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Today's
Stories
January 10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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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January
10 / 11, 2004
The Deadly Secrets
of the Almanac
Dangerous
Books
By SUSAN DAVIS
Forever, people in power have been afraid of fiction.
Wild imaginings threaten to undermine the view of the world as
unchangeable, the easy idea that history is set in its course
like footprints in cement. Novels, poetry, plays, and even pornography
have been confiscated, burned and banned in both dangerous and
safe, settled times. Maybe late 2003, when United States government
alerted us to beware of people carrying books of facts, was a
turning point.
On Christmas Eve, the FBI Counterterrorism
Division announced to all American law enforcement agencies that
"terrorist operatives may rely on almanacs to assist with
target selection and preoperational planning. Almanacs, available
both in print and online, provide comprehensive information on
a variety of topics... that may be exploited for terrorist use...
" because they contain "profiles of US cities and states
and information on geographic and structural features such as
waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings, and
landmarks." Law enforcement agencies were told to report
any suspected use of almanacs to their nearest FBI Joint Terrorism
Task Force.
My first reaction on hearing about this
was to laugh, but the more I thought about it, the more sinister
suspicion of the almanac seems. The ancient almanac (the root
word is Arabic, meaning "the calendar") is just one
piece of a basic modern condition we enjoy in the United States
and elsewhere: abundant --- and in many forms still free ---information.
Warning people against almanac carriers seems like warning against
dictionary collectors.
The directive has gotten a lot of laughs
in the media lately. Perhaps to justify it, reports trickled
out, first over the BBC radio news and then a day later a short
notice in the Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio.
The almanac threat might have been real. The United States' Christmas
week alert, unnamed sources alleged, drew on information the
Department of Homeland Security received that Al Qaeda operatives
with "dirty bombs" might be spreading radiation around
five American cities. Tom Ridge sent operatives carrying concealed
radiation meters in golf bags, to test downtowns and suburbs
for contamination. Target cities varied in differing reports.
If these reports are true, almanacs really
could be deadly. So could tourist guides, USGS maps, gazetteers,
geological handbooks, and calendars of special events. And year
books, and world books, and the Columbia Encyclopedia. If you
take the FBI's perspective, every decently-run public library
is a major threat to national security. It seemed reasonable
to have a look at mine.
The Urbana Public Library is a Carnegie
Library, built with the robber baron's philanthropy in the early
20th century. (In pursuit of public improvement and popular enlightenment,
Andrew Carnegie offered to provide the buildings if cities and
towns agreed to provide the collections.) It's an elegant structure,
with a wonderful staff, and it enjoys wild popular support in
our town of 32,000 people. One of the most heavily used public
libraries in the United States, the Urbana public is open on
Sundays. Late one Tuesday afternoon it was packed with senior
citizens, homeless people getting out of cold, and high school
kids pretending to do homework.
I pulled a bunch of books off the reference
shelf, almost at random, to see just how much dangerous information
was within reach of any old lunatic, me included. The answer
is: plenty.
Prominently displayed because it's very
popular is the Index to How to Do It Information, a guide to
magazine articles about how to make things. Alongside instructions
for building your own china cabinet, you can find how to make
an "Eavesdropping Device," also called "Bionic
Ears," from items easily available at your hardware store
(see also: "Voice Scrambler"). The bionic ears "look
strange when you wear them," but they let you "hear
far-off sounds in stereo." I looked under "Hanging
Planter" but I didn't find any described as "useful
for signaling a contact."
There are scores of indexes of business
information. One of the most useful is the Dun & Bradstreet's
Billion Dollar Directory: America's Corporate Families. It's
full of basic facts about corporations and industries. You can
find addresses and phone numbers for all of the branches and
affiliates of a major corporation, discover what each division
produces, estimate numbers of employees for each plant, and if
you're interested, note the names of all the officers and the
Board of Directors. Who uses the Billion Dollar Directory? Investors,
job hunters, reporters -- but environmental and anticorporate
activists find it handy, too. And aren't these groups considered
potential terrorists under US law?
There are literally hundreds of tourist
guides describing cities and their infrastructures in the Urbana
Public Library. There are geographies, and if you follow FBI
logic it's the geographers who must be stopped. They give the
most specific driving directions, right down to the mile marker,
and they include maps and photographs. One of the best books
I found was a guide to the multiply-branched Chicago River, written
by a geographer. He not only locates the Studs Terkel Bridge
and describes the tunnels carrying fiber-optic cable under the
Loop, he tells you how to paddle your way into the heart of the
Windy City, and gives advice on where to tie up your canoe. Doesn't
Tom Ridge warn against terrorists arriving by water?
Engrossing in a different way is Mark
Crawford's handbook Toxic Waste Sites: An Encyclopedia of Endangered
America. It describes more than 1300 of the most dangerous federal
Superfund sites (toxic dumps or spills prioritized for cleanup
by the Environmental Protection Agency since the 1970s), listing
them state by state. Crawford includes appendices of common toxic
hazards, ranks federally recognized contamination by state (New
Jersey is number one with 109 identified sumps), maps, and worst
of all, a long list of "Additional Reading." It contains
more than I wanted to know about how old industrial and military
sites threaten the health of millions of Americans through drinking
water, air and soil exposure.
I took a turn through the chapter on
Illinois and my eye fell upon a map. In DuPage County, home of
West Chicago and other suburbs and unincorporated areas, there's
a little rose-shaped cluster of Superfund dots. Crawford writes
that the banks of the DuPage River, the river itself, one of
its tributary creeks, surrounding subdivisions, parks, air and
ground water within roughly a three mile radius have been polluted
for decades by radioactive wastes, especially thorium.
The corporate PRP (possibly responsible
party) is Kerr-McGee of Oklahoma uranium processing fame, which
apparently bought several industrial and military manufacturing
plants in area, including a uranium processing mill and a sewage
treatment plant. This last received decades worth of powerfully
toxic wastes, which then spread into streams and ground water.
Radioactive sands and soils were also used for house and road
construction and landfill. The plants operated from as early
as 1931 until 1973, and, although Kerr-McGee signed a consent
decree in the early eighties to clean up the mess, in 1996 an
EPA investigation concluded that contamination was still spread
broadly. In late 2003, the Chicago Tribune reported that hundreds
of millions of dollars later, and after ferocious citizen pressure,
further cleanup was needed. In the meantime, other sorts of pollution
had been detected in the DuPage County groundwater, including
PCBs, trichloroethylene, radium and mercury, and some joker was
caught unloading a slab of radioactive waste in a nearby forest
preserve. (He was fined.)
Just one county in Illinois, just five
old sites, just tens of thousands of people at risk over decades
and decades. Make that at least five decades. How many of them
knew the danger they might be in, and when? It makes you wonder
about the definition of a "dirty bomb." And it makes
you wonder whether the people who live in DuPage County are panicked
by the reports of radiation-packing Al Qaeda operatives in Chicago?
Or have they gotten used to persistent, low-grade fear after
decades of dealing with Kerr-McGee and the EPA?
With no answer at hand, I left the reference
section and a huge pile of frightening fact books waiting to
be reshelved. On the basis of an expedition like this you could
conclude that indeed, information is dangerous. But reviewing
the facts from West Chicago, or almost anyplace else, you could
come to a different conclusion. In order to decide who and what
to be afraid of, we need more information, not less. And we need
to have it from the widest stream of independent sources, not
the tiny toxic trickle we've gotten used to.
Susan Davis
teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She
can be reached at: sgdavis@uiuc.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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