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FEMA's activation sets the stage for rule by decree
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By Kathleen Klenetsky
"In the developed countries there will be a bitter struggle for
the control of their diminished resources. This struggle will
merely worsen a bad situation; it will somehow have to be
stopped. If left unchecked, it would lead to anarchy and to a
drastic reduction of the size of the population by civil war,
famine, and pestilence, the historic reducers of populations that
have outgrown their means of subsistence. Consequently in all
developed countries, a new way of life -- a severely regimented
way -- will have to be imposed by a ruthless authoritarian
government."
-- Arnorld Toynbee ("After the age of affluence," _The Skeptic_,
July-Aug 1974)
Of all the signs during early November that the Bush administration was
lunging toward a cataclysmic conflict in the Persian Gulf, one of the most
ominous was the five day, closed-door meeting with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) convened in Atlanta during the week of November 5.
Despite its innocuous-sounding name, FEMA serves as a framework for the
anti-constitutional, authoritarian regime envisioned by British strategic
games master Arnold Toynbee in the article quoted above. It is now
mobilizing for precisely that purpose.
Since Bush launched his "Operation Desert Shield" in August, preparations
for a FEMA dictatorship, under the guise of a national security crisis
induced by either an oil shortage or a war, have dominated
behind-the-scenes planning at the National Security Council, which controls
FEMA and it's activation.
The process has been shrouded in secrecy. FEMA spokesmen adamantly refused
to provide any information about the agency's Atlanta meeting, other than
to confirm that it was taking place. However, enough information has leaked
out to fuel speculation that Bush will soon utilize the vast array of
stand-by emergency powers available to him.
Over the last few weeks, FEMA has drafted new legislation that would expand
its already formidable powers, allowing it, for example, to set up
operations in any state or locality, without the prior permission of local
or state authorities, as is currently required.
'Emergency' fascism?
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WE are not arguing in this report that emergency preparedness or emergency
measures are unnecessary and inappropriate under any and all circumstances.
What we are saying is that the Bush administration is dead set on using the
pretext of a national security crisis to carry out a set of policies which
violate the U.S. constitution, and are inimical to the interests of the
vast majority of the U.S. population. Bush is being impelled toward
exercising emergency powers by the same circumstances that are behind his
drive for war: the economic collapse of the Anglo-American financial
superstructure. The principle reason that Bush wants a war with Iraq, is to
set a precedent for reviving the savage colonialist policy of looting Third
World countries.
This is deemed necessary by the Anglo-American elite, because their failed
policies of "post-industrialism" and speculation have made it impossible to
pay Third World countries a just and fair price for their oil, minerals,
and other commodities. Rather than change their own economic policies,
Bush, Thatcher, and their elite controllers have opted for misery on a
global scale.
By the same token, Bush needs an excuse to wield emergency powers because
of the economic depression in the United States. As exemplified by the
budget wranglings of the past six months, the administration has decided to
deal with the nation's economic woes not by stimulating investment in
agriculture, manufacturing, and hi-tech industries, but by looting the
living standard of the middle, and working class.
But the depths of the depression the United States has entered will require
austerity on a scale that cannot be accomplished within the framework of
constitutional government -- at least not without risking a popular upsurge
that could overturn the administration and its policies.
Thus, the Iraq conflict -- which, as EIR has documented, was deliberately
setup by the United States and Great Britain -- has provided Bush with the
long-sought-for chance to ram austerity down the throats of Americans,
while establishing a genocidal U.S. policy towards the nations of the Third
World.
FEMA's police state
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Should the American people resist, FEMA is prepared to step in with
police-state measures. In its July 5, 1987 issue, the Miami Herald
published a revealing expose on FEMA's plans to rip up the Constitution in
the event of a national crisis.
Written by Alfonso Chardy, the article reported that between 1982-1984,
FEMA revised its contingency plans for dealing with "nuclear war,
insurrection, or a massive mobilization." [See HERALD.TXT.]
Chardy reported that National Security Council staffer LT. COL. Oliver
North assisted FEMA in drawing up "a controversial plan to suspend the
constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war,
violent and wide spread internal dissent or _national opposition to a U.S.
military invasion abroad_" (Emphasis added). The last eventuality is of
special significance under the present circumstances of growing domestic
opposition to Bush's war plans in the Gulf.
The Plan "also advocated the roundup and transfer to 'assembly centers or
relocation camps' of at least 21 million" black Americans. In 1984, FEMA
ran its "Rex 84" exercise (one of many such exercises, almost all of them
classifies, which FEMA regularly carries out in conjunction with the
Defense Department), to test its upgraded capabilities and powers. The
"Rex 84" scenario was based on a superpower confrontation over Central
America which would lead to a nuclear war. Included in the scenario was a
roundup of Central American refugees who had poured over the boarders into
the United States, and who were placed in detention camps located on U.S.
military bases. The scenario also called for the imposition of martial law
in the United States, to quell an anti-war movement.
Substitute Middle East for Central America, and war with Iraq for a
superpower confrontation, and you've got the Bush Administration -- FEMA
script for suppressing any opposition to U.S. participation in the Gulf
conflict. A still-secret National Security Directive decision (No. 52),
issued by President Reagan in August 1982, pertains to the "Use of National
Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances."
Bush: The American Mussolini
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Bush is the perfect candidate to be the American Mussolini. His patrician
background and intimate ties to the U.S. Intelligence community (he served
as the director of the CIA in the mid-1970s), have inculcated in him a
contempt for constitutional and representational government. That has been
nowhere more evident than in his recent response from pleadings from
Capital Hill that he consult with Congress on the Gulf conflict. In
defiance of the constitutions provision that only Congress has the right to
declare war, Bush has refused.
During the Reagan years, Bush insinuated himself into the heart of the
administration's vast crisis-planning apparatus, getting himself appointed
the head of Special Situations Group, which effectively placed him in
charge of all crisis management.
Bush signaled his intention to use crisis management as the means of
imposing emergency police-state rule just a week after the election. One
of his first acts after winning the presidency was to persuade Ronald
Reagan to issue Executive Order 12656, which we excerpted at length in the
_Documentation_ section -- a chilling blueprint for an emergency
dictatorship with FEMA at the helm.
Blank check for crisis management
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If Bush does decide to use the Gulf crisis as an excuse to declare a
national emergency, he has a virtual blank check to do what he pleases
period. "The President has a broad range of emergency powers available to
him in a crisis," a White House spokesman confirmed. According to Harold
Relyea, a specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the powers
available to the President under conditions of a national security crisis
are "wide open. . . there is probably not a whole lot circumscribing the
Presidents's authority to use certain statutes, some of which require a
declaration of national emergency, some of which don't."
These powers are based on a huge body of executive orders, national
security directives, and legislation that has evolved since WWII. In
addition to the various executive orders and national security directives
described elsewhere in the report, some of the most important of these
include: