[Vision2020] Martial Law by Executive Order

[Paul Rumelhart]

Here it is.  I haven't had a chance to look it over yet, but I will when 
I get a chance.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

Paul

On 04/22/2013 08:07 PM, Paul Rumelhart wrote:
> Some information on President Obama's National Defense Resources 
> Preparedness Executive Order of March 16.  I hadn't heard of this 
> until just today.  It's frightening how things like this happen 
> quietly in Obamas "transparent" government.
>
> From 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-garrison/martial-law-under-another_b_1370819.html
>
>
>   Martial Law by Executive Order
>
> Jim Garrison
> President, Wisdom University; Author, 'America as Empire'
>
> President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive 
> Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 
> National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in 
> particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial 
> oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of 
> "national security." Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the 
> government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never 
> supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial 
> law without the exigencies of a national emergency.
>
> Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various 
> executive orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden 
> executive power in the "war on terror," so the new Executive Order is 
> rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government 
> powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national 
> emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls 
> under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by 
> the president and his secretaries at their discretion.
>
> The 2012 NDAA deemed the United States a "battlefield," as Senator 
> Lindsey Graham put it, and gave the president and his agents the right 
> to seize and arrest any U.S. citizen, detain them indefinitely without 
> charge or trial, and do so only on suspicion, without any judicial 
> oversight or due process. The new Executive order states that the 
> president and his secretaries have the authority to commandeer all 
> U.S. domestic resources, including food and water, as well as seize 
> all energy and transportation infrastructure inside the borders of the 
> United States. The Government can also forcibly draft U.S. citizens 
> into the military and force U.S. citizens to fulfill "labor 
> requirements" for the purposes of "national defense." There is not 
> even any Congressional oversight allowed, only briefings.
>
> In the NDAA, only the president had the authority to abrogate 
> legitimate freedoms of U.S. citizens. What is extraordinary in the new 
> Executive Order is that this supreme power is designated through the 
> president to the secretaries that run the Government itself:
>
> . The Secretary of Defense has power over all water resources;
> . The Secretary of Commerce has power over all material services and 
> facilities, including construction materials;
> . The Secretary of Transportation has power over all forms of civilian 
> transportation;
> . The Secretary of Agriculture has power over food resources and 
> facilities, livestock plant health resources, and the domestic 
> distribution of farm equipment;
> . The Secretary of Health and Human Services has power over all health 
> resources;
> . The Secretary of Energy has power over all forms of energy.
>
> The Executive Order even stipulates that in the event of conflict 
> between the secretaries in using these powers, the president will 
> determine the resolution through his national security team.
>
> The 2012 NDAA gave the Government the right to abrogate any due 
> process against a U.S. citizen. The new Executive Order gives the 
> government, through the Secretary of Labor, the right to proactively 
> mobilize U.S. citizens for "labor" as the government deems necessary 
> and to coordinate with the Secretary of Defense to maintain data to 
> coordinate the nation's work needs in relation to national defense.
>
> What is extraordinary about the Executive Order is that, like the 
> NDAA, this can all be done in peacetime without any national emergency 
> to justify it. The language of the Order does not state that all these 
> extraordinary measures will be done in the event of "national 
> security" or a "national emergency." They can simply be done for 
> "purposes of national defense," clearly a broader remit that allows 
> the government to do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, to 
> whomever it wants, all without any judicial restraint or due process. 
> As Orwell famously said in /1984/, "War is peace. Peace is war." This 
> is now the reality on the ground in America.
>
> Finally, the 2012 NDAA was hurried through the House and Senate almost 
> like a covert op with minimal public attention or debate. It was then 
> signed by the president at 9:00 PM on New Year's Eve while virtually 
> nobody was paying attention to much other than the approaching new 
> year. This new Executive Order was written and signed in complete 
> secret and then quietly released by the White House on its website 
> without comment. All this was done under a president who studied 
> constitutional law at Harvard.
>
> It is hard to know what to say in the face of such egregious disregard 
> for the integrity of what America has stood and fought for since its 
> founding. It is hard in part because none of us thought such 
> encroachments would ever happen here, certainly not under the watch of 
> a "progressive" like Obama.
>
> At one level, the prospect for war with Iran is probably an immediate 
> justification. But the comprehensiveness of the Executive Order, like 
> that of the 2012 NDAA, speaks to something much deeper, more sinister. 
> I would suggest that this Order, like the NDAA, has been in the works 
> for some time and is simply the next step in the logic of the "global 
> war on terror." Our political elites have come to consider democracy 
> an impediment to effective governance and they are slowly and 
> painstakingly creating all the democratic legalities necessary to 
> abridge our democratic rights with impunity, all to ensure our 
> "security." Of such measures do republics fall and by such measures 
> tyrants emerge.
>
> The only thing that really remains is the occasion to test the new 
> rules of the game. Perhaps that will be war with Iran, perhaps some 
> contrived emergency, or perhaps, as long as the public and media 
> remain asleep, no occasion will be necessary at all. It will just 
> slowly happen of its own accord and we, like the frog in the pot of 
> slowly boiling water, will just sit there and be consumed by our own 
> turpitude.
>
>
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