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Featuring Essays by: Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More

Recent Stories

August 5, 2003

Edward Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later

Website of the Day
National Prayer Day


August 4, 2003

Bruce K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by Airport Cops: My Story

David Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security

Mark Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody

James Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail

Mickey Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush

Bruce Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's Pimps for the White House

August 2 / 3, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf Ekeus

Tamara R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down

Francis Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool

David Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side

Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem

Uri Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus

Robert Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq

Jerry Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media

Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to Intervene?

Saul Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology

Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson

Thomas Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta

Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?

Poets' Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming

 

August 1, 2003

Joanne Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape

Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing Prison Rape

Steve J.B.
Prison Bitch

Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq

Wayne Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix

Robert Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico

Website of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape

 

 

July 31, 2003

Ray McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence

Brian Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement

Sheldon Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)

Elaine Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys

Sheldon Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's Wars

Hammond Guthrie
Speculation Blues

Website of the Day
Army of One?

 

July 30, 2003

David Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie

Marjorie Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About the Oil

Elaine Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas in Terror Cases

Zvi Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War

Lisa Walsh Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?

Sean Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes

ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon

Steve Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies

Standard Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing

Website of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!

Congratulations to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD

July 29, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns

Thomas J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes

Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem

Chris Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes

Robert Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre

Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?

Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign

Dan Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech

Ray McGovern
Cheney Chicanery

Website of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape


July 26 / 27, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front

Gary Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence

Saul Landau
A Report from Syria

Stan Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing

Andrew Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud Begins

Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans

Robert Fisk
The Power of Death

Joanne Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui

Standard Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand

M. Shahid Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process

Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later

Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice

Edward S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky

Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company You Keep

Julie Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos

Adam Engel
Man Talk

Poets' Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert

 

Hot Stories

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

Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Watch

Michel Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians"

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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August 7, 2003

Racking Up Those Freedom Units

What's the Score?

By MICHAEL KIMAID

I'm as American as they come. I maintain my lawn with an obsessive-compulsive fervor and I can drive the ball off the tee damn close to 300 yards when I get my whole ass into it. Heck, I've even got a Ph.D. in American History. Yet I'm not "sold" on this war, and quite frankly, a lot of other Americans aren't either. Listen up George, I'm giving you a freebie here...this is how to get those pesky "citizens" who are so concerned with American credibility abroad and whatnot on board with the corporate takeover of Iraq.

Two words: Freedom Units (or "F-U's" for short). We all know about the system in place to gauge terror here in America (though I admittedly don't know which color corresponds with how much crap should be in my pants), but Americans have no way to measure how free we are, or how free the world is for that matter. Americans love to "know the score." It's a cliché you hear time and time again, so why not give us what our soft little minds are already accustomed to; tell us the score in Freedom Units.

Here's how Freedom Units could work. For every time some 19 year-old kid who joined the Army to help pay for college, doesn't even speak the local language and has been told three different times that he was going home, harasses an Iraqi citizen at a checkpoint, America is up one Freedom Unit. For every time the Attorney General denies an American Citizen the judicial process because he's an "enemy combatant," America puts 3 Freedom Units on the board, and for every time America displays the corpse of an enemy to demonstrate its imperial power, that's 7 Freedom Units for the good guys. I've kept the scoring similar to football, because if it's remotely related to football, Americans will dive in headfirst. I can hear it now: "How many F-U's did we get from the Bush Administration today? 14? Wow! What a great day for freedom!"

Which brings us to the scoreboard. Obviously, Haliburton will get naming rights, and it should be placed in Washington DC. Ideally, it could go on the site where the Jefferson Memorial currently stands. It was, after all, that confounded liberal who said "A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free." Since that obviously rings of relevance today, Jefferson's Memorial must go. The Haliburton Scoreboard will mark the era of a new America, where we always know the score.

Michael Kimaid teaches history at Bowling Green State Unversity in Ohio. He can be reached at: mkimaid@bgnet.bgsu.edu



Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf Ekeus

Tamara R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down

Francis Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool

David Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side

Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem

Uri Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus

Robert Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq

Jerry Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media

Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to Intervene?

Saul Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology

Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson

Thomas Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta

Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?

Poets' Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming

 

 

 

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