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Today's
Stories
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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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August
31, 2004
Fanning
the Hysteria About Iran
NPR
Leads the Charge to War
By
MIKE WHITNEY
"We are ready to
do everything necessary to give guarantees that we won't seek
nuclear weapons."
President Mohammad Khatami
When did "liberal" NPR become
a champion of American aggression against Iran?
Listeners to National Public
Radio are increasingly apt to criticize the "rightward shift"
in the station's news coverage. The August 30 "Morning Edition"
program, however, reached a new low for slanted journalism and
for making the Bush Administration's case for war with Iran.
The commentary titled "US
Presses UN Agency on Iran Nuclear Program" was a textbook
example of propaganda dressed up to look like unbiased reporting.
All three interviewees were
charter members of America's "far right" establishment;
haling from the American Enterprise Institute, the Nixon Center
and the Project for the New American Century. All three of these
groups were "front and center" in facilitating the
unwarranted attack on "unarmed" Iraq. The Bush Administration
is looking for an excuse to attack Iran; that much is clear.
Having failed to coerce the
IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) into recommending "punitive
action" be taken against Iran at the Security Council, the
US is trying to cajole its European allies to take steps (sanctions?)
that will further isolate Iran.
As Condoleezza Rice has said,
"Iran will either be isolated or it will submit to the will
of the international community." (ie the USA) NPR reporter
Vicki O' Hara never mentions the conspicuous (malicious) intent
of the US, choosing instead to emphasize the "real concern"
among the Bush team that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.
It's déjà vu,
all over again?
Never the less, O' Hara gives
these dubious allegations the highest respect and proceeds to
corroborate her case by questioning the three aforementioned
"impartial" observers.
The State Dept's, John Bolton
is the first to respond with his entirely speculative analysis
of Iran's capabilities. He said that Iran may be able to "enrich
uranium within a year and "weaponize" within three
years. Bolton, of course, produced no evidence to substantiate
his charges and failed to mention that the IAEA gave Iran a clean
bill of health less than one month ago. As George Jahn of the
Associated Press reported:
"New findings by the
UN agency appear to strengthen Iran's claim that it has NOT enriched
uranium domestically and (this) weakens US arguments that the
country is hiding a nuclear weapons program."
Such "science-grounded"
analysis never satisfies the fanatical appetites of the current
occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, nor does it discourage men
like Bolton who prefer to make their accusations out of "whole
cloth".
He is already on the record
as favoring "regime change" in Iran, now he merely
needs to assemble the appropriate fabrications to support his
case.
Following Bolton, O'Hara questioned
the equally "hawkish" Geoffrey Kemp; a man whose civility
and British accent disguise his otherwise warmongering proclivities.
Kemp agrees with Bolton that
new suspicions about Iran signal (as Kemp says) "an ominous
shift in rhetoric and, therefore, in policy."
In other words, even though
the IAEA says with complete authority that there is "no
conclusive evidence that Iran is involved in illicit activity",
Kemp prefers to "cast his lot" with a madman like Bolton.
These sentiments are also shared
by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute; that bastion
right wing nut-jobs who "spearheaded" America's rush
to war with Iraq. (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle etc)
Rubin reasons that, "What
would constitute proof (for the IAEA) would be nuclear weapons
componentswhich would be too late!"
Too late! Too late, for what?
Iran is surrounded on four
sides by nuclear powers already. (Russia, US, Israel and Pakistan)
Does Rubin expect that the Mullahs will get nukes and suddenly
go "Jackie Chan"?
Consider Rubin's "mind-bending
logic for a moment. By applying his dubious rationale, we could
justify attacking any country we chose without even the slightest
proof of wrongdoing.
In fact, this is precisely
how the neocons have always felt; only now, their aspirations
have become part of an NPR platform for spreading their wisdom
to the benighted masses.
(We note that none of those
interviewed referred to the new generation of nuclear, biological
and chemical weapons currently being developed by the Bush Administration
in violation of previous international treaties)
"Liberal NPR?"
How could anyone call themselves
a journalist and use three right wing loonies as their sourcing
for a report on a topic as hyper-sensitive as Iran?
Is this the new benchmark for
"evenhandedness" at NPR; a standard of "fair play"
that even exceeds those at rival FOX News?
"We malign; you decide?"
It boggles the mind.
NPR has done the public a colossal
disservice by feeding the hysteria that is tilting the country
towards war with Iran.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can
be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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