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May 31, 2002
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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May 31, 2002
Judge: "Ashcroft's
Policies Idiotic"
Crumpling
the Constitution
by
Walt Brasch
With one word, a federal judge
has described not only John Ashcroft's handling of the Department
of Justice, but also the Bush administration's policy of citing
national security as the
reason why it's trying to hide the Constitution from
Americans.
U.S. District Judge Robert
G. Doumar says Ashcroft's super-secret policies and violation
of basic Constitutional guidelines sounds "idiotic."
Yaser Esam Hamdi, 21,
an American citizen born in Louisiana
but captured in Afghanistan, has been confined at the Norfolk
(Va.) Naval Station since April 5. The Justice Department claims
that since Hamdi is a captured enemy combatant not only isn't
he entitled to legal representation but can be held indefinitely
since he hasn't been charged  with
any crime. "That sounds idiotic, doesn't it?" asks
Judge Doumar. Ashcroft also believes it's the government's right
to record all lawyer-client communication; Judge Doumar, citing
the Constitution and more than two centuries of American legal
precedent, disagrees.
In a related case, U.S.
District Judge Gladys Kessler will decide if the government has
any Constitutional basis to keep secret the names and charges
against those it currently
detains as terrorists. Ironically, the Justice Department admits
that many of those it's hiding from the public are not terrorist
suspects. In numerous actions, Ashcroft and Vice-President Dick
Cheney have retreated into their bunkers, arguing that the secrecy
and the shredding of Constitutional guidelines are necessary
for national
security. Cheney himself told the Senate leadership in
February that Bush officials would probably defy all
attempts to question them about what they knew before and
after the Sept. 11 attacks. Both Ashcroft and Cheney have
labeled dissent, even by leaders of both major political
parties, to be unpatriotic, something that should cause even
more fear in Americans than anything that happened Sept. 11.
The Bush administration's
quest for secrecy is understandable, considering it was primarily
staring at headlights prior to Sept. 11. Newsweek and numerous
other publications now report that the Bush administration, probably
for political reasons, discounted the Clinton administration's
severe and substantial warnings about terrorist activities. Ashcroft
himself opposed an FBI proposal to add more counter-terrorism
agents. Numerous memos by the CIA, backed by data from foreign
intelligence agencies, were shuffled into a bureaucratic limbo
by the Bush administration. These are the same leaders who agreed
that color-coded days was a brilliant concept are now chomping
away at our civil rights.
In the first weeks after
the attacks, Americans gave the government wide latitude to seek
out and destroy those responsible. The people realized they may
have to temporarily yield a few of their own civil rights to
gain their permanent security, a reality of life but one that
would have shocked and saddened the nation's founders who wrote
our keystone documents under terrors we can't even imagine.
John Ashcroft saw the
confusion after Sept. 11 as political convenience. Within two
months, drafted in secret under a cloak of "national security,"
Ashcroft had bullied Congress to pass the USA Patriot Act. Most
of Congress now admit they didn't read the 342-page document
which butts against Constitutional protections of the First (free
speech), Fourth (unreasonable searches), Fifth (right against
self-incrimination), and Sixth (due process) amendments.
President Bush--in Europe
telling our allies that the reason to modernize the military
is to make it more modern--has cloaked himself in the fiction
of national security to justify a political agenda of secrecy.
His popularity rating remains over 60 percent, even though his
leading political advisor joyfully proclaims that the events
of Sept. 11 should help elect more Republicans in the Fall elections.
What the President and
his advisors must understand, yet may not be prepared to admit,
is that Americans are giving unprecedented support not because
they believe the President is a brilliant war leader but because
they believe in the country, and hope that solidarity and increased
vigilance will be the fortress against continued attacks upon
the nation.
FBI director Robert Mueller,
acknowledging numerous problems in America's intelligence-gathering
and analysis, and in announcing a massive reorganization of his
agency, says the FBI "has been the agency to protect the
rights of others."
As long as John Ashcroft,
Dick Cheney, and numerous Bush officials believe the Constitution
is nothing more than a scrap of paper to be used to justify a
cover-up for their own problems, then anything Mueller says is
nothing more than empty rhetoric.
It is important to destroy
terrorism. It's just as important we don't destroy the American
fabric to do so.
Walter M. Brasch,
Ph.D. is a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University.
His most recent book is Bill
Clinton: The Joy of Sax. Walt has been sidelined with a nasty illness
the past few weeks and is just now getting some of his old energy
back. He love to hear from you and may be reached at brasch@bloomu.edu.
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