Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 22
/ 24, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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
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Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend Edition
January 22 / 24, 2005
Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Hollywood's
Patriots
By
WALTER BRASCH
Sandra Bullock and Leonardo DiCaprio
each donated about $1 million for disaster relief following the
recent tsunami in Southeast Asia. The Steven Spielberg family
donated $1.5 million. Jet Li donated more than $125,000; Jackie
Chan added at least $64,000. Among several dozen rock bands which
donated proceeds of their concerts or made outright donations,
U-2 and Linkin Park each donated $100,000; Ozzie and Sharon Osborn
donated almost $200,000. At the Laugh Factory in both L.A. and
New York, major comedians donated their time, with proceeds benefiting
the victims. The Red Cross says innumerable celebrities made
anonymous donations.
Dozens of "A"-list
celebrities, many with Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and Obies
became part of a live broadcast fund-raiser for the tsunami victims-and
worked the phones to take pledges from Americans whose names
are unknown outside their own communities. George Clooney, who
had helped organize the creative community for the 9/11 telethon
that raised more than $130 million three years earlier, again
rounded up his friends and their friends for "Tsunami Aid:
a Concert of Hope."
These are the people whom President
George W. Bush believes "don't represent the heart and soul
of America." To innumerable conservative talk-show hosts
who bash celebrities, while bathing in the limelight of celebrity
themselves, they're the "Hollyweird." Rush Limbaugh
and his Dittoheads call most of the creative community "Left
Coast Hollywood Kooks," even if they live in Omaha; simply,
they're traitors who should be exiled. But it is these "kooks"
who are among the first to respond to humanitarian needs.
In 1985, Bob Geldof organized
Live Aid. From Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to B.B. King, Joan
Baez, and the Beach Boys, dozens of the best pop singers and
musicians came together for 16 hours that led to more than $100
million in contributions for the people of Ethiopia who were
dying in a famine that had been flamed by the world's neglect.
Shortly after Live Aid, on
a suggestion from Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John
Mellencamp organized Farm Aid to help struggling farmers who
were being forced into poverty and bankruptcy by corporate farming.
Following 9/11, Madonna and
Julia Roberts each donated $2 million for victims and their families.
They were only two of thousands from the creative community,
most earning less than $50,000 a year, to contribute.
The "Left Coast Liberals"
have been the face of almost every charity in America. It's Danny
Kaye and Audrey Hepburn who spent innumerable days every year
working with UNICEF in places Americans seldom want to tour.
It's Jerry Lewis, who has worked tirelessly for the Muscular
Dystrophy Association for more than 40 years. It's Paul Simon
who's an active contributor for the Children's Health Fund, and
it's Paul Newman whose company has donated more than $150 million
to charities, and provides millions of dollars a year to help
children with cancer and blood diseases. It's Michael J. Fox
whose foundation has raised more than $50 million in the past
five years for research into Parkinson's disease. It's Marlo
Thomas who has continued the work of her father at St. Jude Hospital.
It's Elizabeth Taylor who helped Americans develop a conscience
about AIDS at a time when many Americans, if they even had heard
about the fatal disease, believed it was "God's revenge"
for people being gay, a belief that unfortunately still remains
among the ignorant. It's Sting who campaigns to save the rain
forests, Robert Redford who is active in environmental issues,
and Bono whose work with Amnesty International is as important
as his music. It's Angelina Jolie, who unselfishly works with
Third World poverty and who donated $1 million for Afghan refugees
and $5 million for an animal sanctuary in Cambodia. It's Bradley
Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek who organized Clothes Off Our Backs,
a continuing auction of stars' clothes that provides funds for
not only tsunami victims but also for other humanitarian charities.
And it's conservatives Donnie and Marie Osmond, lumped into the
"celebrity" swatch, who pitch for the Children's Miracle
Network. Name a charity, and a celebrity is out front donating
funds and time.
However, to America's vitriolic
right-wing, anyone opposed to President Bush's policies is wrong.
In internet chat rooms, and on blogs and call-in radio shows,
they are babbling that the "left-wing" donated millions
to try to defeat George W. Bush for a second term, but failed
to contribute like amounts for disaster relief. When confronted
with the facts, which seldom happens on radio talk-shows, they
blather that the celebrities donated only so they could get their
names in the papers-and that these celebrities should have donated
even more. There is no medication for the verbal diarrhea that
gushes from their loose minds that celebrities should be contributing
to American causes, not those of "them furriners" who
didn't provide money for disasters in the U.S. There's no salve
that will heal the viciousness of the rabid-mouths who castigate
the Heinz Endowment for donating "only" $450,000 for
tsunami relief, or who believe that Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen,
Rob Reiner, Alan Alda, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Barbra
Streisand, who donate millions to humanitarian causes, are self-promoting
unpatriotic scum who should donate even more.
If the "Left-Wing Kooks"
responded in similar fashion as the "Right-Wing Nuts"
they would flood the Internet, the radio talk shows, and the
newspaper's letters columns. They would call the Bush administration
hypocrites for staging a $50 million inauguration while there
is world-wide famine, a war in Iraq, and a natural disaster that
left more than 150,000 dead and two million homeless. They would
question why multimillionaire George W. Bush personally donated
only $10,000 for the relief fund. They would wonder if that donation
was made only because Bush's political advisors believed the
donation might placate a worldwide storm of indignation that
grew while the Compassionate-Conservative-in-Chief continued
to bicycle and clear brush from his ranch as millions were swept
into the ocean's fury. They would say that the President's personal
contribution was made amid a fusillade of notices from the government's
massive public relations operation, proving that the donation
was political and not from the heart. They would spend far more
time attacking the President than in working to help others less
fortunate.
But they don't. They just keep
giving, some using their media-induced fame to generate even
more donations for humanitarian needs, many of them making large
donations of time and money anonymously. The creative community
keeps giving, even while being viciously attacked for using their
self-endowed rights of dissent that Jefferson, Madison, and the
Founding Fathers demanded of all citizens. And that's what true
patriotism is all about.
Assisting on this column
was Rosemary R. Brasch.
Walter Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg
University, is an award-winning syndicated columnist and the
author of 15 books, most of them about social issues, the First
Amendment, and the media. His forthcoming book is America's
Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional
and Civil Liberties (Peter Lang Publishing.) You may
contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu
or at www.walterbrasch.com
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