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New Special "Serving Two Flags" Edition of CounterPunch

Inside the Neo-Cons: Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith and the Internal Security Problem at the Pentagon by Stephen Green; O'Neill, Oil and Bush by Alexander Cockburn; My Corporation Tis of Thee: The Stryker, The General and the Lobbyist by Jeffrey St. Clair; A Southern Africa Sojourn by Lawrence Reichard; The Kiev Con: Exposing David Duke's Illusory Doctorate; CounterPunch Online is read by 70,000 visitors each day, but we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

February 16, 2004

Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death

 

February 14/15, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the March of Empires

Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic

William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics

Stan Goff
Beloved Haiti

Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election

Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me

Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot

Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant

Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left

Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism

William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map

Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa

Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation

Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest

Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues That Matter?


February 13, 2004

Alan Maass
Kevin Cooper's Fight to Live

Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club

Annie Higgins
On a Street in America

Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader

Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation

Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken

Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll

 

February 12, 2004

Ray McGovern
George Tenet's Spin Cycle

Robert Jensen
Bush's Nuclear Hypocrisy

Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea

 

February 11, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways

Steve Perry
Bush v. Bush?

 

February 10, 2004

Kurt Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa

Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)

Elizabeth Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry

Mickey Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"

 

February 9, 2004

Michael Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet

Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits

Bill Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?

Dr. Susan Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment: Boob Tube Super Bowl

 

February 7/8, 2004

Kathleen Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with Jewish Self-Absorption

Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping

Dave Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine in Transit

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel

February 6, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?

Joanne Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy

Saul Landau
Happiness and Botox

Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide from Perle and Frum

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure: Our Own

 

February 5, 2004

Benjamin Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free Zone

Khury Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"

Mokhiber / Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003

Teresa Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right

David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools

Norman Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources

Cockburn / St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!

 

February 4, 2004

Brian McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's Last Round Up?

Mark Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel

Judith Brown
Palestine and the Media

Frederick B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's Junta?

Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating the Spooks

M. Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract

Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?

Kevin Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It

 

 

February 3, 2004

Alan Maass
The Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"

Nick Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded in Iraq

Rahul Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure

Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?

Laura Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures

Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts Fairness Campaign

Hammond Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless

Website of the Day
Waging Peace

 

 

February 2, 2004

Gary Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail

Justin E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free Environment

Tom Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee

Winslow Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget

Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth

Leonard Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is Rigged

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean

Website of the Day
Resistance: In the Eye of the American Hegemon

 


Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004

Paul de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities

Bernard Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium

Jack Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks

Christopher Reed
Broken Ballots

Michael Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear

Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War

Lee Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement

George Bisharat
Right of Return

Ray McGovern
Nothing to Preempt

Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks

Conn Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs

Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons

Phillip Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit

Christopher Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read

John Holt
War in the Great White North

Mickey Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley

Mark Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key

Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif

Ben Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert

 


January 30, 2004

Saul Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List

Michael Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in the Woods

Elaine Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo

David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton

Mike Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression

David Miller
The Hutton Whitewash

Sam Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake", Senator Kerry?


January 29, 2004

Patricia Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist

Ron Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized" Immigration

Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq

Greg Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on Moon and Mars

Norman Solomon
The State of the Media Union

Cockburn / St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?

 

January 28, 2004

Kathy Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of Torture and Assassination

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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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Weekend Edition
February 14/15, 2004

The Feds on Campus

The Drake University Subpoenas

By ELAINE CASSEL

It took the "mainstream" media two weeks or more to get to the story of the grand jury investigation that involved an anti-war rally at Drake University on November 16, 2003, sponsored by the National Lawyer's Guild. I reported on it last week, because a reader sent me the story from the Des Moines Register. The Washington Post never even ran a story on it, except in the February 15, 2004 "Nation in Brief," section, where it takes up a tiny bit of space. The New York Times did not get to it until February 10, on the same day the federal prosecutors backed off.

Now, say prosecutors, they were only looking for "leads" into who scaled a security fence at Camp Dodge the day an anti-war rally was held there (November 15), the Iowa National Guard headquarters. Federal prosecutors, who had subpoenaed the financial and membership records of the National Lawyers Guild, subpoenaed four students who were also local members, and likewise subpoenaed Drake University records and security camera tapes, now say that they were not "prosecuting persons lawfully engaged in rallies which are conducted under the protection of the First Amendment."

That is a lame excuse, considering that they would have gotten the records and testimony they wanted had the recipients not filed motions to quash. Their motions, and at least the Des Moines Register coverage, might have intimidated the prosecutors into retreating. For they did not wait for a federal judge to rule on the motions to quash.

The transparency of the prosecutors' pretense is further seen in their trying to make the connections that (1) the Drake University protests were related to the Fort Dodge protest and (2) that someone who "trespassed" on precious Fort Dodge attended either rally. Clearly, the prosecutors are putting protestors on notice that they will be "persons of interest," in FBI parlance, in any "terrorist" investigation, if a link, no matter how absurd and tenuous, can be made.

Showing that he is as good as denying the facts as is his Commander-in-Chief in the White House, Des Moines U.S. Attorney Stephen O'Meara also denied that the investigation was an "anti-terroroism" investigation. Then, do tell, counselor, why the subpoenas were issued by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force?

In yet another example of critics of the Administration being targeted for "terrorism," a truck driver who maintains a website critical of the government's trucking regulations has been questioned in the investigation into the ricin found in Senator Bill Frist's office. Let's see, the man worked for a contractor of the post office, and that contractor delivered the mail that had the ricin. Sounds like he's guilty to me.

Lack of "intelligence" in Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg. The Bush Administration is wanting in intelligence on all fronts. Whistling in the dark, chasing phantoms, hoping that it will scare its critics into silence. So far, it's not working.

Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia, teachers law and psychology, and follows the Bush regime's dismantling of the Constitution at Civil Liberties Watch. She can be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net

 

Weekend Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the March of Empires

Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic

William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics

Stan Goff
Beloved Haiti

Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election

Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me

Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot

Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant

Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left

Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism

William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map

Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa

Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation

Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest

Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues That Matter?

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