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May 2, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
A
Peek Inside Colin Powell's Personal Diary
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
May 1, 2002
Badiou,
Michel, Lazarus
French
Elections:
What is to be Done?
Baruch Kimmerling
The Battle of Jenin as
an Inter-Ethnic War
Edward
Hammond
Hiding
History:
NAS Suppresses Chem/Bio War Documents
Kristen Schurr
Inside Gaza
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
April 29, 2002
Larry Hales
At the Church of the Nativity
Michael
Colby
The
Times Does Brockovich:
Ralph Nader with Cleavage?
CounterPunch Wire
Bank Robs Publisher,
Vows to Repeat
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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May
2, 2002
Subterranean Mini-Nuke Blues
by Carol Norris
No longer is it safe to bury your treasure or
your weapons or your head in the sand. Because the National Nuclear
Security Administration is setting up design teams at three nuclear
labs --Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore --to explore
possible designs for a new nuclear weapon called the "Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator." Unlike the bigger nuclear weapons,
designed to obliterate entire cities, the Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrator will merely demolish parts of cities --specifically
underground parts --like hidden foreign storage facilities, command
bunkers [No! of course not our bunkered shadow government, silly.
Theirs.] It could even hit, say, a basement day care center.
The new darling in America's ever-growing
arsenal is a teensy weensy mini-nuke. It's kind of like a mini-corn
dog, only coming up with its design alone will cost approximately
$14,999,999.75 more than it cost to come up with the time-tested
stick-up-the-middle corn dog design. And to its credit, unlike
the mini or maxi corn dog, it promises to perform without the
need for mustard of any kind.
Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator...Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Say it out loud and trill that first
"R." Sexy! Let's think about it for a minute. The guys
whose job it is to name bombs and things thought merely calling
it the Nuclear Earth Penetrator wasn't intimidating enough. It
seems the word "nuclear" does not pack a big enough
punch for them, so they felt the need to enhance it with the
word "robust." I don't know about you, but just saying
the word "nuclear" out loud takes six and three quarters
years off my life. It's a pretty robust word all on its own--I'd
even go so far as to call it feisty.
Not to worry, it's a low yielding nuclear
bomb you say. What? Exactly just how low yielding can a nuclear
weapon be? And, if it's so low yielding, why not just use some
of the high yielding non-nuclear weapons like those Daisy Cutters
that spill out jellied gasoline on impact and then suck the air
out of a quarter mile radius or whatever it is that they do.
That sounds pretty damn Rrrrrobust to me. That'd save us a few
gazillion or so bucks. And besides isn't the whole point of a
nuclear weapon the fact that it is so mind-bogglingly high yielding?
Isn't that why they are supposedly such a deterrent to all those
evil axes out there?
Perhaps calling this nukelette "robust"
was to compensate for the "Flaccid Nuclear Earth Penetrator-We-Hope,
-But-Can't-Promise-Anything" ones they spent 72 trillion
of our tax dollars on last year. You didn't hear about them,
because, well, they didn't exactly perform --just wilted right
over in their little missile silos. Not even a moment's stand
at attention. At least they didn't promise.
Hmmm...robust penetration...robust penetration...why
would a bunch of mostly aging men sit around talking about robust
penetration? Someone get Freud on the phone. I can see a Pentagon/Energy
Department meeting now:
"This impressive weapon is a model
of stealth and precision. It provides ultimate penetration, gentlemen.
It knows what it has to do, makes the first move and takes no
prisoners. And it's guaranteed to perform every time. It can
penetrate even the tightest opening, plunging hard and long,
deeper and deeper into its forbidden dark, cavernous target until...oh
yeah...payload delivered and Mission. Accomplished."
[A quivering silence.]
"Uh...General, Sir, I'm sorry, but
you can't smoke in here. It's against regulations. Sir?"
"What? Oh...yes, of course. Well,
gentlemen, this is the newest in military offensives."
Yes, Sir, offensive it most certainly
is.
I can think of lots of things that could
use a little robust penetration, some of which I won't go into
here, but how about the Robust Economic Disparity Penetrator
or the Robust Truth About Enron Penetrator or the Robust Skewed
National Budget Priorities Penetrator or even in my city, at
the very least, we could really use a Robust San Francisco Fog
Penetrator. But, we definitely don't need anything else nuclear
and we certainly need to stop violating the Earth because, honestly,
haven't she been screwed enough already?
Carol Norris
is a freelance writer and psychotherapist living in San Francisco.
She can be contacted at: can5@mindspring.com
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