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Recent
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June
26, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
June 25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
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
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
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
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Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
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Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
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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
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Michel
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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June
26, 2003
The Wolf in a Judge's
Robes
Wolfowitz:
Our Lord High Executioner
By
ELAINE CASSEL
As I was reading an article about the Alien and
Sedition Act (the law that the Federalists pushed through the
Congress on June 25, 1798 in order to quell rebellion against
its growing power), and thinking about how its essence resembled
the intent and effect of the USA Patriot Act, this news flash
came across my email:
"Defense deputy gets authority for
military tribunals."
I did not have to open the email to learn
who it was. It could only be (and it is)--the one, the only,
the unhonorable, the dissembling, and the anti-constitution autocrat,
Paul Wolfowitz. He will run the military tribunals in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, or wherever else outside the US Rumsfeld chooses to
try these poor souls.
Seems that Rumsfeld has his hands busy
with this "untidy" war (I thought it was over and that
we had won?) in Iraq that just won't quit. With those ungrateful
Iraqis not happy with American occupation, and the concomitant
lack of energy, money, and food. I digress.
According to CNN News, Wolfowitz will
exercise key powers in the commission process. After the chief
military prosecutor drafts charges against a prisoner (CNN, of
course, referred to this hapless person as a "detainee"--talk
about dissembling), Wolfowitz will "approve" the charges
and send the detainee to trial. So he has already served as chief
prosecutor, grand jury, and presiding judge.
As appointing authority, he also will
select military officers to sit on commissions. If commission
members cannot resolve matters related to procedures, motions
or facts, Wolfowitz will make the final decision. There you go,
a judge again. The article did not say that Wolfowitz would carry
out the executions (and there will be plenty of them, you can
be sure, in secret, as will be the trials), but you can bet he
will. Or wants to. Or maybe he does not want to get blood on
his white shirt or stain his gold cufflinks. But by now, he has
risen to the status of Lord High Executioner in this most bizarre
of legal systems.
Whatever, there you have it, justice
American style. A criminal court created by Bush, run by the
Pentagon, and with "laws" drafted in consort with Ashcroft,
Chertoff, and minions at the Department of Justice. The trials
will be in secret. The chief defense attorney is a reluctant
officer who had been praying for the prosecutor's position (won't
he give some zealous defense?). American defense attorneys, if
any prisoner can afford one, will have to swear a vow of allegiance
to Rumsfeld, of course, agree to a lifetime gag order, and stand
by while certain proceedings against his client are held in secret,
out of his presence. (What lawyer worth his license would agree
to this? None that I would want, that's for certain.)
Foreign news sources have reported that
execution chambers are under construction. Bush and Rumsfeld
are said to be deciding who the lucky ones are to be tried in
this mockery of "justice."
And you should be wondering, as Independence
Day nears, how we have come to this under our Emperor George
Bush II.
So on the anniversary of the passage
of the Alien and Sedition Acts, we witness a sequel of a government
so afraid of its "enemies" (or so they say--we will
never hear the evidence) that it has to create a caricature of
a "legal" system and try them in secret.
Why don't they just drop the charade,
line up the prisoners, and shoot them? Bring on Lord Wolfowitz
with his rifle--or maybe he would prefer a sword?
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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