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Inside the New Print Edition of CounterPunch: a Special Report by David Price on the CIA on Campus

The CIA's New Campus Spies: Meet "PRISP", it may be at work on a campus near you. Program doles out cash to train tomorrow's spooks ; they say it's like ROTC, only it's all secret; a hundred spooklets on campus today; thousands down the road; pay back your loan by translating for torturers in tomorrow's Abu Ghraibs; meet PRISP's Frankenstein, Prof Felix Moos; anthropologists and the CIA, a deadly embrace by David Price; ALSO Alexander Cockburn on Disaster Relief as Scam; air-conditioned tents for the NGOs and money to burn; how tourist "development" deepened tsunami's impact; why governments love "relief". AND Humans and Woodchippers: When small isn't beautiful. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print edition of CounterPunch. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! 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 donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Wars of the Laptop Bombers

 

Today's Stories

January 25, 2005

James Petras
The US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela

January 24, 2005

Fred Gardner
Last Monologue in Burbank

Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case

Uri Avnery
King George

January 22 / 23, 2005

Jennifer Van Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear Incident in Montana

Alexander Cockburn
Prince Harry's Travails

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded

Stan Goff
The Spectacle

Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran

Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?

Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California

Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death

Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights

Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross

Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems

Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural

Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff

Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned

Christopher Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake

Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats

Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel

Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating

Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?

Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum

 

January 21, 2005

Dave Lindorff
A Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance

Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria

Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration

Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert

Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services

Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos

Derek Seidman
An Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta

How the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career

 

 

January 20, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Dying for Sycophants

William Cook
The Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite

Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next

Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War

Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State

Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office

Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions

David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test

James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom

CounterPunch Staff
Voices from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party

 

 

 

January 19, 2005

Marta Russell
Social Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk

Mike Ferner
Marines Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo

Nancy Oden
The Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture

Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security

Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies

Alexander Cockburn
Will Bush Quit Iraq?

 

 

January 18, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
How Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity

Jennifer Van Bergen
Federal Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva Conventions

Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time

Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?

Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese Oil Pact?

Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire

Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins

Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher

 

 

January 17, 2005

Heather Gray
Misconceptions About King's Methods for Social Change

Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US Military

Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One of Texas's Worst Polluters

Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance

Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King

Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier

Greg Moses
King and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option

 

January 15 / 16, 2005

James Petras
The Kidnapping of a Revolutionary

Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad

Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service

Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza

Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert

Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005

John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife

Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci

M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission

Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"

Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq

Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba

Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal

John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old

Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism

Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle

Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism

Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon

 

 

January 14, 2005

Robert Fisk
"The Tent of Occupation"

Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job

José M. Tirado
The Christians I Know

Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson

Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"

Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence

Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti

Tom Barry
Robert Zoellick: a Bush Family Man

Website of the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?

 

 

January 13, 2005

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Hearts and Minds, Revisited

Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror, Elections and Democracy

Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not

Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting

Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?

Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps

Gary Leupp
"Fighting for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America

 

 

January 12, 2005

Robert Fisk
Fear Stalks Baghdad

Josh Frank
The Farce of the DNC Contest

Jack Random
Casualties of War: the Untold Stories

John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule

Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami

Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS

Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Saved?

Paul Craig Roberts
What's Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?

 

 

January 11, 2005

Tom Barry
The US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon of Foreign Policy

James Hodge and Linda Cooper
Voice of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the the Americas

Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia

Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote

Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections

Harry Browne
Irish "Peace Process", RIP

 

January 10, 2005

Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs

Talli Nauman
Killing Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press

Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue

Dave Lindorff
Tucker Carlson's Idiot Wind

Dave Zirin
Randy Moss's Moondance

Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party

Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves

William A. Cook
Causes and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel

 

 

January 8 / 9, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Say, Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?

John H. Summers
Chomsky and Academic History

Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft

Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism

Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace

John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans

Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon

Fred Gardner
Situation NORML

Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone

Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out

Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution

Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61

Saul Landau
Sex and the Country

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout

Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine

Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued

Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins


January 7, 2005

Omar Barghouti
Slave Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation

Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist Arrested

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami

David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties

Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story

Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives

Christopher Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS

Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor
Bush, the Pentagon and the Tsunami

 

 

January 6, 2005

Brian J. Foley
Gonzales: Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin

Greg Moses
Boot Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal

Petras / Chomsky
An Open Letter to Hugo Chavez

Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar

Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror

Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent

P. Sainath
The Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor

 

 

January 5, 2005

Alan Farago
2004: An Environmental Retrospective

Winslow T. Wheeler
Oversight Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam

Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective

Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working

David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows

Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview

Bruce Jackson
Death on the Living Room Floor

 

 

 

January 4, 2005

Michael Ortiz Hill
Mainlining Apocalypse

Elaine Cassel
They Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial

Yoram Gat
The Year in Torture

Martin Khor
Tragic Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster

Gary Leupp
Death and Life in the Andaman Islands

 

January 3, 2005

Ron Jacobs
The War Hits Home

Dave Lindorff
Is There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?

Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag

Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows

Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid

Rhoda and Mark Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice

David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount

Kathleen Christison
Patronizing the Palestinians

 

 

January 1 / 2, 2005

Gary Leupp
Earthquakes and End Times, Past and Present

Rev. William E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian Tendencies

M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America

Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy

Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant

Sylvia Tiwon / Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh

Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004

Greg Moses
A Visible Future?

Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire

Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence

James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly

David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn

Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert

 

 

 

 

December 23, 2004

Chad Nagle
Report from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood

David Smith-Ferri
The Real UN Disgrace in Iraq

Bill Quigley
Death Watch for Human Rights in Haiti

Mickey Z.
Crumbs from Our Table

Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas

Greg Moses
When No Law Means No Law

Alan Singer
An Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat

David Price
Social Security Pump and Dump

Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid

 

December 22, 2004

James Petras
An Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre Historical Amnesia

Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel

Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge

Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column

Kathleen Christison
Imagining Palestine

Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos

 

 

December 21, 2004

Greg Moses
The New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV

Dave Lindorff
Losing It in America: Bunker of the Skittish

Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk

Dragon Pierces Truth*
Concrete Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam

Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"

Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti

Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report

Paul Craig Roberts
America Locked Up: a System of Injustice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot Stories

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

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The Death Train of the WTO

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Hitchens as Model Apostate

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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
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January 25, 2005

Bush's Second Inaugural

A Party Without Virtue

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist. The hubris-filled megalomaniac in the Oval Office has promised the world war without end.

Bush's crazy talk has even upset rah-rah Republicans. One Republican called Bush's speech "God-drenched." It has begun to dawn on the formerly Grand Old Party that a bloodless coup has occurred and that Republicans have lost their party to Jacobins, who cloak themselves under the term "neoconservatives."

What is a Jacobin? Jacobins ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins saw themselves as virtuous champions of universalist principles that required them to impose "liberty, equality, fraternity" not merely on France by a reign of terror, but also on the rest of Europe by force of arms.

Unlike America's Founding Fathers, who exhorted their countrymen to cultivate their own garden, Jacobins were not content with revolutionizing France. They were driven to revolutionize the world

President Bush's second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth. As one of Bush's neocon puppetmasters, Robert Kagen, approvingly wrote in the Washington Post on January 23, "The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism."

Michael Gerson, the Jacobin White House speechwriter who wrote Bush's infamous "God-drenched speech," defensively insists that Bush's wars will only last "a generation." We can take comfort in that. According to the dictionary, a generation is "about 30 years," so it is only our children and grandchildren who will have to be sacrificed for "Bush's historic mission." Along about 2035 things should be calming down. Whoever remains can begin to attack the $50 trillion national war debt.

Kagen calls America's moral crusade against the world "the higher realism that Bush now proclaims." Gerson declares that Bush's "methods are deeply realistic."

What is realistic about declaring weapons of mass destruction to exist where they do not exist?

What is realistic about assigning blame for September 11 where it does not belong?

What is realistic about destroying a secular state and creating a vast breeding ground for terrorists?

What is realistic about making Osama bin Laden an Islamic hero and shaking the foundations of America's reigning puppets in the Middle East?

What is realistic about declaring a world crusade in the face of evidence that the US cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, a city of only 6 million people, much less Iraq, a country of only 25 million people?

There is nothing realistic about Bush or any of his advisers. The world has not seen such delusion since the Children's Crusade led by a visionary French peasant, Stephen of Cloyes, marched off to free the Holy Land from the Muslims in the year 1212. The children were captured and sold into slavery.

Bush and the Republican Party have morphed into a Jacobin Party. They sincerely believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the obligation to impose US virtue on the rest of the world. This Jacobin program requires the supremacy of executive power and is dependent on an unwarranted belief in the efficacy of force.

There is nothing American or democratic about this program. Bush speaks as Robespierre when he invokes "a fire in the minds of men" that "warms those who feel its power." Bush possesses Robespierre's "pure conscience" as he destroys Iraqi's infrastructure and the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, levels cities, and practices torture. American casualties (dead and wounded) have reached 10 percent of the US occupation force and are but the "realistic methods" Bush uses to achieve his "deeply idealistic" goals.

At home the casualties are the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Republicans explode in anger when a liberal judge creates a constitutional right. But they sit in silence when the US Department of Justice (sic) creates the right for Bush to decide who has constitutional protections and who has not.

Like Robespierre, Bush justifies the state of terror that he has brought to Iraq by his noble aspirations. The effect is to destroy idealism with hypocrisy about violence. When the neoconservatives succeed in draining idealism of its power, will they then declare violence alone to be their goal?

Led by Bush, the Republican Party now stands for detainment without trial and war without end. It is a party destructive of all virtue and a great threat to life and liberty on earth.

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