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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Cockburn on Judy Miller's War: Unnamed Sources, the Direct Line to Rummy, Timely Book Promotion; St. Clair on Bush's Main Man, Marc Racicot: Why Do They Call Him "the White Colin Powell"; What Did He Do to Montana?; JoAnn Wypijewski on the Supremes and Sodomy: It's a Sex Thing; FrankenFoods & World Hunger: More Crap from Monsanto; What's in a Name: Smith/Smythe and NPR. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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From Common Courage Press

Recent Stories

July 11, 2003

David Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary

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

 

July 3, 2003

Patrick W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg

Thomas W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy

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

Stan Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3


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 Posed No Threat to US

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
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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

 

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Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians"

Uzma Aslam Khan
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July 12, 2003

Terrorism Against the Constitution

Appeals Court Denies Hamdi Access to Lawyer

By ELAINE CASSEL

The 12 judges--the full panel--of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the most conservative federal court in the United States, has refused to do its constitutional duty and engage in meaningful judicial review, thus handing the Bush regime a big win in its battle to rewrite the Constitution.

In the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the en banc panel denied a rehearing for Yaser Hamdi, 22, the U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 allegedly fighting for the Taliban in a combat zone of Afghanistan. Hamdi has been held in a navy brig in Norfolk Virginia since shortly after his capture. His case arose when the federal public defender in Alexandria, Virginia, Frank Dunham, sued to gain access to Hamdi and provide legal services to him.

Judge Doumar of the U.S. District Court had ordered that Hamdi have access to Dunham. In fact, Doumar was outraged by the government's assertion that Bush could even name someone an "enemy combatant" and deny them not only rights due American citizens but rights under International law.

The government appealed Judge Doumar's ruling to the 4th Circuit. In January 2003, the original panel of three judges affirmed the government's designation of Hamdi as an "enemy combatant," saying he was entitled only to a limited judicial inquiry into that decision.

Limited means that the original panel of three judges looked at the scant affidavit of a mid-level Pentagon bureaucrat who claimed that Hamdi was an "enemy combatant" connected with Al Qaeda. The panel accepted the Pentagon's affidavit without question, saying that they would not interfere with the President in a time of "war." If the President chooses to name someone as an enemy combatant and lock them up forever without attorney or any process against him, well that was just fine with them.

Dunham appealed to the full court to rehear the case. But the order, by a vote of 8-4, leaves undisturbed the January decision. Two judges issued opinions supporting the order and two dissented. But lest you get your hopes up, only one judge, Diana Motz, made an argument for due process under the Constitution. The other dissenting judge, Judge J. Michael Luttig, who aspires to be on the U.S. Supreme Court and may even be to the right of Antonin Scalia (if that is possible), wanted the full court to hear the case so that it could say unequivocally that the affidavit fully supported the President's actions. In other words, Luttig wanted the full panel to look at the case--not not look at it--and to rule resoundingly for the government.

Luttig wrote that the January opinion had not gone far enough in supporting the administration's right to detain enemies in wartime. He wrote that the court disowned its "promise to the executive to accord him the substantial deference to which he is constitutionally entitled for his wartime decisions as to who constitute enemies of the United States."

Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who was also on the original panel denying Hamdi's challenge to his incarceration, said in his concurring opinion supporting the decision,"The ingredients essential to military success­its planning, tactics and intelligence­are beyond our ken, and the courtroom is a poor vantage point for the breadth of comprehension that is required to conduct a military campaign on foreign soil."

Arguing for the Constitution, Judge Motz wrote, "The panel's decision marks the first time in our history that a federal court has approved the elimination of protections afforded a citizen by the Constitution solely on the basis of the executive's designation of that citizen as an enemy combatant, without testing the accuracy of the designation. Neither the Constitution nor controlling precedent sanction this holding."

The decision may be bad news for Ali S. Marri, a Qatari man who has been in federal custody since January 2002. He was charged with being part of a "sleeper cell" in this country and awaiting trial in federal court in Illinois, when on July 8, 2003 the government suddenly dropped its case and moved him to a military prison after Bush declared him an enemy combatant. Like Hamdi, Marri will have no attorney in a military tribunal, but is attorney vows to file for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court.

Jose Padilla, the so-called would-be "dirty shoe" bomber and an American citizen, is also being held without charges as an enemy combatant. But neither Padilla nor Marri were captured on foreign soil, and that being the underlying rationale for the Hamdi decision, the door may be open for a different result in their cases.

Dunham says he will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.




Weekend Edition Features

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

 

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