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Recent
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July
21, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Go Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
July
17, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the
United States Has to Stand Naked
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance
Martin
Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation
Watchdogs
Heidi
Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced
Drugging and the Supreme Court
Norman
Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance
Conference
Pankaj
Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the
Boy Who Cried Wolf
Hammond
Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited
Website
of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism
July
16, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype
Dubious Uranium Claims
William
Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down
Elaine
Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom
Must Not Be Obeyed
Jason
Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?
Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?
Raymond
Barrett
From Detroit to Basra
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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July
21, 2003
History Recapitulates
Guantanamo
and the Japanese Internment Camps
By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
It was a curious and not altogether felicitous
temporal juxtaposition in The New York Times on June 30: the
first, a story in the Sunday Magazine by Ted Conover called "In
the Land of Guantanamo" the second, the same day, a story
datelined Hunt, Idaho, by Sarah Kershaw headlined "Japanese-Americans
Relive Barbed Era."
Ms. Kershaw's story opened as follows:
"After six decades, memories of life at an internment camp
deep in a desolate wasteland of southern Idaho were foggy and
fragmented, all but the most searing images diluted by time."
Mr. Conover's story begins: "The juvenile enemy combatants
live in a prison called Camp Iguana." Ms. Kershaw's is a
story of guilt partially expiated. Mr. Conover's is a story of
guilt awaiting awakening when a humane government is restored.
Both stories are wrenching.
Ms. Kershaw describes the reaction of
the aged survivors of the Minidoka Relocation Center on a return
visit to a place that housed 13,000 Japanese-Americans (one of
10 such installations). The U.S. government, fearful of terrorist
acts known as "sabotage," sacrificed the civil liberties
of 120,000 people who were, by definition, partly and recently
foreign, in order to protect those who were partly, but in the
distant past, foreign, and, more importantly, not Japanese.
Ms. Kershaw's was a poignant description
of a dignified group of people being treated in an undignified
way by a government rendered constitutionally insensate by fear.
The survivors described waiting in line for food and living in
wooden barracks covered with tar paper. Sally Sudo of Minneapolis
described how her parents and eight siblings were given rooms
C and D in Barrack 2 of Block 14, 10 people in two rooms. Families
were assigned numbers to identify them.
Ms. Sudo's father came to the United
States in 1899. He was forcibly relocated after Pearl Harbor.
His daughter said that he lost everything while interned. The
last 20 years of his life "he didn't really live, he just
existed," she said.
In 1988 Congress passed the Civil Liberties
Act. It provided for a formal apology to Japanese-Americans interned
and restitution payment of $20,000 to each internee. That is
the value Congress placed on depriving 120,000 people of their
liberty for periods of up to four years. Jerry Arai, an architect
from Seattle said: "We were here for almost three years.
Surrounded by barbed wire, guards and watchtowers, living in
exile. We cannot forget these hardships the Japanese endured.
Let us not stand back in the midst of fear, hate and prejudice
to see it happen to others."
Mr. Conover's tale reminds us that President
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld are sponsoring fear, hate and prejudice.
Mr. Conover visited Guantanamo, where
enemy combatants from the war in Afghanistan are being held.
It has Camp Iguana for teenagers and Camp Delta for adults. The
teenagers live in rooms painted "Carolina blue" and
enjoy a grassy yard in which they spend time each day. Adults
live in cages 6 feet 8 inches by 8 feet, the doors and walls
of which are made of a tight mesh. Prisoners at Camp Delta are
permitted 20 minutes of solitary exercise three times a week
and following that are permitted a five-minute shower. The rest
of the time they are confined to their cages. Mr. Conover observes,
"[E]ven in most American supermaxes, the cells are larger
and prisoners are let out for at least 30 minutes of exercise
daily."
The Japanese-Americans and those interned
at Guantanamo had at least one thing in common in addition to
involuntary incarceration. The Japanese did not know how long
they would be confined since they did not know when the war would
end. Prisoners at Guantanamo do not know how long they will be
confined because they have been labeled "enemy combatants,"
and like Japanese Americans during World War II, they can be
held indefinitely.
In order to write "Newjack: Guarding
Sing Sing," a description of life in New York's Sing Sing
Prison, Mr. Conover spent a year working there as a guard. One
of his observations, recounted in his New York Times piece, is
that prisoners are all keenly aware of the length of their sentences.
The fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel, (for those
not incarcerated for life) is enormously important and part of
what keeps them going from day to day.
The prisoners at Guantanamo are depressed.
They do not know when they will get out and they have no access
to courts. They are held at the whim of an administration that
has whipped its populace into such a fervor that people no longer
care about human rights if their leaders tell them that caring
would put their own safety in jeopardy. There is, however, one
bright spot learned as a result of the Japanese experience.
At some point the people in the United
States will begin to feel guilty about how the prisoners have
been treated. They will acknowledge that it is inhumane to hold
people indefinitely, even when the people of the United States
are (or in the case of their leaders, pretend to be, in order
to make the people more pliant) afraid. In the case of the Japanese-Americans
it took approximately 44 years for that to happen. If our sensitivity
curve remains intact, most of the people at Guantanamo can expect
to be freed by 2048 and perhaps even given some remuneration.
That should cheer them up. It doesn't have the same effect on
me.
Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder, Colorado lawyer. He can be reached
at: brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Go Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
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