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Today's
Stories
September
29, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Recent
Stories
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
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?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
29, 2003
Bolivia's Gas War
Seven
Dead in Big Protests
By BENJAMIN DANGL
Cochabamba, Bolivia
A new cycle of conflict has developed in Bolivia
as worker unions, coca farmers and ordinary citizens unite to
prevent the sale of the nation's gas reserves to the United States
through a Chilean port. In a country whose economic identity
has been strongly shaped by U.S. pressure in the war on drugs
and IMF structural adjustments, The Gas War is the most recent
case where the Bolivian public has vehemently protested against
foreign interests taking priority over the country's economic
well being.
Bolivia is currently in its tenth day
of road blockades and on September 19th large scale strikes and
protests took place across the country. Confrontations with security
forces and protesters during these manifestations resulted in
over twenty five injuries and seven deaths.
The debate regarding what to do with
Bolivia's natural gas reserves, which are the largest in Latin
America, began approximately a year and a half ago when the government
proposed that the gas be exported through Chile, instead of the
more costly option of exporting it through Peru.
Public Opposition
In August of this year civil society
and union groups announced a coordinated campaign to stop the
exportation which began with direct action in the Yungas, a region
north of La Paz. From its start, The Gas War included demands
for clarity in coca laws, the release of jailed political leaders
and justice regarding the atrocities that took place in La Paz
last February.
In Bolivia, there is a profound contempt
towards Chile which originated with the Pacific war of 1879 when
Chile took over Bolivia's only access to the sea. This event
has fueled much of the tension regarding the plan to sell the
gas through Chile. Rather than having their desperate government
sell the gas to foreign investors, many Bolivians want it to
be industrialized nationally for much needed employment and income.
Bolivia's president, Gonzalo Sanchez
de Lozada, maintains that the millions in revenue from the sale
of gas to the U.S. will create jobs and stabilize the Bolivian
economy. He has promised that the money generated will go directly
into funding for education and healthcare. But many Bolivians
believe that foreign companies and Bolivian business and political
leaders will be the only ones to benefit from the sale.
The results of a recent survey conducted
by Equipos Mori for the Bolivian TV network, Unitel, shows that
70 percent of western Bolivia, mainly located in the cities of
La Paz, El Alto and Cochabamba, reject the proposal to export
the gas. Whereas 58 percent of the population in the southeast
region of the country, where most of the large gas companies
and reserves are - Santa Cruz, Tarija and Sucre - support the
proposal. (La Prensa, 9/24/03)
Those against the exportation of the
gas demand more open discussions regarding the destiny of the
country's natural resource. Yet the lack of significant responses
from the government has created the need for direct action.
Nationwide Protest
On Friday, September 19th tens of thousands
protested in cities across Bolivia. These marches proved that
there are large numbers of citizens who are willing to strike
and construct extensive road blockades if the plan to sell gas
through Chile moves ahead.
On September 19th, in a protester presence
the city of Cochabamba has not seen since the water wars in April
of 2000, nearly ten thousand people marched down the streets
into the plaza. The protest was made up primarily of coca farmers
from the nearby Chapare region, most of whom had left their farms
to ride in buses all night to march in the city.
Protest placards in the Cochabambais
main plaza read "No To Gas Through and For Chile" and
"Soldiers - Who Are You Defending?" Meanwhile political
figures such as Evo Morales, the leader of The Movement Towards
Socialism party, and Oscar Olivera, the spokesperson for The
Peopleis High Command, addressed a raucous crowd.
Calling the people to action against
the exportation, Morales threatened, "If the government
decides to export gas through Chile it's hours are numbered."
(Los Tiempos, 9/17/03)
The police force, who had had hundreds
of officers bussed into Cochabamba from La Paz the day before,
were barely present at all in the day's pacific, but impressive
events
Violent Confrontation
in Warisata
The next day, September 20th, Bolivian
security forces attempted to "rescue" nearly seven
hundred people who had been stuck in buses in a road blockade
for a week in Sorata, a town north of La Paz. The people maintaining
the road blockade were protesting the sale of gas through Chile,
as well as demanding the release of imprisoned local leaders.
Among those stranded in the blockade
were seventy tourists from the United States, Germany and England.
Under urgent recommendations from David Greenlee, the U.S. ambassador
in Bolivia, the Bolivian government dispatched the security forces
to Sorata to extradite these people from the blockaded area.
When confrontations began in the town
of Warisata, just below Sorata, Mauricio Antezana, the spokesman
for president Lozada, said that "they had spoken with the
campesinos that were blockading Sorata and had reached an agreement
that allowed the numerous buses to leave." (La Razon, 9/21/03)
But when the security forces arrived, the tension rose and the
agreement was quickly ignored.
The security forces began to indiscriminately
open fire on the campesinos, while also randomly shooting into
homes and schools. Some of the campesinos returned the fire with
their own weapons and rocks. In the end, the confrontation resulted
in seven dead from bullet wounds, including two soldiers, a sixty
year old man, a student, a professor and a mother and her daughter.
Nearly twenty five injuries were reported from both sides.
Responses
Though government officials maintain
that the security forces were ambushed by campesinos, Human Rights
investigators from El Defensor del Pueblo, Bolivia's Permanent
Assembly of Human Rights and the Congressional Human Rights Commission
stated that there was no evidence of an ambush and that the military
had been securing the area around Warisata from early Saturday
morning, and that later in the afternoon, though talks had been
going on with the campesinos to end the blockade, the military
had aggressively moved in for the confrontation.
Government officials proposed that "racist
and armed terrorist groups" were to blame for the violence
in Warisata. On Monday, photos of armed campesinos were on all
the front pages of Bolivian newspapers. Many believe these comments
and propaganda are simply an attempt to justify excessive use
of force by Bolivia's police and military in Warisata. Felipe
Quispe, Campesino Federation Leader, said that no such terror
groups exist and that it was the security forces who had provoked
the conflict. (La Razon, 9/23703)
However, in the midst of a national debate
regarding the confrontation, press accounts state that during
a ceremony on September 23rd in which the U.S. gave the Bolivian
government 63 million dollars in development aid, U.S. ambassador
Greenlee said that the intervention of the security forces in
Warisata was justified. (El Diario, 9/23/03)
Dozens of union groups and political
parties met on Monday, September 22, in Cochabamba to decide
what course of action to take regarding the deaths in Warisata.
At this meeting various leaders, including those from the Movement
Towards Socialism, The Peopleis High Command and the Bolivian
Workers Union, threatened that if these massacres persist nationwide
strikes and road blockades will go on indefinitely. Currently
road blockades continue on major highways across Bolivia and
it is likely that blockades around the Chapare and Cochabamba
will begin soon.
The excessive use of force in Warisata
reduces the country's already weak faith in the government, puts
constructive dialogue to a standstill and fuels the likelihood
of more violence in the future, leaving the destiny of Bolivia's
natural resource still very much in question.
Ben Dangl
works for The Andean Information Network in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
He can be reached at theupsidedownworld@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 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?
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