Sent to Post-Standard on February 5, 2005

Your paper reached a new low in the quiz today; perhaps you could send this to who is responsible.

It’s obvious from the coverage of Dr. Dhafir’s trial that Post-Standard employees need urgently to read this book: “The War Against Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismanted the Bill of Rights”, by Elaine Cassel. Pub: Lawrence Hill 2004. The book is dedicated: ‘To the lawyers who fight on the front lines in the war against civil liberties and the judges who have the courage to defend the Constitution.’

Cassel, a practicing attorney and a professor of law and psychology, describes exactly what has happened to the justice system since the war on terror and the PATRIOT Act-a very scary book. Made even more scary by knowing how your newspaper has been a willing accomplice in peddling the governments accusations, without any consideration to evidence or truth.

In the book there is a short piece on Help The Needy and the people who have been charged in relation to the case. Now that the author realizes Dr. Dhafir is the person who founded Help the Needy in Syracuse, she will update her civil liberties watch website with information from the trial.

What your paper has done to Dr. Dhafir during this trial is unconscionable. You should be trying to make amends instead of taking your insensitivity to new lows. Please put my website address: www.dhafirtrial.net on the front page of your paper each day this week. It is the least you can do.