AFP - Nov 4, 2007
Pakistani forces rounded up leading critics and deployed around key state buildings Sunday as President Pervez Musharraf sought to shore up his flagging grip on power by imposing emergency rule.
Defying international condemnation, military ruler Musharraf suspended the constitution, sacked the chief justice, imposed strict media curbs and arrested more than 100 leading opposition figures and lawyers.
Accusing the judiciary and Islamic militants of destabilising the country, he said he was acting to stop the nuclear-armed nation from committing "suicide," and appealed for understanding from the West.
Troops and police poured into Islamabad and surrounded the Supreme Court, which had been due within days to rule on the legality of Musharraf's victory in an October 6 presidential election.
The fate of elections scheduled for January remains unclear, and there are fears Islamic militants may retaliate with further attacks and that the move may raise tensions between Musharraf and the army.
"We are heading for a very uncertain time because this coup will be challenged by political parties. This will also build strain between him and the military," Hasan Askari, former head of political science at Punjab University, told AFP.
Pakistani media were incensed. "Gen. Musharraf's second coup", said a headline in Dawn, referring to his first power grab in 1999, while the Daily Times said: "It is martial law."
The White House led global criticism, but Musharraf -- a key US ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- insisted he had no choice.
"Inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan, and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide," he said in a late-night televised address.
"Kindly understand the criticality of the situation in Pakistan... Pakistan is on the verge of destabilisation."
Police on Sunday set up barricades and unrolled coils of barbed wire to block access to the parliament, presidential residence and Supreme Court buildings.
They and paramilitary soldiers fanned out nearby, and set up posts near the state-run radio headquarters, television stations and luxury hotels.
Shops were open but traffic was thin and markets were quiet.
Police arrested Javed Hashmi, acting chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-N party of former premier Nawaz Sharif, and a leading rights activist after earlier rounding up cricket legend turned politician Imran Khan.
"I am neither afraid of prison nor of generals, because I have served the major part of my political life in prison," Hashmi told reporters alerted to the raid on his house in the central city of Multan.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who rushed home from Dubai after Musharraf's emergency proclamation, warned the country was slipping back toward dictatorship.
"This is not emergency, this is martial law and the people of Pakistan will protest against it," she told reporters.
The move could wreck attempts to forge a power-sharing deal with Bhutto as well as the January elections, meant to put the nation of 160 million people back on the path to democracy.
Musharraf's first decisive step after announcing the state of emergency was to replace outspoken chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a thorn in his side since the general first tried to sack him in March.
The new chief justice, Hameed Dogar, cancelled Chaudhry's caseload.
As well as considering legal challenges to Musharraf's election, Chaudhry had been hearing hundreds of human rights appeals from families of people who went missing over the last four years because of alleged Al-Qaeda links.
Police on Sunday surrounded a compound where Chaudhry and other judges live.
Musharraf had pledged to step down as army chief by November 15 if he won the election and the court upheld it, but that now appears unlikely.
Bhutto -- whose October homecoming parade was targeted in a suicide attack that killed 139 people -- said emergency rule merely encouraged extremists but added she was ready to talk with Musharraf.
The White House called emergency rule "very disappointing."
"President Musharraf needs to stand by his pledges to have free and fair elections in January and step down as chief of army staff before retaking the presidential oath of office," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
The United States however said there was no plan to suspend military aid to Pakistan.
China, one of Pakistan's closest allies, expressed concern and said it hoped stability could be maintained. Pakistan's neighbour and nuclear rival India expressed "regrets".
Showing posts with label Dictator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dictator. Show all posts
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War
By ADAM COHEN New York Times - July 23, 2007
The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn’t have the power to do it. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said at a recent press conference. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.” He added magnanimously: “I’m certainly interested in their opinion.”
The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.
Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”
The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”
Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith. But James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical. “In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”
When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.
The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.
The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”
As opinion turns more decisively against the war, the administration is becoming ever more dismissive of Congress’s role. Last week, Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman brusquely turned away Senator Hillary Clinton’s questions about how the Pentagon intended to plan for withdrawal from Iraq. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq,” he wrote. Mr. Edelman’s response showed contempt not merely for Congress, but for the system of government the founders carefully created.
The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.
Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.
The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn’t have the power to do it. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said at a recent press conference. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.” He added magnanimously: “I’m certainly interested in their opinion.”
The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.
Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”
The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”
Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith. But James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical. “In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”
When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.
The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.
The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”
As opinion turns more decisively against the war, the administration is becoming ever more dismissive of Congress’s role. Last week, Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman brusquely turned away Senator Hillary Clinton’s questions about how the Pentagon intended to plan for withdrawal from Iraq. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq,” he wrote. Mr. Edelman’s response showed contempt not merely for Congress, but for the system of government the founders carefully created.
The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.
Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.
Friday, July 13, 2007
When Dictators Serve US Interests
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is good for the Bush Administration
Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz. A number of questions arise. Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?
The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf. Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan's streets. As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.
But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi's order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination. While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government's high-handedness.
Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere. Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west's instrument in a "war on Islam"--there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.
Terrorism requires a political solution. Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy. Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem. It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way. Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.
The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides. When Pakistan's chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government--and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.
While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their "force". None of the opposition parties believe MQM's denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent. It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.
The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people's movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM's terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a "terrorist organisation", and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.
While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror--in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives--he has allied himself with the country's number one terrorist. And Tony Blair's government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan's number one terrorist citizenship.
It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist. Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process? And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?
Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Presidential "Signing Statements"
There is a fine line between a "decisive Decider" and a "Dictator."
Signing Statements Erode Constitutional Balance - Representative Ron Paul
Recently, the General Accounting Office studied nineteen instances where the president issued so-called "signing statements." In such statements, the president essentially begins the process of interpreting legislation – up to and including declaring provisions unconstitutional, hence often refusing to enforce them.
The GAO study found that in nearly 1/3 of the cases studied, the administration failed to enforce the law as enacted. This approach is especially worrisome for several reasons.
First, these signing statements tend to move authority from the legislative branch to the executive, upsetting our delicate system of checks and balances. Next, these statements grant the president power not given by the Constitution, allowing him to usurp powers of the judicial branch. Finally, the idea of agencies refusing to enforce the law as enacted sets precedent for the type of run away administrative actions our constitution was expressly enacted in order to avoid.
Although these signing statements are at record high numbers, the problem is not with a single administration. Contrary to the claims of those who raise this issue for purely political purposes, the most significant challenge to liberty presented by these statements is that they can serve to further erode our constitutional republic.
I have long been skeptical of the line item veto on spending bills for the same reason I oppose these signing statements. The legislature should not yield its authority to the executive. Our constitutional republic demands that all branches of government understand and respect our system and jealously guard their own prerogatives.
In modern Washington nothing is more misunderstood, and less appreciated, than the genius of republicanism. Presidents issue signing statements that effectively approve in part and reject in part laws of the land, even though there is no constitutional provision for such a process. In addition, Congress cedes its powers at the crucial moment when a decision on whether or not a war is to be fought will be made, only to then criticize the effort it could have used its powers to stop.
In his "Notes on Virginia," Thomas Jefferson spoke clearly and directly about the idea of elected representatives delegating their responsibility to other branches of government, saying in no uncertain terms that since such representatives had received their authority by delegation from the people – expressly for the use as representative – the legislature had to choose to either use the authority granted or return it to the people. In other words, there is to be no delegation of authority from the representatives to the executive branch of government.
Concerns with signing statements ought to include a concern for the health of our constitutional republic, it ought not to be based upon the political battle of the day. Regardless of whether the president is named Bush or Clinton, and without respect to any particular political interest, we in Congress need to fulfill our oath of office and protect and defend the constitution and our republic. Our constituents deserve no less, and should demand it of all of us.
Signing Statements Erode Constitutional Balance - Representative Ron Paul
Recently, the General Accounting Office studied nineteen instances where the president issued so-called "signing statements." In such statements, the president essentially begins the process of interpreting legislation – up to and including declaring provisions unconstitutional, hence often refusing to enforce them.
The GAO study found that in nearly 1/3 of the cases studied, the administration failed to enforce the law as enacted. This approach is especially worrisome for several reasons.
First, these signing statements tend to move authority from the legislative branch to the executive, upsetting our delicate system of checks and balances. Next, these statements grant the president power not given by the Constitution, allowing him to usurp powers of the judicial branch. Finally, the idea of agencies refusing to enforce the law as enacted sets precedent for the type of run away administrative actions our constitution was expressly enacted in order to avoid.
Although these signing statements are at record high numbers, the problem is not with a single administration. Contrary to the claims of those who raise this issue for purely political purposes, the most significant challenge to liberty presented by these statements is that they can serve to further erode our constitutional republic.
I have long been skeptical of the line item veto on spending bills for the same reason I oppose these signing statements. The legislature should not yield its authority to the executive. Our constitutional republic demands that all branches of government understand and respect our system and jealously guard their own prerogatives.
In modern Washington nothing is more misunderstood, and less appreciated, than the genius of republicanism. Presidents issue signing statements that effectively approve in part and reject in part laws of the land, even though there is no constitutional provision for such a process. In addition, Congress cedes its powers at the crucial moment when a decision on whether or not a war is to be fought will be made, only to then criticize the effort it could have used its powers to stop.
In his "Notes on Virginia," Thomas Jefferson spoke clearly and directly about the idea of elected representatives delegating their responsibility to other branches of government, saying in no uncertain terms that since such representatives had received their authority by delegation from the people – expressly for the use as representative – the legislature had to choose to either use the authority granted or return it to the people. In other words, there is to be no delegation of authority from the representatives to the executive branch of government.
Concerns with signing statements ought to include a concern for the health of our constitutional republic, it ought not to be based upon the political battle of the day. Regardless of whether the president is named Bush or Clinton, and without respect to any particular political interest, we in Congress need to fulfill our oath of office and protect and defend the constitution and our republic. Our constituents deserve no less, and should demand it of all of us.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Cheney and Bush Declare Autonomous Dictatorial Powers
Exempt Themselves From Executive Branch
Written by Steve Watson
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
The Vice President and the President have casually declared their offices to be independent of the executive branch and completely autonomous, with Dick Cheney also attempting to abolish agencies his office is supposed to be accountable to.
Last week the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reported:
Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”
As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President's position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President's executive order.
In his letter to the Vice President, Chairman Waxman writes: "I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions. ... [I]t would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials."
The documents released by the committee reveal that Cheney's office has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration which is responsible for overseeing the protection of classified material by the executive branch.
As the Washington Post further reported, Cheney's staff have consistently declared themselves above the law by not filing reports on their possession of classified data and even blocking an inspection of their office in 2004. The documents also reveal that after the Archives office demanded cooperation earlier this year, Cheney's staff proposed eliminating it altogether.
While Cheney has declared his office outside of the executive branch he has continued to receive funding from the bill that funds the executive branch. Instead of challenging Cheney's absurd declaration of autonomy, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel is now seeking an amendment to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill in order to cut the funding to Cheney's office and thus legally separate it from the executive branch.
"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch. However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent." Emanuel has said.
In addition to Cheney's office declaring itself exempt from oversight, President Bush's office has also claimed it has the same status.
The LA Times reported:
An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.
It has now become chillingly clear that the President and the Vice President believe that they have absolute power over the Government of the United States and cannot be held accountable to anybody.
Previously Dick Cheney has declared both himself and Bush unaccountable to Congress, stating last year that "vice president and president and constitutional officers don’t appear before the Congress.”
It is also now clear that Bush and Cheney have broken literally hundreds of laws because they see themselves as outside of them. Last April the Boston Globe reported:
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
The Constitution assigns power to Congress to write the laws and asserts that the president has an obligation ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.
Take the "torture ban", which was approved last year, for example. After approving the bill, Bush issued a ''signing statement" giving his own interpretation of what the law meant and giving him the right to bypass it if he so wished.
Bush and Cheney are vastly expanding Presidential power and creating provisions that set their offices up as dictatorial bodies.
Just last month new legislation was signed which declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security", was signed on May 9th without the approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately.
Journalist Jerome Corsi, who has studied the directive also states that it makes no reference to Congress and "its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists."
In other words the new directive excludes Congress altogether from governance in a state of emergency.
While alluding to the "enduring constitutional government", the directive actually ensures the end of constitutional government as each branch, the executive, legislative and judicial, are stripped of equal authority and must answer directly and solely to the President.
The mainstream media has not reported on the directive and the White House has refused to comment.
Last month it was also reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city.
Though anathema to any notion of liberty or freedom, this new legislation has not come out of the blue, it is merely an open declaration of the infrastructure of martial law that the federal government has been building since the turn of the last century, which was first publicly codified in the 1933 war powers act under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Senate Report 93-549, which was presented at the first session of the 93rd Congress, outlines just a handful of the declared national emergencies or martial law declarations that preceded the latest one.
"Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Richard M. Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971."
In alliance with these open declarations of martial law and the 1947 National Security Act, bills such as the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Military Commissions Act have all put the final jigsaw pieces in place to complete an infrastructure of dictatorship since 9/11.
We're already living under an infrastructure of martial law and have been since 1933, all that remains for it to be fully implemented is a big enough natural disaster, mass terror attack or other catastrophe that will cause the necessary carnage and panic that affords the federal government enough leeway to implement open dictatorship with the least possible resistance.
New revelations that Cheney and Bush have openly declared themselves to be have total power and the ability to bypass law and oversight should be a code red emergency. They are moving to implement everything necessary for a total takeover should a catalyst event provide the opportunity. Given that this administration has a history of cooking up its own catalysts we should be very wary indeed.
Paul Joseph Watson contributed research to this article.
Written by Steve Watson
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
The Vice President and the President have casually declared their offices to be independent of the executive branch and completely autonomous, with Dick Cheney also attempting to abolish agencies his office is supposed to be accountable to.
Last week the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reported:
Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”
As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President's position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President's executive order.
In his letter to the Vice President, Chairman Waxman writes: "I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions. ... [I]t would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials."
The documents released by the committee reveal that Cheney's office has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration which is responsible for overseeing the protection of classified material by the executive branch.
As the Washington Post further reported, Cheney's staff have consistently declared themselves above the law by not filing reports on their possession of classified data and even blocking an inspection of their office in 2004. The documents also reveal that after the Archives office demanded cooperation earlier this year, Cheney's staff proposed eliminating it altogether.
While Cheney has declared his office outside of the executive branch he has continued to receive funding from the bill that funds the executive branch. Instead of challenging Cheney's absurd declaration of autonomy, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel is now seeking an amendment to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill in order to cut the funding to Cheney's office and thus legally separate it from the executive branch.
"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch. However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent." Emanuel has said.
In addition to Cheney's office declaring itself exempt from oversight, President Bush's office has also claimed it has the same status.
The LA Times reported:
An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.
It has now become chillingly clear that the President and the Vice President believe that they have absolute power over the Government of the United States and cannot be held accountable to anybody.
Previously Dick Cheney has declared both himself and Bush unaccountable to Congress, stating last year that "vice president and president and constitutional officers don’t appear before the Congress.”
It is also now clear that Bush and Cheney have broken literally hundreds of laws because they see themselves as outside of them. Last April the Boston Globe reported:
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
The Constitution assigns power to Congress to write the laws and asserts that the president has an obligation ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.
Take the "torture ban", which was approved last year, for example. After approving the bill, Bush issued a ''signing statement" giving his own interpretation of what the law meant and giving him the right to bypass it if he so wished.
Bush and Cheney are vastly expanding Presidential power and creating provisions that set their offices up as dictatorial bodies.
Just last month new legislation was signed which declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security", was signed on May 9th without the approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately.
Journalist Jerome Corsi, who has studied the directive also states that it makes no reference to Congress and "its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists."
In other words the new directive excludes Congress altogether from governance in a state of emergency.
While alluding to the "enduring constitutional government", the directive actually ensures the end of constitutional government as each branch, the executive, legislative and judicial, are stripped of equal authority and must answer directly and solely to the President.
The mainstream media has not reported on the directive and the White House has refused to comment.
Last month it was also reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city.
Though anathema to any notion of liberty or freedom, this new legislation has not come out of the blue, it is merely an open declaration of the infrastructure of martial law that the federal government has been building since the turn of the last century, which was first publicly codified in the 1933 war powers act under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Senate Report 93-549, which was presented at the first session of the 93rd Congress, outlines just a handful of the declared national emergencies or martial law declarations that preceded the latest one.
"Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Richard M. Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971."
In alliance with these open declarations of martial law and the 1947 National Security Act, bills such as the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Military Commissions Act have all put the final jigsaw pieces in place to complete an infrastructure of dictatorship since 9/11.
We're already living under an infrastructure of martial law and have been since 1933, all that remains for it to be fully implemented is a big enough natural disaster, mass terror attack or other catastrophe that will cause the necessary carnage and panic that affords the federal government enough leeway to implement open dictatorship with the least possible resistance.
New revelations that Cheney and Bush have openly declared themselves to be have total power and the ability to bypass law and oversight should be a code red emergency. They are moving to implement everything necessary for a total takeover should a catalyst event provide the opportunity. Given that this administration has a history of cooking up its own catalysts we should be very wary indeed.
Paul Joseph Watson contributed research to this article.
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