by John Buell

I am not surprised that John Ashcroft would seize any real or imagined pretext to inflict draconian damage on civil liberties. Much more astounding has been the almost complete capitulation by Democrats in Congress to his radical agenda. If grass roots activists can’t summon the courage to resist, all Americans may pay a high price for the loss of these liberties.

It has never been more important to distinguish between political rights and personal conveniences. Being required to wait longer at an airport so that luggage can be searched is an inconvenience but not an injustice. All of us are subject to such searches and no one has a right to carry bombs or weapons onto planes. Nonetheless, all of us—regardless of background or ideology-- should have a right to our ideas, our privacy, and our political speech.

Wiretapping has long been allowed under US law, but only under strictly regulated circumstances. Probable cause that a crime had been or was about to be committed had to be shown and the approval of a judge obtained. A few years ago, these requirements were loosened to enable gathering of information regarding foreign terrorist organizations. A secret court was established that could approve such wiretaps without requiring the government to show evidence of criminal conduct.

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by Jeff Milchen

My home of Boulder, Colorado made national headlines recently over conflicting interpretations of a powerful icon, the U.S. flag. It seems that the meaning of a symbol—even one over 200 years old—can be changed in a matter of weeks by the way it’s employed.

For me the U.S. flag always stood for freedom above all else. After all, every country on earth has a flag, but none have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights that, despite some failures along the way, has protected the liberty of so many citizens so well, and for so long.

I embraced that symbolism so thoroughly that I founded a non-profit organization with the flag in its logo, so I was curious to find myself sympathizing with those in my community who found the idea of the giant flag unsettling.

At issue was an employee request to drape a mammoth flag in our public library’s entrance, which already flew no less than ten flags outside.

My unease made more sense when I recognized that while millions of citizens were waving the Stars and Stripes, our Constitutional rights were being whittled by Congress’ passing legislation that erodes three core protections: free speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom from deprivation of liberty without due process.

And the flag wavers overwhelmingly were silent.

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by Norman Solomon

For most people in the United States, the picture of events since Sept. 11 has been largely framed by television. When pollsters with Princeton Survey Research asked "Where have you gotten most of your news about the attacks?" more than a week later, a whopping 87 percent of adults gave TV as the answer.

While newscasts are still apt to be disturbing, television is mostly back to normal. Some commercials pay respect to patriotic themes, and Old Glory continues to get a lot of screen time. But an ultimate expression of media normalcy -- the relentless barrage of TV ads -- returned to full strength after a mid-September hiatus of several days. The one-two punch of mind-numbing commercials and checked-out entertainment has never packed more of a wallop than it does now.

Overall, the media disconnect is pretty extreme: Journalists and a range of commentators have told us that our world changed profoundly and irreversibly on Sept. 11. Yet the vast majority of what's on television is in the same old groove.

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by Jonathan D Farley

Oxford's ornately decorated town hall was brimming with people. So many people... All of them there to protest against the war in Afghanistan. Well, almost all of them.

On my way to the meeting, I had seen a group of students standing outside the hall, one of them draped in an American flag. I didn't think much of them until they came in and sat behind me. There were several men and a few women in their group - Americans, judging by their accents. At the center of attention was a smiling girl with curly brown locks. She looks a lot like Chelsea Clinton, I thought, but I wasn't sure. Then the meeting began.

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by Fran Sepler

I confess, here, publicly for all to see, that I have a peace sign decal on my car's bumper. I have long labored under the illusion that peace, tranquility and harmony are good things.

Of late, this has not always been such a welcome point of view in the Twin Cities. Last week, while I waited at a stoplight, a man stepped out of the car behind me, rapped on my window and, when I rolled it down, told me firmly that his son was in the Middle East fighting for our country and didn't I think it was time to take that peace sign off my car?

In a rare state of speechlessness, I moved my mouth until finally words came out. "I'm sorry," I said. "We are at war, young lady," said the fellow (probably five years my senior...why do they do that?), "you had better change your way of thinking."

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by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

In a recent interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Osama bin Ladenjustified the killing of innocent Americans this way :

"If an enemy occupies a Muslim territory and uses common people as humanshield, then it is permitted to attack that enemy. For instance, ifbandits barge into a home and hold a child hostage, then the child'sfather can attack the bandits and in that attack even the child may gethurt. America and its allies are massacring us in Palestine, Chechnya,Kashmir and Iraq. The Muslims have the right to attack America inreprisal."

That's the traditional justification for killing, isn't it?

They kill us, we kill them, they kill us, we kill them.

What ever happened to "thou shalt not kill"?

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by Kate Clark in Kabul

Despite the euphoria that liberation from the Taliban has brought, a dark cloud of fear and anxiety hangs over the Afghan capital, Kabul.

For men as well as women, the flight of the hated religious police from the city has brought deliverance from countless rules that have governed everything from the length of beards (two fists) to the way trousers are cut.

Yesterday, the people of Kabul were still tentatively enjoying their new freedoms. A small group of men ventured back onto the football pitch used by the Taliban to stage public executions, confident for the first time in five years that their game would not be interrupted by the spectacle of some law-breaker being dragged onto the pitch to face a Taliban firing squad.

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by Andrew Murray

Now is the moment to call a halt to this dangerous and unjust war. The apparent disintegration of the Taliban regime gives the British and US governments the chance to observe the first law of holes: if you are in one, stop digging. It is, of course, richly ironic that the first achievement of the war on terrorism has been to install in Kabul the Northern Alliance, for whom terrorism has been the entire line of business and way of life for more than 20 years.

Re-enthroning Northern Alliance President Rabbani - who has been fighting against any form of secular modernisation of his country, however moderate, since the early 1970s - was on no one's list of aims on September 12. It is a bit rich to read liberal commentators now hailing his return to power in terms usually reserved for a decent Liberal Democrat byelection win. Anyone believing that we live in a safer world as a result of gains such as these is surely being naive.

It is still unclear whether this week's developments will bring peace to Afghanistan, but the first reports of resurgent warlords, massacres, lynchings and factional infighting are not encouraging. What is certain is that they will do nothing to remove the sources of terror and conflict in the wider world.

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by Mary Dejevsky

Anyone who has watched the procession of foreign visitors shaking hands with President Bush in recent weeks might be forgiven for believing that the US administration was about to rejoin the world. After eight months of turning its back on almost every aspect of international engagement – from arms control and environment agreements to Middle East peace – the US suddenly repaid its debt to the United Nations and Mr Bush turned the White House into the diplomatic equivalent of Grand Central Station. Aha, we Europeans sighed knowingly, America's new sense of vulnerability is fast teaching it what we learned long ago: that no country, not even the world's superpower, can act as though the rest of the world was not there.

Unfortunately, this may not be the most prescient reading of what is happening. The cataclysm of 11 September has indeed forced changes in the Bush administration's priorities. On coming to office, Mr Bush set about reordering foreign policy, starting in his own back yard with Mexico. But, instead of forging closer hemispheric relations, he has found himself dispatching his country's élite troops to Afghanistan.

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by John Nichols

More than a century ago, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Ryan asked, "Who shall fill public stations - educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?"

As long as Paul Wellstone sits in the U.S. Senate, there will be at least one educated and patriotic free man standing against the corporate tide. It is that awareness of Wellstone's critical role in the Senate that is drawing Wisconsinites - like progressives across the country - to become active supporters of the Minnesota Democrat's 2002 re-election campaign. (Wellstone will be the featured guest at a fund-raising event hosted by Ed and Betty Garvey at their home.)

Wellstone is facing a full-frontal assault from the Bush administration. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and White House politics czar Karl Rove - the man they call "Bush's brain" - did not just recruit Wellstone's challenger for next year's Minnesota U.S. Senate contest. They actively discouraged Republican primary challenges to their candidate, outgoing St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, set up a national fund-raising network for Coleman and began a coordinated campaign to dissect and discredit Wellstone.

Why so much attention to a former college professor from Minnesota?

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By Karen DeYoung and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers

CRAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 15 -- As they prepared to face questions from a gymnasium full of students at Crawford High School this morning, President Bush proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that they adopt a joint strategy for responses: "We'll just limit ourselves to generalities."

That seemed to sum up the three-day summit that ended here today. A meeting that was marked by an extraordinary display of camaraderie between "George" and "Vladimir," it did little to institutionalize their good will into anything more than agreement to keep talking about a range of outstanding issues.

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