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Today's
Stories
March 9, 2004
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
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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March
8, 2004
Laughing All the Way
The
Bush Strategy
By DOUG GIEBEL
Released at last from the starting gate, George
W. Bush has tipped his campaigning hand. The approach, initially
at least, will be to mock John F. Kerry as a flip-flopping lightweight
from Massachusetts. In this high-stakes political poker game,
Kerry is cast as the down-on-his-luck loser who doesn't know
when to fold 'em. Across the table sits George W. Bush, the foreign-policy
master who may or may not have his best plays tucked up his presidential
sleeve. Kerry is a sucker who lacks the substance of George W.,
and everybody gathered around the table (wink wink) knows it.
As the game's commander-in-chief, George
W. Bush not only has been tested, experienced under fire as The
War President; he also has a nearly-unlimited bankroll to tide
him over in the unlikely event the shuffle leaves him with a
bad hand or two. George W. Bush will humor Kerry, whose money
will dwindle until George W. Bush finally decides to end the
game and take the final pot for all the chips in the casino.
Although many of the Bush Squad will
needle Kerry as that most pathetic of creatures, the "Massachusetts
Liberal," word from New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller
is that George W. Bush prefers to call Kerry "the senator
from Massachusetts who has a record of weakening national defense
and raising taxes." Either way, the tipoff word is "Massachusetts."
A major wing of the Bush Squad is comprised
of radio and television politics talkers: Rush Limbaugh, Sean
Hannity, Michael Reagan and the many other conservative-slanted
entertainers with a pro-Bush political agenda. The Kerry-as-joke
theme has already been grabbed up by Limbaugh, whose recent references
to Kerry have been interspersed with artificial chortling and
other gigglings into the microphone. Limbaugh is so amused by
Kerry's flip-flopping ineptitude he can't contain himself. Kerry
breaks him up. Seriously folks, you just can't take John Kerry
seriously.
One wonders why these talk-show hosts
who spend most of their time cheering for a single political
party aren't classified as Political Action Committees-of-One?
The on-air hours they spend pimping for their candidate of choice
is blatant "advocacy." Corporate sponsors pay for these
foaming mouthpieces whose major (if not sole) purpose is to mock,
debase and destroy the other side while promoting their man as
a knight in shining armor. Millions of potential voters listen
to and are influenced by the exaggerated arguments and hype dispensed
day and night from this legion of hot-air jockeys. It wouldn't
dampen their First Amendment rights if they were officially recognized
for what they are: political hacks in service of the party.
To this writer's knowledge, George W.
Bush has not objected to near-24/7 free publicity: hours of advocacy
amounting to coronation. Many talk-show hosts were recently invited
to the White House lawn for interviews with top members of the
Bush Administration. Most, if not all, returned to their stations,
there to extoll George W. Bush and his crew. As this article
is being written, Sean Hannity is broadcasting ominous threats
to excoriate Teresa Heinz because if she speaks on her husband's
behalf she becomes "fair game" for political attack.
Any nation able to survive the months of rancorous political
"debate" such as will explode between now and November
can surely weather attacks from unknown "terrorists."
As noted, the prime maneuver will be
to brand Kerry with the Flip-Flop Factor, an effort that is especially
amusing because George W. Bush would never say something and
then do the opposite, nor would George W. Bush make a donkey
of himself by denying statements he'd made in the past: would
he? Of course he would. He has. Political hypocrisy has become
as thick as yesterday's cooked oatmeal, not just for Republicans,
but among the Democrats, too. As we struggle to not leave them
behind, we teach our children that language should mean what
it says. And then we let them watch as politicians and their
advocates wrestle meaning to the mat.
For example, an e-mail unveiling the
Bush campaign's Charmin-soft commercials states, "Unlike
the Kerry campaign's first ads last September, which included
an attack on the President, our first ads are all positive, focusing
on President Bush's steady leadership in times of change."
(Note the contrast between "steady leadership" portrayed
in the commercials and the flip-flopping lack of leadership attributed
to Kerry in recent Bush speeches.) The Bush camp claims the "first
ads are all positive." Yet when one clicks on the Bush-Cheney
website, the earliest ad listed is an explicit attack piece smearing
Kerry as "Unprincipled." (The ad's official title is
"Unprincipled 1," suggesting there's more attack where
that one came from.)
Until his back is to the wall, George
W. Bush will float lightly above vitriolic argument, as the steadiest
of leaders should. The volleys to blast Kerry's boat from the
water will come from campaign hatchet-wielders and right-wing
talk-show purveyors of anger, hate, innuendo and misinformation.
George W. Bush was chosen to save a nation where everything changed
after 9/11. A man of principle and substance, he will not waste
energy on pettiness. That's a job for somebody else.
For his part, Kerry the Bumbler would
do well to remember what happened when others misunderestimated
George W. Bush. Kerry, whose years in the Senate have made his
speaking-style "senatized," should return to the man
who, in 1971, addressed a Senate committee about the Vietnam
War with sincerity and honest eloquence. Memo to Kerry: Stop
droning and shouting. Begin conversing. Let the right-wing screamers
pound their tables and podia. Speak to us, John, from the heart.
That's what George W. Bush will do.
As noted, much will be made of Kerry
as a liberal Son of Massachusetts, always good for a smile and
a smirk. With only eight months before the November election
date, George W. Bush won't take time to discuss the state's pitiful
accomplishments. Why dwell on historic Massachusetts figures
such as Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, John Hancock,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace, Norman Rockwell,
Paul Revere, Arthur Fiedler, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Kennedy,
or those World War Two heroes John F. Kennedy and George Herbert
Walker Bush (b. Milton, Mass. 1924)? "History," somebody
said, "is bunk."
Speaking of Massachusetts history, the
official presidential website states, "President Bush received
a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School
in 1975." The last time student George W. Bush walked across
Harvard Yard the university was still located in Massachusetts.
The debt George W. Bush owes to Harvard for his "elitist"
Ivy League education might not best be repaid by ridiculing The
Bay State, its contributions to our democratic republic and its
many varied citizens.
Straight-faced as he plays out his hand,
George W. Bush, man of the people, will look down upon the raised-in-privilege
Kerry, a vicious low-life pit-bull politician who chose to marry
a wealthy widow rather than work by the sweat of his brow clearing
sagebrush from that Beacon Hill ranch. Later, during a break
in the game, George W. Bush may swagger into the local Bar-B-Que
and slap a few old timers on the back with a hearty "Hey,
Ranger!" greeting. As they belly up to the salad bar, George
W. Bush and his wranglers will nudge and grin from ear to ear,
confident because they know something his fellow Skull-and-Bones
fraternity brother John F. Kerry doesn't know: how to pull off
the cheerleader's ultimate October Surprise.
Doug Giebel
is a writer and analyst who lives in Big Sandy, Montana. His
article "When Professors Cheat" will be published soon
by the Mellen Press. He can be reached at dougcatz@ttc-cmc.net
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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