New & recent articles & links

Colin Powell: Remarks after his meeting with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan (State Department transcript). Only two years ago, Colin Powell was widely regarded as the most politically-neutral member of Bush's cabinet, a career-soldier for whom facts always trumped politics. That was then; this is now. Here is his most-recent weaselly defense of Bush's Iraq war and Powell's own now-discredited statements about Saddam's WMDs to the United Nations. (4 February 2004)

Janet Jackson's right tit (Drudge). Here's what's obscene: we've got a government that is trashing the Bill of Rights, making war and killing untold thousands of people, with vaporware WMD as the rationale—and everyone's all a-tizzy over the obviously-choreographed exposure of Janet Jackson's brooch-decorated right tit during MTV's tacky Superbowl halftime show on CBS. That was the same halftime in which CBS refused to air MoveOn's commercial about the impact of Bush's budget deficit on today's children because CBS found it inappropriate. Drudge says that CBS knew about the tit bit all along. Something's very screwy in America, right? But you knew that, right? Right. (4 February 2004)

Richard Blow: The Breast and the Brightest (TomPaine.com) "CBS is the company that wouldn’t air an anti-Bush ad by MoveOn.org because it didn’t want to offend the White House and conservatives, just as it spiked a Ronald Reagan mini-series to avoid offending the White House and conservatives. And then it runs a halftime show which offends the White House and conservatives. How quickly all the previous sucking up is forgotten." (4 February 2004)

Blunkett attacked over secret trials for terror suspects (The Telegraph). You think John Ashcroft is a ethnophobic religious fanatic run amok in the US Justice Department? Take a look at Great Britain's Home Secretary David Blunkett, who wants to change the prosecution's burden in criminal trials from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "the balance of probabilities" and to make prosecution evidence in terror suspect trials secret. (3 February 2004)

Ghassan Andoni: Palestinian Prisoners: the Ever-Bleeding Wound (IMEMC) Since September 2000, around 28,000 Palestinians have been taken into custody by Israeli forces and 7500 of them are still locked up. 1200 of them, including women and children, are held without charge. (3 February 2004)

Wayne Barrett: Sleeping with the GOP (Village Voice). Why is Bush's chief election dirty tricks guy working so hard for Al Sharpton? Why is Al Sharpton in bed with people like that? (3 February 2004)

John Engen:  An Investor's Kind of Guy (U.S. Banker). Robert Wilmers—chief of the M&T bank, owner of a vineyard in France, and second-richest man in Buffalo—makes billionaire Warren Buffett very happy. Here's why. (31 January 2004)

Bob Herbert: The Halliburton Shuffle (NY Times). The grow fat and rich on federal contracts, often without having to face competition, and Dick Cheney moved them to offshore bases so they pay hardly any taxes at all. Who needs crime when you can do it legally, more or less? (30 January 2004)

Paul Krugman: Where's the apology? (NY Times). "George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Instead, he got rid of accountability....What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?" (30 January 2004)

Roger Lowenstein: The Company they Kept (NY Times Magazine). The fall of the house of Rigas. (30 January 2004)

Bruce L. Fisher: The ECMC deal. The recent change in status of Erie County Medical Center has drawn heat and praise. Some say it's the county once again cynically profiting at Buffalo's expense; others say it provides an opportunity to improve medical care at less cost to everybody. In this letter, County Executive Joel Giambra's chief of staff, who engineered the deal, tells how it looks from his point of view. (30 January 2004)

Hendrick Herzberg: Unsteady State (New Yorker). Polls showed not much enthusiasm for Bush's Mars travel plan, so it didn't appear in his State of the Union speech. Also absent were the words "environment," "AIDs," and "unemployment." Also missing was "weapons of mass destruction," which was replaced with "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." The words "terror" and "war" got a lot of play, as did "tax reduction." (30 January 2004)

George Soros: The US is now in the hands of a group of extremists. Fundamentalism has spawned an ideology of American supremacy (The Guardian). "We have been deceived," writes billionaire Soros. "When he stood for election in 2000, President Bush promised a humble foreign policy. I contend that the Bush administration has deliberately exploited September 11 to pursue policies that the American public would not have otherwise tolerated. The US can lose its dominance only as a result of its own mistakes. At present the country is in the process of committing such mistakes because it is in the hands of a group of extremists whose strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude." (26 January 2004)

A New Cleveland without borders? (Plain Dealer). There's another tired rust-belt city and county wrestling with the question of going regional: Cleveland  and Cuyhoga County. Here's what they're saying about it. (26 January 2004)

Film Records Effect of Eating only McDonald's for a Month (New Zealand Herald).  What's more American than McDonald's? The fast-food stores operate in every American city, on or close to every major American highway. You see the familiar double arches in Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Rome, Moscow. So filmmaker Morgan Spurlock decided to eat nothing but McDonald's meals for a month, and he documented the experience in Super Size Me: A Film of Epic Proportions, the dyspeptic hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Belch. Burp. Where's the Maalox? (26 January 2004)

Leonard Peltier: Never, never give up. Every year on the anniversary of his incarceration Leonard Peltier sends a message to his friends and supporters. This is his 28th message. (25 January 2005)

Serge Schmemann: The Only Superbad Power (NY Times). If the prominent authors of the seven recent books reviewed in this omnibus essay have it right, the reason America is more hated now than any time in memory is that George Bush and his cronies in empire did everything possible to make America hateful. (25 January 2004) 

Peter Slatin: Bird on a Wire (Slatin Report). The folks who now control Buffalo's Common Council have significantly downgraded the role of the BiNational Bridge Task Force, the only continuing public forum in which citizens could monitor and sometimes influence the behavior and decisions of the people who will be designing the new Peace Bridge. There's real danger that good design will disappear in the political goo. For a reminder of what is possible when people of vision are also people with influence, take a look at Buffalo native Peter Slatin's report on Santiago Calatrava's magnifient design for the World Trade Center transit hub.  (24 January 2004)

Frank Rich: Oldest Living Whiz Kid Tells All (NY Times). You've read my article on why Errol Morris's Fog of War is an important documentary film because of the questions it leaves unanswered, and you've read Alex Cockburn's blistering essay on why the film is a total failure because it never exposes McNamara for being a clinical killer of millions. In this thoughtful essay, Frank Rich considers what the film tells us about now—not just the obvious and easy parallels with the Bush administration, but also where the parallels fail and what it Donald Trump has to do with all of this. (25 January 2004) 

Alexander Cockburn: The Fog of Cop-out: Robert McNamara 10, Errol Morris 0 (CounterPunch). In The Fog of War, Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense out-maneuvered, out-gunned and outran documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who wasn't trying very hard anyway. (24 January 2004)

Ben Cohen's Oreo cookie theory of the federal budget and how to join the True Majority. A nice animation in which Ben Cohen (founder of Ben & Jerry's) illustrates how slight reallocation of the federal budget could heal our mutilated education system and save the lives of millions of children. He also tells you how to join True Majority, an interesting new citizen lobby. Membership is free and takes almost no time, but it could help get your voice heard by people in Washington who otherwise listen only to lobbyists and voices in the night. (24 January 2004)

Spectator: Griffin is still grifting...conservative confusion in Amherst...and Bush is still AWOL. The chief of  BR's undercover operation updates what the scoundrels have been up to. (24 January 2004)

Nat Hentoff: Supreme Court's Gag Rule on Us (Village Voice). Television ads on social and political issues are now banned 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election, and don't even think about airing an ad criticizing the president. Missed that one, didn't you? So did most of us. John Ashcroft didn't. The weird thing it, it was the good guys who stuck us with it. (24 January 2004)

Yonathan Shapira: An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out (CounterPunch). More and more Israeli pilots are refusing to bomb houses with innocent men, women and children in them on the possibility that their bombs will also kill a member of Hamas on the government's death list. The Israeli government says they have betrayed their oaths as members of the military. Here, one of them say why their refusal to kill the innocent honors that oath and responsibility. (24 January 2004)

Rep. Bernie Sanders: Civil Liberties and the Patriot Act. Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders has set up a web page focusing on the Patriot Act's assault on the Bill of Rights. It's got data on Ashcroft's attempt to use bookstores and libraries to build up information databases on people who read (!) and information about communities that have decided to resist. (24 January 2004)

FAIR: Cheney's Iraq Deceptions Leave NPR Speechless. Dick Cheney submitted to a rare interview on NPR January 22 and sat there and told baldfaced lies about Iraq having had a program to produce biological WMD. The baldfaced lies aren't surprising; Cheney does that all the time (see "Herman Goering on patriotism, pacifism and manipulating the people in a time of war," Buffalo Report 24 March 2003). What was surprising was the way NPR reporter Juan Williams rolled over for him. Even though there's a huge amount of data showing Cheney dead wrong, Williams just let Cheney spread it deeper and wider. Perhaps Bill O'Reilly's petulant performance on "Fresh Air" scared the whole NPR team. (24 January 2004)

NPR: The extended NPR interview of Juan Williams with Dick Cheney—includes additional talk that didn't air in the January 22 Morning Edition broadcast. (24 January 2004)

NPR's ombudsman responds to all of that (29 January 2004)

Illicit Arms Gone Before War, Inspector Says (NY Times). Why people giggle or roll their eyes when Dick Cheney and Dubya say Iraq's WMD were the reason we went to war and killed all those people. (24 January 2004)

Arundhati Roy: The New American Century (Nation). Bush's war against the non-Anglo world is, says Indian writer Roy in this January 16 speech at the opening plenary session of the World Social Forum in Mumbai, is the New Imperialism, the New Racism and the New Genocide. (24 January 2004)

Pictures of Saddam's Capture. Your tax dollars at work. Why is the guy in the background in picture #3 wearing kneepads and which of them frizzed up Saddam's hair for picture #8? (24 January 2004)

The best ad you won't see on SuperBowl Sunday. CBS has refused to run during it's Superbowl broadcast the ad that won MoveOn's recent competition.They're running ads from beer and tobacco companies, and from the Bush White House, but not this terrific ad about Bush's deficit.  Click on the link and then click on "Child's Pay" and you can what CBS decided to censor. And click here if you want to sign MoveOn's petition letting CBS know how offensive their toadying to the White House is.  (23 January 2004) 

Jack Wilson: To Die for a Lie. In a recent editorial, the Buffalo News said we went to war in Iraq because we'd been misled. "Little outrage appeared in the words of the editorial. The best writers could manage was a bit of finger-shaking, proclaiming that 'the use of false reasons to justify a war should remain troubling.' Troubling? My arthritis troubles me. This enrages me." We've been harmed not just by the moral failure of the Administration, but by the complicity or failure of nerve of the mainstream press. (23 January 2004) 

Emanuel Fried: Bush's Intentions. Dubya isn't the first US president who lied to the American people about why he manipulated us into a war, but he's the president doing it now and who will continue doing should he get more time in office, which voters should think about that as this election year unfolds. (23 January 2004) 

Halliburton admits 2 employees took a $6 million kickback for Iraq contracts. (Yahoo/Wall Street Journal). These guys are as bad as Manny Fried says they are! (23 January 2004)

Bush Changes his WMD Claims (or Facts? Where we're going we don't need facts.) (The Daily Mis-Lead) How could anyone watch Bush's State of the Union speech and not think and think again of the superbly apt title of Al Franken's recent book, Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them? (22 January 2004)

George W. Bush: State of the Union Speech (NY Times transcription). . Dubya promised everything except eternal life and free pay toilets in his first major 2004 campaign speech, given before both houses of Congress. Republicans jumped up dozens of times, hooted and hollered throughout (especially when he announced he was going to cut in half the huge deficit he's still creating and when he said he wanted this year's tax cuts for the rich to be made permanent). The Democrats mostly sat on their hands, tried to keep their faces straight, and waited for this year to be over. (Here's how it was reported in Le Monde and The Observer, and how The Guardian summed up the response of the US press.) (21 January 2004)

Albert Scardino: Middle-aged technique won Iowa over (Guardian). How the free-for-all for the Democratic nomination looks from England the day after the Iowa caucuses. "With American living in a fog of fear - of terrorism, of foreigners, of other religions - the No 1 concern of the largest number of voters has been security.... Understandable, then, that Iowa Democrats turned to Senator John Kerry, a war hero with a broad grasp of world affairs, supported by a literal army of fellow veterans....This all means less than meets the eye, at least for now..." (20 January 2004)

Uri Avnery: Anti-Semitism: A Practical Manual. (Gush-Shalom). What is anti-Semitism, really? And who's really doing it? Some racist fanatics out there insist that anyone who criticize Israel is a practicing anti-Semite (see the next url). Avnery is the sane and moral alternative to their rabid jingoism. (20 January 2004)

Brian Whitaker: Hate Mail (Guardian). Jewish activists who oppose the Israel government's policies face intimidation and harassment via email and on the internet—much of it from American fanatics. (20 January 2004)

5 million RAF WWII aerial photos have gone online. The archive of World War II aerial reconnaissance photos includes American troops landing in Normandy on D-Day, the effects of the bombing of Cologne, Germany, and the German battleship Bismarck being hunted by the Royal Navy and more. (20 January 2004)

Bob Herbert: A Single Conscience v. The State (NY Times). Bush asked Blair to help the US spy on a half-dozen UN delegations during last-year's run-up to the US/GB invasion and occupation of Iraq. A memo about the illegal plot was leaked to a British newspaper. Tony Blair has his government prosecuting the woman who presumed to act as if the British government should act legally and ethically. (19 January 2004)

Entire Smithsonian/Folkways catalog goes online via Peppercoin (Music Industry News Network). Great news for lovers of traditional music. The late Ralph Rinzler, who was largely responsible for the annual Smithsonian Festival on the Mall, told me that he considered getting the Smithsonian to acquire the entire Folkways catalog and keep all that music available his most important achievement in government. Now all those 33,000 recordings have been digitized and, starting 1 April, will be available for download at 99¢ each--Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and thousands of others. (19 January 2004)

Senator Edward M. Kennedy: A Dishonest War (Washington Post). A shorter and tougher take on Kennedy's earlier "Axis of War" speech: "Hussein's brutal regime was not an adequate justification for war, and the administration did not seriously try to make it one until long after the war began and all the false justifications began to fall apart. There was no imminent threat. Hussein had no nuclear weapons, no arsenals of chemical or biological weapons, no connection to Sept. 11 and no plausible link to al Qaeda. We never should have gone to war for ideological reasons driven by politics and based on manipulated intelligence." (19 January 2004)

Glenn Kessler: Arms Issue Hurting U.S. Credibility Abroad (Washington Post). Most Americans don't seem to much care about Bush & Co. taking the country to war over nonexistent WMD, but the incompetence or deception has been causing serious changes in attitudes in governments that once considered Washington serious, competent and trustworthy. (19 January 2004)

Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2003 (AlterNet). For starters, opium production in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion has gone from 77 tons to 3,600 tons, which constitutes 75% of the world's opium production. If Bush's War on Terrorism goes the same way as his War on Drugs we are eyeball-deep in the Big Muddy. (17 January 2004)

Elaine Cassel: Supreme Court Sanctions Secret Arrests. The Court found nothing wrong with Ashcroft's detention of hundreds of Muslim men without charge of wrongdoing or access to attorneys or families. You're next. (16 January 2004)

Senator Edward M. Kennedy: Axis of War (TomPaine.com). "No President of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," said Ted Kennedy in this January 14 speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington D.C. "In doing so, the President broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war." (16 January 2004)

Spectator: What war on terror was that, exactly? In an article about the increasing GI suicides in Iraq, the Washington Post several times referred to them as casualties in the "war on terror." But no terrorists were operating out of Iraq, nor were there any WMD or facilities for making them. And now we learn that Saddam issued orders telling Iraqis to have nothing to do with outside mischief-makers—exactly the opposite of Bush's claim that he encouraged and supported terrorists. The only war on terror in Iraq is ours, and Americans are dying and being mutilated every day for a lie that the Washington Post, with its careless prose, perpetuates. (16 January 2004)

Jann S. Wenner and Will Dana: The Howard Dean Interview (Rolling Stone). Most of the Democratic presidential candidates have been wracking their brains trying to think up new ways to attack or smear Howard Dean instead of saying what they'd do if they were president or why George W. Bush shouldn't get a second term. They sound-byte him then attack him for the bit they lifted out of context. Dean has been talking mostly about the job and why he thinks he ought to have it. Here's a revealing recent interview. (15 January 2004)

Ari Shavit: Survival of the Fittest: An interview with Benny Morris (Ha'aretz). How does the dean of Israel's new historians, a scholar who has brought into daylight atrocities upon Palestinians by Israelis, now come to justify and endorse ethnic cleansing? Thanks to Jim Holstun for alerting us to this astonishing and disturbing interview with Benny Morris, and for his excellent introductory note to it. (15 January 2004)

Adi Ophir: A Response to Benny Morris: Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion (CounterPunch). The Benny Morris interview is even more vicious, evil and murderous than it seems.

Peyton Randolph: Judging the Future. The Massachusetts supreme court has decreed that gay marriages are legal. The Republican holy-roller deep-south is in a tizzy. How hard will Bush and Cheney work to pretend that's an issue of substance while avoiding discussion of their failure to prevent 9/11 and the real reasons for the oil war in Iraq? (15 January 2004)

Louise M. Slaughter: "Tell Us The Truth: Who Controls What We Hear, Watch and Read?" A Town Meeting on the FCC. More and more tv and radio stations are being owned by fewer and fewer corporations, and the Bush administration is pushing for even more consolidation of ownership of newspapers and broadcast media. This letter from Rep. Slaughter announces a March 8 town meeting on these and other matters with FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein in Rochester. (15 January 2004)

Alexander Cockburn: Bush, Oil & Iraq: Some Truth at Last (CounterPunch). Bill Clinton tried to keep his wife from finding out about an office blowjob and Republicans in unabashed cynicism tied the U.S. government in knots for more than a year frolicking over the impropriety. Now formed Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill reveals that Bush lied to the American people about his intentions about Iraq while campaigning and his reasons for having invaded and occupied Iraq after 9/11, and the Republicans are saying it’s merely a matter of O’Neill having made improper use of the cover of a classified folder. The Democrats are too busy slashing away at one another to notice that anything significant just happened. Someone should tell them that what insider O’Neill has announced is, it’s about Iraq’s oil, stupid, and always has been. (15 January 2004)

Karen Spencer: Privacy of our Financial Records (WBFO). The 2002 PATRIOT Act and the 2003 amendment to the 1978 Right to Financial Privacy Act signed quietly by President Bush have licensed unchecked fishing expeditions into personal records by government agencies in a way that specifically and deliberately destroys the protections the Financial Privacy Act was created to provide. (14 January 2004)

"Free Speech Zone": The Administration Quarantines Dissent (The American Conservative). You want to know how ugly the Bush/Ashcroft repression engine is getting? Even The American Conservative, one of whose three editors is that right-wing ideologue Pat Buchanan, complains they've gone too far in attempting to stifle legitimate criticism. (14 January 2004)

Paul O'Neil on 60 Minutes (CBS). Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told "60 Minutes" reporter Leslie Stahl that the Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq from day one and that 9/11 wasn't the reason for the invasion but was, instead, the excuse for it. The interview was occasioned by The Price of Loyalty, a new book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, for which O'Neill was the primary contributor. The alternative press has been telling everybody this for two years now, but it's nice that CBS and the NY Times have finally decided to report the story too. The Bush Administration response has been stonewalling—if you don't count the announced Treasury Department investigation for improper use of classified materials. Who's going to investigate improper use of the US army and air force? (13 January 2004)

Stephen T. Banko: An Open Letter to the American Soldier from an American Veteran. Time Magazine named The American Soldier its Person of the Year about the same time the VA stepped up its aggressive in cutting veteran's health benefits. Glory and praise are nice—but memory is short and politicians' attention spans are even shorter.  (13 January 2004)

John Ibbitson: Welcome to a new era of liberal democracy (Globe and Mail). The French Revolution suggested that direct rule by everybody can get messy. The US Congress suggests that representative government goes where the big money sends it. Public hearings on legislation are usually dominated by microphone-hugging special interests and egomaniacs. Is there a way liberal democracy can get to work a little better than it seems to? They're trying an interesting experiment in British Columbia. (13 January 2004)

Bruce Jackson: Making war, making movies: the collaboration of Robert S. McNamara and Errol Morris on Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. He was more hated than Rumsfeld, and now he's trying to make sense of his life. Lotsaluck. Sometimes the best documentaries get us asking questions that can't be answered. (Fog of War begins screening at the Amherst Theater in Buffalo on January 31) (11 January 2004).

Susan Jacoby: One Nation, Under Secularism (NY Times). Howard Dean is the latest of the Democratic presidential candidates trying to prove he is every bit as religious as George W. Bush (who justifies his most dysfunctional policies as having been authorized by God in the privacy of their deep and abiding personal relationship). The Religious Right has set demonstrable piety (or lip-service thereto) as litmus of political competence, and not one of the Democrats is willing to risk flunking that test. This hypocrisy or lunacy or dumheit does the nation no good. Rather, Jacoby points out, it ignores the core principle of the Founders, who justified their Constitution on reason, not divine afflatus. (11 January 2004) 

Diane Christian: Lying. Colin Powell held a press conference last week and tried to justify the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, even though the weapons of mass destruction he, Bush and Rumsfeld assured the world were in Iraq and were poised to cause universal havoc now turn out not to have existed. Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stars in a new Errol Morris film in which he too tries to justify his life. How does truth play in all of this? Can these guys get off with "Aw shucks, we thought we were telling you the truth?" When is it self-deception and when it is lying and how does anyone tell the difference between the two? (10 January 2003) 

The S.H.I.T.-List. The most vicious anti-semites in America aren't the few surviving retro fruitcakes with swastikas in their closets, but rather those self-righteous Jews who attack and try to silence—without conscience, doubt or scruple—any Jew who attempts to discuss seriously the ethics or morality or decency or utility of any action taken by the State of Israel or the illegal squatters in the Occupied Territories. The latest in that venomous war against free, open and intelligent discussion is the Self-Hating Israel-Threatening List (it's an acronymn; get it? gee), which includes such enemies of thought as Gloria Steinem, Studs Terkel, Alan Trachtenberg, Woody Allen, Susan Sontag, Stew Albert, Susan Udin, Harvey Weinstein, Ed Asner, George Soros, Art Spiegelman, Uri Avnery, Richard Dreyfuss, Tony Judt, Neve Gordon, Jimmy Breslin (I guess they made him an honorary Jew), Andrew Cockburn, Barry Commoner, Sandy Berger, Phyllis Bennis and the editor of Buffalo Report. Such a list! The opening prose will give you a sense of the character and quality of mind involved in the compilation of the list; the list itself is a roll of honor, and I'm delighted to have been found deserving of inclusion. (10 January 2004)

Anat Matar: A report on the sentencing of 5 Israeli refuseniks. Five young Israelis of conscience have been given harsh prison sentences by a military court because they refused to oppress Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Help the Israeli 5.  Here's a site site with information about the five, their statements at trial, and things you might do to help. Let the Sharonistas and squatters know that the whole world is watching—and cares. (9 January 2004)

Frankenstein in Buffalo.  (No, I'm not talking about the Common Council.) The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, in cooperation with University at Buffalo Libraries and Just Buffalo Literary Center, is bringing a dynamic traveling exhibition, called Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature, to Western New York in January 2004. There will be displays, lectures, and three of the best Frankenstein movies ever made. (10 January 2004)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications. What was known about Iraq's weapons capability before the invasion and occupation, which dangers were real and which were fabricated, what distortions were made, and how can might such deadly adventurism be avoided in the future? A new study with solid information, major implications and no rhetoric. (9 January 2004)

William Rivers Pitt: The Five Hundred (TomPaine.com). More than 500 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Bush II's war began last spring, along with as many as 11,000 wounded. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have been killed or wounded. They died or were mutilated because Bush lied, Cheney lied, Rumsfeld lied, Ari Fleischer lied, Colin Powell lied. And the deaths and mutilations will continue for years and years. Why? (9 January 2004)

Askold Melnyckuk: Shadowboxing: For the Iraqi Dead (Agni). Why are dead Iraqis invisible to Americans? (9 January 2004)

James E. McWilliams: Just Another Leftist Loon (Chronicle of Higher Education). The new assistant professor of history in Texas took a break from his scholarly endeavors to write an op-ed piece mildly criticizing Bush. He knew some people would disagree with him, but he was totally unprepared for the hate mail and telephone calls he got in response. (8 January 2004)

Bush in 30 Seconds. The MoveOn competition for 30-second commercials about the George Bush presidency has resulted in some of the best political ads you'll never get to see on television. The ads are so good that Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie has launched a smear campaign on the RNC's house organ, Fox News, in which he says, among other things, that MoveOn has been pushing two ads comparing Bush to Hitler, which is a lie.You can see the 15 finalists right here in webland. Click on the link. Or click on the next sentence: Bring 'em on! (6 January 2004)

Rabab Abdulhadi: A report from Nablus under seige. A recent AP report said killings were down in the Holy Land last year, but you wouldn't know it from the nightmare underway at Nablus. Here's an on-the-ground report, with a plea for help. (6 January 2004)

Fidel Castro: On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution (CounterPunch). The American press caricatures Castro and the White House demonizes him, but he remains enormously popular in Cuba and seriously respected in most of the world. Read these remarks and perhaps you'll get an idea why. Could George Bush, even with his phalanx of speechwriters and voice-coachers, ever range so thoughtfully across time and ideas? Bush generates body bags in Iraq and mouths platitudes about making the world's oil safe for drivers of SUVs; Castro brags about Cuba's free universal education and health care. Who's got the sane priorities? (4 December 2004)

Two great animations from toostupidtobepresident.com: John Ashcroft's Christmas and Citezentwain's "It's a Wonderful Life" (if this doesn't start after the titlecard, right click your mouse, then click on Play. Sometimes the first screen gets locked in Loop.). And then visit their site for several more. 5 January 2004.

Senator Charles Schumer: Customs' Delay in Releasing Shared Border Management Plan Puts Peace Bridge Scoping Document in Doubt. Full text of 5 January press release. (5 January 2004)

Jimmy Breslin: No Safer With Saddam in the Slammer (NewsDay). Howard Dean says (a) Iraq is just as dangerous now as before they pulled Saddam from his hole and (b) everybody should hold off executing him until they have the trial. His Democrat presidential nomination opponents and their flacks say this proves Dean is (a) unAmerican and (b) unstable. And that, says Breslin, proves they're a bunch of idiots and hypocrites. (3 January 2004)

Paul Barker: Albert Camus (Prospect). At the time of his death in 1960 at the age of 46, Albert Camus had a presence among American readers never achieved by such recent academic darlings as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. He alienated his former French Communist Party friends with lines like "  "It's better to be wrong by killing no one than to be right with mass graves," and he and his Resistance friend Jean Paul Sartre argued and never repaired the rift. He wrote novels, essays, plays, produced Faulkner and Dostoyevsky on the French stage and loved Humphrey Bogart. And, happily, he's being rediscovered. (3 January 2004)

The other civilian deaths in Israel. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel have submitted a petition to Israel's High Court against the Military Judge Advocate General. They say that killings of civilians by Israeli occupation troops warrant careful investigation; the MJAG says the military can police itself, thank you, and if it says killing is justified, it's justified. (3 January 2004)  

Release from jail sought for cleared terrorism suspect. (Washington Post) Here's a poster-boy for Ashcroft atrocity-justice: Benamar Benatta, an Algerian air force lieutenant seeking political asylum, has been locked up since 9/11. Twenty-three months, most of it incommunicado. There was never any evidence that he was connected with anything malign. Last September a federal magistrate told Ashcroft's prosecutors to let the poor guy go because he hadn't done anything. He's still locked up in Batavia, however, because the Justice Department demands $25,000 bond, which he doesn't have. Benatta has done a year more in jail for nothing than the average federal or state prisoner does after a felony conviction. Your tax dollars at work. (3 January 2004)

Congressional opposition to Stealth Patriot II. Only a few members of Congress spoke in opposition to the expansion of the Patriot Act tucked into the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act. Among other things, the new bill opens, without any provision for judicial oversight or sunset provision, all aspects (not just financial) of your transactions with car dealers, pawnbrokers, travel agents, casinos, and other businesses. Here's what Reps. Mark Udall (Colorado), Betty McCollum (Minnesota), Ron Paul (Texas) and Dennis Moore (Kansas) had to say. (3 January 2004)

Too Much Power. The editorial pages of the Washington Post in recent years have been more a flack for the White House and the Hill than observer or critic of them. But sometimes even the flacks choke on governmental excess, as this editorial opposing the increased unchecked FBI powers in the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act indicates. (3 January 2004)

Complete email list for congress, senate and governors. From the Conservative Caucus. (3 January 2004)

Jeffrey Gettleman: A Soldier's Return, to a Dark and Moody World. It's not just the young army Ranger who life was shattered by that piece of shrapnel in Iraq. An astonishing piece of writing published above the fold on page one of the 30 December NY Times. (3 Jan 2004)

Other recent articles (click on the titles or go to the links to the previous articles lists above for full descriptions & other recent articles):

Dani Rothchild and 30 other Israeli generals: "Time is running out. Start acting."

Leslie A. Fiedler: Newark, Jews, and the Boy on the White Horse.

Diane Christian: The Christmas Story.

Newton Garver: GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Elaine Cassel: This Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us.

Aram J. Kevorkian: The Christmas Issue: On Leaving the Forest.

Robert Lopez: On the bad faith of saying 'No More Mr. Nice Guy.'

Elaine Cassel: Two Federal Courts Blast Bush and Rumsfeld. 

Adam Keller on behalf of the Israeli Refuser Forum: Doing things the hard way—the verdict of the five.

Spectator: Golisano's Giambra, Quinn's Democrats, Terrorists' Ashcroft.  

Bruce Jackson: The Desaparecidos of George W. Bush.

Mitskovski's Question

Bernadette Medige:  A Wedding.

Elaine Cassel: Yaser Hamdi gets a lawyer: He just can't do anything.

Elaine Cassel: At War with the Constitution.  

Newton Garver: Bolivia at a Crossroads.

The Buffalo Report Interview: Paul Koessler on the Peace Bridge Expansion Project: "It's not going to be a twin."

John C. Wilson: An Account of One Soldier's War.

Stephen T. Banko III: A Soldier's Dream  

Thomas Robinson: Vice-president Cheney visits Buffalo; tells a few lies; gets $400,000 and applause galore.

Robert Oscar Lopez: Machismo.

Elaine Cassel: Gulag Americana.  

Peter Smith: Report from London.

Joel Rose: Casino Gambling in Erie County.

Elaine Cassel: Vengeance, thy Name is Ashcroft.

Bruce Jackson: Media and War: Bringing it All Back Home.

Christopher Brauchli: Bush Plays Trick or Treat With the American Dream.

Diane Christian: Warriors & Liberators.

Adam Keller (for the Refuser Parents Forum): Israeli Refusenik Update: Breathtaking Days in the Military Court.

Jane T. Christenson: Dead Bees.

Douglas Manson: Book review: Steven High. Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984.by Steven High.  University of Toronto Press. 2003.

Diane Christian: Evil Acts and Evil Actors and Wishing Death.

The Buffalo Report Interview: Joseph Crangle: Taxing Indians, Breaking Treaties.

Elaine Cassel: A Very Bad Civil Rights Day.

Bruce Jackson: Peace Bridge Expansion Project Update: Politicians stage media event kissy-kiss at D’Youville and June moves into November.  

Bernadette Medige:Two public conversations about education.

Bruce Jackson: Midge Decter and the Taxi-driver: getting the bodies right.  

Elaine Cassel: Prosecutors as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists.

Bruce L. Campbell: Shared Border Management  

Christopher Schobert: REVIEW: Michael Moore, Dude, Where's my Country?

Peyton Randolph: Making the Numbers.

Bud Johns: "Arnold is governor, Bush is president/because of the Democrats": a report from San Francisco.

Bruce Jackson: Fort Erie's Leisureplex & Courthouse, the mysterious million dollars, and one I've had wrong. 

Joel Rose: Share the Penny.

Joel Rose: ...this toxic enterprise in this toxic location.

James Bunn: Plotting Pre-Emptive Strikes: "The Readiness is All."

Diane Christian: Ruthlessness

Christopher Brauchli: The death penalty at work: what's good for the pot-bellied pig should be good for a human.

Elaine Cassel: Why Boykin should stay on message.

UB has a new president: John B. Simpson

Newton Garver: Bolivia in Turmoil.

Spectator: Buffalo's financial mess: parasitic unions, self-serving politicians, crippling laws, smug suburbs.

Bruce Jackson: Ethics (not!) at the Buffalo News redux:  the "Get James Pitts" jihad continues and the lines between advertising and journalism continue to dissolve.

William Benzon: The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues 2.

Bruce Jackson: Charles Burnett's "Warming by the Devil's Fire."

Peyton Randolph: Money with a Price.

William L. Benzon: Scorsese's Blues.

Spectator: Hypocrites, snakes, sneaks and swine: A Washington Report.

Bruce Jackson: Carovane 2003: Addio alle armi.

Hanat Matar: Update on the Israeli Refusenik Trials.  Peyton Randolph: The Cleft Stick of Politics.

Newton Garver: 9/11 Plus 30.

Patricia A. Maloney: It's Not the Same For Us.

Spectator: Joel the Shapeshifter and Jimmy the Consistent.  

Peyton Randolph: First Shot.

Bruce Jackson: The little deaths.

Barbra Kavanaugh goes red, white and blue for the white folks.

William L. Benzon: Ghee on a Saturday Evening

Bruce Jackson: Sam Hoyt's open mike: campaining and chaos in the Kavinoky

Spectator: WMD found! AM&A's lost! Giambra befuddled! Republicans buying California!

Bruce Jackson: The New York Times and Michael R. Gordon: Passive Pimping for the White House.

Bruce Jackson: The Peace Bridge and Eminent Domain.

Peyton Randolph: The Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players: Buffalo's control board tries to figure it out

Bruce Jackson: Third and Arizona

Diane Christian: Bad Guy/Good Guy

Peter Smith: Katharine Hepburn on Higher Education.

Bruce Jackson: Peace Bridge Update: a meeting,  an ego, a process at risk

Stephen T. Banko III: Jessica Lynch: real heroes and truth as collateral damage.

Elaine Cassel: Fenced Out on the Fourth

The Spectator: Dubya & other people's guts, Meegan & other people's money Giambra and our city

Diane Christian: Good Killing and Bad Killing.

Sally Fiedler: The Widow's Tale

Spectator: Arbitrators and Quislings: so where's the outrage?

Why did Jeff Simon stick it to Leslie Fiedler?

Heron E. Simmonds: Bikers and liars have their day in Buffalo court

Jorge Guitart: Ten poems

Robert Lopez: Reality check on the President's language.

Sam Hoyt Peace Bridge obstruction update: Hoyt stages Albany hissy-fit, wins big, screws Buffalo

Heron E. Simmonds: Reflections on a "Riot."

Spectator: Alice in Buffalo

Robert Lopez: Dissidents, defectors –  whatever

Joel Rose: Giambra says no

Bruce Jackson: Sam Hoyt Declares War on the Peace Bridge

The Hoyt/Peace Bridge File

Spectator: What's Wrong With Everything

Newton Garver: Freedom and Responsibility

Spectator: Control board crap

Bruce Jackson: Buffalo cops wage war on pedal pushers: Iatrogenic law enforcement on the Niagara Frontier

Howard S. Becker: Trials, strikes and "manifs"

Kevin Gaughan's Teeth.

Diane Christian: Enemy tactics

Newton Garver: The news and the truth

Bruce Jackson: Arctic Silence: icy terror in the heart of the Smithsonian

Kevin Thompson: UB is on solid ground

Bernadette Medige: Privatization of Public Education: Segregation, Desegregation, Resegregation

William M. Kunstler: Public Ethics and the Bill of Rights.

Bernadette Medige: The Privatization of Public Education

The scary things Mickey Brown said to the Buffalo Rotary Club about casino gambling in Niagara Falls and Buffalo.

Robert Lopez: Amherst to Baghdad: race, war and the American Dream.

Tearing down Buffalo's historic buildings—or not

Georg G. Iggers:  Response to the professors who favor war in Iraq

UB's War of Words

Diane Christian: Ends, means, and the present tense.

Bruce Jackson: Nancy Naples is bored, bought, greedy, and/or crazy.

Diane Christian: A Scene in Obscene War.

Bruce Jackson: Peace Bridge v. WTC.

Bruce Jackson: Wolf Blitzer's Voice.

Bruce Jackson: Time and skyline in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

Bruce Jackson: Desert Storms

Diane Christian: A Day of Reckoning.

Diane Christian: Blood Sacrifice. 

A new mess at Peace Bridge Plaza

Bruce Jackson: Why protest? Why write?

Robert Lopez: Why the freedom argument convinces Americans but nobody one else.

Gerry Rising: Thoughts while watching fireworks

Thomas Robinson: Not in my neighborhood

Chuck Richardson: Bombs in Baghdad, rain in Buffalo

Robert Lopez: Believe it or not he's really that bad: a case study of W's image in recent protests.

Stephen Banko III: I was a soldier once.

Diane Christian: The Morality of Violence.

Howard Zinn: "We are going to kill the victims of Saddam Hussein."

Chuck Richardson: "This is deadly serious stuff"

Robert Lopez: Lovers and fighters: the February 15 rally in New York.

Joel Rose: Thoughts on Joel Giambra's opposition to an Erie County casino.

Roxanne R. Amico: The Belly of a Smile

Spectator: The death of common dreams

Zremski and the General

Bonehead Folly

Leslie Fiedler 1917-2003

Ashcroft freedom

Killing a Tree

Mark Boyer: Power and explicit money-grubbing: the alternative licensing process for the Niagara Power Project.

Chet Morton: Dennis Vacco and "One of the most dangerous employers in the U.S."

Bruce Jackson: Bush, Blacks and Jews.

Robert Creeley: To Whom it may concern: Writers on America.

Vincent "Jake" Lamb: "I'm listening to people." The Peace Bridge expansion project now.