Bush Preparing For Martial Law
Bush Prepared to Assume Dictatorial Powers
By now it is clear to most everyone even remotely familiar with American politics that both the 2000 and 2004 national elections were software-engineered G.O.P. triumphs that permitted the regime of George W. Bush to enact and sustain a petro-war profiteering agenda. What remains unclear is why anyone should assume that Bush and company have any intention of relinquishing control of that criminal agenda. A distinct possibility exists that this administration will in fact implement martial law before January 20, 2009.
Consider: a year after George H.W. Bush almost assumed the presidency following the near-fatal shooting of Ronald Reagan, Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) chief Louis Giuffrida, aided by deputy, John Brinkerhoff, drafted an executive order for government continuity in time of emergency, calling for "suspension of the Constitution" and "declaration of martial law." Three years later, Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 188, one in a series of orders authorizing ongoing planning for continued governance by a private non-governmental parallel agency that included then-G.D. Searle CEO, Donald Rumsfeld and Wyoming congressman, Dick Cheney.
Nine years later, with Bush administration officials returned to power, destruction of the Twin Towers and Pentagon accounting offices on September 11, 2001 brought forth new martial law plans similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002, Rumsfeld’s Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets, followed by John Brinkerhoff’s article arguing for the legality of such use to ensure domestic security.
Within 90 days Defense Department officials implemented a plan for domestic U.S. military operations under a new U.S. Northern Command (CINC-NORTHCOM) for the continental U.S. Secretary Rumsfeld called it, "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946,” stating, the NORTHCOM commander is responsible for "homeland defense and also serves as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).... He will command U.S. forces that operate within the U.S. in support of civil authorities. The command will provide civil support not only in response to attacks, but for natural disasters."
Months later, a year after 9-11, Attorney General John Ashcroft suggested internment of even American citizens deemed by the administration to be “enemy combatants.” Last September in Washington, NORTHCOM conducted a highly classified exercise, “Granite Shadow,” described as “yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military's extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the U.S. without civilian supervision or control." Clearly, given power, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Brinkerhoff and their ilk have steadily advanced plans for possible implementation of martial law and military force.
In November of 2006, overwhelming public opposition to Bush administration policies and attendant G.O.P. governmental corruption permitted the Democratic Party to disrupt years of rightwing-engineered governmental dominance by Republican Party members. In January 2007 new House and Senate Democrats were sworn into office, providing America with its first legal semblance of checks and balances against rampant abuse of power enacted for six long years by the Bush administration.
Within days the Bush-Cheney administration’s Department of Homeland Security struck back, awarding to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root, a $385 million contract to build internment centers, ostensibly “to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.,” as well as “to support the rapid development of new programs."
Under this contract, the new facilities can be used in case of a national disaster (ala Katrina) or (as the Bush administration has already done with 'special registration' detention of immigrant men from Muslim countries and at Guantanamo") round-up of Islamic Americans or other U.S. citizens arbitrarily declared "enemy combatants.” The new "immigration emergency" plans and the Halliburton contract more than suggest potential suspension of Constitutional rights for citizens and immigrants as the use of military personnel and military contractors in the event of a Katrina-like disaster allows for virtual martial law, whether officially declared or not.
Now, on May 9, in defiance of the provisions of the National Emergency Act, George W. Bush has signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive granting him virtual dictatorial powers in the event of a declared national emergency.
This Executive Order permits Bush to assume power to direct any and all government and business activities without congressional approval or oversight until the emergency is declared over, and further establishes under his command, a new national continuity coordinator, Frances F. Townsend, (Bush’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism aide), to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to function under Bush’s directives in the event of a “catastrophic national emergency” loosely defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."
This arbitrary unilateral directive ignores the National Emergency Act which requires that such proclamation "shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register" in order to establish the legislative branch as a balance empowered to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if Congress believes the president has acted inappropriately. Bush’s directive, drafted and signed to supersede the National Emergency Act, makes no reference to Congress, and instead creates the new position of national continuity coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing it. The directive’s language negates any requirement that Bush submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists and implements the president’s powers without congressional approval or oversight.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke has affirmed his Department’s intention to implement, if necessary, the requirements of the order under Townsend's direction. Not surprisingly, the White House has declined comment on the directive.
With Democrats and the majority of Americans opposing Bush’s continuance of war in Iraq and his sword-rattling over alleged nuclear materials in Iran, he has now put in place power to arbitrarily and unilaterally impose martial law, suspend the Constitution, assume virtual dictatorial power, deploy under his command military forces into U.S. cities to round up citizens declared by his regime to be enemy combatants or security threats, and to retain control of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, military personnel, law enforcement agencies, and private sector organizations until he and/or a private non-governmental parallel agency of his making deems his declared state of emergency to be over.
With what has happened in America over the last six years under this corrupt, illegal regime, should anyone doubt that the Bush administration and its electively-doomed Republican Party is thinking seriously about imposing martial law? America, beware!
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version- Send to friend
Join us & contribute
Proud members of the Democratic Party
Copyright 2006 Democrats.com. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy
Should be no surprise.
Should be no surprise. Bush has said of the Constitution, "It's just a god-damn piece of paper."
And then there's the classic: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator..."
An Abuser and His Enablers
True. But then, Georgie-boy was pretty much a wasted cocaine and alcohol abuser for much of his pathetic life, only to find his drug-dealing and DUI arrests, along with his AWOL episode virtually erased by George "Poppy" (as in CIA heroin trafficking) Bush, a career CIA agent, CIA Director, VP and president who served as his smirky frat-boy son's powerful enabler, not only expunging the none-too-bright addict's history of criminal wrongdoing, but setting him up via rich and powerful corporate cronies in various businesses that W. repeatedly ran into the ground both literally and figuratively, only to be bailed out each time.
With absence-without-leave during time of war (a capital offense) ignored and excused, as well as felonious drug dealing and addiction unpunished, plus repeated failure and abuse of authority rewarded by powerful enablers made rich by government abuse of power - naturally, George W. Bush feels omnipotent and willing to push abuse of power and criminal authority to the limits. He has never had to be accountable to anyone except his own vaunted sense of power, irrespective of ethics, morals, law and democratic government.
He is a disgrace to democracy, a blight on Constitutional government, an embarrassment to all citizens who revere America's hallowed principles of liberty, justice, and true public service. He is not a leader except in the sense of being propped up to head what history will record as the most criminal regime in the history of the American republic.
- Will
They can't make us use their oil
They can't make us use their oil and I hope the drown in it. We have too many other plants that produce oil, namely the coconut and well as palm and pine. If we want to plug in, and not pump out, then green tech will free the average citizen. Besides this cabal, is on the way to jail.
mommapanther
Oil from food.
FYI:
Although diesel engines were first designed to run on peanut oil, I would caution folks that growing our oil is a non trivial endeavor.
Consumers' insatiable appetite for energy already requires a massive amount of oil be used to create fertilizer to grow the very crops we might then use to produce oil.
I am all for alternatives but until we are willing to change our habits, we should all take head: I have seen the enemy and it is us.
Ok Ok, AND the rat bastards in big oil, but you get my point ;)
Jim
Screwed
You know, we could start a civil revolt over it, but that would be grounds to declare a national military emergency. We could start a no-buy boycott of all the neo-con supporter corporations and their subsidiaries, but that would be grounds to declare a national economic emergency. We could hold a nationwide candlelight vigil, but that would be grounds to declare a national environmental emergency (all that smoke from all those candles).
It appears we are proverbially screwed. Which might be the way out of this one. Sodomy is illegal in most states, isn't it?
DAMNIT, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, STOP WHINING, GET TOUGH AND DO SOMETHING!
Do Something
T:
I like your sense of humor. Great post.
No whining. My post was warning. I urge everyone to contact his and her representative and Senator to seek action to rescind Bush's May 9th Executive Directive. This is the greatest threat to the democratic process in our nation's history. We need to make all citizens aware, demand media exposure of this arbitrary abrogation of Consitutional checks and balances, and demand restitution of the Emergency Act provisions providing Congressional recourse against presidential abuse of power.
- Will
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
VII.
So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message is to WARN the American people that eventually "WAR" will become a corporate business and it will be invoked for financial gain. There is a consumer code for it.
United States Code
TITLE 15 - COMMERCE AND TRADE
CHAPTER 10 - WAR FINANCE CORPORATION
Section 331 to 374. Omitted
Ike's Hypocrisy
A:
I am aware of Ike's warning - something he issued after 8 years of public posturing on defense spending controls while providing covert ops a blank check and therefore undermining the democratic process and government accountability. Under Eisenhower, the CIA mushroomed at an exponential rate into the largest clandestine actions force in world history, involved in assassinations, coups, covert warfare, infiltration of foreign and domestic governments, and the undermining of public and private institutions, academia and unions; global narcotics trafficking; the restitution of Nazi war criminals in Europe while positioning them into U.S. military-industrial labs and industries... etceteras, etceteras ad inifinitum, ad naueum.
As a Republican hero, I prefer Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota who empaneled and led a major Senate investigative committee into he causes of World War I as well as the interim period between WWI and resurgence of European hostilities. He was the first to alert America to the dangers of a "military-industrial complex." He simply called these profiteers, "The Merchants of Death." His motto and mission was simple but profound (a mantra I recommend): "Take the profits out of war."
The Nye Committee's chief counsel was a brilliant, zealous patriot who uncovered massive amounts of damaging information on America's transnational military-industrial corporations (and their supportive legal and financial firms, among them the Dulles brothers' Sullivan & Cromwell, as well as Presctt Bush's work at Brown Brothers Harriman.) The FBI recommended charges of treason against the Dulles boys.
They struck back, however. Later, they railroaded Nye out of office and used Dick Nixon to frame the committee's chief cousel, Alger Hiss, for perjury and a suspected communist - therefore discrediting his ground-breaking and brilliant investigative work against the Merchants of Death.
- Will
Take Action
I urge every American to contact his and her representative and Senator to demand that Congress immediately rescind Bush's May 9th Executive Directive and ensure his compliance with the provisions of the Emergency Management Act that provides Congressional authority to nullify presidential actions deemed inapproprite, excessive, or illegal.
Please contact your government officials, other democratic organizations, and media. Stop this abuse of power!
Ruha, I have to ask
Ruha, I have to ask where you found this information. Do you have links to government sites where we can read these documents? If the documents are secret I must ask how you have privy to them?
When Bush set up the first "First Amendment Zone" in Tampa, right after his "election" and there was very little outcry, I was amazed. Then the three grandparents were removed from that rally for holding up 8x10 signs and arrested for resisting arrest or some such nonsense and there was a small sound that faded almost immediatly from the good citizens of Florida and the nation didn't seem to notice it at all. Since those days there have been hundreds of free speech zones and only the active protesters seem to mind.
My point is that people seem to be ripe for an authoritarian take over and if you are right we need to make a preemptive strike NOW by getting this out in the open and having a national dialog about just how safe is too safe?
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." ~ Sinclair Lewis
"In a time of deception telling the truth is a revolutionary act~George Orwell
Sources
Dinamic:
Thanks for your post. You are correct in stating that action must now be taken.
To review Bush’s May 9th Executive Directive, please refer to the White House announcement at posting at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
The provisions of the 1976 National Emergency Act that require the President to submit to Congress his reasons for a declaration of martial law (U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 34, subchapter II, § 1621, can be read at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/usc_sec_50_00001621----000-.html
You may also wish to read Harold Relyea’s January 7, 2005 report to Congress on Martial Law and National Emergency, available at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RS21024.pdf
One of the few watchdogs to protest Bush’s extraordinary directive is Matt Rothschild who penned a nice piece on May 18 in The Progressive, viewable at: http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx051807.
Kurt Nimmo at Global Research also offered his views in an article, “Bush Pens Dictatorship Directive, Few Notice,” which can be seen at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5816
On February 6, Japanese-American Ronald Takai, professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, wrote a commentary for Pacific News Service asking the pertinent question, “Will Bush’s War on Terror Bring Back Detention Camps?” An apt piece readable at: http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=de9dd9fbbbbd59388d802c3f4e0e1288
Several weeks later, Sheila Musaji wrote an anxious piece for the Muslim community titled, “Why Is Halliburton Building Internment Camps?” It can be read at: http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1665_0_25_0_C
These are anxious times for all Americans concerned about our nation’s hallowed Constitution and its protection of civil liberties for all citizens. Please review these materials and continue to pass along the news with a request to demand that Congress take action to rein in this out-of-control power-mad illegal White House (p)resident.
Kindest regards,
Will
Thanks Ruha
I have been reading the material from your links all morning. I also found this story on alternet http://www.alternet.org/stories/52801/ titled "Don't We Have a Constitution, Not a King?" which is a synopsis of what you have been saying. And I thought "shock and awe" was only for Iraq.
Have you contacted your representatives with this? I know it sounds as if they should already know it all, but I have been shocked on many occasions to find out that they get so caught up in a few select subjects that they miss a lot of what is going on in other areas than the one they are focused on. I really think that we here should bombard congress with this story.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." ~ Sinclair Lewis
"In a time of deception telling the truth is a revolutionary act~George Orwell
Yesssss! That is some
Yesssss! That is some EXCELLENT research. Chaney/Bush need to be declared "MENTALLY INCOMPETENT!" We knock them out of power and the rest will lay down.
The respective states are the key
---Bush did, indeed, come into office fronting for a neocon vision of Constitutional Law discarded in favor of what they labelled the "Unitary Executive." Totalitarianism by any other name, eh?
---But national-level party politics suddenly does not seem to represent a sure means of upending that fascist-corporatist vision, nor of administering justice to its purveyors. And certainly not for preserving a continuance of the Constitutional liberties and guarantees entailed in the Founding Fathers' great experiment. My guess is that the corporatist neocons reasoned that global events and economic considerations are now too large and too important to be entrusted to an idea as quaint as democratic majority rule.
---But the individual and respective states still possess a certain parentage and primary authority where the Constitution is concerned. They wrote it,... they ratified it,.. and only they can amend it. And if the Constitution is (justifiably) taken to be essentially a contractual "compact" between the individual states and the federal government they created, then it follows that the states possess the true "right" of taking an independent course when that contract is violated, or its terms disregarded.
---The state of Vermont has, for some time now, had a fledgling "secessionist" movement founded on the historical fact of the state's once having been an independent republic in its own right. And true to form, Vermont has just had an impressive series of "town meetings" in which the citizenry forcefully expressed opposition to the current administration and, in many cases, a favoring of impeachment. A couple of years ago, working with Vermont's secessionist-minded faction, I wrote a bill for their state legislature, intended to establish the doctrine of "prior dissent" as a state's means of warning an untoward federal executive NOT to go too far. That bill may be read at the Second Vermont Republic's website, www.vermontrepublic.org ... and it generally says that the state will be the final judge of whether or not it will go along with a certain class of executive decrees, particularly those having the effect of suspending Constitutional law and the Bill of Rights. The bill did not pass.
---But imagine first of all that it DID pass. And then further imagine that at least two other states enacted similar resolutions at the same time. More would be better, of course,... but even so,... is a rogue federal executive going to send tanks and troops into three of its states? Would even a "stacked" Pentagon follow such a directive? Would the troops follow their orders? I don't think so. An aroused citizenry is the last thing they want.
---Admittedly, there is much more to this concept,.. notably the means by which individual governors would establish final control over their national guard and state police units,... and communications with other governors. But in a time when national parties and a national media pretty much run things for a corporate aristocracy, it would seem that the best means of outflanking them is at a lower grassroots level.
States' Rights vs. Executive Directives
Parisle:
Constitutionally, your approach may be sound, as Lincoln discovered (much to his chagrin) that states do indeed possess the legal right to elect to secede from the Union. Few Americans realize the extreme and clearly unconstitutional powers Lincoln assumed in his efforts to preserve the Union.
What suffuses a great many Lone Star State politicians is a rebel hubris founded in part in the same arrogance by which Texas originally sought to declare itself an independent republic. And indeed, the seizure of roughly two-thirds of Mexico was predicated on the notion by Texas settlers that this region, having been settled by them, quite naturally should be considered their own land, hence the Mexican-American War and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidlago. (Albeit, people vote with their feet, and I submit that Mexicans are rightfully reclaiming the southern U.S. as their own via mass migration northward.) Too often, whether Democrat or Republican, political figures from the Lone Star State have sought to "Texanize" America and the world at large.
Whether the doctrine of "prior dissent" legitimizes a state's refusal to comply with an Executive Order issued by the federal Chief of State, may, however, be questionable. For example, JFK imposed his right as Chief Executive to forcibly countermand Governor Wallace's state's right argument imposed in defiance of the national government's 14th Amendment attempt to integrate the University of Alabama. Kennedy dispatched National Guard and federal troops to force compliance, and I believe he was deemed to be within Constitutional rights to do so.
However, your argument may have merit in respect to a state's demand that any decree by an official of the federal government must comply with Constitutional law and the Bill of Rights.
In reply to your hypothetical question regarding federal dispatching of tanks and troops: I have no doubt whatsoever that George W. Bush would do so under his new Executive Directive and that the military would comply. They have already conducted exercises and prepared for such contingencies. Given sufficient "cover" (as in another executive-declared "terrorist attack"), no governor nor state legislature would dare oppose the Commander-in-Chief. Bush knows this and is counting on it.
What is necessary, is for Congress and the individual states to now take preventative action in order to ensure that Bush's directive is rescinded as it is clearly unconstitutional in conferring upon the Executive Branch supremacy over both the legislative and judicial branches, and further, violates the provisions of the 1976 Emergency Management Act mandating Congressional review.
Thanks for your excellent post!
Kindest regards,
Will
As you know, Bush is
As you know, Bush is certainly NOT THE BRAINS in all these moves. He didn't do well in college speach classes. I would take a wild guess he didn't do academically very well in anything because he was to busy being a Narcissistic bully with "Daddy's" name and money. But he was certainly dumb enough for the Big think tank behind all these covert tactic's to take down America.
It almost makes me suspious enough to go look up all their geneology to see who "WIN's" this election!
Brainpower and Buried History
Impeachthemall:
I agree with your assessment of George W. Bush’s limited mental powers. Consider his inarticulate speech, fractured syntax, malapropisms, and other forms of evident cognitive difficulty and one is not surprised to discover that independent impartial intelligence assessment experts have estimated his I.Q. to be somewhere between 95 and 98, the lowest of any White House (p)resident in history (as well as subpar for the national average per se), although his prolonged history as an alcoholic and cocaine addict may well have negatively affected his cerebral processing.
Conversely, to his credit, George Bush has managed to acquire a scrappy sort of “street-smarts” not unusual among substance abusers who learn to cleverly manipulate and exploit others in order to succeed in attaining means for instant gratification, which is the key motivation underscoring such sociopathic behavior.
And yes, he has relied extensively on such powerful enablers as his CIA father, wealthy rightwing business executives, Neocon Think Tank polemicists, Christian fundamentalist zealots, and crafty, ruthless sociopaths in and around his administration only too happy to enjoy the spoils of victory and other illicit largesse issuing from endless and excessive raids on the public treasury by what is doubtless the most criminal regime in U.S. history even if it means propping up so unqualified, absurdly incompetent, and pathetically ludicrous a public figure as George W. Bush. Let’s just state it straight-out for the record: historically, next to him, it’s not so much that the inept James Buchanan looks better, but that even Caligula begins to acquire a certain stature.
Of course, the difficulty for any citizen in our current undemocratic society is relative inability to ably authenticate the illegality of government officials like Bush, Cheney, and Company whose criminal acts of treason, mass murder, war, assassination, malfeasance, criminal negligence, and more, are papered over by official lies, public deceit, operational disinformation, covert infiltration of mass media to control news output, manipulation of the legitimate press, and withholding of vital information, followed by suppression of documentation until which time files can be destroyed and surviving reports reviewed, redacted, altered or supplanted by disinformation set forth by the criminal regime in power or legions of perpetual civil servants compliantly following orders from supra-transitional bureaucratic officials in intelligence and other clandestine agencies, entrenched in power to maintain the same perverted status quo. As has been written, those who control the past do indeed control the present.
For example, after illegally seizing the White House via the stolen election of 2000, George W. Bush signed into law an Executive Directive prohibiting journalistic and public access to presidential records for a period of 12 years. Such suppression of information was s.o.p. for a politician whose past was so suffused with crime, convictions, and evasion of due process that upon becoming Texas Governor he had a new driver's license issued with the unusual ID number of "000000005", an action that destroyed the records of his previous license – with good cause.
Others have written extensively about this, but to briefly offer a few highlights:
While attending college, George W. Bush was arrested for theft and vandalism. Not terribly surprising, considering that fellow students, as reported years later in a Newsweek profile, acknowledged that he "went to Yale but seems to have majored in drinking at the Deke House."
As the son of a politically ambitious career-CIA agent whose senatorial father and Executive Branch administrative associates had financed the Nazis during WWII and afterward, fashioned the modern National Security State during the Cold War, Bush was compelled to have his sorry self processed through an Ivy League curriculum for which he was sorely unqualified.
Moreover, just as George H.W. Bush had accepted military service in an effort to rectify the 1942 opprobrium of his father, Prescott, whose Nazi-front businesses were closed by the Federal government under the “Trading With the Enemy Act,” so too, was George W. compelled to enter onto his record some semblance of seemingly patriotic military service following the November 22, 1963 coup of the U.S. Executive Branch by a treasonous contingent of Texas politicians backed by billionaire oil barons and Lone Star State military-industrialists supported by powerful CIA servitors.
Accordingly, during the Vietnam War, after being accepted into the relatively safe National Guard by pulling strings and then taking a two-month Florida vacation after only 8-weeks in, followed by skipping OCS yet receiving a special commission as a 2nd Lieutenant without any qualifications, (he had scored a paltry 25% on a pilot aptitude test and a mere 50% for navigator skills), Bush was assigned to a non-combat “safe” plane, the F-102 Delta Dagger, being phased out of active service, only to receive an illegal transfer to a base where, working in a postal unit, there were virtually no work assignments. When the transfer was overruled, it was apparently too much for the spoiled substance-abuser to take.
In April 1972, the military began administering routine drug tests as part of a servicemen's annual physical exam. The new procedures included urinalysis, questions about drugs and (to detect cocaine use) "a close examination of the nasal cavities.” Before such an examination could be made on George W. Bush, he simply stopped attending Guard duty. In May of 1972 he abandoned his military service. National Guard records and Bush's own supervisors and friends show no sign of him attending any drills or performing any service from May 1972 until May 1973. In August of 1972, the National Guard suspended Bush from flight duty for failing to take his physical.
Bush’s decision to abandon active military service in order to avoid drug testing owed to his heavy use of cocaine. That year, according to investigative author, Bill Minutaglio, Bush was arrested in Texas for cocaine possession and taken to Harris County Jail, but managed to avoid incarceration or formal charges via his father’s intervention in placing George W. into an informal diversion plan involving community service with Project P.U.L.L., an inner city Houston program for troubled youths at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Houston's dirt-poor Third Ward.
Ultimately, Bush made up the required minimum missed service days, and then quickly applied for an early release before being required to take his next annual drug-testing physical exam. Although the official discharge date was October 1, 1973, Bush's last day in uniform was July 31 - a full 10 months before the end of his 6-year, part time commitment.
Four years later, at 30 years of age, Bush was convicted of drunk driving on September 4, 1976, after failing a road sobriety test with a .10 blood alcohol level as confirmed by the administrating state trooper. Bush pled guilty, was fined and had his driver's license suspended. Bush claims that, ten years later, at age 40, he gave up drinking “because it was a problem.”
How then to account for his drunk and disorderly behavior, in 1987, at the age of 41, when, visibly inebriated, Bush began screaming obscenities at a Wall Street Journal reporter who had predicted that Bush's father would not be the 1988 G.O.P. nominee. Unsteadily approaching the reporter in a restaurant, Bush shouted, "You f**king son of a b*tch. I won't forget what you said and you're going to pay a price for it."
As governor of Texas, Bush attacked his predecessor for permitting leniency toward first-time drug users and strongly promoted a "no tolerance" policy that sent casual cocaine users to prison for years, displaying an astonishing temerity in proclaiming that such offenders "need to know that drug use has consequences."
I agree. Drug use does have its consequences. Just look at George W. Bush. Listen to him. Examine his failures, excuses and evasions. Consider the extraordinary and illegal measures he has taken to acquire and retain power. Since November of 2000 “We, the people of the Unites States,” have been subjected to a “long train of abuses and usurpations.” Now contemplate what his May 9th Executive Directive portends for America!
Our Founding Fathers declared that “all men are created equal.” Of course what men do with and/or to their natural God-given gifts can modify that essential equality. Some authentically enhance themselves through education, valuable life experiences, acute observation, astute reflection, moral conscience and ethical action, in the process growing intellectually and spiritually. Others, indulgent and spoiled, waste themselves in lives of alcohol, narcotics and debauchery, becoming burned out shells of beings once thought to hold youthful promise. That is the tragedy of so insolent and solipsistic a figure as the pathetic George W. Bush. Worse is the fact that he now seeks to deny to others their rightful endowment by the Creator of “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Bush’s May 9th Executive Directive is anathema to the notion of our constitutional democratic-republican form of government established to secure these rights. Let us recall what our forebears said in declaring their independence from such tyranny:
“. . . governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness . . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
I call upon all Americans, not to throw off our government, but to uphold it, recognizing that it is not our system of government that is at fault, but those who have failed to honor it. For our government, “deriving just powers from the consent of the governed,” thus impels us by common moral authority and Constitutional law to demand our right of consent, obligating us to alter or abolish from possible implementation, the cause of our current and potential future suffering: Bush’s sudden, arbitrary, unilaterally-imposed May 9th, 2007 Executive Directive – a “design to reduce (us) under absolute despotism.” My fellow citizens, I implore you to take action today. Contact your representatives and Senators, your newspapers, radio and television stations, fellow activists, organizations, germane internet Web sites, friends and neighbors. Demand nullification of Bush’s unconstitutional prelude to tyranny. Write, call, act today, please.
Thanks, Will
---- The doctrine of "prior dissent" may be taken as a state's insistence that Constitutional law and intent are to be followed at the federal level, and a reminder that, in matters of Constitutional import, the states collectively hold greater authority than a mere president.
---- It is also important to note that the strength of prior dissent resolutions is in the preemptive stating of the case,... getting it out in the open BEFORE something goes horribly wrong,... rallying public support,... drawing more effective scrutiny of those federal executive actions which might warrant further action or disengagement by the state. And my original thinking was that if three states, especially three geographically seperate or non-contiguous states, were to make this move simultaneously, then the intimidating, deterrent effect would be great enough that a rogue executive would back down. (A secondary effect would be that additional states would be moved in the same direction) I hope plenty of people read that bill at the vermontrepublic website.
---- But you might be right about Bush, though I do not believe that he is acting upon his own personal initiative. He is carrying out a mission which was assigned to him by corporatist patrons, and I doubt that it would be easy to get them to give up after they've come this far. But then, we outnumber them by a rather huge margin.
---- And just by the way,... the Russian military would not fire on their own countrymen. I still think the US military would resist Bush's grab for dictatorship at a time when 70% of the country is aligned against him.
A Long Train of Abuses . . .
Parisle,
I wish that I could share your faith in this government’s anticipated restraint. I cannot. For me, such hope has been proven to be tragically naive as I have witnessed in my lifetime an American government that has become the very antithesis of what our founding patriots sought and our brave soldiers fought and died to preserve. A government that liquidates its democratically-elected president, assassinates presidential candidates, murders leading public figures, kills witnesses and critics of these murders, and commits mass murder in order to effect its designs, is not one that will hesitate to openly annihilate those it perceives to be insurrectionists, terrorists, “enemy combatants,” anarchists, dissidents, and rebel activists in opposition to its power, authority, and maintenance – no matter how justified the opposition’s position might seem to others at home or abroad. Time may be the great witness, but history is written by the victors.
And consider our history so replete with examples of U.S. government military attacks against American citizens: the April 1993 Waco Texas massacre by federal agents of 74 men, women and children; the May 4, 1970 slaughter of four Kent State University college students and wounding of nine others by Ohio National Guardsmen; the April 1973 shooting of Native Americans by U.S. Marshalls laying siege to Indigenous Americans occupying Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in commemoration of the 1890 U.S. military massacre of 146 U.S. “Indians;” the murder of a sedated sleeping Fred Hampton and Mark Hall in a murderous assault on Black Panther headquarters in Chicago by combined forces of the FBI, the Cook County, Illinois State Attorney’s Office (SAO) and the Chicago Police Department; the infamous “Memorial Day Massacre” of May 30, 1937 when police opened fire on strikers at Republic Steel in Chicago, killing ten and wounded dozens more; the 1934 killing of strikers (with more than 200 wounded) at the Electric Auto-Lite plant in Toledo by 1,300 National Guardsmen; Hoover’s June 1932 police open-fire assault on “Bonus Army” protesters as well as his dispatching of military troops under command of MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton to halt a march by unarmed citizens that resulted in hundreds of Americans being hospitalized; a month earlier police killed striking workers at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan plant; and so on, going back before even the May 1, 1886 “Bay View Tragedy” when Governor Jeremiah Rusk ordered the state militia to open fire on labor protestors. And if we can bear to acknowledge our government’s history of militant oppression against U.S. citizens, we may recall the massive round-up and internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II under Governor Earl Warren and federal troops, as well as an entire national policy of military genocide against indigenous Americans in post-bellum America that effectively reduced Indian populations from 1.4 million in 1880 to about 600 thousand by 1914. Go back further, and we find officials in power not merely disenfranchising women, but burning them at the stake if they chose to speak out against patriarchal authority, organized religious beliefs of the day, or other prevalent dogma.
One might argue that many of those killed in these clashes were political radicals. So too, were Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others considered “radicals” by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis of 1930s Germany. So too, have American ethnic minority members been demonized as dangerous radicals if they dared display the temerity and tenacity to oppose official U.S. policies at best characterized as “benign neglect,” and at worst, genocidal practices that have included slavery, seizure of lands, mass displacement, starvation, biological warfare, mandated sterilizations, forced medical experimentation, lynching, beatings, torture, false imprisonment, violation of civil rights, criminal neglect, discrimination, racial profiling, economic red-lining, and dozens of other acts of murder, theft, and various forms of dehumanizing injustice.
We now have a global atmosphere wherein war, genocide, terrorism, or other mass murder is an ongoing occurrence and its interpretation is manufactured and propagated for American citizens by munitions-making transnational conglomerate corporate mass media confident that the public is all-too-often willing to “pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, and oppose any foe,” in order to ensure what the State’s cover story explanation is in terms of popular faith in one or more of our iconic slogans: “liberty, peace, justice, democracy, capitalism, religious tolerance, etceteras – when, in fact, nothing of the sort is rarely evident or most often even remotely involved, save the stability, growth, expansion, and profitability of war profiteers and corporations seeking strategic foreign assets.Yet, despite history’s examples, the vast majority of Americans elect to live unaware, unwilling to undertake the necessary research, unable emotionally to accept what it reveals, undeterred by blatant examples of not the mere erosion of liberties, but the outright trampling of them and the imposition of despotism. The mistaken mass perception is that security derives from denial and that “it can’t happen here – not in America!” Sad to bear the message, but friends, it already has and all that is missing is the clarion call and the trucks arriving on the streets to round up the heretofore unsuspecting.
Parisle, as for the “security in numbers” argument, the fact is that Jews in many parts of Europe outnumbered their Nazis captors and certainly by vast numbers in the concentration camps. Yet as history records, more than six million went to their deaths. And as for the Russian military not firing on their own countrymen, may I remind you that Josef Stalin liquidated millions more than even the infamous Adolf Hitler. Millions more. Nor to mistakenly believe that only “stupid white men” engage in such atrocities, examples abound not only in America and Europe, but in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, Southeast Asia, and virtually every inhabited section of the globe where a powerful elitist minority seeks to sustain command of the wealth, strategic resources, unequal and unjust economics, political power centers, and human labor of society at the expense of the majority in order to partake of the fruit that bears (false) promise that “ye shall become as gods.”
There is indeed, evil in the world, and Americans have suffered a “long train of abuses and usurpations.” As a great American once said, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” If we fail to act now, what guarantee do we have that another chance will arise in which to even suggest opposition?
I applaud you for our valiant efforts in the East and wish you the very best in your endeavors.
Kindest regards,
Will
Thanks
Thank you for your research on this topic.
Parisle, that is excellent.
Parisle, that is excellent. I am going to look your work over and I am beginning to put myslef out there with the grassroots level to start taking back our "We the Peoples" power that has been stripped from us. There is something to be said about just handing over your power. It's like Domestic violence. They beat their victims down emotionally, psychologically, spiritually...... finally physically. I see the Bush administration doing this to the American people. That is what the Amnesty bill is about. It is about bullying the American people down by giving away our country. Basically that is what he is doing ....giving away our country. Just another tactic of an abuser and a bully.
OHHHHHHH! This is EXCELLENT! This needs to be the Next BIG DYNAMIC Grassroots Movement.
http://www.vermontrepublic.org/about
I urge and encourage everyone to take a look at this website. Make a move and start a Grassroots Movement in your state. I will be working to do the same.
Thank you, Impeachthemall.....
Maybe I should have mentioned that the bill I wrote was to be found under the SVR's heading of "Other Articles" and was called the "State Sovereignty Resolution." I hope and trust you found it Ok,.... and thank you again for your kind words.
The report essentially
The report essentially dismisses the role of the other branches of government – pretty much as the administration did in its first six years – and locates these emergency power solely in the president's hands.
Countries that have soldiers in charge seem, more often than not, to be the ones where democracy is but a flickering candle sitting in an open window with a forecast of rain.
Martial Law Bush's October Surprise?
President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.
---------------------------
reeta
Nicely done
I am just taking a break from doing some work on the website I have,
and started reading these post, and like to say that they are very
informative. I see that the people making these informative
post do a lot of research. Thank you.
Ted IV