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Archive for the ‘Martial Law’ Category

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 3 — The Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared a state of emergency on Saturday night, suspending the country’s Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of the capital with police officers and soldiers.

The move appeared to be an effort by General Musharraf to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the country’s Supreme Court, civilian political parties and hard-line Islamists. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was expected to rule within days on the legality of General Musharraf’s re-election last month as the country’s president, which opposition groups have said was improper.

The emergency declaration was in direct defiance of repeated calls this week from senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not to do so. A day earlier, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, Admiral William J. Fallon, told General Musharraf and his top generals in a meeting here that declaring emergency rule would jeopardize the extensive American financial support for the Pakistani military.

Ms. Rice personally intervened twice in the past four months to try to keep General Musharraf from imposing emergency rule, telephoning him at 2 a.m. Pakistani time in August. On Saturday, while traveling to Turkey for an Iraq security conference, she reinforced that message, saying, “I think it would be quite obvious that the United States wouldn’t be supportive of extra-constitutional means.”

Soon after independent television stations went blank in the capital, just after 5 p.m., dozens of police forces surrounded the Supreme Court building, with justices still inside, as well as the chief justice’s home. The justices were ordered to sign a “provisional constitutional order” enabling the emergency decree, according to Western diplomats, with the government leaving implicit that any justices failing to do so would be dismissed.

At least 6 of the court’s 11 justices gathered in the court and rejected the order, according to an aide to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent lawyer, who led protests against General Musharraf this spring, was detained by the police after saying that opposition groups would announce a schedule on Monday of nationwide strikes and protests.

Before being detained, he accused General Musharraf of “criminal flouting of the Constitution,” adding that “the people and the lawyers cannot be suspended.”

General Musharraf was expected to speak on national television late on Saturday evening. Pakistani government officials said Friday that emergency rule could be justified because of clashes in the past week between security forces and Islamic militants in the Swat Valley, in the North-West Frontier Province, and because of the increasing number of suicide attacks against military and police installations.

As of 9 p.m., Chief Justice Chaudhry and the other justices had gone to their homes, surrounded by police and with the phone lines cut, witnesses and officials said.

Analysts said the emergency-rule decree in effect was the declaring of martial law, because there were no constitutional provisions allowing for such an order. “This is the imposition of real military rule, because there is no Constitution and Pakistan is being run under provisional constitutional order issued by Musharraf as the army chief, not as the president of Pakistan,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, an expert on Pakistani military affairs.

General Musharraf resorted to military power to gain the presidency in October 1999 when he staged a bloodless coup, and Mr. Rizvi said this was a return to those measures. “This is the first time Musharraf has brought in military rule to sustain himself in power,” he said. “He felt threatened by the Supreme Court.”

Mr. Chaudhry has been the focal point of the opposition to General Musharraf since the president fired him from the post last Boosted by support from lawyers, judges and a wide public following, Mr. Chaudhry led a street-style political campaign against his summary firing that helped fuel the growing popular sentiment against General Musharraf.

The Supreme Court reinstated Mr. Chaudhry this summer, and in September the Supreme Court ruled in favor of General Musharraf, saying he could run for re-election while still in uniform.

But the focus was again on Mr. Chaudhry this week as the deadline drew closer for a decision on the legality of General Musharraf’s re-election on Oct. 6 by the national Parliament and four provincial assemblies.

Rumors were rife in Islamabad, the capital, all week that the court might decide against the president or give a muddied verdict that would leave his position as president unclear.

This evening, several lawyers and journalists said they believed that the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, left Pakistan on Thursday for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates after realizing that General Musharraf was planning some form of martial law.

Aides to Ms. Bhutto said she planned to fly back to Pakistan on Wednesday evening, immediately after hearing the emergency declaration was made. Members of her political party condemned the emergency order.

Ms. Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan in mid-October under an arrangement brokered by the United States and Britain, warned the government on Wednesday that she was opposed to emergency rule. “If emergency is imposed, people will come out and resist it,” she said.

She returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18 for the first time in eight years on the understanding that she would take part in elections expected early next year. The Bush administration hoped that Ms. Bhutto would bring a democratic face to Pakistan even as it continued under the rule of General Musharraf, who has pledged to give up his military post after being sworn in for another presidential term on Nov. 15.

Executive Summary – Well this wasn’t hard to see coming. The states are scared of the Fed. The big threat is the Fed declares martial law and closes the state governments making them irrelevant. The states in fear for their own governments existence are passing states rights bills. These basically go back to the constitution reasserting that the states created the Federal Government. The constitution clearly lists the rights the Federal Government has and clearly states any other rights belong to the states. Unless specifically prohibited to the states.

Gold & Silver Money – The states doing this to date are as follows with the respective bill numbers which you can look up yourself:

Indiana S.B. 453 Colorado H.B. 09-1206 Missouri H.B. 0561 Georgia H.B. 430 Maryland H.J.R. 5

None of these bills has yet passed. They basically are saying the state has to operate based on gold and silver. They also say the banking system has to allow people to operate using gold or silver. I believe using a paper note backed 100% by gold or silver would be allowed.

Some of the bills also talk of electronic representation of actual gold or silver. They are talking 100% backed currency, not partial fiat money and the electronic aspects would enable bank to bank electronic transfers of this god and silver money.

Discussion – Reading between the lines what you get is citizens will be able to bank and conduct commerce in gold and silver. States will have to do so. I think there would be a marked preference for gold and silver and many merchants would not want to take federal reserve fiat notes or if they did take them at much higher prices. It is a back door to a solid constitutional monetary system. It is also a sign of the states getting ready to break away.

To secede the states need a monetary system and banking system that is not dependent on using the federal reserve fiat notes backed by nothing at all. They will arrange for bank-to-bank transfer of gold and silver electronically. Exactly how remains to be seen but the virtual currency guys have been doing it for ten years.

Curious how birth certificate free Obama stays away from even mentioning states rights. He sure is working overtime to get control measures passed by any means he can conjure up. Funny with all the homeless, out of work folks, people without healthcare, businesses failing he should chose to make gun control a priority. What’s wrong with this picture.

If the states rights every gets legs and either controls the Fed or the states secede and form new countries the people should know that is was the vast gun ownership and shooting skills in the USA that kept the Fed from just asserting martial law and turning the country into a real nightmare. Have you ever seen a anti-gun politician who is also against high taxes?

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