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Today's
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December 8, 2003
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vincente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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
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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December
8, 2003
Anti-Empire Report
The
Revised Inspiration for War
By WILLIAM BLUM
After failing to convince the world about any
of his many reasons for starting a war, George W., on November
6, devoted almost all of a speech to the new improved reason
-- we invaded to install democracy, something that he had touched
upon before, but he's now promoting it as the primary reason
for the invasion and occupation, at least on Mondays and Thursdays.
In this speech, he waxed eloquent about
democracy. If you're not sure whether this new reason deserves
any more regard than any of the previous reasons, consider this.
In the speech, he likened the battle against Iraqi insurgents
to fighting against communism, "as in the defense of Greece
in 1947." Do you know what happened in Greece in 1947?
There was a civil war. One side had amongst its prominent leaders
people who had supported the Nazis in the world war, including
those that actually fought with them. On the other side were
people who had fought against the Nazis, and had actually forced
them to leave Greece. Guess which side the United States supported
back then? Of course, the fascists. And this is what George Bush
tells us is an inspiration for fighting the Iraqi resistance.
* * *
When a recent poll found that most Europeans
believe that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, Israeli
government minister Natan Sharansky stated: "Behind the
'political' criticism of Israel lies nothing more than pure anti-Semitism."
(Washington Post, Nov. 29, 2003)
What, I wonder, can "pure anti-Semitism"
mean other than something like a belief that Jews are inherently
inferior creatures, less human than other people, evil. Does
the man really believe that that's what motivates critics of
Israeli policies?
Sharansky was a leading dissident in
his native Soviet Union before finally being released from prison
and permitted to emigrate to Israel in 1986. What would he have
thought in his dissident days if the Soviet leaders had declared
that he and his fellow dissidents opposed the communist system
purely because they believed that communists were some sort of
sub-species, or because they hated Russians, or were self-hating
Russians, or perhaps because they were Nazis (the German version
of whom were in fact very anti-communist); anything to avoid
having to deal with the questions raised by the dissidents about
the actual policies of the communist government. It may be
that Natan Sharansky was able to see through and escape one kind
of brainwashing only to fall victim to another kind.
* * *
We now know that Iraq tried to negotiate
a peace deal with the United States to avoid the American invasion
in March. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence
Service, wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons
of mass destruction and offered to allow American troops and
experts to conduct a search; full support for any US plan in
the Arab-Israeli peace process, and handing over a man accused
of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 were
also offered. If this is about oil, they said, they would also
talk about US oil concessions.
What is most surprising about this is
not the offers per se, but the naivete -- undoubtedly fueled
by desperation -- on the part of the Iraqis that apparently led
them to believe that the Americans were open to negotiation,
to di scussion, to being somewhat reasonable. The Iraqis apparently
were sufficiently innocent about the fanaticism of the Bush administration
that at one point they pledged to hold UN-supervised free elections.
Surely free elections is something the United States believes
in, the Iraqis reasoned, and will be moved by.
Other countries have harbored similar
illusions about American leaders. Over the years, a number
of Third-World leaders, under imminent military and/or political
threat by the United States, have made appeals to Washington
officials, even to the president in person, under the apparently
hopeful belief that it was all a misunderstanding, that America
was not really intent upon crushing them and their movements
for social change. Amongst others, the Guatemalan foreign minister
in 1954, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice
Bishop of Grenada in 1983 all made their appeals. All were crushed.
In 1961, Che Guevara offered a Kennedy aide several important
Cuban concessions if Washington would call off the dogs of war.
To no avail. In 1994, it was reported that the leader of the
Zapatista rebels in Mexico, Subcommander Marcos said that "he
expects the United States to support the Zapatistas once US intelligence
agencies are convinced the movement is not influenced by Cubans
or Russians." "Finally," Marcos said, "they
are going to conclude that this is a Mexican problem, with just
and true causes." Yet for many years, the United States
has been providing the Mexican military with all the training
and tools needed to kill Marcos' followers and, most likely,
before long, Marcos himself.
Syria today appears to be the latest
example of this belief that somewhere in Washington, somehow,
there is a vestige of human-like reasonableness that can be tapped.
The Syrians turn over suspected terrorists to the United States
and other countries and accept prisoners delivered to them by
the US for the clear purpose of them being tortured to elicit
information. The Syrians make it clear that they do these things
in the hope of appeasing the American beast; this while the United
States continues speaking openly of overthrowing the Syrian government
and imposes strict sanctions against the country.
The "mystique" of America lives
on.
On November 25 the Washington Post ran
an obituary of Sylvia Bernstein, the mother of former Post reporter
Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. The obit recounted how both
of Carl's parents had been Communist Party members and had endured
long persecution by the government for their political beliefs.
Mrs. Bernstein had invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against
self-incrimination when asked by congressional panels about her
party involvement.
Then we learn that during the Clinton
administration, she was a White House volunteer and answered
the correspondence of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Since the 1960s, I have met numerous
Communist Party members in the US, Europe and Latin America.
In my experience, it has been very typical for these people to
bear scarcely any resemblance to the stereotype of the "commie"
of the "red menace" we were all raised to fear: a shadowy
fiend out to subvert all that is holy and decent and enslave
the world. Instead, they were usually no more radical than a
liberal, a more consistent liberal than the non-party type perhaps,
but a liberal nonetheless.
William Blum is
the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II, Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vincente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
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