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Today's
Stories
January 21, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback
January 20, 2004
Stan
Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another
Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier
Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks
Out
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A
Visit to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How
2004 Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No
Stan for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent
WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A
Record to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban
Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red
Alert 2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The
Washington Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
|
January
22, 2003
A Memo to Karl Rover
Lost
in Space
By PATRICIA
KOYCE WANNISKI
Mr.
Rove, I`m a child of the Apollo program. Like most Americans, I was
awed by Neil Armstrong`s landing on the moon, and held my breath during
the Apollo 13 crisis. I spent many a grade school recess playing "Lost
in Space" instead of hopscotch. When other nine-year-old girls
were asking for dolls for Christmas, I was requesting official NASA
books about the Apollo missions. (I still have them, as my darling Uncle
Bob was wise enough to buy the grown-up versions, so I could enjoy them
forever.)
I
would love to someday have an opportunity to fly into space on the shuttle,
if it ever flies again. I get up in the wee hours of the morning on
frigid winter nights to watch the Leonid meteor showers, which are by
far the most exciting fireworks shows I`ve ever seen, year after year.
I bought a telescope as a birthday gift for my husband, which he never
gets the chance to use. In short, I`ve always been captivated by the
idea of space and space exploration. So you will probably be surprised
to hear that I was profoundly disillusioned and disappointed by the
Moon and Mars initiative that President Bush announced this past Tuesday.
Obviously,
I`m a member of the target audience for such an idea: baby boomer, borderline
Republican, somewhat disaffected by the Bush administration disconnect
on issues that matter to me, discouraged by the progress (or lack thereof)
of the war in Iraq and the war on terror, and skirting the edge of cynicism
on the state of the economy. I`m also old enough to remember the Apollo
flights and young enough to be optimistic that another Moon landing
will happen in my lifetime. And it was my longtime fascination with
space that made me give the President and his idea the benefit of the
doubt. I had first suspected this was a marketing ploy, and a mighty
flimsy one at that.
Sadly,
it seems this instinct was correct. As David Sanger and Richard W. Stevenson
noted in Thursday`s New York Times, "With the nation deeply divided
along partisan lines on the most pressing issues of the day, including
the war in Iraq, tax cuts and the environment, Mr. Bush`s political
advisers backed the plan as a way of associating the president with
a unifying and uplifting election-year goal that transcends politics."
("Bush Backs Goal of Flight to Moon to Establish Base," January
15, 2004.) You`re a smart man, Mr. Rove. Did you really believe the
electorate so gullible as to be fooled by such a transparent effort?
Talk about cynical.
Firstly,
President Bush allocated a laughably low budget for this project. You
know very well, Mr. Rove, that an additional $1 billion dollars in funding
over five years will barely get you onto the drawing board at NASA.
Of course, a larger number would have elicited howls of protest from
all sides; I suppose you figured that this was as good a number as any.
President Bush argues that an additional $11 billion can be redistributed
over the next five years from NASA`s current budget, but as Senator
Bill Nelson [D-FL} noted on the $11 billion, "the devil is in the
details." ("Bush Creative on NASA Aid,"Kenneth Chang,
The New York Times, January 15, 2004.) Even NASA officials are wary
of the potential for redistribution of the remaining $11 billion in
funds to get the initiative started.
Which
programs at NASA will be cut? Which will be reorganized under the new
initiative? President Bush evidently has no idea. Now, I`m all for the
restructuring of NASA. I`m of the opinion that every bureaucracy within
the government ought to reassess its goals and operations periodically,
the more frequently the better. However, giving the agency an impossible
task with absurdly inadequate resources with which to accomplish it,
seems a ridiculously poor way to trim the fat at NASA. Additionally,
with the unfinished business abroad of the war on terror with al Qaida
and the rebuilding of Iraq, and at home with health care and the economy,
can the U.S. Treasury really spare $1 billion over the next five years?
If you don`t know the answer, the electorate does. Surely competing,
more pressing problems have to get priority. Why make the initiative
if the funds aren`t there, if not for a craven political purpose?
Secondly,
technology is so advanced now it is almost an archaic idea to send human
beings into space. Robert Park, a physics professor at the University
of Maryland, made a compelling case for the continuing use of technology
in space exploration on the "NewsHour" on Wednesday night:
"we can do it with machines--in fact, it`s not really a robot that`s
on Mars; it`s just an extension of a scientist back on Earth. And he
directs the robot, he sees through the robot`s eyes. It can do anything
a human being can do. In fact, if a human being was on Mars, he`d be
trapped in a spacesuit with no sense of touch or feel. There`s nothing
much to hear. He would have only the sense of his eyes. And that little
rover we`ve got on Mars has better eyes than any human."
As
expensive as the Spirit was, the cost was insignificant compared to
the astronomical bill of sending a human mission to Mars, or even back
to the Moon. Lori Garver, a former NASA administrator, argued, "I
want my kids to have somebody who is more interesting to them [than
the Spirit rover]is to me, it`s definitely more than magic." The
Spirit, however, has proven to be magical for NASA: the NASA website
reported a record number of hits on January 9, the day Spirit landed
on Mars. Who says we ordinary folk don`t get excited about robots? The
Spirit took its first steps on Mars yesterday, going a whopping ten
feet, a 78-second giant leap for robot kind, while NASA scientists and
I cheered back on Earth. We don`t need men on the Moon (been there,
done that), or Mars, to explore the universe, Mr. Rove, and you know
it.
I`m
surprised that, as this administration`s very savvy political counselor,
Mr. Rove, you would allow President Bush to make a public proposal that
not only isn`t half-baked, it`s not even ready for the oven. It smacks
of desperation, another in a long line of inept, inadequate proposals
made in a failing effort in order to distract from other, more important
issues. The electorate can`t be snookered in this way. Voters know that
the fact that young men and women are dying in Iraq is important. Voters
know the fact that Osama bin Laden is at large is important. Voters
know that the economic recovery is tenuous, and that people who have
no health care are suffering, and that these things are important. More
important than a frivolous public relations effort from which much is
promised, but from which nothing will come. William Broad of the NYT
penned an excellent outline of the promises (and failures) of previous
Presidents, to which I expect this new pig-in-a-poke will be promptly
added. It is very unfortunate, since now any serious (and badly needed)
efforts at remaking NASA by President Bush will be treated with skepticism
and deep distrust, and rightfully so. Your counsel has failed the President,
Mr. Rove.
On
Wednesday`s "NewsHour," Professor Park noted, "the great
adventure of our time is to explore those places where no human can
set foot." We are indeed fortunate to be living in an age when
that great adventure can be lived, if only at a robot`s arms` length.
It`s probably better that way, since, right now, this administration`s
Moon and Mars initiative is hopelessly lost in space.
All contents (c) 2000-2003 Wanniski.com
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