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BUSH'S MELTDOWN AND THE US DEFEAT IN IRAQ

He's on the floor, but can the Democrats Save Him? They're sure trying. Scorching reports on the "new jobs" myth and the end of America's housing bubble. Savage dissection of Council on Foreign Relation's Plan to "Contain" AIDS and Throw Money at the Drug Companies. Why the Military-Industrial Complex Wants U.S. Out of Iraq. What the US Press Missed about the War. Get the facts you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

December 14, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Iran Poised to Win Iraqi Elections

Paul Craig Roberts
Lethal Developments

Kevin Alexander Gray
Richard Pryor's Mirror on America

 

December 13, 2005

Stephen T. Banko, III
Heroes

Patrick Cockburn
America's War So Far: 1000 Days of Getting It Wrong

Laura Carlsen
What's at Play at the WTO

Karl Grossman
Nuclear Routlette in the Troposhere: Another NASA Plutonium Launch

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Original Sin

Kevin Zeese
Report from the International Peace Conference in London

Norman Solomon
At the Gates of San Quentin

Michael G. Smith
Ending the Death Penalty

Stew Albert
California Killers

Bob Dylan
Song for Tookie: George Jackson

Phil Gasper
California Murders Tookie Williams: a Report from San Quentin

Website of the Day
Boot Hill

 

December 12, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Defenders of Torture

Lawrence R. Velvel
George the Disconnected

Jessica Stewart
My Husband is at the Gates of Gitmo

George Bisharat
Busharon: a Fusion of Like Minds

Nate Mezmer
Killing Tookie Williams: If a Black Man Dies in America, Does It Make a Sound?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Richard Pryor Wasn't Crazy

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience

Seth Sandronsky
Thank You, Richard Pryor

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: the Beginning of the End

Website of the Day
Wrestling for Peace


December 10 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
All the News That's Fit to Buy

Landau / Hassen
The Condemned of Nablus

Ralph Nader
The Widening Wasteland of American Media

Linn Washington, Jr
The Philly Media and Mumia: When They Don't Bash, They Ignore

Bill Christison
Apathy, US Culpability and Human Rights Day

Mike Ferner
The Courage of Jim Loney

Elizabeth Schulte
Abortion and the Bush Court

Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner
Murder in Jerusalem

Linda S. Heard
Saddam's Trial: Grandstanding in the Theater of the Absurd

Ingmar Lee
A Kayak Journey to Vancouver Island's Wildest Forest

Ray McGovern
Lies, Torture and the Six Blind Mice

John Chuckman
Torture and White Phosphorous: the Moral Hell of Condi Rice

John Ryan
An Honorary Degree in Child Sacrifice?: Madeleine Albright and US Foreign Policy

Dick J. Reavis
From Waco to Baghdad

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Hired Pens

Behzad Yaghmaian
Trapped at the Gates of the European Union

Aseem Shrivastava
The Winter in Delhi, 1984

John Ross
Bushlandia in Black and White

Ben Tripp
War, What is It Good For?

St. Clair / Pollack / Vest / Despair
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Bear Dog, Ford, Mickey Z, Albert & Engel

Website of the Week
Burn a Brick for Bush

 

December 9, 2005

Linn Washington, Jr.
Roots of Gitmo Torture Lie Close to Home

Dave Zirin / Mike Stark
On Seeing Wesley Baker Die

Patrick Cockburn
Blair Tries to Cover Up $1.3 Billion Iraqi Theft

Alexander Cockburn
Murtha Returns to Attack; Flays Bush

Lila Rajiva
Shooting the Mentally Ill

Gary Leupp
White House Liars on the Defensive

Jason Leopold
Rove Running Out of Answers, Time

Bruce K. Gagnon
So These Are the Democrats?

Andrew Cockburn
Meet Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrats' New Gatekeeper

Website of the Day
"X-mas Time for Visa"

 

December 8, 2005

Kathy Kelly
Blessed are the Merciful in Baghdad

James Petras
The Venezuelan Election: Chavez Wins, Bush Loses (Again)

William S. Lind
Questionable Assumptions: Dissecting the Stategy for Victory

Laura Carlsen
The Strange Mission of Vicente Fox: Free Trade and Mexico

Justin Akers
Bush's Border War

Thomas Graham, Jr
A Nuclear Pearl Harbor in Outer Space?

Norman Solomon
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam

Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn
The Lost John Lennon Interview

Website of the Day
Pigs at the Trough of War

 

December 7, 2005

John Ryan
Dershowitz vs. Chomsky: a Review of the Harvard Debate

Gary Leupp
Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq

Fran Quigley
How the ACLU Didn't Steal Christmas

Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith
Bush War Crimes: the Posse Gathers

Joshua Frank
Bird Dogging Hillary

William W. Morgan
Rendition, Torture and Democracy

Dave Lindorff
A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu Jamal

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam: "Come Visit My Cage"

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Website of the Day
Witnesses to Torture

 

December 6, 2005

Ron Jacobs
No One is Illegal; No One is an Infidel

Patrick Cockburn
Inside Saddam's Trial: Tales of the Human Meat Grinder

Yifat Susskind
Death, Politics and the Condom: African Women Confront Bush's AIDS Policy

Mike Whitney
How Greenspan Skewered America

Pat Williams
Public Land Should Stay Public

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi to Europe: Trust Us

Website of the Day
Debunking Woodward

 

December 5, 2005

John Walsh
The Lies of John Edwards: What Did the Democrats Know and When Did They Know It?

Brian Cloughley
The Poor Dead: the Relative Value of Human Lives

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Corporate Crime Quiz

Robert Jensen
How Big Money Eviscerates the First Amendment

Norman Solomon
Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Ignores Iraq Air War Plan

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to the Justice Department: Pfizer May Have Violated Federal Laws When They Fired Me

Lila Rajiva
The Torture-Go-Round: CIA's Rendition Flights to Secret Prisons

Website of the Day
National Day of Counter-Recruitment


December 3 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Revolt of the Generals

Lawrence R. Velvel
Iraq, Brains and Lies

Rev. William Alberts
The Forgotten Christmas Story: Saying No to King Herod

Saul Landau
Latino Troops Have Parents

Ralph Nader
Consumerama

Paul Craig Roberts
Don't Confuse the Jobs Hype with the Facts

Mike Whitney
Blood Feast: Celebrating Executions in America

Allan Lichtman
The DeLay Scheme: Blatantly Buying Our Government

Dave Lindorff
A Sudden Rush for the Exits?

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections

Fred Gardner
Oregon NORML Honors Growers

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
On Freeing the CPT

Carol Wolman
Remembering the 60s

St. Clair / Vest / Walker / Pollack
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Free the CPT

 

December 2, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad

Mike Ferner
Beware Iraqization: Melvin Laird, Vietnam and Christmas Bombings Over Baghdad?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Constitutional Kamikazes: Padilla's No-Win Dilemma

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Questions for the President

Manuel Talens
The Chávez Theorem

Peter Phillips
Death By Torture: Media Ignores the Hard Evidence

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Alabama's Taliban: Judge Roy Moore, Preachers and Dixie Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Support the Hampton University Peace Activists!

 

December 1, 2005

John Walsh, MD
The God Gaps

Ron Jacobs
Hard Rain: Toward a Greater Air War in Iraq?

Jenna Orkin
EPA's Latest Betrayal at Ground Zero

Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's Blunt Message: Forget Palestine

Tiffany Ten Eyck
Rank and File Resistance to Delphi

Missy Comley Beattie
Home on the Range: Where the Fear and the Animus Play

Eli Stephens
The Reed and Kerry Show

Elaine Cassel
A Government Game of "Gotcha" with Jose Padilla

Website of the Day
Rare Erotica

 

November 30, 2005

Allen / D'Amato
Incident at Oglala 30 Years Later: the Long Struggle of Leonard Peltier

Mike Whitney
The Cheerleader at Annapolis

Kevin Zeese
The Hallucinations of Joe Lieberman

Norman Solomon
Colin Powell: Still Craven After All These Years

Ramzy Baroud
Sharon's New Party

Dave Lindorff
What Happened to All Those Bush/Cheney Bumperstickers?

Stephen Soldz
Mental Health Workers in Iraq

 

November 29, 2005

Phil Gasper
Live from Death Row: an Interview with Tookie Williams

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Ghost of Sangatte

Joshua Frank
Jack Abramoff's Bi-partisan Sleaze

Walter A. Davis
Life on Death Row: a Monologue

Gary Leupp
Bush the Dupe?

Len Colodny
Woodwardgate: Still Protecting the Rightwing

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Duke and the Enterprise: Randy Cunningham's Crash Landing

Bill Quigley
Human Rights Leaders Call for Release of Haiti's Political Prisoners

Website of the Day
Watch Chomsky vs. Dershowitz Live, Tonight at 7PM, EST!

 

November 28, 2005

Chris Reed
The "Bomb Al Jazeera" Documents Trial

David Isenberg
Cooked Intelligence: the Dog that Didn't Bark

Ron Jacobs
Contraindications: a Review of Blood on the Border

Norman Solomon
The Woodward Scandal Must Not Blow Over

Justin E.H. Smith
Schwarzenegger's Curious Power

Mickey Z.
Abbie Hoffman at 70: Steal This City

Mike Whitney
The Pentagon's Domestic Spying Operation

David Swanson
Is Impeachment an Election Issue?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Grave Threat of the Bush Administration

Website of the Day
"Don't Bomb Us!": a Blog by Al Jazeera Staffers

 

November 26 / 27, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
How the Democrats Undercut John Murtha

Saul Landau
Who We Are: Torture and the Empire

Ralph Nader
Junk Television: Excluding Voices That Save Lives

Brian Cloughley
What Are They Dying For?

John Ross
When a Language Dies

Gary Leupp
The Nepal Pact

Fred Gardner
Dr. Denney Goes to Arkansas

Christopher Brauchli
Compassion for Corporations: Northrup Grumman and Katrina's Victims

Dave Lindorff
US War Crimes List Keeps Growing

P. Sainath
See, Neoliberalism Really Works: Net Worth of India's Billionaires Soars!

Timothy J. Freeman
The Price of Freedom

Lila Rajiva
Of Mice, Men and GM Peas

Eric Ruder
Beat the Needle: Saving Tookie Williams

Seth Sandronsky
Working Toward Whiteness: an Interview with David Roediger

Joaquin Bustelo
What Really Happened at Mar del Plata

Lewis Alper
Is the President's Soul in Jeopardy?: an Evangelical Christian Looks at Bush's Skull and Bones Initiation

Will Youmans
In Search of Paradise

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones' Rough Justice in Bush Time

St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Barbara LaMorticella
Poetry and the City of Ideas

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Buknatski, Engel, Albert and Davies

Website of the Weekend
NLR: The Chequered Rainbow

 

 

November 25, 2005

David Price
How US Anthropologists Planned "Race-Specific" Weapons Against the Japanese

Brian McKenna
Will Bush Miss the Next Bhopal?

Jeff Halper
Peretz or Bust?

Ray McGovern
Will the US Seize the Opportunity for Troop Withdrawal?

Leigh Saavedra
Thanksgiving at Camp Casey

Ingmar Lee
How Have the Mighty Fallen?

Website of the Day
Saving Cathedral Grove

 

November 24, 2005

James Petras
How to Think About War and Peace

Bob Shirley
Thanksgiving Torture: What the Puritans Fled

Mike Fox
Torture Survivors Speak for Themselves

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Adrift? Perhaps. A Draft? Never!

Greg Moses
Thanksgiving Delayed: TX High Court Blesses Inequality

Alexander Cockburn
Turkeys in the Larger Scheme of Things

 

November 23, 2005

Ramzy Baroud
The Great Gaza Border Deal: What Does It Mean?

Mike Whitney
Bush, Padilla and Thomas More

Stan Cox
Red, White and Blue Dawn: What a Bad Hollywood Film Can Teach Americans About Life Under Occupation

Linda S. Heard
Targeting Al Jazeera

November 22, 2005

Kevin Gray / Mike Hersh
Maxine Waters, the Real Leader of the Anti-War Caucus

Ralph Nader
What Do Dems Stand For?

Michael Donnelly
The "Vetting" of Bernard Kerik

Mike Ferner
The CIA's "Torture Taxi" in the Spotlight

Pierre Tristam
The Justice Deficit

Marshall Auerback
Bush's "Compassionate Conservativism": Neither Compassionate Nor Conservative

Website of the Day
I Don't Like Geldof

 

November 21, 2005

Mike Marqusee
Clinton's Hypocrisies on Iraq

Josh Frank
Democratic Hawks: the Avian Flu of the Antiwar Movement

Mike Whitney
Hugo Chavez vs. the King of Vacations

Norman Solomon
Getting Out of Iraq

Russ Baker
Woodward's Weakness

Robert Jensen
A National Day of Atonement

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies and Official Secrets

 

November 19 / 20, 2005

Fred Gardner
The Raid on MendoHealing

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
The House GOP Has Done a Heinous Thing: Stop Playing Politics; Get the Troops Out Now

Ron Jacobs
A Pathetic Congress: If It Walks and Talks Like a Withdrawal Resolution, Why Won't You Vote For It?

David Vest
The Politics of Surrender: It's as American as Robert E. Lee

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Condi Rice's Disdain for the Civil Rights Movement

John R. Bomar
Staying the Course on "Freedom's Frontier": a Vietnam Vet on Iraq

John Ross
The Dragon Flies High, But Not Over Mexico

Phillip Cryan
Colombia: "Political Kidnapping" and Murder in Cauca

Dave Lindorff
RIP In These Times

Dick J. Reavis
The Future of the Daily Press

Jeremy Scahill
Vegetarian Between Meals: This War Can't Be Stopped by a Loyal Opposition

Dan Wright
Cleaning Up Alaska's Scan Bay

John Stanton
Scowcroft Talks Turkey; Edmounds Fights Fascism

St. Clair / Vest / Walker
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones: Rarities

Dr. Susan Block
Our Night of Weimar Love

Poets Basement
Albert, Engel, Ford, Harley and Louise

 

November 18, 2005

Michael Neumann
The Palestinians and the Party Line

Dave Lindorff
Murtha and the L Word

Michael Donnelly
Black November 15

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Uncrucify Them

Don Monkerud
A Decent Workplace

Tom Kerr
Grant Clemency to Tookie Williams

Trish Schuh
Faking the Case Against Syria

 

November 17, 2005

John Walsh
A Fractured Anti-War Movement

Rep. John Murtha
Iraq Must Be Freed from the US Occupation

Brian J. Foley
We Are All In GITMO Now

CounterPunch News Service
Guardian Apologizes to Chomsky; Publishes Total Retraction of Brockes' Slurs

Dave Lindorff
In Post-Saddam Iraq, There are No Civilians

Mark T. Harris
Coming Out in an Up-and-Coming Sport

Cockburn / St. Clair
From Reporter to Courtier: the Decline of Bob Woodward

 

November 16, 2005

John F. Sugg
Al-Arian Speaks: In His First Interview Since the Trial Began, Al-Arian Talks About What the Jury Didn't Hear

Noam Chomsky
Putting Out the Englightenment

Dave Lindorff
Shake and Bake: Pentagon Admits Using Phosphorous Bombs on Fallujah

Evelyn Pringle
Laurie Mylroie's War

Sam Husseini
Trying to Look a Female Suicide Bomber in the Eye

Pierre Tristam
Toturers' Theater

Greg Bates
Waffling Alito Charms DiFi

Farrah Hassen
Moustapha AkkadDavid Lean of the Middle East Killed in Amman Blast

Bill Christison
Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars

Website of the Day
Violent Oscillations

 

November 15, 2005

Todd Chretien
My Evening in the No Spin Zone; Or Why Bill O'Reilly Hates San Francisco

Leah Caldwell
Death of the Jailhouse Press

Frederick Hudson
Rosa's Wreath: Miss Parks and Robert Williams

Harry Browne
Bush-Linked Judge Bows Out: Another Mistrial in Irish Ploughshares Case

Jason Leopold
Secret CIA Testimony: Iraq Posed No Threat

Ingmar Lee
Logging Lackies vs. Canada's Most Endangered Species

Diana Barahona
Showdown on the Silver Coast

Tom Andre
New Orleans, Two Months Later

Website of the Weekend
Ernest Crichlow: 1914-2005

 

November 14, 2005

Diana Johnstone
The Origins of the Guardian's Attack on Chomsky

Paul Craig Roberts
Power Over All: Unlimited Detentions and the End of Habeas Corpus

Conn Hallinan
Provoking Syria: Cambodia All Over Again?

Joshua Frank
Off She Goes: Hillary in Israel

Christopher Reed
The Persistence of Racism in Koizumi's Japan

 

November 11 / 13, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
First the Lying, Then the Pardons

Gwyneth Leech
Cross Connections: a Painter Reimagines the Passion of Christ in the Wake of Abu Ghraib

Elmas Mallo
Chillin' in the Blazin' Texas Sun: Inside the Texas Prison System

Michael Neumann
The Rebel King of Bluegrass: Jimmy Martin, an Appreciation

Saul Landau
Leakgate: the Screenplay

Sam Husseini
Bush and Zarqawi Bomb Because We Let Them

Brian Cloughley
Sleaze, Deceit and Torture

Ron Jacobs
Rep. McGovern's Withdrawal Resolution: a Step in the Right Direction?

Lila Rajiva
Dover Bitch: the Curses of Pat Robertson

Michael Donnelly
Hypocrisy Watch

Joe Allen
Murder in El Salvador: Who Killed Gilberto Soto?

Roland Sheppard
Lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Justin E.H. Smith
Another Monkey Trial?

Ben Tripp
The Cost of War

St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Jones, Louise, Ford, Smith, Albert and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Iraq Vets and Against the War Need Your Help!

 

 

November 10, 2005

Peterside, Ogon, Watts and Zalik
Delta Blues Again: Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10 Years Gone

Pat Williams
Will Alito Cost the Republicans the Senate?

Steve Higgs
Bush Crony Targets Indiana's Forests: 400% Hike in Logging

Jimmy Massey
Is Ron Harris Telling the Truth?

Lucson Pierre-Charles
Haiti: Insanity Takes Over

Anthony Newkirk
Syria in the Crosshairs

Lawrence R. Velvel
Why Did Libby Lie?

Website of the Day
Imperial Margarine

November 9, 2005

Gary Leupp
The Niger Deception / Plame Affair: an Incomplete Chronology

Tariq Ali
Blair Defeated on Terror Laws

Chris Floyd
The Philosopher's Stone

Elaine Cassel
The Shocking Trial of an American Citizen: the Case of Ahmed Abu Ali

Joshua Frank
Sen. Max Baucus's NASCAR Pay Day

Alison Weir
Memo to Jon Stewart: Glad You're Against Torture, So Why'd You Give Israel a Pass?

Diana Johnstone
Rage in the Banlieue


November 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Still No Jobs

Roger Burbach
Bush v. Chavez: the Imperial President Meets the Bolivarian Democrat

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Behzad Yaghmaian on the Paris Uprising

Ralph Nader
"The Worst Marketed Disease on the Planet"

Jim McGrath
Voter Beware: a Cautionary Tale for Election Day

David Bloom
McCain, Israel and Torture: Setting the Record Straight

Stan Goff
Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris, and Ambush Journalism

 

November 7, 2005

Dick Reavis
The Origins of Mr. Danger

Jason Leopold
Cheney and the Cover Up: the Vice President Lied

Dave Lindorff
What Country was Bush Talking About?

Eli Stephens
A Tale of Two Generals: the Lies of Colin Powell

David Swanson
The Bush-Cheney Ethics Refresher Course: a Syllabus

M. Junaid Alam
An Interview Stan Goff

Matt Reichel
Paris Uprising: a Rebellion in Real Time

Naima Bouteldja
Paris is Burning

Jeff Halper
Israel as an Extension of American Empire

Website of the Day
Dispatches from Paris

 

November 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Storm Over Brockes' Fakery: Guardian Fabricates Chomsky Quotes

Lawrence R. Velvel
Lying, Law Schools and Executive Power: What Senators Should Ask Alito

Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica: a Response to Certain Criticisms of My Essay

Roosa / Nevins
The Mass Killlings in Indonesia, 40 Years Later

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Missing the Bus: When Conscience Bows to Calculation

John Ross
The Zapatistas' Otra Campaign for Mexico's Presidential Elections

Mike Whitney
Globalizing Sadism: the United States of Torture

Mark Engler
Will Big Business Turn On Bush?: the Economic Nightmare Unfolds

Juliano Mer-Khamis
They Shoot at Children, Too

Ron Jacobs
When Gen. Westmoreland Visited

Jill S. Farrell
Bird Flu and the Posse Comitatus Act

Missy Comley Beattie
Trent Lott's Untroubled Sleep

Mitchel Cohen
People of the Dome, Revisited

Evelyn J. Pringle
Bush-Cheney and Big Oil's Big Summer

Reza Fiyouzat
Signs of Life or Last Gasp? Structural Problems in the Democratic Party

Charles Sullivan
When Courage Fails: a White Southerner on Rosa Parks

Zachary Richard
Return to Louisiana

Ben Tripp
Beginning of the End? Don't Start Cheering Just Yet

St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

 

November 4, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Blood on the Tundra, Betrayal in the Rotunda: Losing ANWR

Dave Lindorff
A Majority Now Favors Impeachment: If He Lied, He Must Be Tried

Phillip Cryan
Crackdown in Colombia

Christopher Brauchli
Katrina and Tax Breaks for the Very Rich

William S. Lind
Exit Strategy: You Can't Stay the Course in a Lost War

Daryl G. Kimball
Of Madmen and Nukes

George Beres
Laurels for Negroponte?

Peter Montague
Why We Can't Prevent Cancer

 

November 3, 2005

James Petras
The Libby Affair and the Internal War

Saul Landau
Torn Families and Shot Down Planes: a Cuba Story

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
An Occurrence at Gretna Bridge

Michael Dickinson
Bang! Bang! You're Deaf! Sonic Weapons Over Palestine

Joshua Frank
Sham Behind Closed Doors

Remi Kanazi
Dancing with Perseverance

Reza Fiyouzat
Taxation or Racketeering?

Website of the Day
CIA Leak Investigation: Bigger Fish, Deeper Water?

 

November 2, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Holy Alito!: Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad

Robert Oscar Lopez
Saving Rosa Parks from American Hypocrisy

John Walsh
The Philosophy of Mendacity: From Leo Strauss to Scooter Libby

Brian J. Foley
Why Most Americans Don't Care About Gitmo (and Why They Should)

Ramzy Baroud
Rolling Back Syria

M. Junaid Alam
What Moral Values?

Todd Chretien
Judgment Day for the Governator

Bruce K. Gagnon
The Democrats' Slap Happy Day

Website of the Day
Hands Off Dave!

 

November 1, 2005

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Kent State's Dave Airhart

Gary Leupp
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome

John Ross
Days of the Dead on the Border

Bill Quigley
Why Are They Making New Orleans a Ghost Town?

Joseph Nevins
From a Boundary of Death to One of Life

Dave Lindorff
Thinking About Impeachment

Linda S. Heard
Bashing Syria: Another Trojan Horse from the UN?

Heather Gray
Thank You, Mrs. Parks

Michael Dickinson
To Di For: Charlie and Camilla Cross the Pond

Jeffrey St. Clair
Kent State: Wise Up and Back Off

 

October 31, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Libby's Lies

Mark Weisbrot
Pop Goes the Bubble: Bernancke and the Fed

Mike Whitney
Carry On, Patrick Fitzgerald

Norman Solomon
After the Libby Indictment, the Press Acquits Itself

Farooq Sulehria
Trading Weapons While Kashmir Burns

Nicole Colson
Scapegoating Immigrants

Madis Senner
Dhafir Sentenced to 22 Years: Another Erosion of Civil Rights

Paul Craig Roberts
Scooter and the Neocons


October 29 / 30, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?

Peter Linebaugh
The Wedges of Hephaestus

Tim Wise
Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media

John Chuckman
Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words

Steven Higgs
Green Hoosiers: Forging a New Democracy in the Heartland

Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War

M. Shahid Alam
Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness

Nikki Robinson
Crack Down at Kent State

Ralph Nader
Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives

Joe DeRaymond
Requiem for Bethlehem Steel?

Joshua Frank
Karl's Great Escape: Did Rove Rat on Scooter?

Laura Santina
Tongue-Tied on Iraq: Why Aren't the Dems Screaming Bloody Murder?

Fred Gardner
Death of an Organizer

Michael Dickinson
Insult Your Country

Ron Jacobs
Autumn in America

Dr. Susan Block
Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting

Vanessa S. Jones
Self-Portrait, 1994. Bronte Beach

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Marbet, Gardner, Ford, Albert, Engel, Krieger & St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Red State Update

 

October 28, 2005

Jared Bernstein
Inflation Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record

Virginia Tilley
Embracing the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine

Phil Gasper
The Race to Execute Tookie Williams

Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!

Manual Garcia, Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?

Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice

Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald Focuses on the Forgeries

Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials


Otober 27, 2005

Saul Landau
The Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War

Stuart Hodkinson
Bono and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!

Ingmar Lee
Stop the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq

Lila Rajiva
License to Bill: Gates Does India

Ilan Pappe
The Last Moment of Hope

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald

Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury

Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo

Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown

 

October 26, 2005

Kathy Kelly
For Whom They Toll

Gary Leupp
Dialectics of the Plame Affair

Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial

Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation

Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks

Website of the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index

 

 

October 25, 2005

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Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings

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Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros

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Talk to Strangers

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Judith Miller and Me

 

October 24, 2005

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Revoke Judy Miller's Pulitzer

Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra

Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial

Mike Whitney
Apres Rove

Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...

Bill and Kathleen Christison
US Foreign Policy and Palestine

 

October 22 / 23, 2005

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When Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller

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Letter from the Circle Bar, New Orleans

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Bush, an Assessment

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Behrooz Ghamari
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Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About

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Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer

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China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness

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December 14, 2005

The Execution of Stan "Tookie" Williams

They Murdered a Peacemaker

By ALAN MAASS

THE STATE of California rewarded redemption with cold-blooded murder--justified with a press release and carried out in the dead of night.

Stan Tookie Williams was put to death in the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison just past midnight on December 13.

The former leader of the Crips in Los Angeles has spent the last decade of his life as one of the most powerful and articulate voices warning youth against violence, crime and prison. Gang truces negotiated along the lines of his "Protocol for Peace" have saved lives across the U.S.

But it didn't matter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who refused Stan's plea for clemency. Or to the state and federal judges, who turned a blind eye to the evidence of racism and bigotry in Stan's capital murder trial two-and-a-half decades ago. Or all the pro-death penalty politicians and media blowhards who calculated that Stan's death was in their interests.

They claimed that Stan's redemption couldn't be real. But it's their death penalty system that is irredeemably barbaric and unjust. This was the legal lynching of a Black man to advance political careers--an age-old tradition in American politics.

* * *

EVEN AS Schwarzenegger put off announcing his decision on clemency until the day of execution, Stan's supporters held out hope that he would acknowledge the evidence that Stan was sent to death row for crimes he didn't commit--and hear the voices of people testifying that this gang leader-turned-peacemaker changed their lives.

But the statement Schwarzenegger issued to justify his denial of clemency shows that he and the right-wing Neanderthals that feed him his lines in the governor's mansion never seriously considered the value of sparing Stan's life--and that all the talk of "facing a difficult decision" was a lie.

The five-page document rejected Stan's transformation from gang leader to peacemaker as a fake. "Williams' perennial nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature from 2001-2005 and the receipt of the President's Call to Service Award in 2005 do not have persuasive weight in this clemency request," reads a footnote in the document.

Stan's anti-gang efforts were dismissed as "hard to assess the effect of such efforts in concrete terms, but the continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams' message," the statement said. "In other words," said Elizabeth Terzakis, an organizer with the Bay Area Save Tookie Committee, "Schwarzenegger went further than the jury and even the prosecutors did. He found Stan guilty of any and all acts of gang violence, anytime and everywhere."

Schwarzenegger--or, more precisely, the author(s) of the statement put out in his name--took special issue with Williams' dedication in his 1998 book Life in Prison.

"Specifically," read the governor's statement, "the book is dedicated to 'Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars. The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts, and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders."

Of course, the "curious" mix of individuals is a list of heroes in the struggles of people of color against oppression. The smearing of them is a grotesque insult added to the ultimate injury.

The statement singles out George Jackson, the Black Panther and prison activist who was murdered by guards in the prison yard at San Quentin in 1971--rewriting history to accuse Jackson of being responsible for that day of violence. It continues: "[T]he inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems."

* * *

STAN'S EXECUTION was met with protests across the U.S.

Crowds of people gathered in the darkness outside San Quentin prison, clogging the narrow street that leads to the east gate--estimates of the size went as high as 5,000. People kept flooding into the demonstration late into the night, as the midnight hour approached when poison would be pumped into Stan's veins.

"Stanley Tookie Williams is a light that can never go out," said Christopher Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. "If Stanley Tookie Williams can't be redeemed, what hope do you hold for America?" Derrel Myers of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights told the crowd, "If we want peace on our streets, we need justice in the schools and in the cities."

In Los Angeles, Stan's supporters gathered at four vigils and protests across the city. At the largest, 250 people turned out to the Westwood Federal Building, and then marched down Wilshire Boulevard to St. Paul the Apostle church, chanting the whole way.

The mood was naturally sad--but angry, too. "My hope is that we continue the fight to end the death penalty," said Stan Muhammad, speaking for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the LA Save Tookie Committee. "Schwarzenegger has made a big mistake," he said to cheers. "His decision will make us fight like never before."

Tom Goldstein, an innocent man who spent 24 years in jail before being exonerated, told the crowd, "I was arrested in 1979, the same year as Tookie Williams, and I can attest with firsthand knowledge that our judicial system is flawed. I believe that Tookie Williams' trial was also flawed, as his conviction was based on the testimony of an reliable jailhouse informants, questionable forensic evidence, and the testimony of self-serving co-defendants."

Hours before, in Washington, D.C., a protest for Stan outside the Justice Department headquarters led the local evening news. Some 40 people delivered a petition calling for emergency federal intervention to stop the execution. The petition had gathered hundreds of signers in just a half a day, and people around the U.S. and internationally faxed the statement to the Justice Department's civil rights division.

From San Diego to New York City to Chicago to Seattle and many other cities, dozens of people came out to protests, vigils and forums--to express their grief and anger at Stan's execution.

These protests were the culmination of a struggle that mobilized people across California and around the country. "The media focused on the celebrity involvement--people like Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg--which has been very welcome, but the key has been the grassroots organizing," said Phil Gasper, a philosophy professor who has nominated Stan for the Nobel Prize and who co-founded Educators for Tookie.

Many diverse organizations and individuals came together around the struggle to save Stan--anti-death penalty groups; the Nation of Islam and other religious organizations; community activists in Stan's hometown of Los Angeles and other cities; liberal civil rights organizations such as the NAACP; school students moved by Stan's books; and groups like the Bay Area's United Playaz that offer positive activities for at-risk youth.

"This was the biggest campaign to stop a California execution that there has ever been," Gasper said. "There has been nothing like it since the campaign to save Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1995."

* * *

FROM THE governor's office to the fanatical prosecutors to the largely silent Democrats at both the state and local levels, the authorities wanted to keep the discussion of Stan's case limited to sensationalized accounts of the 1979 murders that he was convicted of.

Right-wingers filled the airwaves with calls for blood--for example, the daily "Kill Tookie Hour" on AM radio in LA. Among those demanding execution the loudest was a deputy district attorney in San Bernardino County, John Monaghan--who himself faces a civil lawsuit for shooting and killing an unarmed driver he pulled over while working as a county sheriff's reserve deputy.

But the hypocrites on the right couldn't hide the fact that Stan's case shows so much of what's wrong with the death penalty system.

His trial was a racist circus, starting with the jury selection--no Blacks allowed. "If American courts ever attempt to be fair, no Black person would ever stand trial in front of 12 non-Black Americans," wrote Donna Warren, an LA activist and former Green Party candidate for California lieutenant governor, wrote in the San Francisco Bay View newspaper.

During closing arguments at the trial, the prosecutor compared Stan in the courtroom to a caged animal in the zoo--and said that in his "natural habitat" of South Central LA, he would act like a "Bengel tiger."

None of the physical evidence found at the crime scenes was tied to Stan. Instead, the case against him was built around snitch testimony.

In fact, even as Stan's supporters awaited word from Schwarzenegger, further evidence of state misconduct emerged. In a sworn affidavit, posted at the www.savetookie.org Web site, a former prisoner, Gordon Von Ellerman says that he shared a cell with a prosecution witness in Stan's case, and that Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department personnel delivered copies of documents related to different criminal cases, including Stan's. The witness told Von Ellerman that he would use the information in the files to create his testimony against Stan.

* * *

AT THE same time, Stan represented another argument against the death penalty that the media never talk about--that a human being is more than their worst acts.

While Stan steadfastly maintained his innocence in the four murders that sent him to death row, he acknowledged his personal role in furthering the gang violence that plagued South Central Los Angeles.

And he did something about it. From behind bars in San Quentin--in a cell no bigger than most people's bathroom--he transformed himself into a writer and speaker, warning youth against gangs, crime and prison. His children's books and mentoring sessions with incarcerated youth and students won him the respect and love of uncounted young people around the country.

Stan outlined a "Protocol for Peace" that has been used to negotiate truces between rival gangs.

One incident last week underlined the importance of these efforts. As a blogger on a Web site dedicated to the life of hip hop star Tupac Shakur described it, a segment on the BET cable station showed several members of the Bloods gang--arch-rivals to the Crips that Stan co-founded--turning over weapons to a BET reporter, as a gesture of "good faith."

"The mainstream press can put headlines out about how the community leaders in LA are asking for calm, and that they are afraid of violence when the governor's decision comes down," wrote the blogger. "Why are the other sides of this story not reported, especially the BET and the Bloods story?"

Schwarzenegger's predecessor as governor, Gray Davis, was a lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key Democrat who watched the state budget for prison construction swell under his reign. By comparison, Schwarzenegger has been better, promoting parole for prisoners and last year adding the word "rehabilitation" to the name of the Department of Corrections.

If any single person represents "rehabilitation"--in the worst of circumstances--it is Stan Tookie Williams. Granting clemency would have been the perfect opportunity for Schwarzenegger to prove that he was serious about his rhetoric.

It was an opportunity he failed. "This raises the question: Just what do people have to do to show to the criminal justice system that they've rehabilitated themselves," said Marlene Martin, of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "Stan has spent the last decade of his life devoted to steering youth away from gang violence, and he was far more successful at it than any politician. In killing Stan, the justice system showed that it will use its ultimate power in the most vicious and uncaring ways."

Elizabeth Terzakis agrees. "What the governor and the courts and the government made clear today is that justice doesn't matter, that redemption doesn't matter, that the voices of young people don't matter to them," she said. "It doesn't matter to them if a poor person or a person of color can't get a fair trial. It doesn't matter to them that people can change. And it doesn't matter to them whether young people growing up in impoverished cities with crumbling schools have any hope."

* * *

IN THE weeks before the execution, a remarkable groundswell of organizing to save Stan spread around the U.S.

In Los Angeles, when the execution date was first set, activists from the Campaign to End the Death Penalty organized a meeting in South Central LA. In an area ravaged by gang violence, so many people turned out to the first meeting that another was called for the next night. A diverse coalition kept up a steady pace of rallies, vigils, town-hall forums and other events to add to the pressure on Schwarzenegger.

In the Bay Area, where Stan's longtime advocate, journalist Barbara Becnel, had convened the Save Tookie Committee, activists organized a 1,000-strong rally November 19 featuring hip hop star Snoop Dogg. The movie Redemption--made about Stan's life and starring Jamie Foxx--was shown to big audiences in San Francisco and Berkeley, introduced by powerful speeches from actor and activist Danny Glover and others.

In New York City, as many as 150 people attended a December 6 forum in Harlem, featuring speakers from anti-racist and criminal justice groups, as well as spoken word and hip-hop performances from local artists. Newark, N.J., Deputy Mayor Ras Baraka and former members of rival gangs who organized a truce based on Stan's "Protocols for Peace" were among the speakers.

"How in the hell does this country, which is torturing and decimating Iraq, think it has the right to take Tookie's life," said Sundiata Sadiq from the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition and the Ossining, N.Y., chapter of the NAACP. "We leave here believing that we will save Tookie's life. But we also have a greater responsibility, because there are many more Tookies waiting to die."

When Schwarzenegger agreed to hold a private hearing December 8 on Stan's petition for clemency with only lawyers present, the Bay Area Save Tookie Committee, along with the Nation of Islam, the NAACP and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, organized a "People's Clemency Hearing" on the steps of the California state capitol building.

The diversity of the crowd showed how much Stan means to people--and how his case has come to represent everything that is wrong with the death penalty. As seventh-grader Zachary Williams from Richmond, Calif., put it, "Stan stands up for me."

Nation of Islam Western Regional Minister Tony Muhammad pointed out that "Stan isn't the only one who needs clemency. America needs clemency, George Bush needs clemency. If God can forgive America for her negative beginnings, for her crimes against Black people, then America can forgive Stanley Tookie Williams for his negative beginnings."

The high point of the event came in the form of a written statement of support from Linda Owens, the wife of one of the 1979 victims Stan was accused of killing. "I, Linda Owens, want to build upon Mr. Williams' peace initiative," her statement read. "I invite Mr. Williams to join me in sending a message to all communities that we should all unite in peace. This position of peace would honor my husband's memory and Mr. Williams' work."

The movement to save Stan stretched far and wide. In Watsonville, Calif., south of the Bay Area, 40 high school students walked out of classes a few days before the execution date to hold a protest calling for clemency.

The students had planned a speakout on campus during a morning break in classes, but when administrators called one of the leaders of the protest to the office to delay its start, the students left campus and marched through Watsonville's downtown, chanting "No more blood"--with school officials trailing them.

"I'll probably get suspended for this," 17-year-old senior Zeltzin Sanchez told a local newspaper. "But it's worth it, of course. Every life is worth it." "I lost two cousins to gang violence, but that doesn't mean I'm going to kill," she said. "We shouldn't kill. No more blood for blood."

Everywhere, activists recognized that the struggle to save Stan has created new alliances and strengthened the fight against the racist execution machine in the U.S. "Even if this goes badly, I think it's the beginning of a movement against the death penalty," a Sacramento grandmother, Sherri Johnson, said as the "People's Clemency Hearing" took place behind her.

Later, as the execution loomed, Bonnie Williams, Stan's ex-wife and the main spokesperson for his family, said she wanted to thank "everyone who has been supporting us from the bottom of my heart." "Tell everyone that I'm getting on board with the movement," she said. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else. I will not stop now--this is only the beginning. We're going to speak out against this death penalty, and everything else the system does."

Alan Maass is the editor of Socialist Worker. He can be reached at: alanmaass@sbcglobal.net

Petrino DiLeo, Phil Gasper, Sarah Knopp, David McCarthy, Jessie Muldoon, Elizabeth Schulte, Karl Swinehart and David Thurston contributed to this article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 






 

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