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Today's
Stories
April
16 / 18, 2004
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 Story: We Rule; You
Die
April
13, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Ill, Old and Young of Fallujah Ask:
"Do We Look Like Fighters?"
Stan
Goff
The Bridge: a Rant
Dave
Lindorff
The Real Lessons of Vietnam
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
|
Weekend
Edition
April 16 / 18, 2004
Surfacing the Empire's Dirty Secrets
Subvertng
Brazil and Cuba
By SAUL LANDAU
When
declassified documents appear and show how Washington overthrew elected
governments in Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile etc… the media and
government officials act as if this material relates only to unfortunate
errors of the Cold War. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a major
media source simply admit: “hey, we’re the world’s
biggest empire; we offer the world our version of democracy and freedom
and if rogue nations reject it, we’ll shove up it up their…”
Documents
emerging from the national security classification cellar show the US
helping to overthrow the elected Brazilian government of Joao Goulart
in 1964 and supporting a military dictatorship in its place. Since Goulart’s
nationalistic economic policies lacked US approval, U.S. ambassador
Lincoln Gordon sent top secret cables to national security heavies in
Washington pleading for "a clandestine delivery of arms" for
military coup plotters.
On
March 29, 1964, Ambassador Gordon recommended secretly "pre-positioning"
the armaments to be used by "friendly military." President
Johnson had authorized CIA covert operations to support anti-Goulart
military and political forces.
This
new material also contains an audio tape of President Johnson receiving
a Brazil briefing by phone at his Texas ranch, as general and admirals
mobilized against Brazil’s elected government. "I'd put everybody
that had any imagination or ingenuity...[CIA Director John] McCone...[Secretary
of Defense Robert] McNamara" on ensuring the coup’s success,
Johnson instructs undersecretary of State George Ball. "We just
can't take this one," Johnson says. "I'd get right on top
of it and stick my neck out a little."
Shocking?
The nation of democracy and freedom, the place where revolution received
its first justification – “when in the course of human events”
– also became the bastion of counterrevolution, the exporter of
dictatorship, the grand interventionist in the affairs of less powerful
nations whose leaders refuse to abide by US dictates. Few nations have
borne as much US wrath over their insubordination as Cuba. Indeed, the
island has become a perpetual target.
On
March 31, with the false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
still fresh in the public mind, John Bolton, Undersecretary of State
for Arms Control and International Security, offered Congress 35 pages
of written testimony that Cuba "remains a terrorist and [biological
weapons] threat to the United States.”
Bolton
didn’t even use discredited exile sources – like those who
fed false information to the Administration on Iraq – to support
his contention. Acting without fear of replicating the baseless WMD
charges that became the casus belli for Bush’s war against Iraq,
Bolton asserted in his fact-free belief that "the case for the
existence of a developmental Cuba [biological weapons research and development]
effort is strong."
Bolton
first made these charges on May 2002, but almost two years later he
has still not gathered a fact to support them.
The
Cuban government denied the accusation and invited US scientists to
inspect the labs to which Bolton referred. Just as Bolton’s boss,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, has made public his unhappiness with
the shoddy intelligence delivered to him on Iraq, Bolton uses imprudent
charges that could become the basis for war with Cuba.
One
of Powell’s more prudent subordinates, Assistant Secretary of
State for Intelligence and Research Carl Ford, told Congress on June
5, 2002 that the US had no evidence of a full-fledged biological weapons
"program." He did say that the administration was “worried”
about Havana's capabilities.
Cuba’s
biotech industry produces medicines and vaccines, as the world knows,
and therefore theoretically has the ability to create weapons as well.
But Fidel Castro knows that such a move would amount to suicide and
he has shown no tendency to self destruct during his 45 year rule.
I
detect evidence, however, that Cuba may have employed some of its sophisticated
biological weapons here in the United States. Observe the strange behavior
of Lincoln Diaz Balart, (R-FL) – called “Low IQ Lincoln”
by some of his colleagues. In March, Diaz Balart called on the President
to assassinate Fidel Castro. Sources in the national security apparatus
said they had not carried out any tests on Diaz-Balart’s cerebral
cortex to determine whether he might have succumbed to some sophisticated
bio-brain vapor that Cuban covert operatives had managed to slip into
his breakfast cereal. His colleagues found it otherwise difficult to
explain how a Member of Congress could otherwise be so oblivious to
the law and to the implications of advocating such actions.
That
neither the media nor Congress responded in shock to Diaz Balart’s
remarks, or Bolton’s unfounded charges, attests to the state of
imperial denial under Emperor Bush. On the one hand, the national security
apparatus has again insinuated assassination into the foreign policy
play book, thanks not only to Israel’s example of blatantly targeting
Palestinians, but also because of the mystification process that has
obscured the nature of the “terrorist enemy.”
Indeed,
Bush’s rival, John Kerry, has not decried the policy and has tried
to show he would act even more aggressively against Castro.
The
problem is that people, like Iraqis, resist conquest and occupation.
Does denying the existence of empire naturally lead imperial rulers
to practice denial?
Saul
Landau’s new film, SYRIA: BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE
is distributed by Cinema Guild (800-723-5522). His new book is THE PRE-EMPTIVE
EPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH’S KINGDOM. He teaches at Cal Poly Pomona
University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
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