The Biden Administration has racked up a long line of losses in federal courts in what is one of the worst records in the first six months of any modern presidency. While most Administrations tend to minimize such test cases to avoid creating bad precedent, the Biden Administration has litigated with an utter abandon — elevating political over legal considerations in litigation. The latest is one of the most disturbing. This week the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down President Biden’s renewal of the controversial eviction moratorium. It was the second time that a majority of justices declared the moratorium as unconstitutional but, as in other areas, the Biden Administration has become openly and chillingly dismissive of such legal considerations.
The unconstitutionality of the moratorium was never in serious doubt but Biden admitted that he ignored the advice of his own White House Counsel and virtually all of legal experts consulted by the White House. At the urging of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Biden then called Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe who reportedly told him that he could go ahead with a new order even though a majority of Supreme Court justice previously declared it unconstitutional. In following Tribe’s advice, the Biden Administration increased the justices rejecting the basis for the moratorium from 5 or 6 members.
In the prior decision, the Court ruled 5-4 decision in Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services to keep the CDC moratorium in place but five of the justices noted that the CDC order as unconstitutional. Surprisingly, Justice Brett Kavanaugh (who supplied the fifth vote in favor of the CDC to allow the law to simply expire in a few days rather than strike it down) stated that the order was unconstitutional due to the lack of authority for the CDC to issue such moratoriums.
I think at some point this becomes an issue. If an opponent in 2022 wants to portray Joe as out of touch, what better way that by noting moves that the court rules against repeatedly, moves that go to not just overreaching but ignoring Constitutional restrictions?
I can hear attacks like "the runaway Presidency." I'm surprised that his team has been a little smarter. Especially since the inside word is that he's planning for a second term.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, August 27, 2021. Afghanistan fever still inflicts corporate media while the same media tries to sell Iraq as a success.
Sarah Chayes is the person who should be on the talk shows passed off as news programs is you're going to talk Afghanistan. Amy Goodman made a few seconds for Sarah yesterday. Yes, that is a criticism. Not really sure why she gets short changed to bring on Jeremy Corbyn or, for that matter, any politician. She was on the ground in Afghanistan for years. She is a trained journalist so she knows how to speak in such a way that the audience understands her -- meaning she's not tossing out references that will go over the heads of listeners or viewers -- if she's referencing something, she's explaining it. But while Sarah knows about journalism, Amy still struggles with comprehending the term. Here's an excerpt of the brief segment:
SARAH CHAYES: And I was on the ground, you know, starting about — I was in Kandahar maybe a day or two after the city fell, meaning the Taliban regime at the time fell. And well into 2002, there was basically no one home at the U.S. Embassy. There just was nobody there. People would rotate in on two-week deployments. No one spoke a local language. We couldn’t figure out what was going on. And it wasn’t until later that I realized that, by early 2002, personnel were all pivoting already to Iraq. So, I think that’s the first thing you have to understand.
And secondly, that, therefore, the U.S. personnel that it was — that Afghanistan matters were largely left to were members of the CIA. And they had a history in the region which really involved a very close partnership with the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI. And what I came to understand is that the Taliban did not emerge spontaneously in Kandahar, as we often hear. And this is work that I did over the course of years, interviewing both ordinary people who lived in Kandahar and lived across the border in Quetta, Pakistan, as well as some of the main actors in that drama, who became friends of mine. The Taliban were concocted across the border by the Pakistani military intelligence agency and sent across the border. There was a negotiation process — and we’re talking 1994 now, 1993 and 1994 — with the local mujahideen commanders. And that process was, in fact, led by none other than Hamid Karzai. So, when I learned that in the early 2000s, I was pretty gobsmacked, because I realized that sort of the individual that the United States government had chosen to lead a post-Taliban Afghanistan was the very person who had brought the Taliban into Afghanistan in the first place and who had served as their ambassador-designate to the United Nations, as late as 1996.
And so, I would — you know, I would just raise some questions with what Obaidullah was telling you, because his family retained very close links with the Pakistani military intelligence agency throughout. And I found myself almost smiling when he said, “How do I reconcile the two me’s? And maybe that’s a way that Afghanistan can reconcile its own internal divisions.” And I want to say, “Boy, I’m sorry, but that’s called being a double agent.” And I really think that that family, in particular now — I can’t speak to him, because I don’t know him personally, but the family right now is playing precisely the role that he was playing on your air, which is to present a kind of moderate and acceptable facade in order to get the international community to reengage and open the money spigots once again.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: If you could just clarify, what do you think the alternative is? What do you think the international community should be doing?
SARAH CHAYES: Reserving judgment. And I certainly do agree that the money spigot is the only leverage that the international community has left. But I also think that the role of the Pakistani military government in all of this really needs to be taken into account. And it’s one of — I mean, I have, and have had, a number of very consistent criticisms of the way the United States has handled this from the start, the first being this absolutely inexplicable, I want to say, persistent relationship with Pakistan, when the Pakistani government, as I say, organized the Taliban in the first place, organized the Taliban resurgence, harbored Osama bin Laden, and, you know, in the midst of all this, provided nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. I mean, it’s just difficult to quite understand why that country continues to be considered an ally.
And then, secondly, of course, was the behavior of those Afghan leaders that we, the United States, kind of put forward toward their own citizens, and the role of U.S. officials and U.S. development organizations in reinforcing and protecting and enabling, I mean, just an unbelievably corrupt and abusive governmental system, so that, you know, my Afghan friends, who were not in university — they were ordinary villagers in and around Kandahar — they just didn’t know what to make of it. It was like, “Look, the Taliban shake us down at night, but the government shakes us down in the daytime.” And so, I would say that, in my experience, even among very conservative Kandaharis, it was not so much an ideological issue. It was not so much that the United States was an invading country, at least certainly not in the first years. My neighbors were saying, you know, that they were sick of being abused by their own government, and they were sick of the international or Western role in propping up that government, and they wanted a government that was acting in their interests. And that was where their frustration with the Western engagement came from.
When she refers to Goody's other guest Obaidullah Baheer, Sarah's being rather kind. Not only is he questionable because of his family, he's also questionable because of his links to the CIA which will, no doubt, make Amy come under even more scrutiny for how she allowed foundations to purchase DEMOCRACY NOW! with grants and how the show that has made her millions has become an outlet for US government propaganda.
Obaidullah Baheer is not an honest broker and, were Democracy Sometimes an honest broker, they never would have had him on. He works through the panic talking points that demonstrate that the US intel community is still at war with the presidency. And Goody Whore is right there serving along side them while posing as a journalist.
Sarah has much to say. I doubt I would agree with 100% of it but (a) I would be interested in hearing it and (b) I would surely reflect on anything I disagreed with her on. It's a shame that she's brought on for what was little more than a soundbyte. But she can't be counted on to stick to the script so she clearly will not be given the airtime that her expertise warrants.
Where I think we would disagree would be on the issue of Joe Biden's actions this month. And I will give her the compassion award (I'm not being sarcastic) without even hearing her remarks. I'm not a compassionate person in the face of an emergency. I'm practical -- and you can say "cold" (people turn to me in an emergency) -- and I don't see this ending differently no matter what plans were made or taken. The airport was bomed yesterday, there was gunfire, there was this, there was that.
And?
Andrea Mitchell's practically having an orgasm on air as she tries to spread fear.
But the reality is that this is what happens. This is what would happen. 3,000 more US Marines on the ground on Thursday? They might have mitigated some of the violence, they might not have. They might have increased the violence as a result of their presence, they might have become targets as a result of their presence.
I want Andrea out from behind a desk from now on when she's on air because I honestly don't trust where her hands are when she starts her frenzy fear nonsense.
If you look at the situation coldly (and I can be very cold, no question), there's not much that 'fine tuning' could have done to change what's taking place and it's probably best if Americans can admit to that. Best for this moment and best for our future.
Another huge talking point for Andrea is the Americans trapped! Trapped! Trapped in Afghanistan!
So let's note this from the US State Dept briefing Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave on Wednesday:
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good afternoon. I’d like to give you all an update on the situation in Afghanistan and our ongoing efforts there, particularly as they relate to U.S. citizens, and then I’m very happy to take your questions.
Let me begin with my profound appreciation for our diplomats and service members who are working around the clock at the airport in Kabul and at a growing number of transit sites to facilitate the evacuation of Americans, their families, citizens of allied and partner nations, Afghans who have partnered with us over the last 20 years, and other Afghans at risk. They are undertaking this mission under extremely difficult circumstances, with incredible courage, skill, and humanity.
Since August 14th, more than 82,300 people have been safely flown out of Kabul. In the 24-hour period from Tuesday to Wednesday, approximately 19,000 people were evacuated on 90 U.S. military and coalition flights. Only the United States could organize and execute a mission of this scale and this complexity.
As the President has made clear, our first priority is the evacuation of American citizens. Since August 14th, we have evacuated at least 4,500 U.S. citizens and likely more. More than 500 of those Americans were evacuated in just the last day alone.
Now, many of you have asked how many U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan who want to leave the country. Based on our analysis, starting on August 14 when our evacuation operations began, there was then a population of as many as 6,000 American citizens in Afghanistan who wanted to leave. Over the last 10 days, roughly 4,500 of these Americans have been safely evacuated along with immediate family members. Over the past 24 hours, we’ve been in direct contact with approximately 500 additional Americans and provided specific instructions on how to get to the airport safely. We will update you regularly on our progress in getting these 500 American citizens out of Afghanistan.
For the remaining roughly 1,000 contacts that we had who may be Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan, we are aggressively reaching out to them multiple times a day through multiple channels of communication – phone, email, text messaging – to determine whether they still want to leave and to get the most up-to-date information and instructions to them for how to do so. Some may no longer be in the country. Some may have claimed to be Americans but turn out not to be. Some may choose to stay. We’ll continue to try to identify the status and plans of these people in the coming days.
Thus, from this list of approximately 1,000, we believe the number of Americans actively seeking assistance to leave Afghanistan is lower, likely significantly lower.
So we're talking less than a thousand people. One more point, these bobble heads on TV screeching that we don't leave anyone behind. That's actually a slogan of the US military. It has nothing to do with private US citizens who elect on their own to go into a war zone to make money.
Again, I'm cold. I'm sorry, if I'm an American citizen in a country that the US is occupying and they announce a pullout, I'm getting out of the country right then. I'm not rushing around shopping for souvenirs or pondering what to pack and what to leave or do I have time for highlights before I head to the airport. If this had been a surprise withdrawal announced after the fact, that would be different. This was known to be coming, Joe was discussing it publicly in July. If you're a functioning adult who doesn't have the sense to step away from the fire, you are probably going to get burned. That's reality.
A lot of Americans went to Afghanistan to make money. Corporations paid very well -- more than the US military paid service members. Well that payment was so high due to the risks involved. We're seeing those risks right now.
We're also seeing something much worse than online bullies or trolls, the corporate media. Scary and blood thirsty. Ben Burgis (JACOBIN) observes:
A long series of pundits have settled on the same response to this dilemma: keeping some American troops in Afghanistan long-term would be fine and nothing like a “forever war,” since the United States has permanent military bases all over the world.
Here’s Eli Lake — a columnist for Bloomberg and a “National Security Journalism Fellow” at the Clements Center:
GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini hit a similar note. Bret Stephens said pretty much the same thing in the New York Times, focusing on America’s seventy-one-year presence in Korea. Andrew McCarthy worked a version of the same sneer into the National Review, joking that if we were to keep troops in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, we might as well rebrand World War II as “World Forever War II,” since the United States still has bases in Germany and Japan.
None of these pundits seems to feel any need to explicitly spell out the argument they’re gesturing at with these sneers: that America’s supposedly peaceful long-term military presence in these other countries discredits what the antiwar left says about “forever wars” in the Middle East.
As far as I can tell, their implied line of reasoning goes something like this:
- The antiwar left claims that indefinitely extending the presence of American troops in Afghanistan would amount to waging a “forever war” in Afghanistan, but this can only be true if maintaining long-term American military presence in any country counts as waging a “forever war” in that country.
- America has maintained long-term bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other countries without waging a “forever war” in those countries.
- We can conclude from number two that maintaining long-term American military presence in any country would not count as waging a “forever war” in that country, and thus is no big deal.
- We can conclude from one and three that the antiwar left is wrong to say that indefinitely extending the presence of American troops in Afghanistan would amount to waging a “forever war” in Afghanistan — and we should keep some troops in Afghanistan.
Number two is true enough if war means an ongoing “hot war” like the one that’s ending in Afghanistan. US troops aren’t in Germany to help Angela Merkel stave off insurgents already in control of large parts of Bavaria and Saxony. No one is getting into any firefights in Okinawa. Korea comes the closest, but even there, none of the occasional flareups of violence between North and South Korea have involved American soldiers shooting or being shot by anyone in decades. Like Germany and Japan, Korea is a stable society where the government enjoys as much internal legitimacy as the American government does within the borders of the United States.
But these disanalogies between the role American troops were playing in Afghanistan and the role they play in countries like Germany also show that number one is absurd. American soldiers might be able to walk around Berlin or Seoul without anyone shooting at them, but that doesn’t mean that if the war had dragged on for another year or another decade, the same kind of tranquility would have reigned in Kabul.
Branko Marcetic (also JACOBIN) observes:
Officially, what we might call the establishment press in the United States — your cable news networks, long-running legacy press outlets, and the newer, largely digital publications that rely on close relationships with the powerful for their reporting — aren’t meant to have editorial lines and political viewpoints. But every now and then, whether they realize it or not, they accidentally reveal their political priorities.
If you’re in doubt, just examine the news since Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan began, where you’ll get to see this phenomenon in action firsthand. As images of the Taliban’s stunning conquest of the country melded into images of US forces and their allies’ chaotic evacuation, Biden has gotten a hammering from a US media that has centered Taliban human rights violations in its coverage of the pullout, and united across partisan and ideological lines to push a single, pro-war narrative.
[. . .]
What’s so striking about all this is what a turnaround it’s been from the last seven months of Biden coverage. Since at least the general election campaign, when outlets played down Biden’s unexplained absences, ignored the sexual assault accusation against him, and spiked a potentially damaging story about him at the eleventh hour, the press have tended to treat Biden with the softest of kid gloves.
After an inauguration day that reached totalitarian-like levels of leader worship, the White House press corps quickly set the tone with the very first question of the very first press briefing held by press secretary Jen Psaki, when a reporter set her up for an alley-oop with a question about whether she’d be “promoting the interests of the president,” or giving reporters “the unvarnished truth.” Reporters’ infatuation with Psaki was quite possibly reaching its peak just before the withdrawal, when she was bringing the press corps her mother-in-law’s cookies and leading them in a chorus of “Happy Birthday.”
What soon followed was what felt like a coordinated press campaign to wear America down into submission with round after round of pieces insisting Biden was a transformational, Franklin Roosevelt–style president, even as he dropped core items of his platform and appeared to lose interest in his own agenda. After sixty days, Biden was only the second of the last five presidents to be covered more positively than negatively, according to Pew, the first being Barack Obama.
The past seven months have been immensely frustrating for anyone interested in seeing Biden have an actual transformational presidency, in the sense of benefiting most working Americans instead of a thin slice of the elite. Most coverage and headlines have tended to vastly overstate the ambition and significance of Biden’s progressive measures, usually by uncritically reusing his administration’s often misleading framing.
Look at the way his modest tax increases, which in effect permanently cut taxes for the wealthiest from their already low baseline under Obama, were sold by the press as bold new tax hikes on the rich. Or the way his ban on new oil and gas leases, a mostly symbolic move the fossil fuel industry celebrated for its lack of ambition, was presented as a bold emergency action to tackle climate change.
Well into August, the New York Times and Washington Post were selling Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill on his favored terms — as a bipartisan win, and a historic response to an accelerating climate crisis — by talking about the numbers relative to past, do-nothing administrations, instead of pointing out to people how grossly unserious the numbers are relative to what solving the climate crisis actually demands.
From the corporate media, let's return to former journalist Sarah Chayes and some points she was making on DEMOCRACY NOW!:
Now let's get back to Sarah Chayes.
And what I came to understand is that the Taliban did not emerge spontaneously in Kandahar, as we often hear. And this is work that I did over the course of years, interviewing both ordinary people who lived in Kandahar and lived across the border in Quetta, Pakistan, as well as some of the main actors in that drama, who became friends of mine. The Taliban were concocted across the border by the Pakistani military intelligence agency and sent across the border. There was a negotiation process — and we’re talking 1994 now, 1993 and 1994 — with the local mujahideen commanders. And that process was, in fact, led by none other than Hamid Karzai. So, when I learned that in the early 2000s, I was pretty gobsmacked, because I realized that sort of the individual that the United States government had chosen to lead a post-Taliban Afghanistan was the very person who had brought the Taliban into Afghanistan in the first place and who had served as their ambassador-designate to the United Nations, as late as 1996.
[. . .]
And then, secondly, of course, was the behavior of those Afghan leaders that we, the United States, kind of put forward toward their own citizens, and the role of U.S. officials and U.S. development organizations in reinforcing and protecting and enabling, I mean, just an unbelievably corrupt and abusive governmental system, so that, you know, my Afghan friends, who were not in university — they were ordinary villagers in and around Kandahar — they just didn’t know what to make of it. It was like, “Look, the Taliban shake us down at night, but the government shakes us down in the daytime.” And so, I would say that, in my experience, even among very conservative Kandaharis, it was not so much an ideological issue. It was not so much that the United States was an invading country, at least certainly not in the first years. My neighbors were saying, you know, that they were sick of being abused by their own government, and they were sick of the international or Western role in propping up that government, and they wanted a government that was acting in their interests. And that was where their frustration with the Western engagement came from.
A lot of the above plays out in Iraq as well. Every prime minister Iraq has had since the US invasion of 2003 has been a coward who had fled Iraq years before and only returned after the 2003 US-led invasion. The government -- including the militia (which is part of the government security forces) -- is shaking down citizens.
We don't get the reality on Iraq from the press. A number of e-mails to the public account (common_ills@yahoo.com) make that very clear as they note that they're not seeing any articles from REUTERS or this outlet or that outlet on Robert Pether.
Is REUTERS not covering it? That would be something -- if it's true. I haven't seen any coverage from them on it but I'm not reading REUTERS right now. I'm rather disgusted with them as they whore to sell Mustafa al-Khadimi as a great leader and this who nonsense meet-up that's about to take place. But they couldn't whore the way they're doing if they also devoted a lot of time to Robert Pether because what the Iraqi government is doing to Robert goes to how corrupt that government is.
If you need an audio report on Robert Pether, ABC Australia has one here. Peter Murtagh (IRISH TIMES) reports:
Robert Pether, the Australian-born engineer resident in Co Roscommon with his wife and children, has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and fined $12 million by an Iraqi court.
The sentence, handed down earlier this week, applies also to Mr Pether’s Egyptian-born colleague, Khalid Radwan. Both men had been working on a new headquarters in Baghdad for the Central Bank of Iraq when they were arrested without explanation last April.
Mr Pether’s wife, Desree Pether – who lives in Elphin with the couple’s children, teenage sons Flynn and Oscar and daughter Nala (8) – is distraught at the development.
“They have committed no crime,” she posted on social media. “This is a malicious prosecution, a complete fabrication.”
Mr Pether was arrested while in the offices of the head of the bank and has remained incarcerated since but has not been told specifically what is alleged against him. He appears to have become ensnared in a dispute over money between his employer, CME Consulting which in 2015 won a $33 million contract relating to the construction of the Zaha Hadid-designed new Central Bank offices, a landmark building on the bank of the Tigris river, and the Iraqi government.
Ronan Greany Tweets:
That 'success' that is the Iraqi government? They're also struggling to pull off the October elections -- elections that were already delayed. Now Muhammad Irfan (URDU POINT) files a story about a rumor swirling around:
Snap legislative elections in Iraq, scheduled for October this year, may be pushed back until April 2022 due to a boycott by a number of political parties, including the bloc of influential Shiite politician Muqtada al-Sadr, lawmaker Mohammed al-Khalidi told Sputnik.
"The elections cannot be held as scheduled due to the al-Sadr bloc's refusal to participate ... A meeting of the heads of state, parliament and government with the leaders of political parties will take place on Sunday to determine the future of the elections. The decision to postpone the elections may be announced after this meeting," al-Khalidi said.
The vote may be delayed until April 21, according to the lawmaker.
An Iraqi political source told Sputnik earlier this week that Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi may postpone the elections if al-Sadr does not abandon his decision to boycott them.
Meanwhile Sardar Sattar Tweets:
And NRT reports:
Iraqi Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday (August 26) announced the arrest of a group who prepared to commit fraud in the parliamentary elections scheduled for October.
The court said in a statement that the group wanted to create political turmoil in the country by committing fraud and changing the results.
It said that the group also tried to offend Iraq’s prominent political and social figures.
It added that a politician was involved with the group by suggesting to create fake pages and documents to carry out their work.
Let's wind down with this from UNICEF:
BAGHDAD, 26 August 2021 - “UNICEF is deeply concerned after the reported deaths of a 10-year-old child on 24 August in Diyala by the detonation of an explosive remnant of war (ERW) and of an 11-year-old child on 25 August in Muradiya Village, South of Baquba, due to an Improvised Explosive Device (IED.) UNICEF expresses its deep sorrow and condolences to the children’s families, friends, and communities.
“Sadly, these are not isolated losses of innocent lives. UNICEF expresses its alarm over the increase in child deaths and injuries due to landmines and ERW in Iraq in recent months. Between January and August 2021, the UN has recorded the loss of the lives of 35 children from ERW across the country, and 41 more were maimed. This represents an alarming increase in child casualties compared to 2020 when the UN verified the killing of 6 children and maiming of 12 children for the same period as a result of ERW and landmines.
“Child safety must remain as the primary consideration in all contexts. Landmines and ERW often result in civilian casualties, with children being the most vulnerable. Since children are smaller than adults, they are more likely to take the full impact of the blast and are therefore more likely to suffer death or serious injuries.
“UNICEF urges all parties to accelerate every effort to clear existing mines and unexploded ordnance and promote victim assistance and to uphold children’s right to a safe and protective environment.
“UNICEF also urges the Government of Iraq and the donor community to support the scale-up and provision of Explosive Ordnance Risk Education activities so that children and other community members receive explosive ordnance risk education in schools and communities in all areas previously affected by conflict in Iraq.”
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