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Today's Stories

October 17, 2003

David Lindorff
Michael Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty

October 16, 2003

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba

Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq

Norman Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse

Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time

Lenni Brenner
I Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me

Website of the Day
Time Tested Books

 

October 15, 2003

Sunil Sharma / Josh Frank
The General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation

Forrest Hylton
Dispatch from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"

Brian Cloughley
Those Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq

Ahmad Faruqui
Lessons of the October War

Uri Avnery
Three Days as a Living Shield

Website of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor


October 14, 2003

Eric Ridenour
Qibya & Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre

Elaine Cassel
The Disgrace That is Guantanamo

Robert Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People

David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops

VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference

Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews

Peter Linebaugh
"Remember Orr!"

Website of the Day
BRIDGES

 

October 11 / 13, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings

Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles

Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia

Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference

Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci
Allende Lives

Larry Tuttle
States of Corruption

William A. Cook
Failing America

Brian Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand

Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?

Merlin Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin

Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!

Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries

Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus

Bruce Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"

William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2

Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley

Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack

Poets' Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney


October 10, 2003

John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger and the Lottery Society

Toni Solo
Trashing Free Software

Chris Floyd
Body Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women

 

October 9, 2003

Jennifer Loewenstein
Bombing Syria

Ramzi Kysia
Seeing the Iraqi People

Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic

Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?

Alexander Cockburn
Welcome to Arnold, King for a Day

Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark

 

October 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Centrist Dems

Ramzy Baroud
Israel's WMDs and the West's Double Standard

John Ross
Mexico Tilts South

Mokhiber / Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust

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 17, 2003

First Syria, Then Iran

Is It Me or Them That's Insane?

By RON JACOBS

The news is not good. Three American security guards blown up in Gaza. Richard Perle stating that the Pentagon could easily commit troops to an attack on Syria because Syria is "militarily weak." Meanwhile, Jack Straw (a misnomer if there ever was one) is in the news saying that a military attack on Iran has not been ruled out. Oh yeh, let's not forget Iraq-more than a dozen US military and their Iraqi employees dead in the past week, plus a few other foreigners. These numbers do not even address the Iraqi and Palestinian casualties in either of those occupied countries.

As I write this, Al-Jazeera is reporting that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have both distanced themselves from the attack on the US security detail that was destroyed in Gaza. CNN has yet to acknowledge this statement, preferring as usual to publish Israeli statements that attribute the attack to the Palestinian resistance. This means that they believe it was Hamas or one of the other resistance organizations that committed the attack. However, the immediate denial by Hamas and Islamic Jihad lead me to believe that perhaps it was an Israeli organization (governmental or otherwise) that may have killed those guards. After all, Sharon and his government opposes the so-called road map to peace-which is why these Americans were in Gaza in the first place-and if the US can be scared away from even this poor excuse for a solution to the Palestinian situation, then the plan for a Greater Israel can move ahead.

No matter who committed this act, it (unfortunately) comes as no surprise. The US patronage of Israel was bound to blow up in its face sooner or later. For it to occur during the same time period that the US vetoed two resolutions condemning Israel for its attack on Syria and its construction of the apartheid wall makes sense from a Palestinian point of view and (if Israel wants to commit an act that it could blame on the Palestinians), an Israeli point of view. Why would the Palestinians want to get the US military involved, anyhow? That's almost like committing suicide considering their meager resources.

As for Richard Perle and his bellicose ravings; he is quoted in the Jerusalem Post regarding the recent attack by Israel on Syria thusly: "I was happy to see that Israel has now taken a similar step (to the US in Afghanistan) in responding to acts of terror that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of Lebanon in Damascus." What's scary about this statement is the use of the word "happy." How can a sane individual be "happy" that the world has moved a step closer to another war? Then again, how can a sane person continue to support almost any aspect of the U.S. policy in the Middle East? If the architects of this policy are ever put on trial, insanity can be their only defense because willful ignorance is no defense at all. Besides, who would believe that these policy makers don't know what their doing? The problem is that they do know what they are doing: they are attempting to remold the world into their plantation and marketplace. They will do this through bribery, assimilation, threats and plain old mass murder. It's not that these men don't understand the world, it's that they only see it the way they want to see it.

The British government suffers from a similar insanity. Jack Straw, who shares a name with the legendary 15th century British peasant organizer, told the British parliament that he had not ruled out armed action against Iran if it did not meet the US and UK's requirements concerning its nuclear program. While Iran's leaders certainly seem to suffer from their own particular insanity, Straw's statement (echoed by many other Western madmen) is further evidence of the US-UK axis' psychotic state. The Security Council vote that essentially gives the UN blessing to Washington's occupation of Iraq indicates that most other world leaders are showing symptoms of this affliction.

What is the solution? Well, it's going to take more than a couple weeks worth of meds. These maniacs need to be removed from their positions of power, before they can cause any more damage to the world or themselves. Their illusions and delusions are causing irreparable damage to their surroundings and, unless they are subdued, their arson and other destructive tendencies will continue to intimidate and convince others in their sphere of influence to go along with their madness. It has to be madness, for only madness has the energy and resoluteness it requires to destroy the world.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.

He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu

Weekend Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings

Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles

Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia

Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites

Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference

Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci
Allende Lives

Larry Tuttle
States of Corruption

William A. Cook
Failing America

Brian Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand

Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?

Merlin Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin

Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!

Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries

Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus

Bruce Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"

William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2

Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley

Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack

Poets' Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney

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