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Today's
Stories
September
30, 2003
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
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
Recent
Stories
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
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?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
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
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
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
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September
30, 2003
A Message to Conservatives
It's
the Corporations, Stupid!
By CHARLES SULLIVAN
One of the principal tenets of conservative thinking
in America is the precept that all government is evil and mettlesome.
Another is that we should get government out of our lives altogether
and let the free market work its magic. One tends to hear these
arguments more frequently when a democrat occupies the oval office
than when a republican holds the reins of power. But I believe
in the edict voiced by Henry Thoreau in his classic essay 'Civil
Disobedience' that states: "I do not ask for no government
but at once a better government." Government should be responsive
to and servile to the needs of the people. After all, the government,
in an era when it was more responsive to the needs of its citizens,
gave us important social programs such as social security, Medicare,
public schools, unemployment insurance and welfare for the economically
disadvantaged.
Most people recognize that the government
is no longer responsive to the needs of the people. It requires
huge sums of money to put a candidate into political office.
More than half of Americans earn less than $32,000 dollars a
year. According to the Public Interest Research Group, nearly
half of the people newly elected to Congress are millionaires
who thus enjoy salaries and privileges most of us will never
know. How can millionaires possibly understand the struggles
of the rest of us: the need for a living wage and affordable
health care? As members of Congress they are guaranteed the things
most of us have to struggle a lifetime for; and many never attain.
Long ago the power of the people was
usurped by the rich and powerful to serve the wants of the corporate
elite. Thus we Americans find ourselves living under a form of
corporate governance in which the voice of the wealthy are heard
and those of the working poor and middle class go unheeded. We
are living in a highly corrupted oligarchy in which money is
equated with free speech and corporate rights. The concept of
a democratic government in which every citizen, regardless of
social or economic status has equal footing with the wealthiest
has been abandoned. Democracy means that everyone is treated
equally. In a democracy, corporate entities do not have the same
rights as citizens while bearing none of the accountability that
comes with citizenship, because they are a legal fiction; a non-living
entity. In a democratic society, the wants of the corporations
must always be subservient to the needs of the citizenry. People
come before profits. Clearly, that is no longer the case in America.
The conservative mantra of getting big
government off the backs of people is a horrendous misnomer.
The core problem facing America today isn't big government--it
is corporate governance; the cooption of government of the people
by special interest operatives to a government of the corporations.
The most important issue that we citizens face is getting the
corrosive influence of corporations and special interest money
out of government. This cannot be accomplished at the ballot
box. It requires a deeper and more far reaching commitment to
political activism and personal vigilance than voting alone can
accomplish.
Why is it that conservatives fail to
perceive this truth? The mainstream media is owned by only a
handful of corporations. Everything they put forth receives a
pro corporate, conservative spin. The print media, television,
and radio is proliferated by conservative blowhards with names
like Limbaugh, Savage, Coulter and O'Reilly who are self proclaimed
critics of big government, except that envisioned by conservatives.
These clever entrepreneurs have deftly tapped into a reservoir
of angry white males who feel disconnected from political power
in order to enrich themselves. The irony is that these same angry
white males are being exploited and victimized by Limbaugh and
his cadre of white supremists to act against the common good,
and thus their own self interest.
It has long been understood that the
republicans are the party that represents big business and the
wealthy. The myth goes that the democrats represent the interests
of working class people. But that was long ago, before the democrats
abandoned their core values and the political base that differentiated
them from the republicans. Now there is effectively only one
political party in America with two conservative wings. I call
them the Republicrats. Both parties are corrupted by special
interest money; both are owned by the corporate brokers that
put up the cash to get their own puppets elected. It is government--and
therefore legislation--bought and paid for by special interest
money; and our politicians today deliver the goods!
The neocons that are now running the
country have no concept of the common good. They are interested
in self promotion and putting profits over people; and they don't
care who they exploit to get what they want. For them, in true
Machiavellian fashion, the ends justify the means. The democrats,
who were once progressives, are only marginally better. The true
progressives long ago recognized the eminent demise of the Democratic
Party and have moved on to grow fledging parties that truly represent
the interests of working families and the common good. But too
many so called progressives are still wasting their time trying
to breathe life into a dead horse that will never get up and
run again. A system that relies on the principle of lesser evils
cannot serve the common good of the vast majority of the citizenry.
Its time to bury the dead and move on.
The neocons despise democracy because
it levels the playing field; and they abhor the working poor
because they do not produce wealth for the ruling class. However,
the neocons know exactly who butters their bread and they don't
compromise their values, repugnant as they are to most of us.
They take what they want, often by force. They have the vast
propaganda machine of the corporate media and the muscle of the
world's most powerful military industrial complex behind them.
They adroitly manipulate the emotions of their imprudent followers
to serve as cannon fodder in places like Iraq in order to protect
corporate assets which aren't really the American interests they
purport to be. What is good for General Motors really isn't and
never was good for America. So let's slaughter that sacred cow
once and for all.
When poor people die in places like Iraq
and Afghanistan, which ever side of the conflict they are on;
it is to protect corporate profits--not to bring democracy to
the world or to liberate oppressed peoples, as the president
and the media purport. The neocons killed thousands of innocent
Afghani people so that Unical could build a massive oil pipeline
to the Caspian Sea and rake in billions; and Iraq has all that
oil that Halliburton (Dick Cheney's Company) just couldn't wait
to get its hands on. These are the 'noble causes' that American
soldiers killed and died for in the Middle East. And the corporate
empire have their stinging tentacles wrapped around the entire
planet. The robber barons in the corporate board rooms across
the world (large corporations are multi-national) require a huge
reservoir of readily exploited, easily controlled people to unwittingly
serve at the behest of the corporate gods. That's where you and
I come in. This is the extent of the neocons' interest in working
families. The continued exploitation of the poor by the rich
is a kind of demented corporate patriotism that we have come
to expect from the neocons. This is the very definition of the
class warfare that America was founded upon. It's not hard to
follow the money trail that is at the root of our wars and occupations
of sovereign nations. All it takes is a little will and persistence.
The facts are out there.
This brings me to my final point. What
the conservatives really want is the regulatory arm of the government
out of the corporations in order for corporations to have free
reign with no accountability to anyone but the profit motive.
They demand unfettered control over every facet of our existence.
Every year they are getting closer to achieving this goal, regardless
of which party is in control of the Whitehouse and Congress.
The heads of industry are now in charge of the Environmental
Protection Agency: the regulatory arm of government that is supposed
to protect public health from industrial polluters by providing
clean air and pure water. The former heads of Lockheed Martin,
Raytheon and General Electric are running the department of defense,
not to the benefit of the nation, but to the benefit of colossal
corporations who are plundering the public treasury. The timber
industry and concessionaires are running the Forest Service and
the Park Service. There are more lobbyists working on capital
hill for the pharmaceutical industry than there are members of
Congress. Are they working for the common good?
The problem isn't the government per
se; it's the corporate hijacking of the government by the wealthy.
So called free marketers and capitalists have no concept of the
common good. Self interest and greed benefits only a small percent
of the population. Conservatives complain about giving public
assistance to the poor but are silent when it comes to giving
massive welfare to some of the wealthiest corporations on earth,
or providing tax cuts to the rich. Corporate welfare has long
been rampant and costs the treasury thousands of times more than
helping poor families find the means of eking out a living with
a modicum of dignity. The irony of this is apparently lost on
the conservatives.
We have reached this advanced stage of
societal decay because too many of us have looked the other way
for too long. Too many of us have been too easily duped by the
all pervasive corporate media that saturates the printed page
and the air waves. Too many have accepted the lies and distortions
spewed forth by Bush/Clinton and the military industrial complex
for too many years without calling them to task and demanding
accountability from them. If there is any hope for us it lies
in dispelling the prevailing myths of our times. We need a major
paradigm shift and we need it now. The kind of change that is
needed will require a critically thinking, well informed citizenry
and much deep introspection. Most importantly, it will require
accountability from every citizen; and constant vigilance. It
demands an abiding faith in the common good and paying the price
in commitment to make it happen. What ails our political system
is far too systemic to be cured at the ballot box. The question
is: Do the American people care deeply enough about social and
economic justice to talk revolution? Do we have what it takes
to take it to the next level? How serious are we about taking
our country back? Do we really understand what that entails?
Are we up to the task?
Charles Sullivan
is a veteran wild forest activist, writer and cabinetmaker who
resides on twenty acres of land in the rural countryside of West
Virginia.
He can be reached at: cesullivan@stargate.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 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?
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