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Today's
Stories
March 11, 2004
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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.
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March
11, 2004
Embedded, Restricted, Dead
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They
By NORMAN SOLOMON
To encourage restraint in war coverage, governments
don't need to shoot journalists -- though sometimes that's helpful.
Thirteen journalists were killed while
covering the war and occupation in Iraq last year, says a new
report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The deaths were
a subset of 36 on-the-job fatalities related to journalistic
work across the globe in 2003.
CPJ's annual worldwide survey "Attacks
on the Press," released on March 11, indicates that some
of those deaths in Iraq were not just random events in a hazardous
war zone.
Journalists who were "embedded"
with the American military tended to be safer. But as a practical
matter, the tradeoffs shortchanged news readers, listeners and
viewers. "The close quarters shared by journalists and troops
inevitably blunted reporters' critical edge," CPJ reports.
"There were also limits on what types of stories reporters
could cover, since the ground rules barred journalists from leaving
their unit."
Los Angeles Times reporter David Zucchino
was embedded with the 101st Airborne. While he remained near
American soldiers, he recalls, that "access could be suffocating
and blinding."
Zucchino offers a blunt assessment: "Often
I was too close, or confined, to comprehend the war's broad sweep.
I could not interview survivors of Iraqi civilians killed by
U.S. soldiers or speak to Iraqi fighters trying to kill Americans.
I was not present when Americans died at the hands of fellow
soldiers in what the military calls 'frat,' for fratricide. I
had no idea what ordinary Iraqis were experiencing. I was ignorant
of Iraqi government decisions and U.S. command strategy."
Meanwhile, journalists who were not imbedded
with the invading military "faced a multitude of hazards
and restrictions, limiting the reporting from non-U.S. military
perspectives," the CPJ report says. In some cases, those
journalists "faced outright harassment from U.S. forces."
On April 8, during a pair of assaults,
the U.S. military killed three journalists and wounded several
more. In mid-August, American forces killed an award-winning
cameraman. CPJ's report includes summaries of those events, and
-- if you read between the lines -- they shed a lot of light
on the Pentagon's lethally cavalier attitude.
* "In the first attack, a U.S. warplane
struck an electricity generator outside the Baghdad bureau of
the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, killing reporter
Tareq Ayyoub. The attack occurred in an area of heavy fighting,
although Al-Jazeera noted that it had provided the Pentagon with
the coordinates of its offices weeks before the incident. The
nearby office of Abu Dhabi TV also came under U.S. fire at the
time. In October, a U.S. military spokesman acknowledged to CPJ
that no investigation into the incident was ever launched."
* "In the second incident later
that day, a U.S. tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, which
housed most foreign correspondents in Baghdad, killing cameramen
Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and Jose Couso of Spanish television
channel Telecinco. U.S. troops claimed that they were responding
to hostile fire emanating from the hotel. A CPJ investigative
report published in May concluded that the shelling of the hotel,
while not deliberate, was avoidable since U.S. commanders knew
that journalists were in the hotel but failed to relay this information
to soldiers on the ground."
* "On August 17, soldiers shot and
killed veteran Reuters cameraman and former CPJ International
Press Freedom Award recipient Mazen Dana while he filmed a U.S.
tank convoy outside Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad. U.S. soldiers
said they mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG)
launcher. Dana had secured permission from U.S. forces to film
in the area, and, according to eyewitnesses, there was no fighting
in the area when the journalist was shot.
"On September 22, the U.S. military
announced that it had concluded its investigation into Dana's
killing, and a Centcom spokesman told CPJ that while the journalist's
death was 'regrettable,' the soldiers 'acted within the rules
of engagement.' No further details were provided, and the results
of the investigation have not been made public. Observers have
frequently pointed out that although a soldier might mistake
a camera for an RPG at a long distance, a camera would be clearly
visible from the estimated 55 yards at which Dana was hit."
Overall, CPJ reports, "the conduct
of U.S. troops has exacerbated the tenuous security situation
for journalists in Iraq." The occupation has brought a pattern
of efforts by the U.S. command to interfere with independent
news-gathering.
Al-Jazeera correspondents have been arrested
many times, but American journalists have hardly been exempt
from harassment. In Fallujah, when guerrillas shot down a U.S.
Army helicopter in early November, "U.S. troops confiscated
the camera of Knight Ridder photographer David Gilkey, of the
Detroit Free Press, and erased all of his photographs,"
CPJ reports.
In November, a letter to Pentagon press
officer Larry DiRita -- signed by representatives of 30 news
organizations from the United States and other countries -- complained
that they had "documented numerous examples of U.S. troops
physically harassing journalists and, in some cases, confiscating
or ruining equipment, digital camera discs, and videotapes."
Commanders of occupying troops often
see journalists as impediments to effective military activities.
In the case of U.S. forces in Iraq, it's no secret -- and it
should be no surprise -- that the Pentagon has adopted some of
the Israeli military's occupation techniques. The similarities
go beyond the deaths of two journalists in occupied Palestinian
territories last year.
Nazih Darwazeh, a cameraman with Associated
Press Television News, was shot in the back of his head on the
morning of April 19 while filming a stranded Israeli tank at
the corner of an alley in Nablus. Two journalists who were eyewitnesses
said the shot came from an Israeli soldier under the tank.
In early May, the British freelance film
director and cameraman James Miller, working on an HBO documentary
in the Gaza Strip, was also shot and killed. Relatives, friends
and colleagues commissioned an in-depth professional investigation,
which found that Miller and his crew "were consciously and
deliberately targeted by the IDF soldiers."
Darwazeh and Miller were shot while wearing
jackets that clearly identified them as "Press" or
"TV."
Israel Defense Forces are notorious for
targeting journalists in the occupied territories. There's a
pattern of shooting at journalists -- with the IDF hierarchy
refusing to hold anyone accountable for the results. "Over
the years," the latest CPJ report explains, "the army
has failed to conduct thorough investigations into cases where
journalists have been wounded or killed by IDF gunfire, let alone
punish those responsible for the attacks. The same can be said
for troops who physically attack or otherwise mistreat journalists
in the field."
For the authorities in charge of an occupation,
the positive deterrent effects of such policies are self-evident
when journalists know that their lives will be in danger if they
try to document instances of brutality on the part of occupiers.
It's not necessary to shoot too many
journalists. If the goal is to discourage overly intrepid coverage
on the ground, some occasional killing can be a real disincentive.
Norman Solomon
is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in
San Francisco. He is co-author of Target
Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. (Context Books,
2003).
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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