Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 12, 2003
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Recent
Stories
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!
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
Expanding
Power, Gutting Liberty
The
Meaning of September 11
By DAVE LINDORFF
Politics as practiced in America has long been
a cynical business, but the Bush administration has established
a new standard for cynicism and manipulation.
In his speech yesterday in Quantico,
VA to the FBI and a bunch of Marines bused in for patriotic color
and canned applause, our active duty-dodging, "bring 'em
on" threat-making president used the anniversary of the
9/11 terror attacks to call for a further gutting of civil liberties
and expansion of the lawless behavior and draconian powers of
the Ashcroft Justice Department.
The USA PATRIOT Act (widely and unthinkingly
referred to erroneously in the mainstream media as the Patriot
Act), in effect since November 2001, has already been used by
the Justice Department for everything from conducting warrantless
searches and surveillance to arresting and detaining suspected
"terrorists" without charge or even access to a lawyer--including
U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla. The expanded powers now being
sought by Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft would include
the power to strip even native-born Americans of their citizenship,
their very birthright, expanded power for warrantless searches
and arrests and other further assaults on the national's constitutional
liberties. Plans are even afoot to use military brigs to confine
those whose citizenship has been removed, creating a set of Guantanamo-like
Gulags within the domestic U.S.
The irony, of course, is that the Justice
Department, with all the new powers in already granted itself
since September, 2002, has done little to make the country safer
against terrorism  threats.
The Bush administration knows that opposition
to its ongoing rights assault has been growing, not just among
traditional liberals and leftists, but on the right too, where
there remain powerful constituencies that support a literal and
uncompromising interpretation of the Bill of Rights. Over 160
communities and three states, including many dominated by Republicans,
have over the past year or so approved laws and resolutions defending
the Bill or Rights and attacking the PATRIOT Act's provisions,
such as its giving to federal agents the power to examine the
library records of patrons without a warrant and without notice
to the subject of the investigation. Administration sources
and congressional supporters have been quoted as saying that
the intent of having the president make a personal appeal for
expansion of the PATRIOT Act provisions on Sept. 10 was to have
it reach the public on the second anniversary of the 9/11 terror
attack, in hopes that this would mute opposition to the proposed
new measures.
This cynical abuse of the pain and suffering
of the relatives of the World Trade Center and Pentagon dead,
as appalling as it is, is matched by the president's attempt
in his Sunday address to the nation and his Wednesday address
to FBI and Marine personnel to also use the same 9/11 tragedy
to confuse the public and win support for his continued war policy
in Iraq. Conflating the terror attacks with the U.S. military's
growing problems in Iraq, Bush has tried to say that what "began
in America" is being ended in Iraq, as if by attacking Iraqi
guerrilla fighters, the U.S. military is hitting back at the
terror network that was responsible for the 2002 terror attacks
on New York and Washington, D.C. Of course nothing could be further
from the truth. The war against Iraq, which no intelligence has
linked to Al Qaida, diverted military attention and power away
from the search for 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. (In fact,
bin Laden, taking a page from the president's cynical playbook,
chose yesterday to thumb his nose at the president and the Pentagon
with release of a video tape hailing the 9/11 attack and calling
for more attacks on America and Americans.) By destroying the
government in Iraq, Bush and his Pentagon war-mongers also turned
that nation into a lawless breeding ground for anti-American
terrorists--one that is awash in weapons and explosives, and
with people who know how to use them.
No honest observer of the ongoing war
in Iraq would claim that even a thorough U.S. victory there,
and establishment of a successful Iraqi government--a highly
unlikely prospect over the next few years--would end, or even
reduce terrorist threats against the U.S. Few terrorists over
the past decade have been Iraqi, and the terrorist world could
get along fine without Iraqis in the future.
Meanwhile, there is a 9/11 anniversary
worth recalling, without any cynicism but with a great deal of
irony. That's the anniversary of the 1973 coup that overthrew
the elected government of Salvadore Allende Gossens in Chile.
America suffered a terrible terror attack on 9/11, but it hardly
compares with the many more thousands who were brutally killed
in that earlier coup, a coup which, as Peter Kornbluh, in his
new book, replete with original documents and CIA and State Department
cables, proves was instigated and supported by the U.S. government
and specifically by President Richard M. Nixon and his Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger. This was state-sponsored terrorism
at its worst, and as yet, no one in American government has been
brought to justice for it.
As we ponder the meaning of the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2002, and of President George Bush's call for yet
more unchecked police-state powers, we Americans would do well
to also ponder the meaning of September 11,1973. The more recent
9/11 terrorist attack clearly demonstrated what can happen when
committed terrorists decide to attack even the world's most powerful
nation. Sept. 11, 1973 shows something worse: what happens when
the very government of the world's most powerful nation is headed
by terrorists--whether a Richard Nixon and a Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger, or a George W. Bush and a Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld--that is, by people who have no respect for law
or for constitutionally protected civil rights and liberties,
or for human life itself, and who view democracy as a game to
be cynically played and manipulated.
September 11, 1973 showed us in blood
just what such enemies of democracy and basic human decency are
capable of.
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 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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