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Coming in October
From Common Courage Press

 

Today's Stories

Ron Jacobs
The Darkening Tunnel

 

Recent Stories


August 21, 2003

Robert Fisk
The US Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing

Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?

Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq

Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps on the Wrists

Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show

Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks

Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?

Vicente Navarro
Media Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush

Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad

 

August 20, 2003

Robert Fisk
Now No One Is Safe in Iraq

Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad

Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?

Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark

Ramzi Kysia
Peace is not an Abstract Idea

Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway

John L. Hess
A Downside Day

Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay

Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake Up Call"

Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype

 

August 19, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen

Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South Pacific

Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism

Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense

Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna

John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques

Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say

Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities

 

August 18, 2003

Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace

Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure

Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson

Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!

Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay

Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context

Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge

Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War

Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson

Website of the Day
Fire Griles!

 

Congratulations to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD

 

August 16 / 17, 2003

Flavia Alaya
Bastille New Jersey

Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps

Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50

Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?

William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles

Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk

Wenonah Hauter
Which Electric System Do We Want?

David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?

Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist

Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline for August 14, 2003

David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue

Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin

Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number

Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert

Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder

 


August 14, 2003

Peter Phillips
Inside Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party

Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the CIA's Most Expensive War

Linville and Ruder
Tyson Strike Draws the Line

Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran

Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map

Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq

Gary Leupp
Condi's Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride

Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits

August 13, 2003

Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the Heart

Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire

Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy

Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent

Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count

Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur

Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting

 

August 12, 2003

 

Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and Iraq

Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up

Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens

Ray McGovern
Relax, It Was All a Pack of Lies

Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House

Website of the Day
Black Mustache

 

Hot Stories

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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August 23, 2003

Dear Tom, Dear Matt

A Fan's Notations

By ADAM ENGEL

To: Tom Turnipseed

From: Adam Engel

CC: United States of America

Subject: "Blowback in Iraq," Counter Punch, August 14, 2003

Dear Tom Turnipseed,

Horrifying. I actually hoped, though the waving flags and media hoopla indicated otherwise, that all the marching, writing, teaching I and colleagues did from September, 2002 through March 2003 would actually prevent Gulf War II. Hell, fifteen million people across the globe screamed NO in a single February week-end. It ended in a massacre, which itself was the culmination of twelve years of slaughter, starvation, intimidation and outrages too numerous to mention against the people of Iraq (and let's not forget about our great People's Victory over the mighty Taliban).

Whatever happens to the U.S. now is, at the very least, justice. Still, I remember the WTC crumbling to the pavement with friends of mine dying inside. I don't want to see Americans suffer the same punishment we inflicted on the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and (via our Israeli proxies) Palestine. The typical American, despite the flag-waving, jingoistic, fanaticism and indifference to human suffering, is no more deserving of the coming horrors than the Mid East citizens "our" army destroyed with cruise missiles and radioactive shells. But protesting this blowback seems even less effective than protesting the warmongers who started it all (dating back to WWII). Uncle Sam murdered in our names, with our tax money, and the support of a large segment of our population. Now we must all pay.

What were people thinking? That we could allow "our" military to step on humans as if they were insects and get away with it? Because we're such nice people? Because even though our parents and grand-parents got suckered into a materialistic, racist, anti-social "American Dream," they basically meant well?

My wife's best friend, a woman she met in kindergarten, who worked ten hours a day while raising two daughters, probably never made the connection between the fuel that heated her house and powered the vehicles that drove her kids to school and the liquid fire that blew her out of some shiny glass WTC office window.

Great article.

Adam Engel

NYC


From: Adam Engel

To: Matt Siegfried

CC: United States of America

Subject: "Bush Administration in Context", Counter Punch, August 18, 2003

Dear Matt Siegfried,

Fabulous, terse synopsis of "some of the defining events that have set the stage for our current situation" since 1945 and inspiring call to arms against capitalism/imperialism/militarism itself rather than the ridiculous and ineffectual targeting of one member of the tag-team Republican/Democrat wrestling duo that sends in a "new" administration to fight all life on the planet in four to eight year cycles (approximately the time it takes for one or the other to exhaust its own rhetoric and tactics and take a breather while the other fights on).

The problem for me is, despite all that Greens, socialists, anarchists, progressives and anyone else on the left has done to point out that this global meltdown is the result of a highly evolved system, rather than the mere exchange of a "happy hegemon" like Clinton for a "surly hegemon" like Bush, false consciousness (or unconsciousness) wins the day here in America time and time again. It's as if Americans still think in the binary code taught to them by FDR.

I write a weekly column in the Cultural Section of Counter Punch, and I actually receive emails/newsletters daily which invoke the horrors of corporatism, militarism, racism, corruption, exploitation and everything else that makes our "democracy" tick, only to blame it ALL on Bush and urge me to (What, rebel? organize? resist? Of course not!) VOTE Democrat (for Howard Dean or Denis Coconut or whoever else is slated to accept the torch of status quo).

Such thinking truly baffles me, and leaves me speechless. For every such e-missive I receive, I will reply with a link to your article.

Excellent work.

Adam Engel

NYC

Adam Engel can be reached at: bartleby.samsa@verizon.net.

Weekend Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003

Flavia Alaya
Bastille New Jersey

Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps

Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50

Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?

William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles

Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk

Wenonah Hauter
Which Electric System Do We Want?

David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?

Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist

Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline for August 14, 2003

David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue

Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin

Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number

Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert

Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder

 

 

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