Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
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
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Behold,
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February 25, 2005
Punish Pro-War Politicians
How
to Stop the War in Iraq
By
JOHN FARLEY
The Vietnam war was finally ended when
the House of Representatives voted to cut off money for the war.
The antiwar movement ought to take the lessons to heart. Will
the present House do that? Not a chance. There are simply too
many hawks, both Republican and Democrats. We need to start organizing
now to punish pro-war politicians at the ballot box in 2006.
The war will still be around in 2006, never fear. Until we stop
it.
That means forming an antiwar
coalition in each Congressional district. The goal is to make
the war a public issue, to make a big public stink about the
war. Prowar politicians want the war to go away as an issue.
They hope that nobody bothers them about their pro-war vote.
They simply want to be left alone. They count on public apathy
or resignation: in most Congressional offices, if they get 10
letters on a topic in one week, they think the sky has fallen.
This means getting votes against
the war from city councils, county board of supervisors, labor
unions, and community organizations. Before the war started in
2003, the peace movement was very successful in getting these
advisory votes. The votes themselves have little or no legal
force, but in the process of campaigning for the vote, it allows
us to make our arguments. And it raises the war as an issue,
which the hawks would rather forget about.
It means focusing on our existing
Congressional representatives: Petitioning them, letter-writing
campaigns, raising the issue during Congressional visits to their
home districts, and going to their offices on Capitol Hill. It
also means large public demonstrations, both national demonstrations
and local demonstrations. There are plenty of non-electoral work
to do before the 2004 elections.
But lobbying the existing officeholders
is not enough. We need to recruit candidates to run against the
existing officeholders. We need to punish pro-war politicians
at the ballot box.
A decision has to be made about
the best way to defeat pro-war politicians: In the primary election?
Or in the general election? The best approach will vary from
one district to another. In the primary election, there is often
a low turnout, so a small number of activists can have a bigger
impact.
In a safe Democratic district,
the primary election IS the election. Pro-war Democrats could
be especially vulnerable, because the Democratic Party activists
are often anti-war. A poll at the Democratic Convention in Boston
in 2004 found 95% of the delegates opposed to the war.
What about Republicans? There
are enough Republicans (and enough rotten Democrats) that a successful
antiwar campaign has to be nonpartisan. In the 1960's, Pete McCloskey
ran for Congress as a maverick antiwar Republican and won. In
most of Utah, it makes sense to run an antiwar Mormon in the
Republican primary. In a safe Republican district, often the
Democratic nomination goes begging. We can put one of our candidates
on the ballot in the general election as a Democrat, but I donít
know if we can win. It might make more sense to also put up a
Libertarian candidate in the Republican primary, in order to
wound the incumbent in the primary.
We might win: in 1982, Lane
Evans, a liberal Democrat and former antipoverty lawyer, ran
for Congress in an Illinois district that had voted Republican
since the days of Lincoln. He won, and heís still there
nearly a quarter of a century later.
I have focused on the House,
not the Senate, because only 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election
at each election, while 100% of the House is up for re-election.
Also an antiwar campaign with lots of volunteers but less money
than the pro-war forces has a bigger impact on a House race than
on a Senate race.
Four practical questions:
Can we raise enough money?
Can we recruit the candidates for office? Can we recruit the
volunteers for the campaign? And what about the media?
Can we raise the money? In
2003, the peace movement put 3 million people on the streets
in opposition to the war. If each person at the demonstration
gave $30, that would be $90 million. If we run antiwar candidates
in every Congressional district, that would be over $200,000
per district. And $200,000 and a lot of volunteers, and a important
message, ought to be enough to wage a very credible campaign
in every district. If each person of the 3 million raised $300,
we would have $900 million, or over $2M per Congressional district.
We may not actually have to run campaigns in absolutely every
district, but it would be wonderful if we could threaten to do
so.
Can we recruit the volunteers
for the campaign? In 2004, grassroots organizations did a good
job in turning out volunteers for even a lackluster candidate
like Kerry, a man without a message. Imagine how much easier
it would be to recruit volunteers to campaign for a candidate
with a real message! Can we recruit credible candidates for office?
Thatís not easy. Even a political party as well organized
and as well financed as the Republicans, its not easy: they could
not find a credible candidate for US Senate against Barak Obama.
Instead of holding our noses and voting for a hawk, letís
get one of our own people to run. We better start now.
What about the media? The media
can be very important in forming public opinion. On the war issue,
the mainstream media has covered itself with shame, repeating
two discredited pro-war myths: Iraqís mythical Weapons
of Mass Destruction, the bogus Saddam/Al Quaeda link. Even so,
the people are ahead of the official media: at present, about
half the country is opposed to the war. We hardly have half the
newspapers or television networks opposed the war. We need to
attack the mainstream media for their biased coverage. Already
their credibility is quite low, as even members of the media
Establishment sometimes admit. We need to support worthy alternative
media such as CounterPunch. We ought to follow up the very important
work of Bob McChesney and his colleagues at www.freepress.net,
who are holding an important convention on media reform in St.
Louis in May 13-15.
As a wonderful example of what
NOT to do, consider the Kerry campaign. Kerry supported the war,
and his campaign spurned the antiwar movement. At rallies, his
people took down the antiwar signs. Kerry had the opportunity
to turn the Democratic Convention into an antiwar rally, but
chose not to do so. His whole ìmessageî was that
he would somehow manage the war more competently than Bush. That
didnít sell. The antiwar movement wasted a lot of time
and money and effort in backing a hawk.
We ought to learn from the
example of successful lobbies: the anti-abortion lobby, the National
Rifle Association, and the Israel lobby. Each lobby can make
or break a campaign, by influencing (say) 10-15% of the vote.
These lobbies succeed by making their issue a bottom-line issue.
That means that if a politician vote against their issue, the
lobby will target the politician for defeat. In this case, our
strategic objective ought to be: cut off funds for the Iraq war.
Any politician who votes for to fund the war will be targeted
for defeat.
One big advantage that the
peace movement has is that its supporters are more motivated
than supporters of the war. How many pro-war demonstrations have
there been? Hardly any, and they have been tiny. Weíre
closer already than the hawks in making our issue a bottom-line
issue.
The true number one issue of
politicians is to get re-elected. When confronted by demands
to cut off funds for the war, they naturally ask, ìwhatís
going to happen if I donít do it?î If the answer
is ìnot much,î then most of them simply wonít
do it. If we can build an antiwar movement with clout, the answer
will be: ìif you donít vote to cut off funds for
the war, youíre going to lose your job. Unemployment in
your district is going to increase by one.î That will most
definitely get their attention.
If the antiwar movement can
put together a credible antiwar campaign in all or most Congressional
Districts, and if the elections of 2006 see the ousting of, say,
50-100 prowar Congressional representatives, that will put a
hell of a scare into the rest of them, including the most spineless
opportunists in Congress. This kind of campaign, combining non-electoral
and electoral work, is what finally ended the Vietnam war. We
did it before, and we can do it again.
John W. Farley writes from Henderson, Nevada. He
can be reached at: johnwfarley@yahoo.com
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