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!
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.
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January 25, 2005
Lowbaggers for the Environment
Satan
is My Co-Pilot
By
MIKE ROSELLE
Last November I ran into my buddy Floyd
Satan in the Union Club, a bar in Missoula Montana. We were
there with a bunch of local activists to watch the election returns.
The place was packed. There were three generations of conservationists,
party loyalists and other assorted wing nuts there; from the
crusty tree huggers and anarchists to the some of gray haired
pillars of the movement. After it was all over, despite the outcome
for the national ticket, people were still in a good mood. The
Democrats had managed to elect a new Governor and had achieved
voting majorities in both the house and senate. The Montana voters
also passed a strongly worded anti-heap-leach mining initiative.
Across the country it was much the same, where a high percentage
of the conservation measures on the ballot passed with comfortable
margins. All is not lost in the Red States.
Looking at the maps on the
cable news shows, it was obvious that the country was geographically
polarized, pitting the ignorant bible thumping bumpkins from
the heartland against the big city liberal fornicators. Lines
were drawn and many of my friends from the Blue States were peeling
off their Kerry stickers and booking flights out of the country.
But outside the cappuccino districts of the West Coast and the
vast cubical wastelands of Washington D.C., San Francisco and
Seattle, the mood was not so dark. Well, the mood was actually
much, much darker, but that has more to do with melting ice caps
and rapidly diminishing forests, the depletion and pollution
of our oceans and the rapidly rising rents than it has to do
with who currently occupies the White House. And the wars? I
didn't see either candidate speak more than one short paragraph
on such loony fringe issues. Instead they focused on one subject
that we can probably all agree on; Cheap Drugs! And the way things
are going, we're gonna need 'em.
It dawned on me that this country
is nuts. And the Red States, for all the blame they are so rightly
receiving for bringing on the apocalypse, still have better bars.
And judging from the crowd present here in the Union Club, the
Red States may be where most of the action is. Looking over the
last four disastrous years of the Bush administration, it has
been the small town lawyers, local activists and collegetown
treehuggers who have held the line on protecting our public lands
and forests from the timber, mining and grazing industries. A
lot of these folks do so in the face of hostile opposition in
their own communities from the industry, the government and from
law enforcement agencies. They receive only a fraction of the
money from the big city foundations and large professional environmental
groups. Yet somehow they have fought off some of the most onerous
efforts of this administration to go into roadless areas, log
valuable wildlife habitat under the guise of "salvage",
and open more public land to oil drilling and cattle grazing.
The next day, Floyd invited
me down to Alabama for Thanksgiving. I came out and we had a
great dinner at a Middle Eastern Deli, which was about the only
place open in Birmingham. While eating my Thanksgiving falafel,
Jake called and was still bugging me to fly to D.C. for the big,
forest strategy meeting. I didn't want to go. These things are
like meetings of the Elks Lodge. People usually have strange
titles and say things like we should be massaging our messaging
and developing iconic placed-based proactive engagement scenarios
that build capacity in the communities. One learns that at the
end of the day, the bottom line is that in order to push the
envelope out of the box we have to all be on the same page. It
really does drive me crazy sometimes. As usual, I tried to weasel
out of the meeting. And, as usual, Jake wouldn't let me get
away with it.
It turns out I wasn't invited
to the really big-dog meeting this year, but we were having the
National Forest Protection Alliance board meeting in D.C. because
a number of our board members were going to be in town for the
big-skull session. The NFPA is a national coalition of redneck
and hippie activists, mostly from small towns. Since I was about
sick of airplanes, and Floyd had a car, we decided to drive to
Washington, D.C. We went by way of Paducha, Kentucky, Bloomington,
Indiana, Boon, Asheville, and Charlottesville North Carolina,
and Blacksburg, Virginia. Our goal was to get back to Chattanooga
in time for Charlie B's tailgater at the Montana Grizzly's game
against the James Madison University Dukes for the national college
football championships.
To make a long story short,
we put about 2,000 miles on the car before getting to our Nation's
Capitol. During that time we talked to a lot of people about
what they were doing and what they thought we should be doing
in the upcoming year. Many of the organizations, such as Appalachian
Voices and the Mountain Justice Summer campaign will be fighting
mountaintop removal. And there are ongoing campaigns under way
stop logging the remaining mature forests in the Southern Appalachian,
the most biological diverse temperate forest in North America.
Everywhere we went, folks were gearing up for a fight. Out here
in the land of Katua Earth First! And the Dogwood Alliance, that
usually means direct action. We didn't see anyone sitting in
a cubicle until we reached the District of Columbia.
Now friends, I'm not going
to divulge any secrets from these strange lodge meetings I was
in or anything, but what I see going on here is close to insanity.
Over the past 20 years I have worked and lived in this city for
five years. None of the things that happen here have ever seemed
normal to me. The way the big groups are organized, led and managed
seems based on an antiquated corporate structure that even the
big corporations no longer use. They can't seem blow their nose
without hiring a two thousand dollar a day facilitator.
What gets me is that the infrastructure
of the environmental movement in Washington, D.C. must cost at
least a quarter of a billion dollars a year to maintain. This
seems like an Enron scandal ready to explode. Our stock is over
valued and we are not being honest with our investors. If you
give a dollar to a big ten environmental group don't be surprised
if less than a dime goes to accomplishing the organization's
mission. And even then it will likely go to project managers,
media consultants, contractors and other mercenaries. And while
I'm thankful for all these folks do, I have to wonder sometimes
if we are getting our money's worth. In my conversations with
many current and former DC staffers, as well as with many leaders
in the grassroots movement, I think there is a prevailing opinion
outside the Beltway that we are not. As one Alabama lawyer put
it "I've seen better heads on stale beer". And it does
seem to me that we lack professionalism in our fields, and have
a low level of expectations and accountability from the small
part of the environmental movement that is lucky enough to get
a salary and a 401k. It appears that for all the hundreds of
millions of dollars we spend here we are not getting all that
much firepower.
It is just a fact that most
of the best wildlife habitat and wilderness areas are in sparsely
populated and socially conservative areas. I think this is why
the Red State activists are not crying in their lattes or slitting
their wrists like many of my big city leftists friends seem to
be. Out here in the heartland, nothing has changed. Being in
the Rocky Mountains, the Siskyous or the Southern Appalachians
usually means you don't have the luxury of picking your issues
based on polling data or from the learned mouths of consultants.
No, the issues usually find you, and you either stand up or you
get rolled over. Traveling around the country with Floyd has
taught me that there is still a lot of attitude left in this
movement, and that we won't be rolled over that easy. You have
to be tough to live in a Red State.
I have also learned over the
years that you can't get anything published anymore unless you
have your own web site. And while there seems to be a gazillion
websites out there, most of the ones I've seen that deal with
conservation are about as exciting as drinking flat beer out
of a river guides rubber booty. I believe that there must be
people out there somewhere who have a sense of humor and are
doing something other than cry in their beer over this stupid
election. We want to cover the environmental buckaroos that are
going to be out there on the front lines; the lowbaggers and
the high rollers, the lawyers and the lawless, the scrappy small
and the big guys in Washington with bad haircuts. So if you are
tired of the standard boilerplate environmental propaganda you
get online from the Alphabet Organizations, then this site might
be for you. And if you are one of the downtrodden laborers working
for the big-ten groups in some airless badly lit cubicle, or
some federal employee working in a basement for an agency that
is kowtowing to the greedy, pig-dog, multinational corporations
instead of protecting our environment, or even if you are a bike
messenger, we hope you will send us money.
Mike and Floyd are currently
four months into a two-year roadtrip, and will be reporting regularly
from the field.
Tune in Next Month for:
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle.
Mike Roselle, "Man Without a Bioregion," is
cofounder of Earth First!; the Rainforest Action Network and the
Ruckus Society and has been instrumental in virtually every famous
GreenPeace stunt. "Nagasaki" has lost count of
how many times he has been arrested at nonviolent anti-war and
environmental Civil Disobedience actions in every region of the
country, as well as internationally. His dispatches from the
road can be read on Lowbagger.org.
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