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Today's
Stories
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
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September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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
Here for More Stories.
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September 9, 2004
The New York
Model
Indymedia
and the Text Message Jihad
By
JEREMY SCAHILL
The guerrilla musicians from the Infernal
Noise Brigade were tuning their instruments, preparing to lead
an unannounced, unpermitted march from Union Square to Madison
Square Garden. Independent journalists from the Indymedia Center
were putting fresh cassettes in their video cameras. An activist
was instructing people to line up two-by-two in a straight line
because "that way the police don't have a legal right to
stop us when we march." The cops were mulling about waiting
for whatever would come.
Then, Union Square started
beeping with a symphony of cell phone text message alerts. It
was like the activist version of that scene in the awful Tom
Clancy movie "The Sum of All Fears" when the mobile
phones of all of the CIA and White House honchos start ringing
during a presidential dinner party. "From comms-dispatch,"
read the message. "Reports of police using orange mesh fencing
to surround protesters at Herald Square. Riot cops moving in.
Cameras, medics and legal observers needed."
Throughout the week in New
York, independent journalists and activist groups used text-messaging
technology to coordinate an impressive, groundbreaking campaign
of direct action and comprehensive news reporting. It was one
of the many creative, guerilla tactics employed by the decentralized
resistance movement in North America that grew out of the WTO
protests in Seattle in 1999. In contrast to the multi-million
dollar security budgets for the Democratic and Republican conventions
and at the recent FTAA meetings in Miami, activists are using
existing technology that is virtually cost free to mobilize hundreds
of actions and thousands of activists.
In addition to the various
groups using SMS text messaging to send out action alerts, warnings,
news and announcements, the New York Independent Media Center
(IMC) set up an automated information line that activists could
call 24 hours a day to hear breaking news from Indymedia, a calendar
of events and to listen to a live streaming broadcast from the
A-noise radio collective, which was broadcasting live reports
from the streets. At protests past, the work of Indymedia was
primarily available to people at home. In New York, it went mobile.
And it was a huge success.
"Our task is to help facilitate
horizontal communication and information distribution to all
the activists in the streets," says Evan Henshaw-Plath,
the Indymedia tech activist who developed the info-line concept.
"The police want to keep the protests under control and
stay a step ahead of the protesters. So, all of this communications
infrastructure helps on a tactical level. We've appropriated
technology as an essential tool for radical social change."
He points to a moment during
Sunday's mass protest when the "Thousand Coffin March"
needed 60 more people and, through text messaging and the information
line, they were able to rapidly deploy the needed people. "When
there is a blockade or arrests, activists know where to go or
how to avoid arrest," he said. "All of this helps make
the protest more effective."
"It was a last minute
project, which showed how using free software and about $10,
we could create quality phone based information systems,"
said Henshaw-Plath.
The project grew out of a concept
developed by Aspiration Tech of San Francisco a few weeks before
the RNC. It was based on a software package called Asterisk,
which takes information from the web and converts it to speech
to provide it to mobile phones. "We were looking into applications
for non-profits and activist organizations to use VOIP and internet
telephony in relation to their work and the upcoming presidential
elections," says Henshaw-Plath. "After getting the
system setup, a casual conversation lead to the topic of 'wouldn't
it be cool to do something like this for the RNC protests next
week?'"
Henshaw-Plath says that despite
almost no publicity, the service received more than 2000 calls
over a 4-day period.
The SMS text messaging was
coordinated primarily by using a free service from a website
called <txtmob.com>. Users could create a personal account
free of charge and sign up for groups similar to e-mail list
serves. Some of them were unmoderated and had unreliable information.
But others, like the ones operated by nyc.indymedia.org and the
NY Comms collective, were moderated, accurate and effective.
"There is this ongoing
problem of lack of media coverage of protest activity, particularly
in the United States," says the founder of TXTMob.com who
goes by the nom de guerre of John Henry. "Text messaging
becomes another tool in the activist arsenal, a way of representing
their actions to the outside world in a direct manner, rather
than being dependent upon establishment mass media to tell their
story for them."
TXTMob launched two days before
the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Its overhead cost
was the donated labor of Henry and others from the Institute
for Applied Autonomy, an art and engineering collective that
develops technologies for political dissent. In Boston, 200 people
subscribed to the service. In New York, there were more than
5500; a number that far exceeded Henry1s expectations.
"Having this kind of communication
infrastructure allows much more spontaneous, fluid kinds of actions
that can be taken in response to real time events," says
Henry. "It maintains the element of surprise, which ultimately
makes them more effective."
A perfect example of this was
on Sunday when the Mouse Bloc staged a series of spontaneous
street theater protests in Times Square. During the RNC, Republican
delegates had been offered discounts to Broadway shows ahead
of the week's activities. For hours, the police chased activists
around as they confronted delegates coming out of the theaters.
When the cops would shut down one action, text messages alerted
the activists to the next target. Police undoubtedly received
the text messages along with the activists, but the spontaneity
forced the police to engage in a cat and mouse game with the
activists.
While the corporate media largely
ignored the protests, there was one outlet where people could
turn 24 hours a day for the most up-to-date, comprehensive coverage
available anywhere. The New York City Independent Media Center
website (nyc.indymedia.org)
featured multimedia reporting and streaming radio broadcasts,
legal updates and multiple calendars of events during the RNC.
It also produced a one-hour TV show each night that was broadcast
live on satellite television and community TV stations nationwide.
"We simply took the best
lessons of past IMC convergences and built on them, focusing
on systems that would facilitate multiple points of information
dissemination," says Ana Nogueira, one of the founders of
the NYC IMC. "We're journalists," says Indymedia activist
Josh Breitbart who also works for Clamor Magazine. "It's
only by being that plugged in that we were able to break all
the stories that we did."
All of this was coordinated
out of a large, donated space in lower Manhattan, which provided
a newsroom for hundreds of journalists to work from during the
weeklong protests. The total cost of the coverage was less than
$50,000.
"Compare this to the multi-million
dollar budgets of corporate outlets like the broadcast networks
who often can't even get their facts straight," says Arun
Gupta, an editor of the NYC IMC newspaper The Indypendent. "We
also play a unique legal role, gathering and compiling video
footage that is used by lawyers in defending people.2
In the midst of creative tech
wizards and various innovative tactics, Indymedia also produced
an artifact from the days of old: an actual newspaper. The NYC
IMC produced three special issues of The Indypendent in less
than 2 weeks, one of them during the RNC. The writing was solid,
the reporting was creative and its distribution was incredible.
The first edition alone had a print run of 200,000, the largest
distribution in decades for an independent publication produced
for a protest.
But the big story in New York
was the dissemination of tactical, real-time information, like
the text messaging.
The SMS messages alerted activists
of routes that remained open to travel to protests outside Madison
Square Garden, as the police blocked off large sections of the
city. It alerted Indymedia journalists of where cameras were
needed to document protests, legal observers of real-time rights
violations and activist medic teams of where people were in need
of medical attention.
But with the real time updates
for activists comes a conundrum: if anyone can utilize the service,
wouldn't that mean that law enforcement could use it against
the demonstrators or to shut down direct actions preemptively?
"The big question in my
mind is whether our breaking news reporting is more useful for
us or for the police," says Breitbart. "The police
were relying on our website for updates on the protests. The
group that probably made most immediate use of the information
was the NYPD." Breitbart estimates that Indymedia had as
many as 250 journalist/activists on the streets phoning in updates
throughout the protests, far less than the NYPD. Additionally,
the police had a surveillance blimp, helicopters, video cameras
and 200 police officers with helmet cameras capable of live streaming
video back to a central headquarters.
According to The New York Times,
the security buildup for the RNC represented the largest group
of police and military forces ever assembled to provide security
at a national political gathering. Just blocks from the IMC was
the Multi-Agency Command Center, or MACC, the security 3nerve
center,2 out of which some 66 separate city, state and federal
agencies worked during the RNC. Among them, the 37,000-member
NYPD, armed with a security budget of $60 million dollars, which
is larger than all but 19 of the world1s standing armies. "But
it's not clear that they were able to centralize and compile
information as rapidly as could the Indymedia network,"
said Breitbart.
Despite the massive security
budget, that's probably true.
The Times reported that during
the weeklong protests, the police were monitoring websites like
nyc.indymedia.org, "discovering this week that, in the course
of a protest, demonstrators were calling in reports to a message
service that posted the dispatches on the Web." The police
say that was especially helpful to the work of units operating
on mopeds, motorcycles and bikes. These "rapid response2
tactics by the police were labeled internally as the "Kelly
Doctrine," after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. On Wednesday,
an Indymedia journalist posted the following report: "The
Entire Scooter Goon Squad is wrapped around Fifth and 48th reading
INDYMEDIA from an internet phone booth. Everyone should come
by and bring your video cameras."
While the activists don't have
a counter-intelligence program or a mole in the NYPD, they do
have their own surveillance operation. As the police monitored
the activists, the activists also monitored the police. They
had their own central command of sorts, equipped with a handheld
police scanner and a "trunk scanner" that is capable
of listening in on police communications as they switch among
various frequencies. The $1500 hardware was donated to the activists.
"Monitoring the police scanners helps give you an overall
sense of what's happening in the streets," says one of the
activists who operated the scanners. "It was helpful in
corroborating reports we were getting from the field and determining
when and where arrests were about to happen."
Despite the police use of Indymedia
to monitor protest activity, activists say it was a significant
step forward in tactical resistance. "It was historic,"
says IMC editor Gupta. "It shows how powerful a decentralized,
de-funded movement has become."
"If we don't do anything,
then we have nothing," says Breitbart. "The police
still have their Intel. On a level playing field, they're still
going to win, but it is incumbent on people to learn how to use
information in a larger way."
And authorities at the highest
level of government seem to be paying attention. Just as the
week of protests was kicking off, the Justice Department announced
it had opened a criminal investigation into the New York City
Indymedia center. The Department is demanding Indymedia's internet
service provider hand over records regarding posts on the site
that listed the names of Republican delegates. The federal government
is claiming the posting of the delegates1 names may constitute
a form of voter intimidation. "The subpoena shows they view
us as a threat," says Gupta. "It is McCarthyite, Nixonian
political harassment."
The hope on the part of many
who organized the Indymedia operation in New York is that activists
will apply the tactics and technology more broadly in future
protests. "Frankly, Indymedia has evolved faster than the
protest movement," says Breitbart. "The next step is
for people to learn how to use the information effectively."
Still, Gupta says, "Technology
can't substitute for good organizing."
Jeremy Scahill is a producer/reporter for the national
radio and TV show Democracy Now! He can be reached at:
jeremy@democracynow.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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