Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line

February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?

February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire

February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin

February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill

February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch

February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out

February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict

February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions

February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice





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.


|
February 25, 2005
Conclave of the Brats
Dubya
and Puty-Put Share a Medieval Castle
By
KURT NIMMO
It was an appropriate setting for two
of the world's most loathsome individuals: a medieval Bratislava
castle overlooking the Danube River. "President Bush and
Russian President Vladimir Putin sought common ground Thursday
on keeping conventional and nuclear weapons out of the hands
of terrorists," reports ABC News.
ABC provides no definition
of terrorist. Of course for Bush and Putin the word is reserved
for Chechens and Iranians. Never mind that the United States
is the only nation to have actually ever nuked anybody -- and
continues to use non-mushroom cloud nuclear warfare in Iraq (depleted
uranium) -- and the Russians as well have a long and terrible
history of using "conventional" weapons against millions
of people, including more than a few of their own.
It is said Dubya sincerely
enjoys the company of "Puty Put," as Bush calls the
Russian leader and former KGB goon who learned a few licks in
a stay-over in East Germany at the beginning of his career, more
than likely picking up a few tricks from Stasi, the secret police
network that used Orwell's 1984 as a playbook.
Puty Put and Dubya certainly
have a lot in common. For instance, Putin's control of the media
in Russia ensured his "re-election" last year, a feat
repeated by Bush a few months later as the corporate media in
the United States more or less gave him a blank check -- ignoring
the lies and fabrications used by the Bushcons to invade Iraq
while grinding John Kerry down with Swift boats and his embarrassing
antiwar past -- and then refusing to air serious accusations
of voter fraud and electoral malfeasance. Kerry, as a Skull and
Bones elitist and cheerleader for Bush's invasion and occupation,
of course, deserved to be worn down. But that is another story.
Corporate media news coverage
of the Bush-Putin buzz session predictably came down hard on
Puty Put. "The possession of the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft
missiles in the hands of criminals or terrorists pose a threat
to both passenger and military aviation, a White House statement
said. The Soviet Union and now Russia have widely sold shoulder-fired
missiles to customers around the world, including a more potent
version that can't be diverted by decoys," reports ABC News.
No mention here of the Stinger
missiles Reagan bestowed upon CIA-trained "terrorists"
or "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan (the terms "terrorist"
and "freedom fighter" are interchangeable, depending
on who is doing the talking). Reagan gave approximately 1,000
of these advanced missiles to the medieval Mujahedeen. It is reported that
the CIA has since attempted to buy back Stinger missiles now
that the United States is no longer interested in shooting down
Soviet helicopters but the result, to say the least, has been
mixed. In fact, so loose was the Pentagon in its Stinger giveaway,
according to the GAO, it transferred 8,331 Stingers to foreign
countries from 1982 to 2004. "The current international
export control system is insufficient to prevent the proliferation
of shoulder-fired rockets designed to take down aircraft of all
kinds, including civilian airliners," Rep. Duncan Hunter,
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in 2004, told
the San Francisco Chronicle.
If I can find this information
using a simple Google search, no doubt the journalists at ABC
News would be able to do likewise. Of course, they have no reason
to do this since the idea here is to make it appear Puty Put
and the Russians are handing out missiles like lollipops to so-called
rogue states, in other words states Bush and Crew want to shock
and awe into neoliberal submission.
ABC News does not need to delve
into the recent past to uncover hypocrisy on the part of the
United States in regard to handing out missiles. It need look
no further than NicaNet and Nicaragua's El Nuevo Diario newspaper.
"One of the men convicted of selling a SAM-7 surface-to-air
missile in Nicaragua, Jorge Ivan Pineda, said he was paid $1,000
by the CIA to buy the weapon and that the whole thing was planned
at a meeting in the US embassy in the presence of the US ambassador
Barbara Moore on Dec. 23 2004," explains the Nicaragua Network
website. It appears this SAM-7 missile is one of a hundred or
so given to the terrorist organization -- or maybe a freedom
fighter organization, again depending on who is doing the talking
-- the Contras by the Reagan administration. "These weapons
have never been recovered and apparently are still in the possession
of ex-contra fighters in the northern mountains of Nicaragua."
"Before his meeting with
Putin, Bush spoke to thousands of citizens huddled against a
wet snow. He thanked Slovaks for their deployment of non-combat
troops to Iraq and celebrated the example their 1989 triumph
over communism provides," ABC reports, moving on after accusing
Russia of holding shoulder-fired missile bake sales. "For
the Iraqi people, this is their 1989 and they will always remember
who stood with them in their quest for freedom," said Bush.
Indeed a touching moment, especially
for a guy who told Yoshi Tsurumi, his professor at Harvard Business
School, that the little people pretty much deserve what they
get, especially when it is dished out by the ruling elite. Tsurumi
told Air America radio last year that "lies came very easily"
to Bush. "Intellectually very shallow. But more importantly
immature, but lacking the sense of responsibility, compassion,"
added the professor. Bush did not lie precisely to the little
Slovaks gathered in the snow, he simply rewrote history or glossed
over a big chunk of it anyway.
1989 is an interesting year.
In 1989, the Iraqi people had what the people of the United States
might call universal health care, a public medical system that
was the envy of the Arab world. Iraq also had low infant mortality,
increasing literacy rates, and other social benefits, thanks
to the socialist ideals of the Ba'athists. Of course, they had
to put up with Saddam's brutal police state, a political nightmare
many Iraqis now look back at with fond nostalgia as they endure
polluted water, no electricity, bombed hospitals, a destroyed
sewage system, rampant street violence, suicide bombings, and
last but not least foreign soldiers (no, not al-Qaeda) kicking
in their doors at three in the morning and dragging their men
folk off to disappear into the murky depths of Bush's torture
and rape gulag. Iraq now has a higher poverty rate than Haiti.
Is it "freedom" the
Iraqis will remember or the million or so of their fellow citizens
slaughtered by Dubya's daddy and Bubba Clinton? How many Iraqis
agree with Madeline Albright, who so arrogantly and criminally
proclaimed that 500,000 dead Iraqi children -- killed mostly
by starvation, malnutrition, and entirely preventable disease
under sanctions -- was a price worth paying? How many of them
are now "terrorists" and "dead-enders" blowing
up naive American twenty-somethings in inadequately armored vehicles
as they tool around al-Anbar province looking for the mythical
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Even the Pentagon admits more than 200,000
Iraqis are actively involved in the resistance.
"Also on the agenda was the campaign to persuade Iran to
abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions," ABC News continues.
"The subject has been a prime topic throughout Bush's European
trip, and aides have left open the possibility that Bush would
consider the European-led effort to offer incentives to persuade
Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons."
Incentives? Is it possible Bush will not impose murderous sanctions
on Iran and hold off for a while on shock and awing the place
into Stone Age rubble? I wouldn't count on it -- and I'm sure
the Iranians are not counting on it either and that's why they
are getting up to speed on so-called "asymmetrical warfare,"
in other words guerilla warfare, Shia style. For an example of
how this works, consider Lebanon's Hezbollah, a rag-tag assemblage
of Shi'ites who drove the Israelis out of southern Lebanon. Bombing
the hell out of Iran will probably turn out to be the stupidest
thing Bush ever did, far more stupid than the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon.
Considering the killing fields
of Iraq -- and Vietnam, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Indonesia,
East Timor, the Philippines, directly or through proxy, etc.,
on and on over the last hundred or so years -- who can rightly
blame the Iranians for burning the midnight oil and working feverishly
to develop a few nukes of their own, especially with the Israelis,
secretly harboring a passel of their own nukes, a missile's throw
away to the west? Think North Korea. Dubya and Crew are seriously
reluctant to go after the North Koreans precisely because they
may have nukes and repeatedly make no bones about the fact they
will use them if Bush messes with them. It is easier -- and less
risky -- to kill Iraqis and Iranians, especially in the former
case after more than a decade of debilitating and siege-like
sanctions.
Puty Put is a near match for
Bush and that's why they like each other. Put's military has
spent a long time ravaging Chechnya, consistently engaging in
violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,
butchering and disappearing civilians, going all out with extrajudicial
executions and torture. "According to reports, Russian forces
have arbitrarily detained, tortured or killed thousands of civilians,"
reports Amnesty International. "Most people who are detained
by Russian forces are picked up during identity checks on civilian
convoys traveling from Chechnya to Ingushetia or during military
raids (so-called zachistki or "clean-up" raids) on
populated areas. These raids are accompanied by widespread abuses
against the civilian population. Civilians, including women and
children, have reportedly been abducted, subjected to rape and
other forms of torture, and killed." Like Bush and his cronies,
Puty Put considers the slaughter of innocent men, women, and
children in Chechnya a war against terrorism.
Dubya and Puty Put are peas
in a pod and certainly "share common ground," as ABC
News describes it. Indeed they not only shared a medieval castle
for a few hours but also share a blood-stained medieval mindset,
as epitomized not only by Byzantine-like wars and crusades complete
with the modern equivalent of plunder and foraging, but also
a system or torture and brutality that would prompt Tomas de
Torquemada, the inquisitor general of Castile and Aragon, to
take copious notes.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer
in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred
blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
|