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Today's
Stories
December 6 / 7, 2003
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
December 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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
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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December
6 / 7, 2003
When NGOs Attack
Implications
of the Coup in Georgia
By JACOB LEVICH
Nongovernmental organizations--the notionally
independent, reputedly humanitarian groups known as NGOs--are
now being openly integrated into Washington's overall strategy
for consolidating global supremacy.
Events surrounding last month's coup
in post-Soviet Georgia, read in light of recent State Department
documents, suggest that seemingly innocuous NGOs now play a central
role in the policy of US-engineered "regime change"
set forth in the notorious National Security Strategy of the
United States.
The November 24 Wall Street Journal explicitly
credited the toppling of Eduard Shevardnadze's regime to the
operations of "a raft of non-governmental organizations
. . . supported by American and other Western foundations."
These NGOs, said the Journal, had "spawned a class of young,
English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western reforms"
who were instrumental laying the groundwork for a bloodless coup.
Astute commentators have correctly noted
connections between these provocateur NGOs and mega-philanthropist
George Soros, but the billionaire speculator did not act independently.
Georgia's so-called "Velvet Revolution" appears to
have been a textbook case of regime change by stealth, carefully
planned and centrally coordinated by the US government.
Thanks to first-rate reporting by Mark
McKinnon in the Toronto Globe & Mail and Mark Ames in the
Moscow-based online journal The Exile <www.exile.ru>, the
Georgian coup can be understood as a virtual scene-for-scene
rerun of the overthrow of Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic--right
down to the role of US Ambassador, played in both cases by spooky
career diplomat Richard Miles.
But while foreign-funded NGOs played
a significant minor part in the Yugoslavian operation, in Georgia
they were granted star billing. This bold, all but overt, deployment
of NGOs in service of US imperialism represents a new wrinkle
in regime change, reflecting adjusted post-9/11 priorities at
State and in the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Illuminating background is available
in a watershed USAID report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest:
Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity, released in January
2003 but ignored by a press swept up in pre-invasion hysteria.
In the report, USAID vows that development programs will no longer
be directed primarily toward alleviating human misery, but will
be committed to "encouraging democratic [i.e., US-friendly]
reforms." This policy shift is explicitly linked to the
National Security Strategy of the United States, the 2002 White
House blueprint for a new, openly aggressive phase of US imperialism.
Henceforward, the report promises, only
friendly regimes will be rewarded with development money, while
hostile (or merely independent) states will be punished by NGO-driven
"reform" programs that sound suspiciously like old-fashioned
destabilization ops.
The document notes with approval the
explosive growth of NGOs worldwide and points to the NGO network
as an attractive conduit for the strategic distribution of dollars.
Of course, not every NGO is controlled by the US foreign policy
establishment, and many rank-and-file aid workers continue to
perform thankless but essential relief work in countries decimated
by capitalism and war. But there's no mistaking which way the
wind is blowing in the development community: "NGOs used
to work at arm's length from donor governments," the USAID
report smugly observes, "but over time the relationship
has become more intimate."
To be sure, the vast global network of
privately-funded foundations and NGOs has done enormous damage
in its own right over the past two decades. With or without direct
US assistance, NGOs continue to prop up immiserating neoliberal
reforms, abet the schemes of transnational finance and agribusiness,
and thwart the struggles of Third World people to claim better
lives as of right. (The broader case against NGOs has been exhaustively
set forth by James Petras, among others, and is powerfully advanced
in the current issue of Aspects
of India's Economy.)
But USAID's new emphasis on "building
strategic partnerships" with humanitarian groups promises
far worse to come. In thinly coded language, Foreign Aid in the
National Interest touts NGOs and other private donors for their
ability to lay groundwork for coups d' état: "Assistance
can be provided to reformers to help identify key winners and
losers, develop coalition building and mobilization strategies,
and design publicity campaigns. . . . Such assistance may represent
an investment in the future, when a political shift gives reformers
real power."
As summarized by Hoover Institute fellow
Larry Diamond, a self-described "specialist on democratic
development and regime change" who contributed to the report:
"Where governments are truly rotten, the report suggests
channeling assistance primarily through nongovernmental sources,
working with other bilateral aid donors and multilateral aid
agencies to . . . coordinat[e] pressure on bad, recalcitrant
governments."
Shevardnadze, for many years a reliable
US client, seems to have become truly rotten at around the time
of his perceived tilt toward Russia, a development which potentially
threatened US military access to the region and control of the
$2.7 billion Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.
Per script, coordinated pressure began
immediately. An interlocking network of development-oriented
foundations, think tanks, and NGOs was mobilized to disseminate
propaganda, recruit opposition leaders, and fund an ex nihilo
"student resistance movement" modeled on Yugoslavia's
CIA-connected Otpor. Meanwhile, NGOs like the Liberty Institute--a
USAID subcontractor managed by Mikhail Saakashvili, the US-approved
candidate for Georgian leadership--worked hand-in-glove with
the US Embassy (and presumably the CIA) to destabilize civil
society.
Even the coup's immediate pretext--allegations
of electoral fraud -- conveniently emerged from an "election
support" operation run by USAID in consort with a Soros-connected
NGO, Open Society Georgia Foundation. TV-friendly street demos
and orchestrated international outcry followed in due course.
Shevardnadze accepted the inevitable and agreed to go quietly.
Within two weeks, Donald Rumsfeld was in Tbilsi as guest of the
coup leaders, discussing a timetable for Russian troop withdrawals.
In the near future, the smashing success
of the Georgia operation may be expected to lead to similarly
coordinated attempts on independent-minded governments worldwide--Cuba,
now doing its best to cope with an invasion of foreign-sponsored
"reform" organizations, is an especially likely candidate.
Meanwhile, as the US continues to assimilate
worldwide humanitarian endeavors to its imperial ambitions, the
heavy hitters of the NGO establishment are preening for another
round of mediagenic self-celebration at the upcoming World Social
Forum. Suggested new slogan: "Another Coup is Possible."
Jacob Levich,
a frequent contributor to Counterpunch.com, lives in Queens,
N.Y. He can be reached at: jlevich@earthlink.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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