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Recent
Stories
July
3, 2003
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
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David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
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:
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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
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
4, 2003
Fenced Out on Independence
Day
Fucking
Furious on the Fourth
By ELAINE CASSEL
On July 4, 2003, I took my customary bike trip
into DC from my home in Virginia. Along the Potomac River, across
the bridge, onto the "National Mall," as it is called.
The strip of land that runs from the Lincoln Memorial to the
Washington Monument. South of the mall is a beautiful area known
as The Tidal Basin, a lake of water surrounded by walkways and
cherry trees given to the American people by the Japanese government.
Oh, and at one end of the Tidal Basin, the Jefferson Memorial
and the smaller memorial to George Mason, father of the Bill
of Rights.
Last July 4, the first since 9/11, the
nation was on "orange alert." I knew security would
be "tight," because the news was full of it. But I
did not realize what that meant until I arrived at the mall only
to be turned away. The mall was "closed" for a bomb
search. Now, I don't know how they were searching for bombs or
what kind of bombs, but I guess the cops were in the trees and
in the tunnels. Who knows? I hear it opened hours later.
There was nothing for me to do then but
reverse directions, come back over the 14th Street Bridge, and
return to the relative calm of Alexandria, Virginia (that was
before "terrorist" trials took over the town, and barricades
erected here to keep God only who or what knows out). Before
I crossed the bridge, I called my daughter. Her childhood was
filled with July 4's on the mall-from the time she was a infant,
up to the prior year when we all (grandkids, husband, friends)
watched the fireworks from the federal courthouse where she was
working at the time. Little did I know that that may be the last
fireworks any of us saw on the mall.
I called her and told her how a chill
had come over me. Helicopters and fighter jets were omnipresent.
What a different 4th. So upset was I, that I paid no attention
to what I was doing and ended up sprawled across the 14th St.
Bridge with a broken arm. So much for July 4, 2002.
So, at 8 am on July 4, 2003, the nation
no longer on "orange alert" and George Bush spending
the day in Ohio raising money, I set out to see what was happening
in DC.
Beginning at National Airport all the
way to the bridges, double wooden fence had been erected between
the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the river. People
would have to enter through "checkpoints."
There were cops at the marina, cops at
the airport. On the bike path itself, which runs between the
Potomac River and the Parkway, there were cops on foot ("passing
on the left," I yelled, for which I got a threatening look),
cops on bikes. To my left, on the grass, cops on horses. To my
right, in the river, cops in boats. On the riverbank, cops in
tents, cops in trucks. Overhead, cops in helicopters.
To my surprise, Memorial Bridge, which
lies at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, was closed to cars.
Bikes could get in. But not before passing through "security."
As I stood deciding what to do, cops approached me. Step forward,
ma'm, he said. I looked at him. Did you hear me? I heard you,
I said. What's this all about? I don't answer questions, I just
do my job. Step forward. By then, several cops, menacing looking,
too, surrounded me. Not your typical nice park police. Get off
the bike, one said, and I did. He unzipped the carrier, took
out the wallet and cell phone, and told me to step aside and
come through the metal detector. Then I got the "wand treatment."
You can leave now.
I circled the entire mall and saw more
cops than people. While there were no passenger cars, there were
plenty of police cars and trucks. Truck with satellite dishes.
Trucks with more fencing to fence out the people.
I made my way along the Tidal Basin to
the Jefferson Memorial. Cars were trying to park and were being
turned away, but not before they were searched. They would have
to drive to other side of the US Capitol, or along Maine Avenue,
park, and walk the dozens of blocks back to the Memorial if they
wanted to visit it.
Oh, yes, you could visit the Memorial.
A large tent staffed with dozens of cops, a walkway with a metal
detector, a place to have your backpack searched-that's all that
stood in your way. A large sign said, "Memorial open. Pass
through security." I don't believe in an afterlife, but
if there is one, I hope Jefferson is watching and shedding a
tear.
I passed on the opportunity to commune
with him. Not before thinking how life had changed forever in
the nation's capital. Not because of 9/11, not because of Osama
bin Laden, not because of Saddam Hussein. But because George
Bush, the bully, the tyrant, the cowboy who highjacked the election,
George Bush had hijacked the 4th of July.
I hope he enjoys the fireworks, which
news reports say he will watch with "family and friends"
from the White House. I, and tens of thousands of others like
me, including my daughter and my grandchildren, won't be there.
I have been fenced out of the 4th of
July. And I am fucking furious.
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 an eye on Bush and Ashcroft's trampling
on the Bill of Rights at her Civil
Liberties Watch. She would love to write a book about Scalia's
jurisprudence, but finds it too depressing. She can be reached
at: ecassel1@cox.net
Weekend Edition
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Alan Maass
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