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New Reagan Memorial Edition Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch Pentagon Cartoons; Hollywood Fantasies into Political Policy; From Fort Wacky to Bitburg; Star Wars, the Enron of Its Day; Touching the Gipper's Hair; How Reagan Made Clinton by Alexander Cockburn; When Reagan Was King and AIDS Was Raging: Joking About the Terminally Ill by Larry Speakes and the White House Press Corps; Parallel Lives: Watt, Reagan and Brower: by Jeffrey St. Clair; Fortress Baghdad; Iraqi Fury by Patrick Cockburn; Troy, the Iliad and Iraq by Jeffrey St. Clair. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories July 5, 2004 Kathy Kelly "Two Days an' a Wake-Up" July 3 / 4, 2004 Elaine Cassel Bush's Police State and Independence Day Stan Goff ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive" Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti Snehal Shingavi "We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak Out Bruce Anderson The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens Sharon Smith Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush" Josh Frank Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates Robert Fisk Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing Joe Bageant Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite! Brian Cloughley Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine Justin Delacour The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons William S. Lind Saudi Spillover Linda S. Heard A Joke Called "Justice" Greg Moses "It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't Back Down Ron Jacobs "Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?" Toni Solo Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There Dan Nagengast Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It? Stew Albert Brando, a Personal Recollection Dave Zirin From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for Our Brando Patrick W. Gavin The Progressive Case for Dodgeball Steven Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911 Poets' Basement Kearney, Ford and Davies Website of the Day Global Peace Solution July 2, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise of the Green Party Douglas Valentine Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism Gary Leupp "Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities Lee Ballinger Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights Robert Fisk Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly CounterPunch Wire "What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's Arraignment Christopher Brauchli Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right Saul Landau Buzz Words and Venezuela July 1, 2004 Katherine van Wormer Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in His Method Joe Bageant Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter? William James Martin The Dogma of Richard Perle Dave Lindorff Bush's Evacuation Moment Robert Fisk Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq Alan Maass Green Party in Reverse Website of the Day Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?     June 30, 2004 Kurt Nimmo Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush Tariq Ali Getting Away with Murder in Iraq Jennifer Van Bergen Bush and the Detainees Douglas Valentine Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen The Quiet American David Price Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass Roger Normand America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq Stan Cox Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's War on Art Henry David Thoreau On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming Ben Tripp Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof     June 29, 2004 Patrick Cockburn The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover Robert Fisk Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland Troy Selvaratnam New York Times Boosts Pet Developer Harry Browne Bush in Ireland Ray McGovern The CIA According to Anonymous Elaine Cassel Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really Won?     June 28, 2004 Patrick Cockburn / Leyla Linton Grisly Rituals in Iraq Amira Hass Confronting Myths and Deadly Power   June 26 / 27, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Venezuela: the Gang's All Here Patrick Cockburn Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge in Iraq Dennis Hans Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney, the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11 Ben Tripp Adventures in Fuel Efficiency Dave Lindorff That State Department Terrorism Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You Chris Floyd Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit Ali Tonak Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives, Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela Keith Rosenthal The Withering of the Anti-War Movement Bryan Sacks The Failure of the 9/11 Commission Wayne Madsen Another Case of Blowback Thomas St. John L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating in the Wizard of Oz Niranjan Ramakrishnan American Swadeshi   June 25, 2004 Stephen Gowans US to North Korea: "Trust Us" Saul Landau 2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction Amir Butler Iraq: the Deadly Embrace Jack McCarthy Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News? Greg Bates Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader     June 24, 2004 Gary Leupp John Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links Patrick Cockburn A Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing Death Threats Harry Browne On the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe Bill Kaufman Another Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli Bush, Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did They Tell? Rick Gioimbetti Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence? John Chuckman Call Center ID Hypocrisy Diana Johnstone Kerry and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"     June 23, 2004 Laura Carlsen Bush and Castro Face Off Dave Zirin Barry Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism" Kurt Nimmo From Saddam, With Love Patricia Wolff Foundation Wars Mahboob A. Khawaja "They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son" Patrick Cockburn The Pretense of an Independent Iraq Website of the Day The Road to Abu Ghraib June 22, 2004 Dave Lindorff The Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption Ron Jacobs Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq? Vanessa Jones Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings Mickey Z An Open Letter to the People of Iraq John L. Hess Clinton Exhales Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity Committee for Pacho Cortés An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés Bruce Jackson Saying No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify Website of the Day From Boot Camp to Boot Hill   June 21, 2004 Gary Leupp Putin's Helpful Remarks Lucson Pierre-Charles Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos Upon Chaos Cockburn / Khan Saddam May Face Death Penalty Uri Avnery Irreversible Mental Damage     June 19 / 20, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid and Isolated Bruce Anderson Frozen Gringos Diane Christian Morality and Death: a Meditation on Bush and Blake Walter A. Davis Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib Josh Frank How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature Col. Dan Smith Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan Brian Cloughley A Profound Disruption of the Senses Christopher Brauchli Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later Prudence Crowther Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me! Poets' Basement Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert Kathy Kelly Dying to See Their Kids     June 18, 2004 Chris Floyd Blood Victory Dave Zirin Danielle Green, Basketball Player & Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War Justin E.H. Smith The Christian Question in American Politics Gary Leupp The "Long-Established" Link?: Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi   June 17, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 18, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 16, 2004 Lenni Brenner A Question for Kerry Supporters Davey D Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan Daniel Wolff Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner Abuse? Bruce Jackson Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake Patrick Cockburn Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power Facilities Gary Handschumacher Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads JG Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop Mario Benedetti Obituary with Cheers Vicente Navarro Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who is Rodrigo Rato? Website of the Day Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch     June 15, 2004 Harry Browne Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe Neve Gordon The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited David Palmer Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI John Blair Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming Dave Lindorff God Wins in TKO Bill Quigley Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step In Patrick Cockburn Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast John Chuckman John Kerry, Political Placebo   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.     Subscribe Online

July 5, 2004 Crank Reflections on the 4th of July Would Somebody Turn Off That Goddamn Radio! By JOE BAGEANT This is the Fourth of July, 2004, it is muggy and judging from the sporadic concussive noises, every small boy in town is trying his damnedest to blow his thumb off. As a lover of anti-personnel fireworks myself, I would be right out there with them if it didn't look so bad for an unshaven, late middle-aged tub of lard to be setting off cherry bombs along these venerable tree-lined streets. And besides, it would mean getting out of my boxer shorts before 4 PM on a Sunday, thereby breaking my cardinal rule: Never get dressed on the Sabbath until an hour at which it is appropriate to drink. To occupy that torpid expanse between lunch and the cocktail hour, like all good American liberals I listen to NPR. Or maybe Pacifica, or maybe Air America Radio. Well, I did until a couple of months ago, anyway. There is only so much pain a lefty can suffer, in my case 14 years of it. But being a booger for self-punishment, I gave it another crack today, Here is of NPR's offering for this 228th anniversary of our nation. 1--an interview with an author about his book on wine and half-million dollar bottles not meant to be consumed. 2--a history of gunpowder (Fireworks. Gunpowder. Get it? Will associative genius never cease?) 3--a story on the trend among upscale suburban high school kids toward poker parties in their homes. Evidently it keeps them off the streets of their dangerously plush neighborhoods. 4--the history of the saxophone's role in brass bands. Another stunning associative connection for middle class liberals to pick up on while they stir their Columbian dark roast. 5--news that Bill Gates barely missed, by a few billion, becoming a trillionaire in this year's round up of the fabulously rich. Broke the listeners' hearts, for sure. Has anyone told the folks at NPR that on this very Fourth our country is fighting a fascist junta takeover? What do they think about as they look at all that barbed wire and concrete barricades around the White House and other points in downtown D.C.? Sure, the Fourth is another "feel good" day and according to those cannons of American media, the proper offering is yet another paint-by-numbers feature about hot dogs, gunpowder and brass bands. That still leaves us with a fundamental question that should govern serious programming on this day of reflection upon our liberties---When it comes to liberty, what do we have to feel good about on July 4, 2004? I get from 2000-3000 emails a month from readers who agree with me that the answer is this: Not Much. In fact, someone might also remind NPR that quoting research from ultra-conservative institutions such as the Heritage Foundation---which were set up by ultra-cons, polluting corporations and Christian right wingers beginning in the Reagan era specifically to influencing the media--- are not the first places to run to for objective information. Hell, I know a Christian Reconstructionist fellow who makes a fat living supplying these right-wing foundations with reasons why war is a very good thing! According to a recent study by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) of 2,334 NPR quoted sources in 804 stories, 61% were GOP sources and 38% Democratic. Nor were the numbers substantially different during the Clinton administration. 57% Republican-42% Democratic. If anything this constitutes a rightward drift. Anyway, what's going on in this country is a class war, and class wars are always about the money, so, gauche as the topic is supposed to be, among refined liberals, I insist on bringing it up. The folks at NPR are quite snug in their self-referential reality down there on K Street. Prosperous too. Susan Stamberg gets $9000 a crack, plus expenses for speaking at public events. Bob Edwards probably gets even more, plus the keys to your house as a tip. Even a very local public radio "personality" such as Kojo Nnamdi in D.C. gets two grand a pop. I doubt if Bob Edwards or Cokie Roberts ever consider what it takes the working puds listening pull down an extra 60 K on the side, or that the tax dollars of even poor working people in this country go into their paychecks and pay off their company Visas. Before they club me over the head with the fact that they do some freebies, let me say that most listeners would do a helluva lot of freebies between 10-K, one-hour gigs. Does the NPR party wagon stop for peasants? If so, let me on! I'll run my mouth for an hour ANYWHERE for two hundred bucks, plane fare and three vodka martinis. But I'll warn ya, I'm not the precious type and tend to warm up in the hotel bar waiting for the gig to start. In all seriousness though, there aren't many real media options in this country. As an alternative to the alternative NPR is supposed to be, we can turn to Air America Radio network (online here in the D.C. area) and suffer Al Franken's bad stand-up comedy about Bush, and a lot of raucous unfunny hyperactive spew assumedly mimicking AM radio. One Saturday morning was enough. Then there is poor old rowdy, fucked up stumbling Pacifica---the only network out there showing courage, charging forward and sticking spears into our oppressors as best they can. Unfortunately though, the joke about Pacifica is true: What is the difference between the mating call of Bigfoot and Pacifica Radio? Answer: More people have heard the call of Bigfoot. And let's not even talk about PBS. Oh hell, as long as we are pissing in the laps of the so-called public media, lets' do. PBS was a lost cause years ago, and now its last shred of dignity and real reporting, Bill Moyers, an American treasure for sure, is being replaced upon retirement by David Branccacio. Here's hoping DB can handle it. Still, one show doth not a network make. And if you've been watching out for a good film documentary on anything even close to the subject of American politics, forget it. Every good documentary filmmaker I know who once produced for PBS has been cut loose. They simply were no longer funded. Those who delved into the funding dry-up were pretty much told outright that if they lightened up on things, the funding just might come back. Still, though, my friends haven't worked in a year, proving that not everyone with a camera and a big ego is necessarily a whore. Even the genuine liberal mass-readership columnists have gone downhill. Burnout I guess. None less than Molly Ivins, god bless her soul, is sounding very tired and has declined into liberal shtick with a Texas accent. Oh, there are plenty of columnists decrying the mounting corporate and government lies, stacking fact upon fact, proving the case over and over again, Norman Solomon being the best of them. But there are so many lies thus far tabulated, a virtual mountain of them, and still nothing happens. Meanwhile, our strange, shadowy director of homeland insecurity, Tom Ridge, asks Congress to review the Posse Comitatus Law, which forbids the military from policing our cities. Jeezits Krist what does it take to trigger mass public reaction in this country? It is a real problem that our most educated liberal leaders tend to be considerate, well-read, navel gazing, pussies. This makes for great human beings but poor warriors against this developing fascist state. We need to get enough balls to whip the tar out of neocons instead of cataloging their latest lies and amputations performed on the Bill of Rights. Not too long ago many of us were demonstrating in the hundreds of thousands for no less than world peace. Now we have accepted the only offer on the table, perpetual war. Americans are going to be forced to face the fact that half the world cannot eat and shit regularly because Americans like you and me and Linda Werthhiemer and Al Franken suck up a quarter of all the resources. Obviously we have not faced it, so it is coming home for us to deal with strapped onto the chest of suicide bombers or deep within the holds of cargo ships... Let them eat fireworks. Tonight in my town, a couple of millionaire brothers are putting on a fireworks display for their friends at the family mansion on the hill. The display is bigger and better than the city's and visible from quite a distance. They have a lot to celebrate because free market capitalism has been very good to them indeed. Yet, those thousands of dollars up in colored smoke would have done an awful lot for some folks who live in the 85 blighted rentals they own across town. Interestingly, these brothers putting on the display are among the town's few active Democrats. Which goes to show that Susan Stamberg or the local rich kids, it's all the same---comfort breeds uncaring. Breeds blindness. Which is why that old saw about the job of a journalist, NPR or otherwise, being to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" remains ever true.... The rich have never and will never give up anything. That is why the rich men who wrote our constitution wrote it essentially as a property document. Property has always had priority over freedom in America from the beginning (consider that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia slave laws that prohibited George Washington from freeing his slaves upon his death.) But as the results of this have congealed over two centuries, aggregating property and its inherent power into the hands of the few. Again. It has been so wildly successful that property now has far, far more rights than people in America, and gains daily. Presently, when it comes to property, the little guy is driven to buy and own as many cheap junk electronics as humanly possible (his patriotic duty to the almighty economy) and the big guy owns all the little guys by owning the government and the businesses that sell him the junk. In between these classes are you and I, the cadre of professionals and semi-professionals required to conduct the business of the rich. A cadre inhabited by the college educated liberals---journalists, economists, managers, people whose job it is to rationalize the whole mad, unjust scheme---who write the story line that protects the rich from any proper accounting for their wealth, the story line that says we are engaged in a "culture war," not a class war. It is a helluva lot easier to write crap about culture than stand up and point out just who has a lock-down on the public's dough... or admit that the problems have been socialized but the profits have been privatized. Nobody in media gets paid to say that, so no one will say it. We are dying from the lack of the truth out here. Sure, many of us already know the truth, but it would be nice to see at least some small, cloudy reflection of it in the media. And now that the NPR story on saxophones is winding up and I'd better start coming down the home stretch on this tirade. GODDAMIT! I wish those kids outside would lay off the firecrackers. My dogs are in an uproar and I have been screwing with this piece off-and-on all day and now it's time for "Cold Case Files" and I'm still not out of my boxers. With that repulsive image, I will leave you, say good night and may providence bless what remains of our Constitution. Joe Bageant is a magazine editor and writer living in Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at: bageantjb@netscape.net. Copyright 2004 by Joe Bageant Weekend Edition Features for June 12 / 13, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede Team CounterPunch CP's Favorite Albums Jeffrey St. Clair Troy, Now and Then Gary Leupp Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq? Brian Cloughley US Military in Crisis Antonio Ponvert, III Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection Ben Tripp The Polls Get Stupider Joe Bageant Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash" Ron Jacobs The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency Forrest Hylton Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés Christopher Brauchli Federal Bureau of Errors Kurt Nimmo Going After Qaddafi, Again Wayne Madsen Israel's Slap at Reagan Anthony Loewenstein Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World Michael Donnelly A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous Greg Moses Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah? Susan Davis Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban Joseph Ramsey Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground Niranjan Ramakrishnan The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century Wayne Saunders The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup Poets' Basement Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert Website of the Weekend Insurgent Music WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /