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New Edition of CounterPunch Ebb-Tide for the Occupation: a Journey to Najaf with the Medhi Army by Patrick Cockburn; State Terror, Oregon Division: Killer Cops by Kristian Williams; Torture in America by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. In April, CounterPunch Online was read by 16.1 million viewers by far our biggest month ever. 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 (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Now Available: Hot New CounterPunch T-Shirts! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary May 21, 2004 Ray Close The Canards of the Apologists Christopher Brauchli "The Object of Torture is Torture" Amira Hass Darkness at Noon Jack McCarthy Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army? Bill Kauffman Nader v. Bush Omar Barghouti No More Tears for America Ghali Hassan Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza Christopher Reed How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture Website of the Day Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much   May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today   May 19, 2004 Elizabeth W. Corrie Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing, Now Bill and Kathleen Christison The US Can't Win Vijay Prashad For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004 Ray Hanania Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.? Greg Moses Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC Michael Gillespie Who is Kenneth deGraffenried? Josh Frank Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry? Gary Corseri Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave Kevin Alexander Gray If Malcolm Were Alive     May 18, 2004 Neve Gordon The Gaza Debacle Doug Stokes Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib Shouldn't Surprise Us Bob Wing The Color of Abu Ghraib Vanessa Jones Man on a Leash Thomas P. Healy Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden Zeynep Toufe Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations Kenneth Roth Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush Elaine Cassel Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later Website of the Day Truth Against Truth   May 17, 2004 Kurt Nimmo The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain Laura Santina Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib Mickey Z. With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness Frederick B. Hudson Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice Shakirah Esmail-Hudani Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera Boris Leonardo Caro The Revelations of Mr. W. Alex Dawoody Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation Victor Kattan On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg Ron Jacobs Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game   May 15 / 16, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Green Lights for Torture Douglas Valentine ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited John Stanton Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel Ben Tripp Torture: a Fond Reminiscence Brian Cloughley Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act Justin E. H. Smith Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey Brandy Baker Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism John Chuckman Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: Goon Squad John Holt Fencing the Sky Ron Jacobs The Power of Patti Smith Brian J. Foley Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib? Robin Philpot Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide Eric Leser The Carlyle Empire Ray Hanania From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good War Crime Jeff Halper Dozers of Mass Destruction Joe Surkiewicz Inside the Baltimore Detention Center John Whitlow Iraq Goddamn Michael Leon Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video Poets' Basement Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert     May 14, 2004 Dr. Susan Block Bush's POW Porn Ron Jacobs Secret History of the War on Drugs William Blum God, Country and Torture Michael Donnelly The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast Niranjan Ramakrishnan India Shines Stephen Gowans Building Democracy in Iraq and Other Absurdities     May 13, 2004 Dave Lindorff Where is Kerry? Colm O'Laithian Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style? Saul Landau and Farrah Hassan Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting Practices Ralph Nader An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners Willliam James Martin Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled Marc Salomon Reality TV Bites Forrest Hylton Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet on the Southern Front? May 12, 2004 Blanton / Kornbluh Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in 1992 Virginia Tilley So, Who's to Blame? Bruce Jackson James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator of Them All Thomas P. Healy No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks Linda S. Heard Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq Norman Solomon Spinning Torturegate Lisa Viscidi The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala Jack Heyman View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March on DC Niranjan Ramakrishnan Rummy's Reprieve CounterPunch Wire Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence Christopher Brauchli Detention Camp, USA William S. Lind Bush's Waterloo? May 11, 2004 Mark Engler On the "Necessity" of Torture Ray McGovern More Troops? A March of Folly Kurt Nimmo Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment Mickey Z. Less Than Hero Christopher Reed Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse Dennis Hans When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar Bruce Jackson Pete Seeger at 85 Mike Whitney Killing al Sadr Simon Helweg-Larsen Shrinking the Guatemalan Military William A. Cook The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation, Nakedly Displayed   May 10, 2004 Robert Fisk From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism and Torture as Entertainment Wayne Madsen The Israeli Torture Template: Rape, Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks Col. Dan Smith The Shame of Abu Ghraib Joe Bageant John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife! Ron Jacobs Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave Ben Tripp Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage Ray Hanania Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse Reza Fiyouzat "Mishandled" Invasions Diane Christian Images & Abstractions & Genitals Website of the Day Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport? May 8 / 9, 2004 Cockburn / St. Clair Torture: as American as Apple Pie Adam Jones America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated and Shot at Kunduz? Douglas Valentine Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press Kurt Nimmo Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib Brian Cloughley Humpty Dumpty is Falling Lucia Dailey Forbidden Games Joanne Mariner * * * *: Redacting Moussaoui Mickey Z. Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders) John Chuckman The Thing with No Brain Doug Giebel Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs Norm Dixon How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11 Sam Bahour A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah Susan Davis Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art Dave Marsh In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing Laura Flanders Life with Dick and Lynne Dave Zirin Fans Push Spiderman Off Base Carolyn Baker Why I Won't Vote in 2004 Prince "Ain't No Sense in Voting" Dr. Susan Block Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation Poets' Basement Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska   May 7, 2004 Human Rights Watch 10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention Facilities in Iraq Ron Jacobs UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So Robert Fisk An Illegal and Immoral War Ahmad Faruqui The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu Alexander Zaitchik From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell? Mike Whitney The Price of Victory Norman Solomon This War, Racism and Media Denial M. Shahid Alam A Comic Apology   May 6, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with Shit; Kicked to Death Kathy Kelly May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor for the War Machine Werther The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas Casino Game Lawrence Ferlinghetti Totalitarian Democracy Robert Fisk "Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded Men Being Shot by US Helicopter John Janney Torturing the Way to Freedom? Christopher Ketcham Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now! Alan Farago Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish Sam Hamod Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning James Brooks Sullen Spring William S. Lind On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq     May 5, 2004 Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba Complete US Army Report on Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Kathleen and Bill Christison Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives? Will Youmans Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian Zionist and the End of the World Patrick B. Barr Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label Lawrence Magnuson Nightline's All-American Morgue Greg Moses Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals Niranjan Ramakrishnan Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing Truth Lee Ballinger Cinco de Mayo and Unity Gilbert Achcar Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire Website of the Day Operation Phoenix & Iraq             Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition May 22 / 23, 2004 New from Ecotopia The Truth About the Wine Business; Mexicans and Mendolibs; Geezer Charged with Trying to Fry Spouse By BRUCE ANDERSON THE GRUESOME facts of the wine industry are these: It's wholly dependent on immigrant Mexican labor for whom the industry provides little to no housing or labor protections or fair compensation or anything else that American labor, also on the ropes these days, more or less assumes as its y birthright. The wine industry receives enormous public subsidies in the form of ag tax exemptions and in the various forms of welfare benefits citizens must pay which immigrant labor depends on in lieu of fair compensation and benefits. MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS suffer more from the prevalent dumbassification encouraged by popular culture. And Mexican-American children, like all the children of the American poor, suffer from poor public schooling. In Boonville, where more than 60% of the K-12 student body is made up of the children of recent immigrants, the entrenched edu-satrapy is impervious to reform because immigrant parents are unable to pressure the public apparatus on behalf of their children because (1) They don't speak English, let alone edu-speak, an obfuscating language all its own, (2) Immigrants can only look on in horror as the public schools condone behavior and dress not tolerated in the villages of rural Mexico or anywhere else hoping to produce young people who can successfully function in techno-world, (3) Immigrants are mostly illegal and generally fear the repercussions of involvement in public controversies, and fear those repercussions specifically in small communities like ours which are dominated by their gringo wine industry padrones, public school employees, and their interchangeable allies, the oblivious Subaru-libs of the NPR type. An immigrant who looks to Mendolib for specific help is a doomed immigrant. (4) Immigrants assume, fatally, that the gringo knows best when it comes to education, realizing too late that education in America, like all other forms of success in our materialist sweepstakes, is class-based. People who begin life on third base are much more likely to score than people perpetually in the on-deck circle. AND THEN there are the drug and gang interdependencies plaguing the immigrant communities and the rest of us. Immigrants rightly fear the criminals among them because the gang and drug trades, are the source of great misery right here in the bucolic Anderson Valley, Anderson Valley being constantly touted by the co-dependent wine and tour industries as "an unspoiled Napa." Gangs and drugs are interchangeably affiliated and are now omnipresent throughout Mendocino and Sonoma counties. Gangs have a strong presence in Ukiah, have extended their evil influence into Fort Bragg, Willits, Boonville, and Potter Valley. (Gangs are way outta hand in Santa Rosa.) Mexican criminals now dominate the marijuana and methamphetamine businesses in Anderson Valley. Mom and Pop Hippie dope farms have been bonged by the Mexican syndicates whose energy and enterprise are such that they've driven pot prices to all-time lows. THE WHOLE SHOW has been brought to us by the wine industry and America's padrone class generally, George W and John Kerry, proprietors. AND THE WINE industry is catastrophically bad for the land, aka the environment. First they clearcut, then they poison the earth to depths of 10 to 12 feet to plant the vines. Thereafter, literal tons of herbicides and pesticides are applied in annual maintenance dosages. Of course the wine industry also helps itself to whatever water is in the area and the vines themselves aspirate huge, eternal gulps of the water table the deeper their roots penetrate. A LETTER in the Press Democrat the other day said it was only Bush's "strong leadership" that spared America from having to fight the Mohammedans in New York and San Francisco. I suggest a compromise, and I'm ready to fight them and Jerry Falwell, too, but let's fight them in Santa Rosa. It's an easy commute from Boonville and there's no architecture worth saving. RICHARD GARLICK of Fort Bragg is one of Mendocino County's more active and passionate senior citizens. At age 81, Mr. Garlick sits in the Mendocino County Jail on bail of $500,000 he's unlikely to raise accused of trying to incinerate his estranged wife and his sister-in-law. His wife, herself on the casket side of 70, had left him. And his sister-in-law? She has put in a lot of time helping her sister stuff Cupid's arrows back in the quiver. Mr. Garlick's way of resolving his neo-bacherlorhood didn't seem aimed at reconciliation. At 12:16am the morning of Thursday, May 6th, an hour most citizens of Mendocino County who've achieved their 8th decade are deep in slumber, their dentures resting beside them in peaceful jars of Polident, Mr. Garlick set out for the 400 block of North Whipple where, on the wall of the alley residence occupied by his departed wife and her sister, he wrote a great big but non-specific "Fuck You" and set the structure (and himself) on fire. Fortunately for everyone on the block, and the very block itself, 24 ace Fort Bragg firefighters were able to contain the blaze. (For every person living in a street-front Fort Bragg house, it seems like there's five people living in hobbit huts out back in the alley.) Nobody but Mr. Garlick was injured, and him not seriously. The murderous old fool, his forearms and eyebrows singed, was seen driving off from the fire and he was soon under arrest. Mr. G. was arraigned Monday in Ten Mile Court, Fort Bragg, on charges of attempted murder. Mrs. Garlick had previously obtained a restraining order aimed at keeping the old boy away from her. IT LOOKS LIKE one of many crucial services Mendocino County will lose to budget cuts is the invaluable Care-A-Van, the County-funded spay and neuter program run by the comparably invaluable Ruth Rosenblum. ONE OF THE REASONS the County is broke is named Patti Campbell, 4th District supervisor. Campbell, the lamest of ducks, and a predictable vote for fiscal irresponsibility her eight long years in office, won't finally leave that office until the November elections, although her replacement, Kendall Smith, a professional Democrat out of Congressman Mike Thompson's office, was elected to succeed Campbell in March. MARCH! APRIL! MAY! June! July! August! September! October! It won't be until the first week in November when Campbell finally, mercifully, steps off into the invisibility of the Fort Bragg fog! But all this time, all these many months, Campbell will draw her pay and full bennies for not showing up for meetings, for not representing any of her constituents (including, even, the Baxman-Affinito Axis that put her in office), for not so much as answering or responding to a constituent's telephone call. On those rare occasions when Campbell does show up for a Supe's meeting she tends to blubber, literally, about how sad it is that County employees like Ms. Rosenblum are about to lose their jobs! For doing absolutely nothing her last 8 months in office, Campbell has cost local taxpayers at least $40,000. RECOMMENDED READING: The short story "Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones in The New Yorker coupla issues back, and a truer portrait of the ethnic-based part of the War On Drugs, or class warfare, or love relationships is unlikely to be found in any short form than conveyed by this masterpiece. It's the kind of story that's so good you find your mind coming back to it weeks later. ALSO RECOMMENDED is "Mendocino Mystery" by our very own Mary Cesario Weaver, a nifty page-turner pegged to Mendocino County and, loosely, our very own Brinks truck robbery back whenever it was, the late 70s, I think. Mary gets just right the lurking menace behind the jolly facade of "unspoiled Napa" some of us Mendolanders feel, especially those of us aware of the extraordinary incidence of crime among a mere 85,000 people. It's almost as if Mendocino County is some kind of open air Witness Protection Program designed to hide unreconstructed nuts and unrepentant crooks. (It's impossible to hold any kind of "liberal" public meeting in Mendocino County without it being overrun by the outpatients, and it's very unwise to enter certain areas of the County without a gun handy.) Mary's tidy little mystery is very loosely based on our first and, so far, only Brinks job referred to above. IN REAL LIFE, that one was brought off by a gang of white supremacists from some pale face stronghold of eastern Washington or Idaho. The robbery was either extremely bold or extremely dumb, depending on your perspective on high stakes crime, but it worked. Or it worked until the putative master racers, having immediately exchanged ideological commitment for second homes and big engine motor boats, prompting their envious neighbors to wonder out loud to the cops, "How come the crazy bastard next door suddenly has a lot of money?" And soon everyone but the leader, a guy named Matthews who failed to emerge alive from a shootout with the FBI and about 500 cops on an island near Seattle, was in jail. BUT THE WAY the Matthew's Gang hit the Brinks truck for something like $11 mil in cash was a one-of-a-kinder. It happened out on Highway 20 just past the Redwood Valley turnoff on the long grade approaching the north end of Lake Mendocino. The hold-up men were in the back of a pick-up that suddenly stopped in front of the eastbound Brinks truck as the truck labored up the hill. A man jumped from the bed of the pick-up onto the hood of the Brinks truck, spraying its windshield with automatic weapons fire. The two Brinks men in the cab of the truck instantly advised the guard riding with the money in the back to open the door to the bandits. As traffic -- including a Boonville-based Mendocino County Sheriff's Department deputy named Dennis Miller -- backed up nearly to Highway 101, the robbers, taking their time, threw thousands of pounds of money bags into the back of their pick-up, drove to one of Lake Mendocino's grungy, deserted picnic areas, transferred the money bags to another vehicle, and drove the loot out Orr Springs Road to a travel trailer they'd parked at Armstrong State Park, somehow managing to drop $10 grand or so beside the road not far from Ukiah where it was eventually discovered by a group of retarded folks out for a walk. The bandits and the money was at Armstrong over night, as I recall. The Matthews Gang was either dead or locked up within a couple of years. Nothing like it has been attempted since, not counting the recent Bari-Cherney-Sweeney Gang's federal heist of $4.4 mil, a robbery far more brazen and implausible than the Redwood Valley Brinks Job, but so far successful. BRING BACK LOGGING! Premier Pacific Vineyards, Inc. of Napa has bought up 19,000 (30 square miles) of the Gualala watershed, thus reviving the mother of all vineyards scheme conjured by Coastal Forestlands Ltd. a few years ago. Coastal Forestlands couldn't quite bring off 30 miles of vineyard after logging what was left of marketable trees remaining from previous blitzes of the land. According to the Independent Coast Observer, the purchase "consists of more than 100 parcels, many of them adjacent to each other" and that "CalPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, was a partner in the venture." A GLIB FELLOW by the name of Thompson is front man for Premier Pacific. He says his company is "primarily a farming business. Thompson has announced that the 30 miles of severely logged-over land at the southwestern tip of Mendocino County is now called "Preservation Ranch," a sure sign it is about to be destroyed by industrial viticulture. "MUCH OF THE LAND," Thompson told the Independent Coast Observer, "is historic farmsteads," which is not true. The historic farmsteads were long ago bought up and consolidated by large timber concerns. The few homesteaders living deep in the hills of the South Coast were forced off the land by the timber barons, occasionally at gun point, early in the 20th century, a process comprising one more chapter in the untold history of Mendocino County. The largest timber holdings were amassed by capitalists who paid "homesteaders" -- Frisco barflies, for instance -- to lay claim to designated parcels vast tracts of undeveloped government land. The big boys of early timber would then buy out the phony homesteaders. THOMPSON, front man for distant investment collectives is, in keeping with the times, less direct than the old robber barons. He says Premier Pacific "is interested in planting previously-farmed areas in vineyards, with some orchard crops. It's most likely there would be a minority of grapes, and a majority of timber," he said. "We're intrigued by the viticultural potential. In terms of forest practices, we'll see if we can treat the land more gently than [it has been] in the past." TRANSLATION: Thirty miles of grapes relieved by scrub oak and a few upscale homes. Bruce Anderson is the publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, America's best weekly newspaper. Weekend Edition Features for May 15 / 16, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Green Lights for Torture Douglas Valentine ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited John Stanton Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel Ben Tripp Torture: a Fond Reminiscence Brian Cloughley Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act Justin E. H. Smith Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey Brandy Baker Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism John Chuckman Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: Goon Squad John Holt Fencing the Sky Ron Jacobs The Power of Patti Smith Brian J. Foley Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib? Robin Philpot Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide Eric Leser The Carlyle Empire Ray Hanania From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good War Crime Jeff Halper Dozers of Mass Destruction Joe Surkiewicz Inside the Baltimore Detention Center John Whitlow Iraq Goddamn Michael Leon Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video Poets' Basement Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /