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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 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Abe Rosenthal's Times May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad The Indian Road: Left Triumph Joan Roelofs Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too Kathy Kelly Imagining Survival Michael Neumann On the Value and Stability of Israel Dr. Susan Block Hookergate Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Poker Christopher Reed Rebel Journalist: the Memoirs of Wilfred Burchett Mike Roselle The Fallacies of Greenpeace Saul Landau Up the Mekong to Cambodia Robert Fisk The Inescapable Beat: US Military Bases in Brazil Ralph Nader Sally Mae and the Student Loan Swindle Evelyn Pringle Rove and Fitzgerald Play Monopoly Fred Gardner The Marketing of "Cannabis Americana" Stanley Heller Is Another Mass Murder of Arabs in the Offing? Conn Hallinan China: a Troubled Dragon Valentina Palma Novoa "They Ordered Me to Lay My Head in a Pool of Blood" David Krieger Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter Col. Dan Smith The Senate's Peace Quilt Christopher Brauchli Mister Bush and Mister Zarqawi: Video Stars Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Davies, Ford, Engel, Guthrie, Orloski and Louise Website of the Weekend Not Your Soldier!   May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Death by Snitch: the Attempted Murder of Michael Morales Dave Lindorff What Fourth Amendment? Leah Fishbein / RJ Schinner Santorum vs. Santorum-Lite: In Pennsylvania, Abortion is Absent from the Debate Brian Kwoba The Immigrant Rights Movement: Birth of a New New Left? Chris Kromm Why Southern Progressives Should Support an Estate Tax Kai Diekmann 45 Minutes with Bush: the BILD Interview David Swanson Bush Tops Nixon: the Most Despised President in History Virginia Tilley Hamas and Israel's "Right to Exist" Website of the Day The CounterPunch Story That Made the Front Page of the NYT Today   May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Battle Cry for Theocracy: Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Youth Jonathan Cook A Short History of Unilateral Separation Tariq Ali High-Octane Rocket-Rattling Against Iran Won't Work Wayne S. Smith Recycled Non Sequiturs: State Dept. Presents No Evidence Cuba is a "Terrorist State" Mike Whitney Secretary of Lies Pratyush Chandra The Royal Nepalese Army and the Imperialist Agency Joshua Frank Save Darfur? Not So Fast Mickey Z. Does Property Destruction Equal Eco-Terrorism? Francis Boyle Abe Rosenthal Stole My Kill Fee! Edward S. Herman / David Peterson US Aggression-Time Once Again: Target Iran Website of the Day The Missing Papers of John Roberts   May 10, 2006 Werther Axiom of Evil Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Is Venezuela the New Niger?: the Bush Administration is Trying to Link Hugo Chavez to Iran's Nuclear Program Ramzy Baroud Iran and the US: Nuclear Standoff or Realpolitik? Kevin Zeese The Corporate Takeover of Iraq's Economy Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost vs. Goliath: an Ex-Pfizer VP Takes on Big Pharma Amira Hass Hungry and Shell-Shocked Michael Donnelly Nature Loses a Champion Ron Jacobs Singers in a Dangerous Time: Dylan and Haggard Take the Stage Sharon Smith Abstinence Backfires Website of the Day Camp In with Ray and Cindy   May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern My Encounter with Rumsfeld M. Shahid Alam The Muslims America Loves Moshe Adler Mayor Bloomberg: Even Worse Than Giuliani Walter MIgnolo Beyond Populism: Natural Gas and Decolonization of the Bolivian Economy Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Blacks, Latinos and the New Civil Rights Movement William S. Lind The Other War Heats Up: Fighting on Afghan Time Todd Chretien Does It Really Matter Who Runs the CIA? Dave Lindorff Pelosi is in for a Big Surprise in November Ishmael Reed Furor Over the "Colored Mind Doubles" Website of the Day Two Years for One Joint   May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe "No Less Courage": Political Prisoners' Resistance from Ireland to Gitmo Paul Craig Roberts A Nation of Waitresses and Bartenders Col. Dan Smith Privatizing West Point: "Duty, Honor, Trademarks..." Norman Solomon Gag and Smear: the Misuses of "Anti-Semitism" Ingmar Lee Bush's Destabilizing Nuke Deal with India Robert Jensen "Covering" and the Law Ricardo Alarcon The Struggle for Immigrant Rights in a Neo-Liberal Economy Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani The Danders of Misunderstanding Sudan Alexander Cockburn The Row Over the Israel Lobby Website of the Day Labelle Does The Who: We Don't Get Fooled Again   May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair The Rise and Possible Fall of Richard Pombo Ariel Dorfman Mission Akkomplished: the Secret History of George W. Bush Joe Allen Death Row at the "Castle": Inside the Military's Judicial System Fred Gardner From Ritalin to Cocaine: Steve Howe's Untold Story Jeff Taylor Democratic Masqueraders: Plutocracy and the Party of the People Saul Landau The Immigration Malaise Stephen Philion Lessons from the Fordham 9: Challenging CIA and Military Recruiters on Campus Trish Schuh Islamophobia, a Retrospective Ralph Nader The Tragedy of False Confessions Robert Fisk Through a Syrian Lens: Is the US Provoking Civil War in Iraq? Paul Cantor Parody of a Protest: We Came, We Marched, And ... ? John Holt "This Goddamn Place Looks Like Hell" James Ryan When is a West Point Grad, No Longer a West Point Grad? Lawrence R. Velvel Harvard and Its Presidents: Plagiarism, Ghostwriting, and the Character of Larry Summers Greg Moses Canto for a Cinco de Mayo Weekend Laray Polk Homeland Security Spending: a Dallas Case Study Ron Jacobs Subterranean Fire: a Review Ben Tripp No News is Good News Mickey Z. 9/11 Movies, Anti-War Protests and "Illegal" Humans Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: My Own Private, Springsteen-Free JazzFest (Week Two) Poets' Basement Kirbach, Landau, Davies, Engel, Buknatski, Subiet, Ford and Thoreau Website of the Week Lawrence Welk Meets the Velvet Underground   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?         Subscribe Online

May 15, 2006 Why the Iranians will be Rebuffed Appealing to the United States is Not Very Appealing By WILLIAM BLUM With his recent letter to President Bush, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become part of a long tradition of Third-World leaders who, under imminent military or political threat from the United States, communicated with Washington officials in the hope of removing that threat. Under the apparentl belief that it was all a misunderstanding, that the United States was not really intent upon crushing them and their movements for social change, the Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, President Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop, leader of Grenada, in 1983 all made their appeals to be left in peace, Jagan doing so at the White House in a talk with President John F. Kennedy.(1) All were crushed anyhow. In 1961, Che Guevara offered a Kennedy aide several important Cuban concessions if Washington would call off the dogs of war. To no avail.(2) In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that ousted Hugo Chavez, some of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush administration. Chavez learned of this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place soon thereafter. (3) Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, informed Washington, through a Lebanese-American businessman, that they wanted the United States to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts and "2000 FBI agents" to conduct a search. The Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. The Iraqis, moreover, pledged to hold UN-supervised free elections; surely free elections is something the United States believes in, the Iraqis reasoned, and will be moved by. They also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process. "If this is about oil," said the intelligence official, "we will talk about US oil concessions." These proposals were portrayed by the Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein.(NYT 11-6-03) The United States completely ignored these overtures. The above incidents reflect Third World leaders apparent belief that the United States was open to negotiation, to discussion, to being reasonable. Undoubtedly, fear and desperation played a major role in producing this mental state, but also perhaps the mystique of America, which has captured the world's heart and imagination for two centuries. In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh wrote at least eight letters to US President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.(4) This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, at the Versailles Peace Conference following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing (uncle of Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, whom Lansing appointed to the US delegation) for America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and an improvement in the living conditions for the colonial subjects of French Indochina. His plea was ignored.(5) His pleas following the Second World War were likewise ignored, with consequences for Vietnam, the rest of Indochina, and the United States we all know only too well. Ho Chi Minh's pleas were ignored because he was, after all, some sort of Communist; yet he and his Vietminh followers had in fact been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho trusted the United States more than he did the Soviet Union and reportedly had a picture of George Washington and a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on his desk. According to a former American intelligence officer, Ho sought his advice on framing the Vietminh's own declaration of independence. The actual declaration of 1945 begins: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."(6) Now comes the president of Iran with a lengthy personal letter to President Bush. It has the same purpose as the communications mentioned above: to dissuade the American pit bull from attacking and destroying, from adding to the level of suffering in this sad old world. But if the White House has already decided upon an attack, Ahmadinejad's letter will have no effect. Was there anything Czechoslovakia could have done to prevent a Nazi invasion in 1938? Or Poland in 1939? William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com NOTES (1) Guatemala: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, "Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala" (1982), p.183; Jagan: Arthur Schlesinger, "A Thousand Days" (1965), pp.774-9; Bishop: Associated Press, May 29, 1983, "Leftist Government Officials Visit United States" (2) Miami Herald, April 29, 1996, p.1 (3) New York Times, April 16, 2002 (4) "The Pentagon Papers" (NY Times edition, Bantam Books, 1971), pp.4, 5, 8, 26. (5) Washington Post, September 14, 1969, p.25 (6) Archimedes L.A. Patti, "Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross" (1980). Patti is the former intelligence officer (OSS) consulted by Ho; Chester Cooper, "The Lost Crusade: The Full Story of US Involvement in Vietnam from Roosevelt to Nixon" (1971) pp.22, 25-7, 40.

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