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A Special Report on the Presidential Elections Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch

How Progressive Challenges Have Been Killed Off Since LBJ; Gagging Fanny Lou Hamer; Eugene McCarthy on "a Peasants Rebellion;" Sabotaging McGovern; The Wreck of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition; Smearing Nader, Not Once But Three Times: by Alexander Cockburn; The Thieves of the Green Zone by Patrick Cockburn; Murder in Mississippi: Could John Doar Have Saved Cheney, Schwerner & Goodman by David Kotz. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

July 13, 2004

Chris White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine Indoctrination

July 10 / 12, 2004

Kathleen Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between Palestinians and Israel

Janine Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against War

Sherry Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader

Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of

Michael Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004

Stanton / Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?

Richard Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology

Gila Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall

Kurt Nimmo
Clinton's Life

Toni Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means

Ron Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest

Camelo Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize

Omar Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance

Poets' Basement
Curtis and Albert

 

July 9, 2004

Dave Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger Stands Up Against War

Justin Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About Latin America

Robert Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency

Boris Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral

William S. Lind
The October Surprises

Sibel Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth

Ron Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future

Gary Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link

July 8, 2004

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain

Toufic Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall: a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent

Dave Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law

Joshua Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard Dean

Christopher Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card

James Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter

 

July 7, 2004

John Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence of Meaning

Virginia Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's Hunger Strike

Susan Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby

Mickey Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade

Michael Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire

Sean Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown

Diane Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq

 

July 6, 2004

Lisa Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans Risk Lives to Reach El Norte

Marc Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants

James Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?

Ray McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?

William Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...

 

July 5, 2004

Forrest Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept. 11, July 4 and Systematic Torture

Chris White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning of Independence Day

Joe Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July

Robert Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire

Kathy Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"

 

July 3 / 4, 2004

Elaine Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence Day

Stan Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive" Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti

Snehal Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak Out

Bruce Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens

Sharon Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"

Josh Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates

Robert Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing

Joe Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!

Brian Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine

Justin Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons

William S. Lind
Saudi Spillover

Linda S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"

Greg Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't Back Down

Ron Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"

Toni Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There

Dan Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?

Stew Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection

Dave Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for Our Brando

Patrick W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball

Steven Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies

Website of the Day
Global Peace Solution

July 2, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise of the Green Party

Douglas Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism

Gary Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities

Lee Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights

Robert Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly

CounterPunch Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's Arraignment

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right

Saul Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela


July 1, 2004

Katherine van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in His Method

Joe Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?

William James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment

Robert Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq

Alan Maass
Green Party in Reverse

Website of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?

 

June 30, 2004

Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush

Tariq Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq

Jennifer Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees

Douglas Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen The Quiet American

David Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass

Roger Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq

Stan Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's War on Art

Henry David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming

Ben Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof

 

 

June 29, 2004

Patrick Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover

Robert Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland

Troy Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer

Harry Browne
Bush in Ireland

Ray McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous

Elaine Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really Won?

 

June 28, 2004

Patrick Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq

Amira Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power

 

June 26 / 27, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here

Patrick Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge in Iraq

Dennis Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney, the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11

Ben Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency

Dave Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You

Chris Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit

Ali Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives, Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela

Keith Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement

Bryan Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission

Wayne Madsen
Another Case of Blowback

Thomas St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating in the Wizard of Oz

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi

 

 

June 25, 2004

Stephen Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"

Saul Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction

Amir Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace

Jack McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?

Greg Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader

 

 

 

June 24, 2004

Gary Leupp
John Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links

Patrick Cockburn
A Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing Death Threats

Harry Browne
On the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe

Bill Kaufman
Another Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader

Christopher Brauchli
Bush, Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did They Tell?

Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?

John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy

Diana Johnstone
Kerry and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"

 

 

June 23, 2004

Laura Carlsen
Bush and Castro Face Off

Dave Zirin
Barry Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"

Kurt Nimmo
From Saddam, With Love

Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars

Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"

Patrick Cockburn
The Pretense of an Independent Iraq

Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib

 

June 22, 2004

Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption

Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?

Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings

Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq

John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales

Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés

Bruce Jackson
Saying No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify

Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill

 

June 21, 2004

Gary Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks

Lucson Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos Upon Chaos

Cockburn / Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty

Uri Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage

 

 

June 19 / 20, 2004

Patrick Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid and Isolated

Bruce Anderson
Frozen Gringos

Diane Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on Bush and Blake

Walter A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib

Josh Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature

Col. Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan

Brian Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses

Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later

Prudence Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!

Poets' Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert

Kathy Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids

 

 

June 18, 2004

Chris Floyd
Blood Victory

Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player & Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War

Justin E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics

Gary Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?: Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi

 

June 17, 2004

Noel Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine

Kurt Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum

Ed Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz

Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do

Dave Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"

Greg Moses
Geneva Ignored

Norm Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons

 

 

June 18, 2004

Noel Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine

Kurt Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum

Ed Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz

Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do

Dave Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"

Greg Moses
Geneva Ignored

Norm Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons

 

 

June 16, 2004

Lenni Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters

Davey D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan

Daniel Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner Abuse?

Bruce Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake

Patrick Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power Facilities

Gary Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads

JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop

Mario Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers

Vicente Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who is Rodrigo Rato?

Website of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch

 

 

June 15, 2004

Harry Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe

Neve Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited

David Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI

John Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming

Dave Lindorff
God Wins in TKO

Bill Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step In

Patrick Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast

John Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo

 

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Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

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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:
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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
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Weekend Edition
July 13, 2004

Politus Interruptis

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Electorates?

By BEN TRIPP

The Federal government is putting a plan in place to postpone the presidential election in November. Mind you, this is only to be implemented in the event of a terrorist attack on the nation at around that time. However it should be noted that "We assume an attack will happen leading up to the election," according to a Top Washington Official. So if you wanted to look really clever, you could put these two ideas together: We assume the presidential election will be postponed. It's enough to precipitate liquefaction in even the most cast-iron of bowels. But shouldn't we have such a plan in place? I mean, just in case those naughty terrorists do manage to pull off the Big One prior to election day?

No. The whole point of terrorism is that small groups of no-goodniks use asymmetric techniques to knock much larger systems out of balance. Chucking a couple of bombs through the right window and getting the US presidential election process halted in its tracks is quite a return on investment. Any nation worth its salt will show some mustard and carry on regardless. Having a plan to postpone the election is like the pilot of a commercial jet wearing a parachute onto the plane. It sends the wrong message.

Such an attack is not going to hit every city in North America. Even if an unusually motivated bunch of evildoers manages to hit every big coastal city from Portland, Maine to Miami Beach, that still leaves 90% of the electorate free to vote, as long as they don't live in Florida where only 40% of the electorate is free to vote anyway. Let's say Manhattan, that favorite target of terrorists young and old, gets hit so hard that even the Naked Cowboy ends up putting on pants. But only Manhattan. Should we postpone the election? And for how long? A week, a fortnight, or sixteen years? What if, due to a faulty map, the terrorists attack not Washington, DC, but the Forest Hills area of Queens? My agent would hate it, but it wouldn't necessitate holding off the cherished democratic processes of our nation.

Assuming at least two candidates on the ballot are still alive after the attack (excluding Dick Cheney, who has been dead for eighteen months), and there are at least three voters left standing, we can carry on. I'm guessing it won't get as bad as that, but even if it did, the survivors would still be able to go through the motions and make some kind of a statement that way. "Us five remaining Americans won't be intimidated!" The facts of the situation are these: the administration in power is assuming there will be a terrorist attempt to disrupt our electoral process, sometime between today and voting day. The assumption is that after voting day the terrorists will settle down, apparently. So to stop these terrorists from disrupting our electoral process, we will postpone the election if they try anything. Now where I come from, they have a saying: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, we won't get fooled again. And it seems to this fool that postponing the election is tantamount to a disruption of our electoral process. I may have been born yesterday, but I learn pretty fast.

But what alternative is there? Say Washington, DC gets sprayed with Jheri Curl and the whole city is so slippery nobody can leave their house. Should we postpone the election until the capitol has been shampooed? Seems fair. Otherwise, folks in DC won't be able to participate in our democracy, and we know how much this administration cares about participation in our democracy. So maybe, even if the terrorism takes place on a strictly local level, we should do this postponing thing. Let's go with this hypothesis, even though it's stupid (for one thing, there isn't that much Jheri Curl in the entire country). What constitutes a terrorist action, who decides to postpone the election, and when do they get to decide it? "Hey boss, you're losing pretty bad in them swing states, and I hear there was a car wreck outside a polling place in Corn Cob, Alabama. You want I should cancel the proceedings?"

Maybe I'm paranoid, like everybody says the minute I leave the room. But it seems like if I give the guy in power a button with 'postpone the election' written on it, and I tell him he should press the button if he hears any funny noises, and the guy in power starts losing, do you really imagine he's not going to find some excuse to push that button? There's a damn good reason we don't have an election-postponement system in place in this country: if we did, somebody would postpone the election.

Ben Tripp is a screenwriter and cartoonist, who lives in a large human settlement 100 miles south of Bakersfield, which we cannot name for security reasons. Ben also has a lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. A collection of Tripp's essays, Square in the Nuts, will be published in August. If his writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net



Weekend Edition Features for July 3 / 4, 2004

Elaine Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence Day

Stan Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive" Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti

Snehal Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak Out

Bruce Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens

Sharon Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"

Josh Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates

Robert Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing

Joe Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!

Brian Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine

Justin Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons

William S. Lind
Saudi Spillover

Linda S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"

Greg Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't Back Down

Ron Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"

Toni Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There

Dan Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?

Stew Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection

Dave Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for Our Brando

Patrick W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball

Steven Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies

Website of the Day
Global Peace Solution

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