home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

What You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY OR UNCLE SAM? The answer at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags the tail. Fifty years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg in the East Village. Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered them up. 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! Get CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year

Today's Stories May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair The Rise and Possible Fall of Richard Pombo May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad The Charmless Inconveniences of the Bourgeoisie Robert Fisk Sy Hersh versus the Bush Administration (and the DC Press Corps) David Swanson Washington Post Writer Rushes to Rummy's Defense Against Ray McGovern Mearsheimer / Walt The Storm Over "the Israel Lobby" Dave Lindorff They're Back!: The Looters of Social Security Sarah Ferguson A Day Without Gringos: Immigrants Flooded the Streets of NYC on May, But Where Were the White Peaceniks? CounterPunch News Service Costs of US Wars: Bush's GWOT Now Fifth Most Expensive in US History Corporate Crime Reporter David Sirota: Still Shackled to the Democrats Website of the Day Watch Ray KO Rummy   May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Sami al-Arian's Final Persecution Will Potter Green is the New Red: How the Bush Administration is Using Terror Laws to Prosecute Nonviolent Environmental Activists Jonathan Cook The Long Path Back to Umm al-Zinat Roger Burbach Bolivia's Radical Realignment Chris Dols Colbert's Moment (And Why the Beltway Gang Didn't Get It) Christopher Brauchli Sen. Frist Without Clothes Tony Swindell "Our Descent into Hell has Begun" Website of the Day The Two Lobbies   May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce The Self-Locking F-22 Paul Craig Roberts John Kenneth Galbraith, a Great American James Petras The Rise of the Migrant Workers' Movement Lee Sustar Democrats and Immigrants: the Grand Evasion David Bolton The War on Drugs is a War on Ourselves Joshua Frank Challenging Hillary Jeffery R. Webber Evo Morales' Historic May Day: Bolivia Nationalizes Gas! Website of the Day Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger!   May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Gouge and Profit: Will Big Oil Destroy Tariq Ali On the Death of Pramoedya Ananta Toer: Indonesia's Greatest Writerthe US Economy? Saul Landau Life in the Mekong Delta Paul Craig Roberts Endgame for the Constitution Gary Leupp "Out of Iraq, Into Darfur?" Ron Jacobs May Day in Asheville Sen. Russell Feingold Our Presence is Destabilizing Iraq Anthony Papa Rush Limbaugh and the Politics of Drug Addiction Website of the Day Rainbow Books     May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein The Israel Lobby: It's Not Either / Or Christopher Reed Mercury's Message, 50 Years On Michael Donnelly Rummy's Not the Only One Who Should Go: What About the War's Liberal Enablers? Dave Zirin A Day Without Pujols Mike Whitney The "N' Word: Take Back the Oil Companies! Gilad Atzmon Self-Haters Unite! Missy Comley Beattie Marching for Peace Alexander Cockburn The War on Terror on the Lodi Front Website of the Day In Your Face, Mr President   April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh May Day with Heart Ralph Nader Break Up the Big Oil Cartel Robert Bryce The Scandal of the V-22: It Kills, It Crashes, But It Won't Die Rev. William Alberts Praying for Peace or Preying on Peace? Time for People of Faith to Censure Bush Lee Sustar Opening a New Movement John Chuckman Xenophobia in a Land of Immigrants Eric Ruder An Interview with Camilo Meija on the War and Immigrants Seth Sandronsky Securing the Homeland for Whom Ron Jacobs Neil Young's Call to Arms Ben Tripp A Fork in the American Road Fred Gardner Forgotten Memories: Personal and Political Don Monkerud Corruption Reform in the Age of Abramoff: Not a Roar, But a Whimper Tommy Stevenson JazzFest, Tears and the Renewal of New Orleans Lettrist International Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris Contratiempo Back to the Back of the Yards: the Jungle, 100 Years Later St. Clair, Vest and D'Antoni CounterPunch Playlist: What We're LIstening to This Week Poets' Basement Engel, Orloski and Guthrie Website of the Weekend Survival of the Fattest   April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway What You Won't See in Flight 93, the Film Ramzy Baroud Hamas' Impossible Mission Sarah Knopp An Interview with Nativo Lopez on the May Day Protests William S. Lind Off With His Head!: But Rumsfeld's Should Not be the Only One That Rolls Werther Operation Canned Meat and Its Derivatives April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler How Much is the War Costing? How Many US Troops are Really in Iraq? Robert Fisk The United States of Israel? Juan Santos Immigration Endgame Robert Jensen Why Leftists Distrust Liberals Dave Lindorff Making America Safer: One Released War Crime Victim at a Time Jose Pertierra Honor and Injustice:the Case of the Cuban Five   April 26,2006 Robin Philpot The Rich Life of Jane Jacobs Sherry Wolf Democrats, Their Apologists and Abortion: the Jig is Up Pratyush Chandra Nepal: a Saga of Compromise and Struggle Joshua Frank Zig-Zagging Through the War With John Kerry Gary Leupp The Neo-Cons and Iran: No Negotiations Bill Quigley Katrina: Eight Months Later     April 25, 2006 Gary Leupp Wilkinson Speaks Out About the Coming War on Iran Paul Craig Roberts The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium Linda S. Heard Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?: the Prophecy of Oded Yinon Ralph Nader Political Science: Gingrich, "Futurism" and the Abolition of the OTA Mike Whitney Preparing for the Economic Typhoon Michael Donnelly Lutherans Betray Michigan's Loon Lake Wetlands for Pieces of Silver Sharon Smith Breathing New Life Into May Day Website of the Day SDS Ver. 2   April 24, 2006 Tim Wise What Kind of Card is Race? John Stanton Strike Iran, Watch Pakistan and Turkey Fall Dave Lindorff Dangerous Times Ahead Steve Shore Berlusconi Defeated: The Long Wait is Over ... Or Is It? Amadou Deme Hotel Rwanda: Setting the Record Straight Mickey Z. 15 Minutes of Radical Fame: America Meets Bill Blum and Ward Churchill Ralph Nader Lee Raymond's Unconscionable Platinum Parachute Alexander Cockburn Obama's Game Website of the Day Too Stupid to Be President?   April 22/23, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair The General, GM and the Stryker Jeff Halper SUMUD vs. Apartheid: the Elections in Palestine and Israel Jeff Klein How to Manufacture a War Criminal: Saddam and Me, a True Story Thomas P. Healy Out Now: an Interview with Anthony Arnove David Underhill Stuck in Mobile with the Rev. Graham Blues Again Lee Sustar "We are Going to Keep Marching": an Interview with Immigrant Rights Organizer Martín Unzueta Deb Reich The Little Mermaid on Highway Six: Rooting for Ordinary Israelis to Wake Up John Chuckman America's Gulag: Purge at the CIA Fred Gardner More Suppression of Marijuana Research Julian Edney Can Our Economy Run Without Fear? Seth Sandronsky The GOP and California's Levees Brynne Keith-Jennings The Meddlesome Ambassador Trivelli: Undermining Democracy in Nicaragua Dave Lindorff Where are the Frogs? Catherine Ann Cullen and Harry Browne Springsteen Polishes His Roots: First Impressions of "We Shall Overcome" Bill Pahnelas Bush Passes the Buck on Soaring Gas Prices Jim French Time to Overhaul US Farm Policy Ron Jacobs "I Know I'm Not Dreaming, Because I Can't Sleep Any More" David Krieger The Courage of Sophie Scholl: Resisting Hitler Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Buknatski, Engel and Ford Website of the Weekend Eye of the Storm   April 21, 2006 Jonathan Cook The Sinister Meaning of Olmert's "Hitkansut": Deporting Hamas MPs Lawrence R. Velvel Physical Courage, Moral Courage and American Generals Evelyn Pringle How to Out a CIA Agent Christopher Brauchli The Rich are Different Pratyush Chandra Pure-and-Simple Revolutions in Nepal and Venezuela Michael George Smith This is What a Movement Looks Like Missy Comley Beattie Serving at the Decider's Pleasure Sarah Hines The Bracero Program: 1942-1964 Website of the Day Hunger Strike at U. of Miami   April 20, 2006 Chris Kutalik As Crisis Deepens, Is Labor Finally Showing Signs of a Comeback? Gary Leupp Cheney, the Neocons and China Joshua Frank Stop the War! Dump the Democrats! Diane Christian The Authority to Kill William S. Lind Sweeping Up: the Real Problem Wasn't the Execution of the War, But the Enterprise Itself Ramzy Baroud A Case for the Palestinan Government Justin E.H. Smith Doctors and Lethal Injection   April 19, 2006 P. Sainath More Kids? Pay More for Your Water Norman Solomon When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch on Iran Anthony Papa When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards for the Rich and Poor in New York Mike Ferner Movement Blues Stanley Heller The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later: Still No Justice Rifundazione "We Defeated Berlusconi" Christopher Reed Secrets of the Garden of Bliss Alexander Cockburn The Pulitzer Farce Website of the Day Bunker Busters: the Movie April 18, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts How Safe is Your Job? Eric Wingerter Washington Post vs. Venezuela Juan Santos What Immigrants Need to Learn from the Black Civil Rights Movement Greg Weiher The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited Sam Bahour Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse? Behzad Yaghmaian In the Gaze of New Orleans Website of the Day The FBI and the Jack Anderson Files   April 17, 2006 Kevin Zeese An Interview with the First Arab-American Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity Uri Avnery Olmert the Fox Norman Solomon Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing of Iran? John Ross A Real Day Without Mexicans? Laila al-Haddad The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch from Gaza Jeffrey Blankfort A Tale of Two Members of Congress and the Capitol Hill Police Website of the Day Dixie Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down   April 15 / 16, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair How Star Wars Came to the Arctic Ralph Nader Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin Thaddeus Hoffmeister The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for Being Right Kevin Prosen / Dave Zirin Privilege Meets Protest at Duke Thomas P. Healy Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell Berry Kristoffer Larsson Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical Flim-Flam Fred Gardner Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education Edwin Krales New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the Poor Brian Cloughley Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback John Holt Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son Seth Sandronsky What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and the Privatization of Public Schools Rafael Renteria Making It Plain About New Orleans Michael Ortiz Hill In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation William A. Cook An Israel Accountability Act Gideon Levy Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl Andrew Wimmer Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign Madis Senner Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush Michael Kuehl The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"? Mark Scaramella When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm of Mark Twain Nate Mezmer 187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop Jesse Walker Playlist Poets' Basement Engel, Laymon and Subiet Website of the Weekend Pink Serenades Bush   April 14, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials Resign on Principle Saul Landau Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets Stan Cox The Real Death Tax Kevin Zeese Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe? Brian McKinlay Bad Times for Bush's Buddies Howard Meyers Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ Ishmael Reed The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks to Chastize Blacks Website of the Day Asshole: a Film Strip   April 13, 2006 CounterPunch News Service Powell's "Bitch"? Norman Solomon The Lobby and the Bulldozer Stanley Heller Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement Jeff Birkenstein Bush and Freedom of Speech Evelyn J. Pringle Not So Fast, Mr. Powell Michael Donnelly The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart Kamran Matin Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran? Website of the Day "Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"   April 12, 2006 Vijay Prashad Resisting Fences Alan Maass The Suicide of Anthony Soltero Dave Lindorff Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked, You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast Ron Jacobs Resistance: the Remedy for Fear Ramzy Baroud The Imminent Decline of the American Empire? Randall Dodd How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers Missy Comley Beattie The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!" P. Sainath The Corporate Hijack of India's Water Website of the Day "The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"   April 11, 2006 Al Krebs Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration and a History of Greed Lawrence R. Velvel The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight Sonia Nettinin Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation Willliam S. Lind The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors Robert Ovetz Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish Pratyush Chandra Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!" Grant F. Smith The Bush Administration's Final Surprise? Laray Polk Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights Francis Boyle O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home Turf José Pertierra A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455 Website of the Day The Dead Emcee Scrolls   April 10, 2006 Ralph Nader Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats Heather Gray Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Uri Avnery The Big Wink Joshua Frank Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers Seth Sandronsky Immigration and Occupations Michael Leonardi The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important" Evelyn Pringle Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald? Tom Kerr FoxNews Does Ward Churchill Lucinda Marshall The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney Website of the Day Brown Berets April 7 -9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama Jeffrey St. Clair The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile Technology to China Patrick Cockburn The War Gets Grimmer Every Day David Vest The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney Dave Lindorff The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward Gary Leupp "Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean? Elaine Cassel The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This? Saul Landau Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules James Ridgeway "This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film Ron Jacobs Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money John Walsh Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late Ramzy Baroud The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua Christopher Brauchli Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits Todd Chretien What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America Jonathan Scott Javelins at the Head of the Monolith John Bomar What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas Michele Brand Iran, the US and the EU Ronan Sheehan Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese? Mickey Z. Let Us Now Praise OIL Don Monkerud March of the Bunglers Michael Dickinson The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play Website of the Weekend The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast     April 6, 2006 John Ross Mexico's Most Toxic Presidential Election Ever Dave Lindorff Time to Get on Message with the Sissy French Don Monkerud The Strange Case of the American Worker Robert McDonald The Texas Railroad to Death Row: How Prosecutors Fabricated a Case Against Rodney Reed Boris Kagarlitsky A Marriage of Convenience in Ukraine Remi Kanazi The Assault on Cynthia McKinney Niranjan Ramakrishnan Untangling the Issues in the Immigration Debates Robert Fisk A Lesson from the Holocaust for Us All   April 5, 2006 Dick J. Reavis Pancho Bin Laden and the Terrorists' Tombs Mark Brenner Workers in the Aftermath of Katrina: Survival of the Fittest Brian Cloughley Nailing the Lies: Come Clean, Mr. Bush Jozef Hand-Boniakowski Why Democrats Are At Least Half of the Problem Matt Vidal Republican Bliss: the Selfish Road to Happiness Juan Santos The Politics of Immigration: a Nation of Colonists and Race Laws Alan Maass Week of the Walkouts JoAnn Wypijewski Malevolent Power at Ft. Sill: the Army Slays Its Own Website of the Day My Life in the Bush of Ghosts   April 4, 2006 Jackson Thoreau How the Hammer Got Nailed: Taking Down Tom DeLay Gary Corseri Osama's Favorite Writer?: an Interview with William Blum Dave Lindorff Provocative Humanitarianism?: Bashing Hugo Chavez at the NYT Paul Craig Roberts Belligerent to the Bitter End Norman Solomon When War Crimes Are Unspeakable: Bush, Always the Accuser, Never the Accused Michael Carmichael The Christocrat: Condi Does Britain Winslow T. Wheeler Is the F-22 Worth the Price-Tag? Ingmar Lee Is Another World Possible?: Report from Karachi Michael Neumann The Israel Lobby and Beyond Website of the Day West Point Graduates Against the War   April 3, 2006 Saul Landau Vietnam Diary: "What Socialism?" Richard Thieme The CIA: Cowboys, Indians and Whistleblowers, an Interview with David MacMichael Timothy B. Tyson Race, Class and Rape at Duke Omar Barghouti The Israeli Elections: a Decisive Vote for Apartheid Iwasaki Atsuko "As Israelis, We Also Fight for Palestinians:" an Interview with Jeff Halper Julian Edney A Terrible Weapon in the Hands of the Rich Roger Morris Catfight Among the Conservatives   April 1 / 2, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's "Night" Ralph Nader Exxon/Mobil: the Corporate Superpower of Superpowers Dave Zirin The Press Mob, Their Rope and Barry Bonds: Damn Right Race Matters David Underhill Walkin' to New Orleans Earl Ofari Hutchinson Do Immigrants Really Take Jobs from Urban Poor? Dave Lindorff Sen. Orrin Hatch: Defender of Presidential Lawlessness P. Sainath Where India's Brave New World is Headed Fred Gardner Debunking "Amotivational Syndrome" Clancy Chassay Hamas or Al Qaeda? The Gun or the Ballot Box? Heather Gray The Inspiring Face of Immigration: Australia and the American Rural Southeast Greg Moses Austin Students Walkout: "We're a Group This Country Needs" John Chuckman When the Violent Enforce the Peace: America's Brutal Tactics in Iraq Ron Jacobs Leaving Iraq Now is the Only Sensible Solution Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Holt, Engel, Subiet, Ford and Davies Website of the Weekend Pentagon Thievery     Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition May 6 / 7, 2006 The Secret History of George W. Bush Mission Akkomplished By ARIEL DORFMAN I blinked at the words on my screen. I had been trolling the internet, looking for reasons why the US does not celebrate its workers on the same day as the rest of the world, even if the origins of that date happen to be profoundly American: 1 May 1886, when demands for an eight-hour working day by Chicago trade unions (mostly made up of European immigrants) were met by violent police repression. When my search engine turned up an unknown website, www.secrethistory-georgewbush.com, I almost decided not to explore its contents. Of all Americans, the one least likely to be linked to May Day was George W Bush, notoriously uninterested in history or, for that matter, the working class. The website, however, managed to make a connection, albeit an astounding one: It has now been confirmed. 1 May 1973: that was the date George W Bush was recruited as an agent by the KGB rather than some time in 1972 as had been previously reported on this website. "As this is the son of the chairman of the governing Republican Party," the security officer in charge of the operation wrote to Secretary General Yuri Andropov in a coded message which has now been deciphered, "we will see where this leads. Take it as a gift to the glorious Soviet people on this International Workers' Day." Another source inside the Kremlin indicates that, upon receiving the news, the usually solemn Andropov smiled as he reviewed the troops marching through Red Square and murmured to his fellow members of the Politburo: "We have a secret weapon and it is not here in Moscow." I blinked again. The next paragraph was even more absurd: Jump forward 30 years, to 1 May 2003. There was George W Bush, now the president, landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and proclaiming, under a gigantic "Mission Accomplished" banner, that "major combat operations" in Iraq had ceased. At first glance the event appeared as a fantastic Top Gun photo op on a vessel named after the greatest Republican president of all time, which had the added attraction of returning from the second Gulf war without having suffered a single casualty. The homecoming had been delayed for the ship, idling 30 miles off the coast of California until the soft morning light was ready for the Commander-in-Chief to fly in on an S-3B Viking jet, strut around in full battle gear and send a message to a world celebrating workers: the US does not need you or your countries to rule this planet. Or surely that was what his American handlers thought was transpiring. This website deems that the real message was intended for Dubbya's Russian handler, that the Mission Accomplished banner was a mischievous nod and wink to the president's very own KGB agent: "I did it, tovarish. We're on our way. Watch what is about to happen in Iraq and elsewhere and enjoy the decline of the American empire. My jubilation knows no bounds. Happy 30th anniversary! Long live International Workers' Day!" And suddenly, before I could click over to another website which might provide less ludicrous material about 1 May and America, my computer shut down, the words and very website vanishing from my eyes. Irritated by this freak mishap, I rebooted my Toshiba, brought Google up and typed in the internet address. Unable to open [http://www.secrethistorygeorgewbush.com/.] Cannot locate internet server or proxy server. I tried again. Same outcome. The following hour of clumsy surfing yielded no trace of that incongruous blog or anything approximating it. I asked my eldest son, Rodrigo, a webmaster himself, if he could find out whether secrethistorygeorgewbush was owned by anyone. A few minutes later he informed me that nobody had bought it or, as far as he could tell, ever used it. Did I want to secure that domain? And what was I up to anyway? Not a bad question. What was I up to? I told my son: nothing, just curious, forget the whole thing. But I could not, in fact, forget it at all. Was somebody playing a trick on me? Had I been hallucinating? Or had that abruptly cancelled website even existed? Brought up on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes as a child and spy novels as an adolescent, and being the victim of real conspiracies as an adult, I could easily conjure up the anonymous author of such wild accusations seated in some smoke-filled interrogation room even as the web police (whoever they might be) erased all remnants of those outlandish theories from the vast plateaus of virtual reality. Stop right there. I had to resist the temptations of political science fiction. What mattered about 1 May in 2006, in the United States, was that 120 years after those European immigrants had marched in the streets of Chicago, May Day was being miraculously resurrected by other workers, other immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of men and women would again fill those Chicago streets and streets across America. But this time they would come primarily from Latin America, most of them would be illegal and all of them would be united against the impending legislation threatening to expel them. And they had chosen this date, an American date forgotten by America, to emerge from invisibility. That was the story that mattered. The workers from the South bringing May Day, the day known in Mexico as El Día de los Mártires de Chicago, the day of the martyrs of Chicago, back to El Norte, back to the America which had turned its eyes away from its own past. And yet, the febrile writer in me couldn't help wandering off into the arcane realm of Bush and the KGB. In an attempt to rid myself of the obsession, I followed up on some of the clues mentioned on that "disappeared" website, struggling to create a thriller that Hitchcock would never have directed, The Blog Vanishes. Or was it Three Days of the W? Either way, three hours later my cursory search turned out predictably inconclusive. On 1 May 1973, George W Bush was supposed to have been in Texas training as a pilot with the National Guard. It is true that there is not one eyewitness who can confirm that he was in situ during that period. Indeed, not one record places him in Texas or anywhere else during what is known as "George Bush's lost year". So lost, that the future president did not even report for his physical. Of course, it's more logical to picture him partying, boozing and smoking marijuana, rather than to conjecture his body being smuggled into some secret Soviet training camp near Uzbekistan, or wherever those cloak-and-dagger facilities might have been located, maybe Leningrad. Yes, Leningrad, I thought to myself, now passionately embracing the conspiracy. Leningrad would have been perfect, as that was the one place and time when he might have been offered an early introduction to his counterpart Vladimir Putin, already on his way to his own career in the KGB. It would certainly elucidate one of the most bizarre incidents of Bush's presidency, when, at his first (known) meeting with Putin, on 16 June 2001, George W astonished the world by stating that he had looked his Russian "friend" in the eye and found him trustworthy, that he now had a sense of Putin's soul. And if you look at the video of that encounter, there is a peculiar smile on Putin's lips, perhaps enigmatically reminiscent of Andropov's smile in Red Square all those years ago. Was the Russian president saying to himself, yes, you have a sense of my soul, but I have a sense of your KGB file, my friend, and that probably matters more. You won't utter a peep when I bomb Chechnya. Enough already. These convoluted ramblings of my imagination would get me nowhere. More relevant was to ask whether the theory of George W Bush as a KGB agent ultimately made sense of his presidency. And here I have to admit, reluctantly, that yes, it does illuminate any number of dark issues that have been puzzling me over the years. Because the truth is that, during his amazingly inept administration, there is only one thing at which Bush has been diabolically efficient and that happens to be the systematic destruction of his own country. It's easy to understand this as a particularly lethal combination of arrogance and stupidity, laziness and greed. Or it can be interpreted as apocalyptic evangelism run amok. Or we can focus on the corporations that have him in their pockets or the neo-cons or . . . so many explanations. None of which really satisfies my desire to grasp how Bush managed to sabotage his own country in such a savage way. Here is a man who willfully ignored all signs of the terrorist attacks about to be launched on American territory. A man who squandered the goodwill of the world by disastrously invading a country that posed no threat to America's security. Who proved more adept at ravishing foreign lands than rescuing compatriots devastated by a hurricane. Who has bankrupted future generations with his inane tax cut. Who has tried to destroy what is left of his land's social welfare net. Who looks away when people are tortured in the name of America. It is hard to believe that an incompetence so drastic and so persistent is not deliberate. It's crazy, I know, but George W Bush has acted as if he had indeed received secret instructions many years ago to ruin his land and lay low the American empire, make sure that, no matter what happened to the Soviet Union, it would not be the United States that would inherit the earth. Hard to believe and yet, I must confess . . . I made it all up. The eccentric web- site. Its mysterious disappearance. The riotous accusations. All of it invented by me as a way of using that May Day landing on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln three years ago to ask ourselves what George W Bush has done to America, where has his mission finally landed us all? It turns out that, despite all his efforts, the mission is far from accomplished. Just look at those millions of undocumented men and women who advanced through the avenues of Lincoln's country on this 1 May 2006, marching through its hopes and through its fears. Look at them, risking everything, crossing deserts and dodging bullets, exploited by bosses and discriminated against by vigilantes, just to be part of the American dream. It's time to recognize that hidden truth: those illegal workers marching along the avenues and into the memory of America believe more in the promise of the United States than its president does. They are doing more, day and night, to keep their adopted country running and alive than the man who is not, of course, a KGB agent but, sadly for his fellow countrymen, continues to act more and more like one with every passing day. Ariel Dorfman is the author of Death and the Maiden, Other Septembers, Many Americas (Pluto Press) and Burning City (Random House), a novel written with his youngest son, Joaquin. He can be reached through his website: http://www.adorfman.duke.edu This essay appears in the May 8 edition of The New Statesman and is reprinted in CounterPunch with permission of the author.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Order Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair   CounterPunch Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"