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Today's Stories

March 27 / 28, 2004

Jennifer Loewenstein
A Journey to Rafah

 

March 26, 2004

Christopher Brauchli
There's a Chill Over the Country

Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal of Mordechai Vanunu

Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again

Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon

Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead

Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago

CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?

John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb

Website of the Day
Dick is a Killer

 

March 25, 2004

Lee Sustar
Who is to Blame for Lost Jobs?

Standard Schaefer
An Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers

Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins to Throw Off the Austerity Planners

Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"

Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups

Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela

Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded

Saul Landau
Is Venezuela Next?

Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway

 

March 24, 2004

Gary Leupp
General Musharraf's IOU

Richard Oxman
Shakespeare for Kerry

William Lind
The Beginning of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq

Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later

Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again

Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn

Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media in Cuba

John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke

Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"

Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela

Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only Fuel More Suicide Bombings

Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey

 

March 23, 2004

Phillip Cryan
The Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks

Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?

Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections

Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George

Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble

JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"

Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black CD

Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track

Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]

M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie

 

March 22, 2004

Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial Executions

Uri Avnery
The Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage

Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee

Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy Scam

Greg Moses
Stop Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March

Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation

Lenni Brenner
Report from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace

Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations

Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment

Website of the Day
Enviros Against War

 

March 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path

Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne Do?

Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act

Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"

William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall

Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism

Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War

John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon

Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity

Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss

Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?

Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!

Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill

Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet

Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility

Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election

 

March 19, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home

Ann Harrison
So Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?

William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"

Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote

Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup, Mr. Bush

Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future

John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs

Vicente Navarro
The End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend

Website of the War
Naming the Dead


March 18, 2004

Gila Svirsky
Rachel Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency

Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million from Saddam

William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing

Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative

Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment

Josh Frank
The Nader Question

Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy

Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey

Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain

Gary Leupp
The Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost

Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key

 

March 17, 2004

Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on Terror or Civil Liberties?

David MacMichael
Untruth and Consequences

Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer

Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware

Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out

Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections

Peter Linebaugh
Bush: Blanc Blanc

 

March 16, 2004

Lenni Brenner
James Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights

Scott Boehm
Madrid Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days

Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History Behind the Spanish Elections

Sam Hamod and Alfredo Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way: Executing David Clayton Hill

Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran

Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War on Terror"

Bill Christison
The Aftershocks from Madrid

CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa

Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!

 

March 15, 2004

Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe

Mike Whitney
Justice Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism

Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation

Greg Moses
Lessons from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs

Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health

Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer

CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!

 

March 12 / 14, 2004

Gabriel Kolko
The Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power

Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!

William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)

William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks

Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe

Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars

Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists

Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor

Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge

Helen Scott and Ashley Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?

Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy of the American Prison

Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On

Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding

Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith

Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier

 

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
March 27 / 28, 2004

Spinelessness of US Journalism

No Solidarity Among the Scribes

By DAVE LINDORFF

There was a moment that spoke volumes last week about the spinelessness of American journalism and its foot soldiers.

It happened as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was beginning a press conference in Baghdad during his brief visit to Iraq.

As he started to speak, all of the Iraqi and other Arab journalists in the hall got up and walked out, along with many reporters and camera crews from European and other countries.

About the only journalists remaining in their seats when the protest ended were the Americans, who on television could be seen shuffling in embarrassment in their seats.

The cause of the protest was the killing, only a few hours before, of two Dubai journalists from Al Arabiya by U.S. troops, who "took out" their car as they were driving past a military checkpoint.

As always, the U.S. military command has pronounced the killings to be unfortunate but justified, given occupation soldiers' concerns about attacks by insurgents. Powell, for his part, expressed regret about the incident.

Regrettable, but the truth is that some 36 journalists have been killed in the course of covering this war, including a number who were directly and deliberately targeted by U.S. guns and bombs. That's nearly one journalist for every 10 U.S soldiers killed by hostile fire. If you consider that there are over 100,000 American soldiers in Iraq, and at most only a few hundred journalists, it's clearly a hell of a lot safer being a grunt and a target of Iraqi insurgents than being journalist and a target of American forces. (It's also a hell of a lot more dangerous being a journalist in Iraq than it was to be a journalist in World War II, judging by the statistics.)

You'd think that American journalists would be as outraged as anyone at the killing of one of their own, but it seems not to work that way. For one thing, it's not that many American journalists who've been killed by hostile action on the part of American troops. Mostly it's been foreign reporters.

So in bed are most of the American press corps in Iraq that many of them seem to perceive themselves as part of the team (in many cases, as with The New York Times' Judith Miller and the American bomb squad, or Fox TV during the rush to Baghdad, they have been part of the team).

Still, it's appalling to see the lack of professional solidarity that was exhibited at that Powell press conference.

This walkout was, after all, not a political statement. It was not about whether the war was justified, or whether the occupation is good or bad. It was a simple act of professional solidarity in protest against rules of engagement that allow American troops to slaughter accredited journalists at will and escape the consequences of their actions. Surely no one-including their editors and publishers, or their readers or viewers--could fault reporters for protesting such rules and the deaths of colleagues that have resulted from them.

But the American reporters stayed glued to their seats, politely letting our veracity-challenged Secretary of State drone on.

It was a shameful display.

Not surprisingly, a few days later, the U.S. Army issued a report exonerating a U.S. Army tank gunner in the killing of a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters, who was shot as he was filming the tank last August 17. The Army, which has never revealed its so-called "rules of engagement," claimed the shooter had thought the man, Mazen Dana, had been aiming a rocket propelled grenade at the tank. (Forget that RPGs have posed little or no threat to U.S. M-1 tanks, and thus the tank gunner need not have acted in haste, or that Dana was in an area known to be crawling with journalists.)

No doubt, Dana and the two Al Arabiya journalists will not be the last of their profession to die in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Haiti, or elsewhere at the hands of American soldiers.

The least one could hope is that at some point, American journalists would stand with their foreign colleagues and insist on better protection.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He is now in Taiwan on a Fulbright scholarship.

A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org


Weekend Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path

Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne Do?

Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act

Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"

William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall

Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism

Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War

John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon

Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity

Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss

Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?

Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!

Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill

Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet

Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility

Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election


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