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Today's Stories

September 25, 2003

David Krieger
The Second Nuclear Age


September 24, 2003

Stan Goff
Generational Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War

William Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark

David Vest
Politics for Bookies

Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin

Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship

Latino Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!

Neve Gordon
Sharon's Preemptive Zeal

Website of the Day
Bands Against Bush

September 23, 2003

Bernardo Issel
Dancing with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand

Gary Leupp
To Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo

Gregory Wilpert
An Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela

Steven Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and Radical

Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?

Robert Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq

William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent

Elaine Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers

Yigal Bronner
The Truth About the Wall

Website of the Day
The Baghdad Death Count

 

Recent Stories

September 20 / 22, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Silliest Show in Town

Alexander Cockburn
Lighten Up, America!

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet

Anne Brodsky
Return to Afghanistan

Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me

Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie

Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open

Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism

Kurt Nimmo
Colin Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja

Brian Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame

Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush

Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda

Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector

Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!

Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq

John Ross
WTO Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold

Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals

Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane

Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization

David Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America

Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps

Poets Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?

 

September 19, 2003

Ilan Pappe
The Hole in the Road Map

Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times

Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon

Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old

Jeff Halper
Preparing for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid

Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse

Clare Brandabur
Hitchens Smears Edward Said

Website of the Day
Live from Palestine

 

September 18, 2003

Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

Wayne Madsen
Wesley Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job

Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

Wesley Clark and Waco

Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze

Dominique de Villepin
The Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere

Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope

Elaine Cassel
Payback is Hell

Jeffrey St. Clair
Leavitt for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought

Website of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear

 

September 17, 2003

Timothy J. Freeman
The Terrible Truth About Iraq

St. Clair / Cockburn
A Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark

Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark

Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal

Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat

Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!


September 16, 2003

Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security

Robert Fisk
Powell in Baghdad

Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths

M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics of Terror

Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages

Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate Welfare

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraq Wreck

Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine


The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!


September 15, 2003

Stan Goff
It Was the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam

Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead

Writers Bloc
We Are Winning: a Report from Cancun

James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?

Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights

Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City

Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash

Uri Avnery
Assassinating Arafat

Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm

Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg

 


September 13 / 14, 2003

Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle

Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance

Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America

Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld

William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet

Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon

Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation

Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three

Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty

Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun

Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause

David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)

Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show

Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash

Adam Engel
Something Killer

Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart

Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest

 

September 12, 2003

Writers Block
Todos Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun

Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers

Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11

Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico

Linda S. Heard
British Entrance Exams

John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity

Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military

Subcomandante Marcos
The Death Train of the WTO

Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad

 

 

September 11, 2003

Robert Fisk
A Grandiose Folly

Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001

Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President

Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11

Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11

Stew Albert
What Goes Around

Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup

 

September 10, 2003

John Ross
Cancun Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?

Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared for the Postwar Bloodbath?

Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell

Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception

Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!

Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate

Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens as Model Apostate

Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done

Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell

 

Hot Stories

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

William Blum
Myth and Denial in the War on Terrorism

Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy

Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go

Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

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September 26, 2003

Another Nameless Victim in Baghdad

Bomb Destroys the Media's Illusions

By ROBERT FISK

Arasat is a quiet, uneventful suburb of Baghdad, a place of good restaurants serving moderate Lebanese wine, middle class and educated and absolutely unassociated with violence. So the bomb which stopped the clock of the Christian family across the road from the Aike Hotel--it showed 6.51am--also exploded many illusions. The American NBC television network was based in the pseudo-Greek apartment block, there was only one night-watchman and the reporters felt secure far from the American tanks and armoured personnel carriers that guard the Palestine Hotel and the other targets of opportunity in Baghdad.

In bed yesterday morning, I heard the blast--a very minute increase in air pressure--that took the life of the Somali doorman at the Aike, and by the time I got there, it was the usual blood and bits of metal, the watch timer--found by a journalist--and possibly the battery for the bomb--found by The Independent on the roof of a villa opposite--that was left. A little bomb, left behind the hotel's generator, in the hope, no doubt, that it would ignite enough fuel to bring down the wretched place. In the event, of course, the dead Somali--remember Black Hawk Down?--played only a bit part in the drama.

The world was told that a Baghdad hotel had been targeted, that staff of an American television network were the intended victims and that there had been "one" Somali dead. He had no name. No one knew his name. But they did know the name of David Moodie, the NBC soundman who received a nasty piece of broken glass in his arm.

"Americans targeted in Baghdad hotel bomb" was on the news wires. Which was, of course, exactly what the nasty little bomber wanted.

You can see how his master's mind worked. One, attack the Americans. Two, go for a hotel. Three, be sure that it would receive more publicity than the killing of an innocent Iraqi bus passenger.

Lt-Col Peter Jones of "Task Force 1-6" told us it was an "improvised explosive device" and, long after he had left, the FBI and its heavily armed escorts arrived in two 4-by-4s, one of them speaking in a cockney accent, to assess the crime. Too late for the timing mechanism, they did not even spot the clock in the villa opposite and that, I suppose, is the problem when you have to get your "security" escort and arm yourself and find the location long after the attack has taken place. Certainly too late to understand the effect on the Christian family across the road. They stood, professional people--the husband is the Daimler agent in Baghdad--asking who would pay for their broken windows and blasted doors and shredded sofas upon which they were sleeping when the bomb exploded. "At least before all this, I could drink tea on the lawn outside my house," the man said. So what can the Iraqis do? Nothing. What can the Western journalists do? Remain discrete, in undefended hotels like the Aike? Or cluster like rodents around the Palestine Hotel, which is defended by an army of Iraqi policemen and US troops? Arasat was safe--at least, until the NBC lads turned up to live there, along with their "stand-upper" dish and floodlights on the roof.

Many Western journalists in Baghdad were reassessing their safety last night. Was the bomb a warning? Or just a propaganda explosion with a single, poor Somali as the real victim? Needless to say, more attention was paid in Baghdad yesterday afternoon to the death of Aqila al-Hashimi, the ex-Baathist member of the US-appointed Interim Council who was shot and gravely wounded in an assassination attempt on Saturday.

Ambushed with great precision--the road outside her home was blocked by gunmen's cars as she left--Mrs Hashimi had been operated on for bullet wounds to her abdomen in the Kindi Hospital and then taken to an American medical facility outside the capital. Initially, the former foreign ministry official under Saddam Hussein was reported as being "out of danger". Yesterday, she died from her wounds, the first member of America's Iraqi "government" to be murdered.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Weekend Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Silliest Show in Town

Alexander Cockburn
Lighten Up, America!

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet

Anne Brodsky
Return to Afghanistan

Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me

Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie

Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open

Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism

Kurt Nimmo
Colin Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja

Brian Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame

Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush

Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda

Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector

Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!

Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq

John Ross
WTO Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold

Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals

Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane

Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization

David Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America

Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps

Poets Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?

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