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Today's
Stories
April 3 / 5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
April 3 / 5, 2004
Support Nader; Dump
Bush
An
Election Manifesto
By FRANK BARDACKE and
DOUG LUMMIS
How should we, who are horrified by the wars,
lies, and smirks of George W. Bush, approach the coming presidential
election? Two arguments are being made.
One is, Bush has to be defeated, no matter
what it takes.
This man has committed one criminal act
after another. He has announced that aggressive war (relabeled
"preemptive war") is now central to American foreign
policy. True to his word, he has used the U.S. military to carry
out two wars of aggression, bringing death to countless thousands.
Left in office, he will kill again.
He has announced that the US has the
right to change the governing regimes of foreign countries when
they do not suit US interests. He has announced that the US has
the right to arrest foreign people in foreign lands, imprison
them, and try them by U.S. military tribunals_or even worse,
hold them indefinitely without trial, or charges, or lawyers,
or any other of the most primitive legal protections. Again,
he has been true to his word_witness Haiti and Guantanamo_and
if re-elected to office, he will probably get worse.
He even boasted, Hollywood-Mafia style,
in his 2003 State of the Union speech, that his government has
secretly murdered people suspected of being U.S. enemies: "More
than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries,
and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this
way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our
friends and allies."
It all amounts to this: he has taken
the Empire out of the closet and made empirial rule official
U.S. policy.
For these and other reasons, the argument
goes, this man and his administration must be thrown out of office,
whatever it takes. This argument is correct.
But there is another argument. The Democratic
Party and John Kerry do not offer a genuine alternative to Bush
and the Republicans. John Kerry has already made it clear enough
that he is not against Bush's imperial schemes in principle;
rather, he argues only that he can manage the Empire more effectively.
He has already called for an increase in the numbers of U.S.
troops stationed around the world. He opposses "premature"
withdrawal from Iraq. He supports the war against terror. His
every word puts him square in the middle of the Democratic Party,
which throughout the 20th Century, has been just as bad as the
Republicans on questions of war and empire, if not worse. Supporting
Kerry to beat Bush is a fool's game. In the campaign between
Kerry and Bush, the issues that truly matter won't even be raised.
We should support the candidate who openly opposses the U.S.
empire, exposes, by his very presence, the empty choice between
Bush and Kerry, and raises the issues that the American people
have to face if we are to have any chance at all of re-building
our democracy. That candidate is Ralph Nader. This argument is
also correct.
Both of these arguments are being advanced
by well-intentioned people who prefer democracy to empire, and
want to vote the right way. Even those of us who don't think
much genuine change can come through any national elections,
have got to make up our mind about this one. It would make it
a lot easier to think about what the choice entails, if people
on both sides would stop accusing each other of ignorance, cowardice,
or betrayal. In particular, people who have chosen to vote for
Kerry should stop accusing Nader of being "selfish."
Nadar is aware that he is bound to get more flak in this election
than he got in the last one. He knows that the liberal defenders
of the Democratic Party, who four years ago falsely accused him
of electing Bush, will pull no punches this time around. His
entire, honorable public career is already being re-evaluated
and trashed by the punditocracy. He knowingly brings all this
down on himself because he believes that someone in this campaign
has to discuss the real issues, and make clear to the American
people that the Democrats and the Republicans, taken together,
make up one, ruling, imperial party. Taking up this burden is
far from being selfish.
But aren't these two truths contradictory?
Won't the Nader campaign take votes away from John Kerry, and
thereby give an edge to George Bush? Doesn't the Nader campaign
run directly counter to the idea that Bush must be thrown out
of office, "no matter what it takes"? We don't think
so. Rather, we agree with one of the arguments Nadar made in
his speech announcing his candidacy: that a spirited, successful
Nader campaign would bring more people to the polls, many of
whom would vote for Kerry. We take Nadar at his word, translate
it into the slogan_Support Nadar, Dump Bush_and propose it as
a course of action. Nader is our candidate. We urge you to support
his campaign in whatever way you can. Talk to your friends and
neighbors. Write letters to newspapers. If you have money to
spare, give some to the campaign. (We hesitated to mention this
one. You probably could find some project_outside of electoral
politics_which is more deserving of anti-imperial cash. But we
include it, as our main point is that people should find ways
to support Nadar in their own particular, political styles.)
Always answer "Nader" in opinion polls. Work to create
a political culture that supports the Nader campaign, and that
continues to educate people about what the Democratic Party really
stands for. If we do all this, then the day after the election,
we can feel proud that we spoke the truth, as we knew it. But
on the day of the election, vote to dump Bush. In some places
that may mean voting for Kerry, even though he is not our candidate.
In other places, like Massachusetts, people can vote for Nader,
knowing that Bush has no chance to take the State. We are confident
that people can make the right decision come election day. We
are saying something that is true in most every large, national
election, and is especially true this time: who you actually
vote for is not as important as what you work for. Work for the
anti-imperial candidacy of Ralph Nader, and vote for whomever
you think gives us the best chance of beating Bush. But wouldn't
a Nader supporter who voted for Kerry be guilty of a last-minute
betrayal of all she or he had worked for? No. Ralph Nader is
not going to win this election. His is an educational campaign,
an attempt to talk to the American people about what truly ails
us. His place in the opinion polls will be a better measure of
the extent that his message is getting through than the actual
votes cast for him on election day. Ralph Nadar is not running
because he expects to become, or wants to become, President of
the United States. Thank goodness. That is one of the reasons
he is our man. Given the role of the United States in the world,
and the conditions of things at home, people who run for President
with the intention of carrying out that office if elected, automatically
define themselves as anti-democrats. Whoever becomes President
without a mandate to dismantle the Empire, will be a bad one.
The demands of the Empire require that the President lie and
kill. (For example, a person incapable of giving the order to
drop nuclear bombs on crowded cities would be automatically disqualified;
being able to do that is part of the job description.) This is
as true of Kerry, as it was of Bush, as it was of Clinton. And
if we do manage to dump Bush, and Kerry is the next President,
then four years hence we will have to dump him too.
The Bush people like to talk about Pax
Americana, using Latin to remind us that their model is Pax Romana,
the Roman Empire. But if they had studied history a little more,
they would have known that the position of head of state of the
Roman Empire was not an enviable one. To be chosen Roman Emperor
was equivalent to a death sentence; some Emperors lasted a few
years, some, like Constantine III, no more than a few months.
We do not advocate assasination (it didn't make any difference
in Rome, and it would only make things worse in America) but
we do think that anyone who assumes the mantel of the Imperial
Presidency should receive a political death sentence. Every President
who heads the Empire without working to undo it, should be impeached,
or failing that, should be turned out of office, in disgrace,
after four years. As for Bush, the Boy Emperor, it would be a
historical catastrophe, and send a message of despair to the
whole world, if he were to be reelected after all he has done.
We have to dump him and wipe the smirk off his face. Dumping
Bush doesn't mean supporting Kerry. Putting Kerry into office
is a just an unfortunate side effect. We'll deal with him when
the time comes.
Doug Lummis
is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of
Radical
Democracy. Lummis can be reached at: ideaspeddlers@mpd.biglobe.ne.jp
Frank Bardacke
is writing a political biography of Cesar Chavez and lives in
Watsonville, California. He the author of Good
Liberals and Blue Herons and is co-translator of Shadows
of Tender Fury: The Letters and Communiques of Subcomandante
Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
He can be reached at: bardacke@cruzio.com
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
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