Today's Stories

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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A Narrow Opportunity for Democratic Change

Opening Windows in Pakistan

By IJAZ KHAN

In 1985, in classroom in London, Professor Geoffrey Williams explained revolution with a quote from Prof. Hans Kelsen as ‘a Law creating fact’. Revolution replaces existing legality and creates new legality. Legitimacy flows from the act of popular support. Coup d’ etat is on the other hand taking over of the government by a few individuals in violation of constitution and does not create any new legality. On a question, he explained there is no successful Coup d’ tat, there is always attempted coup d’ etat. The learned Professor further emphasized the point ‘every successful coup d’ etat is a revolution.

Revolutionary theory is based on the acknowledgement of the power of the people. The question thus raised was, how to tell people are supporting the change of legality. The answer is simple; through massive support on the street which overwhelms all resistance by the status quo powers (even though the status quo powers are constitutional and legal). The stress being on overwhelming means a Coup d’ etat succeeds and thus changes into revolution when there is no resistance – people expressing their support through acquiescence. The determination whether a particular unconstitutional fact act has created a new law depends on the equation between resistance and acquiescence.

The act of the Pakistani Military Chief of Staff of November 03, 2007 must be viewed against that equation. That will also help us in differentiating between the earlier similar acts with this one. Through an executive order for which the Army chief had no constitutional authority amended various provisions of the Constitution and required the members of higher judiciary (Judges of the Supreme Court and the four high courts) to take oath under it. Those who refused or may be not asked to take oath were declared as no more judges. They were stopped from performing their orders by force. Between the oath taking and the Military Chief’s order, the then existing Supreme Court met and declared the order as null and void. Majority of the judges refused to take oath under the amended constitutional order referred to as Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) as the order of the Army Chief was termed. This much had been done earlier in 1999 as well, when some honorable judges refused to take oath under the then issued PCO. The difference this time round is that the present judges not just refused to take oath but also refused to acquiesce. In this resistance they have continuously received popular support on the street, led by Lawyers with political as well as rights activists.

The situation as it stands today can be described as a continued attempted coup de’ tat, which has not yet achieved the status of revolution through acquiescence, however, it has not been turned back so we can not yet call it an attempted and failed coup. As a result we have a situation with de facto judiciary consisting of the judges who took oath under the November 3 order of the Army Chief and we have a de jure judiciary which existed prior to that date under a constitution legitimized through acquiescence of stake holders, most important being the people and the then judiciary, post October 1999, and that acquiescence formalized through the 17th constitutional amendment. In the current situation when there are both de facto and de jure authorities, the decisions of the de jure authority is considered as legal. In the absence of the de jure authority the decisions of the de facto authority would have the same legal force as that of the de jure authority.

In our current situation, the de jure judiciary has come up with only one decision and that is declaring the Military Chief’s orders of November 03 2007 as unconstitutional. It has, however, refrained from issuing any other orders even after being freed from illegal and unconstitutional confinement. So, it should be clear that according to legal doctrine, the decisions of the de facto courts are as much valid as those of the de jure courts would have been. This should lay down to rest any fears about constitutional and legal crisis, however, that does not change the legal status of the sitting judiciary from de facto to de jure. For that both acquiescence and formalization of that acquiescence through a constitutional amendment are required. Those ordering it know it as well, as they, in recent history, have always proclaimed their as Provisional; clearly acknowledging that their orders must be formalized and clearly they cannot be without a constitutional amendment whenever the parliament meets. Knowing well that whatever, the present parliament will not endorse that PCO, the protagonists of the dictator are arguing that the constitution already stands amended. The de facto (and not de jure) removal of Judges was only a consequence of that constitutional amendment, even if their removal was the main purpose of the PCO.

As explained above today the situation on ground is that the attempted coup de’ tat of Nov 3 has not succeeded yet. If the people of this country through a simple resolution of the parliament reverses that, then that would be well within their power. Similarly if the parliament and the people also accept such act of the parliament that accepts PCO as constitutional then that would be termed as acquiescence. The de facto judges would become de jure and the de jure judges would no more be judges; de jure or de facto. Such acceptance may even be through an amendment removing the inserted amendments and appointing Justice Ifthikhar Chaudhry as Chief Justice for life. It is of fundamental significance for this country to start its healing process which is the same as democratization process, to simply treat the amendments of Nov 03 as void ab initio (never having taken place).

The issue is not that of the person of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the issue is of determining the loci of real power in this country; do people have ultimate power or is it enjoyed by some individual having violent power. The issue is not about one or more great or not so great judges as much as it is about the sovereignty of the people of Pakistan. The judges, including Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar symbolizes the rights of the people to run their state in accordance with their social contract, which can only be amended by them through a procedure they have approved. It must also be remembered the ultimate power is not parliament nor judiciary and also not the army, it is the people on the street. In civilized democratic states, parliaments represent the people and political parties organize and articulate the different perceptions and interests making up a given society. So, when one talks of the supremacy of the parliament they are actually talking of people’s supremacy and sovereignty.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto understood this when he made ‘Fountainhead of power are the people’ as one of the fundamental slogans and promises of his political party and Bacha Khan epitomized this principle through his life of no compromise with the establishment. Is history now giving that role to Nawaz Sharif? We shall see soon. It must be remembered that parliament is agent of the people and like with any agent when those who are represented by the agent can come up and tell the agent you are not doing a good job, I will take over directly from this stage on, the people can also through coming out on streets over rule parliament. Let me add quickly that will not be a good option and this author really hopes that people would not be called upon to exercise that option and right. Political parties that would be present on the street helping articulate people’s view will get the distinction of representing them.

To conclude, history has given an opportunity to the people of Pakistan, their representatives in parliament and their political parties to assert people’s power. The role of the judiciary headed by Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and supported by the legal fraternity led by the poet lawyer leader Aitzaz Ahsan, is that of the opportunity providers, the window openers. They have kept the window open till now, but it will depend on the people and their political parties to pass through that window beyond May 12. Finally, in the words of Dr. Eqbal Ahmad, ‘People of Pakistan can not have democracy unless they want it’.

Dr. Ijaz Khan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of Peshawar.

 

 

 

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