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Recent
Stories
July
2, 2003
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
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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July
3, 2003
Outlawing Subversives
Hong
Kong and the United States
By DAVID LINDORFF
There's a certain irony in the verbal support
being offered by the U.S. government and members of Congress
for democratic activists in Hong Kong who are fighting a quixotic
battle against Hong Kong government plans to pass a sedition
and treason law for the territory and former British colony.
Among the biggest concerns to Hong Kong democracy advocates--and
target of U.S. critics--is a portion of the law that would allow
the Hong Kong authorities to ban, i.e. outlaw, any organization
associated with some organization inside China deemed to be subversive
by Chinese government authorities.
Let's think about this.
Under the USA PATRIOT ACT, federal authorities
are allowed to arrest people who are connected with overseas
organizations which the U.S. authorities in their wisdom (but
without any hearing or court ruling) decide are "terrorist."
Indeed, under current, post 9-11 law,
if an American citizen gives money to an organization in the
U.S.--say a charity -- which then gives that money to a foreign
organization which, unknown to the U.S. donor, has been labeled
"terrorist" by the State or Justice Department (perhaps
even in secret), that  person could be arrested
and charged with being a terrorist or supporter of terror.
Exactly how different is this from the
proposed Hong Kong law, known as Section 23 (a reference to its
proposed position in Hong Kong's "constitution," called
the Basic Law), to which the U.S. is objecting?
The remarkable thing is that in Hong
Kong, a city of 7 million that is not known for its political
activism, half a million people--a tenth of the adult population
of the so-called Special Administrative Region--came out on a
sweltering day on July 1, despite police obstacles and alternative
inducements like free movie and amusement park tickets offered
by an anxious government, to protest the proposed new security
law.
In the U.S., so far, most people don't
even know what the USA PATRIOT Act is, and among those who do
know, many are completely untroubled by its draconian features.
While the Hong Kong security law has been bitterly debated for
the past year and has been intensely covered and analyzed in
the local media, the USA PATRIOT act--a treacherous undermining
of the Bill or Rights crafted by Attorney General John Ashcroft--
was passed by a craven Congress, almost without dissent, and
with no debate, two months after the 9/11 attacks, and has subsequently
largely been ignored by the U.S. corporate media.
Why the dramatic difference in public--and
media--response to these two draconian laws in the U.S. and Hong
Kong? Probably it's the fact that the majority of the population
in Hong Kong is composed of people who either fled China's totalitarian
society or who are one generation removed from people who fled
that police-state political system (many too, remember how Hong
Kong's British rulers used their own sedition laws to terrorize
people in the colony over the years before limited democratic
rule was introduced). The whole populace--even those who are
generations removed from China, have only to look across the
border at Shenzhen to be aware of what happens when authorities
are handed the right to arrest people for thought crimes, or
for supporting organizations that oppose the ruling political
elite. In the U.S., unless you are a member of a minority group,
or are an immigrant, you and your more recent forebears have
probably never experienced such a thing. White middle-class America
simply has no experience with the midnight knock on the door.
Hong Kong, which is now under Chinese
sovereignty, will probably end up with a nasty sedition law on
its books, but the dramatic July 1 protest has clearly registered
with authorities in both Hong Kong and Beijing, and it is unlikely
that Section 23 will lead to any serious restriction of freedom
in the city for at least a while. Neither government wants to
risk even larger protest at a time that the city is reeling from
the SARs epidemic and an Asian economic crisis. Massive protest
against the new law has made it, at least in the near term, unenforceable.
But what about the U.S.?
Public quiescence about the federal government's
ongoing assault on civil liberties has encouraged the Bush Administration
and the Department of Justice to propose a strengthening of the
USA PATRIOT ACT courtesy of a second measure, dubbed PATRIOT
II, with Ashcroft claiming that he doesn1t yet have enough extra-judicial
power to spy on and detain Americans.
We're unlikely to see millions taking
to the street to object to passage of PATRIOT II.
Maybe we who do oppose the Bush Administration's
treasonous assault on our treasured rights and libeties should
turn to China and Hong Kong for help. Perhaps their governments
and diplomats would be willing to send letters to Washington
objecting to these dreadful laws.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend Edition
Features
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
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