Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives from July 2003
The Washington Post reported on the brave lawyers of Jose Padilla, the only American citizen seized on American soil who has been declared an enemy combatant. Padilla’s lawyers, Donna Newman and Andrew Pate, are court-appointed by the U.S. District Cour...
Editors’ Note: We are pleased to present this excerpt from SHELDON RAMPTON and JOHN STAUBER’s excellent new book, ...
The bulk of DARPA’s stock and trade was exposed in yesterday’s papers– but who wants them? Homeland (in)Security is a risky speculation. The terror market might fall-out, the bottom line might well disappear, and onl...
Last Sunday US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz appeared on television networks to peddle the Bush administration’s new line about why it invaded Iraq. It is now asserted by every Washington mouthpiece, loudly and persistently, that Bush went to ...
To those readers still wandering the labyrinth of Bush administration explanations regarding how “intelligence” known to be spurious got into the president’s state-of-the-union address: Don’t give up yet. I think I can help. The White House ...
Six local men have been charged with Class III felonies, which carry sentences of up to five years each, for their role in the next great public scourge: bootlegging. No, not the kind Joe Kennedy’s fortune was built on, nor that which made household names o...
Editors’ note: In the interest of relative brevity we’ve stinted on citing and quoting sources in some of the items below. You can find links to news stories that elaborate on each of these items at Perry’s online ...
Two million liters of water had to be pumped out of the basement of the Iraqi central bank a month ago to make the steel safes stored there accessible. A water pipe that burst during the bombings produced the flooding, and no one knew where the main pipe was to sh...
Dear Readers, In a recent story about the growing trend in outsourcing, I drew from many sources, the first of which was one about IBM’s recent exporting of jobs to India that was first published by Bloomberg news. As I double-checked the growth t...
The Washington Post reported on the tragedy and travesty of the convictions of six men in Lackawanna, New York, the so-called "Lackawanna Six." John Ashcroft’s prosecutors charged the men with conspiring to attend an al-Qaeda terrorist camp. Does t...
Once again, Adm. John Poindexter, the convicted felon of Iran-Contra scandal fame who brought us the Total Information Awareness–oops, make that the Terrorism Information Awareness project–is ahead of his time and in the news. And once again, he’...
It is absolutely shocking to note that the Government of India has extended an invitation to Mr. Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, to pay an official visit to India. This fact was first revealed by Mr. Brajesh Mishra, India’s ‘National Security A...
Now that the rationale provided by Bush & Co. for attacking Iraq is unraveling, it’s time to ask what the true motivation was for the rush to war. Many dismissed the signs of antiwar protestors, which read "No blood for oil." But if we connect ...
The great French Renaissance thinker Michel Eyguem De Montaigne said, "There are few men who would dare make known to the public the prayers they make to God." Although Montaigne lived almost 500 years ago, his words still hold true today. The sad truth ...
The death of a child: the birth of a national hero. This story is still in first draft, rough with a lot of blanks to be filled in. On July 22, 200 American soldiers with enough sophisticated weaponry to start a small war attacked an upscale villa in the al...
The armchair warriors who directed the American-led conquest of Iraq would like us to believe that the estimated 10,000 innocent civilians who died in the invasion were simply unfortunate, inadvertant, unavoidable, accidental victims of a just and noble action. No...
When Vice President Dick Cheney comes out of seclusion to brand critics “irresponsible,” you know the administration is in trouble. Cheney was enlisted to do so in the spring of 2002 amid reports that warning given to President Bush before 9/11 should h...
Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children, the...
The Sacramento City Council appears to be doing John Ashcroft’s dirty work by passing two unconstitutional ordinances, 2003-026 and 2003-028, that suppress freedom of speech. The Council unanimously voted for the secretive resolutions on June 17, just prior...
Last weekend, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz explained that the United States at times relied on "murky" intelligence in trying to link Iraq to the al-Qaeda terrorist group, but the war against Iraq was justified despite the fact that the Whi...
All hell is breaking loose in Guatemala and few outside that tragic nation seem to care or even notice. In recent days, followers of General Efrain Rios Montt, stirred into action by the rightwing Republican Front Party (FRG) which he controls, have charged...
It may be instructive to your readership how the wonderful democracy the U.S. is exporting through the real WMDs actually works. If I am right, there are worse governments than the U.S. "democracy" but surely there are better ones and U.S. "dem...
Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and former bug exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, wants you to know he stands "shoulder-to-shoulder" with accused war criminal Ariel Sharon and the Israeli occupation forces that killed Mohammed Kabha, 6 years of age, l...
The decision by the Bush Administration to sue the European Union (EU) over its five-year moratorium on genetically modified (GM) foods has all the earmarks of a "shock and awe" campaign targeted at prying open a major potential market. But the suit bef...
Walter: Nothing changes. Goddamn Nazis. The Dude: They didn’t say they were Nazis. They said they were nihilists. Walter: Nihilitsts? Fuck me. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it was an ethos."...