Cockburn
/ St. Clair"s Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today"s
Stories
July
3 / 4, 2004
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam"s
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush"s Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain"t Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush"s Damaged Mind: the Madness
in His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush"s Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker"s Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America"s Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft"s
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang"s All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA"s New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn"t Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel"s Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin"s Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz"s Colleagues Refused
to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin"s Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets"
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan"s Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock"s Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global
Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
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
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Weekend
Edition
July 3/4, 2004
"Ain't
You Proud to Be White on Independence Day?"
Fourth
of July Flashbacks
By
RON JACOBS
Man! Fourth of July again! It's not
that I'm any kind of Yankee Doodle Dandy or nothing, but this
date is one of those days that I can remember particular details
throughout the years, mostly because it is different than most
other days.
Let's see, in 1967 I was wearing
my Boy Scout uniform somewhat proudly (although the uniform was
the part I liked least about the whole Boy Scout experience)
as I marched with my troop down a series of streets in Laurel,
MD. We marched more or less in formation, attempting to stay
in rhythm with the snare drums being rattled by the Fife &
Drum Corps behind us. Local politicians sat astride the town's
fire trucks and their own convertibles and townspeople lined
the curbs of most of the streets we marched on.
Thinking back on it, I don't
recall too many black faces in the crowds and none in the march.
Earlier that year there had been incident in the Grove, which
was the so-called Negro section of town where a couple local
youths had attempted to burn down the church there as part of
an initiation process into the KKK. After failing to ignite
the church (which was made of stone), they moved their incendiary
devices to a nearby house that was only saved because of the
quick-thinking inhabitant's neighbors.
In the days that followed there
were stone-throwing incidents along the highway that ran through
the center of the Grove as African-American youths threw stones
at cars bearing white-skinned folks. The local police stepped
up their presence in the neighborhood and refused to grant civil
rights organizations a permit to protest the KKK in their neighborhood.
Not long afterwards, the KKK marched through the town with a
police escort.
It wasn't long before the police
and fire departments were under the gaze of the Feds, who convinced
the respective chiefs to clean the klansmen out of their departments.
No wonder no black folks marched or watched that day.
Nine years later it was 1976.
The US Bicentennial Celebration was in full swing and the Fourth
of July was the grand climax. Gerald Ford was president, courtesy
of the Rockefellers and other power elites who just wanted Richard
Nixon out of the White House. A good number of my friends were
members of the fledgling Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)-a
Maoist organization that had risen from the ashes of the SDS
and other New Left organizations after 1969. The RCP was co-sponsoring
a march in Philadelphia on the Fourth, as were the Prairie Fire
Organizing Committee (PFOC) and a variety of like-minded organizations,
including the Weather Underground (unofficially, of course).
These two marches were operating parallel to each other because
of various political differences understandable only to leftists.
I was planning on attending the Yippies Fourth of July Smoke-In
in DC. My friends went up to Philly the night of the 3rd after
failing to convince me to go. Some other friends and I headed
into DC. Johnny Cash and the Beach Boys were part of the official
celebration and the cops ended up being part of ours.
Although I spent many a Fourth
of July at some kind of a rock concert or festival, the one that
sticks in my mind for the wrong reasons is a Willie Nelson Family
Picnic I attended in the 1980s. My buddy, R, and I were plenty
tanked on a variety of substances and were waiting in the beer
line while Emmylou Harris prepared to take the stage. Two big
hairy bikers walked up to the two of us, handed us a bottle of
Rebel Yell whiskey and offered us a drink. While we sipped on
the bottle, the bigger one handed us each a business card. I
didn't think much of mine and stuck it in my pocket without looking.
R read his and immediately tore it to shreds.
"Take your fuckin' whiskey,
motherfuckers," he yelled. "And get out of my face!"
What the hell, I thought, as
R thrust the bottle into the big guy's hand.
"If I weren't at a concert,"
continued R. "I'd kick your ass."
Now R was a big dude, but
he didn't like to fight. The two bikers looked at him like he
was out of his mind and the big one asked: "Ain't you proud
to be white?"
R took a step closer to the
guy, looked him in the eye and said, "The only people who
I'm prejudiced against is racist fuckers like you. Now get out
of my face before things get ugly."
The two men walked away, wondering
what the hell was wrong with R and I. After we purchased our
beers, I looked at the card I had stuck in my pocket. It was
a business card inviting us to a Klan meeting. I followed R's
motions and tore it into small pieces and let it fall to the
ground.
Isidor Bush, a Jewish anti-slavery
fighter who was born in Prague and a partisan of the 1848 Revolution
there, once gave a speech opposing slavery and demanding immediate
emancipation wherein he pointed out that it was not the enslaved
men and women who needed to be pitied, but the slavers and their
supporters:
"I pray you have pity
for yourselves, not for the Negro. Slavery demoralizes, slavery
fanaticism blinds you; it has arrayed brother against brother,
son against father; it has destroyed God's noblest work--a free
and happy people."
The words and the thought they
represent are almost Fanonesque in their understanding of the
colonialist mind. We live their legacy daily, as our society
stumbles blissfully along, refusing to acknowledge the impact
our history plays on our societal psyche.
And it was Isidor's contemporary,
Frederick Douglass, who asked, "What good to the slave is
the Fourth of July?"
I sometimes wonder what good
it is today to many of our countrymen and women, more than a
century after emancipation.
Ron Jacobs is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is just republished by Verso. It can be purchased by calling
1 800 233 4830.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Weekend Edition
Features for June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP"s Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel"s Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets"
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
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