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Today's
Stories
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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
29, 2004
Phone's Tapped Anyway
Homeland
Security and "Legalized" Immigration
By RON JACOBS
Imagine yourself out driving one evening. It
can be in any of the fifty states. Suddenly you hear a siren
behind you. You simultaneously turn down the music you're listening
to and look in the rear-view mirror. Those blinking blue lights
are right behind you and there are no other cars around. You
quickly run through an inventory of possible reasons you are
being pulled over as you stop your car on the shoulder of the
road. You weren't driving too fast, your registration is current,
what could it be? Heck, you haven't been in trouble with the
police since you were 19 and got arrested for marijuana possession
and that ended up being reduced to a misdemeanor once you copped
a plea. The police officer strolls up to your rolled-down window
and asks you for your license and registration, which you gladly
provide. Before he leaves to call in your id and registration,
he tells you that one of your taillights is not working. You
breathe a sigh of relief. Just an inspection ticket, no problem.
Now, imagine you are a legal immigrant
in the exact same circumstance. You've been working steadily
since you graduated college and you have a nice house and a family.
But, you too, have a felony arrest in your past. It wasn't
for pot, but for driving while intoxicated. Guess what? You're
busted. In some cases, it doesn't even matter if the original
conviction was for a felony. Thanks to the immigration laws
passed in 1996, there's a good chance that the misdemeanor
in your past was converted to a felony. You will, in all
likelihood, be deported. Yes, even though you have not been
arrested since you were a kid twenty years ago, you can be deported
for that arrest even after serving your sentence (or paying any
fines), despite your owning property and being gainfully employed.
And, thanks to the Immigration and Naturalization Service's
(INS)-now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-Law
Enforcement Support Center (LESC) computer database located in
Burlington, VT., it doesn't even take the police officer who
just asked for your registration and license very long to find
that old arrest. It's just a matter of your local police department
signing up with the federal government for the service. This
big brother apparatus was originally only for the use of the
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), but had its reach extend
to the INS since 1996, when the Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act was passed by congress. Like many other aspects
of this policing network, it has also fit neatly into the designs
of Washington since the terrorist acts of 2003. Indeed, the
database has expanded its reach even further, with more local
police agencies and more people are being added.
This law flies in the face of reason.
Not only does it require deportation for felony acts committed
after its implementation, it makes those penalties retroactive.
That means any felony or misdemeanor an immigrant might have
been convicted for in her/his past can cause that person to be
thrown out of the country. Although the current law applies
only to convictions, the creation of the database would make
any enhancement of the law (say misdemeanor convictions or even
arrests without convictions) by anti-immigrant legislators very
simple to enact. Now, imagine if all of us were held to such
a restriction. How many of us would not have a job or a place
to live? This contradicts the very principles our nation was
founded on and makes a lie of one of the primary reasons people
from other countries try to become residents. And it is the
LESC computer system that makes it work.
Another aspect of the LESC system is
its potential use by law enforcement officials against those
of us who are citizens by birth. Its storage capabilities are
immense and, although its use is currently limited by law to
serve as an interchange between the INS and local police departments
only, if the demand is there from federal and local law enforcement
officials, it might not be long before it (or a similar system)
is used to provide instant information on the rest of us, too.
At this point, however, its most deleterious impact is on immigrants
who, knowing that they are always a police interaction away from
potential deportation, are much more likely to keep to themselves,
stay out of sight, and refrain from expressing their political
opinions, especially in public demonstrations and the like.
Of course, this makes them much easier to exploit and abuse--the
part of the quotient employers and law enforcement truly appreciate.
Recently, George Bush proposed a change
in the current laws regarding undocumented workers in the United
States. Under his plan, he would "allow" all those
people currently in the US illegally to register with the immigration
services. According to Bush's spin, this process would allow
those workers to work here legally and make it easier for them
to cross the southern border should they want to visit their
families. In addition, they could then send money more easily
to relatives. On the down side of this-at least for the workers-is
that this registration would only be for a three-year period.
Then, depending on the needs and whims of agribusiness and other
employers, these workers would be sent back to their home countries
or required to re-register. This program is nothing more than
another attempt to regulate the workforce and keep labor costs
low for the likes of corporate America without giving any permanent
rights to any of the currently illegal workers. In addition,
and even more insidious, it is one more government attempt to
control the other in US society. Just like the INS-required
registration of most Muslim and Arab men after 911, this proposal
is reminiscent of Nazi Germany's registration of its Jewish residents.
Even if there is no malicious intent in these registrations,
the mere existence of the database leaves the way open to its
use by unscrupulous and ill-intentioned politicians and bureaucrats.
If you think such creatures don't exist in America, I beg you
to look no further than the current Attorney General for proof
that they do.
In his recent address to the nation,
George Bush demanded (in so many words) that Congress extend
the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that are scheduled to expire.
Playing the card he knows best-the one of fear-he told his listeners
that "terrorists" do not have a timetable or an ending
date for their activities. In the next morning's newspaper
there was an article that one of the current lists of potential
terrorists is around five million names long. Now, think about
that. Five million? How does the Department of Homeland Security
reconcile this with their boss's assertion that the number of
America's "enemies" is small and on the run, thanks
to Washington's war on the world? These lists that the authoritarians
in our government insist on compiling are not about protecting
us from terrorists, they're about protecting the government and
its corporate lords from us.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is being republished by Verso.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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