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Today's Stories February 13, 2006 Michael Neumann Respectful Cultures and Disrespectful Cartoons   February 11 / 12, 2006 Alexander Cockburn How Not to Spot a Terrorist Ralph Nader Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve Paul Craig Roberts Nuking the Economy Pat Williams John Boehner's Dirty Little Secret: Flying Lobbyist Air at $4,000 a Junket Fred Gardner Dr. Mikuriya's Appeal: a Last Minute Twist Saul Landau From Munich to Hamas John Chuckman Cartoons and Bombs: Was Rice Right for Once? Roger Burbach Evo Morales: the Early Days Seth Sandronsky Economy on Ice Website of the Weekend Just Say Know   February 10, 2006 Carl G. Estabrook A US War Plan for Khuzestan? Sen. Russell Feingold A Raw Deal on the Patriot Act Roxanne Dunbar--Ortiz How Did Evo Morales Come to Power? Saree Makdisi The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter Website of the Day The New York Art Scene: 1974--1984   February 9, 2006 Dave Lindorff Bush and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders--in--Chief Mike Marqusee The Human Majority was Right About Iraq Paul Craig Roberts How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press Peter Phillips Inside the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World William S. Lind Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War Christine Tomlinson Innocent Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's Eavesdropping Program Will Youmans Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel Robert Robideau An American Indian's View of the Cartoons Richard Neville The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the Least Funny People on Earth Peter Rost The New Robber Barons Website of the Day Eyes Wide Open   February 8, 2006 Ron Jacobs The Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot Stan Cox Making and Unmaking History with General Myers Sen. Russ Feingold Why Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional Robert Jensen Horowitz's Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch 16 Rep. Cynthia McKinney Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain Don Monkerud Covenant Marriage on the Rocks David Swanson Inequality and War C.L. Cook Nuking Ontario Christopher Fons Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons! Jeffrey Ballinger The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility Website of the Day Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas   February 7, 2006 Edward Lucie--Smith An Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo--Nazis Robert Fisk The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning Paul Craig Roberts Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man" Neve Gordon Why Hamas Won Joshua Frank The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War Peter Montague The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation Jackie Corr The Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana Jeffrey St. Clair Rumsfeld's Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone Website of the Day Negroes with Guns   February 6, 2006 Christopher Brauchli Spilling Blood: Two Sentences Robert Fisk Don't Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism John Chuckman What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win? Jenna Orkin Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air Paul Craig Roberts Who Will Save America: My Epiphany   February 4 / 5, 2006 Alexander Cockburn "Lights Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run Mike Ferner Pentagon Database Leaves No Kid Alone James Petras Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia Alan Maass Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance Fred Gardner Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's Office Ralph Nader Bush's Energy Escapades Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues Saul Landau Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms? Laura Carlsen Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez James Brooks Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors Mike Roselle Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas John Holt Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy Sarah Ferguson Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops William S. Lind Beware the Ides of March Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech? Seth Sandronsky The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry Derrick O'Keefe Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy Michael Donnelly Hop on the Bus Ron Jacobs Religion and Political Power Elisa Salasin RSVP to Bush St. Clair / Vest Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Stew Albert God's Curse: Selected Poems Poets' Basement Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel Website of the Weekend Killer Tells All!   February 3, 2006 Toufic Haddad A Parliament of Prisoners Heather Gray Working with Coretta Scott King Tim Wise Racism, Neo--Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates Conn Hallinan Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm Eva Golinger Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela Daniel Ellsberg The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration Dave Zirin Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink Robert Bryce The Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East Website of the Day The Chavez Code   February 2, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Pentagon Pork: How to Eliminate It Stan Cox Outsourcing the Golden Years Rachard Itani Danes (Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons) Mike Whitney Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up Amira Hass In the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya Norman Solomon When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind Words Michael Simmons Stew Lives! Christopher Reed Japan's Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves Website of the Day State of Nature   February 1, 2006 Sharon Smith The Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster Jason Leopold Enron and the Bush Administration Cindy Sheehan Getting Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened Joseph Grosso Oprah and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality" Earl Ofari Hutchinson Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife Steven Higgs Life After Roe. v. Wade Robert Robideau "God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America R. Siddharth Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with Henry Ford Jim Retherford Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius Rep. Cynthia McKinney The Legacy of Coretta Scott King Paul Craig Roberts The True State of the Union Website of the Day Candide's Notebooks

February 13, 2006 The Bush Inquisition Whistleblowers and Witch Hunters By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI Some are fired. Some are simply muzzled. When considering whether those events are a distinction or a disgrace the question that must be asked is “Who did it?” If it’s George W. Bush it’s a distinction. And so James E. Hansen joins Glen Hubbard, Paul O’Neill, Lawrence Greenfield, Brian Steidle, Susan Wood and a host of others who have been muzzled or fired for failing to promulgate or for exposing Bush lies. Glen Hubbard was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. Before the Iraq war started George Bush and his lying cronies told the world the war would cost $50 billion. Mr. Hubbard said the war would cost $200 billion. They were both wrong. To date the war has cost more than $238 billion and the cost goes up by the minute. Mr. Hubbard was fired. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill opposed tax cuts for the rich and federal budget deficits. He was fired. Lawrence Greenfield was the director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. A congressionally ordered study found that Hispanic and black motorists were three times more likely to be searched or have their vehicles searched than were whites. Mr. Greenfield included the findings in his agency’s press release announcing the study’s results. He was told to delete the reference and refused. He was demoted. Brian Steidle was a Marine captain who worked in Darfur, Sudan as a military advisor. He showed people pictures of acts of genocide taking place there. The state department ordered him to quit showing the photos. He refused. Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times reports that Mr. Steidle has been told he is blacklisted from all U.S. government jobs. There are other examples. These suffice to let Dr. Hansen know that he is in good company. The rest of us can take no such comfort. Dr. Hansen is the longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and has been with the agency since 1967. He is one of the world’s experts on global warming. He has been warning about the dangers of global warming for 18 years. Dr. Hansen says that 2005 was the warmest year on record. He says the burning of fossil fuels has caused a buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. He has not been popular with George Bush for some time. According to the New York Times he acquired his disfavored status when he gave a speech before the last presidential election saying he was voting for John Kerry. Things got even worse for him in December, 2005. That was the month in which he gave a dangerous speech of the sort that frightens George Bush. He said there should be a prompt reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. Mr. Bush disapproves of global warming. It’s not the warming itself of which he disapproves. It’s the concept. That’s why he backed the United States out of the Kyoto treaty. Not everyone opposes the concept. There are some people even smarter than George Bush who think global warming may threaten mankind’s very existence. Mr. Bush does not like to hear from them because they contradict what he believes. Just as Mr. Bush thinks he can do whatever he wants because he’s president even if it means breaking the law, he also thinks he can believe whatever he wants even if he’s wrong. He can also silence anyone who works for him who, not sharing his ignorance, publicly says so. After Dr. Hansen gave his speech he was told that thenceforth the Institute’s public affairs staff would be required to “review his lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard website and requests for interviews from journalists.” This was not because all these people are smarter and better informed than Dr. Hansen. The reason everything must be reviewed is that the administration wants to control what Mr. Bush’s subjects hear. Dr. Hansen says he will ignore the restrictions. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public” he was quoted as saying. Of course people at the Goddard Institute disagree. Dean Acosta is the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs. He said that there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. “That’s not the way we operate here at NASA. We promote openness and we speak with the facts.” In the hated December speech Dr. Hansen not only warned of the perils of global warming. He said that he and other climate scientists were being muzzled. As the litany of muzzled and fired officials described above demonstrates, Dr. Hansen is in good company. It’s the rest of us who suffer when the administration protects us from the truth. We’ll get used to it. Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. he can be reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu

Now Available from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Coming This Fall Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair