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New Edition of CounterPunch

A Journey to Rafah: "We Will Destroy You, If Not In Death, Then in Life" by Jennifer Loewenstein; Senator Facing-Both-Ways: the Double Political Life of John Kerry by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair; General Tommy Franks in Kansas City: "50,000 Dead Americans in Iraq is OK" by Stan Cox. Last month, CounterPunch Online was read by 11 million viewers--by far our biggest month ever. But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

March 4, 2004

Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and Palestine

March 3, 2004

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


February 20 / 22, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry: He's Peaking Already!

Derek Seidman
Chasing Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!

Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem

Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops

Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq

John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People

Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary

Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq

Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and Hypocrisy

Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back

Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala

Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle

Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights Act?

David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons

Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget

David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This

Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics

Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert

Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique

 

February 19, 2004

Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw

Ray McGovern
Iraq Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd Get Away With It?

Tariq Ali
How Far Will Bush Go in Iraq?

Ralph Nader
Whither the Nation?

Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?

Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble

Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT

Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"

Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale

Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope

 

February 18, 2004

William Wilgus
Bush: AWOL and Dereliction of Duty

William Blum
Mush-Minded Liberals

Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome

Greg Weiher
Why is Kerry Getting a Pass?

Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber

Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"

 

 

February 17, 2004

Mike Ferner
The Countryside Murders in Iraq

Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation as Psychopath

Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate: a Victory for Free Speech

Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"

Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The Nation

Ximena Ortiz
A Bush Doctrine, of Sorts

Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?

Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"

Steve Perry
Kerry 1, Drudge 0

 


February 16, 2004

James Johnston
Huddling with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World

Sara Eltantawi
To Wear the Hijab or Not

Bruce Anderson
Kevin Cooper and the Midnight Needle

Elaine Cassel
Feds on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas

Rahul Mahajan
Bush, Is the Tide Finally Turning?

Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death

Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean

Larry David
My War

Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing

Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made

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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March 4, 2004

"I Never Sail on Anything Less Than 135 Feet"

The John Kerry Experience

By HAL CRANMER

I would like to add my two cents about my John Kerry experience.

During my career as an Air Force pilot, I spent two years flying a small twin-engine prop plane around the Pacific from my base in Okinawa, Japan. On one trip we had to fly Senator Kerry, his congressional aide, and a Navy Captain (Vietnam, A-4 fighter pilot) was also in Kerry's party to various locations in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the MIA/POW talks.

When I met him, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of his sailboat on it. I told him I had a small 27 feet sailboat in Okinawa, he remarked 'Oh I never sail on anything less than 135 feet'.

When we first flew him into Phnom Penh, he went to the back of the airplane and grabbed the pizza that was put aside for the crew and passed it around to his staff. He was never offered any pizza because they were supposed to have lunch with the Cambodian government once we landed. The pizza would have been our only meal that day.

Then when we picked him up in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to the airport. We could not start the engines and therefore the air conditioning until he arrived. Phnom Penh at that time was over 100 degrees with 95% humidity and we were basically sitting in a greenhouse behind the cockpit windows.

When he finally did arrive, we were wringing out our clothes from the perspiration. He walks out of the air conditioned car, into the airplane and asks us 'Could you guys get the air conditioning running, I'm a little warm." The other pilot had to physically restrain me from going back there and picking a fight.

Then we took him into Noi Bai airfield in Hanoi. After we picked him up the next day (he stayed the night in Vietnam, we stayed in Bangkok) we taxied out, ran up the engines for takeoff, and noticed that our prop rpm was vibrating all over the place. We taxied off to the side to look at it, but there was a good possibility that there was an engine malfunction and the engine may fail if we took off with it.

Well, Mr. Senator sticks his head up in the cockpit and says 'this plane WILL take off, I have a press conference in Bangkok in three hours!" (Maybe this is an indication of how he will run the FAA). We ran the engines again, and did not have the problem, so we took off and made it back.

During the flight, he told everyone how he had taken a Cessna (a small General aviation plane) up with a fighter pilot, and the fighter pilot remarked that Kerry was one of the best pilots he had ever seen. I don't know about other pilots out there, but it's hard to imagine a little, single-engine prop plane pilot being able to show the 'right stuff'.

After Kerry left the plane, the Navy Captain came up to us, apologized and said basically that he knows Kerry is a jerk and that we should be glad we don't have to deal with him every day....

Or will we?

 

Weekend Edition Features for 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


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