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
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
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Weekend Edition
January 22 / 24, 2005
Why It's So Hard to Like Democrats
The
Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
By
MARK DONHAM
OK, so I wake up early on Sunday morning,
like 6:30 am, so that I can watch the Chris Matthews show on
WPSD, the NBC affiliate TV station out of Paducah, Kentucky.
Hey, when you're on network you have to get what you can when
you can. Chris is followed by the Today Show, then Meet the Press.
So we're junkies of the Sunday network news shows. It's all we
got here off the antenna in the tip of southern Illinois.
Mr. Matthews has a short segment
on his show called "Tell Me Something I Don't Know."
In this segment, his 4 panelists all give a snippet of some inside
tidbit that they have learned from hanging out in Washington
DC that the average public might go "wwwwoooowwwww, I didn't
know that." I have to profess a liking of the segment. Not
that much of anything out of that segment ever turns out to be
really hot, but ya never know. That's what I like about it.
Last Sunday, January 16, 2005,
there were a couple new folks on his panel, Kathleen Parker,
from the Orlando Sentinel, and Ryan Lizza from the New
Republic. Maybe they have been on before, but I don't remember
seeing them. That doesn't matter. And frankly I can't remember
which one said it - I was a little late turning on the TV and
I turned on the program just as this segment started. I heard
one of these two, and I believe it was Parker, but I can't be
sure because Matthews hasn't published the transcript yet, say
that their little inside secret was that the U.S. Democratic
Representative Rahm Emmauel, who worked in the Clinton whitehouse
and is now a U.S. Representative for a section of the north side
of Chicago, was going to lock the Dems in on a Social Security
message that would shake the Republicans, and his White House
experience was the experience that he would use to lock onto
the message and send the Republicans reeling. Well, that was
what whichever one said it said.
(I want to like Democrats.
I am trying, believe me. I want to help Democrats. But, as our
great President W says, "it's hard work!")
I also have an interest in
Mr. Emmanuel. Well not so much him, but his seat. I remember
him working for Clinton. Then, when now Governor Rod Blageovich
quit his congressional seat in the north side of Chicago a couple
years ago to successfully run for Governor, Emmanuel appeared
as a high name- recognition figure from the Clinton administration
to try and stave off a pretty strong Republican challenge for
the seat, which he did. That interested me, because the parents
of my long-time partner Kristi live in Mr. Emmauel's district,
and have for a long time, and still do. Kristi grew up there.
We go there often, and often walk or ride bicycles around the
neighborhood. Mr. Blagoevich lives nearby. It's a really interesting
part of Chicago. I have some connection to the neighborhood
and the area and I've spent some time there. So, I legitimately
think I have a right to be interested in and comment on what
Mr. Emmanuel says or things that relate to him.
So, naturally, I was very interested
when a panelist on the Chris Matthews show, during one of my
favorite segments, said that Mr. Emmanuel was taking over as
chair of the Congressional Democrats election campaigns, and
that this was going to spell problems for the Republicans. This
was, according to the pundit, because Emmanuel was a real message
man on Social Security, and that his success in the Clinton White
House spelled trouble for the Republican's plans to "fix"
Social Security. I certainly knew he used to be in the Clinton
Whitehouse, but I never really considered him to be one of the
frontline, up and coming, fast rising stars of the Democrats.
But then what really got my interest was an hour later, when
Tim Russert had a little teaser on the Today Show and
said one of his guests was going to be Rahm Emmanuel, congressman
from Chicago. HMM, I thought. Coindidence? Hardly. These kind
of things are rarely random in national politics. No, this was
orchestrated.
So here comes Emmanuel on Russert.
I'm all ears waiting for him to knock 'em dead. This might make
me feel like the Dems might have a message after all. And not
only that, but from a guy who is from a district in which I have
some pretty strong connection. Kristi and I are listening carefully.
Russert starts out questioning him. But it isn't Social Security
that gets the first line of questioning. It is the war in Iraq.
While we are waiting for Emmanuel to really lay into Bush, to
be the messenger that we had hoped for, we were more than disappointed.
While the transcript for the
Matthews Show isn't available yet, the Meet the Press
transcript is. So let's just refer to it. Now, I wrote an essay
a few months ago, before the election, entitled something like
"Start Explaining and Fast, John Kerry." This essay
focused on Kerry's lack of courage when he was confronted during
the campaign with Bush's taunting that Kerry wouldn't say whether
or not he would have voted for or against the war knowing "then
what he knew now." We all know what happened. Kerry blew
it. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, he bumbled out
some cockamamie answer that he would still have voted to authorize
the president, but he wouldn't have done it the same way Bush
did, expecting us to figure out what he was trying to say. Blah
Blah Blah. To all who heard it, it was "yes." There
went the anti-war vote. And according to an article in the Chicago
Tribune a few weeks ago, it was the war that decided the election.
This one statement at the Grand Canyon is what lost Kerry the
presidency in my opinion. But hey, what do I know. But my ears
did turn toward the TV when Russert started questioning Emmanuel.
But it wasn't about Social Security first. No, that would come
later. Russert asked him oh about the war in Iraq. After that
line of questioning was over, I was in shock. If this is the
Dems example of a "message man" they got big problems
way beyond what I can imagine. But don't take my word for it.
Let's look at the transcript. Russert basically reiterated the
question that doomed Kerry. One could have reasonable thought
that the Dems would have learned from Kerry's mistakes. But No!
Check this out! (I
have edited it somewhat so that the really meat of this particular
interview shows).
MR. RUSSERT: Now, knowing that
are no weapons of mass destruction, would you still have cast
that vote?
REP. EMANUEL: Yes.. . I still
believe that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the right thing
to do, OK?
MR. RUSSERT: So even knowing
there are no weapons of mass destruction, you would still vote
to go into Iraq?
REP. EMANUEL: You can make--you
could have made a case that Saddam Hussein was a threat....
MR. RUSSERT: What should the
president do? What would you do differently?
REP. EMANUEL: ...what I would
do is I would not have happy talk.... We still don't have a point
on the horizon of what our exit strategy is. Second is if France
and Germany won't go to Iraq and participate in the training
of the forces,.., maybe ask Jordan to do it.
MR. RUSSERT: Should we have
a specific plan for troop withdrawal?
REP. EMANUEL: I would hope
they would have some point on the horizon to think about it.
Oh boy....what a strong message!
Now let's go back over this. On Iraq, the issue that most pollsters
now agree settled the presidential election, we have the Dem
in charge of their House r elections saying that the war was
justified even though the president lied about the reason. And,
his alternative solution to the problem is to have Jordan train
Iraqi troops instead of Germany and France. Oh yeah, and as far
as an "exit strategy" goes, he "would hope they
would have some point on the horizon to think about it."
Oh yeah, let's not forget stopping the "happy talk."
And this is supposed to be
an alternative? Geez. And the Dems wonder why we, the progressives
are a bit frustrated and turned off? This kind of waffling is
exactly what split the Democratic party and suppressed the needed
turnout to beat back the right wing. You would have thought Emmanuel
would have learned something. Apparently not, and that is a problem.
This war was wrong before it
started! It was based on a lie and people are dying needlessly.
To me it was wrong even before we knew that there weren't any
WMD. These guys who claim they represent me and my way of thinking
are still saying that not only was it OK from the beginning,
but that if they could go back, knowing everything they know
now, and redo their vote, they will still vote the same? Is he
serious? And this is their message guy?
I'd like to know who they think
that appeals to, cause I sure can't figure it out. It doesn't
appeal to any Republican or Republican leaning voter - they aren't
going to vote for a Democrat who is sort of for the war but sort
of against it. They're going to vote for the Republican who is
for it. And you're going to alienate the left wing of the Democratic
party, because they are against the war, and have been from the
beginning. The only thing left is the center of the Democrats,
with the left and right wings of the party stripped away. The
center of the Democratic party is really weak on a national level,
but still have a lot of clout in the organizational level, and
their strategic prowess had become about as saavy as a raccoon
raiding the bird feeder. All they do is make you mad.
Mark Donham lives in Brookport, Illlinois. He
can be reached at: markkris@earthlink.net.
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