Bush's Banana Republic

ethos · October 13, 2002

Friday, October 11, 2002 10:18 AM

fboyle@law.uiuc.edu

Francis A. Boyle: Bush's Banana Republic

http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle1011.html

George W. Bush was never elected President by the People of the United States of America. Instead, he was anointed for that Office by five Justices of the United States Supreme Court who themselves had been appointed by Republican Presidents. Bush Jr.'s installation was an act of judicial usurpation of the American Constitution that was unprecedented in the history of the American Republic. Had it occurred in a developing country, such a subversion of democratic process would have been greeted with knowing derision throughout the West. What happened in America could only be likened to a judicial coup d'etat inflicted upon the American People, Constitution, and Republic. There should now be no doubt that the United States Supreme Court is governed by raw, naked, brutal, power politics. Justice has nothing at all to do with it. This Supreme Court's constitutional sophistry proved a harbinger of the new administration's disrespect for the Rule of Law, whether domestic or international.

BUSH JR.'S CONSTITUTIONAL COUP D'ETAT

From the Supreme Court's installation of Bush Jr. as President to the Ashcroft/Federalist Society post-September 11 regime of police state "laws," the politico-legal functioning of America is increasingly resembling that of a Banana Republic. Since September 11th, we have seen one blow against the U.S. Constitution after another. For example, Attorney General John Ashcroft unilaterally instituted the monitoring of attorney-client communications despite the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures and the Sixth Amendment right to representation by Counsel in criminal cases. He just went ahead and did it, without even bothering to inform anyone.

Over 1100 aliens have been picked up and "disappeared" by Ashcroft and his Department of Injustice. The American People have no idea where most of these people are. They are being held on the basis of immigration law, not criminal law, for a period of detention which has not been defined.

Ashcroft proclaimed another ukaze that these immigration proceedings must be held in secret. The phenomenon of "enforced disappearances" is considered to be a crime against humanity by Article 7(I)(i) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court.

It appears that many of these aliens have been deprived of their basic human rights to consular notification and access as set forth in the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the United States is a contracting party and which even the U.S. State Department concedes constitutes binding customary international law. Apparently Bush Jr.'s left hand does not care about what his right hand does. Yet another international convention set at naught.

The one characteristic these detained foreigners have in common is that they are mostly Muslims, Arabs, and Asians. Everyone needs a scapegoat for the 11 September tragedy, and it looks like we have one, both at home and abroad. Thousands more such aliens are being moved into the pipeline for the Ashcroft gulag by the FBI.

Ashcroft is now planning to reinstate the infamous COINTELPRO Program, whose atrocities against the civil rights and civil liberties of the American People have been amply documented elsewhere.

It is just a matter of time before the Bush Jr. Leaguers unleash the newly-augmented powers of the FBI, CIA and NSA directly against the American People. And we already have 2 million Americans rotting away in prison -- the highest rate of incarceration in the world, a disproportionate majority of whom are Americans of Color, victims of the Nixon/Ford, Reagan/Bush, and Clinton administrations' racist "war on drugs," which is really a war against People of Color. The American Police State has already arrived for People of Color!

ASHCROFT'S POLICE STATE

This brings the analysis to the Ashcroft Police State Act. There are no other words to describe it. While Bush failed to get a formal declaration of war that would have rendered him a constitutional dictator, clearly Attorney General John Ashcroft and his right-wing Federalist Society lawyers took every piece of regressive legislation off the shelf, tied it all into what they called an anti-terrorism bill, and then rammed it through Congress, giving it the appropriately Orwellian name of the <U.S.A>. Patriot Act.

According to one report, Ashcroft's first draft would have had Congress suspend the ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus - the necessary prerequisite for imposing a police state in the United States of America.

Many Members of Congress publicly admitted that they did not even bother to read the Ashcroft Police State Act. Another Congressman said basically:

"Right, but there's nothing new about that." Interestingly enough the so-called liberal Democrats in the House and the Senate were willing to give Bush Jr. and Ashcroft more police state powers than the conservative Republicans in the House. But there are no real differences that matter between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to promoting America's self-proclaimed "Manifest Destiny" to control the World and now Outer Space too.

BUSH'S KANGAROO COURTS

It would take an entire law review article for me to analyze all the legal and human rights problems with the Bush Jr.'s proposed military commissions. Here a cabal of Federalist Society Lawyers in the White House got President Bush to sign an Executive Order on 13 November 2001 which, when implemented, will be widely recognized to constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and establish a prima facie case of criminal accountability against the President himself.

It is emblematic of this particular war that right towards its very outset President George W. Bush personally incriminated himself under both international criminal law and United States domestic criminal law.

The Bush Jr. administration has severely undermined the integrity of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949. By doing this, the Bush Jr. administration has opened up U.S. Armed Forces and civilians around the world to similar reprisals, which has already happened.

As a licensed attorney for 25 years, a law professor for 23 years and someone who has done a good deal of criminal defense work in U.S. Federal Courts, I am appalled by the insinuation of these Federalist Society Lawyers that America's Federal Courts established by Article III of the U.S. Constitution cannot hold accountable those responsible for the crimes of 11 September 2001. This is an insult to all Federal Judges, Federal Prosecutors, Federal Public Defenders and all the Lawyers who are Officers of these Courts.

In one fell stroke these Federalist Society lawyers have besmirched and undermined the integrity of two Branches of the United States Federal Government established by the Constitution - the Presidency and the Judiciary. So far the U.S. Congress has supinely gone along with the Bush Jr. police state agenda. If and when these Bush/Ashcroft police state practices make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, many of them will probably be upheld. After all, a 5 to 4 majority of the Supreme Court already gave the Presidency to Bush Jr. We need to seriously consider whether they would strike down laws and practices that would give Bush Jr. a Police State as well.

Philosophers have taught that a People get the type of government they deserve. If the American People permit the Bush Jr. Leaguers to impose a Police State at home in the name of furthering Pax Americana abroad, we will have deserved it by abnegating our responsibilities as Citizens living in what is supposed to be a constitutional Republic with a commitment to the Rule of Law. The same thing happened to the Romans and to the Athenians. The United States of America is not immune to the laws of history.

Sic transit gloria mundi!

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, and The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU

Streetstraw · December 6, 2002

Greetings everyone, Here's a tidbit from the Freedom News Daily. "Authorities have

few leads" because the people who control "the authorities" are the ones committing the crimes!

================

19- Mexican women march for justice. ------ BBC

More than 1,000 women marched through Mexico City, demanding justice for the as-yet unknown killers of hundreds of women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez. Despite widespread outrage over the murders, authorities have few leads. (11/26/02)

>http://www.free-market.net/rd/14582982.html

>F R E E D O M N E W S D A I L Y

> -----------------------------

Please forward this to anyone who might enjoy FND. To join or leave this free list, click to: http://free-market.net/news/

Please note. It's doubtful they will ever find the real killers of these women. (Most of whom had their hearts cut out. Some were Americans by the way.) That's because these Satanic ritual killings are performed by a Who's Who at the topmost levels of the social register. This includes but is not limited to; George Bush, Henry Kissinger, Al Gore, Tony Blair and probably the president of Mexico, Mr. Fox. They are all involved in Satanic human sacrifice. Watch the movie, Eyes Wide Shut, with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stanley Kubrik. There is a scene in that movie which hints at the Satanism which is practiced on a regular basis by our world leaders. Also watch Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove, a video documentary by Alex Jones. He snuck a hidden camera into the Bohemian Grove Satanist retreat in California. There he filmed a short segment on the first day of their annual fourteen day "Summer Fire Festival."

I'm not a Christian nor do I belong to any organized religion. However it is rather unnerving to realize that most of the world leaders in politics, religion, banking, industry, entertainment and every other sphere of society are into Satanism and ritualistic human sacrifice. Mainstream media mostly ignores it because that media is owned by the SAME people who do it. Yours truly, Ed

theist · December 6, 2002

I'm not a Christian nor do I belong to any organized religion. However it is rather unnerving to realize that most of the world leaders in politics, religion, banking, industry, entertainment and every other sphere of society are into Satanism and ritualistic human sacrifice. Mainstream media mostly ignores it because that media is owned by the SAME people who do it. Yours truly, Ed

Ed if you are not nuts you are certainly bananas.

Tarun · January 29, 2003

A Credibility Problem

Commentary by Paul Krugman for The New York Times

Will tonight's State of the Union address restore George W. Bush's political fortunes?

Only a few weeks ago, that would have seemed an extremely unlikely question. Fresh off the Republican victory in the midterm elections, President Bush seemed invincible — and it's amazing how many stories you still read about his immense, unshakeable popularity.

But anyone who takes the trouble to look at the numbers knows that the thrill is gone. Mr. Bush's approval ratings have plunged over the last two months. A year ago he was, indeed, immensely popular; right now he's not significantly more popular than he was before Sept. 11.

Other polls suggest that the public is particularly disenchanted with Mr. Bush's economic policy. Most voters no longer believe that his tax cuts are effective at creating jobs, and many also believe that his policies favor the wealthy and large corporations, rather than people like themselves. (Class warfare!)

Still, polls can shift — as they did, suddenly, after Sept. 11. Can tonight's speech do the trick?

We can be sure that some pundits will acclaim the speech as bold and brilliant; they would do that if he read from "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Whether their praise, and the theatrics of the occasion, will turn things around is anyone's guess. A lot depends on whether Mr. Bush is held accountable for the promises he made in his last State of the Union address.

For there was more to that speech than the axis of evil (a phrase, by the way, that has vanished from Mr. Bush's vocabulary, along with the name of that guy he promised to bring in dead or alive). He assured those who worried about red ink that "our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-lived." He offered comfort for those who remembered his father's "jobless recovery," which felt like a continuing recession: "When America works, America prospers, so my economic security plan can be summed up in one word: jobs."

Fast-forward a year. We now know that the "small" budget deficit will rise above $300 billion, and stay there. Even the administration's own, ever-optimistic budget officials now concede that we face deficits as far as the eye can see. Meanwhile, payrolls continue to decline; since the working-age population keeps rising, it's becoming ever harder for ordinary Americans to get jobs, or keep them.

And there's a good chance things will get a lot worse: with markets sliding, consumers wilting, businesses fearful about the effects of war and oil prices rising, the pieces are in place for a full-blown double-dip recession. And the second dip would take us much further down than the first.

So can Mr. Bush convince us that his latest tax cut is just the tonic the economy needs?

There are several reasons to doubt whether he can pull it off. For one thing, economists outside the administration, even those who always find ways to praise whatever he proposes, can't see what this tax cut has to do with the economy's immediate problems. This has led to a striking dissonance between what administration officials say on TV — where it's still all about jobs — and what they say when speaking to knowledgeable audiences. In background briefings for reporters, at the Davos conference this past weekend and wherever else they encounter people who might actually know something about the numbers, officials now pooh-pooh concerns about the state of the job market. Never mind that, they say, our plan is all about increasing long-run growth. Um, but what about "economic security"?

The administration's credibility problem is made worse by the high casualty rate among top economic officials, and the uninspiring quality of their replacements. Today is the first day of hearings for John Snow, the administration's choice for Treasury secretary. One official I spoke to was rueful: "I thought Paul O'Neill wasn't suited to being Treasury secretary; he'd have been better off running a railroad. Now they've picked a man who ran a railroad."

But that's not why he was chosen, according to CBS Market Watch: "He was picked because he's a lobbyist, a schmoozer, a master salesman" — and a member of no fewer than nine country clubs.

Still, nobody razzle-dazzles 'em like Mr. Bush. Tonight we'll see if he's good enough to make us forget last year's promises.