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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Liberation Four Years After: Iraqis Should Look to Serbia to Find Out What "Freedom" Will Be Like; Unfolding Nightmare: Inside the Humanitarian Disaster in Post-War Iraq; Good News, Bad News: Countering the Flood of Propaganda; You Want Victory?: Return to Vieques; Iraq's War Message to Latin America: You Could be Next. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Recent Stories

April 29, 2003

Gary Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results of the Iraq War

Uri Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen

Anthony Gancarski
Brush with the Law

Mickey Z.
POWs: Then and Now

CounterPunch Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents

Robert Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?

Chris Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria

Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents

Wallace Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?

Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29

 

April 28, 2003

Ann Harrison
Fighting Back: Medical Marijuana Patients Sue Ashcroft

Robert Jensen
Lack of WMD Kills the Case for War

Peter Phillips
Total Information Control

Ron Jacobs
Get the US Out of Iraq and Its Military Out of Our Minds

Mark Hand
Peace Park: The Pentagon Solution to a Baseball Stadium Dilemma

Linda S. Heard
Repeat After Me: Iraq is Weapons Free

Kurt Nimmo
US Military Bases: the Spoils and Deceptions of War

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/28

 

April 26 / 27, 2003

Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Bush, Ashcroft and the End of Civil Liberties

Saul Landau
Iraq War: a Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism

William A. Cook
Sharon Recruits US as Mercenaries Against Syria

William S. Lind
Now the Real War Starts

John Chuckman
In Jesus's Name:
Franklin Graham's Christian Empire

David MacMichael and Ray McGovern
Ex-CIA Analysts on WMD: Where? Find? Plant?

Gary Leupp
Why the War on Iraq was (and Remains) Wrong

Robert Sandels
Cuba Crackdown: a Revolt Against Bush's National Security Strategy?

CounterPunch Wire
An Open Letter to Jerry Brown on Oakland Police Violence Against Peace Activists and Dock Workers

Mickey Z.
Our Ba'athists

Anthony Gancarski
Nader Plays Pullman

Scott Handleman
The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case in Its True Colors

Claud Cockburn
Evelyn Waugh's Ear Trumpet

Poets' Basement
Matt Simon, Sam Hamod, Hammond Guthrie and Stew Albert

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/26

 

April 25, 2003

David Vest
It's Not the Oil; It's the Art!

Steven Higgs
All About Tucker Carlson

Walt Brasch
The Shock and Awe of American Ignorance

Alexander Cockburn
The Decline of American Journalism: the Case of Judy Miller

Zeynep Toufe
A Letter to the People of Iraq from an Anti-War Activist

CounterPunch Wire
Season of the Witch: Jeane Kirkpatrick Unbound

Hammond Guthrie
Springtime in Iraq

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/25

Website of the Day
Having a Great Time, Wish You Were Here: Postcards from a War

 

April 24, 2003

Lois Whitman
An Open Letter to Rumsfeld on the Child Detainees at Guantanamo

Uri Avnery
Abu vs. Abu: It's Not About Egos

David Lindorff
Day Care in the Name of National Security? About Those Kids in Camp X-Ray

John Grebe
Rev. Pat Robertson's Message in the Temple

Dokhi Fassihian
Monster.Com: Ethnic Cleansing on the Web?

CounterPunch Wire
Israeli Army Chief Threatens Peace Activists

Sam Hamod
Our Man in Baghdad

Annie C. Higgins
Do You Regret Being an American?

Harold A. Gould
Will They Hate Us Forever?

Stew Albert
Big Brother in Bed

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/24

Website of the Day
Muscles Abroad

 

April 23, 2003

Anthony Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat

Chris Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach by Example

Marjorie Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers

William Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War

Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer

Binoy Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq

David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?

Standard Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Andrew Rodman
Lawn Poem

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23

Website of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East

 

April 22, 2003

Edward Said
The Appalling Consequences of the Iraq War are Now Clear

Sam Hamod
What's the Deal with This War?

Kurt Nimmo
Shi'a Will to Power

Gary Leupp
At last! The Necessary Evidence

Carl Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort, We Subside

John Stanton
Iran's Reza Pahlavi: a Puppet of the US and Israel?

Ramzy Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?

Steven Sherman
About That Cuba Letter

Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

Stew Albert
Creep

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/22

Website of the Day
Critical Media Literacy in Times of War

 

April 21, 2003

Elaine Cassel
An Administration in Contempt

Gary Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus and Kanaka WaiWai

Roger Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action

Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door

Col. Dan Smith
Early Lessons from Iraq

Jo Freeman
After the Protest Comes Politics

Michael Berry
The Friedman Absurdities

Gray Brechin
Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss

Bob Riedel
The Taliban from Texas

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/21

 

April 19, 2003

Gary Leupp
The Rape of History

Saul Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's War, Wait for Armageddon

Michael J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia

Pablo Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance

Omar Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat

Anthony Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World

Mickey Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage

Will Potter
When Police Attack Journalists

William MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism

Neve Gordon
Haunted by History

Adam Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace

Dr. Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace

Poets' Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/19

Song of the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra

 

April 18, 2003

Uri Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom": This One's Not About Oil

Jorge Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation

Mickey Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes

Hussein Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV

Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles

Matania Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President of Israel's Supreme Court

Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us

Joe Allen
My Lai Revisited

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Support Our Euphemism

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/18

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Meet the Victims of War

 

April 17, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in the Patriot Missile System

Joanne Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications for the Pentagon

Issam Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman to Baghdad

Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism

Robert Fisk
The Army of Occupation

Boris Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim

Biljana Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where is the Truth?

Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire

Stanley Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like

Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation

Harold A. Gould
Iraq After the War

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/17

 

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April 30, 2003

"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"

A Letter to President Bush

By ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL

I don't know if you will read this letter, not because it will not reach you, but because you are incapable of reading it. Your heart is so hardened by hatred and fear, that you have neither capacity nor courage to open your mind and your spirit to compassion. In spite of all that, however, I cannot keep from sending it to you, because if you do not read it, I am sure it will be read by many men and women, those who ask you to stop the massacre of the people of Iraq. When you decided to invade Iraq, in spite of the opposition of the people of the world, you did not listen to their cries, "NO TO WAR, YES TO PEACE;" you closed your ears and your heart when the United Nations, churches, humanitarian and human rights organizations demanded that the rule of law and the consideration of the people had to prevail. You were not interested in hearing it.

I asked you in another letter do not defy God, do not built the Tower of Babel out of pitilessness and hate; do not let yourself be ruled by your own ambitions of power to impose your political, economic and military interests. I asked you to think, because you reap what you sow. Sadly, you do not know how to honor life; you have profoundly damaged humanity as a whole and your own Northamerican people.

You will win wars with your imperial army and with that of your allies; you will be able to show the great power of your weapons and the high technology of death; but none of that justifies you. The greatest of your defeats is that you have lost the respect of the people of the world, and, for all the crimes committed, you have earned the rejection of the conscience of humanity. In this flight from decency you are joined by your deadly allies: Tony Blair, José María Aznar and Australia.

You hide the true motives of the invasion of Iraq and seek to justify the massacres to take over that country's oil resources, and dominate the Middle East to impose your plans of world hegemony and of globalized dictatorship. You have turned the EE.UU. into a terrorist State. Did you need to massacre the people of Iraq, to kill children and women to get rid of a dictator who used to be your ally?

We need to remember, not to remain in the past; but because it must illuminate our present. The long history of invasions confirms it: Vietnam, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and the military dictatorships the EE.UU. imposed; the present militarization and military bases all over Latin America and in other parts of the world. You can dominate militarily; but you will never be able to convince anyone.

The people are not taken in by the lies and disinformation campaigns the accomplice mass media of communications uses as psychological weapon, showing Northamerican and British soldiers in charitable acts, giving away candy to Iraqi children, after having massacred their families and bombarded the population. How will you try to justify your crimes, those you call, "collateral damages"? How will you explain to the world that you want to destroy the United Nations and refuse to acknowledge international law, seeking to apply your policies of domination, without concern for human suffering or for the destruction of other countries, using State terrorism?

How to justify the unjustifiable? Can you sleep without being punished by your own conscience? Your army bombs cities and civilian populations with thousands of missiles; it fires against populations yellow "cluster bombs" and boxes of food color yellow also; aberrant method used in Vietnam, Cambodia and in the Gulf War. Bombs and food are your "medicines of death." Your generals say that they don't count copses; they only count the bombs that produce the corpses.

Perversion has no boundaries; but you say to pray to God and you believe you are predestined for humanity. Hitler had the same thoughts when he unleashed his madness and wanted to dominate the world. The God of Life will call you on account for your own crimes. You are guilty of crimes against humanity and you will be judged for the many deaths and suffering against the people of Iraq and other peoples of the world.

The world sees with horror that you are parceling up and giving away that which not yours, that the vultures that surround you are ready to throw themselves over the carcasses and the blood of the Iraqi people, to make lucrative business with the oil. They talk of the "reconstruction of Iraq," colonized and subjected to the interests of the EE.UU. and think of the profits they will make.

You talk of God. And you detest God. You talk of freedom and you destroy freedom. You talk of democracy and dignity, and you do not hesitate in sacrificing them in the altar of the god, Molok, your god of destruction and death. You talk of human rights and you violate them systematically.

The United Nations are an obstacle to your interests. Or they subordinate themselves to your will, or you destroy them. You pretend to create a tribunal to judge your ex ally, Saddam Hussein, because he is no longer useful to you; but you do not recognize the International Criminal Court to judge the crimes against humanity. You want to get impunity for the crimes of your soldiers and your own impunity. Do not defy God and the peoples of the world. Empires fall, no matter how powerful they are.

You could have planted Peace and Solidarity; but you didn't do it. You could have generated programs for the life and development of the people, and you didn't do it. You elected to follow the worst of the paths. Who will be your next victims?

I cannot give you my greetings of Peace and Good Will, because you do not believe in Peace and you do not practice The Good. But I can tell you repent from your crimes and start to mend the Evil that you do.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel is an Argentinian peace activist and scholar. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.

Today's Features

Gary Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results of the Iraq War

Uri Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen

Anthony Gancarski
Brush with the Law

Mickey Z.
POWs: Then and Now

CounterPunch Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents

Robert Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?

Chris Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria

Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents

Wallace Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?

Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29

 

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