|
Today's
Stories
October 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric
and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People
Ralph Nader
Katrina
and the Growls of Greed
Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream
Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas
October 7,
2005
Larry Johnson
The
Plame Case: the Real Issues
Will Youmans
Why
Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus
Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?
Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison
Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle
Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs
Jennifer Van
Bergen
New
American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir
Website of
the Day
FBI Witchhunt
October 6, 2005
P. Sainath
"Take
That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal
Idol Again
Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged
Paul Craig
Roberts
Blundering
into Syria
Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion
Dave Lindorff
Easy
Money in the Big Easy
Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell
M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason
Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot
Robert Pollin
Is
the Dollar Still Falling?
October 5,
2005
Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for
Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines
Robert Jensen
Is
Bush a Racist?
Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or
the Empire
Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything
is Bad"
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds Laughs Last
Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons
Took Over
Alan Maass
Doing
the Right Wing's Dirty Work
October 4, 2005
Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System:
a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.
Mike Roselle
Houston,
You've Got a Problem
Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers
John Chuckman
War
Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say
Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers,
Hurricanes and the Keys
Mickey Z.
An
Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski
Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims
Gary Leupp
An
Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History
Website of the Day
Rodney
Crowell on Bob Dylan
October 3,
2005
Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
Rice: Gunslinger
Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan
Seth Sandronsky
The
Hiring Crisis for Black Teens
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare
October
1 / 2, 2005
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze
Dave
Marsh
A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan
Ralph
Nader
Gutless, Spineless and Clueless
Flavia
Alaya
Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza
Uri
Avnery
The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory
Chris
Kutalik
The Battle at Northwest Airlines
Greg
Moses
Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues
Brian
J. Foley
I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet
Nicole
Colson
Hunger Strike at Gitmo
Ray
McGovern
Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility
Fred
Gardner
Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit
Justin
Felux
Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby!
Will
Youmans
"Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine
Mike
Ferner
What Else Shall We Do?
David
Krieger
The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant
Agustin
Velloso
Samson Returns to Gaza
Saul
Landau
The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema
Ben
Tripp
Right Down the Middle
Poets
Basement
Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Holler If Ya Hear Me
September
30, 2005
Mary
Geddry
Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill
Paul
Craig Roberts
Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars
Dave
Lindorff
Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary
Jail Time
Gregory
Wilpert
"The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America"
Benjamin
Dangl
"Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo
James
McMurtry
We Can't Make It Here Anymore
T.R.
Johnson
Return to the Ninth Ward
September
29, 2005
Sen.
Russ Feingold
Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America
Carl
G. Estabrook
Obama the Enabler
Ramzy
Baroud
Rhetoric and Reality of War
Dave
Lindorff
What Opposition Party?
Mike
Whitney
Brownie's Comic Opera
Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski
What Noble Cause?
Gary
Handschumacher
Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan
Winslow
T. Wheeler
No Leaders in Congress Against This
War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans
September
28, 2005
Dr.
Eyad Serraj
Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement
Sounds Like
William
A. Cook
Bush's Security Barrier
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Invention of Porno Torture
Mike
Whitney
Apartheid Justice in America
Joshua
Frank
Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home?
CounterPunch
Wire
New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters
Chris
Genovali
Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest
Linn
Washington, Jr.
White Affirmative Action: How
John Roberts Got to the Top
September
27, 2005
Forrest
Hylton
Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a
Matter for Our Movement
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist
Jennifer
K. Harbury
Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration
Ray
McGovern
Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent?
Mike
Ferner
Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon
Antony
Loewenstein
When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel
in Australia
Harry
Browne
Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms
September
26, 2005
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI
Murders a Legend
Joshua
Frank
Democrats Flee Peace Protests
Lamis
Andoni
The Railroading of Taysir Alony
Mike
Marqusee
Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals":
Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement
Rep.
Cynthia McKinney
They Can't Fool Us Anymore
Ron
Jacobs
A Small March for Me, a Giant March
for the Antiwar Movement
Norman
Solomon
The Media and the Antiwar Movement
John
Chuckman
Bush in a Bottle
Paul
Craig Roberts
America is Running Out of Time
September
24 / 25, 2005
Kathy
and Bill Christison
Polluting Palestine: Settlements
& Sewage
Ralph
Nader
Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina
Saul
Landau
The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada
Greg
Moses
A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau
Roger
Burbach
Hugo Chavez's Mission
Vijay
Prashad
America's Shame
Laura
Carlsen
After NAFTA
Robert
Fisk
When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful
Dave
Lindorff
A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They?
Kirkpatrick
Sale / Thomas Naylor
Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration
Maj.
Anthony Milavic
The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator
Brian
Concannon, Jr.
Haiti: the Time for Action is Now
September
23, 2005
CounterPunch
News Service
In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes
Bill O'Reilly
Diane
Farsetta
Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks
Robert
Sandels
Militarizing the Market
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations
Alan
Farago
Bird Flu Takes Flight
Dave
Zirin
When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs
of 1968
Maxine
Conant
A Simple Test for Bush
David
Price
Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and
Davis-Bacon Profiteering
September
22, 2005
Smith,
Wood, Leas, and Greenfield
Which Way Forward for the Green Party?
a Report from Tulsa
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraqis: This Government has No Authority
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
Thinking is Religious Freedom
Lucia
Dailey
Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Are You a Speed Freak?
Russell
D. Hoffman
The Nukes in Rita's Path
Kona
Lowell
God's Hurricane?
Jason
Leopold
GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina
Website
of the Day
Robert Pollin on the Global Economy
September
21, 2005
Jorge
Mariscal
Military Recruiters: Counselers
or Salesmen?
Linda
S. Heard
Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak
Joshua
Frank
NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan
Eric
Ruder
"The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with
Camilo Mejia
Pierre
Tristam
The Struts and Bull Presidency
Dave
Lindorff
The Real Story of the German Elections
Mike
Ferner
Sit Down in DC
Missy
Comley Beattie
Bush's Katrina Bling Bling
Jeffrey
St. Clair
W Marks the Spot
Website
of the Day
New Orleans: Survivor Stories
September
20, 2005
Steve
Breyman
Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental
Justice
George
Galloway
Et Tu, Greg Palast?
Patrick
Cockburn
What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion?
M.
Shahid Alam
Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out?
Mike
Whitney
The Gitmo Hunger Strikers
Winslow
T. Wheeler
It's Not Rocket Science
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit
Paul
Craig Roberts
Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?
|
Weekend Edition
October 8 / 9, 2005
Disdain
of the Simple and the Demise of American Pragmatism
The Leveeathan Approach
By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
"He told me what (his plan) was, and I see in
a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make
Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed
besides."
--Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Patient: Doctor, I have a cold.
Doctor: Go home, and stand
under a cold shower for 10 minutes.
Patient (a little confused):
In this cold weather? What...would that do, doctor...?
Doctor: You would catch pneumonia.
I know how to cure pneumonia.
--Author Unknown
[Circa Aug 30, 2005]
Aide: Mr. President, the levees
have fallen.
Bush: Ain't that great? Ah
hate levies. Ah campaigned aginst 'em! Ah'm for tax cuts.
--From Sore Throat, our inside
source at the White House
Conventional wisdom used to be that
the United States was impregnable on account of having oceans
on two sides.
This should have been even truer for
historical India. Prior to the advent of the warplane, India
should have been a defending general's dream. Surrounded by oceans
on not two but three sides, with the remaining side, unlike
the flat Canadian or Mexican borders, guarded by the tallest
mountain range in the world, India should have been the most
secure nation on the planet. With just a few Himalayan passes
to guard, that too only when the snows eased for a few months
each year, it would be obvous that a strategic deployment of
troops and equipment at the right spots would have been enough
to secure the country's defense.
Alas, history proved otherwise. Probably no nation in the world
was invaded and looted more frequently. Though India, like the
US, has a long coastline, it experienced no significant sea blockades
a la the War of 1812. But on land, it was far less favored by
events than the United States. For over fifteen centuries, it
was subject to a succession of armed invasions across its northern
border, all through the same handful of well-hewn mountain passes
in the Himalayas, the most famous of which was the Khyber.
In wave after wave, marauders (including some future Indian emperors)
periodically broke through the Himalayan ranges. They came from
lands as far flung as Central Asia, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan
and Arabia. One single brigand from Afghanistan, Mohammad of
Ghazni, made 17 such sorties, carrying away large amounts of
booty each time and leaving destruction and desecration in his
wake.
The defenders were unable to accomplish the simple task of securing
the handful of mountain passes.
Fast forward a thousand years and move the lens west by ten thousand
miles. Replace " breach of the Himalayan defenses"
with "breach of the Mississippi levees".
I never did understand why the city was allowed to drown. There
was nothing inevitable about the flooding. It was not the rain
that put New Orleans under six feet of water. It was not as though
the river or the lake overflowed their banks (in which case the
damage would have been far less). The entire flooding was caused
by a few levee breaches. Which brings up the simple question:
why were these not dammed right away (Wrong answer: Because the
Bush administration is averse to profanity)? Some early talk
of sandbags being dropped by helicopters soon petered out with
vague mentions of pulleys being unavailable, and soon a mood
of resignation descended over the country as we watched water
inundating New Orleans. If these breaches had been plugged, the
damage, material and human, would have been nowhere near its
current scale.
It was not a lack of resources that occasioned the rout, either
in India (circa 1000 AD) or in America (2005 AD). Like America
of our time, India of old was known as the richest country in
the world (hence the invasions!). And like America today, Indian
rulers, though all they needed to do was the rather well-defined
task of safeguarding a small number of passages, fell prey to
identical patterns of disaster over the centuries. Just as ancient
and medieval India (or even modern India, considering the Chinese
aggression of 1962, or the Kargil infiltration of 1999) was somehow
unable to grasp the simple expedient of plugging a few border
gaps to prevent incursions, the United States was unable to block
a couple of openings in a levee system this summer and lost one
of its most important cities. This is the real lesson of New
Orleans, and has therefore received almost no attention. The
politicians, who have even shorter attention spans than the public,
have moved on after the initial grandstanding, while the press
is lost in an ecstasy of self-congratulation, partially in shock
at its own unaccustomed (and short-lived) boldness in the wake
of Katrina.
An on-the-ball president would have taken personal command of
the control room instead of hanging out strumming guitars; a
stronger president would have comandeered whatever resources
were needed to resolve problems, and a smarter president might
have anticipated the well-known threats to the country and skirted
such disasters long before they happened. All this is true enough.
But it would be delusional to pretend that our levee problems
begin and end with George W. Bush and his crony culture. In fact,
the unattended breach seems the perfect metaphor for the state
of our wider social contract. We have forgotten the old adage,
"A stitch in time saves nine". Our mode is to begrudge
a few million dollars to prevent a problem, only to end up spending
billions with incanations of the American spirit, generosity,
and other familiar bromides. It is reminiscent of a software
colleague who used to joke that he got a lot farther once he
started calling his bugs, 'features'.
How often in the recent past has America disdained the simple,
on-the-spot, solution, opting instead for a convoluted response!
And in the process, how badly has it that has ended up gutting
our entire "way of life" without solving the problem,
where the simple response would have both solved the problem
and preserved the Republic?
Take 9-11. When all is said and done, securing the cockpit door
in the aircraft was all that was needed to foil the hijackers.
And even after the hijackers took over, the next logical step
was to scramble planes, for which we had almost an hour, and
for which we had 'prepared' for decades. It was not done. Instead,
we changed our entire system of arrest and seizure, surveillance,
created a new national security bureaucracy, and bid goodbye
to many of our freedoms.
Take Tora Bora. All we had to do was cut off Osama Bin Laden's
escape route (those same Himalayan passes again) through the
mountains. We let him go.
Take childhood vaccinations. A simple injection costing a few
dollars could save tens of thousands down the road. Our preventive
health care system is dissolving rapidly.
Take armor. Even if one is opposed to the Iraq war, it should
concern us all that American soldiers have to scavenge junkyards
for their protective armor.
Take the border. Stopping unauthorized entry is a must for any
country that wants to survive, but in the face of a wave of illegal
immigration, our leaders can only talk of amnesty, and go back
to pretending the problem doesn't exist.
Take the budget. The nation which invented the profession of
credit counselor has itself forgotten the first rule of fiscal
sanity, laid down by the Fool in King Lear, "Spend less
than you owest".
Finally, take liberty, the very foundation of the country. For
two hundred years, Americans have reacted viscerally to the government
taking away liberties. It is a simple principle -- you cannot
deprive people of their freedom (of speech or otherwise) without
the due process of law. The First Amendment is America's greatest
invention. Yet, when government hides the carnage in Iraq and
bans photographs of soldiers' coffins, or detains people without
trial or tortures prisoners in far-away cells, there is little
outrage. The defense of this one principle, liberty, which is
the real basis for 'our way of life', is being forfeited by default.
Like Old India, where the elite played chess and argued over
the nuances of poetry while attackers ravished the land, the
buzz in America today when a new judge is nominated is over his
views on Roe Vs. Wade, not on the Bill of Rights. This says as
much about our preoccupations as it does about Bush's.
The problem in Old India was not that it was lacking in money,
intelligence or resourcefulness. It was that the members of a
small elite defined their welfare as their country's, not the
other way about. In her stultified society, people identified
more with their caste than with their country. A long list of
Quislings enabled invaders from Alexander on to thunder down
the passes (though Alexander himself is said to have followed
the Kabul river rather than the Khyber pass) and plunder the
land.
The traditional American genius lay in its pragmatism, the ability
to find simple solutions, heading off problems before they arose,
and in recognizing the merit of investment in its people. Over
the last quarter century, the American state has been breached
by a succession of politicians, experts at running for office
while campaigning on the futility of government! Old India, in
Ram Manohar Lohia's words, "did not have a state for 1000
years". That is to say, private interest prevailed over
public interest. What this systematic dismantling of the state
has done to America is there for all to see. The state exists
now not as a guardian of public interest and people's rights,
but as a protector of tax cuts and promoter of business. The
Kelo decision is the exemplar of this paradox, where in the name
of public interest, the expropriation of private property is
sanctioned for transfer to a corporation.
For all we know, the 'K' in K-Street might stand for Khyber.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, meet John D. Rockefeller.
Postscript:
Even after a millenium of attacks, land invaders never once colonized
India. The real servitude and looting would have to await the
arrival of the Europeans, especially the English in the Seventeenth
Century, and a different kind of invasion, from the sea. What
the overland freebooters could not manage over fifteen hundred
years, this coastal invasion accomplished in a mere hundred and
fifty. India lost her freedom. At its beginning, at least, this
invasion involved no battles. It began with a familar concept
called. It was called, 'Free Trade'......
Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast.
His articles can be found on http://www.indogram.com/gramsabha/articles.
CLARIFICATION
ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY
ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH
We published an article entitled
"A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October
22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute
for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org
(the "Website").
Although it was not our intention,
counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article
suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has
funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist
activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.
We do not have any evidence
connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.
As a result of an exchange
of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed
the Article from the Website.
We are pleased to clarify the
position.
August 17, 2005
|
Coming in the Fall
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
WHAT'S
INSIDE
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
|
