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June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
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Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
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A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
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The Best Show in Town
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Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
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June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
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My America vs. the Empire
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
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of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
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June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
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Roya
Monajem
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John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
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WMD Damage Control at the Times
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
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Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
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Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
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Ron Jacobs
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Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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Watch
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Francis Boyle
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June
28, 2003
Life in Occupied New
York
U.S.
Troops Outta Times Square
By
ADAM ENGEL
Camouflage. Boots. Automatic weapons. Real Vietnam
stuff: spooky fetid atmosphere; scared, bored troops who don't
really know why they're there in that hellish jungle. Fat commanding
officers, confident in overwhelming victory, hitting on female
troops. A stressed-out populace, hoping to get where they're
going with as little hassle as an occupied people can get away
with.
But this ain't Vietnam, it's Times Square
Station.
Yeah, yeah: support "our" troops.
Support 'em in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, South Korea,
Japan, Europe, Greenland, Timbuktu, Atlantis, Mars. Support 'em
anywhere you want except New York City.
If you think I'm gonna smile like a just-pissed-my-pants
Democrat and welcome an invading army, you're as dumb as Dubya
thinks you are. As dumb as he thought Afghans and Iraqis were--boy
is he learning different. Bring the boys and girls back home;
let them enjoy healthy, happy, peaceful lives--far away from
me. Troops who are originally from NYC should be sent somewhere
else...I dunno... Fort Munchaussen or the next pip-squeak axis
of evil Terrorist State of the Month they can conquer without
too much risk of personal injury. I don't care. Just get' em
out of Port Authority and Times Square Station and god knows
where else in the Big Rotting Apple they're squirreled away.
What happened to Posse Comitatus or Habeas
Corpus (more on that later) or all those other Latinate terms
no one seems to care about anymore (with the possible exception
of those with bank vaults full of E. Pluribus Unum?).
This is no joke. Kids not old enough
to shave or buy a drink or a pack of smokes (the legal kind)
legally, toting M16s in the subways and bus terminals, hobnobbing
with middle-aged cops. Young Black and Hispanic and lower class
White kids defending rich old White men's rights to conduct business
as usual and scaring the daylights outta everyone else. Makes
you want to go to a bar and smoke a cigarette and talk to a fellow
New Yorker in low tones, exchange furtive glances, flash secret
signs of rebellion. But you can't smoke a cigarette in a bar
cause this is New York, the City that won't wake up.
That whole "nothing phases New Yorkers"
thing has been perverted by THE MAN to HIS advantage. If you're
not phased by a dozen young men and women with automatic rifles
hanging out in the places you travel through every day, have
been traveling through since childhood, you're not a "hip,
jaded New Yorker," you're a brain-dead Zombie.
I don't know what YOUR situation is,
YOU out there, in America. Maybe this kind of stuff turns you
on. I checked out some awfully sexy female troopers with deliciously
phallic M16s between their thighs. The guys are good-looking
too, if that's your preference.
Now, I like to think of myself as goofy
and degenerate as any other American. When "my" President
says to go shopping while the hyper-armed U.S. Military wipes
out some poor, bedraggled, hopelessly out-gunned "nation,"
why, I go shopping. Or, to paraphrase that great Patriot, Oliver
North, if my President tells me to stand on my head in the corner
and have myself an inverted wank while the Bush twins explore
each others' sexuality, Hell, I'll do it. But I'll be damned
if I'll tolerate soldiers in Times Square.
And I have nothing against the soldiers
themselves. They look scared outta their minds down there in
the subway, the old cops proud to be able to distribute donuts
and wisdom to fellow uniformed protectors of the piece. Blacks,
Hispanics, corn-fed Caucasian country kids. All the cannon fodder
who would be in school or employed, in a real country, or in
jail or guarding the jails, in ours. Fortunately, we have a big
old military and lots and lots of enemies to give these kids
something to do. But not in New York City.
I would think that any "terrorist"
worth his salt would come up with something a bit more creative
than trying to hit a place with swarming with cops and armed
soldiers, so if one place is "safe" god knows how many
others are potential targets. Do we need a commando in every
household, and a chicken in every pot to feed him?
On the other hand, with all the noise
and confusion down there boggling the minds of our brave boys
and girls in uniform, I doubt it would be too hard for a guy
with a suitcase full of god-knows-what to set it off right where
the soldiers stood.
Regardless, if there really are terrorists
plotting to mess up NYC and this is not simply a device for the
Bush Administration to introduce yet more authority into our
lives, I guess I'd rather take my chances with a pistol and my
own paranoid eyes and ears than be terrorized daily by "our"
troops. It's bad enough to have a standing army of 40,000 of
New York's Finest handing out tickets for cigarette smoking,
sitting on milk crates without a license, or having too many
words or letters in a deli sign advertising lunch specials. Now
we gotta deal with the fucking army?
Well, my priorities have sure changed.
You don't see many Palestinians in Occupied West Bank and Gaza
marching to get China outta Tibet. They have immediate, pressing
issues at home. So too does occupied New York.
Sure, we gotta stop the U.S. military
machine from taking over foreign countries; we have to find out
why there are so many, mostly dark-skinned, inmates of U.S. prisons
and what, if anything, most of them actually did (smoke a joint?
think about smoking a joint?). There are nearly a thousand prisoners
in Guantanamo Bay being held without trial or even that war prisoner
Geneva Convention protocol. When they were Germans and Italians
and Japanese, way back when, they were called POWs. Them being
Afghans and all, we tag them "terrorists" and strip
them of what were once known as Human Rights.
We have to face the fact that Muslim--again
dark skinned--Americans and foreign visitors have been taken
away and held indefinitely, without habeas corpus, and demand
from the "authorities" what they are charged with,
not to mention the several thousand more Muslims who were forced
to register with the government in the greatest Federal outrage
against civil liberties since the Japanese internment camps.
We have to find out what really happened
on 9/11 and why the government refuses to hold an open trial
and get to the bottom of this monstrous event (could it be that,
like OJ, the feds are too busy looking for the "real"
killers to answer key questions?). We have to feed, cloth and
educate our children, heal our sick, provide for our elderly
and--oh, that's right. We're in AMERICA. Whatta my talking that
socialist crap? Well, forget about the children and other vulnerable
members of society--let's stick to the foreign invasion of New
York City. The Occupation of Manhattan.
Reality begins at home. Before we attack
these other issues we must get the U.S. Military out of NYC,
and whatever other cities in which troops are stationed. Disney
and Warner Brothers in Times Square was bad enough.
Yanqui go home!
Adam Engel,
a Manhattan refugee, has fled to the safety of New Jersey. He
hopes one day to return to his Homeland. He can be reached at
bartleby.samsa@verizon.net
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
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