Romania, Poland, Portugal

On the surface, this week’s elections in Poland, Romania and Portugal were a victory for Europe’s political centre. But look an inch or two below and a different, darker story emerges.

Let’s start with Romania. A few week ago the country was looking into a political abyss after the first-round of presidential elections was won by Calin Georgescu. The far-right, ultra-nationalist, pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine, anti-NATO, agronomist was a political unknown before the December vote. Yet he managed to top the first round of a two-part elections. A quick investigation revealed Russia skulduggery. The election was annulled and Georgescu barred from running for office.

So, the Romanian far-right put up another candidate—George Simion—who adopted many of the same policies of the barred Georgescu. He lost this week’s election. The centrist Nicursor Dan can claim a solid victory with 53.6 percent of the vote but Simion was close enough—at 46.4 percent of the vote—to be a future threat.

A bit further to the north the first round of the Polish presidential elections were much, much closer. Centrist candidate Rafal Trzaskowski narrowly topped the poll with 30.8 percent of the vote while far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki’s slice was 29.1 percent. The two men will face-off in a final round on June 1st.

A far-right Polish president could easily undermine the country’s centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk who has been in the forefront of world leaders supporting Ukraine. The president’s role is largely ceremonial except for the power to veto any legislation passed by the Polish parliament (Sejm) and to appoint the judiciary.

Further to the West, on the edge of the European continent, Portugal’s centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won enough seats to form a government, although it fell short of a majority.

AD’s success, however, was not the big news of the night. The big news was the triumph of the far-right Chega Party which more or less tied with the established centre-left Social Democrats with 23 percent of the vote. Three years ago Chega polled only seven percent.

The Chega Party joins Vox in Spain, Reform in the UK, AfD in Germany, AU in Romania, Sweden Democrats in Sweden, Freedom Party in Austria, National Rally in France….All of these parties have risen on the backs of inflation, a housing crisis and general uncertainty about the future. They are waiting for the established political parties to mis-step, or, fail to deliver.

United States

Gold is Donald Trump’s favourite colour. It is also expensive. These two factors could explain why the American president is calling his proposed missile defense shield the “Golden Dome.”

The wished-for shield is loosely modelled on Israel’s highly successful “Iron Dome” which has successfully rebuffed missile attacks from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

I say, loosely, because Israel’s Iron Dome is 15 mobile Patriot missile batteries which are moved around the country to the best sites for intercepting incoming missiles. The batteries are all land-based and cover an area of 8,550 square miles.

Trump’s Golden Dome would be based on sea, land and in space and would cover an area of 7,650,000 square miles. It would also be designed to detect and destroy missiles before they are launched as well as after they are launched.

More territory to protect means more money to be spent. Trump has allocated $25 billion in his “Bit, Beautiful Budget Bill” currently before the Senate. That does not come close to paying for the Golden Dome. Trump says the total bill will be $175 billion. The Congressional Budget Office disagrees. It estimates the cost of space-based operations alone will be at least $542 billion (Note:  that is space only. It does not include land and sea which are believed to cost more). No one—other than Trump—has dared to put a figure on the final bill.

There are political as well as military costs. If successfully deployed (big IF) the Golden Dome would increase American isolationism and give the US a distinct second strike and first strike capability. At the moment, nuclear armed countries are deterred from using their nuclear weapons by the fear that any nuclear attack by them would be met with an overwhelming nuclear attack by the enemy.

An effective Golden Dome would mean that America could launch a nuclear attack safe in the knowledge that a counter attack would be repelled.

United States, again

A legal and history lesson for Kristi Noem, US Secretary for Homeland Security who told a congressional committee that Habeas Corpus “is a constitutional right that the president has to remove people from this (the US) country.”

WRONG, VERY WRONG. In fact, pretty close to almost opposite.

Habeas Corpus is a basic tenet of English common law and is considered one of the most fundamental legal protections for individual liberty against arbitrary state detention.

Basically, it means that a person cannot be detained without lawful cause. And that everyone accused of a crime has a right to be brought before a court to determine whether or not they should be detained.

The protection of Habeas Corpus is enshrined in Article One of the US constitution which says: “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Although some people in the Trump Administration may think that the United States is in the midst of a “rebellion or invasion,” they are wrong. It is not.

It should be made clear that American law is based on English Common law. The Founding Fathers needed a body of established legal precedents as a legal foundation. They chose the one with which they were most familiar—England’s.

The same is true of every American state. The one exception is Louisiana which is based on French law because of its historic ties with France.

Many people say Habeas Corpus started with the Magna Carta. Actually, it predates the “Great Charter” but the Magna Carta was the first time that something approaching Habeas Corpus was enshrined in a legal format. This is because much of the Magna Corpus involved protecting existing laws.

The 1215 Magna Carta did not mention Habeas Corpus by name, but it lay the groundwork with clause 39: “No free man should be seized or imprisoned… except by the lawful judgment of his equal or by the law of the land.”

In short, imprisonment could only follow due process of law.

It wasn’t until 1679 that the Habeas Corpus Act was passed during the reign of Charles II. This formally established the legal right that prisoners could petition a court to compel jailers to justify their detention.

It is crucial that the Secretary for Homeland Security know about Habeas Corpus. She is responsible—among other things—for border protection and the Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agency. Their agents have been busily rounding up alleged illegal aliens and protesting foreign students and locking up, deporting or threatening to deport them without bringing them before a court. In short, denying them their right of Habeas Corpus.

Perhaps this legal breach is understandable as the person responsible does not know the meaning of Habeas Corpus.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of The Liberal Democrat Voice. He is also a regular contributor to “The New World” (formerly “The New European”) and the author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”