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Today's Stories January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah January 26 / 27, 2008 Uri Avnery Worse Than a Crime JoAnn Wypijewski How the Clintons Lost It, Whatever the Outcome in S. Carolina Ralph Nader Ambition, Power and the Clintons Paul Craig Roberts How Bush Destroyed the Dollar Paul Watson I'm Proud to be a Pirate! John Ross Murder and Cover-Up in Mexico Fred Gardner Ross v. Raging Wire: Employer's Right to Fire Workers Held Sacred by California Supreme Court Allan Nairn Little Hands with Fever: Some Consequences of Poverty Death Joshua Frank Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey Binoy Kampmark Société Générale and the Economic Meltdown James T. Phillips America's Sick Comedy: Bringing the War Home Stan Cox The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants Eamonn McCann Hillary's Lie: "I Brought Peace to Northern Ireland" Ron Jacobs The Horizons of History: What's at Stake in Bolivia Seth Sandronsky California's Health Care Crisis Ben Terrall The Future is Unwritten Poets' Basement Tripp, Gardner, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend City of Immigrants     January 25, 2008 Douglas Valentine Operation Two-Fold: How the CIA Infiltrated the DEA Patrick Cockburn US Troops Will Be In Iraq for 10 More Years: an Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari JoAnn Wypijewski Down to the Wire in South Carolina Heather Gray Are We Seeing a Racial Shift in the South? Conversations with South Carolina Voters Marjorie Cohn Senate Democrats Poised to Fold to Cheney on FISA Erica Rosenberg Environmentalists Out on a Limb: the Perils of Collaboration Alan Farago Jeb Bush Goes Nuclear Robert Weissman Reclaiming Economic Freedom Laura Carlsen Wild Cards: Mining the Hispanic Vote in Nevada Stephen Lendman Israeli Repression in the Hebron Website of the Day The FIX is In   January 24, 2008 JoAnn Wypijewski Obama as Anthologist of Uplift Paul Craig Roberts President Hillary Alexander Cockburn Hillary Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember Her Nursing Home Scam? Kathleen Christison One and Two State Solutions and the Myth of International Consensus Jeff Halper Power to the (Palestinian) People! Stanley Heller The Siege of Gaza is Broken George Wuerthner The Moronic Sport: ORVs on the Public Lands Patrick Cockburn Desperate Iraqi Farmers Turn to Opium Jeff Sher Just How "Good" is Your Health Insurance? Patrick Irelan Musharraf, the Steadfast Ally? Charles Modiano Restoring the Anti-War King Website of the Day An Illustrated History of Trepanation   January 23, 2008 David Rosen The Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics of Sex David Isenberg Is It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons Program? Farzana Versey Hillary's Harem Paul Craig Roberts The Empire That Must Be Obeyed Alan Farago Where Did All the Good Times Go? Allan Nairn Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights Activist Kenneth Couesbouc Another Turn of the Screw Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West was Re-Sold Michael Donnelly Obama Strikes Back Norman Solomon The Power of Love Website of the Day Rafah Today   January 22, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Farewell to Old Economic Nostrums JoAnn Wypijewski King Day in Columbia, South Carolina Al Giordano Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada Felice Pace Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon Paul Wolf Bolívar's Sword Robert Weissman Deregulation and the Financial Crisis Dave Lindorff The Bush Dollar Trap Marjorie Cohn Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction Richard Neville Keeping Shakespeare in a Box Don Fitz / Zaki Baruti St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform Ben Terrall Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness Sam Husseini Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr. Website of the Day Defend the Mapuche!     January 21, 2008 Kevin Alexander Gray Playing the Race Card Linn Washington, Jr. Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy Pam Martens How Wall Street Blew Itself Up David Macaray Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party? Uri Avnery Look Who's Talking Omar Barghouti Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide Joe DeRaymond Protest and Trial in D.C. B.R. Gowani Why Islam Should Tolerate Images Shepherd Bliss The False U.S. Economy Jean-Guy Allard Philip Agee Versus the CIA Dan Bacher Leaping Steelhead! Website of the Day Destroyed By a Rising Flood January 19 / 20, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Campaign in Black and White Saul Landau Good Time Charlie's War China Hand Endgame for Pakistan? Conn Hallinan Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About? Ron Jacobs No Retreat Dave Lindorff A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess Andy Worthington Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture Paul Armentano What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think Seth Sandronsky High Crimes and Economics Michael Donnelly Dodging Ecocide Patrick Irelan The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki Martha Rosenberg The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit Sherwood Ross Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade David Michael Green So You Want to be My President, Eh? James Rothenberg Unimpeachable: Under House Protection Daniel Gross Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King Peter N. Carroll In Memory of Milton Wolff Susie Day Croakin' on Hudson Paul Krassner Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu Poets' Basement Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski Website of the Day Rocky Mountain Blues   January 18, 2008 Allan Nairn Killing Civilians, Carefully Ralph Nader When the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill? Joanne Mariner Terrorism and Preventative Detention Alan Farago The Stimulus and the Meltdown P. Sainath Pity the Brahmins R.F. Blader Beyond Steinem's Feminism Andy Worthington A Letter from Guantánamo John Jonik Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health Brian McKenna Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan Women's Prison Daoud Kuttab This Time Next Year? Website of the Day Those South Carolina Voting Machines   January 17, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Leader and Vassal Christopher Brauchli The FBI's Bills Come Due Robert Fantina Leadership, Bush and the New York Times Patrick Irelan Eternal War Paul A. Moore When the Rich Pay No Taxes Stephen Lendman Institutionalized Spying on Americans Beena Sarwar Bhutto and the "State Within a State" Walter Brasch Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment Brenda Norrell Bush Legacy in Texas Sours Adam Federman End of the Left? Website of the Day Democrats for Romney   January 16, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Return of the Native Franklin Lamb The Bombing at Qarantina Julian Sanchez David Weigel Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters? Sharon Smith Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope? Allan Nairn Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market Ayesha Ijaz Khan How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation Andy Worthington A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo Richard Behan Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach! Website of the Day Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!   January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds Wajahat Ali An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy and the Prospects of War with Iran Joe Bageant Getting Out the Bling Vote Ralph Nader The Candidate Taboos John Ross Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse Elaine Cassel Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified? Peter Morici The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy Beena Sarwar Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade Robert Weissman Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought Binoy Kampmark Going Tata in India Dave Zirin Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame Website of the Day David Lynch on the iPhone   January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH   January 8, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old) Russell Mokhiber The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative Robert Fantina The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz Dave Zirin Butts on Parade Shamako Nobel I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop John Ross Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves Brenda Norrell Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security Laura Carlsen Why Bolivia Matters Patrick Irelan Remember the Maine! Evelyn J. Pringle The Holes in Bush's FDA Jonathan M. Feldman After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace Movement Michael Dickinson Playing Soldier Website of the Day Sean Hannity on the Run!   January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd There Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities John Blair Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana Uri Avnery The Case of the White Bird Andy Worthington Who Are the Gitmo Saudis? Binoy Kampmark Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court David Macaray Women on Strike Ralph Nader Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood Michael Donnelly It's the War Vote(s), Stupid! Ron Jacobs Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough? Gideon Levy The Hostile President Dave Lindorff A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb Website of the Day Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea   January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Good Guys in Black Hoods Kevin Young The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq Richard Rhames Saddam Who? Saul Landau Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory Marc Lynch Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing Robert Fantina Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War Donna Volatile Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr. Jelle Bruinsma Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands Bob Sutcliffe Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist Harvey Wasserman Anti-Nuclear Renaissance Missy Beattie Why Obama Can't Save Us David Swanson Remembering the Separation of Powers Jacob Hornberger The Importance of the Padilla Case Shepherd Bliss Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms Ron Jacobs Bleeding Kansas Poets' Basement Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski Website of the Weekend Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint   January 4, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Good Night in Iowa Jonathan Cook War Crimes Airbrushed from History Paul Craig Roberts Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime Stan Goff Ron Paul's Monkeywrench Dave Lindorff Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds Niranjan Ramakrishnan To Pindi Station Allan Nairn U.S. Elections Over Before They Began Joshua Frank The Failures of Sectarianism Peter Morici Economy on the Skids Mary McInnis Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease Website of the Day The Return of Obama Girl   January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Farewell to Wadi Bua Pam Martens The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos Joanne Mariner The Presidential Candidates and Torture Zoltan Grossman Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web David Domke The Echoing Press and Huckabee Norman Solomon Edwards Reconsidered Nikolas Kozloff Return of the Faux Liberal Jacob G. Hornberger The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus Martha Rosenberg Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick Russell Means This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands Website of the Day WolfQuest       Subscribe Online

January 28, 2008 Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Pissed About Pistorious By JAMES L. SECOR Oscar Pistorius is a gimp. A crip. A handicapped man with an attitude. He's also what's known, in disability circles, as a super-crip. This is a somewhat pejorative label as it gives the rest of us a bad name--by and for the mainstream abled community. Super-crips make the rest of us look like slackers, like lazy no-goods out for a hand-out: if he can do it, why can't you?, ask the able-bodied. Let me here engage in blonde sorority girl ingenuousness: Well du-uh! Is anybody home? From one gimp to a whole bunch of able-bodied people: Can you do what Michael Johnson did? Can you do as well as Wilt the Stilt? Are you Bret Favre? How about Ronaldinho, can you play like him? No. Of course you can't. Why? These people are exceptional. . .and you're not. You're just average. Like most disabled, very many of whom are ex-military. The very worst athlete you see on TV is better than any athlete you've ever met. So, if you can't do what these athletes can do, why do you expect all crips to perform like super-crips, the exceptions to the rule? Prejudice. Pure and simple. We're a sign of the fragility and meaninglessness of life. We are the embodiment of your life-fear: there but for the grace of God go I. So. . .God's grace has been taken from the disabled and it's therefore A-OK to ignore the disabled, want the disabled out of the way, treat the disabled poorly, as if they're something less? Why is it they have to fight so hard for inclusion in this society? Where's the humanity? And now that a super-crip can perform at the level of an able-bodied exception, the prejudice surfaces with a vengeance. Why? Because a gimp is as good as a non-gimp and that makes the abled look like they're less than they are. You think? And, by God, he can't do that to us! In reality, all Oscar Pistorius has done is overcome a handicap that most normal and, probably, most exceptional people could not overcome. And that pisses y'all off. Who the hell does he think he is, acting like a normal person? He's a fucking crip! He belongs on the sidelines, living a bare subsistence life, dependent on the pity and piteous welfare of peoples and governments, living in holes in the wall or nursing homes--just damn well anywhere but out in public and independent. Yeah? What an insult, what an embarrassment Helen Keller was to the abled community. Yeah? Homer (blind). Milton (blind). Beethoven (deaf). Goebbels (club foot). Henry VIII (club foot). Cher (dyslexic). FDR (post polio syndrome). Abe Lincoln (manic-depressive). Lord Byron (club foot, manic-depressive). Lord Horatio Nelson (blind in one eye). Sarah Bernhardt (one leg). Steven Hawking (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Walt Disney (learning disabled). Miss America 1995, Heather Whitestone McCallum (deaf). Deafy Hoy (baseball pitcher who invented umpire signs). Curtis Pride (baseball outfielder). The great NFL running back John Mackey (one leg shorter than the other). Moshe Dayan (blind in one eye). Why is it that a disabled person must out-perform any and all abled persons in order to gain respect and recognition? Why is it when he does he is suddenly not allowed to compete? Why? Because he's too good. And his disability shows. His adjustment to disability and his will to perform, no greater than any other exceptional athlete's will to perform, is right out in the open. What an insult to Michael Johnson if Oscar "Gimp" Pistorius even ties his record--a record gained by specially rearranging Olympic events so Johnson could perform at such a high level. Pistorius isn't asking the Olympics for anything special to enhance his performance. Oh! There's the key word: enhance. Performance enhancing drugs disqualify you from the Olympics. Performance enhancing drugs for the able-bodied. Performance enhancing drugs that raise the ability of the abled above their natural capability limits. Since cheetahs enhance Legless Pistorius' performance, he can be eliminated, too. Right? Well. . .he's not normal able-bodied to begin with so. . .is it the same kind of enhancement? No. But it doesn't matter: he's a crip out-performing most able-bodied athletes and we just can't allow that. Y'know? So. . .the Olympic Committee gets together and in their able-bodied sagacity and prejudice ruminate over the matter. They decide to do a simulation. That simulation proved to them that, yes, Gimpy Pistorius' cheetahs are an enhancement because he doesn't have to put out as much effort as an able-bodied man. Let's forget that he doesn't have the legs to do what an able-bodied man could do to begin with, yeah? But there's a problem here. As Karl Popper points out in Conjectures and Refutations, simulations will always prove what you are setting out to prove because of the way the experiment is set up: with prejudice, with the desired end in sight. This, he says, proves nothing. If you want to prove a theory--and it is only a theory that Pistorius' artificial limbs are performance enhancers in the illegal Olympic sense--you must try to prove that that theory is wrong. If you can't, then, at least for the moment, you're right. A simulation does not prove a theory at all; it proves a preconceived notion, a prejudgment. . .a prejudice. A disabled person performing at the level of world class able-bodied athletes is untenable. It's unheard of. Until now. Well, at least for the Olympic Committee members. They're not up on their sports history: asthma is a disabling disease and many Olympic athletes have asthma yet they are allowed to compete even though they are taking medication that contains the performance enhancing drugs known as "steroids" and "speed." All they have to do was tell the Olympic Committee they were taking this drug for their asthmatic condition, their disease, their disability. Pistorius doesn't have to tell anyone of his performance enhancer--that an able-bodied man could not use--because it's visible to all and sundry. Steroidal anti-asthmatic medication allows a person to perform beyond his normal capability; so, too, Pistorius' cheetahs. What's the difference? Well, I think you can see need. And the man's got no lower legs. And he can run. And he has overcome his disability to such an extent that he can perform at world class able-bodied level. Those asthmatics couldn't without their drugs. So, what's the difference? After all. . .a disabled man can't do as well as an abled man, right? I mean, he isn't supposed to be able to. I mean, we can't let this happen. Can we? A disabled man as good as. . .me? Hell no! Disqualified! On what grounds? Able-bodied prejudice. Fear. Fear of failure: a crip can do what a non-crip can't. It doesn't matter that we do what the abled can't do every day: listen to yourselves. . .I'd hate to be like that, I could never. . . . The Olympic Committee has effectively taken the disabled agenda to the international arena where everyone can see their narrow-minded, dismissive, segregationist attitude, the attitude that keeps us marginalized, inferior and worthless. Oscar Pistorius asks for recognition and the OC, able-bodied athletes and the press spit in his face. George Washington couldn't have won much of anything if it hadn't been for his two disabled officers. Yeah. Get that: the Father of the USA needed crips to be a winner. James L. Secor is a writer dramatist and professor of literature at Shaoxing University, Shaoxing China. He can be reached at znzfqlxskj@gmail.com.

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