic aspect of the report is an intellectually sloppy definition of a dangerous “antifederalist movement”  where noxious concepts like “white supremacy” and wacko conspiracy theories are casually associated with very mainstream conservative (or even traditionally bipartisan !) political ideas – coincidentally, some of the same ideas that contemporary “big government” liberal elites tend to find irritating, objectionable or critical of their preferred policies. Part of the equation here is that American politics are evolvng into a very bitterly partisan, “low trust” environment, but even on the merits of critical analysis,  these two passages are ill-considered and are largely responsible for most of the recent public criticism of the CTC:

….The antifederalist rationale is multifaceted, and includes the beliefs that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a “New World Order” (NWO) in which the United States will be absorbed into the United Nations or another version of global government.  They also espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.  Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government

….In contrast to the relatively long tradition of the white supremacy racist movement, the anti-federalist movement appeared in full force only in the early to mid-1990s, with the emergence of groups such as the  Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia. Antifederalism is normally identified in the literature as the “Militia” or “Patriot” movement. Anti-federalist and anti-government sentiments were present in American society before the 1990s in diverse movements and ideological associations promoting anti-taxation, gun rights, survivalist  practices,and libertarian ideas 

This is taxonomic incoherence, or at least could have used some bright-line specifics ( like “Posse Commitatus” qualifying what was meant by “anti-taxation” activists) though in some cases, such as “libertarian ideas” and “civil activism”, I’m at a loss to know who or what violent actors they were implying, despite being fairly well informed on such matters.

By the standard used in the first paragraph, Glenn Greenwald, Ralph Nader and the ACLU would also be considered “far right antifederalists”. By the standards of the second, we might be in physical danger from Grover Norquist,  Congressman John Dingell and Penn Jillette. No one who opposed the recent increases in income tax rates, dislikes gun-control or thought the DOJ may have abused it’s power in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz or in their stubborn refusal to prosecute Bankster racketeering is likely to welcome a report under the auspices of West Point that juxtaposes such normal and perfectly valid American political beliefs with neo-Nazism. A move that is simply going to – and quite frankly, did – gratuitously irritate a large number of people, including many in the defense and national security communities who are a natural “customer base” for CTC reports.

As I said previously, this could easily have been completely avoided with more careful use of language, given that 99% the report has nothing to do with mainstream politics and is concerned with actors and orgs with often extensive track records of violence. As the CTC, despite it’s independence, is associated so strongly with an official U.S. Army institution, it needs to go the extra mile in explaining it’s analysis when examining domestic terrorism subjects that are or, appear to be, connected to perfectly legitimate participation in the political process. This is the case whether the subject is on the Left or Right – few activists on the Left, for example, have forgotten the days of COINTELPRO and are currently aggrieved by the activities of Project Vigilant.

I might make a few other criticisms of the report, such as the need for a better informed historical perspective, but that is hardly what the recent uproar was about.

[ by Charles Cameron — something as simple as spirit, important to special ops & law enforcement — an open question ]
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Let’s begin with a quote from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation:

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.

That’s about as basic as you can get. Breath begins with your first gasp (in-spiration) and runs like a silk thread through your life till your last sigh (ex-spiration) and it’s all spirit — which turns out to be beyond the mind-body dichotomy, and a balancing factor for both.

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Fast forward.

Let’s turn from breath — spiritus in Latin, as in spiritus ubi vult spirat, “breath blows where it wants to”, John 3.8 — to its specific application in “combat breathing” as illustrated by the still from the National Geographic movie Seal Team Six: the Raid on Osama bin Laden at the head of this post.

In “Fear Factor”, his review of Amanda Ripley’s fascinating-sounding The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes, published in City Journal 21 June 2008, blog-friend John Robb writes:

… in complex disasters, the biological-fear response can slow thinking so severely that it can kill you.

We can counter fear, however. The best method, FBI trainers say, is to get control of your breathing. “Combat breathing” is a simple variant on Lamaze or yoga training — breathe in four counts, hold four counts, exhale four counts, and repeat. It works because breathing is a combination of the somatic (which we control) and the autonomic (which we can’t easily control) nervous systems. Regulation of the autonomic system deescalates the biological-fear response and returns our higher-level brain functions to full capacity. So one of the best ways you can prepare yourself to overcome fear in a crisis is as simple as a meditation, Lamaze, or yoga class.

I find it fascinating and also sensible that yogic / meditative techniques are now taught by members of the special ops and law enforcement communities:

Training under stress also will help officers learn to control their arousal level. As their physiological agitation escalates, so might their susceptibility to perceptual and memory distortions. Thus, learning to control arousal level can help reduce distortions. Therefore, officers should receive training in and regularly practice ways to control arousal levels in high-stress situations. One process, the combat breathing technique, has proven highly effective in this area.

Alexis Artwohl, “Perceptual and memory distortion during officer-involved shootings”, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Oct, 2002

This reminds me of Richard Strozzi Heckler’s In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets, now in its fourth edition.

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Breath, spirit, breathing — it’s …

… “right under our noses”, all too easily overlooked, and heart-stoppingly, mind-blowingly important.

Let’s talk a bit about it…