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Today's Stories November 8, 2007 Kathleen & Bill Christison Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine November 7, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor? Vijay Prashad The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal Niranjan Ramakrishnan Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf Alan Farago To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse David Macaray The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker? Nikolas Kozloff The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey Charlotte Laws What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign Daniel White Zahid's Story William Cook The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby Website of the Day Safe Lawns   November 6, 2007 Mike Whitney Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution Ralph Nader Who Determines the Price of Oil? Andy Worthington The Torture of Ali al-Marri Pam Martens Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan's Dark Future William Schroder The Return of Water Torture Stephen Lendman Punishing Gaza William Blum Cuba and Original Sin Former US Intelligence Officers A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey   November 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer David Macaray How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer) Gary Leupp General Musharaff's "State of Emergency" Dave Lindorff Those Minot Nukes Ludwig Watzal Israel's Dilemma in Palestine Patrick Cockburn Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan Peter Stone Brown John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past Michael Simmons Yo! What Happened to Peace? Website of the Day Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students   November 3 / 4, 2007 Tariq Ali Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship Jeffrey St. Clair Splitsville Alan Farago The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class Paul Krassner He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards Rannie Amiri Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals P. Sainath Indexing Humanity, Indian Style Ayesha Ijaza Khan Pakistan in a Daze Robert Fantina Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? Seth Sandronsky The Politics of Health Care in California Ron Jacobs The Bebop of Baraka Ramzy Baroud A Case for Arab Dignity Heather Gray When Capitalists Get a Free Ride   November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

November 8, 2007 FISA and America's Basic Freedoms Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act By Sen. RUSSELL FEINGOLD I sit on the Intelligence Committee, and there is no question that some of that committee's work must be conducted behind closed doors due to the sensitive nature of the information it handles on a regular basis. But it would have been far preferable if the Intelligence Committee had considered its FISA legislation in a more open process. As it drafted its bill, that Committee would have benefited from the input of a wide variety of experts. But those experts, who have quite a different point of view on the issues raised by this bill than the Administration, were not able to comment on it before the committee marked the bill up. So I am particularly glad that the Judiciary Committee is holding this open markup, and that it has held open hearings on these issues. The public should have the ability to see what we are doing on this very important issue. In addition, this committee's expertise in privacy and civil liberties, and FISA, is crucial to this debate. This committee's consideration is also important because the bill reported by the Intelligence Committee, which Senator Wyden and I voted against, is badly flawed. Given the promises that were made after the rushed consideration of the Protect America Act last summer, I was very disappointed that the bill reported by the Intelligence Committee did not do more to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans. As the members of this committee are well aware, before leaving town for the August recess, Congress bowed to pressure from the administration by vastly expanding the government's ability to eavesdrop without a court-approved warrant. That legislation, the so-called Protect America Act, was rushed through without adequate consideration, but at least it had a six-month sunset to force Congress to do its homework and reconsider the approach taken in that bill. Congress should take this opportunity to fix its mistakes and pass a new bill that lets the government spy on suspected terrorists but also protects Americans' basic freedoms. This time around, Congress must stand up to an Administration that opposes reasonable privacy protections for law-abiding Americans and that is insisting on immunity language that would effectively prevent courts from ruling on the legality of its warrantless wiretapping program. Let me be clear. I agree that there is a legislative problem that needs to be addressed. Congress should make clear that when foreign terrorists are communicating with each other overseas, the U.S. government doesn't need a warrant to listen in, even if the collection ends up taking place in this country because of the way modern communications are routed. Unfortunately, the bill recently approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee goes far beyond fixing that problem, just as the Protect America Act did. It still allows the government to listen to communications between Americans in the United States and their friends and colleagues abroad without judicial oversight, even if no one involved has any connection to terrorism or any other criminal activity. The government could secretly monitor the communications of an American reporter talking to sources overseas, or an American e-mailing relatives or friends abroad, without any meaningful protections for those Americans. These aren't hypothetical concerns. Because the whole point of these bills is to allow the government to intercept communications in the U.S. and to get them directly from the telecommunications companies, it will result in the collection of enormous numbers of communications involving Americans here at home, without a warrant and without court oversight. It is critically important that we understand the impact that this legislation will have on the privacy of Americans. Before the PAA, all of these communications were collected through a warrant. Now, no warrants are required and the Court has next to no ability to ensure that Americans' communications are protected. At the same time, the scope of these new warrantless collection authorities are far beyond what is commonly understood. Even the Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program at least focused on terrorism. This bill allows for collection to obtain "foreign intelligence information," which is almost anything. The person with whom the American is speaking does not have to be a terrorist suspect. They don't have to be a suspect of any kind. But the bill is even broader than that. The Director of National Intelligence confirmed during a hearing of this Committee that the PAA, and presumably this bill as well, authorizes bulk collection of international communications, meaning the government doesn't have to have any reason at all for collecting the communications. It could just suck it all up. In America, we understand that if we happen to be talking to a criminal suspect, our conversations might be overheard by the government. That applies to terrorists overseas as well. What we don't expect is that all our international conversations could be overheard. And we certainly don't expect that our conversations could be disseminated without any meaningful court oversight. That is why additional privacy protections are so critical, but they aren't in this bill. Now, the Senate Intelligence Committee bill does make improvements over the PAA in some respects. It requires court orders to target Americans overseas. It also gives the FISA Court a small role in reviewing the procedures the government will use to determine if its targets are overseas. But under the bill, the government would not have to get approval from the FISA court until after the procedures have gone into effect. And the court has virtually no power to ensure the government is following even those minimal requirements, much less to protect the privacy of Americans with whom overseas targets are communicating. In America, the courts are supposed to have the last word in protecting individual rights, not the executive branch. It is essential that the FISA court have the power to exercise continuing oversight over this new and very broad power that the bill gives to the government. As we work on this bill, I ask my colleagues to keep in mind how common international communications now are. Thirty years ago it was very expensive, and not very common, for most Americans to make an overseas call. Oftentimes the connections were spotty. Now, particularly with email, such communications are commonplace. Millions of ordinary, and innocent, Americans communicate with people overseas for entirely legitimate personal and business reasons. Students email friends they have met while studying abroad. Business people communicate with colleagues or clients overseas all the time. Reporters have sources all over the world. Technological advancements combined with the ever more interconnected world economy have led to an explosion of international contacts. It is common for those who want to give the government new powers to argue that we just have to bring FISA up to date with new technology. But changes in technology should also cause us to take a close look at the need for greater protections of the privacy of our citizens. I am going to offer amendments that attempt to deal with these issues. If we are going to give the government broad new powers that may very well lead to the collection of information on innocent Americans, we have a duty to protect their privacy as much as we possibly can. And we can do that without sacrificing any of the efficacy of these new powers for collecting information that will help protect our national security. That is the point I want to emphasize. This is not a zero-sum game. Not every protection for privacy and civil liberties leads to a reduction in the ability to identify and capture those who would harm us. We can and we must protect both privacy and national security. We just have to work a little harder to find ways to do that. Let me remind my colleagues of words spoken by Judge Michael Mukasey, who this committee just reported to the floor to be the next Attorney General. At his confirmation hearing, he said: "We can't turn our society into something that's not worth preserving in order to preserve it. That's not a formula for success." I believe he is right. This Congress, and this committee in particular, needs to pay closer attention to the effect of the powers it grants the government on the privacy and freedom of innocent citizens. In one very significant respect, the Intelligence Committee bill is far worse than the PAA. It provides retroactive immunity to companies that allegedly cooperated with the illegal warrantless wiretapping program set up secretly after 9/11 ­ an illegal program that continued for more than five years. I am strongly opposed to this entirely unjustified grant of immunity. For one, it is unnecessary. Current law already provides immunity from lawsuits for companies that cooperate with the government's request for assistance, as long as they receive either a court order or a certification from the Attorney General that no court order is needed and the request meets all statutory requirements. This limited immunity already protects companies that act in good faith while also protecting the privacy of Americans' communications. There is no reason to grant companies that allegedly cooperated with the program a new form of retroactive immunity that undermines the law that actually applied during the course of this illegal program. If we want companies to follow the law in the future, it sends a terrible message, and sets a terrible precedent, to grant a new form of retroactive, blanket immunity for alleged cooperation with an illegal program. It would also very likely prevent the courts from ruling on the warrantless wiretapping program, which would explain why the administration is pushing so hard for it. This program was one of the worst abuses of executive power in our history, and the courts should be able to rule on it once and for all. Congress should never have passed the so-called Protect America Act, even for six months. We should fix this law to make sure we protect Americans' privacy as we wiretap terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets. We also should not be granting unjustified retroactive immunity for those alleged to have cooperated with the Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program. It is my hope that the Judiciary Committee will pass a better bill than the Intelligence Committee did. I am heartened that a number of important changes are included in the substitute to Title I circulated by Senator Leahy. I commend the Chairman for working to improve this bill. I will have additional amendments to offer to make sure that the bill adequately protects the rights of innocent Americans who may get caught up in this new form of surveillance, but the substitute is a good start. And we must address the immunity question in a different way than the Intelligence Committee bill did. Let's not make the same mistake that we made with the Patriot Act. We passed that law without taking the time to consider its implications, and we didn't do enough during the reauthorization process to fix it. As a result, three federal courts have struck down provisions of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional. And that is right back where we are going to end up if we don't do our jobs and fix the Protect America Act. Russ Feingold is the US Senator from Wisconsin.   The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! Israel's Very Dangerous Gamble STEPHEN GREEN reports on the real motivations behind Israel's MISSILE STRIKE on SYRIA. PETER MONTAGUE on the NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE or How the Nuke Industry is using Gore's Prize and Global Warming to Plot Its Big Comeback. WILLIAM BLUM on the DEVALUING of "ANTI-SEMITE" or How to Make a Term Meaningless. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Your Ad Here

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"