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Today's
Stories
September 7,
2004
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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.
|
September 7, 2004
On the Road
in Gringolandia
The
Politics of Darkness: North / South
By
JOHN ROSS
The ambiance inside the Garden was as
toxic as an Al Qaeda bioterrorist Jihad. In the spotlight, a
smugly chortling Bush lip-synched doom to 20,000 beardless Caucasian
conventioneers. "This will not happen on my watch"
the President pandered from the podium while the Twin Towers
crumbled on the big screen behind him, apparently so brain-damaged
that he did not remember that it had already happened. The
Caucasians zeig heiled appropriately. "Four more years!"
they regurgitated.
"Four more wars!"
I screamed hoarsely and my colleagues in the press corps backed
off to avoid contamination by my alarming lack of journalistic
objectivity. An agitated gnome in an elephant's head hat two
rows in front of me who had been haranguing the sky boxes where
Al Franken and Michael Moore were quarantined to prevent a public
lynching, lunged at me menacingly when I refused to stand up
and cheer the bilious Bush.
Shamelessly harping on the
nearly 3000 souls toasted on 9/11, the third anniversary of whose
incineration would be mourned the very next week, Bushwa pumped
up the paranoia as the lynch mob swooned in the aisles. Although
the President often mumbles in a patois only his fellow Texans
can decipher, his intentions were crystal clear. Filling the
hearts and minds of the American electorate with fear and loathing
is his most ballistic missile, and the malignant exploitation
of national tragedy his hole card in the battle to retain the
White House.
I longed for an overripe tomato
to toss at this dangerous bozo strutting around down below on
the circular stage but the sentries at the Garden gates, perhaps
remembering an earlier Eden, had proscribed all round fruit from
being carried onto the premises.
The craven spectacle that profaned
the hallowed home court of the Knicks and countless classic championship
slugfests, was my first stop on a campaign trail I will cover
for the next months as I wend my way across the country from
right coast to left, reminding my fellow Americans of their true
his and herstory as depicted in my latest instant cult classic,
"Murdered By Capitalism", a personal memoir of life
and death on the U.S. Left.
Indeed, I had just touched
down at LaGuardia en route from tropical Chiapas where I had
been celebrating the first anniversary of the Zapatista "caracoles"
(political/cultural centers) and the "Juntas de Buen Gobierno"
(JBGs or Good Government Commissions) that now administer the
five autonomous regions and 29 autonomous municipalities in the
highlands and jungle of Mexico's southernmost state. The anniversary
week had been filled with many cumbia dances and basketball tournaments
and earnest evaluations of the JBG's first year of work. They
still made a lot of mistakes, the members of the Juntas  confessed but 50 rebel schools
had been built in the autonomous zones in recent seasons and
they were learning each day how to apply the Zapatista ethos
of "mandar obedeciendo" or "governing by obeying
the will of the people", a concept so foreign to Bushite
brains that the rebels might as well be discoursing in Martian.
Above all, the Zapatistas spoke from their hearts, an organ
which Bush and his boys, despite their claims of "compassionate
conservatism", have never been able to locate. The contrast
between the toxic megalomania at the Garden and the unselfish,
heroic resistance of the Indians was as stark as a sudden plunge
into Dante's Inferno.
The Zapatistas, and for that
matter the legions of oppressed who take up most of the space
on this lonely planet, were in fact keeping close tabs on the
blasphemy in the Garden. Much as protestors proclaimed in Chicago
1968 during another party's perverted presidential convention,
the whole world was watching. They know that what happens here
in the north from now until November could very well prove to
be a life and death decision for them.
This is one reason why the
multitudes assembled for the humongous August 29th march on the
RNC, the largest protest ever registered at any political convention
in U.S. history, mattered so much beyond the nation's borders
even if the corporate media hype-hoppers failed to notice
that twice the number of participants estimated in United For
Peace & Justice's permit application had filled Seventh Avenue
from gutter to gutter for 20 city blocks, a half million strong
and I mean strong!
The phantasmagoric pageant
featured every conceivable devil image of the Bush: with horns,
with bloody hands, as a shrub, a skunk, a snake, a vampire with
a stake through his heart. 500,000 throats spat out his name
in venomous unison as we approached the Garden. I high stepped
past the arena with my middle finger rigidly upraised in a "Chinga
Tu Pinche Madre!" I dedicated to the compas back home in
Chiapas.
And after the slog through
the mid-Manhattan grit, we retired to the Park from which we
had been barred by the Bloomberg gang on the pretext that our
marching feet would destroy a lawn previously torn up by corporate
rock concerts and highbrow cultural fandangos to which the great
unwashed had not been invited. Re-seeding the Great Lawn had
cost the city $18 million USD and now Bloomberg, who had the
unmitigated chutzpah to compare the peace mob to 9/11 terrorists
and then offer those who would wear buttons labeling themselves
"peaceful protestors" discounts at such venues as the
Museum of Sex, shelled out $103 million in police overtime to
keep the peaceniks off the grass, a dim-witted display of cognitive
dissonance by the bean-counting, billionaire mayor that bordered
on the pathological.
Stopping off first to visit
the gay penguins at the Central Park Zoo, we meandered northwards
to the Great Lawn where brass bands and guitar players were tootling
and strumming, and haki-sack, softball and non-violent training
for Tuesday's mass civil disobedience were being plotted. Paunchy
replicas of New York's Finest prowled the perimeter of this huge,
busy, billowing throng, squinting at the defiant partygoers and
sniffing out criminal activity. Whose Park? Our Park!
Our Streets too although
the cops did not much cotton to our incessant chanting of this
declaration of possession. In a disturbing prelude to the coming
Republican fracas on Friday evening August 28th, the NYPD set
the lawless tone by pepper-spraying, mauling, and hauling off
(250 arrests) participants in perhaps the most gargantuan Critical
Mass ever staged east of the Mississippi. 5000 cycling protestors
peddling rakishly down Second Avenue were set upon by the Men
In Blue so brutally that Frank Morales, the pastor at St Mark's,
threw open the church doors to provide sanctuary from the pigshit
storm.
All convention week, the oinkers
man- and woman-handled the protestors, making nearly 2000 mostly
illegal arrests (San Francisco's record 2400 arrests on the first
morning of Bush's war remains in tact.) In a snit because Bloomberg
had denied them a new contract, police ire was mollified by great
gobs of overtime and lots of red meat in the form of demonstrators
being clubbed into the pavement like so many baby harp seals.
Those so detained were then dutifully cuffed behind their backs,
dumped off at a crumbling pier house on the Hudson where they
were herded into cattle pens and later than sooner transferred
to the Tombs before being released back onto the streets, an
ordeal which took up to 60 hour in durance vile before a New
York State Superior Court Judge found the city in gross violations
of the U.S. Constitution, and imposed half million dollar a day
fines upon Bloomberg and his cronies until all the arrestees
were free at last.
Such institutional sadism was
pioneered by former NYPD bozo John Timmony at Bush's 2000 coronation
in Philadelphia and Timmony's more recent bloodletting at the
so-called Summit of the Americas last November in Miami.
But despite wholesale human
rights abuse, the New York peace mob was undeterred in telling
Bush, Bloomberg, and their accomplices to drop dead. Six times
during the four day klavern, Bush's enemies invaded the convention
floor disguised as Republican clones to diss the outgoing president.
During the battle of Herald Square on Thursday night, delegates
were spat upon, mooned, and pied, and garbage and eggs were tossed
at their buses, at least one of which got its tires flattened.
How all of this entirely justified acting up would play out
in swing states like Missouri had the Kerryites fretting. Many
of us, who feel that John Kerry is just Bush's lesser than evil
twin, don't really give damn. The choice for us and the rest
of the world too is not one between these two clowns of war but
between war and that elusive state that passes for peace with
justice.
For a week, the Fuji blimp
and the black helicopters buzzed the scummy sky above the lower
east side, garnishing breakfast, lunch, and supper with home-fried
fascism. In the graveyard at St. Mark's, the infernal choppers
did their damndest to drown out the reading of the names of the
dead in Iraq by women in flowing white gowns, 25 Achmeds for
every G.I. John Doe.
Despite the deafening onslaught, the forces of darkness could
not staunch the hemorrhage of condemnation for Bush's death mission.
On the resistance scale, poetry is often our most potent WMD.
The Bowery Poetry Club threw open its doors 24 hours a day to
accommodate the angst of local bards. I read from my new book
at the aptly-named KGB bar on east fourth to a respectable crowd
while just blocks away readings at St. Mark's and Judson Memorial
were packed to the gunnels with peace warriors. The rancid arrogance
of the Bushwas was countered by Naomi Klein who I caught in an
Episcopal Cathedral and the parents of Rachel Corrie and the
decapitated Nick Berg who spoke from the altar of a Catholic
temple to which 1400-pound tombstones listing the names of those
taken in Iraq had been pushed all the way from Boston. The late
lay saint, Phil Berrigan's daughter died in on the boulevards
of Manhattan.
But perhaps the most creative
protest during convention week was that of the Men In Black Bloc
who arrived en masse at Sothby's, an auction house recently indicted
for criminal price-fixing, to crash a sale of Johnny Cash memorabilia
exclusively arranged for RNC delegates. And at the Brecht Forum
one evening, during a benefit for Lynn Stewart, that feistiest
of attorneys now on trial for acting as the blind sheikh's legal
beagle, I was gifted with a sliver of one of her unforgettable
apple pies, a morsel which stirred dormant patriotic allegiances.
I mean, are we not all as American as Lynn Stewart's subversive
apple pies?
Whatever happens next November
2nd; we need to remember that the U.S. presidential election
transcends national boundaries. Everywhere I have walked in the
world of late, from the muddy crocodile-laced rivers of the Ecuadorian
Amazon to the jungles and mountains of Zapatista autonomous territory
in Chiapas to the blasted boulevards of Iraq and the damaged
olive groves of Palestine, the world is beseeching us to remove
this malignant cancer named George Bush from the body of Mother
Earth. It is a mission that we have an unbreakable obligation
to fulfill. But replacing Bush with John Kerry would be a great
mistake. I like how my camarada Nuri Fernandez in our Mexico
City Beat Bush group explains it:" first, we bury Bush and
then we will take care of John Kerry."
She's right on target. Blowing
Bush away is only half the job. Now with surging numbers and
reborn momentum infused by the massive resistance to last week's
bullshit in the Garden, John Kerry had best change his tune or
get out of the way before our marching feet trample him into
the forgetful dust of oblivion.
John Ross will be on the spot in Mexico City
for much of July and August before sallying forth to do maximum
mischief at the Republican National Convention in Manhattan from
where he will launch the intergalactic tour of his latest instant
cult classic "Murdered
By Capitalism--A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the
U.S. Left".
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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