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Today's Stories

June 8, 2004

Dave Lindorff
The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam?

Phillip Cryan
Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia

Mark Zepezauer
Getting Reagan Wrong

Mickey Z.
Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions

John L. Hess
Reagan and Bush in Normandy

Alex Dawoody
Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance

Christopher Fons
Reagan in a Word: Mean

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Some Tenets are More Important Than Others

Ahmed Bouzid
Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun

Michael Leon
Bush the Narcissist

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse?

June 7, 2004

Jason Leopold
New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes

Patrick Cockburn
The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing

Dennis Hans
From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy

Tracy McLellan
Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics

Bill Blum
The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War

Ben Tripp
What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter

Susan Davis
Reagan, In a Nutshell

Phil Gasper
Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance

Website of the Day
A Child's ABCs of Terrorism

June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

 

 

June 4, 2004

Chris Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House

Cornwell / Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy

Wayne Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink

Greg Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq

Yitzak Laor
Before Rafah

Ghali Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?

Jane Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey

CounterPunch Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?

John Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush

Mike Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW

Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?

Website of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire

 

June 3, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma

Dr. Susan Block
America in tha Hood

Michael Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin

John Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged

Christopher Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month

Samia Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case

Diane Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead

Scott Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba

Paul de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective

 

 

June 2, 2004

Brian Cloughley
The Liars are Winning

Ray McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence"

Josh Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive

Mike Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots

Jackie Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana

Robert Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too

Alexander Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"

 

June 1, 2004

Gary Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him

William A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?

Kevin Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?

Jacob Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production

Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government

Website of the Day
Remind Us

 

 

May 29 / 31, 2004

Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day

Janine Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day

Mike Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib

Alfred W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research

Douglas Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions

Chris White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto

Bruce Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu

David Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire

Saul Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?

Kurt Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA

Elaine Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders

Will Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"

Ben Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches

Dr. Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!

Kia Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh

Mickey Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!

Jon Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times

Patrick B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance

Stephen Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel

Tom Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New

Dave Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad

Gregory Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"

Erik Cummings
Jung Meets Bush

Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

 

May 28, 2004

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5

Greg Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib

Dave Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work

Norman Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times

Rep. Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba

Paul McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After

Alexander Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"

 

 

May 27, 2004

Amy Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times

Douglas Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs

John L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of

Stew Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist

Dave Dellinger
a 1993 Interview

Christopher Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids

Rampton / Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony

 

 

May 26, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours

Robert Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech

Zeynep Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation

Conn Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection

Tom Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes

Derek Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot

CounterPunch Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art

Andrew Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran

 

May 25, 2004

Joe Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas

Col. Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity

Gary Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home

Toni Solo
A Developing War in the Andes

Marc Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11

Stephen Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops"

Website of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy

May 24, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!

Kurt Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages

Sam Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time"

Mike Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb

Stan Goff
Open Season on MAMs

Image of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs

 

 

May 22 / 23, 2004

Paul de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary

Jeffrey St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer

Brian Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq

Saul Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People

Brandy Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry

Randall Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Rafah

Ben Tripp
Assume the Worst

Bruce Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business

Josh Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers

Peter Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib

Chloe Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy

Linda Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value

Adrien Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse

David Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy

Ron Jacobs
Turnaround

Poets' Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella

 


May 21, 2004

Ray Close
The Canards of the Apologists

Christopher Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"

Amira Hass
Darkness at Noon

Jack McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army?

Bill Kauffman
Nader v. Bush

Omar Barghouti
No More Tears for America

Ghali Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza

Christopher Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture

Website of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much

 

May 20, 2004

Andrew Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi

Kathy Kelly
A Visit from the FBI

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India

Tom Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.

Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy

Robert Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle

Billy Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year

Website of the Day
Rafah Today

 

 

 

 

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

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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
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Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

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June 9, 2004

A Nicaraguan Priest Remembers the CIA's Contra War

Reagan was the Butcher of My People

By Fr. MIQUEL D'ESCOTO
as told to Democracy Now!

Editors' Note: Fr. Miguel D'Escoto is a Catholic priest in Managua, Nicaragua. He was Nicaragua's Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government of the 1980s, when the US was arming and supporting the Contra death squads. Ronald Reagan said of the Contras: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers." The following text is drawn from an interview with Fr. D'Escoto on the national radio/TV show Democracy Now!

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA

First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I'm not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning President Reagan, but as I pray that God in his infinite mercy and goodness forgives him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not, ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled "freedom and democracy."

More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but, in fact, the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan was known as the "great communicator" and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.

Of course, as I say this, I'm quite aware that to the people of the Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big loss. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the world today is far less safe and secure than it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Somoza, a Dictator that the U.S. had imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century; had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front. To Reagan, Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed: the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People, helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said ignorant, I don't say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad.

People don't even begin to see -- if they did, they would rebel. And so, he lied to the people, as Bush lies to the people today and as they push on, thinking that the United States is above every law, human or divine. And we took the United States, Reagan's United States, his government to court, the World Court. I was Foreign Minister at that time here in Nicaragua. I was responsible for that. And the United States government received the harshest sentence, the harshest condemnation ever in the history of world justice. In spite of the fact that the United States since the early 1920's has been proclaiming to the world that one of the proofs of its moral superiority as compared to other countries around the world is the fact that it abides by the international law and was obedient to the world court when the United States was brought to the world court in Nicaragua and received the condemnation that the United States failed to heed the sentence and they till owe Nicaragua by now must be between 20,000 and $30,000 million at the time when we left government that the damages caused by that Reagan war was over $17 billion, and this, according to very moderate estimators of damage, people from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, people from Howard University and from Oxford and from the University of Paris basically this is the team that was pulled together to estimate the damage. The United States was ordered to pay for the damage. Bush never even wanted to talk to me about it. I said, "Well, let's have a meeting so that you comply with your sentence of the court." He said to me in two different letters that there was nothing to talk about.

So, Reagan did damage to Nicaragua beyond the imaginations of the people who are hearing me now. The ripple effects of that criminal murderous intervention in my country will go on for 50 years or more.

Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated radio/TV program broadcast on more than 220 stations. www.democracynow.org


Weekend Edition Features for June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

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