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Sensational New Print Edition of CounterPunch Amazing Plan Surfaces: "We Need Ethno-Weapons!" David Price tells how top-flight US anthropologists eagerly obeyed US government's mandate to "think in a-moral terms". One scheme of OSS's willing executioners: target Japanese physical "weak spot", the respiratory tract, with anthrax germs. Gabriel Kolko asks What's so New About the Neo-Cons? If they had not existed, would the policies have been the same? Jeffrey St Clair digs up more dirt on Halliburton's secret history. Alexander Cockburn on why we need more "celebrity justice". 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! Show the New York Times You Don't Believe a Word of It: CounterPunch's New 14 Per Cent Club T-Shirts Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

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 July 2 / 4, 2005 Laura Carlsen Zapatista's Red Alert   July 1, 2005 Christopher Brauchli With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf Pat Williams What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver Gary Leupp Summer Surprise? John Stauber Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie John Chuckman The Blessings of Canada Justicia y Paz Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least! Cockburn / St. Clair It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court   June 30, 2005 Kathy Kelly An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis John Stauber Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America Virginia Rodino All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement Jason Leopold Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy Dave Lindorff What Was Bush Thinking? Greg Moses Racism at Cape Cod Norman Solomon Memo to the Iraq War Joshua Frank Israel's Theocrats Alexander Cockburn The Political Function of PBS   June 29, 2005 Mike Schaefer How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq Sharon Smith Democrats Shift into Reverse Sam Husseini A Quick Way to End the Insurgency John Stauber Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton Ahmad Faruqui Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan? Linda S. Heard Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo Stew Albert Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero Ray McGovern Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course June 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts A Defeat Bred in Deceit Landau / Hassen Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics John A. Murphy Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania Mike Whitney More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents CounterPunch News Service JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook? Dave Zirin Pining for the Pistons Dave Lindorff Showtime in Washington Patrick Cockburn Iraq: a Bloody Mess   June 27, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans Mike Marqusee G8: Who are the Hijackers? Mark Scaramella When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz Leigh Saavedra Press Apologists for Torture Kathy Kelly Where is the UN? June 25 / 26, 2005 Alexander Cockburn The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals Jennifer Van Bergen America's Parallel Legal Systems George Corsetti This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo Kevin Zeese Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids P. Sainath Russian Roulette in Vidharbha John Stauber How to Bury a Mad Cow Scott Handleman Gay in the Third World Tom Barry The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists John Walsh Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places Justin E.H. Smith The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution Alan Wallis The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood Ben Tripp Negative Space: an Artful Lesson Frederick B. Hudson Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock Poets' Basement Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert   June 24, 2005 Ray McGovern The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed" Jorge Mariscal "They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq Desiree Hellegers Portland vs. the FBI Zeynep Toufe What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It? Joshua Frank Call Him Senator Con Job David Lindorff Which Flag Would Jesus Burn? Michael Neumann Victory and Recruitment Website of the Day Gagging Dr. Dean   June 23, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge Clay Conrad Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform Standard Schaefer A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism P. Sainath Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks Mark Engler CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death Norman Solomon Voluntary Amnesia in America Cockburn / St. Clair Frank Calzon Kathy Kelly Where You Stand Determines What You See     June 22, 2005 Kevin Zeese The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner William S. Lind Afghanistan: the Other War Arsalan Iftikhar Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act Dan Nagengast Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas David Krieger To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World Kathleen & Bill Christison Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making     June 21, 2005 Brian Cloughley Destroy the Unbelievers! Mike Whitney President Disconnect Dave Lindorff Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway? Mark Weisbrot Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez Matthew R. Simmons The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis Dave Zirin The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man" Virginia Rodino The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment Paul Craig Roberts A War Waged by Liars and Morons   June 20, 2005 Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Tariq Ali To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel! Mickey Z. WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo William Blum Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends Gary Leupp Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq Jason Leopold Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War Dave Lindorff Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Uri Avnery Condi and Hamas Website of the Day Crimes Against Poetry   June 18 / 19, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Is the Jury Dead? Greg Moses Race Bias and the Death Penalty, One More Time Benjamin Shepard Arrested for Stickering, Biking and Other Misadventures: Creative Direct Action in the Era of the PATRIOT Act Stan Goff Stuff to Do to Stop the War: 95 Days to Pre-Nixonize George W. Bush Lee Sustar Does Iraq's Main Labor Union Support the Occupation? Jude Wanniski The Tipping Point: Getting Out of Iraq Diana Barahona Librarians as Spooks: the Scheme to Infiltrate Cuba Via Libraries Brian Concannon, Jr. Justice Dodge in Haiti, Again: Impunity and the Raboteau Massacre Fred Gardner How Many Wins Can We Take? Mike Whitney Gen. Tommy Friedman's Plan to "Win" the War in Iraq: Reinstate the Draft Ahmad Faruqui Star Wars or Earth Wars? Manuel García, Jr. De-Eichmannizing America Roger Howard Leave Iranian Politics to Iranians Ron Jacobs Eros and the Grateful Dead Ben Tripp Situation Desperate: Why Am I Not Pleased? Poets' Basement Louise, Albert and Engel Website of the Weekend Christ's Entry into Washington     June 17, 2005 Ricardo Alarcón Who Helped Posada Enter the US? Clay Conrad Medical Marijuana: Is Jury Nullification the Next Step? Marc Estrin Open-Ended Closure: the Death Penalty and the Culture of Victimhood Colin Brown Firebombing Fallujah: Pentagon Lied About Use of Napalm in Iraq Christopher Brauchli Pennies for Africa: Bush's Phony Money Joshua Frank Blue State Warriors: How Democrats Derailed the Peace Movement Norman Solomon The Killing Street Memo Mary Rizzo Who's Afraid of Gilad Atzmon? 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                                                         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

Independence Day Weekend Edition July 2 / 4, 2005 Koran Descretion is Part of the Torture Plan; So is Media Silence The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership By SAUL LANDAU How to understand torture by a free society with a free press! Over the last year, overwhelming evidence forced the media to report that U.S. military personnel had tortured Muslim prisoners. On May 9, Newsweek claimed that a prison guard had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Apparently, millions took this insult to the Koran more seriously than they had taken the torture of hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Muslims. Riots occurred in several cities. Ironically, the Bush Administration chastised the messenger. Newsweek became a target of Bush wrath ­ for inaccurate reporting. And, accepting the White House spin, the rest of the media piled on, ignoring that reliable sources ­ including the FBI ­ had already documented the use by U.S. military and CIA personnel of Koran desecration. Leading news organs sent reporters on assignments to examine whether the actual "flushing down the toilet" incident had occurred. The fact that this incident, not any of thousands, ignited the riots did not seem to provide incentive for investigating the torture. Rather, Newsweek became the subject of the question "did they or didn't they have sufficient proof to run the story?" Newsweek retracted the story several days later. The rest of the media failed to back up the news magazine; nor did they examine the disproportionate response that Koran desecration brought on as compared to human desecration. After all, the Vietnam War had produced flag burners who some self-designated patriots thought merited the death penalty for desecrating a piece of cloth. So, apparently it was implicitly understood that symbols are better than people at inflaming zealous publics: a "holy" book hitting a toilet meant more than torture to live people. (No one asked what it did to the toilet.) Newsweek did not benefit from findings by the Pentagon itself, which issued a report on late Friday afternoon, June 3, a typical ploy to minimize readership. The report cited "two other cases of desecration," one involved "a two-word obscenity written in English inside a prisoner's Koran." In another episode "one soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book, other guards hit it with water balloons and a soldier's urine was splashed on a prisoner and his Koran" (LA Times June 4). The New York Times (June 4) reported that "the guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine into a detainee's cell." The Times did not ask if the guard's urine went astray because the Guantanamo base lacks latrines. Indeed, it doesn't require Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the guard was pissing on the prisoner and that the poor guy happened to have his Koran in hand when the pee hit the cell. Previously, newspapers and TV news programs carried photos of U.S. personnel using sex and animal torture. Reports from the Red Cross, the FBI and other first hand observers added sleep deprivation, incessant noise and other forms of torture outlawed by the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. The attack on Newsweek and its subsequent retraction for having printed a basically accurate story marks the second occasion in the past year that the U.S. public has witnessed righteous anger aimed successfully at true stories. Last year, CBS also pulled back publicly from an accurate story because the ultra right and the Bush Administration aggressively accused them of bad reporting. And the rest of the media piled on. Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" Wednesday story aired on September 8, 2004. Bushies screamed that CBS had used forged documents and timed the story to coincide with the presidential race. A chorus of right wing AM radio talk show hosts chimed in. "Liberal bias," they screamed, had motivated CBS' broadcast of a show that impugned Bush's military record. "60 Minutes" offered four written documents. Rather said they were written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now dead, who was Bush's Texas Air National Guard commander in the early 1970s. The documents showed that Bush disobeyed orders to report for a physical exam, and that Bush family buddies intervened to "sugar coat" his Guard service. The memos showed Bush as a shirker who used family influence to stay out of Vietnam and then reduce the time he agreed to serve in the Guard. Killian's then secretary backed up the thrust of the documents in her appearance on the show. Bush supporters immediately challenged the documents' validity, but even if the actual papers were forged, CBS had accumulated sufficient material to support the gist of their story. The forgery complaints obscured the focus of the reporting and shifted the issue to one of "integrity in journalism." CBS retracted the story. Instead of the media focusing on how Bush got out of service while his rival Kerry served in dangerous combat, the media helped the Bushies turn the story into its opposite. The liberal media was out to get Bush. Meanwhile the "Swift Boat" vets began a defamation campaign against Kerry, implying that he didn't deserve the medals he got for his combat. On January 10, 2005, CBS continued its capitulation ritual by firing three executives for their role in preparing and reporting the Bush-National Guard service story. CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves deeply regretted "the disservice this flawed 60 Minutes Wednesday report did to the American public, which has a right to count on CBS News for fairness and accuracy." Senior producer Mary Mapes accused Moonves of making her a "scapegoat." She said, correctly, that he acted out of "corporate and political considerations ­ ratings rather than journalism." Viacom, a multinational corporation, owns CBS. The other networks belong to similar transnational titans all of whom have a basic interest in staying on the good side of the U.S. government. The result of multinational corporate ownership on reporting is that mass media fear to de-legitimize government. Instead, they attack the "investigative journalist" who might make a tiny factual error in reporting otherwise true government criminality or deviousness. The change occurred after the Watergate era, when Washington Post owners, who also own Newsweek, kvelled over the role Post reporters played in forcing Richard Nixon to resign. What a difference three decades make. In 2005, exposés of government and corporate misdeeds vitiate corporate interests For decades, the old 60 Minutes show had exposed government and corporate corruption. But in 1995, the relationship of the CBS corporation and an exposé of the tobacco industry forced the show's producers to compromise. In 1995, CBS decided not to air a "60 Minutes" report produced by Lowell Bergman on Jeffrey Wigand, a former vice president of Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company. Wigand said that the tobacco executives purposely "hid the truth about tobacco's addictive and harmful properties from the American public. CBS and the key producers and reporters all had interest in tobacco stock and softened the attack against the giant tobacco producers" (Bergman, Columbia Journalism Review May/June 2000). A CBS lawyer told Bergman that "the corporation will not risk its assets on the story." Ironically, the ultra right still rant about the liberal media, but in fact as the retractions by Newsweek and CBS show, the networks cannot play a legitimate news function because they must legitimate both their own corporate interests and that of the government, which protects and abets them in their international pursuits of greater wealth. Thus, an editor, who explicitly or implicitly understands these facts of corporate power, will be reluctant to assign reporters or commit resources to stories that might conflict with basic corporate interests ­ despite the fact that the public needs to know about them. News about Michael Jackson abounds while only rare reporting deals with issues like the adverse health effects of depleted uranium, the 2002 Downing street memo that showed Bush and Blair colluding to go to war against Iraq, and the billions apparently skimmed by Administration-friendly companies in Iraq. The major media loves celebrity news, which obscures stories about unaccountable corporate and government power. Those who represent multinational corporate interests ­ network and newspaper executives ­ understand that their media's primary function is to validate the system that has spawned them, for which government power is essential. The law doesn't restrict the U.S. press, but its owners obviously do. For the time being, go to the internet and non-U.S. sources for accurate news and proper context for the events that define our history. That way, you too may be able to participate in the process of your own history with proper facts and background. Desecrating the Koran is part and parcel of the torture regime, the holding of prisoners without charges. It's what imperialism does in its modern and worried phase. But don't expect the mass media to tell you this. Saul Landau directs the Digital Media Arts program at Cal Poly Pomona University. His new book is The Business of America.