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Today's
Stories
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The Coming Elections and the Future
of American Global Power
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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
March 12 / 14, 2004
The Anti-Empire Report
A
Quaint German Custom the US Used to Have
By WILLIAM BLUM
On March 4 a German appeals court ordered a new
trial for the only person to be convicted for a role in the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks in the United States, saying the proceeding
had been compromised by a US refusal to provide access to a key
witness. Defense attorneys for Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan
citizen, had repeatedly asked for testimony from Ramzi Binalshibh,
who is in secret US custody. US officials have called Binalshibh
a central conspirator in the attacks but declined to produce
him for the trial, citing national security concerns. The appeals
court found that the Hamburg court that had convicted Motassadeq
had not adequately considered the implications of the absence
of evidence from Binalshibh.
Andreas Schulz, a German lawyer who has
represented the families of September 11 victims, said many of
his clients were very upset with the ruling. He said he had told
them that the decision stemmed from the two countries' contrasting
approaches to terrorism -- the United States is waging war on
it, while Germany is sticking with a courtroom approach.
The German system stresses "fair
trial, presumption of innocence and all the values that were
designed and generated after World War II," he said. "From
the German point of view, it's absolutely [logical] to come up
with a decision like the appeals court came up with today."{1}
***
Neo-con(tradictions)
Colin Powell showed that he can be a
neo-con hardliner just like the rest of the Bushgang. Speaking
at the neo-conservative shrine, the Heritage Foundation, on March
2, Powell declared that Asian communism is "withering away."
"The share of the economy owned by the government is smaller
today in China than it is in France -- always an interesting
comparison to make."{2} What would be equally interesting
would be to compare the standard of living, multiple benefits
and labor rights of the average Chinese and French workers. An
American worker would not fare too well either in comparison
with a French worker. But at least the American and Chinese workers
have the deep satisfaction of knowing that their work is not
tainted by any government ownership.
A new book, scheduled for release in
late March, "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold
War" by Thomas Reed, a member of Ronald Reagan's National
Security Council, reveals that Reagan approved a CIA plan to
sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers
of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software
that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas
pipeline. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was carried
out "in order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard
currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy."
This was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare"
against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out during the
Reagan administration, he writes.
Reagan was perhaps the leading neo-con
of his day, often poking fun at the Soviet economic system and
how it couldn't compare to the American system. Yet he apparently
was not always willing to allow a wholly fair and honest competition
between the two systems, preferring to rely on sabotage at times.
This of course did not begin with the Reagan administration.
The CIA was engaged in all kinds of economic dirty tricks against
the Soviet Union and its satellites, particularly East Germany,
for decades before Reagan.
***
"Human kind cannot
bear very much reality." T.S. Eliot
Last year, Libya "accepted responsibility"
for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland
in 1988. Although even a superficial reading of Libyan statements
on the matter made it plain that they were NOT admitting to actually
planting the deadly bomb, American and British officials pretended
that it was such an admittance; ergo, case closed, the US and
the UK had once again seen to it that justice triumphed, Libya
will pay compensation to the victims' families, the US will consider
lifting sanctions against Libya, everyone happy.
Then, on February 24, Libya's prime minister
Shokri Ghanem insisted to the BBC that his government's statements
were not an admission of actual guilt. "We thought it was
easier for us to buy peace and this is why we agreed to compensation,"
he said. "Therefore we said: 'Let us buy peace, let us put
the whole case behind us and let us look forward'."
Not fair! cried the White House and 10
Downing Street. Libya was not playing the game right. They were
cheating. The Bush administration abruptly canceled plans to
lift the travel ban and other restrictions on Libya that had
been planned (in return for Libya scrapping its nuclear weapons
program as well as the Lockerbie issue). "It's important
for Libya to retract these statements," said the State Department,
"and to make clear what their policy is as soon as possible."
The Libyan prime minister had of course
made clear what he thought the truth was, but that was not what
the State Department was asking for. They were asking to make
the "policy" clear; i.e, Are you still playing the
game or not?
The head of the UK families organization
declared: "We don't understand the comments by prime minister
Ghanem. Nobody knows why he has said this." The fact that
Ghanem simply wanted to inject some truth into the matter and
clear Libya's name apparently was not an option to be considered.
Then, Libya quickly returned to the game,
saying it wanted "to set the record straight and be perfectly
clear" about its position on the Lockerbie bombing. It's
August 2003 statement of accepting responsibility for the plane
bombing was still valid. "Recent statements contradicting
or casting doubt on these positions are inaccurate and regrettable,"
said the Libyan government.
Just as quickly, the State Department,
referring to the Libyan statement, announced: "They have
done what they needed to do."{3}
***
Make him an offer
he can't refuse
Statement of Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
President of Haiti, March 5, 2004, from exile in the Central
African Republic:
"The 28th of February, at night,
suddenly, American military personnel who were already all over
Port-au-Prince descended on my house in Tabarre to tell me first
that all the American security agents who have contracts with
the Haitian government only have two options. Either they leave
immediately to go to the United States, or they fight to die.
Secondly, they told me the remaining 25 of the American security
agents hired by the Haitian government who were to come in on
the 29th of February as reinforcements were under interdiction,
prevented from coming. Thirdly, they told me the foreigners and
Haitian terrorists alike, loaded with heavy weapons, were already
in position to open fire on Port-au-Prince. And right then, the
Americans precisely stated that they will kill thousands of people
and it will be a bloodbath. That the attack is ready to start,
and when the first bullet is fired nothing will stop them and
nothing will make them wait until they take over, therefore the
mission is to take me dead or alive. ... Faced with this tragedy,
I decided to ask, "What guarantee do I have that there will
not be a bloodbath if I decided to leave?
"In reality, all this diplomatic
gymnastics did not mean anything because these military men responsible
for the kidnapping operation had already assumed the success
of their mission. What was said was done. This diplomacy, plus
the forced signing of the letter of resignation, was not able
to cover the face of the kidnapping."
A search of the Lexis-Nexis database
on March 10 failed to turn up any report of Aristide's statement
in any American daily newspaper or broadcast medium, despite
news of it being carried by the Associated Press. Several papers
in Canada and the UK did carry stories about the statement.
Thus it was that Aristide went into exile.
And then Colin Powell, in the sincerest voice he could muster,
told us that Aristide's departure was completely voluntarily;
it was his own idea; no pressure from the United States. Powell
sounded as sincere as he had sounded a year earlier when he gave
the UN a detailed inventory of the chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons in Iraq.
Despite all the dishonesty surrounding
Iraq, I'd guess that most Americans tend to believe Bush officials
concerning Haiti because of a couple of reasons. One: Many of
the media accounts of the past few months have mentioned that
in 1994 the US military returned Aristide to power. That sounds
pretty impressive; it indicates that concerning Haiti and Aristide
the United States has its heart in the right place. But "the
US returned Aristide to power in 1994" is just the headline.
If one reads the story below the headline the picture looks remarkably
different. It's simply not the same story any longer. It can
be read online.{4}
A second reason the public may support
US policy in Haiti is that they've been fed one story after another
about Aristide's government being brutal and corrupt and Aristide
himself being mentally unstable and largely responsible for the
current crisis. That's typical before the US moves to overthrow
a foreign government. It's actually rather easy to plant stories
in the media, with or without their cooperation. In 1994, a similar
story of Aristide being mentally unstable, a murderer and psychopath,
was created and disseminated by a CIA official named Brian Latell,
without any evidence to back up the charges.{5}
***
Is Cuba to blame?
A thought about another tiny country
the world's only superpower just can't leave alone -- Cuba. Cubans
often complain about the many hardships imposed upon their life
by the US blockade. Defenders of US policy reply that this is
just an excuse for Cuba's own failings, that the hardships are
the inevitable result of a socialist economic system. It makes
me think of this analogy. Someone is constantly pounding your
head with a hammer and you keep getting headaches. You complain
to the wielder of the hammer and demand that he stop hitting
you. The guy says to you: The headaches are due to the way you
live; blaming me is just an excuse you make up to shirk your
own responsibility. You then say to him: Well, why don't you
stop hitting me on the head with your hammer so we can see if
the headaches go away?
William Blum is
the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II, Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
NOTES
(1) Washington Post, March 5, 2004
(2) Washington Post, March 3, 2004
(3) The Guardian (London), February 25,
2004; Washington Post, February 25-27
(4) http://members.aol.com/bblum6/haiti2.htm,
particularly the second half.
(5) Ibid.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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