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Today's Stories September 27, 2007 Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z         Subscribe Online

September 27, 2007 Lawyers are Denied Access to Detainees A Bad Week at Guantánamo By ANDY WORTHINGTON One thing you learn when studying Guantánamo is that nothing can ever be taken for granted, and the events of the last week have demonstrated, yet again, that this is the case. In Washington, last week District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed 16 lawsuits, challenging the indefinite imprisonment of at least 40 detainees in Guantánamo. This has had the knock-on effect of denying lawyers access to their clients. Crowing smugly, Justice Department lawyer Andrew Warden declared after the decision, "In light of this development, counsel access (both legal mail and in-person visits) is no longer permitted." That this is possible, 39 months after the Supreme Court ruled decisively, in Rasul v. Bush, that the detainees had the right to challenge the basis of their detention, and that habeas corpus was, as Justice John Stephens so memorably described it, "a writ antecedent to statute throwing its roots deep into the genius of our common law," demonstrates, succinctly, how the Bush administration has, for the last six years, shamed the "genius" of the American legal system by reducing it to a game of legislative ping-pong. Although lawyers for the detainees remain confident that the Supreme Court will rule in the detainees' favor (probably in spring 2008), this is a terrible setback for the detainees in question. Imprisoned without charge or trial for over five and a half years, they have no other contact with the outside world apart from through the minimal ministrations of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and their lawyers are often their only lifeline. This process is made that much harder when, year after year, the lawyers are driven to admit to their clients that, despite widespread opposition to the existence of Guantánamo, their attempts to bring them justice-- a day in court before a judge who can impartially weigh the evidence set before him by the government-- are repeatedly obstructed by the administration. In all likelihood, Judge Urbina's ruling will not shut down the lawyer-client relationship entirely. As reported by the Associated Press, Andrew Warden "outlined a series of legal steps that would be required before the attorneys could resume contact with the detainees." After jumping through hoops and being generally belittled, more restrictive arrangements will be arranged with the lawyers, but they may come too late for the Libyan detainee Abdul Rauf al-Qassim. Cleared by a military administrative board after five years at Guantánamo, al-Qassim, a deserter from the Libyan army, had spent a decade living in Afghanistan and Pakistan without raising arms against anyone, and was kidnapped from a house in Lahore, Pakistan, in May 2002, after fleeing Afghanistan with his pregnant Afghan wife. Al-Qassim has spent most of this year fighting cynical attempts by the administration to return him to the country of his birth, where he has legitimate fears that he will be tortured. Wells Dixon, one of his lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights, explained that he would "most likely not be able to complete [the new] measures in time for a scheduled visit" with al-Qassim next month, which he described as "crucial," because he was "in the midst of trying to prevent the government from transferring [him] back to Libya. In measured tones, he added, "This is just the latest example of the government's efforts to frustrate counsel access to detainees." In a press release, another CCR attorney, Shayana Kadidal, spelt out al-Qassim's plight in stronger terms: "We need to remember that this is a man the government has cleared for release-- as close to a statement of innocence as the government will ever issue. Abdul Rauf should never have been taken to Guantánamo in the first place, and the courts should not allow the government to 'disappear' him into Libya in order to cover up its own mistake." In a second, and far more shocking development, the Military Commissions at Guantánamo-- the widely derided show trials, which purport to provide justice, while relying on secret evidence obtained through torture-- stumbled back to life on Monday. Condemned as illegal under US law and the Geneva Conventions by the Supreme Court in June 2006, the Commissions were reinstated in the Military Commissions Act (MCA) last fall, but were derailed again three months ago, when the military judges appointed to preside over the cases of child soldier Omar Khadr and Salim Hamdan, one of Osama bin Laden's chauffeurs, shut down the trials. They argued, correctly, that the MCA had mandated them to try "illegal enemy combatants," whereas the system that had made them eligible for trial-- the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, "administrative" hearings which also relied on secret evidence obtained through unknown means-- had only declared them to be "enemy combatants." After a farcical interlude, in which the administration declared petulantly that it would appeal the judges' decisions, and was then pilloried when it transpired that the appeals court in question had not yet been established, the Court of Military Commissions Review convened a month ago in a borrowed courtroom near the White House. Announcing their verdict on Monday, the court's three military judges-- all appointed by the Pentagon-- agreed with Khadr's military judge, Col. Peter Brownback, that Khadr's classification as an "enemy combatant" at his Combatant Status Review Tribunal in Guantánamo "failed to meet the requirements for jurisdiction set forth in the Military Commissions Act," but explained that Brownback had "erred" in ruling that a Tribunal Review was required to determine that Khadr was an "unlawful enemy combatant" as a pre-requisite for bringing charges against him under the Military Commissions Act. They added, moreover, that he had "abused his discretion in deciding this critical jurisdictional matter without first fully considering" the government's evidence. The decision was immediately condemned by human rights activists. Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national security project, declared, "This ruling may be a step forward for the military commissions but it's a step backwards for the rule of law. While there are prisoners at Guantánamo who should be tried for war crimes, they should be tried under rules that are fair and that will be perceived as fair. The current rules fail this test." More importantly, the verdict was also condemned by Khadr's defense lawyers, led by Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, the principled military attorney, who, in the past few months, has described the Commissions as rigged, ridiculous, unjust, farcical, a sham, and a lawless process. As soon as Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman announced that Khadr's trial had been revived, and that it was the Pentagon's intention "to move out in an expeditious manner to get the military commission cases to trial," Kuebler responded by saying that Khadr's legal team would appeal, asking a civilian court in Washington to block the trial. "This court," Kuebler explained, referring to the Court of Military Commissions Review, "had the chance to bring some degree of legitimacy to an otherwise lawless process," adding, pointedly, "It failed to do so." In a statement, he and Khadr's other lawyers-- Dennis Edney and Nathan Whitling-- accused the military judge of "prohibited off-the-record coordination," and explained that the date set by the Pentagon for Khadr's trial to begin-- October 11-- failed to allow them enough time to challenge the case. "It is the latest evidence of the government's determination to rush forward with the flawed military commission process at breakneck speed, disregarding whatever rights of the accused that may get in the way," Kuebler declared. Expect more fireworks to follow from the latest in an increasingly long line of government-appointed military lawyers to have turned on their masters in the most principled manner possible. Those in any doubt that Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler means what he says should recall that in June he explained to a GQ reporter, "I think things have been done to people that under any definition except this administration's very narrow one would be torture." Andy Worthington (www.andyworthington.co.uk) is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007). He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk Your Ad Here

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