Children surf the Internet at a cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam, April 14. (Reuters File Photo)

The fact that Bush wants to rule as something like a dictator is nothing new. Heck, he even said it himself. But a startling new article in Sunday’s Boston Globe shows just how far he’s already taken his wish: Bush has reserved the right to ignore as many as 750 laws passed by Congress during his presidency.
In the piece, Charlie Savage provides a rundown of how President Bush has used signing statements in lieu of the presidential veto. In contrast to Bush The First’s 232 such challenges, and Clinton’s 140, George W. has challenged 750 new laws in this manner.
The effects? Jack Balkin over at Balkinization neatly sums them up for us: The signing statements enable the president to pick certain portions of legislation that he doesn’t fancy, undermining the will of Congress without any public accountability or effective recourse from Congress or the courts. George W.’s allergy to vetoes smack of a specific intent to avoid public scrutiny of his interpretation of the constitution.
As Balkin writes, The Bush Administration didn’t want Congress regulating how it treated prisoners, regarding any such interventions as unconstitutional; at the same time, it didn’t want the courts deciding the question of constitutionality either. It simply wanted to be free of legal obligations or responsibilities in this area other than those that it choose for itself.
While a presidential veto would require Congress to weigh in, and change the law if it appeared to be unconstitutional, those 750 signing statements are an effective way of influencing future legislation without facing any oversight.
The law is constantly subject to interpretation--and signing statements have import in future readings of congressional intent. That means that these the president’s willful misinterpretation of Congress (case in point: President Bush’s claim that the Authorization to Use Military force--AUMF--allows the president to illegally wiretap and search Americans) can impact future court rulings, long after Bush is out of office.
While it’s tempting for those opposed to this president to continually ask, “How can he get away with that?“ the answer is deceptively simple: because he thinks he can.
As journalist Robert Scheer noted in a recent interview with AlterNet,
These guys areÉfar worse than the Nixon crowd because they think they can get away with it. Nixon, at the end of the day thought it mattered what the New York Times said. He felt that if there was a big contradiction, a big error, they would catch him and there would be all hell to pay.
But it’s not just the specter of the public and press that normally keeps executive power in check: Our political system relies on each branch exercising self-restraint. Fear of and respect for the other branches of government has long provided a more conservative exercise of power. But as Cheney has made explicitly clear, this administration is interested in expanding executive power, not restraining it.
Articles like Savage’s are critical in bringing attention, not only to President Bush’s abuse of the law, but to the continued expansion of executive power that has occurred under his watch. Without a push back from the other branches of government, the path is paved for future presidents, regardless of their politics, to single-handedly interpret the Constitution any way they see fit.
ALTERNET.ORG

Junichiro Koizumi

On last Wednesday, Japan Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi greeted the fifth anniversary of his rule, becoming Japan’s third-longest serving postwar leader after Eisaku Sato and Shigeru Yoshida.
As soon as it was inaugurated, the Koizumi Cabinet launched the challenging task of privatizing postal services and highway public corporations. The undertaking was part of the Cabinet’s campaign for structural reform, the top priority of its political agenda. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the administration moved to strengthen Japan’s defense alliance with the United States.
In Japan’s political history, Koizumi is likely to be remembered as a leader who made major changes in domestic and diplomatic policies. He deserves praise for kick-starting the recovery of the nation’s economy, which remained moribund throughout the “lost decade“ of the 1990s, and for bringing persistent deflation to an end.
Koizumi reformed the nation’s policymaking process with a “top-down“ decision-making system--highly unusual for a postwar leader--and shifted political power from the governing Liberal Democratic Party to the prime minister’s office.
Koizumi threatened to “crush the LDP,“ if necessary, to implement reform, and went on to transform the party’s power structure.
Under Koizumi’s rule, public-works spending was sharply cut. His privatization drive caused the construction industry and a group of postmasters, the LDP’s traditional vote-gathering machines, to distance themselves from the party.
The government’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, chaired by the prime minister, began to play a central role in the policymaking process. Before Koizumi took power, the LDP’s Executive Council used to give the go-ahead for all government-sponsored legislation. Koizumi took away that power.
Koizumi, who lacks a strong power base in the LDP, owes his long rule to public approval ratings as high as 85 percent. Five years on, he still basks in ratings of 40 to 50 percent.
He has used the tactic of repeating terse, strong messages, such as “Without reform, there will be no growth,“ impressing himself as the “champion of reform“ on people’s minds.
In diplomatic and security policies, Koizumi’s pro-U.S. stance is conspicuous. Stressing the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance in the world, he ordered the deployment of Self-Defense Force ships in the Indian Ocean and troops in Iraq to help the U.S. war against terrorism. He also agreed to a plan for the Japanese government to pay $ 6 billion to help cover the cost of transferring 8,000 U.S Marines from Okinawa to Guam as part of the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan.
Koizumi scored a stunning diplomatic success when he visited Pyongyang for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and brought home five Japanese who were abducted by North Korean agents. However, he bears heavy responsibility for causing a deadlock in Japan’s diplomacy in Asia by making annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine. The Yasukuni controversy has prevented reciprocal visits between the Japanese leader on one hand and the Chinese and South Korean leaders on the other. Southeast Asian leaders recently expressed concern that strained relations between Japan and China, the major Asian powers, could adversely affect the region.
If the situation is not remedied, Japan could end up diplomatically isolated in Asia. The DPJ’s new leader, Ichiro Ozawa, said recently that Japan’s deceased wartime leaders should not be honored at Yasukuni Shrine.
JAPANTIMES.CO.JP

Governments in Asia are considered among the world’s worst “enemies“ of Internet freedom, as they increasingly censor websites and jail people who express views deemed dangerous online.
On World Press Freedom Day (Wednesday), experts said countries including China, Vietnam and Nepal are feeling more threatened by cyberspace than ever as Internet use booms and their populations increasingly seek information from the worldwide web.
Of a list of 15 “Enemies of the Internet“ named by Paris-based rights group Reporters Without Borders in a report late last year, seven are in Asia, including China, North Korea, Vietnam and Myanmar.
Experts warn that, with less freedom of information, Asian societies risk seeing more corruption and abuse of government power, while public discontent will grow, leading to more social instability.
Employing sophisticated filtering technology, forcing Internet cafes to register users and Internet service providers to reveal user information, the governments are trying to rein in a medium they realize they must also embrace to spur modernization and economic growth.
In China, the number of cyber dissidents imprisoned has exceeded the number of reporters locked up.
In 2005, 32 journalists were imprisoned while more than 62 people were jailed for posting their political views online, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Internet giants such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google operating in China have been pressured into censoring their content while rights groups have accused Yahoo! of helping China jail several bloggers who have criticized the government.
Vietnam, which lacks China’s money and technology, has employed Internet police to filter out “subversive“ content and spy on cybercafis.
One of the people it threw in jail is Pham Hong Son, who was given a five-year prison term and three years’ house arrest for simply sending an article from the US State Department website entitled “What is Democracy“ to friends and officials.
Myanmar blocks not only foreign news sites but also web-based e-mail services like Yahoo! and Hotmail and forces Internet cafes to monitor their computer users.
North Korea only allows a few thousand privileged people to have access to a heavily-censored version of the Internet with sites praising the regime.
In Nepal, despite restoring Internet access that was initially cut off when King Gyanendra seized power in February 2005, his regime continued to block opposition publications to try and subdue a people power uprising that recently forced him to relinquish his grip on power.
Meanwhile, other Asian countries which are perceived as more modern and open, including Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand remained on Reporters Without Borders’ “watch list“.
While these countries have so far respected online freedom, they have also displayed worrying signs of trying to control the Internet, the group said.
The Malaysian government’s intimidation of online journalists and bloggers has increased in the past three years, the group said.
It cited a raid on Malaysiakini, the countries only independent online daily and detention for people who “spread rumors“ online.
In Singapore, a blogger who criticized the countries university system was forced to shut down his blog last year after official pressure.
South Korea, the fourth most-wired country in the world, excessively filters the Internet, blocking pornographic sites as well as publications that supposedly “disturb public order“, including pro-North Korean sites, the group said.
Defamation suits that once targeted newspapers now hit writers who publish online, the press association said.
This tight control over the Internet in Asia has removed an effective check on government powers and will only fuel more political discontent, experts say.
AFP.COM

Armenia, the great regional power that extended from sea to sea in the first century before Christ and for ages played a central role in the history of Western Asia, has been reduced to a land-locked rump in modern times.
Millennia of foreign conquest and domination, occupation and genocide, have delivered to today’s world a nation that is long on culture and civilization, but short in statecraft. The catastrophic dispossession of the Armenian homeland by the rulers of the Ottoman Empire; the subsequent Bolshevik-Turkish pact partitioning Armenia and effectively tendering Karabagh, Nakhichevan and other integral parts of the Armenian patrimony to Soviet Azerbaijan; and Armenia’s inclusion in the Soviet empire may form the basis of an explanation, but they do not excuse Armenia’s current smallness.
The nation’s historic losses and intermittent statelessness are only prologue. The real story is in a failed leadership that seeks to rationalize the steady decline of the Armenian factor in world affairs by reference to external adversaries and geopolitical limitations.
In fact, the major constraint is the insecure myopia of a semi-feudal, soft-authoritarian regime with a parochial mindset that makes a mockery of Armenia’s ancient values and, in the very name of democracy, smothers human rights, civil liberties, free speech and assembly, and the rule of law. Of course, Armenia is not alone in this demeanor.
In the 15 years of the country’s newly rediscovered statehood, authority has never been transferred from incumbent to challenger by free and fair elections. They have always been forged--unfortunately always by the administration. The sitting presidency is no exception to this deplorable rule of illegitimate government.
For Armenia to reclaim its democratic advantage in the region, to become a competitive contributor to peace, development and security, and to realize its strategic credentials at an increasingly critical crossing on the global map, it must transform itself both at home and abroad.
Fresh Elections: In view of its series of falsified elections, and most recently the constitutional referendum held last November, Armenia requires an electoral transformation.
Rule of Right: The supremacy of rights with due process and an equal application of laws needs in short order to become the foundation of the state. From corruption and conflicts of interest to responsibility for grave crimes and other misconduct, all citizens must face the same standard of justice--starting from the very top and going all the way down the hierarchy.
International Standing: Armenia’s democratic transformation, much like Georgia’s attempt, will find its reflection in international affairs. The republic’s sovereignty is a supreme value and the most meaningful means for pursuit of vital national interests. Armenia must become a bridge of balance and understanding in the wider region, intersecting as it does Western civilization and Eastern tradition, the CIS and the Middle East, and the future linkage between its southern neighbors and the trans-Atlantic hemisphere.
An old nation with a young state, Armenia does indeed face a constellation of contemporary challenges, foreign and domestic, which must be overcome creatively and fundamentally. Neither wishful evolution nor artificial revolution will carry the day. Only a peaceful, system-wide, citizen-driven transformation--anchored in a correlation of the national will and international imperatives--can shift the paradigm and provide the land of Ararat with one ultimate opportunity to close the democratic deal, to turn swords into shared interests, and to redefine its identity, place and promise in the new era.
Raffi K. Hovannisian, Armenia’s first
minister of foreign affairs
METIMES.COM

Forced out of power in Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban remains an oppressively domineering militia outside the bounds of civilised, humane conduct. By abducting and killing the Indian telecom engineer, K. Suryanarayana, without giving Indian officialdom any space for negotiating his release, the Taliban reinforced its image as a beyond-the-pale outfit rooted in obscurantism in the name of religion.
According to one report, Suryanarayana was shot dead when he attempted to flee captivity; his body was found beheaded. But irrespective of the immediate circumstances surrounding the tragedy, the Taliban had really no intention of sticking to the deadline it set for the withdrawal of all Indians working in Afghanistan. The 24-hour deadline itself was unrealistic, a clear indicator that the plan behind the abduction was to shock and awe the people of India--not wrest any concessions.
From the beginning, the Taliban seemed intent on forcing India to disengage itself from any form of cooperation with the changed order in Afghanistan. Significantly, the killing came within weeks of a high-profile visit to India by President Hamid Karzai.
Last year, Maniappan Raman Kutty was killed within a couple of months of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Afghanistan and within days of India awarding the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize to Mr. Karzai. By all accounts, the Taliban appears to resent India’s growing involvement in the development of Afghanistan’s infrastructure, and its repeated endorsement of the leadership of Mr. Karzai.
Following the United States-led invasion in 2001, New Delhi ended its deep association with the Northern Alliance; since it was not involved in the military action, the Taliban did not identify it as an “enemy.“ However, the situation has changed over the past two years on account of the personal rapport Mr. Karzai has built with the Indian leadership. For the Taliban, India is now a collaborator--and a soft target.
A committed relationship with the Karzai Government has its strategic advantages, but New Delhi must take care not to be perceived as embodying an extension of American interests in Kabul. Without being seen as succumbing to vile acts of terrorism, India should re-evaluate its current policy of close identification with specific political factions within Afghanistan.
However much security measures are strengthened for the 2,000 Indian nationals working in Afghanistan, there can be no protection against the threat of abduction from free-roaming outlaws. The challenge before India is to increase its stake in the long-term development of Afghanistan and strengthen people-to-people contacts without appearing to take sides in the political factional wars in that country.
HINDU.COM