Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 12
/ 13, 2005
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
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
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
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
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.
|
Weekend Edition
February 12 / 13, 2005
Caught in the Muddle
Round
Two of Bush vs. North Korea
By
JOHN FEFFER
Hope springs eternal that the Bush administration,
in its new post-election configuration, will finally get serious
about the North Korean nuclear crisis. According to the most
optimistic assessment, the new appointments at the State Department-Condoleezza
Rice, Robert Zoellick, Christopher Hill-will leaven the administration's
hard-line policy with a measure of pragmatism. This more realistic
diplomacy will attract North Korea back to the Six-Party Talks.
Then the new team of U.S. negotiators will take over, having
devised a magic formula of carrots and sticks that will persuade
Pyongyang to shut down and then eliminate its plutonium facilities
as well as its not-yet-acknowledged highly enriched uranium program.
This scenario is remotely
possible.
Much more likely is a continuation
of the previous Bush policy: half-hearted negotiations with North
Korea, persistent faith that the regime in Pyongyang will collapse,
and a program to hasten that end through covert and non-governmental
means. When Washington diplomatic circles began to murmur in
late January about a possible breakthrough in the U.S. approach,
the hardliners dusted off an older charge that North Korea had
provided Libya with processed uranium and deployed it to nip
any détente in the bud. The net result of all this maneuvering
is stasis. "Muddling through" is how North Korea-watchers
routinely describe Pyongyang's approach to its economic and foreign
policy predicament. But "muddling through" is in fact
a much better description of Washington's attempts to resolve
a conflict that everyone else considers a very serious crisis.
North Korea has tried to shock
the United States into a more flexible position by announcing
publicly on February 10 that it possesses nuclear weapons and
sees no purpose in participating in the Six-Party Talks as they
are presently constituted. As in Pyongyang's previous shock tactics-launching
rockets, kicking out nuclear inspectors-this announcement carries
the risk of hardening Washington's position rather than softening
it. Given the Bush administration's underlying goals of regime
change and the catastrophic consequences of military intervention,
the U.S. response to North Korea's latest gambit is likely to
be renewed attempts to chart a muddled course.
Rumor or reality?
Precipitating the latest crisis
were headlines that North Korea had crossed the ultimate red
line by supplying nuclear material to Libya. This news follows
quickly on a report from a South Korean newspaper that the North
acquired a complete nuclear weapon from an outside supplier in
order to avoid testing one of its own. Those opposed to negotiating
with North Korea have seized on both stories to demonstrate that
it is time to put aside carrots and show the U.S. stick to those
miscreants in Pyongyang.
Neither story has much meat
on its bones. The report of Pyongyang's acquisition of a nuclear
weapon comes from a single unnamed source in Washington and neglects
to explain why North Korea would have gone to such lengths to
build not one but two nuclear programs if it could have simply
bought the weapons outright. As for the sale of nuclear material,
this story debuted back in May after Libya turned over a cask
of uranium hexafluoride to U.S. investigators as part of its
own denuclearization deal. Scientists have  since failed to identify the source.
Having ruled out Pakistan and other candidates, some administration
officials have concluded that the supplier must have been North
Korea. But since the United States lacks any sample of North
Korean uranium, the link cannot definitively be made. The International
Atomic Energy Agency, meanwhile, still believes Pakistan might
have been the culprit. And the uranium hexafluoride must be processed
further to become nuclear material; it is not itself the stuff
of bombs.
If the U.S. media is to be
believed, North Korea is not only crossing red lines with its
nuclear program, it is also on the verge of disintegration.
At the end of November, the
media was buzzing with news of upheaval in North Korea. Several
visitors reported that the portraits of Kim Jong II were missing
from public places. A New York Times article cited the
defection of 130 North Korean generals. Several journalists began
to reinterpret the explosive train accident at Ryongchon in April
as an assassination attempt on the North Korean leader. Then
there have been reports of anti-government slogans on the walls
of buildings, the first stirrings of a popular uprising.
Examined more carefully, however,
this "evidence" of incipient regime change in North
Korea turns out to be as speculative as the recent nuclear stories.
According to South Korean intelligence, no hard evidence has
surfaced concerning the defection of a large block of high-ranking
North Korean military officers. The train disaster has not led
to the purge that might be expected if the government had uncovered
or suspected an assassination plot. Anti-government slogans have
been reported for more than 10 years-they probably exist but
don't necessarily translate into imminent revolution. And the
fact that portraits of Kim Jong II have been removed from public
places may support earlier contentions that the North Korean
leader is trying to reduce his official personality cult. In
his recent memoir recalling seven years as a translator in Pyongyang,
Michael Harrold writes of his temporarily successful campaign
to remove "Great Leader" from the translations of Kim
II Sung's works, because he considered the honorific too awkward
for English readers. After Western journalists interpreted this
change as a sign of the leader's weakening power, the title was
quickly restored. Such is the great potential for error in reading
too much into small details in North Korea.
It is also possible that the
stories citing signs of North Korea's imminent demise are not
simply misinterpretation. "There is a great deal of pressure
coming from somewhere," a North Korea-based diplomat told
The Guardian at the end of December. "We don't know
whether it is internal or external, but something is going on."
External pressure is certainly coming from U.S., South Korean,
and Japanese civic groups in northeast China that are taking
advantage of a porous border to encourage anti-government sentiment
within North Korea. The political opposition in South Korea,
hostile to the engagement policy of the Roh Moo Hyun administration,
has also shifted to a more aggressive stance. It conducted a
provocative "fact-finding tour" of China looking at
the refugee issue, intending to embarrass both Beijing and Seoul.
Opposition lawmakers also leaked to the press two secret North
Korean government plans to prepare for mass defections, a possible
civil war, and the need to establish an emergency administrative
headquarters.
Key Problems
* Despite rhetoric to the contrary,
a chief Bush administration goal has been to isolate North Korea
and downplay the economic transformations taking place in the
country.
* The Bush administration preference
for regime change has hardened the U.S. negotiating position
with North Korea.
* Although North Korea is a
human rights nightmare, utilizing aid to precipitate Pyongyang's
collapse may lead to broader regional instability and a deeper
humanitarian crisis.
U.S. plans
Some political actors in the
United States, impatient for the Soviet dominoes to finally fall
in East Asia, believe that North Koreans need a little encouragement
to change their government. Over the last four years, Washington
has been busy working behind the scenes to achieve that goal.
Since confronting North Korea
over its secret nuclear program in 2002, the Bush administration
has vacillated between talking with Pyongyang and declaring that
any compromise with evil is unacceptable. What has remained consistent,
however, is the administration's commitment to undermining the
North Korean government. In 2003, with its draft Operational
Plan 5030, the Pentagon signaled that it was considering ways
to "sow enough confusion" within the North Korean military
to turn it against the government leadership. Planting information
about the defection of 130 generals would serve such a purpose.
In November, according to USA Today, new CIA head Porter
Goss recommended using undercover agents to penetrate the North
Korean government (among other hostile countries)-perhaps to
sow confusion more directly.
Congress, too, has joined the
fray. The North Korea Human Rights Act (NKHRA), passed by Congress
in 2004, authorized $24 million annually to address North Korean
refugee and human rights issues. Some groups jockeying to receive
this money are sincerely working on behalf of North Korean refugees
and defectors, hoping to improve the human rights conditions
for North Koreans within the country by publicizing the government's
appalling record. But much of the money, if any is appropriated,
is likely to go to groups that want to destabilize North Korea
by encouraging large numbers of refugees to defect, sending radios
and Bibles into the country, and challenging China and South
Korea on their more accommodating postures. Buoyed by the new
legislation, a group of North Korean defectors has announced
its intention to form a government-in-exile. This effort involves
such Ahmed Chalabi stand-ins as Park Gap-dong. Park has the dubious
distinction of having once headed up a communist party in South
Korea, then defecting to North Korea, and then re-defecting to
the South.
The framers of the NKHRA were
careful to note that their bill was not connected to regime change.
But Kansas Republican Sam Brownback and neoconservative Michael
Horowitz of the Hudson Institute have crafted follow-on legislation-titled
End Dictatorship, Assist Democracy-that will dispense with rhetorical
niceties. Horowitz's vision is to transform 45 autocracies by
2025, North Korea (DPRK) among them, through nonmilitary means.
Expect some form of the bill to premiere in Congress soon.
Meanwhile, attempts to link
North Korea to al-Qaida-through the reputed sale of some guns
to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines-suggest
a shoehorning of anti-DPRK activities into the overall war on
terrorism. Congress, the State Department, and the CIA will then
all play second fiddle to the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz axis
of ideologues who see the next four years as a grand opportunity
to cross the remaining tasks off their to-do list-by any means
necessary. Seymour Hersh argues in his recent New Yorker
article "The Coming Wars" that the Pentagon will direct
its new covert operations, known as "black reconnaissance,"
first and foremost at Iran. The Bush administration's first-term
record demonstrates, however, that neocons are not afraid to
multitask.
As these secretive efforts
expand, the Bush administration could afford to abate its public
crusade against North Korea. Plausible deniability established,
it could then play the responsible, if uncompromising, negotiator
and leave the destabilizing to those in the background.
Change in North
Korea
Although reports of ferment
from below remain sketchy, the North Korean leadership has indeed
experienced a considerable political shake-up at the top. In
September and October, Kim Jong II restructured his political
party, streamlined decisionmaking, and reportedly put his brother-in-law
Chang Sung-taek under house arrest. Rumors of infighting over
succession are rife, and the latest reshuffling does little to
clarify which of Kim's sons will be anointed. But some of the
changes will enable Kim to advance his economic and military
policies more directly.
There has been much ink spilled
on the question of economic reform in North Korea: is Kim Jong
II following Deng Xiao Ping by introducing capitalism, or is
he just pulling a Mao stunt by offering a shadow play of reform?
Recent visitors to Pyongyang have returned with stories of expanded
markets where those with money can buy practically anything they
want. The government has transferred department stores to pro-North
Korean entrepreneurs from Japan. North Korean citizens are setting
up ice cream stands and other small enterprises. Factory managers
have greater freedom to choose what to manufacture and at what
price. And Internet cafes are reportedly attracting well-heeled
North Korean young people.
But it is the Kaesong Industrial
Zone, located just north of the de-militarized zone (DMZ), that
most suggests a Deng Xiao Ping trajectory rather than a Mao charade.
Defying the DMZ, South Korean capital and North Korean labor
will come together to create thousands of factories employing
hundreds of thousands of workers. In December, at the factory
of the South Korean kitchen supply company Livingarts, the first
Kaesong product-some kitchen pots-officially launched the new
zone. The Korean version of 7-11, Family Mart, is also planning
to open an outlet in Kaesong. True, Pyongyang has voiced skepticism
about the whole venture, but the complaints focus on South Korea
for not moving more quickly with its transfer of capitalism.
This is no egalitarian reform,
however. As with structural adjustment programs in general, the
liberalization of the North Korean economy concentrates wealth
among the already well-connected. Such polarizing effects have
not prevented the United States from supporting similar economic
ventures elsewhere in the world. And the Bush administration
has repeatedly urged North Korea to "join the international
mainstream" on such matters.
Yet Washington has cast a cold
eye on Kaesong, wielding the Wassenaar Arrangement (an agreement
among more than 30 countries coordinating export controls on
"dual use" technologies and conventional weapons) to
stop such technology transfers as equipment to make wristwatches.
The Bush administration has also continued to block North Korea's
attempts to join multilateral financial institutions. This leads
to the old philosophical riddle of geopolitics: if a country
reforms, but no one recognizes it as such, can it still be called
reform?
Key Recommendations
* U.S. policy should follow
the lead of South Korea and China in actively pursuing negotiations
with North Korea.
* Washington should encourage
South Korean efforts at broadening economic integration.
* The Bush administration should
use carrots as well as sticks in halting proliferation, including
removing North Korea from the terrorism list and providing security
assurances.
Stasis
With the departure of Colin
Powell and Richard Armitage, the State Department is losing two
comparative pragmatists regarding North Korea. Replacing them
are a Russia specialist (Condoleezza Rice) and a trade specialist
(Robert Zoellick), both noted for their dutiful pursuance of
administration zealotry (on Iraq and European Union relations
respectively). The new U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Christopher
Hill, is slated to replace James Kelly as point person on North
Korea, an unenviable position given the short leash that the
administration has kept on its negotiators. Pragmatists in the
State Department will surely benefit from the departure of firebrand
John Bolton, though rumors in Washington suggest that he might
find safe haven in the vice president's office, the hub of the
hard line toward North Korea. Victor Cha, a conservative academic
who will likely grow into a moderate administration official,
will offer reality-based assessments from his new position as
the director of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
This new team will no doubt
apply themselves energetically to the conundrum of evaporating
North Korea's nuclear program. But now that the U.S. elections
are over and the Democrats can no longer capitalize on Bush's
great failure of diplomacy in East Asia (which they didn't do
anyway), the administration won't feel much pressure to move
forward on the Six-Party Talks. According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup
poll in November, most Americans don't see North Korea as an
immediate threat. The possibility of war is also remote, given
the Pentagon's overreach in Iraq and Afghanistan plus North Korea's
likely reluctance to cross the final red line of transferring
nuclear material or weaponry.
So U.S.-DPRK relations could
tip either way. Congress hasn't pressed very hard for a negotiated
settlement, though two recent congressional delegations-led by
NKHRA co-sponsor Tom Lantos (D-CA) and serial visitor Curt Weldon
(R-PA)-tried to ease the way for North Korea to return to talks.
In the region, the South Korean, Russian, and Chinese governments
are clamoring for a more flexible U.S. position, whereas the
Japanese government wants to invoke sanctions against Pyongyang
for its failure to provide full disclosure on an abductee issue.
With a quiescent public at home, regional allies pushing in different
directions, and war off the agenda, the Bush administration is
likely to choose the middle way of diplomatic stasis coupled
with covert and nongovernmental destabilization. This "muddling
through" approach is truly faith-based, for it relies on
faith in the so-far-elusive collapse of North Korea.
Surely, given that the DPRK
is a human rights horror show, central authority implosion is
what most North Koreans also want. After all, the most vocal
defectors have expressed very strong anti-government sentiments.
In September, however, the Korean newspaper Segye Times
surveyed 100 North Koreans living in South Korea and found that
four out of ten defectors were not happy with their new life.
Even more startlingly, one in three said they would return to
the DPRK if they could do so legally.
The Bush administration should
be mindful of these sentiments as it flirts with toppling the
North Korean government and unleashing Iraq-like chaos in East
Asia. "Assisting democracy" in North Korea, whatever
that could possibly mean, may not be the highest priority for
North Koreans, if 33% of those who have tasted democracy in South
Korea are willing to exchange it for a return home. The short-term
alternative strategy of negotiating with North Korea and trading
economic carrots for nuclear sticks may not fulfill everyone's
best-case scenario for human rights, but it would go a long way
toward eliminating a security threat and improving prospects
for economic growth in East Asia. The new team at the State Department
should consider how a more flexible U.S. negotiating position-which
would deal with the plutonium program first and provide incentives
throughout the dismantlement process rather than just at the
end-could solve one of the world's most pressing problems and,
improbable as it might seem at the moment, provide George W.
Bush with a positive legacy when he retires.
John Feffer, editor of PowerTrip:
U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11,,
writes regularly for Foreign
Policy in Focus. He is the author of the forthcoming
North
Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven
Stories Press).
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