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Today's
Stories
January 14, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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January
14, 2004
Bush and the Supreme
Court
Amputating
the Bill of Rights
By KURT NIMMO
The Sixth Amendment was lopped off the Constitution
earlier this week.
AG Ashcroft can now have you arrested
-- more accurately, abducted and detained -- and thrown in a
military brig or sent to the Guantanamo concentration camp. Like
military dictators in Chile or Guatemala, or the Gestapo in Nazi
Germany, the Bushites don't have tell your family where you are,
or even acknowledge your detention.
They can detain you for years, decades
-- or until Bush's war on "terr'sim" is over -- that
is to say forever.
All of this is now perfectly legal --
or so the Supreme Court ruled the other day when it refused to
consider whether the government properly withheld names and other
details of hundreds of people detained after 9/11. In other words,
Bush may continue abducting people and throwing them in secret
prisons without charge.
"In all criminal prosecutions, the
accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by
an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime
shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously
ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause
of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against
him; to have  compulsory process for obtaining
witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel
for his defense," states the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution.
Thanks to the Supreme Court there's now
a big bloody hole in the Bill of Rights.
The First and Fourth Amendments are hanging
precariously from the "living document" by threads.
Give the Supreme Court time and they will hack those amendments
away as well.
Recall Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicting
a few hours before the Supreme Court's 2001-2002 session that
Americans are "likely to experience more restrictions on
our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country."
Bush will trump Abraham Lincoln when
it comes down to stripping Americans of their civil liberties.
Lincoln had a habit of arresting people
who disagreed with him during the Civil War. He threw them in
military prison, sort of the way Jose Padilla was tossed in a
military brig for the crime of searching the wrong thing on the
internet ("dirty bomb") and visiting the wrong country
(Pakistan).
"President [Lincoln] suspended the
writ of habeas corpus and subjected all persons discouraging
volunteer enlistments to martial law," writes author Jay
Winik. "To enforce this decree, a network of provost marshals
promptly imprisoned several hundred anti-war activists and draft
resisters, including five newspaper editors, three judges, a
number of doctors, lawyers, journalists and prominent civic leaders."
Maybe Dubya will one-up Lincoln and imprison
several hundred thousand -- instead of several hundred -- antiwar
activists and draft resisters. Of course, thanks to the Supreme
Court, Bush will not be required to tell their families and lawyers
where they are. Maybe a whole lot of them will be deported as
well after Patriot II is rushed through Congress like its predecessor.
This will occur during Bush's second
"term," actually his first term since he was appointed
by the Supreme Court on the first go-round. Howard Dean, Wesley
Clark, John Kerry, Al Sharpton, Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman
-- none of these guys will make it to the White House, and even
if one per chance does he will not do things a whole lot different
than Junior. Remember, a "new Democrat" is basically
"Republican Lite."
As for Dennis Kucinich and Carol Mosely
Braun... well, they may end up with the aforementioned antiwar
activists in the hoosegow. Lincoln jailed "prominent civic
leaders," although none were members of Congress. Bush may
best him yet. Anyway, sweating it out in prison sure beats following
in the footsteps of Paul Wellstone.
Besides, AG Ashcroft had a point to make
on December 6, 2001, when he admonished: "To those who scare
peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty ... your tactics
only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and ...
give ammunition to America's enemies."
In other words, we're putting you on
notice.
So Bill of Rights unfriendly is our New
Caesar that he's going after the First Amendment, considered
by many the foundation of the Constitution.
Bush's Secret Service march out ahead
of Junior when he travels around the country. They get in touch
with local cops and make sure those who disagree with the non-president
are quarantined into "designated free speech zones"
far away from the protest-adverse president and the media.
"Here's a place where the people
can be, and we'd like to have any protesters put in a place that
is able to be secured," the Secret Service told the Allegheny
County Police Department when Bush visited the Pittsburgh area
on Labor Day 2002. When Bush visited the St. Louis area on January
22, 2003, not only were protesters pushed far away from the president,
but the media was prevented from talking with them.
In South Carolina, a protester was prosecuted
by the Justice Department for possessing a sign -- "No War
for Oil" -- in a crowd of people holding up pro-Bush signs.
A policeman told the protester he was being arrested for the
content of his sign. The protestor, Brett Bursey, was convicted
of illegally protesting this month and fined $500. "He's
no hero for First Amendment free speech rights,'' said the prosecutor
after the verdict. "He's a criminal."
Most of us protesting last year against
Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq are criminals, too. Bush called
us a "focus group," but what he really meant to say
is that he considers us criminals. Like Ashcroft said, if you
disagree with Bush you aid terrorists. "You're either with
us or against us in the fight against terror."
You see, the First Amendment pisses Bush
off. His Christian soul has no tolerance for those who disagree
with him.
After all, God talks to Dubya, he's a
chosen instrument. He informed the ersatz Palestinian Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas: "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I
struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which
I did."
Bush's Methodism works in mysterious
ways, as did the Methodism of Rutherford B. Hayes, another president
who lost the popular vote and yet won the White House after a
contested dispute over balloting in Florida.
Lot's wife was reduced to a pillar of
salt for disobeying God. One has to wonder if Bush beseeches
his God, asking Him to turn disagreeable antiwar demonstrators
into pillars of salt.
For now "free speech zones"
will have to do.
Bush doesn't cotton to demonstrators.
For instance, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil
Liberties Union in 1999 (Texas United Education Fund, Inc. vs.
Bush) when Bush was governor of Texas he had protesters arrested
and thrown in the pokey on more than one occasion for criticizing
environmental legislation that served his own interests. "The
rules have changed," Bush averred when asked about his violations
of the First Amendment and the freedom of speech and peaceful
assembly.
Now he's changing the rules again --
and the highest court in the land refuses to take him to account
for his deconstruction of the Bill of Rights.
Since Bush was coronated three years
ago, he instructed Ashscroft to fiddle with the Freedom of Information
Act; warned the media not to air tapes of Osama bin Laden; forced
through the passage of Patriot I -- wiretaps, indefinite detention,
warrantless searches -- and greased the skids for an even more
draconian bill, Patriot II (it will not only allow secret arrests,
but will strip citizenship from persons for their political associations);
authorized snooping of attorney-client conversations; allowed
the FBI to snoop on political groups not engaged in criminal
activity (remember, the "rules have changed"); proffered
Operation TIPS, or the Orwellian neighbor-spying-on-neighbor
program; attempted to aggregate credit-card, travel, medical,
school, and other records of everyone in the United States into
the Total Information Awareness project (the brainchild of this
supposedly abandoned exploit was former Iran-Contra criminal
John Poindexter), and other laws, guidelines, and proposals designed
to chip away at the Bill of Rights.
More recently, Bush and the Ministry
of Homeland Security devised a plan to set up databases -- containing
bank records, credit ratings, and medical records -- on every
air passenger in the country. "We want these programs to
be efficient to the extent it makes them more efficient to have
them rolled together, we will be looking at that," said
Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the chief "privacy officer" for
the Ministry of Homeland Security (note the oxymoron). In other
words, since most Americans fly at one time or another, John
Poindexter's discredited program (see above) has come back in
a different guise. You have to hand it to these Bushites for
their dogged effort to convert America into a police and surveillance
state.
Naturally, there will be lawsuits against
all of this -- that is, while lawsuits are still permitted --
and in such cases the arch-conservative Supreme Court will likely
come down on the side of their pothunter, the man they ushered
into office, the man two of Antonin Scalia's sons worked for
as lawyers and Clarence Thomas' wife helped out by collecting
applications for people who wanted to work in the Bush administration.
On May 11, 2003, while speaking before the Alaska Bar Association
Convention, Scalia reflected on Bush's Patriot act and society
in general. Surveillance and quashing dissent is necessary, Scalia
explained, because society is becoming more violent and irresponsible.
Moreover, US citizens tend to believe the Constitution affords
them more rights than it actually does, said Scalia.
Or, as Scalia told an audience at John
Carroll University in March of last year, during wartime "protections
will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum."
Because Dubya's war is indeterminate,
a "ratcheted right down" Bill of Rights will certainly
become the norm. In distant future, will Constitutional liberty
be as foreign to the people of America as democracy was to the
people of Russia after nearly three generations of totalitarianism?
It would seem Bush and Scalia think so.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, will soon be published by Dandelion
Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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