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Today's Stories

June 8, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse?

June 7, 2004

Jason Leopold
New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes

Patrick Cockburn
The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing

Dennis Hans
From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy

Tracy McLellan
Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics

Bill Blum
The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War

Ben Tripp
What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter

Susan Davis
Reagan, In a Nutshell

Phil Gasper
Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance

Website of the Day
A Child's ABCs of Terrorism

June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

 

 

 

June 4, 2004

Chris Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House

Cornwell / Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy

Wayne Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink

Greg Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq

Yitzak Laor
Before Rafah

Ghali Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?

Jane Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey

CounterPunch Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?

John Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush

Mike Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW

Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?

Website of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire

 

June 3, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma

Dr. Susan Block
America in tha Hood

Michael Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin

John Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged

Christopher Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month

Samia Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case

Diane Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead

Scott Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba

Paul de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective

 

June 2, 2004

Brian Cloughley
The Liars are Winning

Ray McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence"

Josh Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive

Mike Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots

Jackie Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana

Robert Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too

Alexander Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"

 

June 1, 2004

Gary Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him

William A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?

Kevin Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?

Jacob Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production

Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government

Website of the Day
Remind Us

 

May 29 / 31, 2004

Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day

Janine Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day

Mike Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib

Alfred W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research

Douglas Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions

Chris White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto

Bruce Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu

David Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire

Saul Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?

Kurt Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA

Elaine Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders

Will Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"

Ben Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches

Dr. Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!

Kia Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh

Mickey Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!

Jon Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times

Patrick B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance

Stephen Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel

Tom Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New

Dave Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad

Gregory Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"

Erik Cummings
Jung Meets Bush

Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

 

May 28, 2004

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5

Greg Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib

Dave Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work

Norman Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times

Rep. Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba

Paul McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After

Alexander Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"

 

 

May 27, 2004

Amy Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times

Douglas Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs

John L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of

Stew Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist

Dave Dellinger
a 1993 Interview

Christopher Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids

Rampton / Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony

 

 

May 26, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours

Robert Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech

Zeynep Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation

Conn Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection

Tom Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes

Derek Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot

CounterPunch Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art

Andrew Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran

 

May 25, 2004

Joe Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas

Col. Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity

Gary Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home

Toni Solo
A Developing War in the Andes

Marc Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11

Stephen Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops"

Website of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy

May 24, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!

Kurt Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages

Sam Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time"

Mike Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb

Stan Goff
Open Season on MAMs

Image of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs

 

 

May 22 / 23, 2004

Paul de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary

Jeffrey St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer

Brian Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq

Saul Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People

Brandy Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry

Randall Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Rafah

Ben Tripp
Assume the Worst

Bruce Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business

Josh Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers

Peter Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib

Chloe Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy

Linda Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value

Adrien Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse

David Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy

Ron Jacobs
Turnaround

Poets' Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella

 


May 21, 2004

Ray Close
The Canards of the Apologists

Christopher Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"

Amira Hass
Darkness at Noon

Jack McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army?

Bill Kauffman
Nader v. Bush

Omar Barghouti
No More Tears for America

Ghali Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza

Christopher Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture

Website of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much

 

May 20, 2004

Andrew Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi

Kathy Kelly
A Visit from the FBI

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India

Tom Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.

Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy

Robert Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle

Billy Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year

Website of the Day
Rafah Today

 

 

 

 

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Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

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CounterPunch Exclusive:
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June 8, 2004

Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam?

The March on Rumfeld's House

By DAVE LINDORFF

On June 4, a reported 150,000 Italians rallied in Rome to protest the Iraq war during a state visit by President Bush. A day later a disconcertingly small, if energetic, contingent of some 2000 Americans rallied in front of the White House and marched to the private home of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Though a steady drizzle on Saturday certainly hurt attendance somewhat, the dismal turnout at this latest U.S. protest event, organized by A.N.S.W.E.R., may be an indication of the challenge ahead for the U.S. left, as a combination of protest burnout (the women's march a month ago had brought over a million demonstrators to the city), the lack of a Democratic alternative on the war, and the at least short-term success of the administration's efforts to "tamp down" the crisis in Iraq have made organizing protests a lot more difficult.

The Washington event, while sparsely attended-mainly by hard-core radicals and protest veterans, but with a broad age and racial mix-- did its best to compensate in creativity and passion for what it lacked in numbers. The idea of marching into the posh residential district in northwest Washington where Rumsfeld's historic old brick home is located, to bring the war and the protest literally to his doorstep, was a dramatic touch. So too was the Arab-looking guy who came dressed in black pajamas, and stood silently on a wall opposite the Rumsfeld's home, arms spread, a black hood over his head, and two electrical wires dangling from his hands, the spitting image of the Abu Ghraib prisoner whose picture had so shocked the nation and the world a few weeks earlier.

The demonstration also featured a powerful speech by Michael Berg, father of the Nick Berg, who was decapitated by a group of fanatics in Iraq in April. Berg, a former high school history teacher, while condemning his son's murderers, lashed out at the Bush administration and the occupation authority in Iraq for "callously" detaining his son for nearly two weeks, "in effect tying him to the track until it was no longer possible to escape that speeding hate train."

His voice cracking with emotion, Berg evoked the "I Have a Dream" speech of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that the war itself, like the killing of his son, was racist act, and that the way to combat it was "peaceful direct action now."

Most of the rhetoric at the demonstration in Lafayette Park, and later in front of Rumsfeld's home, was aimed at the Bush administration, and at America's imperialist foreign policy. Surprisingly little was said about either the Democratic Party or its presidential standard bearer John Kerry, though both the party and Kerry himself were accomplices in the run-up to the war, and though both have offered little in the way of a critique of the ongoing conflict.

The police presence at this legally permitted rally and march was minimal and uncharacteristically low-key, with few officers in riot gear visible anywhere near the demonstrators. For the most part, the National Parks Service Police and local Washington cops on duty seemed relaxed and at ease. The only tense moment came when police initially sought to block the marchers from entering the narrow street on which Rumsfeld's house is located. As the marchers piled up against a police barricade, and demonstrators took up a loud chant of "Whose streets? Our streets!" the police reconsidered, and eventually withdrew their barricade, allowing the marchers to surge through. A police cordon was re-established on the sidewalk in front of the Rumsfeld house.

Although this Washington demonstration was tiny (ANSWER Claims there were 5000 demonstrators, which seems highly optimistic, and notes that there were two simultaneous rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where they say attendance was slightly higher), especially compared to other such actions over the past year, the protesters were greeted enthusiastically along their march route, with people waving from the sidewalk and from apartment windows, suggesting that support for the anti-war movement is much broader than the demonstration's turnout might suggest. With the exception of a noisy little crew of yamukah-wearing Zionists carrying signs saying that "There is no Palestine" and a small mixed chorus of La Rouchies singing some incoherent ditty, there was almost no heckling either at Lafayette Park or
along the protest route.

There appeared to be no violent incidents on the part of either demonstrators or police, and there were no reported arrests. The march broke up around 4:30 pm.

No one can predict the weather, of course, but the poor turnout at this latest protest was not just the fault of the elements, and suggests that the U.S. anti-war movement needs to organize harder, to reach out more broadly, and to time actions to correspond with dates or events that will make it easier to galvanize support.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of Counterpunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" to be published this fall by Common Courage Press.


Weekend Edition Features for June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

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