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Today's Stories

October 29, 2003

Gary Leupp
Every Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures

October 28, 2003

Rich Gibson
The Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003

Uri Avnery
Incident in Gaza

Diane Christian
Wishing Death

Robert Fisk
Eyewitness in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"

Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte

Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran

Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten

Chris White
9/11 in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective


October 27, 2003

William A. Cook
Ministers of War: Criminals of the Cloth

David Lindorff
The Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer

Elaine Cassel
Antonin Scalia's Contemptus Mundi

Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia

John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls

Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us

Bill Kauffman
George Bush, the Anti-Family President

 

October 25 / 26, 2003

Robert Pollin
The US Economy: Another Path is Possible

Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China

James Bunn
Plotting Pre-emptive Strikes

Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?

Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany

Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace

Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit

Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror

Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors

Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq

John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula

Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies

Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur

An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia

Karyn Strickler
Down with Big Brother's Spying Eyes

Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization

John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America

Mickey Z.
War of the Words

Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous

Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand

 

 

October 24, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's War on Greenpeace

Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews

Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets, Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited

Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty

David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button

Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't

 

October 23, 2003

Diane Christian
Ruthlessness

Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism

David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology

Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement

William Blum
Imperial Indifference

Stew Albert
A Memo

 

October 22, 2003

Wayne Madsen
Religious Insanity Runs Rampant

Ray McGovern
Holding Leaders Accountable for Lies

Christopher Brauchli
There's No Civilizing the Death Penalty

Elaine Cassel
Legislators and Women's Bodies

Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism

Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali


October 21, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Beilin Agreement

Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General

David Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!

William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History

Bridget Gibson
Fatal Vision

Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell

October 20, 2003

Standard Schaefer
Chile's Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Chris Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California

Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky & Nader

John & Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful World

Elaine Cassel
God's General Unmuzzled

 

October 18 / 19, 2003

Robert Pollin
Clintonomics: the Hollow Boom

Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War

Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer

Bruce Anderson
The California Recall

John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"

Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario

Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa

Brian Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War

Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers

Denise Low
The Cancer of Sprawl

Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom

John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?

George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy

Alison Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan

Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir

Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder

 

October 17, 2003

Stan Goff
Piss On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War

Newton Garver
Bolivia in Turmoil

Standard Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack

Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52

Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran

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

 

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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October 29, 2003

Dark Forces?

The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks

By THE INTELLIGENCE SQUAD

It seems that, incredibly, the U.S. armed forces feel that they do not have enough young blacks in their ranks.

And so we see that the army has launched a street marketing campaign, including driving a big yellow tricked-out Hummer around at events where young blacks gather and launching a separate promotional tour co-sponsored by hip-hop magazine The Source.

Considering that blacks are already over-represented in the army, we find it interesting that the organization feels it needs to launch a special marketing campaign targeted just for us.

Then again, using performances by hip-hop artists like The Nappy Roots to distract minority youth makes a lot of sense when you consider that colored folks who are clued-in to what the armed forces are currently involved in may not like what they are seeing. For example:

Just like your own neighborhood!

They might take offense at assertions that what's currently going on in Baghdad is comparable to life in the places where blacks are disproportionately likely to live. In the summer you had General Ricardo Sanchez suggesting that the crime rate in Baghdad was "no worse than in any American city." Then you had Fox "News" Channel's Fred Barnes on Monday night saying that judging the status of Iraq by recent events in Baghdad was like judging the United States by the South Bronx.

The Intelligence Squad, headquartered in New York, just so happens to have roots in the South Bronx. We also have many contacts in many different American cities. And we can confidently state that widespread broad-daylight carjackings, women afraid to walk outside their homes for fear of rape, suicide car bombings, destruction of electrical substations, and rocket attacks against hotels do not represent the current state of affairs in any American city, not even in the South Bronx.

And Barnes should be informed that the South Bronx, unlike Baghdad, is not the capital city of its country, and does not contain 20% of its country's population.

See where your tax dollars are going!

They might not be too psyched to see tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars going to build Iraqi bridges and schools while the bridges and schools in their own home towns continue to decay, and the U.S. President fails to fully fund his own "Leave No Child Behind" Act.

Especially when four billion of the five billion dollars given to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority so far has managed to just disappear without a trace.

Especially when the money seems to pass on a direct line from the U.S. treasury to Dick Cheney's friends at Halliburton.

Especially when the U.S. seems determined to award bridge-building contracts to U.S. firms for $50 million when Iraqis themselves would be willing to complete such contracts for $300,000.

You oughtta be in pictures

They might wonder how much their country would appreciate the sacrifices they may be called on to make after seeing differences in the treatment received by Jessica Lynch and Shoshana Johnson after they returned home from their respective ordeals as POW's in Iraq.

The travails of young, white, blond Private Lynch were hyped off the charts by someone (neither the Pentagon nor the media will take credit), to the point where we were told she had been stabbed and had emptied her pistol trying to ward off her attackers. None of this was true. She was injured in a car accident.

On the other hand, Specialist Johnson, an African-American, had actually been shot in both legs by real assailants - a fact relatively few folks were made aware of.

Lynch came home to a parade covered live by all the national cable news networks.

No live-on-TV parade for Johnson.

Lynch, who is single with no children, will be receiving an 80% disability benefit from the military.

Johnson, who has a child, will be getting 30%.

Lynch, who claimed to have amnesia, and couldn't remember much of her ordeal, nevertheless had no trouble finding a publisher willing to give her a $1 million book deal to tell her story. The broadcast networks fell all over themselves to get an exclusive interview; Viacom offered her a program on MTV in exchange for a CBS News exclusive (Viacom owns both networks). NBC is making a TV movie about the rescue.

Johnson, we think, was interviewed by her hometown newspaper.

Checking the Want Ads

And so, it is a good thing from the military's perspective to promote services in the armed forces using flashy cars and hip-hop music. Anything that anesthetizes the minds of black youth to the painful experiences that could be awaiting them is just, well, good marketing.

The New York based Intelligence Squad provides news and political coverage from a black perspective.

 

Weekend Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003

Robert Pollin
The US Economy: Another Path is Possible

Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China

James Bunn
Plotting Pre-emptive Strikes

Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?

Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany

Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace

Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit

Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror

Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors

Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq

John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula

Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies

Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur

An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia

Karyn Strickler
Down with Big Brother's Spying Eyes

Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization

John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America

Mickey Z.
War of the Words

Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous

Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand

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