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Today's
Stories
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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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Weekend
Edition
October 11 / 13, 2003
Failing
America
Duplicity at Home
and Abroad
By WILLIAM A. COOK
Have the American people capitulated to the manufactured
fear fabricated by Bush, Ashcroft and Ridge? Are we the sheep
Churchill mocked when he said, "Sheep don't need whipping"?
Do we sit passively in front of our television sets listening
to lie after lie and do nothing, knowing now that these lies
sent American boys abroad as administration aggressors, yea,
as unprovoked invaders of a foreign land, as occupiers entrusted
with securing the natural resources of that land to be used to
pay for the reconstruction caused by the invasion? Had we known
the truth would we have agreed to be the mercenaries of the Cabal,
to secure for them the millions they will accrue from contracts
paid for by our tax dollars while we suffer the indignity of
being labeled across the globe, "foot soldiers of the corporate
elite"? Has the "dumbing down" of America, that
has turned our Democracy into a "Corpocrisy," turned
us as well into corporate robots to be used at will by those
who buy our politicians?
Tyranny in any guise, the medal bedecked
uniform of the military dictator or the meticulously pressed
pin striped suit, steals the unalienable rights of the citizen,
and we have been robbed! This administration assumed power; it
did not receive the consent of the governed. Its actions have
not secured the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness;
rather its actions have fostered insecurity, restricted freedom,
and cobbled the pursuit of happiness. A review of this administration's
abuses of power tells the tale, and we need only reflect on a
few of these abusive actions to prove the case.
The peoples' freedom to authorize their
government to go to war in their name cannot be exercised correctly
or legally if the arguments presented by the administration have
been  fabricated
to delude the people. Yet that is exactly what this administration
has done: it raised the specter of WMD because it would "sell"
to the public; it lied brazenly to the people about the existence
of nuclear weapons; and, perhaps the most insidious lie of all,
it gave the people reason to believe that Iraq participated in
the terror that brought death to 3000 Americans on 9/11. None
of these purported facts are true.
Nothing a government does has more lasting
impact on its citizens than war. To rouse a nation to pre-emptively
invade another without provocation forces on its citizens an
implicit moral responsibility grounded in the belief that the
action is justified. Such justification did not exist; it was
manufactured by a group of men for their ulterior motives unknown
to the American people. The consequences have been devastating:
American soldiers die daily, the cost of the invasion mounts
beyond comprehension, more than 7000 innocent Iraqi civilians
have died, unrecorded thousands have been maimed and injured,
an estimated 30,000 conscripted Iraqi soldiers, many young boys,
have been killed, the cultural heritage decimated by bombs and
looting, streets, homes, hospitals, schools, water and energy
plants destroyed, horrendous unemployment, crime everywhere,
and a people distrustful of the Americans with many determined
to throw out the occupiers at any cost. The moral responsibility
can no longer be couched in justifiable terms; it becomes now
a moral responsibility of restitution due the Iraqi people. Yet,
no one in this administration will take responsibility for this
turn of events; no one will pay the cost, only the American soldier,
only the soldier's family, only the taxpayer.
What protection of American life has
this pre-emptive invasion secured for our people? Prior to the
invasion, no American woke in fear that an Iraqi would cause
them harm. Prior to the invasion, Iraq did not provide sanctuary
to terrorists. Prior to the invasion, Americans enjoyed the approbation
and sympathy of people throughout the world. Prior to the invasion,
Americans united in compassion and charity for those who had
suffered the atrocity of 9/11. Now 135,000 soldiers wake to the
imminence of death; now terrorists flock to Iraq to foster the
fanaticism that fuels terror; now Americans have become the pariah
of the world, the cause of the terrorism that we set out to eradicate;
now Americans stand divided not united as they contend with the
deception fostered by this administration. Rather than protecting
American life, the administration imperils American life around
the globe.
That reality becomes the more frightening
when we remember that the "war" against Iraq became
a threat just before the 2002 fall elections, announced in September
before the UN, the best time to "sell" a new product
following the August vacation break. The selling of Saddam's
demise coincided not only with the fall elections but also with
the UN report on the inhumane catastrophic conditions in Palestine
and the second invasion of the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin.
Iraq, as the administration knew all too well, would dominate
the news relieving the administration of responsibility to intervene
in the Israeli invasion just as it released Sharon from any fetters
Washington might impose on his savagery. The deception held until
Bush declared the aggression over in Iraq. In the interim, Bush
took his case to the UN.
The Arab world sat in disbelief as Bush
went to the Security Council to demand that Iraq comply with
UN resolutions, condemning its inaction against a nation that
defies its resolutions while citing its irrelevance if it does
nothing. The duplicity of the administration's behavior was lost
on America but not on the rest of the world, for they knew that
the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the
frightening power Israel wielded against its powerless foe had
full American support. Still Bush went to the UN condemning Iraq.
Iraq, Bush claimed, defied 16 UNSC resolutions; he did not mention
that Israel continues to defy 69. Iraq, he bellowed with fingers
crossed behind his back, has WMD including nuclear, biological
and chemical, a clear threat to peaceful nations; he did not
mention that Israel has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
and has threatened to use them. Iraq, he cried, has invaded its
neighbor, Kuwait; he did not mention that Israel has occupied
all but 22% of Palestinian land since 1967 and refuses to return
that land despite numerous UN resolutions demanding that it do
so. He pointed out that the UN has cited Saddam for human rights
violations; he did not mention that the UN has cited Israel for
such violations over and over since its founding in 1948.
But Bush duplicity does not end there.
He condemns Arafat for support of terrorist acts; he doesn't
condemn Sharon for hurling $300,000 missiles into crowded streets
ostensibly to kill a person judged and condemned to death on
Sharon's say so without recourse to any legal process while 17
die and many others are wounded, actions that even Israeli pilots
have condemned. He praises Israel as a democratic nation, the
only one in the mid-east; but he refuses to recognize the duly
elected President of the PLO who garnered more support from his
people than the "elected" Prime Minister of Israel,
Ariel Sharon, did from his. He demands that Iraq draw up a constitution
before it receives full independence, yet Israel has had 50 years
to draw up a constitution and has not done so, but continues
to be proclaimed a democracy. He won't allow Iraq to have general
elections fearing that the Shite majority might win and design
a theocratic form of government, yet he says nothing about Israel
and its Jewish citizenry that denies equal citizenship to non-Jews.
While the world, through its UN representatives, drew up a resolution
condemning the Israeli government's statements that it would
force Arafat out of Palestine or assassinate him, actions decidedly
opposed to democratic principles, Bush chided the UN for one-sidedness.
Bush calls upon the EU to freeze the assets of Hamas and condemn
that organization as a terrorist front, but he did not ask the
EU to recognize as terrorist supporters the right-wing Evangelical
Zionist churches for providing millions of dollars to the terrorist
settlers in occupied Palestine. This duplicity rouses anger,
indeed, hatred against America, not only in the Arab world, but
also in Europe and Asia.
Some in America took heart when the administration
appeared to balk at the continued construction of the Israeli
security "fence" that ostensibly protects Israeli citizens
even as it secures the future inclusion of Zionist settlements
that exist illegally in Palestine territory; perhaps this concretion
of duplicity would even wake the sleeping American public. But
the fence continues, a fence constructed of slabs of cement garnished
with barbed wire and electric currents, the kind of impediment
used to corral cattle and wild animals in zoos. And how does
the administration demonstrate its anger at thwarting the Commander's
orders? By withholding millions in the supplementary Israeli
aid package, monies earmarked for years down the road ensuring
that nothing will impede the building of the wall. Avraham Burg
put it succinctly: "The Zionist revolution has always rested
on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither
of those is operative any longer It turns out that the 2000-year
struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements,
run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both
to their citizens and to their enemies." (The Observer,
9/14/03)
Last March I spent time in Prague visiting
the Jewish ghetto there. Walls surround much of that ghetto even
today, walls constructed by the authorities when the Catholic
Church through an edict of the Third Lateran Council decided
in 1179 that Catholics should not come in contact with Jews who
had resided in Prague since the 10th century, something like
the situation in Palestine where the indigenous population (say
Palestinians), lived since the 4th century CE. That edict resulted
in the "ghettoizing" of the district, forcing 7,000
Jews to be packed into a network of putrid, squalid alleys where
personal indignity rotted beneath the wall that separated those
in power from those imprisoned. Now we have a government that
acts in our name, like the Lateran Council deciding for Medieval
Catholics whom they shall meet with and whom they shall spurn,
as it allows and provides the money to a sordid regime in Israel
to wall-in a population in their own land even as that regime
defies the world community by refusing to give back the land
to the indigenous people to whom it rightfully belongs. America's
absolute support for the Sharon government, despite the terrorism
it levels at the Palestinians, and its obvious belittlement of
the PLO, mocks the roadmap it proffers as a solution to the crisis.
How can a people so treated construct an "Israeli wall of
humiliation"? How can an American support a President who
acquiesces to such degradation of a people?
Condoleezza Rice called the creation
of a democratic government in Iraq "the moral mission of
our time." Yet she speaks as an advisor to a government
that manufactures policy out of politics, fabricates evidence
from lies, conjures reason from duplicitous acts, extols freedom
of speech as it maligns dissenters, lauds democracy as it illegally
occupies a sovereign state, decries terrorism as it supports
the most savage terrorist regime in the world, and she has the
gall to overlook the need to create a democratic government in
America! This regime, this Bush regime, has failed the American
people. It is time we give our consent to those who govern us.
Sitting passively is no longer an option.
William Cook
is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern
California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was just published by
Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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