Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
November 7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
November
8, 2003
The Anti-Empire Report
A
Permanent Occupation?
By WILLIAM BLUM
When Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed of Malaysia
recently declared that "Jews rule this world by proxy"
and urged Muslim nations to unite to avoid being "defeated
by a few million Jews," he was heavily criticized throughout
the Western world for anti-Semitism. Largely obscured was the
fact that in the same address, Mahathir had been much more harsh
with his fellow Muslims, calling them a backward people, crippled
by religious superstition and enfeebled by infighting. But no
one in the West accused him of being anti-Muslim. And when the
US Senate voted -- without dissent -- to restrict military aid
to Malaysia in retaliation (for his remark about Jews, not the
one about Muslims), who amongst Mahathir's critics conceded that
this lent some credence to his statement about Jewish influence?
* * *
The Most Reverend Pat Robertson recently
called for the nuking of the State Department. "If I could
just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom," he said
over the radio. "I think that's the answer." Imagine
that a Muslim minister -- or any Muslim -- had said the same
on the radio -- or even in a private conversation. Imagine anyone
who wasn't an influential conservative Christian or Jew saying
the same in this day and age. Imagine the consequences.
* * *
George W. recently designated Otto Reich,
his Special Envoy for Western Hemisphere Initiatives, to lead
a delegation to attend the commemoration ceremony of the 20th
Anniversary of "the restoration of democracy to Grenada".
Bad enough that Reich has on his resume abetting anti-Cuban terrorists
who bombed a plane out of the air killing 73 people, bad enough
that what actually happened in October 1983 in Grenada was the
US overthrowing another government which was not a threat to
anyone and covering it up with a campaign of lies that stood
unmatched until the present-day Iraq fiasco, but here's what
"the restoration of democracy to Grenada" looked like
at the time: At the end of 1984, former Premier Herbert Blaize
was elected prime minister, his party capturing 14 of the 15
parliamentary seats. Blaize, who in the wake of the invasion
had proclaimed to the United States: "We say thank you from
the bottom of our hearts," had been favored by the Reagan
administration. The candidate who won the sole opposition seat
announced that he would not occupy it because of what he called
"vote rigging and interference in the election by outside
forces." One year later, the Washington-based Council on
Hemispheric Affairs reported on Grenada as part of its annual
survey of human rights abuses:
Reliable accounts are circulating of
prisoners being beaten, denied medical attention and confined
for long periods without being able to see lawyers. The country's
new US-trained police force has acquired a reputation for brutality,
arbitrary arrest and abuse of authority.
The report added that an offending all-music
radio station had been closed and that US-trained counter-insurgency
forces were eroding civil rights. By the late 1980s, the government
began confiscating many books arriving from abroad, including
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and Nelson Mandela Speaks.
In April 1989, it issued a list of more than 80 books which were
prohibited from being imported. Four months later, Prime Minister
Blaize suspended Parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence
vote resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly
authoritarian style".[1]
* * *
A seemingly odd dispute broke out recently
between the White House and a majority of the members of Congress,
including many Republicans, over the nature of the Iraq reconstruction
funds. Congress insisted that a significant portion of the money
be in the form of loans, while the Bush administration wanted
it all to be grants, even threatening a veto of the spending
bill if it required Iraq to repay any of the money. In the end,
the White House got its way. But what was it all about? Could
it be that the Bushgang wanted to be more generous to the people
of Iraq? That's hardly in keeping with its bombing, invasion
and occupation of the same people. Rather, it's probably another
indication that the Bush  Administration has no intention of leaving
Iraq. A loan which has to be repaid would be money owed by the
US occupation authorities, providing them with less funds for
the likes of Halliburton, Bechtel and other friends of George
and Dick.
* * *
Comparisons between the current Iraq
quagmire and the infamous Vietnam quagmire are being raised more
and more these days. But one vital difference is never pointed
out; namely, that in Vietnam the US had a temporary objective,
while in Iraq it's permanent. In Vietnam, the object was to destroy
the possibility of a state arising there that could serve as
an example of an alternative to the capitalist development model
for other Asian countries. Ideally, this could be achieved by
instituting a pro-American government. Although this proved beyond
Washington's means, once Vietnam had been bombed, napalmed and
Agent-Oranged into a basket case, which would not inspire anyone,
the US was free to leave, with mission accomplished. In Iraq,
the object is to colonize the place for a host of ongoing imperial
needs, so there's no plan to leave in the foreseeable future.
* * *
Clinton's former chief of staff, John
Podesta, has formed a new think tank, the Center for American
Progress. This was characterized by the Washington Post[2] as
"the liberal's answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation".
This is a very common misunderstanding in the mainstream media
and among the public -- the idea that neo-conservatives (far
to the right on the political spectrum) and liberals (ever so
slightly to the left of center) are ideological polar opposites.
Thus, a radio or TV show with a neo-con and a liberal thinks
of itself as "balanced". However, the opposite of a
conservative -- particularly the new breed that prominently advise
the White House and Pentagon, and often occupy positions there
-- is a left-wing radical, progressive or socialist. Liberals
are often closer to conservatives, especially in foreign policy,
than they are to these groups on the far left. In this light,
the never-ending debate about whether the media has a conservative
or a liberal bias takes on much less significance.
NOTES
1. For all the details, see William Blum,
"Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World
War II", chapter 45.
2. November 5, 2003. p.C3
William Blum is
the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II, Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|