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Today's Stories

November 13, 2003

Jack McCarthy
Veterans for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade

Adam Keller
Report on the Ben Artzi Verdict

Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time

Vijay Prashad
Confronting the Evangelical Imperialists

November 12, 2003

Elaine Cassel
The Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?

Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo

Jonathan Cook
Facility 1391: Israel's Guantanamo

Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home

Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike

John Chuckman
Forty Years of Lies

Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency

Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left

Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops


November 11, 2003

David Lindorff
Bush's War on Veterans

Stan Goff
Honoring Real Vets; Remembering Real War

Earnest McBride
"His Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?

Derek Seidman
Imperialism Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff

David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War

Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns

Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top

John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day

Website of the Day
Left Hook

 

November 10, 2003

Robert Fisk
Looney Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East

Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar Laws Across Globe

James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss

Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy

Stew Albert
Call Him Al

Gary Leupp
"They Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals


November 8/9, 2003

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism as Racist Ideology

Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered

Saul Landau
The Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz

Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police

William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?

David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War

Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens

Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring Hollow

Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"

Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?

Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum Disorder

Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy

Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post

Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet

Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman

Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder


November 7, 2003

Nelson Valdes
Latin America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance

David Vest
Surely It Can't Get Any Worse?

Chris Floyd
An Inspector Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment

William S. Lind
Indicators: Where This War is Headed

Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"

Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized

Uri Avnery
Israeli Roulette


November 6, 2003

Ron Jacobs
With a Peace Like This...

Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's New Model Army

Maher Arar
This is What They Did to Me

Elaine Cassel
A Bad Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar

Neve Gordon
Captives Behind Sharon's Wall

Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime


November 5, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Just a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal

Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?

Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List

Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance

Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections

Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"

Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid to Ask


November 4, 2003

Robert Fisk
Smearing Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?

Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam

Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating the New Unity Partnership

Karyn Strickler
When Opponents of Abortion Dream

Norman Solomon
The Steady Theft of Our Time

Tariq Ali
Resistance and Independence in Iraq


November 3, 2003

Patrick Cockburn
The Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah

Dave Lindorff
Philly's Buggy Election

Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003

Bernie Dwyer
An Interview with Chomsky on Cuba

November 1 / 2, 2003

Saul Landau
Cui Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off

Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality

Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver

Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"

John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines

William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit

Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes

Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred

Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos

Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle

Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action

Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon

Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire

David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him Famous

Adam Engel
America, What It Is

Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn

Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie

Congratulations to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!


October 31, 2003

Lee Ballinger
Making a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs

Wayne Madsen
The GOP's Racist Trifecta

Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"

Elaine Cassel
Coming to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)

Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry

 


October 30, 2003

Forrest Hylton
Popular Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia

Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military Families

Dave Lindorff
Big Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"

Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of Israel

Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak

Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?

Alexander Cockburn
Paul Krugman: Part of the Problem

 

 

October 29, 2003

Chris Floyd
Thieves Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton

Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans

Rick Giombetti
Let Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy

The Intelligence Squad
Dark Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks

Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists

Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement

Gary Leupp
Every Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures

October 28, 2003

Rich Gibson
The Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003

Uri Avnery
Incident in Gaza

Diane Christian
Wishing Death

Robert Fisk
Eyewitness in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"

Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte

Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran

Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten

Chris White
9/11 in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective

 


October 27, 2003

William A. Cook
Ministers of War: Criminals of the Cloth

David Lindorff
The Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer

Elaine Cassel
Antonin Scalia's Contemptus Mundi

Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia

John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls

Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us

Bill Kauffman
George Bush, the Anti-Family President

 

 

October 25 / 26, 2003

Robert Pollin
The US Economy: Another Path is Possible

Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China

James Bunn
Plotting Pre-emptive Strikes

Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?

Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany

Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace

Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit

Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror

Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors

Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq

John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula

Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies

Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur

An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia

Karyn Strickler
Down with Big Brother's Spying Eyes

Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization

John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America

Mickey Z.
War of the Words

Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous

Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand

 

 

 

October 24, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's War on Greenpeace

Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews

Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets, Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited

Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty

David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button

Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't

 

 

 

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
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Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

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November 14 / 23, 2003

Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners

Democracy or Oligarchy?

By TOM CRUMPACKER

A New York Times story on November 13 by Christopher Marquis is quite disheartening for those of us who still want to believe we live in a democracy rather than an oligarchy. The unconstitutional Cuba travel restrictions were first enacted into law in 2000 by Senator Trent Lott (Senate majority leader) and Congressmen Tom Delay (then majority whip) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Miami). In a stacked "conference committee" on the approved bills allowing sales of medicine and nutritional food to Cuba, they added a provision codifying the travel restrictions, which had nothing to do with the medicine-food bills and had not been debated or voted on.

At the time Congressman Mark Sanford (R., SC) said his leadership had "behaved shamefully" and Senator Max Baucus (D., MT) called the maneuver "a travesty of our democracy."

Every year since then the "party leaders" have refused to allow the proposed bills repealing the restrictions (supported by substantial majorities) to come to the floor, or be debated or voted on. Meanwhile the Bush Administration's yearly requests for enforcement money for the restrictions have been turned down each year by 55-60% majorities in both chambers.

The restrictions (before 2000 administrative regs only) have not been enforced since the Soviet Union dissolved and our Defense Department in 1993 certified Cuba constitutes no security risk.

Now for the first time in ten years, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control is starting to fine and prosecute unlicensed Cuba travelers (there were an estimated 100,000 in 2002).

This despite the fact that this fall both House and Senate by substantial majorities passed an amendment to the Transportation Budget to refuse the requested enforcement money for the restrictions.

The Marquis article indicates the party leaders have now quietly in conference thrown this amendment out, even though there could be no legal conference committee negotiation or jurisdiction because the passed bills are in identical language. The article says the leaders' purpose is to save Mr. Bush the embarrassment of a veto, which might make him appear to pander to Florida Cuban-Americans.

But the pandering is not to Cuban-American voters (9% of Florida's registered voters). Recent polls over the past two years (which Mr. Bush is surely aware of) show 70% of Florida's Cuban-Americans want the restrictions repealed. Rather Mr. Bush is pandering to wealthy, reactionary Cuba "hard-liners" who fund his national campaigns, most of whom are not Cuban-Americans or from Florida, although some are.

Once again a very few powerful men have overruled the clearly expressed will of our Congress. Why do our so-called representatives allow this to happen? How can we accuse Cuba of being undemocratic? Are we a democracy or an oligarchy? Only if we face reality can we change it.

Tom Crumpacker is with the Miami Coalition to End the US Embargo of Cuba. He can be reached at: Crump8@aol.com

Weekend Edition Features for Nov. 8 / 9, 2003

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism as Racist Ideology

Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered

Saul Landau
The Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz

Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police

William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?

David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War

Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens

Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring Hollow

Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"

Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?

Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum Disorder

Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy

Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post

Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet

Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman

Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder

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