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Today's Stories

August 16, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Real Photo Fakers; Real War Crimes

August 15, 2006

Andrew Ford Lyons
Why Hezbollywood Was Born: Digitally Erasing a Massacre

Binoy Kampmark
Terrorism and the Art of Flying

Robert Fisk
Israel Wasn't Hoping for This

Ralph Nader
Bush to Israel: Take Your Time Destroying Lebanon

Todd Chretien
The US Antiwar Movement: Weak, Passive, Distracted

Chris Floyd
It's Bigger Than the Neo-Cons

Mark Engler
WTO: Best Left for Dead?

George Galloway
"You Don't Give a Damn:" the SkyNews Debate

Laray Polk
What's More Obscene: War or Sex?

Trish Schuh
Operation Change of Location?: Where Were the IDF Soldiers Captured?

Website of the Day
Jesus Never Existed


August 14, 2006

Uri Avnery
What the Hell Happened to the Israeli Army?

Karim Makdisi
The Flaws in the UN Resolution

Kathy Kelly
Approaching a Ceasefire

Robert Fisk
The Truce That Won't Last

Norman Solomon
Who's Afraid of Hillary Clinton? MoveOn, for One

Sunsara Taylor
Ned Lamont and the Antiwar Movement: False Hopes, Bad Terms and Ticking Clocks

Robert Jensen
Outside the Frame: The Limits of George Lakoff's Politics

Mike Whitney
The Litani Gambit: Ceasefire or Trojan Horse?

P. Sainath
An Indian Farmer About to Commit Suicide Writes a Note of Clarification

Goretti Horgan
The Raytheon Nine: Irish Antiwar Protesters Face "Terrorism" Charges

Christopher Reed
London Fog: Doubts Hang Over Terror Plot

 

August 12 / 13, 2006
Weekend Edition

Jean Bricmont
The De-Zionization of the American Mind

Norman Finkelstein
Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?

Robert Fisk
How the London Terror Scare Looks from Beirut

Adrian Grima
Forget the 50 Civilians: Watching Lebanon from Malta

Barucha Peller
Letter from Lebanon: the Proximity of Death

Omar Barghouti
The UN, Lebanon and Palestine

Adam Engel
Tearing Down the Master's House: an Interview with Derrick Jensen

Conn Hallinan
How the Irish Could Save the Middle East

John Stauber
Meet the GOP's Latest Smear Machine: Vets for Freedom

Rev. William Alberts
Bush's Primetime Lies Still Go Unchallenged by the Press

Fred Gardner
Hollywood Does Cannabis: "Weeds," the First Season

Lucinda Marshall
Penis Politics: Does Dick Cheney Want Us All to Fly Nude?

Ron Jacobs
Kill the Precedent: an Interview with Rapper Nate Mezmer

CounterPunch News Service
Kerala Throws Out Coke and Pepsi

Poets' Basement
Katz, Davies and Orloski


August 11, 2006

Col. Dan Smith
Crimes Against Peace: Beyond Nuremberg

John Ross
Class War in Mexico City's Gridlock

Michael Donnelly
Sore Loserman, Redux

William S. Lind
Collapse of the Flanks

Linda Milazzo
Chertoff's New Math: Hair Gel Plot Might Have "Killed 100s of Thousands"

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Something is Happening Around the World

Azmi Bishara
When the Skies Rain Death

Henri Picciotto
Jewish Dissidents Must Challenge Israel

CounterPunch News Wire
The Warrior Lawyer: Tom Crumpacker, 1934-2006

Dave Lindorff
War Crimes in Lebanon

Jonathan Cook
From High Wycombe to Nazrareth: How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists

 


August 10, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Buck Stops Where?

Dave Marsh
Who Are Mr and Mrs Lamont?

Gabriel Kolko
Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Arthur Versluis
How Neocons' Nazi Hero Schmitt Spawned Bush's Totalitarian Lunge

Jennifer Loewenstein
Awakening the Resistance


August 9, 2006

Linda Schade
Incumbents Beware: Peace Voters Mean Business

Jackie Mason
Defends Mel Gibson; Ridicules Abe Foxman

Jonathan Cook
Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah

Gilad Atzmon
Operation Security Roof

Charles Hirschkind
Doing the Lebanese a Favor

Tom Barry
Right-wingers Ramp Up War on Migrants

Cockburn & St. Clair
The Sweetness of Lieberman's Defeat

 

August 8, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Requiem for Baghdad

Paul Larudee
The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions

Joan Roelofs
The Malleable US Constitution: a Deterrent to Democracy?

Dimi Reider
An Interview with IDF Refusenik Sgt. Zohar Milchgrub

John A. Murphy
The Democrats: a Party on the Run ... from Its Own Members!

Eliot Katz
The View from the Big Woods: In Which a NYC Antiwar Poet Takes a Summer Vacation in Canada's Boreal Forest

Tim Llewellyn
Into the Valley of Death

Website of the Day
Galloway Speaks!

 

August 7, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Junkies of War

Karim Makdisi
The Draft UN Resolutions: the View from Beirut

Nadia Hijab
What Israel and the US Wanted May Not Be At All What They Get

Sharon Smith
Birth Pangs and Dead Babies

Magan Wiles
Encounter at an Israeli Checkpoint

George Beres
A New Kind of Bigotry: Lebanon War Exposes Strange Religious Bedfellows

Rachard Itani
Nice Try, Mr. Bolton

Norman Solomon
Some Nukes Are A-Okay with the US Media

Stan Cox
Presidential Doping Scandal Erupts!

Mickey Z.
Go Ahead, Please Stare at Her Chest

Jonathan Cook
The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN

Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Newt Gingrich on Lebanon

 

August 5 / 6, 2006

Virginia Tilley
Boycott Now!: the Case for Boycotting Israel

Uri Avnery
The Black Flag

Patrick Cockburn
Yes, It is a Crusade!: Blair's Mad Speech on Iraq

Sgt. Martin Smith
Military Training and Atrocities: Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree

Gary Leupp
America's Heroes on Trial

Neve Gordon
The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom After 9/11

Ralph Nader
Hey Joe!: the Ghosts of Lieberman's Past

Peter Bouckaert
For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game

Peter Montague
Nukes Rising: Bush Oversees a Global Nuclear Expansion

David Krieger
Global Hiroshima: the Stakes Have Been Raised

Michael Donnelly
"Sir! No Sir!": the Story of the GI Anti-War Movement

Fred Gardner
Dr. Denney Sues the DEA

Catherine Norris
Seeking Justice Abroad: Spanish Courts Issue Arrest Warrants for the Butchers of Guatemala

Imraan Siddiqi
The Smokescreens of War: Moral Superiority, 9/11 and Islamic-Fascism

Missy Comley Beattie
One Year After the Death of Chase Comley

Ira Kay
Where is Geography? Getting Beyond the Place Name Game

Dave Lindorff
Let's Build a Wall

Pratyush Chandra
Nuclear Fascism in India

Ron Jacobs
Keeping It Radical

St. Clair / Donnelly
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Katz and Davies

Website of the Day
Defend Bear Butte

Video of the Weekend
Rainbows Bust Pig Blockade

 

August 4, 2006

Ralph Nader
Joe Lieberman and the Secret Chamber

Brian Cloughley
Osama Has Won

Eliza Ernshire
No Lights in Gaza: "We Have a Death Warrant for Your Home"

Roger Assaf
Letter from Lebanon: Adjusting the Heroic Commando Raid Story

George Bisharat
When I Last Saw Lebanon

Remi Kanazi
Out to Lunch: The US Media's "Special Relationship"

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Critical Moment: The Boardrooms vs. the Street

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Fig (Leaflet) of Warning

Derrick O'Keefe
Ripe Fruit and Rotten Imperial Ambitions: US Reaction to Castro's Illness

Mickey Z.
Some Context on Castro and Cuba

Col. Dan Smith
The New Gonzales Standard for Torture: No Standards, No Accountability

Website of the Day
Israel's TV War


August 3, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Civilian Casualties and the War of Media Deception

Uri Avnery
Knife in the Dark

Saree Makdisi
Time to Call It Quits: Israel's Raid on Baalbeck's Hospital

Robert Fisk
The Family That Stays Together Dies Together

Farrah Hassen
Bush's Nutty Syria Policy: a Report from Damascus

Nicola Nasser
The De-Arabization of the Arab League

Ron Jacobs
The Hollow Body: When Exactly Did the UN Lose Its Street Cred?

Mitchel Cohen
Mexico Rising

Seth Sandronsky
Migrant Labor and Uncle Sam

Bruce K. Gagnon
Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah's Top Ally in Israel


August 2, 2006

John Ross
Mexican Civil Resistance in Five Acts

Chip Mitchell
Kudos to Hitchens!

Saul Landau
Want Peace in the Middle East? End the Occupation

Naseer Aruri
The UN at the Dustbin of History: Does It Have the Capacity to Intervene?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress and the Pentagon: Co-Abusers of the War Budget

Matthias Gebauer
News on a Platter: the Middle East PR War

Joshua Frank
How the Kyoto Protocol Was (Al) Gored

Bill Quigley
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and North Dakota

Manuel Yang
A View of Gaza and Lebanon from the Interior

Shamai Leibowitz
Whitewashing Atrocities: the Tortured Language of War

David Himmelstein
Pulling the Plug on Israel

Lara Marlowe
The Total Destruction of Srifa

Website of the Day
As a Nuke Plant Falls

 

August 1, 2006

Michael Neumann
What is to be Said?: War on the Blathersphere

Robert Fisk
Into the Meat Grinder: NATO and Lebanon

Omar Barghouti
The Massacre at Qana: Were Racism and Fundamentalism Factors?

Marc Levy
Whatever You Did in the War will Always be With You

Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups

Claud Cockburn
Scenes from the Spanish Civil War

Ross Eisenbrey
When is a Raise Not a Raise? House Bill Actually Cuts Wages for Some Workers by $5.50 an Hour!

Dave Lindorff
Making the World Safe ... for Dictatorship

John Chuckman
Canada's Harper Blames the UN Dead

Francis Boyle
Prosecuting Israel: a War Crimes Tribunal May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War

Phil Doe
Bleak House Revisited: My Vacation in Water Court

Stephen Soldz
Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture

Website of the Day
An Unfair War

 

July 31, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Birth Pangs or Death Throes?

Uri Avnery
Syria in the Gunsight

Robert Fisk
Atrocity in Qana: Israel Kills 34 Kids

Amina Mire
The Struggle for Somalia: Warlords, Islamists, US Global Militarism and Women

Marjorie Cohn
Bush's Enemy Du Jour

Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver
All That's Given Up in the Name of Security

John Ross
Report from a Red Alert: Zapatistas at Critical Crossroads

Stanley Rogouski
Why Howard Dean Denounced Our Puppet in Iraq

Gideon Levy
Days of Darkness: the Cruel, Collective Punishment of Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
No One Is Illegal

James Ridgeway / Alicia Ng
Witch Hunting Russell Tice: 3 Films

Brian Tokar
The Visionary Life of Murray Bookchin

Alexander Cockburn
The Triumph of Crackpot Realism

July 29 / 30, 2006
Weekend Edition

Michael Neuman
Humanitarian Intervention: The White Man's Burden

Vijay Prashad
Cry Havoc: Anyone Who Opposes Israel is Labeled a Terrorist

Ramzi Kysia
Lebanon's Children: Voices from an Invasion

Werther
The Manchurian Clergyman: Rev. John Hagee's War

Robert Fisk
Bush and Blair: "Keep It Up!"

Patrick Cockburn
Repeating the 1982 Fiasco

Ralph Nader
Big Oil's Biggest Score: Who Says Crime Doesn't Pay?

Rachard Itani
Professor of Propaganda: the Lies of Alan Dershowitz

Eduardo Galeano
One Country Bombed Two Countries

Gary Leupp
Cowboys Still in the Saddle: Neocon Plans in the MIddle East

Eve Poretsky
The Biggest Stick in the Middle East

John Chuckman
Delusional Expectations: How Israel Could Destroy Itself

Fred Gardner
San Diego v. Prop 215

Juan Santos
Apocalypse No!: an Indigenist Perspective

Punyapriya Dasgupta
Israel's Foes as Beasts and Insects

Liaquat Ali Khan
The War Crime Machine: Defeating the IDF

Israel Shamir
Friends, True and False

William A. Cook
The Power of Evil

Stanley Heller
Bill Clinton Comes to Lieberman's Rescue

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War Crimes Dodge

Moshe Adler
Kelo, a Year Later: Property Sezied By Eminent Domain Must Remain Public

Susie Day
Comrade Bush: Back in the USSA

Pat Williams
The Right's Pre-Election Sleight of Hand

Anthony Papa
Collateral Damage from the War on Drugs

John V. Whitbeck
Imperial Overreach: Suez 1956 to Lebanon 2006

Jackie Corr
Last Rites for Evel Knievel

Myles Palmer
Old Soul: James Hunter's "People Gonna Talk"

Tom D'Antoni
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Louise, Davies, Engel and Meyers

Website of the Weekend
Electronic Lebanon

 

July 28, 2006

Jonathan Cook
The Lies Israel Tells Itself

Uri Avnery
Who is Winning? Questions and Answers About the War in Lebanon:

Renee Bowyer
When Condi Came to Ramallah

Robert Fisk
Smoke Signals from Bint Jbeil

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad's Death Squads, Official and Otherwise

Ramzy Baroud
The War in Lebanon: More Than Meets the Eye

Don Fitz
Half-Hour Hurricanes: Where Were the Warnings About St. Louis's Ultra Storm?

Elaine Cassel
The Second Andrea Yates Verdict: Why the Jury Did the Right Thing

David Price
Much Ado About Landis: What Kind of Tour de France Was It?

Mike Whitney
Bull's Eye: Israel's Targeted Assassination of UN Peacekeepers

Mickey Z.
Power (Outage) to the People: Why Queens Went Dark

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Power of Arrogance in a World Without Deterrence

Charles Glass
Operation "Save Israel's High Command"

Website of the Day
Military Intelligence and You!

 

July 27, 2006

Tanya Reinhart
Israel's New Middle East

Saul Landau
Castro at 80: History Absolved Him, Now What?

Ramzi Kysia
Watching Lebanon Burn: Notes From a Free Fire Zone

Tom Barry
John Bolton: Israel's Man at the UN

Joseph Grosso
Israel and Iraq: Hillary's White House Ticket

Sharon Smith
Lebanon and the Future of the Antiwar Movement

Gale Courey Toensing
9/11 Nablus: First, Destroy the Archives

Christopher Reed
Hirohito's Ghost: Japan's New Militarists

Werther
Hoosier Hooey: Is Terre Haute the Peshawar of the Midwest?

Yusuf Mansur
Can the Crime Justify the Act?

Richard Harth
Squeezing the Last Drops from Palestine

Website of the Day
Who's Arming Israel?


July 26, 2006

Norman Solomon
Applauding While Lebanon Burns: Richard Cohen's Blood Lust

Barbara Olshanksy
Gitmo: Justice Denied is Murder, and a War Crime

David Nally
The Detention of Ghazi Walid Falah: Israel Arrests Geography Professor from University of Akron

Jonathan Cook
Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes

Patrick Cockburn
Beware Iraqi Leaders Bearing Good News

William Blum
They Simply Can't Stop Lying, Can They?

Joshua Frank
Israel's Invasion Pretext Under Fire

Gabriel Kolko
Bankers Fear World Economic Breakdown

Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Dudes

Michael Dickinson
Arrested in Istanbul: "Sorry, We Thought You Were Israeli!"

Robert Fisk
Beirut as Munich

Uri Avnery
Is Beirut Burning?

Website of the Day
Free Ghazi Walid Falah

 

July 25, 2006

Harry Browne
Acquittal!: Activists Found Not Guilty in Irish Ploughshares Case

Marjorie Cohn
Willful Blindness: Bush Greenlights War Crimes

Robert Bryce
Israel and the Irony of UN Resolutions

Sharat G. Lin
Chronology of the Latest Chrisis in the Middle East

George Bisharat
Most Lebanese Now Know Who Their Real Tormentor Is

CounterPunch News Desk
Class War in the Blathersphere

Zena El-Khalil
"Tell Them That I'm Not Leaving. We Love Lebanon"

Larry Lack
The Bottled Water Madness

Mike Mejia
The Secret Behind "State Secrets"

Ashraf Isma'il
Why Israel Is Losing

Website of the Day
Peace on Trial

 

July 24, 2006

Mark Levy
The Whys and Wherefores of PTSD

Robert Fisk
Israelis Bomb Fleeing Villagers

Maher Osseiran
Beirut, 1982

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's Criminal Accomplice

Patrick Cockburn
More Than 100 Iraqis Being Killed Each Day

Website of the Day
sirnosir.com

 

July 22-23, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Indiscriminate Onslaughts

Paul Craig Roberts
The Shame of Being an American

Gilad Atzmon
Israel's New Math

Robert Fisk
Elegy for Beirut

Ralph Nader
Here's How to Halt This Horror

Fred Gardner
The Double Standard on Depression

Christopher Reed
The Right's Use of Sexpot Schoolgirls

Dr. Susan Block
Bush's Fecal World

Najla Said
Do People Know How Much We Hurt?

Uri Avnery
"Stop that Shit"

July 21, 2006

George Galloway
John Cornford and the Fight for the Spanish Republic

P. Sainath
Indian Prime Minister Faces the Dead Farmer Problem

Aseem Shrivastava
The Iraq War is a Huge Success

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need to Know

Website of the Day
FromIsraeltoLebanon

July 20, 2006

William S. Lind
Why Hezbollah is Winning

Robert Jensen
Florida Puts History on Probation

John Ross
AMLO Presidente!

Tom Hayden
I Was Israel's Dupe

Paul Craig Roberts
The Unfolding Horror Show

July 19, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited

Trish Schuh
Israel Targets, Flattens Beirut TV Station HQ

Jonathan Cook
Is Israel Using Arab Villages As Human Shields?

Vicente Navarro
The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco's Genocide

July 17 / 18 2006

Mike Whitney
Israel's Shameful Attack on Gaza

Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land

 

 

July 14 / 15, 2006
Weekend Edition

Alexander Cockburn
How Venice is Dying

Tanya Reinhart
The IDF is Hungry for War

Robert Fisk
Beirut Waits: Is Damascus the Key?

Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Jazz

Winslow Wheeler
Pentagon Budget Gimmickry: When a Cut is Actually an Increase

Hugh O'Shaughnessy
In Amazonia: Slavery and Deforestation

M. Shahid Alam
Israel, the US and the New Orientalism

William S. Lind
Two Signposts in Iraq

Ramzy Baroud
Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault

Gilad Atzmon
Echoes of the Wehrmacht

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Railroading Your Rights

Samar Assad
A History of Israeli-Palestinian Prisoner Exchanges

Ron Jacobs
Japan and Pre-Emptive Strikes: Why Would They Want to Go There?

Lee Ballinger
A New Kind of Jim Crow?

Walter Brasch
A World Without Fajitas?: the Rightwing's Language Police

Dave Lindorff
The Bush Swingers?: They Broke the Law and People Died

Clifton Ross
Up from Below in Oaxaca

Tom Crumpacker
Planning for the Re-Colonization of Cuba

Ricardo Alarcon
The Mad Annexationist

William Hughes
Rev. Billy Graham: A War-Monger in the Pulpit

Susie Day
Bugging Hillary

Farrah Hassen
The Road to Gitmo: Dramatizing the Banality of Evil

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Engel and Davies

 

July 13, 2006

Rev. William Alberts
Rationalizing War Crimes: Saying the Obvious to Conceal the Devious

Ramzi Kysia
Scenes from the Lebanese Front

Rep. John P. Murtha
What the Iraq War is Costing Us

Radford / Santos
Race, Class and the Battle for South Central Farm

Stan Cox
Marching Plague: the Critical Art Ensemble's Biological Defense Program

Saul Landau
Lies as Patriotism

José Pertierra
Is Venezuela the Real Target of Bush's New Cuba Plan?

Website of the Day
National Security Whistleblowers' Dirty Dozen Campaign

 

July 12, 2006

John Ross
Mexico Splits in Half: the Election Hits the Streets

John Stauber
The CIA Propagandist and Former Prankster Stewart Brand: John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars

Robert Boston
Top 10 Powerbrokers of the Religious Right

Wayne S. Smith
Bush's New Cuba Plan: Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination Plots

John Graham
Secrecy and the Curtain of Oz

Ed Kinane
Arrested for Failing to Obey a Lawful Order to Cease Protesting an Unlawful War: My Statement to the US District Court

Kevin Prosen
Goodbye Mr. Zeidler, You Will Be Missed

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Latest Bueaucratic Obscenity

Website of the Day
Addicted to Oil: Starring GW Bush

 

July 11, 2006

Dave Lindorff
Does a State of War Give Bush the Right to Commit War Crimes?

Dave Zirin
Why I Wear My Zidane Jersey

Mokhiber / Weissman
Boeing's Criminal Agreement: Odd and Unusual

Amira Hass
A War on Families

Clare Hanrahan
The Last Free Fourth of July?

Brian Cloughey
Stop Blaming Pakistan

Felice Pace
The US Media and the World Cup

Raed Jarrar
Iraq: Raped

Website of the Day
Bad Boy of Gitmo

 

July 10, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
Courting Doom with North Korea

Uri Avnery
A One-Sided War

Roger Burbach
Democracy Betrayed: Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico

Ron Jacobs
The New SDS: Toward a Radical Youth Movement

Joshua Frank
Sectarian Flames in Iraq

Missy Comley Beattie
Bush's Stunning Admission to Larry King

Alexander Cockburn
The War in Iraq: a Dreadful Mistake


July 8 / 9, 2006
Weekend Edition

Stephen Green
When War Criminals Retire

Paul Craig Roberts
Republic or Empire?: Lessons from Stanford

Greg Moses
Boots Down on the Rio Grande

Ralph Nader
The Wail of the Oceans

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Election Lacks Credibility

Conn Hallinan
Dumping Musharraf: Is Pakistan Expendable?

John Chuckman
Afghanistan is No One's War

Fred Gardner
Big Pharma's Strange Holy Grail: Cannabis Without Euphoria?

Dr. Tod Mikuriya
Cannabis as a Frontline Treatment for Childhood Mental Disorders

Pierre Tristam
Missile Envy: Is N. Korea Bush's Most Reliable Ally?

Lucinda Marshall
Deep Sexing the News: the Rape of Iraq

David Swanson
Command Rape: the Ordeal of Suzanne Swift

Heather Gray
The Spiral of Violence: What the Dead Might Tell Us

Dave Zirin / John Cox
French Soccer and the Future of Europe: Le Pen's Racists vs. Zindane and Henry

Mark Engler
Mexico's Fear of Democracy: Elites, Fraud and the Status Quo

Michael Lettieri
Mexico: Don't Discount a Recount

Ron Jacobs
2008 Might Be Too Late: the Case for Impeachment Now

Jamal Juma'
Globalizing the Occupation

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Engel and Kirbach

 

July 7, 2006

John Ross
Anatomy of a Fraud Foretold: Mexico's Surreal Elections

July 6, 2006

Nick Dearden
Profiting from the Occupation: the Corporate Interests Behind the War on Palestine

John Stanton
Nationalize the Defense Industry

Ralph Nader
The Politics of the Minimum Wage

Laray Polk
Cambodia Then; Gaza Now

Saul Landau
Who Mourned the Victims of the US Covert War on Chile?

Joshua Frank
Sweet Angst, Power Chords and Politics: Farewell Sleater-Kinney

William S. Lind
To Be or Not to Be a State? Hamas and 4th Generation War

Adelman / Lindorff
Impeachment Comes to Main Street, USA

Jonathan Cook
An Experiment in Human Despair

Website of the Day
Adulterers in Chief?


July 5, 2006

Mike Whitney
Is Cheney Betting on Economic Collapse?: the Veep's Curious Investment Portfolio

Saul Landau
False Axioms: Star Democrats and Iraq Massacres

Ramzy Baroud
And Israel Shall Be Safe Again

Missy Comley Beattie
An Axis of Nuts: Ready, Aim, Fear

Arthur Neslen
A Way Out of the Gaza Crisis?

Vincent Maruffi
Party Politics in Connecticut: Lieberman, Lamont and the Greens

Paul Cantor
Aberrations: Hell, High Water and the Moral High Ground

Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: Let's Be Honest About Food's Origin

David Price
Shouting Down Nazis in Olympia


July 4, 2006

Col. Dan Smith
Iraq and Independence Day: Lessons from the War of 1812

Chris Floyd
American Power in Mahmudiyah

Marjorie Cohn
Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza

James Brooks
Israel 9,000 Palestine 1: Destroying the Gaza Strip

Medea Benjamin
"Dictatress of the World:" Has America Become JQ Adams' Worst Nightmare?

Matt Reichel
An Independence Day Lesson for the American Left from France

Elisa Salasin
Why I am Fasting Today

Rick Wilhelm
Will Lieberman Apologize to Ralph Nader?

Paul Craig Roberts
Rape, Lies and Murder

Website of the Day
A Mighty Handsome Family

 

July 3, 2006

Robert Bryce
Gaza in the Dark: Poor, Frustrated and Powerless

Dr. Bouthaina Shaban
"I Hope You're Not Here to Talk About the Palestinians"

Julia Olmstead
The Biofuel Illusion: Running on Top Soil

Dave Lindorff
The Real Meaning of the Hamdan Ruling: Bush Adm. Has Committed War Crimes

Andres Gomez
A Mockery of Justice

Alan Singer
Another Encounter with Chuck Schumer: Just as Hawkish as Hillary, But Nastier

Alexander Cockburn
Temple of Mammon, Planet of Doom


July 1/2, 2006
Weekend Edition

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Assaults on Freedom: What's to Stop Him?

Stephen T. Banko
Echoes from Vietnam; Nightmares in Iraq

Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Slang: the Bunkum of Bunkum (for Dizzy Gillespie)

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Class Behind the Muslim

Jeff Taylor
The Sandy Foundation of the White House: a Bible-Believing Christian's View of Bush

John Ross
Mexico: There's a Riot Going On

Greg Moses
Psycho-Management Hits Mexico's Maquiladoras

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Elections: a Choice for Change

Justin E.H. Smith
Lethal Injection and Other Fashion Trends

Brian Cloughley
Different Worlds: When Liberation is Worse Than Oppression

Anthony Papa
Punishing Addiction: No Walk in the Park for Dwight Gooden

Mike Ferner
Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt

Jerry Tucker
Liberalism's Long Goodbye: McGovern Hoists the White Flag

Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta
Remembering the Marshall Islands

Phyllis Pollack
Roll Over Beethoven: Chuck Berry is Back in Town

Poets' Basement
Salasin, Swindell, Ferri-Smith and Engel

 

June 30, 2006

Marjorie Cohn
Supreme Rebuke: Bush Loses Gitmo Case

Heather Williams
Will Mexicans Ignore What Bolivians Learned?

Burbach / Cantor
Yellowback Democrats: the Party of Cut-and-Run (from Principle)

Nick Dearden
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August 16, 2006

Towards Armageddo and After

Endgame Engulfs Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City.

They carried the coffin of Jose Jimenez Colmanares on their shoulders through the narrow streets of Oaxaca city into the old colonial plaza they had occupied for months and deposited it outside the state government offices. There his comrades ­- striking schoolteachers and militants of the mostly-indigenous Oaxaca Popular Peoples' Assembly (APPO) mourned the fallen car mechanic with furious epithets and accusations. Jimenez, the husband of a striking teacher, had been gunned down by goons during a march two nights before and the assailants had been tracked to a nearby warehouse where they were captured by the furious crowd and their hideout burnt to the ground. But for the striking teachers and their allies in the APPO, the bullet that murdered Jose Jimenez was fired by Governor Ulisis Ruiz whose resignation they have been demanding for months.

The strike of Oaxaca's teachers began last May 15, the Day of the Maestro, when 70,000 members of the radicalized Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union walked out of their classrooms in pursuit of a cost of living increase. Encamped in the same plaza where Jose Jimenez's corpse was now planted, the maestros refused to move even after Governor Ruiz set a thousand state police on them June 14--more than a hundred were injured as the cops slammed concussion grenades into the swirling crowd below from low-flying helicopters. But the teachers soon retook the plaza and together with the even more radical APPO have continued to carry on a vigorous campaign of civil disobedience and just plain sabotage.

Pledging to physically obstruct the July 2 presidential balloting in the state, many teachers instead voted for leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) who won the popular vote in Oaxaca handily greatly embarrassing Governor Ruiz, a disciple of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) standard bearer Roberto Madrazo.

In the heady days since July 2 during which Lopez Obrador was apparently swindled out of the presidency of Mexico, both sides in the Oaxaca stand-off have grown more aggressive, the maestros and their allies blocking highways, tourist hotels, and burning up the stage at the annual Guelaguetza indigenous dance festival, forcing the cancellation of Oaxaca's top tourist attraction. Governor Ruiz has responded in the old PRI way, sending his pistoleros after his detractors--a university radio station was shot up, as was a local newspaper Noticias which had dared to diss Ruiz. A professor was gunned down near the Autonomous Benito Juarez University and protestors' buses were torched. Leaders of the APPO, including one wheelchair-bound activist were arrested and jailed in maximum-security prisons. Jimenez's death may not have been the final straw.

Up until the present face-off, Ulisis Ruiz was a rising star in the sinking PRI firmament. During its excruciatingly long and cruel seven decade rule, the former ruling party stole one election after another, crushed or co-opted those who opposed it, dominated the nation's political agenda, and deliberately kept the Mexican people in abject poverty, holding their votes hostage for crumbs until the PRI was unceremoniously dumped from power six years ago by the right-wing National Action or PAN party and outgoing president Vicente Fox.

The ex-official party's fortunes fell even more precipitously this past July 2 when the PRI finished a dismal third behind Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and right-winger Felipe Calderon's PAN. Its unctuous candidate Madrazo had been Ulisis Ruiz's protector in PRI ruling circles and the Oaxaca governor's political future is deeply entangled with the snake-slim former party president from tropical Tabasco. But for now, the future of the PRI, not only in Oaxaca but all over Mexico's political map, is past.

Southern Mexico was once the ex-ruling party's "green reserve" where the ballot boxes always came back stuffed with 110% of the votes for the PRI, a "zapato" (shoe) or "carro completo" (full car) in the Institutionals' arcane argot - but on July 2, Lopez Obrador swept 16 southern Mexican states, the poorest, most indigenous, and resource-rich region in the union containing 54 per cent of the nation's population, including the PRI's greenest reserves--Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas and Oaxaca.

Both Tabasco and Chiapas are expected to sustain the AMLO tide in gubernatorial elections this August and September. But in Chiapas, it is not easy to separate the PRIistas from the former PRIistas who have moved into the PRD's house in the last months. The PRD's candidate for governor- Juan Sabines, the nephew of the nation's most passionate romantic poet, is a political hack who accepted the left-center party's nomination only after he had been denied the slot by the PRI. Under the auspices of outgoing Chiapas governor Pablo Salazar, who spent six years walking a tightrope between Fox, the PRI, and the PRD, Sabines was running 10 points ahead of the pack when abracadabra, the PAN candidate and an ex-PRDista who had opportunistically availed himself of the PANAL or New Alliance Party's nomination under the tutelage of teachers' union czarina Elba Esther Gordillo, abruptly retired from the race and threw their votes to the PRI's Juan Antonio Bodegas. If this sounds like universal treason, it is.

In Chiapas, at least, and in many states where AMLO won big July 2, both the PRI and the PRD--not to mention the PAN, which seems to have stolen the presidency from Lopez Obrador "a la antigua" (in the old PRI way)--are all living in the past tense

PRESENT TENSE

Despite their demands for a vote-by-vote recount, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is convinced that he won the July 2 presidential race only to have victory wrested away in a complicated fraud orchestrated by the Federal Electoral Commission (IFE) to favor right-winger Felipe Calderon. The seven judge tribunal (TRIFE)which has until September 5 to name the next president of Mexico, has ordered a review of less than 10 per cent of the 130,000 plus "casillas" or precincts where 41 million citizens deposited their ballots back on the first Sunday in July.

Notwithstanding AMLO's refusal to go along with the "10% Solution", the partial recount began last Wednesday in 149 out of the nation's 300 electoral districts. Putting little credence in the fairness of a process he is convinced is rigged against him, Lopez Obrador has vowed to intensify the campaign of civil resistance that his followers, still encamped on the streets and boulevards of the capital, have so industriously waged for weeks.

Even as the votes were being counted out in 26 of the nation's 32 states, AMLO's people closed down toll booths at the gates of Mexico City, slipping plastic bags that read "Voto Por Voto" over the coin collection boxes, and let thousands of motorists into the city for free--not really a huge favor in a megalopolis where traffic has been hopelessly snarled since the encampments were established July 30. In response, the federal commission (CAFUPE) that oversees Mexico's mostly privatized highways--road tolls are some of the most expensive in the world to insure a quick return on transnational investment--offered to drag Lopez Obrador into court for endangering the taxpayers' patrimony.

In a concerted effort to disrupt Mexico's highly globalized economy, supporters also shut down three major foreign-owned banks (all Mexican banks are foreign-owned) and blocked doors at the Finance Ministry's tax-collection offices--AMLO's people shut down the Mexican stock market the week before.

The civil resistance campaign has stoked a backlash amongst chilangos (Mexico City residents) who did not vote for Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of the capital. 349 motorists have filed complaints with the city's human rights commission protesting that their right of free transit is being violated by the camp-in. Interim mayor Alejandro Encinas, AMLO's one-time left-hand man and a roly-poly former communist, has been threatened with impeachment for failing to order the police to clean out the encampments. One transnational publicity outfit that has display advertising contracts with the city filed charges with the attorney general because its clients' billboards were being visually obstructed by the campers' tents.

To answer the charges, several thousand protestors marched on federal law enforcement offices, some wearing convict's stripes, others in handcuffs or hogtied or wearing nooses around their necks but all sporting notices of their intention of turning themselves into the authorities for "defending democracy."

But while these hijinks grabbed the cameras, behind locked doors in 149 district offices of the much-abused IFE and indeed staffed by the same IFE technicians who had fouled the July 2 vote, the partial recount proceeded under the eyes of hurriedly appointed members of the judiciary, not all of them of proven probity by any means, and the representatives of the political parties. The press was locked out, permitted in only for photo ops and on-the-fly interviews with party reps. But despite the absence of hard info, the numbers began to flow sub rosa early on.

Inside the counting rooms, Mexico's 2006 presidential election, exalted by the U.S. State Department as a paragon of democracy, was not a pretty sight. Hundreds of ballot boxes warehoused under military guard had been broken into, their seals ripped open, and the contents contaminated. Sometimes the ballots were scattered on the floor of the warehouse, sometimes there were no ballots inside the boxes to verify what the tally sheets ("actas") affirmed. When AMLO's representatives grew apoplectic at the wholesale fraud, the judges ordered the military to expel them from the recount.

Jalisco, a PAN citadel, was the first state to report results on election night--there was a governor's race on the ballot as well as the presidential vote and the PAN seemed to have kicked ass, building up a 70 per cent landslide. But the results seemed so out of whack with national numbers (Calderon was awarded a highly dubious .58 per cent victory by the IFE) that the judges ordered more than 1700 casillas in the state reopened.

The new count did not sustain Calderon's Election Day claims. In 15 ballot boxes in District 3 (Tepatitlan), the PANista had been awarded 2700 votes according to the tally sheets that could not be found in the ballot boxes. Lopez Obrador, meanwhile, picked up 250 votes in the district, about 12 per casilla--Calderon's disputed 243,000 "victory" breaks down to about 1.8 per casilla.

On paper, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had only to accumulate a total of 24,000 votes recovered in his favor or subtracted from Calderon's in the partial sample--10 per cent of all the precincts--in order to catch the right-winger and force the judges to count out all the ballots "voto por voto." According to the PRD's electoral guru Horacio Duarte, not only has AMLO rescued that many votes in the recount but also at least 150,000 Calderon votes cannot be substantiated by the recount,
Extrapolating the total vote from these estimates would give Lopez Obrador a 1.5 million-vote victory.

Thousands of ballots not found in the ballot boxes were apparently added to the PANista's total July 2 while thousands of other ballots issued to the precincts were never accounted for. One federal judge has suggested that voters took them home as souvenirs. In addition, nearly a million ballots cast July 2 were declared null and void by federal election officials--nearly four times the margin of Calderon's purported triumph.

Indeed the gross number of anomalies found in the sample that now must be evaluated by the TRIFE could result in the annulation of enough districts to throw the election back to Lopez Obrador - although no one is banking on such a happy ending. AMLO himself seems to have lost faith in a judicial process that has always favored the rich and powerful, and now talks of preventing the presidency of Felipe Calderon from being imposed upon the land.

FUTURE TENSE

This past Sunday (August 13), amidst rumors that the encampments were about to be lifted, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took his customary stance on the speaker's platform in the packed Zocalo plaza for yet another "informative assembly". For the first time in years, I was invited to view the proceedings from the roof garden of the Majestic Hotel where AMLO's less impoverished supporters often convene for brunch--the Majestic fronts the Zocalo in sniper's range of Lopez Obrador.

Down below, tens of thousands of little yellow AMLO ants swarmed and seethed, the chants of "los de abajo" rising in great waves from the street and infecting even the "perfumados" (the perfumed ones.) "Voto Por Voto, Casilla Por Casilla!" and "No Estas Solo!" rang from the rooftop garden.

From that vantage point, Lopez Obrador was poised right behind the monumental Mexican flag planted at the exact center of the plaza. The red, white and green banner, which features an eagle devouring a snake on a nopal cactus bush, kept furling and unfurling dramatically, definitely the visual of the day.

Lopez Obrador was here to talk about the future. No, the camps would not be dismantled. He projected that they might remain in place for years. As usual, he did not express much hope that even confronted by the stinking garbage of electoral fraud their own recount had vomited up, the judges would open any more ballot boxes and count out the votes one by one. Even now, they were preparing to sweep the whole mess under the legal rug and crown Calderon king of Mexico. The immediate task was to prevent the TRIFE from putting the certificate of constancy that would confirm the July 2 flimflam in Felipe's little hand. Whenever and wherever this crime was to take place, AMLO appealed to his supporters to disrupt the ceremony--peacefully, of course.

There were other dates on the calendar of civil resistance. On September 1, outgoing President Vicente Fox is to go to congress to present his annual "Informe" or State of the Union address and Lopez Obrador called upon his people to surround the legislature. An attempt to establish a camp outside the building August 14 was repelled by Federal Preventative Police and Fox's elite military guard. Newly elected PRD legislators were gassed and beaten, the first overt repression against AMLO's people during the post-electoral troubles.

On September 15, Fox is slated to deliver his final Independence Day "Grito" ("Viva Mexico!") to a usually jammed Zocalo but the fiery leftist advised the president to find another venue--his people were here now and they would deliver their own grito. AMLO also encouraged his supporters to dog Fox as he travels around the country, protesting his role in the Great Fraud at every stop--there have already been shoving matches between AMLO's people and the elite troops assigned to protect the president.

Loath to expose his person to an enraged public, Felipe Calderon has yet to venture outside business and political circles in upscale southern Mexico City--his SUV was attacked by furious street venders on his one foray outside his insulated bailiwick.

September 16 promises to be an exhilarating day on AMLO's dance card. Traditionally, the Zocalo is the starting point for an ultra patriotic military parade that day. Battalion after battalion goose step beneath the President's flag-bedecked balcony as he waves from the National Palace. But instead of martial music and streaking jet fighters, Lopez Obrador is summoning all Mexicans to flock to the Zocalo for an historic National Democratic Convention. How the Generals will respond to this cheeky challenge is not much of a mystery. The tanks will be in the street.

Armageddon is scheduled for December 1 on AMLO's calendar. That's when FeCal, as he is universally dubbed by his detractors, will receive the presidential sash from his predecessor. As Luis Hernandez, editor of the national left daily La Jornada op ed page recently speculated, the inauguration will probably take place behind the walls of Military Camp #1 in western Mexico City to avoid civil insurrection.

In addition to strong-arming Calderon, Lopez Obrador is reportedly seeking consensus among the PRD's congressional representatives, about a third of the 628 deputies and senators, not to take office September 1. Such a strike by elected officials could paralyze the new congress and trigger constitutional crisis. But some legislators argue that the PAN-PRI majority will use the interval to order the destruction of the evidence of massive fraud July 2nd by burning the ballots, much as they did after the PRI stole the election from Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in 1988.

And after Armageddon--what next? Widespread armed rebellion? A new Mexican revolution? A sniper's bullet from a window of the Majestic Hotel? Will Oliver Stone make the movie?

John Ross's ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible--Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 will be published by Nation Books in October. Ross will travel the left coast this fall with the new volume and a hot-off-the-press chapbook of poetry Bomba!--all suggestions of venues will be cheerfully entertained--write johnross@igc.org


 

 

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