Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
November 5, 2003
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
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.
|
November
6, 2003
They Can Take You
Away & Tell No One
The
Case of Maher Arar
By ELAINE CASSEL
Tuesday night, I happened upon a special two-hour
version of a Canadian news program, "As It Happens."
I heard the voice of Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, 33, providing
outrageous details of his capture by the US last fall and his
shipment to Syria for the purposes of "interrogation."
Arar was returning from visiting family in Tunisia. He was on
his way back to Canada, by way of New York City, when he was
detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Reason for detention: "suspected terrorist." He was
flown under U.S. guard to Jordan, where he was handed over to
Syrian authorities. He was imprisoned in Syria for 10 months,
in what seems to be the equivalent of the "hole" in
U.S. prisons (solitary confinement, darkness). He says he was
physically tortured, but the Syrian ambassador to the U.S., speaking
on the program, denied that much of the story. He agreed that
they did the questioning at the request of the U.S. government,
an oddity in itself, since Syria has been deemed a "terrorist"
state and Bush has made it clear that after it settles its score
in Iraq, it is turning its sights on ferreting out "terrorism"
in the Syrian government.
The ambassador conceded that they took
Arar in order to get "information" about Arar's alleged
"terrorist" activities. Ten months of "interrogation"
turned up no hint that he was a "terrorist" and he
was returned to Canada, against the wishes of the Bush administration.
Further details of Arar's "detention"
were reported in the November 5 Washington Post. Apparently,
Arar's treatment came at the behest of the CIA. Anonymous officials
of the CIA said that Arar fit the bill of a covert "extraordinary
rendition"-the practice of turning over "low-level,
suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of
which are known to torture prisoners." The practice is so
secret that no other details are or ever will be available to
the public or Congress (as if Congress would do anything useful,
anyway). Additional information in the Washington Post article
indicated that "renditions" used to take place on U.S.
soil, but since the CIA is loathe to actually physically torture
"detainees,"since the early 1990's the CIA and the
FBI arrange for the person to be sent to countries who will do
the torturing for them.
Your Friendly Neighborhood
Cop as Ashcroft's Agent
The same edition of the Post contains
a small story, hidden inside (Arar's story appeared on the front
page, below the fold), about a new directive from Attorney General
John Ashcroft putting in place the procedures by which the FBI
will share its surveillance results with state and local law
enforcement. A provision of the USA Patriot Act broke down the
"wall" between law enforcement and surveillance activities,
so that we now have, in effect, our own version of KGB, or secret
police. Of course, the regulations are not available for you
and me to see, but this much is certain: If the FBI is watching
you or any organization (or website) that it suspects is a threat
to "national security or public safety," it can tell
your local cops what it knows about you and your organization
and put them on your trail. You could then be targeted for preemptive
detention under the material witness law (where you can be held
indefinitely in prison to answer prosecutors' questions if and
when they feel like talking to you), targeted for violating some
minor criminal law or administrative infraction (better clean
up those overdue parking tickets), or charged with aiding and
abetting terrorism for knowing someone on the government's many
suspicious persons lists.
What befell Mahar Arar could be your,
my fate. What is to stop the FBI from throwing a blanket over
your head, putting you on a plane to Jordan with U.S. Marshals
as your escort, and dumping you in Syria to be tortured? Not
a damn thing as I can see it.
Keep in mind, that your family and friends
won't know about any of this, you won't have any access to an
attorney and, if and when you are released and in the slim chance
return home, you won't have any redress against the federal government.
For the government will deny that it ever happened.
The Algerian Waiter
Shortly after September 11, Mohamed K.
Bellahouel, a 34-year-old Algerian immigrant, a waiter living
in Miami, was one of the more than 1,200 Arab and Muslim men
rounded up for "questioning" by the FBI. He was deemed
"suspicious" because he was said to have waited on
two of September 11 hijackers, and might have even been seen
going to a movie with one of them. He was subsequently arrested
in Florida on a material witness warrant, imprisoned for more
than five months, and charged with a minor visa violation. He
was brought to Alexandria, Virginia to give testimony before
the grand jury investigating Zacarias Moussaoui.
He filed a writ of habeas corpus, which
became moot when immigration authorities finally released him
on bail ( immigration authorities are still trying to deport
him for violating terms of a student visa), but the federal courts
sealed all records of the case. The case never even appeared
on the courts' docket lists. Bellahouel, news, and civil liberties
organizations appealed the orders of secrecy surrounding the
case. Both a Florida federal district judge and the 11th Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled that the secrecy surrounding the case
violated the First Amendment. The government appealed the case
to the Supreme Court, yet the government has refused to file
any briefs. On November 4, the Court ordered Solicitor General
Theodore Olson to file briefs explaining the government's determination
to keep the case secret. That would suggest that the Supreme
Court wants to know what's going on, except that it gave Olson
no deadline to get back to them and they won't consider whether
to take the case or not until Olson does so. I guess the Court,
for whatever reasons, wants to appear to care about liberty when
in fact it does not. (Earlier this term, it refused to hear an
appeal of a lower court's order that deportation hearings could
be conducted in secret, as hundreds were done post September
11).
So, there you have it. Secrecy, secrecy,
and secrecy. Detentions, arrests, and tortures. A friend this
week asked if I thought the new Iraqi constitution would be better
than ours-or what we have left of it. I replied that it would
likely be the same sham that ours has become. It is obvious that
we live in a police state, and our freedom to speak, travel,
to be free from arrest except on probable cause of having committed
a crime, to have the right to counsel, to have judicial review
of our treatment by our government-these guarantees are the exception,
no longer the rule. It's too late to whine about it now, and
with few courts to run to, not a damn thing we can do about it
except be prepared to pay with our lives if John Ashcroft, George
Bush, or George Tenet sets their sights on us.
Elaine Cassel
practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia, teachers
law and psychology, and follows the Bush regime's dismantling
of the Constitution at Civil
Liberties Watch. She can be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|