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Today's
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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
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
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
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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November
14 / 23, 2003
Invasion as Marketing
Problem
The
Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
By NOAM CHOMSKY
Establishment critics of the war on Iraq restricted
their comments regarding the attack to the administration arguments
they took to be seriously intended: disarmament, deterrence,
and links to terrorism.
They scarcely made reference to liberation,
democratization of the Middle East, and other matters that would
render irrelevant the weapons inspections and indeed everything
that took place at the Security Council or within governmental
domains.
The reason, perhaps, is that they recognized
that lofty rhetoric is the obligatory accompaniment of virtually
any resort to force and therefore carries no information. The
rhetoric is doubly hard to take seriously in the light of the
display of contempt for democracy that accompanied it, not to
speak of the past record and current practices.
Critics are also aware that nothing has
been heard from the present incumbents -- with their alleged
concern for Iraqi democracy -- to indicate that they have any
regrets for their previous support for Saddam Hussein (or others
like him, still continuing) nor have they shown any signs of
contrition for having helped him develop weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) when he really was a serious danger.
Nor has the current leadership explained
when, or why, they abandoned their 1991 view that "the best
of all worlds" would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta
without Saddam Hussein" that would rule as Saddam did but
not make the error of judgment in August 1990 that ruined Saddam's
record.
At the time, the incumbents' British
allies were in the opposition and therefore more free than the
Thatcherites to speak out against Saddam's British-backed crimes.
Their names are noteworthy by their absence from the parliamentary
record of protests against these crimes, including Tony Blair,
Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, and other leading figures of New Labour.
In December 2002, Jack Straw, then foreign
minister, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes. It was drawn
almost entirely from the period of firm US-UK support, a fact
overlooked with the usual display of moral integrity. The timing
and quality of the dossier raised many questions, but those aside,
Straw failed to provide an explanation for his very recent conversion
to skepticism about Saddam Hussein's good character and behavior.
When Straw was home secretary in 2001,
an Iraqi who fled to England after detention and torture requested
asylum. Straw denied his request. The Home Office explained that
Straw "is aware that Iraq, and in particular the Iraqi security
forces, would only convict and sentence a person in the courts
with the provision of proper jurisdiction," so that "you
could expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and
properly constituted judiciary."
Straw's conversion must, then, have been
rather similar to President Clinton's discovery, sometime between
September 8 and 11, 1999, that Indonesia had done some unpleasant
things in East Timor in the past twenty-five years when it enjoyed
decisive support from the US and Britain.
Attitudes toward democracy were revealed
with unusual clarity during the mobilization for war in the fall
of 2002, as it became necessary to deal somehow with the overwhelming
popular opposition.
Within the "coalition of the willing,"
the US public was at least partially controlled by the propaganda
campaign unleashed in September. In Britain, the population was
split roughly fifty-fifty on the war, but the government maintained
the stance of "junior partner" it had accepted reluctantly
after World War II and had kept to even in the face of the contemptuous
dismissal of British concerns by US leaders at moments when the
country's very survival was at stake.
Outside the two full members of the coalition,
problems were more serious. In the two major European countries,
Germany and France, the official government stands corresponded
to the views of the large majority of their populations, which
unequivocally opposed the war. That led to bitter condemnation
by Washington and many commentators.
Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the offending
nations as just the "Old Europe," of no concern because
of their reluctance to toe Washington's line. The "New Europe"
is symbolized by Italy, whose prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi,
was visiting the White House. It was, evidently, unproblematic
that public opinion in Italy was overwhelmingly opposed to the
war.
The governments of Old and New Europe
were distinguished by a simple criterion: a government joined
Old Europe in its iniquity if and only if it took the same position
as the vast majority of its population and refused to follow
orders from Washington.
Recall that the self-appointed rulers
of the world -- Bush, Powell, and the rest -- had declared forthrightly
that they intended to carry out their war whether or not the
United Nations (UN) or anyone else "catches up" and
"becomes relevant." Old Europe, mired in irrelevance,
did not catch up. Neither did New Europe, at least if people
are part of their countries.
Poll results available from Gallup International,
as well as local sources for most of Europe, West and East, showed
that support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America
and its allies" did not rise above 11 percent in any country.
Support for a war if mandated by the UN ranged from 13 percent
(Spain) to 51 percent (Netherlands).
Particularly interesting are the eight
countries whose leaders declared themselves to be the New Europe,
to much acclaim for their courage and integrity. Their declaration
took the form of a statement calling on the Security Council
to ensure "full compliance with its resolutions," without
specifying the means.
Their announcement threatened "to
isolate the Germans and French," the press reported triumphantly,
though the positions of New and Old Europe were in fact scarcely
different. To ensure that Germany and France would be "isolated,"
they were not invited to sign the bold pronouncement of New Europe
-- apparently for fear that they would do so, it was later quietly
indicated.
The standard interpretation is that the
exciting and promising New Europe stood behind Washington, thus
demonstrating that "many Europeans supported the United
States' view, even if France and Germany did not."
Who were these "many Europeans"?
Checking polls, we find that in New Europe, opposition to "the
United States' view" was for the most part even higher than
in France and Germany, particularly in Italy and Spain, which
were singled out for praise for their leadership of New Europe.
Happily for Washington, former communist
countries too joined New Europe. Within them, support for the
"United States' view," as defined by Powell -- namely,
war by the "coalition of the willing" without UN authorization
-- ranged from 4 percent (Macedonia) to 11 percent (Romania).
Support for a war even with a UN mandate
was also very low. Latvia's former foreign minister explained
that we have to "salute and shout, 'Yes sir.' . . . We have
to please America no matter what the cost."
In brief, in journals that regard democracy
as a significant value, headlines would have read that Old Europe
in fact included the vast majority of Europeans, East and West,
while New Europe consisted of a few leaders who chose to line
up (ambiguously) with Washington, disregarding the overwhelming
opinion of their own populations.
But actual reporting was mostly scattered
and oblique, depicting opposition to the war as a marketing problem
for Washington.
Toward the liberal end of the spectrum,
Richard Holbrooke stressed the "very important point [that]
if you add up the population of [the eight countries of the original
New Europe], it was larger than the population of those countries
not signing the letter." True enough, though something is
omitted: the populations were overwhelmingly opposed to the war,
mostly even more so than in those countries dismissed as Old
Europe.
At the other extreme of the spectrum,
the editors of the Wall Street Journal applauded the statement
of the eight original signers for "exposing as fraudulent
the conventional wisdom that France and Germany speak for all
of Europe, and that all of Europe is now anti-American."
The eight honorable New European leaders
showed that "the views of the Continent's pro-American majority
weren't being heard," apart from the editorial pages of
the Journal, now vindicated. The editors blasted the media to
their "left" -- a rather substantial segment -- which
"peddled as true" the ridiculous idea that France and
Germany spoke for Europe, when they were clearly a pitiful minority,
and peddled these lies "because they served the political
purposes of those, both in Europe and America, who oppose President
Bush on Iraq."
This conclusion does hold if we exclude
Europeans from Europe, rejecting the radical left doctrine that
people have some kind of role in democratic societies.
Noam Chomsky
is the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival: America's
Quest for Global Dominance, from which this commentary is adapted.
For more information on the book, published by Metropolitan Books,
see http://www.hegemonyorsurvival.net.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 8 / 9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
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