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Today's Stories

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

Doug Giebel
Saving Jane Fonda

Steven Erlanger
A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief

 

April 29, 2005

W. John Green
Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death Squads?

Luke Brothers
Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT

Norman Solomon
War, Aid and Public Relations

M. Junaid Alam
The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption

Jackie Corr
The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens

Hunter Greer
Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally, a Use for Standardized Testing!

Sharon Smith
The New Assault on Women's Rights: Why are the Democrats Silent?

Website of the Day
Tony Blair's Election Rap

 

April 28, 2005

Omar Waraich
Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview

Kevin Zeese
Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off?

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Torture Tort Reform

Greg Moses
Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes

Toni Solo
Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums

Werther
George Will Revises the Vietnam War

 

April 27, 2005

John Ross
Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death

Joshua Frank
DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias

Ray McGovern
The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets the Eye

Mark Donham
Government Pettiness and Wetland Destruction

Dan Smith
Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?

 

April 26, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder

Alevtina Rea
Magic of the Yellow Emperor

Greg Moses
The Senator and the Narc Pirates of Highway 281

Joshua Frank
Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards on Ruzicka

Diana Johnstone
The French are At It Again

 

April 25, 2005

Uri Avnery
The Persecution of Vanunu

Alison Weir
The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT Minimizes Palestinian Deaths

Lee Sustar
Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life of Dave Yettaw

Leonardo Boff
A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger: a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power?

Gary Leupp
Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton

 

 

 

 

April 23 / 24, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Time's Buried Hitler Cover

Gary Leupp
The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in China

James Petras
Elections for Democracy or Empire?

Harry Browne
Springsteen's "Devils and Dust"

Fred Gardner
The Custody Threat

Ron Jacobs
The Desterrados of Colombia: They are not Collateral Damage

Elizabeth Schulte
Why Backing Democrats is Pulling the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right

Chris Floyd
Oil, Guns and Banks

 

April 22, 2005

Saul Landau
The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries Forever

Kevin Zeese
Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation

Joshua Frank
Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature

Mike Whitney
God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses

Michael Flynn
Wolfowitz on Top of the World

Lee Sustar
The One-Sided Class War

Website of the Day
Bitter Greens

 

April 21, 2005

Bill Quigley
The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger

Dave Lindorff
Bush's X-Files

Jason Leopold
Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse Than the Exxon Valdez?

Kathleen Christison
Sharon's 92 Percent Solution: How the Misperceptions Roll On


April 20, 2005

 

April 20, 2005

John Ross
Lopez Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two)

Kevin Zeese
Halliburton: Poster Child of the War Profiteers

Uri Avnery
The 100 Days of Abu Mazen

Website of the Day
The House that Jack Built

 

April 19, 2005

Jean-Guy Allard
An Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for the White House?"

Dave Lindorff
What's Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight

Neve Gordon
Before the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories

Brian Concannon, Jr
Immaculate Evasions in Haiti

Murray Hudson
Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides

Frank B. Ford
Poem for Marla Ruzicka

Monty Python
Memo to Pope Rat

Michael Dickinson
Cardinal Sins

Paul Craig Roberts
Outsourcing the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism

Website of the Day
Strindberg and Helium


April 18, 2005

Linda Schade / Kevin Zeese
The Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest

John Ross
Mexico's Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness

Brian McKenna
Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan

Mike Whitney
The NYT in Fallujah

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Peace in Tatters

Dave Zirin
Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop

Eli Stephens
The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson

Harry Browne
War and Elections in Britain and Ireland

Website of the Day
A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest

 

April 16 / 17, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Message in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada

Mark Dow
The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag

Omar Waraich
Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain

Robert Buzzanco
How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq

Sherry Wolf
Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation?

Fred Gardner
The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana

Ron Jacobs
Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities

Mark Weisbrot
CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages

John Pardon
The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen

Yoshie Furuhashi
Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit Industry

Mike Roselle
Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism?

Ralph Nader
Scientists or Celebrities?

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair

Jackson Thoreau
Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter

Michael Dickinson
"Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul

Richard Neville
Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney

Website of the Weekend
Rebel Angel

 

 

April 15, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Diplomacy, Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice

Bill Glahn
No Child Left a Dime

Mickey Z.
One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich

Stephanie McMillan
Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit

Josh Mahan
Victoria's Dirty Secret

David Russitano
Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up?

Jorge Mariscal
Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales
"I am Joaquin"

Tom Reeves
Students Rise Again in Québec

 

April 14, 2005

Karyn Strickler
Red States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act

Pat Williams
The Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West

Jessica Pupovac
What You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy

Joshua Frank
Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt.

Jerzy Mankowski
Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland

Talli Naumann
Right-to-Know in Mexico

Antony Loewenstein
The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch

Virginia Rodino
Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
Bush's Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports

Website of the Day
The 13th Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland

 

 

April 13, 2005

Maria Carrión
Bolton in the Western Sahara

Mike Whitney
Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando Botero

Terry Jones
Let Them Eat Bombs

Dave Lindorff
A Sickening Error

Nathaniel Livingston, Jr.
Ethnic Cleansing at Air America

Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran

Don Fitz
Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative to Pesticides

Tom Crumpacker
Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences

JG
The Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34

Jack McCarthy
Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee

Kevin Zeese
Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions

 

April 12, 2005

John Wheat Gibson
The Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot Act

Kevin Zeese
The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now

Alan Farago
The Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida

Dave Lindorff
Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to White Alabamans

Ron Jacobs
Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

Nelson P. Valdes
Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie

Dave Zirin
War Games and War Names

Website of the Day
Parents Against the Draft

 

 

April 11, 2005

Tom Barry
Negroponte and the Eclipse of the CIA

Saul Landau
Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead: Contempt for the Rest Us

Monique Dols
Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad

Phil Gasper
Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt

Mike Whitney
See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media

Edwin Krales
The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry

Paul de Rooij
Undermining Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects

Website of the Day
Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition

 

 

April 9 / 10, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Torture Air, Incorporated

William A. Cook
Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights Abuses

Gary Leupp
My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru

Alan Maass
Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary

Laura Carlsen
Democracy Sinking in Mexico

Joe DeRaymond
Death and Displacement in Colombia

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again)

Dave Lindorff
The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar

Greg Moses
Growling at Hallliburton

Fred Gardner
Southern Station Session

Justin Smith
The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as Bad Old Days

Ron Jacobs
George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones

M. Junaid Alam
No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US

Ira Kay
West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the World

Elizabeth Schulte
From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left

Jackie Corr
Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana

Christopher Brauchli
From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment

Leslie A. Fiedler
On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is Over"

Ben Tripp
Pocket Furniture

Poets Basement
Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Military Free Zones

 

 

April 8, 2005

Rob Eshelman
Made in Palestine: the First Exhibition of Palestinian Art in the US

Hom Raj Acharya / Sally Acharya
The Elephant in Nepal's Parlor

Felice Pace
A Golden Opportunity for Justice on the Klamath

Neve Gordon
Israel is the Key to Iraq

Mike Whitney
The Economic Tsunami: Coming Sooner Than You Think

Don Monkerud
God's Shock Troops: the Religious Right and US Foreign Policy

Adam Engel
The Code of Frank Conroy

Vicente Navarro
Opus Dei and John Paul II: a Profoundly Rightwing Pope

Website of the Day
Mountain Justice Summer

 

 

April 7, 2005

Joshua Frank
The DeLay Scandal Isn't a Partisan Issue

Yitzhak Laor
Racism by Any Other Name

Alan Maass
Tug of War with Terri Schiavo

Steven Sherman
An Open Letter to Daniel Okrent: Why the Times is Not "Assertively Left"

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Potemkin Town Meetings

Gerry Adams
The IRA Should Change from "Volunteers" to "Activists"

John Chuckman
Hanoi Jane and the City of God

Michael Dickinson
Two Weddings and a Funeral

John Ross
Lost and Found in the Arizona Desert

Website of the Day
Genetically-Engineered Small Pox?

 

 

April 6, 2005

Peter Camejo
The Crisis in the Green Party

Kevin Wehr
The Eco-Terror Hoax: Domestic Security and the Culture of Fear

Matt Vidal
Bush's Legacy: Dead Bodies, Dead Wrong, Dead Logic

Robert Creeley / Bruce Jackson
On the Subject of Company

Nikolas Kozloff
Chavez's Oil Gambit

Sea Shepherd Crew
Attack of the Hak-a-Piks

Brenda Child
Ojibwe Have Dealt With Grief Before: From Boarding School Abuse to School Shootings

Terry Eagleton
The Pope with Blood on His Hands

David Swanson
Why the Media Can't Read the Banktuptcy Bill

Cindy Ellen Hill
On the Lists: What's the Patriot Act in Belfast

Website of the Day
The New Nike?

 

 

April 5, 2005

Jim Connolly
The Pope Who Revived the Office of the Inquisition: an American Catholic on the Papacy of John Paul II

Paul Craig Roberts
"Partnering" the Destruction of the American Economy

Gary Leupp
Bombing the Malwiya Minaret

Dave Lindorff
The Grassroots Resistance to the Patriot Act

Ron Jacobs
The Terrorism of War

Dan Smith
Riding the Dragon, Soaring on the Eagle: US Economic Decline and the Rise of China

Mark Engler
John Paul II's Economic Ethics: Moral Values and Global Capitalism

Richard Oxman
Bono for Pope

Greg Moses
Narcowars vs. Civil Rights

Website of the Day
Impeach Cheney and Bush

 

 

April 4, 2005

Kevin Zeese
Liberals and Neocons for a Draft

Paul Craig Roberts
American Rot: When Opposing Voices Do Not Oppose

Larry Birns / Sarah Schaffer
Bush's Arms Sales Hypocrisy

Karyn Strickler
Blood on Ice: Seal Pup Slaughter on the St. Lawrence

Joshua Frank
The Minuteman Project: Paramilitaries on the Border

Michael Dickinson
It's Too Late Now for John Paul II to Repent

Surendra R. Devkota
Ending the Deadlock in Nepal

Derrick O'Keefe
Haiti, Yesterday and Today: an Interview with Laura Flynn

Uri Avnery
Djinn in the Box

Website of the Day
Libby, Montana: America's Most Toxic Town?

 

 

April 2 / 3, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Death, Depression and Prozac

Jeffrey St. Clair
Trippwired

Stan Goff
A Trojan Jackass for the Anti-War Movement

John Ross
How to Change the World Without Taking Power

Saul Landau
Guns, Vitamins and God

Robert Creeley
Goodbye

Mike Roselle
Riding Shotgun with Woody Harrelson

Joshua Frank
Dead Wrong Intelligence

Fred Gardner
The Obvious Green Issue

Greg Moses
Photo ID Movement as White Privilege

Fran Quigley
The Economics of Global Poverty: an Interview with Jeffrey Sachs

Kurt Nimmo
The Strange Allure of Paul Wolfowitz

Nicole Colson
Pentagon Greenlights Murder in Iraq

Chris Genovali
Killing Grizzlies for Fun

Alan Farago
Dirty Water and Land Speculators in the Florida Keys

Lawrence Reichard
The M-19 and the Siege of Bogota

Ben Tripp
Civilization and War

Avantika Regmi
Chaos in Nepal

Lee Sustar
Off the Script in Kyrgyzstan

Ron Jacobs
Death of a Revolutionary: Vermont Loses an Honest Man

Dave Lindorff
The Black Arrow: a Review

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Curtis, Louise, Engel and Albert

Website of the Day
O2 Collective: No Breathing Tube Required

 

 

 

April 1, 2005

Tom Barry
Michael Chertoff: Legal Storm Trooper

Rahul Mahajan
WMD Commission: Yet Another Intelligence Failure

Charlie Cray / Jim Vallette
Dancing with Wolfowitz

Dave Lindorff
News Media Anguish Over Schiavo's Death

Zeynep Toufe
The Terri Schiavo Success Story

Suzan Mazur
Pension Funds and the Price of Oil

Michael Dickinson
Shut Your Mouth or Go to Prison!

Stan Cox
Iraq Reconstruction Funds Invested on Wall Street

Ra Ravishankar
Et Tu, George?

Daniel Wolff
Patti Scialfa's Conversation with America

 

 

March 31, 2005

Sharon Smith
Leftwing Apologists for the Occupation

Ron Jacobs
Rounding Out Iraq's History

Tariq Ali
British Elections: Punish the Warmongers

Michael Dickinson
Cartoon Capers: Turkey's War on Political Cartoonists

Kanak Mani Dixit
The Struggle for Nepal's Future

Mitchell Zimmerman
The Bizarre Legal Philosophy of Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Xuan-Trang Ho
Guatemala and CAFTA: Return to the Bad Old Days?

Dave Zirin
Pay the Damn Players!

Joe Bageant
In Praise of Holy Madness

Jeff Halper
The End of a Viable Palestinian State

Website of the Day
Free Nepal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Weekend Edition
April 30 / May 1, 2005

Abortion's Mann Act

A Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls

By JOSHUA FRANK

Rainbow Lake, New York

Life for teenage girls in the US of A took a dark turn this past week. On Wednesday April 27, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would strengthen state statutes in over two-dozen states that currently require clinics to obtain parental consent before they treat a female under the age of eighteen.

The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (H.R. 748) passed with eager bipartisan support. Over fifty House Democrats voted in favor of the anti-choice measure. The bill, which was put forward by a right-wing Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, would make it a federal crime to transport a female minor to an clinic in a state where parental involvement laws are not as strong as those in the state where the girl resides.

"This legislation will close a loophole that allows adults not only to help minors break state laws by obtaining an abortion without parental consent, but also contributes to ending the life of an innocent child," boasts Rep. Ros-Lehtinen.

President Bush also sang his praise for the passage of the House legislation. In a statement released on April 27, Bush remarked, "The parents of pregnant minors can provide counsel, guidance, and support to their children and should be involved in these decisions. I urge the Senate to pass this important legislation and help continue to build a culture of life in America."

Lucky for Dubya, he may not have to 'urge' the Senate too hard.

It is difficult to imagine Democrats standing up to this assault on abortion rights. For their own Minority Leader Harry Reid has a long squalid history of voting against a woman's right to choose.

The pro-choice advocacy group NARAL has awarded Senator Reid a failing report card on more than one occasion. NARAL claims Reid has voted against choice 71% of the time he's been given the opportunity. They point out that Reid has gone as far as to favor giving personhood to fetuses, as he demonstrated when he voted in favor of criminalizing the harm done to an unborn fetus during an assault crime. And as a senator, he voted "yes" to banning partial birth abortions as well as in favor of outlawing abortions on US military bases.

Why would ol' Reid stop there? Teen girls sure seem like his next logical target.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Reid's arch nemesis (sic), said in a statement released after the bill passed in the House, that he expects a Senate vote later this summer. "No matter how [many] people it affects, it's an important bill on the principles," he said.

Unfortunately, Frist and Reid share the same anti-choice principles. Looks like a lot of teenage girls in the US are going to be shit-out-of luck if they find themselves expecting. After all, what to do about the pregnancy is going to be a parent's decision, not their own. And of course, if an impregnated teen needs state assistance to help out with the kid she is forced to have -- she'll be shit-out-of luck too.

Welcome to America. Land of the controlled. Home of the insane.

Joshua Frank is the author of the forthcoming book, Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, to be published by Common Courage Press. You can pre-order a copy at discounted rate at www.BrickBurner.org. Josh can be reached at: Joshua@BrickBurner.org.