THE CALIFORNIA COUP DE E’TAT

 

A couple of weeks back (June 9), I posted my assessment of Donald Trump’s intensifying assault on democracy: “Make no mistake. Troops occupying LA uninvited isn't a preventive measure. It's an authoritarian invasion for political ends.”

Shortly afterward, a statement by General James Mattis, from June 2020, during the George Floyd riots in Minnesota went viral. Although the general’s concise essay on freedom wasn’t new, it could not have been more apropos of the current Trump administration’s  intervention  in California, and, in general, ICE raids and deportations without due process of people who have lived, worked and raised families in the US for decades. The 2020 essay is entitled, In Union There Is Strength.

You’ll recall that Mattis was Trump’s Secretary of Defense from 2017 to 2019 (before he’d had enough and withdrew). He previously commanded troops in the Gulf War, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

In his statement, General Mattis says, in part: The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

It was a bold statement then, and remains so now. One that, having served in the Army for three years, also a half-century ago, and having sworn that same oath as Mattis, I celebrated, and was filled with gratitude, since today, it seems, that vow, sworn to as well by the president, cabinet, and all members of Congress, is being taken lightly, almost anecdotally. And as a result, we are losing the battle to maintain democracy. Not since the Civil War has there been such a direct and urgent threat to democracy and to the nation’s founding principles.

The obvious overkill that marked Trump’s deployment of troops in California was a clear message of intimidation, not just for the state’s governor, but for every governor in the Union. The message was, cross me, and I’ll take over your state.

Truthout, an online independent medium that reports the news from a left-leaning viewpoint, but which is highly respected among the independent media for its factual accuracy and uncommon investigations, made clear just how overblown Trump’s federal action was. According to Truthout: “President Donald Trump’s latest deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles means that there are now more troops carrying out Trump’s anti-protest crackdown in southern California than in both Iraq and Syria…

“Trump has dispatched roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to respond to L.A.’s protests of his immigration raids, for a total of roughly 4,700 troops. Meanwhile, according to publicly reported Pentagon figures, the US has roughly 2,000 troops deployed in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq, for a total of 4,500.”

General Mattis continues: We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response…sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Yes, equality before the law, and the rule of law in general, founding principles of representative democracy, something Donald Trump knows nothing about, and cares about even less. His contempt for the rule of law was already on full display during his first term (2017-2020), when Mattis wrote his essay on freedom and democracy, after leaving the Trump administration. That disregard for the law and the right of Americans to freely choose their leaders was capped during the final two weeks of Trump’s first term in office, when, on January Sixth, 2021, he fostered a populist insurrection that briefly, violently and dramatically held Congress hostage in an effort to use death threats and physical force as a means of overturning the results of an election that he legitimately lost.

While vilifying protesters in California and elsewhere, the president’s supporters seem to forget that this is the same Donald Trump who, in one of his first actions as president, gave a blanket pardon to the fifteen hundred MAGA supporters convicted of crimes perpetrated during the January Sixth Insurrection in which millions of dollars in damage was done to the Capitol and in which one hundred forty police officers were attacked and injured and one died.

 The difference? The insurrectionists backed Trump in his authoritarian designs. Today’s protesters do not.

While that was the most stunning example of blatant authoritarianism by an American president in the history of the United States, it was, as it turns out, only the beginning. In the second term that he has been handed—shamefully, for the GOP, considering the thirty-four felony convictions handed down against him, and the multiple indictments for high crimes and misdemeanors that he was facing in the run-up to the 2024 election—his disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law in general is now on steroids.

Since taking office for the second time, six months ago, Trump has brazenly violated major tenets of federal law no fewer than nine times.

His unilaterally federalizing of the California National Guard as a repression force, in flagrant disregard for the express demands to the contrary of that state’s governor, and in violation of the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution, is just the latest, if clearly the gravest to date, a fact confirmed by California District Senior Federal Judge Charles Breyer.

In a subsequent appeal to the 9^th District Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel—two appointed by the first Trump administration and the third by former President Joe Biden—Trump won temporary continued control of the California National Guard. Trump celebrated this as a full-blown victory, but the decision was handed down along with a number of caveats. First, that control was indeed temporary, while Governor Gavin Newsom’s legal action against the Trump administration continues to play out. Second, it gives Trump no power to take over law enforcement in the state. The troops he mobilizes can only be used to protect federal agents and federal property. Third, it contradicted the Trump Justice Department’s claim that, once the president decided that an emergency merited the intervention of troops, no court or governor can review that decision. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument out of hand.

Furthermore, of the three conditions set out under the law in which a president can federalize a state’s National Guard, Trump’s decision in California objectively only met one: arguably, the idea that a situation is created in which the US government is unable to execute the country’s laws using regular forces. In short, a few violent protesters, out of a generally peaceful protest, who clashed physically with ICE agents gave Trump the excuse he needed to intervene. The other two factors—rebellion, or danger of a rebellion against the federal government—simply didn’t exist.

The appeals court said that the one plausible condition had “probably been met,” because protesters hurled items at immigration authorities' vehicles, used trash dumpsters as battering rams, threw Molotov cocktails and vandalized property, “frustrating law enforcement,” meaning the continuing ICE raids.

According to Gov. Newsom, troops were deployed
in LA without adequate food and water provisions
and with no arrangements for their comfort.

Even though the Appeals decision to let Trump temporarily maintain control of the California National Guard was a much less smashing victory than Trump has tried to make out, it has indeed rewarded Trump once again for his authoritarian behavior. And, the fear of every freedom-loving supporter of democracy should be that he will take it as a litmus test for future authoritarian actions. In other words, having gotten away with it in one state and city, it will make it all the easier in the future for him to use federal troops to intimidate and undermine the authority of state governors, mayors and officials, especially considering that pushing the envelope and blurring the lines between lawful and unlawful are signature traits of the Trump regime.
 

Other Trump violations of the Constitution and/or Federal Law include:

·        An attempt to restrict Americans’ Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship. On January 20^th, Trump issued an executive order—one of one hundred sixty-two he has signed in the less that six months since he returned to office—in which he pretended to wipe out this constitutional right with the stroke of a Sharpie. Four federal judges immediately blocked execution of the authoritarian decree, citing it as a direct violation of the Constitution.

 

·        Trump had his Office of Management and Budget issue an official directive immediately freezing federal spending on grants. This was a heavy-handed violation of the Appropriations Clause under federal law, since funds appropriated for grants are under the authority of Congress, not the president. As a result, nearly half the states in the Union sued the administration over the move, and a Rhode Island federal judge blocked execution of the directive—almost before the Sharpie ink dried.

 

·        Trump again violated the powers of the co-equal Legislative Branch when he unilaterally sacked seventeen inspectors general. It should be noted that the job of inspectors general, as the name indicates, is to oversee government operations and ensure that they are above board and corruption-free—making them an apparent thorn in the side to the Trump-Musk billionaire team. This was a flagrant violation of the Inspector General Act, and of the so-called Take-Care clause under federal law.

 

·        He further violated federal law, under the Equal Protection and Administrative Procedure statutes when he issued a brace of orders both banning transgender individuals from serving in  the Armed Forces, and withdrawing federal support for gender-affirming care. Multiple courts handed down immediate injunctions, citing constitutional rights issues.

 

·        Clearly no friend of First Amendment rights (unless they’re his own) in May, Trump signed an order (EO14290) to withdraw Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, which mainly supports National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), two stellar outlets for accurate information and cultural dissemination in the US today.

They are also two of the most professional, accurate and objective sources of news and commentary in the United States. The Trump administration views that accuracy and objectivity as a “lack of loyalty” to the head of state. If Trump can’t turn them into a propaganda tool for MAGA, he prefers to gut them.

The administration has also gutted Voice of America. VOA was founded during World War II as an international tool to unmask Nazi propaganda. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, VOA has become one of the most important international sources of objective news and information available to people in countries where the local media are censored and where disinformation is rife. The Trump administration apparently feels VOA’s important mission is trivial when it comes to clawing back funds to help make up for billionaire tax breaks. 

·         Use of the Alien Enemies Act for Mass Deportations, in violation of the constitutional tenets of Due Process and the Separation of Powers. In March 2025, the administration erroneously employed the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to expel alleged gang-affiliated individuals, including Venezuelans—not a declared enemy nation, which that legislation addresses. A federal judge issued a restraining order citing constitutional concerns, but the ultra-conservative Supreme Court once again gave Trump a pass and temporarily allowed the policy.

 

·         In an outgrowth of Trump’s anti-immigration challenge to due process and the rule of law, his administration further disregarded the principle of judicial supremacy, by defying court orders in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia Case, in which a man who was apparently not related to gang activity—something that only could have been determined through appropriate due process—was picked up in an ICE sweep and directly deported, with no legal recourse, to one of the world’s most notorious foreign prisons. In April 2025, courts ordered the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who, it was determined, had been wrongly deported. Trump’s DOJ team ignored the order, prompting legal experts to flag this omission as a direct challenge to judicial authority, establishing a constitutional crisis.

 

·         Misappropriation of executive power to retaliate against law firms and media outlets for not toeing the administration’s line, in direct violation of their First Amendment rights.

The courts eventually blocked the retaliatory actions of the Executive Branch, which targeted the law firms Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale, as well as several media outlets including the Associated Press, stating that the arbitrary retaliation violated their constitutional rights.

 

In the specific case of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed intervention in California, MAGA Republicans—who, it has become apparent, are willing to toss the Constitution and the nation’s laws out the window in bending over backwards to justify any outrage that Trump perpetrates—have sought to excuse Trump’s dispatching of US troops to intimidate state authorities by citing President Lyndon Johnson’s use of federal troops to respond to state-sponsored racial segregation in Alabama under Governor George Wallace.

If there was ever a case of comparing apples to oranges, this is it. That was not a case of rival policies, or even of rival parties, since Wallace, like Johnson, was a Southern Democrat. It was, rather, the case of a governor who was willfully and flagrantly violating federal law, and doing so at the service of racial discrimination that directly violated his black citizens’ constitutional rights.

Alabama’s Governor George Wallace faces General Henry Graham in Tuscaloosa on June 12, 1963, at the University of Alabama.  Federal troops under General Graham intervened after Wallace blocked the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Despite an order of the federal court, Governor George Wallace appointed himself the temporary University registrar and stood in the doorway of the administration building to prevent the students from entering.
-Getty Images-

Wallace’s stubborn refusal to embrace and materially support the principle of racial desegregation as espoused by the Civil Rights Act and other federal legislation led to Johnson’s decision to send Federal Marshals, and to mobilize federal troops in order to ensure that the rule of law prevailed in the face of Wallace’s flagrant lawlessness.

Make no mistake, Trump's intervention in California has nothing to do with riot control and everything to do with taking over power. It is, as I posited earlier, a litmus test to see if anyone makes a serious effort to stop him, as a prelude, in my opinion, to the possibility of declaring martial law and taking over power entirely. This last seems clear to me from the fact that the Trump administration is doing everything it possibly can to further inflame situations in the cities where he is seeking to take federal control, instead of helping de-escalate them.

Just to be clear, when Trump, during his first campaign for president, said that he could “shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote,” this is what he meant. And it is only possible because the GOP has been corrupted, and has lost its way. Trump Republicans will justify everything he does, given that, for them, Constitution is "just a word" and the oath they took to it means about as much as their consistently broken promises and duplicitous discourse.

To again (and in conclusion) quote General Mattis’s 2020 essay:

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us…

We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

 

THE INQUIRER LISTS REASONS LINKED TO DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW FOR BACKING HARRIS

 

The Philadelphia Inquirer today officially announced its endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.

This is huge, in terms of media endorsement in a crucial swing state. The Inquirer was founded in 1847 and is one of Pennsylvania's oldest and most influential periodicals. It is also ranked among the most influential papers in the country. This fact is supported by its having won TWENTY Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence since 1975.

In announcing its endorsement of the Harris-Walz ticket, the paper's editorial board pulled no punches in listing its reasons.

These are the same reason that I have voted for Kamala Harris and why I don't think this election is simply a matter of political choice or "differences of opinion".

This election is quite simply about the choice between democracy or tyranny, and my objective reasons for saying that are precisely the same as The Inquirer's reasons for throwing their paper's support behind Kamala.

Here are the reasons they gave for their endorsement:

"Voters face an easy but tectonic choice in the race for the White House.

“Will they choose the first woman or the oldest man to be the next president?

“Will they choose the prosecutor or the convict?

“Will they choose the candidate who supports restoring Roe v. Wade, or the man who bragged about overturning it?

“Will they choose the candidate with a tax plan to help the middle class or the one who wants to help the superrich?

“Will they choose the candidate who backs a tough bipartisan immigration law or the guy who killed the measure?

“Will they choose the candidate who wants to combat climate change or the one who thinks it is a hoax?

“Will they choose the candidate who upholds the peaceful transfer of power or the one who summoned a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol?

“Will they choose the candidate who stands up to Vladimir Putin or the one who said Russia could do ‘whatever the hell they want?’

“Will they choose the candidate who champions education, health care for all, and sensible gun safety laws, or the person who wants to close the U.S. Department of Education, repeal Obamacare, and told supporters after a school shooting to ‘get over it?’

“Will they choose the candidate who supports the working class or the one who is anti-union and opposed raising the minimum wage?

“Will they choose a woman of color who wants to unite the country, or a man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and divisive comments and actions?

“Will they choose the candidate who supports LGBTQ rights or the one who wants to roll back protections for the gay community?

“Will they choose the candidate who will uphold the presidential oath, or the one who was impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, profited from the White House, dangled pardons to cronies, and was indicted four times?

“This baker’s dozen list could go on, but the choice is clear and obvious.

“Vice President Kamala Harris wants to help all Americans.

“Donald Trump wants to help himself.

“That is why The Inquirer endorses Kamala Devi Harris to be the 47th president of the United States.”

Amen!

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/a/endorsement-president-kamala-harris-democracy-20241025.html

US DEMOCRACY—ENDANGERED SPECIES

We are taught that in a representative democracy, checks and balances make it impossible to have a dictatorship because it is the system, not individuals, which makes the Constitution inviolable. Well, the current president’s ever expanding abuse of power, and the apparent incapacity of the rest of the government to put a stop to it, make it clear that this is yet another lie our teachers told us.

Trump and McConnell - anti-democracy jihadists

The Age of Trump has hinged on just two men: President Donald Trump, who has consistently run amok and afoul of the rule of law, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has blocked any and all attempts to stop him.

The vast majority of GOP House and Senate members, with only a small handful of exceptions, has acquiesced to Trump’s hostile takeover of the party. It appears that this has been the case because GOP members of Congress worry that  opposing him might hurt their re-election chances with his anti-Washington, authoritarian base, because they are afraid that he will pillory them on Twitter, or because his clearly racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti-civil rights, politics suit them to a “T” (party).

And so they have fallen in line, rank and file—some against their better instincts but motivated by fear or blind ambition—behind the autocratic forty-fifth White House occupant and have basically reneged on their sworn obligation to defend the rule of law, deferring to the absolute power of the president and his right-hand henchman, Mitch McConnell. This Republican Party is the party of Lincoln no longer. Nor is it any longer at the service of the Constitution or the interests of the majority of the American people. Wittingly or unwittingly, it is at the service of Trump, and so far has kept him from having to respond for the grave damage that he is doing to the country, to the rule of law and to representative democracy.

The GOP has been rendered the POT, an apropos acronym meaning Party of Trump. And with the indispensable aid of the current attorney general, who has relinquished the traditional independence of that post to place the Justice Department at the beck and call of the president, these two autocrats alone now decide what the law and what the interpretation of the law will be.

The rest of the three-branch system has had to look on helplessly, seeing their every action quashed, as the US has been turned into an autocratic regime run by a madman and ensured by his shill, just over the course of the last three years. If the so-far ineffectual opposition to Trump fails to muster the kind of overwhelming support necessary to send Trump, McConnell and other staunch Trump enablers packing at the end of this year and to immediately initiate a serious reconstruction era for beleaguered American ideals, justice and equality, the chances, after four more years of abuse, of ever again re-establishing the United States as Americans and the world once knew it will be slim to none. 

PRESERVING THE RULE OF LAW AND CHECKS AND BALANCES

If there was any doubt in anyone's mind about whether the current occupant of the White House thinks he's above the law, his administration’s manifesto saying that it would not cooperate (not uphold the rule of law, in other words) with an impeachment inquiry  should make this fact all too clear. During the run-up to the 2016 election, many clear thinkers and insiders who knew the candidate better than the average voter did—including numerous Republicans, who have since pivoted, after it became clear that Donald Trump had managed to hijack the GOP—warned that he was not a man who would respect the law and that he would want to be a power unto himself.

Like the despot that he set out to be and like the tyrants for whom he has expressed such admiration, Trump is seeking to supersede the powers of Congress and the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States. Latest polls show that even from twelve to eighteen percent of Republicans are now calling for his removal from office and twenty-four to twenty-eight percent of them now believe that an impeachment inquiry should be carried out. The polls show, over all, that three out of five Americans support the impeachment inquiry being ordered in the House.

Finally, it seems, Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that Trump is not just any president. He is a man with truly dangerous delusions of grandeur. And, potentially, an even greater threat than Richard Nixon was when he was threatened with impeachment and, instead, resigned in disgrace.

The Trump White House, rather than cooperate in getting to the bottom of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice, which it claims are false (“fake news”), is ratcheting up its rhetoric, saying that it is “declaring war” on any and all impeachment proceedings. Had the president or anyone on his staff even summarily  read the Constitution of the United States, they would know by now that the presidency is not an all-powerful, autocratic entity—or, at least, it is not meant to be—and that it is subject to congressional oversight and accountable to the investigative power of the House of Representatives.

Under the Constitution of the United States, the Executive doesn't get to make the rules for what the House or Senate can or can't do. It's only under dictatorships that the head of state can get away with dispensing with legislative oversight whenever it doesn't agree with his or her personal or political interests. The three branches are carefully, constitutionally designed to act as near perfect checks and balances on each other. But that only works when all branches respect the rule of law.  And the current executive is not doing that. Nor is he taking seriously his vast responsibilities as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, as witnessed by his stunningly capricious, unilateral and inadvisable weekend order to remove US troops from Syria, taking America’s allies by surprise and leaving friendly Kurdish troops open to immediate attack by the Turkish military.  

The founders of the United States wrote the book on the three-branch balance of power under representative Western democracy. Trump apparently wants to re-write the rules according to his own convenience. He seems to want to re-write history as well, and to turn America’s democratic republic into an autocratic state. It is self-evident that he yearns to re-write the Constitution, or at least to ignore it.

As such, he is a clear and present danger to US democracy, and Congress has a duty to the American people, and to the system of checks and balances, to bring him into line.

THE BEFORE AND AFTER OF A 'HAVING IT ALL' REGIME

“Vamos por todo...¡por todo!

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

 

 

Dark humor from a Facebook

site called

"Si-no-te-gusta-vaffanculo"

Authentic democracy filled the streets of major cities all over Argentina on the evening of Thursday, April 18, while tyranny stalked the halls of the national Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers. The A18 protest was, like its 8N predecessor, a spontaneous civic demonstration organized from computer to computer through the social media and without partisan links. A number of opposition politicians respectfully joined the protesters but from the uncomfortable low-profile position of tolerated guests rather than organizers, since demonstrators have made it abundantly clear ever since the first of three progressively stronger protests less than a year ago that they are as disappointed with the lukewarm opposition as they are furious with the rabidly self-absorbed ruling political movement.

In an outpouring of genuine democratic zeal, millions of people of all political colors poured into the country’s streets—over a million participating protesters in the nation’s capital alone—to reject what their supposed political representatives were ostensibly doing in their name and in the name of “democratization”: seeking to introduce “reforms” that would give an already autocratic Executive Branch even greater discretionary power, to the detriment of the Judiciary, the rule of law, the rights of the individual and those of the “fourth power” (the media and their role as the guardians of free expression in representation of the people). But that wasn’t all—as if that were not enough—that the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets were protesting. They were also decrying encroaching corruption that, in the last decade, has become so shockingly flagrant that it can no longer be hidden from view. In that sense, the revelations aired the previous Sunday night—and that continued last night—by investigative

In Buenos Aires alone, over a million people turned out

for the A18 protest.



broadcast journalist Jorge Lanata proved a major catalyst for the 18A protests and clearly marked a “before and after” in terms of any doubts anyone might have had about links between blatant criminal activities and the powers that be.

If opposition politicians were relegated to a secondary role in the A18 event, however, they were indeed showing greater activism than usual with regard to the “reforms” that a now embattled administration was seeking to ram through its rubber-stamp majority in Congress with the pace and power of an express train. Two days before the mass protest, members of opposition political movements gathered before court buildings in Buenos Aires to protest the government-sponsored judicial “reform” bills, by holding up a sky-blue and white national banner bearing the inscription “Sin justicia, no hay futuro” (without justice, there is no future)—a noble thought and slogan, but not strictly true. Without Justice there could indeed be a future for a despotic government bent on ruling in perpetuity and on protecting its circle of influences—just not for democracy, representative governance or civil rights.

The protesting politicians also certified their opposition by signing a document rejecting what they unequivocally termed as the government’s “attempt to control Justice.” Among the opposition politicians involved in the pre-A18 protests were representatives of the centrist Radical Party and Peronist Opposition Front, the center-left Civic Coalition and the conservative PRO movement. Joining them were also numerous attorneys, former prosecutors, constitutional law experts and other jurists.

The President, for her part, remained true to form and acted as if she had never heard the revelations of crime and corruption within her inner circle that Lanata reported in chilling detail and with documented evidence to back up his claims. The task of defending her ivory tower walls she left to her surrogates in the press, like Mauro Viale and a once serious investigative reporter, Rodolfo Graña, who, of late, has become an unabashed cheerleader for the K regime and a pitbull sent to attack its enemies. In all cases, pro-K mouthpieces limited themselves to hammering the messenger rather than presenting any sound evidence to refute the Lanata team’s impeccable two-year investigation.

One usual spokesman for the Kirchners, however, did break ranks when it came to the Judicial "reform" bills. As head of the Center for Legal Studies (CELS), writer and former Montonero urban guerrilla Horacio Verbitzky, who not only usually follows the government's script but also often writes it, surprised many observers by sharply criticizing the bills for restricting the civil rights and legal recourse of citizens.

Federico Elaskar, former owner of SGI -

a.k.a. "La Rosadita"

Meanwhile, the public got a taste of what the proposed government-sponsored “reforms” will mean to Argentine civil rights when the corroded wheels of justice failed to creak into action on the heels of Lanata’s investigation. Despite the fact that his televised reports provided compelling information linking a Puerto Madero finance firm called SGI—and nicknamed “La Rosadita” due to its geographic proximity and alleged connection with the Casa Rosada (Government House)—and its former owner, Federico Elaskar, to massive money laundering, the first part of the week passed without a single judge’s daring to invoke his/her own authority to order the premises searched. This, despite the fact that neighbors of Madero Center—the building where the company has its office, and where not only Vice President Amado Boudou but also President Kirchner reportedly own property—went onto Facebook and Twitter to report boxes apparently containing documentation being carried from the building. It wasn’t until Thursday, in the very midst of the A18 mass protests, that police descended on the finance firm’s offices, making a great show of the raid, despite the fact that if they’d found anything of relevance to the Lanata investigation, it would have been a miracle, since those implicated in corruption in high places, had been given all week to make sure anything incriminating—more incriminating, that is, than the documentation Lanata had already made public—was long gone.

Two generations: The Kirchners, mother and son, Cristina and Maxi; the

Báezes, father and son, Lázaro and Martín. Close ties.



Perhaps one of the principal virtues of Lanata’s investigation is that it has taken corruption out of the realm of generality and put names and faces with events, as well as specifying the connections between political and economic powers in the Kirchner era. He has introduced us to Santa Cruz strongman Lázaro Báez, who over two decades and on the strength of his relationship with former governor and president Néstor Kirchner—as attested even by Kirchner’s former lieutenant governor, Eduardo Arnold—went from being an obscure provincial bank teller to, first, running the bank, and then, acquiring a bankrupt construction company and turning it into a major State contractor, as well as accruing interests in oil, media, aeronautics and land (some 250,000 hectares, most of which he bought with cash).

Leonardo Fariña, a compulsive talker.

We also met the flamboyant and singularly indiscreet Leonardo Fariña, who distributed vast amounts of cash that the alleged Báez-Kirchner partnership flew out of Santa Cruz in amounts weighty enough to be considered air cargo. We met Federico Elaskar, who admitted to helping Fariña set up as many as 50 offshore phantom companies through which to launder vast sums of money, before being forced out of business by another nefarious face in the chain, that of Daniel Pérez Gadín. And we also met Fabián Rossi, whose business contacts, allegedly gained through his relationship with Argentine Ambassador Jorge Arguindegui in Panama, allowed him to help Báez set up ghost operations in foreign tax havens.

As Lanata was revealing how in a country where foreign exchange regulations are so tight that Argentine tourists aren’t permitted to legally change enough pesos into dollars or euros to take a business trip or brief vacation abroad, friends of the ruling family have been moving foreign currency out of the country by the bale, another story was being told: that of Santa Cruz Province under the 12-year governorship of Néstor Kirchner. A province so remote and sparsely populated that for the vast majority of Argentines it might as well be another country, it would have been a good case study to have analyzed before the election of Kirchner to the presidency in 2003, when he was an unknown politician who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Had observers seen how the Kirchners had their own province sewn up so tight that nothing happened without their say so, it would have been easy to see what was in store for the nation under their power structure model. In fact, many of the key players who have accompanied them in Santa Cruz have remained with them throughout their decade at the head of the national administration. And the President’s latest moves to tie the hands of the Judiciary are simply part of the Santa Cruz model of total control. With 125 seats in the Lower House of Congress belonging to ever faithful rubber-stamp Kirchnerist deputies, the effort to keep this affront to democratic rule from passing has boiled down to bringing as much opposition pressure as possible to bear on just 12 deputies whose past performance has marked them as swing voters. The “reform” bills would give the Executive virtual control over the naming and removal of judges, and, among other things, would also make it virtually immune to any legal recourse that citizens could take against it to protect their rights. Until now the Kirchner government has had to find ad hoc ways of shoving a stick into the wheels of justice, such as allegedly naming temporary judges and prosecutors to replace ones it fears might rule against it. If its bills pass into law, it would be able to handle such manipulation of the Judiciary pretty much as it pleases and within a “legal”—if morally illegitimate—framework.

The 12 mavericks on whom an independent Judiciary depends.

A little over a year ago, on February 27, 2012, at a rally in Rosario commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of the first raising of the Argentine flag, Cristina Kirchner stated, in a nutshell, the essence of her government’s plan: “Vamos por todo...¡por todo!” (“We’re going for it all...for all of it!”) she shouted, gesticulating to a clump of her FPV (Frente para la Victoria) political movement gathered in the crowd before the reviewing stand in Argentina’s third largest city. It wasn’t part of her own speech. It was, instead, a sort of battle cry that she issued, without a microphone, in the middle of Socialist Mayor Mónica Fein’s speech, obviously startling the mayor, as the president’s fans drowned Fein out with their shouts of approval for their jefa’s words and gestures. It was a show of power and disrespect. It was Cristina trying to demonstrate to the mayor that she, not Fein, owned the street, that even if Fein was at the mike, the crowd belonged to the Kirchner regime and so did the country—but in ways that clearly have had little to do with democracy or constitutional administration.

As political news commentator Joaquín Morales Solá pointed out this past week, Jorge Lanata’s investigation has brought to the fore what everybody in politics and serious journalism already knew: basically, that Argentina currently reeks of corruption as it never has before—which, after the era of Carlos Menem in the nineties, is saying a mouthful—and that the deeper meaning of “going for it all” carries with it a barely veiled and underlying threat and project of perpetuity in government, the creation of a popular dictatorship capable of protecting the burgeoning Kirchner estate and its friends and partners in power.

Jorge Lanata

As Morales Solá tangentially points out, Lanata’s investigation has been a mere catalyst, a wake-up call, a way of whacking people—including a somnolent opposition—over the head with what, in voluntary blindness, they’ve been tripping over on a daily basis for the past ten years. If most people living in Argentina were honest with themselves, they would have to admit that they have long since seen the signs of advancing tyranny and crippling corruption within the power structures that are seeking to control every aspect of life in this country. But why did it take the unique head-on style of a Jorge Lanata to wake people from their lethargy even as their democracy, their freedom and their well-being are being wrested from their hands? The late Argentine physician and world-renowned heart specialist René Favaloro once said, “After so often seeing incompetence triumph and dishonor prosper, after so often seeing injustice grow, after so often seeing power in the hands of bad people burgeon, Man eventually becomes disheartened with virtue, laughs at honor, and is embarrassed to be honest.” Perhaps the answer to my question lies within this wise man’s simple yet crystal-clear observation.

Some people still cling to the idea that Néstor and Cristina Kirchner’s original plan of passing the presidency back and forth between them ad infinitum died along with the late former president, and they cling as well to the hope that the presidential elections of 2015 will no longer contain a Kirchner as a candidate, since it is—currently at least—unconstitutional for any president to serve three consecutive terms. But astute and highly respected political analyst Nelson Castro said it all when he reminded the country this past week that for Cristina Kirchner and her entourage, “a ‘re-reelection’ is a matter of life and death.” Clearly, without a means of retaining their hold on power and the judicial immunity that goes with it, the President and her entourage would become common (if vastly wealthy) citizens, who could be called upon to answer for all charges and allegations against them.

The latest advances by the President and her rubber stamp majority in the Senate against the necessary checks and balances of any truly democratic society should have left no doubt in anyone’s mind about their intention to “go for all of it” by also controlling the Judiciary and thus sealing their future impunity. And if they manage to get away with it by also carrying the Lower House of Congress, then there should also be no doubt about what their next move will be: a rubber stamp constitutional “reform” aimed at “legalizing” the President’s illegitimate, totalitarian ambitions and perpetuating her administration in power.                

The Temptations of Torture

US President Barack Obama has been quite clear as regards his stance on waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques”: He considers them torture, plain and simple, and under his presidency, the United States will refuse to condone torture under any circumstances…period.

So why does the debate continue about whether or not the United States government can or cannot apply torture under certain circumstances (in which, far-right-wing commentators and torture proponents would have us believe, the ends justify the means)? Why do reporters from right-wing news media continue to hound President Obama on the subject, as if his answer to torture required justification, as if he were the one who was somehow unethical for defending the non-use of torture? Answer: Because certain officials and advisers of the former administration, who decided that they possessed the power to throw more than two centuries of American ethics regarding the inalienable and universal rights of Man out the window may now have to answer for their unmitigated arrogance and absence of moral character. And the possibility that high-ranking officials (including former presidents of the United States of America) might someday be called upon to be accountable for the questionable decisions they make, scares the daylights out of the far right. Why? Because the far right believes in central power, in some people’s being “more equal” than others, in certain rights only applying to “people like oneself”. And they had long sought a leader that was less interested in doing what was right than in doing “whatever it took”, a leader who thought that he was above the law and the Constitution, a leader who would give in to the temptations of torture, the temptations of lawlessness, the temptations of the “hanging judge” mentality of the Old West, a leader who felt that the “expediency” of vigilante “justice” was preferable to the preservation of the highest ideals of a nation that was once the shining beacon of individual and collective rights and the worldwide defender of democratic rule.

And they found that leader in the person of George W. Bush, who wasn’t averse to giving the “great unread”, movie-culture masses the fantasy they longed for: the one that says, what if there weren’t any rules and you could do whatever you wanted to the “bad guys”? The fantasy that justifies the actions of the “Dirty Harries”, and the “Rambos”, who, from the silver screen, teach the public that there’s a point at which the law no longer works and you have to take justice into your own hands.

Tyranny by Any Other Name

Most of us have that fantasy at one point or another. It is almost natural for us as individuals to have such fantasies and even for us to occasionally be tempted to act them out by getting mad and getting physical. (I myself, in this sense, do not hold myself up as an example, notorious hothead that I am). But in order for civilized society to function properly, the law and its representatives must be coldly, clearly and objectively above such feelings and the system must be devised in such a way as to ensure that officials, including the President – perhaps even especially the President – act not as individuals, but as the worthy representatives of the law, and the keepers of the morals and ethics of the nation. If not, if it becomes the attitude of the Executive that rules are made to be broken, then mob justice will simply run amok and civilization and rule of law will be such in name only, a caricature cited for effect in political rhetoric, because it is the law that is the framework for civilization and if the law and the ethical standards of a people are only applied “when they are convenient”, then they become nothing more than an expression of good intentions. And, in the end, unless they are systematically preserved as inviolable, their application is only as effective as the individual in charge at any given time. So applied (or not), ethical and legal standards eventually cease to exist. They become obsolete and are replaced by the arbitrary decisions of the powers that be.

There is a name for this state of affairs: It is called tyranny. Here, I speak not from a textbook, but from experience, having lived through a decade of this kind of authoritarianism in Argentina back in the mid to late1970s and early ‘80s. Based on that experience – back in the early days of Bush’s war on terrorism, when Guantánamo first became an issue, and when perhaps the greatest living American statesman, Jimmy Carter, was one of the few people speaking out against the holding of political prisoners without trial on the offshore US base – I had an unexpected clash with a friend, an intellectual for whom I have the highest respect, who is as bi-cultural as I myself am – a sort of reverse of my own experience, his having been born in Buenos Aires and then having spent many years living in New York. In the midst of an otherwise friendly phone conversation, I stated my opinion that what was happening in the United States, in view of the special powers the Bush government had granted itself following Nine-Eleven, had clear parallels with what had happened in Argentina (as well as in Chile and Uruguay, for example) in the 1970s.

To my surprise, my friend couldn’t figure out what I was taking about. Well, I explained, suspension of civil and human rights, detention without trial at the disposal of the Executive Branch, military council’s of war instead of proper trials, the use of coercion and mental and physical abuse to elicit confessions, etc., etc. All of those things that the military junta imposed and that, back then, would have been inconceivable in the USA, were now a part of accepted US policy. What the United States is living through, I said, are the early stages of authoritarian rule. My friend found this funny, crazy even. He laughed. Treated me with the condescension reserved for imbeciles and madmen. It wasn’t like that, he insisted. He lived in New York. He knew what he was talking about. I was “misinformed”. It was just these terrorist guys that they were holding, nothing more. It wasn’t as if the whole system were jeopardized.

Frankly, I was shocked that he failed to see the comparison, since he was an expert in political science. Because the very same arguments were used here in Argentina to justify the abuses of power and sidestepping of the law and of the Constitution indulged in by the supposed “defenders of democracy” that stepped in to “save the Republic” in this country in 1976. And at the time, a very broad spectrum of the public agreed that in order to fight terrorism you had to throw the rulebook out the window. But in the end, it would become clear to the majority of Argentines – although the far right here as in the United States, still clings to the idea of the ends justifying the means – that defending democracy and rule of law by suspending them and applying a greater lawlessness to the battle against outlaws was tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bath water. If a single person’s rights were violated, everyone’s rights were violated. Because if it could be done to one today it could be done to all tomorrow.

The arguments applied by the so-called National Reorganization Process in Argentina for methods that were clearly at odds with international standards of decency and respect for human rights and jurisprudence, as well as with the country’s own Constitution and Bill of Rights, were very much like those quoted by the Bush Administration: the existence of aggression by a “non-Western and un-Christian enemy with ties to hostile foreign powers”, the need to fight fire with fire in the kind of “dirty war” waged by lawless terrorists, the “unfortunate reality” of “collateral damage” in confrontations of this kind, the practicality of applying “extraordinary means”, justified by the greater good of saving innocent lives through “expedient preventive action”, the justification of “extraordinary powers” being assumed by the Executive Branch so as to not “tie the hands” of government in the face of a clear and present danger to “the values and way of life of an entire nation”.

But in Argentina, what this led to, in the end, was institutionalized State terror, in which tens of thousands of people were tortured, most of the time simply to “see if they knew anything” rather than based of any proper intelligence, with the “evidence” wrung from non-person prisoners by means of water torture, electric shock, beatings, extreme humiliation, drugs and so on being used to justify the detention and torture of still other thousands, with this in turn leading to the summary executions of as many as 30,000 people still referred to simply as “the missing”.

At this juncture, when the far-right is very vocally accusing President Obama of being soft on terrorism and of endangering the United States by not doing as the Bush Administration did and pretending that the Bill of Rights and the human rights treaties signed, often promoted and once-championed by the US government are non-binding suggestions rather than inviolable statements of principle, it almost seems ironic that one of the main factors in stopping the slaughter in Argentina was then-President Jimmy Carter’s insistence on respect for human rights among all countries that sought friendly ties with Washington. With what face could the United States have judged any other country’s treatment of suspects and prisoners under the Bush Administration? And as a world leader, is this the face that the people of the United States wish the Nation to have: that of a country that condones torture and is not averse to suspending rule of law for the sake of expediency; that of a country that applies one law to certain of its citizens and another to others, or that is exceptionally lawless and cruel in dealing with its prisoners of war, no matter what their nationality may be. And if this is indeed the image we are willing to accept, then, what will be the extent to which we can express outrage when our own citizens are treated with brutality when captured?

A Case in Point

The question is: Can democracy, constitutionality and rule of law escape unscathed from attempts to “work around them”? Once a rule has been broken, is it ever “hard and fast” again? And if not, if every time a single man (in this case, the President of the United States), decides that a situation warrants a constitutional “time-out”, of what use is the law and democracy as our forefathers conceived it? And if the Executive has the power to switch the legal rights of individuals on and off like artificial light and effective darkness, then what is the difference between that and authoritarianism – indeed, between that and tyranny?

Almost as controversial as the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy is the case of the late Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro (b.1916 - d.1978). Moro was a high-profile Italian politician who twice served as the country’s premier (1963-1968 and 1974-1976). On the ever-volatile Italian political scene, he was the country’s longest serving post-war leader and one of the most important figures in the Christian Democracy Party. He was an intellectual and was considered a skilled and patient mediator.

In March of 1978, members of the Red Brigades communist terror organization kidnapped Moro, demanding the release of jailed terrorist leaders in exchange for his freedom. The government took a hard line making, it clear that it refused to deal with terrorists. Despite appeals from Moro’s family that the government save him by any means necessary, the government maintained its position. In view of the government’s refusal to negotiate, the Vatican intervened, with Pope Paul VI calling on the Red Brigades to unconditionally release the former prime minister. When this didn’t work, the Pope offered to take Moro’s place as the terrorists’ hostage if they would agree to the politician’s release. Nothing worked, and after holding Aldo Moro for 54 days, his kidnappers murdered him and left his body in the trunk of a car parked on a street in Rome.

There is now speculation that, despite the fact that the Red Brigades were almost surely involved in the kidnapping and murder, there was collusion with others who stood to gain from his death, including US and other interests in NATO and Moro’s successor and co-party member, Giulio Andreotti. Moro and Andreotti were from different factions of the Christian Democrats. While Andreotti was strongly rumored to have ties to both the CIA and the Italian and US Cosa Nostra and, as such, to be radically anti-communist, Moro, ever the mediator, saw the advantage of bringing members of Italy’s then-influential Communist Party into a coalition government. According to statements attributed to Moro’s widow, the former premier had received such strong warnings not to pursue this idea from U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Nixon Administration) that he had, at the time, become frightened and ill and had considered leaving politics altogether. The ties between Moro’s assassination and Andreotti came up in a trial against the Andreotti years later for the murder of yet another politician and for his alleged Mafia ties. Andreotti was found guilty on a prosecution appeal and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, but the decision was later overturned in a defense appeal, and to this day, the former Prime Minister (now aged 90) sits in the Italian Parliament with the title of Senator for Life.

While interesting and revealing, these facts are not, in themselves, the point. What is germane, however, is that despite the extremely high profile and importance of the Moro abduction and in spite of the political machinations behind it, government and security officials at the time refused to bend the law to fit their political needs. Italy’s staunch pro-human rights stance remained firm despite the formidable threats posed at the time by the Red Brigades on the one hand and the long-standing Mafia on the other. When it was widely suggested that certain political-profiled prisoners’ feet should be put to the coals in order to expedite the investigation and secure the immediate release of the former prime minister, General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa – a ranking officer in the Italian Carabinieri and one of the architects of the country’s anti-terrorist policies and enforcement strategies – is quoted as having responded: "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction of torture."

Dalla Chiesa himself was murdered along with his wife and driver by the Mafia in 1982. But that didn’t make him any less right about what he said. Although the fight waged by all legal means against the Sicilian Mafia and the Red Brigades brought the assassinations of numerous law enforcement and justice officials, persistent legal action eventually brought the substantial dismantling and stunning debilitation of both movements and the clear strengthening of Italy as both a political power and as a paladin of civilized culture and society.

But Does It Work?

Torture as an interrogation technique is highly questionable, not only from a moral and ethical standpoint but also with respect to its actual efficacy. Here in Argentina false leads gained through torture were, perhaps, the singlemost cause for the subsequent torture and summary executions of other people who were absolutely innocent of any links with terrorism. Torturing someone beyond all boundaries of human resistance while repeating a question or demand obviously begs an answer – whatever answer pops into his/her head – from the torture victim. In Argentina, it was reportedly not uncommon for interrogators to simply repeat, “I want a name! A name! A name!”, while punctuating each demand for a name with a blow from a nightstick, a kick in the ribs or a punch in the face. After long minutes of mistreatment, prisoners would obviously come up with a name…any name: an rival, a casual acquaintance, their landlord, their boss, any name at all that might stop the abuse.

Or in other words, such unsophisticated techniques often lead to bad intelligence. And experienced intelligence agents and military interrogators in the United States are not unaware of this. There is reason to believe that intelligence professionals may well have been bullied into using the techniques by political officers in the Bush Administration, judging from reports that show that more than a few of them have left little doubt that they find torture an unreliable tool for extracting sound information.

In 2005, the New York Times quoted CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon as saying in a 2004 report that the so-called EITs (advanced interrogation techniques) “appeared to constitute cruel and degrading treatment under the [Geneva] Convention” – an international treaty that the United States has waved in the faces of its enemies in successive wars when these foreign powers have mistreated US captives.

Former CIA officer Bob Baer is reported to have told ABC News that torture made for “bad interrogation”. He said: “I mean, you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture’s bad enough.”

Another former CIA officer, Larry Johnson, who also served for a period as Deputy Director of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Office wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “What real field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust…than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets.”

ABC and other media have quoted CIA sources as saying that certain presumably crucial information extracted from Libyan-born al Qaeda trainer Ibn al Shaykh al Libi through torture ended up being proven false. Al Libi was subjected to the whole battery of progressively harsher “enhanced interrogation techniques” over a two-week period, and finally broke after being waterboarded and left to stand naked overnight in a cold cell, while being periodically hosed down with cold water. The statements he gave under duress where largely the basis for the Bush Administration’s claims that Iraq possessed biochemical weapons and trained al Qaeda members in their use. In other words, his confession was a major plank in the administration’s platform for launching its attack on Iraq. It was later established by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that Al Libi really had no such knowledge and had only told his interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear – either to purposely mislead them or simply in order to make the torture stop.The DIA said in an official report that the Libyan’s statements were “unreliable”, since he could provide no further details to corroborate his confession resulting from torture.

Justice Where Justice Is Due

President Obama has been criticized for leaving the decision as to whether to try officials who condoned and ordered torture under the Bush Administration to Justice and the Courts.

Hard-line liberals had hoped the President would be an avenging angel, who would swoop down on human rights violators in government and make them pay for undermining North America’s image and substance as a staunch defender of human rights and rule of law. Far right-wingers wanted him to “show patriotism” by intervening and granting immunity to those who permitted and ordered the use of the torture techniques – which they whimsically refer to as EITs.

But in the end, the criticism in both camps is morally, politically and ethically misplaced, since in the hands of Justice is precisely where that decision must lie, not in those of the Chief of State, if Americans’ rights are to be properly protected and tyranny is to be kept at bay.