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Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories 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 May 19, 2004 Elizabeth W. Corrie Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing, Now Bill and Kathleen Christison The US Can't Win Vijay Prashad For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004 Ray Hanania Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.? Greg Moses Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC Michael Gillespie Who is Kenneth deGraffenried? Josh Frank Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry? Gary Corseri Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave Kevin Alexander Gray If Malcolm Were Alive   May 18, 2004 Neve Gordon The Gaza Debacle Doug Stokes Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib Shouldn't Surprise Us Bob Wing The Color of Abu Ghraib Vanessa Jones Man on a Leash Thomas P. Healy Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden Zeynep Toufe Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations Kenneth Roth Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush Elaine Cassel Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later Website of the Day Truth Against Truth   May 17, 2004 Kurt Nimmo The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain Laura Santina Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib Mickey Z. With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness Frederick B. Hudson Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice Shakirah Esmail-Hudani Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera Boris Leonardo Caro The Revelations of Mr. W. Alex Dawoody Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation Victor Kattan On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg Ron Jacobs Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game     May 15 / 16, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Green Lights for Torture Douglas Valentine ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited John Stanton Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel Ben Tripp Torture: a Fond Reminiscence Brian Cloughley Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act Justin E. H. Smith Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey Brandy Baker Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism John Chuckman Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: Goon Squad John Holt Fencing the Sky Ron Jacobs The Power of Patti Smith Brian J. Foley Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib? Robin Philpot Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide Eric Leser The Carlyle Empire Ray Hanania From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good War Crime Jeff Halper Dozers of Mass Destruction Joe Surkiewicz Inside the Baltimore Detention Center John Whitlow Iraq Goddamn Michael Leon Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video Poets' Basement Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert       May 14, 2004 Dr. Susan Block Bush's POW Porn Ron Jacobs Secret History of the War on Drugs William Blum God, Country and Torture Michael Donnelly The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast Niranjan Ramakrishnan India Shines Stephen Gowans Building Democracy in Iraq and Other Absurdities       May 13, 2004 Dave Lindorff Where is Kerry? Colm O'Laithian Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style? Saul Landau and Farrah Hassan Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting Practices Ralph Nader An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners Willliam James Martin Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled Marc Salomon Reality TV Bites Forrest Hylton Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet on the Southern Front?   May 12, 2004 Blanton / Kornbluh Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in 1992 Virginia Tilley So, Who's to Blame? Bruce Jackson James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator of Them All Thomas P. Healy No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks Linda S. Heard Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq Norman Solomon Spinning Torturegate Lisa Viscidi The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala Jack Heyman View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March on DC Niranjan Ramakrishnan Rummy's Reprieve CounterPunch Wire Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence Christopher Brauchli Detention Camp, USA William S. Lind Bush's Waterloo?   May 11, 2004 Mark Engler On the "Necessity" of Torture Ray McGovern More Troops? A March of Folly Kurt Nimmo Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment Mickey Z. Less Than Hero Christopher Reed Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse Dennis Hans When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar Bruce Jackson Pete Seeger at 85 Mike Whitney Killing al Sadr Simon Helweg-Larsen Shrinking the Guatemalan Military William A. Cook The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation, Nakedly Displayed     May 10, 2004 Robert Fisk From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism and Torture as Entertainment Wayne Madsen The Israeli Torture Template: Rape, Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks Col. Dan Smith The Shame of Abu Ghraib Joe Bageant John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife! Ron Jacobs Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave Ben Tripp Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage Ray Hanania Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse Reza Fiyouzat "Mishandled" Invasions Diane Christian Images & Abstractions & Genitals Website of the Day Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?   May 8 / 9, 2004 Cockburn / St. Clair Torture: as American as Apple Pie Adam Jones America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated and Shot at Kunduz? Douglas Valentine Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press Kurt Nimmo Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib Brian Cloughley Humpty Dumpty is Falling Lucia Dailey Forbidden Games Joanne Mariner * * * *: Redacting Moussaoui Mickey Z. Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders) John Chuckman The Thing with No Brain Doug Giebel Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs Norm Dixon How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11 Sam Bahour A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah Susan Davis Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art Dave Marsh In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing Laura Flanders Life with Dick and Lynne Dave Zirin Fans Push Spiderman Off Base Carolyn Baker Why I Won't Vote in 2004 Prince "Ain't No Sense in Voting" Dr. Susan Block Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation Poets' Basement Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska     May 7, 2004 Human Rights Watch 10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention Facilities in Iraq Ron Jacobs UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So Robert Fisk An Illegal and Immoral War Ahmad Faruqui The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu Alexander Zaitchik From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell? Mike Whitney The Price of Victory Norman Solomon This War, Racism and Media Denial M. Shahid Alam A Comic Apology   May 6, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with Shit; Kicked to Death Kathy Kelly May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor for the War Machine Werther The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas Casino Game Lawrence Ferlinghetti Totalitarian Democracy Robert Fisk "Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded Men Being Shot by US Helicopter John Janney Torturing the Way to Freedom? Christopher Ketcham Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now! Alan Farago Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish Sam Hamod Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning James Brooks Sullen Spring William S. Lind On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq     May 5, 2004 Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba Complete US Army Report on Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Kathleen and Bill Christison Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives? Will Youmans Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian Zionist and the End of the World Patrick B. Barr Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label Lawrence Magnuson Nightline's All-American Morgue Greg Moses Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals Niranjan Ramakrishnan Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing Truth Lee Ballinger Cinco de Mayo and Unity Gilbert Achcar Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire Website of the Day Operation Phoenix & Iraq             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 May 29 / 31, 2004 News from Ecotopia Is L-Wop Truly Forever? The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu By BRUCE ANDERSON MENDOCINO COUNTY has one "media" -- this one. No, I'm not bragging; that's the way it is here and one "media" is a simple statement of fact. We have a more or less benign DA, a laughable bunch of judges with the possible exceptions of Mayfield, David Nelson and LaCasse, all of whom are relatively new, and the cops, at this time and eternally subject to change on short notice, are doing what they're supposed to do as law enforcement professionals. They even arrest rich people, although rich people, as in the rest of the country, seldom do any time. No sir, Mendocino County's system breaks down completely in its absence of a functioning media, and if media is dysfunctional or non-existent, lots of people are going to be severely harmed because the system is allowed to operate in the dark. The lights have been out in Mendocino County for at least a hundred years, and they've pretty much stayed off all the way back to when the Indians got it. TAI ABREU OF FORT BRAGG got severely harmed out of all proportion to what he did, and there's no justice if punishment is out of proportion to the known facts of any given crime. As most of you reading this know, punishment has never been more out of sync with crime than now, with most of America a bunch of whining fatsos hiding behind the cops and the courts. MR. ABREU got life in state prison without the possibility of parole because he didn't murder Donald Perez, a gay man from Los Angeles. What Mr. Abreu did do is this: He was co-participant in the robbery of Mr. Perez that ended with Mr. Perez, his throat cut, duct-taped to a tree a mile from the Fort Bragg Police station. Mr. Perez's remains were taped to the tree for almost a month, exactly 14 feet from the pavement as literally hundreds of people walked past, drove past, hiked past, jogged past, paddled past up the Noyo River -- all of them and their dogs, and there this man remained in his upright silver sarcophagus in the late summer sun between the Noyo and the old A&W log road. He might still be there if one of Mr. Abreu's pot pals hadn't gone to the cops and, exempting himself from perp status, told the cops his friends had lured this guy to Fort Bragg to rob him but had robbed him and killed him and laughed about it one day when they were all hot-boxing pot in an abandoned car in the non-perp's Fort Bragg backyard. MR. PEREZ, aka "Vic," may or may not have had his throat cut, as it turns out. His remains were inconclusive one way or the other, although there doesn't appear to have been another way than the duct wrap and then a quick, deep knife to the throat, and not a happy way to go in a green gold bower beside a lazy early September stream. But Mr. Abreu, age 19 at the time of these terminally sad events, was sitting look-out man in Mr. Perez's truck on the road above the death tree when Mr. Perez was slashed by one of Mr. Abreu's two confederates. Or died of suffocation from the duct tape, or was hit over the head, or died of some other unnatural cause. Whatever happened happened without Mr. Abreu's presence, not that he intervened or not that he even disapproved. We're deep in moral murk here, and for sure Mr. Abreu was co-participant in an ultimate evil, but he paid for it out of all proportion to his participation while his co-conspirators got 15 years or so each and can look forward to seeing Fort Bragg again as men in early middle age. BUT THE LAW says a murder committed during a robbery gets you life without parole whether or not you did the murder part of the crime, and by this unyielding standard a murder was indeed committed by all three boys, and Mr. Abreu was on board for the robbery part of the murder, as were his co-participants, one of whom, a very sick young man to have done it, walked up to the gray, writhing mummy Mr. Perez had become and cut Donald Perez's throat deep, all the way to the top of his spine. MR. ABREU, compounding the crime with himself as the second vic, made the fatal mistake of pleading not guilty to the murder of Donald Perez, reasoning that because he hadn't killed anybody, hadn't even been there when one of his partners in crime had cut Mr. Perez's throat, he was innocent of the crime of murder. Worse (for him) Mr. Abreu demanded a jury of his peers. He was sure his attorney could explain to the jury that he was up on the road when whatever happened, happened. He wasn't hadn't killed the guy. He'd robbed him, but he didn't kill him. Tai Abreu didn't know murder was on the menu. Nobody knew until it happened, and when it happened Tai Abreu was not there. He was up on the road sitting in Donald Perez's brand new truck. MENDOCINO COUNTY gets all upset when 19-year-old defendants don't do what the system wants them to do. In Mr. Abreu's case the system wanted him to plead guilty to a jazzed-up manslaughter, and the taxpayers would be spared the expense of a lot of legal fol de rol, and the DA, in triage mode these days as them that don't have hurl themselves at each other and sometimes at them that have, would be spared the time and trouble of a murder prosecution. Abreu would get 10 or 15 years for his part in Perez's killing and he'd be out to resume life as it exists outside the cruelest prison system between the collapse of the Soviet Union and Abu Ghraib. But Abreu didn't go along, and the Mendocino County justice system killed him deader than one of his two crime com-panions had killed Donald Perez. LINDA THOMPSON of the Mendocino County Public Defender's Office, was Mr. Abreu's attorney. The kid might just as well have gotten on the jail bus without stopping at the Mendocino County Courthouse. For reasons of convenience to the local justice system, the case was heard in Ukiah, not Fort Bragg where the crime had occurred. All the while, of course, and this being the ongoing media vacuum that Mendocino County is and always has been, the local papers, owned by the same Colorado-based newspaper chain, were running the wild-looking mug shots of the three young perps over inflam-matory stories the reporter, Glenda Anderson, got directly from the DA and the cops. All three defendants were lynched by the newspapers, as Ms. Anderson, girl friend of Bari car bomber Mike Sweeney, as always selectively indignant, huffed and puffed about the gay bashing that was not, so far as is known, a factor in the murder of Mr. Perez because Mr. Abreu says he's bi-sexual while co-perp Mr. Stuckey was Mr. Perez's some time lover. IF IT WAS A GAY BASHING, Abreu's gay attorney did the bashing. Maybe Ms. Thompson, a cross-dressing lesbian, was pre-disposed to killing all three perps, given that the 'vic' was a gay male and she as a gay woman can be assumed to have hard a rough go of it in America, Land Of The Free Ranging Hetero. As it turned out, Ms. Thompson could only kill one of the gay bashers -- her client. THE CASE WAS HEARD IN UKIAH because, and knowing Mendocino County I'd say it's highly likely if not slam dunk fact, most of the lawyers involved in it live in the Ukiah area and don't want to drive back and forth to the Mendocino Coast to put some punk in state prison for the rest of his life as his friends, family and teachers look on. Do the dirty work in Ukiah where no one will see, no one except maybe Glenda Anderson, hack reporter. The system, as anyone on the receiving end knows, has its own convenience as its first priority. DEFENSE ATTORNEY THOMPSON among every-thing else she did not do for her "client," did not dispute the casual venue change. Mr. Abreu's family, consisting on one ailing grandmother, was not kept informed of where Mr. Abreu was in the injustice process. Once in a while someone would tell her something, but not often, and nobody ever answers the phone anywhere in the Courthouse except the DA's office and poor old gran was on the wrong side of this one. Nobody who knew any of the three boys, all of whom were born and raised in Fort Bragg, and none of whom had a history of vio-lence or even a prior of any consequence whatsoever, were aware that the case could have, should have, been heard in Fort Bragg. THE PUBLIC DEFENDER, Ms. Thompson, a small, odd-looking woman who dresses in men's clothes, did not assign an investigator to look into the crime's par-ticulars on behalf of Mr. Abreu; she failed to challenge any of the persons who became Mr. Abreu's jury, includ-ing a man from Fort Bragg who said he knew Mr. Abreu and did not like him; she called no witnesses of any kind in defense of Mr. Abreu; didn't put Mr. Abreu on the stand to explain himself, which probably wouldn't have helped him anyway because there's no explanation and less excuse for being young, stupid and stoned; and a trial day later Mr. Abreu had himself a fast pass to life forever, deep in a state prison with no hope for parole ever no matter the facts of the crime that put him there, no matter how well he behaves inside those eternal, steel bowels. And this happens in the country of people who say they're for hope and resurrection. NO WITNESSES for the defense. No challenges to the jury panel. A one-day trial and good-bye forever Mr. American Pie. Mr. Abreu's co-defendants? Did they want a jury of their peers, 12 middle-age and older mid-dle-class non-stoners? Nope. Not after they saw what happened to Tai Abreu. They pled out, and both of them will see home by 2020. And one of them did it. Cut Mr. Perez's throat while he was taped to the tree. Mr. Abreu didn't do that part of it, wasn't there when "he gurgled when he died," in the lurid but false quote from Ms. Anderson, corporate journalist. Tai Abreu didn't know Mr. Perez had gurgled when he died until after Mr. Perez had gurgled and bled to death in the summer sun on the north bank of the Noyo River. WHAT DEFENSE did Ms. Thompson present for Mr. Abreu? How did she explain this kid to the jury, the ritalin kid from early elementary school on, a semi-aban-doned kid, a kid whose mother is still cranking in Lake County, a kid whose father left him behind and went off to work in place beyond, even, the telephone? Ms. Thompson told the jury Mr. Abreu was indeed a bad per-son, which he isn't, none of the three defendants is hopelessly bad or even half-bad, or even mostly bad. There isn't a young man in this country who hasn't come real close to doing something just as dumb or worse. One young man by himself is harmless. Two young men are borderline dangerous. They can go home or go crazy. Three young men will go crazy then go home. Sorry, Mom, but that's a basic fact of life, and you can get your own confirmation every morning on the news. BUT MS. THOMPSON went on about what a bad guy Abreu was, said he'd done it, said he was out of control. She conceded the prosecution's case, which was that three murderous young men had put Mr. Perez to death because they wanted his cameras. The Public Defender agreed but, she said, Mr. Abreu hadn't been advised of his rights by the detective assigned to the murder. One more time. Yeah but he wasn't properly Mirandized. Yeah, I got the tail and I think there's an elephant on the other end of it. So the odd little woman who dresses like a man went before a jury of conventional everyday Ukiah, Willits and Fort Bragg people confident that she could convince 12 very straight, carpenter's level straight people, that Mr. Abreu should go home because he was not properly Mirandized! IS LINDA THOMPSON CRAZY? Is she even within shouting distance of reality? Did she think the jury would see her as Clarence Darrow? Did she really think an obscure delineation of the Miranda Law would con-vince anybody that Mr. Abreu ought to go free? This was a defense? THE WHOLE SHOW was so absurd, so purely nutso, so uniquely Only In Mendocino County, so far from even a semblance of a defense in a case with a young man's life on the line that even the cops thought "it was a goddam disgrace, a travesty", as one put it. When the cops denounce a trial as "a goddam disgrace" you can be sure it's a double goddam disgrace. Bear Lincoln had the whole PC gang piling on. He got publicity on top of publicity, media coming in the windows, so much public-ity that Tony Serra rode into town and defended him for nothing, intimidating the DA into dumping the case on an untried assistant and intimidating the wimp-twits sit-ting as Mendocino County Superior Court judges to call old Judge Golden in from some retirement home to hear the case. (Golden took zero crapola, including none from Serra and the PC Brigade, and Bear Lincoln got a fair trial.) A decade later, Judge Henderson, a practicing Catholic but no Christian, put on a big show of denounc-ing the "remorseless" defendant, going on about what a heinous crime had been committed while committing a second heinous crime with the Life In Prison Without The Possibility Of Parole sentence he was pronouncing on a kid who never had a chance in all his life in liberal Mendocino County. TAI ABREU has a tired grandmother and me, meaning he's the ultimate longshot. I'm going to try to raise the money for Abreu's appeal which, it appears, will be a federal habeas process. I've taken the recent alms sent the AVA's way and set them aside in an unofficial Abreu Defense Fund. They amount, as of the end of this month, to almost two grand. If anyone out there is inclined to sign on for the long haul, I can guarantee you your con-tributions will go directly to the intrepidly brilliant Mendocino attorney, Rod Jones, who has agreed to at least look at the options Abreu has, and they aren't many. In fact, they almost don't exist in a country seemingly crueler and more brutal by the day. DEATH ROW people and celeb defendants get all the money they need to appeal their convictions, and most of them are guilty, and most of them totally undeserving. Mr. Abreu, young Mr. Abreu, like almost all L-WOP defendants (as they're called by the legal hangmen) get buried so deep nobody can even hear them scream. TAI ABREU did a bad thing, but he didn't do the bad-dest thing that was done to Mr. Perez. One of his co-defendants did that, but they'll get out of prison and Tai Abreu won't get out of prison. Tai Abreu didn't get an unfair trial. He didn't get a any kind of trial. His Public Defender wasn't incompetent, she was inexplicable. If these guys had had OJ's legal team not one of them would have been convicted of anything, a fact even the cops concede. "We know we got the right guys, but who did what we still don't know." THIS KID'S CASE has got to get in front of a real judge, on the off chance there's an honest one left somewhere in the upper reaches of this country's country club system of jurisprudence. To get it in front of the honest judge who may or may not exist, is going to take time and money. I hope some of you will help out. Bruce Anderson is the publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, America's best weekly newspaper. Weekend Edition Features for 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 WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /