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Today's
Stories
November 11, 2003
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
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.
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Veteran's
Day Edition
November 11, 2003
Paying Lip Service
to Sacrificial Victims
Born
on Veteran's Day
By JOHN ESKOW
I was born on November 11th, 1949--on Veterans'
Day--at a time when Veterans' Day still had the power to haunt
men's eyes, and enchant children with displays of huge tanks
and mounted guns, and--if this sounds impossible, remember, it
was fifty-four years ago--even had the power to unite the citizens
of a hometown in a spirit of reverence for the wounded and dead
soldiers who had fought to keep our '50s America boringly safe,
endlessly calm. That's how it felt, in upstate New York, fifty-four
years ago today.
So it was a curious thing, to be a little
boy whose birthday was Veterans' Day. The very first year that
I displayed a basic ability to understand English, my father--an
ex-vaudevillian, always desperate to amuse himself--promised
me that he'd made special arrangements for my birthday: the regular
cake-and-playing-cowboy party wasn't good enough for his son;
no, there would be "big crowds marching right down Gennessee
Street"-the main drag of Utica, New York, the decaying mill-town
in which we lived.
I was a kid, but I wasn't a nitwit, and
I couldn't figure out how my father could deliver on his promise.
And when he actually did-when the surplus tanks rolled slowly
past the boarded-up factories, and people lined the parade route
as if posing for Norman Rockwell-I actually believed, for maybe
twenty minutes, that somehow my father could work miracles.
And even when the joke finally played itself out, and I was told
the truth, I could still marvel that this day of commemoration
could bring our dying town-and the whole country-closer to some
real kind of Union.
Did I mention just how LONG ago that
was? And that the universe is hurtling in reverse, at the speed
of light?
Today's always-compelling AOL News carried
this story:
"Even as thousands of U.S. troops
are stationed in war zones abroad, plans for Veterans' Day parades
across the country are being scaled back or scrapped."
(Kind of cold, that "scrapped"
thing, but shock was still dulling the true impact.)
"The problem? Not enough troops,
tanks and HumVees to wow the patriotic crowds."
(You might've hoped that truly "patriotic
crowds" wouldn't need to be "wowed" by Schwarzengger-style
hardware-though perhaps the Governor would be willing to lend
out some of his vehicles for the day; shouldn't the fact that
men and women are still willing to die and suffer for the love
of their country "wow" American citizens itself?)
"Some cities are depending on Boy
Scouts and other non-military marchers to fill the gaps (sic.)"
Bad idea. Spectacularly bad idea. Uh-uh.
It's no good using Boy Scouts, or defrocked priests, or distinguished-looking
men in their 50s who are under arrest for corporate fraud as
Ringer Vets. And don't try rounding up homeless old men, promising
them pints of Thunderbird if they'll act like ex-infantrymen.
Even if we can't have marching bands anymore, and crowds along
the parade route, and Life magazine-type images of joyful sailors
kissing gorgeous civilian women, you've got to go with actual
war veterans. Well, there are 131,600 troops deployed in Iraq
right now, which makes them unavailable for public appearances.
Fair enough. But--if nothing else--if you can't scare up any
vets in the flesh-if they're too sick, and this is their "Off"
week for heart medication because the government only pays for
half their pills now-and even if the younger ones are wasting
their days in the florescent-lit waiting-rooms of V.A. buildings,
fighting to be officially diagnosed with Gulf War Disease-then
at least, as Arthur Miller said, "attention must be paid."
Our warriors have to be honored somehow.
So why doesn't anyone seem to give a
fuck? How can they even dare to play "the Boy Scout hand",
so to speak?
You'd have to dig around page A-23 of
the Washington Post to find a clue: buried there over the weekend
was a story about how the Bush Administration is not allowing
the coffins of dead service-people to be seen, much less photographed;
and it took no less a social critic than Cher to wonder aloud
why there's absolutely no coverage of the hundreds of veterans
suffering TODAY in hospitals all over the country. The Bush
media experts have insisted that curtains be placed around the
cots of the badly wounded to prevent anyone from taking photographs.
So it's not that we don't have enough veterans to put on a decent
show; it's just that they're being kept hidden away, like Faulknerian
idiots, by a family invested in keeping their very existence
a secret. I'll even go where Cher doesn't tread: how many soldiers
have been awarded Bronze Stars for this "war?" How
many Distinguished Service Crosses, or just plain old Purple
Hearts--the ones that used to adorn almost every vet's lapel
back in the day when our government paid more than lip-service
to its sacrificial victims.
Wait...that's not completely fair. Today,
Bush has signed perhaps his most visionary piece of legislation-The
National Cemetary Expansion Act-to establish new boneyards in
places like Bakersfield, California and Jacksonville, Florida.
Since 1,500 American veterans die every day, and the Veterans'
Affairs Department expects the number to peak at 687,000 in 2006-barring
further adventures, of course-the N.C.E.A. may prove even more
prescient than the Patriot Act by the time Bush is driven from
office.
To read the e-mail responses to this
AOL news-piece was heartbreaking-a kind of folk-literature of
the abandoned soldier. "As a fellow veteran there was a
time when I was extremely proud to be ret.service member &
vet.In the world we live in today I find myslf 2nd guessing that
pride.our service members today are used as thugs thieves/murders
of Inocent women & children,I say to you when that military
officer knocks on the door of the family member,whose loved oneJust
got zapped in Iraq what does he say to the family,your loved
one died protecting his country,I dont think so.In the first
place there was no reason to be there,No wmd/nothreat/no nukes/so
what we have left is Iraque freedom & we all know thats a
crock of crap,the Iraque people are less free now than many years.(
A lier in the white house is a serious threat to national security)."
As a man descended from military traditions
on both sides of his family, I always carried this birthday proudly--even
while fighting against the war in Viet Nam, and being 1-A at
the height of the Tet Offensive, and vamping my way through two
horrifying draft physicals--scenes directly from Bosch, vast
hellishly-lit halls full of shrieking 18-year-olds who KNEW they
were going to die. I was proud of being born on November 11th
even as I was being accused by Peter Kann, editor of The Wall
Street Journal, of personally "spitting on the graves of
American war dead" by writing a movie called Air America,
about the CIA's role in the dope-trade during the war in Southeast
Asia. I was proud because my great-grandfather, John Temple-my
full name is John Temple Eskow-fought for the Union Army in 1864,
and was left to bleed to death in an abandoned schoolhouse by
Confederate soldiers, but somehow made it through. Proud of
my grandfather, John Temple, who fought in the Ardennes in World
War I, where his lungs were scalded by mustard gas. Proud and
grieving for my uncle and direct namesake, John Temple, who I
never met-he was killed when his C-47 crashed in the waters of
the Indian Ocean in World War II. And I was in awe of my uncle
Jerry, who helped take a beach-head in Southern Italy, rigging
together those intricate, pipe-like Barleymore mines to blow
up enemy pillboxes under heavy machinegun-fire (yes, like that
scene in Saving Private Ryan). Through just wars, dubious wars,
and flat-out bad ones, my forefathers have shown up for America.
Now, as the America of Bush and Rumsfeld
and Cheney and Powell seeks to bury their very existence in the
pitiful hope of creating an upward blip in Bush's poll-numbers,
I feel even closer to them. And since I'm lucky enough to be
in possession of my great-grandfather's Union Army dog-tags,
and the musket-ball the surgeons removed from his side-the one
that should've killed him, and kept me from ever drawing breath-and
his discharge papers, perhaps I could be allowed my own commemoration
of Veterans' Day. Most of us could do the same, if we had access
to our history, which is what we have to battle for every day
that George Bush and his friends rule this country. Most of
us could observe the day by simply reading, out loud, something
like the simple document I keep pressed under glass in a wooden
cabinet:
"Know Ye, that John L. Temple, a
private of Captain John Land's Company, 66th Regiment of Indiana,
who was Enrolled on the 7th day of August, 1862, is Discharged
this 28th day of November, 1862, at Indianapolis, by reason of
Disability from a Gunshot in his Left Side, received in Battle
near Richmond, Kentucky."
We don't need parades. We just need
to remember.
John Eskow
is a screenwriter, who wrote the script for one of CounterPunch's
favorite movies, Air America. He can be reached at: eskow@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 8 / 9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
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