home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

New Stories Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch The Empire Viewed from Oceanside by Alexander Cockburn; Rumsfeld's Enforcer: the Mysterious Career of Stephen Cambone by Jeffrey St. Clair; "We Want to Kill Westerners": Inside the Saudi Oil Bombings: by Patrick Cockburn; The Last Straw? Kerry, Judges and Abortion: Brandy Baker. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Now Available: Hot New CounterPunch T-Shirts! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories June 12 / 13, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede June 11, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Reagan in Truth and Fiction Ron Jacobs Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit Chris Floyd Funeral Games Steven Sherman How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton Mokhiber / Weissman Remembering Reagan Norman Solomon Media's Mourning in America Paul Alexander The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson CounterPunch Wire The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk About Planned Attacks on Cuba     June 10, 2004 Noam Chomsky The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity Through Marketing Gary Leupp Bush, the Religious Scholar Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns Saul Landau Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade Scott Evans Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another Tool of the Democrats Jacob Levich John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons Zeynep Toufe Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures" Nico Pitney Reform at Wal-Mart? Dave Zirin Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution Jack McCarthy Where Were You When Reagan Croaked? Gary Corseri Nouns That Should be Acronyms David Price Reagan and the Black Budget Website of the Day Inequality by the Numbers   June 9, 2004 Mustafa Barghouthi Israel's Common Use of Torture Must be Exposed Mike Whitney Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending Torture John Chuckman Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop Jim Tarbell / Roger Burbach Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq Dave Lindorff Put Reagan on the $3 Bill Miguel D'Escoto Reagan was the Butcher of My People Becky Burgwin The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero Patrick Cockburn The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave Baghdad   June 8, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse? Dave Lindorff The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam? Phillip Cryan Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia Mark Zepezauer Getting Reagan Wrong Mickey Z. Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions John L. Hess Reagan and Bush in Normandy Alex Dawoody Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance Christopher Fons Reagan in a Word: Mean Niranjan Ramakrishnan Some Tenets are More Important Than Others Ahmed Bouzid Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun Michael Leon Bush the Narcissist   June 7, 2004 Jason Leopold New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes Patrick Cockburn The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing Dennis Hans From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy Tracy McLellan Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics Bill Blum The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War Ben Tripp What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter Susan Davis Reagan, In a Nutshell Phil Gasper Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance Website of the Day A Child's ABCs of Terrorism June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations   June 4, 2004 Chris Floyd Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House Cornwell / Penketh Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy Wayne Madsen Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink Greg Moses Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq Yitzak Laor Before Rafah Ghali Hassan Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte? Jane Stillwater God, the Rapture and Vera Casey CounterPunch Wire D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage? John Borowski Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush Mike Griffin Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW Alexander Cockburn Has Bush Gone Over the Edge? Website of the Day Aquae Urbis Romae: Water and Empire     June 3, 2004 Ron Jacobs Iran's Nuclear Dilemma Dr. Susan Block America in tha Hood Michael Donnelly The Bully and the Brahmin John Chuckman Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged Christopher Brauchli The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month Samia Nassar Melki Caravaggio in Iraq Mike Whitney Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case Diane Rejman Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead Scott Morris "WMDs" in Cuba Paul de Rooij Palestinian Misery in Perspective     June 2, 2004 Brian Cloughley The Liars are Winning Ray McGovern How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence" Josh Frank The Anybody But Bush Offensive Mike Whitney The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots Jackie Corr Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana Robert Jensen The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too Alexander Cockburn "Bye, Bye Boonville!"   June 1, 2004 Gary Leupp Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him William A. Cook Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah Dave Lindorff Will the Times Clean House? Kevin Zeese Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed? Jacob Levich Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production Kathy Kelly Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government Website of the Day Remind Us     May 29 / 31, 2004 Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh The Origins of Memorial Day Janine Pommy Vega Memo for Memorial Day Mike Ferner On Their Way to Abu Ghraib Alfred W. McCoy The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research Douglas Valentine An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions Chris White First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto Bruce Anderson The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu David Vest Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire Saul Landau Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy? Kurt Nimmo Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA Elaine Cassel The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders Will Potter The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist" Ben Tripp They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches Dr. Susan Block Save Abu Ghraib! Kia Kojouri Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh Mickey Z D-Day: 60 Years is Enough! Jon Brown Correcting the Correction at the Times Patrick B. Barr Pre-emptive War Insurance Stephen Gowans Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel Tom Gorman Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New Dave Zirin Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad Gregory Weiher Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy" Erik Cummings Jung Meets Bush Poets' Basement Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert   May 28, 2004 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5 Greg Moses Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib Dave Lindorff Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work Norman Solomon Leaping for Lies at the Times Rep. Bill Delahunt Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba Paul McGeough Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves Niranjan Ramakrishnan India and Nehru: 40 Years After Alexander Cockburn NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"     May 27, 2004 Amy Goodman / David Goodman Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times Douglas Valentine Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs John L. Hess The Times Confesses...Kind Of Stew Albert Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist Dave Dellinger a 1993 Interview Christopher Brauchli Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids Rampton / Stauber Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony     May 26, 2004 Ron Jacobs Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours Robert Fisk The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech Zeynep Toufe New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation Conn Hallinan Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection Tom Stephens 2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes Derek Medley Protesting Gov. Bigot CounterPunch Wire FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art Andrew Cockburn The Trail to Tehran   May 25, 2004 Joe Bageant The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas Col. Dan Smith A Question of Human Dignity Gary Handschumacher Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home Toni Solo A Developing War in the Andes Marc Estrin September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11 Stephen Banko, III A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops" Website of the Day The Wizard of Whimsy May 24, 2004 Ron Jacobs Dan Senor is Safe! Kurt Nimmo Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages Sam Hamod Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" Mike Whitney The Wedding was a Bomb Stan Goff Open Season on MAMs Image of the Day A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs     May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary Jeffrey St. Clair When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer Brian Cloughley America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq Saul Landau Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People Brandy Baker Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry Randall Robinson Bushwhacked in the Caribbean Uri Avnery The Rape of Rafah Ben Tripp Assume the Worst Bruce Anderson News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business Josh Ruebner Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers Peter Wolson, Ph. D. Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib Chloe Cockburn In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy Linda Burnham Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value Adrien Rain Burke War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse David Krieger Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy Ron Jacobs Turnaround Poets' Basement Ford, Albert & LaMorticella   May 21, 2004 Ray Close The Canards of the Apologists Christopher Brauchli "The Object of Torture is Torture" Amira Hass Darkness at Noon Jack McCarthy Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army? Bill Kauffman Nader v. Bush Omar Barghouti No More Tears for America Ghali Hassan Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza Christopher Reed How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture Website of the Day Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much   May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today         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.     Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004 The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup Reagan Lives...in Calgary By WAYNE SAUNDERS D-Day is one thing; Ronald Reagan is quite another altogether: His Legacy lives on, in Calgary, Alberta. Surely it was a bad omen. Before Game Six of the Stanley Cup final from the Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, millions of CBC viewers were subjected to a glowing tribute to the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who had just died. This was then followed by a D-Day tribute. Now, Alberta has its share of rich rednecks and oily American imports, but that's hardly a reason to salute Reagan's legacy before a hockey game on Canada's public airwaves. Afterall, the CBC wouldn't have survived very long in Reagan's deregulated America. Don't get me wrong; I don't mind a little war with my hockey (actually distinguishing between the two has become merely a matter of degree). In any case, Reagan was all about war -- the wrong ones that is. He bungled his way in and out of Lebanon, and then waged a war of distraction in Grenada. He was misdirected into Lybia, and by way of delusion, he unleashed the Star Wars "missile defence" juggernaut. But the worst of his wars, was by far, the one he waged by proxy in Central America. The media darling and "teflon president" spent billions of US taxes dollars creating, training and equipping rightwing armies and fascist elements throughout the Central American isthmus. This led to the death, torture and rape of tens of thousands of civilians. These are the teachers, farmers, doctors, students, nurses, and children of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala that Reagan's supporters are willfully ignorant of, or choose to forget. One wonders: how many amongst the 200,000 Americans who paid their resects to him, (because he made them "feel good"), have ever heard of El Salvador's Atlactl Battalion? This was the first Salvadoran unit to receive US training after Reagan came into office. In December, 1981, after receiving their marching orders from US advisors, they went on murderous rampage through Morazan province, slaughtering hundreds of peasants, mostly women, children and the elderly. Thanks to the efforts of freelance journalist, Ray Bonner, the story made the front page of the New York Times, directly contradicting Reagan's formal certification to Congress the following day that El Salvador was "achieiving substantial control over elements of its own armed forces." Bonner's article and subsequent others, greatly angered the Reagan administration. He was promptly replaced in August, 1982. 75 % of all US aid to El Salvador went directly to the military, with the predictable staggering results. In the name of "strengthening democracy" atrocities throughout the region reached horrifying levels in the 1980s, rivaling Sadam Hussein's torture state at its macabre worst (Reagan's tilt towards Iraq is another chapter altogether). I recall sitting in class in 1983 and hearing my History Professor, (a man who was advising NATO on arms control issues), say that it's no wonder that certain people despised Reagan and the foreign policy of the United States. The US administration was staunchly supporting the closest thing to Hitler that Guatemala had yet experienced. General Rioss Mont, whom Reagan lauded as a great democrat was committing genocide against the indigenous people in the highlands. Meanwhile from US bases in Honduras, CIA-backed Contra terrorists murdered upwards of 40,000 civilians in the US funded aggression against the Sandinista government. Reagan labeled these thugs as the moral equivalent to America's founding fathers. "I'm a Contra too", he exclaimed. Did he understand what he was saying? Who can tell? But this much is clear: once he'd made up his mind about something, there were no grey areas, much to the detriment of all of the innocents killed, maimed or made into refugees as a result of his "steadfastness." A portent of this dangerous personality defect appeared while he was still Governor of California, when he offerred the following remedy for the spreading campus revolt against the Vietnam War: "If there has to be a bloodbath, lets get it over with." In July, 1986, Reagan's attack on Nicaragua was recognized as an international crime of aggression and the United States stands accused to this day, refusing to pay reparations. In the name of fighting "communism" in Central America, Ronald Reagan became an international pariah. His crusade was deeply unpopular at home and abroad, and so US foreign policy was essentually driven underground. Oliver North and the Iran Contra crew began diverting the profits from arms sales to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, in order to fund the Contra War, in contravention of the 1984 Boland Amendment, whereby the US Congress forbade any US intelligence agency from assisting the Contras in any way. "I thought it was a neat idea at the time," said the Gipper. As part of Reagan's global crusade to rollback communism, he upped the ante in Afghanistan, training and funding the Islamist mujahadeen to fight the Russians, only to have this Jihad eventually spin out of control and blowback in America's face in the form of Osama bin Laden. The first Reagan administration was full of fanatical militarists and apocalyptic dispensationalists. Defense Undersecretary T.K. Jones once told a reporter that "everyone would survive a nuclear war if there were enough shovels to go around," while Secretary of the Interior James Watt advised us that "We don't have to protect the environment - the Second Coming is at hand." For the most part, the press fell for the act, as outlined in the popular style of Mark Herstgaard's "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency." Only after the Iran-Contra scandal broke, and Reagan's approval ratings plummetted from 67% to 46% did the Reagan spell begin to lift. It was also then that he began to make an about face. He didn't exactly bring down the Soviet Union which was crumbling through internal contradiction. But this much must be conceded: Reagan lent support to Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalizing reforms, angering his hardline anti-communist base, but that no longer mattered, because he'd made up his mind. A new detente with what he had earlier called an "evil empire" led to the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, something inconceivable in his first term. It is difficult to imagine a similar flip-flop occuring, from the single-minded ideology of George W. Bush--on any issue. Nevertheless, given all the gushing and collective amnesia of the past week, it is clear that Reagan's annointed status as The Great Communicator over the US body politic served as the necessary precursor to the evil spells of the current administration. Apparently Jeb Bush was in the crowd for Game Seven in Tampa Bay. In the final minute, with the Calgary Flames trailing by one goal, a dubious, "mid-season" penalty call against Calgary's Andrew Ference helped seal the fate in Tampa's favor. Now, isn't that exactly what we'd expect to happen in Florida? (it so happens Ference, an outspoken, articulate young man claimed in a recent interview that Ralph Nader was his favourite political figure). So you see, it all adds up. It seems that symbolism carries its own karmic debt. It's one thing to honour Canada's D-Day veterans and those who died fighting fascism in Europe; it's quite another altogether to honour the man who enabled it in Central America. No wonder Calgary lost. Another bad omen. Wayne Saunders is a freelance writer from Canada. He can reached at punditman@punditman.com Weekend Edition Features for June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /