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Today's
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Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
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"
Vicente 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
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
December 13 / 14, 2003
The Same Old Racket
in Iraq
To
the Victors, the Spoils
By TARIQ ALI
Iraq remains a country of unbearable suffering,
the sort that only soldiers and administrators acting on behalf
of states and governments are capable of inflicting on their
fellow humans. It is the first country where we can begin to
study the impact of a 21st-century colonisation. This takes place
in an international context of globalisation and neo-liberal
hegemony. If the economy at home is determined by the primacy
of consumption, speculation as the main hub of economic activity
and no inviolate domains of public provision, only a crazed utopian
could imagine that a colonised Iraq would be any different.
The state facilities that were so carefully
targeted with bombs and shells have now to be reconstructed,
but this time under the aegis of private firms, preferably American,
though Blair and Berlusconi, and perhaps plucky Poland too, will
not be forgotten at handouts time. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's old
firm, Halliburton, awarded a contract (without any competition)
to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, is happily boosting profits by
charging the US government $2.64 a gallon for the fuel it trucks
into Iraq from Kuwait. The normal price per gallon in the region
is 71 cents, but since the US taxpayer is footing the bill, nobody
cares.
The secret plan to privatise the country
by selling off its assets to western corporations was drafted
in February this year and surfaced in the Wall Street Journal,
which helpfully explained that "for many conservatives,
Iraq is now the test case for whether the United States can engender
American-style free-market capitalism within
the Arab world". Worried by the leaks, Bush and Blair issued
a user-friendly joint statement on April 8, stressing that Iraq's
oil and other natural resources are "the patrimony of the
people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit".
But who decides on behalf of the Iraqi people--Bremer/Chalabi
or Chalabi/Bremer?
Iraq's state-run health service, which,
prior to the killer sanctions, was the most advanced in the region,
is now being privatised, courtesy of Abt Associates, a US firm
specialising in privatisations that has clearly been forgiven
its record of "invoice irregularities" by its Washington
patron. Its first priority is instructive. It has demanded armoured
cars for its staff. Khudair Abbas, the orthopaedic surgeon from
Ilford and "minister for health" in the puppet government,
was recently in London boasting of the state-of-the-art hospitals
they would soon build to create a "two-tier health system".
Sound familiar?
This week Bush amplified US policy by
insisting on the time-honoured norm: to the victor, the spoils.
Why should those countries (Germany, France, China, Russia, etc)
that had refused to make the necessary blood sacrifice expect
a share of the loot? The EU is screaming "foul", and
its bureaucrats are suggesting that by denying the non-belligerent
states equal opportunities to exploit an occupied Iraq, the US
is withdrawing itself from the groove of capitalist legality.
These arguments won't carry much weight in Washington, but if
China, Russia and France insist that, as the occupying powers,
the US and Britain should immediately meet the debts incurred
by the former Iraqi regime, there might be some basis for negotiation.
A few bones in the shape of juicy subcontracts could be thrown
in the direction of China and the EU, but only if they stop whingeing
and behave themselves in public.
On its own, the privatisation plan, if
implemented successfully, would be a disaster for the bulk of
Iraqi citizens (as is the case in most of Latin America and central
Asia), but the situation here is unique. These "reforms"
are being imposed at tank point. Many Iraqis perceive them as
a recolonisation of the country, and they have provoked an effective
and methodical resistance. On the military level, the situation
continues to deteriorate, thus remaining the source of numerous
internal difficulties and sustaining friction and strife within
the west.
In a recent dispatch from Baghdad in
the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner reported that in the
two months (October and November) he spent in the occupied city,
the number of daily attacks on US troops had more than doubled,
from 15 to 35, and behind the bombings of other targets "one
can see a rather methodical intention to sever, one by one, with
patience, care and precision, the fragile lines that still tie
the occupation authority to the rest of the world". How
will the occupying armies respond? In the only way they can,
with the traditional methods of colonial rule. The Israelis are
trying their best to help, but they haven't been too successful
themselves.
On December 7, the front page of the
New York Times carried a report from Dexter Filkins in Baghdad.
Its opening paragraph could have applied to virtually any major
colonial conflict of the past century: "As the guerrilla
war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have
begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire. In selective cases,
American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used
by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning relatives of
suspected guerrillas in hope of pressing insurgents to turn themselves
in."
During the first phase of European colonisation,
it was the companies that were provided with a charter to raise
their own armies to defend their commercial interests. The British
and Dutch East India companies took India and Java. Later, their
countries' empires moved in to take control and consolidate the
gains. It was different in the Americas. Here it was always a
case of "send in the marines". General Smedley Butler,
a much-decorated and celebrated US war hero of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, with 34 years' military service, later
reflected on his campaigns and produced a telling volume entitled
War as a Racket. He explained his central thesis thus: "I
spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business,
for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short I was a racketeer,
a gangster for capitalism... I helped make Honduras 'right' for
American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially
Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make
Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys
to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen
Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The
record of racketeering is long."
The 21st-century colonial model appears
to be a combination of the two approaches. Specialist companies
are now encouraged to provide "security". They employ
the mercenaries, and their profits are ensured by the state that
hires them. They are backed up by the real army and, more importantly,
by air power, to help defeat the enemy. But none of this will
work if the population remains hostile. And large-scale repression
only helps to unite the population against the occupiers. The
fear in Washington is that the Iraqi resistance might attempt
a sensational hit just before the next presidential election.
The fear in the Arab east is that Bush and Cheney might escalate
the conflict to retain the White House in 2004. Both fears may
well be justified.
Tariq Ali's
latest book, Bush
in Babylon: The Re-colonisation of Iraq, is published by
Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.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"
Vicente 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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