Today's Stories

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

Subscribe Online

Spams R Us
BY PETER BUKNATSKI

while writing poems
I noted some irregularities
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and how the hell did I manage
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to let you know that 5 million poems,
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all I require in giving out this treasure
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if these poems go unclaimed many will die

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Dignity
BY MAHDY Y. KHAIYAT

A person whose dignity
Has been eviscerated
Is no longer capable
Of self-restraint.

MAHDY Y. KHAIYAT lives in Goleta, California and can be reached at mahdy10@cox.net.

wolf moon
BY GRETCHIN LAIR

the wolf moon is an old moon
hard and grim she bares her teeth
like a warning in the bright
january night

the wolf moon never rests
there is always something to fight
the stars retreat from her vast glare
while her howl burns
in the vacuum

the wolf moon is hungry and alone
at midnight her coat is stiff with ice
but dreaming spills from her twilight heart
and the brittle trees reach for her
in the dark

GRETCHIN LAIR is a creative advocate residing in Portland, Oregon. She is the founder of Scarlet Star Studios and teaches at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

Intifada
BY STEVE KOWIT                                             

They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance.

  -- David Ben Gurion

Because of the rod of the Pharaoh, the sword of Marneptah,
the sting of the lash of Assyrian armies,
because legions of pious Crusaders condemned the Torah to flames,
because we were led off in halters, enslaved in Armenia, Georgia,
the Caucasus, fled Chrysostom’s rage, Luther's Hitlerian frenzy,
the Dominican Fathers’ Inquisitorial cross,
because we were numbered among the transgressors,
scattered among nations, expelled from the Rhineland, Bavaria, Spain,
brought as the lamb to the slaughter at Prague, Nemirov, Tarnapal,
Bar, Salonika,
because we were dragged through the streets of the shtetl
& set to the torch in the shul, because we died screaming for mercy

were crucified, blinded, boiled in oil & buried alive,
because we were stuffed into cattle cars & shipped East
and our neighbors said nothing,
& were gassed in the showers & no one protested,
am I now to rejoice that my Palestinian brothers & sisters are blindfolded,
beaten, bound at the wrists & kicked to the ground,
pummeled & mocked, left to rot in the heat of the Negev,
while the pious Zionist settlers raze their villages, demolish
their homes, expropriate their farms, plough their olive groves under?
Should I pretend I heard nothing? Saw nothing?
That it was none of my business? 

Because the Einsatsgruppen mowed down the Jews in the streets
do I turn my back now and forget that the farmers of Khan Yunis
were murdered in cold blood,
that the shepherds of Kafr Quasim were shot where they stood,
that the massacred women & children of Dier Yassin have been flung into wells,
that the village where Mahmoud Darwish was born no longer exists,
that the Palestinian homeland was stolen?

Should I forget the blood of Shatilla & Sabra, should I forget the Lebanese dead?
that Ashbir Yusef & Mahmoud Sabad were beaten to death,
that Sohel Zantut's son is still missing, that Fadhi Salim has lost his right leg,
that Sohel El-Ali was thrown from a bus, that Tamer Dasuki was shot in the back,
that Mustafa Hamden was buried alive,
that the husbands disappear into prisons, and the children
are gunned down by tanks, & the women weep in the rubble
while the Gush Emunim & the minions of Valdman, Schmuel Derlich,
Zeevi, Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Rabin & Kehane dance in the streets,
cursing the filthy Arabushim:
Do I just turn my back? Do I too become the Good German?

Because of the curfews, expropriations, expulsions, the knock at the door,
because of the Anchloss, the Kristallnacht  riots,
because of the boot of despair & the cheek of denial,
because we have suffered the smokestacks of Auschwitz,
the mass graves of Chelmno & Belsen,
because we fell at the walls of the ghetto,
I tell you the occupation must end.

The Palestinian homeland was stolen.

Because I am Ashkanazy, a Jew, descendent of Khazars,
son of the tradesmen of Krakow, Lithuanian fiddlers, Talmudic scholars,
the wandering peddlars of Minsk, child of the Diaspora, exile in this world,
am I not of the Amalekite people as well: part Moabite, Chaldean,
Toltec & Pawnee, son of a long line of Canaanite cobblers,
Nigerian ploughmen, child of those who escaped here from Melos,
Soweto, Sharpville, Zimbabwe, Belfast, Jakarta?
I am Kurdish. Armenian. Of the wandering Romani people.
Of Calcutta's untouchable Harijan masses.
Part Lacandon, Quiché & Yana, of Tasmanian blood,
born of the Sac-Fox nation, son of the Bayou, a runaway field slave,
sojourner, nomad, pariah, untermensch, heir to this world of nettles & dust.

That is to say, I am of the shebab, of pure Palestinian blood,
a Fedayeen son of Jerusalem shepherds,   
child of al-Nakba, son of those with the bayonet at their throats.

 In Occupied Palestine the Palestinian flag is not allowed to be raised.
Here in this poem I raise the Palestinian flag.

 While the villagers pray & the young men throw stones, I stand
in the shadows & watch. I say nothing. Shots have been fired.
A handful of men are hauled off for beatings.
Their confessions are written in Hebrew.
A mother runs thru the darkness: Mustafa, she whispers, Mustafa?
… Mustafa? I hear the sharp breath in take, the all but inaudible weeping,
the vows of revenge. I note well the names of the dead,
who is missing, who has been murdered,
who has been beaten, whose land this time has been taken,
whose homes the Occupation Forces demolish.
Because of those who have stood here before me
& said “This cannot be done in my name,” I can no longer be silent.
Because of Gush Shalom & the Yesh G'vul, & Women in Black
Because of the terrible fate of The White Rose
I stand my ground at the edge of an olive grove in the village of Dir Istya.

I can do nothing no longer.
The expropriation of the Palestinian homeland must end.
About the scald of the rope of bondage pricking my throat
I wrap the kaffiyah. Let the young men take up their stones.
Let the people arise. Let the lamps of the priests of the Lord of Plunder
sputter & darken. Let the armies of occupation tremble.
What was dread has been sharpened to mettle & has festered to gall.
Because of the Oremus et pro perfidis judaeis, that terrible Good Friday prayer
I stand with this heavy stone in my hand: unbending, defiant.
I tell you the theft of the Palestinian homeland must end.
Because of the Nuremberg Laws and the Aryan Clauses,  
because of the Easter pogroms,
because of the rod of the Pharoah,
because of the sword of Marneptah,
because of the sting of the lash of Assyrian armies,
because legions of pious Crusaders condemned the Torah to flames.

STEVE KOWIT can be reached at steve.kowit@gmail.com.

Editorial Note: Submit your poems as a word document to CounterPunch's poetry editor, Kimberly Willson at: willsons53@gmail.com.

To be considered for Saturday's Poetry Basement, please send your poems by Wednesday of that week.