Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 28,
2005
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
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
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*
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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,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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January 28, 2005
The US Really is a Miser
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers
By
RACHARD ITANI
Over the past two weeks, "Tsunami-Aid"
concerts were organized in many countries, including one in the
city of Cardiff, England which the BBC described as an "event
set to be Britain's biggest charity concert since Live Aid 20
years ago." These and other numerous events that mobilized
people around the world for the past month, are a testament to
the solidarity and generosity that ordinary humans can feel and
display towards fellow human beings struck by calamity. Or are
they?
An article published January
16th by the Observer on Sunday ("West's tsunami pledges
$200m short: Oxfam") compared the donations made
by private individuals of 12 countries to the victims of the
Asian tsunami, in the first 15 days following that natural disaster.
The Observer's article reported the donations in absolute terms,
showing that Norwegians donated the most per head of population
($13.20) followed by the Swedes ($12.04), the Dutch ($9.16) the
Australians ($5.23) and so on, down to the Americans with a donation
of $1.08 per head, and the French, whose per head donation amounted
to 80 U.S. cents. The Observer table places Saudi Arabs in the
middle of the pack, at number 6 with a donation of $4 per head,
but still outranking Canadians, Austrians, Brits, Greeks, Americans
and French in their generosity.
Ranking people's generosity
in absolute terms however is not very instructive. A more informative
approach would compare donations as a percentage of per- capita
income, the average amount of money each head of population is
theoretically supposed to earn. Thus, if two people donate $1,000
each to a charity, but one makes $50,000 per year while the other
earns $100,000, the former has of course proven to be twice as
generous as the latter. This more accurate measure of generosity
reveals private Saudi individuals as the most generous amongst
the people of the 12 countries mentioned in the Observer article,
followed in descending order by the Swedes, Dutch, Norwegians,
Australians, Germans, Canadians, Greeks, Austrians, Brits, French,
and in 12th and final place, Americans.
In terms of percentage of donations
relative to their per capita income, the Saudis are revealed
to be extremely generous indeed: 112% more generous than second
place Swedes, 134% more than 3rd place Dutch, 154% more than
fourth place Norwegians, 194% more generous than 5th place Australians,
and so on to a staggering 1,421% more generous than 11th place
French, and 1,617% more than 12th place Americans.
What do the above numbers tell us?
They seem to shatter the widely
held myth often quoted by U.S. media and government spokespersons,
namely that "Americans are the most generous people on earth."
Since the above analysis compares private, not official donations,
the generosity of Saudi individuals cannot be dismissed away
as resulting from their "oil wealth." Indeed, Saudi
per-capita income, at $8,530, pales in comparison with American
per capita income at $37,610. Interestingly, the pattern of poorer
people giving a larger percentage of their income to charity
than richer people is mirrored in domestic US private charitable
donation patterns: it's a well documented fact that poorer Americans
donate a larger percentage of their income to charity than the
richer amongst them do.
The numbers also serve to reflect
a certain moral confusion on the part of donors.
When the statistics discussed
above were compiled, close to 150,000 people were known to have
died in the 2004 tsunami (the number to-date has risen by another
100,000) and more than five million were rendered homeless by
it. Very soon thereafter, apparently before governments got their
acts together, people all over the world generously and seemingly
spontaneously dug deep into their sometimes shallow pockets to
give to the victims of this natural catastrophe, shaming the
hesitant stinginess of their governments' original response.
Very soon thereafter, movie celebrities and music stars rushed
to anchor telethons and concerts to raise additional funds. Then
the establishment emerged from its initial lethargy and co-opted
the program: the nominee Secretary of State declared in a crass
remark that the tsunami had "paid great dividends"
for the U.S. since it "was a wonderful opportunity to show
not just the U.S. government, but the heart of the American people"
(an assertion unfortunately not supported by the numbers, as
shown above,) and two former American presidents were enrolled
to appear on TV, urging people to open their hearts and purses
to the poor victims of this natural disaster.
For victims of natural disasters:
billions of dollars in donations, dozens of live-aid concerts
and celebrity appearances, and two former US presidents urging
their compatriots to give generously. But for victims of man-made
disasters, be they Iraqi, Afghan, Rwandan, Congolese, Timorese,
or Haitian, no world-wide fund-raising efforts, no concerts,
and no former presidents urging relief: just current ones intent
on bringing them more harm. This is not to take away from all
the courageous voices that were raised in protest at the war.
But between protest and life-giving monetary donations there
exists a significant gap that begs to be explained in this case.
Does this mean that we should
not give generously to the victims of the tsunami or other natural
disasters? On the contrary: solidarity with our less fortunate
fellow humans who are struck by any type of disaster is a virtue.
Indeed, we need to nurture and expand it to include long-term,
inexpensively avoidable calamities like malaria, diarrhea, trachoma
and other endemic, infectious diseases that kill and maim more
people each month than the total number who died in the 2004
tsunami. What this also means therefore is that we must learn
to be consistent when we dig deep into our pockets to help our
fellow humans: we must extend our generosity to the long suffering
Iraqis and other people in the non-white, poor countries of the
globe, who deserve the same worldwide fund-raising effort and
celebrity-anchored telethons and music concerts to bring them
relief from their man-made disasters as the victims of the 2004
tsunami deserved our compassion to help them manage the consequences
of their natural cataclysm.
While ever mindful that many
celebrities and extra-ordinary people around the globe are still
courageously speaking out, organizing and working against the
war in Iraq, one is still compelled to ask: what was it that
led millions of people to march two years ago against a war that
hadn't yet started, a historic first, only to then do next to
nothing monetarily for the victims of that war once it got under-way,
but to give billions of dollars to the victims of a natural disaster
a couple of years later?
Did the poor Iraqis and Afghans
not need and deserve monetary help and relief from their man-man
disaster as much as the tsunami victims did from their nature-induced
catastrophe? And did the poor Congolese, Rwandans, Sudanese,
Timorese, and other Asian and African victims of modern-day holocausts
not deserve the same widespread indignation that their Iraqi
brethren inspired, let alone, along with the poor Iraqis and
Afghans, the same fund-raising drives that the tsunami victims
rightly received? These questions speak to the very foundations
of morality. Or, for those who would prefer to think of it in
another term, of faith.
Given the above discussion,
can we offer a reasonable understanding for the failure of people
to be consistent in their generosity? One might be tempted to
offer one easy explanation for the extraordinary generosity displayed
by Saudi Arabs towards the tsunami victims: they were merely
giving to fellow Muslims, since the majority of the tsunami victims
were also Muslims. That would not explain, however, the absence
of an equal amount of collective Saudi generosity towards, and
fund-raising drive in favor of, their Iraqi Muslim brethren.
Nor would it explain why Europeans and Americans did not give
another five or ten dollars per head to the victims of the African
holocausts or to the millions who suffer and die each year in
Africa, Asia and South America, as a result of easily preventable
infectious diseases. This points to one obvious conclusion amongst
others: the failure, here, was not of the people, but of their
political leaders and societal role models. Given half a chance
and organized leadership, as in the case of the officially-sanctioned
and celebrity-sponsored tsunami fund-raising drives, people,
be they Saudi, Norwegian, American or otherwise, will do the
right thing. That same leadership went AWOL in the case of recent
and less recent made-by-man disasters. This should give us all
reason to pause, reflect, and perchance, act.
Rachard Itani can be reached at: ritani@datavalet.com
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