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Today's
Stories
November
23, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: Meet the Sentator
Most Likely to Start a Nuclear War
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
November
19, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Mementos You Won't Find in the Clinton
Library: Back in the 90s When We Were Happy
Kevin
Alexander Gray
Soul Brother: the Exhibit You Won't
See at the Clinton Library
Paul
Craig Roberts
There's No One to Stop Them Now
Jack
Z. Bratich
Digging Out Kerry and Burying the Bones(men)
Greg
Bates
The Implosion of the Dems and the Death of Pragmatism (Hurray!)
Christopher
Brauchli
Terror by Night: Waking Up to Darfur?
Forrest
Hylton
At a Loss: for Margaret Hassan
James
Petras
The Crushing of Fallujah
November
18, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
Iraq War as Video Game: "I
Got My Kills...I Just Love My Job"
Hugh
Urban
America, "Left Behind": Bush,
the Neo-Cons and Evangelical Christian Fiction
Luis
A. Gómez
The Bolivian Crisis Deepens
Robert
Fisk
The Murder of Margaret Hassan
Suzan
Mazur
The New York Times Fesses Up to a Rip Off
Prof.
Francis Boyle
Dems Cave on Gonzales: War Criminal as Attorney General?
Mike
Ferner
Sign Here, Kid
November
17, 2004
Christian
Harleman / Jan Oberg
Who and What Killed Our Friend Margaret
Hassan?
Dave
Lindorff
Bring Them Home Before They Kill
Again
Larry
Birns
Condi Rice and Latin America: She Sees
Enemies Everywhere
Toni
Solo
Rumsfeld in Nicaragua
Omar
Barghouti
Snuff Films and War Crimes in Iraq
Clancy
Sigal
"How to Take a Beating": Gen. Stilwell's Lessons for
Iraq
Brita
May Rose
America's Radioactive War: DU in Iraq
Ben
Terrall
"We Must Kill the Bandits!": Lula's Troops in Haiti
Sam
Hamod
The New Mongols
David
Krieger
An Open Letter to the Regents of
the University of California on Nuclear Weapons Research
Pierre
Tristam
It Has Happened Here
John
Marciano
Oppose the War and the Warriors:
"Iraqis are a Cancer. An We're the Chemotherapy"
Website
of the Day
Fallujah: the Real Story
November
16, 2004
Paul
Craig Roberts
Declining Superpower Act: the Coming
Currency Shock
Mike
Whitney
The Goss Purge: Night of the Long Knives at CIA
Uri
Avnery
Rejoice Not: Arafat's Funeral
Andrew
Buncombe
Murder in a Fallujah Mosque
Dr.
Teresa Whitehurst
On Refusing to be Silenced: Sen. Bill Frist v. John Quincy Adams
Rudy
Rimando
Cousins of Color: Black Soldiers in the Philippines, 1899
Jordan
Green
Fighting Jim Crow in Cincy: The Old South Lives ... Across the
River
Hugh
Urban
The Ohio "Vote": Ken Blackwell Has Some Explaining
to Do
Steve
Breyman
Challenges for the Peace Movement
John
Ross
Bush in Rapture
Website
of the Day
We
Doomed?
November 15, 2004
Larry
Birns
A Resignation Without Meaning: Powell
and Latin America
Walt
Brasch
On the (Far) Right Hand of God
John
Pilger
The Greatest Political Scandal of
Our Time
John
Chuckman
Welcome to Ripley's Believe It or Not of Christianity
Francis
A. Boyle
Obliterating Fallujah: War Crime in Real Time
Georgy
/ Sengupta
Fallujah in Ruins: The Air is Polluted with the Stench of Death
Ralph
Nader
Voters v. Sports Fans
Neve
Gordon
The "No Partner" Myth
Donna
J. Volatile
So What Are You Going to Do About It?
Werther
On Reading the Duelfer Report
November
13 / 14, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
"Let Them Drink Sand!"
David
Domke
Bush, God and the Election: a Theology
of War?
James
Petras
The Politics of Imperialism: Neoliberalism and Latin America
Carl
G. Estabrook
How to Stop the GWOT: "Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil!"
Stan
Goff
Torture and the Cinema
Dave
Lindorff
The Ruins of Fallujah
Mike
Whitney
Fallujah and the Erosion of American Power
Ron
Jacobs
Waiting for the Last War to End
Alan
Maass
The Rise and Fall of Gingrich: a Parable for Our Times
Lenni
Brenner
"Next"...a Prison Tale
Gary
Leupp
France's Little Vietnam: Imperialist France Destroys an African
Air Force
Jessica
Leight / Larry Birns
Haiti: the New Regime Shows Its Colors
Heather
Gray
Whistling Dixie: Bush's Reelection, a Perspective from the South
Jordan
Green
Ohio's Provisional Ballots: the State of Play
Robert
Fisk
Arafat Ruled by Emotion and Cronyism
Omar
Barghouti
The Death of Arafat and the Two-State SOlution
Fred
Gardner
Marijuana: an Election Scorecard
Christopher
Brauchli
When a POW Isn't a POW: the Other Torture Memo
Joanne
Mariner
A Preview of the Scalia Court
Dr.
Susan Block
Blue Values
Patrick
Timmons
Violence at the Ballot Box: the War on Gay Rights
Mickey
Z.
Rumor Club
Poets
Basement
Hasan, Albert, Kent, St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Hand of God?
November
12, 2004
Forrest
Hylton / Sinclair Thomson
Insurgent Bolivia: the Roots of Rebellion
November
11, 2004
Peggy
Thomson
Encounters with Arafat
Joe
Bageant
Hung Over in the End Times: Heaven's
Foot Soldiers Escape the Dog Patch
Ben
Tripp
The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grief
Edwin
Krales
Cuba's Response to AIDS: a Model for
the Developing World
Jordan
Green
How They Tried to Suppress the Black
Vote in South Carolina
Gary
Leupp
Guzman's Fist
Mike
Whitney
Meet Your New AG: Alberto Torquemada
Sam
Bahour
Palestine is Bigger Than Arafat
Sylvia
Shihadeh and Robert Jensen
The Irony of Arafat
Russ
Wellen
Why Do They Laugh at Us?
Mark
Scaramella
Kerry's Enablers: the Clinton
Cult Factor
November
10, 2004
Joshua
Frank
The Bright Side of Bush's Reelection
Mickey
Z.
The Worst President Ever?: Bush +
Clinton = Bubya
Stan
Goff
Debating a Neo-Con
Mike
Whitney
Exit Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Taking a Leak on the Bush Bulge
Ghada
Karmi
After Arafat
Fr.
Gerard Jean-Juste
Letter from a Haitian Jail
Rev.
Bob Jones, III
A Letter to President Bush: "God Has Granted America a Reprieve"
Bernestine
Singley
Tampa Vote: Dispatches from the Ground
Website
of the Day
Free Camilo Mejia
November
9, 2004
Meredeth
Kolodner
Rebuilding the Anti-War Movement
Saul
Landau
The Appeal of George W. Bush: a Mystery for the World to Solve
Brian
Cloughley
Diego Garcia and Freedom, Bush-Style
Charles
Glass
US is Failing the Test of History in
Iraq
Robert
Fisk
Arafat Died Years Ago
Paul
Craig Roberts
The American Century is Over
Adam
Federman
Witch Hunt at Columbia: Middle East Profs Smeared as Anti-Semites
M.
Junaid Alam
The Discredited Logic of ABB
Tony
Kevin
Fallujah and the Making of a War Crime
Pierre
Tristam
Zealots on the Mount: Get Voltaire on Speed Dial!
Patrick
Cockburn
Crushing Fallujah Will Not End the
Iraq War
Website
of the Day
Don't Blame the Voters!
November
8, 2004
Roger
Burbach
Out of the Ashes: Bush Win is a Defeat
for Democrats, Not the Left
Dave
Lindorff
Lessons from a Quagmire: Fallujah, the Hue of Iraq
Greg
Moses
After the Morning After: On the Homefront of the Civil War
Greg
Bates
Nader's Election Legacy: Something to Stand On
Michael
Donnelly
The Hit-and-Run Left: From ABB to CYA
Nick
Schwellenbach
Gutting FOIA: the Harm of Too Much Secrecy
Adam
Jones
Men vs. Civilians in Fallujah
Amelia
Peltz
Note from Palestine: This Is Not the Time for Despair
David
Swanson
The Media Black Out on Vote Fraud
Brian
Rainey
The Devil Made Them Do It? Elections, Religion and the American
People
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Landau, Hamod
Website
of the Day
A Report on the US Supply of Toxic Weapons to Iraq
November
6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Don't
Say We Didn't Warn You
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Green Out
Carl
G. Estabrook
Who Killed Cock Robin?
Saul
Landau
Che: the Man and the Movie
Gary
Leupp
Let There Be Conflict!
Ben
Tripp
You Call This a Party?
Paul
Craig Roberts
The October Numbers: Continuing Stress on the Jobs Front
Jordan
Green
Heroin, Cocaine and Espanola, NM
Fred
Gardner
Haul of Justice
J.A.
Miller
Cults of the Jealous God: the Balfour Decision Reconsidered
Ramzy
Baroud
Life Without Arafat
Dave
Zirin
Out at the Ballgame: Pro Sports and the Gay Athelete
Ron
Jacobs
The Arrow on the Doorpost
Robert
Oscar Lopez
How White Liberals Became a New Racial Minority
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The November Surprise
Dave
Lindorff
Silver Linings
Richard
Oxman
Invitation to the Bodily Snatched
John
Whitlow
Value Wars: the View from Lexington, Kentucky
Rahul
Mahajan
Fallujah and the Reality of War
Leila
Matsui
Political "Ju-On": Carrying a Grudge
November
5, 2004
David
Vest
The Not-Bush Brothers: a Fond Farewell
Elizabeth
Boylan
The Dems and Faith-Based Politics
Conn
Hallinan
War Crimes and Iraq
David
Zonsheine
Poetry and the Courage to Refuse
Cynthia
McKinney
It's a New Day!
Elaine
Cassel
Running from the Religious Right
Chris
Geovanis
First Protect Your Vote: Lessons for Democrats on Fixing Elections
from Chicago
Rob
Ritchie
Election 2004 by the Numbers
Jo
Guldi
The Beast of History is In
November
4, 2004
Sharon
Smith
The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Lesser-Evilism
CounterPunch
Wire
Bush Voters: 2000 v. 2004
Ben
Tripp
My Fellow Americans...Get Stuffed!
Michael
Donnelly
Why Not Blame Rosie?
Vijay
Prashad
An Election of Homophobia and Misogyny
Jules
Rabin
De Profundis: the Morning After
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Professions of Faith:
"Your Rich Men are Full of Violence"
Zoltan
Grossman
Blue State Secession: the Only Solution?
Jonah
Birch
1968 and Today
Dave
Lindorff
What Went Wrong?
Jack
McCarthy
I Knew It Was Over When Michael Moore Showed Up: He Was For Nader...Before
He Was Against Him
Donna
J. Volatile
Ahoy Kerrycrats! Welcome to Our Nightmare
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bright Side of Black Tuesday
November
3, 2004
James
Hodge / Linda Cooper
The CIA and Abu Ghraib: 50 Years of
Training Torturers
Ann
Harrison
The Ghost Votes in the Machine: Voting Snafus Across the Nation
Greg
Moses
Blues for Fallujah
Anis
Memon
The Moral (Values) of This Election
Mickey
Z.
Post Mortem
Josh
Frank
The Dems Should be Ashamed
Chris
Floyd
No Ways Tired: Defeat, Dissent and the Bush Machine
spArk
Smoke Signals from Portland: Karmic Blowback and the Democrats
Friedrich
von Schiller
Folly, Thou Conquerest
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Democrats in End Time: Who to Blame
Now?
November
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Democratic Elections in Historical
Perspective: The Wrong Side Wins
Lance
Selfa
Selling the War on Terror
Laura
Carlsen
The US Elections and Latin America: Can the US Ever be a Good
Neighbor?
James
Davis
To Control the Event: Attention Bicyclists
Richard
Oxman
Getting Up with Osama
Dr.
Ira Kay
A Mental Map of the Bush Presidency
Jesse
Walker
Frankenstein v. Chucky: the Halloween Election
Thomas
C. Mountain
Election '24, Deja Vu?: LaFollette, Nader, & the "Most
Important Election of Our Lifetimes"
November
1, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and
Blew It
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate Confirmed; Press Yawns
Greg
Bates
Nader Voter Survey Results
Roger
Morris
Novel Politics: Only Fiction Can Do
This Election Justice
Diane
Christian
Death Tolls
Lenni
Brenner
Secularists Be Warned: Christlike Kerry Roams Spiritual Universe
Christopher
C. Conway
Can the Left Sink Any Lower?
Francis
Boyle
Legal Elites and the Iraq War: the Nazis Had Their Law Professors,
Too
Jason
Leopold
Rummy's Failed War Plan
Website
of the Day
Dylan Resurrects "Masters of War"
October
30 / 31, 2004
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The Long March and the Million Worker
March
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Spartacus Tells All
Bruce
Anderson
Notes from the Big Empty: When the Hippies Invaded NoCal
Vicente
Navarro
They Worked for Franco: How Sec. of State Cordell Hull and Nobel
Laureate Camilo Jose Cela Collaborated with the Fascist Regime
Robin
Blackburn
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security
Greg
Bates
A Question of Character: What Makes Nader Tick?
Nancy
Welch
The American Health Care Crisis: an Interview with Dr. David
Himmelstein
William
Lind
Election Day: Which Menendez Brother Will You Vote For?
Brian
Cloughley
Uzbekistan and Bush Hypocrisies
Suzan
Mazur
Oops They Did It Again: the NYTs the Paper of Record and Rip-Offs
Greg
Moses
Standing at the Graves of Iraq
John
Chuckman
Osama's Endorsement
Richard
Oxman
Why Not Accept Osama's Offer?
Ken
Avidor
Landscape of Fear: When Ugly is Suspicious
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Bush, Ba'ath and Beyond
Hope
Bastian
Strangling Cuba's Economy
P.
Sainath
Tower of Gabble: Toward a Sustainable Rhetoric
Dave
Zirin
Bush League: Why MLB Owners Support the Prez
Jon
Swift
The Dry Drunk Thang: Put a Cork in It
Ron
Jacobs
The Joke's on Me: a Review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1
Alexander
Billet
Taking Theatre Back: Are the States Ready for "Stuff Happens"?
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Laymon, Norris, Ford and Albert
Website
of the Weekend
The Origins of Halloween
October
29, 2004
Harry
Browne
No Justice for Peace Activist in County
Clare
October
28, 2004
Forrest Hylton
"The Gas is Ours:" Bolivia's
Ghosts of October
Col. Dan Smith
Rebellion
in the Ranks
Alan Maass
Jon Stewart v. the Pundits
Ron Jacobs
Ecstasy
in Red Sox Nation
Alexander
Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October
27, 2004
Jules
Rabin
Crammed with Distressful Politics
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate: the Lies Continue
Katherine
Van Tassel
On the Home Front: Both Parties
Ignore Working Parents
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil
October 26,
2004
Brian Cloughley
Three
Weddings and Lots of Funerals: Atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan
William Blum
Fear
Factors
Lenni Brenner
The
1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Lessons for 2004
Ben Tripp
The
Chicken Salad Election
Fidel Castro
After the Fall
Greg Bates
The Nation's Flawed Calculus
Walter Brasch
Gag the Public: the War on Dissent
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Open Letter to Pat Buchanan
Mickey Z.
Rumble in the Jungle at 30: Ali, Foreman and the Congo
Amir Taheri
The Boom in Conspiracy Theories
Alexander Billet
Say It Ain't So, Bruce!: the Boss Endorses Kerry
Doug Giebel
The Religion of G.W. Bush
Kathleen Christison
Why
I Liked Thomas Friedman's Latest Column Before I Didn't
October 25,
2004
Ralph Nader
Letter
from a Minnesota Highway
Werther
West
Texas Wahabbism
Dave Zirin
Boston's Killer Cops: Death of a Fan
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Oregon Revokes Dr. Leveque's License
Omar Barghouti
Executing Another Child in Rafah
William J. Nottingham
Lori Berenson's Story
John Chuckman
A Foolish Consistency
Uri Avnery
On
the Road to Civil War
October 22
/ 24, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
You
Can't Blame Nader for This
Rev. William Alberts
On Bended Knee: Faith-Based Deceptions
Willliam A.
Cook
Killing for Christ
Saul Landau
George W. Bush: a Man of His Words?
Bill Quigley
I Held the Bullet in My Palm: Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children
While Arresting Priest
Christopher Brauchli
Seal It With a Frown: What Compassionate Conservativism Really
Means
William S.
Lind
Fallujah and the Moral Level of War
Sharon Smith
Guilt Trippers for Kerry
Greg Bates
Kerrynomics: "Hurt the Ones Who Vote for Us"
Justin E.H. Smith
Is Lesser Evilism a Compromise with Evil?
Rebecca Evans
Tarnished Legacy: Pinochet and the Chilean Military
Mike Whitney
Al Hurra TV: the Second Invasion
M. Junaid Alam
Purchasing Individuality in America
David Krieger
Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and
Kerry
David J. Ledermann
The Emperor's New Crumbs
Lawrence Reichard
Same Old FBI Story
Website of
the Weekend
Lie Girls: the Real Coalition of the Willling
October 21,
2004
Ben Tripp
The
Undecided Voter Examined
Joshua Frank
Kerry
and the Environment:
It's Not Easy Pretending to be Green
Stan Cox
What
the Left Doesn't Get About Small Businesses
Bill Martinez
State
Depart and Cuban Visas: Only Anti-Castro Agitators Need Apply
Mark Engler
The War and Globalization
Lina Britto
and Lucia Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
Website of the Day
Two Pampered Children of Wealth
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
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The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
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"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
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Protest and Populism in Latin America
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Bush's Credibility Gap
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The
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Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
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CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
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October 7,
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"Please,
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Going
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The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
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Rethinking WMDs
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Stealing Diego Garcia
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Kerry's "Triumph"
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Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
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Elections
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Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
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Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
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Greg Bates
Trading
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Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
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Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
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What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
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October 4,
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The
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An Interview with David Cobb
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Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
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Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
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An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
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My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
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Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
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Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
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Sticker Shock
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The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
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October 1,
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Kerry's
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November 23, 2004
Meet the Senator
Most Likely to Start a Nuclear War
The
Mark of McCain
By
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
It's November 19, 2004, a mere two weeks
after the election that returned George W. Bush to power, and
Senator John McCain has traipsed off to New Hampshire to give
a speech calling for 50,000 more troops to be sent into the quagmire
of Iraq, press flesh and raise money for an expected run at the
presidency in 2008. John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor
and Bush family consigliere, wryly quipped about McCain's junket
to the Granite State, "What took him so long?"
The press corps, already bored
with Bush and election post-mortems, tags along. McCain's the
darling of the moment, the opinion press's favorite senator,
a media-made maverick, who was sedulously courted by both John
Kerry and George Bush. McCain, true to form, flirted with them
both and sniped at them both, but in the end remained wedded
to the GOP, even as the party fell further under the sway of
neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists that McCain publicly claims
to abhor.
But that's all part of the
McCain profile. He is the senator of the hollow protest. McCain
is nothing if not a political stunt man. His chief stunt is the
evocation of political piety. From his pulpit in the well of
the senate, McCain gestures and fumes about the evils of Pentagon
porkbarrel. He rails about useless and expensive weapons systems,
contractor malfeasance, and bloated R&B budgets.
But he does nothing about them.
McCain pontificates, but never obstructs. Few senators have his
political capital. But he does nothing with it. Under the arcane
rules of the senate, one senator can gum up the works, derail
a bad (or good, though those are increasingly rare in this environment)
bill, dislodge non-germane riders, usually loaded with pork,
from big appropriations bills. McCain is never that senator.
He is content to let ride that which he claims to detest in press
releases and senate speeches.
A recent example. In late October,
McCain went on 60 Minutes to decry a footnote in the Defense
Appropriations Bill of 2004 that transferred billions of dollars
from so-called Operations and Maintenance accounts for US troops
in Iraq to porkbarrel projects, such as gold mines and museums,
in the states of powerful senators. In his stern voice before
the cameras, McCain made congressional looting sound like a treasonable
offense. But what he failed to disclose is the fact that he actually
voted for the bill. Not only that, he was personally approached
by each senator who wanted just such a transfer of funds and
gave it his seal of approval.
McCain the Maverick is a merely
a fine-honed act, underscored by these kinds of casual hypocrisies.
* *
*
In the past couple of years,
McCain has been portrayed as one of the doves the senate. It's
a stunning transformation and a phony one. Instead, throughout
his career in Congress McCain has often been one of the hottest
hawks around. During the war on Serbia in 1999, in one rhetorical
bombing run after another, McCain bellowed for "lights out
in Belgrade" and for NATO to "cream" the Serbs.
At the start of May of that year he began declaiming in the US
senate for NATO forces to use "any means necessary"
to destroy Serbia.
McCain is often called a "war
hero", a title adorning an unlovely resume starting with
a father who was an admiral and graduation fifth from the bottom
at the US Naval Academy, where he earned the nickname "McNasty".
McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam, each averaging
about half an hour, total time ten hours and thirty minutes.
For these brief excursions the admiral's son was awarded two
Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Distinguished Flying
Crosses, three Bronze Stars, the Vietnamese Legion of Honor and
three Purple Hearts. US Veteran Dispatch calculates our hero
earned a medal an hour, which is pretty good going. McCain was
shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967 and parachuted into
Truc Boch Lake, whence he was hauled by Vietnamese, and put in
prison.
A couple of years later he
was interviewed in prison camp by Fernando Barral, a Spanish
psychiatrist living in Cuba. The interview appeared in Granma
on January 24, 1970.
McCain's fragile psyche runs
on what Barral described "the personality of the prisoner
who is responsible for many criminal bombings of the people."
Barral went on, "He (McCain) showed himself to be intellectually
alert during the interview. From a morale point of view he is
not in traumatic shock. He was able to be sarcastic, and even
humorous, indicative of psychic equilibrium. From the moral and
ideological point of view he showed us he is an insensitive individual
without human depth, who does not show the slightest concern,
who does not appear to have thought about the criminal acts he
committed against a population from the absolute impunity of
his airplane, and that nevertheless those people saved his life,
fed him, and looked after his health and he is now healthy and
strong. I believe that he has bombed densely populated places
for sport. I noted that he was hardened, that he spoke of banal
things as if her were at a cocktail party.
McCain is deeply loved by the
liberal press. As Amy Silverman, a reporter at the Phoenix weekly
New Times who has followed the senator for years, puts it, "As
long as he's the noble outsider, McCain can get away with anything
it seems -- the Keating Five, a drug stealing wife, nasty jokes
about Chelsea Clinton -- and the pundits will gurgle and coo."
Indeed they will. William Safire,
Maureen Down, Russell Baker, the New Yorker, the New York Times
Magazine, Vanity Fair, have all slobbered over McCain in empurpled
prose. The culmination was a love poem from Mike Wallace in 60
Minutes, who managed to avoid any inconvenient mention of McCain's
close relationship with S & L fraudster Charles Keating,
with whom the indulgent senator romped on Bahamian beaches. McCain
was similarly spared scrutiny for his astonishing claim that
he knew nothing of his wife's scandalous dealings.
McCain's escape from the Keating
debacle is nothing short of miraculous and it's probably the
activity for which he most deserves a medal. After all, he took
more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from the swindler
Keating between 1982 and 1988, while simultaneously logrolling
for Keating on Capitol Hill. In the same period McCain took nine
trips to Keating's place in the Bahamas.
When the muck began to rise,
McCain threw Keating over the side, hastily reimbursed Keating
for the trips and suddenly developed a profound interest in campaign
finance and reform.
Yet McCain is legendary among
those who have worked with him for a pathologically vicious temper,
also for his skill in adopting apparently principled stands which
are never exposed to any rigorous test.
The pundits love McCain because
of his grandstanding on soft money's baneful role in politics,
thus garnering for himself a reputation for willingness to court
the enmity of his colleagues.
In fact, colleagues in the
Senate accurately regard McCain as a mere grandstander. They
know that he already has a big war chest left over from the corporations
that crave his indulgence, as chairman of the Senate Commerce
Committee. Communications companies (US West, Bell South, ATT,
Bell Atlantic have been particularly effusive in McCain's treasury,
as have banks, military contractors and UPS. They also know he
has a rich wife and the certain knowledge that his supposed hopes
for an end to soft money spending will never receive any practical
legislative application.
* *
*
John McCain says he models
himself after TR. "I'm a Teddy Roosevelt kind of Republican",
McCain told a crowd of about 1,000 people in East Lansing, Michigan.
"I believe America needs a strong leader. And most Republicans
take in pride in identifying with TR, who believed that second
only to the national defense, one of our most important public
duties is to wisely husband the country's natural resources.
Like TR I'll be the kind of president who will have the courage
stand up to the special interests and no. There are some things
they just can't have." The crowd of students plus those
elusive Reagan Democrats cheered lustily as McCain raised his
arms in his now customary crimped victory salute.
Two days later McCain was in
Spokane, capital of Washington's Inland Empire, where the Republican
Party is dominated by big timber, big agriculture and the hydro-power
conglomerate that includes the aluminum factories, the barge
fleets and the pulp mills. Over his 18-year career in the House
and Senate John McCain has rarely let them down. He has supported
property rights legislation, backed the salvage logging rider,
fought measures for stricter control over pesticides and harshly
denounced proposals to breach dams on the Columbia and Snake
Rivers to save endangered salmon.
Even in that crowd, McCain
claimed to be a conservationist: "It's possible for a conservative
president to be an environmentalist." So the question is
what kind of environmentalist is John McCain?
McCain has confused many observers.
Even staunchly Democratic organizations such as the League of
Conservation Voters, can't seem to find it in themselves to pin
him down on the environment. The League's profile of McCain notes
that "on most issues dealing with Arizona, National Park
protection and auto-efficiency standards, his record ranges from
good to excellent". But the group's own annual ranking (heavily
prejudiced against Republicans, it must be admitted) gives the
Arizona senator a lifetime rating of only 20 per cent. Several
years he rated a zero.
When he's out West, McCain
is fond of saying that his political mentor was Barry Goldwater.
But McCain is no Goldwater. And that's not a compliment. Goldwater
was, essentially, a western populist, a Libertarian version of
Mike Mansfield, Lee Metcalf and Frank Church. Goldwater always
had a passion for the outdoors and in the end singled out as
his greatest political regret his vote to authorize the construction
of Glen Canyon dam. McCain is not one for searing self-scrutiny.
As with the rest of his political agenda, McCain's environmentalism
has always been pointedly opportunistic. Voting for a popular
Arizona wilderness bill when he faced a tough election. Introducing
legislation at the behest of local businesses to limit overflights
of planes and helicopters at Grand Canyon National Park. Perhaps,
this is a sign for optimism. After all, he isn't a Wise-Use ideologue.
McCain tends to analyze the
polls with an obsessiveness comparable to the Clintons. Of particular
interest has been Republican pollster Frank Luntz's work, which
shows that upwards of 70 per cent of Republicans favor strong
environmental laws and increased funding for national parks.
The environment, in other words, might be a wedge issue, one
that can win over independents, Reagan Democrats, Republican
moderates and women. Hence, a recent McCain speech on the environment
in San Diego, where he thundered, "Republicans have to do
a lot more than they are doing today on the environment."
Aside from generic calls to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation
Fund (which gets its money from royalties from offshore oil drilling),
McCain tends to leave the particulars fuzzy.
Of course, McCain is hardly
alone in this regard, of course. Indeed, on a bad day he can
even sound a bit like Hillary Clinton. "One area I believe
we must focus upon is to ensure that our laws and rules are more
performance-based and that we focus better on outcomes rather
than means," McCain writes on his webpage. "To that
end we should work to instill greater flexibility to employ new
approaches to meeting our standards and environmental goals."
His votes in the Senate have
gone somewhat beyond "greater flexibility", embracing
takings legislation, opening of the Alaskan National Wildlife
Refuge to oil drilling, and Bob Dole's regulatory reform bill.
When the interests of the military
and the environment come into conflict, as often happens in the
Western states, there's no question where John McCain stands.
In 1993, McCain placed a hold on the nomination of Mollie Beatie,
Clinton's choice to head the Fish and Wildlife Service. McCain
had been told by his buddies in the Marine Air Corps that the
Fish and Wildlife Service planned to halt low-level flights above
the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Reserve, near Yuma, Arizona.
McCain's strong-arm tactics worked. Bruce Babbitt sent the senator
a letter pledging that the military fly-bys would not be impeded.
With this easy victory conquest of Babbitt under his belt, McCain
struck again the following year, when he placed a rider onto
the California Desert Preservation Act, allowing military flights
over the wilderness areas and national preserves created by the
act. Now, McCain shouldn't be forced to shoulder all the blame
for that one. His amendment was fondly received by the bill's
author, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who had already perverted the
bill by permitting mining claims inside in the so-called national
preserve.
In 1999 McCain attached a rider
to the Defense Appropriations bill that would have permanently
transferred to the Pentagon 7.2 million acres of federal wildlife
refuge land managed by the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service,
where they would become used as a bombing range and a testing
ground for a new generation of missiles. McCain's rider exempted
the military from conducting any environmental review of its
programs.
One of the issues that divides
the often united Western delegation is the Department of Energy's
plan to bury the nation's commercial nuclear waste inside Yucca
Mountain, an earthquake prone region on Shoshone lands in western
Nevada. The plan, dubbed "mobile Chernobyl", sets up
an MX missile system for nuclear waste, with trains shipping
the radioactive materials from across the country on a maze of
rail routes. McCain, happy to keep the waste out of Arizona,
enthusiastically supports the scheme. And he backs the creation
of even more nuclear waste by standing forth as one of the nuclear
power industry's most reliable allies. "While waste and
proliferation issues present unique challenges, nuclear energy
can play a key role in reducing pollution emissions and controlling
releases of carbon dioxide."
"If there's one thing
we know about McCain, it's that he can't be trusted", says
Roger Featherstone, director of the GREEN, an Albuqueque, New
Mexico environmental group. "Anybody who promotes McCain
is environmentalist is either an idiot or a liar." Much
of the blame for McCain's reputation can be laid to our gullible
press. Living on Earth, the NPR environmental show, recently
produced a puff piece touting McCain as the Senate's most environmentally
conscious Republican. Of course, most of McCain's act is scripted
for the photo op. When the chips are on the table, McCain can
be counted on to do the bidding of industry. Take the issue of
subsidies. In 1996, McCain introduced a bill that would have
slashed corporate welfare, including millions in subsidies to
big timber in form of federally funded logging roads. The measure
was enthusiastically received by liberals and the Washington
press corps, which wasted no time hailing McCain as a "maverick"
and a "renegade Republican". But a few months later
McCain had the opportunity to make part of his plan reality,
but he defected, voting against a measure offered by then-Senator
Richard Bryant, the Nevada Democrat, that would have eliminated
the very same timber road subsidies. McCain didn't explain his
flip-flop.
McCain played a malign role
in one of Arizona's most controversial issues, the mad scheme
by the University of Arizona to erect seven deep space telescopes
on national forest lands at the summit of Mt. Graham. Mt. Graham
is known as a sky island, a lush montane oasis rising out of
the Sonoran desert. In its upper reaches, Mt. Graham is cloaked
in a dense alpine spruce-fir forest unique in the world. It is
home to more than 18 endangered plants and animals, the most
famous of which is the Mt. Graham red squirrel, found nowhere
else. Mt. Graham is not only an ecological marvel, it is also
a sacred mountain to the San Carlos Apache.
Neither of these factors carried
weight with McCain, who was hell-bent on doing favors for the
University. He duly introduced legislation exempting the $520
million project from compliance with the Endangered Species Act,
Antiquities Act and the Native American Religious Freedom Act.
In the spring of 1989, the
Forest Service began to raise questions about the project. Worried
about the impacts on the endangered Mt. Graham red squirrel,
Jim Abbott, the supervisor of the Coronado National Forest, ordered
a halt to road construction at the site. The delay infuriated
McCain. On May 17, 1989, Abbott got a call from Mike Jimenez,
McCain's chief of staff. Jimenez told Abbot that McCain was angry
and wanted to meet with him the next day. He told Abbott to expect
"some ass-chewing". At the meeting, McCain raged, threatening
Abbott that "if you do not cooperate on this project [bypassing
the Endangered Species Act], you'll be the shortest tenured forest
supervisor in the history of the Forest Service." Unfortunately
for McCain, there was a witness to this encounter, a ranking
Forest Service employee named Richard Flannelly, who recorded
the encounter in his notebook. This notebook was later turned
over to investigators at the GAO.
A few days later, McCain called
Abbott to apologize. But the call sounded more like an attempt
to bribe the Forest Supervisor to go along with the project.
According to a 1990 GAO report on the affair, McCain "held
out a carrot that with better cooperation, he would see about
getting funding for Mr. Abbott's desired recreation projects".
Environmentalists attempted to bring an ethics complaint against
McCain, citing a federal law that prohibits anyone (including
members of Congress) from browbeating federal agency personnel.
The Senate ethics committee never pursued the matter. When the
GAO report, condemning McCain, surfaced publicly, McCain lied
about the encounter, calling the allegations "groundless"
and "silly"
In 1992, Robin Silver and Bob
Witzeman went to meet with McCain at his office in Phoenix to
discuss Mt. Graham. Silver and Witzeman are both physicians.
Witzeman is now retired and Silver works in the emergency room
at Phoenix hospital. The doctors say that at the mention of the
words Mount Graham McCain erupted into a violent fit. "He
slammed his fists on his desk, scattering papers across the room",
Silver tells us. "He jumped up and down, screaming obscenities
at us for at least 10 minutes. He shook his fists as if he was
going to slug us. It was as violent as almost any domestic abuse
altercation."
Witzeman left the meeting stunned:
"I'm a lifelong environmentalist, but what really scares
me about McCain is not his environmental policies, which are
horrid, but his violent, irrational temper. I think McCain is
so unbalanced that if Vladimir Putin told him something he didn't
like he'd lose it, start beating his chest about having his finger
on the nuclear trigger. Who knows where it would stop. To my
mind, McCain's the most likely senator to start a nuclear war."
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature,
a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
What's
Inside the New Post-Election Print Edition of CounterPunch!
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Weekend
Edition Features for October 30 / 31, 2004
November
6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Don't
Say We Didn't Warn You
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Green Out
Carl
G. Estabrook
Who Killed Cock Robin?
Saul
Landau
Che: the Man and the Movie
Gary
Leupp
Let There Be Conflict!
Ben
Tripp
You Call This a Party?
Paul
Craig Roberts
The October Numbers: Continuing Stress on the Jobs Front
Jordan
Green
Heroin, Cocaine and Espanola, NM
Fred
Gardner
Haul of Justice
J.A.
Miller
Cults of the Jealous God: the Balfour Decision Reconsidered
Ramzy
Baroud
Life Without Arafat
Dave
Zirin
Out at the Ballgame: Pro Sports and the Gay Athelete
Ron
Jacobs
The Arrow on the Doorpost
Robert
Oscar Lopez
How White Liberals Became a New Racial Minority
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The November Surprise
Dave
Lindorff
Silver Linings
Richard
Oxman
Invitation to the Bodily Snatched
John
Whitlow
Value Wars: the View from Lexington, Kentucky
Rahul
Mahajan
Fallujah and the Reality of War
Leila
Matsui
Political "Ju-On": Carrying a Grudge
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