By William Fisher
Two of the nation’s most influential human rights organizations have filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to carry out “targeted killings” of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charge that the authority contemplated by the Obama administration is far broader than what the Constitution and international law allow.
The organizations claim that, “outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which names are added to CIA and military ‘kill lists’ through a secret executive process and stay there for months at a time is plainly not limited to imminent threats.”
The CCR and the ACLU were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring the lawsuit in connection with the government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have marked for death. The complaint asks a court to rule that using lethal force far from any battlefield and without judicial process is illegal in all but the narrowest circumstances and to prohibit the government from carrying out targeted killings except in compliance with these standards. It also asks the court to order the government to disclose the standards it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.
al-Awlaki, 39, was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is an Islamic lecturer who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen. He is a spiritual leader and former imam who has purportedly inspired Islamic terrorists. His sermons are said to have been attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers.
Today’s lawsuit was filed against the CIA, Defense Department and the president in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
According to today’s legal complaint, the government has not disclosed the
standards it uses for authorizing the premeditated and deliberate killing of
U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield. The groups argue that the
American people are entitled to know the standards being used for these life and death decisions.
“The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens,
anywhere in the world based on its own say-so,” said Vince Warren, Executive Director of CCR. “The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law.”
The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged – without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists – also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.
But a top Obama counterterrorism official is defending the government's right to target U.S. citizens perceived as terror threats for capture or killing, citing al-Awlaki as an example.
Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, does not say whether al-Awlaki is on a U.S. targeting list, but a senior U.S. counterterrorism official has previously confirmed that the cleric is among terror targets sought to be captured or killed.
What does the law say about targeting and killing people?
Much of the discussion thus far has been about the Constitutionality of such killings. But, counter-intuitively, the Constitution is not the primary engine. It is largely the laws of war that are in play here.
Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First (HRF) explains to IPS, “Whether the target is a citizen isn't so important, because he's targetable if he's an enemy belligerent or civilian who's directly participating in hostilities against the United States.”
She adds, “The problem with the government's drone program is that it hasn't provided the public with enough information to determine whether the government is complying with those legal requirements. The fact that someone is suspected of having ties to al Qaeda or even supporting al Qaeda does not make them a member of a foreign force fighting the United States, or someone directly participating in hostilities against the United States.”
“Until the U.S. starts providing information about not only who they're targeting but what evidence exists that this person is a legitimate target, then we can't know if what they're doing is legal,” she says.
Scott Horton, a constitutional lawyer and contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, tells IPS, “There are two ways the government can justify the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen: one is when the person is in the act of a crime that threatens the lives of others, or serious injury to them, and no other means exists to stop him; the other is in the context of a war.”
“The Obama Administration appears to think that the second case is applicable with respect to Al-Awlaki, but if they have evidence to prove it, they certainly haven't advanced it to the public,” he says.
But even if they have such evidence, he adds, “they haven't explained why they don't simply have him arrested and brought back to stand charges based on the crimes they believe he has committed, which appear to include terrorist activities and perhaps treason. They obviously need to explain why that approach won't work before they go dropping bombs in circumstances that might kill large numbers of innocent civilians in addition to killing Al-Awlaki, “Horton tells IPS.
Col. Morris Davis, the Defense Department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases who argued on behalf of a terrorism suspect that the military justice system has been corrupted by politics and inappropriate influence from senior Pentagon officials, tells IPS:
“The 5th Amendment says U.S. citizens can’t be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.’ If the Constitution prohibits the government from taking your house without giving you a hearing and the opportunity to defend yourself it seems rather ironic that they might take your life with even less formality and less process.”
Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer and contributor to Salon.com, is similarly troubled by the targeting policy. He concludes: “We really are talking about a President who believes he has the right to send the CIA to murder American citizens based purely on allegations and suspicions of wrongdoing.”
Saturday, September 04, 2010
THE FUTURE OF COAL ASH
By William Fisher
In what promises to be a contentious, high-profile series of debates, the forces of environmental protection will be lining up against those of the electric power industry over the future status of coal ash.
Environmentalists are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to regulate toxic ash from coal-fired power plants as a hazardous waste. Industry spokespeople are claiming that Federal enforcement of coal-ash disposal rules would mean classifying the waste as hazardous, adding, costs and making it harder to recycle some of the waste to help hold down disposal costs.
Erich Pica of the advocacy group Friends of the Earth told an EPA panel that the December 2008 coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant was a graphic reminder that there are no federally enforceable standards for coal ash. The spill involved 5.4 million cubic yards of the substance.
"It's time the EPA begin to regulate coal ash as a toxic pollutant," Pica said at a public hearing.
The EPA is considering adopting the first-ever federal standards for the disposal of coal ash. Opponents of that position are pushing for coal ash to be regulated as a nonhazardous material with enforcement remaining in the hands of individual states. Environmental groups say the states have failed to protect the public and that the EPA should set a national standard and enforce it.
Yesterday’s hearing, held in Alexandria, Virginia, on the proposed federal rules is the first of seven that will be held across the country over the next month.
Scott Schlesinger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, one of yesterday’s witnesses, wrote in his blog:
“What happens to the toxics that utilities remove from their stacks that used to pollute our skies? They now pollute our waters. During the past 30 years, the pollutants that used to go up the stack are now collected in ash. Administrations have been prodded by NRDC lawsuits to regulate these toxic wastes and have found excuses not to do so.”
He added, “Now, with new technology that better predicts the high levels of these toxics reaching groundwater, EPA has come forward with a plan to regulate coal ash and its metal components of arsenic, mercury, lead, antimony, and other toxic metals.”
A study released last week reveals that 39 sites in 21 states where coal-fired power plants dump their coal ash are contaminating water with toxic metals such as arsenic and other pollutants. The study reports that the problem is more extensive than previously estimated. The report shows that, even contained, stored ash can have led to water contamination and negative health impacts.
The electric power industry is lobbying to keep regulation up to individual
states.
But Jeff Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project, director of the study, contends, "This is a huge and very real public health issue for Americans. Coal ash is putting drinking water around these sites at risk."
Most states don't require monitoring of drinking water near the waste sites. The study found five sites where monitoring figures were available, and all of them had some contamination. In four, tests showed problems at one or more drinking-water wells. In Joliet, Ill., where the information was too limited for analysis, at least 18 nearby wells were closed because of boron contamination, the report said.
The U.S. burns more than 1 billion tons of coal a year to generate about half of the nation's electricity. It ends up with at least 125 million tons of coal
waste, including ash and the sludge left from scrubbers that remove air
pollutants.
The report from the environmental groups said that more than a third of the
reused coal ash is for structural fill or to fill up empty mines. The report
said those uses could result in water contamination.
The report, by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, documents 39 additional coal-ash dump sites in 21 states that are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.
Experts from those groups found that, at every one of the coal-ash dump sites equipped with groundwater monitoring wells, concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic or lead exceeded federal health-based standards for drinking water, with concentrations at the Hatfield’s Ferry site in Pennsylvania reaching as high as 341 times the federal standard for arsenic.
This new report comes after a February 2010 report by Environmental Integrity and Earthjustice that documented water contamination from 31 coal-ash dump sites in 14 states. The report documents 39 additional coal-ash dump sites in 21 states that are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.
Experts from those groups found that, at every one of the coal-ash dump sites equipped with groundwater monitoring wells, concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic or lead exceeded federal health-based standards for drinking water, with concentrations at the Hatfield’s Ferry site in Pennsylvania reaching as high as 341 times the federal standard for arsenic.
This new report comes after a February 2010 report by Environmental Integrity and Earthjustice that documented water contamination from 31 coal-ash dump sites in 14 states. It also adds to the nearly 70 other sites previously identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Lisa Evans, senior administrative counsel at Earthjustice, said: “There is no greater reason for coal ash regulation than preventing the poisoning of our water. We now have 39 more good reasons for a national coal ash rule. the mounting number of contaminated sites demonstrates that the states are unable or unwilling to solve this problem.”
Environmental groups want to see the Obama EPA take a more aggressive stance, and choose to more closely regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste.
Jeff Stant, director of the Environmental Integrity Project’s Coal Combustion Waste Initiative, said:
“The contamination of water supplies, threats to people, and damage to the
environment documented in this report illustrate very real and dangerous harms that are prohibited by federal law but are going on in a largely unchecked fashion at today’s coal ash dump sites. Contamination of the environment and water supplies with toxic levels of arsenic, lead and other chemicals is a pervasive reality at America’s coal ash disposal sites because states are not preventing it.”
In what promises to be a contentious, high-profile series of debates, the forces of environmental protection will be lining up against those of the electric power industry over the future status of coal ash.
Environmentalists are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to regulate toxic ash from coal-fired power plants as a hazardous waste. Industry spokespeople are claiming that Federal enforcement of coal-ash disposal rules would mean classifying the waste as hazardous, adding, costs and making it harder to recycle some of the waste to help hold down disposal costs.
Erich Pica of the advocacy group Friends of the Earth told an EPA panel that the December 2008 coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant was a graphic reminder that there are no federally enforceable standards for coal ash. The spill involved 5.4 million cubic yards of the substance.
"It's time the EPA begin to regulate coal ash as a toxic pollutant," Pica said at a public hearing.
The EPA is considering adopting the first-ever federal standards for the disposal of coal ash. Opponents of that position are pushing for coal ash to be regulated as a nonhazardous material with enforcement remaining in the hands of individual states. Environmental groups say the states have failed to protect the public and that the EPA should set a national standard and enforce it.
Yesterday’s hearing, held in Alexandria, Virginia, on the proposed federal rules is the first of seven that will be held across the country over the next month.
Scott Schlesinger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, one of yesterday’s witnesses, wrote in his blog:
“What happens to the toxics that utilities remove from their stacks that used to pollute our skies? They now pollute our waters. During the past 30 years, the pollutants that used to go up the stack are now collected in ash. Administrations have been prodded by NRDC lawsuits to regulate these toxic wastes and have found excuses not to do so.”
He added, “Now, with new technology that better predicts the high levels of these toxics reaching groundwater, EPA has come forward with a plan to regulate coal ash and its metal components of arsenic, mercury, lead, antimony, and other toxic metals.”
A study released last week reveals that 39 sites in 21 states where coal-fired power plants dump their coal ash are contaminating water with toxic metals such as arsenic and other pollutants. The study reports that the problem is more extensive than previously estimated. The report shows that, even contained, stored ash can have led to water contamination and negative health impacts.
The electric power industry is lobbying to keep regulation up to individual
states.
But Jeff Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project, director of the study, contends, "This is a huge and very real public health issue for Americans. Coal ash is putting drinking water around these sites at risk."
Most states don't require monitoring of drinking water near the waste sites. The study found five sites where monitoring figures were available, and all of them had some contamination. In four, tests showed problems at one or more drinking-water wells. In Joliet, Ill., where the information was too limited for analysis, at least 18 nearby wells were closed because of boron contamination, the report said.
The U.S. burns more than 1 billion tons of coal a year to generate about half of the nation's electricity. It ends up with at least 125 million tons of coal
waste, including ash and the sludge left from scrubbers that remove air
pollutants.
The report from the environmental groups said that more than a third of the
reused coal ash is for structural fill or to fill up empty mines. The report
said those uses could result in water contamination.
The report, by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, documents 39 additional coal-ash dump sites in 21 states that are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.
Experts from those groups found that, at every one of the coal-ash dump sites equipped with groundwater monitoring wells, concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic or lead exceeded federal health-based standards for drinking water, with concentrations at the Hatfield’s Ferry site in Pennsylvania reaching as high as 341 times the federal standard for arsenic.
This new report comes after a February 2010 report by Environmental Integrity and Earthjustice that documented water contamination from 31 coal-ash dump sites in 14 states. The report documents 39 additional coal-ash dump sites in 21 states that are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.
Experts from those groups found that, at every one of the coal-ash dump sites equipped with groundwater monitoring wells, concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic or lead exceeded federal health-based standards for drinking water, with concentrations at the Hatfield’s Ferry site in Pennsylvania reaching as high as 341 times the federal standard for arsenic.
This new report comes after a February 2010 report by Environmental Integrity and Earthjustice that documented water contamination from 31 coal-ash dump sites in 14 states. It also adds to the nearly 70 other sites previously identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Lisa Evans, senior administrative counsel at Earthjustice, said: “There is no greater reason for coal ash regulation than preventing the poisoning of our water. We now have 39 more good reasons for a national coal ash rule. the mounting number of contaminated sites demonstrates that the states are unable or unwilling to solve this problem.”
Environmental groups want to see the Obama EPA take a more aggressive stance, and choose to more closely regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste.
Jeff Stant, director of the Environmental Integrity Project’s Coal Combustion Waste Initiative, said:
“The contamination of water supplies, threats to people, and damage to the
environment documented in this report illustrate very real and dangerous harms that are prohibited by federal law but are going on in a largely unchecked fashion at today’s coal ash dump sites. Contamination of the environment and water supplies with toxic levels of arsenic, lead and other chemicals is a pervasive reality at America’s coal ash disposal sites because states are not preventing it.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
