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Today's
Stories
March 30, 2004
Bill Christison
The 9/11 Commission: Dangerous
Harbringer for the Future
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
A
Journey to Rafah
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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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March
29, 2004
The Countessa of Empire
Condoleezza
Rice's Idea of Democracy
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
Condoleezza Rice wants to bring democracy to the
Middle East. Ms. Rice, an expert on what is now an obsolete subject,
the Soviet Union, believes this can be done the way the United
States brought democracy to Chile or Iran or Afghanistan--that
is, by violently overthrowing governments.
Does democracy come from the full belly
of a B-52 and the murderous aftermath of coups?
Apparently not. Virtually none of the
countries that America's freedom-loving army of enlightenment
has bombed and shot-up over the last sixty years is today a democracy.
One is reminded of the claims of Napoleonic
France that it was spreading revolutionary principles by conquest.
The conquest part was vigorously pursued, but the liberte, egalitie,
et fraternite part left a little something to be desired.
Ms. Rice displays little understanding
of the history of democracy or of the circumstances which make
it possible. She is not alone in this. Former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright's efforts on "democracy initiatives"
displayed a similar lack of understanding, although it must be
said in Ms. Albright's favor, she was less inclined than the
ever-hysterical Ms. Rice to classify unprovoked attack by a great
power as an initiative for democracy.
Democracy is simply a natural development
of a healthy, growing society. Over the long term, it requires
no revolution, no coup, and no sacred writ. It grows and blooms
as automatically as flower seeds tossed in a good patch of earth,
although it is a plant whose maturity is measured in human lifetimes
rather than seasons.
The early United States after its revolution
was no more a democracy than was the Mother Country. The authority
of Britain's monarchy had long been limited by the growing authority
of Parliaments. Even that mighty ruler, Elizabeth I, more than
a century and a half before George III and the American Revolution,
felt the limits of Parliament closing in on her.
George III, despite later American myths,
was very much a constitutionally-limited monarch. For some time,
up to and during the Revolution, there were many prominent American
colonists who felt that the machinations of the British Parliament
were thwarting the intentions of the king and endangering the
health of the empire. Even at that early time, people understood
that elected government was just as capable of bad policy as
a royal one or an aristocratic one. Indeed, the genius of the
British (unwritten) constitution was seen by most thoughtful
American colonists as being in the way it combined the three
forms of government to offset each other, the direct origin of
the American concept of "checks and balances" by branches
of government.
While the British franchise was then
highly restricted, it was no less so in the early United States.
It is estimated that maybe 1% of the population could vote in
early Virginia with all the restrictions of age, sex, race, and
ownership of property. That's actually roughly comparable to
the percentage of people making decisions in contemporary Communist
China where about 60 million party members hold sway over about
1.2 billion people.
The American Revolution did not produce
anything resembling a democracy. Nor did the later Constitutional
Convention. It took about two hundred years of growth and change
in the United States for that to happen. The powerful Senate,
able to block the elected President's appointments and treaties,
only changed from being an appointed body to an elected one in
1913. The Senate to this day uses undemocratic operating rules
and bizarre election patterns to shield it against public opinion.
The popular vote for President did not
matter originally. Apart from the fact that only a small number
of males meeting property requirements could vote, the members
of the Electoral College, drawn from political elites, were the
ones whose votes actually counted. This absurdly out-of-date
and anti-democratic institution still exists, and it can cause
serious problems as we saw in the election of 2000.
Women only got the vote in 1920. Blacks
in the American South only received an effective franchise a
few decades ago. In some places, like parts of Florida, recent
elections suggest that methods may still operate to limit the
franchise of black citizens.
America has two parties sharing a quasi-monopoly
on political power, and they produce much the same effects in
the body politic that quasi-monopolies produce in the market
place. The two quasi-monopoly parties are financed through a
corrupt system of private donations. America herself still has
a considerable way to go along the path to democracy.
Yet Americans generally believe that
their Revolution and Constitutional Convention created a full-blown
democracy and near-perfect system of government right from the
start. Perhaps this explains the blind faith of people like Ms.
Rice in thinking that if you just have a big war or coup somewhere,
you can create a democracy.
Democracy comes gradually because it
represents a massive social change that affects all relationships
in society. The chief driving force towards democracy is the
emergence of a strong middle class whose members have too much
at stake to leave decisions to a king or group of aristocrats.
The size of the middle class expands by steady economic growth.
In the West, this process of change has proceeded steadily since
the Renaissance and the rise of science and applied technology,
with variations in the pattern of individual countries reflecting
adjustments to peculiarities of local culture, invasions, civil
wars, and varying rates of economic change.
Many of the societies America looks askance
at in the world today make no progress towards democracy because
they make little progress of any kind, especially economic progress.
Static societies with little or no economic growth are ones where
ancient customs and social relationships do not change, where
kings or warlords rule just as they did thousands of years ago
in early societies.
Economic growth is like a magical solvent
that begins to erode old relationships. And given enough of it,
over a considerable period of time, it erodes old ways of governing
completely. This process is observable even within regions of
a country. The American South was remarkably backward and static
for a good part of the 20th century. But the shift of business
and middle-class populations to the sunbelt during the middle
of the century brought some rapid change--ergo, the phenomenon
known as the New South.
It has been said that if, in the wake
of 9/11, the United States truly had wanted to battle for democracy
and human rights, it would have dropped dollar bills rather than
bombs on Afghanistan. That, of course, is an exaggeration, but
it contains important truth.
The United States could make a genuine
contribution to the spread of democracy were it to focus attention
on the economies of the world's more backward places. It might
start with some generosity in foreign aid. The United States
is the stingiest of all advanced countries in giving economic
assistance to poor countries, giving at an annual rate of 1/10
of one percent of its GDP.
Reducing or doing away with American
agricultural subsidies that impoverish third-world farmers would
also be a great help. So, too, the tariff and non-tariff barriers
that the U.S. uses against many products from these struggling
countries.
Paying its dues to the United Nations
and ending its childish carping about that important institution
would help, since U.N. agencies perform many valuable services
for the world's children, its refugees, and international cooperation
and understanding.
In general, concern for democracy calls
for the U.S. to start behaving more like a responsible neighbor
in the international community and rather less like an 18th century
French aristocrat who barely notices as his carriage thumps over
the body of whoever happened to be in its path.
John Chuckman
lives in Canada.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
A
Journey to Rafah
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
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