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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 24, 2005 Dave Zirin Palestine's Big Visitor: Not Laura, but Ronaldo May 23, 2005 Esther Sassaman / Thomas Nagy An Exclusive Interview with George Galloway Mike Whitney Free Jose Padilla: Three Years in Prison, Not a Shred of Evidence Ramzy Baroud Fallout from a Forged War: Battling Windmills While Iraq Burns Michael Dickinson Pictures at an Exhibition: Censoring the "Carnival of Chaos" Walter Brasch In Praise of Bob Barr Dick J. Reavis The Newsweek Scandal: an Unmentioned Detail Maria Tomchick Galloway and the US Press Norman Solomon Let's Play "Media Jeopardy" Kevin Zeese Inventing a Pretext for War: an Inte4rview with James Bamford Website of the Day Drawings of Darfur: Genocide Through Children's Eyes   May 21 / 22, 2005 David H. Price CIA Skullduggery in Academia Gabriel García Márquez My Visit to the Clinton White House, Bearing a Message from Fidel on Terrorism Oren Ben-Dor To Create Academic Freedom in Israel, a Boycott is Needed Gary Leupp Nights in White House Satin with Jeff Gannon Laith al-Saud An Anatomy of the Iraqi Resistance Elaine Cassel Bush and the Angry God: Twilight of Secular Democracy in America? Greg Moses The Saints of Mischief and Halliburton Fred Gardner Martyring Dr. Carol Wolman Dave Lindorff The GOP's Police State Alan Maass Uzbekistan's Karimov: Bush's Favorite Terrorist? William Blum The American Myth Industry Tom Crumpacker Send Posada Carriles to Venezuela Niranjan Ramakrishnan Newsweek: a Contest of Hypocrisies Doug Giebel The Grand Illusion Evelyn J. Pringle No Child Left Unmedicated: TeenScreen, State-drugging and Suicide Carolyn Baker Spiritual Abuse by the Religious Right Chris Floyd Justice in JebWorld Frederick B. Hudson Black and Gay?: a Review of "Brother to Brother" Ben Tripp Him Talk Plenty Long Time: Busting the Filibuster Poets' Basement Davies, Engel and Louise   May 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff Newsweek and White House Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese As Insurgency Increases, New US Military Recruits Fall Paul de Rooij "Private": a Film in Search of a Cliché Christopher Brauchli How Insurance Companies Exploited 9/11 Mark Engler Triumph Over Debt? Joshua Frank Bush to Dine with Porn Star Robert Jensen TV Talk, No Evidence Required Jeffery R. Webber Bolivia Erupts   May 19, 2005 Bill Forman An Interview with Alexander Cockburn Stan Goff Hey, Democrats, Listen to Galloway and Learn Something Neve Gordon From Ghettos to Frontiers: What Will Happen After Israel Withdraws from Gaza Michael Dickinson The Trouble with Menwith: Tagging British Peace Activists Karyn Strickler The Texas Nexus: How Racial and Political Gerrymandering United Andrew Freedman Nazi Science at NIH Paul Craig Roberts The Politics and Economics of Outsourcing   May 18, 2005 Jean Bricmont Vive La France? Laura Carlsen Bush's Posada Carriles Quandry: an Anti-Cuba Terrorist is Still a Terrorist Mike Whitney The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales: 10,000 Swept Up Joshua Frank Flushing the Koran: Why Newsweek Got It Right George Galloway Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens) Manuel Garcia, Jr. Writing Tickets for American War Crimes Dwight D. Eisenhower How the GOP will Destroy Itself Dave Lindorff The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse May 17, 2005 Mickey Z. GIs Behaving Badly Petuuche Gilbert The People of Acoma Still Fight to be Free Paul Craig Roberts Lies That Kill: Why Isn't Bush in the Dock? Ramzy Baroud The New Palestinian Uprising Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood Pinning the Blame on Newsweek Stan Cox Poisoning Patancheru: the Severe Side Effects of India's Drug Industry Dave Zirin American Anthem: Ozzie Guillen and Fining for Freedom Diana Barahona Reporters Without Borders Unmasked Website of the Day Revolutionary Flower Pot Society May 16, 2005 Michael Gillespie The Family Released a Statement: Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy Jason Leopold BP Stains the Arctic Jesse Muldoon How Many Schools Left Behind? Norman Solomon Media and the War: "The Bombs in Iraq Explode at Home" Robert Cray Twenty Patrick Cockburn Iraq is a Bloody No Man's Land Website of the Day Bolton's Divorce Papers: She Took It All Away, Including Most of the Furniture   May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Join the 14 Per Cent Club! Saul Landau Lessons from Vietnam: Wars Kill Empires as Well as People Gary Leupp Whither Yale? Towards the Imperial University JoAnn Wypijewski The Glory that is Lockhart, Texas Ben Tripp The Wayward Airplane: a Cautionary Tale Brian J. Foley Was Jesus Gay? Tom Barry Bolton the Eavesdropper Mitchell Verter Barbarous Oaxaca: Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the "Law of the Club" Mike Ferner War on COs: Army Files Additional Charges Against Kevin Benderman Dan Smith Perceiving Darfur Mark Scaramella Death with Pitfalls Don Fitz Mommy, Is This a Finger in My Rice Puffs?: Splicing Human DNA into the Food Chain Diane Farsetta PR Industry Imitates Big Tobacco: the Senate's "Fake News" Hearings Michael Dickinson Soldier Crawling: Military Conscription in Turkey Ron Jacobs The Jackson State Murders Fred Gardner "Hydroponics? 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Lind Reality Gap: the Myth of US Invincibilty Jack Random The Dubious Wisdom of George W. Bush Gary Leupp Douglas Feith Bares His Soul to Jeffrey Goldberg     May 11, 2005 Patrick Cockburn The Rise, Fall and Rise of Ahmed Chalabi: King of Jordan to Pardon His $300 Million Bank Swindle Kevin Zeese The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day Christopher Brauchli Coffee, Tea or Torture?: A One Way Ticket to Uzbekistan Zalman Amit The Collapse of Academic Freedom in Israel: Tantura, Teddy Katz and Haifa University Robert Shull Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops: Senate Gives DHS Power to Waive All Laws Mike Whitney God, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Anti-Arabic Week at a Southern High School Norman Solomon Political Bluster and the Filibuster   May 10, 2005 Richard Drayton The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check Dave Zirin Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP Jackie Corr The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall Dave Lindorff Silence of the Scams: Economists on China Michael Donnelly From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory Reza Fiyouzat Nomadic Abstracts Scott Parkin Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton Stephen Babcock The Burden of Knowing Better Alan Farago Florida, Water and Lobbyists Michael Neumann Naomi's Courage Website of the Day One Nation Under Plagiarism   May 9, 2005 Louis Proyect Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher Robert Fisk "Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two Kevin Zeese Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman Joshua Frank Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage Sasha Kramer A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons Andrew Wimmer Create and Resist Jeffrey Webber Back to the Streets in Bolivia? Jeffrey St. Clair Straight to Bechtel   May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Who Beat Hitler? Gary Leupp Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism Saul Landau Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups Joe DeRaymond Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega Daniela Ponce Seeing Chile in Nepal Heather Williams Hollywood Does Enron Gregory Elich Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice Anis Memon To Cuba and Back John Chuckman The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism" Mike Whitney Hard Right Rage Against the Truth Ron Jacobs Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On Colin Kalmbacher Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont. Lance Selfa Uprising in Mexico City Fred Gardner "Getting High is a Little Like Cuba" Ben Tripp Letters on Wittgenstein Mickey Z. The Mother of All Days Richard Joseph Those Patriotic Magnets Dr. Susan Block Come As You Are: Masturbation 101 Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert     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. Sainath 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                                             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

May 24, 2005 Herzl Day in Berlin Wagner at the Holocaust Memorial By URI AVNERY What to do on "Herzl Day", the anniversary of the birth of the founder of the Zionist movement - officially celebrated this week for the first time? How to honor the memory of this strange man, who still has such an enormous impact on our lives? The day found me in Berlin. I took a look at what was on in the city and discovered the perfect solution: on the same day, the renowned Staatsoper, the State Opera House, was performing Richard Wagner's Tannhaeuser. What connection can there be between Wagner, the anti-Semitic composer, whose works are not performed in Israel to this very day, and the man who is officially defined as "the Prophet of the State"? In his autobiography, Theodor Herzl recounts that he wrote "The Jewish State", the book that changed Jewish (and Arab) history, under the influence of this opera. As he tells it, while writing the book in Paris, he went to this opera evening after evening. If there was no performance, he was unable to continue writing the next day. The opera, so it seems, worked on him like an intoxicating drug. For four hours I sat among the German audience, some dressed in formal suits and evening gowns, some dressed casually, concentrating on the music and the words (both written by Wagner, of course) and trying to understand what exactly it was that had such a big impact on Herzl, and how it influenced the revolution set in motion by him. The story is based on several German medieval legends. Tannhaeuser himself was a historical personality: a popular poet who reached the Holy Land with the fifth crusade (1228) and, upon returning to Germany, took part in the song contest that is the center of the plot. In the opera, he is torn between Venus and Jesus, between wordly love and his Christian faith. The opera is far removed from the Germanic-Pagan motifs of some of Wagner's other works, and is permeated with devout Christian sentiment. So what attracted Herzl so much? The pathos-drenched music? The dramatic confrontations? The German mysticism that pervades the whole work? Herzl was a great admirer of Imperial Germany. He was enraptured by German order, the German army, the German regime. It must be remembered that this was the authoritarian, power-drunk, colonialist Second German Reich, which was committing genocide at that time in the territory now known as Namibia. Its ruling class was imbued with anti-Semitism (a term invented in the Germany of that period). Kaiser Wilhelm himself exclaimed, after meeting Herzl at the gates of Jerusalem, "Zionism is a great idea, but you can't realize it with Jews." The psychologist Gustave Le Bon once remarked that the realization of any vision comes three generations too late. The creator of the vision is influenced by his teachers, who belong to the preceding generation, and the people who realize his vision belong to the next generation. In the meantime, the circumstances that gave birth to the vision have changed completely. When the idea at long last becomes reality, it is already obsolete. Has this happened to Herzl? Have the values of Imperial Germany and Wagner, who died 13 years before Herzl wrote "Der Judenstaat", infected the character of the State of Israel, which was founded 50 years after Herzl wrote this book? That morning I went to see the new Holocaust Memorial (the German term, Mahnmal, includes the idea of warning future generations) in the center of Berlin. I have heard much about it, some very good and some very bad , and wanted to see for myself. There is something astounding in the very fact that this huge site has been set up in the heart of the capital, next to the national symbols of Imperial Germany: the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building. A few days after its official opening, it has already become a part of the life of the city. Masses of people are drawn to it, walk around the labyrinthine edifice, between the thousands of gray concrete slabs of unequal heights, in the narrow, uneven-floored passages. I saw many visitors sunk in meditation, aware of the meaning of the site. Others looked as if they had come out of curiosity, took pictures of each other; here and there a couple was kissing in a remote corner. On some of the slabs white flowers were lying, on some others young visitors had put their rucksacks. Children were jumping from slab to slab or playing hide and seek. Individuals and whole families were standing in line for an hour, waiting patiently to enter the Information Center located beneath the slabs. This is a modest, functional and overwhelming site. Five big rooms. In the first, the rise and crimes of the Nazis in sparse, dry words, accompanied by photos. I was relieved to notice that the description does not omit the mass-murder committed by the Nazis against non-Jews - Roma and Sinti, the mentally ill, homosexuals, Slavic "subhumans", prisoners-of-war and German opponents of the regime. In another room, film clips about the Jewish communities in Europe run continuously, showing the fate of each community in the Holocaust. In another room, the name of individual victims, each with their fate, are spoken and displayed, underlining the fact that reading of the whole list would take weeks and months. In another room, one can use computers to search for murdered relatives (I found my aunt.) But the most moving and depressing room is the one which shows the photos of individual families. Families from different countries and classes - family photos from the beginning of the last century: family reunions, weddings, co-workers, children in festive dress, grandpa and grandma in the middle, all of them looking solemnly at the camera - and after that, a detailed description of the fate of each of the family members shown in the photos - who was murdered, who disappeared without a trace, who succeeded in emigrating to Palestine or Australia. So close, so personal, so inviting of comparison: this one is my age, this one the age of my father or mother, this one could have been my son or daughter. If I had been asked, I would have devoted a special room to enlargements of the faces of the Germans - soldiers, policemen, ordinary citizens - who are clearly recognizable in the photos of the annihilation in all its stages, shouting, mistreating, laughing, doing their job, which happened to be murder. In the rooms, total silence. Even the children were quiet. I looked at the faces of the Germans when they came out of this underground site. They looked shattered, talking in whispers. Some recorded their feelings in the guestbook: "shocking", "impossible to grasp", "how could this have happened?", "we must make sure this cannot happen again". I wrote some words of appreciation for the initiator of the site, the television-journalist Lea Rosh, who had to move heaven and earth to realize this plan. These pictures were still before my eyes when I entered, some hours later, the impressive building of the Staatsoper on the "Unter den Linden" boulevard. To what extent was Wagner guilty? To what extent did he influence not only Herzl but also the twisted mind of Adolf Hitler, a fellow-Viennese, who committed suicide in his bunker a few meters from the site of the Warning Memorial? (The film about his last days is now being shown in Israel, too.) When I returned home, I heard that a fight had broken out between some private initiative to fly young Israelis to Auschwitz and the Ministry of Education. The ministry wants to retain the monopoly on organizing these flights, which serve to indoctrinate youngsters with a hate-filled nationalism, in the spirit of the song "All the World is Against Us". For balance and to complete the picture, I would show these young people the Berlin Memorial, too.