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July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
July 17, 2002
Philip Farruggio
The
New Role Model:
Remember Jesus, George?
Zara Gelsey
Who's
Reading Over
Your Shoulder?
Behzad Yaghmaian
9/11 and
Fotress Europe:
the Drama of the New
Moslem Diaspora
Mike Ferner
War, Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith--based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al--Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti--Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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 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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This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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July
25, 2002
Ashcroft's Assault on Bookstores
The Fiction Behind National Security
by Walt Brasch
Between a diner and an empty store that once housed
a shoe store, video store, and tanning salon, in a small strip
mall in Bloomsburg, Pa., is Friends-in-Mind, an independent bookstore.
On the first floor are more than 10,000
books on more than 1,200 running feet of shelves that create
aisles only about three feet wide. On top of the shelves are
stacks of 10, 15, even 20 more books. On the floor are hundreds
more, stacked spine out three- or four-feet high. There are books
in metal racks, drawers, and on counters. It's hard to walk through
the store without bumping into a pile in the 1,000-square foot
store. In the basement, in reserve, are 2,000 more books.
"Sometimes I order four or five
copies of a title, but often I only order one copy, but I want
to have whatever my customers want," says owner Arline Johnson
who founded the store in 1976 after working almost two decades
as a clinical  psychologist and teacher. Unlike the
chain stores with magazine and newspaper racks, wide aisles,
track lighting, and even a coffee shop, Friends-in-Mind has only
books and some greeting cards. Also unlike the chain stores with
large budgets for space and promotion to attract hundreds of
customers a day, Johnson says she sees "on a real good day"
maybe 25 or 30 people; often she sees fewer than a dozen.
In September 1984, she saw someone she
didn't want to see. A week after the Naval Institute Press shipped
three copies of Tom Clancy's cold war thriller, The Hunt for
Red October, the FBI showed up. The FBI, which apparently got
the information from the publisher, "wanted to know where
the books were and who purchased them," says Johnson. She
says she told the two men that she couldn't remember to whom
she sold two of the copies, but acknowledged she sent one copy
to her cousin, who had served aboard a nuclear submarine, "and
had all kinds of clearances." Johnson says she wasn't pleased
about the interrogation--"and my cousin certainly wasn't
happy about anyone checking on what he was reading."
The FBI never returned, but occasionally
residents in this rural conservative community will complain
about what's in the store. She's been challenged for selling
books about Karl Marx, gay rights, and even dinosaurs. Johnson
says she tells the "book police" that "it's important
that people learn and read about everything, whether they believe
it or not." She also stocks copies of the Constitution and
the Federalist Papers. Left-wing. Right-wing. Business. Labor.
Anti-establishment. Everything's available in her store. "It's
not the government's job to tell me or anyone what they can read,"
she says.
But the government has decided that under
the cloak of "national security" it can abridge the
rights of the citizen. The base is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA). Under that Act's provisions, the government may conduct
covert surveillance of individuals only after seeking an order
from a special government-created secret court. However, that
Court, in its first two decades, granted every one of the government's
more than 12,000 requests.
The most recent series of intrusions
upon civil liberties began in 1998 when special prosecutor Ken
Starr demanded a book store to release records of what Monica
Lewinsky had purchased. It was a sweeping allegation that had
no reasonable basis of establishing any groundwork in Starr's
attacks upon President Clinton. Since then, there have been several
cases in which police, operating with warrants issued in state
courts, have demanded a bookstore's records.
In state actions, individuals have the
right to ask local and state courts to quash subpoenas for records.
If denied, they may appeal all the way to state supreme courts.
There is no such protection under FISA. Not only can't individuals
and businesses be represented in that secret court, they're bound
by a federal gag order prohibiting any disclosure that such an
order was even issued. There is no recourse. No appeal.
Then came the USA Patriot Act, drafted
by the Bush administration, and fine-tuned in secret by the House
and Senate leadership following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Patriot Act, which incorporates and significantly expands
FISA to include American citizens, was overwhelmingly approved
by the Congress, most of whom admit they read only a few paragraphs,
if any at all, of the 342-page document. President Bush enthusiastically
signed the bill, Oct. 26.
Among its almost innumerable provisions,
the Act reduces judicial oversight of telephone and internet
surveillance and grants the FBI almost unlimited, and unchecked,
access to business records without requiring it to show even
minimal evidence of a crime. The FBI doesn't even need to give
the individual time to call an attorney. Failure to immediately
comply could result in that person's immediate detainment. The
federal government can now require libraries to divulge who uses
public computers or what books they check out, video stores to
reveal what tapes customers bought or rented, even grocery and
drug stores to disclose what paperbacks shoppers bought.
The effect of the USA Patriot Act upon
businesses that loan, rent, or sell books, videos, magazines,
and music CDs is not to find and incarcerate terrorists--there
are far more ways to investigate threats to the nation than to
check on a terrorist's reading and listening habits--but to put
a sweeping chilling effect upon Constitutional freedoms. The
Act butts against the protections of the First (free speech),
Fourth (unreasonable searches), Fifth (right against self-incrimination),
and Sixth (due process) amendments.
If the Act is not modified, book publishers
will take even fewer chances on publishing works that, like The
Hunt for Red October "might" result in the government
investigation; bookstore owners may not buy as many different
titles; and the people, fearing that whatever they read might
be subject to Big Brother's scrutiny, may not buy controversial
books or check books out of the library. Even worse, writers
may not create the works that a free nation should read. How
ironic it is that a President who says he wants everyone to read
is the one who may be responsible for giving the people less
choice in what they may read.
Chris Finan, president of the American
Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, believes "we've
seen some shift" in the hard-core attitudes of the government's
position. He believes public opinion will eventually shift "from
the panic after Sept. 11 to allow a reasonable debate of the
dangers" created by the USA Patriot Act. The Act has a built-in
sunset provision--several sections will expire, unless Congress
renews them, on Dec. 31, 2005.
Judith Krug of the American Library Association
isn't as optimistic as Finan. "It's going to be used as
long as they think they can get away with it," says Krug,
one of the nation's leading experts in First Amendment rights
and civil liberties. Krug says until the people "start challenging
the Act in the federal courts, we'll be lucky if we can 'sunset'
out any of it."
In the meantime, Arline Johnson says
she doesn't keep computer records, accept credit cards, or even
have a store newsletter, all of which can compromise the Constitutional
protections of her customers. "I once lived and taught in
Bulgaria," says Johnson, "and I don't like totalitarian
regimes." It makes no difference if it's a Balkan dictatorship
or one created out of fear in a democracy. The Bush administration
has put far more fear into the American people than any terrorist
could.
As Benjamin Franklin once argued, a nation
that gives up freedom to gain security deserves neither.
Walt Brasch,
a former newspaper reporter and editor, never smoked--or even
inhaled--but he understands a tax-shaft when he falls into one.
Brasch's latest book is "The
Joy of Sax," a witty and penetrating look at America
During the Bill Clinton Era. The book is available at local and
on-line bookstores. You may reach Brasch by e-mail at wbrasch@planetx.bloomu.edu
Today's Features
Gary Leupp
An Islam
Primer
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
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