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Today's Stories

February 4, 2004

Brian McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's Last Round Up?

February 3, 2004

Alan Maass
The Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"

Nick Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded in Iraq

Rahul Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure

Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?

Laura Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures

Jordan Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New Mexico

Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts Fairness Campaign

Hammond Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless

Website of the Day
Waging Peace

 

February 2, 2004

Gary Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail

Justin E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free Environment

Tom Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee

Winslow Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget

Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth

Leonard Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is Rigged

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean

Website of the Day
Resistance: In the Eye of the American Hegemon


Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004

Paul de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities

Bernard Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium

Jack Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks

Christopher Reed
Broken Ballots

Michael Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear

Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War

Lee Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement

George Bisharat
Right of Return

Ray McGovern
Nothing to Preempt

Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks

Conn Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs

Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons

Phillip Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit

Christopher Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read

John Holt
War in the Great White North

Mickey Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley

Mark Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key

Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif

Ben Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert


January 30, 2004

Saul Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List

Michael Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in the Woods

Elaine Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo

David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton

Mike Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression

David Miller
The Hutton Whitewash

Sam Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake", Senator Kerry?


January 29, 2004

Patricia Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist

Ron Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized" Immigration

Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq

Greg Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on Moon and Mars

Norman Solomon
The State of the Media Union

Cockburn / St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?

 

January 28, 2004

Kathy Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of Torture and Assassination

 

 

January 27, 2004

Steve Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with CNN's Aaron Brown

Daniel Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the Lies from the Inside

C.G. Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected President?

Josh Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke Screens

Greg Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again

Gilad Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art

Mike Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad

Hammond Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day

 

January 26, 2004

Sean Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's Drug War Zealot

Gary Leupp
David Kay's Admission

January 24/5, 2004

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"

Laura Flanders
State of the Conservative Union

Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala

Dave Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George

Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace

Alexander Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris 0

 

January 23, 2004

Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out

Standard Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben Protests US Travel Policy

Josh Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's Vermont

William A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious

 

January 22, 2004

Sam Smith
Howards End?

Patricia Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space

Alexander Lukin
Putin and the Clans

Katherine van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations and Bush's Mind

Forrest Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia

 

January 19, 2004

Justin E. H. Smith
Inside America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution

Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.

Ray McGovern
Bush's State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?

Werther
SOTUS: the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura

Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War

Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?

Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water

Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism: a Practical Manual

Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State

 

January 17 / 18, 2004

Fadi Kiblawi and Will Youmans
The Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists

Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins

Blaming the Symptoms

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant

Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq

Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians

Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise

Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp

Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court

Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov

Carol Norris
Arnold and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up

Joe Quandt
Suicide Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities

David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75

Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies

Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review

Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister

Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum

Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie

 

January 16, 2004

Kathy Kelly
A Visit to Umm Qasr Prison

William S. Lind
More Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare

Gillian Russom
So. Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"

Ari Shavit
Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris

Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris

Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich

Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2

 

January 15, 2004

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memo to the President: Your State of the Union Address

John Chuckman
Dry Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc

Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter

Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon

Gary Leupp
The Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan

 

 

January 14, 2004

Greg Moses
Happy Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots

Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights

Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional Dems (and Dean)

Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton

Alexander Cockburn
Bush, Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last

 

 

January 13, 2004

William S. Lind
How 2004 Looks from Potsdam

M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?

Mickey Z
Snipers: No Nuts in Iraq

Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro: The Prisoner and the Presidents

Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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

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February 4, 2004

Bush's Australian Deputy

Howard's Last Round-Up?

By BRIAN McKINLAY

While the problems facing George Dubya and Parson Blair, are receiving world-wide attention,the rising sea of problems surrounding their Australian ally, John Howard haven't been widely reported outside Australia, although they are now starting to follow a similar pattern.

Howard, it will be recalled,was the most passionate and sycophantic of Bush's allies in the co-called Coalition. of the Willing. In this he followed the past traditions of Australian conservatism,which has always been more than ready to respond to the call of the Imperial Power whether in London or Washington. Howard is in many ways, a man of the 1950's, still recalling an Australia that has long since vanished.

Never at home with the multi-cultural nation that has emerged in the past generation, Howard was happy to profit from the meteoric rise (and later fall) of the far-right, racist One Nation Party and its populist leader Pauline Hanson. Later of course one of Howard's Ministers, Abbot (know as the Mad Monk to his critics), masterminded an attack on Hanson, which eventually saw her jailed for electoral fraud, then cleared on appeal.

Howard has rejected an apology to the Aboriginal people, an idea widely supported by the previous Labor Government, and he led a clever campaign which saw the referendum on the Republic defeated because of divisions amongst the republican movement.

When he came to power in 1996 Howard and Bill Clinton had a rather cool relationship, and indeed on the occasion of Clinton's visit to Sydney in 1998, there was a famous clash between Hilary Clinton and Howard's extremely conservative wife Janet, over the guest list for a Sydney function, which Hilary quietly subverted. The original guest list having been stacked with conservative friends of Mrs Howard,while Hilary Clinton wanted to meet a swath of Sydney's left-liberal and feminist groups.

When Bush came to power Howard and Dubya became instant best buddies (Howard also warmed at the same time to Silvio Berlusconi which says a lot about his political tastes). By a quirk Howard was in Washington on 9-11, and was afterwards filled with an almost religious zeal for the Bush-Rumsfeld Agenda. He supported the plans for the war with Iraq and committed troops in the teeth of the largest anti-war demonstrations ever seen in Australia, and overwhelming opposition in the opinion polls. He even was emboldened to claim that Australian Intelligence input played an important role in shaping the US-British decision to go to war, a statement which has now come back to haunt him Howard showed clever footwork after May 2003.

Taking Dubya's proclamation of an end to hostilities as his base, Howard removed the Australians from Iraq, save for a small presence still there. This, he must have assumed, would save him from the troubles resulting from the continuing hostilities. However he has been caught up in the growing debate at home and abroad about the WMDs. His line has been to say that Australia doesn't actually gather much intelligence information, but relies on our great and powerful friends, a disingenuous argument now beginning to become hard to defend, as it tends to paint Australia as the dumb, junior partner in the Coalition.

Worse, the Labor Party opposition in a recent party coup, dumped its rather lack-lustre leader Crean,and went for a maverick, Mark Latham, who in the debate in the House of Representatives on the war last April, described Bush, as "the most dangerous, man ever to be president of the USA" and his Cabinet as "a Conga Line of Suckholes." (Yes. Australian politicians have a rather earthy style!) These statements brought cries of protests from the US Embassy in Canberra, when they were made. Little did the Ambassador know that within months Latham would be Labor leader.

Latham's first months in office have been marked by a Honeymoon with the media and the voters, and the latest polls put Labor 8% ahead (54-46), with an election looming later in the year.

A few days ago Latham got a standing ovation from the national Convention of the Australian labor Party,w hen he said "Australia will be nobody's Deputy". This was a direct shot at Howard's notorious statement last year when he said he would be Dubya's Deputy in South east Asia, a remark that brought outrage from Asian leaders who detest Howard by and large, and which came only months before the Bali bombing, which killed many Australian tourists, and seems to have been a terrorist attack clearly intended to target Australians.

Howard now faces demands for an Inquiry into a whole range of Iraq related matters,and will certainly face trouble in the Senate, where his Government if outnumbered by the Labor Party and several other minor parties on the centre-left. Howard must be hoping wistfully for some assistance from his now beleaguered friends in London and Washington, assistance which is unlikely in the months ahead as Australia moves towards a federal Election.

Brian McKinlay is an Historian,and author of a number of books on Australian History,most notably a three-volume "Documentary History of the Australian Labor Movement" and "Australia,1942: An end of Innocence." He can be reached at: brianmckinlay@bigpond.com

Weekend Edition Features for February 1, 2004

Paul de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities

Bernard Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium

Jack Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks

Christopher Reed
Broken Ballots

Michael Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear

Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War

Lee Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement

George Bisharat
Right of Return

Ray McGovern
Nothing to Preempt

Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks

Conn Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs

Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons

Phillip Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit

Christopher Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read

John Holt
War in the Great White North

Mickey Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley

Mark Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key

Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif

Ben Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert


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