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From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
8, 2003
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Saul Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
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
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
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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for More Stories.
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July
8, 2003
Troubled Sleep
Getting
Used to the American Gulag
By CHRIS FLOYD
"When you gonna wake up
And strengthen the things that remain?"
--Bob Dylan
The secret policemen snatched the citizen from
his house. There were no charges, no warrants, no warnings. They
spirited him away to a secret location; no one knew where he
had gone, why he'd disappeared. The covert agents grilled him,
in secret, for three months. They told him that if he didn't
cooperate, he'd be declared an enemy of the state--then they
could salt him away in a military prison or the regime's concentration
camp and hold him there, without charges, for as long they wanted.
There, they said, he could languish until
he rotted--with no judicial oversight, no recourse to appeal
save one: a plea for mercy from the regime's unelected leader.
This usurper, who liked to be known as "The Commander,"
had given himself the arbitrary authority to strip any citizen
of their liberty, and he alone--no court, no council, no legislative
body--held the ultimate power of life and death over anyone he
thus decreed an "enemy."
After months in secret captivity, the
prisoner--a young truck-driver with a history of mental problems--broke
down. In a secret court session, he confessed to planning a series
of crimes against the state. The success of this covert operation
was announced by the head of the regime's internal police forces.
His declaration--that a citizen had been snatched, interrogated,
threatened and broken in secret, outside every stricture of the
country's old constitution--was greeted with cries of admiration
in the national press.
Yes, it was just another day in the New
America--the fearful, fawning, fortress-land that Bush and bin
Laden have made. The above facts--openly attested in the mainstream
media--are the raw guts of truth beneath the fancy PR frocks
and propaganda implants that mask the inner moral rot of the
Bush Regime.
Iyman Faris, an American citizen originally
from Kashmir, was nabbed, threatened and processed in the exact
manner described above. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Faris
was a key al Qaeda operative, prowling America's highways in
his monstrous diesel truck, looking for likely terror targets
and sending back coded messages to his nefarious foreign controllers.
True, a few feds grumbled that Faris--who
was reportedly fingered by top al Qaeda operatives now in American
custody--might not actually be the Fu Manchu mastermind of Ashcroft's
ever-fevered imagination. For one thing, the mentally disturbed
trucker's chief threat to the Homeland seems to have been a quixotic
plan to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge--with a blowtorch. In fact,
some insiders suspect yet another prank by the captured Qaeda
honchos, who've sent U.S. agents on wild goose chases all over
world in pursuit of various kibitzers, hangers-on and assorted
small fry.
A few days after the Faris "triumph,"
the Regime took things a step further, actually removing a terror
suspect from the judicial system and plunging him into the limbo-land
of military custody. Illinois graduate student Ali al-Marri had
been imprisoned since December 2001, after Ashcroft told his
agents to round up "anyone with a Muslim-sounding name,"
the Village Voice reports. Held for months on minor charges,
al-Marri, a Qatari national, was finally accused of being a "sleeper
agent"--again, on the say-so of the Qaeda jokesters already
in irons.
But al-Marri maintained his innocence,
refusing to "cooperate" with Ashcroft's agents. So
the Commander himself intervened, declaring the miscreant an
"enemy combatant"--although federal agents admitted
he'd neither taken up arms against America nor planned any terrorist
attacks, Knight-Ridder reports. Even so, he's now at the mercy
of Bush's khaki kangaroo court.
The charges against Faris and al-Marri
might well be true. Or partly true. Or totally false. We'll never
know--because the entire process was sealed from public view.
But whatever their actual degree of guilt or innocence, the prisoners
have served their main purpose: advancing the Bush Regime's assault
on America's dying constitutional republic. These cases are an
important step in further habituating the American people to
the idea of secret arrests, secret detentions, closed hearings
and arbitrary rule by a militarized state apparatus--much as
the illegal invasion of Iraq has accustomed them to the idea
of aggressive war, of murder in the name of corporate loot and
extremist ideology. A new kind of American state is being forged,
where arbitrary authority replaces law, and obedience outweighs
liberty.
Yes, things are far gone in the "Homeland"
these days. No protest about secret arrests. No protest about
the dictatorial powers that Bush has awarded himself, including
the authority to order the assassination of anyone in the world
he designates an "enemy." Bush even boasts about these
extrajudicial killings, which have included at least one American
citizen; indeed, the Commander was showered with applause in
Congress when he laughingly referred to them in his official
State of the Union address. Again, this has all been reported
openly--yet has stirred barely a flicker of public opposition.
History has shown us this sad spectacle
many times before: a people sleepwalking into tyranny and disaster.
A people lulled into a stupor by alternating currents of fear
and frivolity, afraid to cast off their comforting ignorance--their
willful ignorance--of the crimes being committed in their name.
Afraid to face the truth, afraid to fight the lies, afraid indeed
to wake up--and strengthen the things that remain.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
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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