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Today's
Stories
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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
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for More Stories.
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January
2, 2004
Beef, the Meat of
Republicans
Deregulating
Themselves to Extinction?
By DAVE LINDORFF
Things may be looking grim for progressives these
days, given the Republican grip on the media, the American public's
seemingly willful obsession with crime and celebrity news, the
few really competitive seats in the already Republican-dominated
Senate and House, and the increasingly conservative and politically
active U.S. Supreme Court.
Looking at the short term, then, there
might seem little hope for a political turnaround.
Longer term, though, there is a dialectic
at work that favors progressive political change.
The latest mad cow find gives us a clear
picture of how this could work: Beef, after all, is above all
a Republican food. How many progressives do you know who like
to chow down on a 16-oz steak? Many of the progressives I know
are vegetarians--even vegans--and those who do eat animals tend
to favor poultry. Yet beef-loving Republicans (like President
Bush who this past weekend announced "I ate beef today,
and will continue to eat beef), don't want to impose any regulatory
costs on the agribusiness firms that raise, slaughter, butcher
and deliver beef to their tables. That means that millions of
mad cow prions are finding their way onto the  $1000 plates of the GOP
fund-raising circuit, and are gradually entering the Republican
leaderships' bloodstreams. It's only a matter of time before
even the gray matter of the Republican braintrust begins to resemble
whatever it is that resides in the Bush II cranial cavity.
And Mad Cow is only one example.
With Washington firmly in the pocket
of corporate interests, the nation's entire regulatory apparatus
is now only doing the bidding of the industries its various units
are ostensibly regulating. That means that there will be cover-up
after cover-up of industry problems and crises, and that corporate
evil-doers will be given a free hand to commit their money-making
atrocities.
But the interesting thing is that many
of those corporate crimes will end up striking the very folk
who are enabling them.
Take airlines. The FAA and the National
Transportation Safety Board have always been as much about promoting
air travel as they have been about monitoring airline safety,
but under the Bush Administration, they have pretty much jettisoned
the latter function altogether. Despite clear evidence that pilot
compartments need to be secured, most U.S. airliners still don't
have hardened doors to the flight deck, making it as easy for
a hijacker to get to the flight controls as it is to go to the
lavatory. Airliners are routinely permitted to fly, with passengers,
past their engine overhaul deadlines, and planes that have only
two engines are now allowed to fly over vast stretches of ocean,
even though failure of one of those motors would doom the flight.
The list goes on and on.
But think about it. Who flies these days?
Most working class people can't afford such luxuries. My guess
would be that the percentage of Republicans on airplanes is probably
at least double the national average. Add to that the evidence
that survival rates in a crash are much higher in the steerage
section located at the rear of the plane than in the first class
section at the front where the ride is smoother, and you can
see how this calculus works to the advantage of the progressive
movement.
The same might be said when it comes
to housing.
Republicans, increasingly, are moving
into gigantic houses. A family of four Republicans in a 26-room
McMansion would not be unusual. But because of lax building codes
designed to placate the construction industry, these ostentatious
plywood palaces are actually toxic wastelands. Sealed up as tight
as drums with plastic wrap, double-glazed windows and the like,
they are filled with deadly carcinogenic fumes from insulation,
glue-filled particle-board siding, formaldehyde-soaked wall-to-wall
carpeting and vinyl-based plaster. Walking into these over-sized
structures is like entering a chemical plant, and the results
of living in such settings are predictable.
The lower classes, progressives among
them, are left with older housing stock, which, even if it was
built with similar chemical-laced material, is so venerable that
most of the volatile chemical stew has long since leached away.
Besides, the windows of most progressives' homes I've been in
are so leaky that the air inside remains relatively fresh.
It's easy to see who's going to win out
in the longevity stakes here.
Medical care too, provides an example
of how this demographic story is playing out.
We hear all the time how working people
are losing insurance coverage, while the rich in America have
access to gold-plated medical care, and this is all very true.
But at the same time, with access to medical care comes overuse
of medical care. Granted, the Republican rich are able to get
rid of arthritic hip and knee joints so they can continue to
stroll an 18-hold course while their poorer countrymen have to
hobble around the house with inflamed joints. But those same
metal-jointed conservatives (we used to call them rock-ribbed,
but this is a dated term now), are also getting a lot of risky
surgery, too. And before long, we'll be seeing the wealthy getting
replacement organs from pigs and other animals. It's only a matter
of time before the viruses that plague the animal kingdom will
be plaguing the recipients of these frankensteinian ventures.
The increasingly impoverished middle
class, unable to access modern high-tech medicine, will be stuck
with their own organs, and will have to resort to long walks
or jogging to keep their tickers healthy.
The same kind of story can be repeated
over and over looking at each regulated industry.
My guess is that over time, we'll see
the American ruling class, like the lead-poisoned Roman elite
before it, reduced to doddering idiots, at which point the progressives
and working classes, healthier by default, will take over.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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