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Today's
Stories
January 8, 2004
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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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January
8, 2004
Official Malfeasance
Bush:
Driving Without Breaks
By RAY McGOVERN
It came at the very end of a long New York
Times report of Jan. 2 regarding the havoc caused at Dulles
airport in Washington, DC because of heightened concern there
about a terrorist attack.
"In a footnote, the director
of security at Dulles airport was arrested Thursday on suspicion
of drunk driving"
Dulles airport's director of security,
former Secret Service agent Charles Brady, was pulled over on
suspicion of being drunk at the wheel at the very height of the
emergency! What a telling metaphor for malfeasance at a more
senior level, I thought to myself. While President George W.
Bush may no longer be drinking, the year 2003 showed him to be
DWI in a far more dangerous sense-driving while intoxicated with
power.
Worse still, unlike Brady and other drivers
for whom the police provide disincentive to full-speed-ahead,
the president sees no reason to apply the brakes-surrounded as
he is with swift SUVs and with televangelist Pat Robertson riding
shotgun.
The top story of 2003, in my view, deals
with official malfeasance, the difference between Brady and Bush,
and the reasons why the latter has not yet been pulled over for
reckless endangerment on an international scale.
Checks and Balances?
In our system of government, checks and
balances were designed to serve, in effect, as speed traps.
While the judiciary is beginning to limit some of the more egregious
abuses attending the "war on terror," the legislative
branch in its current coloration is little more than a patsy
for the administration.
Congress, which in 2002 was tricked into
ceding to the executive its constitutional prerogative to declare
war, is now under even tighter control by the president's party.
And with trustees like Sen. Pat Roberts (R, Kansas) and Rep.
Porter Goss (R, Florida) keeping tight rein on the intelligence
committees, you can forget about an impartial investigation into
the still missing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and
the wider question as to whether the war was launched under false
pretences.
"Washington Democrats" like
Rep. Dick Gephardt, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Sen. John Kerry who
voted for the war are still lending a helping hand. Rather than
admit that they were hoodwinked and thereby risk qualifying for
the George W. Romney memorial prize for naiveté, they
remain co-opted. (Remember the caricatures after Romeny claimed
in 1968 to have been brainwashed on Vietnam; remember how the
soapsuds dripping from Romney's head washed away his presidential
aspirations?)
How else to explain Gephardt's tortured
response on December 31. 2003 when he was asked for the umpteenth
time to explain why, as minority leader in the House, he threw
his support to Bush on the war. Gephardt told the Washington
Post he was persuaded by the administration's insistence
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Was he lied to? Gephardt: "I do
not feel deceived." Despite the Post's consistent
cheerleading for the war, I will still somewhat surprised to
see that on Jan. 4 the editorial folks at the Post began
a major piece with strong applause for Gephardt's "consistent
and responsible position on the war in Iraq." It would
appear that consistency is considered the supreme value at the
Post.
The president has little to fear from
speed traps or even speed bumps at the hands of our representatives
in Congress-on either side of the aisle. What about the United
Nations and international law? No braking effect there either.
Any doubts about the contempt in which the UN is held by the
US officials running our policy toward Iraq were laid to rest
in 2003. And leading UN-phobe, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle,
conceded publicly on November 19, 2003 that the invasion of Iraq
was illegal but added, "I think in this case international
law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
Moreover the deterrent effect once exerted
by a militarily robust USSR is no more. Tiresome as the mantra
has become that the USA is the "sole remaining world superpower,"
that happens to be true. And a short decade ago one would have
been considered quite the spoilsport to predict that this would
turn out to be a very mixed blessing?
Is there, then, no disincentive at all?
No antidote to driving the country while intoxicated with power?
Who will pull the president over and give him a summons?
The Fourth Estate? Sorry, Embedded.
The extraordinary performance of the
US press on Iraq is the most telling part of 2003's top story.
Inimitable commentator Jimmy Breslin describes that performance
as "the worst failure to inform the public that we have
seen; the Pekingese of the press run clip-clop along the hall
to the next government press conference." Commenting on
the prevailing practice of reciting the official line, another
pundit has branded journalists and broadcasters alike little
more than "ventriloquists' dummies."
The 18th century British statesman Edmund
Burke coined "fourth estate" in circumstances similar
to those of today here in this former British colony. It was
before we rebelled against the ruling George of the time-George
III, whom Burke castigated for trying to enlarge the power of
the crown.
In his pamphlet "Thoughts on the
Cause of the Present Discontents" (1770), Burke argued that
although King George's actions were legal in the sense that they
were not against the letter of the constitution, they were all
the more against its spirit. As for the American colonies, Burke
argued strongly for a more flexible approach, one enlightened
by "moral principle," but British imperial policy ignored
him and lost America. And that, as our own George I (George
H. W. Bush) would say, is history.
Burke said there were three estates in
parliament (two chambers in the House of Lords of the time and
one in Commons). But the fourth estate, "more important
far than they all, sat in the Reporters Gallery."
How far we have come since then.
Indeed, perhaps you need to have been
around for Vietnam and for Watergate to have some sense of how
the media have deteriorated in one brief generation.
The mainstream press is now giving our imperial president, our
"George II," a free pass.
The Dog Ate My Homework
Among other shortcomings, American journalists
and talking heads simply do not do their homework. Had not Australian
documentary producer John Pilger shown due diligence in reviewing
video footage of what Secretary of State Colin Powell and national
security adviser Condolleeza Rice had been saying about weapons
of mass destruction, we would not know that on Feb. 24, 2001
Powell said:
"He (Saddam Hussein) has not
developed any significant capability with respect to weapons
of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power
against his neighbors."
Or that two months later Condoleezza
Rice said:
"We are able to keep his arms
from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
As a bumper sticker might say-"If
you can read this, thank a Pilger!"
But must we depend on Australian journalists
to slow down the presidential motorcade? Was it simply laziness
or perhaps something worse that prevented US journalists from
doing a computer run on past statements, when Powell and Rice
later changed their tune?
The unholy marriage of conglomerate press
and government is the Achilles heel of our democracy-and a fillip
to fascism. We are inching closer to the modus operandi of Nazi
propaganda minister Josef Goebbels than to Edmund Burke's ideal
of a press as watchdog, holding the barbarians at the gates.
As freelance journalist and press observer
Ron Callari has noted, US media are now populated by "well-paid
conformists" whose voices are owned by the major corporations
that pay them so well. Callari decries the "dumbing down"
of the media and asks whether a people can be truly free if Big
Brother can spoon-feed them what to believe.
Sadly, there is no dearth of examples
that can be adduced. How can it be, for instance, that the press
has completely missed recent signs that the administration plans
to stretch out the quest for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
beyond November?
Until After the Election
The most recent hint of this came in
a last-sentence buried in an unnoticed Christmas Eve story by
the Washington Post's Walter Pincus (who actually was
writing about something else). Pincus merely noted in passing
that the WMD search in Iraq "is expected to continue for
at least another year, according to administration sources."
Like until after the election? Transparent,
no? And yet, if the recent past is precedent, the mainstream
press will let the administration get away with it.
Or consider that the Post on September
18, 2003 buried on page A18 President Bush's admission the previous
day that "there has been no evidence that Saddam Hussein
was involved with September the 11th." This admission came
after many months of artful White House rhetoric that strongly
implied just the opposite-with remarkable success in getting
a large majority of the American people to believe it. And on
December 23, 2003, the Post kept out of its news section
altogether retired Marine General Anthony Zinni's biting critique
of the US policy on Iraq, relegating it to the "Style"
section. Until he retired in 2000, Zinni commanded all US troops
in the area of the Persian Gulf.
What's the Difference?
Lest we begin the New Year thoroughly
depressed, we shall call a halt after one more example. Recall
the initial press reporting on Jessica Lynch: ambushed by the
Iraqis, courageously firing her weapon until her ammunition ran
out, shot, stabbed, raped and then rescued in a daring nighttime
raid videotaped for showing around the world.
But US media dropped Jessica Lynch as
soon as it became clear that she was not going to cooperate with
Pentagon yarn spinners. Good for Private Lynch. This young
woman from rural West Virginia knows the difference between the
truth and a lie.
Would that that were so in the case of
our president, who asks, without a trace of shame, "What's
the difference?"-the question this time being the difference
between whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction last
year or not; i. e., whether the ostensible justification for
attacking Iraq was real or was manufactured out of whole cloth.
What's the difference? I believe most
Americans can see the difference.
The Question for 2004
The key question for 2004 is whether
or not the administration's stranglehold on the media can be
loosened to the point where the electorate can wake up, take
away the president's driver's license, and put an end to the
reckless endangerment.
For that we shall need to resurrect the
spirit of Thomas Paine and show a lot more Common Sense.
Ray McGovern,
a 27-year veteran CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, is now co-director of the Servant Leadership
School, an outreach ministry in the inner city of Washington,
DC. He can be reached at: RRMcGovern@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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