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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 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Join the 14 Per Cent Club! 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

Weekend Edition May 14 / 15, 2005 "The Ski Mask Way" 50 Cent's Plea By DOUGLAS VALENTINE Brent Staples recently slammed 50 Cent, the Rap/Hip Hop lyricist, in an article in the NY Times. Mr. Staples accused 50 Cent of being a discredit to his musical genre by promoting misogyny, materialism and murder. I have been informed by my older sister, a sociology professor at one of the colleges that did not erupt in violent protest over Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, that Staples is wrong on two counts. He does not understand that Rap/Hip Hop "is the center of lots of sturm und drang. But there is excellent analysis of the genre which places it in historical context and in relationship to other musical genres that are "violent" but white." Nor does Staples understand "50 Cent's hidden ironic meaning." Not being familiar with Mr Cent's art, I decided to analyze, from the point of view of a literary critic, one of his popular songs. I chose his lyrically haunting, autobiographical ode to the horrors of armed robbery, rape and murder, "Ski Mask Way." In "Ski Mask Way," Mr Cent explains that the protagonist, his alter ego, is trying to "catch me sumthin." In the chorus we learn that sumthin is a watch, or chain, or them nice earrings. The alter-ego entreats the person who has these nice ornaments to "Take that shit off, move I'll break you off properly." Mr Cent's alter-ego, the capitalist exploiter of blacks, minorities, and working class people everywhere, gets his "the fast way, ski mask way." Mr Cent mocks this individuals de-humanized materialism, saying: "Make money Make money, money, money nigga if you ask me It's the only way Take money Take money, money, money." In Verse Two, Mr Cent vents his alter ego's wrath on the music producers who control his industry. He warns the owner of the label he's currently contracted with not to try to commercialize his art. He tells how "the last nigga that tried" to do that "Got hit, keeled over, and bled 'til he died." Mr Cent, having lived this experience, quotes the metaphorically murdered corporate executive "little sister" (whom we understand to be the shareholders in the company), who is now financially "hog-tied" with her "momma in the livin room" (a not to vague reference to the historical link between oppressed black women working as servants in white households), as having seen the inherent stupidity in her brother's brash actions. Indeed. Mr. Cent savagely attacks the "house nigger" blacks in the Bush Administration, neo-cons like Colin Powell and Condi Rice in this verse, saying that they make money from robbery (obviously an allusion to the invasion and occupation of Iraq) and selling drugs, a direct reference to the CIA's cocaine sideline in Colombia. Mr Cent, like his spiritual guide and fellow Baltimoron, Edgar Allan Poe, finds solace in smoking marijuana by the kilo. Like Ginsberg and Landau, he uses his body as a metaphor for modern America; that body is infused with the CIA's poison and only when he uses the sauna, by which he means engages in his artistry, does the coke comes out his pores, cleansing us as well as him with a flush of poetic grace. Mr Cent doesn't give the system a break, repeating over and over again, "I get mine the fast way, ski mask way Make money Make money, money, money nigga if you ask me It's the only way Take money Take money, money, money." In Verse Two, the story takes a sudden sad twist. Apparently, upon becoming the new Che Guevara, Mr Cent has been mercilessly but, happily, ineffectually pursued by federal agents. The feds are obviously unaware of the historical context of his Mr Cent's actions, as he describes them above. Nor have they read the available excellent analysis on Mr Cent's inevitable behavior, as he so wonderfully and beautifully expresses in his art. The federal authorities do not realize that in the proper historical context of freewheeling capitalism, "This towns one big pussy waitin to get fucked." Mr Cent preaches communist revolution through the mindless repetition of the chorus: "the fast way, ski mask way Make money Make money, money, money nigga if you ask me It's the only way Take money Take money, money, money." Obviously, we are charmed by his sense of irony, the way he mocks the capitalist system. In that same vein, I have written a playful "beef" reply to "Ski Mask." I hope no person of color is offended by my Bad Rap/Hippity-Hoppity song, "50 Cent Plea" "50 Cent Plea" White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? Yeah, I shot dat nigga When he try to take my shit. Yeah, I shot dat nigga When he try to take my shit. But white boy you must acquit If da historical context fit! White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? Yeah, I sold dat dope. Da dude he need his fix Yeah, I sold dat dope, Da dude he need his fix. But nigga you must acquit Cause da historical context fit! White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? Yeah, I fucked dat little bitch (Here we refer to the one that was hog-tied with her momma) Made her beg for more of it. Yeah, I raped dat little bitch, Made her beg for more of it. But nigga you must acquit Cause da historical context fit! White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? White boy made me do it. Why'd ya make me do it? (Here the syncopated music stops and Mr Cent's alter ego breaks into a free verse passage, as we imagine he would spoof Bush and his abuse of working class America.) Yeah, I'm a pimp and a player Unnerstan! Dey calls me 50 Cent Cause I got fifty white women, All star bitches, Unnerstan! I lines the bitches up in the morning And makes 'em drop their drawers for inspection, And there's one bitch down at the end of the line Smiling up at me. So I takes out a roll of stick matches Strikes 'em across her teeth, Lights a big cigar Blows da smoke in her face and says, "Bitch, don't you ever smile at me Unless you got money in your hand! Unnerstan! If youse got to turn one trick Every hour every day for a week Don't smile at me unless you got money, Unnerstan!" Cause I'm a pimp and a player. Is got Cadillacs and El Dorados and Broughams Unnerstan! Thus ends my ode to Mr 50 Cent piece. In the spirit of "beef" I'd like to say to him, in my opinion, "You are capitalism's poster boy of the week, not society's child. You know you're only half a buck. And if this white boy gets you alone, You I will not acquit Cause in my historical text You a pile of shit." (I'm sure Mr Cent will appreciate the pun on his silly name. God, he should grab his 38 Special and shoot hisself in his empty head for giving hisself such a ridiculous nickname. How do he come up with that shit?) Douglas Valentine is the author of The Hotel Tacloban, The Phoenix Program, and TDY. His fourth book, The Strength of the Wolf: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930-1968, is newly published by Verso. The Strength of the Wolf, has received the Choice Academic Excellence Award and is being published in Russia. Tthe sequel, The Strength of the Pack, is being published by University Press of Kansas in December 2005. For information about Mr. Valentine, and his books and articles, please visit his web sites at www.DouglasValentine.com and http://members.authorsguild.net/valentine                   .