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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 25, 2005 John Ross Sweet Revenge at Terminal Island May 24, 2005 Dave Zirin Palestine's Big Visitor: Not Laura, but Ronaldo Michele Bollinger Criminalizing Abortion in S. Carolina: Why Did Gabriela Flores Go to Jail? Winslow Wheeler The Pork War Uri Avnery Wagner at the Holocaust Memorial Michael Donnelly Behind the Green(back) Curtain Joshua Frank Chavez's Economy: Is It Sustainable? Stephen Dunifer The Folly of Media Reform Paul Craig Roberts Is Bush a Sith Lord?   May 23, 2005 Esther Sassaman / Thomas Nagy An Exclusive Interview with George Galloway Mike Whitney Free Jose Padilla: Three Years in Prison, Not a Shred of Evidence Ramzy Baroud Fallout from a Forged War: Battling Windmills While Iraq Burns Michael Dickinson Pictures at an Exhibition: Censoring the "Carnival of Chaos" Walter Brasch In Praise of Bob Barr Dick J. Reavis The Newsweek Scandal: an Unmentioned Detail Maria Tomchick Galloway and the US Press Norman Solomon Let's Play "Media Jeopardy" Kevin Zeese Inventing a Pretext for War: an Inte4rview with James Bamford Website of the Day Drawings of Darfur: Genocide Through Children's Eyes   May 21 / 22, 2005 David H. Price CIA Skullduggery in Academia Gabriel García Márquez My Visit to the Clinton White House, Bearing a Message from Fidel on Terrorism Oren Ben-Dor To Create Academic Freedom in Israel, a Boycott is Needed Gary Leupp Nights in White House Satin with Jeff Gannon Laith al-Saud An Anatomy of the Iraqi Resistance Elaine Cassel Bush and the Angry God: Twilight of Secular Democracy in America? Greg Moses The Saints of Mischief and Halliburton Fred Gardner Martyring Dr. Carol Wolman Dave Lindorff The GOP's Police State Alan Maass Uzbekistan's Karimov: Bush's Favorite Terrorist? William Blum The American Myth Industry Tom Crumpacker Send Posada Carriles to Venezuela Niranjan Ramakrishnan Newsweek: a Contest of Hypocrisies Doug Giebel The Grand Illusion Evelyn J. Pringle No Child Left Unmedicated: TeenScreen, State-drugging and Suicide Carolyn Baker Spiritual Abuse by the Religious Right Chris Floyd Justice in JebWorld Frederick B. Hudson Black and Gay?: a Review of "Brother to Brother" Ben Tripp Him Talk Plenty Long Time: Busting the Filibuster Poets' Basement Davies, Engel and Louise   May 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff Newsweek and White House Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese As Insurgency Increases, New US Military Recruits Fall Paul de Rooij "Private": a Film in Search of a Cliché Christopher Brauchli How Insurance Companies Exploited 9/11 Mark Engler Triumph Over Debt? Joshua Frank Bush to Dine with Porn Star Robert Jensen TV Talk, No Evidence Required Jeffery R. Webber Bolivia Erupts   May 19, 2005 Bill Forman An Interview with Alexander Cockburn Stan Goff Hey, Democrats, Listen to Galloway and Learn Something Neve Gordon From Ghettos to Frontiers: What Will Happen After Israel Withdraws from Gaza Michael Dickinson The Trouble with Menwith: Tagging British Peace Activists Karyn Strickler The Texas Nexus: How Racial and Political Gerrymandering United Andrew Freedman Nazi Science at NIH Paul Craig Roberts The Politics and Economics of Outsourcing   May 18, 2005 Jean Bricmont Vive La France? Laura Carlsen Bush's Posada Carriles Quandry: an Anti-Cuba Terrorist is Still a Terrorist Mike Whitney The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales: 10,000 Swept Up Joshua Frank Flushing the Koran: Why Newsweek Got It Right George Galloway Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens) Manuel Garcia, Jr. Writing Tickets for American War Crimes Dwight D. Eisenhower How the GOP will Destroy Itself Dave Lindorff The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse May 17, 2005 Mickey Z. GIs Behaving Badly Petuuche Gilbert The People of Acoma Still Fight to be Free Paul Craig Roberts Lies That Kill: Why Isn't Bush in the Dock? Ramzy Baroud The New Palestinian Uprising Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood Pinning the Blame on Newsweek Stan Cox Poisoning Patancheru: the Severe Side Effects of India's Drug Industry Dave Zirin American Anthem: Ozzie Guillen and Fining for Freedom Diana Barahona Reporters Without Borders Unmasked Website of the Day Revolutionary Flower Pot Society May 16, 2005 Michael Gillespie The Family Released a Statement: Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy Jason Leopold BP Stains the Arctic Jesse Muldoon How Many Schools Left Behind? Norman Solomon Media and the War: "The Bombs in Iraq Explode at Home" Robert Cray Twenty Patrick Cockburn Iraq is a Bloody No Man's Land Website of the Day Bolton's Divorce Papers: She Took It All Away, Including Most of the Furniture   May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Join the 14 Per Cent Club! Saul Landau Lessons from Vietnam: Wars Kill Empires as Well as People Gary Leupp Whither Yale? Towards the Imperial University JoAnn Wypijewski The Glory that is Lockhart, Texas Ben Tripp The Wayward Airplane: a Cautionary Tale Brian J. Foley Was Jesus Gay? Tom Barry Bolton the Eavesdropper Mitchell Verter Barbarous Oaxaca: Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the "Law of the Club" Mike Ferner War on COs: Army Files Additional Charges Against Kevin Benderman Dan Smith Perceiving Darfur Mark Scaramella Death with Pitfalls Don Fitz Mommy, Is This a Finger in My Rice Puffs?: Splicing Human DNA into the Food Chain Diane Farsetta PR Industry Imitates Big Tobacco: the Senate's "Fake News" Hearings Michael Dickinson Soldier Crawling: Military Conscription in Turkey Ron Jacobs The Jackson State Murders Fred Gardner "Hydroponics? Ridiculous!": A Real Farmer Looks at Medical Marijuana Farrah Hassen Far From Heaven: a Review of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" Douglas Valentine 50 Cent's Plea Poets' Basement Louise, Ford, Engel, & Albert Website of the Weekend Military Base Closings and the South 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

May 25, 2005 And God Said to Mankind, "Extirpate the Tasmanian Wolf". And, Behold, It Was Done... Kansas, Extinction and "Intelligent Design" By KARL SHEPARD I am astonished that the Kansas state school board would once again make itself a world laughing stock. Like a little boy caught with his pants down, it tries hard to conceal the face of science. It is a difficult task when you expose the source of speciation. At 40,000 feet up in the Gulf Stream, "the angels made me do it," will not suffice as an excuse. The claim is that intelligent design is somehow different from creation science. The postulate is that the complexity and interconnectedness of the natural world cannot have occurred by chance and therefore must have been intelligently designed. It would do us well to distinguish the physical world from the natural world in such an argument. All plants and animals including hominids are subject to a physical world. The tsunami, earthquake, volcanic explosion, meteorite, or climate change, can wipe out whole populations of plants and animals. What happens next depends upon the adaptive radiation of species. You know, that cornerstone of evolution whereby animals are traced to a common ancestor that colonizes new territory and diversifies over time into new species to fill the available niches. Marsupials in Australia are a good example. Koalas, kangaroos, and Tasmanian wolves evolved from a common marsupial ancestor. (Oh god, this is so complex for the Kansas State School Board and so well understood by everyone else.) The last caged Tasmanian wolf died in 1933. I guess this extinction at hominid hands was also part of an intelligent design. Or, was that extinction malevolent intent? Geological events and climactic catastrophes might also be attributed to bad planning. Is it an intelligent design or wrathful superstition that stops our queries? Only the veal is cowed. Scientists lack the fear of questions. So intelligent design, malevolent intent, or favorable geographical chance on some planet in the universe is by design? Perhaps. But not in any testable hypothesis I can conceive. What do you do with an intelligence that condemns most species to extinction in the absence of human permission? Is that intelligently designed? How would we know? What observable evidence could prove it? Hominids trace their past to the last million years. Evidence of the cockroach is dated to 450 times that number, to the last 450 millennia. It would be easy to argue that the intelligent designer was more interested in these relatively unchanged insects than human improvement. At its root, we are only at one end of a branch of ancestors reproducing to survive, just another species on a speck of dirt in the universe. We do have an advantage, consciousness of self and sometimes self-knowledge of our claims and questions. The least conscious barely understand what it means to not know. Discourse and discussion will find those limits among those who ask questions. Clearly, species can and will alter their environments as they populate it and will in turn adapt and radiate to fill the space. Every successful creature only attempts to reproduce. As conditions change, and they always do, reproduction succeeds or fails. The real myth is ecological balance. What appears to be balance is in fact a moving target. As humans have become more successful, as with every wildly successful species, their impact has grown. The human animal chooses animals and plants both domestic and wild. We keep, improve and cherish some. We discard, deny, and destroy others. We do weed gardens. We also kill wolves, some in sheep's clothing. In the absence of wolves, we try to kill as many deer as we are able in the Mid-West to restore a semblance of balance and make our crops safe for market. It is a perennial complaint by the Missouri Department of Conservation that we do not kill enough deer. The deer eat corn and soybeans to the dismay of farmers. We cull elephants in African game parks to insure that a patch of land is not overrun for similar reasons. We actively seek the extinction of disease organisms. The eradication of small pox springs to mind. We choose to vaccinate the hominid body and purposefully make it inhospitable. Without the parochial superstition in northern Nigeria, polio could be eliminated in Africa. Polio is not intelligent design; it is a pernicious crippler and killer. It is no accident that the now rare early 18th century Berkshire pigs, in the last 150 years have lost favor for the newer breeds, Hampshires, Yorkshires, and a Duroc or two. It was the observation of variation in domestic animals that paved the way for our understanding of natural selection. Only modern humans can force extinction or survival, even their own. We may yet be a warming pot of frogs, cozy in the heat. I seriously doubt that an intelligent designer would have left that cauldron to us. I aver that the Kansas school board is mostly early 19th century Berkshires, lost in the annals and perhaps now among the scarce pre-Darwin swine of time. All are eaten, some more slowly than others. Humans manage their environments even their social ones based on their understanding all too frequently lacking in abundance. Unfortunately, "intelligent design" undermines serious and legitimate questions in the interest of political ends, and a pernicious one at that. The board seeks nothing less than the reintroduction of religion into the science and its flip side, the extinction of inquiry. Kansas's students will suffer, whether or not they believe in supernatural causes. Inquiring minds want to learn of the school board's next retreat from science. Perhaps they will revive Ptolemy. I am certain that if they work hard enough they could find the quacks that would work out cycles that once again put our planet at the center of the universe. They could call it "cyclical design" and force its consideration in astronomy classes. Scientists would refer to both "designs" as recurring cycles of stupidity. Karl Shepard has a BA in History from the University of Kansas, an MA in History from the University of Kansas, and has completed PhD coursework in African Studies at the University of Chicago. In 1989, he received a Fulbright-Hayes Dissertation Fellowship to pursue field research in Kenya. Originally from Kansas City, he currently resides in Hillsboro, Oregon. He can be reached at: karls@easystreet.com