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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Cockburn/St. Clair: Bush and Blair's Chickens Come Home to Roost; No Poultry for the Press?; Amanpour Admits CNN Cowed by Bush and FoxNews; WMDs, Misdirection and Iraqi Defectors on the Take; Cockburn in London: David Kelly's Mistress; The Bahai Spy; Corruption at Harrod's; A Tribute to Edward Said; John Donne's Vision of Paradise as Modern Airport; The Caledonian Road; Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 70,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 CounterPunch Events: Cockburn in Berkeley / Saul Landau in No. Cal

Now Available from CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included) Today's Stories October 18 / 19, 2003 Robert Pollin Clintonomics: the Hollow Boom   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 Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

October 18 / 19, 2003 Love It or Leave It? I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague By ADAM ENGEL "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask not what you can do cause you've probably already done it your country thanks you very much. Ask nothing, and if you're lucky you shall receive nothing worse than nothing." Well, why NOT ask what my country can do for me? Why not ask simply, what's in it for me? What has America done for me lately, that big plot of land shared by 280,000,000 head trips, some minute percentage of which are somewhat similar to my own in some small way, but otherwise born to be programmed, propagandized, brain-washed about how god wanted us: manifest by god and destined by god to take god's country and everything in it, and every one, and do with them what we will? Maybe I'd fight for the old neighborhood where I grew up. Or maybe I'd die to protect the 'hood. But even NYC is too big and complex -- 8,000,000 head trips. Might as well be 280,000,000 or 280 for all that "united we stand" bullshit. How many people do I really stand united with? How many is it possible to stand united with? Certainly not 280,000,000. Only thing I have in common with most of them is I want to be left the hell alone. But that is the one impossibility in America, unless you happen to be very, very rich and connected to the kind of wealth that is not to be fucked with. The kind of wealth that frightens even government to stay at least 100 feet away at all times, to look at you with awe and defer to your superior collection of whatever stuff it is of value (another fiction) that you possess in obscene abundance - paper, metal, electronic pulses of on and off, one and zero. "Stay away, I'm a wealthy man. Just stay away. Don't begrudge me my freedom." Now there's a word you don't hear everyday. "Freedom." You can't possibly hear it, it's repeated so often it's part of the aural atmosphere. Freedom in the air, choking us like smog. Who needs this kind of "freedom" anyway, this gift to us from Uncle Sam for being such good children? "Really you're lucky you weren't born in China or Somalia or some place REALLY bad..." But am I? I mean, "Who says?" We should be grateful that government officials, elected or selected, don't kill us or torture us or throw us away like garbage? Grateful that they're not - at least to white people - as vicious as some others (whom they nonetheless support with guns and butter)? Well then, my wife and kids should be grateful I don't beat them half as badly or as often as my neighbor next door beats his. Freedom to work for a corporation, to be locked in a cubicle in the labyrinth of the great office on the thirty-somethingth floor. Working away at nothing particularly important, but it's the only way to get health insurance, and possibly money enough to live in your "own" apartment, if you're single, or share a decent apartment with your spouse and kids, provided they bring in money (these damn spoiled kids! in the good old days before child labor laws, kids were worth something, whether you were a farmer sending them to the fields or a shopkeeper making them sweep up or a factory worker begging The Big Boss hire your kids "oh PLEASE, master! they're all at least ten years old, the eldest almost thirteen.") Went to the National Institute of Health (NIH) to become a guinea pig but thought to myself, "There's no national aspirin, there's no national penicillin, there's no national out patient clinic, hospital or anything else that might let people benefit from experiments done on yours truly." So where is all this research data going? Who's benefiting from this NIH? I don't have to tell you to go to your Duane Read or Walgreen's or other National pharmacy chain to figure that out. Anyway, back to the issue at hand: what has "my" country done for me lately? Besides waste my most impressionable years drumming lies into my head? Besides terrify me with tales of nuclear menace and drudgery and breadlines and having to share apartments with strangers (!!!) and other horrors from them Commie Soviets who no longer exist, allegedly, because my tax money afforded Uncle Sam more missiles than "Collective Ownership" provided Uncle Misha? Besides perpetual war for perpetual fleece, the mayhem and suffering that I am perpetually funding, thereby making me perpetually complicit to murder? Besides making me "grateful" I was born with white skin and therefore not a congenital enemy of the state? Besides making me an enemy of EVERYONE ELSE not lucky enough to have been born on this great chunk of stolen property? Besides spending an incredible on $400,000,000,000 of peoples' tax money on its war machine, and a fraction of that on feeding, clothing, housing educating and tending to the health of its citizens? Besides being nothing but a legal fiction, created on and held together by a piece of paper, yet demanding that I love it and its corporations, which are not "which's" but "who's" and far more important than its people, for corporations are immortal and richer than god, who may not bless America, but certainly blesses Raytheon and Boeing? Besides being nothing but a MERE fiction and demanding that I love it, not a LEGAL fiction, because it broke nearly every law written on the piece of paper that allegedly provided its life, its "constitution?" Besides allowing me to follow the advice of a friend and take "Unemployment" when I was unemployed ("Hell, they took it from your paycheck these past fifteen years, it's your money," he said), and forcing me to undergo the humiliation of not serving a corporation, at least not the one that downsized me, and then...and then...double-dip TAXING me on these measly "benefits." Besides telling lies, lies, lies everywhere and always, from the lie that it is anything more than a fiction (and not even a legal one) to the lie that it values me as a customer; therefore, I should love it. I know, I know: "America, love it or leave it!" Well I'll leave it soon enough, Jackson, and YOU can pay the bill. I hope my corpse gives you the plague. Adam Engel can be reached at Bartleby.samsa@verizon.net   Weekend Edition Features for Oct. 9-11, 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 Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /