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Today's Stories

October 25 / 26, 2003

Karyn Strickler
Down with Big Brother's Spying Eyes

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

 

October 11 / 13, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings

Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles

Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia

Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference

Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci
Allende Lives

Larry Tuttle
States of Corruption

William A. Cook
Failing America

Brian Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand

Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?

Merlin Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin

Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!

Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries

Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus

Bruce Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"

William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2

Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley

Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack

Poets' Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney


October 10, 2003

John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger and the Lottery Society

Toni Solo
Trashing Free Software

Chris Floyd
Body Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women

 

October 9, 2003

Jennifer Loewenstein
Bombing Syria

Ramzi Kysia
Seeing the Iraqi People

Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic

Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?

Alexander Cockburn
Welcome to Arnold, King for a Day

Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark

 

October 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Centrist Dems

Ramzy Baroud
Israel's WMDs and the West's Double Standard

John Ross
Mexico Tilts South

Mokhiber / Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust

James Bovard
The Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster

Michael Neumann
One State or Two?
A False Dilemma

 

October 7, 2003

Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion Ethnic Cleansing

Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta

Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present

David Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq

Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required

Cynthia McKinney
Who Are "We"?

Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case

Walter Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall

Gary Leupp
Israel's Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?

Website of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot

 

October 6, 2003

Robert Fisk
US Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria

Forrest Hylton
Upheaval in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity

Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War

Bridget Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus

Nicole Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor

Website of the Day
Guerrilla Funk

 

October 3 / 5, 2003

Tim Wise
The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment

Peter Linebaugh
Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW

Gary Leupp
Occupation as Rape-Marriage

Bruce Jackson
Addio Alle Armi

David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?

Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers

Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean

Mickey Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest

Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq

John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus

William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac

Glen T. Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism

Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos

Wayne Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can

M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier

William Benzon
Scorsese's Blues

Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest

Poets' Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie

 

 

October 2, 2003

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What's So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
The Ashcroft-Rove Connection

Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair

Hamid Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)

Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act

Saul Landau
Who Got Us Into This Mess?

Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!


October 1, 2003

Joanne Mariner
Married with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families

Robert Fisk
Oil, War and Panic

Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia as State Policy

Elaine Cassel
The Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act

Shyam Oberoi
Shooting a Tiger

Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?

Sean Donahue
Wesley Clark and the "No Fly" List

Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund

 

September 30, 2003

After Dark
Arnold's 1977 Photo Shoot

Dave Lindorff
The Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well

Tom Crumpacker
The Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers

Robert Fisk
A Lesson in Obfuscation

Charles Sullivan
A Message to Conservatives

Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective

Naeem Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
Does a Felon Rove the White House?

Website of the Day
The Edward Said Page


September 29, 2003

Robert Fisk
The Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies

Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!

Lee Sustar
Paul Krugman: the Last Liberal?

Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War

Uri Avnery
The Magnificent 27

Pledge Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com

 

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


The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!


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?

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

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October 25, 2003

Killing Endangered Species for Profit

Between Bush and a Lobotomy

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

George Orwell, 1984

The only thing between a people living in a country governed by George W. Bush and contentment is a lobotomy. Words have lost all meaning.

The Healthy Forest initiative means means cutting down trees. Homeland Security means the right to spy on us. The Clean Air initiative doesn't mean anything.

On August 28, 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that 20 percent of the costs of replacing an industrial plant's production system would be treated as routine maintenance thus avoiding the theretofore extant requirement that anti-pollution controls be installed. The new rule affects 17,000 facilities and will save utilities, oil companies and other affected industries billions of dollars they would otherwise have been required to spend to reduce pollution.

In 2001, the environmental administrator, Christie Whitman, sent a memorandum to Vice President Dick Cheney about the changes that at that time were only being proposed. She said if the administration made commitments on changing the rules: "Settlements [of existing lawsuits to enforce the rules] will likely slow down or stop. It will also be counterproductive. We will pay a terrible political price if we undercut or walk away from the enforcement cases. It will be hard to refute the charge that we are deciding not to enforce the Clean Air Act." Mr. Bush has no such trouble.

When he visited the Detroit Edison coal-burning power plant in Monroe, Michigan, he touted the EPA's new rule saying: "It makes sense to change these regulations. It makes sense for the workplace environment, it makes sense for the protection of the workplace environment." He's lucky he doesn't live in that environment. According to the EPA, the Monroe plant will continue to emit 102,700 tons of sulfur dioxide until 2016. Under the old policy its emissions would have been reduced to 10,000 tons a year.

The outrageousness of Mr. Bush's comments about the new policy, whose substance belies their truthfulness, pales when the administration's newest proposal is examined. It is a policy that removes protection from endangered species around the world (that has been in place for almost 30 years) in order to protect endangered species around the world. On October 12, 2003 it was reported that the administration proposes to again allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and/or import animals that are near extinction in some parts of the world. By doing that, says the administration, we will be protecting those species from extinction.

Under the new regulations American trophy hunters will be permitted to kill, among others, the straight-horned markhor in Pakistan, and Morelet's crocodile, an endangered freshwater crocodile whose skin is coveted by U.S. leather importers. They will be permitted to capture the endangered Asian elephant of India and Southeast Asia who, American zoos and circuses believe, would be much happier living in this country than in their native habitat.

The proposal has been well considered. The administration has discovered that poor countries have no incentives to protect endangered species. By sending in American circuses, zoos and hunters who will pay those countries handsomely for the privilege of killing and capturing endangered species, those countries will be able to take the money and spend it on caring for whatever endangered species remain alive following the Bush sponsored plundering.

Ignoring the fact that the Act has been consistently interpreted since 1973 to prohibit exactly the kind of activities the administration will now permit, David Smith, deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks said: "I think the nature of the beast [not the endangered ones] is such that there are critics who are going to claim some kind of ulterior motive." He's right Adam Roberts is one of those people.

Mr. Roberts is a senior research associate at the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute, an advocacy group for endangered species. Commenting on the proposal he said: "It's a very dangerous precedent to decide that wildlife exploitation is in the best interest of wildlife." Stating what all but someone working for Mr. Bush would consider obvious, he said: "As soon as you place a financial price on the head of wild animals, the incentive is to kill the animal or capture them. The minute people find out they can have an easier time killing, shipping and profiting from wildlife, they will do so."

The Safari Club International, by contrast, supports the new rules. It also supports Republican politicians. In the 2000 election cycle it gave politicians $274,000, 86 percent going to Republicans. This is not the only proposal made by the administration to help out endangered species.

In August the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed an exemption to the Wild Bird Conservation Act passed under the administration of George I in 1992. The exemption will allow importation of the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina. The parrots sell for hundreds of dollars each. If approved, ten nesting parrots will be permitted to be harvested from five nests in every 250 acres of parrot habitat. Thanks to export tariffs, each 250 acres plot will produce $400 to $800 a year to help support the remaining parrots. The money can be used for such things as bird houses for the remaining parrots.

With a lobotomy none of the foregoing would come as a surprise. Without it, it's worse than surprising. It's dismaying. <Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu>


Weekend Edition Features for Oct. 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

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