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Today's
Stories
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
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
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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.
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November
12, 2003
A Glimmer of Hope?
The
Supremes and Guantanamo
By ELAINE CASSEL
On November 10, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed
to hear whether or not prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba may
challenge the legality of their detentions as enemy combatants
in U.S. courts. The Supreme Court has limited the appeal to that
very specific and narrow issue. The U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia both summarily dismissed the petitions for writ of
habeas corpus filed in behalf of 12 Kuwaitis, 2 Brits, and 2
Australians, 16 of the 650-plus prisoners captured in Pakistan
and Afghanistan and interned in Cuba for going on two years.
The government's position is disingenuous,
that the prisoners are not on sovereign U.S. territory, therefore
the federal courts are closed to them. But the lease between
the Cuban and U.S. governments specifically holds otherwise.
In effect since the end of the Spanish-American war in 1903,
the pertinent provision for the lease of the 45 square mile area
that makes up the U.S. Naval Base says that "the United
States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over
and within said areas with the right to acquire . . . for the
public purposes of the United States any land or other property
therein by purchase or by exercise of eminent domain." The
lease gives the U.S. civil and criminal jurisdiction over all
persons located therein. On its official web site, the U.S. Navy
describes Guantanamo as "a Naval reservation, which, for
all practical purposes, is American territory. Under the [lease]
agreements, the United States has for approximately [one hundred]
years exercised the essential elements of sovereignty over this
territory, without actually owning it."
While it should be noted that earlier
legal precedent ruled that a base in Bermuda was not "sovereign"
U.S. territory, that case did not deal with a prison camp presided
over by military guards. To suggest that the U.S. can create
a law-free zone where it may imprison whomever it wants whenever
it wants for as long as it wants--and never charge or try them--is
an astoundingly absurd proposition from any government, let alone
one that purports to live by the rule of law.
The prisoners' petitions for writs of
habeas corpus asked for modest relief-that they have the opportunity
to challenge the basis for their detention as enemy combatants.
On November 13, 2001, the President issued a Military Order entitled
"Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens
in The War Against Terrorism" (the "Military Order").
66 Fed. Reg. 57, 833-36. (Nov. 16, 2001). Section 1(e) of the
Military Order states that, "[t]o protect the United States
and its citizens, and for the effective conduct of military operations
and prevention of terrorist attacks, it is necessary for individuals
subject to this order pursuant to section 2 hereof to be detained.
. . . " Section 2 provides that any non-citizen of the United
States may be detained if the President determines "in writing"
that "there is reason to believe" he or she "is
or was a member of the organization known as al Qaida" or
has engaged in or supported terrorism or other acts aimed at
injuring the United States.
The prisoners' attorneys insist that
they have the right, under international law, to see the evidence
against them, and to have the rights guaranteed prisoners of
war under the Geneva Conventions. These include the right to
be charged with crimes or released and, if charged, to have legal
counsel and fair tribunals. Intelligence experts have conceded
that no more than a handful of the men could have any real intelligence
value or could have been involved with al Qaeda. Most are likely
there because others turned them in order to get huge money bounties.
The U.S. was handing out fistfuls of dollars to people in the
street who would name names, promising "snitches" enough
money to take care of their families for a lifetime.
The lower federal courts also went far
afield from their stated case precedent, Johnson v. Eisentrager,
a 1950 Supreme Court case that arose out of World War II. There,
Germans who had been tried and convicted by military tribunals
wanted to challenge their convictions in federal court. The Supreme
Court ruled that they could not. But these men had at least the
semblance of due process-they were charged, given attorneys,
and tried. For the District of Columbia trial and appellate court
to jump from those facts to foreclose the Guantanamo prisoners
from judicial review was a huge leap unsupported by the facts
or the law.
The Bush Administration pleaded with
the Supreme Court not to grant the appeal. It warned the court
that waging war was the President's business, not the Court's.
This was also an argument so absurd and frightening that alarms
ought to be clanging in the hearts and minds of every American.
Since when does the President tell the Supreme Court what cases
to take? Since when is the Supreme Court not the supreme law
of the law-the last word in all things legal and judicial? Before
he was President, Bush thought the Court could anoint him President.
The Court agreed. Now, he thinks that same Court cannot consider,
merely consider (the Court may well agree with the lower courts,
but I doubt it) whether courts might have jurisdiction over prisoners
in Guantanamo so that his detention orders might be subject to
some modicum of judicial oversight. That arrogance alone-even
if the policy at issue were not so terrifying-justifies taking
down this Administration a peg or two.
I would bet that the Supreme Court will
decide that Guantanamo is enough of a U.S. territory that the
prisoners detained there are allowed to have access to the courts.
In a year from now, if the case finds its way back to the U.S.
District Court in the District of Columbia, we will see plenty
of stonewalling by the administration, much like it has done
in the Moussaoui case. You don't think they are going to play
by the book, do you? Of course, the "book" is a lot
better for them in D.C. then in front of Judge Brinkema in Virginia.
The D.C. trial and appellate courts are highly conservative and
beholden to the Bush administration. And if Bush gets his way,
the mad woman Janice Brown, the judicial nominee who does not
even know the meaning of the term "supremacy clause"
(she stumbled badly with Sen. Arlen Specter asked her about it
in the Senate judiciary committee hearing that just recommended
her for a full vote) and who thinks the 14th Amendment has nothing
to do with the states, will be sitting on the D.C. appeals court.
It is too early to get excited and think
that justice will be done for the prisoners in the black hole
of Guantanamo. But it is some consolation that the Supreme Court,
for once, has said no to Bush, no to Rumsfeld, and no to Solicitor
General Theodore Olson. "We will have a look at this case,
" they said. For now, we have this small gesture, the tiny
glimmer of hope, for which to be grateful.
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 Nov. 8 / 9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
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