Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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the dictator….

America, meet your new dictator-in-chief.

As the New York Times reports, “Newly disclosed documents have shed a crack of light on secret executive branch plans for apocalyptic scenarios—like the aftermath of a nuclear attack—when the president may activate wartime powers for national security emergencies.”

The problem, of course, is that we have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency.

Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

 

BY JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

 

The seeds of this present madness were sown almost two decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20) provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

Essentially, the president would become a dictator for life.

It has happened already.

As we have witnessed in recent years, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents recently obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

In such a climate, the American president becomes dictator with permanent powers: imperial, unaccountable and unconstitutional.

Then again, the police state with the president at its helm has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

As law professor William P. Marshall explains, “every extraordinary use of power by one President expands the availability of executive branch power for use by future Presidents.”

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump and passed along to Joe Biden.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

Unfortunately, the process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, it must start with “we the people.”

For starters, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we must recalibrate the balance of power.

Start locally—in your own communities, in your schools, at your city council meetings, in newspaper editorials, at protests—by pushing back against laws that are unjust, police departments that overreach, politicians that don’t listen to their constituents, and a system of government that grows more tyrannical by the day.

What we desperately need is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

In other words, we’ve got to start making both the president and the police state play by the rules of the Constitution.

WC: 1014

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads

 

 

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no cakewalk…...

 

The US President Joe Biden’s op-Ed in the New York Times on Tuesday on the Ukraine war starts with a bluff. He says President Vladimir Putin had thought Russia’s special operation would only last days. How Biden arrived at such an estimation is unclear. Like the US narrative on the war, it is largely presumptive. 

Russians are rooted — and well-founded — in their belief that Ukraine has become an American colony and the leaders in Kiev are mere puppets. How could Putin and his Kremlin advisors have estimated that the special operation would be a cakewalk? The core objectives of the special operation are such — a treaty affirming Ukraine’s neutral status and its recognition of Donbass republics as independent states and Crimea as integral part of Russia — that an operation that “would last days” wouldn’t secure them. 

Moscow knew that the US had absolutely no intentions to accommodate Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding NATO expansion into Ukraine that were formally projected in December in writing.  

That is the main reason why the Russians have no timeline for their special operation. They would love to round it off the soonest but knew that the integration of Ukraine’s southern regions — Zoporozhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv — that is vital for Crimea’s economy and security and Ukraine’s Black Sea Ports was not going to be child’s play and might be a long haul. 

In the fourth month of the special operation only, Putin could decree the streamlining of procedures for Russian citizenship from applicants in the Kherson, Zoporozhia regions of southern Ukraine.(here, here and here)

Zaporozhye Region in southern Ukraine has offered Russia a military airfield in Melitopol and a naval base in Berdyansk on the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Kherson region plans to integrate into Russia’s education system. Cars are using Russian number plates, Russian SIM cards operate internet and phones. Suffice to say, the shoe is on the other foot.

It was Biden who thought that Russia could be thrown away like a piece from a chessboard but only to realise belatedly that life is real. Biden threatened to render Russian currency ruble a mere rubble and destroy the Russian economy. Having been a hatchet man as a professional politician, Biden never really understood the resilience, fortitude and grit of the Russian people or their historical consciousness and psyche to rally behind Putin. 

In the Times op-Ed, Biden thinks Biden makes a personal gesture toward Putin by promising that he “will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow.” Yet, Putin’s rating in his country is around 80 percent, while Biden’s is less than half of that — 36%! 

Herein lies the predicament of the Biden Administration. The US is groping in the dark about the Russian intentions in Ukraine. It keeps improvising and updating its narrative to cope with emergent realities that keep coming as nasty surprises. 

This is not only about the military part but also about Russia’s political roadmap. The only constant in Washington is about providing Ukraine with “advanced” weaponry — but then, that is also either about regenerating lucrative business for the military-industrial complex by fuelling wars abroad, or, compensating for the NATO allies who transfer their Soviet-era redundant stockpiles to Ukraine.   

Nonetheless, Biden proclaims in his op-Ed that he will “stay the course” and the massive aid to Ukraine will continue “in the months to come.” That said, Biden makes a nuanced presentation in the op-ed, where, apart from the iteration of usual catechisms — about “a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine”; allied unity; unprovoked Russian aggression; “rules-based international order”, etc. — he does some messaging as well to Moscow as the war graduates to a new phase. 

For a start, he no longer makes any false promises to send the Russians packing to Siberia. Biden doesn’t predict winners and losers. On the contrary, he acknowledges that this war can only have a diplomatic solution. He signals modestly that such massive scale of US military aid may put Kiev “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Carefully drafted words. 

Elsewhere, Biden estimates that the focus of the Russian operation is “to take control of as much of Ukraine as it can” before negotiations begin. Implicit here is the realisation that the Russians have turned the tide of the war and a reversal of fortunes is not to be expected. 

It is from such a rational perspective that Biden’s uncharacteristic avoidance of vituperative and belligerent rhetoric toward Russia (or Putin personally) needs to be understood. He reaffirms categorically: “So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces. We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.” 

Of course, Washington will “continue cooperating” with allies regarding sanctions — “the toughest ever imposed on a major economy” — but Biden won’t evaluate its effectiveness. He promises to “work with our allies and partners to address the global food crisis that Russia’s aggression is worsening,” but won’t allege anymore that world food shortage is Russia’s creation. He will help European allies and others to “reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels” but also links it to “speed our transition to a clean energy future.” There is no acrimony. 

As regards the security issues, Biden reiterates the US policy to continue “reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank with forces and capabilities” and welcomes Finland’s and Sweden’s applications to join NATO — “a move that will strengthen overall U.S. and trans-Atlantic security by adding two democratic and highly capable military partners” — but refrains from directly linking either of these to Russian aggression. 

Most important, Biden retracts from the dramatic prognosis by CIA Director William Burns that under military pressure, Putin might order use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.  

The sombre tone of Biden’s words is in sharp contrast with his own intemperate and tendentious past remarks. This eschewal of the “big macho tough guy” image betrays that some degree of realism is appearing in the US official narrative. But on the other hand, Biden also discloses in his op-ed that the US will provide the Ukrainians with “more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.”

All this adds up to a calculated signal to Moscow, no doubt. But it isn’t easy to resurrect the Atlanticist inclinations in the Kremlin. The tortuous policy procrastinations on NATO expansion through the past quarter century have cost Russia dearly in lives and treasure. That folly or naïveté — depending on one’s viewpoint — shouldn’t repeat.

Again, stalling the momentum of the special operation at this point would carry immense risks. The operation almost lost momentum on the outskirts of Kiev in March due to the “stop-and-go” approach. 

Fundamentally, there has been a certain inevitability about the western sanctions, with or without the Ukraine crisis, aimed at weakening Russia permanently. The compass is now set. Therefore, no matter the deliberate sobriety of Biden’s op-Ed, the big picture cannot be wished away.

Indeed, the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces held drills in the Ivanovo region, northeast of Moscow today, the day after Biden’s op-ed appeared.

The Russian Defence Ministry said some 1,000 servicemen participated in the drills using over a hundred vehicles, including Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, which have the capability to launch the MIRV-capable (Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles) thermonuclear RS-24 Yars inter-continental ballistic missile with range of 12,000 km that can carry up to 10 warheads and cruise at speeds of up to 24,500 kilometres per hour.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.indianpunchline.com/biden-tweaks-ukraine-narrative/

 

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