Today's Stories

September 29, 2008

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

September 29, 2008

"Torture is at the Very Center of the Case"

Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

It could all have been so different. Between September 2002 and April 2003, the five defendants in the forthcoming 9/11 trial at Guantánamo -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi) and Walid bin Attash -- were seized and transferred to secret CIA prisons, where they were subjected to an array of “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding. And yet they could, instead, have been questioned by skilled US interrogators for whom torture remains abhorrent, illegal and counter-productive.

These experts would, no doubt, have spent years building up cases against Mohammed and his alleged accomplices and encouraging them to talk through tried and tested methods. After 9/11, however, the White House and the Pentagon decided that skilled interrogation was somehow soft, and that al-Qaeda operatives were so tough that they had been trained to resist all types of traditional interrogation. But as the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer explained in an article last summer, a former CIA officer with knowledge of the techniques used on the al-Qaeda suspects explained, “A lot of them want to talk. Their egos are unimaginable.” 

If the same techniques used before 9/11 had been applied after the attacks, it’s probable that by now Mohammed and his co-defendants would have been tried in a US federal court, and the reputation of the United States -- as a country that does not torture, rather than one with a lying administration that claims it does not torture because it has cynically redefined what torture means -- would still be intact. A case in point, completely overlooked in the administration’s defense of its “robust” new approach, is Ramzi Yousef -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew, and the terrorist behind the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 -- who, as Mayer has explained, “gave a voluminous confession after being read his Miranda rights,” following his capture and rendition to the US court system in 1995.

Instead of being condemned as a mass-murdering criminal, however, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- a man with an “unimaginable” ego, and one, moreover, at the apex of a system of mass imprisonment in which thousands of innocent men and insignificant Taliban foot soldiers have been brutalized, held without charge or trial and deprived of the protections of the Geneva Conventions -- has been allowed to portray himself as a “warrior” in an epic “Clash of Civilizations.”

In his tribunal at Guantánamo last year, Mohammed compared himself to George Washington fighting the British, and last week he spent several days in a courtroom at Guantánamo, unrelated to the US courts or the US military’s own judicial processes, in which he was free to bait the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, to play to the world’s media, and to make strategic use of his torture at US hands to score points against the system set up to try him.

Day One

The action unfolded slowly. At 9 am on Monday, four of the co-defendants gathered in the courtroom for hearings on a series of pre-trial motions, but one -- Ramzi bin al-Shibh -- was nowhere to be seen. Doubts had already been raised about the mental health of the Yemeni, and his lawyers -- whom he is trying to dismiss, so that he can represent himself, like Mohammed and some of his other co-defendants -- were seeking permission to appoint clinical and forensic psychologists to examine him. His lead attorney, Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, stated that the defense team has doubts about his mental health, and noted that his medications include “a psychotropic drug prescribed to persons with schizophrenia.” As a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) explained, Lachelier “referred to pleadings filed by the bin al-Shibh team that contained considerable additional evidence, which she could not discuss in court, which bolstered the claim that he was mentally ill and might not be competent to stand trial or able to participate in his own defense.”

In the end, the rest of the day’s planned discussions were derailed, as the authorities tried to work out what to do about bin al-Shibh’s refusal to appear. Although the military could have brought him to the courtroom against his will, they refused to do so without a formal order from Kohlmann. In the first surreal touch of the hearings, protracted discussions between Kohlmann and the prosecution were only halted when, as the Washington Post described it, Mohammed “raised his hand and offered to meet with bin al-Shibh in an effort to persuade him to come to court,” and was backed up by his co-defendants. Bin Attash explained, “I agree with my brother Sheikh Mohammed. We don't have to do any fight with Mr. Ramzi. He doesn't trust anyone in government, but he does trust us. With what has happened to us in this situation -- we have all lost faith. But we have faith in each other.” Kohlmann refused to allow a meeting, but he did allow the co-defendants to write letters to bin al-Shibh, which they all signed.

The judge also stated that bin al-Shibh should be given another opportunity to meet with his lawyers, but he refused to let Cmdr. Lachelier meet him in his cell, in the prison’s secretive Camp 7, and explained that he would, instead, have to be “transported, hooded and shackled, in a van with blacked-out windows” to a meeting place. Pointing out that this might only add to her client’s reluctance to meet, Lachelier offered to be hooded herself and taken to Camp 7, but Kohlmann refused. As Denny LeBoeuf of the ACLU explained, it was “a remarkable suggestion that highlights yet again the absurdity of Guantánamo's secrecy regime.”

Day Two

As a bizarre spectacle, however, the hearings only really came to life on Tuesday, after bin al-Shibh had responded to the entreaties of his co-defendants, and all five men were in court together for the first time since their arraignment in June. On that occasion, Mohammed’s willingness to be a martyr had dominated the proceedings, but nearly four months later it was apparent that he had decided to take on the US government through the weaknesses in its novel judicial system.

In the voir dire process, in which, as Carol Rosenberg explained in the Miami Herald, “lawyers question a judge on his potential bias at trial,” Mohammed was allowed to grill Kohlmann about his background. “For a while,” as the Los Angeles Times noted, he “turned the tables on his captors and made the military judge justify his competency to preside over the trial.”

“Glaring and poking an occasional finger in the air,” Mohammed told Kohlmann, “The government considers all of us fanatical extremists,” and asked, “How can you, as an officer of the US Marine Corps, stand over me in judgment?” Insisting that he was attempting to work out if Kohlmann was a religious extremist, he continued: “[President] Bush said this is a crusader war and Osama bin Laden said this is a holy war against the crusades. If you were part of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson's group, then you would not be impartial.'”

For his part, Kohlmann attempted to maintain his dignity, explaining that he was “currently unaffiliated with a church ‘because I've moved so often.’” He added that he had previously worshiped at “various Lutheran churches and Episcopal churches,” and the sub-text -- that he was no religious fanatic -- was clear. It was at this point that bin al-Shibh spoke out unexpectedly. “As far as I know your last name is a Jewish name, not a Christian name,” he said, prompting a terse response. “With regard to your observation about my heritage and background,” Kohlmann said, “it's actually inaccurate. And I'll leave it at that.”

Mohammed proceeded to ask Kohlmann about his views on torture. As part of the background materials supplied to him -- or made available to the civilian lawyers who are voluntarily assisting him in his defense -- he referred to an ethics seminar that Kohlmann had conducted at his daughter's high school in 2005, in which the students had been asked to consider their responses to a “Ticking Time Bomb” scenario. Based on a fictional proposition that a bomb is about to go off, and an unwilling captive knows its location but is unwilling to disclose the information, the scenario is widely used by proponents of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to justify the use of torture.

Kohlmann explained that he encouraged the debate as part of “a complex question that might be dealt with differently if someone were specifically trying to save the nation or just looking at it from an ethical sense or just looking at it from a legal sense,” and dismissed a combative question from Mohammed -- “It seems that you are supportive of the use of torture for national security?” -- by stating, “I have no idea where that would come from.”

As Mohammed continued questioning Kohlmann, in what the Washington Post described as a “sometimes rambling disquisition,” he was “frequently unsatisfied,” as Josh Meyer described it in the Los Angeles Times, “and hit Kohlmann with a barrage of follow-up questions and sarcastic political commentary.” Kohlmann put up with this for some time, but when he was asked if he read books by Billy Graham or Pat Buchanan, and what movies he watched, he said that the questions seemed designed “to develop a personality profile,” and stated, “I decline to provide you with my reading list or my movie list.” Finally, after he had twice scolded Mohammed for failing to stick to the topic in hand, and Mohammed muttered aloud, “You reject to answer,” Kohlmann lost his patience. “You are not going to have free rein,” he exclaimed. “I will not allow you to act in a manner that is disrespectful to this court. Do you understand me clearly?”

Nevertheless, it was Mohammed’s day. Although Ramzi bin al-Shibh piped up at one point, declaring, “I am not mentally incompetent,” but haranguing Cmdr. Lachelier in a manner that did not necessarily justify his own appraisal of his mental state, the rest of the co-defendants seemed content to allow Mohammed to speak for them. Even the defense lawyers’ long list of relevant complaints, which, they insisted, would make it impossible for the men to receive a fair trial, were overshadowed by Mohammed’s grandstanding. At various points throughout the day, as the Los Angeles Times put it, they expressed concerns that “lawyer-client conversations may not be confidential,” complained that they “cannot talk to friends and family of the accused as part of their defense preparation without prosecutors finding out about it, which has scared off potential witnesses on their behalf,” and described the court translators as incompetent, which was proving to be “a severe hindrance for defendants who don't speak English.”

Explaining how bad the situation was, Major Jon Jackson, the lawyer for Mustafa al-Hawsawi, said at the end of the day that his client “doesn't understand about a quarter of the court proceedings because of incomprehensible interpretation.” But although he and other lawyers “asked for the transcripts of each day's proceedings to be made available in English and Arabic so that they can go over each day's events with their clients and make corrections for the record,” as the ACLU explained, the government “strenuously opposed the request,” stating that it was “enough for the defendants to be present and observe the proceedings.” This prompted Major Jackson to complain, “I could not believe my government would not provide transcripts in the native language of the accused that it wants to put to death.”

While a few commentators noticed these exchanges, however, most eyes were on Mohammed. As the Associated Press pointed out, “During breaks, Mohammed pivoted in his seat at his defense table and chatted amiably in Arabic with his co-defendants, who sat at their own tables arrayed behind him -- despite complaints that he used a similar opportunity in June to pressure the others to reject their Pentagon-appointed defense lawyers.”

Day Three

On the third and final day of this round of pre-trial hearings, as the Washington Post put it, “The loquacious Mohammed, as he does on most days, took the lead in speaking for the other four defendants.” Following up on claims made the previous day that Kohlmann’s background as a Marine prevented him from being impartial, he stated, “I believe that we are part of an inquisition,” adding that Kohlmann was an officer in the US military, “which is “currently occupying our Muslim holy lands. As I address the court now, your government is killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.” On another occasion, he said, “I don’t believe you respect Muslims. We are your enemy,” adding, with a sly broadside about how he and his co-defendants had been treated for years, “If this is the case, you could have killed us years ago instead of holding us for years under torture.”

The thrust of Mohammed’s remarks, however, focused on an admission by Kohlmann that he was due to retire in April. Asking the judge to disqualify himself from the case, he said, “It is clear you are retiring before [the trial] is completed,” and argued that, as a result, he “might inappropriately rush the proceedings.” Kohlmann replied that Mohammed's claims were “completely wrong,” and “briskly rejected each argument offered as a basis for disqualification,” but the announcement of his departure was not reassuring. Although Kohlmann is the chief judge at the Commissions, and selected himself for the 9/11 trial, defense lawyers noted that, “with unused leave time,” he “could be gone as early as mid-January.” And that, as bin Attash’s lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. James Hatcher explained, would mean that “a new round of pretrial hearings would be required and the new judge would be forced to reexamine earlier rulings.” “It will,” he said, “make an already complex case even more complex.”

With Mohammed’s attention-grabbing antics out of the way, the rest of the day’s proceedings focused on “defense motions seeking more resources for the defendants and easier access to them for their attorneys, both by person and by phone.” Explaining that the prosecution was seeking “to improve access while maintaining security,” lead prosecutor Col. Robert Swann explained, as the Associated Press put it, that the government was “preparing to issue each defendant a laptop computer loaded with 40,782 pages of documents and more than 50 videos.” He added that “they could not safely be provided with requested printers or other equipment with electrical cords, presumably because of the danger of suicide.” It transpired, after Amanda Lee, one of Ali Abdul Aziz Ali’s attorneys, asked for the men to have “unfettered access to news articles so that they can be prepared to challenge expert witnesses for the prosecution,” that they currently only receive a redacted version of USA Today, and that their lawyers are prohibited from giving them other material when they meet them.

Away from Mohammed and the limelight, it is issues like these -- and the other problems raised by the defense lawyers on Tuesday -- that will be fought over until the next time the five men appear in a courtroom. As Major Jackson explained, “This is going to be a long, long, long battle before these accused get sentenced.” And while Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali’s military lawyer, closed the proceedings by promising, “Torture is at issue in this case. It is going to be at the very center of this case,” my feeling is that it is, above all, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who will remain at the center of the case, doing all he can to derail a system that is an inadequate substitute for a real trial.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk

He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk

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