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Today's
Stories
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
October 11 / 13, 2003
A
Lawless Cowboy Rattles His Sabre
Cuba and the "Necessary
Viciousness" of the Bushites
By KURT NIMMO
In order to please crucial "swing" voters
in his brother's state, Junior has ratcheted up the anti-Castro
rhetoric.
Bush has not threatened Castro outright
-- not yet anyway -- but instead has said he will increase "restrictions"
on Cuba. "The transition to freedom will present many challenges
to the Cuban people and to America, and we will be prepared,"
declared Bush. He told Secretary of State Colin Powell and Housing
Secretary Mel Martinez to "plan for the happy day when Castro's
regime is no more and democracy comes to the island."
It wasn't all that long ago Bush said
the same about Iraq.
In response to Bush's latest saber-rattling,
Dagoberto Rodriguez, head of Cuba's diplomatic mission, said
Bush should "stop acting like a lawless cowboy" and
"start listening to the voices of the nations of the world."
Not likely. Bush doesn't know anything
but the "lawless cowboy" routine. Like the run-of-the-mill
playground bully, it's how he and the neocons deal with the world.
Of course, considering how strapped the
Pentagon is with the whole Iraq imbroglio, chances they will
invade Cuba anytime soon are slim to none. Instead, they will
continue to make life miserable for a few million Cubans.
But then, thanks to over four decades
of economic warfare, misery is common fare for the vast majority
of Cubans.
Paying for the egregious sin of deposing
the brutal military dictator Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar
-- friend of both US business interests and gangster Meyer Lansky
-- is a never-ending and ever-increasing debt for the Cuban people.
It seems the lawless cowboy in Washington
wants them to hanker for the good old days when Havana served
as an international drug port and as the "Latin Las Vegas"
for the likes of Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante
Jr., Moe Dalitz and other notable mobsters.
Neoconservatives, who like to call themselves
"Conservative Internationalists," have always had it
out for Castro and the communists of Cuba. But then so have any
number of US presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton.
It's just that the Bushites are more
operatic about it.
Last year Josh Bolton, US Under Secretary
of State, gave a speech before the rabid rightwing Heritage Foundation
entitled "Beyond the Axis of Evil." In the speech,
Bolton designated Cuba, Libya and Syria as "rogue states,"
in other words states facing possible military action. Bolton
went so far as to say "Cuba's threat to our security has
often been underplayed," stopping an inch short of claiming
Castro plans to attack Florida with biological weapons.
It was the other way around, though.
Back in 1961 and 1962, the CIA used biological
weapons on Cuba's agricultural workers. A decade later, the CIA
introduced swine fever into the island, precipitating an epidemic
which culminated in the death of 500,000 pigs.
The Washington Post further detailed
the US covert war against Cuba in 1979 when it published an article
claiming the Pentagon had produced biological agents to use against
Cuba's sugar cane and tobacco production. Other suspicious disease
outbreaks include haemorraghic conjunctivitis, dengue fever,
dysentery, ulcerative mammillitis, black sigatoka, and citric
sapper blight, to name but a few. In 1977, CIA documents disclosed
that the Agency "maintained a clandestine anti-crop warfare
research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries
throughout the world," according to the Washington Post.
"In 1984, Eduardo Arocena, leader
of the terrorist group OMEGA-7, admitted to an American jury
that he had taken part in operations to introduce deadly viruses
into Cuba as part of a secret biological warfare programme against
Havana," writes Marcia Miranda. Arocena was trained in the
use of explosives by Cuban exiles who were trained by the CIA.
And then there was Operation Northwoods.
As James Bamford writes in his book,
Body of Secrets, "Operation Northwoods called for a war
in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die
senseless deaths -- all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals
back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer-financed homes and
limousines."
So fanatically anti-Castro was Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lemnitzer that he not only
proposed killing scores of innocent Cubans, but also John Glenn,
the first American to orbit the Earth. "Thus, as NASA prepared
to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext
to launch a war," Bamford writes.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
reported in 1961, right-wing extremism was prevalent in the Pentagon.
"Among the key targets of the extremists, the Committee
said, was the Kennedy administration's domestic social program,
which many ultraconservatives accused of being communistic...
much of the administration's domestic legislative program...
would be characterized as steps toward communism." Not long
after the Senate issued its report, Kennedy was assassinated.
Now we call "ultraconservatives"
neocons.
No doubt this current crop of fascistic
rightwingers would love to engineer the same sort of social chaos
in Havana they engineered in Baghdad. Imagine Raul and Ramon
Castro, the younger brothers of Fidel, suffering the same fate
as Uday and Qusay Hussein. Imagine yet another deck of playing
cards distributed by the Pentagon with pictures of Carlos Rafael
Rodríguez, Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, Lázaro
Peña, and other members of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Naturally, the Bushites will not be invading
Cuba soon, especially considering how over stretched and bogged
down they are in Iraq. No, there are more practical matters at
hand, such as the United Nations vote on easing the embargo on
Cuba next month. Junior has also warned that he will veto any
measure approved by the Congress that gives relief to the Cuban
people.
"Cuba sera pronto libre [Cuba will
soon be free],'' said Bush from the Rose Garden the other day.
In the meantime, however, he will settle for a spate of new visas
and investigations by the Ministry of Homeland Security of Americans
who travel to Cuba.
As to the former -- well, of course,
the election is a little over a year away and closing in fast.
Let's not forget how instrumental Florida
was in the last Bush coup d'etat. Recall the role played by Republican
Party operatives and Cuban fascists in Broward County four years
ago. Likewise tactics may serve well again, especially considering
how bad the Bush economy is and how terrible the Bush occupation
of Iraq is going. No doubt the political trickster and former
Donald Segretti understudy Karl Rove understands all this very
well. As the Valerie Plame affair demonstrates, there is no shortage
of "necessary viciousness" (as John Dean terms it)
on the part of the Bushites.
Junior's going to need all the extra
votes he can get come November, 2004.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, will be published
this fall by Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 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
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