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Today's
Stories
April
24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
April 20, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Bush and Kerry Share a Problem
Stan
Cox
Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers
Bruce
Anderson
On Listening to Air America
Joseph
Kalvoda
Czech Mate for Condi
Greg
Moses
Yesterday's Intelligence
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
Website
of the Day
Santorum Happens
April 19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
April 10 /
12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other
Delicacies
Robert Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview
with Lee Evans
Brandy Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website of
the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The
Non-Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8,
2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6,
2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The
Anti-Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher
Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez
del Solar
A
Year Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The
Illegal Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated
US and International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
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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Weekend
Edition
April 24 / 25, 2004
What Happened
to Those Days When We Had Standards?
A Revitalized
Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
By BRANDY BAKER
I do not think that we humans feel only
one emotion at any given time. I am thinking of the March for
Women's Lives this Sunday and I feel elated. Finally, the fight
for women's reproductive rights is coming back out where it belongs:
in the streets. But I am also feeling frustrated: why did it
take the ban on the dilation and extraction procedure (the so-called
"partial birth abortion"), the Bush Administration's
exploitation of Laci Peterson's horrific murder, and John Ashcroft's
snooping into women's medical records to galvanize the mainstream
feminist leadership? None of this would have happened if a strong
movement were in place to stop it. I could just say better late
than later and be happy about Sunday if I were not so apprehensive:
I know that many liberals at the march will use this important
event as a soapbox to get out the vote for John Kerry: Bush-lite.
There is no reason to suspect
otherwise since this is an election year and many have already
been actively campaigning for Kerry since he tied up the nomination:
Women's Voices, Women's Vote [WVWV] is a newly founded "project
to determine how to increase the share of unmarried women in
the electorate and develop a set of messages to motivate their
participation." WVWV was founded after pollsters Stanley
Greenberg and Celinda Lake discovered an electoral goldmine for
Democrats in the single woman demographic; they have a tendency
to be politically progressive, yet noticeably absent on Election
Day. (1) Wonder why?
Since WVWV was established,
scores of liberal writers have been whooping and hollering over
the idea of this organization showing us single women the way
to the polls so we can elect the Democratic Party's current Great
White Father, John Kerry to the Big White House.
In her Common Dreams article
last month, "A Different W: Move Over NASCAR Dads, the Sex
and the City Crowd Could Turn the Election..." Martha Burk
suggests that in order not to "scare men", the Democrats
should be "clever" by appealing "to men at the
same time by saying: 'Just think how much better off every family
would be if our daughters, mothers, and spouses were paid what
they're worth.'" (2) So Burke recommends that Kerry asks
our fathers, boyfriends, and other males in our lives permission
to court us? And why so little faith in the men in our lives
and so much faith in these men who make up the Democratic Party
establishment?
Katha Pollitt of The Nation
does a little bit better. Not only does she point out the absurdity
of the "Sex and the City Crowd" labeling of a group
who are "disproportionately young, mobile, struggling and/or
very, very poor" but she calls for the Democrats to "come
up with similar lures for the votes of single women--a federal
living wage, universal public preschool and after-school (don't
forget, singles with kids don't have the luxury of staying home
with them), heck, free birth control." (3)
In addition to abortion rights,
these are also much needed reforms and a new womens' movement
that encompasses all and more of these concerns. But I just have
one question for the writers and feminist leaders who say we
should vote for Kerry: do they want conditions for women in America
to improve or do they want to get a Bush-lite Democrat into office?
Because these two should know by now that not only are these
two roads not the same, not only do they not parallel, they do
not even exist on the same planet. One only needs to take a look
at the troubling history of the Democratic Party and its neglect
of women.
In 1980, for the first time,
women voters outnumbered male voters, and feminists in the Democratic
Party threatened to abandon Jimmy Carter and support Independent
Presidential Candidate John Anderson if the Democrats did not
take women's issues seriously. This got choice, ERA, and child
care on the on the agenda.(4)
In 1988, after a brutal eight
years of Reaganomics in which domestic programs were stripped
of billions of dollars, there was a 24 percent gender gap in
the pre-election polls in favor of Michael Dukakis.
It was single women, whether
unwed, divorced, or widowed, who contributed most dramatically
to the gap, along with working, educated, professional, young,
and black women....who most supported a feminist agenda of pay
equity, social equity, and reproductive rights. (5)
Dukakis intentionally ignored
women's issues, so the gap was reduced to eight points by Election
Day. Despite GOP claims that Bush/Quayle had "narrowed the
gender gap", the reality was that the Bush/Quayle ticket
only received 49 to 50% of the women's vote.(6) Obviously, many
women who felt that both parties were out of touch stayed home.
In his first year in office,
Bill Clinton abandoned health care reform. He later went on to
dismantled welfare (a horrific blow to many women and children
in poverty), and did nothing to try to get the Freedom of Choice
Act passed.
For his 2000 bid for the presidency,
Al Gore offered nothing more than a few words of lip service
to the pro-choice position that he had only adopted in recent
years (in 1991, Gore stated that abortion "was the taking
of an innocent life") and attacked Bill Bradley in the Democratic
primary for calling for Universal Health Care. The millions of
Americans who are uninsured are disproportionately women. And
even during the Clinton years, abortion providers were not available
in the majority of the counties in this country. The reality
is this: reproductive freedom will not be available to all women
in the United States until we have Universal Health Care.
During the 2000 Presidential
Election, many mainstream feminists viciously attacked Ralph
Nader for running for President as a Green Party Candidate, despite
feminism being one of the party's key principles. The feminist
movement itself was on the receiving end of such invective in
the summer of 1989 when NOW delegates who were disgusted with
the Democrats proposed an exploratory committee to discuss the
possibility of launching a third party that would not only speak
to specific women's issues, but would address militarism, racism,
and poverty. After the media, which usually ignored NOW, castigated
them for daring to toy with such an idea, feminist leaders publicly
distanced themselves from the proposal. (7) NOW briefly considered
the idea of forming a third party again in 1992. (8)
What happened to those days
when we had standards: when we dreamed? Now, as Bush seeks to
corrode the one square foot of ground that we stand tiptoed on,
we have a tougher fight because there wasn't a battle for more
when we had two square feet: just a battle in Congress by professional
lobbyists to keep what little we had, and if it was chipped away
by Democrats we were supposed to look away and pretend that it
did not happen. The mainstream feminist leadership became apologists
for the rich, white men (the Democrats) who enabled the Republicans
to launch these latest assaults on our rights. If the definition
of feminism is the end to sexism, then frankly, this mode of
thinking is anti-feminist. If I divorced a man because he was
taking my money and denying me my basic rights, I cannot see
any of these women telling me to marry one of his brothers, yet
after eight years of Clinton, that is what the mainstream feminist
movement wanted us to do, and they want us to do it now in 2004.
But because of a lack of faith
in those who would most benefit from direct involvement, lobbying
and voting have taken the place of grassroots political activity.
Of course, this election year, there is activity, but its' aim
is to get women to the ballot box. The very demographic that
WVWV seeks to reach is the one that is most receptive to progressive
ideas and can jump start the womens' movement, but the movement
needs to be democratic, and not top down with a petrified leadership
and it needs to extend far beyond electoral politics. Corie Osborn
from Radical Cheerleaders DC says it best: "The leading
pro-choice organizations have come to resemble hierarchal, bureaucratic
corporations. Grassroots activism has been replaced by top-down,
American-style democracies in which only a small number of well-educated,
well-paid 'representatives' are hired to speak on behalf of everyone."
(The Radical Cheerleaders are meeting up Sunday morning to march
to the march. If you are going to be in DC, get with them http://www.radicalcheer.org/call.htm
they look like fun people: another important element of activism).
This march is important, and
the mainstream feminist leadership should be praised for calling
it. But it will be an insult to women who have been affected
most by the abuse of the Republicans and the neglect of the Democrats
to use the energy from Sunday's demonstration to get out the
vote for Kerry and abandon activism after Election Day. No matter
who wins the election, we must build a strong women's movement
that will fight relentlessly for what we have lost and dare to
envision equality for all.
Brandy Baker can be reached at: bbaker@ubalt.edu
(1) Women's Voices, Women's
Votes (www.wvwv.org)
(2) "A
Different W: Move Over NASCAR Dads, the Sex and the City Crowd
Could Turn the Election..." Martha Burke
(3) "Pull
Over NASCAR Dads" Katha Pollitt.
(4) Backlash: The Undeclared
War Against American Women. Susan Faludi.
(5) ibid.
(6) ibid.
(7) ibid.
(8) Press Release November
3, 2000 (Nader Campaign) IN OPEN LETTER TO WOMEN, LEADING FEMINIST
SUPPORTS NADER: Clinton-Gore leveled blow to women by ending
welfare (Barbara Ehreneich)
Weekend
Edition Features for April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
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