Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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Hitchens
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Israel's
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|
Weekend Edition
February 26 / 27, 2005
CounterPunch Diary
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence; Roe v. Wade:
Nixon's Ultimate Dirty Trick? Gonzo Exit? Shanley DA Aims Higher
in Hate-filled Massachusetts
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Across the world the Jewish lobby in
America is accorded extraordinary power, almost to the mythic
levels of guileful effectiveness once attributed to the British
Secret Service. And in truth, MI6, as the Secret Service was
also known, never approached the Jewish lobby in overall clout.
But these days, if you read analyses by American Jews of where
their power is headed, the tone is often dour and the forecast
grim. They say, in the words of the American anti-Arab fanatic
Daniel Pipes, "the golden age of the Jews" in America
has passed its zenith.
This may seem strange when
there is universal recognition that George Bush may well be the
most pro-Israel president in the nation's history, when the role
of the so-called "neocons", usually short-hand for
the more fanatical supporters of Israel in American public life,
is identified as crucial in pushing for the war on Iraq and now
on Iran, when pro Israel votes in the US Congress sweep through
by margins of over 90 per cent.
But listen to a man like Illinois-based
political analyst Richard Baehr, writing in American Thinker.
Baehr could fairly be described as a Zionist ultra. He can also
read numbers objectively. Recently he outlined in a speech and
then in his publication the reasons he sees for concern.
The indices of dismay for Baehr
show most clearly in population statistics. From 1990 to 2000,
he points out, the Hispanic population grew by 13 million. just
over 50%. The black population grew by 4 million, or 11%. The
Asian
population grew by 4 million, or over 60%. The population of
non-Hispanic whites grew by 6 million or 3%. Non-Hispanic whites
accounted for 22% of the country's population growth during the
ten year period, Hispanics for half of it. Non-Hispanic whites
are now 70% of the population, headed for 50% by 2050.
Meanwhile, from a peak of 6
million American Jews, or 4% of the US population in 1950, Jews
are now just about 5.2 million in number, according to the latest
Jewish population surveys, or a bit less than 2% of the US population,
and the trend points down to maybe three million in the next
but one generation.
Baehr laments that "With
an intermarriage rate around 50%, and a fertility rate of 1.6
children per Jewish woman, Jews are committing population suicide."
He takes a swipe at liberal American Jews, most of them supporters
of legal abortion: "American Jews marry late and often never
marry, and have fewer children as a result. The commitment to
abortion rights as a pre-eminent political issue strikes me a
particularly odd, with Jewish numbers declining at an accelerating
rate. Rather than being aggressive advocates of abortion rights,
Jews might more rationally be advocates of carrying unwanted
pregnancies to term, and then giving up the babies for adoption.
This is especially the case since many Jewish women marry late
and have difficulty conceiving."
Reading Baehr you might even
conclude Planned Parenthood is not a Malthusian plot sponsored
by the Rockefellers, but Nixon's deftest dirty trick, fixing
the Supreme Court to pass Roe v Wade in 1973. Huh? Listen to
Baehr: "In fact, if no abortions had occurred in the last
30 years, and the total number of abortions were added to the
populations of each state since Roe v Wade was adopted, Al Gore
would have been running for re-election in 2004, since the states
he won in 2000, such as California, and New York, would have
had several more electoral votes in that year, and Bush's states
fewer. Gore would have been elected regardless of the Florida
outcome." Kevin Phillips, move over! This makes the southern
strategy look like chickenfeed. That's why Nixon needed the hundred
grand from Howard Hughes, to bribe Harry Blackmun. You don't
think Nixon would have figured this out? One of these days I
bet we'll find Operation Herod buried in Nixon's papers.
Back to Baehr's nightmare of
Muslim breeders. As Jews decline in number, he points with a
quivering finger at the Arab and Muslim population in America
heading in the other direction. Baehr cites two academic studies
putting the US Muslim population at between 1.8 and 2.9 million,
with the total Arab/Muslim community "probably about 3.5
million, two thirds the size of the Jewish community."
Turning to political influence
in the form of financial contributions, Baehr notes that in the
2004 campaign, four Jews - George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steven
Bing and Herbert Sandler - gave over $80 million to Democratic
political funds. While "this level of political giving by
a few individuals has never happened before in the history of
the countryIsrael is not the leading agenda item for any of them.
They were Bush-haters, pure and simple. This is true of much
of the political money that comes from Jews in Hollywood (from
where Bing hails). Israel is not the motivator for their contributions."
Baehr goes on to portray, somewhat
fancifully, the Democratic Party as increasingly falling into
the clutches of what he sees as the ultra, Israel-hating left,
headed by Michael Moore, the movie director. I seem to remember
Moore taking enormous pains last year to absolve Israel from
any unpleasing role in Fahrenheit 911, by the simple tactic of
not mentioning that troublesome nation. By "Israel hating"
Baehr appears to mean anyone who speaks up in any way for justice
for Palestinians or criticizes Ariel Sharon. Seeing the Democratic
Party as a lost cause for Israel over the long term, and on the
decline as a political force in America, he extols the alliance
between Christian Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews and the Republican
Party.
To anyone used to lamenting
the overwhelming tilt towards Israel in intellectual circles
and the media it is bizarre to find Baehr writing that he sees
a "Distancing of media, academic and intellectual elites
from Israel" and to hear him citing Frank Luntz, a pollster,
as saying "there is great danger ahead, because American
elite opinion is not sympathetic to Israel, and it is getting
worse. Elites view Israel as aggressive and warlike and Palestinians
as victims. Academia is the community that is the least sympathetic
to Israel, since lefty radicals from the 60s run the faculty
at most schools."
Happily for the blood pressure
of his audience, Baehr did open his often gloomy survey with
these words: "There is good news and bad news. The good
news is that the reports of the decline of Jewish and pro-Israel
influence, and the rise of Arab/Muslim influence in the American
political system are at the moment greatly exaggerated. The bad
news is that change is underway, and the relative shift described
above is occurring."
Hunter Thompson's
Final Exit
Getting back to Hunter Thompson,
whom I wrote about last week
you really think this was a considerate goodbye to his family?
Here's the latest AP story:
ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - The widow
of journalist Hunter S. Thompson said her husband killed himself
while the two were talking on the phone.
"I was on the phone with
him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking
of the gun," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Daily News in
Friday's editions.
She said her husband had asked
her to come home from a health club so they could work on his
weekly ESPN column - but instead of saying goodbye, he set the
telephone down and shot himself.
Thompson said she heard a loud,
muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was
waiting for him to get back on the phone," she said His
son, daughter-in-law and 6-year-old grandson were in the house
when the shooting occurred.
Anita Thompson, 32, said her
husband had discussed killing himself in recent months and had
been issuing verbal and written directives about what he wanted
done with his body, his unpublished works and his assets.
His suicidal talk put a strain
on their relationship, she said. "He wanted to leave on
top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of
his decision," she said. "It was a problem for us."
Suicides leave the family survivors
devastated, often forever. Yet some Thompson fans, in toto
never a discriminating gang at the best of times, have been cheering
the manner of his departure as fitting and even uplifting gonzo-closure.
To me it looks more like a terrible terminal act of aggression,
that he wanted that final explosion to echo in his wife's
brain for ever.
Honderich
and SOAS
From London Omar Waraich writes
to tell me that his terrific story
last week on the framing of George Galloway elicited around
500 emails from around the world, pouring into his inbox. I told
him the truth, that CounterPunchers are responsive readers. Then,
next day he put on his hat as one of the organizers at the Palestine
Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies and wrote
to usw about a piece on this site last week by the philosopher
Ted Honderich, also based at the University of London:
Dear Alex and Jeffrey,
You know how we revere your
pages, so you can imagine our consternation upon being misrepresented
in Honderich's piece last weekend.
It's rather churlish of him
to claim that we had invited him to speak, only to knock him
of the bill later. In actual fact, we never invited him, so his
name was never on "the list" he mentions. The meeting
didn't even take place at SOAS.
Then Honderich plunges to greater
depths by suggesting that the SOAS Palestine Society may have
been the ones "barracking" him at LSE. Another falsehood.
Best,
Omar Waraich,
Chair - SOAS Palestine Society.
Here Comes
Martha Coakley, an HRC Look-Alike
Paul Shanley, 72, now sits
in prison, in the first days of his twelve to fifteen year sentence.
By all accounts he's bearing up well, even though shamefully
convicted by a jury solely on the basis of the "recovered
memory" of one accuser, whose supposed recollections were
not corroborated, indeed were contradicted by all witnesses.
Meanwhile the triumphant DA, the ghastly Coakley, readies herself
for higher things.
Dear Alex,
You were quite right in your
piece on the conviction of Paul Shanley ("Back to Salem",
www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02192005.html) to name Martha
Coakley, current Middlesex county DA, as the lead villain in
the terrible legal travesty that was visited upon the Amirault
family in Massachusetts. I had nothing to do with the case, do
not even live in Massachusetts anymore, but I graduated from
the same college, in 1983, that the criminal prosecutor graduated
from in 1975, Williams College.
Martha Coakley's unwavering
role in prosecuting Gerald Amirault, despite the waves of revelations
about child abuse prosecutorial fraud, marks her as one of the
most shameful examples of the immorality of elite-tax-bracket
American higher education. And yet, as any attentive Boston
Globe reader may surmise, Coakley a DLC Democrat
has copied all of Hillary Rodham Clinton's moves, down to same
hairstyle, same public waxiness, same upward-career trajectory,
and is poised to become a major candidate for governor of the
commonwealth of Massachusetts. Williams styles itself the greatest
college in the world, and invited Coakley in 2003 to be its convocation
speaker. She's on all manner of boards and conferences on "Protecting
our Youth" and other soccer-mom drivel. Should she answer
for the decades Gerald Amirault lost to be inside prison because
of her uneducated zeal to witch-hunt? Of course. Will she? Not
given our track record of protecting scheming "elite"
college maniacs.
Martin White
"Perhaps the Shanley affair
is part of some very long-term trend", writes another CounterPuncher:
"I grew up in Brookline,
and remember reading about local murder cases in the Globe. It
struck me, forcefully at the time that there never seemed to
be much evidence against those convicted. I don't know if this
was a local phenomenon, even whether my perceptions were correct,
but over the years I have come to feel that people just don't
have any conception of evidence any more. The WMD scandal is
just the political manifestation of a trend already recognizable
in the criminal justice system, most prominently with the recovered
memory nonsense. Indeed even the growth of Christian fundamentalism
pretty well requires such a trend."
By coincidence, just before
I read this note, I had been reading a posting by Jude Wanniski
on his Polyconomics site about the origins of anti-Semitism where
he mostly quotes some racy stuff about the 13th century by Will
Durant and was brooding on how the accusations of ritual murder
by Jews of Christian kids echo in the frenzies about ritual penetration
of children in day care centers in the US in the 1980s and 1990s,
with consequent life sentences for many including the Amiraults.
So there's the historical conjuncture,
and in the case of Massachusetts a long term local conjuncture
going back to the Salem trials.In many criminal matters, our
courts are definitely swinging towards some new form, in which
emotional factors are being given pride of place, and sentencing
is placed in the hands of the victim, most egregiously in the
case of Shepard's father in Wyoming in 1998 who told the accused
in the courtroom that he held power of life or death over them,
a claim that had some validity. "I am going to grant you
life," Matthew's father declared in court, and as JoAnn
Wypijewski pointed out here last November
this was the ultimate expression of privatized justice.
The same CounterPuncher remarked,
apropos, Durant,
I can't see much mystery about
the origins of anti-Semitism. The Jews made themselves unpopular
by rejecting Roman syncretism, so Rome was hostile to the Jews
before Constantine. He just took over that hostility and added
to it the doctrinal squabble between Christian and Jewish Jews,
itself exacerbated by the institutionalization of the Church.
In short the origins were purely religious.
The economic forces which led
to the decay of first Hellenistic and then Roman society, also
opened the gates to anti-social, otherworldly religions; their
jockeying for position lead to religious anti-Semitism. I know
about all this stuff about how it was usury and the Jews were
estate superintendents and so forth. All true, I suppose, but
without the eschatological propaganda of the Church it would
never have come to anything.
The anti-Semitic outbreaks
were, after all, not directed against usurers in general. The
Fuggers never got trashed. Durant et al. have to explain why
the peasants didn't just have good old peasant revolts or the
city folk riot against usurers - it's not as if these tactics
were unknown to them. It won't do to say the Jews were scapegoats
- why settle for a scapegoat when you can just kill the moneylenders
and superintendants?
John Edwards
Drops Everything: How A Politician Defines "Focus"
"Since this election,
I have been so focused on Elizabeth and on doing the work that
I'm going to be doing here, I haven't even made a decision about
what I'm going to do," Edwards told ABC News "This
Week with George Stephanopoulos."
For the record (as assembled
by CounterPuncher Michael Donnelly): since the ABB loss, Edwards
has been very busy politicking. Just a sample of his "focus
on Elizabeth": 12/14 Charlie Rose Show; 12/19 Larry King;
2/5 New Hampshire speech; 2/20 Stephanopoulos show ABC; 2/26
Florida Democrat Dinner speech; 3/4 Kansas Democrat Speech.
And the topper, he was named Director of the Center on Poverty,
Work and Opportunity, a non-profit Dem think tank at the University
of North Carolina.
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