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Inside Iraq's Resistance HOT HOT HOT New CounterPunch Print Edition! Meet actual Iraqis and not just Western caricatures. Laith al-Saud interviews top man in Iraq's national resistance. It's not just Abu Ghraib and bids to kill Fidel Castro. Torture and assassination are integral parts of America's imperial machine. Don't miss Andrew Wimmer's searing journey into the soul of a nation that tortures as a way of life. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the killing of General Kassem. PLUS Sam Sillen's rollicking exhumation of Edmund Wilson as Malthusian Trostskyite. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! 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 donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch Writer Daniel Wolff in Portland on Race, Music and Ashbury Park Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People Ralph Nader Katrina and the Growls of Greed Saul Landau An Oily Religious Dream Jeff Halper Setting Up Abbas   October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson The Plame Case: the Real Issues Will Youmans Why Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus Dave Lindorff Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design? Judith Scherr Haiti's Children's Prison Russell D. Hoffman Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle Jared Bernstein Katrina and Jobs Jennifer Van Bergen New American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir Website of the Day FBI Witchhunt October 6, 2005 P. Sainath "Take That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal Idol Again Scott Parkin When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged Paul Craig Roberts Blundering into Syria Andréa Schmidt Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion Dave Lindorff Easy Money in the Big Easy Joshua Frank In Defense of Lew Rockwell M. Junaid Alam Jackboots at George Mason Matthew Koehler Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot Robert Pollin Is the Dollar Still Falling?   October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines Robert Jensen Is Bush a Racist? Ramzy Baroud Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire Col. Dan Smith Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad" Dave Zirin Barry Bonds Laughs Last Paul Craig Roberts Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over Alan Maass Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work   October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt. Mike Roselle Houston, You've Got a Problem Joshua Frank The Scoop on Harriet Miers John Chuckman War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say Alan Farago Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys Mickey Z. An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski Christine & Ethan Rose Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims Gary Leupp An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History Website of the Day Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan   October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Desperation at Holyoke Paul Craig Roberts Condi Rice: Gunslinger Joshua Frank An Interview with Cindy Sheehan Seth Sandronsky The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens Jeffrey St. Clair The Great Green Scare   October 1 / 2, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze Dave Marsh A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan Ralph Nader Gutless, Spineless and Clueless Flavia Alaya Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza Uri Avnery The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory Chris Kutalik The Battle at Northwest Airlines Greg Moses Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues Brian J. Foley I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet Nicole Colson Hunger Strike at Gitmo Ray McGovern Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility Fred Gardner Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit Justin Felux Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby! Will Youmans "Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine Mike Ferner What Else Shall We Do? David Krieger The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant Agustin Velloso Samson Returns to Gaza Saul Landau The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema Ben Tripp Right Down the Middle Poets Basement Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert Website of the Weekend Holler If Ya Hear Me   September 30, 2005 Mary Geddry Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill Paul Craig Roberts Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars Dave Lindorff Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time Gregory Wilpert "The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" Benjamin Dangl "Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo James McMurtry We Can't Make It Here Anymore T.R. Johnson Return to the Ninth Ward   September 29, 2005 Sen. Russ Feingold Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America Carl G. Estabrook Obama the Enabler Ramzy Baroud Rhetoric and Reality of War Dave Lindorff What Opposition Party? Mike Whitney Brownie's Comic Opera Jozef Hand-Boniakowski What Noble Cause? Gary Handschumacher Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan Winslow T. Wheeler No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans   September 28, 2005 Dr. Eyad Serraj Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like William A. Cook Bush's Security Barrier Liaquat Ali Khan The Invention of Porno Torture Mike Whitney Apartheid Justice in America Joshua Frank Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home? CounterPunch Wire New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Chris Genovali Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest Linn Washington, Jr. White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top   September 27, 2005 Forrest Hylton Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement Jason Leopold The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist Jennifer K. Harbury Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration Ray McGovern Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent? Mike Ferner Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon Antony Loewenstein When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia Harry Browne Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms   September 26, 2005 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend Joshua Frank Democrats Flee Peace Protests Lamis Andoni The Railroading of Taysir Alony Mike Marqusee Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement Rep. Cynthia McKinney They Can't Fool Us Anymore Ron Jacobs A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement Norman Solomon The Media and the Antiwar Movement John Chuckman Bush in a Bottle Paul Craig Roberts America is Running Out of Time   September 24 / 25, 2005 Kathy and Bill Christison Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage Ralph Nader Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina Saul Landau The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada Greg Moses A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau Roger Burbach Hugo Chavez's Mission Vijay Prashad America's Shame Laura Carlsen After NAFTA Robert Fisk When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful Dave Lindorff A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They? Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration Maj. Anthony Milavic The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti: the Time for Action is Now   September 23, 2005 CounterPunch News Service In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly Diane Farsetta Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks Robert Sandels Militarizing the Market Christopher Brauchli Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations Alan Farago Bird Flu Takes Flight Dave Zirin When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968 Maxine Conant A Simple Test for Bush David Price Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering   September 22, 2005 Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa Patrick Cockburn Iraqis: This Government has No Authority Manuel Garcia, Jr. Thinking is Religious Freedom Lucia Dailey Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One Mokhiber / Weissman Are You a Speed Freak? Russell D. Hoffman The Nukes in Rita's Path Kona Lowell God's Hurricane? Jason Leopold GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina Website of the Day Robert Pollin on the Global Economy   September 21, 2005 Jorge Mariscal Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen? Linda S. Heard Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak Joshua Frank NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan Eric Ruder "The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia Pierre Tristam The Struts and Bull Presidency Dave Lindorff The Real Story of the German Elections Mike Ferner Sit Down in DC Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Katrina Bling Bling Jeffrey St. Clair W Marks the Spot Website of the Day New Orleans: Survivor Stories   September 20, 2005 Steve Breyman Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice George Galloway Et Tu, Greg Palast? Patrick Cockburn What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion? M. Shahid Alam Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out? Mike Whitney The Gitmo Hunger Strikers Winslow T. Wheeler It's Not Rocket Science Niranjan Ramakrishnan Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit Paul Craig Roberts Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition October 8 / 9, 2005 CounterPunch Diary Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Every year or so some right-winger in America lets fly in public with a ripe salvo of racism and the liberal watchdogs come tearing out of their kennels and the neighborhood echoes with the barks and shouts. The right winger says he didn't mean it, the President "distances himself" and the liberals claim they're shocked, shocked beyond all measure. Then everyday life in racist America resumes its even course. This past fortnight it's been the turn of that public moralizer and noted Las Vegas habitué, William Bennett. He should have known better than to loose off a hypothetical on his radio show. Announce publicly that " if you wanted to reduce crime, you could you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down," and many Americans reckon that's no hypothesis, that's a plan waiting to happen. Amid the dutiful uproar when his remarks finally drew notice Bennett kept insisting that he was being purely hypothetical, but Americans don't take hypotheses lightly, any more than they feel at ease with irony. Particularly in the age of the internet, literalism is the order of the day. Qualifications such as Bennett added (to the effect that this would be "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do") are useless. The deeper irony here is that liberals have pondered longer and deeper than conservatives on how exactly to carry out Bennett's hypothetical plan, either by sterilization or compulsory contraception. Before Hitler and his fellow Nazis (who said they had learned much from US sterilization laws and immigration restrictions) made the discipline unfashionable, eugenics and the prevention of socially unworthy babies were hot topics among America's social cleansers. The keenest of these cleansers were not Southern crackers but Northern liberals. States pioneering sterilization laws included La Follette's Wisconsin and Woodrow Wilson's New Jersey. Around the country, after Indiana led the way in 1909, eugenic sterilization was most energetically pushed by progressive politicians, medical experts and genteel women's groups. In the mid-1930s Alabama's governor, Bibb Graves, vetoed a sterilization bill enthusiastically passed by the legislature. The populist Graves cited "the hazard to personal rights". Behind this sterilization drive was the Malthusian fear that poor people reproduce at a faster rate than rich ones or those endowed with a high IQ. The highly regarded biologist Garrett Hardin wrote in his 1949 book Biology: Its Human Implications that "Either there must be a relatively painless weeding out before birth or a more painful and wasteful elimination of individuals after birth. If we neglect a program of eugenics, will the production of children be non-selective? By 1968 Paul Ehrlich, in his Population Bomb, was urging a cutback in government programs of "death control", i.e., public health. Nixon cut health benefits and pumped money into population control. Allan Chase, in The Legacy of Malthus, says 63,678 people were compulsorily sterilized in America between 1907 and 1964 in the thirty states and one colony with such laws. But there were hundreds of thousands more sterilizations which were nominally voluntary but actually coerced. Chase quotes federal judge Gerhard Gesell as saying in 1974, in a suit brought on behalf of poor victims of involuntary sterilization, "Over the past few years an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 low-income persons have been sterilized annually by state and federal agencies." This rate equals that achieved in Nazi Germany. Gesell said that "an indefinite number of poor people have been improperly coerced into accepting a sterilization operation under the threat that various federally supported welfare benefits would be withdrawn unless they submitted to irreversible sterilization. Patients receiving Medicaid assistance at childbirth are evidently the most frequent targets of this pressure." Writing towards the end of the 1970s, Chase reckoned that probably at least 200,000 Americans per year were the victims of involuntary and irreversible sterilization. In the mid-1990s liberals flourished the same basic hypothesis as Bennett. They said there was a cycle of poverty and welfare dependency that bred crime. In 1994 Arizona and Nebraska prohibited welfare increases for recipients who had additional babies while on the dole. Connecticut in the same year gave serious consideration to a bill providing additional subsidies for welfare mothers who accepted a conctraceptive implant (called Norplant). Though race specific terms were usually avoided by eugenicists, who preferred words like "weak minded" or "imbeciles" (a favorite of that enthusiast for sterilizing, Oliver Wendell Homes, a jurist much admired by liberals) the target was, by and large, blacks. What direct sterilization could not prevent, incarceration or medically justified confinement has also sought to achieve. Bill Bennett didn't know the half of it. He's about a century behind the curve.   Forty Million on Strike in India The left unions in India had an industrial strike on September 29. It was huge. Industries and units employing over 40 million workers participated in great strength. Millions of workers across the country came out on the streets. According to Sainath, CounterPunch's well qualified man on the spot, the Indian media hated it and kept trying to undermine it -- 'SMS' polls (i.e. cellphone msgs) polls were held by TV channels to show how much people hated the strike. Then they tried to say many services were not affected. By evening they changed tack and took the line that the strike was devastating, a loss to national economy, a blow to India's image as an investment destination and so forth. The strike was against the privatization policies of this UPA government. One of the main sectors was airport employees (NOT airlines) who were fighting against privatization of the airports. The TV anchors kept saying that Delhi and Mumbai airports were normal (the airlines were not part of the strike anyway) and below them the ticket kept announcing how many flights from those airports were either cancelled or clubbed together for lack of passengers. In Kerala, Sainath tells us, two devastating things happened: one, the strike was total. Two, the Left swept to its biggest ever victory in local body polls, from the gram (village) panchayats to the district panchayats and municipal councils and municipal corporations. This suggests a huge victory is in the offing for them in next year's assembly polls. The news from Wyanad, the upland region in northern Kerala where I spent time with Sainath last spring, was particularly striking. For 50 years this had been a Congress stronghold. Last assembly elections, the Congress won all three assembly seats by huge margins. This time, in the local body polls, they were beaten by equally large margins. Such margins are very unusual in Kerala. Wayanad was always a rich farmer-Church haven. So it's a measure of how badly the agrarian crisis has hit the people there. Hard-core Congress supporters either did not go out to vote, disgusted with their party's policy; or went out and voted against it.                                       CLARIFICATION ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH We published an article entitled "A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the "Website"). Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism. As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website. We are pleased to clarify the position. August 17, 2005

Coming in the Fall from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher 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