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Today's Stories

October 17, 2003

David Lindorff
Michael Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty

October 16, 2003

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba

Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq

Norman Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse

Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time

Lenni Brenner
I Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me

Website of the Day
Time Tested Books

 

October 15, 2003

Sunil Sharma / Josh Frank
The General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation

Forrest Hylton
Dispatch from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"

Brian Cloughley
Those Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq

Ahmad Faruqui
Lessons of the October War

Uri Avnery
Three Days as a Living Shield

Website of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor


October 14, 2003

Eric Ridenour
Qibya & Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre

Elaine Cassel
The Disgrace That is Guantanamo

Robert Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People

David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops

VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference

Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews

Peter Linebaugh
"Remember Orr!"

Website of the Day
BRIDGES

 

October 11 / 13, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings

Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles

Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia

Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference

Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci
Allende Lives

Larry Tuttle
States of Corruption

William A. Cook
Failing America

Brian Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand

Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?

Merlin Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin

Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!

Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries

Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus

Bruce Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"

William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2

Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley

Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack

Poets' Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney


October 10, 2003

John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger and the Lottery Society

Toni Solo
Trashing Free Software

Chris Floyd
Body Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women

 

October 9, 2003

Jennifer Loewenstein
Bombing Syria

Ramzi Kysia
Seeing the Iraqi People

Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic

Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?

Alexander Cockburn
Welcome to Arnold, King for a Day

Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark

 

October 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Centrist Dems

Ramzy Baroud
Israel's WMDs and the West's Double Standard

John Ross
Mexico Tilts South

Mokhiber / Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust

James Bovard
The Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster

Michael Neumann
One State or Two?
A False Dilemma

 

October 7, 2003

Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion Ethnic Cleansing

Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta

Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present

David Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq

Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required

Cynthia McKinney
Who Are "We"?

Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case

Walter Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall

Gary Leupp
Israel's Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?

Website of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot

 

October 6, 2003

Robert Fisk
US Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria

Forrest Hylton
Upheaval in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity

Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War

Bridget Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus

Nicole Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor

Website of the Day
Guerrilla Funk

 

October 3 / 5, 2003

Tim Wise
The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment

Peter Linebaugh
Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW

Gary Leupp
Occupation as Rape-Marriage

Bruce Jackson
Addio Alle Armi

David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?

Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers

Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean

Mickey Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest

Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq

John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus

William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac

Glen T. Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism

Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos

Wayne Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can

M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier

William Benzon
Scorsese's Blues

Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest

Poets' Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie

 

 

October 2, 2003

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What's So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
The Ashcroft-Rove Connection

Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair

Hamid Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)

Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act

Saul Landau
Who Got Us Into This Mess?

Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!


October 1, 2003

Joanne Mariner
Married with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families

Robert Fisk
Oil, War and Panic

Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia as State Policy

Elaine Cassel
The Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act

Shyam Oberoi
Shooting a Tiger

Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?

Sean Donahue
Wesley Clark and the "No Fly" List

Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund

 

September 30, 2003

After Dark
Arnold's 1977 Photo Shoot

Dave Lindorff
The Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well

Tom Crumpacker
The Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers

Robert Fisk
A Lesson in Obfuscation

Charles Sullivan
A Message to Conservatives

Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective

Naeem Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
Does a Felon Rove the White House?

Website of the Day
The Edward Said Page


September 29, 2003

Robert Fisk
The Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies

Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!

Lee Sustar
Paul Krugman: the Last Liberal?

Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War

Uri Avnery
The Magnificent 27

Pledge Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com

 

September 26 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist

David Price
Teaching Suspicions

Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity

Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and the Patriot Act

Brian Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again

Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama

Robert Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions

M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA

John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN

Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada

William S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security

Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia

Chris Floyd
Vanishing Act

Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui

Richard Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved

George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said

Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized

Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss

Mickey Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice

Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said

Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room

Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie

Website of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?

 

 

September 25, 2003

Edward Said
Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony

Robert Fisk
Fanning the Flames of Hatred

Sarah Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School

David Krieger
The Second Nuclear Age

Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak

Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime

Michael S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs

Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley

Mustafa Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights

Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate Heart

Website of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine


The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!


September 24, 2003

Stan Goff
Generational Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War

William Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark

David Vest
Politics for Bookies

Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin

Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship

Latino Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!

Neve Gordon
Sharon's Preemptive Zeal

Website of the Day
Bands Against Bush

September 23, 2003

Bernardo Issel
Dancing with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand

Gary Leupp
To Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo

Gregory Wilpert
An Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela

Steven Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and Radical

Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?

Robert Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq

William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent

Elaine Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers

Yigal Bronner
The Truth About the Wall

Website of the Day
The Baghdad Death Count

September 20 / 22, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Silliest Show in Town

Alexander Cockburn
Lighten Up, America!

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet

Anne Brodsky
Return to Afghanistan

Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me

Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie

Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open

Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism

Kurt Nimmo
Colin Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja

Brian Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame

Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush

Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda

Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector

Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!

Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq

John Ross
WTO Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold

Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals

Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane

Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization

David Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America

Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps

Poets Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?

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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:
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Steve J.B.
Prison Bitch

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War

Wendell Berry
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CounterPunch Wire
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Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

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October 17, 2003

The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52

The World's Most Powerful Corporation Puts the Squeeze on Protesters

By BEN TERRALL

Lockheed Martin, the world's largest and most profitable arms manufacturer, has been turned back in its attempt to squeeze $15,000 in "restitution" from peaceful protestors.

On April 22, 2003, fifty-two demonstrators were arrested for engaging in non-violent civil disobedience outside Lockheed's Sunnyvale "campus," with 6,000 employees its largest facility in California. The weapons giant initially demanded $41,000 in compensation for private security forces, but that fee was knocked down in initial court proceedings. The defendants never moved onto company property while protesting Lockheed's profiteering off the war on Iraq, but sat and linked arms in front of vehicles entering the corporation's domain. The more than 200 police present had no problems containing the demonstrators, who had earlier assured the authorities of their commitment to non-violence.

On the day of the protest, a company spokesperson told the Stanford Daily that the demonstrators "have been very cooperative, very communicative, letting everyone know their plans. They've worked with law enforcement officials. There's been good communication and good cooperation on all sides." He added, "we encouraged [employees] to stagger their arrival hours--everything is operating normally."

Henry Norr, a San Francisco writer who was among the "Lockheed 52" defendants, points out that "most jurisdictions in the Bay Area haven't pursued fines in civil disobedience cases" and that "restitution has a chilling potential to create a deterrent effect for dissent." Norr adds, "an element of the victims rights movement was worthwhile, in that after all that victims go through, it's not entirely fair that penalties should only be paid to the authorities. I think that it makes sense if somebody steals your stereo you should get money back. But we didn't do a penny's worth of damage--and the only time we set foot on company property was after we were arrested when they put us on a company tennis court."

In her recent book "The New Nuclear Danger" Dr. Helen Caldicott calls Lockheed Martin "the world's most powerful corporation, one that literally controls the fate of the earth." The weapons giant certainly has a major presence in Washington, with a staggering 28 former executives now in the Bush administration. Lockheed ex-VP Bruce Jackson signed on to the founding letter of the infamous Project for a New American Century, the template for the current deranged U.S. uber alles foreign policy. Jackson played a pivotal role in front groups supporting war on Yugoslavia and the expansion of NATO (securing billions in weapons sales to the new member states), as well as the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," which backed the campaign against this year's reincarnation of Hitler. As the overall chairman of the Bush Foreign Policy Platform Committee, Jackson also wrote the Republican party foreign policy platform for Bush's 2000 campaign.

Dick Cheney's wife Lynne collected an annual $120,000 for years by sitting on Lockheed's board. And though Republicans received the lion's share of Lockheed dollars, Democrats are also complicit: Senate minority leader Tom Daschle's wife is a paid lobbyist for the weapons giant, and former Texas governor Ann Richards and former California Representative Vic Fazio have lobbied for Lockheed in the past, while stalwart party hack Joe Lieberman is a favored recipient of Lockheed campaign donations.

Lockheed's staggering profits have made the occasional multi-million dollar fine for graft just one more cost of doing business. The Project on Government Oversight found that from 2000-2001 Lockheed was cited for 84 instances of misconduct and pay outs of more than $426 million. In June, Lockheed paid the U.S. government $7.1 million to settle a suit over "false and fraudulent" claims made to NASA. In August, company spokeswoman Meghan Mariman explained that the payment of $37.9 million to settle charges of inflating costs on an Air Force contract was "to avoid the distraction of litigation."

But in a political climate where John Ashcroft can tell his critics that "your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode national unity and diminish our resolve," litigation against dissidents is obviously worthy of Lockheed's corporate attention.

Given the range of weaponry the company produces, including anti-personnel landmines and depleted uranium weapons, it's not surprising Lockheed wants to avoid scrutiny of its operations. Jennifer Hansen of the "Lockheed 52" argues that "to realistically acknowledge the vast numbers of civilians these weapons have killed, Lockheed should not just be fined for price gouging, it should be charged with war crimes under international law. Anti-personnel mines are inherently indiscriminate, maiming more than 26,000 people a year, mostly civilians. Though other companies have stopped producing these horrific weapons, Lockheed refuses to do so. It also continues to generate massive profits from the widespread use of depleted uranium, which the UN found to be in violation of the Geneva conventions, the Genocide convention, and the Convention against Torture." Depleted uranium, widely used in the bombing of Serbia and Iraq, contaminates the soil and the entire foodchain, and is linked to the "Persian Gulf Syndrome" which killed thousands of U.S. veterans, and thousands more Iraqis, after the first Gulf war.

Shortly after the company crowed about a sale of F-16s to Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces dropped a 250 kilogram bomb from one of the war planes onto a crowded apartment building in Gaza City (miraculously, there were only 15 reported injuries, no thanks to the PR invention called "precision bombing").

Arming Israel to the teeth helps feed Arab paranoia, leading to sales like the 2000 deal with the United Arab Emirates which will deliver 80 F-16s to the U.A.E. from 2004-2008, leaving Lockheed gleefully anticipating "what we expect to be a long and mutually beneficial partnership." Egypt also ordered 20 F-16s in 2000.

Lockheed, whose first quarter sales for 2003 were $7.1 billion, an 18% increase from 2002's first quarter, is poised to continue to reap gigantic profits from the Bush war on the world. According to the New York-based Arms Trade Resource Center, "the company has a greater stake in nuclear weapons and missile defense than any other U.S. arms maker"; Bush and his warmongers are pushing hard for expanded weapons contracting on both fronts for their version of "deterrence."

After Lockheed agreed to drop the restitution claim, on October 3 Judge Kenneth Barnum sentenced 36 of the 52 defendants from the April anti-war action to a fine of $612.50 (none of which will go to Lockheed) or equivalent amounts of public service or jail time. The defendants also received two years' court probation. Catholic Worker Larry Purcell agreed to plead no contest, but when Barnum asked if he would "obey all laws" during the probation period, Purcell responded, "I can't predict what the government is going to do in the next two years, so I can't promise not to engage in non-violent resistance again." The judge called Purcell "a hero" for his work on behalf of the hungry and homeless, but sentenced him to 45 days in jail anyway.

Ben Terrall is a writer and activist in Oakland. He can be reached at: bterrall@igc.org



Weekend Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings

Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles

Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia

Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference

Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci
Allende Lives

Larry Tuttle
States of Corruption

William A. Cook
Failing America

Brian Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand

Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?

Merlin Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin

Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!

Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries

Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus

Bruce Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"

William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2

Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley

Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack

Poets' Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney

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