How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
Today's
Stories
January 20,
2005
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
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
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Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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Corrie
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The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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January 20, 2005
A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
The
Bush Inauguration
By
WILLIAM A. COOK
As we enter this New Year, we are, like
Tantalus, trapped between extremes: unable to reach the fruit
that hangs just beyond our reach and unable to quench our thirst
by drinking from the water that laps at our chin. Hope hung before
us during the election season, hope for any change that might
arrest the Cabal that has taken control of our government, gone
now into the ephemeral mist of paperless ballots and absent voting
booths. And that river of change we thought we floated in, the
ever-changing river that would nourish us in the coming years
with its clear waters and purifying powers, now only a dream
of what might have been. But we are here nonetheless, caught
in the flotsam of the past four years that turned this country
into a cesspool of lies and deceit, overflowing now with even
greater arrogance and vengeance, determined to spread its toxic
waste throughout the world.
Today America inaugurates a
newly elected President, a ceremony that traditionally celebrates
the promise of our Democracy, recognition of the people's right
to consent to be governed by a person they selected and fulfillment
of the promise of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. How
ironic, then, this immanent inauguration of the Lord of Misrule,
this comic fool who struts his hour on the stage, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing!
What pray tell is there to
celebrate? Why spend forty million dollars to recognize a man
whose efforts to date have been to undermine our democracy, not
to strengthen the pillars on which it rests; to carve the nation
into the haves and the have nots, not to build bridges of support
to aid all our citizens; to sever alliances with the nations
of the world, not to forge agreements that bind us as one to
better conditions for all; to make America a pariah among nations,
not loved for its rational policies but feared for its erratic,
unpredictable actions that threaten stability in the world; and,
perhaps worst of all, to turn America from a nation revered by
many because of its compassion for others and its perceived desire
to bring the significance of individual rights to all to one
that supports oppression and occupation, torture, and disdain
for human rights.
What has this administration
brought us but disrespect, dishonor and despair?
Disrespect for our democracy
as it has become the lackey of corporate powers and religious
zealots; dishonor as a people, seen now as manikins manipulated
by money and ministers before all the nations of the earth; and
despair resulting from our inability as individuals to prevent
the wanton slaughter wrought by our weapons of mass destruction
on all the helpless in the mid-east? What, then, is this inauguration
but a mock-epic fittingly tuned to the roots from which it sprang:
a fertility rite conducted by a druid priest ceremoniously inducting
Bush into office ensuring that the few will reap a rich harvest
from the many who bow obsequiously before his altar.
I'm afraid I do not hear rising
above the processional lofty anthems signaling the ascendancy
of a worthy man with compassionate ideals to the position of
"most powerful man on earth." I hear instead the marching
drums and shrill patter of the fife leading the congregation
of believers in "Onward Christian Soldiers" as they
assemble for the final battle Christ has promised them if they
are to attain everlasting glory. But I hear as well the distant
wail of children blinded and burned by our depleted uranium,
and those crushed beneath the rubble of our precision bombing,
and those caught in the savagery of "green parrots,"
tantalizing toys created by our weapons merchants to dismember
and maim innocent children, and those caught by chance in the
crowds as Israel hurls missiles at men it has judged worthy of
death but not worthy of a trial, a decidedly democratic way of
celebrating the rite that brings Bush to the presidency of a
purportedly Christian nation. "All those who take the sword
will perish by the sword," (Matt. 26: 52) appears to be
a forgotten admonition, as forgotten as the words of the Psalmist
by the Jews: "O Lord, if I have done this, if there is injustice
on my hands, if I have rendered evil to him who was at peace
with me, or, without cause, have plundered him who was no enemy,
let the enemy pursue and overtake my soul; let him trample my
life to the ground and lay my honor in the dust." (Psalm
7: 3-5).
No, I'm afraid this inauguration
is not a celebration for me or for half the nation who voted
against this Cabal, whose ruthless and un-Christian actions hurl
America backward in time and morality to barbarous days when
might made right and life was reserved only for those willing
and capable of killing. No, I'm afraid the righteous must do
the celebrating even as they attend his coronation as Emperor
of Fools. Let them celebrate his morality that proclaims salvation
for the yet to be born while he mutilates children in kindergartens
with misplaced missiles; decries terrorist acts of wanton slaughter
even as he and Sharon, his puppeteer, terrorizes innocent civilians
with crippling and deadly missiles hurled into crowded streets
and apartment buildings; feigns outrage at suicide bombers but
demands his minions torture and kill prisoners, then, shamelessly
denies that he is responsible; admonishes the nations of the
world for permitting the UN to be ridiculed by rogue nations
that defy their resolutions while he supports, nay encourages,
Israel to terrorize the indigenous population of the land they
have stolen despite having mocked the UN by defying more than
155 Resolutions; brazenly condescends to Israeli demolition of
homes, thousands of them, in full violation of human rights and
international law; lures the compliant citizenry of the US into
a devastating, illegal and immoral invasion of another state
by lying to the people, time and time again, compounded by his
lying that he had not lied; and, most ironically, ridicules the
evangelical Christian community, those most devoted to his cause,
by hypocritically declaring that he is a messenger of God, indeed,
on a mission from God since he receives messages from Him, when,
in fact, he is but a deluded fool responsive to myths believed
as reality. Zealots, unfortunately, succumb to imposed literalism
as a salve to suppress ignorance, and that in turn allows the
most insidious evil to escape scrutiny.
These pseudo-Christians, these
end-timers, dominionists, Zionist evangelicals raise their collective
hands in swaying unison proclaiming passionately their belief
in Jesus, damning disbelievers who threaten their institution
of marriage with civil unions and their pro-life commandment
with a woman's right to choose, believing erroneously that Jesus
preached these truths. He did not. "Be merciful, even as
your Father is merciful," (Luke 6:36) that is what He said;
"As you wish that men would do to you, do you to them,"
(Luke 6:31) that is what He said; "So also my heavenly Father
will do to you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart,"
(Matt: 18:35) that is what He said; "Judge not, that you
be not judged," (Matt: 7:1) that is what He said; "This
I command to you to love one another," (John 15: 16-17)
that is what He said; "You have heard that it was said,
'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say
to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven,"
(Matt: 5: 43-45) that is what He said; "A new commandment
I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved
you. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if
you have love for one another," (John 13:33-35) that is
what He said. These are the words of the Christ, not "Kill,
Kill!" Where is the NEW Testament in the rants of the ministers
of war? Why do they resort to the wrathful, malicious, judgmental
G-d of the OLD Testament? Let that G-d judge His chosen people;
let Jesus open salvation to all in mercy and forgiveness. Enough
of vengeance and retaliation; bring back the sun of Christ's
spirit.
These ministers mock the democracy
they claim to support by denying the unalienable rights guaranteed
in the Declaration of Independence since they crush freedom of
thought under the monolith of prescribed dogma and doctrine;
they turn religion into tyranny over the mind, forcing their
faithful to negate thought in favor of "belief" in
them, regardless of reason's questioning the literalism of their
teachings or the probability that Robertson or Bush talks to
God, a convenient ruse that allows them to accept "faith"
without question but denies that route to God to those of other
faiths; and, most deceptively and insidiously, they convert Christianity
into cruelty in the name of the most peaceful man to tread the
earth as they raise their collective swords against the infidels
in the mid-east. Their religion is a religion of hate, of oppression,
of fanatical singleness of belief, of divisiveness, of arrogance,
of exclusivity that denies the ideal of the brotherhood and sisterhood
of humankind, of mercy and charity, of love and forgiveness,
the sun of Christ's spirit.
Ironically, the neo-cons who
wrote the sacred books of this administration the Patriot
Act, Powell's WMD presentation before the UN, the National Security
Strategy Report deny the validity of Christianity even
as they delight in the blindness of the faithful as a tool to
be used to solidify their intent to control the world. These
modern, Machiavellian manipulators salivate at the millions who
accept on faith that God has chosen Bush to fulfill His mission
to bring about the Rapture and usher in the 1000 years of peace.
Equally ironic one could argue is the laughable parallel between
this inauguration and that held when Cromwell took power in England
in the mid 1600s, another time when mis-guided clergy predicted
the coming of Armageddon as that state moved toward a theocracy.
How many times must Armageddon come before we realize Revelations
is a work of metaphors not a history text or the word of God?
The last time a king was crowned
believing in his heart that God Himself had anointed him, he
found himself in due time brought before the court of the people's
representatives, would you believe on January 20th 1648 in the
Great Hall of Westminster, where he was charged with "High
Treason" because he had broken his oath of office by seeking
"unlimited and tyrannical power, attempted to overthrow
the peoples liberties," and "traitorously and maliciously"
made war against the people. Charles I went defiantly to his
death insisting that no earthly power could dissemble what God
had foreordained. But this was the time of the Levellers, those
who, long before our Founding Fathers extolled the idea, held
that "all power is originally and essentially in the whole
body of the people." Now this country is faced, somewhat
incredibly, with a bunch of men who believe they are the chosen,
either by Straussian determinist beliefs as fitting to rule or
by God's recognition of them as of the elect. They come to celebrate
the crowning of George W. Bush, the self-proclaimed disciple
of the only true Lord, sent on His mission to bring His gift
to all humankind, a veritable "divinely anointed Emperor"
of the world, a return to days of yore when people accepted what
their ministers preached, that God blesses those leaders they,
on His behalf, anoint, and negate, thereby, the unalienable rights
that reside in the body politic, each and every citizen of this
nation.
How quaint, indeed, that this
bastion of the 21st century should resort to concepts long dead
as the means to effect the dreams of the Cabal that has stolen
the American Dream, the belief that the people rule the country,
substituting in its place rule by fear that they, like ancient
conquerors of old, might impose their imperialistic designs on
powerless nations in order to ensure their ultimate control.
How fitting, then, that we witness this cabalistic inauguration
orchestrated by our own Cabal, not dissimilar to that which surrounded
Charles II, progeny of the doomed King Charles I (another irony
I might add), an inauguration filled with intrigue and ritual,
a mock rite sanctified by self-proclaimed interpreters of God's
word.
William Cook is a professor of English at the University
of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen
Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
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