Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
June 19 / 20, 2004
Brian Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
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
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
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
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
| June
19 / 20, 2004
Forging
Alliances
A Quick
Look at How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
By
JOSH FRANK
George
W. Bush’s environmental record can be dummied down to one simple
word: devastating.
Not
only has President Bush gutted numerous environmental laws--including
the Clean Air and Water Acts--he has also set a new precedence by disregarding
the world’s top scientists and the Pentagon, as their concerns
about the rate of Global Warming grow graver by the day.
As
Mark Townsend and Paul Harris reported for the Observer in the UK in
February of 2004, “[The Pentagon report] predicts that abrupt
climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries
develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water
and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses
that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.”
Indeed
one of Bush’s first actions in office was to forge the dirty “Energy
Policy Act of 2003”, which calls for a slash in renewable energy
funding and an increase in fossil fuel consumption. The bill, authored
by Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force, met with a reported
39 oil lobbyists and executives to form the outlandish legislation.
Portions of the bill are still hung up in Congress.
And
like his predecessor Bill Clinton, President Bush saw nothing wrong
with the disastrous practice of hill-top strip mining, and overturned
a federal ruling that had banned the practice during the Clinton years,
despite some top Democrats’, including Al Gore's, dismay.
Then
in another bold move, the Bush administration pandered to corporate
timber barons and authored a new radically bad forest plan, titled the
“Healthy Forests Initiative”, mirrored after Clinton’s
Salvage Rider bill and language Democratic Senator Tom Daschle slipped
into a bill in the summer of 2002. Daschle's legal jargon, backed by
the Sierra Club and other "green" titans, allowed logging
on First American’s land in South Dakota without having to abide
by environmental restraints or lawsuits. These very holy lands were
once visionary refuge for Lakota Sioux elders including Crazy Horse
and Black Elk.
As
environmental writer Jeffrey St. Clair wrote at the time, ”The
logging plan was consecrated in the name of fire prevention. The goal
of the bill, Daschle said, "is to reduce the risk of forest fire
by getting [logging] crews on the ground as quickly as possible to start
thinning." It's long been the self-serving contention of the timber
lobby that the only way to prevent forest fires is to log them first.”
The
ex-governor of Texas loved Daschle’s cunning style, and Bush’s
own forest plan--supported by the majority of Democrats in the Senate
(John Kerry forgot to vote that day)--authorized over $760 million dollars
in the hopes of preventing wild fires. The legislation however, accomplishes
no such thing, and instead sanctions the pillage of over 2.5 million
acres of federal forest land by 2012.
Following
the forest debacle, Bush began pushing his Clean Skies initiative which
calls for a reduction in the limit of harsh chemicals allowed to be
released by industrial polluters. The legislation currently aims to
cut the US’s “carbon intensity” by measuring the harsh
pollutants with an economic model, rather than a scientific analysis.
And now the proposed Republican budget for 2005, with the support of
many Democrats in the Senate, calls for almost $2 billion dollars in
cuts for environmental protection.
This
quick look back on Bush's environmental report card reveals grades far
worse then any on his Yale transcript. It is just too bad the blame
for nature’s continuous ruin isn’t Bush's alone.
Josh
Frank is the author of the forthcoming book, Left
Out: How Liberals Helped Bush to be published by Common Courage
Press late this year.
Weekend
Edition 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
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