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Today's Stories October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play   October 15, 2007 Gary Leupp Response to an Angry Marine Andy Worthington A Gitmo Detainee Finally Gets a Break Heather Gray Al Krebs, a Fighter for Family Farmers John Walsh Blacks Turn Against the War: Why Won't Liberals Join Them? Joshua Frank Nobel Gore? Dave Lindorff Slaughter of the Innocents in Iraq Matt Vidal Squaring the Circle on Children and Health Care Ali Khan Pakistan's Constitutional Mess Sen. Russ Feingold The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program Johnny Barber The Balm of a Peace Process Infuses the War on Terror Website of the Day The Real Gore October 13 / 14, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Al Gore's Peace Prize Wajahat Ali Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy: an Interview with P. W. Singer Jeffrey St. Clair A Half Mile of Hell Ralph Nader Impeachment, Cowardice and the Democrats David Heleniak Gitmo at Home Laura Carlsen Plan Mexico and the Billion Dollar Drug Deal Brian Cloughley The Flat Drug World Richard Rhames Here Come the "Bankrupted Social Security" Scamsters, Again Ron Jacobs For the Sake of a Future Fred Gardner The Overrated Importance of Being "On Message" John Ross The Betray Us Flap Russell Hoffman Another Pro Nuker Wins the Peace Prize Missy Beattie Will Someone Please Give Lou Dobbs a Lobotomy? Poets' Basement Gibbons, Buknatski and Ford Website of the Day "Psychokiller", the Blackwater Version October 12, 2007 Cindy Sheehan Leadership Void Brendan Cooney Washington's Holocaust Deniers Alan Farago Gore Still Lost Florida Jan Oberg Gore's Peace Prize, a Grand Misjudgment M. Shahid Alam The Mercenary State: Pakistan's Killer Elites David Macaray Lies About Teachers and Unions Julia Kendlbacher Urban Legend, We Love Our Forest People Peter Rost, MD Drug Money and the Clinton Campaign Website of the Day Nader Live: "Things are a Lot Worse Than We Thought" October 11, 2007 Al Giordano Bill Clinton as Ambassador to the World? Saul Landau Killing for Profit: Blackwater in Iraq Jacob G. Hornberger The Failed Legacy of Interventionism William S. Lind The Iraq Mirage Joshua Frank Big Sky Rebels Josh Mahan Colorado River Blues Pat Williams Where Are You, Paul Wellstone?     October 10, 2007 Michael Yates Travels Across Greenspan's America Gary Leupp Spreading Awareness or Smearing a Religion? David Macaray How Wal-Mart Can be Beaten Alan Farago Corruption and the Law of Intended Consequences Tom Clifford Homeless in Their Own Land: Iraq's Deepening Refugee Crisis Col. Douglas MacGregor Washington's War Sunsara Taylor Nooses at Columbia George Wuerthner Behind the Bovine Curtain Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Indigenous Peoples' Day Michael Dickinson Forgetting Lennon's Birthday Website of the Day Paying for War   October 9, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Blinded by Ideology: Cato, Trade and Outsourcing Andy Worthington Fourth Whistleblower Rocks Guantánamo Alan Farago The Fall of Florida's Largest Land Developer Brian Eno Exporting Democracy with Missiles David Rovics The RIAA vs. the World Farzana Versey Two Lovers and the Funeral of Secularism Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich Musharraf's Landslide Website of the Day Romney and the Wheelchair Bound Medical Marijuana Patient   October 8, 2007 David Macaray Lesbians for Hillary? or Teamsters for Hillary? Jeff Ballinger Nike, Steroids and Marion Jones Brian Eno This Ban Won't Stop Us Christopher Brauchli Translating Bush Louay Safi End the Disgrace of Guantánamo Matt Reichel Homocide by Cops at the Phoenix Airport Dave Lindorff Finally, A Good Day for the Constitution Thomas P. Healy The Politics of Mercury Pollution Martha Rosenberg E. Coli Spreading Slaughter Allowed to Stay Open Richard Rhames A Democrat's Lament Website of the Day Not All Italians Love Columbus   October 6 / 7, 2007 Alexander Cockburn A Rainbow Over a Graveyard Norman Finkelstein Jeffrey Goldberg's Prison James Bovard Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners? Patrick Cockburn The Invasion of Afghanistan, Six Years Later Jeffrey St. Clair At Disaster Falls Ralph Nader Where Are the Lawyers of America? Ray McGovern So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Saul Landau A River Runs Through It Ben Tripp Bring on the Next War! Terry Lodge The Grateful Dead Body Parts Delivered to Your Door Reform Act Seth Sandronsky Market Mystification and the Liberal Virus Kevin Funk / Steve Fake Divestment and Darfur Missy Beattie In the Custody of Bush and Cheney Website of the Weekend Snoop Dogg vs. Bill O'Reilly   October 5, 2007 Andy Worthington The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo David Macaray De-Skilling America's Labor Force Lee Sustar The Democrats and Iran: Can They Sink Any Lower? Dan La Botz Cincinnati Six Years After the Killings and the Riots Aaron Hess Hate Week Comes to Campus William A. Cook Unmasking AIPAC Website of the Day Range of Memory   October 4, 2007 Uri Avnery The Power of the Israel Lobby Dave Marsh Dick Cheney, a Eulogy Valerio Volpi How Italy Became a Launching Pad for the US Military Cecilie Surasky Dissenting at Your Own Risk Dave Lindorff Remaking Iraq, as Vietnam Norman Solomon Sputnik, 50 Years Later Laura Carlsen Costa Rica and CAFTA: Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme Walter Brasch When Compassion Fails: Bush and the Children's Health Act Ben Terrall Haitian Human Rights Advocate Kidnapped William S. Lind Beyond the OODA Loop Website of the Day Musicians in Handcuffs   October 3, 2007 Vijay Prashad Gang of Four Anita Sinha Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans Winslow T. Wheeler Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight? Sharon Smith The Kucinich Quandary Jeff Leys Our Bonhoeffer Moment Sen. Russ Feingold We Must End This Tragedy Mohamad Bazzi Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad Brenda Norrell A Cry from the Top of the World Robert Weissman No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF Website of the Day Jena by Mellencamp   October 2, 2007 Ibrahim Warde Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth Gary Leupp "I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official David Macaray The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote Conn Hallinan Religion and Foreign Policy John Ross The Great American Chess Match Alan Farago Ripping Off Miami's Poor Sonja Karkar The Right to Exist: States or People? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Meteor and the Mahatma Website of the Day Grandin on Che's Legacy   October 1, 2007 Al Giordano The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors Paul Craig Roberts From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West Moshe Adler The Crimes of Microsoft Ingmar Lee My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast John V. Walsh Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy Norman Solomon Political Science and Truth of Consequences Roger Burbach Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left Ramzy Baroud The Politics of Assassination Stephen Lendman The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy Susie Day Honey, I Shrank the Military! Website of the Day Letters from Fort Lewis Brig   September 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back? Uri Avnery So What About Iran? Andrew Cockburn Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable Jeffrey St. Clair Through the Gates of Lodore Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi Andy Worthington The Curse of the Military Commissions Don Santina Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco Ralph Nader Free Lunches, for Corporations! Fred Gardner The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Seth Sandronsky The US Economy Since 1980 Gideon Levy The Children of 5767 William S. Lind A Ticking Bomb Reza Fiyouzat An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran Richard Rhames Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog David Michael Green Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret Zach Mason Hate and Hope in Herndon Poets' Basement Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss Website of the Weekend Domestic Crusaders     September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time               Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition October 27 / 28, 2007 Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations By ROBERT SANDELS In 2005, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded Creighton University a $750,000 contract to study how to collect on claims against the Cuban government for property confiscations, most of which were carried out in 1959 and 1960. The resulting report, issued in October, reinforces the suspicion that the claims were never meant to be resolved but simply added to the store of weapons useful for the giant Cuban makeover that is supposed to happen after the death of Fidel Castro. The report is also likely to be soon forgotten. Even USAID appears not to take the study seriously since it cut the project from two years to one and halved its budget. But no matter, the report is not worth the money. To begin with, it lists as its outside advisors five organizations of dubious acquaintance with objectivity on Cuban issues. They are, the US military (Southern Command) and four anti-Castro NGOs: the Cuban American Bar Association; the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy; the Cuba Study Group; and the Cuba Transition Project, another recipient of USAID money. One need look no further than the first paragraph of the report's executive summary to see that the Creighton scholars hurried to surrender their credibility by associating their proposals with the US campaign to overthrow the Cuban government. The model they propose for adjudicating property claims is "a central feature in the U.S. Government's proactive planning for Cuba's transition to democracy," and "responds to the requirement of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity [Helms-Burton] Act."[1] This legislative confection is, of course, the imperial blueprint for eliminating the Cuban government and imposing a US-dictated market economy. No claimant left behind In 1972, the Justice Department's Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC) registered 5,911 claims for confiscated personal and business property with an estimated value $6 billion.[2] To register, all claimants must have been US citizens or businesses owned by US citizens at the time of the confiscations. The Creighton report follows general historical precedent by proposing that a settlement be negotiated through a bilateral claims tribunal. Comprising a second category are claimants the FCSC refers to as Cuban-Americans - those who were Cuban citizens at the time their property was confiscated and therefore not covered by international law on restitution. Their only option is to apply to the Cuban government for redress. However, even while recognizing that the United States has no jurisdiction over these claims, the Creighton scholars offer a non-legal justification for including them somewhere in their compensation scheme. "Politically and economically," says the report, "their claims should not be ignored." Why not? Because their influence over policymakers in Washington "brought about the Libertad Act...achieved special immigration status for Cubans leaving the island [Cuban Adjustment Act], sustained Radio Marti programming, and leveraged millions of dollars in federal money to support democracy programming for Cuba."[3] For this group, the Creighton scholars propose that Cuba set up a special independent claims court within its judicial system. Curiously, they recommend that this independent court should consist of 12 judges appointed "in consultation with the United States," and that only six of the judges should be of the same nationality.[4] Consequently, might such an independent Cuban court consist of six judges from Miami and six from Poland? Could such a court be independent or even legal within the Cuban judicial system if rules for its makeup were determined by a foreign power? Perhaps USAID should commission another study to find out. No claimant left behind except Cuba A third claimant category could be added. The Cuban government seeks compensation for damages inflicted on Cuban lives and property by decades of economic blockade, invasions, sabotage and terrorist acts carried out directly or indirectly by the United States. A Cuban court in 1999 assessed the damage at more than $181 billion. The report does not suggest a model for addressing these claims except for specific property losses such as personal bank accounts frozen in the United States. "Other Cuban claims, including tort claims, should be undertaken within the domestic Cuban judicial system and treated as normal litigation."[5] The scholars seem to forget that in 1996, the US Congress showed how citizens of one country could sue governments of another country by claiming they were victims of terrorism. In that year, President Bill Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which expanded "the circumstances under which foreign governments that support terrorism may be sued for resulting injuries, and increases the assistance and compensation available to the victims of terrorism."[6] The law blew a hole in the immunity nations generally have from such lawsuits under the Foreign Sovereignty Immunity Act of 1976.[7] Claims & how not to resolve them Cuba long ago settled the claims of Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In 1960, Cuba offered to compensate US claimants through a bond issue funded with income from sugar sales to the United States, which were assured by yearly import quotas allotted to Cuba since 1934. President Dwight Eisenhower responded to the offer by suspending the sugar quota for the rest of his term, and his successor, John F. Kennedy, reduced it to zero in 1961. The effect was to cut off the chief source of dollars Cuba needed to back the bonds.[8] Thus, the claims issue persists nearly 50 years after most of the confiscations took place even though there are well-established mechanisms in international law and common practice to settle them. There are historical precedents that could be followed without recourse to the foolish Creighton model. The United States could simply advise the Cuban government to ignore the claims just as the government of George Washington ignored the claims of dispossessed Tories and Loyalists after the War of Independence. Or, the United States could negotiate a settlement as it did four years after the Mexican oil expropriations of 1938. But Cuba is different. The claims serve a political purpose by remaining unresolved. The US refusal to accept the Cuban offer was not based on a consideration of what was good for the claimants but rather on the usefulness of unresolved claims to help justify US Cuba policy and on the value of maintaining a permanent class of angry claimants in Miami who support that policy. The claims competition game The appointment in 2002 of Mauricio Tamargo as head of the FCSC worried lawyers for some of the registered corporate claimants that he might set up a special program to accept claims from the Cuban-American category, greatly increasing competition for compensation from the roughly $270 million in Cuban funds frozen in the United States since 1963. That suspicion was based on Tamargo's history as a Bush appointee who had worked for 20 years on the staff of the reflexively anti-Castro Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). While Tamargo created no such program, he managed to increase the competition by opening a second round of certification in 2006 at the request of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 34 years after all claims were supposed to have been submitted. Five more claims were certified, but the most important one, which apparently was the reason for Rice's intervention, was that of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide of White Plains, NY. Starwood's claim was based on confiscations in 1968 and 2003 of land and bank accounts in Havana previously owned by Radio Corporation of Cuba, a subsidiary of the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). Starwood acquired ITT's interest in the assets in 1998. "It is extraordinary that a program would be created for a single company," said Robert Muse, an attorney for some of the corporate claimants.[9] But, the real threat to the registered claimants came not from Tamargo's FCSC but from Miami courtrooms. The frozen-fund raiders The Eisenhower, Kennedy and subsequent administrations effectively turned matters of sovereign state policy over to private citizens and civil courts in Miami. The Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, revived in modern times primarily as a tool for redress in human rights cases abroad, was made available to plaintiffs in the United States who could convince a court that they were victimized by a foreign country. The Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act then comes into play allowing plaintiffs to argue that their victimization was the result of state-sponsored terrorism. These two laws were successfully employed in the Brothers to the Rescue case.[10] In 1997, a Miami court awarded $187 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the families of two pilots of the Miami-based organization who were shot down by Cuban jet fighters the previous year over waters near Cuba. The award was to be paid from the frozen funds, but the Clinton administration regarded control of the funds as the prerogative of the executive branch and opposed taping into them to satisfy court judgments. Nevertheless, in 2001, he authorized a $93 million payout from the funds to compensate the families. This was in addition to $1.2 million in US taxpayer funds they were given in 1998. Later in 2001, Congress legislated further access to the funds by permitting claimants to collect on compensatory (but not punitive) damage awards from the frozen funds in cases against countries the United States declared "rogue states." In another case, Ana Margarita Martinez won a judgment against Cuba under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Martinez was the wife of Cuban pilot Juan Pablo Roque, who defected in 1992 and joined the Brothers to the Rescue. Just before the shootdown in 1996, he turned up on Cuban television denouncing the Brothers as a terrorist organization. He denied having been a Cuban agent, but the Martinez suit rested on the official Miami assumption that he was. Martinez based her suit on allegations that Roque had married her under false pretenses, and that the Cuban government was therefore an accessory to rape because at the time of the marriage Roque was allegedly working for Cuba. Technically, she won the settlement as a victim of terrorism and the court ratified the claim by declaring Roque a spy, a terrorist and an accessory to murder. In 2001, Martinez was awarded $27 million. In 2003, her lawyers took possession of two Cuban-owned planes that had been hijacked and flown to Key West. Proceeds of $19,000 from the sale of the planes went to Martinez in partial payment of her award. In 2005, Bush authorized a further $198,000 payment from the frozen funds. Cuba ordered to pay invaders Various non-property claims arose from cases involving the deaths of US citizens taking part in attempts to overthrow the Cuban government. In one such case, a Miami court in 2006 awarded $400 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a wrongful death suit against Cuba to the survivors of Robert Fuller, a US citizen who took part in an armed incursion into Cuba and was tried and executed in 1960. The plaintiffs' brief said that Fuller had "ventured to Cuba in an effort to protect his family's land, businesses and other interests." [11] The expedition was actually ordered and outfitted in Miami by Rolando Masferrer, generally regarded as a counter-revolutionary terrorist. Fuller and two dozen others aboard four boats took part in the "venture." OfficeMax versus dead pilots' daughter Another case involved CIA contract pilot Thomas Ray, shot down in his B-24 while assisting the US Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961. He was tried and executed the same year. If there are any Cuban victims of his attack on the town of Central Australia in 1961, they might try suing his daughter Janet Ray Weininger, who won a judgment from a Miami court in 2004. Using the legal legerdemain cited in various US tort cases against Cuba, they might consider themselves victims of terrorism and try suing the estates of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. OfficeMax Inc. tried to block payment to Weininger arguing that its $267 million claim was the biggest one registered with the FCSC and should be first in line to get at the frozen funds. OfficeMax took over a claim from Boise Cascade for the loss of its interest in the expropriated Cuban Electric Company. The competition between OfficeMax and Janet Ray Weininger illustrates one of the problems caused by a succession of US administrations surrendering issues of sovereign prerogative to private interests for foreign policy advantage. None of the court awards in these cases was grounded in property claims, which casts doubt on the seriousness of the government's pledges to support the duly registered claimants. The major legislative remedies Congress made available to plaintiffs create a kind of closed system, a legal black hole from which nothing can emerge, as illustrated by the logic of Helms-Burton. It prohibits resumption of full economic and political relations between Cuba and the United States until the property claims are settled.[12] But there is a catch: There can be no resolution of the claims until relations are resumed. That requires the destruction of the Cuban revolution, for the benefit of which the confiscations were ordered in the first place. Robert Sandels writes about Cuba and Latin America for the Latin America Database at the University of New Mexico and other publications. He received a B.A. in Spanish literature in 1958 from the University of the Americas in Mexico City. He also received an M.A. in American history in 1962 and a Ph.D in Latin American history in 1967 from the University of Oregon. He has taught at Chico State University in California, at San Francisco State University, and at Quinnipiac College in Connecticut. This article originally appeared on Cuba-L Direct. Notes   [1] Executive Summary, Creighton report, Sec.I(A)(2), 09/13/07. [2] There is also a private Miami-based Cuba Claims Registry Assistance firm set up 1999. Its purpose is to connect potential buyers of the claims with the claimants and to scare off potential investors in the property. El Nuevo Herald, 08/04/99. [3] Executive Summary, Creighton Report, I (A)(2). [4] Ibid., Sec.I(D). [5] Ibid., Sec.I(B). [6] Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Title II Sec.221.http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/laws/majorlaw/s735.htm. [7] Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Suits Against Terrorist States by Victims of Terrorism, 06/07/05. [8] For a full history, see Cuba vs. Blockade. [9] The Miami Herald, 08/25/05. [10] Citing the Alien Tort Act, Lawyers in Miami tried to sue Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez alleging he caused the deaths of opposition demonstrators during the failed 2002 coup attempt. Law.Com, 07/13/03. [11] Estate of Robert Otis Fuller vs. The Republic of Cuba, Claim Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act 2002, In the Circuit of the 11TH Judicial Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida, Cuban Information Archives. [12] "It is the sense of the Congress that the satisfactory resolution of property claims by a Cuban Government recognized by the United States remains an essential condition for the full resumption of economic and diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba." Helms-Burton Act, Sec.207 (d).

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