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Today's Stories

October 21, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Beilin Agreement

October 20, 2003

Standard Schaefer
Chile's Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Chris Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California

Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky & Nader

John & Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful World

Elaine Cassel
God's General Unmuzzled

 

October 18 / 19, 2003

Robert Pollin
Clintonomics: the Hollow Boom

Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War

Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer

Bruce Anderson
The California Recall

John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"

Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario

Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa

Brian Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War

Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers

Denise Low
The Cancer of Sprawl

Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom

John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?

George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy

Alison Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan

Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir

Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder

 

October 17, 2003

Stan Goff
Piss On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War

Newton Garver
Bolivia in Turmoil

Standard Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack

Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52

Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran

David Lindorff
Michael Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty

 

October 16, 2003

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba

Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq

Norman Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse

Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time

Lenni Brenner
I Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me

Website of the Day
Time Tested Books

 

October 15, 2003

Sunil Sharma / Josh Frank
The General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation

Forrest Hylton
Dispatch from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"

Brian Cloughley
Those Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq

Ahmad Faruqui
Lessons of the October War

Uri Avnery
Three Days as a Living Shield

Website of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor


October 14, 2003

Eric Ridenour
Qibya & Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre

Elaine Cassel
The Disgrace That is Guantanamo

Robert Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People

David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops

VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference

Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews

Peter Linebaugh
"Remember Orr!"

Website of the Day
BRIDGES

 

October 11 / 13, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings

Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles

Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia

Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference

Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci
Allende Lives

Larry Tuttle
States of Corruption

William A. Cook
Failing America

Brian Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand

Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?

Merlin Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin

Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!

Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries

Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus

Bruce Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"

William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2

Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley

Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack

Poets' Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney


October 10, 2003

John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger and the Lottery Society

Toni Solo
Trashing Free Software

Chris Floyd
Body Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women

 

October 9, 2003

Jennifer Loewenstein
Bombing Syria

Ramzi Kysia
Seeing the Iraqi People

Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic

Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?

Alexander Cockburn
Welcome to Arnold, King for a Day

Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark

 

October 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Centrist Dems

Ramzy Baroud
Israel's WMDs and the West's Double Standard

John Ross
Mexico Tilts South

Mokhiber / Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust

James Bovard
The Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster

Michael Neumann
One State or Two?
A False Dilemma

 

October 7, 2003

Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion Ethnic Cleansing

Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta

Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present

David Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq

Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required

Cynthia McKinney
Who Are "We"?

Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case

Walter Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall

Gary Leupp
Israel's Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?

Website of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot

 

October 6, 2003

Robert Fisk
US Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria

Forrest Hylton
Upheaval in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity

Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War

Bridget Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus

Nicole Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor

Website of the Day
Guerrilla Funk

 

October 3 / 5, 2003

Tim Wise
The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment

Peter Linebaugh
Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW

Gary Leupp
Occupation as Rape-Marriage

Bruce Jackson
Addio Alle Armi

David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?

Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers

Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean

Mickey Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest

Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq

John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus

William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac

Glen T. Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism

Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos

Wayne Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can

M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier

William Benzon
Scorsese's Blues

Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest

Poets' Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie

 

 

October 2, 2003

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What's So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
The Ashcroft-Rove Connection

Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair

Hamid Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)

Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act

Saul Landau
Who Got Us Into This Mess?

Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!


October 1, 2003

Joanne Mariner
Married with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families

Robert Fisk
Oil, War and Panic

Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia as State Policy

Elaine Cassel
The Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act

Shyam Oberoi
Shooting a Tiger

Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?

Sean Donahue
Wesley Clark and the "No Fly" List

Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund

 

September 30, 2003

After Dark
Arnold's 1977 Photo Shoot

Dave Lindorff
The Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well

Tom Crumpacker
The Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers

Robert Fisk
A Lesson in Obfuscation

Charles Sullivan
A Message to Conservatives

Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective

Naeem Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
Does a Felon Rove the White House?

Website of the Day
The Edward Said Page


September 29, 2003

Robert Fisk
The Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies

Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!

Lee Sustar
Paul Krugman: the Last Liberal?

Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War

Uri Avnery
The Magnificent 27

Pledge Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com

 

September 26 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist

David Price
Teaching Suspicions

Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity

Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and the Patriot Act

Brian Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again

Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama

Robert Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions

M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA

John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN

Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada

William S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security

Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia

Chris Floyd
Vanishing Act

Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui

Richard Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved

George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said

Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized

Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss

Mickey Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice

Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said

Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room

Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie

Website of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?

 

 

September 25, 2003

Edward Said
Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony

Robert Fisk
Fanning the Flames of Hatred

Sarah Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School

David Krieger
The Second Nuclear Age

Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak

Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime

Michael S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs

Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley

Mustafa Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights

Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate Heart

Website of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine


The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!


September 24, 2003

Stan Goff
Generational Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War

William Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark

David Vest
Politics for Bookies

Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin

Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship

Latino Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!

Neve Gordon
Sharon's Preemptive Zeal

Website of the Day
Bands Against Bush

September 23, 2003

Bernardo Issel
Dancing with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand

Gary Leupp
To Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo

Gregory Wilpert
An Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela

Steven Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and Radical

Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?

Robert Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq

William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent

Elaine Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers

Yigal Bronner
The Truth About the Wall

Website of the Day
The Baghdad Death Count

September 20 / 22, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Silliest Show in Town

Alexander Cockburn
Lighten Up, America!

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet

Anne Brodsky
Return to Afghanistan

Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me

Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie

Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open

Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism

Kurt Nimmo
Colin Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja

Brian Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame

Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush

Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda

Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector

Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!

Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq

John Ross
WTO Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold

Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals

Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane

Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization

David Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America

Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps

Poets Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?

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

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October 21, 2003

War Dispatch from the NYT:

God's On Our Side

By DAVE LINDORFF

"It seemed a small miracle that no one was killed or even wounded here," wrote reporter Ian Fisher in a Monday report in the New York Times on Sunday's stunning attack by Iraqi guerrillas on a U.S. military convoy in Falluja, a city west of Baghdad in the part of Iraq American forces call the Sunni Triangle.

Miracle indeed, except that people were killed and wounded there. They just weren't Americans.

As a matter of fact the attack on the convoy, which blew up an American truck carrying highly explosive Hellfire anti-tank missiles, resulted in the death of one Iraqi, by some accounts an innocent bystander. and also led to the wounding of several others, probably innocent bystanders too, when American troops at the scene retreated in panic, firing wildly in a 360-degree sweep as they departed the scene.

Fisher conceded in the 19th paragraph of his story that there were "reports, unconfirmed, that at least one Iraqi had been killed in the exchange of fire that erupted after American soldiers returned several hours later," following the initial attack. He made no mention of people being wounded.

According a British newspaper, the Independent, six Iraqis were wounded and sent to local hospitals, where one died.

But then, the Times is apparently talking about American miracles, not general, all-purpose miracles.

At the Times, it seems, it's really our God against their god, and if God is on our side, He only does miracles that affect our side.

A miracle is when our guys blow away Iraqis--it doesn't matter that much apparently whether they're guerrillas or just ordinary people--and don't get hurt or killed themselves.

This is sports journalism, not international war reporting.

With sports reporting, you expect the local press to hype the home team, to cheer when our side makes a goal or a TD, and to groan and complain when the other side wins. In sports, God is on our side.

But war reporting is supposed to be different.

The trouble is, if readers incautiously read reports written in the style of the Times, they'll end up being perplexed by the growing resistance to American troops and to the occupation among Shia people. They'll end up wondering why all those men were dancing and celebrating after the attack on the convoy.

Fisher, in his article, went on to say that the security situation in Iraq is deteriorating, with Shiites as well as Sunni Iraqi's joining the remnant Baathists in the guerrilla attacks on Americans.

How to explain this.

Well, one way is to look what God's soldiers are doing as an occupying force.

Attacked, they fire wildly, killing anything that moves. They're not just getting crazy; this is what they are being instructed to do by the generals in charge of the occupation.

They enter mosques and try to disarm local militias.

According to an Associated Press report, they may even be executing suspected enemies. Following the Falluja convoy attack, AP reports that a second American unit returned to the city, where it was attacked also, leading to the death of one soldier. The U.S. unit responded in standard fashion: "Paratroopers raked the area with return fire, then raided a mosque and houses looking for the attackers," AP reports.

Subsequently, the AP reporter Tarek Al-Issawi, who visited a local hospital, writes, "The bodies of the two civilians killed in the Monday attack Ð an Iraqi and a Syrian truck driver Ð were taken to Fallujah General Hospital. The Associated Press saw that one of them, Iraqi Nazem Baji, had a gunshot wound in the back of his head and his hands were tied in front of him with plastic bands similar to those used by the U.S. military when they arrest suspects."

It's good bet that this incident won't be viewed locally as a miracle, or even as an act of a vengeful god. It will no doubt be laid to a repressive and increasingly offensive army of occupation.

At least the Times and other American media should attempt to tally all the dead in these incidents, and with civilians dying right and left with almost every attack on Americans, refrain from calling actions in which no Americans die successes or "miracles."

Maybe then we'd all have a better understanding of what's going on in Iraq, and why there's always so much dancing in the street after an attack on our guys.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html

Weekend Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003

Robert Pollin
Clintonomics: the Hollow Boom

Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War

Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer

Bruce Anderson
The California Recall

John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"

Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario

Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa

Brian Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War

Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers

Denise Low
The Cancer of Sprawl

Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom

John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?

George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy

Alison Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan

Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir

Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder

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