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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Alexander Cockburn: My Life as an "Anti-Semite"; Jews and the Media: The Third Rail in American Political Life; The Decline of Anti-Semitism in the US; The Terror of the Occupation and the Ghastly, Futile Suicide Bombings; The Lessons of Hilliard, Moran and McKinney: Speak Out for Palestinian Justice & Lose Your Seat; Jeffrey St. Clair: The Saga of Mangequench: How a Manufacturer of Guided Missile Parts Outsourced to China; Indiana Workers Cry "Treason"! Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Coming in October
From AK Press

Today's Stories

September 24, 2003

Neve Gordon
Sharon's Preemptive Zeal

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

 

Recent Stories

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?

 

September 19, 2003

Ilan Pappe
The Hole in the Road Map

Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times

Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon

Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old

Jeff Halper
Preparing for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid

Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse

Clare Brandabur
Hitchens Smears Edward Said

Website of the Day
Live from Palestine

 

September 18, 2003

Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

Wayne Madsen
Wesley Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job

Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

Wesley Clark and Waco

Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze

Dominique de Villepin
The Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere

Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope

Elaine Cassel
Payback is Hell

Jeffrey St. Clair
Leavitt for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought

Website of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear

 

September 17, 2003

Timothy J. Freeman
The Terrible Truth About Iraq

St. Clair / Cockburn
A Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark

Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark

Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal

Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat

Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!


September 16, 2003

Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security

Robert Fisk
Powell in Baghdad

Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths

M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics of Terror

Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages

Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate Welfare

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraq Wreck

Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine


The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!


September 15, 2003

Stan Goff
It Was the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam

Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead

Writers Bloc
We Are Winning: a Report from Cancun

James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?

Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights

Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City

Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash

Uri Avnery
Assassinating Arafat

Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm

Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg

 


September 13 / 14, 2003

Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle

Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance

Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America

Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld

William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet

Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon

Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation

Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three

Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty

Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun

Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause

David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)

Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show

Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash

Adam Engel
Something Killer

Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart

Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest

 

September 12, 2003

Writers Block
Todos Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun

Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers

Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11

Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico

Linda S. Heard
British Entrance Exams

John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity

Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military

Subcomandante Marcos
The Death Train of the WTO

Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad

 

 

September 11, 2003

Robert Fisk
A Grandiose Folly

Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001

Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President

Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11

Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11

Stew Albert
What Goes Around

Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup

 

September 10, 2003

John Ross
Cancun Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?

Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared for the Postwar Bloodbath?

Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell

Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception

Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!

Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate

Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens as Model Apostate

Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done

Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell

 

Hot Stories

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

William Blum
Myth and Denial in the War on Terrorism

Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy

Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go

Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

Click Here for More Stories.

 

 

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September 24, 2003

Occupation and Censorship

So This is What Freedom Means?

By ROBERT FISK
The Independent

Sewage is coming through the manhole covers, there's still only 15 hours electricity a day and anarchy grips the streets of Baghdad, but yesterday America's toothless Iraqi "interim council" roared like a lion, issuing a set of restrictions and threats--against the press, of course.

Aimed primarily at the Arab satellite channels al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, which always air Saddam Hussein's tape recordings, the almost Orwellian rules -- each of which begins with the words "do not" -- mean Iraqi or foreign press and television news organisations can be closed if they "advocate the return of the Baath party or issue any statements that represent the Baath directly or indirectly [sic]".

The council, which was appointed by Paul Bremer, the US proconsul, admitted yesterday that it had consulted his legal advisers before issuing its set of restrictions. True to the chaos that governs Baghdad, the council's spokesman Intefadh Qanbar--Ahmed Chalabi's man--initially said al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya were to be closed in Iraq. Within two hours, news emerged that the two Arabic-language channels would be punished for their alleged transgressions by being refused all co-operation from the "interim council" for two weeks--a punishment many journalists here would wish to have inflicted on them.

But the list nevertheless provides an intriguing reflection on the "democracy" that Mr Bremer--who ordered his legal advisers to draw up censorship rules in the late spring--wishes to bestow on Iraqis.

Some of the restrictions are so self-evident as to be naive. "Do not incite violence against any person or group," for example, could have been enshrined in any civil law. But the references to the Baath party are clearly intended to prevent Iraqis hearing Saddam's voice. The rule shows just how fearful the US authorities have become of his sympathisers.

After telling the world that most Iraqis are delighted with their "liberation" and forthcoming "democracy", the authorities are obviously aware that many Iraqis don't feel that way at all. Journalists must also inform the authorities of "any acts of sabotage, criminal activity, terrorism or any violent action ... before or after an attack takes place".

Journalists--even those with al-Jazeera--do not receive advance warning of ambushes. The rule is in effect asking them to become assistants to the occupation authorities.

There have been instances in the flourishing new Iraqi free press--there are now more than 100 newspapers in Baghdad--of incitement to "jihad" against the occupation authorities and false information on the behaviour of American troops. As it is, even reporting yesterday's killing--or killings--near Falujah by a missile-firing American helicopter could fall into "incitement to violence". US forces say they came under fire from a house in the city and killed "one enemy" (sic). But hospital doctors gave the names of three men killed, all members of the same family.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Weekend Edition Features for Sept. 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?

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