In an as yet un-numbered Executive Order (at least the number isn't published), president bush has decreed that your property - all of it - can be taken away at the sole discretion of the Secretary of State - who of course has to obey his orders. You can view and read this latest atrocity at your own leisure at the White House's own website here:
Once this becomes law, he has all the tools Hitler and Stalin had to keep their respective populations in utter subjection to their will.
The executive order states in Section 1(a) that “all property and interests in property” of “any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of - blah, blah, blah (followed by a laundry list of “purposes or effects”).
This means that the triggering factor underlying any such blocking order is a mere “determination” by the Secretary of the Treasury that you pose a “significant risk” of committing an act of violence in the future that has any of the listed purposes or effects. All the Secretary then has to do is to “consult” with the secretaries of state and defense. There is not even a requirement that these two agree with the Treasury Secretary’s “determination”(!)
In other words, if the Secretary of the Treasury says that you “pose a significant risk” of committing an act of violence with the purpose or effect of “threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people”, then the Bushprez can block you from accessing your bank account, retirement account, credit cards, or “any property or interest in property” that you may own.
That technically includes your house, whether owned or rented, your car or other means of transportation, whether owned or rented, your business, all the way down to your cell phone, toothpaste and underwear, as well as the twenty bucks you loaned your buddy last week that he hasn’t paid you back yet.
What is there to keep the Secretary of the Treasury from “determining” that you, because you oppose the war in Iraq, are probably one of those extremist hooligans who protested the WTO in Seattle a few years back, or that you are likely to act like one of them even though you haven’t even participated in those riots? War protesters do these things, don’t they? They are all the same, aren’t they?
If the Secretary “determines” that you “probably” are one of them, and that you “pose a significant risk of committing” an act of violence intended to frustrate the war (or even the peace) effort in Iraq, all of your stuff can be taken away from you - or you can be “blocked” from accessing it, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Unconstitutional? You bet!
But you can’t complain about it.
Why is that?
The president has declared a state of emergency back in 2003 (as he so aptly recites in this executive order at the end of the paragraph that starts with “I, GEORGE W. BUSH”). That state of emergency has not been rescinded, to this date.
In a state of emergency, the president has the power to do whatever he wants, and you can’t complain - or else.
This is the clear, logical consequence of Americans’ acquiescing to their government claiming the right to pursue the anti-Christian doctrine of preemptive war.
If the president can launch a war against another country in order to prevent a potential, as yet unrealized, future attack, then he can also prosecute a potential criminal at home - or confiscate ALL of his property - for acts that he (or his Secretary) simply “determine” he might commit in the future.
We are talking about the imposition, by executive order, of absolute, unrestricted tyranny and despotism in the name of “national security.”
