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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Patrick Cockburn's Eyewitness in Baghdad: Saddam's Stuffed Horse; 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! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Coming in September From AK Press 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.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

August 7, 2003 Who Will Speak Up? Conscience Takes a Holiday By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN While the airwaves jangle gleefully with the killings of Saddam's sons and grandson, life in Iraq continues to spiral downward. This is not out of Al-Jazeera or Abu Dhabi TV, but from that sober organ, the New York Times. The July 15 issue of the Times carries a front page dispatch from Neela Banerjee, its Baghdad correspondent. Rape and abduction, she reports, have become so common in the anarchy following the American occupation, that women have taken to closeting themselves in their homes rather than risk danger to life and dignity. Such a development, in what was one of the Arab World's most pro-women societies (Saddam's head of biological weapons was female!), sadly sums up the American claim of 'liberating' Iraq. Some liberation, indeed, when 50% of the population is forced to stay home in fear! What the Taliban enforced by edict, America has wrought by bungling. Excepting that both went about it with similar fanatical overtones of divine purpose. In the editorial section of the same paper, Thomas Friedman lauds the Iraq initiative. He goes so far as to concede that the Bush Administration's claim of WMD's was 'phony'. But, Friedman goes on breathlessly, that is because they were chary of stating the real purpose--namely "to install a decent, tolerant, pluralistic, multireligious government in Iraq that would be the best answer and antidote to both Saddam and Osama." These are Friedman's reasons for the war, reasons that Bush and Co. have never seriously signed on to. (If you're asking whether even the best intentions are valid enough cause for any country to invade another, save it-- you would only reveal your back-number status in the post 9-11 world). In his recent columns, Mr. Friedman sounds more shrill than sage, more fanciful than factual--as he reads Bush's mind, divining noble impulses of which its owner himself seems unaware--reminding one of Iraq's Information Minister al Saraf's free clairvoyance during the fall of Baghdad. The Bush administration procession from one egregious innovation to another is reminiscent of an old Indian movie where a fine, upstanding, lawyer is led inevitably from crime to bigger crime until one day he finds he has broken all ten commandments he had taught his young son. The latest act of brazenness is the new policy of targetted assassination. Not only has America put a bounty of $25 million on Saddam's head (and $15 million each on his sons) --it also has hit squads trying to bump him off. Such is the degradation of sound-byte journalism that there is little public debate (let alone horror) of the implications of the United States government openly entering the mafia's domain. The Times' article details a searing tale of a 9 year-old child called Sanariya, raped by a stranger, and now beaten daily by its brothers and parents for the 'shame' of the incident. The article says there is no policing in Baghdad, and abduction of women has become so common that parents wait outside girls' schools all day until their children return safely. If a lone sexual assault by a soldier is a war crime, then surely, widespread rape and abduction enabled by a planned and deliberate war can be hardly called any less. An international community with any sense of outrage would speak up, and call the 'Coalition Partners' on the carpet. But other than an aging Mandela, one has hardly sees anyone of international stature doing so. The usual purveyors of morality? Not a word from Vaclav Havel. Not a peep from Lech Walesa. Complete silence from Mikhail 'Popular in America, Hated in Russia' Gorbachev. Even Chirac and Schroeder seem to have gone mute, awed by the swift military blitzkrieg. As to the third world, no leader seems to have the vision, let alone the voice, that something enormously vital is at stake? And in the United States, it is funny to see the brouhaha over 16 words, when the administration's entire Iraq enterprise was steeped in falsehood. Are world leaders going to speak up? Or have we all become so lost on the highway to hyper-consumption, our collective conscience blinded by visions of reconstruction contracts, that we view the Sanariyas of Iraq as no more than road-kill? Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer based on the west coast. You can see more of his writings at Indogram. He can be contacted at njn_2003@yahoo.com. 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       Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /