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Today's Stories April 15 / 16, 2006 Ralph Nader Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin 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   March 31, 2006 Gary Leupp Better Off Under Saddam: an Inventory Patrick Cockburn Mosul Slips Out of Control Saree Makdisi Israeli Elections Big Winner: Avigdor Lieberman Ron Jacobs Where Capital is Not God: France Shows the Way Mark Engler There's Much More to be Done on Third World Debt Relief Curtis F.J. Doebbler An Appeal to International Lawyers: Hold Bush Accountable for Flauting International Law Laith al-Saud Iraq is Not in Civil War (Yet); It's Under Occupation Website of the Day Boobies, Dolphins and Flying Fish: Sailing the African Coast     March 30, 2006 Uri Avnery Israeli Elections: What the Hell Has Happened? Sen. Russell Feingold A Fact Check on a Presidential Crime: Myth vs. Reality on Bush's Warrantless Wiretapping Program Winslow T. Wheeler The Saga of the Joint Strike Fighter: Just Because Its High Tech and Costs $247 Billion Doesn't Mean It Works Dave Lindorff A Strategy of Massacres? Juan Santos The Ghost of George Wallace: Immigration and White Racism Frida Berrigan Privatizing the Apocalypse Joshua Frank War in Search of a Justification Vonnie Edwards Letter from the LA County Jail Neve Gordon Does Kadima's Victory Put the Peace Process in Reverse? Website of the Day The Women of New Orleans Speak   March 29, 2006 CounterPunch News Service Fake Saddam Interview Put Out by Israel Lobby Catspaw, Endorsed by NeoCons' Pet Cassandra, Now Wiping Egg From Face Patrick Cockburn Bush's Call for Ouster of Iraq PM Widens Rift with Shias John Ross When Water is Not a Human Right Omar Barghouti When is Killing Arab Civilians Considered a Massacre? William S. Lind Truth in Advertising from the Army? Missy Comley Beattie Missing in America Earl Ofari Hutchinson AWOL: Black Leaders and Immigration Website of the Day Colombia Support Network Needs Your Help   March 28, 2006 Sharon Smith Liberal Hypocrisy on Immigration: Krugman and Clinton Say Shut the Door Paul Craig Roberts Bush is No Conservative Tariq Ali Karachi Social Forum: NGOs or WGOs? Manuel Garcia, Jr. God's Torturers: from Torquemada to Opus Dei Ramzy Baroud False Impressions: the Media and the Middle East Evelyn Pringle Fentanyl's Body Count: the FDA's Math Problem Seth Sandronsky Inflation and Speculation Patrick Cockburn Shias May Now Turn on US Forces   March 27, 2006 Patrick Cockburn War Crime in a Mosque Joshua Frank The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks Ron Jacobs The Case of the Anti-Minutemen Five Jeff Lays Eternal Spending for a Never-Ending War Davey D. We Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us Robert Billyard "I Did Not Join the British Army to Conduct US Foreign Policy" Jim Rigby Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church Lisa Viscidi Justice and Impunity in Latin America: the Case of Rios Montt Nick Dearden Refugees: Thirty Years in the Western Sahara Gideon Levy Are We Done Killing Children, Yet? Website of the Day "Love Me, I'm a Liberal " (Updated) March 25 / 26, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Why There's No Strategy to End This War Patrick Cockburn The Battle for Baghdad: It's Already Begun Ralph Nader Bush's Divorce from Reality Christopher Reed Slave Labor and Hell Ships: Mitsubishi Awaits Judgment for Its War Crimes Jeff Ballinger Memo to Walter Mosley: the Crisis in Black Leadership Joseph Massad Blaming the Israel Lobby Brian Cloughley The Fifth Afghan War Chris Floyd Death in the Village of Isahaqi Elaine Cassel Abortion Politics: The FDA and Plan B Dave Zirin Death Row Talks Back to Etan Thomas John Chuckman Sorry, Prime Minister, Afghanistan is Not Canada's War Sharon Smith "Si Se Puede!": On Chicago's Streets Christopher Fons A City With Latinos Chris Kromm Coretta Scott King a Communist? There's a History Here John Bomar Neurotic-in-Chief: Bush's "Change of Course" Ron Jacobs More Than Just a Band Maymanah Farhat What MoMA Does to "Islamic" Art St. Clair / Walker / Vest Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Harley, Davies, Engel and Subiet Website of the Weekend Peacecast   March 24, 2006 Cockburn / Sengupta / Duff How the CPT Hostages were Freed P. Sainath Bribe or Die Todd Chretien Jim Crow Goes Fishing: the Racist War on Immigrants Marty Omoto The Other California Michael Carmichael Islamophobia at Downing Street: Tony Blair's Bipolarity Peter Phillips Impeachment Movement Grows; Media Yawns Gabriel Kolko The US Empire vs. Reality Website of the Day Music for Peace   March 23, 2006 Charles V. Peña Bush's Pro-Terrorism Defense Budget Joe DeRaymond El Salvador 2006: a Broken Nation Robert Fisk "US Authorities Say..." Jonathan Cook The Emerging Jewish Consensus in Israel Tom Engelhardt Whatever Happened to Congress?: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson Joshua Frank Political Lemmings: the Democrats and the Precipice Norman Solomon The Ultimate Scapegoat: Blaming the Media for Bad War News Robert Fitch / Joe Allen An Exchange on the State of Organized Labor Patrick Cockburn Kirkuk's Dr. Death CounterPunch News Service On the Proper Way to Address a Bible-Waving Republican State Senator from Maryland Website of the Day Bird-Dogging Kerry   March 22, 2006 David MacMichael Iranian Nuclear Showdown: an Unnecessary Crisis Juan Santos Brown Skin, Yellow Star: Making Latinos Illegal Paul Craig Roberts Hollow Nation: Americans Don't Live Here Anymore Patrick Cockburn Iraq's My Lai?: Shooting Any Iraqi Who Moves Ramzy Baroud The Jericho Raid Jason Leopold The Mysterious "Official One": Woodward's Plame-Leak Deep Throat Dennis Perrin Killer Lies from Cheney's Harlot William Blum The Cuban Punching Bag Jeffrey St. Clair Contract Casino Website of the Day Bird Flu: Will It Cross Over?   March 21, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Delusional Speech Winslow Wheeler Lipstick on the Pig: the Fiasco of Congressional Earmark Reform Tom Engelhardt Cold Warrior in a Strange Land: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson Arnold Oliver To the Guy Who Called Me a Traitor: Dissent and the Iraq War Earl Ofari Hutchinson When Black Cops Go Bad: the Killing of Elio Carrion Mike Whitney Death Squad Democracy William A. Cook Israeli Human Rights: Starve the Palestinians Sophia A. McLennen Assault on Higher Education: the Conservative Push for the Right Student   March 20, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts A Collapsing Presidency Dave Lindorff Howard Dean Tells CounterPunch: DNC No Foe of Impeachment Ralph Nader The DNC's "Grassroots Agenda": Howard Dean's Plea for Advice Diane Christian License to Lie: Over to You, Dante Jeff Halper "To Hell with All of You": the Power of Saying No Harry Browne Unhappy St. Patrick's Day: Bush's Crackdown on Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein Norman Solomon Why are We Here?: Is There a Right Way to Wage a Wrong War? Patrick Cockburn Death Squads on the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear Website of the Day Abugate   March 18 / 19, 2006 Cockburn / St. Clair Three Years On: Where's the Resistance Here on the Home Front? Werther Bombs and Butchers: "Where Do We Get Such Men?" Chris Kromm Katrina Aid Package: Much Too Little; Much Too Late Patrick Cockburn Halabja: Kurds Destroy Monument to Victims of Saddam's Poison Gas Attack Elaine Cassel Abortion Politics and Animus for Women: Can Justice Kennedy be Swayed? S. Brian Willson Iraq Vets and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Fred Gardner The War on Kids Brian Cloughley General Insanity: the Prevarications of Gen. Peter Pace Laura Carlsen Challenging Disparity: Toward a New US Policy in Latin America Eamon Martin Life in the Shadows of the Empire: Mysterious Photographers of Nothing Julie Hilden Free Speech in the Classroom: Teachers Don't Enjoy Enough Legal Protection Alison Weir So Much for "Sunshine Week": AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement LaMorticella, Krieger, Louise, and Engek Website of the Weekend Are the Elites Turning Against the Effects of the Israel Lobby?   March 17, 2006 Eduardo Galeano Abracadabra: Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear Greg Moses Bush and Nuclear Preemption: Do You Feel Safe With This Man's Finger on the Button? Richard Falk / David Krieger The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is Dying: What Now? Cindy and Craig Corrie Three Ways to Remember Rachel Amira Hass Hamas's Haniyeh: "I Never Sent Anyone on a Suicide Mission" Mike Marqusee Reasons to March James Petas and Robin Eastman-Abaya Philippines: the Killing Fields of Asia Website of the Day Black Shamrock   March 16, 2006 Norman Solomon Hook, Line and Sinker: War-Loving Pundits Tom Philpott Neoliberalism at the Garden Gate: Community Farming in LA Heather Gray Anne Braden: the South's Rebel Without a Pause Amira Hass Is Hamas Playing into the Hands of Israeli Hardliners? Missy Comley Beattie Dangerous-to-Society Women: Locked Up in the Tombs Sen. Russell Feingold President Bush has Broken the Law; He Must be Held Accountable Lucinda Marshall President Ken Doll: Bush Insults Women on Intl. Women's Day Andrew Bosworth From the Man Who Voted Against Katrina Aid: Joe Barton's War on CITGO Clancy Sigal In Celebration of Dachau's 73rd Anniversary, Halliburton Gets Concentration Camp Contract Website of the Day Help Rebuild the New Orleans Public Library March 15, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel's Raid on the Jericho Jail Winslow Wheeler Hiding the Cost of War: Paying for Iraq with Supplemental Funding Diane Christian Sharon's Stroke Ron Jacobs New Tenants for Abu Ghraib?: a Cell for Kissinger and Haig Missy Comley Beattie How Many Brinks to Pass? Jared Bernstein The Minority Wealth Gap Noam Chomsky The Crumbling Empire Website of the Day French Students Reclaim the Streets of Paris   March 14, 2006 Earl Ofari Hutchinson No Requiem for a Black Conservative: the Fall of Claude Allen Dave Lindorff Why the Gitmo Tribunals are a Bad Idea: Exhibit A, t he Moussaoui Case Kevin Zeese Divide and Rule in Iraq Gone Awry Todd Chretien Counting the Dead in Iraq: Why is the Left Understating the Carnage? Jason Kunin Canada in Afghanistan: "We're Here Because We're Here" Thomas Palley The Economics of Outsourcing Cockburn / St. Clair Pages from the Liberals' War Website of the Day Golf Courses and Swimming Pools   March 13, 2006 Uri Avnery The Missing Word Dave Lindorff Extra, Extra! Media Reports on Censure Motion Mike Whitney South Dakota's Taliban: the Fanatics are on the Loose David Green Questions of Solidarity: Blacks and Jews in Neo-Con America Jeremy Scahill Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Slobo Can't Talk Any More Mike Ferner Up Against the Wall, Son: Hungering for Justice During My First Congressional Testimony Corey Harris Memories of Ali Farka Touré Paul Craig Roberts Killing Off Milosevic: Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq? Website of the Day Prayer Flags for Peace March 11 / 12, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Democrats: When the War Was Lost Ralph Nader Bush at the Tipping Point Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Bush Destroy Iraq? Ben Tripp My Night at the Oscars: the Happy People Speak Out John Strausbaugh The Cowboys and the Village Voice: Alt Press Flagship Goes Corporate Landau / Hassen Why "We" Fight "Their" Wars Robert Bryce A Thousand Pages of Rage Gary Leupp Why They Really Think They Must Defeat Iran Fred Gardner "But He's Good on Our Issue" Ron Jacobs Condi and Iran: Folly, Tragedy and Farce Jonathan Scott Science Fiction's Black Oracle: the Genius and Courage of Octavia Butler Ramzy Baroud Who Will Stop Bush's Militant Militarists? Jordan Flaherty Gitmo on the Mississippi: Life Under the Klan Wasn't This Bad John Chuckman Parable of the Hatchet: the Fallacy of Nation-Building in Afghanistan Joe Allen Smearing Ron Carey and the TDU: Bob Fitch's Hatchet Job Julia Kendlbacher Amazonia: Where All Life Matters St. Clair / Walker / Pollack / Vest Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Hassen, Harley, Ford and Subiet Website of the Weekend No Hay Ser Humano Ilegal   March 10, 2006 Ben Rosenfeld The Great Green Scare and the Fed's Case Against Rod Coronado: a War on the First Amendment Lila Rajiva The Gitmo Documents: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith Saree Makdisi From Rachel Corrie to Richard Rogers: the Wall, the Javits Center and the Bullying of an Architect Elena Shore FBI Grills US Professor Over Support for Venezuela Joshua Frank How the Green Party Slays Their Own Dave Zirin Lynching Barry Bonds Aura Bogado An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos   March 9, 2006 John Walsh Neocon Daniel Pipes Advocates Civil War in Iraq as Strategic Policy Annie Zirin Leftwing Generals: the Dark Side of Liberal Imperialism Brian McKenna We All Live in Poletown Now: GM and the Corporate Uses of Eminent Domain Chris Floyd Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq Rachard Itani "Over There": Iraq as Soap Opera Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Action Thing Wylie Harris Immigration and Jeffersonian Democracy: Free Borders Make Good Neighbors Alexander Cockburn Ex-State Department Security Officer Charges Pre-9/11 Cover-Up Website of the Day About Pace: Expelling Anti-War Students   March 8, 2006 Patrick Bond The Loans of Mass Destruction: Wolfowitz's Anti-Corruption Hoax at the World Bank Brian Concannon, Jr. Elusive Victories in Haiti Pat Williams Buyer's Remorse: Bush, the View from the Purple States Lance Selfa The Democrats and Dubai: the Politics of Distraction Mokhiber / Weissman Have You Ever Been Convicted of a Felony? Walter Brasch Compromising Civil Liberties Vijay Prashad For Them Indian Mangoes: Anatomy of an Agreement Website of the Day Rachel Corrie: a Call to Action   March 7, 2006 Werther Half a Trillion Dollars: It's an Awful Lot of Money to Make Us Less Safe and Less Free John Blair Dr. Strangelove is Our President: Global Peace Through Nuclear Weapons Dave Lindorff The Impeachment Groundswell and Bush's Last Hope: the Democrats Mike Whitney No Immunity: Israel's Policy of Targeted Assassination Warren Guykema Who is Afraid of Rachel Corrie? Sen. Russell Feingold Misleading Testimony About NSA Domestic Spying Robert Jensen Why I am a Christian (Sort Of) Norman Solomon Digitalized Hype: a Dazzling Smokescreen? Bernie Dwyer Hopeful Signs Across Latin America: an Interview with Noam Chomsky Website of the Day Golem Song March 6, 2006 Ralph Nader Bush and Katrina: "Situational Information?" Dave Zirin Why Did Pat Tillman Die? an Investigation Reopens Vanessa Redgrave Censorship of the Worst Kind: the Second Death of Rachel Corrie Walter A. Davis Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie" Joshua Frank Down By Law: the Mysterious Case of David Cobb Nate Mezmer A Second Look at "Crash": More Myths About Blacks and Racist Cops Paul Craig Roberts America's Bleak Jobs Future Website of the Day Crossroads: Race, Class and Art March 4 / 5, 2006 Alexander Cockburn The Dubai Ports Purchase: National Insecurity, Imported or Homegrown? Jennifer Van Bergen Bush's NSA Spying Program Violates the Law Steven Higgs Dying for Their Work: Westinghouse Workers and the Highest Level of PCBs Ever Recorded Winslow T. Wheeler The Generals, the Legislators and the Gulfstream VIP Transports Ron Jacobs Stealing Back Adam's Rib Rev. William E. Alberts Remember Damadola Colin Asher Goodbye, Dubai: the Teamsters and the Ports Fred Gardner Denney's Law "Pariah" Scapegoats and Shunning: Sexual Fascism in Progressive America John Scagliotti Brokeback Mountain: Pain is Not Enough Seth Sandronsky When the White House Walks Away: Bush, Arnold and the Flood Risk in the Central Valley Joan Roelofs A Challenge to Rebuild the World Arjun Makhijani The US / India Nuclear Pact: a Bad and Dangerous Deal Ardeshr Ommani Destroying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Diana Barahona An Open Letter to Freedom House: Release Info on Your Federal Grants Ben Tripp Bonzo, Wherefore Art Thou? St. Clair / Socialist Worker Staff Playlist: What We're Listening To Poets' Basement Engel, Davies, Buknatski Website of the Weekend The Return of Pearl Jam March 3, 2006 Laura Carlsen Mexico: the Power of Corruption and the Corruption of Power John V. Whitbeck Two States or One? Chris Floyd The Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism About Iran Mohamed Hakki Wolfowitz at the World Bank: Cronyism and Corruption Pratyush Chandra Bush in India: Dinner with George and Manmohan John Scagliotti Why are There No Real Gays in "Brokeback Mountain"? Website of the Day Support the IRC!   March 2, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts How the Economic News is Spun Dave Lindorff Troops to Bush: Get Us Out of Here! Ramzy Baroud Middle East Democracy: the Hamas Factor Saul Landau Halfway Down the Road to Hell Joe Allen The Murder of George Jackson: an Interview with His Lawyer, Stephen Bingham Steve Shore Berlusconi on Capitol Hill: "I Am Italy!" Denise Boggs Roadless and Clueless: Wilderness Logging Greenwashed by Enviro Groups Norman Finkelstein The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah Website of the Day ScreenHead   March 1, 2006 Mairead Corrigan Maguire The Human Right to a Nuclear Free World Niranjan Ramakrishnan The India That Can No Longer Say No Faheem Hussain Bush in Pakistan Antony Loewenstein Spinning Us to War with Iran: an Aussie Perspective Elizabeth Schulte The Charge to Overturn Roe Has Begun Mike Whitney Sudan: Beware Bolton's Sudden Humanitarianism John Ryan Canada and the American Empire Michael Donnelly Brokeback Mountain: a No Love Story Tom Reeves Haitian Election Aftermath Website of the Day Mardi Gras Index: Reuilding of New Orleans Stalled         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition April 15 / 16, 2006 Pie in the Sky How Star Wars Came to the Arctic By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR The Kodiak Launch Complex was marketed to Alaskans as one of the nation's first commercial space ports. Many promises were made to lure public support: High-paying, year-round jobs. Better roads. A fancy cultural center. New schools with real astronauts helping out in the classrooms. Peace and prosperity. The whole multibillion-dollar project, located on Narrow Cape, a remote tip of Kodiak Island 250 miles west of Anchorage, was supposed to be run by a state-chartered outfit called the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation. In 1996, the state and the feds turned over 3,500 acres of public land for the project, which would house two launching pads, a space vehicle assembly plant, a radar station, a command center and other support facilities. Its backers claimed that a new age of commercial space traffic was dawning, and that Kodiak Island was one of the world's best locations for "launching telecommunications, remote sensing, and space science payloads" into orbit. Local skeptics weren't thrilled at the prospect of their wilderness redoubt being transformed into an Alaskan Cape Canaveral. After all, Kodiak was already one of Alaska's most popular tourist destinations, with tens of thousands of people coming to fish for salmon and halibut, hike the wilderness, photograph the great grizzlies and view one of the few thriving populations of gray whales in the Pacific--people who might think twice about visiting with missiles screaming overhead. Others worried their villages might be vulnerable to misfires and toxic fallout. Some wondered how Kodiak, one of the most remote islands in North America, could possibly be the epicenter of a profitable commercial enterprise. There were suspicions that something a bit more nefarious might be in the offing. These concerns were briskly swept aside by state and federal officials. A brief environmental analysis was slapped together, with much of the data concealed from public scrutiny, and construction began in 1998. Not long thereafter, the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation announced it was having financial problems, and the federal government came to its rescue with a timely handout and the promise of sustained appropriations. But there was a catch: Instead of sending into orbit commercial satellites and the cremated remains of rich Trekkies, the Kodiak site was going to work very closely with the Air Force and its legion of defense contractors. There's some compelling evidence that this was the plan all along, starting with the man tapped to head the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation: Pat Ladner, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who served in the '80s as the program manager for a secretive project called the Single Stage Rocket Technology Program (SSTR). This program was a component of the initial burst of funding for Reagan's version of Star Wars. But by the early '90s, with public and congressional support lagging, the Pentagon made a decision to "privatize" much of the development and testing for many of its Star Wars projects. Ladner retired from the Air Force in 1993 and joined the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation. The facilities at Kodiak were designed by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the same shadowy wing of the Pentagon that had supervised the SSTR program on Ladner's watch. So the launching pads at Narrow Cape turned out to be just another off-shoot of the National Missile Defense program. On November 5, 1998 the Kodiak site fired off its first rocket, an experimental Air Force missile that is part of the Pentagon's "atmospheric interceptor technology program." The rocket arced across the sky for more than 1,000 miles before slamming into the Pacific somewhere off the southern Oregon coast. A second rocket was launched from Kodiak on September 15, 1999. Since those initial launches, a steady stream of Star Wars experiments have been ongoing at Kodiak, projects steered there by the guiding hand of Sen. Ted Stevens, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. Stevens is a master at manipulating the flow of federal dollars back to military projects in Alaska, often as last-minute amendments to Defense Supplemental Appropriations bills, where they receive little public scrutiny. This is how Star Wars has continued almost uninterrupted since its inception in 1983. The next round of tests at Kodiak will involve a much more potent and unnerving rocket, a Polaris missile packed with a payload of simulated nuclear warheads. Last August, a Polaris was fired from Kodiak and streaked 4,300 miles to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, where interceptor missiles tried to shoot it down--and missed. Over the next five years, Kodiak is slated to launch more than 20 Polaris rockets. (The other Polaris launching site is on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.) Even though the test rockets only pack simulated nukes, they are still dangerous. The missiles' three-stage booster engines carry highly toxic materials, including magnesium, hydrazine and radioactive thorium. The boosters fall to the ocean and are not recovered. The exhaust trail itself leaves behind a poisonous plume of smoke. "Each rocket first stage releases a minimum of 8,000 pounds of aluminum oxide at lift-off," warns Brad Stevens (no relation to the senator), a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Kodiak. "Much of this will wind up in local streams that drain into Twin Lakes and the Fossil Beach tidepools and kelp beds, which provide nutrients and shelter for juvenile marine species. Documented fish kills in waterways around Cape Kennedy attest to the fact that rocket emissions can destroy aquatic life." (Also under the flight path of the missiles are rocky beaches on small islands that serve as haul-outs for Stellar sea lions, an endangered species.) One of the launch trajectories sends missiles over the fishing villages of Akhiok and Old Harbor and across one of the world's most pristine salmon spawning grounds. The Pentagon has told the people living there not to worry: They will clear the waters of boats before each launch and build two hardened bunkers in each town. The bunkers serve as stark reminders that the townspeople not only are potential victims of an accident, but a target of Russian and Chinese defense systems designed to counter Star Wars. Alaskans are old hands at this by now. Indeed, there's a grim irony in the fact that Alaska, the most frigid of states, has been one of the most ravaged battlegrounds of the Cold War. Over the past 55 years, Alaska has witnessed: early warning radar erected onto the fragile tundra in the early '50s; the intentional irradiation of more than 100 unwitting Alaskan native peoples in 1955 to test the acclimation of humans to sub-zero temperatures; Project Chariot, a mad scheme to excavate a naval harbor at Cape Thompson by exploding five nuclear bombs at the mouth of a coastal creek (the bombs were never detonated, but the site was left in a toxic and radioactive mess); and the Cannikin nuclear test in 1971, one of the largest ever, which permanently contaminated Amchitka Island and continues to ooze radioactive debris into the Bering Sea. Kodiak alone already suffers from 17 toxic dumps left by previous Pentagon operations on the island. Even the push to transform the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into a forest of oil derricks has lately been justified on the grounds of national security. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Alaska seems poised to bear the brunt of Bush's revised Star Wars plan. The Kodiak site is just one of more than a dozen enclaves of assorted anti-missile paraphernalia that will be scattered across the state, from the Aleutians to the Arctic plains. In addition to Kodiak, Congress approved the construction of a $500 million radar dome on remote Shemya Island in the Aleutians. Shemya, the site of an old CIA listening post, is more than 1,500 miles from the nearest active military base. A top Pentagon official told the Washington Post that it posed difficult construction problems, and that when completed the site would be "very, very vulnerable" to attack. Ted Stevens also has pushed to make Fort Greely Military Reserve, an Army outpost on the Tanana River about 90 miles southeast of Fairbanks, a base for the 100 interceptor missiles once the Stars Wars scheme becomes operational. Constructed in 1945, Fort Greely already has a dark history as a kind of outdoor laboratory for some of the Army's most malign experiments. In 1953, the Army authorized the use of Fort Greely and the adjacent Gerstle River Proving Ground to test chemical and biological weapons. Of course, these operations were kept secret from the surrounding population of homesteaders, miners, trappers and the Goodpastor tribe of Athabaskan Indians. In the early '60s one of the biological weapons tests went terribly wrong, and 21 people were infected with tularemia. After the Army stopped testing chemical and biological weapons at the site, it did a cursory cleanup and buried most of the contaminated canisters and shell-casings in shallow pits next to the river and several lakes and ponds, where the lethal detritus continues to seep out. In 1962, the Army built a small nuclear reactor at Fort Greely, which it claimed was needed as a power station. This claim proved to be an elaborate cover. The reactor did generate some electricity, but it also produced weapons-grade plutonium. The background of this project is revealed in a startling report released in 2001 by physicist Norm Buske and Pam Miller, director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. Among their findings: The Army dumped nuclear waste into Jarvis Creek for 10 years; disposed of liquid radioactive waste into groundwater that was used as a drinking source by the village of Clearwater; and used radioactive steam from the reactor to heat the military base. "Army leaders were more committed to producing special nuclear materials for battlefield nuclear weapons than they were to assuring the safety of the operation," Buske and Miller concluded. Fort Greely was slated for decommissioning as part of the military's base-closure program. A convincing theory holds that Stevens and the Pentagon want to transform this Arctic outpost into the deployment site for 100 interceptor missiles as a convenient way to disguise the extent of the contamination and to evade accountability for what went on up there through the '60s. What's more, Fort Greely site is a major sticking point with the Russians and Chinese. Under the now defunct Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, each nation was permitted only one site for missile defense. Currently, the U.S. site is in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Plans to begin pouring concrete for the new site at Fort Greely clearly violate the accord. Stevens, Alaska's senior senator, dismissed concern that these early Star Wars projects might breach the treaty, saying, "Construction of the Shemya radar in and of itself is not a violation of the ABM treaty until it is integrated into a defense system." Why Alaska? It's not that all Alaskans welcome the Pentagon. In fact, an organized campaign defeated Edward Teller's nightmarish Project Chariot scenario. And in 1983, Alaskans approved the nuclear freeze initiative by an overwhelming vote. But in a state this large and sparsely populated it's relatively easy for big money to overwhelm citizen opposition, especially when those billions are backed by the lobbying might of the military, the nuclear labs and their contractors. At present estimates, the Star Wars program will unleash a $80 billion spending spree. In Republican senators Murkowski and Stevens, Alaska sported two pitiless hoarders of Pentagon pork. Even Alaska's Clintonesque former governor, Democrat Tony Knowles, got into the act, investing a chunk of state money with lobbyists to help steer as much of the Star Wars business to Alaska as possible. It will surprise no one who is familiar with the symbiotic relationship between Stevens and the arms makers that the treasurer of his Northern Lights Leadership PAC, Richard Ladd, is also president of Robinson International, a top D.C. lobby shop that specializes in representing defense contractors. In the past two election cycles, the Northern Lights PAC has raked in more than $300,000, largely from corporate executives, many with ties to defense firms. The PAC recycled all that money back into Republican campaigns. In return, the defense companies, led by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, have been very generous to Stevens. From 1995 to 1999, the senator received $255,650 in PAC contributions from missile defense-related firms, second only to Virginia's John Warner, who, as head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pulled in $330,000. In an interview with the Alaska Journal of Commerce, Stevens boasted about how he almost single-handedly had steered hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts to Alaska, even under President Clinton. He predicted that much more federal loot was ready to flow north in the Bush regime. The money comes in, but it doesn't stay long. Most of it ends up in corporate coffers in Alabama, California and Washington State. Even Ladner, the head of the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation, admitted that the year-round jobs at the Kodiak launch site would probably only amount to a few security and maintenance positions. It's the old Cold War routine repeated once again: The money goes south, but the risk and the waste stays up in Alaska. This article is excerpted from Jeffrey St. Clair's new book, Grand Theft Pentagon.

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