Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
23, 2003
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website of the Day
Bands Against Bush
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?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
23, 2003
The Dick Cheney Tapes
"Can You Handle the
Truth?
By STAN COX
A videotape has surfaced in which
a man believed to be Vice President Richard Cheney addresses
the American people from an unidentified office. The tape is
not dated, but analysts have inferred from the speaker's comments
that it was made sometime this summer. He claims to be making
his remarks on behalf of President Bush, but, if the tape is
authentic, the fact that it was never offically released suggests
that the president did not give the speech his final approval.
Following is a transcript. -- Stan Cox
My fellow Americans:
Tonight I have been authorized by our
President to tell you the truth. We have been reluctant to do
this, because, as that movie actor once said, we didn't think
you could handle the truth. But we have become concerned that
your support for the Iraq effort is wavering, and we cannot let
that happen.
So we're going to tell you the truth,
because, to be frank, we've tried just about everything else
and you still don't seem satisfied.
In recent years, you, the American people,
have demonstrated your toughness. You have shown that you can
deal resolutely with horrifying attacks on our country, with
terror alerts, and with seeing your sons, daughters, and spouses
sent off to war in Asia. You have stoically accepted - most of
you - some adjustments in your Constitutional rights. You have
tolerated floods, droughts, forest fires, and a massive electrical
blackout.
You have worked your way through many
difficulties, but there is one blow that has not yet struck you
- a blow the full force of which, we are convinced, you simply
could not withstand. It is a challenge that we must confront
head-on or else be crushed. I am talking about a sharp and permanent
rise in the price of petroleum.
Now I don't mean that we are fighting
a "war for oil" in the sense that the anti-war malcontents
in our society use that term. This isn't about which corporations
get contracts or how much salary your
vice president might have received from one company or another.
We are in Iraq and we have to stay there because, in the words
of President George Herbert Walker Bush - a man whom I am proud
to have been serving at the time our troops began their involvement
in Iraq twelve years ago - "the American way of life is
not negotiable."
Despite all the rumors, our Iraq policy
is not being dictated by think tanks or in the bowels of the
Pentagon. You yourselves have dictated it, and we have responded.
You want to keep your way of life, you want national prosperity,
and you want to believe that when the United States steps into
the world arena, we do so only with the noblest of motives. This
year, with our victory over Saddam Hussein, you came very, very
close to getting all of those things.
But now, as you know, very serious challenges
have emerged in Iraq, made worse by the carping of armchair critics.
If we are tough this thing out, we have to stop kidding ourselves.
To secure our energy future and thereby preserve our way of life,
we, as loyal Americans, have to go the distance in Iraq. And
that means growing up a bit, letting go of our illusions, and
getting down to business. That means securing our supply of oil
and natural gas, not just in the immediate future, but for decades
to come.
Our country's production of oil hit its
peak in about 1970, and it has been declining ever since. In
the late 90s, we began importing more oil than we produce, and
that's the way it's going to be from now on. And, in this decade
or the next,
the world's oil production will reach a peak, level out for
some time, and then begin an irreversible decline.
Geologists and economists certainly don't
agree on the precise year when the peak will pass. Some say world
oil production could begin declining by 2010. Some say it's already
falling. Some hold out the hope that we'll find miraculous, huge
new reserves of oil, but even they admit that we'll pass the
peak before 2030. And when the world's oil consumption begins
its decline, we will never again see a period of increasing oil
supplies.
World demand for petroleum is accelerating,
thanks largely to increased consumption in countries like China
and India that want to emulate our way of life. When world production
starts heading downward, and world demand for oil continues to
strain upward, the shock to the global economy will be devastating.
But note that I am talking about worldwide production and consumption.
A large, powerful nation that has secure access to a generous
share of Middle Eastern oil (two-thirds of the world's remaining
oil, and the easiest to pump) will be able to continue meeting
its own needs and even prospering for decades, leaving the rest
of the world to worry about declining supplies.
That lucky nation will be the United
States of America, thanks to our decisive action in Iraq. We
have secured Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves (the second
biggest on the planet), we continue to work with our friends
in Saudi Arabia (the biggest), and if we remain resolute, we
will have shown the rest of the world who calls the shots in
the Mideast. At this stage of the game, we simply cannot afford
to falter.
Those of you over the age of 40 or so
may think that you saw catastrophic oil shocks in the 1970s.
But those were Sunday afternoon picnics compared to what we would
be facing had we not secured Iraq. We recovered from the stagflation
and long gas lines caused by that earlier crisis, as soon as
the flow of cheap oil resumed and increased. A future oil shock
would be much nastier, and it would be permanent.
Let me paint you a picture of a future
in which we've reached the far side of the world oil peak with
the Middle Eastern wellheads still in foreign hands:
A full tank of gas whenever you want
it, that comfortable ride to work with only your stereo system
for company, cheap flights to Grandma's at Christmas, a camping
trip in your RV - with the next oil crisis, these would become
only fond memories, or at best occasional luxuries. That big,
beautiful, three-ton investment parked in your garage? How would
it feel to have to let it just sit there, day after day, except
when you have to haul something?
Today, the average American travels more
than 17,000 miles by car and plane every year, and every
mile of that is powered by relatively inexpensive fossil fuels.
We can keep that way of life. But if we were to let Iraq slip
away, your life could start to seem like one long ride on a crowded
bus or maybe an eternal carpool, trapped in the backseat of a
Neon with your loudmouth neighbor.
If we were to stumble blindly over the
oil peak, everything - and I mean everything from fresh vegetables
in the winter to trash pickup - would become much more expensive.
Look around your house. How much plastic do you see? How much
came from China? Most of your household goods are shipped from
abroad, and even the average American-made item travels about
300 miles before you buy it and drive it home. Moving people
and goods from one place to another accounts for 11%
of our entire economy. Almost all of that transportation
depends on petroleum (and, of course, most of those goods are
at least partly composed of petroleum products.) Let oil go to
$50 or $100 a barrel, and Wal-Mart can take down its "Always
Low Prices" signs.
And to those of you who recycle and drive
those little 40-mile-per-gallon cars: Don't feel too smug. Once
on the downhill side of the oil peak, you'll find that you're
just as hooked as your neighbor with the Suburban and the snowmobile.
There is no
energy source equivalent to that Persian Gulf oil that fairly
spurts out of the sand. Ethanol? Sure, you can run cars on it
but the energy they contain doesn't come out of thin air - to
get it, you have to grow crops and growing crops requires fuels
to run machinery make fertilizer. To fuel all of America's cars
with ethanol made from grain grown with renewable fuels, we would
have to plant the
entire land mass of the United States to corn! And what if
we wanted to use renewable
resources to replace the oil and gas we use every year to
produce petrochemicals like plastics, synthetic rubber, and solvents?
That would require the entire yearly growth of all of our forests!
(Trouble is, we're already consuming that growth.)
Finally, you can forget about that "green"
fantasy they call the hydrogen economy. Hydrogen's not a source
of energy. You have to expend energy to make the stuff. By the
time we attain the capacity to do that, either by using up natural
gas (which will have its own peak) or with more nuclear plants
(which you'll complain about, of course), or by installing millions
of acres of photovoltaic solar arrays, and by the time we get
our hydrogen distribution system, and by the time we replace
our entire vehicle fleet with those funny-looking
super-efficient cars ... well, by comparison, our president's
request for those few extra billions to get Iraq "up and
pumping" is going to look like the biggest bargain since
the Louisiana Purchase.
Americans know that the best defense
is a good offense. I've spent many years in the energy industry.
It's an often unpredictable business, but there is one certainty:
No one has ever lost a dollar betting on the U.S. public's lack
of interest in energy conservation.
You may recall that in early 2001, I
headed President
Bush's Energy Task Force. I have resisted the release of
any records relating to our deliberations, but not, as has been
charged, to protect myself or my colleagues. In sheilding you,
the American people, from the details of our energy planning,
I was trying to allow you to keep both your way of life and your
pride in America as a moral leader in the world. But now I'm
putting all the cards on the table, so you will have to bear
the same burden that the president and I do - the knowledge that
we are fighting for economic survival, not principle.
The Task Force received truckloads of
expert advice, and from it we learned that we had no choice but
to move quickly to guarantee our access to Mideast oil and gas,
regardless of the consequences. We were provided no better description
of the current situation than one compiled by my friend James
Baker III and his Institute for Public Policy. Let me share with
you what their
report called our "central dilemma" when it comes
to energy:
"The American people continue to
demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience.
But emerging technologies are not yet commercially viable to
fill shortages and will not be for some time. Nor is surplus
energy capacity available at this time to meet such demands.
Indeed, the situation is worse than the oil shocks of the past
because in the present energy situation, the tight oil market
condition is coupled with shortages of natural gas in the United
States, heating fuels for the winter, and electricity supplies
in certain localities."
The report went on to point out that
"Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to U.S. allies in
the Middle East, as well as to regional and global order, and
to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East."
We met the challenge. A few short months
ago, Iraq was a "destabilizing influence." Now it's
our ace-in-the-hole, our key to happiness and prosperity. Things
may be rough right now, for us and for the Iraqis, but our central
mission - future oil security - has been accomplished.
Now that we've had this free and honest
discussion of the situation, I am confident that you and those
you've elected to Congress will keep funding our work in Iraq
as long as is necessary. It's an investment you can't afford
to pass up. And that's the truth.
Thank you, and good night.
Stan Cox
lives, works, and drives his car in Salina, Kansas. He thanks
Marty Bender for help with data. Cox can be reached at: t.stan@cox.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 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?
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