Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 22
/ 24, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
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
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
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Weekend Edition
January 22 / 24, 2005
CounterPunch Diary
Prince
Harry's Travails; John L. Hess Gone at 87
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Imagine, in the same month as the death
of the muse of high camp, Susan Sontag, we have England in an
uproar about Prince Harry and his silly arm band. All this while
The Producers is playing to packed houses in London. They're
even talking of banning the swastika. That'll be on in the eye
for Indian symbols! The airlines will have to start handing out
reminders to the Navajo before they land at Heathrow.
The theme of the party where
some jerk snapped Harry was Colonialists and Natives. I suppose
the lad could have gone as Lord Curzon or Lord Kitchener, but
most of Harry's male relatives still have to dress like that
anyway for formal military occasions. The Afrika Korps uniform
was a nice idea and a lot more original than putting some shoeblack
on his face and going as a native.
How bitterly Harry must regret
not dressing up as Captain Cook. Then he could have had an enjoyable
Tour of Contrition to the Antipodes and the Pacific region, apologizing
to the Maoris and Hawai'ians for insensitivity to genocide. Who
wants to go to Auschwitz at this time of year?
Of course the leaders of major
Jewish organizations have had a field day, broadcasting their
shock and dismay on an hourly basis and telling Harry to jog
round the Auschwitz perimeter another couple of times. Moral
reprobation from these folk about fancy dress looks threadbare
in an age when Israeli soldiers force a Palestinian to play his
violin at a border crossing.
How come Sharon didn't send
those soldiers to Auschwitz to apologize for having forgotten
that it's only sixty years since Jews with fiddles in Eastern
Europe were being told by genuine Nazi murderers to hop about
and play a few tunes. How come Sharon doesn't have to apologize
for anything?
"Where do you stop with
the taboos?" wrote David Ball of Milton Keynes to the Daily
Telegraph. "Do you not dress as a Dominican Friar, whose
order was responsible for the persecution and death of thousands
of 'Heretics' i.e people with different views, in the Middle
Ages. Do you not dress as a US cavalryman, who assisted in the
systematic destruction of the indigenous native population of
America, or as a conquistador, who decimated the Inca population.
History is full of evil-doers. Do we try and ignore their existence
or accept them for what they were? I don't think Harry was going
around shouting neo-Nazi slogans and giving Heil Hitler salutes.
He was just dressed as a soldier, complete with all the insignia-
swastika included, that the uniform entailed. An insensitive
choice, but probably only youthful indiscretion. To bar him from
Sandhurst, would be crass. If anything, the training is likely
to teach him some values and a better appreciation of the influence
his position has got."
I'll buy that, same way as
I buy the view of the Pravda editorialist who wrote: "Prince
Harry turned up in an Afrika Korps uniform - who better to mock
than
the German colonials under Hitler, the greatest imperialist project
in human history since perhaps Genghis Khan?. If this young man
was invited to a Colonials and Natives party, what was he supposed
to wear? A pink ballet dress, to be accused of being a fairy,
a trans-sexual or a cross-dresser?"
Rommel was a perfect choice.
The English have always had a soft spot for him, the Desert Fox,
the Good German outgeneraled by Montgomery and then forced to
commit suicide by Hitler. Actually Rommel was outgeneraled by
the Matrons who ruled over matters of hygiene at the schools
attended by the British officer class. How well I remember Matron
at my own school, Heatherdown, who used to line us little boys
up and then clasp our testicles in her chill hand and demand
we cough. I'm never quite sure why; maybe to detect signs of
incipient syphilis in case we eight-year olds had been infected
by the girls at Heathfield, the other side of a wall even more
forbidding than the one the Israelis are running through the
occupied territories.
It was these matrons, so I
was recently reminded by Mark Harrison in my Christmas issue
of Oxford Today, who instilled in British officers in
North Africa and elsewhere importance of hygiene. In the Western
Desert of Egypt in 1942, Harrison writes in his essay "Medicine
and Victory", because of "proper waste management"
the British Army "enjoyed a marked and consistent advantage
over their opponents, as sickness rates were 50-70 per cent lower
than in the German forces. By the time of the climactic battle
of El Alamein, the Afrika Korps carried the burden of 9,954 sick
out of a total strength of 52,000." Out of 10,000, the Panzer
division had slightly less than 4,000 men fit to fight.
All this gives fresh resonance
to the phrase "dirty Germans". Colonel H.S. Gear, assistant
director of hygiene in the British Army, claimed the Germans'
defensive positions were "obvious from the amount of faeces
lying on the surface of the ground the enemy appears to have
no conception of the most elementary sanitary measures".
The official historian of the campaign, F.A.E. Crew wrote that
"It is not improbable that the complete lack of sanitation
among both the Germans and the Italians did much to undermine
their morale in the Alamein position." Matron won! Prince
Harry should have gone to the party dressed as Matron, or Matron's
softer antecedent in the lives of these young men: Nanny, the
emotional rock to which many an upper class lad clung for the
rest of his life.
All this talk of matrons and
nannies brings me to Harry's great uncle, Edward VIII (titled,
after abdication, the Duke of Windsor), a keen admirer of Hitler,
as pious British reprovers of Prince Harry have not failed to
point out. Wallis Simpson, herself a Nazi agent, won the Duke's
eternal affection by understanding exactly what fancy dress he
really craved.
In his wonderful The Duchess
of Windsor (recently reissued with sensational new material
along with his equally gripping Howard Hughes) my friend
Charles Higham quotes the Duke's equerry, Sir Dudley Forwood,
who used to peer through the bedroom keyhole, as saying of saying
of Windsor that "It is doubtful whether he and Wallis ever
actually had sexual intercourse in the normal sense of the word.
However, she did manage to give him relief. He had always been
a repressed foot fetishist, and she discovered this and indulged
the perversity completely. They also, at his request, became
involved in elaborate erotic games. These included nanny-child
scenes: he wore diapers, she was the master."
Harry could have gone to that
party in diapers, or even as a foot. But instead he tried to
be a manly man and went as a soldier, and got into a whole heap
of trouble. He'll know better next time. Even if he'd gone as
a 1942-vintage Luftnachrichtenhelferin, as fetchingly depicted
in my treasured copy of Women at War, 1939-45, probably
no one would have batted an eye.
John L.
Hess Gone at 87; A Great American Reporter Misses Chance to Flay
Bush Inaugural
John Hess grew old the way
journalists are meant to go old, but almost never do. He never
stopped stamping on the toes of the powers-that-be, never lost
his edge, never got out of harness.
He wrote almost till he dropped,
more taken up with the latest outrages of the Bush administration,
of the New York Times, of scoundrelly real estate tycoons and
self aggrandizing liberals than he did about the boring business
of putting food in his mouth. Like many folks who get to be 87
and enjoy working, he reckoned a cupful of fuel ould keep the
engine running all month.
A friend of CounterPunch, one
of John's favored and grateful outlets in his last years, called
to tell us last week that John had keeled over in a faint and
was in the Jewish Home on the Upper West side of Manhattan. I
called him from Petrolia, here in California, and at first he
sounded, as the Irish say, pretty shook.
I had some difficulty making
out what he was saying but then he gathered force and soon was
pressing me to suggest a publisher for the writings and commentaries
he'd done since his splendid, acrid memoir of his life on the
New York Times. We chatted a while and a few days later, on Jan
15, we got an email relayed by his children Martha and Peter:
From deepest rehabilitation
-- Greetings. I've been too disabled by reality to spread my
usual cheer at a time when there's been so much to spread,
i.e. -- Kerik and Gonzales. As Rummy likes to put it, we have
to deal with the humankind they gave us.
Onward and upward. Till the
next time.
John.
I figured he'd soon be back
in action, but it turns out John's race was almost over. We got
an email early on Friday from his son Peter saying he died peacefully
in his sleep even earlier that day, at the age of 87. Thus he
was spared the Inauguration, about which he would have filed
one of his inimitably succinct commentaries. At 84, his wife
Karen --active collaborator in those seignant days and
nights when the Two Musketeers took the Food Establishment by
storm--survives him.
Whenever I saw John, rare in
recent years since we live at opposing edges of this continent
he reminded me of the old, green eyeshade days, when the best
journalists were bohemian in spirit, parlous in financial stability,
knew their way round libraries, back alleys, lobbies, precinct
houses, waiting rooms, morgues, corporate balance sheets, wine
lists, the Eighteenth Brumaire. They mostly didn't go to roundtables
at the Council on Foreign Relations but if they did they could
take the striped pant pundits down in a second with a couple
of facts and a knowledgeable anecdote. They had real politics
and the fire of the great populist muckrakers and hellraisers
of an even earlier time.
That was John and in this land
of some 250 million souls, there are others--not too many, to
be sure--who resemble him, dissenters to the end, bloodied but
unbowed before the pettiness, ignorance, arrogance and malevolence
of power.
Footnote: I'm sad to have
had the opportunity to honor, albeit briefly, John Hess in this
diary. My somewhat heterodox thoughts on Prince Harry's fancy
dress first ran in the print edition of the Nation that went
to press last Wednesday.
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