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Today's Stories April 20, 2006 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 20, 2006 Disparities of Power A Case for the Palestinian Government By RAMZY BAROUD Responding to successive decisions made by the US, the European Union and various European and non-European countries to boycott the Palestinian Authority and deprive it of urgently needed funds, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh described these dictates as both “hasty” and “unjust”. Hasty for the obvious reason that the new Palestinian government has just been sworn in and is yet to formulate any workable political program, according to which it should be judged. In fact, the democratically elected government has made several overtures and has provided ample evidence that it is willing to comprise on what is perceived as an extremist political stance. The Prime Minister, his foreign minister, Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahhar and various officials made it uncompromisingly clear that they are willing to live in peace “side by side” with their neighbors. But it appears as if the seemingly contagious boycott campaigns (which confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither the US, the EU and less significantly Canada are truly interested in genuine Middle East democracies, nor is even-handedness on their foreign policy agendas) were meant to impede the new government’s attempt to alter its image through a decided political program that might create an embarrassing political milieu for Israel. Indeed, these boycotts (which included less distinctly hostile countries such as Norway) were also unjust, not only because the current Palestinian government was elected through, according to various European observers, fairly contested and transparent democratic elections. They were unjust because the demands that accompanied them are unfair. So, what’s so unfair about forcing the Palestinian government to recognize Israel’s right to exist? Those truly familiar with the disparity of power between Israel – a formidable nuclear power - and Palestinians with their dysfunctional police apparatus must find the notion tragically funny. It gets even more amusing when one understands that those expected to recognize Israel’s “right to exist” are the descendents and immediate decedents of those who have been utterly victimized by Israel’s policies, and who continue to endure on a daily basis the pain and hurt of Israel’s military occupation. But is it not unjust to expect the Palestinian government to recognize Israel who has intentionally left its borders undefined with the hopes of robbing Palestinians of the leftovers of the original size of their homeland - 22 percent of the total size of Palestine? Maybe the EU should hold on for a few months before making such demands, enough time to allow Israel to unilaterally determine how much it wishes to keep and how much it wishes to spare of the Occupied West Bank, so that Palestinians know what they are recognizing exactly. Is it not unfair to demand an occupied nation to recognize the same entity that has illegally expropriated its future capital - East Jerusalem - to become part of its own “greater” capital, in defiance of international law? Wouldn’t the PA be recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over what Israel conceives as part of “proper Israel” which includes much of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem? What’s even more sanctimonious is demanding that the Palestinian government disown violence. Is this some sort of crude joke that the West insists on playing on Palestinians, keeping in mind that Hamas has religiously adhered to a self-declared one-sided ceasefire with Israel for over a year? Let’s juggle some hypotheses. If the international community thinks that it is imperative that Palestinians abandon violence and terrorist ways of resistance, is it prepared to pressure Israel, through economic boycotts, denial of aid and travel restrictions on its officials to end all forms of collective and individual violence inflicted on Palestinians? More, if such pressure fails, is it prepared to provide Palestinians with a tangible form of protection against wanton Israeli violence, such as the most recent onslaught in Gaza that left 15 people dead and many more wounded? How about the third demand that the new Palestinian government must commit to peace? Detached from reality, the demands look and feel both fair and legitimate. But is it not strange that the EU and the US are too busy congratulating the victorious Kadima party in Israel – whose victory was based on a unilateral platform that further espouses the notion that Israel will do what it sees fit, including the illegal annexation of large swathes of the occupied West Bank – while at the same time it punishes the Palestinians for allegedly disowning past commitments to peace, commitments which Israel has openly refused to acknowledge? Such an approach reeks with hypocrisy. I wish I could make a similar declaration to that made by the courageous Jewish American lawyer, Stanley Cohen in a recent BBC debate, where he said: “Palestinians don’t need your money.” True, Palestinians are too dignified to succumb to such debasing pressure, but the reality is that the Israeli occupation and the past corruption of the former Palestinian government has left them broke and totally reliant on foreign assistance. Their economy was intentionally kept with no prospects of self-reliance precisely for a moment like this where such unwarranted pressure is needed. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, being punished for making a democratic choice that has been deemed unacceptable from an Israeli point of view and from its benefactors elsewhere. Palestinians should recognize Israel, quit violence and commit to peace, but only when such demands are equally required of Israel. Until then, they are simply unmerited. Ramzy Baroud teaches mass communication at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology, Malaysia Campus. His most recent book is entitled, Writings on the Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London.) He is also the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle online newspaper.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Order Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair