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Today's
Stories
September 4-6,
2004
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who Are and What We Do
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
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September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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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Labor Day Weekend Edition
September 4-6, 2004
The Day the
World Ended
9/11,
Three Years On
By
JOHN CHUCKMAN
A lot can happen in three years.
In the United States since
9/11, about 4,000 children died from child abuse and neglect;
in more than 80 percent of cases, parents were the perpetrators.
About 36,000 Americans died from unnecessary surgery. Another
21,000 died from medication errors in hospitals, along with another
60,000 from other errors in hospitals. Adverse reactions to prescription
drugs killed about 100,000. Roughly 10,000 Americans died from
accidental drowning. About 2,100 died from bicycle accidents.
Homicidal Americans killing other Americans took another roughly
60,000 lives. Suicide took more than 90,000. Traffic deaths amounted
to well over 120,000.
Despite all of America's mayhem
and death (more than 7,000,000 Americans died in the last three
years, including the clearly avoidable ones listed above plus
hundreds of thousands not listed that were at least in part avoidable),
the subject of 9/11 is never allowed to rest. About 3,000 Americans
died on 9/11 in a spectacular act of hatred and vengeance, carried
out, so far as we know, by 19 men, all of whom were themselves
consumed.
Those who attacked America
certainly did not do so because they hated democracy or rights,
no matter what President Muffinmouth keeps deliriously muttering.
Likely, they would not even have understood such concepts, coming
as they did from cultures where conditions prevail comparable
to those of centuries ago in Europe. But anyone understands abuse
and bullying, and it is America's terrible, careless abuse of
its wealth and power to which they were violently responding.
In a Congress which consistently
fails to remedy America's social ills, its members always disparaging
sensible regulation and rules to cover their abject political
cowardice and bought-and-paid-for status, it took no time to
start a war, even though it was clear that no nation had attacked
the United States, and to pass legislation more repressive than
any possible regulation. Scene after scene of America's grunting,
spewing legislators resembled life imitating art in the form
of a movie for teen-agers, The Planet of Apes.
Whoever was responsible for
9/11 beyond those who killed themselves (America's press automatically
attributes the act to al Qaeda, a shadowy and rather small organization
at best, although still no proof has been offered), the U.S.
responded by spending tens of billions of dollars to invade two
nations. Billions more were spent stuffing already-bloated intelligence
agencies like geese being prepared for pâté de foie
gras and cranking up the megawatts snapping and crackling through
the wires to the nation's military Frankenstein.
The money wasted on killing
and maiming in Iraq might have done many fine things for the
world. It might have built fine new schools in every wretched
ghetto and backwater across the United States. It might have
been used to launch an historic alternate-energy program, bringing
down costs dramatically for technologies such as solar cells,
contributing to the future well-being of all of humanity. Even
a small portion of it could have done some spectacular things
for fundamental science or medicine. Another small portion would
have generously funded the simple technologies used for bringing
clean drinking water to parts of the Indian subcontinent where
arsenic and other compounds slowly poison millions year after
year. The possibilities are almost endless.
But no, it all went to a destructive,
psychotic fantasy called the war on terror (and more specifically
to invade a place where, much as in the old Soviet Union, terror
was never tolerated for a second). It should be clear, there
can be no such thing as a war on terror, because terror is not
a society or a regime or an army or even an ideology. Terror
is a violent response to severe grievances. You can work hard
to track down specific law-breakers and you can enhance security
measures and you can work to redress grievances - all these are
reasonable and fitting things to do - but there is no place or
army that you can attack with any meaningful purpose. Of course,
that simple fact hasn't stopped America from instituting vast
new abuses in the name of fighting a war on terror. As with the
country's crusade against communism, the pointless violence reflects
America's own shibboleths, fears, and internal politics rather
than meaningful policy. American politics are so utterly poisonous
and corrupted that the failure of one party to commit some barbarism
abroad automatically is used by the other party as a visceral
issue. When Bush speaks of a long-haul war against terror, he
really means a renewal of the same cycle of vicious domestic
politics with a new foreign bogeyman and new foreign victims.
Estimates of civilians killed
by American forces in Iraq have been slow in coming. America's
press shows almost no interest, perhaps taking its lead from
a government which doesn't want the subject mentioned. But then,
Daddy Bush never advertised how many he slaughtered in the brief,
first Gulf War he started with subtle winks and suggestions to
Hussein. It is certain that tens of thousands of pathetically-equipped
conscripts died under waves of B-52s whose carpet bombing on
the desert sealed the men in their own graves: cooked and packed
underground by millions of pounds of high explosive.
Quite recently, an Iraqi group
announced what may be the best count in view of its language
and network of contacts in every part of the country. It spent
months talking to everyone from gravediggers to doctors, deliberately
avoided counting military deaths, and came up with 37,000 civilian
killed.
The immense suffering of a
major part of the population who, overnight, lost the means to
earn a living must be added to America's achievement, as well
as the birth of violent resistance to occupation, an excellent
laboratory for developing future generations of terrorists, and
tidal waves of violent crime (things consistently under-reported
in the U.S. press). Independent observers in Europe, including
many British soldiers, have been taken aback by the violence
and heavy-handedness of America's occupation. The abuses documented
in the published photos from Abu Ghraib prison (and there are
many others not published) show a small part of what American
soldiers have done. Consider one clear instance, fairly typical
according to witnesses in Iraq brave enough to speak up and at
least one Marine non-commissioned officer who has left the service,
the Pentagon-invented Battle of Samara. Headlined in America's
press as a remarkable American victory, it was actually a slaughter
of scores of civilians by sweltering, disgruntled, trigger-happy
soldiers.
Only devotees of the Orwellian
fantasies of Fox News and CNN and those who depend on Defense
Department contracts for a living (and, sadly, that is now a
truly gigantic number in the U.S.) ever accepted Bush's claims
about Iraq. Recent American stories about "they knew,"
referring to the fact that Bush was informed by outsiders of
the weak nature of his claims, are bitterly amusing. The world
was awash in good information that told us Bush was lying before
the invasion. It came from past weapons inspectors, current weapons
inspectors, Iraqi refugees, diplomats, national leaders, and
scrupulous journalists (a category that notably excluded employees
of the New York Times and Washington Post). As it always does,
understanding the truth required that essential skill, prized
by courts everywhere, of evaluating the credibility of each witness.
In Bush's case, this was an open-and-shut judgment for anyone
with powers of observation. The man's every word is shrill and
hollow.
America's stubborn refusal
to think was broadcast to the world in childish demonstrations
of antipathy towards France - restaurant owners pouring vintage
wines down the drain - and, to a lesser extent, Canada. Had Americans
just listened to sane voices coming from outside their nearly
hermetically-sealed society, about 1,000 of their soldiers now
dead would be alive, taxpayers would be at least 100,000,000,000
dollars richer, oil prices wouldn't be setting record highs,
and the country would not be facing a years-long burden in Iraq,
something, by the way, that is not going to change in the slightest
if John Kerry is elected. (No one should forget, although the
Democratic candidate strains the meaning of words to maintain
otherwise, Kerry voted with the thumping, spewing gorillas to
launch the war).
Of course, more Americans and
others working for Americans have died than the 1,000 or so soldiers.
For in this disgraceful war, America farmed-out substantial occupation
duties to richly-paid private contractors - people once known,
before the dawn of political correctness, as mercenaries or assassins.
No effort is even made to keep track of how many of these are
killed although I doubt many people much care.
Many small stories of 9/11
remain untold. I do not mean the kind of mawkish-tabloid stories
that will be featured on the anniversary, but stories that help
explain what happened afterward. One of mine concerns an American
woman I know who left her job that morning and frantically raced
around to gather her three children from schools and daycare
and take them home, just in case, any terrorists were going to
sacrifice their lives to send airliners hurling into rural Maine.
Of course, the odds - infinitesimally small as they were - were
at least the same that any airliners would crash near her house
located in a more populated area. A deadly road accident during
her frenetic car trip was a far more likely outcome than avoiding
another hijacked plane crashing.
The point of the story was
repeated only recently in testimony at Congressional hearings
by members of "9/11 families," an American lobby group
of professional victims, some of whom made flatly ridiculous
statements about the country being unprepared for another attack,
including Twilight Zone stuff about little Elizabeth or Kyle
not being able to play outside safely (Good God, one wishes such
people could spend one day with a miserable Iraqi family cooped
up in a shattered apartment surrounded by violence and ruin so
that they truly understood what terror is). Well, I do suppose
a twenty-foot wall could be built around America and all of its
possessions and embassies abroad with all planes and boats being
required to stop outside for complete inspection, but in an age
of globalization and the huge economic gains being made from
it, it does seem an unpromising idea.
Both stories are measures of
the terrible job America's press does informing people on politically-sensitive
matters and of the irrationality so commonly observed in American
society. Americans behave this way partly because they have so
little understanding of the world and live in a fantasy concerning
even the realities of their own country. American television
doesn't ever show pictures of the country's dead, abused or murdered
children although there are plenty of them (anymore than it showed
the pictures of piteous Iraqi children mangled by bombs), but
for videos of the planes striking the World Trade Center, networks
left the replay switch in the "on" position for weeks.
The flashing-message signs at service-station gas pumps are not
used to remind motorists of dead kids in their neighborhood,
but they sure were used to blink out idiotic slogans like "Never
Forget!" over and over after 9/11. It all became something
of a national computer game with life-like graphics, frightening
and titillating Americans, reinforcing paranoid conceptions.
So far as the world is concerned,
it might be fine were Americans to remain happily cocooned in
their fantasies, if only they didn't leave their bloody set of
butcher's tools in the hands of some of the world's most ignorant
and dreadful elected leaders. These armies and weapons are never
used to defend democracy or freedom or human rights (or even
to stop the several horrifying genocides that have taken place
in recent decades) - in fact, there exists no threat to America
requiring such huge armies and dreadfully destructive machines
- they exist solely to bully and intimidate and overthrow.
Can you think of one example
of America displaying behavior that might be regarded as that
of a human rights-respecting democracy towards Iraq and its neighborhood?
Would you include actively supporting the tyrant Hussein for
many years? Supplying him the means to wage chemical warfare
during the Iran-Iraq war? Supporting the tyrant Shah in neighboring
Iran for decades, right down to the day of his death in exile?
Shooting down an Iranian airliner full of civilians with no apologies
or proper compensation? Kissinger's duplicitous promises to the
Kurds when they proved briefly useful? Pushing American forces
into view near the holy places of Saudi Arabia after the first
Gulf War?
Doing decades of Enron-style
business with Saudi Arabia's feudal ruling family? Supporting,
against all reason and decency, the violent apartheid policies
of Israel? Putting a leader like Musharraf of Pakistan, elected
by coup, on the regular payroll? Invading Afghanistan and making
cozy deals with psychopathic warlords? Keeping an embargo on
Iraq for a decade in the face of overwhelming proof that it was
killing hundreds of thousands of innocents? Invading and occupying
Iraq?
Please, is there a even hint
in any of that about democracy and concern for human rights?
No, there is only the ruthless manipulation and menacing displays
of an imperial power using its might to get what it wants. Observed
from the receiving end, in no case could you distinguish an enlightened
nation at work. At the same time, on the sending end of things,
America's cowardly politicians flatter constituents' vanity about
having done brave and heroic deeds in the cause of freedom, and,
truth be told, they get away with it, every time.
I wish Americans had the least
spark of imagination and will to compare their almost delusional
fears with the colossal human misery they have inflicted on the
world. I wish, too, they had the imagination and will to understand
that nothing has changed with American policies which literally
assembled the forms and poured the concrete foundation for 9/11.
All that has changed is that America has spent immense resources
to pitch the world into more violence and lunacy.
Osama bin Laden or whoever
was responsible for 9/11 must sit back on the anniversary date
quietly chuckling as he reflects on his achievement, not only
because he was able to see all of this happen at the mere cost
of 19 followers, but because it is so stunningly clear that America
still doesn't get it.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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