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Today's
Stories
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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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Weekend
Edition
October 11 / 13, 2003
Contradictions
Pumping Empire and
Losing Job Muscles
By SAUL LANDAU
"I have nothing but contempt and
anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the names of
our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."
George W. Bush at the Dedication Ceremony
for the George Bush Center for Intelligence, April 26, 1999
"President George W. Bush has no
plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in
revealing the name of an undercover CIA officer."
Washington Post, 9/29/03
Don't bother him with details! Nobody's totally
consistent! If you remember long ago, in 2000 to be precise,
George W. Bush eschewed expensive and ambitious projects like
nation building and called for less spending on overseas operations
not directly connected to immediate US interests. He called himself
a "compassionate conservative" and pledged, among other
things, to "leave no child behind." One wit reminded
me that Bush had not left one child behind; rather, he'd left
millions of kids in far worse shape than before he took office.
It's because of the economy, stupid!
In 1980, his daddy shouted "Voodoo economics" when
Republican candidate for President, Ronald Reagan, announced
his "no tax and spend freely" program as the cure-all
for America.
Boola Boola economics (the Yale Fight
Song thought to have come from a Hawaiian island) might better
describe W's version. A rich kid from Yale majors in cheer leading
and during the Harvard game cheers as he sips from the hip flask.
"Bring 'em on," he roars as the Harvard eleven emerge.
He remembers the phrase before a presidential TV appearance and
repeats it, now referring to Iraqi resistance fighters. He would
fight them just as he did his hated Ivy League rival vicariously.
After the football games W always looked
forward to tearing down the goal posts a metaphor for what he's
doing to the US economy.
Although he supposedly now steers the
ship of state from the Oval Office, logic still eludes him. He
has developed a monster-sized spending habit in Afghanistan and
Iraq while slashing government revenue -- taxes. He still claims
unqualified success for his Iraq policy while he and his staff
ferret in the halls of the United Nations for help to get out
of the Iraq mess.
As Iraq looks daily more like a quagmire
than a liberating success story, the deficit rockets upward and
job losses continue. With his Alfred E. Newman grin, W tells
the public not to worry because the brave but economically poor
--  servicemen and women and those in the
reserve will forgo their pleasures and fight, die and sacrifice
for the filthy rich that just got rewarded by his tax plan.
Bush seems unaware of the pain "out
there." His dad couldn't very well teach him how the average
American lived. Remember when Bush 41 encountered a zebra code
in a supermarket and asked what the funny black and white thingydoo
was for?
But under Daddy, the economy may have
sputtered, but didn't lose jobs. W is the first president since
Herbert Hoover to preside over an economy with a net 2.7 million
payroll job loss, the heaviest hit taken by the manufacturing
sector (New York Times Week in Review, September 28, 2003 p.3.).
His speech writers had him promise that "he will not be
satisfied until every American who's looking for a job can find
a job." He simultaneously assured the public that he had
a "comprehensive plan for job creation all over America."
Even some Wall Street conservatives don't
understand how cutting taxes for people who least need or deserve
them will produce jobs. Just as W falsely reiterated that Saddam
had weapons of mass destruction and close links with the 9/11
ghouls, W now repeats his economic mantra: somehow, some way,
through his zany economic plan God will bless the unemployed
by finding them a job.
Instead of describing the newest tax
cut plan as simply one more sleazy means of satisfying the plutocrats
who put up big money for his campaign, Bush infused his policy
with an aura of nobility. On April 24, 2003, he said that "the
whole purpose of the [tax cuts] package is...to create the conditions
for job growth, so people can find work." "This is
a jobs program," agreed Stan Collender, Budget Analyst at
Fleishman-Hillard, but it's "for two people, the president
and the vice president, as they face their re-election"
(January 7, 2003).
For all his assurances that lower taxes
would help everyone, Bush's plan demonstrably hurt the poor.
A new Center for Budget and Policy Priorities report demonstrates
that between 1995-98 the nation's top 400 taxpayers more than
doubled their average income to $110 million average and they
did even better during 2001-3, under Bush.
Between 1979-97, the top 1% of the country's
rich had already made more than $414,000 (per family) thanks
to government tax policies. During that same period, the bottom
20% had lost about $100. The wealthy benefited from low-taxed
capital gains and a fall in the federal tax rate for the upper
high income levels from 30 to 22 percent. Under the years of
lucrative stock options, where CEOs routinely made tens of millions
on "legal" insider trading, the elite figuratively
snorted money as if it was lines of powdered cocaine. But the
majority of the nation's population actually paid more in overall
taxes.
By cutting the overall domestic budget,
the federal grants to the states also diminished. Programs like
health care for the poor and mentally ill disappeared. Funds
for schools and parks and even police forces diminished. Bus
routes disappeared in city after city. Cost cutting measures
affected negatively public services in every sector. The rich
don't use any of these so it doesn't matter to them.
Vociferous anti-tax advocates, who have
come close to adding "thou shalt not pay taxes" as
the eleventh commandment, laud Bush. Mountebanks like Rush Limbaugh,
Larry Elder and Sean Hannity fill the air waves with righteous
"conservative" palaver about how honest citizens give
their hard earned dollars to the no-goodniks of government. These
same self proclaimed Christian screamers have little sympathy
for the poor. Why should the rich pay anything to those whom
God has decided to occupy lower rungs of the income ladder?
The poor had their chance and blew it,
the compassionate conservatives implicitly allege. When these
low income types get tax refunds, they spend them meaning creating
jobs and kick-starting the economy. But, according to economists
like William Dudley, who directs domestic research at Goldman
Sachs, the ultra rich tend to horde or invest their massive tax
gains in non-productive entities (New York Times, September 28,
2003 p.3).
George W. Bush, loyal to his class, wants
to rid the plutocrats not only of the burden of taxes on income,
but those on estates and dividends as well. He wants the well-born
to enjoy ever greater pleasure when they read and re-read and
the gloat over their monthly financial statements.
The average American worker, on the other
hand, struggles to make a yearly $40,000 for his or her family.
"Why," asks New York Times columnist Paul Krugman,
"does the administration, even on its own estimates, need
to offer $500,000 in tax cuts for each job created? If it's all
about jobs, wouldn't it be far cheaper just to have the government
hire people?" (April 22, 2003).
Don't confuse W with facts or logic.
More than 400 economists, including 10 Nobel Prize-winners, agreed
that Bush's tax plan would not produce meaningful job growth.
Rather, they reported "its purpose is a permanent change
in the tax structure," that favors the already favored ("Economists'
Statement Opposing the Bush Tax Cuts," February 10, 2003).
One Bush Administration critic, Dr. Lawrence
Mishel, told the House Education and Workforce Committee on February
12, 2003 that the President's plan will generate growth in GDP
and in jobs in the first two years i.e., a plan geared for reelection
rather than real job growth. Indeed, Mishel predicted that the
plan would raise unemployment higher than would otherwise be
the case from 2005-2007.
Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Economy.com,
claimed that the Bush plan would result in 750,000 fewer jobs
by 2013 (Economy.com, February 2003).
Boola Boola economics purveyors will
continue to pretend that tax cuts have noting to do with government's
ability to meet the needs of the average American. They will
try to sell that line to meat packers and food processing workers,
supermarket checkers and Walmart clerks whose needs have grown
acute. W hailed firefighters and cops for their 9/11 heroism
and used them for photo ops, but slashed programs that would
help them and their families.
By accumulating a $200 million campaign
chest for 2004, the Bushies plan to bamboozle the electorate,
and, if necessary, chad enough votes to win four more years to
make four more wars. Politically, the Bush gang aims to create
the sense of utter hopelessness in the minds of the poor. That
way the downtrodden will not have the will to vote and the rich
will no longer face even a remote electoral challenge. Yeah,
"bring 'em on."
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. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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