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Today's
Stories
July
6, 2004
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
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July
6, 2004
The
Felonious Five Ride Again
The
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
By
MARC NORTON
PART ONE
You have just been hauled off by Homeland
Security and declared an Enemy Combatant. Maybe you hung out
with the wrong people in Pakistan. Maybe you logged into that
website that describes how to make a "dirty bomb."
Maybe the cousin of that Arab guy next to you at the firing range
once shared a cab with Mohamed Atta. It doesn't matter, they've
got their claws into you now.
But, not to worry. According
to a whole host of progressive human rights organizations, the
Supreme Court handed Bush his hat on June 28 -- an "historic
ruling" and a "strong repudiation" of the administration,
according to Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"This is a major victory for the rule of law," claims
Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, "and
affirms the right of every person, citizen or non-citizen...
to test the legality of his or her detention in a U.S. Court."
Yup, everyone "can now have their day in court," says
Jamie Fellner from Human Rights Watch.
So now you and the rest of
your fellow Enemy Combatants wait for your day in court. And
wait. And wait. And wait.
You wait because what the Supreme
Court did was not a "major victory" at all. What the
Supreme Court has actually done is enshrine the concept of Enemy
Combatants into our legal system, strip you of nearly all of
your constitutional "due process" rights, and consign
you to a legal limbo that would make both Franz Kafka and George
Orwell spin in their graves.
PRELUDE:
THE 2000 ELECTION
Al Gore won the popular vote,
but you know the story. Thousands of voters in Florida not allowed
to vote, thousands more handed misleading ballots, thousands
more disenfranchised when their chad-impaired ballots were thrown
away. Even then, just when defeat stared George W. Bushboy in
the face, the majority of the Supreme Court rode to the rescue
of their ideological soulmate, with an "equal protection"
ruling so ridiculous that the same Court had rejected the same
legal argument only weeks before.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas -- dubbed the "Felonious Five" -- earned themselves
a special place in the history of scoundrels. "Although
we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the
winner of this year's presidential election," wrote dissenting
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, "the identity of
the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in
[the Supreme Court] as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
And yet this is the same cast
of characters who just provided us with "a major victory
for the rule of law." Apparently leopards do change their
spots.
JOSE PADILLA
Again, you know the story.
Jose Padilla -- a U.S. citizen, a resident of New York, a Puerto
Rican, and a Muslim -- is arrested in Chicago as a "material
witness" in connection with an alleged plot to detonate
a radioactive "dirty bomb." Attorney General John Ashcroft
himself calls a press conference to announce the arrest. Then,
when the government lawyers run into legal difficulties holding
Padilla, the Prez declares him an Enemy Combatant and sends him
off to a Navy brig in South Carolina. There he is held incommunicado,
without charges, for two years. Padilla's attorney, Donna Newman,
appointed by the Southern District of New York to represent him
when he was being held as a "material witness," files
a habeas corpus petition. Eventually she wins a ruling from the
New York appeals court ordering the Bush administration to either
release Padilla or to file criminal charges. The administration
then files an appeal to the Supreme Court.
The stage is now set for a
"major victory for the rule of law." Padilla is the
poster boy for victims of civil rights abuses. He's a citizen,
arrested in the U.S. There has been no evidence presented to
any court about his alleged transgressions, other than vague
hearsay. There are no charges. He has been denied access to his
lawyer almost the entire time he has been incarcerated, and when
he does finally meet with her, their conversations are monitored
by the feds. He has the New York appeals court behind him. How
can the Bushies wiggle out of this one?
Easy. Bush wins on a technical
knockout. By a 5-4 vote, the Supremes declare that Padilla's
attorney filed her habeas corpus petition in the wrong courtroom.
And who are the five who consign
Padilla to who-knows-how-many more years of legal limbo? Why,
none other than the Felonious Five -- the same five black-robed
thieves who put Bush in the White House, the same five injustices
who told the American people that democracy will have to wait
for at least four more years.
According to the Felonious
Five, Padilla's attorney should have filed her petition in the
District of South Carolina, where Padilla is currently being
held in captivity, instead of the Southern District of New York,
where Padilla was first arrested. Instead of naming Donald Rumsfeld,
Bush's Secretary of Defense, as the defendant, she should have
named Melanie Marr, Commander of the Consolidated Naval Brig
in South Carolina.
The dissent, written by Justice
Stevens and joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and Stephen Breyer, rips this technical argument apart. The President
had expressly designated Rumsfeld to detain Padilla. The administration
conceded that Rumsfeld's war department first took custody of
Padilla in New York, where he had been jailed as a "material
witness." Newman was appointed to be Padilla's lawyer by
the court in New York. She filed the habeas corpus motion in
New York, before being informed that Padilla had been secretly
transferred to South Carolina. "If jurisdiction was proper
when the petition was filed," writes Stevens, "it cannot
be defeated by a later transfer of the prisoner to another district."
All the proceedings concerning Padilla's detention, both as a
"material witness" and as an Enemy Combatant, took
place in New York.
Finally, as the New York court
observed, Rumsfeld has publicly shown "both his familiarity
with the circumstances of Padilla's detention, and his personal
involvement in the handling of Padilla's case." Contrast
that with Rumsfeld's claimed lack of familiarity with the conditions
in Abu Ghraib.
But Stevens doesn't stop with
a technical argument about courtrooms. In language reminiscent
of his scathing dissent in Bush v. Gore, he call portions of
the majority's argument "disingenuous at best." Calling
someone disingenuous, for those unschooled in the art of tact,
is a polite way to call that person a liar. Stevens and his colleagues
claim that the Padilla case poses "a unique and unprecedented
threat to the freedom of every American citizen... At stake is
nothing less than the essence of a free society... For if this
Nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag,
it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault
by the forces of tyranny."
That's strong language. But
you probably read it here first. Neither the media, nor our friends
on the left so eager to declare major victories, have quoted
this dissent.
NEXT: YASER
ESAM HAMDI & GUANTANAMO
Marc Norton wrote about the Felonious Five and
Enemy Combatants in the January 1, 2004 print edition of CounterPunch.
He has also written on the subject in Beyond
Chron, a San Francisco-based online daily. Marc Norton can
be reached at nortonsf@ix.netcom.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
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Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
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The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
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The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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