home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

Inside the New Print Edition of CounterPunch: How Go the Democrats? Democrats on the Brink: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair; Innocent Lads, Depraved Killers and Predatory Priests by JoAnn Wypijewski; Torture Air, Inc.: the Road to Rendition: by Jeffrey St. Clair. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print 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! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Coming Soon from CounterPunch Books Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order! Today's Stories March 26 / 27, 2005 Gary Leupp God's Imperialists March 25, 2005 Scott Richard Lyons Horror and Hope at Red Lake Nation Yoshie Furuhashi No Troops; No Wars Pat Williams How a Town Got Poisoned: Libby, MT and the Labor Movement Mark Engler Remembering Archbishop Romero: 25 Years After His Assassination Rahul Mahajan Culture of Life or Culture of Living Death? Lance Selfa Can the Democrats be Moved to the Left? Ralph Nader Corporate Cyborg: Cal Nurses Take on Schwarzenegger John R. Llewellyn Why Utah's Prosecutors are Soft on Polygamy: a Former Sheriff Speaks Out Jo Guldi Beyond Belief: Holy Week in France   March 24, 2005 Joshua Frank The Selling (Out) of the Antiwar Movement Talli Nauman Vicente and George: Security by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter Martin Espada Why I Refused Coke's Money: a Poet Speaks Out About Colombia Dave Lindorff Another Social Security Snow Job Elaine Cassel When Fools Rush In: the Legal Implications of the Schiavo Case Jack McCarthy Jeb Bush's Mob: Snatch, Grab, Insert Tube Jack Random Juxtaposition: Terri Schiavo and the Red Lake Massacre Barbara Ferguson Wolfowitz Dating Muslim Woman and World Bank Employee Suzan Mazur Peak Oil: Debate or Vendetta? Dorreen Yellow Bird Suffering Red Lake Nation Endures the Worst of Days Andrew Wimmer and Mark Chmiel Torture: Old Hat or Open Wound? March 23, 2005 Patrick Bond A New War? On Wolfowitz's World Bank Mike Whitney Railroading Moussaoui Becky White Why I Hung from a Bridge to Defend the Wild Forests of the Siskiyou Mountains Michael Donnelly Dissecting the Changeling: How the AuCoin Express Was Really Derailed Niranjan Ramakrishnan Remembering Ram Manohar Lohia: the Che of Non-Violence Ashley Smith Bush is What Hypocrisy Looks Like David Swanson The More Bush Talks, the Less Popular Privatization Becomes Derrick O'Keefe Enter Bono, Stage Right Paul A. Moore The Fire This Time: the Bush Bros. Racist Crackdown in Florida Dalton Walker My Reservation Will Never Be the Same Patrick Cockburn The US Frees Iraqi Kidnappers to Become Spies   March 22, 2005 William Blum Anti-Empire Report: Democracy--or is it the US Military--on the March Jim Vallette Cheney's Oil Change at the World Bank Greg Moses A Palm Sunday Chat with Sis Levin John Farley Bush's Culture of Life: Let the Insurance Companies Pull the Plug When the Sick Cost Too Much Ron Jacobs Halt the Anniversary Rallies and Stop the Damn War M. Junaid Alam How the Democratic Party Fosters Conservatism Rep. Cynthia McKinney An Immoral and Illegal War: Destroying Iraq Isn't Enough for Them Dave Lindorff "Saving" Schiavo; Killing the News James Petras Fateful Quadrangle: Cuba and Venezuela Face Off Against the US and Colombia     March 21, 2005 John Walsh In the Bars on the Road to Fayettevile: War Support Paper Thin Werther The Legacy of George Kennan, Chief Architect of the Cold War Mike Stark Where is the "Culture of Life" in Maryland? Time is Running Out for Vernon Evans David Swanson Feeding Tubes for the Third World: Put the Hungry into Comas, Then Feed Them! James T. Phillips Happy Meals: Behind the Grill at a Baltimore Diner Mike Ferner Serving, Refusing, Impeaching Robert Jensen The World Waits for an Answer Paul Craig Roberts A Threat Greater Than Terrorism Stew Albert Vegetable Nation Website of the Day American Press Blotter: Jacko, Terry and Steroids vs. the World     March 19, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Three-Card Monte and the One-Party State Tom Reeves Exposing the Coming Draft: a Draft by Any Other Name is Still Wrong Saul Landau The Grandchildren of Roy Cohn: the Politics of the Repressed Alan Maass Making Bankruptcy a Life Sentence Ron Jacobs Submit or Else: the Nuclear Demon that Won't Go Awayy David Green The Holocaust Industry Comes to the University of Illinois John Blair Hey, Dick! I'm Still Free: a Blow for Freedom of Speech in Indiana Steve Greenfield The Decline of the Green Party: the Numbers are In Ben Tripp Nature isn't Real Mike Roselle A History of White People in the Conservation Movement Joshua Frank Hope in Red State America: Lessons from the Big Sky Country Mark Weisbrot The World Bank: a Bigger Problem Than Wolfowitz Dave Lindorff Congress on Steroids Sarah Schaffer Lula's Nukes: Bush Bullies Iran, Ignores Brazil's Nuclear Ambitions Warren Hastings Why the Queen Should Chop Off Tony Blair's Head for Treason Poets' Basement Lodge, Albert. Landau, Engel, Davies, Capaccio   March 18, 2005 Dave Zirin The Congressional Urine Testers: Baseball's Theater of the Absurd Richard Thieme The Church Committee Candidate: I was a Victim of the KGB John Walsh Misdirecting the Anti-War Movement David Swanson Hunger Striking for a Living Wage at Georgetown Ben Terrall In the Spirit of Rachel Corrie: Confronting Caterpillar in San Leandro David Boyle Just Say "No" to Harvard Dorreen Yellow Bird Coping with Teen Suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation Mokhiber / Weissman Global Bully Goes to Guatemala Greg Moses They Don't Shoot Donkeys...Do They? Website of the Day 800 Protests: Find One Near You   March 17, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Rendered Unto Caesar: the Etymology of Torture Bill Quigley The St. Patrick's Four and the Resistance to the War in Iraq Brian Cloughley Bush's Herds: Willing to Kick Anyone in the Face Gary Bass / Adam Hughes Inside the Bush Budget: Rhetoric vs. Reality Dave Lindorff The Incredible Shrinking Coalition Jude Wanniski Wolfowitz at the World Bank: a Perfect Fit Alexander Billet Irish Republicanism at the Crossroads John Ross Wal-Mart Invades Mexico Website of the Day Campus Resistance   March 16, 2005 Ralph Nader Filling the Congressional Cop-Out Gap: an Idea for Local Peace Activists William Cook Resurrecting the Neo-Con Failures Kevin Zeese Two Years of Occupation: Both US and Iraq are Worse Off Jackie Corr Why is Dick Cheney Laughing? The New Tax Cut Patriotism Alan Maass Bush's Class War Budget David R. Kolker Jailed Without Charges in Haiti Cindy Ellen Hill Speculative Policing in Northern Ireland Paul Craig Roberts America's Has-Been Economy     March 15, 2005 Gary Leupp The Plan is Still on Track Dave Lindorff Free John Walker Lindh! Greg Moses The Fix-It Guys and Their Electoral Filters Hadas Their / Katrina Yeaw Military Recruiters Target Campus Activists Alison Weir Uprising on the Anniversary of Rachel Corrie's Death Matt Koehler A Line in the Ancient Forest: 50 Arrested in Blockade to Save the Siskiyous Evelyn Pringle Labeling Kids Mentally Ill for Profit Harry Browne War and Peace in Ireland     March 14, 2005 Ralph Nader Restarting the Anti-War Movement David Miller Ministry of Defence in the Control Booth: Did the BBC Broadcast Fake News Reports? Stan Cox Look Deeper, Mr. Moyers Mike Roselle Why Women Should Take Over the Environmental Movement David Swanson Nursing Against the Odds: the Workers' View Simona Sharoni To End the War, Listen to Soldiers Dave Lindorff Corporate Surveillance Dorreen Yellow Bird Incidents at Standing Rock: Suicide on the Reservation Tom Barry John Bolton's Baggage Website of the Day Spinwatch     March 12 / 13, 2005 David H. Price The CIA's Campus Spies Noam Chomsky The Toothpaste Election Laura Carlsen Women's Rights Eroding in Latin America Stan Goff On Revolutionary Optimism: the View from Cumberland Co, NC Valentina Nicoli The Game of Role-Playing and the Ambush of Giuliana Sgrena Michael Leonardi Head Shot: Lifting the Veil on the Sgrena / Calipari Incident Saul Landau / Sarah Anderson Blood Money and the Riggs Bank: Pinochet's Bank Finally Pays Up Joe Bageant It Ain't Easy Being White Manuel Garc'a, Jr. The Question of American Guilt Greg Moses Electoral Lessons from Cuyahoga and Harris Counties James J. Brittain Run, Fight or Die in Colombia Ben Tripp Communist Watch Joshua Frank A Red State Paradox: Montana on the Cusp Fred Gardner Pesticides Made Her Sick; Pot Got Her Well Walter Brasch Bush's Horse Killers Ramzy Baroud Reining in Syria on Behalf of Israel Christopher Brauchli Going All the Way for Usurers Michael Donnelly The Humiliation of Les "Timber Toad" AuCoin Ron Jacobs ZAP Comics: Still Kicking US Culture in the Ass Richard Oxman The Eternal Reciprocity of Tears Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Davies, Ford, Louise and Albert   March 11, 2005 Jerry Fresia Targeting Giuliana Ron Jacobs Making Lebensraum in the Middle East for Tel Aviv's Fears & Washington's Dollars Dave Lindorff America's Magical Kingdom William James Martin Ben Gurion and the Origin of the "Pushing into the Sea" Myth Muqtedar Khan Modi's Operandi: American Business and Genocide Linked Again Kathryn Ledebur Bolivia on the Brink Mike Whitney Saddam's Capture: Just Another Bush Lie? Dave Zirin Neo-McCarthyism Slugs Baseball Website of the Day William Rivers Pitt, Another Hack for the Occupation     March 10, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts So Much for the New Bush Economy John Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin and Ashley Smith Vermont Vs. the War Larry Birns The Pathological John Bolton Michael Donnelly The Re-Reinvention of an Oregon Timber Beast Luis Gomez In Bolivia, Reality Changes Once Again Jackie Corr Whatever Happened to the Social Security Trust Fund? Uri Avnery Bush's Guru: Natan Sharansky Website of the Day Red Alert in the Siskiyous!     March 9, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Dirty Harry's Fear of Flying: Making Love, War and Profits at Boeing Ward Churchill Who's the Terrorist? Robert Fisk Another Species of Cedar: a Half Million Lebanese March for Syria Bernice Powell Jackson No Justice for America's Nuclear Guinea Pigs in the Marshall Islands Mickey Z. The Revolutionary of Potential Art Dave Zirin NHL Says: "Bring On the Scabs!" Michael Donnelly Standing Up to Ecocide in Oregon James Reiss Stopping by Words in Favor of Privatizing Social Security Vijay Prashad Get Modi: a State Terrorist Visits Florida   March 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Syrian Delusion Robert Fisk Lebanon's Nightmare Kurt Nimmo War is Peace: John Bolton to the UN Suzan Mazur Time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Polygamy? Evelyn Pringle Neil Bush and Crest: Another Profiteering Scheme Giuliana Sgrena My Truth: "The Americans Don't Want You to Return" Elaine Cassel The Appalling Case of Abu Ali   March 7, 2005 Dave Zirin Bloodlust in Annapolis: Gov. Ehrlich Wants to Kill Vernon Lee Evans Brian Cloughley More War Crimes John Chuckman The Creature Walks Among Us Mike Whitney Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments Mark Weisbrot Haiti's Torment: Why Are US Human Rights Groups Silent? Fred Gardner The Cannabinoid Messenger Richard Neville The Italian Job Uri Avnery The Next Crusades     March 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Arnold vs. the Nurses Gary Leupp What's Happening in Lebanon: an Interview with Fadi Agha, Advisor to President Lahoud Ron Jacobs Lies Military Recruiters Tell Tom Reeves Haiti: One Year After the Coup Jenna Orkin Memories of Kawaggi, Saudi Arabia Tom Barry Negroponte: Intel Czar or Policy Hack? Joshua Frank The Trials of Max Baucus Moshe Adler When Pfizer Came to New London: Corporate Giveways vs. Eminent Domain Jane Stillwater My Jury Questionnaire: "Do You Agree that a Corporation is a Person?" Omar Barghouti / Jacqueline Sfeir Double Standards on S. Africa and Israel: an Open Letter to UNESCO Christopher Brauchli Target: Al Jazeera John Pilger The Fall of Saigon: 30 Years Later Raúl Zibechi Colombia: Militarism and Social Movements David Krieger Saving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement Three Takes on Nepal Surendra R. Devkota Another Blow to the King of Nepal Bhishma Karki Nepal in Twilight Joseph Pietri Murder at the Palace Ben Tripp The Good Old Days Poets' Basement Hassen, Chief Running Late, Wuest, Albert and Collins Website of the Weekend O'Shaughnessy's: All About Medical Pot     March 4, 2005 Frederick Hudson Caught in a Cage   March 3, 2005 Pat Williams "Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old" Brian Cloughley Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions Dave Lindorff Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan? Amira Hass Oslo All Over Again Greg Moses In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go? Lynne Landes Exit Poll Madness Nelson P. Valdés Rapture Takes Leftists John Ross Mexico's Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist   March 2, 2005 Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen The "Noble Liars" Attack Syria Mike Roselle The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental Dissent M. Junaid Alam Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism Suzan Mazur Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah Jackson Thoreau Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria" Michael Donnelly No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass Jeffrey St. Clair Uncle Bucky Makes a Killing Website of the Day The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey     March 1, 2005 Scott Richard Lyons Million Dollar Bigotry David Lindorff Stealing Workers' Pensions Patrick Cockburn / David Enders Bloodbath in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Last Poets Recalled Tanya Garcia USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security Joseph Pietri The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black Prince Kona Lowell Woody: Broken in Vietnam Paul Craig Roberts The Coming End of the American Superpower Website of the Day Petition: No US Intervention in Iran     February 28, 2005 Gary Leupp Year 4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran? Bill Quigley Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers Mickey Z. The Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter Thompson and the "Right to Die" Paul de Rooij Why Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel David Swanson Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media Mario Lamo Jimenez Maria Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars Emma Perez The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge of Academia Diana Johnstone Censorship and the Empire Website of the Day Stop the War Campaign!     February 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn An American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence Noam Chomsky Nuclear Terror at Home Rev. William E. Alberts Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground Fred Gardner AARP Gets Pot-Baited Gary Leupp Bush and Camus on Freedom Saul Landau An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami Mafia Robin Philpot Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda Yitkhak Laor In Praise of the Facts Ben Tripp Out of Sight; Out of Mind Justin Taylor Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars Jack Random The Wounds from Wounded Knee Rafael Renteria Ward Churchill and White America Jim B. Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood Seth DeLong Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin John Chuckman A Season of Depressing Political Reruns Alison Weir Relativity, LA Times Style Richard Oxman Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace Dr. Susan Block It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation Poets' Basement Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert     February 25, 2005 Roger Burbach Murder in the Amazon Behzad Yaghmaian Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making Kurt Nimmo Conclave of the Brats Joshua Frank Diagnosing the Green Party John Farley How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians Lawrence Reichard The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil Pratyush Chandra The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs David Smith-Ferri When the Battlefield has No Borders Website of the Day The 2005 Election in 3-D   February 24, 2005 Omar Waraich The Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician Brian Cloughley Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame & 30 Pieces of Silver Tom Wright Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later Sharon Smith The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons Dave Lindorff Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu? Fred Feldman Lynching Ward Churchill James Reiss On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush Diane Christian Bad Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq Website of the Day The Gray Line     February 23, 2005 Werther The Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq W. John Green A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground Rules James Petras A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy? Conn Hallinan Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby Joe Pietri Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and Cops) Louis Proyect Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism Alexander Cockburn Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo Website of the Day Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?   February 22, 2005 Naseer Aruri The Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East Richard Manning The Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan William A. Cook Righteous Racism Running Rampant Paul Craig Roberts The Agents of Instability Ken Krayeske Dr. Thompson is Out Dave Zirin How the Owners Destroyed the NHL Kirkpatrick Sale Imperial Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire     February 21, 2005 Hunter S. Thompson "He Was A Crook" John Ross Mexico: the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq Ward Churchill What Did I Really Say? Why Did I Say It? Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to You by the US Navy David Swanson Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State Dave Lindorff All the News That's Fit to Fake Stew Albert Fear and Loathing: HST Michael Neumann Strategies in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky     February 19 / 20, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Back to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory" Kathleen Christison Struggling for Justice in Palestine Ted Honderich On Being Persona Non Grata Gary Leupp Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to Commit Suicide Don Santina Reparations for the Blues Jennifer Roesch John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior Scott Richard Lyons Ward Churchill and the Identity Police Chris Clarke Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage George Beres Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in Oregon Harry Browne The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels Manuel Garc'a, Jr. Who Killed Rafik Hariri? Mark Scaramella Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War Michael Donnelly Whatever Happened to John Edwards? John Pilger First, They Attack the Past Norman Madarasz Death Wish for Reform in Brazil? Surendra Devkota The Monarchy in Nepal Deborah Rich How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark Fred Gardner When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard CounterPunch News Service About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland Richard Oxman CounterPunching Arthur Miller Poets' Basement Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin   February 18, 2005 Ben Moxham In East Timor, the Nightmare Continues Dave Lindorff The Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte Larry Birns Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery Gregory Elich N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy Samuel Logan / John Meyers The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads Nicole Colson Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward Churchill Suzan Mazur Whose National Security Are We Talking About? Mickey Z. "One Man Has Stopped Killing"     February 17, 2005 Joshua Frank Hogtying of the Deaniacs Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media Robert Fisk Under the Shadow of Death in Lebanon Christopher Brauchli Where Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Military Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be Cannon Fodder? Alison Weir Russia, Israel and Media Omissions Ahrar Ahmad A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?" Saul Landau An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples the Laws It Wrote" Website of the Day Petition to Support Ward Churchill     February 16, 2005 Robert Fisk Lebanon: a Battlefield for the Wars of Others Kevin Zeese Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect Retirement Gary Leupp Meanwhile, in Nepal... Ron Jacobs Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration Jessica Leight Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff Greg Moses Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities in Texas Mark Engler The Last Porto Alegre Jack McCarthy Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill Bill Christison US Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel Website of the Day The World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch     February 15, 2005 CounterPunch News Service Dean a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch Robert Fisk The Killing of Mr. Lebanon Uri Avnery "Sharm-al-Sheikh, We Have Come Back Again" Stan Cox Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal Mickey Z. Radio Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook Dave Zirin Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean Nadia Martinez Ending World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now Lila Rajiva "Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of Magical Thinking in Politics Paul Craig Roberts The American Job Sell Out     February 14, 2005 Robert Jensen Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11 Brian Cloughley Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style Patrick Cockburn Outcome of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War Gary Leupp Post-election Iraq: What Next? Michael Donnelly Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity? Dave Lindorff When Bush Came to My Neighborhood Elaine Cassel The Lynne Stewart Verdict   February 12 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ward Churchill's Genes Saul Landau Alarcon Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba Paul Craig Roberts Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself Patrick Cockburn Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All Major Roads into Baghdad John Feffer Bush v. N. Korea: Round Two Mickey Z. Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak Kurt Nimmo Viva la Cucaracha! Fred Gardner Waiting for Raich Dave Zirin Fighting the New Republic(ans) John Chuckman Hiroshima, Mon Amour Ben Tripp A Leftist on the Bush Payroll Carol Norris "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?" Robert Fisk No Middle East Peace Without Justice Frank / Chowkwanyun Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin Mike Whitney Condi's Euro Tour Deborah Frisch A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill Niranjan Ramakrishnan Reading Khomeini in Colorado Christine TenBarge What's So Special About Ward? Ron Jacobs Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan Dr. Susan Block Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting Poets' Basement Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert Website of the Weekend Free Sherman     February 11, 20055 Manuel Garcia, Jr The Eight Percent War Kurt Nimmo Ann Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need Him? Dave Lindorff Guckert or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In Larry Birns War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott Abrams Bill Quigley Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz Tom Barry Bush's State of Delusion Jennifer Van Bergen Lynne Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All     February 10, 2005 Dave Lindorff What Academic Freedom? Christopher Brauchli The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq Patrick Cockburn In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed Nicole Colson Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights? Suzan Mazur More on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha Michael Donnelly Salvaging an Opposition Mike Stark Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little Hope" Greg Moses Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers Website of the Day The Missionary Positions     February 9, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Duck and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers Mickey Z. What Ward Churchill Didn't Say John Ross Hecho en Mexico: the Iraqi Election Tom Barry Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon Conn Hallinan The Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion Patrick Cockburn Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely Forbidden" Steen Sohn Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions Tim Wise Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians Website of the Day Support Antiwar.com     February 8, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Shia/Kurd Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral Pact, Not a Party" Brian Cloughley Out of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People" Steve Breyman Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society" Harry Browne "Don't Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland Doug Giebel "We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President and Ward Churchill Nate Collins The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the Same Beast Dave Lindorff It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper David Smith-Ferri Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq     February 7, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Bush's War on Jobs Carolyn Baker The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher Ed Joshua Frank Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill Mickey Z. Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill Patrick Cockburn The Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq Mike Whitney Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism Stacie Jonas Pinochet: Fit to be Tried Dave Zirin A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI Tariq Ali Imperial Delusions       February 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs Kurt Nimmo A Ward Churchill Kind of Day Joshua Frank Liberals Trash Ward Churchill P. Sainath Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami Patrick Cockburn Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust Laura Carlsen Bush, Rice and Latin America Dave Lindorff How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story Pamela Olson West Bank Story Behzad Yaghmaian The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen A Threatened UN in King George's Court Roger Burbach World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents Robert Fisk History by Laptop David Swanson James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome Justin E.H. Smith Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada Cacie Hart The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love Ron Jacobs Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life Mickey Z. Viewing America from the Outside Ben Tripp Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy Ben Sonnenberg France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the Game Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert Website of the Weekend John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File   February 4, 2005 Brian Cloughley The Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior of Someone Like That is to Kill Them" Bill Christison Election Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005 Elaine Cassel Did Zoloft Make Him Do It? Jacob Levich Chomsky and the Draft Kanak Mani Dixit Return of the Royalists in Nepal Ron Jacobs The Downward Spiral in Iraq     February 3, 2005 Ward Churchill On the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications and Gross Distortions Sharon Smith Resisting Soldiers Need Our Support Mickey Z. Leslie Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy? Mike Whitney President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union Jenna Orkin 9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan Saul Landau Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq Yitzhak Laor Strange is the Silence Dave Lindorff The Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies     February 2, 2005 David Domke / Kevin Coe Bush's Brand of Christianity Noam Chomsky Iraq After the Elections M. Shahid Alam O'Reilly's Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me in Its Crosshairs Richard Oxman Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen Joshua Frank The Suckering of Howard Dean Dave Lindorff A History Lesson from the NYT Nina Hartley Feminists for Porn Website of the Day War is a Racket     February 1, 2005 Joshua L. Dratel The Torture Memos Patrick Cockburn New Doubts About Allawi Robert Fisk "The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals" Uri Avnery The Stalemate Col. Dan Smith "W" Stands for Withdrawal Alison Weir Making America as "Secure" as Israel Alan Farago Heaven and Hell in the Everglades Ray Hanania Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified Voters Paul Craig Roberts American Police State Website of the Day Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors                         December 22, 2004 James Petras An Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre Historical Amnesia Omar Barghouti The Case for Boycotting Israel Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit Harry Browne Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge Richard Oxman On the Seventh Column Kathleen Christison Imagining Palestine Website of the Day FBI Torture Memos     December 21, 2004 Greg Moses The New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV Dave Lindorff Losing It in America: Bunker of the Skittish Chad Nagle The View from Donetsk Dragon Pierces Truth* Concrete Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam Patrick Cockburn "Things Always Get Worse" Seth DeLong Aiding Oppression in Haiti Ahmad Faruqui Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report Paul Craig Roberts America Locked Up: a System of Injustice                                         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

Weekend Edition March 26 / 7, 2005 A Really Terrible Book Beware of Beware of God By JUSTIN TAYLOR Beware of God: stories Shalom Auslander pp. 194, $19.95 Simon & Schuster Eager to please and semi-offend, quick to poke fun at his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, the Holocaust, or even (gasp!) relations between the sexes; equipped with jacket blurbs from the likes of A.M. Homes and Augusten Burroughs: on paper this looks like it can't fail. Auslander's book should earn him the crown (or is it yarmulke?) of "next Jewish it-boy" faster than a guiltily copped feel on a second cousin at a Passover seder. Not to mention that it should prove an exception to the trend in short story collections and actually sell a bunch of copies. There's only one problem. This is a terrible book, and not just a little bit either. Simon & Schuster should be ashamed of themselves for having allowed Beware of God to go to press, though that the above-described is a marketing department's wet dream probably explains what happened. I seriously wonder if anyone read these stories before okaying them. Even if they were perused before being rubber-stamped I'd bet my paycheck they weren't edited. Most of these stories qualify as, or anyhow strive for, magic realism, though the "magical" conceits they rely on are almost entirely without that genre's glamour, and so poorly constructed they couldn't survive ten minutes of group critique in an undergraduate writing workshop. In "Bobo the Self-Hating Chimp," for example, a monkey at the Bronx Zoo achieves "total conscious self-awareness." At least that's what Auslander tells us has happened. He does little to prove his case. Bobo doesn't seem to have become conscious of his own monkey-selfhood, or of the true nature of reality, or of whatever Auslander might have meant by this nonsense phrase. Bobo creates expressionist artwork and provides his own political readings thereof; he ponders (and opines on) Judeo-Christian ethics; he falls in love with a female monkey named Esmerelda but becomes enraged when she chooses Mongo, a larger and more virile monkey, over him. The enlightened primate who can paint a "searing assault on political power and corporate gain" also takes $35,000 per canvas and wants a place in Larchmont, "something with a fence and a swing set for the kids." Eventually the reader will realize what Auslander clearly didn't. Namely, that Bobo is not self-hating; it's everyone else he hates. The satirical, nightmarish character of the story comes not from the inverted caricature (man-represented-by-a-monkey-which-thinks-it's-a-man) but from the irresolvable discrepancy between Bobo's sudden "awareness" (read=American bourgeois values and white-guy angst) concerning what life is supposed to be and his inability to obtain it. Bobo isn't tormented by his status as lonely prophet, unrespected in his own land; he's the Jew who wants to be a good Nazi, if only they'd let him come to the meetings. Like that Jew, the monkey's trauma stems not from a consciousness of limitation but from a profound delusion. And so, in another amusing (albeit unintended) reversal, the supposedly fully conscious monkey is in fact possessed by the particular delusion that he is a secular, middle-class Jewish intellectual. Auslander has so few tricks up his sleeve that the book, though short, fast becomes a reading chore. Does the dog in "Heimish Knows All" actually speak, and if so, can anyone else hear him as the little boy fears? The reader doesn't find out, and I'd bet Auslander couldn't tell you. The story is an excuse to write about jerking off; as if this theme were suddenly rendered novel by the fact that the boy here is an Orthodox Jew, that attribution as shallow and tacked-on as a tail pinned to a donkey. On Amazon.com you can buy Beware of God bundle-priced with Robert Alter's recent scholarly translation of the five books of Moses. The book and its accompanying publicity have taken great joy in parading Auslander's Orthodox upbringing and his willingness to "explore" that culture. But this book is as light on exploration as it is on inspiration or, for that matter, detail. He keeps telling us the characters are Orthodox Jews, or that they live in Sheepshead Bay, but he doesn't bother to nuance these people or places at all. His satires offer less insight and humor than a Saturday Night Live sketch, though Auslander's jokes skew dirtier than network TV can get away with these days. After fourteen stories, you still don't have a clue what Sheepshead Bay looks like or what its residents might do there. Continuity problems also abound. If the reader is "treated" to watching little Shlomo first discover pornography during the course of "Heimish Knows All," then how can the narrative (a close third person that really wants to be first person but won't commit) describe the fluttering page of an as-yet-unidentified copy of Juggs as "pornography pink?" A few pages later, Shlomo is at the shul but notices the all-seeing mutt "over the driveway, through the trees, past the main entrance, through the bathroom window." The dog and Shlomo have a short conversation, then some older boys start pushing Shlomo around, then Shlomo runs outside. How were Shlomo and Heimish even talking when they were separated by all that space (and walls and windows)? Where did these boys come from, and how are they getting away with pushing Shlomo around when the last we heard Dr. Kaplan was in the shul's bathroom also, and Auslander never bothered to write in the scene where Kaplan left? Why is the dog concerned at all with what the boy is doing, even granting the premise that he magically "knows all?" It's easy to forget that there are two parts to magic realism. Writers are quick to embrace the wiggle-room and loose ends afforded by the "magic" aspect, but they tend to be less enthusiastic when it comes to holding up the "realism" end of the bargain. A magic realist work's success relies largely on the text's ability to affirmatively answer two basic questions: (1) Is the fictional world sufficiently realistic (read=believable) as a world? (2) Is the particular magic realist element internally consistent within said world? If you can say "yes" to those two things, you can do just about anything else and come out on top. "Waiting for Joe" is a story about two rodents who think their owner is God. Well, sort of. Actually they kind of know he's just some guy, and they wonder where he went, if he's coming back, if he's dead. They have a brief argument about whether or not Joe reads James Patterson novels, and whether he's still fit to be their savior if in fact he does. That's funny, but it shatters the story's balsa-weak conceit. Are these hyper-intelligent rodents that read novels and can critique the human world, or are they pitifully misguided creatures so lacking in perspective they think their owner is God? Both are ideas arguably worth exploring in a short story but they are diametrically opposed; each idea deserves-requires-its own tale. Instead we get this garbled mess, which manages the marginally impressive feat of being simultaneously empty and overstuffed. Honestly, though, I was so bored by the time I came across "Waiting for Joe" (near the middle of the book) that I'd have forgiven it all of its structural and logical sins if it had only made good on its promise of being funny. There are half-assed references to other, better works of literature peppered throughout this book. He invokes Tim O'Brien's haunting "The Things They Carried" for his piddling misfire "The War of the Bernsteins." "Waiting for Joe" starts out with the Bible's own "In the beginning." "Holocaust Tips for Kids," one of the few high points of this collection, benefits from a considerable helping of Barthelme; and of course we have a main character named Bloom, but Auslander trying to harness Joyce is just sad. Ditto Kafka for the unfunny rewrite of "The Metamorphosis" where Motty awakes one morning to find himself "transformed in his bed into a very large goy." Here is Motty the goy: muscular, hairy-chested, wearing a Budweiser shirt, suddenly filled with the desire to do physical labor, foreskin re-established. The writing smacks with self-pride even as the story raises every hackneyed stereotype and does nothing productive with any of them. You can almost hear Auslander sitting at his computer, pounding out this trite tripe and tittering to himself: that'll show 'em. And how. Which is, apparently, the way that Auslander thinks. As I mentioned above, these stories are told in a close, talky third person. It's the same narrative voice in each story, asking rhetorical questions to the reader, throwing in little one-liners, almost always ending on a pseudo-snappy sentence fragment afforded its own paragraph. (Examples: "Because you never know;" "That was new;" "Tired of the whole damn business;" "Doughnut prayed;" "But Motty had already gone;" "Schmuck;" "They're all the same;" "Chicken.") Who is this omniscient, disembodied creature that constantly threatens to turn what was already a bad collection into a bad monologue? Well it's either God or Auslander playing same, and either way the Beware in the book's title is once again more appropriate than it meant to be. Beware of God is rarely amusing, occasionally disgraceful, and generally a regrettable mess. If you're at a bookstore and have a few minutes to spare, maybe read "Holocaust Tips for Kids" or "Smite the Heathens, Charlie Brown." The two best selections in the book by far, it should be no surprise that these are not regular stories, but rather amalgamations of vignettes and one-liners. They work because Auslander, who may or may not be a humorist but is certainly not a storyteller, is left without anything to screw up; he can just tell jokes. At an average of a paragraph a shot you can take them or leave them. This could go on, but probably shouldn't. It is worth mentioning, however, that Auslander isn't a disease; he's a symptom. It's galling that in a publishing environment where short story collections are always already getting the short end of the stick, a large and reputable house would put what little time, money, and PR it has for story collections into backing a text that by all rights should still be saddled with the one adjective no longer applicable to it: unpublishable. Maybe it's an easy cash cow for the company. (I certainly hope Homes and Burroughs were well-compensated for taking the credibility hit.) S&S will probably make their money back and then some in the time it takes everyone to realize the book is trash, then it'll go out of print. Existing copies will be consigned to the bargain bin box at every used bookstore from the Upper East Side toyou guessed it: Sheepshead Bay. Justin Taylor is a writer, living in Portland, Oregon. He can be reached at justindtaylor@gmail.com