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SHOULD SCOOTER LIBBY'S LAWYER BE DISBARRED? Law school dean Lawrence Velvel says, Maybe he should, if he sat idly by while client Libby spouted lies. What lies at the core of Zionism? Michael Neumann tortures Alan Dershowitz, without a warrant! "Sex-mad adulterer from British aristocracy claims to have 'revolutionized' philosophy." Yes, Bertrand Russell, they mean you! Alexander Cockburn on Smearing 101 in the British press. Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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November 18, 2005 Trish Schuh November 17, 2005 John Walsh Rep. John Murtha Brian J. Foley CounterPunch
News Service Dave Lindorff Mark T. Harris Cockburn /
St. Clair
November 16, 2005 John F. Sugg Noam Chomsky Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Sam Husseini Pierre Tristam Greg Bates Farrah Hassen Bill Christison Website of
the Day
November 15, 2005 Todd Chretien Leah Caldwell Frederick Hudson Harry Browne Jason Leopold Ingmar Lee Diana Barahona Tom Andre Website of the Weekend
November 14, 2005 Diana Johnstone Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Joshua Frank Christopher
Reed
November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gwyneth Leech Elmas Mallo Michael Neumann Saul Landau Sam Husseini Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Michael Donnelly Joe Allen Roland Sheppard Justin E.H.
Smith Ben Tripp St. Clair /
Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Eli Stephens David Swanson M. Junaid Alam Matt Reichel Naima Bouteldja Jeff Halper Website of the Day
November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Diana Johnstone Roosa / Nevins Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Ross Mike Whitney Mark Engler Juliano Mer-Khamis Ron Jacobs Jill S. Farrell Missy Comley
Beattie Mitchel Cohen Evelyn J. Pringle Reza Fiyouzat Charles Sullivan Zachary Richard Ben Tripp St. Clair / Vest
November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Lindorff Phillip Cryan Christopher Brauchli William S.
Lind Daryl G. Kimball George Beres Peter Montague
November 3, 2005 James Petras Saul Landau Rep. Cynthia McKinney Michael Dickinson Joshua Frank Remi Kanazi Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
November 2, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Robert Oscar Lopez John Walsh Brian J. Foley Ramzy Baroud M. Junaid Alam Todd Chretien Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs Gary Leupp John Ross Bill Quigley Joseph Nevins Dave Lindorff Linda S. Heard Heather Gray Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St. Clair
October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Mark Weisbrot Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Farooq Sulehria Nicole Colson Madis Senner Paul Craig
Roberts
Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Steven Higgs Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Joshua Frank Laura Santina Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs Dr. Susan Block Vanessa S. Jones Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
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November 18, 2005 An Exercise of the ImaginationUncrucify ThemBy MARK CHMIEL and ANDREW WIMMER This weekend thousands of people are gathering at Fort Benning, Georgia, to demonstrate their continued opposition to the "School of Assassins," a school that has been training Latin America's military in the techniques of torture and terror for more than fifty years. Each November a protest and solemn funeral procession are held around the anniversary of the 1989 assassination of six Salvadoran Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador. The soldiers responsible for their murders were among the elite forces who trained at Fort Benning's School of the Americas. Ignacio Ellacuría, the Jesuit priest and rector of the UCA, may have been predicting his own slaying when he wrote that if the university were to make a clear, strong stand for justice, it would suffer persecution. And so it did. Yet his focus was not on what would happen to the privileged Jesuits at the university, but what was already happening to the majority of Salvadorans living in inhuman poverty. Ellacuría once proposed an exercise of the imagination for this present age of atrocity; an exercise that calls people of good will to step outside their own comfort so that others might simply live: I want you to set your eyes and your hearts on these people who are suffering so much-some from poverty and hunger, others from oppression and repression. Then, standing before this people thus crucified you must repeat St. Ignatius' examination from the first week of the [Spiritual] Exercises. Ask yourselves: What have I done to crucify them? What do I do to uncrucify them? What must I do for this people to rise again? Now, these many years later, Ellacuría's questions carry a new urgency for all of us mired in the global "war on terror." Indeed, we can look in many directions and see people suffering so much from the results of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. We need only turn our gaze toward Fallujah and Ramadi, the pulverized cities of Iraq, once cities of thousands, now shells, their populations scattered to makeshift desert dwellings and refugee camps. How did we contribute-by our taxes, our silence, our timidity-to their crucifixion? We at the Center for Theology
and Social Analysis in Saint Louis, Missouri, have been especially
horrified by one particular expression of contemporary "crucifixion,"
the brazen use of torture as an instrument of U.S policy. From
Bagram Prison in Afghanistan, to Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantánamo
in Cuba, the U.S. has scandalized the world with the sickening
disparity between our official rhetoric about "liberation"
and "democracy" and our operative practices of abuse,
humiliation, and torture. Hannah Arendt instructed us long ago in the utter banality of evil, neatly laying bare the mechanisms of evil's shockingly everyday quality. So it's not just-or even primarily-the hands of Lynndie England, but the senators, bureaucrats, military personnel, doctors, lawyers, private contractors, corporate heads, and pundits who all do their part to keep the gears of this U.S. torture machine turning. Evidently wanting to be rid of the terrorist threat once and for all, they are willing to accept "whatever works." And so they line up in loyalty, from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dutifully parroting the mantra of "a different kind of war," to our representatives who will not vote to "tie the president's hands," or White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan regurgitating his professions of American rectitude. George Bush himself taunts us all with his recent declaration in Argentina, "We do not torture." But we see the victims. What do we do to uncrucify them? Every morning thousands of commuters head into Raleigh/Durham from the south, traveling along Route 70. Just north of Smithfield they pass the Johnston County Airport, where shielded only by a small grove of trees, Aero Contractors does its duty by participating in our government's program of "extraordinary rendition." Aero provides the pilots and planes so teams of CIA agents can snatch terror suspects and fly them to countries with known records of torture where the dirty work will be done for us, or directly to Guantánamo and other "black sites" where we will do it ourselves. On Friday morning, a group of us (some from St. Louis, several Catholic Workers and others from Raleigh, and Kathy Kelly from Chicago) gathered outside the hangar that houses these CIA "torture taxis" to offer a Litany of Lament and Mourning. The Jewish prophets' reliance on "the language of grief," writes Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, breaks open "the rhetoric that engages the community in mourning for a funeral they do not want to admit. It is indeed their own funeral." One by one Friday morning we lamented the torment and death of victims of torture throughout the world while we mourned the death of our own souls as we learn more each day about our own complicity. We lowered the American flag at Aero to half-staff as a sign of mourning and grief for the suffering caused by the oppression and repression that is U.S. policy. We also willingly trespassed at Aero Contractors in order to read and present an indictment of Aero's direct involvement in numerous violations of domestic and international law by its aiding and abetting the torture program of the Bush Administration. While some of our group held signs and banners along the highway, others delivered copies of the indictment to county officials, calling on them to take action against Aero. The vibrant movement to close the School of Assassins in Georgia has sought to shine a light on the nefarious U.S. practice of training in torture and terrorism against the Latin American people. By our actions Friday in North Carolina, we hope to shine a light on what has become the U.S. reliance on torture across the globe. Let's put our bodies before the wheels of the great machine that crushes Iraqis and Americans both, and to say, "No more!" We urge you to engage in your own acts of mourning and resistance. Go to Johnston County. Haunt Aero Contractors. Sit on the runway. Shine the light. Refuse to move. No more crucifixion. No more rendition. No more torture. Go to WWW.STOPTORTURENOW.ORG for video and audio accounts of the action. Mark Chmiel and Andrew Wimmer teach at
Saint Louis University and work with the Center for Theology
and Social Analysis (www.ctsastl.org).
They can be reached at: wimmera@slu.edu |
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.               |
