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Today's
Stories
Mike
Marqusee
Message from London
July
6, 2005
Elaine
Cassel
Political Necrophilia in Florida:
Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair
Sean
Donahue
Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't
Help Nicaragua's Poor
Jeremy
R. Hammond
State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard
Joshua
Frank
Will Rove be Indicted?
Ali
Khan
The "Gift" of US Democratization
Michael
Dickinson
Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers
Norman
Solomon
How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility
Dave
Zirin
Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad
Gary
Leupp
Accusing Ahmadinejad
Website
of the Day
Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"
July
5, 2005
Behrooz
Ghamari
What's the Matter with Iran?: How
the Reformists Lost the Presidency
Elaine
Cassel
Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra
Day O'Connor
Ron
Jacobs
Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice
Bob
Libal
The Right's Assault on Academia
Dr.
Peter Rost
Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO
Mark
Engler
The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee?
Gideon
Levy
They Broke the Public's Heart
Dave
Zirin
The Great Olympics Scam
Sameer
Dossani
The Trouble with Gleneagles
July
2 / 4, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bomb Teheran!" Urges
Jilted Condi?
Lenni
Brenner
Jefferson, God and the Fourth of
July
Laura
Carlsen
Zapatista's Red Alert
James
Petras
The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits
of Foreign Investment
William
A. Cook
Kings of Serpents
Brian
Cloughley
Quagmire of the Vanities
Saul
Landau
The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership
Tom
Crumpacker
Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles?
Greg
Moses
Dylan's America
Dr.
Susan Block
My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family
Values and Really Lousy Cable Service
Fran
Shor
Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land
Fred
Gardner
Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
Moshe
Adler
The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities,
But Don't Create Jobs
David
Model
The Downing Street Memo: So What's New?
Seth
Sandronsky
California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style
Ramzy
Baroud
Managed Democracy in the Middle East
Suzan
Mazur
Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton
Ben
Tripp
Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap
Justin
Taylor
Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint"
Brendan
Bailey
Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Engel and Louise
Website
of the Weekend
Radical Reference
July
1, 2005
Christopher
Brauchli
With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies
Karimov and Musharraf
Pat
Williams
What
Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver
Gary
Leupp
Summer Surprise?
John
Stauber
Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie
John
Chuckman
The Blessings of Canada
Justicia
y Paz
Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names,
At Least!
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court
June
30, 2005
Kathy
Kelly
An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion
for Iraqis
John
Stauber
Oprah Not the "Only" Mad
Cow in America
Virginia
Rodino
All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement
Jason
Leopold
Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited
Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy
Dave
Lindorff
What Was Bush Thinking?
Greg
Moses
Racism at Cape Cod
Norman
Solomon
Memo to the Iraq War
Joshua
Frank
Israel's Theocrats
Alexander
Cockburn
The Political Function of PBS
June
29, 2005
Mike
Schaefer
How the Washington Post Lied About
Its Own War Poll
Roger
Burbach / Paul Cantor
Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq
Sharon
Smith
Democrats Shift into Reverse
Sam
Husseini
A Quick Way to End the Insurgency
John
Stauber
Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton
Ahmad
Faruqui
Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan?
Linda
S. Heard
Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo
Stew
Albert
Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero
Ray
McGovern
Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked
Course
June
28, 2005
Paul
Craig Roberts
A Defeat Bred in Deceit
Landau
/ Hassen
Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian
Politics
John
A. Murphy
Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling
in Pennsylvania
Mike
Whitney
More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings"
with Insurgents
CounterPunch
News Service
JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading
from Kennedy's Playbook?
Dave
Zirin
Pining for the Pistons
Dave
Lindorff
Showtime in Washington
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq: a Bloody Mess
June
27, 2005
Paul
Craig Roberts
Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans
Mike
Marqusee
G8: Who are the Hijackers?
Mark
Scaramella
When a Corporate Raider Claims
Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz
Leigh
Saavedra
Press Apologists for Torture
Kathy
Kelly
Where is the UN?
June
25 / 26, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
The Supreme Court's Jackboot
Liberals
Jennifer
Van Bergen
America's Parallel Legal Systems
George
Corsetti
This Land is Their Land: Condemnation
for Corporations
Mark
Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission
to Gitmo
Kevin
Zeese
Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep
the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids
P.
Sainath
Russian Roulette in Vidharbha
John
Stauber
How to Bury a Mad Cow
Scott
Handleman
Gay in the Third World
Tom
Barry
The Politics & Ideologies of
the Anti-Immigrationists
John
Walsh
Looking for Peace in All the Wrong
Places
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs.
the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in
the War on Evolution
Alan
Wallis
The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade
in My Neighborhood
Ben
Tripp
Negative Space: an Artful Lesson
Frederick
B. Hudson
Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By:
the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock
Poets'
Basement
Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert
June
24, 2005
Ray
McGovern
The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing
to Fix "Fixed"
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Only Call Us Americans
When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans
in Iraq
Desiree
Hellegers
Portland vs. the FBI
Zeynep
Toufe
What Do the American People Know and
When Did They Know It?
Joshua
Frank
Call Him Senator Con Job
David
Lindorff
Which Flag Would Jesus Burn?
Michael
Neumann
Victory and Recruitment
Website
of the Day
Gagging
Dr. Dean
June
23, 2005
Christopher
Brauchli
Thomas Griffith and Rule 49:
He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals
Court Judge
Clay
Conrad
Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform
Standard
Schaefer
A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism
P.
Sainath
Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But
It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks
Mark
Engler
CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death
Norman
Solomon
Voluntary Amnesia in America
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Frank Calzon
Kathy
Kelly
Where You Stand Determines What You
See
June
22, 2005
Kevin
Zeese
The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on
the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner
William
S. Lind
Afghanistan: the Other War
Arsalan
Iftikhar
Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act
Dan
Nagengast
Give Populism a Chance: From
France to Kansas
David
Krieger
To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent
World
Kathleen
& Bill Christison
Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting
Israeli Myth-making
June 21, 2005
Brian Cloughley
Destroy
the Unbelievers!
Mike Whitney
President
Disconnect
Dave Lindorff
Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway?
Mark Weisbrot
Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez
Matthew R.
Simmons
The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis
Dave Zirin
The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella
Man"
Virginia Rodino
The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
War Waged by Liars and Morons
June 20, 2005
Alan Maass
The
GM Job Massacre
Tariq Ali
To
the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel!
Mickey Z.
WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo
William Blum
Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends
Gary Leupp
Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq
Jason Leopold
Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another
War
Dave Lindorff
Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd
Alan Maass
The
GM Job Massacre
Uri Avnery
Condi and Hamas
Website of
the Day
Crimes Against Poetry
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.
|
July 7, 2005
It's Up to the Anti-War Movement
to Restrain the Thirst for More Revenge
Message from
London
By
MIKE MARQUSEE
This morning, the suffering, grief and
terror that have visited so many innocents in recent years came
to London. We have not paid the kind of price that people have
paid in Fallujah, Najaf or Jenin, but it is a steep price nonetheless.
And its root causes are the same.
The bomb blasts were grimly predictable. Indeed, they had been
widely and repeatedly predicted not least by rank-and-file
Londoners, who knew that by taking Britain into Iraq side-by-side
with the USA, Tony Blair had placed their city in the firing
line.
As I write, the wreckage is being cleared and the casualties
counted. But Blair has already appeared on television to address
the nation, pledging to defend "our values" and "our
way of life" against those who would "impose extremism
on the world". He spoke of the unity of "civilised
nations" in resisting "terrorism". While the delivery
may be slicker, his "us" vs "them" world-view
was indistinguishable from Bush's. Even by Blair's standards,
it was a performance of nauseating hypocrisy, as he sought to
seize the moral high ground in relation to violence and destruction
that he himself helped unleash.
The Labour government, egged on by the Conservative opposition
and the right-wing press, will now seek to play on fear and drum
up vindictive feelings. At this stage, however, it is unclear
how the British population will respond. Will the mood more resemble
post 9/11 USA or Spain in the wake of the Madrid carnage?
Coming the day after London's Olympic triumph, the attacks are
a grim reminder that media-hyped feel-good boosterism will do
nothing to mitigate the UK's plummeting global standing. Blair's
closeness to Bush, his championship of the US neo-liberal model
in the European Union, his aggressive pursuit of the "war
against terror" have all diminished Britain in the eyes
of Europe and the world.
This is a reality of which many people in Britain are acutely
aware. Opposition to the invasion of Iraq spread across every
sector of British society, and was overwhelming in London. Subsequent
revelations concerning the bogus claims about Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction have further embittered public opinion
and made the Prime Minister, according to every poll, one of
the least trusted and most disrespected individuals in the country.
Of course, Blair was able to overcome this decided disadvantage
and get himself re-elected in May thanks to the absence of meaningful
opposition within the established political system. That absence
will be felt acutely in the days to come as Britain wrestles
with the consequences of the bomb blasts.
The Blair government will doubtless seek to use this morning's
atrocity to escalate its alarming attacks on civil liberties.
The country's 1.5 million strong Muslim population, already subject
to police harassment, will come under increased pressure. (Commentators
have been quick to claim that the bombs may be the work of people
hiding anonymously within the "law-abiding Muslim community".)
Anti-globalisation protesters currently gathered outside
the G8 summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland will
be branded as "terrorists" and dealt with accordingly.
Fomenting and exploiting fear has been a speciality of the Blair
regime. Asylum seekers, teenagers wearing hoods, militant Muslims,
anarchists, paedophiles the list of targets is lengthy and frighteningly
flexible. Whenever there is a need to distract people from the
impact of the government's neo-liberal economic policies, from
its failure to rebuild the public sector, from its misbegotten
foreign adventures, a new scapegoat is conjured up. The bomb
blasts may aid this process, but there is also reason to hope
that this time there will be substantial public resistance.
On 15th February 2003, some two million people gathered in London
to demonstrate against the imminent attack on Iraq. I remember
speaking to a neighbour who told me proudly that he was going
on the march his first ever protest march because
he was damned if he was going to let Tony Blair endanger his
children's lives by making London a prime target for attack.
Everything that has happened since then the exposure of
lie after lie, the deaths of British soldiers, the refusal of
ground realities in Iraq to conform to Blair's scenario - has
further entrenched popular resentment of the war, widely seen
as a result of Blair's determination to court favour with George
Bush. The prime minister calculates that the bomb blasts will
unite British people behind their government and that a touch
of well-rehearsed statesman-like gravitas will refresh his image.
Much of the media will pump out the message that we are all under
threat from faceless barbarians irrationally opposed to "our
way of life". It will be up to the anti-war movement to
articulate a different analysis, to remind people that this attack
is a consequence of our role in dishing out brutality in Afghanistan,
Iraq and Palestine, and to insist that no amount of moralistic
posturing by our leaders can substitute for a desperately needed
change in policy.
Mike Marqusee is the author of Chains
of Freedom: the Politics of Bob Dylan's Art and Redemption
Song: Muhammed Ali and the Sixties. He can be reach through
his website: www.mikemarqusee.com
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