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March 15, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
When
Business Men
Make Boo-Boos
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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Whiteout:
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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Al Gore:
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March 15, 2002
Those Secret Snatches
Render Unto Caesar
By Chris Floyd
The rule of law is dead.
Even as a fiction, a dream of human betterment
-- of "civilization," to use that word we hear so often
on the lips of warlords and terrorists these days -- the idea
of law has been discarded, trashed: Just so much excess baggage
thrown aside in the relentless, mindless pursuit of raw power.
And perhaps the most remarkable thing
about this regression, this throwback to our most primitive and
brutal instincts, is that it's being carried out in plain sight,
openly, proudly. The defenders of "civilization" no
longer even pretend to be bound by law, by moral codes designed
to quell the raging beast inside us all and draw us on toward
higher notions of justice, liberty, and the integrity of the
individual. Instead, they exult in their desecration of these
ideals -- and are exalted for it.
This week, the administration of U.S.
President George W. Bush admitted it was snatching suspected
terrorists in secret operations around the world and "rendering"
them without due process or any legal hearing at all to repressive
regimes where they can be beaten and tortured to extract information
-- then killed when their usefulness is over. Their families
too can be threatened with imprisonment or death: another useful
extraction tool for the CIA and its proxies.
"After Sept. 11, these sorts of
movements have been occurring all the time," a U.S. diplomat
told the Washington Post. "It allows us to get information
from terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil."
Note the usual neat elision there --
from "suspected terrorist" to "terrorist."
In fact, the CIA "rendering" operations take place
outside all legal jurisdiction; there is no standard of evidence
or level of proof required to brand someone -- anyone -- a "terrorist
suspect" and put him on the next secret plane to Cairo or
Amman. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have already "disappeared"
in this way, without legal counsel, without extradition, on nothing
more than the word of an ambitious junior operative or a local
informer -- or even a cranky neighbor.
It's not always done in secret, of course.
In January, American forces openly seized five Arabs in Bosnia
and sent them to the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
for interrogation -- the kind you "can't do on U.S. soil,"
no doubt. This despite the fact that the men had earlier been
freed by the Bosnian Supreme Court for lack of evidence against
them -- and that the Bosnian Human Rights Chamber had issued
an injunction protecting them from seizure pending further legal
proceedings. That would be the same Human Rights Chamber set
up by the United States after the Bosnian war to "protect
human rights and due process." From everyone except the
United States, obviously.
Nor are U.S. residents exempt from rendering.
In January, just after the release of "Black Hawk Down,"
the story of kindly American soldiers being butchered by nasty,
bug-eyed Somalis, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft grabbed
three dozen Somali-Americans from their homes, classrooms and
businesses and deported them -- without charges, without hearings,
"not shriving time allowed" -- to Mogadishu, the London
Times reports.
These were men, and one woman, who had
been in the United States for many years, some of them from infancy.
They had fled with their families from the murderous warlords
who ravaged their country, and had found peace and prosperity
in America. But now it was over. They were seized by Ashcroft's
immigration officials, they were beaten, shackled, boarded onto
planes and dumped in Somalia without papers, passports or any
means of support. Most of them don't speak the language or even
dare walk the streets, where foreigners -- especially Americans
-- are viewed with hostility. They're now trapped in a fleabag
hotel, broke, desperate, and besieged by local media screaming
about "the terrorists."
Why were they taken? No one knows; or
rather, no one will say. Ashcroft's minions claim they are "investigating"
the situation, but will give no details. They never do. Perhaps
some Somali warlord pointed to a rival clan, some past enemy
-- and their children -- and whispered the magic words: "al-Qaida."
After all, the Somali gangleaders are now courting Bush's favor,
hoping to get the kind of money and weapons the Americans are
doling out to their favored drug-dealers and warlords in Afghanistan,
where dozens of innocent civilians have been killed by U.S. air
strikes called in by mercenary chieftains knocking off their
rivals.
That's the world the "defenders
of civilization" have given us. They strut out in their
thousand-dollar suits and preach to us about "civilized
values" and "enduring freedom" while they pay
their murderers and wave their cattle prods and "expand
their nuclear attack options," plotting the death of millions.
They're teaching every budding terrorist, every aspiring dictator,
every mafia goon that violence, death and dominance are the truest
human values, the way to wealth and glory.
So forget law. Law is dead. There is
no law. There is only the reality of power. They can take you
tonight, anywhere in the world, beat you and drug you and ship
you to a dungeon in Jakarta if they want to. They can ram their
cattle prods up your rectum and slap their electrodes on your
genitals and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. No
one will hear you scream; no one will even know where you are.
You don't exist anymore. You're not a person, you have no standing
under the law. There is no law.
Chris Floyd
is an American freelance journalist based in Europe. His political
column, 'Global Eye,' appears weekly in The Moscow Times and
the St. Petersburg Times. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
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