Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 22,
2005
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
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
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WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
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Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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February 22, 2005
Imperial Zealotry
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
By
WILLIAM A. COOK
"We on the right side
of freedom's divide have an obligation to help those unlucky
enough to be born on the wrong side."
Condoleezza Rice, 2/9/05
David Stannard, in his thoroughly documented
work on genocides, American
Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World (1992), introduces
his 5th Chapter with a passage from Toni Morrison's Beloved:
"Whitefolks were still on the looseWhile whole towns wiped
clean of Negroes; eighty seven lynchings in one year alone in
Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men
whipped like children; children whipped like adults; black women
raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken (and as Stamp
Paid, a black man, came to his flatbottomed boat he saw) a red
ribbon knotted around a curl of wet wooly hair, clinging still
to its bit of scalp." He pulled the ribbon loose and let
the scalp sink in the river as he asked to no one in particular
and the world in general, "What are these people? You tell
me, Jesus. What are they?"
What fuels slavery, ethnic
cleansing, land theft, and genocide? What enables a mind to justify
imprisoning another without cause, without trial, without rights
of due process and assumption of innocence until proven guilty?
What enables a soul to accept dominance over another, to degrade
and humiliate other humans, to participate in or acquiesce to
genocide?
Let me mutter a response to
Stamp Paid's question to Jesus since He seems silent on the subject.
I'll posit two trends of thought that seem to reside at the root
of Western culture, trends that swirl like infected eddies beneath
the surface of our ideals allowing for slavery, ethnic erasure
of populations, land theft and genocide. The first blossoms when
men, driven by a commitment to an ideology they accept as absolute,
as those who zealously and fanatically proclaim they alone know
God's word, rise to power and force their beliefs on others,
knowing in their hearts that they are chosen to lead because
of their innate superiority, men like Ferdinand, the King of
Spain, Columbus and the Pope who guide their legions of friars
and conquistadors to impose their divinely ordained right on
others. The second follows from the first, when men, who accept
unquestioningly their superiority over others deemed by them
to be sub-human or inferior in intellect or will, move to positions
of power not driven by an ideology, but willingly use those so
possessed, to impose their covetous desire to acquire land, natural
resources, or labor regardless of the consequences.
Elie Wiesel said of the Nazi
perpetrators of the holocaust: "All the killers were Christians
The Nazi system was the consequence of a movement of ideas and
followed a strict logic; it did not arise in a void but had its
roots deep in a tradition that prophesied it, prepared for it,
and brought it to maturity. That tradition was inseparable from
the past of Christian, civilized Europe." Wiesel's observation
implies that the Nazi holocaust uitlized the belief structures
in the church and the faithful's acceptance of them as articulated
by their leaders to carry forward the devastation of the Jews.
Both trends were in operation as the Nazi leadership imposed
its will on the German citizenry while enunciating the innate
superiority of the German nation.
Condoleezza Rice noted in her
Paris speech "history does not just happen, it is made.
History is made by men and women of conviction, of commitment
and of courage, who will not let their dreams be denied."
Once again the past of Christian, civilized Europe is on the
march; its dreams of God's mission to bring His gift of "freedom"
to all the peoples of the world will be executed whether or not
they are the dreams of all the peoples who will accept them or
die. What mind decides, "We are on the right side of freedom's
divide"? What mind declares it will impose its righteousness
on all the peoples of the earth? What soul will succumb to the
will of its leaders to slay the infidels who deny the "right"
as determined by an elite group of fanatics driven by a self-determined
superiority and a zeal to impose their beliefs on all?
Let us note that the Secretary
of State did not say history is made by those seeking oil to
ensure its military dominance, nor did she say that history is
made by the nation that supports America's and Israel's interests
in the mid-East; she said, most emphatically, what the Zionists
of the Christian right claim to be "right," that God
gave this land to a Christian nation, to be a "City on a
Hill," a beacon to all the world that they might see what
God expected His creatures to do on His behalf, and in that covenant,
the responsibility to bring that gift to all the world.
Imbedded in that belief resides
the spirit of superiority of God's chosen, an awareness that
they alone possess the truth, and, consequently, are the most
civilized creatures on the planet. Indeed, refusal by a people
to accept conversion to Christianity became a mark of irrationality
and subhuman status. Now, this most Christian of nations brings
God's gift to the nations of the world judging them fit to join
the "advanced, civilized, and developed" nations of
the West if they adopt willingly or by force America's form of
Democracy, a form dominated by Corporate power and control, where
"advanced and developed" means in reality new markets
for Capitalistism and new resources to fuel its continued growth.
Strange how the "bread of heaven" has metamorphized
into a euphemistic "freedom" for all if they become
cooperative consumers for extended Christian Capitalism. Both
trends that give rise to genocide swirl beneath the rhetoric
of "freedom and liberty," a virtual whirlpool of Zionist
Christian fanaticism and neo-con covetousness for land and resources,
and will erupt in a tsunami of devastation for those who oppose
the will of this administration.
But even more insidious is
the unquestioned acceptance of their right to impose their dreams
on all, by force if necessary, since they, like their Christian
ancestors, accept Augustine's view, "Any violation of God's
laws could be seen as an injustice warranting unlimited violent
punishment. Further, the guilt of the enemy merited punishment
of the enemy population without regard to the distinction between
soldiers and civilians. Motivated by righteous wrath, the just
warriors could kill with impunity, even those who were morally
innocent." (Frederick H. Russell, American Holocaust.).
The "dreams" of the
Spanish priests who came with the Crown's forces, the Conquistadors
(who had their own dreams), believed, as do our current crop
of TV evangelists and right wing Baptists, that God was about
to fulfill the prophecies of the Book of Revelation. Columbus
had calculated the end time as 150 years away and the Franciscans
understood their founder to be an angel of Revelation, Charles
V to be the Anti-Christ, and the Reformation wars of nothern
Europe the catastrophes predicted in that book. Since they were
obviously born on the right side of the divide, they had a responsibility
to bring God's word to the infidels. This they did with a vengeance,
including the Miranda Law of the day, the requerimiento,
that forced the natives to abandon their beliefs and tribes and
accept the authority of the Papacy and the Crown. Should they
refuse, perhaps because it was read to them in Spanish, they
were tortured and killed.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
We need only turn on our television set to the indominable Hal
Lindsey to hear the most recent predictions of God's ultimate
twisting of events to force the prophecies of Revelation into
reality. When do we bring this man and all his ilk to court to
stand trial for inciting to riot and crimes against humanity?
What right does he have, whatever side of the great divide he
claims to be on, to intimidate the faithful with eternal damnation
if they do not press forward with Lindsey's war against the Muslims?
Genocides and holocausts arise
out of unchecked zeal, unquestioned duty, and silent acquiescence.
They are fueled by blind belief, personal fear, and a sense of
superiority that gives license to slaughter. Both the United
States under Bush and its clone under Sharon exemplify the presence
of racism resulting in genocidal devastation as they impose their
respective wills on Iraqis and Palestinians.
William Cook is a professor of English at the University
of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen
Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
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