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March
7, 2002
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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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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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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 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
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March 7, 2002
The Patriot Act
and Free Speech
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, {italic} The
Hunt for Red October{italic}, 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 what
books patrons 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 {italic}
The Hunt for Red October {end italic} "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. As Benjamin Franklin
once argued, a nation that gives up freedom to gain security
deserves neither.
Walter M. Brasch,
Ph.D. is a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University
. His most recent book is Bill Clinton: The Joy of Sax.
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