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Today's
Stories
September
25, 2003
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
26, 2003
Return of the Secret
Courts
The
Chicago Conspiracy Trial and the Patriot Act
By RON JACOBS
In late September of 1969, the US Department of
Justice opened its prosecution of eight men on charges that included
"conspiracy to cross state lines and/or us interstate transport
with the intent to incite a riot." These eight became known
to middle America as the Chicago 8. After the one black member
of the indicted-Black Panther Bobby Seale-was severed from the
trial due to the rather overt racism of the presiding judge,
the defendants became the Chicago 7. To their supporters, they
were always known as "the Conspiracy", as in "If
there is a conspiracy to end the war, if there is a conspiracy
to end racism, if there is a conspiracy to end the harassment
of the cultural revolution, then, we, too, must join the conspiracy."
These men, (all men despite the fact
that several women had been as intimately involved in the planning
of the 1968 demonstrations against the Democratic party convention
in Chicago), were picked by the government to represent all those
forces arrayed against the United States-Black Panthers, hippies,
antiwar radicals, student radicals-you name it, these were the
guys who ran it all. The charges stemmed from the battles at
the Democratic convention a little more than a year earlier:
battles that began when the Chicago Mayor's office refused to
give the organizers permits to stay in certain city parks overnight
or to march on the convention site itself. The battles ended
in front of the Chicago Hilton where police brutally attacked
protesters, media workers, and bystanders alike. Some of the
heat was even felt inside the convention center itself as antiwar
Democrats faced off with those who supported the murder in Indochina.
When it was all over, the Democrats had
nominated Hubert Humphrey, who went on to lose to Richard Nixon
in a very close race. These two men were joined in the campaign
by third party candidate George Wallace, who openly campaigned
for the racist vote. It was Wallace's campaign that would inspire
every GOP campaign since then, in what has become known amongst
mainstream political pundits as the "Southern Strategy."
As any honest political pundit might tell you, this is nothing
but an appeal to white racism-an appeal that has worked only
too well ever since 1968.
The constitutionality of the law under
which the Conspiracy defendants were charged was a matter of
some debate back in 1969. Its origins can be found in the attempts
by various (mostly) Southern congressmen and senators who wished
to craft a law that could be used against black activists who
traveled the nation speaking to mostly black audiences about
changing their situation in America. Occasionally, these speeches
were followed by vigorous protests, which sometimes ended up
in battles with police. Two of the activists most often mentioned
in the testimony that crafted this law were H. Rap Brown and
Stokely Carmichael. Hence, the law itself became known as the
H. Rap Brown law. Rather ironically, it was part of the larger
1968 Civil Rights Law.
It was the defendants' attorneys' (among
them William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass) belief that this
law was unconstitutional because it constituted a "state
of mind" prosecution. Indeed, their argument went, this
law was not about rioting or even inciting a riot, but about
what was going on in the accuseds mind when they crossed a state
line. The only way to even begin to attempt to prove such a
thing would be by entering as evidence speeches, writings, and
other comments-actions protected under the First Amendment.
The ACLU summarized the inherent problem with this part of the
law like this:
Any "outside agitator" (who
by virtue of being such will have crossed state lines and have
committed an overt act) runs the risk that he will be accused
of having done so with "evil intent." The college
student who helps black sharecroppers in Mississippi to organize
may be found to have had the intent to "aid and abet them
in carrying on a riot." The speaker who urges residents
of the slum or ghetto to "do something about their situation"
may be found to have had the "evil intent" if some
months later those persons riot-there is no requirement in the
statute that his action has had anything to do with the riot."
The attorneys further argued that the
only way the government could prosecute its case was through
the use of illegal wiretaps. Indeed, this turned out to be the
case. Despite the objections of the defense, the government argued
that the wiretaps should be allowed because the prosecution involved
a matter of "national security."
Five months later, the verdicts were
in. The defendants were not found guilty on the charges of conspiracy,
but most were individually found guilty of crossing state lines
with the intent to incite a riot. The trial was a trial of the
movement and the counterculture and was a harbinger of the immediate
future for those who had a vision of the United States that differed
from the Nixon administration. Many of the convictions were
thrown out years later due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Jump ahead to 2003. The PATRIOT Acts
have made legal most of what was illegal for the Justice Department
back in 1968. Many forms of protest are now potentially considered
terrorist acts by the government. US citizens are disappeared
under the guise of national security and, if the second series
of these laws pass, many citizens risk losing their citizenship
and being deported. Prosecutor misconduct is a thing of the
past in the United States after 911. Not only are wiretaps conducted
without knowledge, they are expected. Attorneys who represent
so-called terrorists can count on their conversations with their
clients taped. Law enforcement can break into someone's house,
take whatever evidence they feel is appropriate and not let the
victim of the break-in know until after the fact.
Secret courts can convict defendants
who may or may not have been involved in antigovernment actions.
Indeed, antigovernment actions are being re-defined as any actions
that block commerce. FBI agents can approach libraries and bookstores
and ask demand that they turn over information regarding an individual's
book purchases or library loans and the store proprietor or library
worker is not allowed to acknowledge that such an incident took
place. People who donate money to a charity organization that
the Justice department eventually ties to an organization the
US government has deemed terrorist can be charged with aiding
and abetting. This can happen even if the designation is made
months or years after the donation was made. Just as the H.
Rap Brown law was an attempt to prosecute someone based on the
government's perception of their "state of mind.,"
it is clear that the purpose of the PATRIOT Acts is to expand
these types of prosecutions even further.
The Chicago Conspiracy trial was one
of several such trials in the 1960s and 1970s. They were part
of the US government program known as COINTELPRO. Most of these
trials were opposed in public demonstrations and other such displays.
It is due to this opposition that many of the defendants walked
and many others had their convictions overturned. Unfortunately,
many others (usually black of Latino) ended up dead or in jail
for life. One is fooling themselves if they think that their
skin color and ethnicity had nothing to do with their fate.
In the United States of 2003, a similar scenario is occurring.
Jose Padillo, a Chicago man who was designated as an enemy combatant
by the Justice Department, has spent over 500 days in prison.
He has yet to have any charges filed against him. His fate
is matched by hundreds of others-natural born and immigrants-from
Arab and other Central Asian countries. Many of these individuals
have had only minimal contact with their families or an attorney
since they were rounded up. Even if the charges against those
who have had charges filed against them turn out to be true,
these prisoners have a basic human right to an attorney and contact
with their families.
Unless those of us who are still on the
outside make the fate of these individuals our business, they
may spend years in detention without ever having done anything.
If this can happen to them, just because they are currently
marginalized, what's to stop the police state apparatus from
silencing us next?
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the
Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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