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Today's Stories June 14, 2007 Michael Donnelly Charred SUVs and the End of Citizen Eco-Activism   June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Obama's Siren Song Marjorie Cohn Repression in Oaxaca Bill Christison A Grave Injustice at DePaul University Charles Jonkel Bears in a World of Indifference Silvia Cattori "I Was Not Prepared for the Horrors I Saw": an Interview with Hedy Epstein Richard Gott Racism and TV in Venezuela Firmin DeBrabander How the Neocons Misread Machiavelli William S. Lind The Perfect (Sine) Wave: Bombing Railroad Stations in Iraq Keith Rosenthal Workers Score a Victory at Harvard Website of the Day GOP and Monty Python Explain: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair How to Sell a War Paul Craig Roberts The Neocon Threat to American Freedom P. Sainath India's Plutocrats and the Press Ralph Nader The Biggest Scam in the World Omar Waraich A Black Day for Pakistan's Press Dave Lindorff Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You Harvey Wasserman Confessions of an Anti-Nuke Jerk Malini Johar Schueller It Takes a Bomb Ramzy Baroud War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Empire Website of the Day Palestinian Chronicle Needs Our Help!   June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The War on Journalists Paul Craig Roberts Losing the Economy to Mythology Uri Avnery 40 Bad Years: the Rot of Occupation Norman Solomon The Silence of the Bombs Eva Liddell Paris Hilton Doesn't Do Dishes: How Barbie Stood Up to Allen Ginsberg Rannie Amiri Groundhog Day in Pakistan Rachel Voss Poetry and Politics in Nassau County Christopher Brauchli A Wild West Tale, Starring Rev. Dobson and Bill O'Reilly D. K. Wilson Untangling Michael Vick from the Dogs Website of the Day Paris, Mixed Up June 9 / 10, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Dissidents Against Dogma George Ciccariello-Maher Behind Venezuela's "Student Rebellion": Who's Pulling the Strings? Saul Landau An Interview with Ricardo Alarcon, Vice President of Cuba Robert Fisk Believe It or Not in the Middle East Brian Cloughley Troop Support: Deceptions and Insipid Sentiments Ron Jacobs Condoleezza Rice Names the System Ward Boston Searching for the Truth About the USS Liberty Conn Hallinan Dark Plots in Byzantine Beirut Leonard Peltier The Ongoing War on Native American Religious Practices Lawrence Davidson Israel's New Anti-Boycott Task Force John Ross Mass Nude-In Complicates Church-State Scuffling in Mexico Kate Allan Some People Think the Internet is a Bad Thing Fred Gardner Ignorance Marches On Stephen Fleischman Little Boy, Fat Man and Iran Monica Benderman Reading Tom Paine in a Time of Crisis Geoff Bailey A Real Oil Conspiracy: Gouged at the Pump Missy Beattie Faith and War Patrick Dyer A Democrat Revs Up Ohio's Death Machine Tim Lengerich Dispelling the Cowboy Myth: an Interview with George Wuerthner James Irani and David Rahni Perspectives on the Arrests of Iran-Americans in Tehran Gary Leupp The Unfair Treatment of Paris Hilton Michael Tillery The Heart of a Sportswriter: an Interview with David Aldridge Michael Simmons Beating Off the Squares: the Hipness of Anton Rosenberg Poets' Basement Laymon, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend This is Sea Shepherd!   June 8, 2007 Serge Halimi What Sarkozy Learned About Politics from the US Patrick Cockburn The Turkish Incursion Jeffrey St. Clair Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited   Paul Craig Roberts The Secret War William Blum What If NBC Cheered on a Military Coup Against Bush? Joshua Frank Swing-State Strategy: Looking for a Spoiler Lance Selfa How the Six Day War Changed the Middle East Dave Lindorff A "Criminal Conspiracy" in the White House Lawrence Ferlinghetti The Summer of Love: Flashbacks of a Human Be-In Website of the Day Robert Pollin: "Making the Federal Minimum Wage a Living Wage" June 7, 2007 Marjorie Cohn The Prison is the War Crime Soldz, Reisner and Olson: A Q & A on Psychologists and Torture Soldz, Reisner and Olson, et al: An Open Letter to Sharon Brehm, President of the American Psychological Association Paul Craig Roberts Losing Iraq, Nuking Iran Bill Quigley "How Long Must We Support a Mistake?" Silvia Cattori Sailing to Gaza Carl G. Estabrook What the June Bug Is: Politics in the Dismal Season Ellen Taylor Free the Tweakers!: The Good News About Meth Corporate Crime Reporter BAE Systems, Prince Bandar and the $2 Billion Account at the Riggs Bank Brenda Norrell Torture Training at Ft. Huachuca: Two Priests Face Prison for Exposing Torture in Arizona D. K. Wilson What Gary Sheffield Really Said Kevin Zeese Iraq Occupation Coming to a Head Over Oil Website of the Day How the Press Expired June 6, 2007 Alain Gresh Countdown to War on Iran Gary Leupp Poddy's Crazy Prayer: Bomb Iran, For Israel and America! Steven Sherman The Perils of Humanitarian Intervention Bruce Dixon Is Bill Gates Trying to Hijack Africa's Food Supply? Corporate Crime Reporter The Professor and the Nukes Brian M. Downing The Iraq War and Presidential Politics Ron Jacobs Luv n' Hate: a Different Take on the Summer of Love George Bisharat The Mirage of the Two State Solution Nicole Colson Over to You, Dante: Falwell's Ministry of Hate Bruce K. Gagnon From Italy to Guam: A Global Peace Movement is Taking Shape Website of the Day How the Democrats Should Treat Bush   June 5, 2007 Michael Neumann Canada in Afghanistan Jonathan Cook The Shin Bet and the Persecution of Azmi Bishara David Vest The Democrats' War Robert Fantina America's Cuba Policy Hoffman, Parsneau and Chowdhury CounterTerrorism as International Healthcare John V. Walsh Shaming the Official Antiwar Movement Richard Cretan Yellow Dog: The Strange Love of Martin Amis and Tony Blair Adam Engel Days of Dread: an American Tale William S. Lind The News from Anbar: Has Al Qaeda Over-Reached? Myles Hoenig Free the Oaks! Cut Down Those Yellow Ribbons! Jim Minick Lead-Foot Nation Website of the Day Punk Rock Soap Opera June 4, 2007 Nizar Latif An Interview with Moqtada al-Sadr Diana Johnstone Sarko and the Ghosts of May, 1968 Gregory Wilpert RCTV and Freedom of Speech in Venezuela Paul Watson The Anchorage Whale Killing Bureaucrats Summit Susan Rosenthal, MD How Cindy Sheehan Unmasked the Democrats Richard Ward The Right of Return to New Orleans Eva Liddell Don't Support the Troops Zahi Khouri Four Decades of Occupation Evelyn Pringle The FDA, GlaxoSmithKline and the Avandia Disaster China Hand About Those North Korean Benjamin Franklins ... Karyn Strickler George W. Bush: a "Ficeist" Leader Website of the Day The Guantanamo Files   June 2 / 3, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Last of the Texas Outsiders Marc Levy Iraq Dead Ahead: a Brief Military History and Civilian Guide to Arlington National Cemetery Martin Smith Camilo Mejía's War: From Foot Soldier for Empire to Rebel for Peace Diana Johnstone Great Power Meddling in Kosovo John Ross The Oaxaca Volcano Stews Uri Avnery On Generals and Admirals Sunsara Taylor This is Not a Story About Cindy Sheehan Richard Neville Were the Hippies Right? P. Sainath The Farm Crisis and 100,000 Indian Widows Missy Comley Beattie Let's Roar Nisrine Abiad and Victor Kattan The Hariri Tribunal: a Fait Accompli? Rannie Amiri Lebanon, Bush and the Three Stooges Margot Pepper Deconstructing "Return to Sender" Eric Stewart Censorship and Cop Brutality in the New Bison Wars Ralph Nader The Halberstam Camp Dan Bacher A Victory for the Fish Shaun Harkin and Sandy Boyer Irish War Protesters on Trial Richard Rhames Selling Five Acres in Crawford Frederick Hudson The Rediscovery of Ella Fitzgerald Poets' Basement Lindorff, Landau and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Gimme Shelter June 1, 2007 Dave Marsh The FBI and the Godfather (of Soul): James Brown's FBI Files Saul Landau Return to Cuba: 47 Years Later in Havana David Phinney How the Baghdad Embassy Was Built: Forced Labor and Worker Abuse Robert Jensen The Bigot and the Boycott Stanley Heller Arrest Robert McNamara Yifat Susskind Indigenous Women Fight Back Robert Weissman Corporate Power Since 1980 Paul Buchheit Africa and Its Discontents William S. Lind The Folly of Maximalist Objectives Sherwood Ross 78,000 Iraqis Have Been Killed by Coalition Airstrikes Stephen Lendman Terrorism Defined Website of the Day Desert Autonomous Zone

June 14, 2007 A Greenwash for Bertie Ahern Ireland's Green Party Sell Out By HARRY BROWNE Dublin. Ireland’s Green Party has agreed to go into a coalition government with the centre-right Fianna Fail party -- despite having spent 10 days in negotiation failing to get the larger party’s agreement on several crucial issues. A hastily arranged Green conference secured a solid 86 per cent majority of party members for the coalition deal, an outcome earnestly desired and passionately sold by almost all its most visible politicians -- three of whom will pick up ministerial office, while others pick up various government appointments. The word “Betrayal”, however, has echoed through the party and the wider left, as the Greens go into a government that will continue to facilitate thousands of US troops at Shannon Airport; that will send a motorway through an archeologically sensitive area near the Hill of Tara; that will continue effectively to privatise the country’s disastrous health service; and that will prop up the leadership of prime-minister Bertie Ahern despite ethical and financial questions hanging over his head (as Eamonn McCann has discussed here on Counterpunch). You don’t have to agree with Alexander Cockburn about anthropogenic climate change to acknowledge that fighting global warming has become a flag of convenience for governments and companies who want to appear to be doing something progressive. Sure enough, the Greens made their happiest noises about the promises they had secured on “climate change”-- the usual mishmash of “carbon taxes” and “greenhouse targets”. This earnest concern ignores certain salient facts: despite phenomenal economic growth that has sent Ireland’s emissions well above the country’s Kyoto limits, it is a comparatively tiny carbon-contributor; and Ireland was picked out by the IPCC as one of the country’s that will do relatively well out of even dramatic global warming, thanks very much. (You should see my tan already this year.) Moreover, the new government’s continuing fealty to the White House over Iraq doesn’t promise much resistance on a global level. The Green leadership also draws attention to certain nominal gains in the new programme for government, e.g. on education spending and local government reform. But their main argument for taking a piece of state power seems to be that they can: office is on offer, how can they refuse? The conference on Wednesday saw many members in tears as they contemplated the party’s capitulation on crucial matters, but also saw the chance for its leading deputies to take control of a couple of government departments. (Or so they hope, though we’ll see what the senior bureaucrats have to say about that.) The members and leaders of the party are, by and large, patently decent and honest people who have stood on the right side of many of the great debates in Irish public life -- including the one over US troops and CIA flights at Shannon. But it’s hard to believe they haven’t seriously overestimated the Greens’ capacity to wield real power in a government where they are not even strictly required to make up the numbers: Bertie Ahern could have cobbled together a majority with a few easily bought independents and the remnants of the right-wing Progressive Democrats, who were nearly wiped out in the May 24th elections. The Greens have failed even to remove the PDs from the health ministry, which will continue to operate for the benefit of private providers, insurers and developers. Like many small parties in coalition, the Greens will be used to put an attractive spin, a Green tint, on the same old policies, and will act as a lightning rod if and when popular opinion turns against the government. Historically in Ireland, coalition has been virtually suicidal for small parties, who fare worse when the next election rolls around and they take the blame for what they did and failed to do. Ironically enough, the Greens did quite poorly in the election on May 24th, securing just six seats with a vote of less than 5 per cent -- after opinion polls early in the year showed them with possibly double those figures. It is not fanciful to imagine that potential Green voters and election-workers were turned off by the eagerness for office displayed by the party’s leaders in the run-up to the election, an eagerness that rose to fever pitch in the three subsequent weeks of inching toward the cabinet table. (Sinn Fein’s electoral support fell nearly as far with similarly eager leaders and disillusioned ground-troops, but that’s another story in what has been a rough season for the Irish left.) Before the election the Greens were talking up the chances of a no-hope non-Fianna Fail coalition, but that didn’t survive polling day. At least party leader Trevor Sargent will keep his pre-election promise that he would not lead the party into government under the terribly tainted Bertie Ahern: The squeaky-clean Sargent, an unlikely cynic, will step slightly aside by officially relinquishing the leadership but still take a senior position in the government. Former Member of the European Parliament Patricia McKenna was the party’s only household name to oppose the deal, expressing literal disbelief that her party’s negotiators could have come up with so little to boast about. Former Irish Army Commandant Ed Horgan, a peace campaigner and Green member, also spoke up against it, predicting that such a thorough abandonment of principle will see the party wiped out in the next six years. The beneficiary, as usual in Irish politics, is likely to be Fianna Fail. Harry Browne lectures in Dublin Institute of Technology and writes for Village magazine.

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