Bush's Banana Republic 2002

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Mon, 1 May 2006 22:03:02 -0700 (PDT)

Bush's Banana Republic 2002

 

 

 

 

(little by little, the USA is slowly being turned into a large version

of just another banana republic)

 

 

 

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=96 & contentid=620 & page=1

 

Bush's Banana Republic

by Francis Boyle

 

 

October 13, 2002

 

 

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 is Professor of Law at the University of Illinois. He

is the author of Foundations of World Order (Duke University Press,

1999) and The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence (Clarity Press, 2002)

Email: FBOYLE