Jesse's Café Américain

An Enemy of the State

Redefining 'Imminent Threat'

In early 2013, a Department of Justice white paper surfaced that laid out the Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen.

The government lawyers who wrote the 16-page document asserted that the government need not possess specific intelligence indicating that an American citizen is actively engaged in a particular or active terror plot in order to be cleared for targeted killing.

Instead, the paper argued that a determination from a 'well-informed high level administration official' that a target represents an 'imminent threat' to the United States is a sufficient basis to order the killing of an American citizen. But the Justice Department’s lawyers sought to alter the definition of 'imminent,' advocating what they called a 'broader concept of imminence.'

They wrote, 'The condition that an operational leader present an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons will take place in the immediate future.'

The government lawyers argued that waiting for a targeted killing of a suspect 'until preparations for an attack are concluded, would not allow the United States sufficient time to defend itself.' They asserted that such an operation constitutes 'a lawful killing in self-defense' and is 'not an assassination.'

Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU called the white paper a 'chilling document,' saying that 'it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen.'

Jaffer added, 'This power is going to be available to the next administration and the one after that, and it’s going to be available in every future conflict, not just the conflict against al-Qaeda.

And according to the [Obama] administration, the power is available all over the world, not just on geographically cabined battlefields. So it really is a sweeping proposition...'

Today, decisions on who should live or die in the name of protecting America’s national security are made in secret, laws are interpreted by the president and his advisers behind closed doors, and no target is off-limits, including U.S. citizens. But the decisions made in Washington have implications far beyond their impact on the democratic system of checks and balances in the United States.

Jeremy Scahill, Perpetual War

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Late FOMC/Expiration Hit For End of Month

"Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which are employed altogether for their benefit."

Andrew Jackson

We finally saw the inevitable bear raid show up for an option expiration/FOMC week on the Comex.

There was concern in some circles, mostly among the denizens of the Beltway and the City, that the big desk traders were becoming too lazy to steal. That would almost certainly rob the Banks, not to mention the financial interests in New York and London, of much of their remaining competitive advantage.

And where would that leave our political class, as comfortable as they have become to their pandered, primped and pampered situations, sucking in the bounty of contributions and financial largesse from the elite as a reward for doing nothing?

There was no movement in or out of the COMEX gold warehouses yesterday. As reminder, I do not think that the Comex is going to default, unless they do something extraordinarily stupid, which does place it in the realm of possibility, but not probability. They would slither out of a hard default in some way most likely.

Rather, I think we are going to need to see much higher prices to move gold bullion out of storage and into the deliverable category where it remains in rather light supply, with over 56 claims per deliverable ounce. The Comex is becoming increasingly less relevant to the global precious metal markets. It is becoming increasingly fictional.

It has some resonance with Gary Gensler's comments about LIBOR. It is a shame he could not bring himself to do something about the abuses in price manipulation while it was his duty and responsibility over the metals markets.

This is an interesting read. China's Gold Coup d'Etat

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The One Percent's Lament: Poor Poor Pitiful Me

"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved."

Henry Adams

"For the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars."

Upton Sinclair