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Today's Stories

July 23 / 24, 2005

Tariq Ali
The War Comes Home

July 22, 2005

Heathe Gray
Home Grown Axis of Evil: Corp. Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott Decision

David Domke
The American Press and Credibility

Lance Selfa
Battle of the Insiders: No Heroes in the Plame Leak Scandal

JoAnn Wypijewski
Is This Really an "Insurgency" to Shake Up the Labor Movement?

 

July 21, 2005

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Top 10 Problems with the "Crisis" in the Labor Movement

William Blum
London: Another Casualty in the War on Terror

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Whites Need to Learn Something: Dixie is Everywhere

Christopher Brauchli
Strange Affairs: Liberals and Alberto Gonzales

Joshua Frank
Plame Blame Game: the 5 Ws

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections: Time for a Reality Check

Patrick Cockburn
The True, Terrible State of Iraq and the Link to London

Website of the Day
Who Blew Up the Murrah Building?

 

July 20, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judge Roberts: Business as Usual

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Red Christmas

Ray McGovern
Did Dick Finger Valerie?: the Hand of Cheney

Chris Floyd
Judge Dread: John Roberts and the "Enemy Combatants"

Uri Avnery
"Silence is Filth"

Dave Lindorff
Westmoreland's Body Count Goes Up by One

Norman Solomon
Gen. Westmoreland's Death Wish

Bill Quigley
Travels in Haiti with a Wanted Priest

 

 

July 19, 2005

Tariq Ali
An Isolated Regime

John Ross
Jihad Meets G-8

Davey D.
More Clear Channel Censorship: "Don't F--K Around with Tha Police"

Greg Weiher
Muzzling Saddam: the Old Bait-and-Switch in Iraqi Jurisprudence

Brian McKinlay
An "Arse Licker" Goes to Washington: John Howard's Grand Tour

Norman Solomon
Nukes for India; Threats for Iran

Dave Lindorff
Get Back to Where We Once Belonged

Bill Christison
Bush's Itinerary: First Stop Syria, Next Stop Iran

Joshua Frank
Laura's Justice?: Meet Edith Brown Clement

 

July 18, 2005

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Ward Churchill

M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Problem: Did Thomas Friedman Flunk History?

Jude Wanniski
Memo to Patrick Fitzgerald

Ron Jacobs
A Weekend to Stop the War

Mike Whitney
The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station

William MacDougall
From "Bring It On" to "London Can Take It"

Seth Sandronsky
Temporary Recovery: New Frontiers in Labor Flexibility

Richard Lichtman
The Consolations of George Lakoff

Paul Craig Roberts
Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars?

Website of the Weekend
Novels of the Neo-Cons

 

July 15 / 17, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Don't You Dare Call It Treason

Jeffrey St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton

Paul Craig Roberts
Economic Treason

Harry Browne
"What They Do to Us, They Will Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland

Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron
A Warning from Israel

Andrew Rubin
End of the Enlightenment: an Open Letter to Stephen Plaut

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Ghost Battalions

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Changes in Selma: Standing Up to Racism in the South

Fred Gardner
A Professional Bust

Christopher Brauchli
An Olympic Feat: How to "Double" Aid with No New Money

Chris Floyd
The Great Iraq Oil Giveaway

Ben Tripp
The Dark Incontinent

Col. Dan Smith
General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked

Jason Leopold
What Did Rove Say and When Did He Say It?

Jack Random
Miller Time

Norman Solomon
War and Venture Capitalism

George Ochenski
Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All!

Website of the Weekend
Vote for CounterPuncher David Vest

 

 

July 14, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton

Subcomandante Marcos
This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona

Dave Lindorff
No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State

Joshua Frank
Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA

Jude Wanniski
Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove?

Dave Zirin
Storming the Castle

Kevin Zeese
Exit Strategy: Within Reach?

Robert Jensen
War Myths and the Press

Reza Fiyouzat
A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji

Carol Norris
Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged

Website of the Day
Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher

 

July 13, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq

George Galloway
We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop

Carlos Fierro
A Supreme Waste of Time

Sarah Knopp
Hate on the Border

Norman Solomon
"Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors

Mickey Z.
Water on the Brain

Jim Minick
The Right Tree in the Right Place

Pat Williams
American Indian Education for All

Andrew N. Rubin
Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set"

Website of the Day
"London's Burning": the Mikey Mix

 

July 12, 2005

Laith al-Saud
Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement

Kara N. Tina
"This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield

William A. Cook
The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This?

Jack Bratich
2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma

Amina Mire
The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others

Dick J. Reavis
Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke

Kevin Zeese
Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets

Paul Craig Roberts
No-Think Nation

Website of the Day
Coke Gags Indian Artist

 

 

July 9 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
After the Bombings

Uri Avnery
War of the Colors in Israel

Sheldon Rampton
Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London

Bill Christison
Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement?

Robert Fisk
Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed

Stephen Winspear
Collateral Damage in London?

Saul Landau
Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken

Behrooz Ghamari
Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem

Karl Beitel
False Promises and Real Debt Relief

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires

Fred Gardner
Sentencing Season

John Whitlow
And What Does the Market Say?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us?

Lila Rajiva
Witches and Bastards

Laura Carlsen
CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities

Jackie Corr
Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket

Dave Lindorff
"My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter"

N. D. Jayaprakash
Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference

Seth Sandronsky
Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq

Norman Madarasz
The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party

Ben Tripp
The Inevitability of George W. Bush

Poets' Basement
Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel

Website of the Weekend
The Mother of All Enemies Lists

 

July 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception

Tariq Ali
The London Bombings: Why They Happened

Monica Benderman
One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality

Rick Jahnkow
Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement

Christopher Brauchli
Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra

Kim Peterson
Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror

Joshua Frank
Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments?

Norman Solomon
Messages from the Carnage

Website of the Day
An Interview with Ray McGovern

 

July 7, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr

John Walsh
More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry

Mike Marqusee
Message from London

Gilad Atzmon
London's Burning

Nicole Colson
Showdown at the Supreme Court

Jack Random
Judith Miller, Anti-Hero

Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War

Len Colodny
Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig?

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr

 

 

July 6, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Political Necrophilia in Florida: Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair

Sean Donahue
Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard

Joshua Frank
Will Rove be Indicted?

Ali Khan
The "Gift" of US Democratization

Michael Dickinson
Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers

Norman Solomon
How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility

Dave Zirin
Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad

Gary Leupp
Accusing Ahmadinejad

Website of the Day
Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"

 

 

July 5, 2005

Behrooz Ghamari
What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency

Elaine Cassel
Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor

Ron Jacobs
Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice

Bob Libal
The Right's Assault on Academia

Dr. Peter Rost
Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO

Mark Engler
The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee?

Gideon Levy
They Broke the Public's Heart

Dave Zirin
The Great Olympics Scam

Sameer Dossani
The Trouble with Gleneagles

 

 

July 2 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
"Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi?

Lenni Brenner
Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July

Laura Carlsen
Zapatista's Red Alert

James Petras
The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment

William A. Cook
Kings of Serpents

Brian Cloughley
Quagmire of the Vanities

Saul Landau
The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership

Tom Crumpacker
Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles?

Greg Moses
Dylan's America

Dr. Susan Block
My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service

Fran Shor
Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land

Fred Gardner
Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

Moshe Adler
The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs

David Model
The Downing Street Memo: So What's New?

Seth Sandronsky
California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style

Ramzy Baroud
Managed Democracy in the Middle East

Suzan Mazur
Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton

Ben Tripp
Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap

Justin Taylor
Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint"

Brendan Bailey
Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Louise

Website of the Weekend
Radical Reference

 

 

July 1, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf

Pat Williams
What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver

Gary Leupp
Summer Surprise?

John Stauber
Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie

John Chuckman
The Blessings of Canada

Justicia y Paz
Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least!

Cockburn / St. Clair
It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court

 

June 30, 2005

Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis

John Stauber
Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America

Virginia Rodino
All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement

Jason Leopold
Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy

Dave Lindorff
What Was Bush Thinking?

Greg Moses
Racism at Cape Cod

Norman Solomon
Memo to the Iraq War

Joshua Frank
Israel's Theocrats

Alexander Cockburn
The Political Function of PBS

 

June 29, 2005

Mike Schaefer
How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll

Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor
Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq

Sharon Smith
Democrats Shift into Reverse

Sam Husseini
A Quick Way to End the Insurgency

John Stauber
Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton

Ahmad Faruqui
Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan?

Linda S. Heard
Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo

Stew Albert
Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero

Ray McGovern
Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course

 

 

June 28, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
A Defeat Bred in Deceit

Landau / Hassen
Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics

John A. Murphy
Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania

Mike Whitney
More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents

CounterPunch News Service
JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook?

Dave Zirin
Pining for the Pistons

Dave Lindorff
Showtime in Washington

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Bloody Mess

 

 

June 27, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans

Mike Marqusee
G8: Who are the Hijackers?

Mark Scaramella
When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz

Leigh Saavedra
Press Apologists for Torture

Kathy Kelly
Where is the UN?


June 25 / 26, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals

Jennifer Van Bergen
America's Parallel Legal Systems

George Corsetti
This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo

Kevin Zeese
Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids

P. Sainath
Russian Roulette in Vidharbha

John Stauber
How to Bury a Mad Cow

Scott Handleman
Gay in the Third World

Tom Barry
The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists

John Walsh
Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places

Justin E.H. Smith
The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution

Alan Wallis
The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood

Ben Tripp
Negative Space: an Artful Lesson

Frederick B. Hudson
Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock

Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert

 

 

June 24, 2005

Ray McGovern
The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed"

Jorge Mariscal
"They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq

Desiree Hellegers
Portland vs. the FBI

Zeynep Toufe
What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It?

Joshua Frank
Call Him Senator Con Job

David Lindorff
Which Flag Would Jesus Burn?

Michael Neumann
Victory and Recruitment

Website of the Day
Gagging Dr. Dean

June 23, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge

Clay Conrad
Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform

Standard Schaefer
A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism

P. Sainath
Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks

Mark Engler
CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death

Norman Solomon
Voluntary Amnesia in America

Cockburn / St. Clair
Frank Calzon

Kathy Kelly
Where You Stand Determines What You See

 

June 22, 2005

Kevin Zeese
The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner

William S. Lind
Afghanistan: the Other War

Arsalan Iftikhar
Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act

Dan Nagengast
Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas

David Krieger
To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making

 

 

June 21, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Destroy the Unbelievers!

Mike Whitney
President Disconnect

Dave Lindorff
Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway?

Mark Weisbrot
Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez

Matthew R. Simmons
The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis

Dave Zirin
The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man"

Virginia Rodino
The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment

Paul Craig Roberts
A War Waged by Liars and Morons

 

June 20, 2005

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Tariq Ali
To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel!

Mickey Z.
WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo

William Blum
Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends

Gary Leupp
Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq

Jason Leopold
Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War

Dave Lindorff
Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Uri Avnery
Condi and Hamas

Website of the Day
Crimes Against Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Weekend Edition
July 23 / 24, 2005

Blair's Britain is Now a Mess, Thanks to Blair

The War Comes Home

By TARIQ ALI

Ever since the occupation of Iraq there were very few in Britain who imagined that the hellish developments that unfolded in an Arab country might be a vision of their own future. London is , of course, not Baghdad and what has happened here is nothing compared to the savage chaos in Iraq, but the war has come home to haunt Tony Blair and his government in what could become New Labour's nightmare scenario.

Two days ago there were new explosions in London, reminding people that even though there were no casualties, we were back to the times of the Irish troubles. There is today, like then, a great deal of uncertainty in the air. A leaked intelligence report published in the Financial Times confirms that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine have acted as a trigger to unleash a wave of terrorism from within the Muslim heartlands in Britain. Apart from the pro-Israel, neo-con mimics (usually ex-leftists) and unashamed apologists for Blair in the print media, this is now the common sense of the country. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in more thoughtful mode, linked the attacks to the long Western occupation of the oil-rich Arab East.

Yesterday (22 July) the police captured and publicly executed a South Asian man on an underground train in South London. There is absolutely no evidence so far to suggest he was a bomber. Mark Whitby, who witnessed the killing, provided genuine first-hand testimony to BBC News 24:
"I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers, one of them was wielding a black handgun. As [the suspect] got onto the train I looked at his face, he looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him, [they] couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand. He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him."

Blair's Britain is now in a mess, thanks to Blair. There is one immediate and one medium-term solution to the crisis. Britain must withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. It should do so not because it is under terrorist pressure, but because these interventions were wrong in the first place.

Secondly, there needs to be a moratarium on religion. Blair and his hand-picked Cabinet have encouraged single-faith schools and turned to religion to help fill the vacuum created by a neo-liberal society and a culture obsessed with consumerism and celebrity life-styles. What is required is a high quality state education system which provides the same education to rich and poor, Christian or Jewish or Muslim children. Over one-third of British state schools are religious and the National Secular Society has published figures that reveal Labour permitting 40 more nonreligious state secondaries be taken over by the Church of England in the last four years, with another 54 about to go. Given this it is impossible to deny the same rights to other religions. Matters are not helped by the fact that Blair's Education Secretary, a member of Opus Dei, has stressed that the 'bombs' will not stop her encouraging the formation of more single-faith schools.

The media has been parading 'good' Muslims on the TV screens who have been arguing that violence is not advocated in the Koran and therefore the bombers are wrong. The implication here is that if the Koran permitted such actions it would be fine. In fact there are many readings of the Koran as of the Old Testament. There are both pacifist and violent sections. Establishing a religious criteria is, in these circumstances, counter-productive.

There is a paralysis inside Parliament. Atavistic political structures have insulated the Blair regime from public opinion. The first-past-the-post electoral system is an affront to democratic functioning. The conformism and timidity of the opposition parties have played a vital role in reinforcing Blair's weightless hegemony. This is reflected by a neutered public television service which rarely allows programmes outside the narrow parliamentary spectrum to achieve a hearing.

It is time for Blair to go. He took a calculated risk when he decided to back Bush and US foreign policy. He proclaimed proudly that in order to defeat Saddam Hussein a 'blood price would have to be paid.' It is being paid by tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and now by innocent Londoners. A British Colonel has been charged with committing crimes in Iraq. If we were to apply the norms of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, it is the politicians who gave the orders and justified the war who should also be in the dock as real war criminals.

Tariq Ali is author of the recently released Street Fighting Years (new edition) and, with David Barsamian, Speaking of Empires & Resistance. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

(This essay originally appeared in Il Manifesto, 23 July 2005)