Patrick’s Notebook

Calls restrictions unconstitutional

By Charlie Savage, Boston Globe — 30 January 2008

– President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

Bush made the assertion in a signing statement that he issued late Monday after signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. In the signing statement, Bush asserted that four sections of the bill unconstitutionally infringe on his powers, and so the executive branch is not bound to obey them.

“Provisions of the act . . . purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as commander in chief,” Bush said. “The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.”

One section Bush targeted created a statute that forbids spending taxpayer money “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Continue reading ‘Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act’ »

Those with populist agendas, who threaten vested interests, such as the giant media corporations, are denied entry to the “democratic process.”

By Jessica Lee, The Indypendent — 12 January 2008

– The limits of the presidential election process has penned voters between corporatebacked candidates and a hard place after both antiwar candidates, Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Ron Paul (R-Tex.), were iced out of national debates, likely affecting the outcomes of both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.

Both veteran politicians have a strong grassroots following — Kucinich with progressives and Paul with libertarians and nativists —and have fought mightily for attention across the nation. Their attempts to gain a national platform for their ideas and candidacies have been thwarted by the corporate media, which have not given them fair coverage and have excluded them from debates.

This is not some back-room conspiracy; it’s how the system works. The electoral process is slanted to those candidates who can raise hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations and the wealthy. Those with populist agendas, who threaten vested interests, such as the giant media corporations, are denied entry to the “democratic process.”
Kucinich, for example, was excluded from the Jan. 5 ABC News-sponsored New Hampshire debate after the network claimed Kucinich failed to qualify because he did not place in the top four in Iowa or poll higher than 5 percent. According to a joint ABC-Facebook survey, however, Kucinich polled higher than New Mexico

Gov. Bill Richardson, who was invited to the debate. Kucinich filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission on Jan. 4, claiming that ABC “is violating its obligation to operate in the public interest” and that it could not be a “true presidential primary debate without including all credible candidates, but instead is effectively an endorsement of the candidates selected by ABC.”

Continue reading ‘Populists Need Not Apply’ »

Protesters who re-enacted one of Blackwater’s worst civilian massacres in Iraq got jail time, while the real killers remain free.

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet — 29 January 2008

– Last week in Currituck County, N.C., Superior Court Judge Russell Duke presided over the final step in securing the first criminal conviction stemming from the deadly actions of Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration’s favorite mercenary company. Lest you think you missed some earth-shifting, breaking news, hold on a moment. The “criminals” in question were not the armed thugs who gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others in Baghdad’s Nisour Square last September. They were seven nonviolent activists who had the audacity to stage a demonstration at the gates of Blackwater’s 7,000-acre private military base in North Carolina to protest the actions of mercenaries acting with impunity — and apparent immunity — in their names and those of every American.

The arrest of the activists and the subsequent five days they spent locked up in jail is more punishment than any Blackwater mercenaries have received for their deadly actions against Iraqi civilians. “The courts pretend that adherence to the law is what makes for an orderly and peaceable world,” said Steve Baggarly, one of the protest organizers. “In fact, U.S. law and courts stand idly by while the U.S. military and private armies like Blackwater have killed, maimed, brutalized and destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.”

A month after the Nisour Square massacre, on Oct. 20, a group of about 50 activists gathered outside Blackwater’s gates in Moyock, N.C. There, they reenacted the Nisour Square shooting and staged a “die-in,” involving a vehicle painted with bullet marks and blood. The activists stained their clothing with fake blood and dramatized the deadly shooting spree. Some of the demonstrators marked Blackwater’s large welcome sign — with the company’s bear claw in a sniper scope logo — with red hand prints. The demonstrators believed these “would be a much more appropriate logo for Blackwater,” according to Baggarly. “We’re all responsible for what is happening in Iraq. We all have bloody hands.” It took only moments for the local police to respond to the protest, the first ever at Blackwater’s headquarters. In the end, seven were arrested.

The symbolism was stark: Re-enact a Blackwater massacre, go to jail. Commit a massacre, walk around freely and perhaps never go to jail. All seven were charged with criminal trespassing, six of them with an additional charge of resisting arrest and one with another charge of injury to real property. “We feel like Blackwater is trespassing in Iraq,” Baggarly later said. “And as for injuring property, they injure men, women and children every day.” The activists were jailed for five days and eventually released pending trial.

Continue reading ‘Pioneering Blackwater Protesters Given Secret Trial and Criminal Conviction’ »

By James Cogan, WSWS.org — 30 January 2008

Since January 1, American and Iraqi government forces have been conducting a major offensive, codenamed Phantom Phoenix, against Sunni Arab-based resistance groups in northern Iraq. Operations have already been conducted in the province of Diyalah and in the Arab Jabour district to the south of Baghdad. They have been characterised by some of the heaviest aerial bombardments of the war and the mass round-up of anyone accused of being members or sympathisers of the Sunni fundamentalist organisation which calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq.

US authorities have seized upon the activities of this outfit to designate all Sunni-based resistance to the foreign occupation as terrorism. Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told the media on January 20 that the latest offensive had already resulted in the death of 121 “terrorists” and the detention of 1,023.

The killing and repression is now being extended to Mosul, an ancient metropolis on the banks of Tigris River and Iraq’s second largest city after Baghdad. Mosul is the capital of Ninevah province, which borders Syria to the west, the Kurdish autonomous region to the north and east and the predominantly Sunni Arab provinces of Anbar and Salah Ad Din to the south. It had an estimated pre-war population of 1.7 million. Sunni Arabs comprised the majority, but lived alongside large Kurdish, Turkomen and Assyrian Christian communities.

The US occupation has faced continual resistance in Ninevah since the 2003 invasion. A number of Sunni Arab resistance groups and tribes in Anbar province and Baghdad struck deals with the US military during 2007 and ended attacks on American and Iraqi government forces, but that has not taken place in Mosul. The predominantly Sunni districts of the city remain guerilla strongholds.

Continue reading ‘Iraq: US military extends its offensive into the northern city of Mosul’ »

From RIA Novosti

– Russia and China hold “the most realistic” position on Iran’s nuclear program, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday.

“Among all countries of the ‘Group of Six’ [permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany] the positions of Russia and China [on Iran's nuclear issue] are the most realistic,” Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

He said Iran would continue constructive cooperation with the international nuclear watchdog.

“Certain countries would like to undermine the authority of the [International Atomic Energy] Agency, which has not recorded any deviations from Iran’s peaceful nuclear activity,” he said.

On January 22, foreign ministers from the six nations are to meet in Berlin to consider a UN Security Council draft resolution on sanctions against Iran.

Continue reading ‘Tehran praises Russian, Chinese position on Iran nuclear program’ »

The apartheid Israeli regime is continuing its policy of collective punishment through inhuman treatment of Palestinians to exercise dominion over Gaza while outwardly claiming support for the recent Annapolis peace accords.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters — 21 January 2008

– A U.N. agency said on Monday it would have to suspend food distribution to 860,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as early as Wednesday unless Israel eased the border blockade it imposed on the Hamas-controlled territory.

Other international groups said that Gaza hospitals would run out of drugs and generator fuel in a few days unless Israel allowed goods through border crossings closed on Friday in what Israel said was a bid to make militants stop rocket attacks.

“Because of a shortage of nylon for plastic bags and fuel for vehicles and generators, on Wednesday or Thursday we are going to have to suspend our food distribution programme to 860,000 people in Gaza if the present situation continues,” said Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The European Union, which funds fuel for Gaza’s now-idle main power plant, said it understood Israel’s need to defend itself against cross-border rockets but called the closure “collective punishment” and said it should be lifted.

Continue reading ‘U.N. agency says may have to halt Gaza food handout’ »

U.S. macro power is helpless against a single micro actor trained in asymmetrical warfare with no return address and looking forward to his reward of 72 virgins in the promised land.

By Arnaud De Borchgrave, United Press International — 18 January 2008

– President Bush’s Air Force One was still airborne on its way back from a six-country, eight-day tour of Middle Eastern capitals when agreements and understandings began to unravel.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah was noncommittal on pumping more crude oil. With oil near $100 per barrel, all OPEC countries are already siphoning off at full capacity and the desert kingdom’s now small extra capacity would be a drop in the global bucket. The six Gulf states, known as the Gulf Cooperation Council, have already accumulated a cool $1 trillion nest egg — half of which is already assigned to sovereign wealth funds for investment abroad.

Bush’s quid for the king’s quo was $20 billion worth of high-tech military goodies over the next 10 years (still not authorized by Congress or accepted by the king, who is also shopping in the United Kingdom, France and Russia).

Bush rang the alarm bell about Iran’s clear and present nuclear danger, but his diplomatic message had already been overshadowed by last month’s National Intelligence Estimate. While his Israeli interlocutors echoed the president’s Iranian concerns, Arab heads of state took comfort in the assessment of Washington’s intelligence community that said Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program when the United States invaded Iraq.

Continue reading ‘Mission unaccomplished’ »

By RAW STORY — 14 January 2008

– National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park,” according to an interview published in the New Yorker’s print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America’s intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker’s Web site.

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

“Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search,” author Lawrence Wright pens.

Continue reading ‘US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search’ »

As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with repressive regime)

By Robert Fisk, The Independent — 16 January 2008

– Twixt silken sheets – in a bedroom whose walls are also covered in silk – and in the very palace of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President George Bush awakes this morning to confront a Middle East which bears no relation to the policies of his administration nor the warning which he has been relaying constantly to the kings and emirs and oligarchs of the Gulf: that Iran rather than Israel is their enemy.

The President sat chummily beside the all-too-friendly monarch yesterday, enthroned in what looked suspiciously like the kind of casual blue cardigan he might wear on his own Texan ranch; he had even received a jangling gold ” Order of Merit” – it looked a bit like the Lord Chancellor’s chain, though it was not disclosed which particular merit earned Mr Bush this kingly reward. Could it be the hypocritical merit of supplying yet more billions worth of weapons to the Kingdom, to be used against the Saudi regime’s imaginary enemies.

It was illusory, of course, like all the words that the Arabs have heard from the Americans these past seven days, ever since the fading President began his tourist jaunt around the Middle East.

You wouldn’t think it though, watching this preposterous man, prancing around arm-in-arm with the King, in what was presumably meant to be a dance, wielding a massive glinting curved Saudi sword, a latter-day Saladin, who would have appalled the Kurdish leader who once destroyed the Crusaders in what is now referred to by Mr Bush as “the disputed West Bank”.

Continue reading ‘Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President’ »

By Palestinian Center for Human Rights, ElectronicIntifada.net — 15 January 2008

– On Tuesday morning, 15 January 2008, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed 17 Palestinians, including five civilians, and wounded at least 30 others, five of whom are in a serious condition, during an incursion into the al-Shojaeya and al-Zaytoun neighborhoods of east Gaza City. The incursion continued until noon. Preliminary investigations conducted by Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) indicate that most of the victims were killed by tank shells, and that IOF troops used excessive lethal force without regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians living in the affected areas.

PCHR strongly condemns these latest crimes, and continues to be gravely concerned about the escalation of attacks by IOF against the Gaza Strip. PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene in order to stop these crimes, as well as repeated Israeli threats to invade the Gaza Strip en masse, which will undoubtedly cause even more destruction, including deaths and injuries, to the Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

According to the preliminary investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 8:00am on Tuesday, 15 January 2008, IOF heavy military vehicles moved nearly 3,000 meters into Palestinian areas around Malaqa Square, which lies between al-Shojaeya and al-Zaytoun neighborhoods in the east of Gaza City. IOF then indiscriminately opened fire at anything that moved within the area. A number of militants from the Palestinian resistance clashed with IOF, and the IOF responded by firing tank shells. As a result, five Palestinian fighters were killed:

Continue reading ‘Israeli forces kill 17 Gazans in less than four hours’ »

Official Had Implicit Approval, Lawyer Says

By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, Washington Post — 16 January 2008

–In late 2005, the retiring CIA station chief in Bangkok sent a classified cable to his superiors in Langley asking if he could destroy videotapes recorded at a secret CIA prison in Thailand that in part portrayed intelligence officers using simulated drowning to extract information from suspected al-Qaeda members.

The tapes had been sitting in the station chief’s safe, in the U.S. Embassy compound, for nearly three years. Although those involved in the interrogations had pushed for the tapes’ destruction in those years and a secret debate about it had twice reached the White House, CIA officials had not acted on those requests. This time was different.

The CIA had a new director and an acting general counsel, neither of whom sought to block the destruction of the tapes, according to agency officials. The station chief was insistent because he was retiring and wanted to resolve the matter before he left, the officials said. And in November 2005, a published report that detailed a secret CIA prison system provoked an international outcry.

Those three circumstances pushed the CIA’s then-director of clandestine operations, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., to act against the earlier advice of at least five senior CIA and White House officials, who had counseled the agency since 2003 that the tapes should be preserved. Rodriguez consulted CIA lawyers and officials, who told him that he had the legal right to order the destruction. In his view, he received their implicit support to do so, according to his attorney, Robert S. Bennett.

Continue reading ‘Story Behind CIA Tapes’ Destruction’ »

The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.

By Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com — 13 January 2007

– The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.

Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president’s inauguration and screech “I’m melting! I’m melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude-cutting down brush with a chain saw.

He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the executive branch.

World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are of “no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that.”

Continue reading ‘The End of the Road for George Bush’ »

All this suggests that Bush is vainly trying to play the victim while he is actually the criminal by distorting reality and attempting to deceive regional Arab states about Iran’s goodwill policy and its nuclear program.

Mehr News Agency — 13 January 2008

– In a ridiculous speech in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, President George W. Bush claimed that Iran is threatening the security of the world and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger “before it’s too late.”

“Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” Bush claimed. “So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the (Persian) Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.”

Bush claimed Iran sends arms to the Taleban, seeks to intimidate its neighbors with alarming rhetoric, defies the United Nations, and destabilizes the entire region by refusing to be open about its nuclear program.

Responding to Bush’s claims

Threatening the security of nations everywhere: Is public opinion in the region the best judge of whether Iran is a threat to international security or the United States under Bush and his mentors?

The Bush record since he took office at the White House speaks volumes: the invasion of Iraq without UN approval under the pretext that Iraq possessed a weapons of mass destruction program while in the end no WMDs were found; about a million Iraqis have been killed since the March 2003 invasion and two million have been displaced; human rights scandals such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the clandestine prisons located across the world; ignoring the global demand that the U.S. sign the Kyoto Protocol for curbing global warming, which threatens the lives of millions of people in low-lying areas; starting a new cold war by planning to deploy missiles in Eastern Europe near the border with Russia; and developing a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Continue reading ‘Criminal Bush trying to play the victim’ »

“It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably ’seriously criminal’ would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating…”

By Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers — 11 January 2008

— A federal appeals court Friday threw out a suit by four British Muslims who allege that they were tortured and subjected to religious abuse in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a ruling that exonerated 11 present and former senior Pentagon officials.

It appeared to be the first time that a federal appellate court has ruled on the legality of the harsh interrogation tactics that U.S. intelligence officers and military personnel have used on suspected terrorists held outside the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The detainees allege that they were held in stress positions, interrogated for sessions lasting 24 hours, intimidated with dogs and isolated in darkness and that their beards were shaved.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren’t recognized as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from “substantially burdening a person’s religion.”

Continue reading ‘Court Says Torture Is To Be Expected’ »

“Unfortunately, the United Nations and its agencies have become impotent as they have come to be controlled by western capitals such as Washington DC, who have held the United Nations hostage by withholding their contributions.“

By Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service (IPS) — 10 January 2008

– As Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon begins his second year in office, he has refused to claim any tangible successes during 2007, nor has he laid out any clear-cut strategy to meet the political and economic challenges facing the United Nations in 2008.

“So far his performance and what appears to be his future approach do not reflect anything close to the independence, strength of character, willingness to stand up to powerful governments and commitment to equality of nations and peoples,” says Phyllis Bennis, director, New Internationalism Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

These are qualities that would be required if the United Nations had any chance of rebuilding its tattered reputation and its potential capacity, said Bennis, author of several books on the world body, including “Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power”.

She said Ban Ki-moon’s end-of-first-year speech provided an example. “While he spoke of protection of the ‘global commons’ and the ‘bottom billion’ as U.N. priorities, he failed to provide any real programmatic blueprints for how those crucial goals might be brought about,” Bennis told IPS.

Continue reading ‘UN Remains Impotent as a Captive of the US’ »