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SHOULD SCOOTER LIBBY'S LAWYER BE DISBARRED? Law school dean Lawrence Velvel says, Maybe he should, if he sat idly by while client Libby spouted lies. What lies at the core of Zionism? Michael Neumann tortures Alan Dershowitz, without a warrant! "Sex-mad adulterer from British aristocracy claims to have 'revolutionized' philosophy." Yes, Bertrand Russell, they mean you! Alexander Cockburn on Smearing 101 in the British press. Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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November 30, 2005 Allen / D'Amato Mike Whitney Kevin Zeese Norman Solomon Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Stephen Soldz
November 29, 2005 Phil Gasper Behzad Yaghmaian Joshua Frank Walter A. Davis Gary Leupp Len Colodny Jeffrey St.
Clair Bill Quigley Website of
the Day
November 28, 2005 Chris Reed David Isenberg Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Justin E.H. Smith Mickey Z. Mike Whitney David Swanson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
November 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley John Ross Gary Leupp Fred Gardner Christopher Brauchli Dave Lindorff P. Sainath Timothy J.
Freeman Lila Rajiva Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Joaquin Bustelo Lewis Alper Will Youmans Phyllis Pollack St. Clair /
Vest Barbara LaMorticella Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
November 25, 2005 David Price Brian McKenna Jeff Halper Ray McGovern Leigh Saavedra Ingmar Lee Website of the Day
November 24, 2005 James Petras Bob Shirley Mike Fox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Greg Moses Alexander Cockburn
November 23, 2005 Ramzy Baroud Mike Whitney Stan Cox Linda S. Heard November 22, 2005 Kevin Gray
/ Mike Hersh Ralph Nader Michael Donnelly Mike Ferner Pierre Tristam Marshall Auerback Website of
the Day
November 21, 2005 Mike Marqusee Josh Frank Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Russ Baker Robert Jensen Paul Craig
Roberts
November 19 / 20, 2005 Fred Gardner Rep. Cynthia McKinney Ron Jacobs David Vest J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. John R. Bomar John Ross Phillip Cryan Dave Lindorff Dick J. Reavis Jeremy Scahill Dan Wright John Stanton St. Clair / Vest / Walker Phyllis Pollack Dr. Susan Block Poets Basement
November 18, 2005 Michael Neumann Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer Don Monkerud Tom Kerr Trish Schuh
November 17, 2005 John Walsh Rep. John Murtha Brian J. Foley CounterPunch
News Service Dave Lindorff Mark T. Harris Cockburn /
St. Clair
November 16, 2005 John F. Sugg Noam Chomsky Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Sam Husseini Pierre Tristam Greg Bates Farrah Hassen Bill Christison Website of
the Day
November 15, 2005 Todd Chretien Leah Caldwell Frederick Hudson Harry Browne Jason Leopold Ingmar Lee Diana Barahona Tom Andre Website of the Weekend
November 14, 2005 Diana Johnstone Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Joshua Frank Christopher
Reed
November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gwyneth Leech Elmas Mallo Michael Neumann Saul Landau Sam Husseini Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Michael Donnelly Joe Allen Roland Sheppard Justin E.H.
Smith Ben Tripp St. Clair /
Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Eli Stephens David Swanson M. Junaid Alam Matt Reichel Naima Bouteldja Jeff Halper Website of the Day
November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Diana Johnstone Roosa / Nevins Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Ross Mike Whitney Mark Engler Juliano Mer-Khamis Ron Jacobs Jill S. Farrell Missy Comley
Beattie Mitchel Cohen Evelyn J. Pringle Reza Fiyouzat Charles Sullivan Zachary Richard Ben Tripp St. Clair / Vest
November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Lindorff Phillip Cryan Christopher Brauchli William S.
Lind Daryl G. Kimball George Beres Peter Montague
November 3, 2005 James Petras Saul Landau Rep. Cynthia McKinney Michael Dickinson Joshua Frank Remi Kanazi Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
November 2, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Robert Oscar Lopez John Walsh Brian J. Foley Ramzy Baroud M. Junaid Alam Todd Chretien Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs Gary Leupp John Ross Bill Quigley Joseph Nevins Dave Lindorff Linda S. Heard Heather Gray Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St. Clair
October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Mark Weisbrot Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Farooq Sulehria Nicole Colson Madis Senner Paul Craig
Roberts
Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Steven Higgs Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Joshua Frank Laura Santina Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs Dr. Susan Block Vanessa S. Jones Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
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December 1, 2005 Trashing Every Principle of Constitutional LawA Government Game of "Gotcha" with Jose PadillaBy ELAINE CASSEL On Tuesday, November 22, two cases that I had followed and written about since their inception took a strange turn. Jose Padilla's case received the most attention. He is the American citizen who was picked up in Chicago in May 2002, taken into custody in New York, and held in New York on a "material witness" subpoena. This is a little-known-about trick the government can play on you when it wants to lock you up but doesn't quite know why. The New York prosecutors said they wanted to question him about a "dirty bomb" plot and they had to keep him locked up because he might flee the country. A New York federal judge appointed Padilla an aggressive, shrewd attorney, Donna Newman, and she moved to have him released. But before that motion could be heard, literally in the dark of night, Padilla was turned over to military authorites on order of President Bush. He was named an "enemy combatant," and ordered held by the military for as long as Bush wanted-or until the end of "hostilities." Newman promptly filed a habeas corpus petition--that most ancient of legal writs designed to allow judicial review by a prisoner who alleges he is being imprisoned contrary to law. It took two years for Padilla's case to get to the Supreme Court, and when it did, in the summer of 2004, the Court ruled that the case had to be filed in another federal court-wrong venue. By this time, Padilla had been removed to a navy bring in South Carolina. Upon refilling, the lower federal
court found that Padilla was unlawfully held. As an American
citizen, the U.S. District Court judge said, there was no lawful
basis to hold him in prison without charging him with a crime.
The judge ordered the government to charge him or release him,
but stayed that order and allowed the government to appeal. That
appeal went to the federal court in Richmond, Virginia and they,
the rightist of the right-wing courts, upheld his detention,
much as they had done in the case of Yaser Hamdi two years before.
The Supreme Court had Lo and behold, within a few short weeks, Hamdi was released from Guantanamo on the grounds that he return to Saudi Arabia, where he held dual citizenship. The once dangerous terrorist was set free when the government was told to put up or shut up. When Attorney General Gonzales held a press conference to announce that Padilla was being charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism abroad, he refused to answer any questions about why Padilla was not charged with plotting to do what Ashcroft said he was going to do (even the Ashcroft story had morphed over time from planning to detonate a "dirty" bomb, to plots to blow up bridges or apartment buildings). Further, he said his indictment, and removal from the navy brig in South Carolina where he had been for three years to the federal detention center in Miami had nothing to do with his being an enemy combatant. In other words, he still is one. Does Padilla's indictment mean he will get a real trial under the Constitution and federal law, or will Gonzalez and gang try to play by different rules, as they are doing in so many other "terrorist cases?" I imagine the later. And on the off chance Padilla is acquitted, he can be returned to the custody of the President of the United States as an enemy combatant. The government played an even bigger "gotcha" on Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a Falls Church resident, American citizen, who November 22 was convicted by an Alexandria, Virginia jury of conspiring to commit terrorism, including plotting to assassinate President Bush, bring in terrorists through Mexico, and blow up airplanes. The charges sound horrible, but if you read the indictment you would find that Abu Ali did nothing more that talk-not that talk like this is a smart thing-but there was no concrete plan. As Paul Wolfowitz had one time said of Padilla's alleged "plot," it appears to have been a lot of "loose talk." But loose talk can get you life in prison these days. But it's not the charges against Abu Ali that were unusual. No, those are cropping up all here and there, against Arab men, some American citizens. What was unusual about Abu Ali's case is that he was held, at the behest of the federal prosecutors, in a Saudi prison for twenty-two months, during which time he was repeatedly interrogated by Saudi law enforcement and the FBI. Eventually the Saudis obtained a confession, with FBI agents watching from behind a hidden camera. Though conceding that Abu Ali was interrogated for hours on end, day after day, the interrogations lasting throughout the night, during which he was often shackled and chained, and though he had no attorney (even though his parents were trying to provide him one), Judge Gerald Bruce Lee found his confession to be voluntary and uncoerced. Medical doctors testified that he had the marks of physical torture and the symptoms of having been mentally coerced, but prosecution doctors said he was faking. Lee also said that Abu Ali was not entitled to the constitutional protections of an attorney and a speedy trial. Why? Because he was held by Saudi Arabia, not the US, and, further, he was never a criminal suspect and thus the Bill of Rights does not apply. The government did not explain how someone who was never a criminal suspect suddenly became a criminal defendant. But I have a plausible explanation. Alexandria prosecutors brought Abu Ali to the U.S. and charged him after his parents had appeared to convince a federal judge in the District of Columbia that the government had their son and would not allow him to return home (Abu Ali was studying in a Saudi university at the time of his arrest). They, like Padilla's lawyers, filed a writ of habeas corpus. Initially, the Justice Department denied having anything to do with Abu Ali's arrest and imprisonment in Saudi Arabia. They even said, at one time, that he could come home whenever the Saudis were ready to release him (they had questioned him in connection with the bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh in 2003), Then the government changed its tune and said he was too dangerous to be returned to the U.S., but they couldn't say why-oh they could say, but only to a judge, not to Abu Ali's parents. While the judge was pondering this posture of the government, the government produced him, without warning, in federal court in Alexandria and arraigned him on an indictment that was a lot milder than the one he was eventually tried on. As with Padilla, the charges kept shifting and, of course, each time they got more serious, more sinister. Abu Ali will surely receive life in prison even though, as one attorney put it, the charge is more like a conspiracy to conspire at some future time. But then, if you looked behind the grandiose press conferences of his case, Padilla's, and others like theirs, you would find the flimsiest of facts. I can't speak to the facts surround the charges that Padilla faces and that Abu Ali was convicted of. What I can speak to, is the sorry methods of our government as it plays games with American citizens. Nothing excuses keeping Padilla locked up incommunicado for three years, changing stories about him all the time and two weeks before it was due to file a brief explaining its position to the U.S. Supreme Court, pulling out a whole new set of facts and taking him out of Bush's hands and into the hands of federal prosecutors. And nothing excuses using a foreign government, known to engage in torture (one Saudi official testified, by video feed, in Abu Ali's case, that Saudi's had a 100 percent confession rate under their interrogation methods), to imprison an American for what reasons, we will never know and then, when the gig appears to be up, when a federal judge has a hard time believing the government's ever-changing theory of where Abu Ali was and who had him, bringing him home and filing charges. In these two cases, our government has violated every principle of constitutional law and criminal procedure that at one time made our criminal justice system something to be proud of. The Bill of Rights held no hope for these men. Only the right of habeas corpus-that last hope for the hopeless that holds the President to account for imprisoning someone-got then in the court house door. But the government taught them a civics lesson they didn't learn in school: the President, at least this President, thinks he can walk all over the Bill of Rights-your rights-and get away with it. When one maneuver fails, they have another up their sleeves. And when they run out of tricks, they turn their energies to making a criminal case against you, albeit the allegations are based in supposed facts that are years old and often come from other alleged terrorists who are making plea bargains and sentencing deals or from coercion, maybe even torture, in a foreign land. You want due process? The Bush administration will make you sorry you asked. Gotcha. Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the
District of Columbia and teaches law and psychology. She doesn't
like being lied to. Her new book The
War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled
the Bill of Rights, is published by Lawrence Hill. She can
be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.               |
