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Today's
Stories
March 1, 2004
Heather Williams
Haiti as Target Practice: How
the US Press Missed the Story
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
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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March
1, 2004
Writing and Reading
as Terrorism
I
Hate to Say "I Told You So," But I Told You So
By ELAINE CASSEL
It has been almost two years ago that I first
wrote a comprehensive story on the USA Patriot Act. At that time,
I warned that the Patriot Act could be construed to render nonviolent
protest against government policy an act of terrorism. One example
I used was a fax or e-mail campaign to Congressional representatives
(or the White House, for that matter) that could lead to the
allegation that the faxes or email had "crippled" the
government office and interfered with its normal business. For
utilizing tactics that in any way interfere with the government
can be an act of terror. Another example was a peaceful protest
that blocked a law enforcement vehicle--that could be an act
of terror.
In the past couple of weeks, what I predicted
has come to pass--and then some. We learned that the Justice
Department started an investigation into anti-war protests led
by the National Lawyer's Guild at Drake University, in Des Moines,
Iowa in November 2003. The FBI's Joint Counter-Terrorism Task
Force subpoenaed the records of the National Lawyer's Guild,
the student records of student organizers, and the surveillance
tapes of campus security. Demonstrations at the federal courthouse,
motions to quash by recipients of the subpoenas, and negative
publicity led the government to withdraw the subpoenas. The U.S.
Attorney changed his tune and said they were never after anti-war
protestors, but were looking for leads into who might have tried
to enter a National Guard facility in Des Moines. Aside from
casting a pretty wide and chilling net for a would-be trespasser,
the affidavits in support of the subpoenas were devoid of any
mention of a trespassing incident. Asked to explain the discrepancy,
the U.S. Attorney said the affidavit was deficient--not his story.
Shortly after the Drake story broke early
in February, the government confirmed that Defense Intelligence
Agency operatives had "infiltrated" a conference on
Muslim Law at University of Texas-Austin, and that FBI agents
were attending ACLU meetings in Texas. They were on the lookout,
we were told, for people who might be espousing terrorist tactics.
I think they were taking names of attendees so that they could
open files on people who dared to think about Islam law, or dared
to be a part of an organization that has been in the forefront
of taking the Bush Administration's despotism to federal courts.
When Secretary of Education Ron Paige
referred to the National Education Association as a terrorist
organization, he was parroting the Patriot Act. It was no slip
of the tongue, but a calculated shot across the bow at people
and organizations that speak out against a Bush policy. Paige
later retracted the term, but not the substance of his charge.
The NEA, he repeated over and over, has used "obstructionist
and scare" tactics to defeat Bush's No Child Left Behind
law. That description is one of the ways in which the Patriot
Act defines "terror." In an op-ed in the Washington
Post on Saturday, Paige lambasted all critics of the law, including
state legislators who don't want the damn federal money if it
means letting Paige and his cronies tell them how to run their
schools, as people willing to sacrifice "children"
for political purposes. I found the op-ed alarming--for he went
even further than just calling them terrorists. He accused them
of wanting to harm children because they don't agree with the
Bush policy, driven by the desire to control each and every public
classroom in the US (similar to Ashcroft wanting to control the
body of every woman in the U.S.).
I could imagine all of the above, but
what I read in the Saturday New York Times gave even me pause.
The Treasury Department, which forbids doing "business"
with countries (Iran, Cuba, Libya, Sudan, and North Korea, for
instance) who are considered state sponsors of terrorism and
are defined as our "enemies," notified editors and
publishers that if they change one comma, word, or syntactical
element in a document that came from a person who lives in a
"forbidden" country, they may be charged with "trading
with the enemy," a crime that carries a penalty of up to
ten years in prison and a fine of $500,000. Presumably, an editor
could not remove a comma from a story written by a born-again
Christian Bush-ite any more than it could correct the pagination
of a treatise by an al-Qaeda operative--if the writer was an
Iranian national.
This regulation begs the question, "Are
all citizens of all nations our enemy? Judge T.S. Ellis, Alexandria,
Virginia federal district judge, alluded to this mindset of our
government when he recently refused to sentence a former Bush
Administration most-favored Muslim to two years in prison for
carrying money into and out of Libya. Federal prosecutors wanted
to put him away for at least ten years because he had "friends"
whom the government alleged were "terrorists." Aside
having no proof that his friends were terrorists, the pro-Bush
Ellis said, last he checked, it was not a crime to know a "terrorist"
socially.
The Treasury Department is up to more
mischief than I can keep up with. The Washington Post reported
on Friday that the Treasury Department was freezing the assets
of travel agencies who book trips to Cuba (you do realize, don't
you, that some travel to Cuba is legal? Tell that to Treasury),
including the legitimate deposits of American citizens. And Homeland
Security Secretary Tom Ridge ordered the Coast Guard to take
over any ship, American or otherwise, traveling to Cuba. Cuba,
you see, is a "terrorist" state. And if we travel to
Cuba, we are supporting terror. A friend recently traveled to
a Caribbean island and brought me back a CD of Cuban music. I
have it displayed prominently in my office for Ashcroft to easily
find. I am surely a terrorist for having Cuban music in my house
and listening to it--even enjoying it, and my friend is a terrorist
for buying it. (In a disgusting display of idiocy and bigotry,
the State Department denied visas to Cuban musicians nominated
for Grammy awards this year. Cuban Ibrahim Ferrer won the Grammy
for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album, putting the Grammy
organization into the unenviable position of arguably supporting
terrorism.)
So, what I predicted, and worse, is upon
us, and I am not hearing much outrage about any of it. A yawn,
a "what's new," a "does that surprise you, Cassel?"
is about all I am getting when I rant and rave. No, it does not
surprise me, it terrifies me. Four more years of Bush and I doubt
that I will be writing or you will be reading these warnings.
We will have been silenced. I wish I were exaggerating, but this
past year has taught me that, if anything, my warnings have been
too tame.
We have seen a despot, and he is occupying
the White House. We have seen tyranny, and it is the Bush Administration.
And yes, I am certain that, if there has been any doubt heretofore,
now I am sure that I can be labeled a "terrorist" for
saying it. And you, likely, are a terrorist for reading it.
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 February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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