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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Patrick Cockburn's Iraq Diary: The Bush Mosiac; Inside the Looting of the Iraq National History Museum; the Rise of the Guerrilla War; Jeffrey St. Clair on The Anatomy of a Swindle: How the Bush Administration is Giving Away Public Lands to Its Political Cronies; Scott Handleman on the Return of the Aliens: Why the CIA Was Paranoid About UFOs. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 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!

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From Common Courage Press

Recent Stories

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

 

Hot Stories

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War

Stan Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!

Wendell Berry
Small Destructions Add Up

Gary Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence

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 2, 2003

 

400 Against to 21 For Megadeath Media Takeover
By JANINE POMMY VEGA

The e-mails have been buzzing for months:
constituent opposition to the fat cats disguised
as aerobically trim millionaires in business suits,
Michael Powell leading the parade,
was one last shot before the media rip-off.
It's already crystal clear air play programming
coast to coast-no blues, no jazz, no real country-
musicians themselves tell you they don't listen,
And the big guys want to chomp down more-
more air time glub more newspapers glub glub
Hitler had it there in Mein Kampf:
Say it enough times, and they will believe you.
Own enough radio stations, enough TV stations,
all the newspapers, who's to say no?
Stalin got that, too.
Who's to know it's any other way but how we paint it?
So people spoke up, they rattled the phones of the
house of reps, and the house voted 400 to 21
against the FCC proposal.
The Federal Communication Commission,
a misnomer like Green Haven, Albion,
Great Meadows and Grove Land-bucolic prisons all,
Federal Anti-communications Commission spells FAC
like fuck the people's airways and lifeblood of democracy,
plugged and clogged as it is, we're still breathing,
we don't want to be quiet.
The Christian zealots, the Civil Rights leaders,
the Writers Guild, Consumers Union-
unlikely bedfellows-agree on this:
We don't want to go dumbly down to slaughter
we want to speak up.
Give us a radio dish, we want to sing
We want to clap hands and dance, wake up a nation,
one sleeping citizen at a time.
The aerobic gentlemen in the million dollar suits
are up front: "We need consolidation for the money.
We need to pay for the Super Bowl!"
Fascism dressed in the lily lambs wool of capital,
O you poor ole things!
Computer keys are clicking in the background:
It ain't over till the fat lady sings,
and if she sings, when we hear it.

Janine Pommy Vega has had fifteen books published-most recently, Mad Dogs of Trieste, Black Sparrow, 2000; and Tracking the Serpent, City Lights, 1997. She'S the director of Incisions/Arts, an organization of writers working with people behind bars, and has been teaching inside prisons for 27 years. She can be reached at: jpvega@ulster.net


The Bush Barbershop Quartet
By WILLIAM WITHERUP

Bush: Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!

Cheney: I smell the blood of al-Qaeda man.

Rice: Be he alive, or be he dead

Rumsfeld: I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

They high-five each other, then sing another round.

Bush: Fee! Fie! Foe! Fain!

Rice: I smell the armpits of Saddam Hussein.

Rumsfeld: Be he alive, or be he dead

Cheney: I'll stick a cluster bomb in his bed.

Ari Fleischer comes out of the wings for a solo.

Ari.: Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
Whitehouse reporters sure were dumb.
Be they awake, or be they asleep,
They had no clue to mission creep!

They high-five Ari. Want to do another round, by Bush can't remember his lines and needs a nap. The alliteration wore him out.

William Witherup is the author of Down Wind, Down River: New and Selected Poems. West End Press, 2000

(C) William Witherup 2003


Godless?
By STEW ALBERT

Ever think
Pat Robertson might be right
about a supra-rational shield
protecting us
against tooth decay
and all evil
having been lifted
for our
sins without ending?

Killing Indians
Jim Crow's Strange Fruit
Hiroshima's melted souls
Vietnam napalm
and the clincher
was
lying passive
as moron played
Steal This White House.

Our lease is up.
Certifiable loons
acting out nightmares
of pathetic power.
Citizens watching the news
and voting yes
on
amok now!

Shield is gone.
All our emperors are naked
So are their spectators.
America a laughing stock
of tears.

Stew Albert manages the Yippie Reading Room. He can be reached at: stewa@aol.com

 

Deadheat
By DEBBIE FLEMING

white lies/black lies
bobby dylan in a white tie--and a cowboysuit
his band was slammin, rockin root
the legends mumble lines were moot
the dead dont speak, so they cant lie
cool old folks on a sound-tech high
jerrys gone, theyre still tryinta fly
the crowd was stoned on white, swept in varilite, the joint was made for ice
houselites: midnite? out to the tie-die street
and walk on back, down the track, in the sticky Tampa heat

Debbie Fleming can be reached at: jusaresunshine@yahoo.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

 

 

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