From The Progressive
By Howard Zinn

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

Read more Flags

From The Progressive
By Matthew Rothschild

Bush and Cheney are going down the Nixon slide.

Bush has decided not to comply with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees’ subpoenas for documents dealing with the firing of the U.S. attorneys.

And he’s likely to do the same over subpoenas on Cheney’s and Gonzales’s role in the NSA spying scandal.

Bush invoked “executive privilege.”

That’s got a vague ring to it, doesn’t it?

Patrick Leahy, head of the Senate Judiciary, called it “Nixonian stonewalling,” and said, “Increasingly, the President and the Vice President feel they are above the law.”

John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, added: “This is reckless. It’s a form of governmental lawlessness that is really astounding.”

Conyers should know.

He sat on the Judiciary Committee when it voted to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974.

And let’s remember, one of the three articles that Nixon was impeached on concerned just this kind of stonewalling.

Read more Bush/Cheney

From CounterPunch
By Christopher Brauchli

Although I am not normally one to spring to the defense of Dick Cheney I have to say that people are being really petty about the latest kerfuffle over his conduct. Mr. Cheney is not, after all, just any vice president. He was president of a big corporation before he picked himself to be Mr. Bush’s vice-president. He would not have made the switch from president of a big important company to a job described by John Nance Garner, one of its former occupants, as not worth more than a warm bucket of spit, unless he knew that the position he was accepting was more important than the job he was giving up. The reason it is more important is not just that he, being brighter than the president, sees himself as the real power behind the throne. It is because of the unique nature of the office of the vice-presidency as seen through Mr. Cheney’s constitutional eyes.

Mr. Cheney and other constitutional scholars know that what makes the Constitution of the United State a special document is that it is a living document that changes with the times, even if some of the changes can only be effected by torturing its meaning. (Torture, as Mr. Cheney knows, can work miracles).

According to Mr. Cheney’s interpretation of the Constitution, the vice-president is a member of the executive branch for purposes of being entitled to receive classified information that members of the legislative branch may not receive, but a member of the legislative branch when it comes to being accountable for what he does with that information. It is based on this creative interpretation of the Constitution that recent events unfolded.

In mid-June it was disclosed that beginning in 2003, Mr. Cheney’s office had refused to comply with Executive Order 12958. In a very nice letter to Mr. Cheney, Henry Waxman, the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform explained to Mr. Cheney what that executive order was all about and to whom it applied. He explained to Mr. Cheney that: “Executive Order 12958 . . . directs the National Archives to oversee a uniform system for protecting classified information. A key component of the executive order directs the Information Security Oversight Office . . . to inspect . . . White House offices to ensure compliance with the security procedures required by the President.” The executive order applies to any “entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.”

Read more Cheney

From The Pgh Post Gazette
By Robert Burns

The harder President Bush has pushed to win in Iraq, the closer he has come to losing.

The question no longer is whether the U.S. military can fully stabilize Iraq. It cannot.

That was a possibility four years ago, immediately after Saddam Hussein’s government fell. Before the insurgency took hold. Before U.S. occupation authorities lost any chance to avoid the sectarian strife of today’s Iraq.

Now only the Iraqis can save Iraq.

They need the U.S. military’s help, no doubt. But the Bush administration has made no secret of the fact that the U.S. troop buildup in Baghdad is simply buying time for the Iraqis to sort out their differences, create a government of national unity and show they can defend themselves.

So it is not whether the U.S. can win the war. It is whether the Iraqis can, which is in great doubt.

Read more Iraq

From The Guardian UK
By Mark Townsend, Jo Revill and Paul Kelbie

Britain is braced tonight for a fresh wave of terrorist attacks as the national threat level was raised to ‘critical’ following an attempted car bombing of Glasgow airport.

Just four days into his premiership, Gordon Brown was dealing with the most dangerous situation facing Britain since the attacks on London in July 2005. Police and intelligence officers confirmed that there was a direct link between the Scottish attack and the attempting car bombing of London on Friday – confirming the reality of a renewed UK offensive by Islamic extremists.

Tonight the Prime Minister summoned intelligence chiefs and ministers to a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee in Whitehall to discuss the deteriorating security situation. It was agreed to raise the threat level to the highest degree possible, a decision that confirmed another attack is expected imminently.

In a televised address from Downing Street, a sombre-faced Brown urged people to be ‘vigilant’ and support the police and security services. He said: ‘I know that the British people will stand together, united, resolute and strong.’

Read more Terror

From Michigan Liberal
By Jim Ramelis

Doing nothing about immigration and border security is taking a position on the
issue. Those that don’t want tightened border security or any type of sane
comprehensive immigration policy are in effect saying: “Yes. I want the
borders wide open, the profits of agri-business, construction industries, and
others that hire undocumented workers are more important than a good solid
border that screens both for security and health concerns. Support for no reform
says “It is a good thing when the wages of American workers are suppressed by
workers coming across the borders and working for less than minimum wage.”
Failure of immigration reform means the status quo is maintained and that is
just fine with many special interests. It means when an undocumented worker is
sickened by the poison that is sprayed on our crops he or she goes to a hospital
Emergency Room, where you and I pay the bill, and is eligible for no workmen’s
compensation or help of any kind. No politician is going to formally announce he
is for any of these issues but they have to smoke screen the subject. No action
on immigration is the smokescreen. Read the rest of this entry »

From The Consortium News
By Robert Parry

Upon learning that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would become a new envoy intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a former senior Israeli intelligence official confided to an old colleague a two-word comment in English: “It’s nuts.” One can only imagine what the Palestinians said in private.

Rarely in recent history have a man and an assignment matched up as poorly as this one: an officious and deceitful Brit who collaborated on a disastrous scheme to invade an Arab country and who is blamed for the deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, now intervenes in another Arab land to get the Palestinians to shape up.

At least, the Palestinians and Israelis have been assured, Blair won’t be in charge of negotiating a peace settlement. That daunting assignment will be left to President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, two other widely despised figures in the Middle East.

Blair’s duties will be limited to shoring up Palestinian institutions, funneling international assistance to embattled Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and promoting Palestinian economic development, Bush administration officials have said.

Still, one has to wonder who comes up with these ideas. Is this envoy assignment just the latest Bush-Blair vanity play in the Middle East, treating a strategically vital region as a toy for their egos and a source of patronage plums for their cronies? Or are Bush and Blair really so self-absorbed that they think they’re the right guys for these sensitive jobs?

Read more Vanity Play

From The Independent UK
By Rupert Cornwell

Tomorrow’s summit between George Bush and Vladimir Putin raises the intriguing question of whether the shadow of the father can help the son bring an end to the frostiest period in ties between the United States and Russia since the Cold War?

For the first time in his six-and-a-half years in power, Mr Bush is inviting a foreign dignitary not to the White House, or the Camp David retreat, or his ranch in Texas. This meeting takes place at the home of Mr Bush’s father in Kennebunkport, Maine. The former president’s deft handling of US-Soviet relations was a hallmark of his term in office.

The White House confirmed yesterday that the 41st president will be at the house while his son entertains Mr Putin. Although he will not take part in the official talks, the elder Bush is bound to be involved informally as the two leaders address the host of grievances that divide them.

These range from the planned US missile defence system in eastern Europe to the independence of Kosovo – both fiercely opposed by the Kremlin.

Washington complains about the erosion of democracy and human rights in Russia and Moscow’s bullying of neighbours once part of the Soviet Union. Mr Putin has responded by likening Mr Bush’s foreign policy to that of Nazi Germany, and by offering his own missile defence project.

Read more Big Daddy

From AlterNet
By John Dean

Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.

In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major and minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President’s extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.

For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions — considered among the nation’s most important treaties — are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using “waterboarding” — the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.

Read more Cheney

From The Pgh Post Gazette
Editorial

A four-part Washington Post series this week on Vice President Dick Cheney by reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker offered valuable perspective on his work and his role, as the end of his two terms and those of President Bush draw nearer.

It is said, and is probably true, that Mr. Cheney has expanded the role and powers of the vice president beyond those of any of his predecessors. Many previous vice presidents were almost forgettable in office and afterward unless they became presidents themselves. Mr. Cheney will leave a unique heritage.

One of the main points of The Washington Post’s analysis is that Mr. Cheney ranged far and wide, in policy areas where a vice president would normally not be determinant. It is still not clear how he was able to do this — because he read President Bush’s inclinations correctly, or because Mr. Bush wasn’t interested or was incapable of performing effectively.

Areas where Mr. Cheney’s hand can be seen include the lead-up to the Iraq war, judicial and physical handling of prisoners, intra-governmental jostling for power, personnel appointments and nominations and the ongoing Bush administration campaign to put the interests of business — especially the energy industry — and of America’s rich ahead of everything else, including conservation and the concerns of working people.

Read more Cheney Time