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Stunning New Print Edition of CounterPunch Will the US Labor Movement Rise Again in Chicago? Or is this just a power play at the top? JoAnn Wypijewski details what's really at stake in the great showdown as some of labor's most powerful bosses threaten to quit the AFL-CIO. No-holds-barred profiles of the SIEU's Andy Stern, Hoffa of the Teamsters and the other "insurgents". Jeffrey St Clair tells the incredible saga of the $30 billion bailout of Boeing. How the scandal reached the White House and Don Rumsfeld screamed, Let the woman take the fall. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the Judy Miller story. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... 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! CounterPunch's Hot New T-Shirts for Women! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories July 15 / 18, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Don't You Dare Call It Treason Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton Harry Browne "What They Do to Us, They Will Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland Fred Gardner A Professional Bust Col. Dan Smith General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked Jason Leopold What Did Rove Say and When Did He Say It? Jack Random Miller Time Norman Solomon War and Venture Capitalism George Ochenski Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All!     July 14, 2005 Subcomandante Marcos This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona Dave Lindorff No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State Joshua Frank Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA Jude Wanniski Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove? Dave Zirin Storming the Castle Kevin Zeese Exit Strategy: Within Reach? Robert Jensen War Myths and the Press Reza Fiyouzat A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji Carol Norris Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged Website of the Day Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher   July 13, 2005 Brian Cloughley Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq George Galloway We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop Carlos Fierro A Supreme Waste of Time Sarah Knopp Hate on the Border Norman Solomon "Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors Mickey Z. Water on the Brain Jim Minick The Right Tree in the Right Place Pat Williams American Indian Education for All Andrew N. Rubin Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set" Website of the Day "London's Burning": the Mikey Mix   July 12, 2005 Laith al-Saud Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement Kara N. Tina "This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield William A. Cook The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This? Jack Bratich 2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma Amina Mire The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others Dick J. Reavis Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke Kevin Zeese Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets Paul Craig Roberts No-Think Nation Website of the Day Coke Gags Indian Artist   July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander Cockburn After the Bombings Uri Avnery War of the Colors in Israel Sheldon Rampton Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London Bill Christison Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement? Robert Fisk Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed Stephen Winspear Collateral Damage in London? Saul Landau Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken Behrooz Ghamari Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem Karl Beitel False Promises and Real Debt Relief Brian Concannon, Jr. Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires Fred Gardner Sentencing Season John Whitlow And What Does the Market Say? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us? Lila Rajiva Witches and Bastards Laura Carlsen CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities Jackie Corr Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket Dave Lindorff "My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter" N. D. Jayaprakash Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference Seth Sandronsky Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq Norman Madarasz The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party Ben Tripp The Inevitability of George W. Bush Poets' Basement Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel Website of the Weekend The Mother of All Enemies Lists   July 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception Tariq Ali The London Bombings: Why They Happened Monica Benderman One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality Rick Jahnkow Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement Christopher Brauchli Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra Kim Peterson Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror Joshua Frank Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments? Norman Solomon Messages from the Carnage Website of the Day An Interview with Ray McGovern July 7, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr John Walsh More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry Mike Marqusee Message from London Gilad Atzmon London's Burning Nicole Colson Showdown at the Supreme Court Jack Random Judith Miller, Anti-Hero Norman Solomon Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War Len Colodny Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig? Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr     July 6, 2005 Elaine Cassel Political Necrophilia in Florida: Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair Sean Donahue Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor Jeremy R. Hammond State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard Joshua Frank Will Rove be Indicted? Ali Khan The "Gift" of US Democratization Michael Dickinson Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers Norman Solomon How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility Dave Zirin Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad Gary Leupp Accusing Ahmadinejad Website of the Day Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"     July 5, 2005 Behrooz Ghamari What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency Elaine Cassel Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor Ron Jacobs Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice Bob Libal The Right's Assault on Academia Dr. Peter Rost Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO Mark Engler The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee? Gideon Levy They Broke the Public's Heart Dave Zirin The Great Olympics Scam Sameer Dossani The Trouble with Gleneagles     July 2 / 4, 2005 Alexander Cockburn "Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi? Lenni Brenner Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July Laura Carlsen Zapatista's Red Alert James Petras The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment William A. Cook Kings of Serpents Brian Cloughley Quagmire of the Vanities Saul Landau The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership Tom Crumpacker Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles? Greg Moses Dylan's America Dr. Susan Block My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service Fran Shor Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land Fred Gardner Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer Moshe Adler The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs David Model The Downing Street Memo: So What's New? Seth Sandronsky California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style Ramzy Baroud Managed Democracy in the Middle East Suzan Mazur Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton Ben Tripp Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap Justin Taylor Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint" Brendan Bailey Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony Poets' Basement Albert, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Radical Reference     July 1, 2005 Christopher Brauchli With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf Pat Williams What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver Gary Leupp Summer Surprise? John Stauber Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie John Chuckman The Blessings of Canada Justicia y Paz Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least! Cockburn / St. Clair It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court   June 30, 2005 Kathy Kelly An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis John Stauber Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America Virginia Rodino All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement Jason Leopold Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy Dave Lindorff What Was Bush Thinking? Greg Moses Racism at Cape Cod Norman Solomon Memo to the Iraq War Joshua Frank Israel's Theocrats Alexander Cockburn The Political Function of PBS   June 29, 2005 Mike Schaefer How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq Sharon Smith Democrats Shift into Reverse Sam Husseini A Quick Way to End the Insurgency John Stauber Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton Ahmad Faruqui Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan? Linda S. Heard Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo Stew Albert Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero Ray McGovern Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course     June 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts A Defeat Bred in Deceit Landau / Hassen Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics John A. Murphy Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania Mike Whitney More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents CounterPunch News Service JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook? Dave Zirin Pining for the Pistons Dave Lindorff Showtime in Washington Patrick Cockburn Iraq: a Bloody Mess     June 27, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans Mike Marqusee G8: Who are the Hijackers? Mark Scaramella When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz Leigh Saavedra Press Apologists for Torture Kathy Kelly Where is the UN? June 25 / 26, 2005 Alexander Cockburn The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals Jennifer Van Bergen America's Parallel Legal Systems George Corsetti This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo Kevin Zeese Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids P. Sainath Russian Roulette in Vidharbha John Stauber How to Bury a Mad Cow Scott Handleman Gay in the Third World Tom Barry The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists John Walsh Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places Justin E.H. Smith The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution Alan Wallis The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood Ben Tripp Negative Space: an Artful Lesson Frederick B. Hudson Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock Poets' Basement Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert     June 24, 2005 Ray McGovern The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed" Jorge Mariscal "They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq Desiree Hellegers Portland vs. the FBI Zeynep Toufe What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It? Joshua Frank Call Him Senator Con Job David Lindorff Which Flag Would Jesus Burn? Michael Neumann Victory and Recruitment Website of the Day Gagging Dr. Dean June 23, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge Clay Conrad Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform Standard Schaefer A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism P. Sainath Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks Mark Engler CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death Norman Solomon Voluntary Amnesia in America Cockburn / St. Clair Frank Calzon Kathy Kelly Where You Stand Determines What You See   June 22, 2005 Kevin Zeese The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner William S. Lind Afghanistan: the Other War Arsalan Iftikhar Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act Dan Nagengast Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas David Krieger To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World Kathleen & Bill Christison Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making     June 21, 2005 Brian Cloughley Destroy the Unbelievers! Mike Whitney President Disconnect Dave Lindorff Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway? Mark Weisbrot Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez Matthew R. Simmons The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis Dave Zirin The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man" Virginia Rodino The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment Paul Craig Roberts A War Waged by Liars and Morons   June 20, 2005 Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Tariq Ali To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel! Mickey Z. WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo William Blum Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends Gary Leupp Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq Jason Leopold Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War Dave Lindorff Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Uri Avnery Condi and Hamas Website of the Day Crimes Against Poetry                                                       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

July 15, 2005 CounterPunch Diary Don't You Dare Call It Treason By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Treason, no less! A leading Democrat, Rep Henry Waxman howls in Congress that "The intentional disclosure of a covert CIA agent's identity would be an act of treason. If Rove was part of a conspiracy and intentionally disclosed the name ­ then that jeopardizes national security" Liberal columnists like Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times join the Waxman chorus. Of White House political adviser Karl Rove's efforts to discredit Joe Wilson by outing his wife Valerie Plame as a covert CIA employee, Scheer bellows furiously that that Rove might have even endangered Plame's life and that "this partisan game jeopardizes national security. This is the most important issue raised by the Plame scandal." But suppose one of Valerie Plame's covert CIA missions, until outed by Karl Rove, had been to liaise with Venezuelan right-wingers planning to assassinate president Hugo Chavez, possibly masquerading as a journalist and using her attractions to secure an audience with the populist president and then poison him, just as the CIA tried to poison Castro. In an earlier incarnation Scheer would surely have been eager to jeopardize national security by exposing Plame's employer. Thirty-eight years ago Scheer was one of the editors of Ramparts and in February of 1967 that magazine ran an expose of covert CIA funding of the National Student Association, prompting furious charges that it had endangered national security which, from the foreign policy establishment's point of view, it most certainly had. Of course Ramparts, and the left in general, derided the very phrase "national security" as a phony rationale for covering up years of covert CIA operations entirely inimical to any decent definition of what "national security" should properly mean. The CIA's covert wing is not in the business of advancing world peace and general prosperity. The record of almost 60 years is one of uninterrupted evil. So we should drop all this nonsense about treason and clap Rove warmly on the back for his courageous onslaughts on the cult of secrecy. By all means delight in the White House's discomfiture, but spare us the claptrap about national security and treason. To thread one's way through coverage of the Plame affair, the jailing of Judy Miller, the contempt citations of four journalists (though not,alas, of Jeff Gerth of the New York Times) and the AIPAC/Franklin spy case is like strolling past distorting mirrors in a fun house. Go from one to the next and the swollen giant of "treason" in the west wing of the White House shrinks to the dwarf-like status of a "leak", which is how AIPAC's defenders like to categorize the transmission of a top secret Presidential Directive on Iran from Larry Franklin in the Pentagon to AIPAC officials and thence to a spymaster, Naor Gilon, in the Israeli embassy in Washington. Judy Miller too has had an image make-over, from the warmongering fabricator of yesterday to today's martyr to the First Amendment, with years of profitable speaking tours beckoning after she is released from the incarceration she surely knew would winch her reputation out of the mud. But why is prosecutor Fitzgerald going after her? She wrote no story about Plame. Now, as a prime propagandist of the war faction Miller had every reason to be as keen to discredit Wilson as was Rove. Suppose it was she who relayed from her pal and prime disinformant, Ahmad Chalabi, the news that it was CIA employee Plame who assigned her husband the Niger mission to assay the veracity of charges that Iraq had bought uranium yellowcake there. Relayed to whom? Maybe to one of the State Department's neocon warmongers, like John Bolton or EliottAbrams, who duly passed the news on to Scooter Libby and Rove in the White House. Remember, Rove told the prosecutor that he learned about Plame from two journalists. What a joke it would have been to have him behind bars for refusing to disclose his sources. Stroll on to the next set of mirrors, apropos Wen Ho Lee's suit to discover who leaked the false accusations about his supposed acts of treason at Los Alamos, allegedly transmitting nuclear secrets to China. Four journalists, including James Risen of the New York Times and Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, may join Miller behind bars for refusing to divulge their sources. One can understand why Wen Ho Lee is unmoved by charges that he is sabotaging the First Amendment. His case displayed the FBI and the press which smeared him ­ primarily Risen and Gerth in the New York Times ­ in a disgusting light. He spent nearly a year in solitary confinement, with FBI agents telling him he might face the death penalty for being a traitor. Who in fact was the betrayer of secrets, if one has to be found? On July 7 Steve Terrell reported in The New Mexican that the leaker so eager to disclose a top secret government probe of Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos, may well be a the current governor of New Mexico and possible White House aspirant, Bill Richardson, who was Clinton's Energy Secretary at the time and who had spent a large portion of his political career nurturing the interests of Los Alamos as a nuclear research lab. I doubt Waxman will start calling for his blood as a compromiser of national security, leaking secrets as part of a political maneuver to shift blame for the appalling mess at Los Alamos to a person of Chinese origin whom he falsely accuswed of being a spy, then denied he had done any such thing. This guy wants to be president of the United States. If you want to start waving words like "treason" around, the AIPAC spy case is surely a better target than Karl Rove. Here we have a four-year FBI probe of possible treachery by senior US government officials, as well as by Israel's premier lobbying outfit in the United States, AIPAC. Yet compared with the mileage given to the Plame affair, coverage of the AIPAC spy case in the press has been sparse, and the commentary very demure, until you get to Justin Raimondo's pugnacious columns on Antiwar.com. Raimondo's been comparing the AIPAC spy case to the indictment of State Department official Alger Hiss back in the 1940s, claiming that just as the foreign policy apparatus was allegedly riddled with Communist spies in the 1940s, the same apparatus is now riddled with Israel's agents today. I'd reckon that when it comes to agents of influence the USSR back then couldn't hold a candle to Israel today (or then, for that matter, though in that distant time Zionist and Communist were often hats on the same head). One answer in the McCarthyite era to accusations of spying was that the Soviet Union was an ally and the supposed transmission of "secrets" was just a routine exchange of information on such matters as the schedule for the Dumbarton Oaks conference laying the groundwork for the UN (in which Hiss was involved.) Similar talk about "allies" and "routine exchanges" pops from the mouths of Israel's supporters here, denouncing the FBI probe as some latterday equivalent of the persecution of Dreyfus. It's perfectly obvious that Israel exerts huge influence on US policy. Men and women working in Israel's interest throng Washington. But on the left, in the spy case just as in the Plame affair, we should be leery of words like traitor and "national security". They cut both ways. Here's a useful parable on the fetishization of secrecy. Jeffrey St Clair unearthed it in Ernie Fitzgerald's The Pentagonists, essential reading for anyone interested in how US politics really works. In 1973, Nixon fired Pentagon auditor Ernie Fitzgerald for exposing the tidal wave of cost overruns associated with Lockheed's useless C-5A cargo plane. One of the accusations hurled against Ernie at the time was that he had "leaked" to a congressional committee "classified information" about the scandal. The charge was made by Robert Seamons, Nixon's Secretary of the Air Force. When Fitzgerald sued (and won his job back and a major settlement, which he used in part to found the Fund for Constitutional Government), his lawyers deposed Seamons, who retreated a little. Here's how Ernie describes it: "Later, after I was fired, Senator William Proxmire forced Seamons to retract this accusation. In his apologia pro vita sua to the official tape, he produced this wonderful waffle: 'At the time I was testifying, I really thought that Ernie had given them classified material, marked 'Confidential.' Later on, when we still had the opportunity of going over the testimony, it wasn't so clear as to whether any of the material was classified or not. So we changed the word from Confidential with a capital "C" to confidential with a small "c".   This Is On Background Dear Folks, Been fascinated by this whole Karl Rove situation...I am not familiar with the clandestine and hush-hush world in which the likes of Karl Rove and the Wilsons live...but it struck me as kind of interesting that the journalist Matt Cooper used the term "double super secret background" to describe whatever conversation they had. Remember the classic film Animal House? (written by a Dartmouth grad and modeled after the fraternity next door to my beloved house Heorot - named appropriately after the drinking hall of Beowulf) Remember Dean Wormer's response to Greg Marmalard? Greg Marmalard: But Delta's already on probation. Dean Vernon Wormer: They are? Well, as of this moment, they're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION Imagine then a similar conversation between Matt Cooper and Karl Rove: Cooper: Well, I already have you on secret background Karl? Rove: We are? well then this has to be DOUBLE SUPER SECRET BACKGROUND!!! Who do these guys think they are? Maxwell Smart? I mean...come on. Tell me that when you really get down to the bones, these guys like Rove are really still using their sophomoric minds to handle stuff and get folks in trouble...just like college... We should just put Rove on DOUBLE SUPER SECRET PROBATION and have done with it... Cheers, Dave Ross   Not Brian Lamb! CounterPuncher Morton Skorodin, commending me for my parody of the Lehrer News Hour took a swipe at CSPAN'S Brian Lamb, which I printed here a couple of weeks ago. This presumption elicited a protective cry from Holden Mills. I agree with you that much of PBS has continually become more timid and watered down. Personally, I stopped watching Jim Lehrer's program at least a year ago. Who needs it! Nevertheless, PBS continues to occasionally show excellent documentaries. I profoundly disagree with your correspondent, Morton Skorodin, who put C-Span and Brian Lamb in the same category as PBS and Jim Lehrer. I consider Mr. Lamb a hero of our time. Recently, one of his interviewees (I think Bob Herbert) commented that the pressure must be overwhelming. Brian responded: "You cannot imagine it!". I believe him. He continues to present programs like the Rev. David Ray Griffin's, who made a case that the falls of the World Trade Center buildings were caused by controlled demolitions. Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Greg Palast, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and many, many other informed, left wing people who do not and cannot appear anywhere else on network or cable TV are presented in long, detailed interviews or symposia on C-Span. I recently read an article by Gore Vidal calling C-Span subversive because you can see and hear numerous public figures displaying themselves, some in all their ridiculous pomposity or outright evil-doing. Also, C-Span covered Rep John Conyers' entire basement hearing on the recent British memo on "fixing" intelligence to start the Iraq war. I also want to praise the Sundance Channel, which shows excellent, eye-opening documentaries, like The Origin of Aids. I do not usually write such letters, but feel obliged to send this one. Let's not "throw out the baby with the bathwater". There are too few honest channels remaining. Let's value the few we have left (pun intended). Vehemently, Holden Mills   To refresh your memory, here's what Morton wrote: Mr. Cockburn, Great piece on PBS. C-SPAN is almost the same. Claim to be neutral; Brian Lamb is an ICONOBLAST (the opposite of iconoclast) - it's very well-managed. He snickered at a caller who was a Hawaiian "nationalist." Right wing think tanks dominate on CSPAN- e.g. Heritage Found, AEI. They quote the Wash. Times daily. One caller counted 40 Republicans to 21 Democrats. Progressives tolerated rarely - Howard Zinn was on recently. In all fairness CSPAN 2 has some progressive coverage. Also, Lamb's book - it's chronological - and it completely skips the 60's. Lamb hung up on me twice; I accused the pres. of treason.   Those Google Ads: How To Keep Imperialism At Bay Hello Counterpunchers, As an on-line reader on a daily basis I would say a few things.The first: just keep up the good work. It is a delightful daily experience, and it helps to raise spirits of at least one rebel in the Netherlands: The first: I read about those google ads, that you need them, but that some readers object. A few things about it all. 1. counterpunch has guts. 2. I find those ads often useless, sometimes they lead to useful stuff, and sometimes they are hilarious. But the idea that I (or you) would be contaminated because there are ads, or because one clicks at them, is sheer silliness. Are we lefties so easily contaminated?? 3. I have no money to support you directly. I am pleased to be able to do my bit in this easy, and often quite funny. Just four clicks a day keeps imperialism at bay: yours in struggle peter storm The Nethelands weblog (in Dutch) http://rooieravotr.web-log.nl   That Smile on the Face of the Tiger John Brown at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown recently cited that snooty conservative prof, Roger Scruton, as having written in the TLS (April 15), that "human beings are alone among the animals in revealing their individuality in their faces. The mouth that speaks, the eyes that glaze, the skin that flushes, all are signs of freedom, character and judgement, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within." What bilge! I see more expressiveness on the faces of my dog (Jasper), horse (Agnes), cat (Frank) cockatiel (Percy) and even my Gouldian finches and Gloucester canaries than on 90 per cent of the people I see on tv, starting with the Leader of the Free World. The same is true of Jeffrey St Clair's Australian shepherd, Boomer, Destroyer of Fine Carpets. Jasper has the blood of Irish wolf hounds and other indeterminate canine DNA pulsing in his veins Let me tell you, "the signs of freedom, character and judgement" are writ large on his whiskered mug, every minute that passes. The other day I handed him the remnants of a pork chop on which he deemed I had left insufficient meat and before he picked up the morsel he threw me a glance of such delicate reproach that Marcel Proust would have taken a couple of pages to describe its modalities. There was nothing so delicate in the reporoach of Sinclair Lewis's sometime dog ­ an Airedale ­ which in his youth my father once had to look after over Christmas in Berlin in the late 1920s, as he describes in his memoirs. It was a horrible Christmas for the dog, because just at that time I had run entirely out of money and was living chiefly on expectations of a check from the United States which never came. To begin with, the dog fed fairly well because the butcher round the corner always had a pile of scraps ­ offal, bacon rind and the like ­ which he gave me free when I bought some meat for myself. But on Christmas Eve, when everyone I knew had left town for the holiday, I found, distressingly, that I had only just enough money to buy a couple of drinks and some tobacco. Feeling very low, mentally and morally, I went round to that butcher and told him that I myself was, of course, invited to eat my Christmas dinner with friends and therefore did not wish to buy anything for myself but was anxious that the dog should have a particularly good Christmas dinner. The kindly butcher made up an unusually large and nasty-looking parcel of scraps, which I took home and cooked. The dog watched me with satisfaction. But the next day at noon when he saw me carefully dividing the mess into equal portions and putting only half of it on his plate, his disappointment and indignation knew no bounds. At first he watched me with an expression of sheer incredulity. Then when he saw me actually digging my fork into that portion of his dinner that I had reserved for myself, he got up on his hind legs, with his forepaws on the table, and threw back his head, howling in astonishment and despair at the pass things had come to. Footnote: a slightly shorter version of the first item ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday. Please, resist the urge to send us photographs of your domestic menagerie. Our inbox is already bursting at the seams.