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Today's Stories April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Whining Imperialists April 7 / 8, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Dead Dogs Don't Bleed: How Giuliani Lost America Sara Roy A Jewish Plea Arno J. Mayer Back to Cleopatra's Nose: Bush-Bashing and Empire's Onward March Jeffrey St. Clair In the Realm of the Grizzly Kings Vicente Navarro Why Huntington and Beck Are Wrong Fidel Castro Where Have All the Bees Gone? And Other Reflections on the Internationalizaton of Genocide Fred Gardner Medical News from the Business Pages Ralph Nader The IRS Owes You Money David N. Rahni Test Tube Zealots: American Chemical Society Purges Iranian Chemists Arthur Neslen When an Anti-Semite is Not an Anti-Semite Pratyush Chandra Joseph Stiglitz's "Another World" Missy Beattie Enough Already! The Politics of Exasperation Marc Levy A Beginner's Guide to Combat Poets' Basement Reiss, Holt, Orloski and Louise Website of the Weekend Reactor Man   April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List? Gloria La Riva On the Case of the Cuban Five and Luis Posada Carriles Corporate Crime Reporter The Politics of Coal in West Virginia Ron Jacobs Good Friday, Beethoven and Patti Smith Felice Pace Simon Says: The Pro-Israel Bias of NPR Walter Brasch Treason in the White House? David Swanson Heroes, Sung and Unsung Sylvia Syracuse Roadside Rampage: Salvadoran Murders in Guatemala April 5, 2007 Patrick Cockburn A De Facto Hostage Exchange Tom Barry The Fred Thompson Factor Richard W. Behan Congressional Complicity Nicola Nasser Playing US Politics with Iraqi Blood for Oil Bernadine Dohrn The New and Old SDS: Convergence Not Division Laray Polk Lucky Dragon: Does the World Really Need a New H-Bomb? Helen Redmond Female Chauvinist Pigs?   April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith "Have You No Sense of Decency?": the Tillman Affair and the Moral Decay of the Army Joshua Frank Democratic Blood Money: Sen. Feinstein's War Profiteering Margaret Kimberly Of Confessions and Torture Sharon Smith Circuit City's Guinea Pigs: the Latest Trend in Corporate America Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV Martin Luther King,Jr. Beyond Vietnam Bill Quigley Incident at Fort Huachuca, the Army's Torture Training Center Dave Zirin Picking Chicago's Pockets with the Olympics Evelyn Pringle Drug Companies Want Women of Childrearing Years Peter Rost, MD Pfizer's Puny Fine Website of the Day Crash of the Honey Bees   April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted hostage Taking Marjorie Cohn Coming Up Short on Habeas Corpus for Gitmo Detainees Brian M. Downing The Army's Road to Iraq Corporate Crime Reporter Coddling Pfizer: Praise the Criminal, Dis the Whistleblower Carol Norris A Psychologist on Sexual Assault: Yes, Virginia, There is a Sollution Ralph Nader Tailpipe Blues Dave Lindorff I Quit: A Movement of One (Or a Maybe a Million) Scott Bontz The Great Depletion Thomas Dolby Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Racism and the National Anthem Website of the Day Cockburn on BookTV April 2, 2007 Gary Leupp A Bogus Hostage Crisis Uri Avnery Condi in the Middle East: Olmert and the Pussycat James Petras Palestine: The Political Economy of a Disaster Norman Solomon McCain in Baghdad: Walking in McNamara's Footsteps Robert Fisk War of Humiliation Stanley Heller A Neocon Looks Two Conquests Ahead: The Ravings of James Woolsey Sherwood Ross How the Pentagon Cheats Iraq Vets Out of Medical Care and Disability Pay Monica Benderman On Keeping Men Alive: Report from Ft. Stewart Stephen Fleischman Winners and Losers in a Dog-Eat-Dog System Anne McElroy Dachel Never Mind the Mercury Website of the Day Midwestern Common Sense on the War March 31 / April 1, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair That Was an Antiwar Vote? Fred Gardner How Corrupt is Malcolm Gladwell? Shilling for Enron and Breast Cancer Greg Moses The Pirates of Homeland Security Gary Leupp 300 vs. Iran (and Herodotus) Robert Fisk Shakespeare and War Roger Morris The Politics of the Witch Hunt Conn Hallinan The Price of Fire: Oil, Water and Resistance in Bolivia Kristin J. Anderson A Protocol for Death Jason Hribal California's Most Unhappy Cows John Ross Strange Fruit Down South Christopher Brauchli Bush and the Politics of Falsehoods: If You're Going to Lie, Lie Big David Underhill War Breeds Stranger Bedfellows Elizabeth Schulte The Pentagon's "Don't Ask" Disaster Ben Terrall Time for Lula to Stop Doing Bush's Dirty Work in Haiti Missy Beattie Guess Who Isn't Coming to Dinner: The Story of King Abdullah and the O-Word Sonja Karkar How Palestine Became Israel's Land Daniel Wolff Have You Heard the News? David Vest A Romanian Jazz Rebel Drops a Bomb on Paris Ron Jacobs Wynton Marsalis Checks In on the Land That Never Has Been Yet Poets' Basement Davies, Holt, Wigley and Landau Website of the Weekend Kansas City Rocks   March 30, 2007 Alan Maass Oil and the Empire Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity A Memo on Iran: Brinksmanship in Uncharted Waters Richard W. Behan George Bush's Land Mine: If Iraqis Get Revenue Sharing, Exxon Gets Their Oil Gabriel Kolko Israel's Last Chance William S. Lind Operation Anabasis Stedjan / Weis The Cluster Bomb Treaty: Again, It's the US vs. the World Kevin Zeese Is Bush Lame or Is Congress? David Busch Homeless in LA Fidel Castro Biofuels and Global Hunger CounterPunch News Service Mistrial in Olympia 15 Case Website of the Day Free Shaquanda Cotton March 29, 2007 Saul Landau Comparing Padillas Patrick Cockburn When Iraqi Cops Go on a Rampage Dave Lindorff War and the Futures Market: Oil Traders Fear an Attack on Iran Arthur Neslen Normalizing Injustice: Jaffa's Ugly Truth Michael Dickinson Incident at Westminster Abbey Ingmar Lee Plantskyyd: Planting Trees with Pig's Blood in British Columbia Aseem Shrivastava As India Goes Global, the Public Goes Private Marlene Martin Sacco and Vanzetti, Revisited Mahmoud El-Yousseph Wake Up, You Live in America! Michael Foley A Citizen's Peace Lobby Website of the Day Impeach Bush Club Parade March 28, 2007 Nicole Colson The Ongoing Persecution of Sami Al-Arian Harry Clark Michigan Peaceworks on Palestine Larry Everest Another $100 Billion to Continue the War Jonathan M. Feldman Citigroup, Property and Theft Dave Zirin Yet Another Book on Muhammad Ali (and Why I Wrote It) Jane Stillwater How Runaway Inflation Has Slipped Under the Radar Ayesha Ijaz Khan Pakistan's Cry for Justice Jim Wilfong Who Owns Maine's Water? Hawra Karama An Open Letter to Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi Uncle Tom Website of the Day Free Fire on Iraqi Civilians March 27, 2007 Iain Boal / Standard Schaefer British Petroleum and the New Greenmail Patrick Cockburn The Hostage Game Monica Benderman On Ending War: Is America Ready for the Troops When They Come Home? Corporate Crime Reporter Political Players and Single Payer Joshua Frank Dems in Power: Broken Promises and Bald-Faced Lies Harvey Wasserman Will Al Gore Deliver Us to Solartopia? Sen. Russell Feingold FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act Tillman Family Crimes and Cover Ups are Not "Missteps" Patrick Bond Zimbabwe's Descent David Judd Arbitrary Discipline at Columbia Website of the Day Why Work? March 26, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Seven Days on Iraq's Cruel Roads Uri Avnery Schoolbooks and Borders Greg Moses Hothouses for Hapless Masses on the Rio Grande Bill Hatch A Plague of Big Shots John V. Walsh The Democrats' War Funding Debacle Diane Christian God Does Not Love the Aggressor Dan La Botz The Immigration Movement at a Crossroads Frederico Fuentes Latin America Tells Bush to "Get Out!" Sunsara Taylor Democrats' Victory Means More Iraqi Deaths Mickey Z. Pat Tillman: Beyond the Hype Website of the Day DynCorp's Iraq Training Policy   March 24 / 25, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Where are the Laptop Bombardiers Now? Jeffrey St. Clair Nuclear Saviors?: Kyoto, Gore and the Atomic Lobby David Rosen An American Obituary: Anna Nicole Smith and the Exploitation of Nature Ron Jacobs The Political History of the Car Bomb Robert Fantina Vietnam and Iraq, the Rhetoric Remains the Same Alan Maass Why Ralph Nader Took a Stand Atul Gawande On Washing Hands: A Surgeon's Notes on How Infections Spread in Hospitals Marianne McDonald Staging Anti-Colonial Protest China Hand Zealots Scheme to Derail North Korea Accord Kaz Dziamka The Iroquois Way of Impeachment Andrew Wimmer The Nursemaid's Tale Don Monkerud World's Biggest Debtor Nation Anthony Papa Bong Hits 4 Jesus Case Matthew Provonsha Return of the Black Bloc Missy Beattie Calling Youth and Young Adults Stephen Fleischman Confrontation, At Last Poets' Basement Newberry, Laymon, Harley and Buknatski Website of the Weekend An Interview with Ron Jacobs Song of the Weekend "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" March 23, 2007 Saul Landau Return to Syria Patrick Cockburn Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Ban Greg Moses Protesting Immigrant Prisons in the Rio Grande Valley Rep. Ron Paul The War Funding Bill Franklin Lamb Will Hezbollah Hand Israel Its 6th Defeat? Stephen Gowans Mugabe Gets the Milosevic Treatment Roger Burbach Leftist Victory in Ecuador Dave Lindorff The Gutless Mini-Politics of the Congressional Democrats William S. Lind Candles in the Hurricane Alan Mammoser The New Rules of Food Russell Hoffman Al Gore's Nose is Glowing Website of the Day Global Outsourcing and the US Working Class   March 22, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Oil-Rich Kirkuk at the Melting Point Robin Blackburn Toxic Waste in the Sub-Prime Market Michael Donnelly Mr. Green Goes to Washington: Another Oscar Performance from Al Gore Uzma Aslam Khan Down Pakistan's No-Constitution Avenue Lee Sustar Bush's Braceros: The Ugly Truth About the Guest Worker Program Robert D. Skeels LA's Vicious War on the Homeless Rev. William Alberts The Forbidden C-Word Anne McElroy Dachel The Search for the Elusive Autism Gene Mickey Z. This is Your Brain on Meat Website of the Day Raimondo Does Hitchens   March 21, 2007 Tao Ruspoli A Conversation with Robbie Conal James Petras Meet the Global Ruling Class Fred Gardner A U.S. Army Pipe Dream Corporate Crime Reporter Cramer Comes Clean: Lies, Market Manipulation and Wall Street Faisal Kutty Too Guilty to Fly, Too Innocent to Charge? Robert Fantina U.S. Imperialism in Action Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach Brazilian Opposition to Bush-Lula Ethanol Accords Lucinda Marshall Missing in Action: Why is the Peace Movement Ignoring the Impact of War on Women? Winslow Wheeler Dem Budget Tricks: Reform Means What We Say It Means! Website of the Day Student Day of Action Against the War     March 20, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Iraq is a Vast, Blood-Drenched Human Disaster Winslow T. Wheeler The Blank Check War Sharon Smith Hillary's Cojones: Our Bleached-Blond Thatcher? Uri Avnery The New Palestinian Unity Government Stan Cox Down-to-a-Trickle Economics Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Hating the Rich Alan Farago Why Al Gore Soft-Peddled the Environment in 2000 Richard W. Behan Impeachment and Patriotism Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On David Krieger The Treaty of Tlatelolco Peter Rost, MD An Open Letter to Pfizer's CEO: $11 Million Salary, 36% Raise, 10,000 Fired Employees Mickey Z. A Cat-Eat-Cat World: Beyond the Pet Food Recall Website of the Day Bringing the War Home Webclip of the Day Sunsara Taylor Beats O'Reilly, Again   March 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Crime Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Patrick Cockburn Operation Deepening Nightmare Stauber / Rampton Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward? Werther Plame Wars: Valerie Plame, the Washington Post and the Ghost of Joe McCarthy Noam Chomsky In Memory of Tanya Reinhart Jeff Leys Tap Dancing on Graves: How Democrats Bought the War Richard May And Then There Were None: Europe's Afghan Backlash Ron Jacobs Lessons of the Antiwar Movement and the Washington Post's Lessons of the Iraq War Mike Whitney Rove in the Dock Website of the Day Ringtones That Roar     March 17 / 18, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Here Comes Another "Crime Wave" John Scagliotti A Sissy's Manifesto Jeffrey St. Clair The Green Imposter: When Al Gore Was Veep Paul Craig Roberts The Confession Backfired Greg Moses Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso Harry Clark Thrice-Told Tales: Those Israel-Syria Peace Talks Brian Cloughley In the Name of Improving People's Lives: Mounting Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq Mehran Ghassemi An Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh on the US, Israel and Iran William Loren Katz A Disturbing Expulsion: Racism and the Cherokee Nation John Ross Being a Zapatista Where You Live Ralph Nader Ban the Bomblets! Walter Brasch An Intolerant Minority: the Witch Hunt Against Gays in the Military Samer Assad The Palestinian Unity Government: Another for US Diplomacy Dave Zirin Bowie Kuhn: Death of a Baseball Reactionary Ron Jacobs The Darker Nation's: Remembering and Re-examining the Third World Missy Beattie No to War and Pace Don Santina First, They Came for the Democrats Sami Adwan What Hillary Should Know About Palestinian Schoolbooks Dr. Susan Block Gods of Spring: the Erotics of the Equinox Poets' Basement Reed, Landau, Engel, Buknatski Website of the Weekend God Save Helen Mirren   March 16, 2007 R. T. Naylor The Political Economy of Diamonds Paul Craig Roberts The Last Days of Constitutional Rule Joshua Frank Obama's Israel Problem Diane Farsetta How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups Tom Barry Tancredo's Putsch: Anti-Immigrant Agenda Veers Hard Right Stephen Lendman Plays from a Political Fake Book: Congress's Phony Opposition to War Al Krebs Compounding Infamy: Chiquita, Its Workers and Colombia's Death Squads Jackie Corr Senator Schumer and the Corruption Culture Ramzy Baroud Palestinians Must Redefine Struggle Reza Fiyouzat The Chinese Way of Capitalism Website of the Day Introducing: the iRak   March 15, 2007 Alison Weir Strip-Searching Children at Israeli Checkpoints Patrick Cockburn Baghdad Under Surge Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Memo to Congressional Leaders on Iraq Funding: First Stop the Bleeding Franklin Spinney Of Character and Contractors: the Unauthorized Rumsfeld Standard Schaefer Biofuels and the Green Resistance Conn Hallinan The Right's Stuff in Africa: Neocons, Evangelicals and Sudan Maureen Webb Another Patriot Act Abuse Sonja Karkar Rachel Corrie and Palestine Margaret Kimberly The Profits of Self-Hatred: Malkin and D'Souza, Incorporated Anthony Papa The New Capones: It's Time to Rethink Drug Prohibition Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost Video of the Day The Easiest Targets Website of the Day Memo to Kucinich: Watch Your Back!   March 14, 2007 Tao Ruspoli A Conversation with Peter Linebaugh on the Slave Trade, Magna Carta and the State of the Left Philip Agee The Decline of the US, the Rise of Latin America Bruce Dixon The Digital Redlining of African-Americans John Walsh How One Senator Could End the War Sunsara Taylor Red Light, Green Light: the Democrats and Iran William Johnson Still Reeling from Katrina: The Spirited Strike at Pascagoula Shipyards Richard Thieme Entitlement and Empire Jeffrey Klein Right-Wing Academic Values Nicola Nasser This Time, Israeli is Missing an Historic Opportunity Dave Lindorff Political Hide-and-Seek with the Democrats Website of the Day Oil Change   March 13, 2007 Catherine Wilkerson, M.D. Scenes from a Cop Riot Jonathan Cook The Real Goal of Israel's Invastion of Lebanon Robert Bryce Beyond Redemption: the Legacy of George the Second Corporate Crime Reporter Coal-Powered Democrats Pierre Rimbert Libération and the Evolution of French Neoliberalism Dave Lindorff What's Good for Halliburton is Good ... for Dubai Elizabeth Schulte The Repackaging of John Edwards Norman Solomon The Pragmatism of Prolonged War Kevin Zeese The Democrats' Fraudulent Iraq Exit Plan Jeff Conant Greeting Rumsfeld in Taos Website of the Day Tacoma and the Big Heat     March 12, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Patriot Act Unbound Col. Dan Smith Ghost Prisoners, Shadowy Jails and Secret Trials Paul Craig Roberts Neocons in Kafkaland Ingmar Lee The Sentencing of Betty Krawczyk: a 78-Year-Old Eco-Heroine Fred Gardner Cannabis for the Wounded: Another Walter Reed Scandal Ron Jacobs Showdown at Port Tacoma: Confronting the War Machine in the Northwest Ralph Nader Send the Bush Twins to Iraq! John Ross Political Prisoners in Calderon's Mexico Stephen Fleischman Bush's Latin American Slip Eva Carazo Vargas Why We Reject CAFTA Website of the Day Mountain Justice Spring Break   March 9 / 11, 2007 Sameer Dossani Interview with Noam Chomsky: War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st Century Jeffrey St. Clair Crude Alliance: The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil Dave Marsh Bono's Bullshit: Not One Red Cent Patrick Cockburn Shia Pilgrims Die Despite US Offensive Jennifer Van Bergen A Gonzo Argument: Alberto Gonzales's Defense of NSA Domestic Spying James P. Stevenson Pardon Whom? Libby and the Cheney Unseen Arthur J. Versluis Crusade for Commercialism Corporate Crime Reporter Not a Dime's Worth of Difference: Congress and Corporate Crime Missy Beattie Too Much Info, Newt!: Sex, God and Praying Michael Simmons Annie Get Your Gums: Why I Like Ann Coulter Kevin Zeese Making Democrats Pay the Price: Voting Against the War is No Longer Enough David Swanson Shocking Video: The Dark Side of the Democrats John A. Murphy Are the Congressional Democrats Spineless? Dave Lindorff Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico: Abetted by Democrats Nikolas Kozloff Lights! Camera! Chavez! Christopher Fons Bush Goes to Latin America: Is It All About (N)PR? Mike Roselle A Thousand Miles of Bad River Mike Mejia Justice for Sibel Edmonds Susie Day Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran! Michael Donnelly LA Story: Rock Stars, Porn Stars and Peace Tao Ruspoli Just Say Know (Parts 4 and 5) Poets' Basement Reed, Laymon, Mezmer and Harley Website of the Weekend Japanese Dolphin Massacre   March 8, 2007 Elaine Cassel The Tragic Case of Jose Padilla Yifat Susskind Iraq's Other War: Violence Against Women Under US Occupation Corporate Crime Reporter Politics and the Prosecutors Col. Dan Smith The Sins of Walter Reed William S. Lind The Washington Dodgers Mark Engler Bush's Latin American Spring Break Roger Burbach With Negroponte as Tour Director, Bush's Trip Destined to Fail Dana Cloud Return of the Campus Witch Hunts: David Horowitz and the Thought Police Isabella Kenfield Brazil's Ethanol Pland: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental Degradation Lucinda Marshall We Stand with the Women of the World Tao Ruspoli Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction (Part 3) Website of the Day Filibuster for Peace March 7, 2007 Christopher Ketcham What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks? Christopher Ketcham The Kuala Lumpur Deceit: a CIA Cover Up Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair Ketcham's Story: Coming in From the Cold Winslow T. Wheeler Mismeasuring the Defense Budget Sean Donahue Free Scooter Libby! Dave Lindorff The Fall Guy Has Fallen Evelyn Pringle Psychosis and Mania: ADHD Drug Warnings Come Too Late for Many Tao Ruspoli Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction Website of the Day Debating Iraq: Gaffney Against the World!   March 6, 2007 Gary Leupp Meet Eliot Cohen: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It Gets" Uri Avnery Esterina Tartman: The Big Mouth of Israeli Fascism Patrick Cockburn The War on Terror is a Bust: Bush is Now Al Qaeda's Top Recruiter Saul Landau World in Crisis, Candidates in Denial Corporate Crime Reporter John Edwards' Big Lie Ron Jacobs The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong! Mike Roselle Judi Bari: Ten Years Gone P. Sainath Neoliberalism and the Ideology of the Cancer Cell Joshua Frank Dump the Dems, Unite Against the War Aniket Alam Women's Day, Lenin and a Riot in Copenhagen Dave Zirin Resurrecting Don Barksdale: Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer Website of the Day Physicians for a National Health Program   March 5, 2007 Greg Moses Holding Suzi Hazahza for Profit Patrick Cockburn Exodus of Iraq's Ancient Minorities James Petras Bush vs. Chavez Frida Berrigan US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran Marjorie Cohn Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial: the Case of Augustín Aguayo Douglas Kammen and S.W. Hayati The Rice Crisis in East Timor Sen. Barack Obama On Israel and AIPAC: "We Must Preserve Our Total Commitment to Our Unique Defense Relationship with Israel" Michael Young Sy Hersh and Iran: the Dark Side of Spun a Lot? Dave Lindorff It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al Sonja Karkar Raiding Nablus: Israel's Hot Winter Offensive Website of the Day How Obama Learned to Love Israel   March 3 / 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian Corporate Crime Reporter "No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim Bias Jeffrey St. Clair Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite Patrick Cockburn War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply Ralph Nader Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America M. Shahid Alam American Mamlukes Gilad Atzmon From Esther to AIPAC Fred Gardner It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain George Ciccariello-Maher The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela Rock & Rap Confidential Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively for Blacks" Gillian Russom The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo Michael McPhearson My Small Act of Civil Disobedience Kevin Zeese The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom? Sunsara Taylor Four Years of an Unjust War Wendy Thompson Re-Organizing the UAW Kenneth Rexroth Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" Missy Beattie Regarding Cheney Don Monkerud Jesus Turned Away at US Border Tina Louise Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams Poets' Basement Richards, Landau and Davies Website of the Weekend John Prine: Flag Decal   March 2, 2007 Roger Morris Cheney's Bagram Ghosts Phil Gasper Prisoners of Ideology Mike Roselle Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone Robert Bryce The Ethanol Scam John V. Walsh Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the War Sherwood Ross Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget China Hand Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb? David Rosen To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America Chris Genovali Connecting the Dots Peter Harley The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela Website of the Day Courage to Resist   March 1, 2007 Laura Carlsen Return to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail Paul Craig Roberts The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men Ray McGovern How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows? Christopher Brauchli Bush's Theater of the Absurd Najum Mustaq America's Musharraf Dilemma Brent Bowden The War on Terror and the Terror of War Tina Richards Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds Ethan Nadelman Mexico and the Drug War Mike Stark "Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution Wadner Pierre / Jeb Sprague Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN Mike Whitney Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan Website of the Day Dylan Hears a Who     Subscribe Online

April 9, 2007 Big Coal Invokes Reverse Nuremberg Defense Massey Energy's CEO: Just Giving Orders, Not Carrying Them Out By CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER The Nuremberg defense is widely known--sorry, just carrying out orders. Now comes the reverse Nuremberg defense--sorry, just giving the orders, not carrying them out. Lawyers for widows of two miners killed in a January 2006 West Virginia mining fire argue that Don Blankenship--the CEO of Massey Energy--is using something close to the reverse Nuremberg defense to escape personal liability for the deaths of the men. "It appears that Mr. Blankenship and the two companies under his direct control are attempting to argue something akin to a reverse Nuremberg defense--I am not guilty because I was only giving the orders, not carrying them out," the lawyers for the widows write. "The outrageousness of such a position cannot be tolerated in modern society, and is, in fact, squarely contradicted by existing law." On April 16, a state court judge in Logan County, West Virginia will hear these and other arguments in a lawsuit concerning the deaths of miners Elvis Hatfield, 46, and Don Bragg, 33. Both were miners in Aracoma Coal Company's Alma #1 mine in Logan County, West Virginia. Both died in January 2006 when a fire broke out in the mine. Both died of asphyxiation and carbon monoxide poisoning. Aracoma is owned by Elk Run Coal Company. Elk Run is a subsidiary of A.T. Massey Coal Co. A.T. Massey is a subsidiary of Massey Energy Company. Massey Energy is the fourth largest coal company in the United States--the largest in Appalachia. Blankenship is the CEO of Massey Energy and A.T. Massey. Lawyers for the widows of Hatfield and Bragg will appear in a courtroom in Logan, West Virginia, before Judge Roger Perry. One of the widows' lawyers--Bruce Stanley, is a partner in the corporate powerhouse law firm of Reed, Smith. The other is Tonya Hatfield, a lawyer based in Gilbert, West Virginia. They have filed a lawsuit on behalf of the widows against Aracoma Coal, A.T. Massey, Massey Energy and Blankenship. They allege that the defendants put profits ahead of safety at the Alma #1 mine. In papers filed with the court, Blankenship argues that he's not liable for the deaths. Blankenship says he has instituted numerous safety programs, including the "Safety First" or "S-1" program--"a program that exceeds the requirements of state and federal law." During his tenure as CEO, Blankenship says the company he heads has received "numerous safety awards" and Massey's safety record has "consistently been far better than the national average." Blankenship claims he has "created a culture of safety at Massey." And Blankenship claims that an officer of a corporation cannot be held responsible for the wrongs of the corporations just because he's an officer. "Indeed the reason for the creation of the corporation is to limit liability," Blankenship argues. Blankenship is arguing that the widows can't pierce the corporate veil. The lawyers for the widows of the miners argue that Blankenship's corporate veil arguments are irrelevant. "The widows are contending that Mr. Blankenship is independently liable for his actions--and so, therefore, are the two companies on whose behalf he was acting directly--over and apart from the illegally dangerous conduct in which Mr. Bragg and Mr. Hatfield's statutory employer, Aracoma, was engaged," the lawyers write. The lawyers for the widows base their case, in large part, on an October 19, 2005 memo that Blankenship wrote to "All Deep Mine Superintendents." "If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e. build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills." The lawyers write that "the sum and substance of the widows' claims against Mr. Blankenship, Massey Energy and A.T. Massey all stem from the same operative factual allegations--that Mr. Blankenship, personally and in his capacity as the President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Board of Directors of Massey Energy and A.T. Massey, directed the superintendent of the Alma Mine No. 1, Mr. Lawrence Lester, to ignore work necessary to insure safe operation at the mine in favor of increasing coal production." For his part, Blankenship says the memo is being blown out of context. In fact, he says, one week later, he wrote a second memo to clarify the first. In this memo, dated October 26, 2005, Blankenship says some of his workers interpreted the first memo that "safety and S-1 are secondary." "By now, each of you should know that safety and S-1 is our first responsibility," Blankenship wrote. "Productivity and P-2 are second. It has been the culture of our company for a long time." "I would question the membership of anyone who thought that I consider safety to be a secondary responsibility," he wrote. But lawyers for the widows see the second memo as a threat to the workers. "It is important to understand that Massey Energy refers to the coal mine employees of its subsidiaries as 'members,'" they write. "With that understanding, it is evident that Mr. Blankenship is actually stating that anyone who wants to keep his or her job at a Massey mine had better not question his motives." And they go into a long recitation of safety problems at Massey. They quote one Alma #1 miner, Larry Browning, as saying that the operation at that mine is like a fast-food restaurant. "It's like a fast-food restaurant to me, you know, hurry up and get it up, hurry up and get it up," he says. They argue that Blankenship's claims to have created a "culture of safety" at Massey are "ill-founded and misleading." Indeed, they list sixteen miners who have died at Massey mines since 2000--Ronnie Wright (May 24, 2000), Ricky Dale Vance (October 30, 2000), Allen Harris, Jr., (February 2, 2001), Herbert J. Meadows (March 29, 2001), Gregory Barron (August 27, 2001), Paul Miller (September 14, 2001), Danny Adkins (January 2, 2002), Keith L. Casey (March 22, 2002), Rodney Alan Scurlock (July 19, 2003), William P. Birchfield and Rodney W. Sheets (September 17, 2003), Kenneth Adrian McNeely (February 5, 2004), Christopher McGuire (March 29, 2005), Don Bragg and Elvis Hatfield (January 19, 2006), and Paul Moss (February 1, 2006). But Blankenship points to a key measure of coal mine safety--Non Fatal Days Lost (NFDL). "Massey's NFDL has been better than the industry average in 13 out of the last 15 years," he says. That's true as far as it goes, the lawyers for the miners' widows argue. But include contractor accident data and it becomes among the highest, they say. And they say that the NFDL at Alma #1 and overall incident rates in particular were more than twice the national averages in 2005. "Given all of the foregoing, and given their late spouses' untimely, unnecessary and unimaginably horrendous deaths, described as 'statistically insignificant' by Massey's president, chairman and chief executive officer, the widows can hopefully be forgiven if they do not take seriously Mr. Blankenship's protestations that he 'has created a culture of safety at Massey and, under his leadership, Massey has achieved successful results.'" Corporate Crime Reporter is located in Washington, DC. They can be reached through their website.

Now Available! The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained! Buy End Times Now! Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair       The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn     CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed   Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"