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New Reagan Memorial Edition Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch Pentagon Cartoons; Hollywood Fantasies into Political Policy; From Fort Wacky to Bitburg; Star Wars, the Enron of Its Day; Touching the Gipper's Hair; How Reagan Made Clinton by Alexander Cockburn; When Reagan Was King and AIDS Was Raging: Joking About the Terminally Ill by Larry Speakes and the White House Press Corps; Parallel Lives: Watt, Reagan and Brower: by Jeffrey St. Clair; Fortress Baghdad; Iraqi Fury by Patrick Cockburn; Troy, the Iliad and Iraq by Jeffrey St. Clair. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! 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 (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! June 16, 2004: 100 Years of Bloomsday! "And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle offortyfive degrees over Donohue's in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel." James Joyce, Ulysses. Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories June 16, 2004 Vicente Navarro Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who is Rodrigo Rato? 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   June 14, 2004 John Stanton / Wayne Madsen Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins the Party Kathy Kelly Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies? Bruce Jackson Bush Gets Testy About Torture Lee Sustar Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs Kurt Nimmo The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit 9/11 Jim Davis Hard Right Nativism Eliot Katz Death and War Uri Avnery The Nightmare Comes True Website of the Day Instruments of Statecraft June 12 / 13, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede Team CounterPunch CP's Favorite Albums Jeffrey St. Clair Troy, Now and Then Gary Leupp Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq? Brian Cloughley US Military in Crisis Antonio Ponvert, III Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection Ben Tripp The Polls Get Stupider Joe Bageant Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash" Ron Jacobs The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency Forrest Hylton Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés Christopher Brauchli Federal Bureau of Errors Kurt Nimmo Going After Qaddafi, Again Wayne Madsen Israel's Slap at Reagan Anthony Loewenstein Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World Michael Donnelly A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous Greg Moses Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah? Susan Davis Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban Joseph Ramsey Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground Niranjan Ramakrishnan The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century Wayne Saunders The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup Poets' Basement Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert Website of the Weekend Insurgent Music   June 11, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Reagan in Truth and Fiction Ron Jacobs Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit Chris Floyd Funeral Games Steven Sherman How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton Mokhiber / Weissman Remembering Reagan Norman Solomon Media's Mourning in America Paul Alexander The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson CounterPunch Wire The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk About Planned Attacks on Cuba     June 10, 2004 Noam Chomsky The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity Through Marketing Gary Leupp Bush, the Religious Scholar Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns Saul Landau Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade Scott Evans Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another Tool of the Democrats Jacob Levich John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons Zeynep Toufe Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures" Nico Pitney Reform at Wal-Mart? Dave Zirin Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution Jack McCarthy Where Were You When Reagan Croaked? Gary Corseri Nouns That Should be Acronyms David Price Reagan and the Black Budget Website of the Day Inequality by the Numbers   June 9, 2004 Mustafa Barghouthi Israel's Common Use of Torture Must be Exposed Mike Whitney Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending Torture John Chuckman Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop Jim Tarbell / Roger Burbach Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq Dave Lindorff Put Reagan on the $3 Bill Miguel D'Escoto Reagan was the Butcher of My People Becky Burgwin The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero Patrick Cockburn The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave Baghdad   June 8, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse? Dave Lindorff The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam? Phillip Cryan Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia Mark Zepezauer Getting Reagan Wrong Mickey Z. Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions John L. Hess Reagan and Bush in Normandy Alex Dawoody Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance Christopher Fons Reagan in a Word: Mean Niranjan Ramakrishnan Some Tenets are More Important Than Others Ahmed Bouzid Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun Michael Leon Bush the Narcissist   June 7, 2004 Jason Leopold New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes Patrick Cockburn The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing Dennis Hans From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy Tracy McLellan Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics Bill Blum The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War Ben Tripp What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter Susan Davis Reagan, In a Nutshell Phil Gasper Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance Website of the Day A Child's ABCs of Terrorism   June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations     June 4, 2004 Chris Floyd Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House Cornwell / Penketh Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy Wayne Madsen Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink Greg Moses Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq Yitzak Laor Before Rafah Ghali Hassan Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte? Jane Stillwater God, the Rapture and Vera Casey CounterPunch Wire D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage? John Borowski Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush Mike Griffin Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW Alexander Cockburn Has Bush Gone Over the Edge? Website of the Day Aquae Urbis Romae: Water and Empire     June 3, 2004 Ron Jacobs Iran's Nuclear Dilemma Dr. Susan Block America in tha Hood Michael Donnelly The Bully and the Brahmin John Chuckman Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged Christopher Brauchli The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month Samia Nassar Melki Caravaggio in Iraq Mike Whitney Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case Diane Rejman Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead Scott Morris "WMDs" in Cuba Paul de Rooij Palestinian Misery in Perspective     June 2, 2004 Brian Cloughley The Liars are Winning Ray McGovern How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence" Josh Frank The Anybody But Bush Offensive Mike Whitney The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots Jackie Corr Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana Robert Jensen The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too Alexander Cockburn "Bye, Bye Boonville!"   June 1, 2004 Gary Leupp Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him William A. Cook Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah Dave Lindorff Will the Times Clean House? Kevin Zeese Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed? Jacob Levich Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production Kathy Kelly Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government Website of the Day Remind Us     May 29 / 31, 2004 Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh The Origins of Memorial Day Janine Pommy Vega Memo for Memorial Day Mike Ferner On Their Way to Abu Ghraib Alfred W. McCoy The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research Douglas Valentine An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions Chris White First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto Bruce Anderson The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu David Vest Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire Saul Landau Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy? Kurt Nimmo Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA Elaine Cassel The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders Will Potter The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist" Ben Tripp They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches Dr. Susan Block Save Abu Ghraib! Kia Kojouri Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh Mickey Z D-Day: 60 Years is Enough! Jon Brown Correcting the Correction at the Times Patrick B. Barr Pre-emptive War Insurance Stephen Gowans Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel Tom Gorman Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New Dave Zirin Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad Gregory Weiher Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy" Erik Cummings Jung Meets Bush Poets' Basement Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert     May 28, 2004 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5 Greg Moses Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib Dave Lindorff Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work Norman Solomon Leaping for Lies at the Times Rep. Bill Delahunt Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba Paul McGeough Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves Niranjan Ramakrishnan India and Nehru: 40 Years After Alexander Cockburn NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"     May 27, 2004 Amy Goodman / David Goodman Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times Douglas Valentine Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs John L. Hess The Times Confesses...Kind Of Stew Albert Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist Dave Dellinger a 1993 Interview Christopher Brauchli Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids Rampton / Stauber Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony     May 26, 2004 Ron Jacobs Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours Robert Fisk The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech Zeynep Toufe New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation Conn Hallinan Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection Tom Stephens 2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes Derek Medley Protesting Gov. Bigot CounterPunch Wire FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art Andrew Cockburn The Trail to Tehran     May 25, 2004 Joe Bageant The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas Col. Dan Smith A Question of Human Dignity Gary Handschumacher Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home Toni Solo A Developing War in the Andes Marc Estrin September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11 Stephen Banko, III A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops" Website of the Day The Wizard of Whimsy May 24, 2004 Ron Jacobs Dan Senor is Safe! Kurt Nimmo Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages Sam Hamod Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" Mike Whitney The Wedding was a Bomb Stan Goff Open Season on MAMs Image of the Day A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs     May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary Jeffrey St. Clair When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer Brian Cloughley America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq Saul Landau Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People Brandy Baker Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry Randall Robinson Bushwhacked in the Caribbean Uri Avnery The Rape of Rafah Ben Tripp Assume the Worst Bruce Anderson News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business Josh Ruebner Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers Peter Wolson, Ph. D. Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib Chloe Cockburn In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy Linda Burnham Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value Adrien Rain Burke War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse David Krieger Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy Ron Jacobs Turnaround Poets' Basement Ford, Albert & LaMorticella   May 21, 2004 Ray Close The Canards of the Apologists Christopher Brauchli "The Object of Torture is Torture" Amira Hass Darkness at Noon Jack McCarthy Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army? Bill Kauffman Nader v. Bush Omar Barghouti No More Tears for America Ghali Hassan Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza Christopher Reed How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture Website of the Day Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much   May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today         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.     Subscribe Online

Bloomsday June 16, 2004 Meet the New Head of the IMF Who Is Rodrigo Rato? By VICENTE NAVARRO Rodrigo Rato has been appointed as the new managing d\irector of the International Monetary Fund. I have read the biographical notes and references to his career that have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other major papers in the U.S., and nowhere have there appeared those key elements of his biography that could shed light on his economic policies. As I have written about in a previous article (The US Media's Double Standard. The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush, CounterPunch, August 21, 2003), one of the most unsettling developments in the main stream U.SUS media is their right wing shift. For example, the US press saluted Mr. Aznar, past president of the Spanish government, as a "great friend of the U.S." (confusing, as usual, the U.S. government with the U.S. population), without once making reference to his fascist past and current ultra-right wing positions. The same is happening now with Mr. Rodrigo Rato, Mr. Aznar's Minister of Economy, who is responsible for the dismantling of the Spanish welfare state. Mr. Rato is of the ultra-right . While in Aznar's cabinet, he supported such policies as making religion a compulsory subject in secondary schools, requiring more hours of schooling in religion than in mathematics, undoing the progressivity in the internal revenue code, funding the Foundation dedicated to the promotion of francoism (i.e., Spanish fascism), never condemning the fascist dictatorship, and so on. In the economic arena, he dramatically reduced public social expenditures as a way of eliminating the public deficit of the Spanish government, and was the person responsible for developing the most austere social budget of all the governments of the European Community. The elimination of the deficit in the Spanish government's budget has had an enormous social cost. The Spanish welfare state (public transfers like pensions, and social services such as education and health services) had been very limited, due to forty years of fascist dictatorship. Franco was known not only for his enormous repression--for every political assassination carried out by Mussolini, Franco killed 10,000--but also for his non-existent social sensibility. As a consequence, when Franco died IN 1975 , the percentage of the population with poor education (less than six years of schooling) was the highest in Europe (84per cent), and the public social expenditures (the funds to support the welfare state) were extremely low (14 per cent of GDP), much lower than the average in Continental Europe (22 per cent of GNP). This deficit of eight points was reduced after the establishment of democracy, (and very much under the social democratic governments, 1982-1993), to reach only four points in 1993. In that year, Spain spent 24 per cent of the GNP in public social expenditures, while the EU-15 average was 28 per cent. In 1991-93 there was a fight within the socialist party that ended with the victory of the so-called social-liberals (the equivalent of the Democratic Leadership Council of the U.S.). One of its leaders, Solbes, (later the person in charge of fiscal austerity in the EU-15 as European Commissions for Economics and Financial Affairs) took over the Ministry of Economy of the social democratic government and inaugurated a whole series of cuts in social expenditures that led to the socialist party'S defeat in 1996, at the hands of Aznar's Popular Party. Rato then became the new Minister of Economy. During his tenure as Minister (1996-2004), the pensions and health expenditures were cut even more savagely than during the Solbes period of 1993-1996. In pensions, for example, Rato increased the Spanish deficit of pension expenditures per capita relative to the EU-15 average by 21per cent and the deficit of public medical care expenditures to the EU-15 average by30 per cent. The consequence of these policies is that Spain, rather than catching up with the EU-15, has been losing ground quite dramatically. Today, the deficit of social expenditures of Spain compared with the average of the EU-15 (measured as percentages of the GNP) is the same as when Franco died. At the practical level, these policies have come to mean that the average time of a visit to the doctor in the National Health Services is only six minutes; that a 14 year old student in a public school has the academic knowledge of an average 13 year old student in the rest of the EU-15, that Spanish pensions are the lowest in the EU-15; that the percentage of children 0-3 years old in attendance at public child care centers is only 8 per cent, the lowest in the EU-15; that the level of temporary work (called "shit work" by the trade unions) in Spain is the highest in the EU-15, 35 per cent of the labor force, and a long etcetera of other social problems. The quality of life of the popular classes (working and middle class) has indeed declined during these social austerity years, as dictated by Mr. Rato. Mr. Rato (and Mr. Aznar) has paraded triumphantly around the EU-15, claiming that Spain is in the top of the league because it is the first member of the EU-15 to reach the stability pact, i.e., public deficit zero. And non other than Blair's Minister of Economy, Gordon Brown, became Rato's main advocate for the IMF position. Nowhere mentioned is the enormous costs this "success" has had on the quality of life of average folks in Spain. And these are the same policies that Mr. Rato is going to follow in the IMF, policies that have caused enormous pain and harm to the Spanish people, and will now be implemented world-wide. Nowhere, however, have the mainstream media reported on such important dimensions of Mr. Rato's tenure as Minister of Economy of Spain. Quite remarkable! Vicente Navarro is Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, USA and Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. He can be reached at: navarro@counterpunch.org Weekend Edition Features for June 12 / 13, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede Team CounterPunch CP's Favorite Albums Jeffrey St. Clair Troy, Now and Then Gary Leupp Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq? Brian Cloughley US Military in Crisis Antonio Ponvert, III Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection Ben Tripp The Polls Get Stupider Joe Bageant Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash" Ron Jacobs The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency Forrest Hylton Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés Christopher Brauchli Federal Bureau of Errors Kurt Nimmo Going After Qaddafi, Again Wayne Madsen Israel's Slap at Reagan Anthony Loewenstein Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World Michael Donnelly A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous Greg Moses Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah? Susan Davis Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban Joseph Ramsey Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground Niranjan Ramakrishnan The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century Wayne Saunders The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup Poets' Basement Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert Website of the Weekend Insurgent Music WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /