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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 23, 2005 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                     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

March 23, 2005 Native American Blood on the High School Floors My Reservation Will Never Be the Same By DALTON WALKER Mesa, Arizona. My heart stopped 2,000 miles away. The unthinkable had happened, and it had happened in a place I call home. Innocent people were killed. Loved ones gone. Sons and daughters were lost forever. Mothers and fathers never will be seen again. I grew up on the Red Lake Chippewa Reservation. In 2000, I graduated from the same high school where a gunman decided, with a few tugs of his finger, that he was better than everyone else. After hearing of Monday's Red Lake shootings, I didn't know which reservation school it was or who had been shot. My mother is a secretary at the Ponemah Elementary School, which is one of three elementary schools on the reservation. I tried to call her first, but the line was busy. I called my grandmother, my sister, my aunts and uncles and my friends, but all the lines were busy. I knew the news wasn't good. When I finally reached my mother, I was relieved for a split-second. Her voice was full of sadness, but she said my family was OK. And yet, my family is not OK. As a Red Lake member, we all are brothers and sisters. We are all one people. That was my Native American blood on the high school floors. I spoke with my favorite high school teacher just hours after the shootings. One of her colleagues now is dead. Some of her students now are dead. She could barely talk because she was so overwhelmed. When I sat in her classroom five years ago, I was thinking about a state basketball championship, not Columbine. I woke up at 6:20 a.m. every school day for the two-hour bus ride to school. I felt safe at school - particularly because it was surrounded with barbed-wire fencing. The building was laced with cameras, inside and outside. Metal detectors greeted each person entering the school. If the metal detector squeaked, security guards were there to pat you down. The reservation never will be the same. My cousin, who is like a baby brother to me, now is a junior at Red Lake High School. I talk with him regularly. I ask him about school and about my old teachers. He tells me school is good and the teachers are good. Now he must live the rest of his life in fear, with the school shootings always in the back of his mind. Dalton Walker, a Mesa Community College student, is a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa. He was selected for a 2005 Bernard H. Ridder Jr. Fellows reporting internship at the Duluth News Tribune, where this column originally appeared.