Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 12, 2003
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
Recent
Stories
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
12, 2003
Protest
and Death in Cancun
Todos
Somos Lee
By WRITERS BLOCK
A few thousand of us maybe. No more. The crowd
snakes through Cancun, a neo-liberal paradise lost. Of the 600,000
people who live here fully two-thirds are transient laborers.
Like a large proportion of the world's population they exist
in the twilight zone of mobile capital, industrial tourism and
ecological catastrophe.
At the WTO fortification; a fence ten
foot high reinforced by a matrix of steel and concrete a crowd
assembles. Behind the fence, thousands of cops. The farmers electrify
the mood. The Mexican campensinos push a table displaying a collection
of diverse corn strains, alter-like, and are lead by one who
carries a basket of kernels on his back. They say that the transgenic
agenda of the WTO will mean the end of all this.
From Korea come 200 small farmers and
trades unionists. This group knows how to demonstrate. The contingent
provides its own free jazz accompaniment; clanging cymbals and
the thud of deep drums provide the rhythm for the march with
banners, costumes and deadly seriousness. They make directly
for the front and attack the fence, their position announced
earlier as, "What fence?"
As the fence begins to rock back and
forth, the crowd takes heart. A few of the Koreans climb on top
hanging banners and leading the chants of their comrades below.
Kyong Hae Lee leads. If there is confusion among the assembled;
are we here to take the fence down? Are we here to fight? To
go through.." Kyong has an answer the fence must come
down. A sign hangs from his neck, "WTO Kills Farmers".
He is leading the chant in English "Dismantle the WTO,
conditions." and thousands respond.
Lee turns away from us, towards the
police, the WTO and the corporate media functionaries who cower
among them. His right hand is raised; he plunges a knife into
his heart and falls backward from the fence into the waiting
arms of his astonished comrades. A scrap breaks out as militants
are forced to beat back the sickening throng of photographers
and journos who crowd around the body. A path opens quickly through
the crowd allowing Lee to be carried to a waiting ambulance.
The mood alters. The Korean contingent who have carried an ornate
paper and wood construction symbolizing the death of the WTO,
reassemble. They raise the prop above their heads and run at
the fence, smashing into it. This gesture is repeated three times
before they set it alight sending the crowd into a frenzy of
rage and unity.
All week long hundreds of hours have
been invested in meetings to determine what exactly we would
try to achieve here. All of this obsessive planning becomes moot
as the crowd joins Kyung Hae Lee and his compatriots in an unscripted
but singular objective; to destroy the fence. A fence that excludes
not just the farmers present here but 3.5 million Korean farmers
and countless others being strangled by the policies of the WTO.
The closest that these thousands of Mexican and Korean campesinos
can get to the architects of their doom is seven kilometers.
Seven kilometers of smooth concrete highway edged by luxury hotels
full of elites from every corner of the world. Seven kilometers
of luxury hotels, wet t-shirts, cheap labor, liberal investment
régimes and Martha Stewart. This week they are guarded
by a mercenary force of tens of thousands and they have come
to Cancun to map out the continued imposition of the cash nexus
over every aspect of our lives. Some peoples dreams are our
nightmares.
The closest that Kyung Hae Lee could
get to deliver his message was this spot seven kilometers from
the source of his despair, so it was here that he came to die.
The Koreans are very hardcore and plenty
join in. The fence is assaulted along the line. Over to one side
the campesinos are hard at work. Meanwhile at another spot 20
meters away the Korean block are making steady progress. Scattered
groups of Mexican radicals are figuring out how best to dismantle
the edifice, backed up by squads of stone throwing fighters who
support the engineering brigades. This is the anti-globalization
movement, mixed, intuitive, and highly effective
As the WTO burns, banners hung along
the fence are set alight. At two points the fence begins to buckle
as the second wave of militants appears from behind. The Koreans
split up, some accompanying Lee, in critical condition, to the
hospital, while the rest continue to destroy the barricade. A
breach is created within a few minutes and quickly the fence
is peeled back. The police reinforce the breach and are kept
at bay by disciplined gangs of stone throwers and street fighters.
Along the 200-meter line the fence continues to be overturned
and dismantled, yet the police don't make a move. Their only
attempt to charge the crowd is quickly beaten back under a shower
of stones, fists, and appropriated police batons.
Kyong Hae Lee who made the ultimate sacrifice
here was leader of a small farmers union, he was 54 years old,
the father of three daughters and a militant revolutionary. He
is not the first Korean farmer to take his own life in protest
and desperation at the policies of the WTO, just the latest.
In the evening we tried to figure out what had happened. We tore
down the fence, we beat police and found a way to fight against
these pricks here in this neoliberal nightmare zone called Cancun.
The Koreans stayed overnight at the junction where Lee died,
many others joined them. Trying to explain their tactics to us
one of them described it thus, 'we have specialists here'.
Indeed.
Writers Block
is a collective of reporters in Cancun. They can be reached at:
joolz@riseup.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
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