Today's
Stories
February
27, 2007
Tom Barry
America's
Crusaders: Santorum and Lieberman
February
26, 2007
Franklin Lamb
US
Israel Lobby Targets Lebanon's Jihad al-Bina
Bill Quigley
The
Right to Return to New Orleans
Greg Moses
Suzi Hazahza in Haskell Hell
Col. Dan Smith
Calling All Carriers
Ralph Nader
The Bush Administration is a Threat to Our National Security
Paul Buchheit
The Income Gap
Jeff Leys
How Democrats Are Buying the Iraq War
Dave Zirin
Bojangling for Bigots: an Open Letter to Jason Whitlock
Mike Whitney
Doomsday Dick and the Plague of Frogs
Michael Dickinson
Free Kareem Amer!
Website of the Day
Beware the Chickenhawks!
February
24 / 25, 2007
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Frightening
Tales of Endangered Species
R. T. Naylor
Inside Islamic Charity
Gary Leupp
AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran
Saul Landau
Modern Day Miracle: Rev. Haggard Cured! Thank You, Jesus!
Ron Jacobs
Missile Defense Redux
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Debate on the Israel Lobby
Chris Sands
Afghanistan in Winter: Where Death Comes Cheap
Gary Freeman
The N-Word and Black History Month
Larry Portis
Zionism and the United States: the Cultural Connection
P. Sainath
Two Million People in "Maximum Distress"
Lee Sustar
What Next for the Immigrants' Rights Movement?
Kevin Wehr
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros: the Thrill isn't Gone, It's Just
Moved
Ken Couesbouc
The African Card
Soffiyah Elijah
FBI Hunting Dead Panthers: Can John Bowman Ever Rest in Peace?
Kathlyn Stone
Iraqi Labor vs. Big Oil
Dave Lindorff
Breaking the Dam in Olympia
Jason Kunin
Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry
Kevin Zeese
Can Hillary be Trusted?
Remi Kanazi
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints
Missy Beattie
Five Words That Change Lives
Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt and Rodriguez
Website of the Weekend
Caught on Tape: an Anti-War Movement Finding Its Feet?
February
23, 2007
Franklin Spinney
Top
Gun vs. the Axis of Evil: Is This What We Have Become?
Jonathan Cook
Watching
the Checkpoints
Patrick Cockburn
The True Extent of Britain's Failure in Basra
Kathy Kelly
Do Something Good
Chris Dols
Islamophobia at Urban Outfiters: the Case for Keffiyehs
Evelyn Pringle
The Neurontin Suicides: Risks Kept Hidden for Years
Stephen Pearcy
If Bush is a War Criminal, What About the Troops?
Dan Brook
Making Poverty History
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Police Commit Rapes
Website of
the Day
A Citizens Arrest of Patty Murray
February
22, 2007
Robert Fantina
Repeating
History
Tariq Ali
Prodi's Soap Operatic Fall: Neoliberalism and War in Italy
Michael Shank
An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, the Democrats and
Climate Change
John Ross
Calderon's War on Drugs
Christopher Brauchli
Stockcars on Dope: How NASCAR and the Tour de France are Bring
the World Together
Cindy Litman
Paying for the Damage Done to Iraq
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Mr. Jefferson's Inheritors: Caution, Calculation and Cold Feet
Kevin Zeese
Finally, a Populist Antiwar Candidate for President
Aseem Shrivastava
The New Indian Way?: a Developer's Model of Development
Reza Fiyouzat
A Letter to the Israeli People: We are All Led by Mad Men
Illinois Students Against the
War
Why We Protested at Obama's Speech
Website of
the Day
An Interview with Mike Gravel
February
21, 2007
Maass / St.
Clair
The
Clintons: the Art of Politics Without Conscience
Sharon Smith
Inside
the Imperial Budget
Greg Moses
Showdown Over Texas Immigrant Prisons
Margaret Kimberly
America the Stupid
Ralph Nader
Making Cancer Cool: Tobacco and Hollywood
Nicola Nasser
Evasive Diplomacy: Bush Adm. Shuns Middle East Peace Talks
Mike Whitney
The Second Great Depression
Tao Ruspoli
Revolutionary But Gangsta: a Conversation with Stic.Man of Dead
Prez
Byeong Jeongpil
Beyond the "Protection Facility",
Another Prison
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Why Hillary, Obama and Edwards Oppose Single-Payer Health Care
Josh Mahan
The Lost Art of Shattuck: a Good, Old-Fashioned Drinking Story
Website of
the Day
Time to Free the Puerto Rican Nationalists
February
20, 2007
Sgt. Martin
Smith
Structured
Cruelty: Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine
Werther
How
to be a Washington Expert
Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing SAIC
Carl G. Estabrook
Common Sense About the Recent Past
China Hand
Setting Sun: The Diverging US-Japan Relationship
Joshua Frank
Cleaning Up Exxon's Greenpoint Oil Spill
Megan Boler
The Daily Show and Political Activism
John Feffer
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia
Daryll E. Ray
What's Inside the New Farm Bill
Alan Gregory
Midwest Wolves Fall Prey to Slob Hunters' PR Scam
Website of the Day
"Not a Target Rich Environment?"
February
19, 2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Economists
in Denial: Blind to the Consequences of Offshoring
Gary Leupp
"A Genocidal, Suicidal Nation:" Mitt Romney Joins Iran's
Hysterical Accusers
Ron Jacobs
The Mecca Agreements: the Future Remains Bleak
Michael F.
Brown
The Peace Process Industry
Robert Jensen
Liberal Icons and War: Bi-Partisan Empire-Building
Roger Burbach
Ecuador Stands Up to US
Monica Benderman
America, Where Are You Now?
Sonja Karkar
Apocalyptic Archaeology: Israel's Provocations Threaten Jerusalem
John Walsh
Some Good News from Beantown
Talli Nauman
Colorado Delta Blues: Challenging the Law of the River
Website of the Day
"The Best Place to be in Town"
Feburary
17 / 18, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Sold
to Mr. Gordon, Another Bridge!
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Patrick Cockburn, Part Two
Gary Leupp
Iran: A Chronology of Disinformation
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Dark Mesas in an Ancient Light
Roger Morris
The Undertaker's Tally: the Tragedy of Donald Rumsfeld
Uri Avnery
Facing Mecca
James Brooks
Palestinians and the "Diplomatic Horizon"
Sen. Russell
Feingold
Congress Must Defund the Iraq War
Linn Washington, Jr.
"Death Row is a Web That Catches Only the Poor"
Michele Brand
Iran: the Proxy War?
Fred Gardner
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Music and Basketball in the Harlem Renaissance
Mitchel Cohen
Storming the Pentagon: Lessons from 1967
Mike Ferner
Democrats Keep Ohio Refugee Free: "No Iraqis in Our Backyards!"
David Swanson
Memo to Don Young: What Lincoln Really Said
P. Sainath
In the Theater of the Jungle Belt
Mike Stark
GoreAid: Gore Plans Concert with Musicians He and Tipper Betrayed
in the 80s
Missy Beattie
The Object of My Disaffection
Jonathan Franklin
Carnival: Where Dance is Hope
Website of the Weekend
The Godfather and the Tenor: "It's a Man's World"
February 16, 2007
Marc Levy
Turning
Point: Veterans' Voices Trigger Response
Andrew Cockburn
In Iraq, Anyone Can Make a Bomb
Glen Ford
Powell, Rice and Obama: Putting Black Faces on Imperial Aggression
Greg Moses
The Terror of Suzi Hazahza: Why Her Family Must Be Freed
Ron Jacobs
Marching on the Pentagon: Then and Now
John W. Farley
Hook, Line and Sinker: The Press and Stephen Hadley
James Marc Leas
Vermont Legislature Says: "Bring Them Home Now!"
Tim Rinne
The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth?: StratCom
and the Coming War on Iran
Albert Wan
Star-Cross'd Lovers?: The Strange Romance of Hillary and David
Brooks
Website of
the Day
Did Wal-Mart Murder Tweety Bird?
February 15, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
Who
is Muqtada al-Sadr?
Saul Landau
How
to Obsess Your Enemies
Stephen Lendman
The Rules of Imperial Management
Evelyn Pringle
More Zyprexa Postcards from the Edge
Michael Simmons
Is the Joke Over?: an Evening with Ralph Steadman
Kevin Zeese
A Congressional Kabuki Show
Dave Lindorff
The Co-Dependent Congress
Pete Shanks
They Want You to Eat Cloned Meat--And They Don't Want You to
Know It
Peter Rost
The Michelle Manhart Affair: the Air Force Listens!
Lenni Brenner
/ Gilad Atzmon
An Exchange
Website of the Day
Barack Obama vs. Huey P. Newton
February
14, 2007
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews:
A Conversation with Patrick Cockburn
Dick J. Reavis
War
Without a Name
Margaret Kimberly
Medical Apartheid in America
Christopher Brauchli
The Perils of Charity: You Can be Prosecuted for Funding Terror
Even If the Designation of the Group as a Terrorist Organization
was Wrong!
Paul Craig
Roberts
Cracks in the Pentagon
John Ross
The Plot Against Mexican Corn
Michael F.
Brown
The Democrats and Palestine: New Chairman, Old Rules
Dave Lindorff
The Press Bites, Again: a Word of Caution on Those Iranian Weapons
J.L. Chestunut,
Jr.
Texas-style Injustice in Black and White
Don Fitz
Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols
Michael Donnelly
Give Love, Give Life
Dr. Susan Block
The Chemistry of Love
Website of
the Day
Code Pink Drops By Hillary's Office
February
13, 2007
Uri Avnery
Three
Provocations: the Method in the Madness
Patrick Cockburn
Targeting Tehran
Ralph Nader
When Wall Street Whines (You Know They're Making a Killing)
Marjorie Cohn
Fool Us Twice? From Iraq to Iran
Col. Dan Smith
Iran Bashing Goes Prime Time
Col. Douglas
MacGreagor
Empty Vessels: Gen. Patraeus and Other Hollow Men
Thomas Power
Coal Ambivalence: Mining Montana
Nicola Nasser
The Politics of Archaeology in Jerusalem
David Swanson
Iran War Talking Points
Columbia Coalition
Against the War
Why We Are Striking
Website of the Day
Our Friends at Antiwar.com Need Your Help
February
12, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
Scapegoating
Iran
Paul Craig
Roberts
How the World Can Stop Bush: Dump the Dollar!
John Walsh
A Splintered Antiwar Movement: Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome
Dr. John Carroll,
MD
What Next for Haiti's Cite Soliel?: a Journey Through the World's
Most Miserable Slum
Greg Moses
An Outrageously Sickening Immigration Policy
Nicole Colson
The Frame-Up That Fell Apart: Jury See Through Another Botched
Federal "Terrorism" Case
Dave Lindorff
Acting in Bad Feith: Inappropriate
Behavior and Impeachment
Ray McGovern
The Kervorkian Administration: Are Bush and Cheney the Biggest
Threats to the Existence of Israel?
Doug Giebel
Rampant Cyncism
David Swanson
Twisted: Sex and Torture in America
Website of the Day
The Texas Model: Executing Women in Iraq
February
10 /11, 2007
Weekend Edition
Alexander Cockburn
Will
They Nuke Iran?
Gabriel Kolko
Israel, Iran and the Bush Administration
Patrick Cockburn
Now
It's War on the Shia
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Till the Cows Come Home: How the West was Eaten
Kevin Alexander Gray
Barack Obama: Not a Bold Bone in His Body
M. Shahid Alam
The Pacification of Islam
Greg Moses
The Words of Mohammad: an 11 Year-Old Prisoner
Paul Craig
Roberts
Brzezinski's
Damning Indictment
George Ciccariello-Maher
Coups and Democracy in Venezuela
Kevin Zeese
"You Can't Oppose the War and Fund the War:" a Conversation
with Anthony Arnove
Turner / Kim
The World's Factory: China's Filthiest Export
George Duke
Has Jazz Lost Its African-American Core?
Walter Brasch
A Dream Still Unfulfilled: America Remains Divided
Shepherd Bliss
Veterans' Love Story
Missy Beattie
Fear and Diversions: Anna Nicole, Wolf Blitzer and the Missing
Body Count in Iraq
Peter Harley
Mr. Hyde and Uncle Sam: Reading Stevenson in an Age of Shock
and Awe
Pat Wolff
Oprah's Strange Endorsement of "The Secret"
Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Engel and Louise
Website of the Day
The 25 Most Corrupt Members of Bush Administration
February 9, 2007
Conn Hallinan
The
Najaf Massacre: an Annotated Fable
Gary Leupp
Charging
Iran with "Genocide" Before Nuking It
Lee Sustar
An Interview with Patrick Cockburn
Nikolas Kozloff
Bombing Venezuela's Indians
Newton Garver
Politics
and Apartheid
Yitzhak Laor
Under the Steamroller
Dave Lindorff
Truth or Consequences: Some Questions for Bush
David Swanson
The Politics of Self-Congratulation: Democrats Change Gas, Claim
It's a New Car
Website of the Day
Why Corporate Social Responsibility is Not Working for Workers
February
8, 2007
John V. Walsh
Filibuster
to End the War Now!
Marjorie Cohn
Watada Beats Government
Trish Schuh
The Salvador Option in Beirut
Ron Jacobs
The Case of the San Francisco 8
Laura Carlsen
Mexico at Davos: the Split with Latin America Widens
Ramzy Baroud
Countdown for Iran
Brenda Norrell
"Leave It in the Ground": Indigenous Peoples Call for
Global Ban on Uranium Mining
Bryan Farrell
The Splinter and the Beam: Violence in the Eye of the Beholder
Judith Scherr
BP Beds Down with Cal-Berkeley
Website of
the Day
Peace TV
February
7, 2007
Daniel Wolff
"The
Road Home is a Joke": Playing Politics with the Recovery
of New Orleans
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews:
A Conversation with Oliver Stone on Art, Politics and the Future
of Cinema in Bush's America
Tony Swindell
The
Looming Shadow of Nuremberg
Sharon Smith
Why Protest Matters
Ken Couesbouc
Delenda Est Baghdad: Why Republics End Up as Empires
Jeff Cohen
Jonah
Goldberg's Gambling Debt
Col. Dan Smith
The Self-Destructive Logic of War
Tom Kerr
McCain to Wounded Soldiers: When Words Fail Fundamentally
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran
Adam Elkus
Surging Right Into Bin Laden's Hands
Stephen Fleischman
The Good News About War on Iran
Website of
the Day
Vote Vets: Battling Escalation
February
6, 2007
Diana Johnstone
Frenzy
in France Over Iranian Threat
Gregory Wilpert
Did Chavez Over-reach?: Venezuela's Enabling Law Could Enable
Opposition
Norman Solomon
A Kangaroo Court Martial: Making an Example of Ehren Watada
Dave Lindorff
Borat Goes to Washington: Don't Experiment with the Economy?
William Blum
Space Cowboys: Full Spectrum Dominance
Mike Ferner
War Opponents Occupy Congressional Offices
CP News Service
Nader's CNN Interview: "Hillary's a Panderer and a Flatterer"
Evelyn Pringle
Eli Lilly and Zyprexa: Even the Insurance Companies are Bailing
Christopher Brauchli
Corporate Advice from the Office of Detainee Affairs
Alan Cabal
How Charles Manson Kept Me Out of Vietnam
Website of the Day
Free Josh Wolf: the Longest Jailed Journalist in US History
February 5, 2007
Dave Zirin
Super
Bore: When Hawks Cry
Uri Avnery
The
Fatal Kiss: Wars and Scandals
Ron Jacobs
The
Looming War on Iran: It's Not About Democracy
Paul Craig Roberts
The Real Failed States
Newton Garver
Bush
and the Old Hands: Decider vs. Negotiator
Bruce Anderson
The Genocidal Namesake of the Hastings School of Law
Saul Landau
The Golden Globes After a Mud Bath
Ralph Nader
The Good Fight of Molly Ivins
James T. Phillips
Road Outrageous: Tailgating and Iraq
Mike Whitney
Quarantine USA: Bird Flu Panic and Profiteering
Kenneth Rexroth
Clowns and Blood-Drinking Perverts: Imperial History According
to Tacitus
Website of the Day
Richard Thompson's Anti-War Song: "'Dad's Gonna Kill Me"
February 3 /4, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Who
Can Stop the War?
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Censorship
and Liberation
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Thrill is Gone: the Withering of the American Environmental
Movement
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis
on the Run
P. Sainath
They Take the Early Train
Sen. Russell Feingold
A Symbol of a Timid Congress
Diane Christian
Dying Well: Why Killing Saddam Backfired on Bush
Brian Cloughley
Space Missiles Away!: the Irony of Bush's Indignation
Diana Barahona
How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal: US Reporting on the Coup
in Haiti
Timothy J. Freeman
The Iraq War Hits Hawai'i: the Stryker Brigade and the Watada
Case
Conn Hallinan
The Vishnu Strategy
John Ross
Felipe's First Fifty Days
Greg Moses
The Government Blinks: Freedom for the Ibrahim Family
Missy Beattie
No More Rebukes or Non-Binding Resolutions
Joshua Frank
Unsafe in Any Seas: Cruising with Ralph Nader?
Evelyn Pringle
"These Drugs are Poison to Some People"
Stephen Fleischman
Let's Hear It for Chuck Hagel!
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Iraq in Fragments
Poets' Basement
Holt, Engel, Ford and Saavedra
Website of the Day
Flamenco Dali
February 2, 2007
Chris Kutalik
The
Meanest Industry
R. Gibson /
E. W. Ross
Cutting the Schools-to-War Pipeline
Pam Martens
America's "Money Honey" as Corporate Matchmaker: Maria
Bartiromo and the Co-Branding of CNBC and Citigroup
John Feffer
Picturing the President
Daryll E. Ray
Why the Family Farm is Good for Rural America
Ronald Bruce
St. John
Apartheid By Any Other Name
Mitchel Cohen
Listen Gore: Some Inconvenient Truths About the Politics of Environmental
Crisis
Website of
the Day
The Real Issue is Empire
February 1, 2007
Diane Farsetta
An
Army Thousands More: How PR Firms and Major Media Military Recruiters
Marjorie Cohn
Bush
Targets Iran: Cruise Missile Diplomacy
Mark Scaramella
Our
Founding War Profiteers
Ranni Amiri
Senator Prejudice: the Day Joe Biden Threatened to Kick My Ass
Christopher Ketcham
Die, TV!
Winston Warfield
Art Panic Hits Boston!
Corporate Crime Reporter
Jailing the Artists, Not the Executives: the Great Boston Art
Panic, Turner Broadcasting and the AG Who Won't Pursue Corporate
Crime
Thomas P. Healy
Adios Molly Ivins: Populist Journalism and Never Dull
Website of the Dau
The Ordeal of Gary Tyler
January
31, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
Waco
of Iraq?: US "Victory" Cult Leader was a "Massacre"
Jean Bricmont
What
is the Decisive "Clash" of Our Time?
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Politics
and Liberation
James T. Phillips
Flashbacks de Jour: Photographing War
William Johnson
Worker Reistance at Smithfield Foods
Tim Wilkinson
A Hawk in Drag: Dershowitz and the Iraq War
Evelyn Pringle
The Judge, the Reporter and the Secret Zyprexa Documents
Joshua Frank
What America Really Needs to Hear
Ramzy Baroud
Shameless in Gaza
Mickey Z.
Nader Still in the Crosshairs
Website of the Day
What's Goin' On?
|
February
27, 2007
British Law Lords Denounce Kangaroo
Trial and Sentences of Grenada Putschists
Grenada:
an Invasion Revisited
By HUGH O'SHAUGHNESSY
One of the fetid messes which Ronald
Reagan left on the Caribbean island of Grenada after his invasion
of it in 1983 has been smelling increasingly vile over the last
few decades. It has just resurfaced in London.
Older readers will remember
that the government of prime minister Maurice Bishop was overthrown
in a mini-putsch mounted by Bishop's rival Bernard Coard in which
Bishop and his closest supporters were massacred. Thereupon Reagan,
seizing an opportunity offered by the deluded putschists, ordered
a massive invasion of the tiny island alleging, inaccurately,
that lives of US students on the island were at risk. Of course,
no US lives were ever at risk. Of course the appeal for help
to the US which was purportedly issued by Queen Elizabeth II's
representative on Grenada, Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon, which
the Reaganites waved as the legal justification for the invasion
was a fraudulent invention. It had been manufactured after the
US troops had landed. Reagan had about as much genuine justification
for invading Grenada as George Bush had for invading in Iraq.
On February 7 this year five
members of the judicial committee of the Privy Council - otherwise
known as "law lords" - who for historical reasons form
the supreme court of the tiny former British colony now an independent
mini-monarchy, gave their view of some of the elements of the
legal charade which followed the invasion. They allowed the appeal
of Coard and twelve others against their imprisonment on charges
of murdering Bishop and his companions and declared that they
had irregularly been in jail for almost a quarter of a century.
All thirteen doubtless had
a hand in the murder on 19 October 1983 of Bishop and his closest
colleagues. No one in his or her right mind thinks that Bernard
Coard and his associates have clean hands. That is not the point.
The point is that after the Ronald Reagan's illegal invasion
which was roundly condemned by the UN General Assembly and even
by his close ally Margaret Thatcher, the men were detained unlawfully,
put in front of a court of doubtful legality and kept under lock
and key against the most elementary rules of the Grenadian constitution.
In their judgement a few days ago the five law lords--some of
whom were active in the cause of justice in Chile after the detention
of the murderer Augusto Pinochet following his arrest in London
in 1998--found unequivocally that the thirteen appellants "remain
held in detention without lawful authority" and that "the
appellants' present detention is solely by the authority of the
executive". They added that their case should after all
this time be put back to the Supreme Court of Grenada for proper
sentencing. In plain English the highest legal authority is saying
the appellants never enjoyed due process.
In late October 1983, Coard
and his group were arrested and detained by US forces, held
incommunicado on US naval vessels and subjected to lengthy interrogation
à la Guantánamo. Their whereabouts were kept secret
and requests from lawyers, family members and others to meet
them were rejected. They were held by the US for periods of nine
to twelve days before eventually being turned over the following
month to the authorities at Richmond Hill Prison. The incommunicado
detention of these people violated both the constitutional law
of Grenada and international human rights law.
They reported they had been
tortured. Amnesty says that they were subjected to cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment being held in wooden crates, fully exposed
to the sun and without facilities for water or personal hygiene.
Bernard Coard was allegedly held for a total of nine days in
steel cages in the holds of two US naval vessels. The cages were
placed very near the engine rooms of the ships where the noise
was deafening.
Two years after their detention,
the 13 with several others were finally brought in front of
an unconstitutional tribunal, termed a court of necessity --shadows
of the military tribunals fashioned to deal with the detainees
in Guantánamo Bay. It was operating under the minute-by-minute
control of, and indeed paid for by, the US government. It was
no surprise therefore that among its many other deficiencies
the method it adopted to choose the twelve jurors for the case
was fraudulent. The job of choosing them, for instance, was taken
away from the usual officer, the Registrar. A lawyer for the
prosecution, Denise Campbell, was given the job of selecting
the twelve from a group of citizens who saw nothing wrong in
jeering and booing and proclaiming noisily in court that the
accused would soon be hanged. When Campbell finished the selection
process, the Registrar was given back the job which had temporarily
been taken from him. The expressed wishes of the jurors were
realised and they were sentenced to death, later commuted to
life imprisonment. The judgement was delivered orally. A written
document was not forthcoming since the ill-paid judges wouldn't
provide one except for a sum of money--rumoured to be up to US$100,000
for each of them - that the government of Grenada was unwilling
to pay. Apart from Campbell many of the dramatis personae would
have graced a novel by Charles Dickens. One was a jurist universally
known as "Sleepy" Smith because of the difficulty he
had controlling an eye-lid.
In 1991 the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights found that throughout this pantomime
the Government of the United States had violated a whole series
of articles of the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties
of Man. They included the right to life, liberty and the physical
security, the right to recognition of juridical personality and
civil rights, the right to be protected from arbitrary arrest,
the right to humane treatment in custody, the right to have the
legality of detention ascertained without delay by a court,
and the right to be tried without undue delay, or, in default
of that, be released.
They have been kept in custody
to this day.
It is a bizarre state of affairs
when citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom--and
indeed those of Grenada - have to rely on the judiciary rather
than on supposedly democratically elected governments to get
something resembling justice. But, sadly, such is the case. As
already mentioned, various of the law lords involved in this
month's judgement played a useful role in keeping Pinochet under
arrest in Britain to face justice for this crimes and make known
the spurious medical evidence on which he was released: it was
not their fault that the Blair government, which had initially
decreed his arrest, then lost its nerve, found a way of overriding
their views and allowed the old torturer to escape back to Chile
where he has just died having finally evaded the law. The law
lords' latest judgement demonstrates they can recognise a fetid
Caribbean mess when one is put under their noses.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy, who reported Pinochet's 1973 putsch
from Chile and the US invasion from Grenada for The Observer,
is the author of Grenada: Revolution, Invasion and Aftermath
(1964) and Pinochet: the Politics of Torture (2000).
|
Coming
in March from
CounterPunch Books
The Gang's
All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert
Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End
Times
Leaves No Reputation Unstained!
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Saul Landau's
Bush and Botox World
with a Foreword by Gore Vidal
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"The Case Against Israel"
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
WHAT'S
INSIDE
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn
Bruce Springsteen On Tour
By Dave Marsh
The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced
as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"
|