entagon and Washington-area military leaders are on red alert, wary of what President Donald Trump might do in his remaining days in office. Though far-fetched, ranking officers have discussed what they would do if the president declared martial law. And military commands responsible for Washington DC are engaged in secret contingency planning in case the armed forces are called upon to maintain or restore civil order during the inauguration and transition period. According to one officer who spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity, the planning is being kept out of sight of the White House and Trump loyalists in the Pentagon for fear that it would be shut down.
"I've been associated with the military for over 40 years and I've never seen the discussions that are being had right now, the need for such discussions," says a retired flag officer, currently a defense contractor who has mentored and advised his service's senior leaders. He was granted anonymity in order to speak without fear of reprisal.
Read more at
Exclusive: Donald Trump's Martial-Law Talk Has Military on Red Alert
Showing posts with label Martial Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martial Law. Show all posts
3/19/20
USA: What Can a President Do During a State of Emergency?
In the weeks leading up
to the 2018 midterm elections, President Donald Trump reached deep into
his arsenal to try to deliver votes to Republicans.
Most of his weapons were rhetorical, featuring a mix of lies and false inducements—claims that every congressional Democrat had signed on to an “open borders” bill (none had), that liberals were fomenting violent “mobs” (they weren’t), that a 10 percent tax cut for the middle class would somehow pass while Congress was out of session (it didn’t). But a few involved the aggressive use—and threatened misuse—of presidential authority: He sent thousands of active-duty soldiers to the southern border to terrorize a distant caravan of desperate Central American migrants, announced plans to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive order, and tweeted that law enforcement had been “strongly notified” to be on the lookout for “ILLEGAL VOTING.”
These measures failed to carry the day, and Trump will likely conclude that they were too timid. How much further might he go in 2020, when his own name is on the ballot—or sooner than that, if he’s facing impeachment by a House under Democratic control?
More is at stake here than the outcome of one or even two elections. Trump has long signaled his disdain for the concepts of limited presidential power and democratic rule. During his 2016 campaign, he praised murderous dictators. He declared that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, would be in jail if he were president, goading crowds into frenzied chants of “Lock her up.” He hinted that he might not accept an electoral loss. As democracies around the world slide into autocracy, and nationalism and antidemocratic sentiment are on vivid display among segments of the American populace, Trump’s evident hostility to key elements of liberal democracy cannot be dismissed as mere bluster.
Unknown to most Americans, a parallel legal regime allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply. The moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him. While many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Other powers are available even without a declaration of emergency, including laws that allow the president to deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest.
Unlike the modern constitutions of many other countries, which specify when and how a state of emergency may be declared and which rights may be suspended, the U.S. Constitution itself includes no comprehensive separate regime for emergencies. Those few powers it does contain for dealing with certain urgent threats, it assigns to Congress, not the president. For instance, it lets Congress suspend the writ of habeas corpus—that is, allow government officials to imprison people without judicial review—“when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” and “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Nonetheless, some legal scholars believe that the Constitution gives the president inherent emergency powers by making him commander in chief of the armed forces, or by vesting in him a broad, undefined “executive Power.” At key points in American history, presidents have cited inherent constitutional powers when taking drastic actions that were not authorized—or, in some cases, were explicitly prohibited—by Congress.
Notorious examples include Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent during World War II and George W. Bush’s programs of warrantless wiretapping and torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Abraham Lincoln conceded that his unilateral suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War was constitutionally questionable, but defended it as necessary to preserve the Union.
Note EU-Digest: As the Chinese saying goes "we are living in interesting times"
Read more at: What Can a President Do During a State of Emergency? - The Atlantic
Most of his weapons were rhetorical, featuring a mix of lies and false inducements—claims that every congressional Democrat had signed on to an “open borders” bill (none had), that liberals were fomenting violent “mobs” (they weren’t), that a 10 percent tax cut for the middle class would somehow pass while Congress was out of session (it didn’t). But a few involved the aggressive use—and threatened misuse—of presidential authority: He sent thousands of active-duty soldiers to the southern border to terrorize a distant caravan of desperate Central American migrants, announced plans to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive order, and tweeted that law enforcement had been “strongly notified” to be on the lookout for “ILLEGAL VOTING.”
These measures failed to carry the day, and Trump will likely conclude that they were too timid. How much further might he go in 2020, when his own name is on the ballot—or sooner than that, if he’s facing impeachment by a House under Democratic control?
More is at stake here than the outcome of one or even two elections. Trump has long signaled his disdain for the concepts of limited presidential power and democratic rule. During his 2016 campaign, he praised murderous dictators. He declared that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, would be in jail if he were president, goading crowds into frenzied chants of “Lock her up.” He hinted that he might not accept an electoral loss. As democracies around the world slide into autocracy, and nationalism and antidemocratic sentiment are on vivid display among segments of the American populace, Trump’s evident hostility to key elements of liberal democracy cannot be dismissed as mere bluster.
Unknown to most Americans, a parallel legal regime allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply. The moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him. While many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Other powers are available even without a declaration of emergency, including laws that allow the president to deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest.
Unlike the modern constitutions of many other countries, which specify when and how a state of emergency may be declared and which rights may be suspended, the U.S. Constitution itself includes no comprehensive separate regime for emergencies. Those few powers it does contain for dealing with certain urgent threats, it assigns to Congress, not the president. For instance, it lets Congress suspend the writ of habeas corpus—that is, allow government officials to imprison people without judicial review—“when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” and “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Nonetheless, some legal scholars believe that the Constitution gives the president inherent emergency powers by making him commander in chief of the armed forces, or by vesting in him a broad, undefined “executive Power.” At key points in American history, presidents have cited inherent constitutional powers when taking drastic actions that were not authorized—or, in some cases, were explicitly prohibited—by Congress.
Notorious examples include Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent during World War II and George W. Bush’s programs of warrantless wiretapping and torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Abraham Lincoln conceded that his unilateral suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War was constitutionally questionable, but defended it as necessary to preserve the Union.
Note EU-Digest: As the Chinese saying goes "we are living in interesting times"
Read more at: What Can a President Do During a State of Emergency? - The Atlantic
4/5/18
USA - Martial Law Soon ? Trump's New Favorite Solution: The Military - by David A. Graham
Three times in the last two weeks, President Trump has turned in
frustration from an intractable problem and landed upon an apparently
elegant solution: the military.
First it was Congress’s decision not to fund the president’s border wall in the omnibus spending bill. Trump twice tweeted that he wanted to “build WALL through M,” which most observers understood to mean “Mexico,” until The Washington Post revealed it actually referred to the military.
Next came Trump’s idea to deploy the military to the border and provide security in the absence of a wall.
Finally, Trump set off a frantic scramble Tuesday when he appeared to announce a withdrawal of American troops from Syria as a solution to the intractable conflict there. Asked whether he intended to pull troops out, Trump replied, “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation.”
In each of these cases, the attraction of military action for the president is clear. He has found his agenda largely stalled in Congress, where legislators have no interest in funding the wall or any other number of signature Trump projects, and the president has shown neither the interest nor the patience to lobby them. Even working through executive-branch processes has not produced the results that Trump wants, as courts have blocked some of his most treasured moves, especially his Muslim travel ban.
The military, however, seems to offer something more akin to the experience that Trump enjoyed as the chief executive of a privately held company, where he could make a decision and see it quickly implemented. As commander in chief, he has authority over the military, and the military is, at least in theory, better equipped to respond quickly and efficiently to orders than the rest of the government. What each of these cases has shown, however, is that even the military doesn’t offer a frictionless tool for evading political and practical reality.
Trump is hardly alone among presidents in turning to the Pentagon as a method of acting when other means wear out. Dog-wagging and jingoism make military deployments an alluring option for any president, especially one who is struggling in Congress, opinion polls, or both. President Obama became quickly enamored of drone strikes. President Clinton bombed the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Sudan. President Reagan invaded Grenada. Presidents at the ends of their terms tend to concentrate on foreign affairs, sometimes at the barrel of a gun, once they’ve achieved all they can domestically.
What is unusual about Trump is how quickly he has landed on the military as his silver bullet, and the range of cases in which he has employed it.
The prehistory of this impulse began before he took office. In assembling his team, Trump hired several retired generals, and he interviewed a range of current and former generals and admirals for top jobs. This seemed to serve a dual purpose. It both satisfied Trump’s appreciation for a martial aesthetic and for the majesty of a uniform, and it brought to him prospective lieutenants with a strong sense of can-do spirit and duty, unlike some of the civilians who had already written off working for Trump.
The inflection point came in April 2017, when Trump ordered missile strikes on Syria. This was widely interpreted as a major reversal. During the campaign, he had offered a sort of non-intervention, complaining about the expense of nation-building overseas and preferring to spend money domestically, although a broad reading of candidate Trump’s statements would indicate an aversion to lengthy occupations, not to bellicosity per se. (There is even a caveat to this caveat: his suggestion that the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil, a vast colonial project.) In any case, the strikes won Trump widespread acclaim, including from centrist and establishment pundits who portrayed the strikes as signs of more realistic engagement with the world, or even an indication that Trump was becoming “presidential.” (This even though the strikes proved to be hastily ordered and not connected to any broader strategic purpose.)
The lesson must have been clear to Trump: Ordering military action gave him a chance to quickly and prominently produce results, and it would earn him praise from a press that otherwise detested him. Since then, he has become fond of talking up the power of the armed forces.
Famously, Trump lobbed a vague but ominous threat of “fire and fury” at North Korea in August 2017, one of many times when he rattled the American saber in Pyongyang’s direction. These threats were more or less in the mainstream of American foreign policy, although he made them more explicit than other presidents, and it’s not clear the U.S. has any particularly attractive military option in North Korea.
Note EU-Digest: What is next for Trump as the Commander in Chief of the US military forces : Martial Law - in case he is rebuffed too many times by the Congress to carrying out his plans? Lets hope not.
Read more: Trump's New Favorite Solution: The Military - The Atlantic
First it was Congress’s decision not to fund the president’s border wall in the omnibus spending bill. Trump twice tweeted that he wanted to “build WALL through M,” which most observers understood to mean “Mexico,” until The Washington Post revealed it actually referred to the military.
Next came Trump’s idea to deploy the military to the border and provide security in the absence of a wall.
Finally, Trump set off a frantic scramble Tuesday when he appeared to announce a withdrawal of American troops from Syria as a solution to the intractable conflict there. Asked whether he intended to pull troops out, Trump replied, “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation.”
In each of these cases, the attraction of military action for the president is clear. He has found his agenda largely stalled in Congress, where legislators have no interest in funding the wall or any other number of signature Trump projects, and the president has shown neither the interest nor the patience to lobby them. Even working through executive-branch processes has not produced the results that Trump wants, as courts have blocked some of his most treasured moves, especially his Muslim travel ban.
The military, however, seems to offer something more akin to the experience that Trump enjoyed as the chief executive of a privately held company, where he could make a decision and see it quickly implemented. As commander in chief, he has authority over the military, and the military is, at least in theory, better equipped to respond quickly and efficiently to orders than the rest of the government. What each of these cases has shown, however, is that even the military doesn’t offer a frictionless tool for evading political and practical reality.
Trump is hardly alone among presidents in turning to the Pentagon as a method of acting when other means wear out. Dog-wagging and jingoism make military deployments an alluring option for any president, especially one who is struggling in Congress, opinion polls, or both. President Obama became quickly enamored of drone strikes. President Clinton bombed the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Sudan. President Reagan invaded Grenada. Presidents at the ends of their terms tend to concentrate on foreign affairs, sometimes at the barrel of a gun, once they’ve achieved all they can domestically.
What is unusual about Trump is how quickly he has landed on the military as his silver bullet, and the range of cases in which he has employed it.
The prehistory of this impulse began before he took office. In assembling his team, Trump hired several retired generals, and he interviewed a range of current and former generals and admirals for top jobs. This seemed to serve a dual purpose. It both satisfied Trump’s appreciation for a martial aesthetic and for the majesty of a uniform, and it brought to him prospective lieutenants with a strong sense of can-do spirit and duty, unlike some of the civilians who had already written off working for Trump.
The inflection point came in April 2017, when Trump ordered missile strikes on Syria. This was widely interpreted as a major reversal. During the campaign, he had offered a sort of non-intervention, complaining about the expense of nation-building overseas and preferring to spend money domestically, although a broad reading of candidate Trump’s statements would indicate an aversion to lengthy occupations, not to bellicosity per se. (There is even a caveat to this caveat: his suggestion that the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil, a vast colonial project.) In any case, the strikes won Trump widespread acclaim, including from centrist and establishment pundits who portrayed the strikes as signs of more realistic engagement with the world, or even an indication that Trump was becoming “presidential.” (This even though the strikes proved to be hastily ordered and not connected to any broader strategic purpose.)
The lesson must have been clear to Trump: Ordering military action gave him a chance to quickly and prominently produce results, and it would earn him praise from a press that otherwise detested him. Since then, he has become fond of talking up the power of the armed forces.
Famously, Trump lobbed a vague but ominous threat of “fire and fury” at North Korea in August 2017, one of many times when he rattled the American saber in Pyongyang’s direction. These threats were more or less in the mainstream of American foreign policy, although he made them more explicit than other presidents, and it’s not clear the U.S. has any particularly attractive military option in North Korea.
Note EU-Digest: What is next for Trump as the Commander in Chief of the US military forces : Martial Law - in case he is rebuffed too many times by the Congress to carrying out his plans? Lets hope not.
Read more: Trump's New Favorite Solution: The Military - The Atlantic
3/17/18
USA: What is next - Martial Law? Trump Is Taking Out His Enemies And Turning Toward Mueller - by Jonathan Chait
 |
| Donald Trump: the US self appointed Fuhrer |
The answer, he concluded, was that Hitler was put on earth to invade Russia. His loathing of Bolshevism, his twisted Darwinian mania for the acquisition of land and resources, and his fixation with his own military genius all led him to a decision that was both inevitable and impossible.
Read more: Trump Is Taking Out His Enemies And Turning Toward Mueller
12/5/08
EU-Digest/RFI - Prime Minister suspends parliament to avoid censure
For the complete report from the RFI click on this link
Prime Minister suspends parliament to avoid censure
The Canadian Parliament was shut down Thursday after an unprecedented request by Prime Minister Stephen Harper allowed him to avoid a vote that would have surely toppled his government.Harper had scheduled a confidence vote on several budget proposals for next Monday, but once the opposition Liberal and New Democratic Party (NDP) released a public agreement to bring the government down and form a coalition to replace it, Harper asked the Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, to prorogue Parliament until January. Opposition leaders cried foul, saying the Prime Minister’s request was an overt attempt to save his own job. "We must realize the enormity of what has happened here today. For the first time in the history of Canada, the Prime Minister of Canada is running away from the Parliament of Canada," said Liberal leader Stéphane Dion after the suspension was made official.
Note EU-Digest: Suspending parliament is something only dictators do. Mr. Harper's 44 % popularity with the Canadian voters does not sound like an overwhelming vote of confidence to do so? All we need now is that President Bush and his confidants find this an appealing idea and declare Martial Law in the US before the inauguration of President elect Barack Obama, giving the economic meltdown there as the excuse to do so. If he does, he should realize the US population will not be as passive as the Canadians have been so far.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)