Ted Rall: Executive Privilege is a Lie Handed Down!

Presidents of both parties have asserted that the constitutional separation of powers grants the executive branch an "inherent" right to ignore subpoenas issued by Congress or the judiciary through "executive privilege." The standard argument is that compliance would reveal the internal deliberations of the president, his Cabinet officers, and other government officials who require the presumption of privacy in order to engage in internal debates and deliberations. The ongoing "Fast and Furious" debacle is President Obama's first use of "executive privilege" to avoid such subpoenas, but both by historical and current legal standards, the continued use of the tool is a radical overreach. I put "executive privilege" in quotes because, like terms such as "enemy combatant," it does not appear in law. The closest we have to a definite word on executive privilege dates to the Watergate scandal, when the US Supreme Court ruled against Richard Nixon's attempt to stonewall Congress. As long as a prosecutor could argue that the relevant documents were essential to the justice of a case, and did not compromise national security, Chief Justice Warren Burger said, the president would have to fork over the documents. Operation Fast and Furious, a law enforcement matter, doesn't qualify under the Burger ruling. Yet, it's hard to imagine making a credible case that national security would be compromised if the details were made public. Since run-of-the-mill Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives memos would be covered, the usual top-level internal deliberations justification doesn't apply either. Once again, Obama is following precedent established by George W Bush, whose legal advisers seem to have missed the class about how Americans decided not to be ruled by a King.   

Brent Budowsky: France To The Rescue!

As European leaders gather in Brussels to shape the fate of the continent, many eyes turn to Francois Hollande, the newly elected president of France and a world leader championing humane and rational economic policies at a time of great human and economic suffering. Before Hollande's victory over conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, I wrote on The Hill's Pundits Blog about what I called "Midnight in Paris" and the French Spring I hoped would begin with a Hollande presidency. The people of France made a fateful choice between two competing philosophies. They elected a president and legislature with a mandate for their belief that jobs can be increased, deficits reduced, and prosperity restored with policies that are both enlightened and rational. As Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told me for this column, "The future of Europe lies with its leadership, and French President Hollande is central to that dynamic. He can expand the narrative over the future of Europe to one where stability and opportunity define the continent's future. I encourage him to seize the moment and make the difference." Hollande faces challenges: He must work with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who governs like a small-minded banker, always does too little too late, and fails to grasp that we are in this together. He must work with David Cameron, the British prime minister who governs like a merchant banker allied with the widely discredited Liberal Democratic party, which surrendered its soul and its heritage for a powerless seat at the table of power.   

Finian Cunningham: NATO Proxies Turkey and Saudi Arabia!

NATO Proxies Turkey and Saudi Arabia Move to War Footing on Eve of Syrian Peace Summit: The NATO-backed covert aggression against Syria could be reaching a tipping point for all-out war involving state forces. That should be no surprise. For the past 16 months, NATO and its regional proxies have been steadily increasing the violence and turmoil inside and outside Syria, while the Western corporate-controlled media maintain the ridiculous fiction that the bloody chaos is largely due to the government forces of President Bashar Al Assad cracking down on peaceful protesters. Ironically, the crisis is culminating at the same time that the United Nations convenes an emergency summit on Syria in Geneva this weekend. The meeting, which is ostensibly aimed at reviving the Kofi Annan peace plan, will be attended by the five permanent members of the UN security council and other invited regional states. The irony is that leading NATO members, the US, Britain and France, as well as their Turkish and Arab allies who will also be attending the crisis conference, are the very parties that have deliberately created the precipice for all-out war in the Middle East. As dignitaries fly into Geneva to salvage peace in Syria, there is a lockstep military build-up on the northern and southern flanks of Syria underway, with news that Turkey has dispatched battlefield tanks, missile batteries and heavy artillery to its Syrian border, while to the south Saudi Arabia has announced that its military forces have been put on a state of high alert. Ankaras military mobilization along its 800km land border with Syria came within hours of the declaration by Turkeys prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, slating Syria as a hostile state. The immediate cause of the deterioration in relations between the neighboring countries is the downing of a Turkish fighter jet last week in Syrian territorial waters. 

Mark Karlin: Stopping the Mexican Drug Insanity!

US Banks Love Real Dollars, and Illegal Drug Money Comes in Cash. A recent article in The Guardian UK offers evidence that "while cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits." According to The Guardian UK story, the study by two Colombian professors found that "2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within Columbia, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries." One of the researchers, Alejandro Gaviria said: "We know that authorities in the US and UK know far more than they act upon. The authorities realize things about certain people they think are moving money for the drug trade, but the DEA only acts on a fraction of what it knows." "It's taboo to go after the big banks," added Gaviria's co-researcher Daniel Mejia. "It's political suicide in this economic climate, because the amounts of money recycled are so high." Since Wachovia Bank, now owned by Wells Fargo, was levied a fine in 2010, but without criminal charges, for money laundering of millions, and perhaps billions, of illegal drug cartel dollars, there does not appear to be any large crackdown on the practice in the United States, although lip service is often given to coming down hard on money laundering. Indeed, more than one analyst has speculated that the billions of dollars in drug cash are vitally important to US banks because so many of their financial assets are tied up in non-fluid assets.

Rick Rozoff: NATO War Council To Target Syria

On Tuesday, June 26 Belgium time the North Atlantic Council, the highest governing body of the US dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization military bloc, will take up the issue of Syria under provisions of its founding document that in the past ten and a half years have resulted in military deployments preparatory to and the subsequent waging of full-scale wars. The ambassadors of the alliance's 28 member states constitute the council, nations whose collective population is 900 million. Its founding members include three nuclear powers, the US, Britain and France, the first the self- proclaimed sole military superpower. Until the day before the meeting, NATO was to take up a request by member Turkey to hold consultations under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty's Article 4, which allows any member state to call on the entire alliance to respond to alleged threats to its territorial integrity and security. On June 25, three days after a Turkish F-14 supersonic fighter-bomber was shot down over Syrian waters, Turkey announced that it was going to ask the military alliance to discuss its Article 5, which states that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all" and commits NATO allies to "assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force." Article 5 was invoked for the first and to date only time in October 2001 and is the basis for the deployment of troops from 28 NATO and 22 partner states to Afghanistan over the past decade.   

Lawrence Sellin: Barack Obama is an Illegal President!

American politicians and the media are lying to the American people. They do so because they hope that their complicity in the greatest fraud in US history will be overtaken by events, that is, the 2012 election. It is the Big Stall to cover up the Big Lie. In the Russian language there is a term called "vranyo." It is loosely defined as telling a white lie or a semi-truth. It may contain fantasy or involve the suppression of unpleasant parts of the truth. In regard to Obama's ineligibility and his alleged felonies, politicians and the media expect the American people to respond in this way. "You know that you are lying. I know that you are lying, and you know that I know you are lying, but we both smile and nod in agreement." Barack Obama, according to Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution, is an illegal President. The law requires a candidate for the Presidency to be a "natural born citizen," that is, a second generation American, a US citizen, whose parents were also US citizens at the time of the candidate's birth. Obama's father was a citizen of Kenya and a British subject at the time of his birth, which made him forever ineligible for the Presidency. For the same reason, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio is ineligible for the Presidency and Vice Presidency because his parents were Cuban citizens, not US citizens at the time of his birth. There is no ambiguity, although those who wish to undermine the Constitution would like the American people to think otherwise. The difference between "citizen," that is, born in the US and "natural born citizen" has been clear since the adoption of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. 

Olivia Kroth: Venezuela's Partnership with Russia!

Under President Chavez, Venezuela is enjoying good relations with Russia as one of its most important trade and military partners in Latin America. By strengthening Venezuelan-Russian ties, Hugo Chavez wants to help create a multi-polar world, " a world that permits the rights of peoples to liberty, self-determination and sovereignty". Over the past years, while the Russian Federation has been led by Vladimir Putin either as Prime Minister or as President, the ties between Chavez and Putin have become stronger. Both leaders are ardent patriots, proud to serve their respective countries which they love with great intensity. Both men share similar views on many topics, for example the role of the USA in global economics. Hugo Chavez agreed with Vladimir Putin's opinion that the USA is an "economic parasite" because of its "constant instability and high debts, living far beyond its means, and transferring the burden of its problems to the entire world economy." On Venezuelan television (VTV), President Chavez repeated Vladimir Putin's words, demanding Venezuela to "free itself from the parasite." Venezuela has the largest oil reserves, and is the fifth biggest oil exporter worldwide. In the twelve years of Hugo Chavez' government, Venezuela transferred its international funds from US banks to other banks in different parts of the world. Furthermore, Venezuela paid back all of its debts to US banks and ended its dependence on the IMF. Venezuela is a strategic business partner for Russia in the exploitation of gas and crude oil. Since 2005, Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA and the Russian oil company Lukoil have been drilling in the Venezuelan Orinoco Oil Belt together. Another joint venture contract was signed in 2011 between Russia's Rosneft and PDVSA to exploit the oil reserves of the blocs Carabobo-2 North and East. Rosneft holds 40 percent, PDVSA owns the majority of 60 percent.