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Today's Stories

September 8, 2004

Stan Goff
Body Count: 1001

September 7, 2004

Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker

Joshua Frank
Greens Unravel from Within

Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000

Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"

Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed

Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade

John Ross
The Politics of Darkness North / South

 

September 6, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
An Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted For Taft-Hartley?

Ralph Nader
The Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for Working People

Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Dual Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel

 

September 4-5, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Elephants and Gramsci

Ted Honderich
The Way Things Are

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do

Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo

Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles

Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire

Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt

William A. Cook
The Day of the Lemming

Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom

John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended

Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act

Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup

Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate

Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast

Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain

Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?

Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert

 

September 3, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb

Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response

Carl Estabrook
The Book of Slaughter and Forgetting

Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again

Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March

James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?

Mark Engler
Republicans Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out

Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education

Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid

Stephen Green
Serving Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel

Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden

CounterPunch's Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
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September 2, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks

Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves in Guatemala

James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities

Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote Twice, Let Them"

Todd Chretien & Jessie Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?

Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer

Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam

Christa Allen
Contre Bush

Website of the Day
[Redacted]

 

September 1, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
The Stench of Doom

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin

Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test

Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up

John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops

Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold

Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC

Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?

Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words

 

August 31, 2004

Joseph Nevins
Escapism and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs

Matt Vidal
Beyond Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy

Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Bush the Peace Candidate?

Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran

Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card

Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)

CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC

 

August 30, 2004

Justin Podhur
The Disappeared Mayor

Shaun Joseph
The Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com

Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly Want?

Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate

David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy

Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate

Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History

 

 

August 28 / 29, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Zombies for Kerry

Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US

Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence

Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor

Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!

Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot

Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live

William S. Lind
The Desert Fox

Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry

Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads

Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests

Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange

Justin E.H. Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left

Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?

Mark Engler
New York Says "No"

Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas

Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod

 

 

August 27, 2004

Gary Leupp
Neocon Musings

Robin Cook
The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

Diane Christian
Disarming

Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?

Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters

Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"

Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners

Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"


 

August 26, 2004

M. Shahid Alam
The Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?

Diane Christian
War Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu

Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get Organized

David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally

Christopher Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble

Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity

Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court

Saul Landau
Pinochet: the Al Capone of the Southern Cone

Website of the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See

 

 

August 25, 2004

Amelia Peltz
Can I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?

Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture

Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About Democracy

James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan

Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"

Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism

Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia

CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door

 

 

August 24, 2004

Jeremy Scahill
John Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate

Gary Leupp
"We Want Them to Go Away"

David Domke
God Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism

William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in Venezuela

Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media

Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah

Joe Bageant
Driving on the Bones of God

Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC


 

August 23, 2004

Winslow Wheeler
Don't Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror

John Pilger
Bush May Be the Lesser Evil

Stan Goff
Swift Boat Dogfight

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Notes from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild

Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan

William Blum
Brave New World of Iraqi Sovereignty

Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial

 

 

August 21 / 22, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
"They Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on Drugs

Landau / Hassen
Failing the Mission? Form a Commission

Brian Cloughley
The Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts

Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So

Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib

Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues

Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin

Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants

Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot

Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA

Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings

Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad

Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery

Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing

Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot Stories

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

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The Death Train of the WTO

Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens as Model Apostate

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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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September 8, 2004

This Doesn't Smell Like Victory

A War on Two Fronts

By PATRICK COCKBURN

The American death toll in Iraq reached 1,000 last night, the White House announced after yet another day of heavy fighting in Baghdad.

The symbolic figure was reached 18 months after President Bush started the war that has become the defining issue of the US presidential campaign. His rival in the elections, the Democrat candidate John Kerry, called it a "tragic milestone".

The Pentagon said that 998 troops and three civilian defence employees had been killed in Iraq, and 6,916 soldiers wounded. Yesterday, fierce battles between US forces and Shia militiamen of the Mehdi Army in the sprawling slum of Sadr City left 34 people dead, including one US soldier, and 193 wounded. Shia fighters used hammers to dig up asphalt from the roads, and then planted explosives. Shops shut as roads were blocked with stones and tyres.

Militiamen carrying machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers moved hurriedly towards the fighting. Sheikh Raed al-Khadimi, the spokesman for Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, said: "Our fighters had no choice but to return fire and to face the US forces and helicopters pounding our houses."

US commanders have said they want to clear the Mehdi Army from its stronghold in Sadr City. Talks between representatives of Mr Sadr and the interim government of Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, broke down when the government rejected the demand that American troops keep out of Sadr City.

If Mr Allawi and the US want to eliminate the Mehdi Army entirely there could be fighting in Sadr City as bloody as anything seen during the three-week battle for Najaf that took place last month and devastated the holy city.

The US is now fighting two different wars in Iraq: one is against the large but ill-trained Mehdi Army; the other is against the highly effective Sunni Muslim guerrillas who have killed 12 US soldiers in the past two days.

Many of the US soldiers have died when their vehicles were caught by the blast from roadside bombs, usually several heavy artillery shells detonated by a command wire. The US army has not found the answer to this type of attack.

A typical but devastating ambush using a buried mine took place at 11.45pm on Monday in the Khadra district of Baghdad beside an expressway close to an intersection much used by American military traffic.

As a convoy of Humvees--the enlarged jeeps preferred by the US Army--passed along the road a bomb exploded, squarely hitting one vehicle. Rocket-propelled grenades were fired from the other side of the road.

The blast destroyed one Humvee, killing a soldier and wounding another. The explosion was powerful enough to hurl shattered fragments of the weapon on to the roof of a house. A metal door from the vehicle had been flung 40 yards and was lying on top of another roof where it had cut through an electricity cable in its fall. Beside it were torn pieces of American uniform and the broken lid of a first-aid kit.

Ten minutes away from where the Humvee had been destroyed, guerrillas launched another professional ambush yesterday morning. Their target was Ali al-Haidri, the governor of Baghdad, as he sped down the road in a heavily armed convoy on his way to work.

A witness, Ali Faruq, said that as the governor's convoy drove by two men who were standing by the boot of their car quickly opened it. Inside was a gunman who opened fire. At the same moment,two other gunmen on foot, their faces concealed by kafiyahs, appeared ahead of the convoy.

To get off the main road, Mr Haidri's convoy turned right into a side street. The ambush party must have been expecting this. Mr Faruq said: "Three minutes earlier a man had put down a box in this street. It turned out to be a bomb."

It exploded, making a black crater in the tarmac and smashing down the wall of the nearby Ala Allah mosque.

But whoever detonated the bomb did so seconds too early because the governor's car was still approaching.



Weekend Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004

James Petras
The Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of Abu Ghraib

Fred Gardner
Run Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain

Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela

Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?

Joshua Frank
The Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader

Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection

Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome

Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti

Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan

Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush

Carol Miller / Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only 12% of the Vote

Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter

Donald Macintyre
The Battle of Najaf

Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies

Mickey Z.
Kid Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO

Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert

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