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November 7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
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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November
8, 2003
Will the Real Ron
Wyden Please Stand Up?
One
Senator; Many Masters
By MICHAEL DONNELLY
In these days of brand politics, all senators
must have a motto. For Ron Wyden (D-OR) it's the ecumenical slogan,
"Standing up for ALL of Oregon." It's right there at
the top of his recent Press Release proudly proclaiming his and
Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) crucial role in persuading the
Senate to adopt their version of the deceptively titled Healthy
Forests Initiative.
ALL Oregon? Hmmm? How does that rhetoric
stack up to reality? Did ALL Oregon support this raid on our
public lands? Hardly. Polls show that the majority of Oregonians
opposed it. So, which Oregon does the Senator represent?
Maybe it's the Israeli lobby? Wyden's
their Number One Senate PAC money recipient in a state that's
two percent Jewish. Probably not.
Maybe it's the Telecommunications Industry?
Again, Wyden's their Number One PAC guy, as well. The Oregon
Business Journal lists but one Telecom with an Oregon Headquarters.
So, again, probably not.
Could it be Used Car dealers? He's Number
Three for them.
How about Dentists? He's their Number
Two man in the Senate.
Dietary Supplements? Number Three again.
(No word on whether he's being called before the Grand Jury along
with Barry Bonds.)
Perhaps the Sierra Club which along with
the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) have blindly endorsed
the senator in every political race he's ever run.
Maybe the National! Association of Police
Organizations which made him their Senator of the year?
Nope.
One has to go to Wyden's other Number
One Senate PAC ranking -- Big Timber! Yep. That's right. Sen.
Ron Wyden hauled in more money from Timber PACs than any other
Senator this election season. (<Source:http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?In
d>=A10&cycle=2004&recipdetail=s&Mem=Y&sortorder=U
In fact, he hauled in more timber bucks
than any other US politician, save one, George W. Bush. Now Bush
will now sign into law what Wyden, himself, proudly calls the
"Wyden/Feinstein Forest Compromise," when the environmental
establishment, lapdogs of the Democratic Party, persists in calling
it Bush's so-called "Healthy Forests Initiative." For
Big Timber, Ron Wyden clearly has stood up. Perhaps Bush will
hand him a souvenir pen after he signs the logging bill into
law.
When one considers that in his long tenure
as Big Timber's greatest friend, former Sen. Mark O. Hatfield
(R-OR) was NEVER the industry's Number One PAC recipient, the
depth of the betrayal begins to register. At least with Hatfield,
even though he is responsible for over 10 million acres of Old
Growth stumps, he would always throw a morsel or two to conservationists.
Big meaty morsels. Wilderness Areas like Opal Creek, at that.
Throughout his long career, Wyden is responsible for exactly
NO forest protection successes. Nada. Yet, he is portrayed as
a champion of the green cause. Someone call George Orwell!
So how did this lifelong politician's
vote come up for sale?
Well, the story going round for decades
in Oregon is that, in 1974, as a young University of Oregon Law
grad, Wyden did a major venue shop of the entire West Coast looking
for just the right Congressional District to move to so as to
fulfill his dad's (writer Peter Wyden) cradle-imprinted Congressional
wish for him. Once the ambitious, young Ron found the right District,
Oregon's progressive Third, he quickly moved from Eugene to a
Legal Aid position in NE Portland and the rest, as they say,
is history.
So how does Big Timber's Number One guy
get those LCV and Sierra Club endorsements?
Easy: the environmental movement has
largely become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.
Consider this: Big Timber's Number One guy has an 80% positive
rating from the League of Conservation Voters, which supposedly
scores politicians on their environmental votes. But the ratings
are as rigged as the bush Star Wars test. Sure, Wyden casts the
obligatory Nay on the annual shadow dance on oil drilling in
the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
He DID support the great, under appreciated
(hey, he is THE guy who brought an end to Nuclear Testing!),
former Rep. Mike Kopetski's (D-OR) efforts to protect the magnificent
Ancient Forests of Opal Creek. This action bought Wyden a lot
of cover. Even when running against him in the Primary fight
for the disgraced Sen. Bob Packwood's senate seat, I couldn't
bring myself to go after Wyden on the environment, simply because
of Opal Creek. In retrospect, not such a bright move on my part.
But talking about not so bright moves,
how is it that after a year of declaring "stopping Bush's
HFI" to be their collective "Number One Priority"and
raising some $5+ million to fight it, the Big Greens were smoked
in a lopsided 80 -- 14 vote? Simple. They were backstabbed from
within. Wyden and Feinstein (along with Montana's Sen. Max Baucus)
did what Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR)
couldn't: shepherd the logging bill past a potential Senate filibuster.
Bush unveils it August 22, 2002 and LCV darlings Wyden and Feinstein
seal the deal and the fate of the forests a year later. This
is what the combined forces of Big Green produced on their top
priority.
How much did Wyden's vote cost? That
Number One ranking came cheap. He took in a mere $32,500 (Bush
got $213,000). Methinks the Big Greens need some strategic rethinking.
They could lay off but one of their incompetent staff and use
the bloated salary to buy a few Wydens at that price.
The Big Greens get defeated on forests
every time and every time it's by a wider margin. Is it mere
ineptness? Or is something darker going on here? Is losing a
reflex? Or are they throwing the game and blaming the loss on
Bush and Republican ultras for their own political purposes?
Those are the two choices: incompetence or collusion. When one
follows Deep Throat's famous advice and looks at the money, here's
what we find: not only is Wyden Number One, other Democrats make
up seven more of Big Timber's Sweet Sixteen, with Sen. Blanche
Lincoln LCV rating = 32%) at number four; Joe Lieberman (LCV
= 88%) number six; Patty Murray (LCV = 76%) number ten; John
Kerry (LCV =92%) number eleven; Bob Graham (LCV = 64%) number
twelve tied with Mary Landrieu (LCV = 20%) and John Edwards (LCV
= 68%) at sixteen.
Lieberman, Kerry and Edwards failed to
vote on Wyden/Feinstein, as they failed to vote on Bush's nomination
of the slavishly pro-industry Mike Leavitt as head of the EPA,
thus preserving their records of not recording ANY environmental
votes this election year! Sen. Hilary Clinton garnered lots of
ink for her 9-11-03 "vow" to block Leavitt. Clinton
sheepishly voted a month later for Leavitt as did most Democrats
in an 88 -- 8 vote.
Rather sobering. And, yes, collusion
is going on here. It's all about Big Greens covering for bad
Democrats, pure and simple. When appalled activists met to discuss
reprising the entertaining and media-successful Weenie Roast
they held outside Wyden's office after he went along with previous
Big Timber "salvage" giveaways, the Sierra Club nixed
the idea as "he's our friend." After the defeat on
HFI, The Wilderness Society (TWS) went public with their sentiment,
telling the Idaho Statesman the "bill offers workable solutions
to forest problems, as long as the government follows through
with its promises." In California, TWS staffer Jay Watson
said it was a bill "we can work with." Talk about Weenies!
Grassroots activists, however, did show
up at Wyden's office on Halloween, the day after the Senate bloodbath.
They made their displeasure known and were able to get local
media coverage of their outrage and the fact that they are still
cutting Big, Old Trees a decade after the Big Greens declared
it "our greatest victory" that Bill Clinton had "saved
the Ancient Forest." Ivan Maluski, dressed in a salmon outfit
said, "The bill that passed the Senate last night is a logging
bill. It opens up 20 million acres and who knows how many of
those are going to be in Oregon and a lot of that is going to
be in the backcountry far away from homes and communities. The
way we read some of the old growth provisions -- it actually
targets old growth forest for logging and that's really dangerous."
One thing one has to give the Big Greens
credit for is that their original analysis of the provisions
of the HFI was quite accurate. Instead of creating healthy forests,
it's clearly a huge giveaway to Big Timber and Big Timber's more
recent offshoot, privatized Big Fire prevention. Industry will
be able to go after big old trees far from any human development.
As Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth has noted, it makes no
sense economically otherwise. Somehow, these folks have sold
the notion that cutting the biggest, most fire-resistant trees
will somehow make the forests less vulnerable to fire.
And Big Fire prevention, a highly unregulated
industry that is totally dependent on there being fires and often
has seen its employees become the arsonists that start them,
will get an additional $760 million, pushing the total set aside
for fire prevention to over $1.2 billion for the fiscal year.
And, wait a minute. Yes, indeed, it becomes more clear. Over
80% of all the private companies in this industry are headquartered
in Oregon. Under Wyden/Feinstein, these companies, many direct
offshoots of timber firms, will become triple dippers: paid to
"prevent" the fires with "fuel reduction projects,"
paid to fight the fires and, then paid for the "salvage
and restoration logging" that inevitably follows.
Big Fire benefits greatly from the Senator
for ALL Oregon's compromise. But, just how effective is this
industry? Who put out the California fires, anyway? Mother Nature,
as always -- this time in the form of rain, mists and snow. Yet,
Wyden still believes the best way to fight a fire is to smother
it with federal dollar bills.
Even though Wyden has been named one
of the dumbest members of Congress, he is something of an idiot
savant when it comes to having his cake and eating it too. Wyden
will go on to more timber PAC and other corporate money, yet
he will enjoy high LCV ratings and Sierra Club endorsements.
Gordon Smith should cry foul. They have nearly identical records
on National Forest policy (log more), yet Wyden pockets money
from both Big Timber and Big Green.
Green Central will continue to blame
their defeats on Bush and the Republicans. Gordon Smith will
take on more principled stands than the craven Wyden. Ralph Nader
will once again pull in over 75,000 Oregon votes next year's
presidential selection, though the Big greens will endorse one
of the nonvoting Senate Democrats. Senator-from-birth Ron Wyden
will continue his "Standing up for ALL of Oregon's"
ruling elites. One senator; many rich masters.
MICHAEL DONNELLY
of Salem, OR has been a longtime champion of protecting our Public
Ancient Forests. He was a 1996 Democrat primary candidate for
US Senate. He was deeply involved in the successful effort to
protect Opal Creek. He can be reached at: pahtoo@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
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