Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
July
7, 2004
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Parade: Madman or Commisar?
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
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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July
7, 2004
A
Letter to Bill Cosby
That's
Dr. Knucklehead to You
By
SUSAN MARTINEZ
'These people marched and were
hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've
got these knuckleheads walking around,'' he said. 'The lower
economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These
people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids --
$500 sneakers for what? I can't even talk the way these people
talk: `Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' . . . You can't be a doctor
with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!'
Bill Cosby, speaking at the
NAACP in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board
of Education
Dear Mr. Cosby,
I wish you had been at dinner
last night.
I had the privilege and honor
of celebrating 22 young men and women as they were graduated
from high school. These students are the FACES for the Future,
a three-year program at Children's Hospital Oakland which helps
underrepresented minority high school students achieve their
dream of becoming health care professionals like the one you
portrayed on tv.
This was the second FACES graduation.
Last year's graduates, the first, were 30 of the original 32
enrollees. 28 of those students went on to college, many with
scholarships, all with their dream within reach.
This year 22 students were
graduated -- only two young men made it through -- and the stories
they shared in their speeches, songs, and poetry inspired me.
Many students were considered at-risk, though not all were from
impoverished economic circumstances.
There was Marqeus James, a
tall, thin, handsome young man in a well-tailored suit who gave
up his love for basketball to pursue something he thought less
attainable, a career as a surgeon. At age 17 he found himself
scrubbing in on an operation but he "couldn't take the blood."
He didn't give up, though; during his rotation in the Intensive
Care Nursery he was taken under wing by two nurses. He helped
care for the most fragile newborns,  many
born prematurely, some weighing as little as a pound and a half
and easily cradled in his large hands. Marqeus will become a
nurse, a field he once thought was for women, and as he told
of his future the excitement in his voice was contagious.
There was Patricia Warfield,
a vibrant young black woman. Patricia wanted to become a lawyer
but signed up for FACES because it'd get her out of school early
twice a week; she liked that idea, she has lots of energy and
many things to do in life. After her first week with FACES she
asked to stop. Her mother insisted she stay -- "You've made
a commitment and you're going to see it through." Patricia
stayed and came to love the program. For her senior clerkship,
Patricia worked with a hospital labor and delivery department.
The first few days bored her -- watching monitors and measuring
the timing of contractions -- and again she asked to be relieved,
and again her mother insisted she follow through. Then she saw
the birth of a baby (from across the room, as close as she wanted
to get), but there was the second birth and third, and many more.
She's decided not to be a lawyer after all, and at summer's end
she heads to Tuskegee AL to become an OBGYN.
Janderra Landry had a black
hooded parka over top her beautiful graduation dress, and even
in that coat she looked slight til she sang "Thank You"
a cappella. During her first year of FACES, she rarely spoke
-- not in class, nor to her counselors, tutors or other students
-- and here she was, microphone in hand and in full voice, bringing
a roomful of people to their feet with cheers and applause and
shouts of "Marifly!" and "You go girl!"
I wish you'd met Luz Gomes,
headed east to Williams College on a scholarship, and Concepcion
Solis, who said even though she loved the program she'd decided
to become a lawyer. She added, "With a health care bent,"
and described in great detail how she will commit her life to
advocating for the health rights of undocumented immigrants and
migrant workers. Maddie Blanco was my intern for six weeks and
is a future RN/mental health specialist, and Yolanda Montoya,
future midwife, sobbed uncontrollably when she received her plaque
and certificate. We burst in to tears with her except her parents,
seated next to me, smiles on their faces. Her father held her
plaque, touched his daughter's name lettered in gold, and said
admiringly "I'm putting this on my office wall." She
said, "That's going on MY office wall."
I know for a fact you will
hear from Andres Martinez. Andres is going to be a fine physician
but is already a passionate speaker. He decided to become a physician
at age 4 when he witnessed his mother's heart attack, but it
was when Dr. Tomas Magana, co-director and founder of the FACES
program, spoke to Andres' freshman class that Andres was inspired
to apply. Andres also participated in the National Youth Leadership
Forum -- a sort of intensive summer camp for teens interested
in health care careers. Students spend each day during NYLF visiting
a health care facility and Andres found himself as a local participant
amongst a group of privileged high schoolers from around the
country. Andres' group visited the local adult trauma center;
the other kids hadn't experienced an environment like Oakland
and it disturbed them but Andres felt at home. An ER surgeon
talked to the students about his work and then took questions.
Andres told us, "One girl asked the surgeon 'What kind of
car do you drive? How big is your house? How much money do you
make?' I went home and I cried." He paused for a moment
to catch his breath. He said he saw the future standing alongside
him and he didn't like it. He knew he needed to be part of changing
it even as people told him he couldn't.
Maybe Andres' personal responsibility
is what you meant to describe in your recent remarks, Mr. Cosby.
But what you didn't describe -- perhaps because you don't see
it -- is that Andres and many of these teens come from neighborhoods
with no full-service grocery store, where the words and the physical
environment say "No" at every turn. They attend school
in portable trailers considered temporary three decades ago,
trailers so moldy they make students physically ill. (In Oakland,
asthmatic students miss almost 100 days each year due to respiratory
attacks: they go to school, get sick, get better --sometimes
after hospitalization -- and are sent to school where their albuterol
gets them labeled "disruptive" and they get sick again
anyway.) They are poor people, not bad people, and it is OUR
policy decisions and inaction which cause their suffering.
An instructor in the Chicano
Studies department at UC Davis said this fall his students had
a discussion about the lack of minorities in the class. They
said things like "If they really wanted to be here, they
would be. Where are all the minorities?" A young woman who'd
been quiet all semester finally raised her hand. "They're
in Oakland," she said, "in the FACES for the Future
program. I was one of them."
She'd been at the top of the
FACES class until one semester her grades fell off. She couldn't
stay awake during rotations; something was wrong. It turned out
she was the sole breadwinner for her family, working double shifts
at fast food joints while going to school, trying to study and
complete her internship. She couldn't keep up with the bills,
could not feed her family, and when the electricity was turned
off she could not study her textbooks. The family was evicted,
until the folks with FACES found out and intervened.
She told what it's like to
have unthinkable challenges instead of basic human rights. She
made clear she wasn't the one minority student in class because
she just wanted to be there. She got there because people reached
out, repeated over and over and over "Yes you CAN."
Doctors, nurses, teachers, people like me, worked with her, counseled,
tutored, mentored, comforted, fed her breakfast and lunch when
she was hungry.
They believed in her when she
could not believe in herself.
Nobody admonished these kids
for their poverty last night. Nobody called them names or mocked
them. It was an evening full of realizations: applauding the
achievements of these strong young men and women, as well as
recognizing the network of people who helped. There will be more
graduates next year, but they need more than the desire to walk
to the podium. They need my support, and yours, every step of
the way.
Susan Martinez lives in Oakland. Her essay on Alejandro
Escavedo is featured in CounterPunch's sizzling new collection
on sex, music, art and culture: Serpents
in the Garden: Liaisons with Culture and Sex.
Weekend
Edition Features for JuLY 3 /4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
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