|
August 21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The Return
of Mani
Romi Mahajan
Bhopal
on $40 a Day
Jerre Skog
Bush and
Europe:
Fun, Profit & Betrayal
Tom Crumpacker
The
Politics of the Cuba Embargo
August 20, 2002
Michael Neumann
The American
Left
and Palestine
William Blum
Chemical
Weapons, Iraq and the US: What the Times Left Out of the Story
Ralph Nader
The Politics
of Bankruptcy
Robert Fisk
The Two
Deaths of Abu Nidal
Philip Farruggio
Junk
School Nation
Edward Said
Disunity
and Factionalism
Kathleen Christison
Israeli
Tilt: the NYT
and Palestine
August 19, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Advance
Draft of Bush's 9/11 Anniversary Speech
Gavin Keeney
Auteur-Driven
Vehicles
Kurt Nimmo
Son of
COINTELPRO
David Krieger
Peace
Declarations from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 14 / 18, 2002
Susan Davis
Played
Out: a Journey to Central City, Colorado
CounterPunch Staff
Our Favorite
Films
Jeffrey St. Clair
Usonian
Utopia's:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Working Class Housing and the FBI
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon and the Iron Wall
Uri Avnery
A Phone
Call from Hell
Wendy Brinker
Racism
is Alive and Well in the South Carolina Death House
Hamit Dardagan
The
Unbearable Lightness of Bombing
Ahmad Faruqui
The Legacy
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Philip Farruggio
Leading
by Example
Anthony Gancarski
Union
Jackass: Richard Perle's UK Charm Offensive
Jeff Halper
Fortress
Israel: the Message of the Bulldozer
Robert Jensen
Our Failures
are Borne by the Palestinians
Gary Leupp
An Open
Letter to Bruce Springsteen about Bush's War on Terrorism
Dave Marsh
Sing a
Simple Song
Rashmi Mayur
To Johannesburg
in Search of Hope
Steve Perry
Another Fine Mess:
Martha Stewart and Paul Wellstone
Anis Shivani
What's
Next...Concentration Camps?
Edward Said
Punishment
by Detail
Jeff Taylor
Paul Wellstone's
Legacy
August 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
At the al--Qaeda
Cemetery
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporate
Crime Time
Andrew Cockburn
Bono
Betrays Ireland
August 12, 2002
Messier / Dreier
The IDF
in Nablus:
Shooting at Kites;
Bulldozing Schools
Brian J. Foley
No Iraqi
Surprise: Look Now
at the Dangers of War
Fran Shor
Psychic
and Political Numbing
in Preparations for War
August 10/11, 2002
Bruce Jackson
Buffalo
in Black and White
Robert Fisk
US Bombs
Still Killing Civilians
Lawrence McGuire
How Does
Christianity Work?
Ralph Nader
The Quest
for the
Fuel Efficient Car
Frank Fugate
The Arabs
I Know
Jan Oberg
Visit Iraq
Jill Drier
Dodging
Bullets in Nablus
Walt Brasch
The Bush
2 Legacy...So Far
Poetry
M. Shahid Alam
Death by
Sanctions
Anthony Gancarski
Coin of the Realm
David Krieger
Einstein's
Regret
August 9, 2002
Robert Fisk
Gul Agha:
the UN's Warlord of the Year
Nelson P. Valdés
An Open
Letter to Bush
on Cuba Policy
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporate
Crime:
More Shareholder Power
Not the Solution
Ansar Ahmed
The Waning
of the
Pax Americana
Alexander Cockburn
War,
the Military and the Hunt for the "Violence Gene"
August 8, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Iraq:
The Final Storm?
Dave Marsh
Now Ain't
the Time
for Your Tears
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Tries to Hide Role in Venezuela Coup
Anthony Gancarski
AIPAC,
Congress and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Families
of the Disappeared Demand Answers
Gary Leupp
Karzai's
Bodyguard
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
August
21, 2002
Splenetic
Thoughts for Dog Days
From Cynthia McKinney to Katha
Pollitt, to the ILWU to Paul Krugman
by Alexander Cockburn
One less radical black voice in Congress.
One less champion of labor. One less brave soul unafraid to jump
the traces of political orthodoxy. Cynthia McKinney, five-term
US rep from Georgia's Fourth District, was beaten in Tuesday's
Democratic primary by Denise Majette, also black, a former judge,
put in with the help of lots of money from American Jewish groups
and by a hefty Republican cross-over in Georgia's open primary.
Don't you think that if Arab-American
groups or African-American groups targeted an incumbent white
liberal, maybe Jewish, congressperson, and shipped in money by
the truckload to oust the incumbent, the rafters would shake
with bellows of outrage.
Yet when a torrent of money from out
of state American Jewish organizations smashed Earl Hilliard,
first elected black congressperson in Alabama since Reconstruction,
you could have heard a mouse cough. Hilliard had made the fatal
error of calling for some measure of even-handedness in the Middle
East. So he was targeted by AIPAC and the others. Down he went,
defeated in the Democratic primary by Artur Davis, a black lawyer
who obediently sang for his supper of the topic of Israel.
Then it was McKinney's turn. A terrific
liberal black congresswoman. Like Hilliard she wasn't cowed by
the Israel right-or-wrong lobby and called for real debate on
the Middle East. And she called for a real examination of the
lead-up to 9/11. So the sky fell in on her. Torrents of American
Jewish money showered her opponent, a black woman judge called
Majette. Buckets of sewage were poured over McKinney's head in
the Washington Post and the Atlanta Constitution.
Here's how it worked. McKinney saw what
happened to Hilliard, and that American Jewish money was pumping
up Majette's challenge. So she went to Arab-American groups to
try to raise money to fight back. This allowed Tom Edsall to
attack her in the Washington Post as being in receipt of money
from pro-terror Muslims. Lots of nasty looking Arab/Muslim names
suddenly filled Edsall's stories.
Now just suppose someone started looking
at names in the pro-Israel groups funding Majette who by mid-August
had raised twice as much money as McKinney. Aren't they aren't
supporting and helping fund terror that has US-made F-16s machine-gunning
kids in Gaza? What's the game here? It's the reiteration of the
same message delivered to politicians down the years, as when
Senator Charles Percy went down. Put your head over the parapet
on the topic of Israel and the Palestinians and we'll blow it
off.
Oh, and when furious blacks start denouncing
the role of outside Jewish money in the onslaughts on Hilliard
and McKinney, what then? First stage: imply the money from Jewish-American
groups came in reaction to money from Arab-American groups, as
with this typical AP paragraph: "Middle East politics played
an unlikely role in the race. McKinney drew campaign financing
from out of state, including money from pro-Arab groups, while
Jewish groups helped fund Majette's campaign.The race echoed
the Alabama primary this year that cost Democratic Rep. Earl
Hilliard his job. Hilliard received support from Arab groups
after supporting a Palestinian state, while his young opponent
had the backing of pro-Israel groups."
Then there'll be intricate articles with
intricate exit poll calculations promoting the conclusion that
the money from the Jewish groups "wasn't a factor".
Then there'll be an avalanche of hysterical columns about the
ever-present menace of black anti-Semitism.
Next splenetic
thought
Yes, Katha Pollitt, you did raise a little
stink in The Nation re McKinney, in overly decorous but still
commendable terms, which reminds me, here's what I wrote to a
fellow angered over a piece by Ellen Johnson we'd run in CounterPunch,
criticizing you for saying Dennis Kucinich's position against
abortion rendered him ineligible as the progressives' 2002-champion.
"Hi Matt, I'm forwarding your note
to Ellen, and she may drop you a line, but allow me to say that
I think your reaction is too hasty. Ellen raised some very serious
points about the monoptic way NOW and leading feminists address
the abortion issue. I think it is right to emphasize that we
should battle for social conditions where abortion ceases to
be regarded by many progressives as a prime indicator of freedom
and liberation for women.
"Surely you cannot regard the killing
of fetuses as somehow, an intrinsically "good thing".
The real friends of abortion are the Malthusians who want to
rid the world as much as possible of the "over-breeding"
and disruptive poor, particularly minorities. Just the other
day in New York I listened with some astonishment as two progressive
lesbians who had just had an unsuccessful effort with a turkey
baster to get one partner pregnant, cheering the news that Mayor
Blumberg has instructed that New York doctors (I guess somehow
those attached to the city payroll, I'm not sure of the details)
b e trained in aborting fetuses. Would you see anything sinister
or out of whack about that?
"More generally, I think the liberal
women's groups gave Clinton the pass on savage assaults on the
poor because the Clintons unrelentingly preached commitment to
abortion. In sum, we ran the piece because we think it is high
time to get beyond bunker liberalism, where progressives huddle
in the foxhole, holding onto "choice" as their bottom-line
issue, with a sideline in telling black teen moms that they are
socially irresponsible. Best Alex Cockburn"
More spleen
The ILWU? That's the West Coast Longshoremen.
Their contract expired at the end of June. The contract is being
renewed on a daily basis . The employers are playing very tough,
well aware that the Bush high command has told the ILWU leaders
that Bush would invoke Taft Hartley, bring in troops if necessary,
destroy the ILWU as a bargaining agent for the whole West Coat.
Separately Tom Ridge, calling in his capacity as chief of Homeland
Security has done some heavy breathing in the ear of ILWU leaders
about the inadvisability of a strike at this time.
The ILWU's coastwide contract was won in the 1934 strike, along
with the hiring hall, which replaced the old shape-up system
where the boss could keep out organizers and anyone liable to
cause trouble. These are bedrock issues for which strikers fought
and died in 1934, in San Francisco and in Seattle.
The west coast Longshoremen stand as
a beacon of what union organizing can do. Of course the Bush
White House yearns to destroy it, maybe using the War on Terror
as half a pretext. If ever there was time for solidarity, this
is it.
Final splenetic
thought on Paul Krugman
Krugman? He has just conceded that maybe
neo-liberal policies haven't worked too well in Latin America.
Look it up. It's in his column for August 9, "The Lost Continent".
He spent 184 words on the matter. "Why hasn't reform worked
as promised? That's a difficult and disturbing question."
Well, gee Paul, since you constitute
the entirety of the Democratic Party's opposition to the Bush
administration I know you're as busy as hell. But since you and
your crowd supervised a good deal of the economic destruction
of Latin America, and your economic faction offered all the basic
rationales for that devastation, I sure hope you return to the
problem. Maybe you won't be so snooty about the opponents of
"free trade" and all that jazz. Maybe even have a quiet
word with Friedman.
Today's Features
Gary Leupp
The Return
of Mani
Romi Mahajan
Bhopal
on $40 a Day
Jerre Skog
Bush and
Europe:
Fun, Profit & Betrayal
Tom Crumpacker
The
Politics of the Cuba Embargo
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|