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May 14, 2002
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
May 10, 2002
Lisa Taraki
In Defense
of Sanctions
Against Israel
Jack McCarthy
Snitch Envy: Hitchens, Brock and
Whitaker Chambers
John Jonik
Tobacco
and Teens: Criminalizing the Victiims
Vijay Prashad
Fettered Histories:
Tariq Ali and Ahmed Rashid
on Islam
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Analyst Details
The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United State
Omar Barghouti
Israel's Best Interest
May 9, 2002
Alex Lynch
American
Mainstream Media:
Institutionalized Subjectivity
Alexander Cockburn
The Armey Plan:
Palestine to Ft. Worth?
May 8, 2002
James
Masterson
Hysteria
and Panic
About France
Robert Fisk
The Solution to this Filthy War: Foreign
Occupation
Edward
Hammond
and Jan van Aken
Pentagon
Pushed for Offensive BioWeapons Development
David Vest
From Ground Zero to the Bronx
May 7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Bone
Apart:
The Graveyard of Napoleon's Defeated Army
Philip
Farruggio
Muffler
Shop Medicine
Norman
Madarasz
French
Elections:
Pandora's Ballot
Tom Turnipseed
A Travesty of Justice
May 6, 2002
Fran Schor
Invasion
of Iraq:
Coming Soon
Dave Marsh
Love Hurts
John Chuckman
The
Paradoxes of Israel
Rep. Ron Paul
End Corporate Welfare, Pull
the Plug on the Ex-Im Bank
Hussein
Ibish
Devastation
Only Feeds Resistance to Israeli Rule
May 5, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
High and Dry in the Mojave
May 4, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Sharon
the Merciless
and Arafat the Corrupt
Sam Bahour
New United States of Israel
Alexander
Cockburn
Extreme
Solutions:
Priests and Palestinians
May 3, 2002
Arundhati Roy
Democracy and
Religious Fascism
Wayne
Madsen
Dispatch
from Paris:
Le Pen's Strange Coalition
Yigal Bronner
A Journey to Beit Jalla
CounterPunch
Wire
Otto
Reich Named to Board of School of the Americas
John Troyer
Hatemongers Try to Cleanse History:
Gays and 9/11
John Stauber
Big
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Attacks "Mad Cow" Authors
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
Resources:
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The New Crusade:
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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The New Intifada:
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May
14, 2002
U.S.
Plans for Martial Law, Tele-Governance,
and the Suspension of Elections
When the War Hits
Home
by John Stanton and
Wayne Madsen
Since September 11, 2001, the Bush Regime, the
US Congress and senior personnel in the U.S. military have been
busy planning their escape routes from Washington, D.C. and surrounding
communities in the event that the continental United States is
attacked by another 19 global insurgents possessing little more
than wit, dedication, an unrepentant animosity towards America,
and an ample dose of radioactive material packed inside an explosive-laden
metallic suitcase. Corporate executives have ensured that they
too will find a place in the bunker along side their effete government
colleagues through organizations such as National Security Telecommunications
Advisory Committee (NSTAC). That group is composed of "up
to 30 industry chief executives representing the major communications
and network service providers and information technology, finance,
and aerospace companies the NSTAC provides industry-based advice
and expertise to the President on issues and problems related
to implementing national security and emergency preparedness
" Defense contracting giants play a prominent role on the
NSTAC and include Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Oracle (the company
that volunteered to develop a post-911 national identification
database), Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and CSC. The chairman
of the NSTAC also conveniently serves as an ex-officio member
of Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge's President's Homeland Security
Advisory Council.
The U.S. government and its military
and corporate officials are fond of making the pitch to the American
public that the U.S. Constitution mandates that their survival,
above all others, is absolutely necessary to ensure that the
government that emanates from that document survives a debilitating
attack. It is astonishing that the American public believes such
absurdities. But one has to admire the boldly craven and callous
"doomsday" planning of the Bush regime and its military
centurions and corporate nabobs, who take pleasure in gutting
the environment, the workforce, the economy, and the world in
general. These are the same people who played hide-and-seek with
the American public in September 2001.
We the People?
On September 11, 2001, one of the commercial
aircraft commandeered by suspected Saudi and Yemeni insurgents
made its final approach to its destination, the Pentagon -- located
roughly three miles across the Potomac River from the U.S. Capitol
and White House in Washington, DC -- by following Columbia Pike,
in Arlington, Virginia, to its target. The Pentagon is located
adjacent to the glitzy Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, Virginia,
not Washington, DC, as much of the media conveniently fudged
the geographic difference. Although not Manhattan, Arlington
is a densely packed and diverse community of close to 200,000
people. It hosts five high schools and two notable colleges:
Marymount University and George Mason Law School. When the aircraft
slammed into the Pentagon, residents of Arlington--including
many in office buildings, stores, and schools in the "South
Side" -- felt the thud of the explosion as the aircraft
incinerated a block of the Pentagon and killed 123 employees
and contractors on the ground and 64 on the Boeing 757.
Arlington fire fighters, police and EMT
units were on the scene at the Pentagon -- as were their counterparts
at the World Trade Centers in New York City-- within seconds
of the aircraft's explosion. In Arlington's case, the rapidity
of response was due to alert firefighters and police officers
who noticed the aircraft off-path as it flew dangerously low
over the heavily populated Columbia Pike corridor in Arlington
that leads directly to the Pentagon. They alerted their colleagues
in the Arlington Fire and Police Departments that something was
terribly wrong. Someone at the controls of the aircraft knew
to pick up the visual of the "Pike" as it is called
by Arlingtonians, the same way other pilots pick up the Potomac
River on visual to land at Reagan National Airport.
Local residents scrambled to get their
youngsters out of schools where the hallways were filled with
the crying and unsettled. Teachers, counselors, and coaches did
all they could to calm student's nerves. Local firefighters and
police were busy trying to give relief to the Pentagon structure
and its mangled people. Local hospitals were alerted to receive
Pentagon injured. The same scene was played out in New York
City.
As mayhem broke loose in Arlington, Virginia,
adjacent Washington, and New York City, the response of those
who are tasked with national governance provides important clues
as to who will live and die during the next disaster. Prior to
911, the only insight into continuity-of-government planning
was provided by Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove, which through
its characters, portrayed dimwitted "leaders"--most
un-elected -- sheltering themselves ahead of their populations.
911 Hide and
Seek
Dick Cheney was hustled into a bunker
and ultimately ended up in a cave running the Shadow Government.
U.S. Supreme Court-anointed George Bush II and staff was whisked
from an elementary school class--minus the children, teachers
and school staff --- to undisclosed locations scattered across
the land. Military installations barricade their gates. As F-16s
patrolled the skies, government officials lauded the protection
they were providing despite the fact that the fighters were there
to shoot down commercial passenger planes. Leaders of both parties
in Congress, and, in fact, all of Congress, were escorted from
Washington, DC as if Gort from the Hollywood classic "The
Day the Earth Stood Still" had gone on a rampage.
The Bush Regime's senior appointees and
bureaucrats sprinted off to hardened bunkers or were taken by
helicopter, like their military counterparts, to place like Site
R in Pennsylvania to "monitor" the situation. Many
of the local corporate senior managers and local newsreaders
instructed the "public" to remain calm and not panic.
A commonplace refrain from this lot was to "keep busy, be
productive". The lone Superpower, with its arsenals and
vaunted intelligence agencies convulsed from the handiwork of
19 insurgents, became enfeebled. In effect, the nation came under
the rule of a tele-government. Undoubtedly, government and military
planners -- and their think tanks have discussed attack
scenarios that include the institution of a Federal government
tele-governing operation. Members of the U.S. Congress, Supreme
Court justices, and the President and his cabinet could easily
debate, vote, set policy, render legal decisions via encrypted
communications lines, from the comfort of their protective bunkers,
home shelters, and command posts on land, sea, and air. In the
eventuality of nationwide martial law, these individuals, based
on their cowardly performance on 911, would no doubt prefer the
safe confines of Hitleresque bunkers. Such was the case on September
11, when, from the safety of a studio in a bunker and a phone
line from a basement, the nation's "leadership" sought
to govern in an ersatz manner.
The American public fell for this act
from a "government" whose inserted president and appointees
are the wealthiest Americans ever to oversee a US populace. And
as the wealthiest and most corrupt person ever to occupy the
White House uttered his inanities, "average people"
were taking care of their post-attack communities in Arlington
and New York City. As they suffered, the so-called civilian and
military "leaders" ducked and covered in a classic
CYA move. These are America's leaders who -- through sheer arrogance
and stunning stupidity -- ignored reports from tireless FBI field
agents that involved suspicious flight school activities and
similar reports from gutsy Drug Enforcement Administration agents
about the activities of Israeli "art student" spies
who happened to be living in the same Florida and Texas neighborhoods
as the future hijackers. The same "leaders" would stand
by and watch the state of California get raped by Enron -- the
Bush family's fund raising Ponzi scheme contrivance.
Where was the Senator or Representative,
or Cabinet official (save for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld)
who said, "I'm staying with the people" and showed
up in the bucket line? Where was the General or Admiral who said
I'm staying with my people and worked with the body bags? Where
was the Corporate Executive who, instead, was busy turning "patriotism"
into profiteering to gain market share and recoup profits? Where
will they be during the next attack?
As the U.S. military-industrial complex
sells more and more advanced weaponry to Israel, Indonesia, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Pakistan, India, and Nepal and as more
and more ethnic and religious minority groups, poor villagers,
nomads, urban laborers, and sustenance farmers are massacred
by national armies in the pay of ruling oligarchs and multinational
corporations, will America's leaders care? No, it's good for
business. After U.S. snubbing of the International Criminal Court
(to protect war criminals like Henry Kissinger), Conventions
on child soldiers and land mines, long-held international nuclear
test-ban treaties, international protocols involving HIV/AIDS
and global warming, will America's leaders care? No. When the
Turkmens, Uzbeks, Afghans, Pakistanis, Azeris, Kurds, Turks,
and Georgians tire of the special treatment that US Special Forces
receive for guarding gas and oil pipelines -- and the young troops
are killed-- will America's leaders notice? No.
Hand it to the CYA crowd, they now know
that they can successfully sell the American public a rotten
barrel of apples (or oil) and they will buy it gladly. Armed
with that knowledge, the next attack may trigger enactment of
national martial law.
Martial Law:
Coming to a
Neighborhood Near You?
The U.S. government has used martial
law on numerous occasions, most often to quell domestic disturbances
in specific locations around the country. According to the United
States Constitution Online, during the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson
imposed martial law in an area of New Orleans. When a judge demanded
Jackson produce, through the writ of habeas corpus, a man arrested
for sedition, Jackson ordered the arrest of the judge. in 1892
at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, rebellious mine workers blew up a mill
and shot at strike breaking workers. Mine owners requested that
the state's governor impose martial law and, to no surprise,
he did. In 1914, federal troops were ordered by Woodrow Wilson
to end the Coal Field Wars in Colorado. In 1934, dockworkers
in San Francisco initiated a strike and the governor declared
the dockyards subject to martial law empowering the National
Guard to make arrests and try detainees. The Supreme Court opined
twice on matters involving martial law in Ex Parte Milligan and
Duncan v. Kahanamoku. In 1866, Milligan's Supreme Court writers
proclaimed that Abraham Lincoln's imposition of martial law had
been unconstitutional:
"Martial lawdestroys every guarantee
of the Constitution and effectually renders the military independent
of an superior to the civil power--the attempt to do which by
the King of Great Britain was deemed by our fathers such an offense
that they assigned it to the world as one of the causes which
impelled them to declare their independence. Civil liberty and
this kind of martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism
is irreconcilable, and, in the conflict, one or the other must
perish."
In 1946, the Supreme Court ruled that
the military arrest of two civilians in Hawaii during World War
II and their subsequent trial by military tribunals was unconstitutional.
In 2002, with the U.S. Supreme Court
nothing more than a useful machination of the Bush regime, it
seems likely that if Americans become subjected to a Bush declaration
of martial law, any challenge to it would fail miserably. With
that thought in mind, its useful to note that the Bush crowd
has had plenty of experience with martial law and states-of-emergency.
In 1992, Bush the Elder issued Executive Order 12804 in response
to the Los Angeles riots. Hence, the US Army 7th Infantry Division
and detachments of US Marines were deployed to mop up Los Angeles.
That order was only issued after the city's poor had destroyed
their neighborhoods. As an aside, that event would expose the
CIA's penchant for selling drugs to inner city youth to raise
funds for U.S. government covert operations in Central and South
America. Bush the Elder was the overseer of much of this activity
when he lorded over the Iran-contra scandal while Vice President
under Ronald Reagan. One of Bush's underlings at the time, Oliver
North, came up with a secret plan, along with the fascist-oriented
Federal Emergency Management Agency (the key-masters for the
doors to the bunkers), to declare martial law in the event of
a "national crisis," including "violent and widespread
internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military
invasion abroad." Florida's provincial ruler Jeb Bush signed
Executive Order 01-262 on September 11, 2001 declaring a State
of Emergency in Florida. That was prior to similar declarations
in New York and Virginia where the action was. "Jebbie"
(that's what Bill Clinton calls him) also has the power to suspend
elections for 30 days in a county under a State of Emergency.
The Bush family has managed to involve
the United States in two wars; two invasions in Latin America,
one that resulted in the fiery deaths of thousands of poor Panamanian
barrio residents and another that resulted in the Bay of Pigs
fiasco; aiding and abetting through murky financial investments
America's Teutonic enemy in the last world war; corrupting the
U.S. presidential election process; and making the wealthiest
Americans and U.S. corporations richer while at the same cutting
federal health, education, and welfare budgets and offloading
those tasks to the overburdened states.
As the economy sputters with real unemployment
close to 8 percent and as income disparity reaches astronomical
proportions, it seems that the Bush regime will begin another
war. Will that war be against Iraq, as Bush's neo-conservative
hawks want? Or will the Seven Days in May crowd spin the Axis
of Evil roulette wheel? Will the arrow point to Cuba? North Korea?
Venezuela? The Bush family's record of death and destruction
prompted one elderly couple in Baltimore, Maryland (the husband
being a highly decorated WW II U.S. Army veteran) to say, "
The Bush family should be barred from ever holding political
office. Look what they've done to this nation!"
And They Are
Not Done Yet
An invasion of Iraq or any of the "Axis
of Evil" or "Beyond Axis of Evil" nations is likely
to result in a response that means American citizens will die
here in the U.S. One incident, one aircraft hijacked, a "dirty
nuke" set off in a small town, may well prompt the Bush
regime, let's say during the election campaign of 2003-2004,
to suspend national elections for a year while his government
ensures stability. The precedent for such thinking is now enshrined
in GOP politics. Another egotistical politician, Rudolph Giuliani,
suggested that he should stay on as Mayor of New York a while
longer past his term to make sure "New Yorkers would get
through this thing". Would it be any surprise to hear Bush
II say the same thing late in 2003 after insurgents would have
destroyed part of a city or a chemical weapons cloud spreads
over half of a small state?
Many closed-door meetings have been held
on these subjects and the notices for these meetings have been
closely monitored by the definitive www.cryptome.org. In the
event of martial law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which
has already been largely gutted by the USA Patriot Act and other
Bush II actions, would cease to exist. Posse Comitatus has, for
over 100 years, served as an important criminal law safeguard
proscribing the use of the Army (later, the Air Force and Navy)
to "execute the laws," except where expressly authorized
by the Constitution or by Congress. With the abrogation of Posse
Comitatus and the imposition of martial law, the military would,
as it did during post-Civil War Reconstruction in the South,
be able to arrest and detain civilians for any flimsy reason.
Civilian detainees consigned to federal prisons would be under
the control of the Bureau of Prisons while those detained by
the military would be subject to the regulations imposed by military
commanders. The writ of habeas corpus would be suspended and
the family members and legal representatives for detainees would
not have a right to see them. This situation has already occurred
with those detained in the wake of September 11 without a formal
imposition of martial law.
Military tribunals could, as they did
in Hawaii during the war, try and convict U.S. civilians. If
prisons could not hold all the detainees, the government already
has plans to create or reactivate large prison camps in the South
and West. Some of these were already used to detain Cuban, Vietnamese,
and Haitian "boat people."
In the event of martial law, Draconian
censorship laws would be implemented. Even now, the Patriot Act
grants authority to obtain an order from the FISA (Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act) Court requiring any person or business to produce
any books, records, documents, or items." That law would
undoubtedly be extended to encompass the Internet as well. It
should be of little wonder why the Pentagon has brought Iran-contra
felon Admiral John Poindexter back from retirement to head the
Office of Information Awareness. Coupled with the Office of Information
Exploitation, Poindexter's office is seeking ways to identify,
block, and determine the sources of seditious material posted
on the Internet. Blocked web sites, confiscated computers and
servers, and the arrest of non-conforming web site managers would
become the rule of the day.
Not that it would need much in the way
of pressure, but the broadcast media would similarly be required
to air only that which has been approved by government censors.
For example, U.S. Air Force scientists are soon to meet with
CNN to figure out how to gather and disseminate information.
During the war against Yugoslavia, CNN and National Public Radio
hosted as interns U.S. Army psychological warfare operatives
who worked on news stories concerning the war.
Similar closed-door meetings for "Continuity
of Government" have taken place since September 11, 2001.
Odd, it seems, that no "regular U.S. citizen" and few
first responders have had any input into this process. Chalk
that up to the fact that the entire process is classified and
a matter of "national security" the rubric that
is used to justify the constant whittling away of the Constitution
and its Bill of Rights. If the general public knew that "Continuity"
actually means that the abilities of the Internal Revenue Service
to continue to collect taxes, the Customs Service to continue
to collect duties, and the Environmental Protection Agency to
continue to collect fines actually outweigh the health and safety
of American citizens, they would be outraged. Hence the secrecy
surrounding the continuity plans.
James Madison had in right in 1794 when
he wisely warned about "the old trick of turning every contingency
into a resource for accumulating force in the government."
The United States was founded by political sages like Madison,
Jefferson, and Franklin. It will ultimately see its demise as
a democracy through the likes of Bush II, his father, and the
Trent Lotts and Dick Armeys that pervade the American body politic.
John Stanton is an Arlington, VA-based writer and Wayne
Madsen is a Washington, DC journalist and commentator on
national security and intelligence affairs. They can be reached
at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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