|
Articles
JUNE
2004
The Grand Inquisitor Revisited
June 29,
2004 · Surely, the President hardly
could have expected to be called upon personally to lie so
often and so frequently. But with recent events in Iraq demanding
press conferences, an annoying job requirement that in the
past he had so religiously avoided, the weight of the deception
is clearly pressing down on George W's shoulders. By
D. A. Blyler
Cheney's Colorful Comment
June 29,
2004 · An adult understands that
the purpose of civility is to maintain an environment that
allows for communication, compromise, cooperation and reconciliation
between people who are currently at odds with each other.
Such an environment is an assumed pre-condition for our system
of government. Deliberative government is impossible in the
absence of this environment. It seems to me it would be important
that the Vice President of the United States understand this.
By Max
Udargo
Truth and Freedom, Slip-Sliding
Away
June 29,
2004 · It is a fallacy that the
American people don't like to be lied to by their leaders.
We love it. Thrive on it. Die for it. Remember Poppy's 1991
incubator babies - Iraqi troops amassed on the Saudi border?
Remember the millions who died, not just during the war, but
as a result of relentless bombing and cruel sanctions for
12 long years until Junior could get back in there and finish
the job? Remember who was secretary of defense back then?
By Sheila
Samples
Iraqi Sovereignty Doesn't
Pass the Duck Test
June 29,
2004 · There is a saying that
if something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then
it's a duck. This is sometimes called the duck test. Monday,
two days ahead of schedule, Iraq was declared a sovereign
state. It doesn't pass the duck test. By
Jack Rabbit
Unravel This!
June 29,
2004 · It's certainly no secret
that the radical right was on the rise for years before it
finally found its way into the White House. Those who are
dismayed to watch what's happening now also tend to find it
baffling: "How do they think they can get away with that -
what can they possibly be thinking?" By Terry
Dyke
The Essence
of Addiction
June
26, 2004 · Americans have a problem when
it comes to oil. We seem to think that fossil fuel consumption
is our God given substance and we show no signs of trying
to deal with our addiction to it. By
David Leaf
The Worst is Yet to Come
June 25,
2004 · The problems of veterans
who have been released from the military after wartime service
does not get much attention. Now we have a new generation
of soldiers who will have to deal with reality upon their
return. By David
Leaf
Shallow Throat to Dems:
Don't Torture Bush, Just Abuse Him
June 25,
2004 · Dems need to stop gloating
over Bush's scandals and the deteriorating situation in Iraq
dragging down his numbers, and to quit thinking it's going
to be easy to win a landslide. We need to work our butts off
between now and November, and be willing to spend the necessary
money to do so, if we want to send this vicious crowd packing.
By Bernard
Weiner
New York Times and Cheney
Once Were Sweethearts
June 24,
2004 · How our newspaper of record
and the vice president, with an assist from NBC's Tim Russert,
teamed up to spread the myth of the Iraqi connection to 9-11.
By Dennis
Hans
Declaring Victory Does
Not Make It So
June 24,
2004 · We all know the one that
says, "victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan."
Well that old saw remains true as far as it goes but - if
you will pardon the familial pun - we seem to have forgotten
that before defeat can truly become an orphan somebody on
the losing side has to cry, "Uncle." By Michael
Shannon
Bill O'Reilly's Final
Solution
June 23,
2004 · Bill O'Reilly is openly
advocating for genocidal tactics to be used against civilians
- proposals that would kill millions of civilians if they
were carried out. By Thomas
Wheeler
For the Love of Freedom
June 22,
2004 · Bush's "good vs. evil"
rhetoric serves to cover up the ugly truth - that while the
citizenry of America is generally in favor of truth and justice,
our government has been betraying us abroad for many, many
years. This is a hard fact for many people to fully come to
terms with. And when the alternative of, "We're good and they're
evil!" is presented, it's very tempting to take that quick
and easy route to absolution. By Aden
Nak
Control Room: Adding Fairness
and Balance to the US Media's portayal of the 'War on Terror'
June 22,
2004 · The revelations in the
new documentary "Control Room" are, to say the very least,
quite surprising. The tortured consciences and difficult dilemmas
of the staff of Al Jazeera are shown - at least in this film
- to be a great deal more thoughtful than the "vicious, inaccurate
and inexcusable... mouthpiece of Osama bin Laden" that Donald
Rumsfeld and other US officials have painted them to be. By Brad
Friedman
Moving America Backwards:
Censoring Michael Moore
June 19,
2004 · If the group Move America Forward
has its way, come June 25th you will not be able to see Michael
Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Why? Well, the main reason
seems to be that they do not like what Michael Moore has to
say about America, and being freedom-loving Americans, they
want to pressure movie theater chains not to screen the film.
By Scott
C. Smith
The Bush Administration
Makes Another Mistake
June 19,
2004 · If the Pentagon's drastically
flawed Patterns of Global Terrorism Report was evidence that
the actions of the Bush administration are winning the "war
on terror," does that mean that the correct data shows
that we are actually losing the "war on terror"
and that the actions of the Bush administration are resulting
in more terrorist attacks around the world? By Keith
Vance
Connect the Dots Between
Iraq and America Through Halliburton
June 18,
2004 · To fully understand Cheney's role
in the administration's war profiteering scheme, all we have
to do is follow the money and connect the dots. By Evelyn
Pringle
Reagan on Mount Rushmore?
Not Good Enough, I Say!
June 18,
2004 · Ronald Reagan on Mount Rushmore?
The twenty dollar bill? It demeans the greatness of the man
to merely offer him the slot on the twenty. Ronald Reagan
should be on the hundred dollar bill and the fifty dollar
bill to boot! But not on anything smaller than the ten, because
that's just chump change. By Bucky
Rea
No Other Way to Say This:
Torture Memos Reveal Fascist Mentality
June 17,
2004 · Conveniently buried in the all-Reagan-all-the-time
news coverage last week was the smoking-gun revelation, in
the so-called torture-memos, that the Bush Administration
was actively engaged in setting up a governmental system where
Bush becomes the sole law of the land. In this set-up, no
court, no legislature, nobody can touch him. He is to be the
Supreme Leader. By Bernard
Weiner
Reagan, Bush, and the
"Evil Other"
June 16,
2004 · Though many people like to say
"Bush is no Reagan" (and he isn't), the similarities between
them are so significant that they define an entire strategy
for moving the country farther and farther right. Like Reagan,
Bush has sprayed the air with enough testosterone to affect
the national neurology, and the results, though ugly, are
not nearly as damning of Reagan and Bush as they are of the
national character. By Diane
E. Dees
Politics: We Ain't Playin'
June 16,
2004 · The reason that politics
is rearing its ugly head in the national security issue is
precisely because we think that mistakes have been made and
that someone needs to pay the price. By Dennis
Jones
The Last Casualty
June 15,
2004 · The notion of empire is
still as misguided today as it was when the legions of Rome
were marching the earth. America and Great Britain, however,
have always been able to rationalize our presence in foreign
lands with intellectual constructs. We were wrong, of course,
and the deadly lesson, whether it was learned by Her Majesty's
armies in Africa or American troops in Vietnam, is that the
occupied never want to be occupied. By James
C. Moore
No Backing Down
June 15,
2004 · While many may disagree
with Moore's politics and style, he has a right to be heard
and now it is great that he has a chance to screen the film.
However, it is unconscionable that at every turn, attempts
are made to silence him and I feel that this administration
has fomented this culture. By James
C. Moore
Henry and George
June
12, 2004 · Ever since George Bush led
us into this dreadful war, we've heard occasional references
to Shakespeare's Henry V from the punditocracy. Like
the unpromising wastrel Prince Hal, Chris Matthews told us,
the shallow frat-boy, George, had been transformed into a
great and inspiring leader. Which is simply not true. By Ernest
Partridge
Moral Relativism: It's not
just for liberals anymore
June
12, 2004 · Moral relativism is a concept
that right-wingers frequently accuse liberals of. Basically
it's living life not governed by the rules of morality; making
up the rules as you go along. Conservatives seem to think
that only they live their lives based on a strict code of
morals and ethics. By Scott
C. Smith
News Dispatch from 2032
June 11,
2004 · An abnormality in the
sun's gravitational field Thursday resulted in a small portion
of an American news program from the future to be received
by several television sets in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico and Del
Rio, Texas. The program appears to originate from the year
2032. The following is a transcript... Satire
by Ian Watson
Everything Old is New Again
June 11,
2004 · The current attempts by
government to restrict individual rights are in line with
the aims of HUAC and the fascists who supported that committee.
The rightist aims of the Bush administration are not new or
unique to our times - they're actually as old as the desires
of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. By punpirate
Meet Cathy Diebold
June 11,
2004 · Georgia's Secretary of
State, Cathy Cox, could easily be considered the official
Poster Girl for Diebold Election Systems, Inc. She is defending
the statewide implementation of Direct Record Electronic (DRE)
voting machines, more commonly known as touch screen voting,
in the face of overwhelming evidence of security flaws and
unreliable performance. By Denis
Wright
He Was a Hack
June 10,
2004 · While the official particulars
of Tenet's resignation have yet to be established, the ignominy
of his exit is not in doubt. Kennedy once said of Nixon, "He
went out like he came in. No class." It could just as easily
be said of Tenet that he went out like he came in - a useless
tub of guts whose only real talent was deflecting political
heat, however temporarily, from the man at whose pleasure
he served. By Raul
Groom
Crossing the Line
June 10,
2004 · Without boundaries, and
without meaning, the marvelous human mind is reduced to the
dysfunctional output of a sophisticated animal brain. And
there is no animal more dangerous - to itself and to others
- than a dysfunctional human being. By Violet
Lake
Bush Scandals 2004
June 9,
2004 · There are so many Bush
Administration scandals and so little time to figure them
all out. So here are some succinct questions with clear answers
to explain them. By Bernard
Weiner
Class Warfare
June 9,
2004 · You have to admire the
Republican Party's flexibility. No matter what kind of person
the Democrats nominate as their presidential candidate, that
kind of person is bad. Hardscrabble background in Arkansas?
No class. Wealthy Bostonian? Aristocrat who thinks his you-know-what
doesn't stink. By Woody
Mena
Fox News Presents: Ronald
Reagan, 1911-2004
June 8,
2004 · Ronald Reagan, the greatest
president in the history of the Republic, was taken bodily
into Heaven on Saturday at the age of 93. Reagan was born
in Tampico, Illinois, in 1911. The first 30 years of his life,
like the first 30 years of Jesus, are largely shrouded in
mystery. Satire by
James A. Bartlett
Reagan Redux
June 8,
2004 · We have forgotten Reagan's
birth and will soon forget his death as well. He will become
an eternal brave and smiling president: dentures and a cowboy
hat hovering over the Potomac like a Cheshire cat. By David
Swanson
Mourning in America
June 8,
2004 · Undoubtedly the desperate
Right will twist history any way they can to draw some kind
of inevitable tortured positive comparison between Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush. But I think the trick is now unlikely
to gain much traction. The vast differences between the real
McCoy and the boy Pretender are now simply all too clear.
By Brad
Friedman
Counting On The Fear Premium
June
5, 2004 · Although we are now being told
that Iraq's oil output is higher than the prewar levels, one
might logically ask where is the dividend to the American
people, especially given the fact that oil prices were lower
in April 2003 than they are now? By Richard
A. Stitt
Calling Iraq the center of
the War on Terrorism does not make it so
June
5, 2004 · We were making progress on
the War on Terrorism. But, in the middle of the War on Terrorism,
we invaded Iraq. Why? It seems that there were individuals
within the Adminsitration, and Bush himself, that had planned
on getting Saddam Hussein before they ever came into office.
By kentuck
The Evil of Banality
June 4,
2004 · "Get over it" means "Get used
to it." While they work hard to intimidate those who dissent,
the current administration is also going to try, once the
initial shock has passed, to convince everyone that only the
most irrational crackpot could object to the seismic changes
they are making in our country. By Pamela
Troy
The Other War - The War
on Poverty
June 4,
2004 · Our leading export under Bush
is a flawed form of democracy coupled with a perverted version
of a free market economy to a people unwilling to import these
western concepts. The cost of this activity is robbing the
programs that aid the American poor until our priorities are
defined otherwise – hopefully in November. By Bob
Volpitto
Shortchanging our Nation's
Brave: Bush's Empty Handshake to Veterans for Services Rendered
June 3,
2004 · On Memorial Day, I flipped on
the TV just in time to catch President George Bush and Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfield bellying up to the podium to give
their speeches at the beautiful and somber Arlington National
Cemetery. For the first time in my life, I watched a Memorial
Day service with a growing sense of anger - even outrage.
By Vincent
L. Guarisco
"Cannot Tell a Lie"
vs. "Cannot Tell the Truth"
June 3,
2004 · George W. Bush's deceit goes beyond
a few simple misstatements or stretching the truth done by
most politicians. With Bush and other administration officials,
lying has become a long-documented pattern, a policy as sure
as tax cuts for the rich, blood for oil, and world domination.
By Kevin
L. Shay
Quicker Than Vietnam,
and "Worse Than Watergate"
June 2,
2004 · The speed with which the anti-war
forces have coalesced and influenced the general mood of the
country about Iraq has amazed the peace-movement. "Amazed"
because it took years and years for those of us active in
the anti-Vietnam War period to educate the general public
to the point where they could even consider that their leaders
might have lied to them and led the country into an unwinnable
war. By Bernard
Weiner
The Art of Denial
June 2,
2004 · Since the launch of "Operation
Iraqi Freedom" fourteen months ago, over 800 American troops
have been killed and thousands more injured. Not that you'd
know it from the conservative pundits and politicians. By Scott
C. Smith
Win-Win Spin-Spin
June 1,
2004 · The GOP Win-Win Spin-Spin: The
same set of plans no matter what the circumstances. They want
what they want, and it has nothing to do with you or me, or
the "problem" they claim to be trying to solve.
By Brad
Friedman
When Will Grandpa Come Home?
June 1,
2004 · Reaching deep into the undermanned,
under-trained, under-equipped and aging military reserves,
Bush is faced with the Hobson's choice of sending more troops
to Iraq or abandoning and failing that country by leaving
it to the Shiite and Sunni clerics whose goal has always been
to establish a theocracy based upon oppressive Islamic orthodoxy.
By Richard
A. Stitt
ARTICLE
ARCHIVES
|
