Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
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
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
30, 2003
Pirates of the Caribbean
The
WTO in Cancun
By STAN COX
Members of the World Trade Organization worry
that their Sept. 10-14 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, might turn
into a rerun of the tumultuous Seattle gathering in 1999. To
defuse one of several high-profile controversies, the United
States agreed to relax some pharmaceutical patents so poor countries
could produce or import inexpensive generic drugs to fight AIDS
and other diseases. But when the compromise reached the WTO's
General Council, it promptly fell apart under the weight of additional
demands by several member nations. The deal may still go through
before Cancun, but independent aid groups were already calling
the proposal a sham. A representative of the relief agency Oxfam
said the deal was "watered down so much that it isn't really
anything to cheer about."
For months, trade representatives from
the United States, prodded by the pharmaceutical industry, have
demanded that U.S. patents on lifesaving drugs be enforced in
all countries, rich or poor. Meanwhile, Congress connected patented
drugs with patented corn and soybeans by passing President Bush's
Global AIDS Initiative. Somewhat jarringly, the new program links
medical assistance for AIDS-stricken countries to their acceptance
of food aid produced from genetically engineered crops.
Seed and pharmaceutical companies, which
are intertwined in what they like to call the "life sciences"
industry, sell many products that can be reproduced cheaply and
on a huge scale. They share that problem with the software and
entertainment businesses. Without governments and international
bodies like the WTO to back up their patents, all of these industries
could say goodbye to their hefty profits.
The stormier the world economy, the more
big business insists on claiming information -- both humanity's
and nature's -- as its own property. The fewer tangible goods
that corporations are able to sell abroad, the more they depend
on the sale of ideas, words, symbols, knowledge and brands. And
once price tags are attached to these intangibles, sharing them
is redefined as piracy.
Every year, we Americans import and consume
more of the kinds of goods you can actually lay your hands on,
like clothes and appliances -- and, of course, oil. Our annual
balance-of-trade deficit has swollen alarmingly in the past decade
to around $400 billion -- the equivalent of importing the entire
economy of India every twelve months.
That deficit would be a lot bigger without
the continued broadening of intellectual property rights. In
the words of Michael Perelman of California State University,
Chico, "Intellectual property rights have become the financial
counterweight to deindustrialization (in the United States),
because the revenues they generate help to balance the massive
imports of material goods."
When cracking down on pirated DVDs and
shoes marked with a stolen "swoosh" becomes a cornerstone
of our global economic strategy, we're in trouble. And it's downright
embarrassing when the world's only superpower tries to pay for
its bloated consumption by extracting seed and medicine royalties
from some of the world's hungriest and sickest people.
The uninhibited flow of information is
a long human tradition It has been crucial to seed, drug and
computer companies, among others. They didn't pull their ideas
and data out of thin air. The information they call private property
has its roots in taxpayer-funded research. University and government
researchers, in turn, draw on centuries of ideas hatched by others.
The information that nature encoded in patented genes is far
more ancient.
The Constitution views patents as a way
to spur creativity, not block access to the basics of life. And
that distinction is becoming more crucial. The Earth's inhabitants
will face serious scarcities in the decades to come. Because
of these limits on matter and energy, we must let information
follow its natural tendency to move and multiply freely. To keep
the planet livable, we'll need to draw on the entire pool of
human knowledge, as well as the plant, animal and microbial gene
pools that, until recently, were our common inheritance.
People risk being hunted down as pirates
when they share music files, save seed from patented crops or
bring back a suitcase full of medicines from Mexico. But, whatever
their legal status, these are strictly small-time activities.
You'll find the big-time pirates operating openly starting Sept.
10 along the coast at Cancun.
Stan Cox
is a member of the Prairie Writers Circle and senior research
scientist at the Land Institute in Salina, Kan. From 1984 to
1996, he was a plant geneticist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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