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Recent
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June
24, 2003
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
June 23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
Hot Stories
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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June
24, 2003
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust
Denial at the High Court
By
ELAINE CASSEL
Yesterday was a big day at the Supreme Court.
The Court handed down five opinions. Two of these related to
the University of Michigan affirmative action policies. Inasmuch
as legal minds far brighter than mine have already weighed in
on these cases (and will continue to do so for months to come),
and inasmuch as affirmative action is not really my beat, I am
not going to comment on those opinions--at least not now.
A case that ruled that libraries must
use internet filters that shut down porn sites (and any other
sites snared by the filter: collateral damage in the war on porn)
is of critical importance to civil libertarians and will be the
subject of a future article.
But for now, I want to comment on, and
urge you to read, the sleeper case of the day - the one in which
California's law that provides information about insurance companies
that might be liable for claims of Holocaust victims was stricken
by the Court because it interferes with the President's "foreign
policy." The case is American Insurance Association vs.
Garamendi.
In 1998 the US entered into an agreement
with Germany to set up an organization, the International Commission
on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), to hear claims of
Holocaust survivors and victims and to pay some claims up to
a certain limit. This was not a formal treaty and it did not
by its terms prohibit alternative remedies for survivors or victims
of the Nazi regime who sought compensation for the confiscation
of Jewish bank assets, the use of Jewish slave labor, and the
failure to pay Jewish insurance claims. California enacted a
law that allows residents to ascertain which insurance companies
might have been insuring Nazi interests such that they could
be looked to for reimbursement.
The Supreme Court ruled today that the
law must be stricken because it interferes with the Executive's
agreement with Germany regarding the settlement of claims through
the ICHEIC (it is noteworthy that few claims have been settled
by this body). Affidavits of "sub-cabinet" level officials
were filed with the Court assuring the court that the California
law impedes the President's ability to speak with "one voice"
about foreign policy.
Justice Ginsberg wrote a strong dissent
in which she was joined by--are you ready for this?--Justices
Scalia, Thomas, and Stevens (no surprise, as to him). The dissenters
noted that there was no legal precedent for holding that an agreement
like this one, made outside the statutory and constitutional
framework or foreign treaties, should be preempted in the name
of "foreign policy." The dissent reminds me of the
lone voices on federal courts who have recently (and likewise,
unsuccessfully) called for judges to conduct judicial review
and not merely assent to the President's claim of national security
justification for secret detentions, trials, deportations and
denial of trials and counsel.
(Along those lines, yesterday the Justice
Department also named another "enemy combatant, removing
him from federal court jurisdiction where he was charge with
minor fraud charges to an undisclosed location. Ali Saleh Kahlah
al-Marri, 37, has been in custody since 2001. He had a lawyer,
now he has none. He had a trial date. Now he has none.)
If you have been paying attention to
the Bush administration's preemption of laws since 9/11 (all
in the name of national security and fighting a "war on
terror"), you will see the Garamendi decision as an obvious--but
nonetheless frightening--extension of its desire to overthrow
any law--state, federal, or international--that interferes with
its supreme power, with its "national" interest, be
it national "security" or national "foreign policy."
It is ironic that it scores a win on
a case dealing with victims of the Nazis, for many commentators
are noting the uncanny resemblance of the Bush administration
to a fascist regime, in which wars are waged in the name of "national"
interest (Bush's preemption doctrine).
And civil liberties, even life itself,
are sacrificed in the name of national "security."
Elaine Cassel practices
law in Virginia and the District of Columbia and teaches law
and psychology. She is writing a book on civil liberties post
9/11, and keeps and keeps an eye on Bush and Ashcroft's trampling
on the Bill of Rights at her Civil
Liberties Watch.
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
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