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Today's Stories

November 22, 2005

Kevin Gray / Mike Hersh
Maxine Waters, the Real Leader of the Anti-War Caucus

Marshall Auerback
Bush's "Compassionate Conservativism": Neither Compassionate Nor Conservative

 

November 21, 2005

Mike Marqusee
Clinton's Hypocrisies on Iraq

Josh Frank
Democratic Hawks: the Avian Flu of the Antiwar Movement

Mike Whitney
Hugo Chavez vs. the King of Vacations

Norman Solomon
Getting Out of Iraq

Russ Baker
Woodward's Weakness

Robert Jensen
A National Day of Atonement

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies and Official Secrets

 

November 19 / 20, 2005

Fred Gardner
The Raid on MendoHealing

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
The House GOP Has Done a Heinous Thing: Stop Playing Politics; Get the Troops Out Now

Ron Jacobs
A Pathetic Congress: If It Walks and Talks Like a Withdrawal Resolution, Why Won't You Vote For It?

David Vest
The Politics of Surrender: It's as American as Robert E. Lee

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Condi Rice's Disdain for the Civil Rights Movement

John R. Bomar
Staying the Course on "Freedom's Frontier": a Vietnam Vet on Iraq

John Ross
The Dragon Flies High, But Not Over Mexico

Phillip Cryan
Colombia: "Political Kidnapping" and Murder in Cauca

Dave Lindorff
RIP In These Times

Dick J. Reavis
The Future of the Daily Press

Jeremy Scahill
Vegetarian Between Meals: This War Can't Be Stopped by a Loyal Opposition

Dan Wright
Cleaning Up Alaska's Scan Bay

John Stanton
Scowcroft Talks Turkey; Edmounds Fights Fascism

St. Clair / Vest / Walker
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones: Rarities

Dr. Susan Block
Our Night of Weimar Love

Poets Basement
Albert, Engel, Ford, Harley and Louise

 

November 18, 2005

Michael Neumann
The Palestinians and the Party Line

Dave Lindorff
Murtha and the L Word

Michael Donnelly
Black November 15

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Uncrucify Them

Don Monkerud
A Decent Workplace

Tom Kerr
Grant Clemency to Tookie Williams

Trish Schuh
Faking the Case Against Syria

 

November 17, 2005

John Walsh
A Fractured Anti-War Movement

Rep. John Murtha
Iraq Must Be Freed from the US Occupation

Brian J. Foley
We Are All In GITMO Now

CounterPunch News Service
Guardian Apologizes to Chomsky; Publishes Total Retraction of Brockes' Slurs

Dave Lindorff
In Post-Saddam Iraq, There are No Civilians

Mark T. Harris
Coming Out in an Up-and-Coming Sport

Cockburn / St. Clair
From Reporter to Courtier: the Decline of Bob Woodward

 

November 16, 2005

John F. Sugg
Al-Arian Speaks: In His First Interview Since the Trial Began, Al-Arian Talks About What the Jury Didn't Hear

Noam Chomsky
Putting Out the Englightenment

Dave Lindorff
Shake and Bake: Pentagon Admits Using Phosphorous Bombs on Fallujah

Evelyn Pringle
Laurie Mylroie's War

Sam Husseini
Trying to Look a Female Suicide Bomber in the Eye

Pierre Tristam
Toturers' Theater

Greg Bates
Waffling Alito Charms DiFi

Farrah Hassen
Moustapha AkkadDavid Lean of the Middle East Killed in Amman Blast

Bill Christison
Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars

Website of the Day
Violent Oscillations

 

November 15, 2005

Todd Chretien
My Evening in the No Spin Zone; Or Why Bill O'Reilly Hates San Francisco

Leah Caldwell
Death of the Jailhouse Press

Frederick Hudson
Rosa's Wreath: Miss Parks and Robert Williams

Harry Browne
Bush-Linked Judge Bows Out: Another Mistrial in Irish Ploughshares Case

Jason Leopold
Secret CIA Testimony: Iraq Posed No Threat

Ingmar Lee
Logging Lackies vs. Canada's Most Endangered Species

Diana Barahona
Showdown on the Silver Coast

Tom Andre
New Orleans, Two Months Later

Website of the Weekend
Ernest Crichlow: 1914-2005

 

November 14, 2005

Diana Johnstone
The Origins of the Guardian's Attack on Chomsky

Paul Craig Roberts
Power Over All: Unlimited Detentions and the End of Habeas Corpus

Conn Hallinan
Provoking Syria: Cambodia All Over Again?

Joshua Frank
Off She Goes: Hillary in Israel

Christopher Reed
The Persistence of Racism in Koizumi's Japan

 

November 11 / 13, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
First the Lying, Then the Pardons

Gwyneth Leech
Cross Connections: a Painter Reimagines the Passion of Christ in the Wake of Abu Ghraib

Elmas Mallo
Chillin' in the Blazin' Texas Sun: Inside the Texas Prison System

Michael Neumann
The Rebel King of Bluegrass: Jimmy Martin, an Appreciation

Saul Landau
Leakgate: the Screenplay

Sam Husseini
Bush and Zarqawi Bomb Because We Let Them

Brian Cloughley
Sleaze, Deceit and Torture

Ron Jacobs
Rep. McGovern's Withdrawal Resolution: a Step in the Right Direction?

Lila Rajiva
Dover Bitch: the Curses of Pat Robertson

Michael Donnelly
Hypocrisy Watch

Joe Allen
Murder in El Salvador: Who Killed Gilberto Soto?

Roland Sheppard
Lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Justin E.H. Smith
Another Monkey Trial?

Ben Tripp
The Cost of War

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

Poets' Basement
Jones, Louise, Ford, Smith, Albert and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Iraq Vets and Against the War Need Your Help!

 

 

November 10, 2005

Peterside, Ogon, Watts and Zalik
Delta Blues Again: Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10 Years Gone

Pat Williams
Will Alito Cost the Republicans the Senate?

Steve Higgs
Bush Crony Targets Indiana's Forests: 400% Hike in Logging

Jimmy Massey
Is Ron Harris Telling the Truth?

Lucson Pierre-Charles
Haiti: Insanity Takes Over

Anthony Newkirk
Syria in the Crosshairs

Lawrence R. Velvel
Why Did Libby Lie?

Website of the Day
Imperial Margarine

November 9, 2005

Gary Leupp
The Niger Deception / Plame Affair: an Incomplete Chronology

Tariq Ali
Blair Defeated on Terror Laws

Chris Floyd
The Philosopher's Stone

Elaine Cassel
The Shocking Trial of an American Citizen: the Case of Ahmed Abu Ali

Joshua Frank
Sen. Max Baucus's NASCAR Pay Day

Alison Weir
Memo to Jon Stewart: Glad You're Against Torture, So Why'd You Give Israel a Pass?

Diana Johnstone
Rage in the Banlieue


November 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Still No Jobs

Roger Burbach
Bush v. Chavez: the Imperial President Meets the Bolivarian Democrat

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Behzad Yaghmaian on the Paris Uprising

Ralph Nader
"The Worst Marketed Disease on the Planet"

Jim McGrath
Voter Beware: a Cautionary Tale for Election Day

David Bloom
McCain, Israel and Torture: Setting the Record Straight

Stan Goff
Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris, and Ambush Journalism

 

November 7, 2005

Dick Reavis
The Origins of Mr. Danger

Jason Leopold
Cheney and the Cover Up: the Vice President Lied

Dave Lindorff
What Country was Bush Talking About?

Eli Stephens
A Tale of Two Generals: the Lies of Colin Powell

David Swanson
The Bush-Cheney Ethics Refresher Course: a Syllabus

M. Junaid Alam
An Interview Stan Goff

Matt Reichel
Paris Uprising: a Rebellion in Real Time

Naima Bouteldja
Paris is Burning

Jeff Halper
Israel as an Extension of American Empire

Website of the Day
Dispatches from Paris

 

November 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Storm Over Brockes' Fakery: Guardian Fabricates Chomsky Quotes

Lawrence R. Velvel
Lying, Law Schools and Executive Power: What Senators Should Ask Alito

Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica: a Response to Certain Criticisms of My Essay

Roosa / Nevins
The Mass Killlings in Indonesia, 40 Years Later

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Missing the Bus: When Conscience Bows to Calculation

John Ross
The Zapatistas' Otra Campaign for Mexico's Presidential Elections

Mike Whitney
Globalizing Sadism: the United States of Torture

Mark Engler
Will Big Business Turn On Bush?: the Economic Nightmare Unfolds

Juliano Mer-Khamis
They Shoot at Children, Too

Ron Jacobs
When Gen. Westmoreland Visited

Jill S. Farrell
Bird Flu and the Posse Comitatus Act

Missy Comley Beattie
Trent Lott's Untroubled Sleep

Mitchel Cohen
People of the Dome, Revisited

Evelyn J. Pringle
Bush-Cheney and Big Oil's Big Summer

Reza Fiyouzat
Signs of Life or Last Gasp? Structural Problems in the Democratic Party

Charles Sullivan
When Courage Fails: a White Southerner on Rosa Parks

Zachary Richard
Return to Louisiana

Ben Tripp
Beginning of the End? Don't Start Cheering Just Yet

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

 

November 4, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Blood on the Tundra, Betrayal in the Rotunda: Losing ANWR

Dave Lindorff
A Majority Now Favors Impeachment: If He Lied, He Must Be Tried

Phillip Cryan
Crackdown in Colombia

Christopher Brauchli
Katrina and Tax Breaks for the Very Rich

William S. Lind
Exit Strategy: You Can't Stay the Course in a Lost War

Daryl G. Kimball
Of Madmen and Nukes

George Beres
Laurels for Negroponte?

Peter Montague
Why We Can't Prevent Cancer

 

November 3, 2005

James Petras
The Libby Affair and the Internal War

Saul Landau
Torn Families and Shot Down Planes: a Cuba Story

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
An Occurrence at Gretna Bridge

Michael Dickinson
Bang! Bang! You're Deaf! Sonic Weapons Over Palestine

Joshua Frank
Sham Behind Closed Doors

Remi Kanazi
Dancing with Perseverance

Reza Fiyouzat
Taxation or Racketeering?

Website of the Day
CIA Leak Investigation: Bigger Fish, Deeper Water?

 

November 2, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Holy Alito!: Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad

Robert Oscar Lopez
Saving Rosa Parks from American Hypocrisy

John Walsh
The Philosophy of Mendacity: From Leo Strauss to Scooter Libby

Brian J. Foley
Why Most Americans Don't Care About Gitmo (and Why They Should)

Ramzy Baroud
Rolling Back Syria

M. Junaid Alam
What Moral Values?

Todd Chretien
Judgment Day for the Governator

Bruce K. Gagnon
The Democrats' Slap Happy Day

Website of the Day
Hands Off Dave!

 

November 1, 2005

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Kent State's Dave Airhart

Gary Leupp
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome

John Ross
Days of the Dead on the Border

Bill Quigley
Why Are They Making New Orleans a Ghost Town?

Joseph Nevins
From a Boundary of Death to One of Life

Dave Lindorff
Thinking About Impeachment

Linda S. Heard
Bashing Syria: Another Trojan Horse from the UN?

Heather Gray
Thank You, Mrs. Parks

Michael Dickinson
To Di For: Charlie and Camilla Cross the Pond

Jeffrey St. Clair
Kent State: Wise Up and Back Off

 

October 31, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Libby's Lies

Mark Weisbrot
Pop Goes the Bubble: Bernancke and the Fed

Mike Whitney
Carry On, Patrick Fitzgerald

Norman Solomon
After the Libby Indictment, the Press Acquits Itself

Farooq Sulehria
Trading Weapons While Kashmir Burns

Nicole Colson
Scapegoating Immigrants

Madis Senner
Dhafir Sentenced to 22 Years: Another Erosion of Civil Rights

Paul Craig Roberts
Scooter and the Neocons


October 29 / 30, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?

Peter Linebaugh
The Wedges of Hephaestus

Tim Wise
Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media

John Chuckman
Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words

Steven Higgs
Green Hoosiers: Forging a New Democracy in the Heartland

Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War

M. Shahid Alam
Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness

Nikki Robinson
Crack Down at Kent State

Ralph Nader
Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives

Joe DeRaymond
Requiem for Bethlehem Steel?

Joshua Frank
Karl's Great Escape: Did Rove Rat on Scooter?

Laura Santina
Tongue-Tied on Iraq: Why Aren't the Dems Screaming Bloody Murder?

Fred Gardner
Death of an Organizer

Michael Dickinson
Insult Your Country

Ron Jacobs
Autumn in America

Dr. Susan Block
Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting

Vanessa S. Jones
Self-Portrait, 1994. Bronte Beach

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

Poets' Basement
Marbet, Gardner, Ford, Albert, Engel, Krieger & St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Red State Update

 

October 28, 2005

Jared Bernstein
Inflation Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record

Virginia Tilley
Embracing the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine

Phil Gasper
The Race to Execute Tookie Williams

Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!

Manual Garcia, Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?

Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice

Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald Focuses on the Forgeries

Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials


Otober 27, 2005

Saul Landau
The Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War

Stuart Hodkinson
Bono and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!

Ingmar Lee
Stop the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq

Lila Rajiva
License to Bill: Gates Does India

Ilan Pappe
The Last Moment of Hope

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald

Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury

Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo

Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown

 

October 26, 2005

Kathy Kelly
For Whom They Toll

Gary Leupp
Dialectics of the Plame Affair

Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial

Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation

Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks

Website of the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index

 

 

October 25, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President?

Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn
Attack on the Palestine Hotel

Conn Hallinan
Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings

Jackie Corr
Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros

Robert Day
Talk to Strangers

John Sugg
Judith Miller and Me

 

October 24, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Revoke Judy Miller's Pulitzer

Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra

Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial

Mike Whitney
Apres Rove

Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...

Bill and Kathleen Christison
US Foreign Policy and Palestine

 

October 22 / 23, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
When Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller

Billy Sothern
Letter from the Circle Bar, New Orleans

Saul Landau
Bush, an Assessment

Ralph Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers

Behrooz Ghamari
Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve?

Brian Cloughley
Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory?

Diana Barahona
Venezuela's National Workers' Union

Fred Gardner
Dershowitzed!

Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About

Patrick Cockburn
Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer

Laura Carlsen
Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake

James Petras
China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness

Joshua Frank
Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Disasters are Us

Michelle Bollinger
When Abortion Was Illegal

Missy Comley Beattie
CSI: Iraq

Kona Lowell
Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun

Ben Tripp
Tanks for the Memories

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

Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel

Website of the Day
Indictment Watch

 

October 21, 2005

Dave Lindorff
The Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense Budget

Col. Dan Smith
The Destruction of the National Guard

Norman Solomon
Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph

Madis Senner
Abusing Katrina

Michael Donnelly
Richard Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots


October 20, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Comes to NYC

Ray McGovern
16 Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost

Jeremy Brecher /
Brendan Smith

Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right?

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court

Kevin Zeese
Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?

Ross Eisenbrey
Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment

Randy Shields
James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton

Justine Davidson
Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory

After Lucas Cranach
Judy and Holofernes

Joe Allen
The Scandalous History of the Red Cross

 

 

Subscribe Online

November 22, 2005

America's Grossest Domestic Product

The Justice Deficit

By PIERRE TRISTAM

My wife and I were getting ready to watch a spaghetti western Friday evening (specifically, Sergio Leone's "My Name Is Nobody," the Henry Fonda-Terence Hill masterpiece from 1973). A last check of the headlines suggested that something at least equally entertaining was happening at that moment in Congress. We turned to C-Span. Sure enough, the House of Representatives, a spaghetti debating club on its best days (congressmen's rhetoric being generally thin, their motives stringy and their intellect al dente), had gone smack down. The name-calling was flying. The lies were dueling. The shame was sticking to everyone. Why? Because one of their most respected conservative members had suggested that it was time to redeploy America's collective head out of Iraq's sands.

John P. Murtha is barely a Democrat. Elected to the House in 1974 in a conservative district held by Republicans going back to 1936, he's a Republican's Democrat -- farther to the right on many issues, including abortion, flag-desecration and the death penalty, than moderate Republicans. Republican presidents going back to Ronald Reagan have used him to sway Democrats their way. So, when he speaks, he's like John Houseman in the old E.F. Hutton commercials: The House listens.

Last week, Murtha pulled a Fulbright -- as in William Fulbright, the Arkansas Democrat of the 1950s and '60s whose book, the "Arrogance of Power," had been partly inspired by another president deceiving him into voting in favor of a war resolution on false pretenses: "Many Senators who accepted the Gulf of Tonkin resolution without question might well not have done so," he wrote, "had they foreseen that it would subsequently be interpreted as a sweeping Congressional endorsement for the conduct of a large-scale war in Asia." It is beginning to dawn on a few members of Congress, three years too late, that they, too, were deceived into endorsing the Iraqi crusade, although the deception was self-inflicted. It was no mystery even in 2003 that the Bush administration was a kitchen-cabinet full of half-baked chefs glazing facts, cooking books, icing doubters and boiling dissenters alive. Yet Congress chose to swallow the administration's words like some factoid from Mount Sina! i: Thou Shalt Not Question.

In an epic 6,500-word story on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times described the extent to which the CIA based its entire "proof" that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons on a low-level engineer who'd graduated last in his class, been fired from his government job in Baghdad in 1995, drove a taxi, was accused of a sex crime, escaped to Germany in 1999 and fabricated his way to all-expenses-paid asylum by pretending to have seen bio-weapons operations firsthand -- all lies the German secret service, the United Nations and some of the CIA's own analysts discredited before the war. But then-CIA director George Tenet wasn't interested in conveying the internal debates to the president, nor was the president, who wanted his war, interested in hearing them. And Congress didn't ask questions when handed the gruel the Bush administration called evidence.

Embarrassing? No. Lawmakers getting caught smoking crack in a Vegas whorehouse is embarrassing. Lawmakers endorsing a counterfeit war that has killed almost 2,100 American soldiers and more than 30,000 Iraqis, that will soon have cost more than the entirety of the Vietnam War, that has no end in sight and that keeps being defended, by most of those very lawmakers, as a battle protecting American freedom and birthing Iraqi democracy (the two biggest lies of this poison-ridden war) -- those things aren't embarrassing; they're criminal. Yet, the most revolting aspect of Friday evening's display in Congress was both parties' wrangle over saving face or piling on the white-man's-burden chauvinism. And passing on the bill to the public.

The Iraq war has cost $250 billion, so far. It's costing us $6 billion a month in military spending alone. The budget deficit is running at more than $300 billion. On the same day that representatives called war-doubters "cowards" looking to "cut and run," here's what the same House gave America by means of a Thanksgiving turkey, in the name of that war: a $746 million cut in food stamps and tighter eligibility rules for families and immigrants; a $4.9 billion cut in child support enforcement programs; an $8.9 billion cut in Medicaid, the health-care program for children and the poor, including rules that will make it more difficult for the elderly to qualify for nursing home coverage; and a $14 billion cut in student aid programs. That's over the next five years. On top of that, the House approved a two-year extension of a lavish tax cut for stock market investors. Then it went on vacation. Speaking of cutting and running.

This is what passes for democracy. This is what we're exporting. No wonder no one is buying. America's justice-deficit is now its grossest domestic product.

Pierre Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer and author of Candide's Notebooks . Reach him at ptristam@att.net.








 

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By Michael Neumann

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Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror

by Jeffrey St. Clair


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