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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 May 7, 2005 Gary Leupp Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism May 6, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood Erin Yoshioka Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison? Sam Husseini Talking with Syrians Dave Lindorff Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters Kevin Zeese Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty Joshua Frank An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War Dan Bacher Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid P. Saineth India's Bloody Water Wars   May 5, 2005 Carles Mutaner Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?" Carl G. Estabrook Is There Any Hope for the Pope? Farrah Hassen The US's Syrian Obsession Kevin Zeese "Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta Michael Leonardi May Day with an American Soldier in Rome Bennett Ramberg The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You Ray McGovern The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit Norman Solomon Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran Nicole Colson The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights Brian Concannon, Jr. Clearing the Fences in Haiti   May 4, 2005 Colin Kalmbacher Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested John Walsh Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War Greg Moses Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation" Ali Khan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart Chris Floyd Ring Them Bells Linda S. Heard D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics Dave Zirin The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle William S. Lind Fool's Paradise Gary Leupp Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution Website of the Day Kent State, May 4, 1970     May 3, 2005 Dave Lindorff Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice Brian Cloughley Halliburton's War Loot Ira Kurzban Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers Seth Sandronsky Towards Debtors' Prisons? Gilad Atzmon The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More Michael Donnelly Branding Eco Collapse Alex Sanchez Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush? Peter Linebaugh Magna Carta and May Day     May 2, 2005 Ron Jacobs Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement Stan Goff The Case of Hasan Akbar Karyn Strickler Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics Joshua Frank Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly Kevin Zeese Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam Vicente Navarro Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician       April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility" Gabriel Kolko Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later Jennifer Loewenstein The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood Lee Sustar City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago Saul Landau The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power T.W. Croft The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy Nikolas Kozloff Fox News v. Hugo Chavez William Blum Never-Ending Double Standards Dave Lindorff Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly Joshua Frank The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls Doug Giebel Saving Jane Fonda Steven Erlanger A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief Fred Gardner Washington State Doctor Harassed Mike Whitney Another Mad Bush Press Conference Kurt Nimmo Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine Joe DeRaymond A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania Michael Dickinson Flags Mickey Z. May Day at Yankee Stadium Justin Taylor The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy Poets Basement Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Save Barbados's Cowpastor   April 29, 2005 W. John Green Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death Squads? Luke Brothers Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT Norman Solomon War, Aid and Public Relations M. Junaid Alam The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption Jackie Corr The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens Hunter Greer Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally, a Use for Standardized Testing! Sharon Smith The New Assault on Women's Rights: Why are the Democrats Silent? Website of the Day Tony Blair's Election Rap   April 28, 2005 Omar Waraich Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview Kevin Zeese Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off? Dave Lindorff Bush's Torture Tort Reform Greg Moses Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes Toni Solo Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever? Niranjan Ramakrishnan Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums Werther George Will Revises the Vietnam War   April 27, 2005 John Ross Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death Joshua Frank DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias Ray McGovern The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets the Eye Mark Donham Government Pettiness and Wetland Destruction Dan Smith Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?     April 26, 2005 Dave Lindorff Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder Alevtina Rea Magic of the Yellow Emperor Greg Moses The Senator and the Narc Pirates of Highway 281 Joshua Frank Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards on Ruzicka Diana Johnstone The French are At It Again     April 25, 2005 Uri Avnery The Persecution of Vanunu Alison Weir The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT Minimizes Palestinian Deaths Lee Sustar Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life of Dave Yettaw Leonardo Boff A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger: a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power? Gary Leupp Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton             April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Time's Buried Hitler Cover Gary Leupp The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in China James Petras Elections for Democracy or Empire? Harry Browne Springsteen's "Devils and Dust" Fred Gardner The Custody Threat Ron Jacobs The Desterrados of Colombia: They are not Collateral Damage Elizabeth Schulte Why Backing Democrats is Pulling the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right Chris Floyd Oil, Guns and Banks   April 22, 2005 Saul Landau The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries Forever Kevin Zeese Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation Joshua Frank Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature Mike Whitney God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses Michael Flynn Wolfowitz on Top of the World Lee Sustar The One-Sided Class War Website of the Day Bitter Greens   April 21, 2005 Bill Quigley The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger Dave Lindorff Bush's X-Files Jason Leopold Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse Than the Exxon Valdez? Kathleen Christison Sharon's 92 Percent Solution: How the Misperceptions Roll On April 20, 2005   April 20, 2005 John Ross Lopez Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two) Kevin Zeese Halliburton: Poster Child of the War Profiteers Uri Avnery The 100 Days of Abu Mazen Website of the Day The House that Jack Built   April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard An Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for the White House?" Dave Lindorff What's Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight Neve Gordon Before the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories Brian Concannon, Jr Immaculate Evasions in Haiti Murray Hudson Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides Frank B. Ford Poem for Marla Ruzicka Monty Python Memo to Pope Rat Michael Dickinson Cardinal Sins Paul Craig Roberts Outsourcing the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism Website of the Day Strindberg and Helium April 18, 2005 Linda Schade / Kevin Zeese The Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest John Ross Mexico's Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness Brian McKenna Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan Mike Whitney The NYT in Fallujah Patrick Cockburn Iraqi Peace in Tatters Dave Zirin Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop Eli Stephens The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson Harry Browne War and Elections in Britain and Ireland Website of the Day A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest   April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Message in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada Mark Dow The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag Omar Waraich Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain Robert Buzzanco How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq Sherry Wolf Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation? Fred Gardner The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana Ron Jacobs Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities Mark Weisbrot CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages John Pardon The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen Yoshie Furuhashi Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit Industry Mike Roselle Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism? Ralph Nader Scientists or Celebrities? Ramzy Baroud Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair Jackson Thoreau Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter Michael Dickinson "Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul Richard Neville Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™ Poets' Basement Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney Website of the Weekend Rebel Angel     April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Diplomacy, Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice Bill Glahn No Child Left a Dime Mickey Z. One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich Stephanie McMillan Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit Josh Mahan Victoria's Dirty Secret David Russitano Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up? Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales "I am Joaquin" Tom Reeves Students Rise Again in Québec   April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Red States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act Pat Williams The Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West Jessica Pupovac What You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy Joshua Frank Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt. Jerzy Mankowski Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland Talli Naumann Right-to-Know in Mexico Antony Loewenstein The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch Virginia Rodino Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Bush's Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports Website of the Day The 13th Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland     April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Bolton in the Western Sahara Mike Whitney Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando Botero Terry Jones Let Them Eat Bombs Dave Lindorff A Sickening Error Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Ethnic Cleansing at Air America Kurt Nimmo Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran Don Fitz Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative to Pesticides Tom Crumpacker Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences JG The Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34 Jack McCarthy Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee Kevin Zeese Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou Jeffrey St. Clair How Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions   April 12, 2005 John Wheat Gibson The Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot Act Kevin Zeese The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now Alan Farago The Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida Dave Lindorff Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to White Alabamans Ron Jacobs Bob Dylan at the Crossroads Nelson P. Valdes Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie Dave Zirin War Games and War Names Website of the Day Parents Against the Draft     April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Negroponte and the Eclipse of the CIA Saul Landau Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead: Contempt for the Rest Us Monique Dols Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad Phil Gasper Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt Mike Whitney See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media Edwin Krales The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry Paul de Rooij Undermining Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects Website of the Day Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition     April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Torture Air, Incorporated William A. Cook Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights Abuses Gary Leupp My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru Alan Maass Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary Laura Carlsen Democracy Sinking in Mexico Joe DeRaymond Death and Displacement in Colombia Nikolas Kozloff Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again) Dave Lindorff The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar Greg Moses Growling at Hallliburton Fred Gardner Southern Station Session Justin Smith The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as Bad Old Days Ron Jacobs George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones M. Junaid Alam No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US Ira Kay West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the World Elizabeth Schulte From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left Jackie Corr Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana Christopher Brauchli From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment Leslie A. Fiedler On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is Over" Ben Tripp Pocket Furniture Poets Basement Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis Website of the Weekend Military Free Zones                                           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 7 / 8, 2005 Gagan Thapa's Arrest Highlights Disturbing Parallels Seeing Chile in Nepal By DANIELA PONCE My friend was arrested on April 26. His name is Gagan Thapa. He is not a murderer or a thief, but a student leader, who, despite significant risks to his life, has been fighting to restore democracy in Nepal. I am Chilean. Gagan is Nepali. Despite the distance between our countries, Gagan and I have a lot in common. I too became a student activist during a democratic transition, in Chile, a country that made the term "disappeared" famous because of the ability of Augusto Pinochet's government to make a person disappear from public view without trace. If they turned up at all, they often turned up dead. I met Gagan through several years of work and graduate research on the student movement of Nepal, and realized that we share a common cause: a devotion to human rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of political expression. Now Gagan is in danger of joining the list of what we in Chile called the "desaparecidos." The "disappeared." And I am seeing Chile in Nepal. I was expecting Gagan's arrest. It was just a matter of weeks, maybe months. When King Gyanendra assumed executive powers, appointed a royalist cabinet, and declared a state of emergency in early February, Gagan became one of Nepal's authorities' most wanted political leaders. Although many of his friends had been trying to convince him to find refuge in India-including me-he had refused over and over citing his need to be "where the people are." The king had compelling reasons to dislike him. Last year and the year before, Gagan and his student organization, the Nepal Student Union, mobilized thousands of students to pressure the palace to restore democracy. The pressure heightened after a student protestor was shot dead by the police in April 2003. Gyanendra had dissolved the parliament and sacked the elected government in 2002. He had been ruling through prime ministerial appointments since then. Gagan and another student leader was also arrested back then. Around the time, I was in Nepal, conducting research on political violence against civilians in Kathmandu, Butwal, and Bhairawa. Last year I returned to Nepal and conducted over a hundred interviews with student leaders and activists on the emergence and development of the student movement. In a recorded interview last year, he told me about his ordeal and what it triggered: "We were attending an event and the police came and said: 'we have an arrest warrant for you two guys.' 'For what?, we asked them.' They said, 'for chanting slogans against the king.' And the very next day, the press runs that the government had filed sedition charges and that we could be jailed for ten years because of this new law. And the students reacted. The students come to the streets. Thousands and thousands of students and I think, that was the day the real movement for a republic started." Students, for the first time in Nepal's history, became very vocal in calling for the end to the monarchy and the establishment of a Nepali republic. King Gyanendra was facing two fronts of opposition: The students and a violent Maoist-inspired insurgency who had gained vast control of rural Nepal. Therefore, Gyanendra's complete takeover was not a surprise. The monarch said that he was forced to take this action because the government failed to protect Nepal from the growing guerrilla group. According to data available, since 1996 the conflict has cost the lives of more than 11,300 people. Of this number, 9,300 have been killed since 2002 mostly by security forces. Nepal holds world records in human rights violations in the context of this war. After the palace's coup, once phone lines and the internet was restored after days of being cut off, I got this message from Gagan: "Daniela, I'm safe till now, the army personnel have raided my home several times, the process is on, they often harass my family members, I have been underground from that very day, the case is that I'm not afraid to face the challenges, but you understand there is no rule of law, and no one knows the fate of imprisoned leaders, I prefer to fight for freedom from outside the bars, I want to do something that matters." He was right to fear arrest. The palace's state of emergency strips Nepalis of their human rights and civil liberties. Amnesty international estimates than more than 3,000 activists had been detained since the royal coup. Arrests have increased in the last few days too. Former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has joined the ranks of those under arrest, having been detained for refusing to appear before a the royal anti-corruption panel. Gyanendra is using his personally appointed "corruption" commission to punish political enemies while members of the royal family remain untouched. Security officials also arrested five opposition leaders from a meeting in Dilli Bazaar. Ironically, at the meeting they were discussing the need for the king to negotiate with the political parties with transparency and consistency; the need for political parties to unite and speak with one voice; the need for the scrapping of unconstitutional bodies (such as the royal "anti-corruption commission" that sidelines the constitutional corruption commission); and the immediate release of leaders under house arrests or activists in jails. Gagan was hauled off by security officers after a pre-dawn raid on his safe house in Lainchaur where he had been staying underground. An effort had been made to arrest him earlier at an anniversary celebration at the Nepali Congress office in Sanepa, but he'd managed to flee. He had recently been seen addressing a few corner meetings in New Baneshwor. Also caught in the raid at Lainchaur were fellow student leaders Subodh Acharya and Sandesh Adhikari. The former ministers may end up being kept in detention, may have medicine withheld, and may suffer from poor conditions. But their lives are probably not in danger. Gagan and other student leaders, who are more outspoken and known to support a republican system, are in graver danger. Gagan always expressed deep interest in learning how Chileans had brought down Pinochet's dictatorship. He was also captivated by the legal case against Pinochet and the movement for international jurisdiction. Now he is in danger of sharing something else in common with many Chileans who dared to speak out against dictatorship ­ he could become one of the "disappeared." Nepal is currently the country with the world's highest number of disappearances. Chileans know very well what it means to be among the "desaparecidos." We also know very well what it means for a dictatorship to have the open or tacit support of the U.S. India and Britain, as well as other European nations, have termed the king's takeover as 'undemocratic' and expressed deep concern for the human rights situation in the country. They rightly suspended all military aid to Nepal. Yet unlike their allies, the U.S. has continued to support King Gyanendra's army, the RNA, which Human Rights Watch has classified as "one of the world's worst violators of human rights." In Chile, Pinochet was able to commit his crimes because he counted with U.S. economic and military support. The Hindu Himalayan Kingdom is my daily reminder that dreadful dictatorships exist in the world, and that those of us who live outside their borders in fact support them if we consent to being mere spectators. Yet Nepal is also a reminder of the inspiring people who challenge these dictatorships. Gagan is one of them. He wrote this not long ago: "What we need urgently is an international call, the response from the governments are not everything, civil societies, individuals like you can make a difference, so please give us your hands. We need you in the fight for freedom." His words speak now for themselves. Daniela Ponce is a Chilean student who graduates this year from American U'niversity's School of International Service with a master's in Peace and Conflict Resolution. Her thesis is on the student movement in Nepal. She works at the Institute for Policy Studies, mostly on Chilean issues. This essay originally appeared on Freenepal.org.