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Today's Stories April 20, 2006 Justin E.H. Smith Doctors and Lethal Injection April 19, 2006 P. Sainath More Kids? Pay More for Your Water Norman Solomon When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch on Iran Anthony Papa When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards for the Rich and Poor in New York Mike Ferner Movement Blues Stanley Heller The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later: Still No Justice Rifundazione "We Defeated Berlusconi" Christopher Reed Secrets of the Garden of Bliss Alexander Cockburn The Pulitzer Farce Website of the Day Bunker Busters: the Movie April 18, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts How Safe is Your Job? Eric Wingerter Washington Post vs. Venezuela Juan Santos What Immigrants Need to Learn from the Black Civil Rights Movement Greg Weiher The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited Sam Bahour Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse? Behzad Yaghmaian In the Gaze of New Orleans Website of the Day The FBI and the Jack Anderson Files   April 17, 2006 Kevin Zeese An Interview with the First Arab-American Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity Uri Avnery Olmert the Fox Norman Solomon Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing of Iran? John Ross A Real Day Without Mexicans? Laila al-Haddad The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch from Gaza Jeffrey Blankfort A Tale of Two Members of Congress and the Capitol Hill Police Website of the Day Dixie Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down   April 15 / 16, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair How Star Wars Came to the Arctic Ralph Nader Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin Thaddeus Hoffmeister The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for Being Right Kevin Prosen / Dave Zirin Privilege Meets Protest at Duke Thomas P. Healy Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell Berry Kristoffer Larsson Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical Flim-Flam Fred Gardner Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education Edwin Krales New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the Poor Brian Cloughley Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback John Holt Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son Seth Sandronsky What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and the Privatization of Public Schools Rafael Renteria Making It Plain About New Orleans Michael Ortiz Hill In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation William A. Cook An Israel Accountability Act Gideon Levy Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl Andrew Wimmer Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign Madis Senner Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush Michael Kuehl The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"? Mark Scaramella When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm of Mark Twain Nate Mezmer 187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop Jesse Walker Playlist Poets' Basement Engel, Laymon and Subiet Website of the Weekend Pink Serenades Bush   April 14, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials Resign on Principle Saul Landau Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets Stan Cox The Real Death Tax Kevin Zeese Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe? Brian McKinlay Bad Times for Bush's Buddies Howard Meyers Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ Ishmael Reed The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks to Chastize Blacks Website of the Day Asshole: a Film Strip   April 13, 2006 CounterPunch News Service Powell's "Bitch"? Norman Solomon The Lobby and the Bulldozer Stanley Heller Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement Jeff Birkenstein Bush and Freedom of Speech Evelyn J. Pringle Not So Fast, Mr. Powell Michael Donnelly The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart Kamran Matin Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran? Website of the Day "Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"   April 12, 2006 Vijay Prashad Resisting Fences Alan Maass The Suicide of Anthony Soltero Dave Lindorff Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked, You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast Ron Jacobs Resistance: the Remedy for Fear Ramzy Baroud The Imminent Decline of the American Empire? Randall Dodd How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers Missy Comley Beattie The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!" P. Sainath The Corporate Hijack of India's Water Website of the Day "The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"   April 11, 2006 Al Krebs Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration and a History of Greed Lawrence R. Velvel The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight Sonia Nettinin Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation Willliam S. Lind The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors Robert Ovetz Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish Pratyush Chandra Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!" Grant F. Smith The Bush Administration's Final Surprise? Laray Polk Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights Francis Boyle O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home Turf José Pertierra A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455 Website of the Day The Dead Emcee Scrolls   April 10, 2006 Ralph Nader Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats Heather Gray Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Uri Avnery The Big Wink Joshua Frank Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers Seth Sandronsky Immigration and Occupations Michael Leonardi The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important" Evelyn Pringle Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald? Tom Kerr FoxNews Does Ward Churchill Lucinda Marshall The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney Website of the Day Brown Berets April 7 -9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama Jeffrey St. Clair The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile Technology to China Patrick Cockburn The War Gets Grimmer Every Day David Vest The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney Dave Lindorff The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward Gary Leupp "Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean? Elaine Cassel The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This? Saul Landau Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules James Ridgeway "This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film Ron Jacobs Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money John Walsh Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late Ramzy Baroud The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua Christopher Brauchli Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits Todd Chretien What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America Jonathan Scott Javelins at the Head of the Monolith John Bomar What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas Michele Brand Iran, the US and the EU Ronan Sheehan Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese? Mickey Z. Let Us Now Praise OIL Don Monkerud March of the Bunglers Michael Dickinson The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play Website of the Weekend The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast

April 20, 2006 "The Solution to 'Enemy Deprivation Syndrome'" Cheney, the Neocons and China By GARY LEUPP Robert Dreyfuss’ article “Vice Squad,” about the Office of the Vice President in the American Prospect) is the best piece I’ve seen in awhile on the neoconservatives and their persistent influence in the Bush Administration. But it also places the neocons’ Middle East preoccupation in wider perspective. Dreyfuss notes that the OVP is “very difficult for journalists to penetrate” because of its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of secrecy. Even so, “a Prospect investigation shows that the key to Cheney’s influence lies with the corps of hard-line acolytes he assembled in 2001. They serve not only as his eyes and ears, monitoring a federal bureaucracy that resists many of Cheney’s pet initiatives, but sometimes serve as his fists, too, when the man from Wyoming feels that the passive-aggressive bureaucrats need bullying.” Among key staff members, Dreyfuss lists the disgraced Lewis “Scooter” Libby, formerly Cheney’s chief of staff and top national security adviser; current top security adviser John Hannah; current chief of staff David Addington; national security advisers Eric Edelman and Victoria Nuland (wife of neocon heavy Robert Kagan); Middle East specialists William J. Luti, and David Wurmser; and Asia hands Stephen Yates and Samantha Ravich. He also lists an array of technocrats, lobbyists, domestic policy gurus and communications directors. (For an official enjoying about 18% approval, Cheney has a large PR staff.) Dreyfuss describes how on numerous occasions one of Cheney’s “acolytes” has intervened to overturn decisions made by the State Department, CIA or other government bodies to produce the result Cheney desires. For example, in February 2005 King Abdullah of Jordan on a Washington visit urged the U.S. to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader, to counter the power of the new popularly elected Hamas administration. The State Department was inclined to agree, but Hannah stepped in, arguing Cheney’s view that the entire Palestinian Authority was now irrelevant. (Washington has since cut nearly all ties to the Palestinian Authority.) Cheney consistently gets his way, controlling what information reaches President Bush, who has little interest in details. An “insider deeply involved in U.S. policy toward North Korea” described the decision-making process. “The president is given only the most basic notions about the Korea issue. They tell him, ‘Above South Korea is a country called North Korea. It is an evil regime.’ … So that translates into a presidential decision: Why enter into any agreement with an evil regime?” Lawrence Wilkerson has referred to the Vice President’s office as the center of a “cabal” that pressed for war on Iraq and built the case by cherry-picked dubious intelligence. That it’s a powerful nest of neoconservatives intent on “regime change” in Syria and Iran is no news. That the simple-minded, bellicose president leans on Cheney for advice and thereby empowers an alliance of aggressive nationalists and neoconservatives to set foreign policy is no news either. But Dreyfuss sheds new light on Cheney’s perception of the world, and the role that China plays within it. Cheney’s leading China specialist, Stephen Yates, and several other staffers (including Libby) worked for California Congressman Christopher Cox in the 1990s during the investigation into Chinese political influence in the U.S. that followed allegations of Beijing contributions to the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign. The long report they produced maintains that China is a looming threat and rival, with its rapacious need for Middle East oil and designs on Taiwan. Charles W. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to China who has known him many years says that Yates, as well as neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, formerly top officials in Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department, “all [see] China as the solution to ‘enemy deprivation syndrome.’” (You need some unifying enemy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.) I’ve hesitated about whether to apply the word “neoconservative” to persons like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. I tend to follow the Christian Science Monitor list. Paul Wolfowitz, Libby, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Richard Bolton, and Elliott Abrams are intellectuals absorbed in the project of using U.S. military power to remake the Middle East to improve Israel’s long-term security interests. (Hannah, David Wurmser, Eric Edelman, and other White House staffers not on the Monitor’s dated list also fall into this category.) Ultimate decision-makers Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld on the other hand are sometimes referred to as “aggressive nationalists.” They are no doubt Christian Zionists, but are probably most interested in transforming the “Greater Middle East” in the interests of corporate America in an increasingly competitive world. They’re probably more concerned about the geopolitics of oil and the placement of “enduring” military bases to “protect U.S. interests” than the fate of Israel. Dreyfuss’ article suggests that Cheney (and thus, the administration) sees China as the biggest long-term threat to those interests. If conflict with China is inevitable, it makes sense to have U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq and maybe Iran and Syria. If China is dependent on Middle East oil, it makes sense for the U.S. to be able to control how and where it flows from the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil fields. It makes sense to cultivate an alliance with India, risking the accusation of nuclear hypocrisy in doing so. It makes sense to ratchet up tensions on the Korean Peninsula, by linking North Korea to Iran and Iraq, calling it “evil,” dismissing South Korea’s “sunshine diplomacy” efforts and encouraging Japan to take a hard line towards Pyongyang. It makes sense to get Tokyo to declare, for the first time, that the security of the Taiwan Straights is of common concern to it and Washington. It makes sense to regain a strategic toehold in the Philippines, in the name of the War on Terror, and to vilify the growing Filipino Maoist movement. It makes sense for a man like Cheney, who decided on Bush’s staff in late 2000, to seed the cabinet with strategically-placed neocons who have a vision of a new Middle East. Because (1) that vision fits in perfectly with the broader New World Order and U.S. plans to contain China, and (2) the neocons as a coordinated “persuasion” if not movement, with their fingers in a dozen right-wing think tanks, and the Israel Lobby including its Christian Right component, and the academic community, are well-placed to serve as what Dreyfuss calls “acolytes.” They are equipped with a philosophical outlook that justifies the use of hyped, imagined threats to unite the masses behind rulers’ objectives and ambitions, to suppress dissent and control through fear. They’re inclined to identify each new target as “a new Hitler,” and to justify their actions as “an answer to the Holocaust.” They have served Cheney well, and he them so far. They’re all being exposed, maybe weakened. But as Dreyfuss states at the end of his article, “The true measure of how powerful the vice president’s office remains today is whether the United States chooses to confront Iran and Syria or to seek diplomatic solutions. For the moment, at least, the war party led by Dick Cheney remains in ascendancy.” Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

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