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Today's
Stories
August 30,
2004
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites of TheNaderbasher.com
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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.
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August
30, 2004
The
Majority Claimed No Candidate
Live,
From New York!
By
RON JACOBS
Manhattan.
First person I talked to when I got
to New York was a cop in the Shea Stadium parking lot. He was
standing next to a police-owned SUV while watching people disembark
from the various buses on their way to the train that would bring
them to the big protest march.
"Hey, you." He said,
pointing at me.
I looked up from the leaflet
somebody had just handed me and asked him if he meant me.
"Yes, sir. Come here."
Oh shit, I thought. Not even
here five minutes and already the cops are hassling me. I walked
slowly over.
"What are you protesting
about?" He asked. "Union stuff, the war, what?"
"Mostly the war and the
attack on our rights." I replied, relaxing a bit."
"Just like my sister-in-law."
He shook his head.
"I'm just taking a little
survey of my own. I'm a big fan of Bush's and I'm trying to
figure out why so many people hate him. Have a good day."
"Thanks." I replied.
"You too."
Then I headed up the stairs
to catch the train.
Forty minutes I was standing
at Union Square surrounded by thousands of people. It was a
Manhattan crowd. Flamboyant, rambunctious, and large. Rally
marshals were yelling over their megaphones at people. Please
go to Seventh and Fifteenth. Please make sure you have some
water. Please donate some change. Please be patient. After
ten minutes or so, there calls became part the background drone-subways
running underneath, cars driving down Fourteenth Street, cop
whistles blowing, sirens sounding, vanguardist left groups hawking
their papers.
Stopped in a store to get a
sandwich and made my way to Seventh Avenue. A street theatre
group had made 974 faux coffins and covered them with flags.
One for each US GI killed in Iraq. Members of the troupe were
enlisting people to serve as pallbearers. A group of young people
beat out a series of rhythms on their drums and danced. They
were joined by a couple of elderly women with smiles on their
faces. We stood in the street for at least
an hour watching the crowd grow. By the time the police finally
sealed off 14th Street to traffic at the intersection of 14th
and 7th Avenue, the crowd stretched from 11th Street up to 23rd.
Around 1:15 PM, we began to move up the Avenue.
Judging from the pins people
wore, the chants they were shouting, and the literature being
passed out, the overriding message of the crowd was: Get George
Bush and his band of fascist crooks out of the White House and
Get the US military out of Iraq. A substantial minority was
wearing John Kerry pins, a smaller number had Nader or Cobb paraphernalia
pinned on their clothing. The majority seemed to claim no candidate.
As the marched slowly progressed, I walked back towards its
beginning point. People were streaming in at what appeared to
be greater numbers than before.
Cops were out in force and
their helicopters flew overhead, but they were noticeably low
key. People were allowed to stand on mailboxes and move the
metal barriers along the street if they needed to get through
to the sidewalk. This had not been the case on February 15,
2003 during the last big antiwar protest in the city. As we
approached Madison Square Garden, however, things tightened up.
The entire area from 30th Street on was blocked off by metal
barriers with lines of cops behind them. These cops were wearing
riot gear and included many members of the Tactical Force.
Each segment of the crowd stopped in front of the Garden to raise
their voices in anger. Across from the Garden was a huge banner
advertising Fox News. This aroused the crowd even more. Fox
News sucks, Fox News sucks was the most popular version of
this expression. Besides the news cameras, one couldn't help
but notice the various surveillance hardware employed by law
enforcement around the Garden. There were video cameras on booms
manned by men without uniforms and hidden faces, uniformed cops
on the roofs of nearby buildings snapping photos with still cameras
that were equipped with very long zoom lenses, and an unusual
piece of equipment that stood on a tripod above the crowd snapping
rapid-fire pictures of the crowd with it dozen cameras arranged
in a circle. Business as usual in the land of the free.
On the corner of Macy's on
34th Street is a giant television screen. It was broadcasting
Fox News. Even their ticker was stating that at least 250, 000
people were in the streets of Manhattan protesting Bush and his
policies. This was at 3 PM. I turned the corner onto Broadway
and sat down to watch the crowd go by. While I was sitting there
I struck up a conversation with some street medics who had been
watching the march since 12:30. They told me that the latest
estimates they had heard from the police and the press put the
numbers of the crowd between 300, 000 and 400, 000. As we talked,
a news photographer from France stopped and commented that Bush
certainly didn't look very popular from his vantage point.
The medics went off to attend
to an older man who had overheated and I sat down with my back
against a building. I wanted to soak up the crowd. A Korean
group snakedanced by playing a steady beat on their drums and
carrying a long green flag that fluttered and dipped in the air.
Three Iranian-American teenage women in black chador walked
by chanting El pueblo unida, hermas sera vencida. I smiled
at them and they gave me a bumper sticker that read Iranian-Americans
Against the Occupation, US Out of Iraq! The sound of drums
increased as a group calling itself the Rhythm Workers Union
marched by dancing and smiling. Anarchist youth carrying a bucket
of fruit stopped and gave me a banana and a leaflet about direct
action on Tuesday. A young woman walked by selling t-shirts
that read Buck Fush. Two guys walked by carrying a sign
that read Frat Boys Against Bush. A Nader supporter argued
with a Kerry supporter about Nader. Another fellow interjected
that no matter who won, we needed to stay active. Elections,
he said, are just a fuckin' diversion. A press photographer
wearing at least twenty Bush-Cheney pins walked by. You look
objective, I remarked. Fuck you, loser was his reply.
Same to you, I thought.
After watching the march go
by for a half hour, I rejoined it and headed south on Broadway
back towards Union Square. I got there about forty-five minutes
later. Union Square was full people catching their breath, selling
political t-shirts, books and pins, and marshals urging people
to move on. A friend went up to Central Park to see what was
happening. Because of a change in plans, I had to go back to
Vermont Sunday night and did not plan to go to the park. I found
a barbeque joint and replenished my body with some chicken and
a beer, then went back to Union Square. The crowd continued
to pour in. Meanwhile, people were still leaving the point of
origin. I called my friend in Central Park and she told me that
people were coming into the park but nothing was really going
on. After hanging up, I ran into an anarchist buddy of mine
with a camera. He planned to be in NYC the entire week. After
arranging with him to send me pictures and reports of the action,
we parted ways. I watched the Billionaires for Bush stage a
mock rally demanding that Central Park be privatized, then headed
to the subway stop.
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
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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