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Today's
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October
8, 2003
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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October
9, 2003
As US Unilateralism
Rockets Out of Control...
Mexico
Tilts South
By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
Ten years ago, Mexico put its Juan Hancock on
the NAFTA free trade treaty with Washington and Ottawa, thereby
transforming itself into the southernmost region of North America
rather than the northernmost outpost of Latin America, an address
change that estranged this nation which is sometimes described
as being "so close to the United States and so far from
God", from its traditional Spanish and Portuguese- speaking
neighbors. At the time, then-president Carlos Salinas justified
the realignment as a pragmatic necessity under the New World
Order--with the fall of the Wall and the consolidation of unipolar
power in Washington, Mexico had little choice but to join forces
with its northern neighbor, the winner of the Cold War.
Now a decade later, with U.S. unilateralism
rocketing out of control, Mexico is looking south again, a tilt
not much in favor here since the early 1980s. South-South solidarity
was perhaps most inscribed in memory at the 1981 North-South
summit in the Caribbean luxury resort of Cancun where, led by
Mexico, Latin leftists challenged Washington's aggressions in
Central America.
Now, with another U.S. aggression polarizing
the world, Cancun was recently the site of a fresh revolt from
the South at the fifth ministerial meeting of the World Trade
Organization when, spurred on by Brazil and backed up by Mexico
among other southern hemisphere powers, 22 developing nations
stood up to U.S.-European Union-Japanese brow-beating on agricultural
subsidies and the Doha or "development' round of trade liberalization
negotiations, and perhaps the WTO itself, crashed in flames.
Mexico's tilt to the south was once again
on display at the mid-September 58th session of the United Nations
General Assembly in New York. The annual gathering, described
by the New York Times as "tense" (it was convened on
the morning after the Iraqi resistance bombed UN headquarters
in Baghdad for the second time in three weeks) was keynoted by
a noticeably weakened George W. Bush who in 2002 failed to persuade
the United Nations to back up Washington's unilateral invasion
of Iraq. This year, the U.S. president had the unenviable task
of trying to cajole 191 mostly-dark-skinned member nations into
easing the white man's burden by contributing troops and cash
to the U.S.'s faltering occupation of that harried Islamic nation.
In a surprisingly forceful response,
Mexican president Vicente Fox demanded an end to the occupation
and immediate restoration of Iraqi sovereignty--Mexico's refusal
to back up Bush's invasion last March has led to bitter discord
with Washington. Fox also campaigned for long-overdue reform
of the UN Security Council that would grant permanent membership
to Asian, African, Latin American, and Islamic nations, and advocated
the requirement of a double veto to limit Washington's frequent
use of this mechanism to thwart the Council's will--the U.S.
has exercised its veto power 96 times since the UN's founding,
most recently to support Israel's decision to exile or liquidate
Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat.
Fox reiterated the somber assessment
of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who earlier had rebuked the
U.S. for its unilateral invasion of Iraq, that "the survival
of the United Nations is at stake." U.S. political analysts
characterized the Mexican president's speech as "hostile"
towards Washington.
In the deep freeze since 9/11, U.S.-Mexican
relations are chillier than ever. Seated one setting away from
each other at a breakfast hosted by Annan on the opening morning
of the session, Fox and Bush did not even exchange small talk--a
scheduled ten minute huddle between the two was subsequently
scratched and Fox pointedly stood up Bush at a lavish evening
cocktail party thrown by the U.S. president.
There have been no state visits between
Fox and Bush since September 6th, 2001 when Bush hosted Mexico's
then-new president at the White House and toasted his southern
neighbor as "our most important foreign relation."
But a landmark immigration reform accord cooked up in the heat
of all this good will collapsed five days later beneath the rubble
of 9/11. Relations grew gelid when Washington perceived Mexico
as being slow to send condolences for the terrorist attacks.
A year later, at the October 2002 Asian
Pacific Economic Summit in Cabo San Lucas Mexico, with Iraq very
much on the front burner, Bush could find no time to meet with
his host. The two had touched bases briefly the previous March
at a Monterrey UN Development summit but only after Fox issued
a White House-dictated ultimatum to Fidel Castro, insisting that
the Cuban leader leave Mexico before Bush touched down, a move
that has leveled relations with that beleaguered island ever
since.
At Evian France last spring during a
G-7 summit, Fox-Bush interchange was limited to polite nods.
Now Mexico's foreign relations ministry is touting an extended
tete-a-tete at the late October APEC conclave in Thailand but
given the tattered state of bi-lateral affairs, this seems more
hyperbole than a done deal.
Bush's refusal to move ahead on immigration
issues that impact 3.2 million undocumented Mexican workers north
of the border is poisoning the soup. The annual Mexico-U.S. inter-parliamentary
exchange last June in Tennessee broke up in accusations and mutual
recriminations--Arizona Republican Jim Kolb, a veteran of 17
such seances, told reporters he could not remember when bi-lateral
relations had been so bad. Now Colin Powell's definitive turn-down
of any immigration reform in the foreseeable future as communicated
to Mexican foreign minister Luis Enrique Derbez during a September
Washington pow wow, seems to leave Mexico with little left to
gain from backing up U.S. unilateral aggressions.
Frustrated by Bush's intransigence, Mexico
has turned south for solace--in particular towards that other
Latin American giant, Brazil. Now governed by Luis Inacio de
Silva, "Lula", a socialist ex-steel worker whose election
had Washington contemplating coup, Brazil has been in the vanguard
of the South's newly-revived resolve to stand up to commercial
domination by the North. As the most visible leader of the G-22
rebellion at the WTO's Cancun meet, Brazil earned the vilification
of U.S. Trade rep Robert Zoellick who pinned the blame on the
Cariocas for the collapse of the talks.
Brazil, India, South Africa, and China,
along with Mexico, point a finger at the U.S.-UE's reluctance
to cut $300 billion USD annually in agricultural subsidies that
are putting poor farmers in the south out of business, as the
real reason for the fracaso,
The disintegration in Cancun, which unquestionably
strengthens both the solidarity of the southern bloc and its
bargaining position in future trade talks, cast a long shadow
in distant Dubai where, for the first time since tens of thousands
of anti-globalization activists disrupted its 2001 Prague junta,
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were meeting
outside of Washington. Holding the wealthy, industrial north
to task, Bank president James Wolfensohn calculated that the
U.S.-UE refusal to strip back agricultural subsidies would depress
world trade and leave 144 million poor farmers in poverty.
Brazil compounded its role as star villain
at the UN session in New York. Availing itself of its traditional
role as lead-off speaker to the General Assembly, Lula lashed
out at runaway U.S. unilateralism and the collateral damage it
has wrecked upon the United Nations. Like Fox, Lula called for
radical reforms to save this battle-scarred international forum,
among them a permanent place for Brazil on the Security Council.
While the two Latin giants have been
driven closer by U.S. unilateralism, Brazil vs. Mexico is not
just a soccer match. Conflict over which would occupy the wished-for
permanent Latin seat on the Council is one potential faultline
in this reborn south-south alliance. Until recently, Mexico eschewed
a seat on the Security Council because membership placed its
foreign policy "under the hooves of the horse' i.e. subjected
it to U.S. pressures, and contradicted Mexico's long-standing
position that the General Assembly should become the UN's dominant
voice. But with the ambitious ex-foreign minister Jorge Castaneda
at the helm, Mexico steered itself into an impermanent seat on
the Council--and right into the eye of the storm over Iraq.
In an insightful analysis in the daily
Reforma, Castaneda, now an unannounced independent candidate
for president, reflected on the state of the world since he quit
the Fox government at the maximum moment of the U.S. squeeze
to vote the Iraqi invasion up. Marveling at how the "unilateralists"
in Washington have "miscalculated" Iraqi resistance
to that invasion, Castaneda warns that "here we are again"
in reference to the Bush full court press to convert the UN into
a fig leaf for his doomed occupation.
Although Mexico would have abstained
or cast a ballot against the U.S. invasion of Iraq last March
if it had been brought to the Security Council for a collective
decision, UN ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a one-time Castaneda
ally, voted in favor of sending inspectors into Iraq at the behest
of the U.S. and, more recently, to recognize the White House-created
Iraqi Provisional National Council. Mexico has also twice voted
to uphold immunity for U.S. troops from World Penal Court war
crimes charges. But now, if Fox's no-bones speech to the General
Assembly on Iraq is to be believed, Mexico will be obligated
to vote against the latest U.S. dictate. Nonetheless, diplomatic
duplicity is a Mexican art form.
Lula and Fox capped their UN outing by
flying south for a Mexican honeymoon. One first fruit of the
September 19th Mexico City huddle between the two new friends:
the prospect of a free trade treaty between Mexico and Lula's
pet Mercosur common market. Such a pact would present a fresh
challenge to Bush's cherished Free Trade Area of the Americas
(ALCA in its Spanish acronym), a U.S. scheme to extend NAFTA's
dubious benefits all the way to Tierra del Fuego, whose 2005
start-up Brazil opposes. Although Fox pays lip service to ALCA,
Mexico is leery of the FTAA because it would lose privileged
trade status with the U.S. should the hemispheric treaty become
a fact.
During his 16-hour lightening stop-over
here, Lula found time to schmooze with his old friend Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas--the Left leader is weighing a fourth bid for the Mexican
presidency (Lula won on his fourth try.) From Mexico, the popular
Brazilian leader hopped over to the Isle of Cuba to hobnob with
another old comrade--Lula and Fidel Castro first met at the anniversary
of the Sandanista revolution in Managua 1981, a high-water mark
in south-south solidarity.
While in Cuba, Brazil's president nixed
a meeting with representatives of the opposition -such meetings
have become mandatory for visiting dignitaries in Washington's
stern eyes.
Since 9/11, Latin America has "fallen
off the map" an unnamed diplomat told right-wing Miami Herald
Latin pundit Andres Oppenheimer during last June's Organization
of American States summit in Santiago, Chile. Despite the fact
that 'Leftist' regimes now rule the roost in Brazil, Argentina,
Ecuador, and Venezuela, a U.S, proxy war is stalemated in Colombia,
and incipient revolution brews in Bolivia, Washington doesn't
seem to get it, Oppenheimer rues. Colin Powell's mantras in Santiago
about "tyrants, traffickers, and terrorists" failed
to stir Latin leaders who increasingly view U.S. unilateralism
as being a more prescient danger to hemispheric security.
The new south-south vibes will be given
a workout in the upcoming months at a mid-October OAS Hemispheric
Security summit convened at Washington's request in Mexico City
(human rights groups here are alarmed at preliminary documents),
the December FTAA ministerial meeting in Miami, and a hastily-called
Summit of the Americas set for somewhere in Mexico at a yet-announced
date in January. As Washington's unilateral aggression flunks
out in Iraq and Bush's popularity and power wanes at home, the
South has a rare window of U.S. vulnerability to climb through
and exercise its long-dulled voice. It is an opportunity that
should not be wasted.
John Ross
is off to pick olives in Palestine.
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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