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Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Join the 14 Per Cent Club! May 13, 2005 Tom Stephens A Chronology of US War Crimes and Torture, 1975-2005 Patrick Cockburn "They Destroyed Everything" Mike Whitney Tom Friedman, Imperial Chronicler Chris Floyd Miami Vice: the Sleazy World of Jeb Bush Jenna Orkin Ground Zero's Toxic Dust Dave Lindorff Googling for Fun Joshua Frank Yale Fires an Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar: an Interview with David Graeber Website of the Day Botero: Pinta El Horror de Abu Ghraib May 12, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts America is Losing: More Phony Jobs Hype Uri Avnery Death of a Myth Greg Moses Neo-Con Logic at the Border Carolyn Baker The Politics of Dominionism: the New Religious Right in America Pat Williams Amateurish High Jinks on Roadless Areas William S. Lind Reality Gap: the Myth of US Invincibilty Jack Random The Dubious Wisdom of George W. Bush Gary Leupp Douglas Feith Bares His Soul to Jeffrey Goldberg   May 11, 2005 Patrick Cockburn The Rise, Fall and Rise of Ahmed Chalabi: King of Jordan to Pardon His $300 Million Bank Swindle Kevin Zeese The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day Christopher Brauchli Coffee, Tea or Torture?: A One Way Ticket to Uzbekistan Zalman Amit The Collapse of Academic Freedom in Israel: Tantura, Teddy Katz and Haifa University Robert Shull Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops: Senate Gives DHS Power to Waive All Laws Mike Whitney God, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Anti-Arabic Week at a Southern High School Norman Solomon Political Bluster and the Filibuster   May 10, 2005 Richard Drayton The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check Dave Zirin Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP Jackie Corr The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall Dave Lindorff Silence of the Scams: Economists on China Michael Donnelly From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory Reza Fiyouzat Nomadic Abstracts Scott Parkin Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton Stephen Babcock The Burden of Knowing Better Alan Farago Florida, Water and Lobbyists Michael Neumann Naomi's Courage Website of the Day One Nation Under Plagiarism   May 9, 2005 Louis Proyect Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher Robert Fisk "Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two Kevin Zeese Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman Joshua Frank Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage Sasha Kramer A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons Andrew Wimmer Create and Resist Jeffrey Webber Back to the Streets in Bolivia? Jeffrey St. Clair Straight to Bechtel   May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Who Beat Hitler? Gary Leupp Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism Saul Landau Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups Joe DeRaymond Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega Daniela Ponce Seeing Chile in Nepal Heather Williams Hollywood Does Enron Gregory Elich Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice Anis Memon To Cuba and Back John Chuckman The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism" Mike Whitney Hard Right Rage Against the Truth Ron Jacobs Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On Colin Kalmbacher Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont. Lance Selfa Uprising in Mexico City Fred Gardner "Getting High is a Little Like Cuba" Ben Tripp Letters on Wittgenstein Mickey Z. The Mother of All Days Richard Joseph Those Patriotic Magnets Dr. Susan Block Come As You Are: Masturbation 101 Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert   May 6, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood Erin Yoshioka Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison? Sam Husseini Talking with Syrians Dave Lindorff Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters Kevin Zeese Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty Joshua Frank An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War Dan Bacher Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid P. Sainath India's Bloody Water Wars   May 5, 2005 Carles Mutaner Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?" Carl G. Estabrook Is There Any Hope for the Pope? Farrah Hassen The US's Syrian Obsession Kevin Zeese "Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta Michael Leonardi May Day with an American Soldier in Rome Bennett Ramberg The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You Ray McGovern The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit Norman Solomon Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran Nicole Colson The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights Brian Concannon, Jr. Clearing the Fences in Haiti     May 4, 2005 Colin Kalmbacher Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested John Walsh Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War Greg Moses Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation" Ali Khan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart Chris Floyd Ring Them Bells Linda S. Heard D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics Dave Zirin The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle William S. Lind Fool's Paradise Gary Leupp Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution Website of the Day Kent State, May 4, 1970   May 3, 2005 Dave Lindorff Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice Brian Cloughley Halliburton's War Loot Ira Kurzban Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers Seth Sandronsky Towards Debtors' Prisons? Gilad Atzmon The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More Michael Donnelly Branding Eco Collapse Alex Sanchez Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush? Peter Linebaugh Magna Carta and May Day   May 2, 2005 Ron Jacobs Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement Stan Goff The Case of Hasan Akbar Karyn Strickler Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics Joshua Frank Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly Kevin Zeese Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam Vicente Navarro Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician       April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility" Gabriel Kolko Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later Jennifer Loewenstein The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood Lee Sustar City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago Saul Landau The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power T.W. Croft The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy Nikolas Kozloff Fox News v. Hugo Chavez William Blum Never-Ending Double Standards Dave Lindorff Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly Joshua Frank The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls Doug Giebel Saving Jane Fonda Steven Erlanger A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief Fred Gardner Washington State Doctor Harassed Mike Whitney Another Mad Bush Press Conference Kurt Nimmo Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine Joe DeRaymond A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania Michael Dickinson Flags Mickey Z. May Day at Yankee Stadium Justin Taylor The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy Poets Basement Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Save Barbados's Cowpastor                                             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 14 / 15, 2005 Right-Wing "Christians," Watch Your Back! Was Jesus Gay? By BRIAN J. FOLEY Right-wing "Christians" hate gays. They denounce homosexuality as an "abomination." Many political analysts credit President Bush's reelection to the "Christians" who stampeded to the polls to vote against gay marriage. Why the hate? Some mental health experts suggest that people who hate gays may be repressing their own homosexual tendencies. Indeed, we just saw the gay-bashing Republican mayor of Spokane go down, so to speak, in flames, after his same-sex sex was exposed. Maybe these "values voters" are repressing something else. Could they harbor a fear that dare not speak its name, a fear that their "American Idol," Jesus, might have been gay? Consider the evidence. Jesus never married. He was apparently dateless at the Cana wedding. He associated almost exclusively with men, bopping from town to town, incurring the wrath of religious elders. The Bible doesn't detail any sexual encounters among these guys, but it does show Jesus telling them how much he "loved" them. He made his companions remove their sandals and washed their feet, drizzling warm water over their toes and rubbing them dry. They were cavorting in a park when police raided them and arrested Jesus; one of his friends had betrayed him with a "kiss." Hanging out in parks with other men, kissing them, fondling their feet such behavior would not be tolerated in today's "mega churches." And just imagine the reaction to the robe and long hair, or the Palm Sunday parade! Some Right-wing "Christians" might argue that the evidence is inconclusive, that the Bible wouldn't necessarily discuss someone's sexual orientation, especially if it were "normal." But what is normal? In our culture, people are assumed to be heterosexual unless they or someone else claims otherwise. Jesus' world was different, and perhaps more complicated. Jesus was a Jew, and Jews condemned homosexual acts. But Jesus lived under Roman occupation, and the pervasive Greco-Roman culture gave a green light to gay love. Et tu, Brute? There's no proof that Jesus was heterosexual, either. He never claimed to be. He never denounced homosexuals. There is no Biblical evidence that Jesus ever had sex with anybody, though in his times, celibacy was considered abnormal. Sex is a natural human drive, so it's a good bet that the Son of Man got some. Since he hung out with twelve foot-washing, love-talking, kissing male companions, it's a good bet that it was among them he satisfied his urges (though we can't rule out, of course, that he was bisexual). Try as they might, Right-wing "Christians" can't prove that Jesus wasn't queer. You can't prove a negative ­ a principle that should be familiar to many religious people who believe in God in part because God's existence can't be disproved. Religious people everywhere have relied on this basic fact of logic for millennia. Even if God exists, who can prove any particulars about him, her, or it? Don't reach too fast for that Bible: the Good Book is just a document that claims to be true. The National Enquirer and The New York Times also claim to be true -- and many Right-wing "Christians" don't believe those. The Bible is even less reliable than those sources; its stories were written hundreds of years after the fact, by people who weren't eyewitnesses, and who relied on hearsay. And those stories are often ridiculous, n'est-ce pas? A guy gets eaten by a whale, and survives in its gut for three days, until he's vomited to safety. A man is crucified and dies, yet rises. A young woman gets pregnant without having sex. More to the point: No one can prove that God, if he, she, or it even exists, hates homosexuals. The opposite may well be true. According to the stereotype, gays have more sex partners, and more and better sex, than heterosexuals. They have more creative jobs, better decorated homes, and more disposable income -- especially where they can't adopt kids. By the standards of many Right-wing "Christians," gays are "blessed." The only thing it seems can be trusted is Jesus' main commandment. To follow it requires no belief in the supernatural, just faith that the words were repeated and translated with reasonable accuracy. Indeed, one can follow it without even believing Jesus existed. "Love one another." That includes loving homosexuals ­ which might include Jesus Christ himself. A Gay Jesus: What a wonderful way for God to test his followers' faith! Most Right-wing "Christians," I bet, would rather be puked up by a whale. Brian J. Foley can be reached at brian_j_foley@yahoo.com.       .