In a manner similar to that of Padilla and Hamdi, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri was abducted on the eve of his trial and by orders of George W. Bush, declared an enemy combatant, and had him thrown in the brig. (standing precedent does not allow him any legal basis to do so). After approximately 2 years of detention in the same brig as Jose Padilla, he has filed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld for:

"...unlawful and unconstitutional conditions of confinement to which Plaintiff has been subjected by Defendants at the Consolidated Naval Brig (“the Brig�) in North Charleston, South Carolina, since President Bush designated him an “enemy combatant� on June 23, 2003."

Ford Greene has been putting signs up on the side of the building he owns in San Anselmo. Nothing graphic, violent or pornographic, yet the City Council of San Anselmo recently voted to curtail his free speech in the form of these signs.

The execution of National Security Directive No. 77 was crafted to satisfy business elites in Haiti and the US that eventually would organize to undermine the policies of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, especially his decision to raise the minimum wage. Political Science Professor Ronald W. Cox explains how and why the US government has struggled against the rise of democracy in Haiti since the early 80s.

As part of this effort, AID cut off aid to Aristide shortly after he took office. In addition, for the first time in its history, the State Department became concerned with human rights violations in Haiti after the election of Aristide. The Department reportedly established a notebook of human rights violations committed by the Aristide government, something it had not done during the Duvalier regimes. In fact, State Department officials had supported the Duvaliers consistently by arguing that the human rights abuses (which were notorious) of those regimes were unsubstantiated and that those regimes deserved support for their anti­communism.

Constitutional Democracy as a Defense against Centralized Power

August 6, 2005
Apparently in the best of health, Robin Cook collapsed while walking through his favorite hills in Scotland. Less than 2 hours later, after having been flown by helicopter to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, Cook was declared dead at 4:00pm GMT 1. Cook enjoyed a long and vigorous career as a labor party leader. Outspoken, as always, in his views on attacking Iraq, he resigned from Tony Blair's government on March 17, 2003. Since then, he has continued to speak out against the war, and against the deception that led the UK into a war "...for reasons of US foreign policy and Republican domestic politics."