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Today's
Stories
February
5, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
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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February
5, 2004
Ladies and Gentlemen:
President Edwards!
(After
All, He Did Win South Carolina)
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Suddenly the field of battle is littered with
the dead and the dying.
Senator Joe Lieberman had pinned his
hopes on Delaware, the state of ten thousand corporations whose
motto, "nihil a me alienum puto", translates as "We
don't care if they make Zyklon B, so long as they file their
articles of incorporation in Wilmington." Lieberman barely
broke 10 per cent and finally quit.
Dennis Kucinich had seen light in New
Mexico, where his presidential ambitions flowered under the aegis
of the New Age goddesses, but fell to earth with a meager 5 per
cent. We cannot officially bury his campaign because a sepulchral
silence has fallen over Camp Kucinich, but it surely cannot be
long before his campaign gets carried out in a box.
Each time we offer some deprecating comments
on Kucinich our counterpunch mail box overflows with furious
abuse of the "Kucitizens," as they term themselves.
Now, don't get us wrong. We like Dennis Kucinich, and have known
him for over quarter of a century. We admire him greatly. But
he has run a pathetic and inept campaign. He turned his back
on his working class roots and allied himself with a band of
rich New ASgers, who have a lot of money and a lot of advice
(mostly misguided) but know nothing about organizing or getting
people to vote. Kucinich failed miserably in a state he should
have done well in...Iowa, which has a strong peace movement that
has always given establishment Democrats problems. He made a
stupid alliance with John Edwards, which seriously undermined
his credibility. He performed even worse in New Hampshire, which
has in the past been kind to quirky candidates...see Tsongas.
The real question for us is what lies
ahead. If Kucinich is truly against the war will he continue
to challenge the front-runners through the spring and perhaps
bolt the party and run as a Green (which he should have done
to begin with). Or will he be a team player and endorse the centrist?
If the later, it will confirm our suspicion that Kucinich's objective
function has been, and is, as a kind of lure to bring the Naderites
back into the party.
Much had been expected of the Rev Al
Sharpton in South Carolina. There was a point several months
ago when it looked as Sharpton had a shot at winning the state
where moree than 50 per cent of the registered Democrats are
black. He ended up with 10 per cent, coming in third even among
black voters, a far cry for Jesse Jackson's victory in 1988.
Sharpton's campaign was a shambles from
the start. Experienced local organizers in South Carolina were
treated rudely, and in their stead he allied himself with, of
all people Roger Stone, a Republican political operator, the
man the Bush crowd called up to organize the Miami Cuban riot
during the 2000 Florida recount. Stone's wife is a Miami Cuban.
Howard Dean went AWOL during the week
and finally surfaced in Seattle, affixing his wan hopes on a
decent showing in that state's primary this coming Saturday,
which also is primary day in Michigan, with Maine on Sunday.
In his public appearance in Seattle Dean looked as though his
new campaign manager had put him on downers. There was no fire
in the man, and it's understandable why. There hasn't been so
fast a collapse by a highly rated challenger since Liston took
that dive in the second fight with Cassius Clay, as he was named
at the time. Even the replays don't show the punch that felled
Dean.
It's true Dean took a beating in the
press, and from the Clinton crowd running the Democratic National
Committee. But a more adept campaigner could have handled that.
He made some expensive miscalculations, like concentrating his
fire on Gephardt in Iowa, and running a negative ad he had to
pull. One big factor is the one that was touted as being his
strongest card: the internet. Internet campaigns can be like
pouring white gas on concrete and lighting a match. There's a
big flare up, then nothing. Another parallel would be like many
internet stocks. All boost, no bang. In the end, where were the
Deaniacs? Not out organizing, but stuck in front of their computers,
tapping out their blogs.
Fact is, aside from innovative fund raising,
Dean ran an utterly orthodox campaign in Iowa. A friend of CounterPunch
reading Dean blogs predicted in advance of the Iowa caucus that
Dean would fare badly. He said the Dean's campaign ads, done
by his campaign manager Trippi's firm, were terrible disasters,
costing Dean support each time they aired.
Dean could still provide some exciting
friction in a primary season that's threatening to become deadly
dull unless Kerry and Edwards start throwing mud at each other.
But it seems unlikely that the doctor from Vermont will come
out of the corner in any kind of combative shape.
On Tuesday morning Wesley Clark Jr, son
of the general, and the man who got him into the campaign and
coaxed endorsements from Madonna and Mary Steenbergen, moaned
aloud that it was all over. Why? Wes Jr revealed exit polls were
showing Clark to be doing poorly in Oklahoma, the state he was
expected to win. Actually Wes Jr was wrong. Clark won by 500
votes over Edwards (who had soared in the state after receiving
the endorsement of former Sooner football coach Barry Switzer)
and as he said later, he beat Edwards in four out seven contest
on February, even as the press hailed Edwards as the man now
challenging Kerry.
Clark has a point. As yet Edwards has
won only his native state. By doing so he stayed alive but he
has to fight it out with Clark across the rest of the south.
Both men claim to be economic populists and sensitive to the
concerns of blacks. Between a general, a mad one at that, and
a trial lawyer, we'd favor the trial lawyer on the simple grounds
that trial lawyers are almost the only force corporations have
to worry about these days. It's why the Wall Street Journal hates
trial lawyers more than any other group in America. Besides,
Edwards's dad worked in a textile mill; Clark's dad was a prosecutor.
The Marijuana Policy Project points out
that four states that have passed medical marijuana initiatives,
Washington, Maine, Nevada and Oregon, are all swing states in
a presidential election, and so Friends of the Bud could have
huge clout. So where do the candidates stand? Clark and Kerry
have both pledged that they would end federal raids on providers
and consumers of medical marijuana. Dean blocked a Vermont version
of the medical marijuana bill in 2002, as one would expect of
a guy who, so his wife recalls, wore khaki drill slacks and carried
a brief case when he was in college. Anyway, Dean's a doctor
and by and large doctors don't like rivals, as the homeopathic
crowd discovered a hundred years ago when the Rockefeller-financed
campaign for allopathic medicine got under way.
Edwards is cited by the MPP as having
said to a pro-pot group in New Hampshire that it would be "irresponsible"
to stop DEA raids on marijuana patients and providers. It's a
bit more complicated than that. On August 21 Edwards was asked
in New Hampshire whether he would end the DEA raids in California.
He answered, "I don't think you can say to people working
for you, 'no, ignore violations of the law.' I think that's irresponsible
for the President to do." The logical follow up question
to Edwards would have been, Well, as president would you seek
to change the law?" Here at CounterPunch at least we don't
know what Edwards' position on the matter is. He has admitted
to smoking dope, and no, we don't know whether anyone asked him
if he inhaled.
In New Hampshire the Edwards campaign
got very testy with Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana, going
so far as to get the cops to eject one activist passing out leaflets
during an Edwards meeting. After the primary the GSMM exulted
that " Medical marijuana patients were the clear winners...a
solid majority of Granite Staters voted for candidates who have
pledged to end the Bush administration's raids on medical marijuana
patients and providers." GSMM had given Kerry an A grade
in their voters' guide, Clark a B+. Dean pulled a D and Edwards
a low rating.
Medical marijuana is a potent issue.
An August 2003 Zogby International poll disclosed that voters
were told that Dean had acted to block a medical marijuana bill
in Vermont, 28 percent said they would be less likely to vote
for him in the Democratic presidential primary, while only 10
percent said they would be more likely to support Dean.
So far as we can see, aside from medical
marijuana, the big issues dividing Kerry and Edwards, are Botox
and Nafta. Kerry has been asked Are you now, or have you ever
been a recipient of a Botox treatment? Kerry said he'd never
heard of Botox, which could be an illuminating comment about
the state of his marriage since his wife Teresa, the ketchup
queen, has publicly discussed her close and admiring relationship
with Botox, the brow freezing bacteria dose. So this could be
the big lie that sinks Kerry's cred, the Botox trap. Edward has
a pretty boy look, unusual in a 50-year old trial lawyer. We
look forward to fierce exchanges on the matter in the next debate,
like the arguments in 1976 as to whether Ronald Reagan dyed his
hair. Reagan offered to let reporters look at his hair close
up, and even pull it. Will Kerry allow the newshounds to scan
him with a magnifying glasss?
Kerry voted for NAFTA. Edwards hails
from one of the states hit hardest by the trade agreement, and
has called for NAFTA's repeal. Get anywhere near high office
as an opponent of NAFTA or the WTO and you can expect ferocious
treatment in the press. If Edwards is going to make any headway
on trade, he has go beyond steer easy rhetorical flourishes about
trade protections.
As we
wrote here last November in a discussion of Robert Pollin's
Contours of Descent: "If we are to move towards a world
in which families don't have to line up outside churches in Ohio
to stay alive and teenagers don't have to work for 20 cents a
day in Third World sweatshops, we have to have policies here
that promote full employment and income security. Such policies
would have to include a strengthening of workers' legal rights
to organize, to form unions, and to fight on a level playing
field when it comes time to go on strike.
"To get a measure of fairness and
stability in the financial system financial institutions would
have to obey asset-based reserve stipulations, of which one example
would be the margin requirements Greenspan failed to impose in
September, 1996. This same policy instrument could be used to
channel credit to socially beneficial projects such as low-income
housing. Despite the best efforts of our doctrinal leaders, the
moral sentiments of the people are not entirely corrupted. Consumers,
for example, are prepared to pay a premium if they can be assured
they are buying products not made in sweatshops. And third-world
countries need not survive only under the sweatshop regimen...Third
world countries have to return to the somewhat protected conditions
encouraged in the development policies of an earlier era, without
agencies of the US government decreeing that their reformers
and their union organizers be murdered by death squads."
But that would mean a serious campaign
about serious issues, and there hasn't been any of that thus
far in the Democratic primaries, and we can't imagine Terry McAuliffe
and the DNC powerbrokers permitting anyone in their party to
edge onto such terrain.
Outside the two-party system?
Well, we haven't heard from Ralph Nader
ever since the Nation urged him not to run, but yes, there is
a lot of oxygen out there for any third party candidate, though
we hope any such candidate looking to attract the Deaniacs won't
put too much trust in the powers of the Internet.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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