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Exciting New Print Edition of CounterPunch
Bolivia's Third Revolution

Confused by Bolivia's upheavals? CounterPunch's Newton Garver gives you the history, the politics and a roadmap through the present great upsurge of Indians who say NO to centuries of theft and oppression. On the track of Guatemala's killers: a searing report from John Ross on the US-backed monsters who turned Guatemala into a charnel house and on the heroes who hunt them down. The rise and rise of a corporation called Halliburton: Jeffrey St Clair scours some of Texas' history's dirtiest pages and tells how Halliburton's cash helped put two presidents to the White House. 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!

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Today's Stories

Bond / Brutus / Setshedi
How Bono and Trojan Horse NGOs Sabotage the Struggle Against Neoliberalism

June 16, 2005

John Walsh
The Iraq War Polls: Dems' Stance Even Less Popular Than Bush's

Dave Lindorff
Work 'Till You Die: the Bush Retirement Plan

Adrian Lomax
Torture in U.S. Prisons: Common, Lethal, Unreported

Tom Crumpacker
The CIA, Posada and the Bombing of Cubana Flight 455

Jeffrey Kolakowski
The Kinsley Paradigm: Downsizing the Downing St. Memo

Julene Bair
Turning Off the Ogallala Spigot: Toward a New Way to Farm on the Great Plains

Michael Dickinson
As We Forgive Our Debtors: the Madness of Money

Francois Houtart / Isabel Parra, et al.
Against Terrorism; In Defense of Humanity: an Appeal

Tom Barry
Meet Bolton's Replacement: Robert "First Strike" Joseph

 

June 15, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to US Troops on Loyalty

Daniel Wolff
The Palace at 4 A.M.

Tim Wise
Discover the Nutwork: David Horowitz and the Politics of Ad Hominem Distortion

Ricardo Alarcón
The New CIA Revelations About Posada

Joshua Frank
House Republicans vs. Bush: "This is Not a Conservative War"

John Hilary
Bloodsuckers' Summit: Why the Left Should Rendezvous at the G8

Norman Solomon
Iran's Reformers: a Threat to Theocrats and Neocons

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Juries and Lynch Mobs

Website of the Day
What It Feels Like to be Tasered (Turn Up the Volume)

 

June 14, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners

Forrest Hylton
Stalemate in Bolivia

Richard Gott
The Crisis in Bolivia

Fred Gardner
The Raich Decision: All Power to the Feds

Steve Breyman
Doing the Right Thing is Also Politically Expedient

Dave Zirin
Sacred Hoops: Basketball in the Barrio

Robert Kent
Outsourcing Torture and the Stop-Loss Program

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners

 

June 13, 2005

Gary Leupp
Another Damning Document

Dave Lindorff
The Inca and Us

John Stauber
Mad Cow USA: the Cover-Up Begins to Unravel

Fred Gardner
Supreme Indignity: Medical Pot Doctors Respond to Justice Stevens

Evelyn J. Pringle
TeenScreen: the Lawsuits Begin

Norman Solomon
Letter From Tehran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Neo-Con Unfurls the Big Picture

 

June 10 / 12, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Thomas Friedman's Imaginary World

Sharon Smith
Torturers and Liars: Masters of Deception

Brian Cloughley
"Support Our Torturers!"

Chris Kromm
Home Cookin': Pentagon's Base Relignment Plan Would Increase South's Share

Heather Gray
A Day in Mississippi: Some Things Have Changed; Some Remain the Same

Kevin Zeese
What the Left Must Learn from 2004: an Interview with Josh Frank

Mickey Z.
The Pentagon Papers, 34 Years Later

Gary Leupp
A Review of Sison's "At Home in the World"

Eli Stephens
The Asshole in El Paso: Why Posada Carriles Matters

Nick Dearden
A Scottish Band in the Occupied Territories

Oscar Olivera
Recovering Bolivia's Oil and Gas

Robert Fisk
Screening "Kingdom of Heaven" in Beirut

Michael Dickinson
Oh My God!: Gunning for Blasphemers

Poets' Basement
Engel, Albert, Louise, Ford

Website of the Weekend
Gravity's Rainbow, Illustrated


June 9, 2005

Len Colodny
Felt Was Asked Under Oath in 1975 If He Was "Deep Throat"

Christopher Brauchli
From Baseballs to Hand Grenades

Ron Jacobs
Light a Candle; Curse the Darkness

Dave Lindorff
US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist

Katrina Yeaw / Alex Schmaus
Repression 101: Anti-War Students Sanctioned at SFSU

Alan Farago
Spin Machine Busts a Gasket in the Everglades: Fed Judge Whacks Jeb

Saul Landau
The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

June 8, 2005

Jim Hougan
Strange Bedfellows
Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA

Alan Maass
Is Bolivia on the Edge of Revolution? an Interview with Tom Lewis

Jason Leopold
Enron Lives!: Former Army Sec. White Wants Govt. Money for New Energy Scam

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exit Right, Advani: Unpardonable Acts of Statesmanship

Dave Zirin
The Rotting Soul of the 49ers

Derrick O'Keefe
Bush's Terrorist: the Case of Posada Carriles

Diana Johnstone
Non, Neen, Angelene!
Why Defenders of the "Oui" are Wrong

Website of the Day
The Meatrix

 

June 7, 2005

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia's Agony of the Stalement Continues

Greg Moses / Susan van Haitsma
Pushing Back the Violence

Lenni Brenner
What Madison Would Think About the Air Force Academy's Offical Fanatics

Col. Dan Smith
Liberation vs. Survival in Iraq

Joshua Frank
Dean at the DNC: the Establishment vs. the Elites

Dave Lindorff
Fair-Weather Allies: US Denies French Fighters Emergency Landing Rights

Margot Veranes / Adrian Navarro
Xenophobia in the Desert: Racist Fever Becomes Law in Arizona

Michael Neumann
Sharing Music: Property Gone Wild

 

June 6, 2005

Stew Albert
Everybody Must Get Busted: Supremes Rule Against the Sick

Paul Craig Roberts
Federal Bureau of Entrapment

Nicole Colson
Inside Walter Reed Hospital

Ali Khan
Friendly Renditions to Muslim Torture Chambers

Jason Leopold
When Will Rumsfeld Be Indicted?

Charles Walker Poff
Rumsfeld, China and Hypocrisy

Ramzy Baroud
My Grandpa's Right of Return

Rep. John Conyers
Did Bush Deliberately Deceive America About Iraq?

Evelyn Pringle
TeenScreen's Top Pusher

Gary Corseri
25 Reasons to Impeach Bush

Website of the Day
Save This 200 Year Old Burr Oak from Bible Thumpers with Chainsaws

 

June 4 / 5, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
France's Magnificent Non!

James Petras
The Centrality of Peasant Movements in Latin America

Robert Fisk
Who Killed Samir?

Patrick Cockburn
My Father, Claud Cockburn, the MI5 Suspect

Rev. William Alberts
When Pride in Power Corrupts: the Story of a Methodist President, His Bishops and an "Incompatible" Lesbian Minister

Saul Landau
40 Interns and a Mule: Will the Dems Ever Take Advantage of the Republicans' Blunders?

Mario Lamo Jimenez
Dante with a Brush: Botero Immortalizes Bush

Dave Lindorff
What is the Media Running From?

Lance Selfa
Why Bush is Getting Away with Murder

Tom Crumpacker
On the Use of State Terrorism: the Posada Precedent

Joshua Frank
How Beltway Dems Sank Dean for America

Fred Gardner
Don't Bogart That Taxable Commodity

Michael Dickinson
Roll Out the Barrel: Blood, Oil and Baku

Roger Martin
We Can See, But Not Far Enough

Reza Fiyouzat
Welcome to the Third World

Ben Tripp
Romance: Advice from a Pro

Graeme Greenback
Pardon Me, While I Piss on this Bible

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Albert, Engel, Smith

 

 

 

June 3, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Welcome to a Has-Been Country

Joseph Massad
Witch Hunt at Columbia

Jeff Halper
The Process of Transfer Continues

Tom Barry
The Immigration Debate: Whose Side Are You On?

Bruce K. Gagnon
Bush Seeks Military Control of Space: "It's Our Destiny"

Joshua Frank
Bombing Iran: Facts Don't Matter

Mickey Z.
Deep Throat as Sideshow

Gary Leupp
"Peddling Lies About How They Were Mistreated"

Website of the Day
Tattoo on My Heart: Warriors of Wounded Knee, 1973

 

 

June 2, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Slave Traders of the Gitmo Gulag

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia: the Agony of Stalemate

Mike Whitney
Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment: Warrants without Judges

Brian Cloughley
Anarchy in Afghanistan; Ignorance in America

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A Two-State Solution is No Solution

Russell D. Hoffman
High Tension at San Onofre

Norman Madarasz
"Le Jolie Mois de Mai": the Meaning of the French "Non"

Norman Solomon
War Made Easy: from Vietnam to Iraq

David Price
The Shallowness of Deep Throat

Website of the Day
Fallujah on Film

 

 

June 1, 2005

James Petras
Beyond Hypocrisy: the Deeper Meaning of Posada

Justin Delacour
Framing Venezuela: US Media Bias Against Chavez

Edward Jay Epstein
Was "Deep Throat" a Fictoid?

Omar Barghouti / Lisa Taraki
The AUT Boycott: Freedom vs. "Academic" Freedom

Dave Lindorff
When War Goes Off the Script

Kevin Zeese
Reality Check: Who to Believe on Iraq War and Gitmo?

Jason Leopold
When Presidents Lie

William S. Lind
Wreck It and Run

 

 

May 31, 2005

Sen. Mike Gravel
Thank You, Mark Felt: We Need a New Deep Throat

David Krieger
US Nuclear Hypocrisy

Tad Daley
The Nuclear Me-Too Club

Joshua Frank
Pelosi at AIPAC: Israel Comes First

Richard Gott
Chavez Leads the Way

Norman Solomon
Time to Get Serious About Impeachment

Tom Segev
Our Man in the Territories

Walter Brasch
Killing Americans with Secrecy

Diana Johnstone
The French "Non"

 

 

May 28 / 30, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
There's Their Way or the Galloway

Richard Lichtman
We Wuz Framed! the Consolations of George Lakoff

Sharon Smith
The Road to Abu Ghraib

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Whigged Out: the Dems Have Become Merely a Vestigial Opposition Party

Ramzy Baroud
Muslims Were Desecrated, Not Just Their Holy Book

Brian Cloughley
Why Are Nukes OK for You, But Not for Us?

Fred Gardner
Advice from a Lawyer About Medical Pot

Lee Sustar
Chavez Gets Proactive

Joshua Frank
Isikoff Comes Clean: "Nobody in the US Said a Word, Until the Riots"

Justin E.H. Smith
What About the People? a Report from Romania

Jackie Corr
A Montana History Lesson on Assfulness

Michael Kimaid
Bush as Ahab

Toufic Haddad
Lessons from the Reversal of the AUC Boycott

Justin Taylor
The Fear of Paul Virilio

Amir Butler
Searching for a Saladin

Ben Tripp
Insomnia and Sarcasm

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Davies and Louise

 

May 27, 2005

Gary Leupp
It Really is a Crusade!

Daniel Estulin
Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005

Kevin Zeese
Iraq Withdrawal Vote: If Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones Can See the Light, Why Can't Nancy Pelosi?

Robert Fisk
Mubarak's Goon Squads

Dave Zirin
Why Pat Tillman's Parents Are No Longer Silent

Website of the Day
Stuckists

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Weekend Edition
June 18 / 19, 2005

Pot Shots

How Many Wins Can We Take?

By FRED GARDNER

It's not so much whether you win or lose, it's how you control the spin. Thus the medical-marijuana movement honchos seem quite pleased with themselves, even though the Supreme Court turned down the Raich-Monson bid to obtain and use under California law, and then Congress turned down an amendment directing the DEA to honor medical-mj laws in the states that have adopted them. The vote in Congress was 264 to 161.

"'We pick up votes each time as we continue to educate the public,' said Steve Fox, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project." This perfect example of Beltway elitism was quoted in the Associated Press story on the defeat in Congress June 15 of the Hinchey-Rohrbacher amendment. We pick up votes as the public continues to educate Congress. And picking up nine votes is nothing to crow about in the year of our Lord 2005. Rep. Barney Frank told the AP's David Whitney "that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had been working the issue hard among Democrats and that he felt certain there would 180 or more votes for the amendment." By turning losses into wins, "reform" bureaucrats keep up the morale of their funders.

"Even Without a Federal Push, California Reins in Marijuana" read a 2-column headline above the fold in the New York Times June 15. The 43-inch story, dateline San Francisco, by Dean Murphy, asserts that cities are now "struggling with the excesses of the law's success." What success? More than eight years after we legalized marijuana for medical use, only about 120,000 Californians have availed themselves of the right by getting a doctor's approval. Opposition from law enforcement has been unrelenting and support from the medical establishment has been nonexistent or weak. If most doctors weren't afraid to approve cannabis use by their patients -or unwilling to out of humility, since they have never been educated on the subject- the number of Californians now using cannabis for pain and depression would be at least a million.

Murphy writes, "Advocacy groups reported that a handful of small dispensaries closed last week." Advocacy groups apparently kept from Murphy news that nine clubs, including the busiest in Oakland and L.A., folded abruptly June 6, the day the Raich ruling was announced. The activists thought somehow that news of club closures might cause some members of Congress to vote against the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment!

Journalist Ann Harrison (a Counterpunch contributor) says she was under pressure from some activists to not report the closure of Compassionate Caregivers. She did so anyway in the S.F. Bay Guardian June 15. Harrison had gotten a tour of Compassionate Caregivers Oakland headquarters from Manager Sparky Rose last month. She described it as "an efficient corporate operation with purchasing, human resources, IT, and shipping departments that delivered medical cannabis to the company's cannabis clubs. According to Rose, the shutdown put approximately 225 employees out of work and impacted about 7,000 dispensary members and almost 15,000 other patients and caregivers across the state who purchased cannabis from the seven clubs."

Rose told Harrison that the owner's biggest fear was a tax claim by the IRS in which the cost of marijuana could not be deducted as an expense. Harrison reported that "Valerie and Mike Corral, founders of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) - which provides free medical cannabis to about 200 chronically sick and dying patients in Santa Cruz - are being audited by the IRS, which has referred the case to its criminal division for possible tax evasion charges.

"The Corrals said they are being audited for the year 2002, when 30 armed DEA agents raided the group's cannabis garden. In 2003 a federal court granted WAMM an injunction against federal prosecution. In the aftermath of the Raich decision, Corral said he expects federal authorities to petition the court to lift the injunction."

The Ballad of Prop 215

Have you heard of our law called Prop 215?
Passed by California voters just saying what we mean
Marijuana eases pain and grief
There's many a condition for which it brings relief

The State could not wait to cover up its ears
Long-robed judges said the wording isn't clear
The cops and D.A.s held a council of war
In secret to dis-implement the new law

Put heat on the doctors that's the whole strategy
Said Attorney General Lungren then he flew off to DC
To meet with Cardinal Constantine and Rabbi Alan Lesh-
ner Reno and Shalala like a scene out of MacBeth

It was back in December, 1996
General McCaffrey announced the big fix
California doctor, your license is at risk
Big Janet and the neckless nun all tsk-tsk-tsk

What were their names, what were their names
The docs who believed their patients claims?
What were their names, tell me what were their names
The docs who stood up for the patients?

From up in Crescent City down to San Diego
Many a physician had to just say no
Unless you got cancer or AIDS better yet
A letter of approval could prove difficult to get

Paxil and Statins they are eager to prescribe
Viagra and estrogen dispensed like a bribe
The detail men offer them jaunts to here and there
And the board never questions their standard of care

But those brave physicians whose plain common sense
Leads to respect for anecdotal evidence
Get called Dr Feelgood like it was a bad thing
And made to feel fear every time the doorbell rings

They helped a lot of people in a wide range of pain
The data they've collected should not be in vain
Sabotage of research, when's it gonna stop?
The practice of medicine is not up to the cops

What were their names? What were their names?
The doctors who believed their patients' claims?
What were their names? What were their names?
The doctors who stood up for their patients...

Fred Gardner can be reached at journal@ccrmg.org