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Today's
Stories
March 22, 2005
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Democracy--or is it the US Military--on the March
Greg Moses
A Palm Sunday Chat with Sis Levin
John Farley
Bush's Culture of Life: Let the
Insurance Companies Pull the Plug When the Sick Cost Too Much
Ron Jacobs
Halt
the Anniversary Rallies and Stop the Damn War
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
An
Immoral and Illegal War: Destroying Iraq Isn't Enough for Them
Dave Lindorff
"Saving" Schiavo; Killing the News
James Petras
Fateful
Quadrangle: Cuba and Venezuela Face Off Against the US and Colombia
March 21, 2005
John Walsh
In
the Bars on the Road to Fayettevile: War Support Paper Thin
Werther
The
Legacy of George Kennan, Chief Architect of the Cold War
Mike Stark
Where is the "Culture of Life" in Maryland? Time is
Running Out for Vernon Evans
David Swanson
Feeding
Tubes for the Third World: Put the Hungry into Comas, Then Feed
Them!
James T. Phillips
Happy Meals: Behind the Grill at a Baltimore Diner
Mike Ferner
Serving,
Refusing, Impeaching
Robert Jensen
The World Waits for an Answer
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Threat Greater Than Terrorism
Stew Albert
Vegetable Nation
Website of
the Day
American Press Blotter: Jacko, Terry and Steroids vs. the World
March 19, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Three-Card
Monte and the One-Party State
Tom Reeves
Exposing the Coming Draft: a Draft by Any Other Name is Still
Wrong
Saul Landau
The Grandchildren of Roy Cohn: the Politics of the Repressed
Alan Maass
Making Bankruptcy a Life Sentence
Ron Jacobs
Submit or Else: the Nuclear Demon that Won't Go Awayy
David Green
The Holocaust Industry Comes to the University of Illinois
John Blair
Hey, Dick! I'm Still Free: a Blow for Freedom of Speech in Indiana
Steve Greenfield
The Decline of the Green Party: the Numbers are In
Ben Tripp
Nature isn't Real
Mike Roselle
A History of White People in the Conservation Movement
Joshua Frank
Hope in Red State America: Lessons from the Big Sky Country
Mark Weisbrot
The World Bank: a Bigger Problem Than Wolfowitz
Dave Lindorff
Congress on Steroids
Sarah Schaffer
Lula's Nukes: Bush Bullies Iran, Ignores Brazil's Nuclear Ambitions
Warren Hastings
Why the Queen Should Chop Off Tony Blair's Head for Treason
Poets' Basement
Lodge, Albert. Landau, Engel, Davies, Capaccio
March 18, 2005
Dave Zirin
The
Congressional Urine Testers: Baseball's Theater of the Absurd
Richard Thieme
The
Church Committee Candidate: I was a Victim of the KGB
John Walsh
Misdirecting the Anti-War Movement
David Swanson
Hunger
Striking for a Living Wage at Georgetown
Ben Terrall
In
the Spirit of Rachel Corrie: Confronting Caterpillar in San Leandro
David Boyle
Just Say "No" to Harvard
Dorreen Yellow Bird
Coping with Teen Suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation
Mokhiber /
Weissman
Global Bully Goes to Guatemala
Greg Moses
They
Don't Shoot Donkeys...Do They?
Website of
the Day
800
Protests: Find One Near You
March 17, 2005
Christopher
Brauchli
Rendered
Unto Caesar: the Etymology of Torture
Bill Quigley
The St. Patrick's Four and the Resistance to the War in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Herds: Willing to Kick Anyone in the Face
Gary Bass / Adam Hughes
Inside the Bush Budget: Rhetoric vs. Reality
Dave Lindorff
The Incredible Shrinking Coalition
Jude Wanniski
Wolfowitz at the World Bank: a Perfect Fit
Alexander Billet
Irish Republicanism at the Crossroads
John Ross
Wal-Mart
Invades Mexico
Website of the Day
Campus Resistance
March 16, 2005
Ralph Nader
Filling
the Congressional Cop-Out Gap: an Idea for Local Peace Activists
William Cook
Resurrecting the Neo-Con Failures
Kevin Zeese
Two
Years of Occupation: Both US and Iraq are Worse Off
Jackie Corr
Why is Dick Cheney Laughing? The New Tax Cut Patriotism
Alan Maass
Bush's Class War Budget
David R. Kolker
Jailed Without Charges in Haiti
Cindy Ellen
Hill
Speculative Policing in Northern Ireland
Paul Craig
Roberts
America's
Has-Been Economy
March 15, 2005
Gary Leupp
The
Plan is Still on Track
Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh!
Greg Moses
The Fix-It Guys and Their Electoral Filters
Hadas Their
/ Katrina Yeaw
Military
Recruiters Target Campus Activists
Alison Weir
Uprising
on the Anniversary of Rachel Corrie's Death
Matt Koehler
A
Line in the Ancient Forest: 50 Arrested in Blockade to Save the
Siskiyous
Evelyn Pringle
Labeling Kids Mentally Ill for Profit
Harry Browne
War
and Peace in Ireland
March 14, 2005
Ralph Nader
Restarting
the Anti-War Movement
David Miller
Ministry
of Defence in the Control Booth: Did the BBC Broadcast Fake News
Reports?
Stan Cox
Look
Deeper, Mr. Moyers
Mike Roselle
Why Women Should Take Over the Environmental Movement
David Swanson
Nursing Against the Odds: the Workers' View
Simona Sharoni
To End the War, Listen to Soldiers
Dave Lindorff
Corporate Surveillance
Dorreen Yellow Bird
Incidents at Standing Rock: Suicide on the Reservation
Tom Barry
John
Bolton's Baggage
Website of the Day
Spinwatch
March 12 /
13, 2005
David H. Price
The
CIA's Campus Spies
Noam Chomsky
The Toothpaste Election
Laura Carlsen
Women's Rights Eroding in Latin America
Stan Goff
On Revolutionary Optimism: the View from Cumberland Co, NC
Valentina Nicoli
The Game of Role-Playing and the Ambush of Giuliana Sgrena
Michael Leonardi
Head Shot: Lifting the Veil on the Sgrena / Calipari Incident
Saul Landau
/ Sarah Anderson
Blood Money and the Riggs Bank: Pinochet's Bank Finally Pays
Up
Joe Bageant
It Ain't Easy Being White
Manuel García,
Jr.
The Question of American Guilt
Greg Moses
Electoral Lessons from Cuyahoga and Harris Counties
James J. Brittain
Run, Fight or Die in Colombia
Ben Tripp
Communist Watch
Joshua Frank
A Red State Paradox: Montana on the Cusp
Fred Gardner
Pesticides Made Her Sick; Pot Got Her Well
Walter Brasch
Bush's Horse Killers
Ramzy Baroud
Reining in Syria on Behalf of Israel
Christopher
Brauchli
Going All the Way for Usurers
Michael Donnelly
The Humiliation of Les "Timber Toad" AuCoin
Ron Jacobs
ZAP Comics: Still Kicking US Culture in the Ass
Richard Oxman
The Eternal Reciprocity of Tears
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Ford, Louise and Albert
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March 22, 2005
Halt the Anniversary Rallies
End
the Damn War
By
RON JACOBS
We've got to do more than mark their
anniversaries and we've got to take the initiative. Leftists
all around me complain that there is no left in the USA. If there
isn't I wonder, than who are you and who am I? Anarchists hit
the streets with their fellow travelers; and the liberals against
the US war on the world seem to be waiting for their savior-some
kind of Democratic wolf in peacenik clothing, I assume. Meanwhile
all around, death, destruction and deception go on. Congress
votes another hundred billion for the war industry under the
guise of staying the course and too much of the country is wondering
if Mark McGwire took steroids and/or did Michael Jackson wore
pajamas to court today.
In Iraq, the battle continues.
Bombs in the streets and helicopter gunships in the air. Corrupt
politicians behind military police checkpoints negotiate their
place in a puppet government with one of their eyes on the monetary
prize. One can almost hear the players saying, Ahmed Chalabi,
please show us how you scammed the ideologues in Washington and
then go away. It's our turn at the trough now. Sooner or later,
one or more of these leeches will lose their grip on the Pentagon
monetary supply vein and fall into themselves like a college
frat boy pledge trying to drink a fifth of whiskey in an hour.
Puking their vanity and duplicity all over their freshly ironed
overpriced clothing.
In the streets of Sadr City and Mosul, to name just a few zones
where the occupiers dare not go unless accompanied by a tank
or, at the very least,  that behemoth they call the Bradley Fighting
Vehicle, Iraqi children and their parents face an indeterminate
amount of time under the yoke of occupation. Elections fade into
one's memory quicker than the life they had before the invasion
of 2003. Here in the US of A, we watch the misery unfold-those
of us who bother to pay attention, anyhow. Everyone else just
wants it all to go away. Why, they wonder, is this war a war?
That's not what they promised.
Of course, the US troops didn't
mean to kill that Italian intelligence officer. Even when the
war is wrong, our soldiers only act with the noblest intentions.
Meanwhile, the larger national organizations that organize these
rallies appear to be fighting over direction (a direction that
the leaders of the organizations seem to have lost). The one
led by liberals and others who appear only too eager to isolate
the more radical elements of the movement and cozy up to the
Democratic wing of the war party disses the other communist-inspired
group. At the anniversary protests, it was the latter that got
out the black and Latino communities and it was the liberals
who got arrested. Go figure. Meanwhile, those of us who want
to do something effective to end this war (and the "war
on terror") go to the rallies but ignore the national organizations
and follow our own agendas or do nothing.
Bottom line-this war is a war fought to maintain and (if the
war planners can pull it off) and expand the US empire. This
means that the Democrats will only help the antiwar cause so
much. After all, they profit from the current situation just
like the GOP. To oppose this war at its fundamental level, we
can't look to the democrats. After all, Bill Clinton's bombs
and cruise missiles killed and destroyed with the same impunity
as George Bush's. The cause of most of the world's problems is
not George Bush, it's US imperialism.
That imperialism is best represented
off the battlefield by the nomination of Iraq War architect and
all-around evildoer Paul Wolfowitz to the presidency of the World
Bank. It is further represented by Donald Rumsfeld's claim that
it is Turkey's refusal to allow their countryside to be used
as a launchpad for the northern invasion of Iraq that is the
reason there is still armed resistance to the US occupation.
Domestically, it is represented by the continued destruction
of social services, tax cuts for the rich, and more money for
military recruiters who have failed to make their quota for the
past two months at least. It is represented in the continued
imprisonment of unknown numbers of immigrants and others without
charges in Guantanamo Bay and who knows where else. It is further
represented in the incredible numbers of people incarcerated
in the United States, often for acts that are not even crimes
in other countries.
Two years is how long the Bush
war on Iraq has been going on, but the US war on those who either
disagree with its plans or just don't fit in to them has been
going on considerably longer. The unfortunate fact of this latter
war, however, is that very few people oppose it. Are we that
bought off? Or are we just too busy trying to maintain the lifestyle
we are accustomed to? Are these last two questions essentially
the same question? Or better yet, are these last two years just
a small example of what our future looks like? George Bush and
his Book of Revelations Bible Study Group have got to be told
that the Second Coming is not a utopian vision. Before we're
all blown to hell.
Ron Jacobs is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill
Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music,
art and sex, Serpents
in the Garden. He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
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