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 Special Print Edition of CounterPunch: The 2004 Election

The Wreckage: Labor, God and Turnout; Was Gay Marriage Really "the" Issue; Can These Democrats Ever Win Again?; Blame It on the Smart-Assed White Boys by JoAnn Wypijewski; Political Diary: They Didn't Believe Him: What Really Happened in Ohio; How to Lose a County Hit By 30% Unemployment; David Cobb: Apex Vote Suppressor; Hope From Montana? by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Weekend Edition Features for November 27 / 28, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Torture Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq Alexander Cockburn What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa? Fred Gardner Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court Kathy Kelly What We Can Control Diane Christian The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts" Gary Leupp One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea Lenni Brenner Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York Times Ron Jacobs Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of the AMS Clerics Joshua Frank An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd Toni Solo The Murder of Danilo Anderson Saul Landau Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica JoAnn Wypijewski Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are No Cure for Homophobia Justin Taylor Empire's Lawless Opportunities Amos Harel The Case of Captain R. Walter A. Davis Tabloid Justice Stephen Hendricks God's Kind of Men Poets' Basement Albert, LaMorticella and Ford

Read Why It Happened!
Dime's Worth of Difference:
Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils


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Today's Stories

December 14, 2004

Burbach / Cantor
The Legacy of Pinochet: Kissinger and the Teflon Tyrant

December 13, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Gary Webb: a Great Reporter, Trashed by the CIA's Claque

David Phinney
"Contract Meal Disaster" for Iraqi Prisoners: Rancid Food Sparked Abu Ghraib Riots

Paul Craig Roberts
A Dose of Non-Delusional Reality for Douglas Feith

M. Junaid Alam
The War is the War Crime

Robert Jensen
The US Has Lost the Iraq War...and That's a Good Thing

Richard Oxman
Kafkaesque Lessons for the Left

Greg Moses
Send No Messengers of Defeat

Douglas Lummis
The Pentagon's Neurosis: Fallujah Gulag

 

December 11 / 12, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Running an Empire on the Cheap

Ron Jacobs
The Drugs of War: Getting High in the Green Zone?

Saul Landau
Listening and Talking to God About Invading Other Countries

Gary Leupp
Bush's Capital

Sharon Smith
The Horrible Toll on US Troops

Dave Lindorff
Deja Vu All Over Again: 5,000 Desertions and Counting

Uri Avnery
The Boss Has Gone Crazy

Jude Wanniski
The Neo-Con Smear on Kofi Annan: What Food-for-Oil Scandal?

Heather Gray
How the South Became Republican: an Interview with John Egerton

Patrick Cockburn / Ken Sengupta
Fallujah: the Homecoming and the Homeless

John Pilger
Return to Kosovo: Calling the Humanitarian Bombers to Account

Joshua Frank
All the Rage: Mr. Solomon, Say You're Sorry

Ben Tripp
O Canada!: the Truth About the Election of 2004

John Stanton
God Speaks!

Laura Nathan
Porn Stars are People, Too: a Talk with Christi Lake

Poets' Basement
Capaccio, Davies, Louise, Ford and Albert

Website of the Day
Fallujah Photos: Killed in Their Beds

 

December 10, 2004

Ralph Nader
President Bush, Stop Destroying the Mosques of Iraq

Greg Moses
Whitewashing Voter Fraud

Nicole Colson
Rebellion in the Ranks: Grunts Are Resisting Stop-Loss Orders

Frederick B. Hudson
"They Still Got Those Dogs": A New Book Probes Old Civil Rights Lessons

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Insurgents Oppose the Occupation, Not the Elections

Kathy Kelly
From Haiti to Iraq: Burying Water

 

December 9, 2004

Greg Moses
Ask Not Who Bankrolled Fallujah

Joshua Frank
Cobb and the Ohio Recount: Vote Fraud as Fundraiser!

Ralph Nader
An Open Letter to Bush: It's Time to Disclose the Real Casualty Figures

Lee Sustar
Bhopal: the Making of a Disaster

Tom Barry
Restrictionist Resurgence

Mickey Z.
Sander Hicks and the 9/11 Truth Movement

Christopher Brauchli
Bush in the Bubble

Mark Donham
Why are House Democrats Trying to Deny Cynthia McKinney Seniority?

Gary Corseri
On the Anniversary of John Lennon's Death, 2012

Paul de Rooij
The Voices of Sharon's Little Helpers

 

 

 

December 8, 2004

Ralph Nader
Will the Real Michael Moore Ever Re-Emerge?

Ann Harrison
The Ohio Recount: Reluctant Officials and Few Rules

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crime

Dave Lindorff
They've Got a Secret: Inside the $40 Billion Black Budget for Spying

Patrick Cockburn / Andrew Buncombe
CIA Warning on Iraq: Fallujah Did Not Break the Back of the Insurgency

Col. Dan Smith
Rules of Engagement in Iraq

Emily Alves / Michael Johnson
Paradise Lost: Corruption and Clientelism in Costa Rica

Richard Oxman
The Dylan Bob Wouldn't Mention: Up With Dylan Thomas

Ron Jacobs
In Fallujah, Freedom Isn't Free

 

 

December 7, 2004

Patrick Cockburn
Running Battles in Baghdad

Behrooz Ghamari
Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent

Dave Lindorff
American Fantasies: Psst! Hey Buddy, Did You Hear How Well the War's Going?

Joshua Frank
Dean at the DNC?

Richard Oxman
Down with Dylan: the Insufferable Interview

Ray McGovern
All Mosquitoes, No Swamp

John Chuckman
The Invasion of Hallifax: The Imperial Wizard Visits Canada

James Petras
Latin America: the Empire Changes Gears

Website of the Day
ToxMap: Who's Poisoning You

 

 

December 6, 2004

Paul Craig Roberts
Paranoia and Pre-emption: Is the Bush Administration Certifiable?

December 4 / 6, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to be Kidding

Joe Bageant
Dining with the Rhinos

Alan Maass
Reporting from the Ground in Iraq: an Interview with Patrick Cockburn

Brian Cloughley
Democracy, Bush-style, in the Gulf

Laura Carlsen
Latin America Shifts Left

Lenni Brenner
Jefferson, Madison, Bush and Religion

Anna Ioakimedes
Brazil's Haitian Mission: Doing God's Work or Washington's?

Uri Avnery
Widow of Opportunity?

Fred Gardner
Supreme Court Hears Medical Pot Case

Dave Zirin
Steroids to Heaven

Jackie Corr
Mining Camp Blues: the Red State Variation

Don Fitz
Will Greens Abandon IRV?

Lucy Herschel
"Art can be a Weapon of the Oppressed": an Interview with Artist Anthony Papa

Richard Oxman
No Angels in America: Bashing the Gay Play

Ron Jacobs
Holiday Greeting Card

Poets' Basement
Collins, Albert, LaMorticella

 

 

December 3, 2004

Dave Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate

Ben Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a Time of Crisis

Joe Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer Gilberto Soto

Matthew B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson

Meir Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins

Bob Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004

Christopher Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran

 

December 2, 2004

Tito Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration

Dr. Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes

Frank / Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds

Lee Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt

Patrick Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq

Mark Engler
Seattle at Five

Michael Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham

Nate Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds

Saul Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson

 

December 1, 2004

Phillip Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias in Wire Coverage of Colombia

Dave Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?: Budweiser's Racist Commercial

Ghali Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation: 200 Children Die Every Day

Donna J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"

Patrick Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency

Nick Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan

Mike Ferner
The Battle of Toledo

Mokhiber / Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising

Kathy Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes of the UN in Iraq

 

November 30, 2004

Jennifer Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy

Toni Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence

Patrick Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq

Chuck Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization Movement

Adam Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana

Gregory Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for North Korea

Website of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!

 

November 29, 2004

Dave Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of the CIA?

Omar Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine: Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint

Mike Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to Market a Siege

Uri Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me Some Credit!"

Matt Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers

Patrick Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign Minister

Alan Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters

Justin Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later

Antony Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy

Gary Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real Issue

Website of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone

 

 

November 27 / 28, 2004

Peter Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq

Alexander Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?

Fred Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court

Kathy Kelly
What We Can Control

Diane Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"

Gary Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea

Lenni Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York Times

Ron Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of the AMS Clerics

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd

Toni Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson

Saul Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica

JoAnn Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are No Cure for Homophobia

Justin Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities

Amos Harel
The Case of Captain R.

Walter A. Davis
Tabloid Justice

Stephen Hendricks
God's Kind of Men

Poets' Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford

 

 

November 26, 2004

Peter Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?

Greg Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments

Michael Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry of Immigration

Dave Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the Way

Gary Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?

Website of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch

 

 

November 25, 2004

Willliam Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"

Mitchel Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving

Mike Ferner
An Uncommon Mom

 

 

November 24, 2004

Gila Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence is Set by the State

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Other Mess in Congress

Christopher Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay

Dave Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony

Ron Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem

Ken Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah

Diana Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader

John L. Hess
Safire the Shameless

Jason Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear War

Map of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860

 

November 23, 2004

Forrest Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach

 

 

 

 

November 22, 2004

Dave Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage in Detroit

Paul Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?

Michael Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada

Kathie Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill

Ken Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place in Iraq"

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer

Roger Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile

Website of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?

 

 

November 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice

Todd May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear

Abbas Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account

Kevin Zeese
Mishandling Nader

Landau / Hassen
After Arafat

Tom Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley

Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd

Justin E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel

Carl Estabrook
Where We Are Now

Gary Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue

Dave Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon

Jenna Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower and Lives

Mickey Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William Blum

Greg Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America

Sharon Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?

Ron Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs

Ben Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days

Richard Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!

Gilad Atzmon
Politics and Jazz

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.

Website of the Day
Voice of the Forest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot Stories

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

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The Death Train of the WTO

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Hitchens as Model Apostate

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CounterPunch Exclusive:
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True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War

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December 14, 2004

Time to Sack the Entire Leadership

DNC Meddling in the Ukraine Elections

By DAVE LINDORFF

What, I'd like to know, was the Democratic Party, which has demonstrated an uncanny ability to lose elections it should be able to win handily here in America, doing spending $40 million in U.S. taxpayers' dollars "helping" people and organizations in other countries to compete in elections to overturn incumbent governments overseas?

It turns out that even as it was blowing the presidential election in the U.S., an arm of the Democratic Party, the so called National Democratic Institute, was busy over the last year spending tens of millions of dollars prov ided by the State Department to help the opposition in the Ukraine to challenge the government party in that former Soviet state. (A similar Republican Party organization, the Republican International Institute, was doing the same thing with more State Department money. ) Some of that help was itself of questionable legality, which is why it was all done covertly.

Does anyone else see the huge irony and hypocrisy here?

The opposition party in the U.S. was actually working hand in glove with the government (and with the Republican Party!) in a subversive foreign policy effort of the Bush administration even as its chosen presidential candidate and nominal party leader, John Kerry, was campaigning against the foreign policy and foreign policy establishment of the Bush administration as inept and untrustworthy.

It takes nothing away from the students and workers of the Ukraine who took to the streets and overturned the results of a corrupt election to say that citizens in America, and especially people who call themselves members of the Democratic Party, should be outraged that they and their party, the victims of fraud and voter abuse at home, were engaged in some of the same kinds of subterfuges overseas that GOP operatives and Republican-led election bureaucracies were using against them here at home.

Imagine, for a moment, the scandal that would ensue if it were to come out that a political party from a foreign country, say the British Labour Party or the Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party, had secretly given $20 million to the Republicans or the Democrats during the last campaign!

Bad enough that the U.S. government is interfering with foreign countries' elections. But our political parties have no business getting involved in this way in foreign affairs. In fact, the U.S. Constitution itself strictly forbids this, declaring all international relations matters to be the sole responsibility of the federal government.

America's reputation as a democratic model is cheapened and destroyed if it furtively tries to undermine elections in other nations. While there was clear evidence of corruption and fraud in the Ukrainian election, the improprieties were not limited to the ruling party and the states it controlled, and American outrage and condemnation of the results will not be taken seriously either in the Ukraine or in other newly democratic nations, given America's own role in bankrolling the opposition.

Indeed, disclosure of the U.S. government's large-scale covert backing of the opposition, more than anything else, could even lead to increased support for the governing party and end up costing the opposition victory in the Dec. 26 rematch, if the vote is close.

Meanwhile, we are left to wonder why the Democrats, so skilled at helping to organize mass demonstrations against election theft in the Ukraine, have proved so submissive and nonconfrontational in the face of election theft in places like Florida and Ohio.


December 11 / 12, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Running an Empire on the Cheap

Ron Jacobs
The Drugs of War: Getting High in the Green Zone?

Saul Landau
Listening and Talking to God About Invading Other Countries

Gary Leupp
Bush's Capital

Sharon Smith
The Horrible Toll on US Troops

Dave Lindorff
Deja Vu All Over Again: 5,000 Desertions and Counting

Uri Avnery
The Boss Has Gone Crazy

Jude Wanniski
The Neo-Con Smear on Kofi Annan: What Food-for-Oil Scandal?

Heather Gray
How the South Became Republican: an Interview with John Egerton

Patrick Cockburn / Ken Sengupta
Fallujah: the Homecoming and the Homeless

John Pilger
Return to Kosovo: Calling the Humanitarian Bombers to Account

Joshua Frank
All the Rage: Mr. Solomon, Say You're Sorry

Ben Tripp
O Canada!: the Truth About the Election of 2004

John Stanton
God Speaks!

Laura Nathan
Porn Stars are People, Too: a Talk with Christi Lake

Poets' Basement
Capaccio, Davies, Louise, Ford and Albert

Website of the Day
Fallujah Photos: Killed in Their Beds

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