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Today's
Stories
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
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
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
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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Weekend
Edition
February 20 / 22, 2004
Campaign Diary
Kerry:
He's Peaking, Already
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
By all rights John Kerry should have been at the
top of his form, the night he won the Wisconsin primary. Even
though the six biggest states, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida,
New York and California have yet to vote, he's been hailed as
the Democratic nominee, with hit teams already on the rampage,
hunting down prospective Nader supporters, rounding up all known
and prospective third party defectors from the Democratic standard,
forcing them to kneel and kiss the Democratic Party platform
under pain of death, while playing a tape of DNC chair Terry
McAuliffe screaching "convert or die!"
Kerry has emerged from the bruising kiss
of imputed scandal and, unless Ms Alex Polier or other women
inconveniently crop up again, Teresa Heinz won't have to wield
the carving knife she has threatened to deploy to her husband's
private parts if his path to the White House is derailed by sexual
scandal. Polier not withstanding, never has a candidate had to
put up with less in the way of the baptism of sewage that is
a vital part of the primary process. Dean and Clark drew all
the fire. John Edwards, who could slice up Kerry in a minute,
has adamantly refused to unleash his forensic artillery.
So did Kerry have the jaunty mien of
triumph, that night in Madison? Not that we could see. His long
face, albeit abbreviated by corrective surgery, remained lugubrious
and he stumbled his way tiredly through Bob Shrum's phrases.
The one thing all Democrats this year want is a winner. He doesn't
feel like a winner to us.
Right now some polls show Kerry a few
points ahead of Bush. Other polls show Kerry peaked on February
15 and has started to slip behind Bush. The states that voted
for Gore in 2000, according to a Zogby poll, are softer on Kerry
while Bush states remain strong for their man. As yet Karl Rove
has yet to launch the Shock and Awe barrage that will explode
over Kerry's head some time in the late summer, after the Democrats
have got their boost in Boston.
Rove's targeting plans will obviously
include such easy, but telling hits as Kerry's support for Bush's
tax cuts for the rich. (If elected President, according to the
bean counters at Forbes', Kerry will be the third richest denizen
of the Oval Office in American history.) Kerry voted for the
Patriot Act and he voted for the '03 attack on Iraq.
And this wasn't just a resigned Aye.
Kerry was up there with Bush, Rumsfeld and Blair as a huckster
for all the lies that have come home to haunt Washington. "These
weapons represent an unacceptable threat", he bellowed last
year. Not just nuclear weapons of mass destruction. "Iraq
has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly
producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including
anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles,
aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them
to the United States homeland." Kerry's bottom line: "The
President laid out a strong, comprehensive, and compelling argument
why Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are a threat
to the United States and the international community."
Kerry agrees with Bush about the tax
cuts. He agrees with him about the Patriot Act. He agrees with
him on trade. He agrees with him on the war. Why change horses,
Bush will ask the American people. "I can manage things
better," Kerry will respond. What else can he say? He's
never once, in three senate terms, offered legislation to inconvenence
the "special interests" at which he's lately launched
a few pop-gun attacks. "Over the course of his senate career,"
writes Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, "Kerry
has not been averse to taking campaign cash from the companies
and firms with a direct interest in his work. Since '95, he raised
more than 30 million for his various campaigns, most of it from
industries such as finance and telecommunication companies (which
are overseen by the senate committees he served) and the law
and lobby firms that represent them."
This is where the timid legions of the
left, cowed by furious bluster about their treachery in deserting
the Democratic standard back in 2000, might ask some serious
questions, and maybe even threaten desertion again. All Kerry
can offer is superior management of the imperial bandwagon at
home and abroad. Defense? More over, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz!
To cleanse the Augean stable, with those fragrant heaps of procurement
cash handed out to Bush and Cheney's cronies Kerry has a broom
in the form of his defense adviser William Perry. Not a clean
broom, mind you. Perry, a notorious shil for the avionics sector
when he ran the Pentagon's R&D in the Carter years, drew
deserved fire in Clinton time for being the first secretary of
defense allowed to hold investments in a military contractor,
Cambridge Research Associates, doing business with the Defense
Department.
The War on Drugs? National Security Advice?
Kerry has Rand Beers. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, he served
as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement Affairs, and was one of the architects of the
aerial crop fumigation program the U.S. introduced in southern
Colombia when the State Department hired DynCorp, a private military
contractor, to fly crop dusters at high altitudes over southern
Colombia, spraying poison on all the vegetation and, often, peasants
below.
Beers' terrible role in Colombia was
recently stigmatized by Sean Donohue of Massachusetts Anti-Corporate
Clearing House. Beers had scant concern for peasant with their
only means of subsistence, whether coca or legal yucca, wiped
out. "One doesn't get a special pass for being poor,"
he told NBC's John Stossel, (a sentiment with which Kerry surely
concurs, since he voted for Clinton's onslaught on welfare.)
Beers once gave a sworn deposition in
a lawsuit filed against DynCorp in a U.S. Federal District Court
by indigenous tribes in which he argued for fumigation, claiming
that "It is believed that FARC terrorists have received
training in Al Qaida terrorist caps in Afghanistan."
AP cited three intelligence sources in
Washington expressing incredulity. "'My first reaction was
that Rand must have misspoke,' said a veteran congressional staffer
with extensive experience in the Colombian drug war. 'But when
I saw it was a proffer signed under oath, I couldn't believe
he would do that. I have no idea why he would say that.'"
Beers later recanted his testimony, claiming that he had been
misinformed.
How about oil and empire? Right next
to Beers on Kerry's national security team is Richard Morningstar,
whose career was usefully dissected by Laura Flanders not so
long ago. An inside player to be sure. He ran the Overseas Private
Investment Corp, a notorious swill-bin for corporate plunder,
then became Clinton's oil ambassador to Central Asia where he
rubbed shoulder pads with Condoleezza Rice, at that time Chevron's
envoy prospecting capture of the region's vast oil reserves.
But isn't Kerry at least a living reproach
to the horrors of the Vietnam War. Not really. He's got his medals
back up on the office wall and here's what he wrote in "A
Call to Service", his campaign bio: "I could never
agree with those in the antiwar movement who dismissed our troops
as war criminals or our country as the villain in the drama As
a veteran of both the Vietnam war and the Vietnam protest movement,
I say to both conservative and liberal misinterpretations of
that war it's time to get over it and recognize it as an exception,
not as a ruling example, of the US military engagements of the
twentieth century."
Conscience thus cleared and memory obliterated,
Kerry advocates "a tough-minded strategy of international
engagement and leadership." Kerry over Bush, Bush over Kerry?
As regards impact on humanity, it's hard to figure how big a
slice of the planet would register a dime's worth of difference
between the two, or even a genome's worth, for that matter. After
all, they are cousins. Sixteenth cousins. Why, in San Francisco
right now they could legally get married. They've been close
for years.
Weekend
Edition Features for 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
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
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