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FW:Anti-war mobilisations in 32 countries set for weekend
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.
>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!
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
. 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.
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 a senior legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority. He
can be
reached at: FBOYLE@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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