Saturday, April 29, 2006
Dead Week, Finals Week, Graduation, Summer 2006 Housing, The Da Vinci Code, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and United States Air Force
(Dead week is from Monday, May 1, 2006 to Friday, May 5, 2006, finals week is from Monday, May 8, 2006 to Thursday, May 11, 2006, graduation and housing is Sunday, May 14, 2006, The Da Vinci Code is Friday, May 19, 2006, X-Men 3: The Last Stand is Monday, May 26, 2006, and United States Air Force enlistment is middle to late 2006. I shall be taking a long break to study for finals, to take finals, graduation and housing, assist the moving in and moving out of others, watch The Da Vinci Code, watch X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and enlistment into United States Air Force.)
Monday, April 24, 2006
Anniversary of a Key Counterterrorism Law by Michael Kraft
Today, April 24, is the 10th anniversary of the enactment of a major United States counterterrorism law that provided major new legal tools in the fight against international terrorism including making it illegal to provide material support to terrorists. This law provoked controversy at the time and a related material support provision in the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) is the subject of a new dispute over its unanticipated impact on refugees.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996. (P. L. 104-132) was signed by President Clinton in a Rose Garden ceremony after a prolonged and convoluted passage through Congress.
Key features of the multi-faceted law, originally drafted by the Justice and State Departments in 1994, include provisions aimed at terrorist fund raising, the “Material Support” provisions (18 USC Section 2339A and 18 USC Section 2339B).
These provisions were a major step in the effort to take the offensive against terrorism funding – a campaign that accelerated after 9/11. The Act also was studied closely and some of its conepts were adopted by other countries.
According to Justice Department figures, 113 persons were charged and 12 were convicted under the material support chargesof AEDPA. Another 38 persons have pleaded guilty. The most recent related case involved Sami al-Arian, a University of South Florida professor who pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to providing material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad after a jury failed to reach a verdict on a number of other counts.
Section 2339 A makes it an offense to provide funding or other forms of material support for specific terrorist operations, regardless of whether the terrorist activities were conducted by a previously known organized group.
This provision was intially enacted in 1994 but contained barriers to investigation that the Justice Department felt made it unuseable and it was modified in 1996.
The second and more controversial provision, Section 2339 B, provides criminal penalties for knowingly providing material support for groups that the Secretary of State (in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Treasury) has designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) – regardless of whether the support was used for a specific terrorist operation.
The first group of 29 FTO’s was designated in October 1997. Currently, 42 organizations are on the State Department list. They include Middle Eastern groups such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and half a dozen other Palestinian groups, Kahane Chai (Kach) a Jewish group in Israel with American roots, and various terrorist organizations in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe.
Before a group is designated, the State Department must compile a detailed administrative record showing why the group should be designated; for example a compilation of successful or attempted terrorist attacks and manifestos or other declarations by the leadership. The designations can be challenged in court, and thus the administrative records have to be cleared by the Departments of Justice and Treasury before the Secretary of State approves a designation.
Material support includes not only funding or transfer of funds but such activities as providing weapons, safe houses and training.
The concept for the provisions grew out of declassified intelligence reports that terrorist groups such as the Abu Nidal Organization were turning to setting up front companies and other fund raising activities on their own instead of relying on state sponsors such as Libya, Iran , Iraq, and Syria. This was partly because these countries had been pulling back to some extent on their financial support of terrorist groups. The designation of a country as a state sponsor of international terrorism (dating back to the Export Administration Act of 1979) had lead to an escalating series of U.S. economic sanctions against these countries. Some other exporting countries also had tightened controls over their export of military or dual use equipment.
But what really precipitated the criminalization of material support to terrorist organizations were two series of terrorist attacks in the Middle East. Although there is a widespread perception in the Arab world that the anti-funding measures were aimed at Muslims, the actual drafting was prompted when Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arabs at a mosque in Hebron in February, 1994. He was believed to have been affiliated with Kahane Chai or Kach, small groups of right wing Jewish extremists who had been involved in several terrorist acts and raised money funds in the U.S. The Hebron massacre led to the State Department and Justice Department convening interagency meetings to determine whether (a) existing laws could be used to curb money flows to terrorist groups and (b) whether new law legislative authorities were necessary.
During the summer of 1994, the Justice Department was preoccupied by the massive Crime Bill then working through Congress and the interagency group concluded this was not the best vehicle for adding potentially controversial counterterrorism measures. Then, a series of bus bombings in Israel in October by the Palestinian Hamas group stepped up the drafting of new legislation for the 1995 Congressional session.
I was one of the State Department officials serving on the legislative task force. We completed our work in time for friendly Senators to introduce the Omnibus Antiterrorism Act when Congress convened in January, 1995. At the same time the Clinton administration took a stop-gap measure. It used its authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to issue an executive order freezing the assets of 12 Middle East terrorist groups on the grounds that they threatened the use of force to undermine the Middle East peace process. The “dirty dozen” included 10 Palestinian groups and two Jewish groups, Kahane Chai and Kach (which have since merged).
The new bill went through a torturous process in Congress, stalling at some points and then invigorated in response to the Oklahoma City bombing. The Republican controlled Congress and the Clinton Administration disagreed on some of the non-terrorist provisions, such as the proposals to restrict habeas corpuses and the efforts by Republicans to add the death penalty to a wide variety of offenses.
One Senate Judiciary Committee version drafted by the staff of then Republican Sen. Spencer Abrahams of Michigan, who has a large Arab-American constituency, virtually gutted the provisions designating foreign terrorist organizations. It would require the Justice Department to prove that the leaders of designated groups, some of which operated schools and medical clinic, knew that financial contributions was being diverted to terrorist operations -- as if these were normal business organizations with transparent auditing procedures. These Senate proposals were beaten back.
In the House, an unlikely coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans added a provision allowing a designated group to seek judicial review of the designation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. As part of the negotiating process, the Justice and State Departments agreed to a requirement that the designations would expire after two years unless renewed. (The Tamil Tigers and the MEK, an anti-Iranian group, but no Palestinian groups, have challenged their designations but the court upheld their designations.)
One later controversy involved the definition of “training.” Supporters of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil Tiger group, argued in court that the law blocked efforts to train members in ways of peacefully advancing their cause. The law was later amended. A new subsection, 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (b)(2) provides that for these purposes “the term ‘training’ means instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (b)(3) further provides that for these purposes the term ‘expert advice or assistance’ means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.’’
A new controversy has arisen over whether recent amendments in the PATRIOT Act's material support amendments to the Immigration and Naturalization Act have unfairly become a barrier to letting a small group of Burmese refugees resettle in the United States. They are ethnic Karens who fled Burma during attacks by the military junta in 1997 and eventually resettled in Thailand at a camp called Tham Hin.
The U.S. decided last year that the group, numbering about 9300, should be considered for resettlement in the United States. However, the International Rescue Committee, in a Washington Post op-ed Saturday, and others including Frederick Barton, a former UN deputy high commissioner for refugees writing in the Christian Science Monitor, have recently charged that some members of the group are unfairly being denied visas because they were teachers in schools run by the Karen National Union (KNU) or otherwise had some non-violent association with the group.
The KNU is not on the State Department’s current list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations but Patriot Act amendments to the immigration laws expanded the definition of terrorist groups to include two or more people who cause significant property damage or injury. At issue is 8 USC 1182.
As one of the State Department officials who helped initiate and draft the FTO and material support provisions in the 1996 AEDPA, I can say it certainly was not the intent to affect innocent refugees or others who in a minor way, such as teaching conventional subjects in a school,may have had a marginal, non-violent and perhaps unwilling association with what U.S. laws consider a terrorist group.
An overly rigid or expansive interpretation of the existing law apparently is having an unintended humanitarian consequences to innocent refugees. It should be possible to draft more precise regulations and guidelines for visa officers and definitions in the law for these refugee cases. With Congress facing a full legislative plate before adjourning for the November elections, timely action is essential if this problem is to be fixed before another year passes.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996. (P. L. 104-132) was signed by President Clinton in a Rose Garden ceremony after a prolonged and convoluted passage through Congress.
Key features of the multi-faceted law, originally drafted by the Justice and State Departments in 1994, include provisions aimed at terrorist fund raising, the “Material Support” provisions (18 USC Section 2339A and 18 USC Section 2339B).
These provisions were a major step in the effort to take the offensive against terrorism funding – a campaign that accelerated after 9/11. The Act also was studied closely and some of its conepts were adopted by other countries.
According to Justice Department figures, 113 persons were charged and 12 were convicted under the material support chargesof AEDPA. Another 38 persons have pleaded guilty. The most recent related case involved Sami al-Arian, a University of South Florida professor who pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to providing material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad after a jury failed to reach a verdict on a number of other counts.
Section 2339 A makes it an offense to provide funding or other forms of material support for specific terrorist operations, regardless of whether the terrorist activities were conducted by a previously known organized group.
This provision was intially enacted in 1994 but contained barriers to investigation that the Justice Department felt made it unuseable and it was modified in 1996.
The second and more controversial provision, Section 2339 B, provides criminal penalties for knowingly providing material support for groups that the Secretary of State (in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Treasury) has designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) – regardless of whether the support was used for a specific terrorist operation.
The first group of 29 FTO’s was designated in October 1997. Currently, 42 organizations are on the State Department list. They include Middle Eastern groups such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and half a dozen other Palestinian groups, Kahane Chai (Kach) a Jewish group in Israel with American roots, and various terrorist organizations in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe.
Before a group is designated, the State Department must compile a detailed administrative record showing why the group should be designated; for example a compilation of successful or attempted terrorist attacks and manifestos or other declarations by the leadership. The designations can be challenged in court, and thus the administrative records have to be cleared by the Departments of Justice and Treasury before the Secretary of State approves a designation.
Material support includes not only funding or transfer of funds but such activities as providing weapons, safe houses and training.
The concept for the provisions grew out of declassified intelligence reports that terrorist groups such as the Abu Nidal Organization were turning to setting up front companies and other fund raising activities on their own instead of relying on state sponsors such as Libya, Iran , Iraq, and Syria. This was partly because these countries had been pulling back to some extent on their financial support of terrorist groups. The designation of a country as a state sponsor of international terrorism (dating back to the Export Administration Act of 1979) had lead to an escalating series of U.S. economic sanctions against these countries. Some other exporting countries also had tightened controls over their export of military or dual use equipment.
But what really precipitated the criminalization of material support to terrorist organizations were two series of terrorist attacks in the Middle East. Although there is a widespread perception in the Arab world that the anti-funding measures were aimed at Muslims, the actual drafting was prompted when Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arabs at a mosque in Hebron in February, 1994. He was believed to have been affiliated with Kahane Chai or Kach, small groups of right wing Jewish extremists who had been involved in several terrorist acts and raised money funds in the U.S. The Hebron massacre led to the State Department and Justice Department convening interagency meetings to determine whether (a) existing laws could be used to curb money flows to terrorist groups and (b) whether new law legislative authorities were necessary.
During the summer of 1994, the Justice Department was preoccupied by the massive Crime Bill then working through Congress and the interagency group concluded this was not the best vehicle for adding potentially controversial counterterrorism measures. Then, a series of bus bombings in Israel in October by the Palestinian Hamas group stepped up the drafting of new legislation for the 1995 Congressional session.
I was one of the State Department officials serving on the legislative task force. We completed our work in time for friendly Senators to introduce the Omnibus Antiterrorism Act when Congress convened in January, 1995. At the same time the Clinton administration took a stop-gap measure. It used its authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to issue an executive order freezing the assets of 12 Middle East terrorist groups on the grounds that they threatened the use of force to undermine the Middle East peace process. The “dirty dozen” included 10 Palestinian groups and two Jewish groups, Kahane Chai and Kach (which have since merged).
The new bill went through a torturous process in Congress, stalling at some points and then invigorated in response to the Oklahoma City bombing. The Republican controlled Congress and the Clinton Administration disagreed on some of the non-terrorist provisions, such as the proposals to restrict habeas corpuses and the efforts by Republicans to add the death penalty to a wide variety of offenses.
One Senate Judiciary Committee version drafted by the staff of then Republican Sen. Spencer Abrahams of Michigan, who has a large Arab-American constituency, virtually gutted the provisions designating foreign terrorist organizations. It would require the Justice Department to prove that the leaders of designated groups, some of which operated schools and medical clinic, knew that financial contributions was being diverted to terrorist operations -- as if these were normal business organizations with transparent auditing procedures. These Senate proposals were beaten back.
In the House, an unlikely coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans added a provision allowing a designated group to seek judicial review of the designation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. As part of the negotiating process, the Justice and State Departments agreed to a requirement that the designations would expire after two years unless renewed. (The Tamil Tigers and the MEK, an anti-Iranian group, but no Palestinian groups, have challenged their designations but the court upheld their designations.)
One later controversy involved the definition of “training.” Supporters of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil Tiger group, argued in court that the law blocked efforts to train members in ways of peacefully advancing their cause. The law was later amended. A new subsection, 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (b)(2) provides that for these purposes “the term ‘training’ means instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (b)(3) further provides that for these purposes the term ‘expert advice or assistance’ means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.’’
A new controversy has arisen over whether recent amendments in the PATRIOT Act's material support amendments to the Immigration and Naturalization Act have unfairly become a barrier to letting a small group of Burmese refugees resettle in the United States. They are ethnic Karens who fled Burma during attacks by the military junta in 1997 and eventually resettled in Thailand at a camp called Tham Hin.
The U.S. decided last year that the group, numbering about 9300, should be considered for resettlement in the United States. However, the International Rescue Committee, in a Washington Post op-ed Saturday, and others including Frederick Barton, a former UN deputy high commissioner for refugees writing in the Christian Science Monitor, have recently charged that some members of the group are unfairly being denied visas because they were teachers in schools run by the Karen National Union (KNU) or otherwise had some non-violent association with the group.
The KNU is not on the State Department’s current list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations but Patriot Act amendments to the immigration laws expanded the definition of terrorist groups to include two or more people who cause significant property damage or injury. At issue is 8 USC 1182.
As one of the State Department officials who helped initiate and draft the FTO and material support provisions in the 1996 AEDPA, I can say it certainly was not the intent to affect innocent refugees or others who in a minor way, such as teaching conventional subjects in a school,may have had a marginal, non-violent and perhaps unwilling association with what U.S. laws consider a terrorist group.
An overly rigid or expansive interpretation of the existing law apparently is having an unintended humanitarian consequences to innocent refugees. It should be possible to draft more precise regulations and guidelines for visa officers and definitions in the law for these refugee cases. With Congress facing a full legislative plate before adjourning for the November elections, timely action is essential if this problem is to be fixed before another year passes.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Energy: Over A Barrel by Jessica Holzer
With pump prices passing $3 a gallon in some parts of the country, President George W. Bush vowed to sniff out any manipulation of gas prices by oil companies on Tuesday, and announced some measures to ease supply.
But with world oil markets tight as a drum, and crude prices driven as much by fear as shortages, there is very little the administration can do to ease pump prices in the coming weeks--much less before the November elections.
Bush said he would halt purchases of crude for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and relax fuel standards that produce a hodge-podge of gasoline blends throughout the country--measures that may well take a nibble out of gas prices. But the administration's announcement that it will investigate oil companies for gouging consumers is pure politics: Like the dozens of inquiries into oil industry price-gouging of the past, this one too will come up dry.
"I've seen no evidence at all that any U.S. company has the power to control the world price of oil today," says James Hamilton, an economist and energy expert at the University of California at San Diego.
Rather than manipulation by greedy oil companies, the soaring price of crude--which hit a record $75 a barrel on Friday--is to blame for sticker shock at the pump. Roaring demand from China and India combined with instability in oil-producing Nigeria mean that crude prices aren't coming down anytime soon. Talk of a U.S. invasion of Iran, which has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, is only making things worse, as speculators have poured millions into oil futures markets in the expectation that prices will remain high.
Given these market realities, Bush may be helpless to do much about gas prices before the onset of the summer driving season. But he should be kicking himself for bowing to the ethanol lobby when he signed last year's energy bill. The new law has surely made the present situation worse by requiring refineries to use 4 billion gallons of ethanol this year. (The mandate increases by 700 million gallons a year until it hits 7.5 billion in 2012.)
Because it's corrosive, ethanol needs to be transported in trucks or barges rather than in the country's network of pipelines. It needs to be blended at the last moment with a more costly form of gasoline base. Taken alone, these factors are contributing to higher pump prices. But the mandate has also squeezed ethanol supplies, creating a bull market for the fuel additive: The price of ethanol in the New York Harbor has risen to $2.77 a gallon from roughly $1.45 a gallon this time last year.
This costly handout to the corn lobby might make sense if ethanol were any answer to America's long-term energy needs. But other biofuels and alternative energy sources hold far more promise than ethanol. "It's not even clear that it is a net energy source," says Hamilton. In other words, it may take more energy to turn out a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of the fuel produces.
As it is probably too late to unwind the ethanol mandate, a Congress desperate to appease voters in election year will turn to other remedies.
In doing so, it will likely ensure that the oil companies, which have been slow to invest their record profits, preferring to lavish them on shareholders and buy back stock, will be even more reluctant to commit to major new capital projects.
Senator Byron Dorgan, the Democrat from North Dakota, is proposing a 50% excise tax on profits from oil sold at more than $40 a barrel. Meanwhile, Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, mused last week that a windfall profits tax for the industry is "worth exploring."
But with world oil markets tight as a drum, and crude prices driven as much by fear as shortages, there is very little the administration can do to ease pump prices in the coming weeks--much less before the November elections.
Bush said he would halt purchases of crude for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and relax fuel standards that produce a hodge-podge of gasoline blends throughout the country--measures that may well take a nibble out of gas prices. But the administration's announcement that it will investigate oil companies for gouging consumers is pure politics: Like the dozens of inquiries into oil industry price-gouging of the past, this one too will come up dry.
"I've seen no evidence at all that any U.S. company has the power to control the world price of oil today," says James Hamilton, an economist and energy expert at the University of California at San Diego.
Rather than manipulation by greedy oil companies, the soaring price of crude--which hit a record $75 a barrel on Friday--is to blame for sticker shock at the pump. Roaring demand from China and India combined with instability in oil-producing Nigeria mean that crude prices aren't coming down anytime soon. Talk of a U.S. invasion of Iran, which has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, is only making things worse, as speculators have poured millions into oil futures markets in the expectation that prices will remain high.
Given these market realities, Bush may be helpless to do much about gas prices before the onset of the summer driving season. But he should be kicking himself for bowing to the ethanol lobby when he signed last year's energy bill. The new law has surely made the present situation worse by requiring refineries to use 4 billion gallons of ethanol this year. (The mandate increases by 700 million gallons a year until it hits 7.5 billion in 2012.)
Because it's corrosive, ethanol needs to be transported in trucks or barges rather than in the country's network of pipelines. It needs to be blended at the last moment with a more costly form of gasoline base. Taken alone, these factors are contributing to higher pump prices. But the mandate has also squeezed ethanol supplies, creating a bull market for the fuel additive: The price of ethanol in the New York Harbor has risen to $2.77 a gallon from roughly $1.45 a gallon this time last year.
This costly handout to the corn lobby might make sense if ethanol were any answer to America's long-term energy needs. But other biofuels and alternative energy sources hold far more promise than ethanol. "It's not even clear that it is a net energy source," says Hamilton. In other words, it may take more energy to turn out a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of the fuel produces.
As it is probably too late to unwind the ethanol mandate, a Congress desperate to appease voters in election year will turn to other remedies.
In doing so, it will likely ensure that the oil companies, which have been slow to invest their record profits, preferring to lavish them on shareholders and buy back stock, will be even more reluctant to commit to major new capital projects.
Senator Byron Dorgan, the Democrat from North Dakota, is proposing a 50% excise tax on profits from oil sold at more than $40 a barrel. Meanwhile, Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, mused last week that a windfall profits tax for the industry is "worth exploring."
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