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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 18, 2005 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? Ridiculous!": A Real Farmer Looks at Medical Marijuana Farrah Hassen Far From Heaven: a Review of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" Douglas Valentine 50 Cent's Plea Poets' Basement Louise, Ford, Engel, & Albert Website of the Weekend Military Base Closings and the South May 13, 2005 Tom Stephens A Chronology of US War Crimes and Torture, 1975-2005 Patrick Cockburn "They Destroyed Everything" Mike Whitney Tom Friedman, Imperial Chronicler Chris Floyd Miami Vice: the Sleazy World of Jeb Bush Jenna Orkin Ground Zero's Toxic Dust Dave Lindorff Googling for Fun Joshua Frank Yale Fires an Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar: an Interview with David Graeber Website of the Day Botero: Pinta El Horror de Abu Ghraib May 12, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts America is Losing: More Phony Jobs Hype Uri Avnery Death of a Myth Greg Moses Neo-Con Logic at the Border Carolyn Baker The Politics of Dominionism: the New Religious Right in America Pat Williams Amateurish High Jinks on Roadless Areas William S. 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 18, 2005 A Virtual Tribual Writing Tickets for Amerian War Crimes By MANUEL GARCÍA, Jr. Imagine a web site presenting point-by-point indictments of outstanding American war criminals. It is easy speak of McNamara, Kissinger, Bush and the neo-cons among others as major (and minor) war criminals, for instigating wars and supporting violent international crimes in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, Latin America in the 1980s, and the Middle East from the 1990's. The literature on this subject is vast; William Blum's book "Killing Hope" can be seen as merely an abstract of the subject. With such a wealth of documentation (evidence?), it must be possible for a small group of people knowledgeable in both US and international law to draft a precise list of indictments, each charge citing a specific statute that has been violated. Certainly, my local motorcycle policeman has no trouble handing me a ticket with a number-coded citation of the traffic laws I have violated, say after an insufficiently languorous idyll at a stop sign. We can all easily say George W. Bush lied about his concocted Iraq War, as the now exposed secret British government memo reveals, but what points of law did he violate in doing so? How would this be phrased by a prosecutor for presentation to a legal tribunal? We can look back to the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals after World War 2 for examples of what is needed today. (1) In 1967, Bertrand Russell helped convene a Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal in which American war crimes were examined. This was a "people's" tribunal, which is to say it had no legal standing except in that most important of all jurisdictions, the court of public opinion. The "indictments" and "testimony" of the Russell Tribunal had its greatest impact in helping to raise public awareness about the reality, the monstrous criminality of the Vietnam War. This probably added something to the overall social pressure that opposed that war. (2) I think a legally rigorous set of indictments for a wide array of American defendants from the time of the Vietnam War to the present, kept up to date as the careers of these individuals progress, would have an impact in helping to build public opposition to the Iraq War and American policies related to it. The idea would be to have these indictments "ready to use" in the miraculous circumstance that a legal tribunal with appropriate jurisdiction suddenly materialized out of the fog of international politics. While our war-criminal government officials and corporate decision-makers would probably loose little sleep over the likelihood of an American War Crimes Tribunal, they might on occasion have a slight case of gastrointestinal queasiness on seeing their very own web page (with mug shot of course) listing for each alleged crime: date, time, place, allegations, statutes and codes violated (local, national, international). An American War Crimes Tribunal web site of the type described would be a challenge in at least three ways. First, for opponents of the Iraq War and American imperialism and capitalism generally, to focus political critique into a list of particulars that is both factually accurate and legally precise. Second, the presentation of such "people's indictments" would be a continuing challenge to existing national and international courts that would have responsibility for any actual criminal proceedings, which obviously do not occur because of the raw political power (at the moment) of the accused and the governments they operate in. Third, the existence of such indictments would have some effect on the accused themselves, to rethink their actions. While this last effect may seem negligible now it should not be discounted. Today, we know that such considerations have entered the minds of McNamara (writing excellent anti-nuclear weapons commentaries), Kissinger (planning his travels to avoid inconvenient jurisdictions) and Pinochet (reminding himself to become senile again). Robbing our present war criminals of a sense that their immunity is guaranteed in future decades could have both a restraining effect on them, and a preventative effect on their would-be successors. I'm sure you get the idea. I cannot produce such a web site, having neither the legal expertise, the command of the intricate historical detail of the skulduggery to be exposed, nor the knowledge of creating web sites. So, I hope you can transmit this idea to others who may be able to assemble the talents required for the task. There must be others who have already arrived at the idea of an American War Crimes Tribunal (I found at least one web page with the same intent), so perhaps with proper encouragement such individuals can find each other, pool resources and produce such a site. (3) Or, perhaps the people capable of putting together such a site have concluded it is not worth the effort. When you consider the recent Spanish prosecution of Pinochet, other recent legal victories in the United States against torturers and death squad commanders (of the 1980s) from Central America, and convictions of Civil Rights (1950s-1960s) murderers in the 1990's, one gains a sense of tempered hope for justice. Tempered because while it may seem that human society is slowly evolving to a point where war (and civil rights) criminals do not escape prosecution in their lifetimes, such prosecution may be both delayed and attenuated in proportion to the wealth and power of the individuals -- and the constituencies identifying with them. An American War Crimes Tribunal web site with prospective indictments might add momentum to a desirable social evolution. Manuel García, Jr. can be reached at: mango@idiom.com Notes [1] Court TV Looks Back At Nuremberg [2] Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal [3] War Crimes Tribunal (International Action Center)