Coming
in August!
Dime's
Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
Order Now!
Today's
Stories
August 14 /
15, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
War
on the Poor: "A Risk No Sane Person Would Take"
August 13,
2004
Lee Sustar
Report
from Caracas
Mickey Z.
McProtests R Us: Why are the Dems Trying to Gag Anti-War Protesters?
Stan Goff
There
He Goes Again: Kerry's "Energy" Plan
Norman Madarasz
Thoughts on Najaf: How Could the US Ever Be Considered a "Terrorist"
State?
Victor Kattan
Press Freedom, Censorship and the War on Terror
Oscar Heck
Is Mendoza Off His Rocker? Chavez Opponents Pledge to Post Results
Online Before Polls Close
CounterPunch
Wire
Military Families File "Stop Loss" Suit
Milan Rai
Najaf: Bush Started It
Website of
the Day
The Yes Men
August 12,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
How
Bush Got (and Lost) His Wings
Lenni Brenner
Take
It on Faith: Kerry's See-Through-Monk's Robe
Lee Ballinger
The Coors and the Kerrys: Drink Up, Kids!
Tariq Ali
The
Handover Fiction
Yves Engler
What's at Stake in Venezuela
William S.
Lind
Seeing
Through the Other Side's Eyes
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Bush's Goat
Website of
the Day
The Sucker Puncher
August 11,
2004
Ceylon Mooney
Who
Woke Up Sen. Joe?: Watchers of the NJ Turnpike
Voices in the
Wilderness
Hands
Off Najaf
Ray McGovern
Porter
Goss as CIA Director?
Robert Jensen
US
Supports Anti-Democratic Forces in Venezuelan Recall
Annie Higgins
In Memory of Nick Pretzlik: As Good as It Gets
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
v. Kerry: Not Even a Dime's Worth of Difference
Website of the Day
Nick Pretzlik
August 10,
2004
William A.
Cook
Silencing
the Voice of the People
Todd Chretien
California Greens at the Crossroads: Will It Be Nader or Cobb?
Dave Lindorff
Chicago on the Hudson?
Richard Gott
Loathed
by the Rich: Why Chavez is Headed for a Big Win
Toni Solo
Bluebeard's
Castle: Disappearing the Right to Development
Dave Zirin
Carl Eller's Plea
Rep. Ron Paul
Police State, USA
Patrick Cockburn
If the Chalabis Were Corrupt, They Weren't Alone
Website of
the Day
The Surveillance-Industrial Complex
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 9, 2004
Tito Tricot
Pinochet
Must Still be Tried: a Murderer and a Thief on the Loose
Ron Jacobs
In
Memory of Deep Throat: the Day Nixon Was Gone
Norm Dixon
Crisis in Sudan: Oil Profits Behind West's Tears for Darfur
Kurt Nimmo
The Politics of Entrapment
Elaine Cassel
Welcome to Bush's America
Gary Leupp
Why
Iraqi Christians are Moving to Syria
August 7 /
8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
August 6, 2004
Joshua Frank
David
Cobb's Soft Charade: the Greens and the Politics of Mendacity
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Stan Goff
Mike Whitney
The
Arbitrary Imprisonment of Jose Padilla
William S. Lind
Corruption in the Marine Corps
David Price
In
the Shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 5, 2004
Mike Ferner
The Kerry Show: When Peace is Off
Message
Bruce Anderson
Two
Rejections
Robert Fisk
The Tale of Saddam's Cameraman
Todd Chretien
Florida
Comes to California: the Democrats' Plot Against Nader
Peter Linebaugh
Doing Time for Political Crime:
Paul and Silas, Bound in Jail
August 4, 2004
Mickey Z.
Two
Traditions: WMD and Disinformation
Justin Huggler
The Hunt for Bin Laden
John Ross
Mexico's
Dirty War Never Ended: Inside Puente Grande Prison
August 3, 2004
Uri Avnery
The
Oligarchs
Ray McGovern
The 9/11 Commission Chimera
Jack McCarthy
Sexual Politics in Jeb's Florida
Eric Ruder
Meet Barak Obama: the Democrats' New Liberal Star
John L. Hess
Crying Wolf: Orange Alert!
Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Elections: 1800 v. 2004
Jules Rabin
The Man Who Didn't Walk By
Website of the Day
No Wall
August 2, 2004
Robert Jensen
Kerry's
Hypocrisy on the Vietnam War
Joshua Frank
Greens, Kerry and the Politics of Mendacity
Mike Whitney
The 9/11 Commission and Civil Liberties: "We Need an American
Police State"
Gary Leupp
Beyond
Good and Evil: Some Thoughts on Invasions
July 31 / Aug.
1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
July 30, 2004
Kolhatkar /
Ingalls
Shattering
Illusions: Kerry's Speech Tells Anti-War Activists They're Not
Wanted
Dave Lindorff
Murder
Not So Foul?
Bruce Jackson
Walt Whitman on the Sound of Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Fidel Castro
The
Pathology of George W. Bush
Maximilien Robespierre
Memo to Kerry and Bush: Why They Resist
Saul Landau
Bush
Charges Castro with Sex Tourism; JFK Rolls Over in His Grave
July 29, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Hail,
the Conquering War Criminal: What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
Frank Bardacke
What
Michael Moore Left Out of F9/11
Tom Barry
Shallow and Formulaic: Kerry's Latin America Plan
Ron Jacobs
Kerry
and Lennon: Hawking the CounterCulture
Robert Fisk
The Unreported War
Lichtman /
Kellis-Borok
What Kerry Must Do to Win (But Probably Won't)
William S. Lind
The 9/11 Commission Report: Cashing in on Failure
CounterPunch
Wire
Doonesbury Onto John Kerry in 1971!
Website of
the Day
Jabbing JibJab: Copyright Madness
July 28, 2004
Robert Fisk
The
Occupation at 114 Degrees: Baghdad is Swamped in the Smell of
the Dead
Kevin Mink
Kerry's Misperception of Palestine
Ray McGovern
Israel and the Iraq War: How the 9/11 Report Soft-Pedals Root
Causes
United for
Peace & Justice
An
Open Letter to John Kerry: Winter Soldiers and Summer Patriots
Mike Ferner
Vets Demand End to Occupation: "Pull the Troops or Face
Impeachment Mvt."
Imraan Siddiqi
Turning Tricks with Ann Coulter
Alexander Cockburn
Candidate
Kerry
Website of
the Day
Iraq Vets Against the War
July 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Why
the Democrats Deserve Nader
Dave Lindorff
Back to the 19th Century: Globalization's Coming!
Mike Whitney
Control Room: Inside Al Jazeera
Ali, Anderson, Bello, et al.
If We Were Venezuelan, We'd Vote for Chavez
Stefan Wray
Texas Plan to Grab Los Alamos Takes Hold, as DOE Shuts Down Labs
Louis Proyect
Reflections on Nicaragua: First Came the Contra Butchers, Then
the Sweatshops
Rick Giombetti
Faith in Freedom: the Challenge of Thomas Szasz
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
The
9/11 Report and Its Weak-Kneed Consensus: Dogding Israel/Palestine;
Blinkered on Causes of Terrorism
July 26, 2004
Todd Chretien
Green
Resistance: a Reply to Normon Solomon & Medea Benjamin
Robert Fisk
Terror
by Video
Richard Forno
Security
Theater in Boston: Security Expert Harrassed by DHS for Exposing
Flaws at the Fleet Center
Mitchel Cohen
Report from a Boston Demo: Arresting the Curious
Richard Moreno
Rockers
for Justice: an Interview with Tom Morello and Serj Tankian
Alexander Cockburn
Boston
Awaits a Dead Party
July
24 / 25, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Democrats and Their Conventions:
Part One
Dennis
Hans
Those 16 Words Still Smell, Mr. Bush
Patrick
Cockburn
The Struggle for Iraq is Only Beginning
Josh
Frank
The War Path of Unity: Dems Reject
the Peace Movement
Justin
E.H. Smith
Christianity and the Left: the Latin
American Experience
Tariq
Ali
What's at Stake in Venezuela
Fred
Gardner
The Politics of Pot: Year of the
Antagonist
Mark
Scaramella
There's Dope and There's Dope
Ron
Jacobs
The Weather Underground's Prairie
Fire Statement...35 Years On
July
23, 2004
Lee
Sustar
Revolution in Nicaragua: 25 Years
On
Dave
Lindorff
Battle for NYC: Bush 1, Protesters
0
Saul
Landau
Zaniest President in US History: Bush
Beats Reagan
Mike
Whitney
The 9/11 Whitewash: Blaming No
One
Mickey
Z
Get On the Bus: 150 Years After Elizabeth
Jennings
Gary
Leupp
The 9/11 Commission and the Looming
War on Iran
July
22, 2004
M.
Junaid Alam
Ten Ways to Build a Better Democrat
Brian
McKinlay
Rusted On Down Under: Howard, Bush and Sharon
Jason
Leopold
Cheney Lobbied for Easing of Sanctions on Terrorist Regimes While
CEO of Halliburton
Chris
Floyd
Mob Rule: Ripping the Lid Off of America's Pious Myths
Uri
Avnery
Chirac v. Sharon
July
21, 2004
Paula
J. Caplan
The Emotional Casualities of War:
Psychologists Can't Heal All the Damage
Joshua
Frank
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy? Let's
be Fair
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Reza
Ghorashi
The Elections, Iran and al-Qaeda
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go
On and On
July
20, 2004
Stan
Cox
The Bush / Kerry War Ticket
Chris
Randolph
An Open Letter to Dr. Ehrenreich: It's Over, Barb!
Forrest
Hylton
The Ghosts of Gonismo: "Popular
Patricipation" and Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Mark
Scaramella
It's Official! Mendocino County is Crazier and Fatter Than the
Rest of California
Sam
Bahour
The World is Knocking on Israel's Door
George
Reiter
A Defense of David Cobb
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
John
L. Hess
Girlie Stuff: Media Tolerance of Arnold & Co.
Website
of the Day
This Land is Your Land
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of
Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition
to Iraq War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything
Wrong with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...
July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire
July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
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.
|
Weekend
Edition
August 13 / 14, 2004
Echoes
of Mexico City, 1968
Warrant
for Dirty War President Rebuffed by Court, Military and One-time
Ruling Party
By
JOHN ROSS
MEXICO CITY.
On the 25th anniversary of the death
of ex-president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, whose six years in office
(1964-70) were stained with the blood of hundreds of striking
students gunned down on the eve of the 1968 Olympic games here,
surviving family members and cronies gathered at his well-tended
tomb in a wealthy enclave just outside the capital.
Among those who had come to
honor the dead president students taunted as "El Chango"
("The Monkey") was his successor, Luis Echeverria,
now a frail but not doddering octogenarian who himself was about
to be charged with being complicit in plotting the student massacres
that signaled the opening salvos in Mexico's as-yet unfinished
dirty war. Also at graveside: Echeverria protégé
Roberto Madrazo, the snake-thin president of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) which owned Mexico for seven decades
until displaced from the presidency by the rightist Vicente Fox,
and under whose auspices the most heinous dirty war crimes took
place.
"We must leave history
to the historians to clarify" the orator, the PRI governor
of Puebla state, intoned as Madrazo and the ex president exchanged
meaningful glances, "let us look to the future and not the
past."
The remarks at the Diaz Ordaz
memorial added decibels to the rising chorus of Echeverria defenders
as Ignacio Carrillo, the Fox-appointed special prosecutor for
past political crimes, put the finishing touches on his blockbuster
request of a federal judge for the arrest of the ex-president
and his confederates on charges of genocide.
Among those advocating caution
in the efforts to bring Echeverria to justice was Fox's Secretary
of Defense, General Ricardo Clemente Vega Garcia. In a speech
to the National War College days before Carrillo's self-imposed
deadline for filing the indictment against Echeverria and nine
co-defendants,  Garcia Vega warned darkly
that "these are times of reconciliation and we must know
how to pardonif not, the country could slip from our hands."
Insiders say the speech could not have been delivered without
having first been cleared with the president.
The defense secretary's veiled
call for a "punto final"as such procedures to exculpate
perpetrators is euphemistically tagged in Chilean and Argentinean
dirty war prosecutions, was echoed by one of Mexico's top law
enforcer, Santiago Vasconcelos, who runs the nation's war on
organized crime and is a close ally of Attorney General Rafael
Macedo de la Concha, himself an army general. "It will
be difficult to judge (Echeverria) without understanding the
context of the times. The nation was under attack and these men
were doing their job to keep us secure," the anti-crime
czar argued, endorsing amnesty for those who ran the dirty war
that spanned three presidencies Diaz Ordaz to Echeverria
to the late Jose Lopez Portillo and continues on even unto
today (see "The Dirty War Today-2)
The context to which the sub-prosecutor
refers was, of course, the Cold War when Mexico was seen by Washington
as a bulwark against Soviet subversion in the hemisphere and
local leftists were considered accomplices of the world-wide
Communist conspuiracy. The roadsides of the country were plastered
with billboards that read "Christianity Si! Communism No!"
In a surprise move two days
before his announced July 24th deadline, Special Prosecutor Carrillo
and a team of associates lugged nine bulging boxes of documents
into a Mexico City courtroom adjacent to one of the capital's
most corrupt prisons and filed a raft of papers asking federal
Judge Cesar Flores to issue orders for the arrest of ex-president
Luis Echeverria on charges of genocide and other crimes against
humanity.
The request for the arrest
warrant was unprecedented in modern Mexican history where the
"Imperial Presidency" was once the sole authority in
a uni-party system, and the word handed down from Los Pinos,
the Mexican White House, was the virtual law of the land. Even
the much-reviled Carlos Salinas who many Mexicans believe looted
and bankrupted the country was allowed to escape into self-exile,
although his brother languishes in prison for contracting the
killing of a PRI rival.
General Plutarco Elias Calles,
the founder of the PRI, was seized by troops and packed off to
San Diego by his successor, Lazaro Cardenas, another army general.
Carranza and Obregon, both generals and post-revolutionary presidents,
were gunned down as was Salinas's handpicked candidate Luis Donaldo
Colosio. But no president, sitting or not, has ever before been
formally arrested.
24 hours after the special
prosecutor filed his request, Judge Flores upheld the long-standing
impunity of those who commanded the dirty war against the Mexican
Left by refusing to indict Luis Echeverria et al. The jurist
justified his decision on the grounds that the statute of limitations
had elapsed on genocide and the related charges.
Although Mexican laws sanctioning
genocide carry a 30 year-limit, a period that expired in 2001
for the particular crime Echeverria is accused of - the so-called
"Corpus Thursday Massacre" - Carrillo Prieto argues
that the nation is a signatory to international conventions that
make the crime prosecutable, a position Mexico's Supreme Court
has endorsed. The special prosecutor will appeal the turndown
of his request for an arrest warrant directly to the Supreme
Court, a process that could take anywhere from six months to
a year.
Now the shrunken shell of his
former strongman self, Echeverria, for whom 41 Mexico City streets
are named, first gained notoriety as Diaz Ordaz's hard-nosed
Interior Secretary and is thought to be the last civilian official
to sign off on a military plan drawn up by Diaz Ordaz's personal
command ("Estado Mayor Presidencial") to massacre the
students at a meeting in the capital's Tlatelolco housing complex
on October 2nd, 1968. Diaz Ordaz later took full responsibility
for the repression.
As president, Echeverria broadcast
a stridently left wing, populist line and championed third world
solidarity and south-south alliance even as he persecuted
left dissenters at home at the behest of Washington. In the
aftermath of the Pinochet coup in Chile, he welcomed refugees
from that dirty war to Mexico and even offered them positions
in his government, at the same time that he was conducting his
own dirty war against homegrown rebels.
Echeverria also presided over
Mexico's oil boom, a process that ended in economic and environmental
disaster, and was a devote of the "guayabera", a loose-fitting
tropical shirt much loved in Cuba, an island to whose defense
he was pledged.
The crime for which Carrillo
Prieto has chosen to prosecute the former president and a handful
of co-conspirators transpired June 10th, 1971, a Thursday and
the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi, when thousands of university
students took to the streets of Mexico City for the first time
since the Tlatelolco bloodshed, and a paramilitary band, the
"Halcones" or "Falcons", opened fire on them
and beat dozens to death with clubs although there has
never been an official count (the police attributed the violence
to a feud between rival student groups), 39 are thought to have
died on "Thursday of Corpus."
Echeverria, who was inaugurating
a water system elsewhere in Mexico City that day quickly fingered
his appointed mayor Alfonso Martinez Dominguez as fall guy and
fired him the next day. Similarly, those charged with Echeverria
have pointed to Martinez as having organized the attack, an expedient
accusation since the ex-mayor died early in Carrillo Prieto's
investigation. Before he passed on, Martinez Dominguez told Carrillo's
investigators the president had ordered the killings in no uncertain
terms: "if they are wounded, take them to Military Camp
#1. If there are bodies, burn them!"
The Corpus Thursday killings
opened a full throttle dirty war against leftist guerrillas whose
ranks had been swelled with disaffected students after Tlatelolco.
15 distinct guerrilla "focos" operated throughout
Mexico during Echeverria's reign, most notably in the mountains
of the Pacific Coast state of Guerrero where over 500 farmers
are thought to have disappeared during the Echeverria-ordered
counter-insurgency. In towns like Atoyac, each family lost at
least one.
The former president and his
co-defendants (they include Echeverria's Interior secretary and
attorney general and several army generals) are charged by the
special prosecutor with multiple offenses, most notoriously genocide
or the systematic physical elimination of an entire class or
ethnic group or, in this case, a political group.
From the outset of his investigation,
Carrillo Prieto has clung tenaciously to the idea of prosecuting
Echeverria on genocide charges despite peer opinions that the
Corpus massacre did not fit the definition of the allegation
and that even if it did, Mexican law would take precedence over
international treaty.
One leg of the case for a genocide indictment is reportedly founded
on information gleaned from Phillip Agee's cold war classic,
"Inside the Company CIA Diary" in which the author,
a covert agent posing as a "cultural attaché"
in the run-up to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, reports that
he and his colleagues prepared a daily report for Echeverria
assessing subversive activities in the country and suggesting
how the then-interior secretary could combat them.
Document probes into the Corpus
Thursday massacres, most notably by Kate Doyle of the private
National Security Archives in Washington, establish that not
only did the Nixon government know of the Falcons' murderous
plans prior to the June 10th 1971 killings but also that several
members of the paramilitary group were actually trained in the
United States.
Although the CIA's mission
to eliminate the enemies of U.S. Capitalism in Mexico seems to
be fundamental to Carrillo Prieto's case for charging genocide,
his source is not so enthusiastic. Reached in Havana by the national
daily La Jornada where he now runs a travel agency, Agee was
evasive: "it would be better to let things lie as they are."
The inclusion of retired generals,
one the leader of the Halcones, in the arrest warrants asked
by Carrillo Prieto, and the intended detention of Echeverria,
the ex-commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces, has,
as might be anticipated, riled up the military which under the
constitution enjoys immunity from prosecution in civilian courts
- the "fuero militar" and should be out of reach
for the special prosecutor. General Alvaro Vallarta, a PRI congressional
deputy, has called upon Fox to dissolve Carrillo Prieto's office
and instead to investigate the guerrilla fighters who "shot
300 Mexican soldiers in the back" and allegedly assassinated
their own comrades in internecine disputes.
The military's immunity from
prosecution is widely criticized by national and international
human rights groups as a closed-door, arbitrary proceeding with
no oversight that often whitewashes abuses committed by the army
against civilian populations. Indeed, in early July, a military
tribunal cleared General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro of complicity
in the deaths of 22 Guerrero campesinos whose bodies were loaded
on to military planes and dumped into the Pacific Ocean off Acapulco
while General Acosta was head of the state police during the
Echeverria presidency. The so-called "vuelos de muerte"
("flights of death) soon spread to the dirty wars further
south as standard operating procedure for disposing of torture
victims.
The PRI, whose hands are as
steeped in gore as the military's, and whose seven decade "perfect
dictatorship" would never have functioned so smoothly without
the hard hand of the army to suppress dissidents, appeared as
fretful about the indictments as the generals were. Indeed,
the fates of these two venerable institutions are indelibly entwined.
11 high ranking military men
have served as president of the PRI in the former state party's
76-year history and six PRI presidents of the republic were generals.
Although the army withdrew from congress as a formal political
bloc in 1946, its interests have always been tended to by the
PRI. Currently, four retired generals serve as PRI legislators,
among them Ramon Mota Sanchez who heads up the senate armed forces
commission and regards Carrillo Prieto's foiled attempts to indict
Echeverria & Company as "pragmatic perversity and complete
ignorance of our history these allegations would destroy
the presidency if they are allowed to proceed and constitute
a direct attack on the legitimacy of the Mexican state."
The PRI president Madrazo,
an overt candidate for the presidency in 2006, threatens to break
off a sputtering "dialogue" with the Fox administration
in re the backlog of legislation the PRI has successfully bottled
up, if the special prosecutor's hand is not stayed. "This
country's institutions are in fragile shape and this is not a
good time to open fresh political conflicts," the PRI honcho
hisses.
"We cannot let the 'olvido'
(forgetting) take over we have to learn these lessons so
the past does not happen again" responds Carrillo to those
who call upon his office to just forget all about prosecuting
the perpetrators of the dirty war and close up the shop.
Created by Fox on the recommendation
of the National Human Rights Commission as the most politically
expedient way to respond to the president's campaign pledge of
establishing a "truth commission", the special prosecutor's
office for the investigation of past political crimes (FEMOSPP)
has had a rocky road to climb from its inception. Carrillo Prieto's
credibility was assailed by the grand dona of the disappeared,
Rosario Ibarra de Piedra who lost a son to the dirty war
even though Carrillo himself suffered the police assassination
of his cousin, Demi Prieto, a member of a Zapatista predecessor
guerrilla formation. The military distrusted the special prosecutor
too and refused to talk to FEMOSPP investigators. Witnesses
disappeared and some were shot dead.
The first indictment Carrillo
drew up against Miguel Nazar Haro, head of the White Brigade
thought responsible for the 1975 forced disappearance of Ibarra's
son Jesus, was thrown out on similar grounds that the statute
of limitations had elapsed. Later, the Supreme Court to
whom Carrillo will now appeal the Echeverria decision - would
rule that forced disappearance cases could never be closed until
the fate of the disappeared had been determined. Nazar Haro
is back behind bars although, aged and ailing, he spends most
of his time in the prison hospital, the sole dirty warrior up
until now jailed by Carrillo.
Whether Luis Echeverria will
ever actually spend a night in jail remains to be savored. The
genocide allegation seems dubiously drawn and some family members
of the victims of Corpus Thursday charge that the prosecutor
has purposely left the ex-president a lot of legal wiggle room.
Even if the high court reverses
Judge Flores' denial, given appeals and "amparos" (injunctions
against prosecution) at every step of the proceedings, Luis Echeverria
is at least three years away from going to trial by which time
he may well have, as is so often the case with dirty war prosecutions,
escaped justice by death.
In the interim, should the
arrest orders be reinstated, the former president will be comforted
by a new law that calls for house arrest for those defendants
70 years of age and above. "They have waited to prosecute
these criminals until they are too old to go to jail" snaps
ex-deputy Rosa Albino Garavato, a one-time guerrilla fighter
who was tortured during the dirty war.
Even if President Fox at one
time intended a serious probe of past state crimes, political
exigencies now impel him to cut his losses and move on. The scenario
for a presidential pardon is already in place "the
only rationale way out of this trap with a minimum of political
cost" concurs Federico Reyes Heroles, son of the PRI's most
venerated politilogue. "I only created the FEMOSPP"
Fox recently told reporters, "I didn't promise to punish
anyone."
John Ross will be on the spot in Mexico City for much
of July and August before sallying forth to do maximum mischief
at the Republican National Convention in Manhattan from where
he will launch the intergalactic tour of his latest instant cult
classic "Murdered
By Capitalism--A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the
U.S. Left".
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|