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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 11, 2005 Kevin Zeese The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day 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   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                                           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 11, 2005 A Black and White Issue? Political Bluster and the Filibuster By NORMAN SOLOMON The battle over the filibuster is now one of the country's biggest political news stories. The Bush seems determined to change Senate rules so a simple majority of senators, instead of three-fifths, can cut off debate and force a vote on the president's judicial nominees. Both sides claim to be arguing for procedural principles. But a Senate filibuster is not inherently good or bad. Throughout U.S. history, the meaning of the filibuster has always been a matter of political context. The merits have everything to do with what kind of nation people want. During the 1950s and '60s, to anyone who supported civil rights legislation, "filibuster" was a very ugly word. In Washington, it was the ultimate maneuver for avian racists whose high-flown rhetoric accompanied their devotion to Jim Crow. The gist of many speeches and commentaries was that civil rights bills were part of an ominous plot against "states' rights" and sacred American traditions. The names of many senators who fought for racial segregation -- Russell, Stennis, Eastland, Ellender -- are now displayed on federal buildings or U.S. Navy vessels. Such was the hallowed clout that Southern Democrats, usually champions of white supremacy, wielded in Washington during the middle third of the 20th century. Their political descendants migrated into the Republican Party, which today leads its congressional majority with a lot of white Southern politicians (DeLay, Frist and others) who, in turn, rely on white voters. While considering how the right wing of the GOP depends on the South to maintain its current grip on the Senate and the White House, we may want to ponder something that Mississippi Gov. Paul Johnson said four decades ago at a rally of 10,000 people in Jackson. It was the early summer of 1964, and Johnson was hosting a fellow segregationist governor, Alabama's George Wallace, who trumpeted the potential power of the South's electoral votes. During the joint appearance, Wallace opined that the 1954 Supreme Court decision for school desegregation was "ridiculous and asinine," adding that "any person who made such a ruling should have a psychiatric examination." And Gov. Johnson declared: "It's time the white people of our various states started bloc voting." Today, although quite a few anti-racist and progressive white voters live in the South, they -- along with the vast preponderance of black voters -- are routinely on the losing side in lopsided statewide races and presidential contests. While it's certainly true that there's an abundance of personal and institutional racism in every state of the union, Southern states are home to the highest proportions of reactionary and bigoted whites. As a region, the South is the national stronghold for political agendas most hostile to the aspirations of African Americans and other people of color for economic justice, social equality and legal parity. Now, Southern senators are prominent in leading the charge against the filibuster in clashes over nominees to the federal bench -- warmups for senatorial struggles over Supreme Court nominations that are expected sooner rather than later. The outcome is likely to guide the direction of the nation's judiciary for decades to come. And journalism rarely seems capable of conveying the enormity of the implications. To the extent that this political battle is framed as a test of wills between the Republican majority and Democratic minority in the Senate, journalists are missing the bigger story. Forty years after landmark civil rights bills became law, the codes for a non-discriminatory society are often trumped on the ground by countless realities of discrimination that will persist in the absence of legal remedies. Constitutional protections for racial minorities, gay people, and women -- including their reproductive rights -- are at stake. Overall, many civil liberties hang in the balance. "Filibuster" sounds like a Washington word, and it is. But in 2005, this is not a Washington story -- it's a story about the future of the United States. If the Bush forces are able to kill the filibuster, they will be a lot closer to transforming the judicial system of this country. It's hard to think of a story that less deserves to be reported merely as a dispute raging inside the Beltway. Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," will be published in early summer. His columns and other writings can be found at: www.normansolomon.com