Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
August
1, 2003
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
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
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
Hot Stories
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.
|
Stop
Prison Rape Edition
August 1, 2003
The
Return of "Old Europe"
Unplugged
from the Matrix
By WAYNE MADSEN
Take heart that most Europeans not only understand
the threat posed by the Bush regime to the future well being
of the world but sympathize with the plight of those Americans
who are fed up with the regime and want to replace it at all
costs. After spending three weeks in Donald Rumsfeld's "Old
Europe," I am happy to report that Old Europe is ringing
the klaxons about the expansionistic goals of the Bush regime.
Europe is free from the "Matrix" of perception management
that has permeated the political and social life of America.
The BBC's World television service aired
a special report on living with a powerful superpower. Congratulations
go to the team that put together the trailer for the special.
Bush, it will be recalled, tried to emulate the fictional President
Whitmore, played by actor Bill Pullman in the Fox movie "Independence
Day." By landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier
 within eyesight of the San Diego skyline,
Bush's spin team was trying to suggest that Bush, whose record
as a fighter pilot is murky at best, was somehow acting out the
same sort of scene in which Pullman, who played a former fighter
pilot who became president, joined in the air battle against
invading alien spaceships. At the conclusion of Independence
Day, Pullman, bedecked in a flight suit, celebrates victory over
the aliens. Bush, clad in a flight suit, celebrated the end of
"military operations" in Iraq. Honestly, the Pullman
scene in a science fiction movie was more believable than the
charade on the USS Lincoln.
But the clever ad people at the BBC must
have picked up on the obvious links between Independence Day
and the Bush publicity stunt. In its preview of its special on
the United States, huge dark shadows appears over major world
landmarks: the Arch de Triomphe in Paris, the Dome of the Rock
in Jerusalem, a busy street in Beijing with curious Chinese pedestrians
looking skyward, the pyramids of Egypt, the African Serengetti
(with animals fleeing the menacing shadow), and finally, the
Houses of Westminster in London, where a BBC reporter nervously
looks into the sky as a shadow comes over Big Ben. Are the shadows
an invading fleet of alien spaceships? After the BBC reporter
begins to describe the special report, the viewers finally are
made aware that the huge shadow is an American flag descending
around the world. Bravo BBC! That network has much to teach the
lame American news networks about not only how to defend the
news media from scurrilous attacks from an unpopular Tony Blair
government but in going on the offensive against the Bush regime
by using a very clever spin borrowed from Hollywood.
Bush also makes it so easy for the French
to hate him. Bush, who tore up the Kyoto Accord on global warming
and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil, can take solace
in how his policies are affecting the French. Southern Europe
is suffering from one of its worst heat spells and draughts in
100 years. French vacationers in southern France have had to
rapidly evacuate from intense wild fires that have burned thousands
of hectares of forests and camping sites. French rivers like
the Loire are at their lowest depths in years. French farmers
are suffering from lost crops. But what does Bush say about global
warming? He calls it "silly science." While Italy and
Russia have come to the assistance of French fire fighters, what
has Bush offered? Nothing. In Bush's demonic view of the world,
the French vacationers and residents in southern France are indistinguishable
from the government. Bush probably figures the fires are some
sort of divine retribution for France's unwillingness to go to
war against Iraq.
Meanwhile, French (and Spanish and Portuguese)
bathers along the Atlantic seacoast have to use detergents to
wipe off oil from themselves as a result of the sinking of the
oil tanker Prestige nine months ago. Fishermen in the region
are experiencing low catches from the spill and the environment
will be adversely affected for years to come. But does Bush  care? No. Moving oil in tankers
is his lifeblood. When one sinks, the only thing that Bush cares
about its insuring oil companies for the loss of their oil. No
wonder Christine Todd Whitman and her deputy walked out of the
Environmental Protection Agency a few months ago.
So, in France, without even considering
the war on Iraq, it is easy to loathe Bush. But, contrary to
the right wing hype artists, the French are not anti-American.
They have adopted the French-speaking Texan Lance Armstrong,
who just won his fifth Tour de France, as one of their own. And
a little news for Armstrong's fellow Texan Bush: the cyclist
who has more courage in his little finger than the president
has in his entire body, proclaimed a few months ago that he was
not only against the war in Iraq, but he is against all wars!
I hope Mr. Armstrong, who would be my candidate to be a future
U.S. ambassador to France, has the chance to tell Bush to his
face about his feelings about war in the event there is a White
House event honoring his fifth victory. However, knowing the
vindictiveness of the Bush cabal, such an event seems unlikely.
The Europeans definitely know how to
handle their own fifth column of neo-cons. Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, once again, faces a criminal investigation
of his shady business deals between his media conglomerate, Mediaset,
and the securing of American film rights, including those from
his close pal Rupert Murdoch. There are also interesting links
between the how those bogus documents purportedly from Niger,
which claimed that Saddam Hussein was trying to but Nigerien
uranium, wound up in the hands of the U.S. government. It appears
that one of Berlusconi's magazine's, Panorama, was at the heart
of the laundering of the Niger disinformation through the European
media, with Murdoch's media empire and Lord (Conrad) Black's
Hollinger Group being part of the scam. Berlusconi, who one French
law enforcement official revealed is the head of a large Italian
Mafia bribery network, parodies Tony Soprano in his rants about
AIDS patients, Germans (he said a German European Parliament
member looked like a concentration camp commander) and saying
that he, like other Italians, can find humor in jokes about the
Holocaust. There must have been some late nights of laughter
at the Crawford Ranch recently when Bush hosted his Italian friend
and ally. Bush likely recounted how he gleefully gave the juice
to hundreds of Texas convicts, including born-again Christian
Karla Faye Tucker who he once mimicked by sniffling, "Please,
don't kill me." Berlusconi must have had Bush in stitches
over, "Giorgio, did you ever hear the one about the concentration
camp?" These two disgusting creatures really do deserve
one another.
Berlusconi's membership in the infamous
P-2 (Propaganda Due) Masonic lodge also provided him with close
links to Italy's secret services. No wonder the bogus Niger documents
some how miraculously made their way from the Italian military
intelligence service right into the hands of a reporter for Panorama.
Just like how bogus documents from the Iraqi intelligence ministry
implicating British Member of Parliament George Galloway in taking
money from Saddam found their way into the hands of a reporter
for Black's Daily Telegraph. It seems that The New York Times
and its episode with Jayson Blair is not unique in journalism.
The neo-con media in the United States and Europe has its own
share of fakes, phonies, and frauds parading around as journalists.
Sensible people (and they are in a clear
majority) in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and other European
capitals are planning for the eventual running out of town of
Tony, Silvio, and their political and media allies and capos.
Meanwhile, for Americans who despise the Bush regime, take heart
that throughout "Old Europe," you have many fellow
travelers. If you want to unplug from the Matrix, go to Europe,
enjoy the French joie de vivre, the Spanish hospitality, and
the British wry sense of humor. Our European allies are doing
all they can to rid themselves of their scourges of neo-conservatism
and they are with us all the way in our upcoming campaign to
cleanse our corridors of power of the same blight.
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of the
forthcoming book, "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of
George Bush II."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 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
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
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|