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Today's
Stories
March 16, 2004
Bill Christison
The Aftershocks from Madrid
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
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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
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March
16, 2004
Madrid Diary
How
to Change World Order in Four Days
By SCOTT BOEHM
On Thursday, I missed becoming a statistic by
less than fifteen minutes. On Friday, I joined millions marching
through the bone-chilling, rainy streets of Madrid in solidarity
with those who were not as lucky as I. On Saturday, I spent most
of the night banging a black hubcap I found lying in Sol-Madrid's
version of Times Square-with a teaspoon I lifted from a café
busy with protesters taking a break from noise-making conciousness-raising
that was still going strong when I decided to drag myself to
bed around three o'clock in the morning. We were protesting what
seemed like the government's cover-up of facts surrounding Thursday's
horrendous attack, with the egregious aim to maintain their driver's
seat position in Sunday's national election, which until bombs
entered the race, everyone had pretty much decided was over before
it even began.
So, it was, as one Spanish friend wrote
me in a celebratory text message, "collective catharsis"
when last night's election results rolled in with a surprisingly
decisive win for the main opposition party, PSOE (Partido Socialista
Obrero Español). On Wednesday, this "regime change"
was inconceivable. Mariano Rajoy, hand-picked by President José
María Aznar as his presumed successor, had only to keep
his hands on the wheel of Partido Popular's cruise-controlled
coast to victory, which many predicted by absolute majority.
On the other hand, José Luis Rodríguez
Zapatero, the leader of PSOE, was looking more and more like
Mr. Bean at the Indy 500-stuck in the pits waiting for his inevitable
crash. His campaign slogan, "We deserve a better Spain,"
sounded weak and uninspired. But Sunday night, after the worst
violence in Madrid's post-civil war history, those words, flying
above his red-and-white flag waving supporters packing the street
outside PSOE's headquarters, suddenly rang true. Hundreds of
young, previously disenfranchised voters sandwiched between old-style
socialists shouted sentiments of the same sort mixed-like the
cocktails floating through the estatic crowd-with pointed insults
directed at Aznar and TV1, Spain's conservative national television
station, which they felt had failed to accurately report developments
in the investigation of the attack.
Leaving PSOE headquarters after midnight,
the surrounding sidwalks were littered with the colors of victory,
and throughout Madrid-even though Partido Popular won the region-cars
were honking as if Real Madrid, Spain's leading soccer team,
had won another world championship. The crisp night air, dry
again after raining for two days, seemed somehow cleansed of
its heaviness present since 7:39 Thursday morning. I entered
a bar where I had been the previous night when it was full of
protesters, vocal, yet holding their breath in anxious anticipation.
Although a Sunday, and approaching one o'clock in the morning,
the place was packed, the music turned up, and it felt like happy
hour on Friday night after a long, but productive week at week.
We shall see the results of "regime
change" in Spain over the next four years. Zapatero and
PSOE have a difficult task ahead of them as they must quickly
shift gears from opposition politics to leading a pack of independently-minded
parties that have difficulty resolving regional conflicts. In
addition, it will be difficult to meet the expectations of the
young voters the party attracted, and even more challenging still
to walk the thin line between left and center, which is as far
as most Spaniards want PSOE to move from Aznar's center-right
policies, especially in the economic arena.
However, on the ever-shifting, international
geopolitical stage, the world has just witnessed the birth of
a new act. Americans especially should prepare themselves for
similar bloody attacks within their borders this fall, not long
before going to the polls to vote. The timing of the Madrid attack,
just three days before national elections, was clearly meant
to send a message to Spanish voters, much stronger, yet not so
unlike that of Zapatero's campaign slogan-with a fundamental
variation on who constitutes "we." The attack worked,
probably more effectively than the plotters expected, and is
therefore likely to develop into a new strategy by groups seeking
to defend themselves from Western violence in the Middle East,
while inflicting revenge on particular aggressors.
These sorts of "pre-emptive strikes"
may prove, as in Spain, highly advantageous in achieving political
goals, while at the same time requiring comparitively little
in terms of human or economic cost. Just compare the economic
and cultural costs of America's so-called "War on Terror,"
or the death toll and military spending on the "pre-emptive
war" and occupation of Iraq with the 11th of March and it
is easy to see how the last four days in Madrid may very well
mark a new page in the playbook of global power relations.
Of course, influencing election results
through the violent intervention of foreign groups is nothing
new. The United States government, usually with the help of the
CIA, has been doing it consistently for nearly half a century.
From the outright murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 after he
won the first democratic elections in the Congo to the current
evidence suggesting that the U.S. has been funding groups in
Haiti and Venezuela to overthrow governments antagonistic to
Washington's agenda, the U.S. government has been behind a countless
number of terrorist acts. These acts, usually planned and carried
out in secret, are usually always hidden from the view of the
American public, who often accept outright lies and poor reporting
for facts that happen far and away from American daily life.
But this flagrant policy of human rights
abuses-affecting domestic politics in order to gain international
leverage-developed by the United States during its global ascendancy
and executed with precision last week in Madrid by astute improvisers
should ignite not more violence, but mass reflection. Spanish
voters did just that between Thursday and Sunday. Whether or
not there is, indeed, an attack on U.S. soil before the November
election, Americans now have eight months to consider the consequences
of the Bush administration's response to September 11th, and
a war in Iraq that is now undisputably recognized as having been
fought under false premises-even by the administration itself.
Unfortunately for Americans, groups intent
on challenging U.S. hegemony in the Middle East will most likely
take the lesson of Madrid to heart, if not to the grave: it is
much more effective to provide voters with a sampling of their
government's foreign policy before national elections, than to
trust citizens of the privileged "first-world" to vote
their moral conscience-however open-minded their free, democratic
societies claim to be-when the real consequences of unjust wars
are only felt by a small minority of military personnel and their
families, who, as a voting block, tend to have more conservative
leanings than the average voter, anyway.
Tragically, even as Aznar's loss on Sunday
foreshadows Bush's probable-if more gradual-demise, American
citizens and residents-legal or otherwise-guilty or not of voting
for a president who lost the popular vote and was appointed President
under highly suspicious circumstances by a Supreme Court composed
of many judges hand-picked by his father or his father's mentor
will probably suffer retribution for crimes so clearly against
humanity. Since I'm planning on returning to the United States
in May, I hope I am lucky enough to miss the next bomb-ridden
train. I hope that American voters reflect not only on potential
attacks in their own country, but also on this attack in Madrid,
just a block from my house, and of course, the war and greater
foreign policy for which it was carried out.
This will not be easy. Americans are
less optimistic that their political system can offer significant
change, and vote in fewer numbers than Spaniards whose constitution
is only as old as I am, and whose democratic experience was just
getting started as the United States was celebrating its 200th
anniversary. American citizens are also farther from mass death,
having fought major wars on foreign, not domestic soil during
this and the last century. Add a quirky frontier mentality,
and ocean-insulated Americans are, in general, a more fearful
bunch, and thus easier to manipulate than their European cohorts.
Unfortunately, Karl Rove, Dick Cheny
and the other spin doctors of the current Republican regime are
master fear-mongers. They are likely to persuade voters to do
anything but reflect on the events in far-away Spain or Iraq
or Haiti for that matter. Proof of this electoral strategy is
already evident. As El Pais, Spain's leading newspaper reported
in today's election edition, Colin Powell was still playing the
ETA card on ABC and FOX while saying that what occurred in Madrid
only "confirms that there is a war on terror that must be
fought." On NBC, Condeleezza Rice also held the party line
that broke Aznar's hold on his country, saying that "what
happened is another example of how far these assasins will go
to try to intimidate people."
Accepting this type of unreflective,
unilateral reasoning only serves as a temporary band-aid for
growing fears: for the Bush administration, fear of losing the
election and their chance to chart the next half century of American
direction; for the rest of the American public, it is fear of
another September 11th. Neither fear will disappear by implementing
and supporting the very same foreign policy that provoked the
attack in Madrid, if not those of New York and Washington as
well. And, as we have painfully witnessed in Madrid, band-aids
do not serve well the wounds of bombs designed to kill.
Scott Boehm
is a freelance writer and English language teacher living in
Madrid. He can be contacted at culturecrossed@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for 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
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