Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
24, 2003
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
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
Recent
Stories
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
for More Stories.
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September
24, 2003
The Real Looting is
About to Begin
Stealing
Home
By JON BROWN
Iraq's looting commenced when the cheap-seat crowd
swept out of the bleachers to tear up the field. The circling
sky-box set waited. With wholesale privatization, the real looting
is about to begin. Why settle for souvenirs when you can walk
off with the stadium?
Predatory and outrageous? Not at all.
It's business as usual by WTO standards. Yet the privatization
announcement, issued in Dubai by an interim finance minister,
prompts a question: How is it that the U.S. gets to auction off
Iraqi assets at bargain-basement prices? Iraq is not an American
possession, yet the U.S. aims to peddle a national patrimony
under rules that allow foreign companies to extract Iraqi capital
at will. Undoubtedly the Bush administration will point to authorization
from the unelected, U.S.-appointed Iraqi governing council for
the clearance sale. Interestingly its current president, the
neocon favorite Ahmed Chalabi, is a convicted embezzler. (Substitute
Middle Eastern "Jordan" for the Midwestern state in
"Indiana Wants Me" for a fitting presidential theme
song.) His one-month term ends Sept. 30.
An inopportune introduction to Bush's
speech at the UN on Tuesday? Perhaps not. For the administration
to award party favors to them's that brung 'em-the $2,000-a-plate
lobbies that fuel American elections-it must get a move on, signing
over the Iraqi economy before domestic electoral necessities
force the U.S. to cede authority. Indeed, a place at that exclusive
table for the carving up of Iraq may be the quid, otherwise known
as "baksheesh," to the quo of foreign assistance, otherwise
known as "mercenaries."
The goings-on call to mind a certain
quintessentially American document, the Declaration of Independence,
with its quaint notion of consent of the governed-which is in
fact the elemental basis of the United States, its founding principle.
What consent can the U.S. claim to justify the de facto expropriation
of Iraqi public and private assets? The winking claim that opening
the market to outside investment is for the Iraqi people's own
good fails by the Declaration's own standard. It's not for a
foreign power, especially one that obliterated a country's infrastructure
and currently occupies it, however benevolently in its own eyes,
to decide. Nor can an imposed government legitimately divest
the Iraqi economy. By fundamental American tradition and law,
the proposed selloff is not only wrong but axiomatically illegal.
For proof look no further than the
Declaration itself: "That to secure these Rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the
Consent of the Governed." Precisely that is absent in Iraq.
The U.S. occupation derives its powers from military might, not
consent. It is not, therefore, a just power, and hence illegitimate.
The U.S. may protest that it is a liberator, not an oppressor
with "a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all
having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny."
Yet consider Declaration complaints against an erstwhile King
George.
Electricity outages, fuel shortages,
contaminated water? "HE has refused his Assent to Laws,
the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good."
"It is not necessary for Uday and Qusay to be dead,"
Younis says. "We need water and electricity. At night, we
have two hours of electricity on and four hours off. It was better
before the war." An open sewer runs past their front door
and rubbish is piled up on the street. In the small courtyard
it is clean and tidy, but stiflingly hot. Since the day before
they had not had electricity to power the ceiling fans, and no
one in the household - from her 80-year-old father to her grandson
of six month- had managed to sleep. "You cannot know what
it is like to live in this heat with no power and no fuel. It
is intolerable."
Anarchy and a crime wave? "HE has
abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection."
Nor does an 11 p.m. curfew ensure nighttime peace. Thieves easily
exploit its lax enforcement in the absence of police patrols.
"At the beginning we were relieved that the looters did
not attack residential districts," says Ms. Khadimi. "But
now we are afraid to be in our houses." "It's untidy,
and freedom's untidy," he said, jabbing his hand in the
air. Mr. Rumsfeld insisted that words such as anarchy and lawlessness
were unrepresentative of the situation in Iraq and "absolutely"
ill-chosen.
Indefinite detainment without charge?
"FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of
Trial by Jury." "A civilian car came up with American
soldiers in it. Then more soldiers in military vehicles. I told
them I didn't understand what had happened, that I was a scientific
researcher. But they made me lie down in the street, my face
on the tarmac, tied my arms behind me with plastic-and-steel
cuffs and tied up my feet and put me in one of their vehicles.
Some soldiers drove me back to Baghdad after 33 days in that
camp. They dropped me in Rashid Street and gave me back my documents
and Danish passport and they said 'Sorry'. Yes, they were 'sorry.'"
Accountability? "FOR protecting
[soldiers], by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders
which they should commit on the Inhabitants." The shooting
in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, occurred less than 48
hours after gunfire during a demonstration Monday night that
hospital officials said killed 13 Iraqis. "The evildoers
are deliberately placing at risk the good civilians," said
Lt. Col. Tobin Green of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "These
are deliberate actions by the enemy to use the population as
cover." "Even when US troops on a raid in Mansour six
weeks ago ran amok and gunned down up to eight civilians- including
a 14-year-old boy-the best the Americans could do was to say
that they were "enquiring" into the incident. Not,
as one U.S. colonel quickly pointed out to us, that this meant
a formal enquiry. Just a few questions here and there. And of
course the killings were soon forgotten.
Elections and local authority? "HE
has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing
Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent
should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected
to attend to them." With a great sense of accomplishment,
the council finished its report on June 11, a mere 9 days after
they were elected. When they went to turn in the report, however,
they were told that the council had been disbanded and they should
go home. Majid and his fellow council members were stunned. They
were given no reason for their dismissal. In less than two weeks,
they had been elected and fired. It made no sense. "Perhaps
we made too many suggestions. Perhaps they didn't like our suggestions,"
said Majid, struggling to find an explanation. "Or perhaps
this is democracy, American-style. In any case, what can we do?
They are the occupiers and we are the occupied."
Inaccessible authorities? "HE
has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable,
and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for
the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures."
For its own protection, the council has been all but invisible
since it was appointed last month. The council works cloistered
in a building set back more than half a mile from the road. Visitors
can enter only if they are met by a council member and after
they have been checked by U.S. soldiers. Once inside the complex,
they must drive past a second American checkpoint, stop their
cars and wait while a soldier removes a set of road spikes.
A national for-sale sign? "FOR suspending
our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with
Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever." Chanting
their demands for work, they marched toward Saddam Hussein's
old Republican Palace, headquarters of the Coalition Provisional
Authority-the almost all-American body, headed by L. Paul Bremer
III, that runs Iraq. When I asked one of the organizers why they
didn't go to their own leaders in the Iraqi Governing Council,
he looked blank. 'We don't know where they are,' he said.
And what of the judiciary, military,
and police? "HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone,
for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of
their Salaries. HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and
sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat
out their Substance. HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace,
Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures."
"Life in Baghdad can only be described as bizarre,"
[Wooldord] writes. "We are based within a huge compound...
in Sadam (sic) Hussein's former Presidential Palace. The place
is awash with vast marble ballrooms, conference rooms (now used
as a dining room), a chapel (with murals of Scud missiles) and
hundreds of function rooms with ornate chandeliers which were
probably great for entertaining but which function less well
as offices and dormitories ... I work in the 'Ministries' wing
of the palace in the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
Within this wing, each door along the corridor represents a separate
ministry; next door to us, for example, is the Ministry of Health
and directly across the corridor is the Finance Ministry. Behind
each door military and civilian coalition members (mainly American
with the odd Brit dotted about) are beavering away trying to
sort out the economic, social and political issues currently
facing Iraq. The work is undoubtedly for a good cause but it
cannot but help feel strange as our contact with the outside
world-the real Iraq-is so limited."
The litany goes on, with Iraqis able
to lay claim to virtually every colonial grievance. Glowing encomia
by the likes of Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza
Rice can't elide the biblical cadences of the Declaration's words:
"HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our
Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People. HE is, at this
Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat
the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with
circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in
the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized
Nation."
Unfair? Eighteenth-century England thought
as much. Certainly the Bush regime can and will indignantly invoke
the overthrow of the Baathist regime in exculpation of the ancient
accusations of America's founding fathers. But without the consent
of the governed, the U.S. acts illegitimately, damned by the
very text that inseminated it as a nation and an idea, the betrayer
not just of the Iraqi people but of itself. The coming privatization
is to Iraq what taxation without representation was to colonists:
tyranny. It is unjust, but more than that it is, ironically,
un-American, if "America" is to retain any of the Declaration's
aboriginal, and apparently lost, meaning.
Jon Brown
is Jon Brown, except when Roscelin Nimba. Email either at dogen@mindspring.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 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?
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