Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 24,
2005
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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Marcos
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Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
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20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
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February 24, 2005
Valerie Plame and 30 Pieces of Silver
Bribing
and Twisting Amerian Journalists
By
BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Scots steel tempered wi'
Irish fire,
Is the weapon that I desire.
-Hugh MacDiarmid
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God!
the British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.
'The Uncelestial City', Humbert
Wolfe, 1930
Apparently one can bribe and twist American
journalists nowadays (I wouldn't be too happy about certain
European scribes, come to think of it), and the fact that the
Bush administration has done so isn't in the slightest surprising.
After all, they've bought or twisted far more important people
than the bunch of dismal media hacks - Williams, Ryan, Gannon/Guckert
and Garcia--who have been rewarded for helping the Bush pursuit
of freedom. That is, of course, the freedom to put the Bush
point of view and no other. In general this point of view is
put in a less than forthright manner (to be kind), and few can
help in this more effectively than members of the roving media.
One particularly contemptible
instance of odious conduct by Bush freedom hiders took place
in July 2003 when two officials in his administration used a
warped and twisted germ to reveal the name of a CIA deep cover
operative, Valerie Plame. Robert Novak, the sleazy creep who
shrilled her name around the world, should have known it is
a felony under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act to
disclose the name of a US agent. But even were he not aware
of criminal intention (having arrived in Washington from Planet
Zog the day he betrayed her), there is the small matter of morality.
"Hey -- there's one of our spies who has contacts in
horrible places round the world. I'll reveal her name and she
will never be able to serve America again and the sources she
has had for years will be arrested, tortured and killed. This
is a public service, folks!" One thinks of the Bible's
words in Matthew 16, Verse 7 : "What will ye give me, and
I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for
thirty pieces of silver."
You have to ask Cicero's classic
question "Cui bono?"--who benefited?--to begin to understand
this squalid operation. It wasn't the public who benefited.
It wasn't the CIA. It sure as hell wasn't Valerie Plame or
her husband. Then who did? The scum who devised this poisonous
attack wanted a prize. They desired a tangible reward for deliberately
breaking the law of the land by using a willing hack to spread
their filth. But what can they have wanted in return? It couldn't
have been money, because Bushco has got scads of cash. There
was something else. And that was vengeance. They had an overwhelming
desire to inflict punishment. It was their intention, in good
Christian Bush Washington, to take spiteful revenge, no matter
the cost or consequences, on a man whose moral duty it was to
confirm that Bush is a lying charlatan. And, contemptibly,
they did it by striking at his wife.
Relentless and venomous vindictiveness
is the hallmark, the leitmotif, the very life-breath of the
diseased Bush administration.
And if you think that anyone
in the administration will go to jail for endangering the life
of a loyal public servant by giving her name to a piece of mobile
excreta then you have another think coming. It won't happen,
although there is no possibility that the name could have been
revealed except through a government official, and a highly-placed
one at that. Nobody outside the CIA should have known - should
ever know - the identity of one of its active or retired operatives.
But the name of Valerie Plame was willfully betrayed by someone
who had access to ultra-secret CIA information. (Beware, all
those who serve the CIA. As St Matthew recorded : "Verily
I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me".)
If you think I am becoming
a trifle hot under the collar about this, you are quite right.
I know of two people who were for some time under deep cover,
many years ago, and what sticks in my mind is the fact that they
were dicing with death all day, every day, every minute, that
they were playing their parts. One false step and a deep cover
agent is dead. And not just by shooting. The agonizing torment
inflicted on them by their captors would make the Abu Ghraib,
Bagram and Guantánamo Bay torture sessions look like a
warm-up on an exercise bike. The IRA terrorists, for example,
had the delightful habit of skinning people alive from the neck
up. Their demented shrieking usually stopped just below the eyeballs.
The Soviets captured some African deep cover agents (probably
employed by western intelligence services) and drove them stark
raving crazy and sent at least one of them back home. (The person
who told me this-- not herself an agent-- said, perhaps a trifle
cynically, "and that is how Robert Mugabe got his start.")
All the people in the chain
of revealing Valerie Plame's identity are guilty of complicity
in wickedness. A hack was used by people in the Bush administration
in a spasm of vicious malevolence to punish a person who embarrassed
Bush by speaking the truth. Valerie Plame's husband had showed
the world that Bush was a lying oaf when in his 2003 State of
the Union Address he gibbered about Iraq's non-existent nuclear
program. Nobody in the world can be forgiven for showing Bush
to be the asinine prat that he is. Richard Nixon's List of Enemies
to be dealt with was evil, but it's nothing compared to current
White House vendettas against those who dare to rove out of line.
Before the story intended to
destroy Plame and her husband was provided to Novak it was peddled
round some honorable writers who refused to have anything to
do with it. And the intriguing thing is that Novak then riposted
: "The published report that somebody in the White House
failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found
me as a willing pawn is simply untrue." But how can Novak
be so certain? Could Novak's assertion that the story was
"simply untrue" have come from the White House whose
officials told him it wasn't true, whereupon (having just arrived
from Planet Zog), he at once believed them? Or - perish the
thought - could Novak have been playing with words? Or perhaps
he didn't do that, although his use of the word 'plant' is illuminating.
But it is undeniable that two reporters were indeed contacted
and declined to support the tawdry conspiracy. Naturally, they
are now being prosecuted.
No matter what Novak's evasions
might or might not have been, the most perturbing aspect of the
scandal is that for over a year and a half there has been no
action to find out the names of the fetid dregs who crawled out
of their Washington gutter to tell Novak about Valerie Plame.
Given normal powers of investigation, a team of detectives
from any police force in the United States could have discovered
who was responsible for the crime within a week of being tasked.
But all that has happened is prosecution of two journalists
who were involved peripherally in the affair. They didn't break
the law about revealing CIA names. They are not traitors to
their country. But they were subpoenaed in the case and then
refused to divulge the names of the people who told them about
Valerie Plame. They were honorable enough to refuse to broadcast
her name to the world at the bidding of the filth, but jibbed
at revealing the names of the scum. Good thinking, Bush supporters
: Don't go for the traitors in the case ; put up a smokescreen
and attack someone who didn't do anything wrong. Then bribe
and twist the hacks to smear and denigrate anyone likely to be
critical of the Great Leader. Such is Bush freedom.
This criminal case is a simple
one. It could have been cleared up in short order by professional
investigators. By now, eighteen months after the crime was
committed, Novak and those who told him the details about Valerie
Plame should have been in the slammer for months. But nothing
will happen to them. They are well-protected by Bush administration
Omerta. Enjoy the figurative pieces of silver, fellas, but
it's difficult to understand how you can bear the burden of your
conscience. As Saint Matthew recorded : "What is a man
profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
You said it, Matt. But in spite of all the prayer meetings
in the White House there has been no reduction in bribing and
twisting in Christian Washington.
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