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Today's
Stories
March 9, 2004
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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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March
8, 2004
Where is the Love?
Will
the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
By SAUL LANDAU
"Let me tell you about the very
rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy
early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we
are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless
you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They
think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are
because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life
for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink
below us, they still think that they are better than we are.
They are different."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Rich
Boy"
Early last year, a mostly multi millionaires soiree
purred with contentment about the policies of George W. Bush.
I asked a few people about "the
Iraq threat."
"Yes, well, he's quite good on taxes,
you know," one smug young man replied, referring, I assumed,
to W's design to allow the ultra rich to become ultra richer.
I inquired of a mink-clad matron at the
door about the charges that Bush's policies amounted to an assault
on the environment. Her dress looked even more expensive than
those from Nicole Kidman's wardrobe in "Cold Mountain."
"I'm sure he'll do the right thing,"
she said dismissively as her limo pulled up.
Recently, however, the formerly contented
monied set has begun to hand-wring over "that ne'er do well"
in the White House. "He has mis-directed the ship of state
toward  chimerical escapades and away from reality,"
an allusion my eloquent, rich acquaintance used to refer to concerns
about his family's vast fortune.
Typically, the affluent haven't needed
formal agencies to protect and expand their interests. They have
simply counted on the U.S. government, no matter who served as
President. My conspiratorially minded friends still think of
rich people gathering at places like the Bohemian Grove, a vacation
setting for the truly posh, or in loosely knit associations,
like the Rockefeller-backed Tri-Lateral Commission in the 1970s,
to plot how to expand capitalism's hold on the world's wealth.
A friend of mine who regularly attended
"The Grove," as he called it, extolled the place. "I
make a hundred thousand in a weekend there," he boasted.
What's your secret? I asked.
"I concentrate on playing poker
while the others drink and whine about their servant problems."
Don't you talk politics? I inquired.
"Don't be silly," he responded.
"Those people don't know anything. They pay others to think
about their interests. They worry only when their accountants
and lawyers advise them to worry."
Since the invasion of Iraq did not proceed
as advertised, the advisers to the well-born have offered pessimistic
counsel. Thus, the dinner-party set has begun to drop remarks
and raise the traditional eyebrow, not just over Junior's Middle
East bellicosities, but about the strange clique - "quite
a few Jews and zealots, you know" - with whom he has surrounded
himself in policy matters (The trusted Paul O'Neill has revealed
the worst, Christy Todd Whitman has yet to blab and the loyal
Powell retains his politeness to power, so to speak).
High fee accountants have counseled the
privileged that 43's mismanagement has led to more than half
a trillion dollars of deficits, which destabilize their holdings.
True, Junior didn't have to spend all that much to undo that
nasty Saddam fellow (the poor always lose a few of their own
in such wars, sigh!) and it seemed like a good idea at the time
- it was related to 9/11 in some way, wasn't it? - to warn those
awful fiends over there not to try such antics again.
But, on reflection, those who spun and
sold the Iraq affair appear to have miscalculated. What they
call security appears to have transformed itself into anxiety.
Even the filthy rich must submit to those undignified procedures
at airports ("Can you imagine, she wanded me!").
Cocktail party walla that didn't used
to contain references to that vulgar political world now ring
with disturbing notions like: "the Bush lad hasn't even
retained enough troops to send to some other spot should one
of the other WOGS, (a British pejorative that referred to natives
in Egypt 'working on government service' during World War II
were allowed to enter British bases), threaten our fortunes in
other remote places."
And the fabulously fortunate crowd did
not take kindly to insulting the Germans and French sacre bleu.
Damaging those old and trusted ententes (national and family)
did not ring loudly for the old credibility image.
While at dinner parties, clubs and salons
the pillars of assets exchanged disparaging one-liners about
the lesser Bush's performance, former Reagan Navy Secretary James
Webb let fly a more public alert.
In a USA Today opinion piece Web accused
Bush of having "committed the greatest strategic blunder
in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target.
While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did
far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country
that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so
doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region
that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade
away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while
being placed on the defensive in a single country that never
will fully accept its presence."
Webb then resorted to the older notion
of conservatism so as to distinguish himself and his grouping
from the neophytes in the White House.
"There is no historical precedent
for taking such action when our country was not being directly
threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have
set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation
for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military
that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment
that he deserves."
Indeed, at one DC fete, an influential
dowager opined that the Bush boy's invasion of Iraq and his failure
to encounter those awful WMDs did not inspire the truly important
people with confidence. And why didn't our CIA lads know something
after employing all that hi-tech seeing and listening technology
that one sees in the movies? Can the affable young man in the
White House find the proverbial pimple on his you know what?
What will happen if one of the truly
dangerous WOGS actually threatens us?
This kind of chatter among the idle rich
bodes well for the Democrats, who could accuse Bush 43 of having
committed the strategic bungle of the decade. He seems to have
wanted to go to war and allowed those boorish neo-cons to, what's
the term, yank his chain.
Not only has billionaire George Soros
coughed up large bucks to defeat Bush, but other former staunch
Republican mainstays have also begun to flirt with anti-Bush
efforts. John Kerry, after all, has earned his credentials in
the super loaded club.
The anti-Bush sentiment that derives
from that shared feeling of the government being in the hands
of people who have lost their focus protecting the assets of
the old establishment occurred during the Nixon years as well.
In 1969, Nixon brought to the White House a staff of Californians
from the advertising industry. Along with them came zealots like
Chuck Colson, who organized the "plumbers" to stop
the leaks to the media and carry out black bag jobs on Nixon's
enemies (breaking into the Watergate and Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's
office) not traditional gentleman's ways of handling the job.
The eastern Establishment has begun to
worry. They adored hundreds of billions in their bank accounts
tax plan, (finally, after almost a year of waiting, a new yacht
and private jet) but since then the Iraq and Afghanistan situations
appear out of control, high ranking military officials seem upset
over the behavior of old Rummy, once one of the elite set, and
the nation seems upset over trivial issues like gay unions (would
he rather they behaved promiscuously rather than marry?) and
stem cell research. The Members of this informal club have dropped
the hints: those who service them in the media have picked up
the cues. The way they attacked in piranha like formation around
the National Guard scandal, well, it was almost as if Bush had
had illicit sex.
I conclude that the ruling class love
fest for W. Bush is fading. Let the electoral games begin and
don't forget to count the votes this time!
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just been published
by Pluto Press. His new film is Syria: Between Iraq and a Hard
Place, now available from the Cinema
Guild. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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