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What You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter Bush's Worst Appointment Yet? Read Jeffrey St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee , Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than Watt, fouler than Fall? More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein blazes a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard onslaught on Hamas by the US and EU. 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 Flamenco Hits Portland!

Today's Stories May 18, 2006 Juan Santos The Border War Comes Home May 17, 2006 Lenni Brenner The Lobby and the Great Protestant Crusader Carlos Villarreal Immigrant Scapegoats and the Manufacturing of a Crisis Larry Everest Catching Rumsfeld Red-Handed: an Interview with Ray McGovern CounterPunch News Service Hugo Chavez: the London Sessions Lee Sustar Compromise and Conquer? Inside the Senate Immigration Bill Anthony Papa Dealing with the Rockefeller Drug Laws: a Tale of Two DAs William S. Lind Ink Blots and Super Fortresses: More Contradictions from Iraq War Bruce K. Gagnon Where are the Real Leaders? JoAnn Wypijewski Has Anything Really Changed at Fort Sill? Website of the Day The Pacific Northwest: Animated   May 16, 2006 Ward Churchill Punishing Free Speech Ted Honderich The Moral Barbarism of Blair and Bush Paul Craig Roberts Ministry of Fear Annie Nocenti "Jesus was a Zombie?": Letter from Haiti Charles V. Peña Regime Change Redux: US Plans for Iran Go Far Beyond Nuclear Efforts Ron Jacobs Circling the Wagons and Building Walls: Bush and Co.'s Immigration Policy Norman Solomon A Sick, Hungry Well-Armed Nation Harvey Wasserman Why the Fundamentalists Are Freaking Out Over the Da Vinci Code Michael George Smith Bush, Immigration and the Democrats Harry Browne New Frontiers of Shamelessness: Bono's Independent Website of the Day Seeger: "Bring Them Home"   May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Abe Rosenthal's Times William Blum Appealing to the US is Not Very Appealing Tanya Golash-Boza and Douglas A. Parker Dehumanizing the Undocumented: an Immigration Policy Statement by Sociologists Without Borders Dave Lindorff Gen. Hayden's Sedition Against the Consitution Debra Schaffer Hubert The Battle Cry of G.I. Jesus: Capital Punishment for Gays? Patrick Cockburn Now It's Shia Troops Versus Kurdish Troops in Iraq Tom Turnipseed The Messianic Presidency Ken Livingstone Welcome to London, President Chavez! Gideon Levy Game Theory: Hamas is Winning Mickey Z. Is Impeachment Too Good for Bush? Jeff Faux What Bush's Speech Will Miss: Immigration and the Desperate Mexican Economy Website of the Day Iraq War Images Uncensored   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 18, 2006 Bad Deal on the Beaverhead / Deerlodge National Forests Ice Cream Wilderness? By GEORGE WUERTHNER The recently announced collaborative timber-wilderness deal for the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF) between the timber industry and representatives of the Montana Wilderness Association (MWA), Trout Unlimited (TU), and National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has been hailed a break through or a sell out depending on your perspective. Key features of this proposal call for 570,000 acres of new wilderness, but also a tripling of logging over what even the BDNF had proposed in its forest plan, permitting logging of over 700,000 acres of the forest. On the face of it, this may seem like a reasonable compromise: timber companies get to take public trees at bargain basement prices to keep their stockholders happy and hikers get some beautiful alpine country to explore. I know and love the BDNF from first hand experience. I shot my first mule deer on the slopes of the Madison Range near Cowboy's Heaven. I once spent an entire day tracking the largest bull elk I've ever seen outside of a national park among the doghair lodgepole pine forests along the lower slopes of the Pintlers. I caught my first big bull trout from the cold headwaters of Rock Creek and I've pulled many grayling from some of the clear creeks in the West Big Hole. Indeed, I have fished, hunted, hiked, skied, and camped among 16 of the 18 magnificent areas that would be protected as wilderness by this proposal. So I don't take this opportunity to permanently protect 570,000 acres as designated wilderness lightly. But read the label. I read labels on the food I eat. Take ice cream, for instance. I love it. It tastes good. But I also know from reading the label that it's high in fat, sugar, and calories. It's not the kind of diet that can sustain a healthy person. In fact a diet of only ice cream would likely kill you over time. Most of the acreage in this proposal is like ice cream-- high alpine country. It tastes good. It looks yummy. But in terms of sustaining the biological heritage of the BDNF, it is sorely lacking in nutrition. There may be a lot of "wilderness acres" in this proposal, but not that many acres protecting ecologically important lower elevation productive landscapes. Not withstanding that these areas are worthy of wilderness designation based on their scenic values alone--the West Big Hole, East Pioneers, Italian Peaks, Lima Peaks, Mount Jefferson, Flint Creek Range, Snowcrest-these are some of the most spectacular alpine landscapes in Montana. But for the most part, they are lands that no one wants to exploit-and thus in little need in the way of protection. These lands are steep, snow covered most of the year, and lacking in any developable resource or they would have been logged, mined, or drilled a long time ago. They are, with some notable exceptions, not even that attractive to ORVs. In other words they are "self protected". Having a lot of acres of these lands "protected" is a hollow victory if you give up a lot of the biologically important landscapes to resource exploitation. Unfortunately that is just what is proposed. By contrast, the 700,000 plus acres that will be logged will impact much of the forest's most productive wildlife and fish habitat. Whether "stewardship" or otherwise all logging has unavoidable negative costs including the removal of woody debris, disruption of natural fire regimes, forest fragmentation, loss of old growth forests, changes in forest stand age and structure, and so on. Anyone who suggests that commercially viable logging can be done in a benign manner is glossing over substantial ecological impacts. The only way timber companies make any money cutting trees on the low productivity BDNF is because taxpayers pay many of the real costs of production such as constructing roads, while at the same time industry is permitted to marginalize the genuine environmental costs to our collective national heritage. Proponents of logging further try to minimize this damage by stating that "only" 7000 annually or 70,000 acres over ten years will be logged-a small amount of the forest they assert. But that is somewhat disingenuous. It's like the oil companies claiming that only 2000 acres of the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic Refuge will be impacted by drill pads. The oil company and their supporters ignore the many miles of pipeline, winter service roads, and so on that will come with development that will be scattered across nearly a million acres of the coastal plain among what is the refuge's most important wildlife habitat. Similarly proponents of this logging ignore the fact that these 7000 acres are not concentrated in one patch-they will be scattered in many different drainages on the most productive lands of the forest. And their effects are longer lasting than the single year when trees are cut on those acres. Cumulatively this proposed logging will affect far more of the landscape than the mere acres that will be logged annually. For instance, the roads constructed for this logging-whether temporary or not-- will cause some sedimentation for years. They will disrupt natural drainage and water flow-and may never be restored. They will be pathways for the introduction and spread of weeds. The road system will invite ORVs use whether legal or otherwise. And the human activity associated with logging and subsequent human use will negatively affect wildlife from elk to grizzly bear. And these impacts extend well beyond the acres that may be roaded and logged so influence far more of the forest than these numbers represent. And just as the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the most biologically rich portion of the entire refuge, thus any energy development has a disproportionate negative impact on the entire landscape, most of the BDNF logging is by default targeted for the most productive lower elevation wetter lands-thus the most important wildlife and fish habitat. Though "only" 70,000 acres will be logged over any ten year period, the overall ecological impact of logging to the BDNF ecological integrity is amplified many times that amount. Given the fact that the BDNF is one of the least productive forests in Montana with slow-growing, small trees, steep slopes, poor soils and high erosion rates; does it make any sense to log even an acre of it? What this forest does better than just about anyplace else in the country is produce high quality water, wildlife, wildlands, and fisheries. Why risk degradation of these nationally significant assets to enrich some private timber companies' bottom line to get something like 2 x 4s you can produce someplace else at far less ecological and economic cost? Logging the BDNF for timber is like burning priceless paintings from the Metropolitan Museum to warm your house-it just doesn't make any economic, ecological or ethical sense. It's a crime against our collective heritage. The MWA, TU, and NWF have the best intentions and goals and I want to see new wilderness designations as much as they do. There is no doubt that there are some important wildlands that will be designated if this proposal is enacted into law. Yet if these lands are given Congressional wilderness designation , it will be mostly a symbolic "win" since most of these land are not now under immediate threat, nor will most of these acres ever be threatened by development. At the same time we will be giving away the low elevation forestlands for certain development, including hundreds of thousands of roadless acres to logging interests. Worse yet there is no way this development will truly "pay" for itself. It will only occur with public economic and environmental subsidies. Some may suggest signing on to legislation that gives away public resources to private industry is the "cost" of new wilderness designation today, but if all we get is empty acres of rocks and ice, in exchange for ecologically degraded lands, and at the same time shifting the economic burden to the public through direct and indirect economic and environmental subsidies, it's reasonable to suggest as some have done that the cost of this proposal is unacceptably high. George Wuerthner is an ecologist, writer and photographer. His new book is Wildfire: a Century of Failed Forest Policy. He is also a former Montana hunting guide and once a board member of the MWA. He is the author of 32 books including Montana Magnificent Wilderness.

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"