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Today's Stories

December 12, 2003

David Vest
Bush Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton

December 11, 2003

Siegfried Sassoon
A Soldier's Declaration Against War

Douglas Valentine
Preemptive Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program

John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra

Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride

James M. Carter
The Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq


December 10, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
The War According to Newt Gingrich

Pat Youngblood / Robert Jensen
Workers Rights are Human Rights

Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children

CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart Case

Dave Lindorff
Gore's Judas Kiss


December 9, 2003

Michael Donnelly
A Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder

Chris White
A Glitch in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?

Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style

Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus

Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now

Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens

Ron Jacobs
Remembering John Lennon

 

December 8, 2003

Newton Garver
Bolivia at a Crossroads

John Borowski
The Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville

William Blum
Anti-Empire Report: Revised Inspirations for War

Tess Harper
When Christians Kill

Thom Rutledge
My Next Step

Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear Terror and Psychic Numbing

Michael Neumann
Ignatieff: Apostle of He-manitariansim

Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak

 

December 6 / 7, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great

CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of Anti-Semitism"

Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist

Saul Landau
"Reality Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq

Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win

Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer

Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?

Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire

Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami

Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia

Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia and Dominican Republic

Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank

Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race

Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN

Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise

Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation

Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley

Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday

Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean"

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston

Mickey Z.
Press Box Red

Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert

T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?

 

December 5, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
Bremer of the Tigris

Jeremy Brecher
Amistad Revisited at Guantanamo?

Norman Solomon
Dean and the Corp Media Machine

Norman Madarasz
France Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination

Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan: the Road Back


December 4, 2003

M. Junaid Alam
Image and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein

Adam Engel
Republican

Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI

Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia

Gary Leupp
The Fall of Shevardnadze

Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr

December 3, 2003

Stan Goff
Feeling More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money

Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates

George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?

Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart

John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario

Harry Browne
Shannon Warport: "No More Business as Usual"

 

December 2, 2003

Matt Vidal
Denial and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom

Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas

Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?

Norman Solomon
That Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test

Josh Frank
Trade War Fears

Andrew Cockburn
Tired, Terrified, Trigger-Happy


December 1, 2003

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam

Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland

Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media

Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?

Gilad Atzmon
About "World Peace"

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes


November 29 / 30, 2003

Peter Linebaugh
On the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone

Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos

Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math

Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative

Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview with John Pilger

Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam

Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream

Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia

Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser

Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali

Standard Schaefer
Unions are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes

Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay Bridge

Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again

Adam Engel
The System Really Works

Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool

Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans

Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace

Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith

 

 

November 28, 2003

William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes

David Vest
Turkey Potemkin

Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks

Wayne Madsen
Wag the Turkey

Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited

Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?

South Asia Tribune
The Story of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words

Website of the Day
Bush Draft


November 27, 2003

Mitchel Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving

Jack Wilson
An Account of One Soldier's War

Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas

Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD

Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer

Neve Gordon
Gays Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa

 


November 26, 2003

Paul de Rooij
Amnesty International: the Case of a Rape Foretold

Bruce Jackson
Media and War: Bringing It All Back Home

Stew Albert
Perle's Confession: That's Entertainment

Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities

David Orr
Miami Heat

Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists on the Beach

Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami

Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates

Kathy Kelly
Hogtied and Abused at Ft. Benning

Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement

 


November 25, 2003

Linda S. Heard
We, the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy

Diane Christian
Hocus Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators

Mark Engler
Miami's Trade Troubles

David Lindorff
Ashcroft's Cointelpro

Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas


November 24, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
The Miami Model

Elaine Cassel
Gulag Americana: You Can't Come Home Again

Ron Jacobs
Iraq Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?

Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant

 

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.

 

 

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December 12, 2003

Follow the Money

Halliburton, Timber and Dean

By JOSH FRANK

The Pentagon has finally weighed in; Halliburton may have overcharged the US government $61 million dollars in gasoline from Iraq. At this point it's not a matter of whether or not Halliburton gouged our wallets, it's a matter of "how much" they ripped us off.

And Dick Cheney's old comrades aren't the only greedy capitalists hoping to profit from the Iraq calamity. Thankfully, the Pentagon has caught onto Kellogg, Brown and Root's latest scheme, and smashed it. The crooks would have overcharged US taxpayers $67 million dollars for cafeteria services in Iraq.

Bush's reaction? Only we can profit from this war! Of course our allies can reap the benefits of the smoldering battlefield as well. But France, Germany, Canada and Russia?

Forget about it.

Well how have the Democrats reacted to all this? "I have long been troubled by the continued growth of the Pentagon's no-bid contract with Halliburton," wrote New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg this week, "[and] the delay in the Pentagon's promise to compete [with] this contract competitively."

That's it? He is just "long been troubled?" Not "outraged," "furious," or "irate" over Bush's lies and deceit? Give me a break.

If you notice Lautenberg is mainly upset because the Pentagon has delayed their promise to allow other corporations to compete over Iraq contracts. He does not once acknowledge that nobody should profit from this illegal invasion. But we can't count on the Democrats to stand up to the imperial aggressors in the White House-that would be asking far too much from a party controlled by the same pin-stripe patrons as the Republicans.

Well, how about Howard Dean? He's grassroots, and a nubile compared to Bush and Rove's whorish fundraising talents. He must have something to say on the issue. Right?

Unfortunately, Dean has been far too tight lipped.

He does talk tough from time to time about corporation's authority over our government's policies. "The oil companies write our energy policy; big pharmaceutical companies draft Medicare reform without price controls," Dean recently said, "and in Iraq, Halliburton is awarded a $1.7 billion no-bid contract." Sounds good to me. But since this statement last fall, we've heard very little from Dean on the escalating matter of Halliburton in Iraq.

Why is that? Could it be that his campaign is receiving money from Halliburton connections too? Say it ain't so!

Sorry, it is.

According to FCC records, Robert L. Crandall (from Dallas Texas), has given Dean $2,000 to date. Who is Crandall you ask? He is the ex-CEO of American Airlines, and has sat on the board of (you guessed it) Halliburton since 1986.

Obviously this does not mean Dean is wed to Halliburton, or anywhere near as embedded as old Dick Cheney. But it does remind us to keep our eyes peeled for future contributions to Dean, and other Democrats from Halliburton employees, executives, and Board Members.

Also, it should be mentioned that Dean wants to open up Iraq bidding to more contractors; "[a]warding reconstruction contracts in a transparent and open process," Dean's website contends, "not just to Halliburton -- but to the best US or foreign bidder." So it is quite certain that Halliburton competitors will be knocking on Dean's campaign door any day now.

One other Dean tidbit worth noting-it has been revealed that the doctor has an interest in harvesting old trees. That's right. Dean has two stakes of timber land in Virginia, valued at $100,000 and $200,000 respectively, which have recently been priced for liquidation prospects.

Thankfully, cutting down those old trees would be a politically unwise move for Dean to make at this point.

All this means, is that we need to keep a close watch on the Democratic hopefuls. It would be irresponsible to unashamedly cheerlead around a Bush opponent, without fully knowing the facts behind their candidacy. Campaign season is just starting to roll. Plus, if Dean is the victor, it is in our best interest to know what we'll be up against come 2004.

Josh Frank is a writer living in New York. His work has appeared in Left Turn Magazine, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Z Magazine, among others. He can be reached at frank_joshua@hotmail.com

Weekend Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great

CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of Anti-Semitism"

Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist

Saul Landau
"Reality Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq

Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win

Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer

Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?

Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire

Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami

Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia

Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia and Dominican Republic

Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank

Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race

Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN

Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise

Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation

Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley

Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday

Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean"

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston

Mickey Z.
Press Box Red

Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert

T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?

 


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