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Before Kill and Run, Was There Rape and Run? Documents Show the FBI Gave Janklow a Pass by Stephen Hendricks; The Faces of Janus: Why the New York Times Has Always Been a Rotten Paper by Alexander Cockburn; Steal a Tree, Go To Jail; Steal a Forest, Stay in the Lincoln Bedroom: the Politics of Timber Theft by Jeffrey St. Clair; A Southern Africa Sojourn by Lawrence Reichard; The Kiev Con: Exposing David Duke's Illusory Doctorate; CounterPunch Online is read by 70,000 visitors each day, but we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

January 23, 2004

William A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious

January 22, 2004

Sam Smith
Howards End?

Patricia Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space

Alexander Lukin
Putin and the Clans

Katherine van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations and Bush's Mind

Forrest Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia

January 21, 2004

Mazin Qumsiyeh
Spring in Palestine

Ron Jacobs
Drive, He Said

Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback

January 20, 2004

Stan Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier

Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks Out

Cockburn / St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields

January 19, 2004

Justin E. H. Smith
Inside America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution

Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.

Ray McGovern
Bush's State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?

Werther
SOTUS: the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura

Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War

Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?

Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water

Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism: a Practical Manual

Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State

 

January 17 / 18, 2004

Fadi Kiblawi and Will Youmans
The Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists

Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins

Blaming the Symptoms

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant

Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq

Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians

Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise

Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp

Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court

Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov

Carol Norris
Arnold and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up

Joe Quandt
Suicide Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities

David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75

Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies

Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review

Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister

Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum

Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie

 

January 16, 2004

Kathy Kelly
A Visit to Umm Qasr Prison

William S. Lind
More Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare

Gillian Russom
So. Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"

Ari Shavit
Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris

Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris

Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich

Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2

 

January 15, 2004

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memo to the President: Your State of the Union Address

John Chuckman
Dry Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc

Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter

Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon

Gary Leupp
The Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan

 

January 14, 2004

Greg Moses
Happy Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots

Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights

Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional Dems (and Dean)

Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton

Alexander Cockburn
Bush, Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last

 

January 13, 2004

William S. Lind
How 2004 Looks from Potsdam

M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?

Mickey Z
Snipers: No Nuts in Iraq

Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro: The Prisoner and the Presidents

Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?

 

January 12, 2004

Ben Tripp
No Stan for the Kurds

Norman Solomon
The Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South

Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge

Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq

Uri Avnery
Syria's Peace Proposal

 

January 10 / 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair

Susan Davis
Dangerous Books

Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell

Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past

Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq

Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety

Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?

Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List

Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost

Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War

Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry

Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?

Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common

Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike

Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page

Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball

Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert

 

January 9, 2004

David Lindorff
The Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses

Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand

Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent WMDs

Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable

David Vest
Disabled Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld

 

January 8, 2004

Neve Gordon
Israeli Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail

Lenni Brenner
Dr. Dean and the Godhead

Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks

Mark Scaramella
Inside the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium

Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit

James Hollander
Journalists Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad

 

January 7, 2004

Democracy Now!
Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured

Greg Weiher
The Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem

Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003

Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors

Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky

Bob Boldt
God Talk

Ramon Ryan
Small Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising

 

 

January 6, 2004

Dave Lindorff
RNC Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads

Ron Jacobs
Drugs in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism

Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia

Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go

John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto

Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake

John L. Hess
A Record to Dissent From

Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT

David Price
"Like Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation

 

January 5, 2004

Al Krebs
How Now Mad Cow!

Kathy Kelly
Squatting in Baghdad's Bomb Craters

Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons

Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm

Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution

Gary Leupp
North Korea for Dummies

 

 

January 3 / 4, 2004

Brian Cloughley
Never Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History

Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time

William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11

Glen Martin
Jesus vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse

Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage

Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble

Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia

Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left

Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case

Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy

William Blum
Codework Orange!

Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara

Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA

Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler

Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100

Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick

Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis

 

 

 

January 2, 2004

Stan Cox
Red Alert 2016

Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans

Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana

Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?

David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth


January 1, 2004

Randall Robinson
Honor Haiti, Honor Ourselves

David Krieger
Looking Back on 2003

Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs

Stan Goff
War, Race and Elections

Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac

Website of the Day
Embody Bags


December 31, 2003

Ray McGovern
Don't Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation

Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria

Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned

Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George

Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead

 

 

 

December 30, 2003

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism

Annie Higgins
When They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary

Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades

Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish

Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat

Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?

 

 

December 29, 2003

Mark Hand
The Washington Post in the Dock?

David Lindorff
The Bush Election Strategy

Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War

Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?

Uri Avnery
Israel's Conscientious Objectors

 

December 27 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
A Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul

Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World

Saul Landau
Iraq at the End of the Year

Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey

Robert Fisk
Iraq Through the American Looking Glass

Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?

Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0

Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution

Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market

Susan Davis
Lord of the (Cash Register) Rings

Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California

Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish

Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce

Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music

 

 

December 26, 2003

Gary Leupp
Bush Doings: Doing the Language

 

December 25, 2003

Diane Christian
The Christmas Story

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

Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock

Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead

Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

Alexander Cockburn
The Magnificient 9

 

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January 24, 2004

Ground Control to Major George...

Dead Rover, Dead Rover

By DAVE LINDORFF

The most wilfully ignorant and unscientifically minded man to hold the office of President in recent memory and his conniving handlers must be grinding their teeth at the thought that they now have to count on the work of engineers and scientists to rescue them and their fanciful "Americans to the Moon, Mars and Beyond" campaign strategy from embarassment and disaster.

The recent effort by Karl Rove & Co.to parlay the landing of a robot rover on Mars into a campaign gimmick, designed to give Bush that "vision thing" his father found so lacking has run into a huge pothole: the crash of the $400-million rover's sophisticated electronics system. Once again, NASA's effort to put a equipment on the Martian surface appears in danger of failing spectacularly, leaving a $400-million piece of junk on the planet's surface.

It will be interesting to see how the corporate media, which managed to keep a straight face while running fanciful drawings by NASA artists to illustrate the non-story of Bush's purported "return to space" proposal, despite his offer of only $1 billion in extra funding (roughly the cost of this and another duplicate Martian rover), handles this propaganda fiasco.

If NASA cannot manage to make a robot work on Mars, how exactly is the space agency going to build a whole base on the Moon, much less the Red Planet?

Maybe the second rover, due to land on Mars on Jan. 25, will rescue Rove's and Bush's campaign stunt, but there must be a lot of crossed fingers over at the White House right now. The Democratic candidates for the nomination--and the media--should have a good time with this one, if they can stop obsessing about each other's polls.

Actually, of course, Bush and the Republican administration have no intention of initiating a half-trillion-dollar program to send explorers to Mars. Heck, they can't even find the money to finance medical care for the poor guys coming home maimed from the current war, some of whom are reportedly waiting weeks or even months for treatment because of a shortage of veterans facilities.

The whole thing was a political ploy, much like the No Child Left Behind education ploy, the Healthy Forest environmental ploy, and the Operation Iraqi Freedom democratization in Arabia ploy. With this admistration, the whole public agenda (as opposed to the private agenda of enriching the rich) is a Potemkin Village of programs, none of which are what they seem. The Spirit rover seemes to have lost its steam, which is sad for the scientists who invested years in the project, but at least its apparent loss gives the lie to one of those pieces of presidential fakery--in the process shining a light on the larger charlatanism.

It's a fair bet that it will turn out the problem on the rover was caused by NASA engineers having to make shortcuts because of underfunding by the Bush Administration of the very project he was trying to take credit for--about what one can expect to happen to whatever stunted lunar project--if any--gets underway in the years to come.

And about what is happening to the nation's schools, forests, rivers and soldiers.

Then again, maybe instead of the Martian rover discovering signs of life on Mars, life on Mars found the rover, realized the device was the advance guard of an invasion from Earth, and did something Native Americans probably should have done to Columbus: drove a stake through its heart.

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