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Today's
Stories
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
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.
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Weekend
Edtion
March 6 / 7, 2004
The Longest Jump
The
Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
By DAVE ZIRIN
Young Phil Shinnick wasn't supposed to smash a
world record. On May 25th 1963, the 20 year old University of
Washington unknown landed 27'4" long jump at the California
Relays in Modesto, besting the previous mark held by the USSR's
Igor Ter-Ovanesyan. It is undisputed that Shinnick soared this
unmatched distance. Yet his name graces no book of records.
Meet officials disqualified the jump
because they assumed it was wind aided even though no wind gauge
was on hand for the leap. The one wind gauge present in Modesto,
in use for the 220 low hurdles, read 1.6 meters per second, under
the limit of 2 meters per second (about 4.8 miles per hour) during
Shinnick's jump.
Shinnick had bested a hallowed mark once
held for twenty five years by Jesse Owens and being stalked that
very day in Modesto by the great Ralph Boston. But his anonymity
spurred meet organizers to presume an illegitimate jump. As Shinnick
remembers, "They didn't know who I was. Ralph [Boston] told
me later 'when I saw that jump, I went into shock. I just was
absolutely in shock.' And I think that the track world never
recovered from that shock. They couldn't believe the unbelievable.
How could a guy who's just twenty-years-old, and jumped in only
four or five college meets in his life, break the world record?"
The meet officials voted the next day
to accept his World Record but in an extraordinary move never
submitted the mark to the International Amateur Athletics Federation
(IAAF) for consideration.
A brief storm of outrage erupted at their
actions. Arthur Robinson of the Sacramento Bee wrote in June
1963, "First of all it wasn't a wind. It wasn't even a breeze...
Whatever it was, it wasn't enough to blow out a match...even
a hummingbird's feather would have dropped to the ground without
drifting in its descent at the moment young Shinnick made his
phenomenal jump."
By Sept. 12, 1964, Boston flew past Shinnick's
Modesto jump, reaching 27-4 1/2. Shinnick's phantom leap would
have lasted just 16 months and the hue and cry receded into the
background for everyone. Everyone except Phil Shinnick. Even
though he went on to make the 1964 Olympic team and competed
in four other World Record breaking competitions in the next
five years, the still day in Modesto never left his mind.
Now 40 years later Dr. Phil Shinnick,
a 60-year-old Manhattan Acupuncturist and research scientist
is attempting to shatter another record by getting his name in
the books, four decades after the fact. Over the last ten years,
in an at time grueling effort he has likened to writing his doctorate
dissertation, Dr. Shinnick has pleaded his case to the highest
levels of track and field. Active supporters include Gold Medallists
Lee Evans, Tommie Smith, Harold Connolly, and recently, Bob Beamon.
Former world record holder Ralph Boston, the man Shinnick beat
40 years ago has signed an affidavit stating, "I saw the
attempt and it was real."
Other affidavits signed on Shinnick's
behalf come from the Modesto Meet Director, the late Dr. Tom
Moore who wrote in 1995 before his death, "I have regretted
this happening all these years, also as I have always felt that
the wind was under the allowable and you should have a world
record." Even the actual wind gauge officials present that
day have sworn statements that Shinnick's jump was true. Last
year the United States Track and Field Association retroactively
recognized Shinnick's mark. Shinnick has now turned his dogged
attention to the final authority on the matter, the IAAF. Shinnick
knows that many in the track world wonder why he can't let this
go.
"People project on me a lot of why
I'm doing this and say I want to be more recognized. I'm doing
this because of truth and justice. I want to be happy in my life
and I don't want to die while thinking about this. I don't want
to have regrets. When you get older that's what happens to you.
Things that were bad start to come back. So I don't want that.
I'm in medicine; I see a lot of people dying and I see how, if
they don't deal with things in their life, it bites them in the
end and it makes them bitter. You've got to have peace and I
want peace in my soul. That's what I really want."
While the 40 year gap has raised eyebrows,
changing records after the fact is actually quite common in track
and field. From 1901 to 1935 the IAAF on the basis of signed
affidavits ratified five long jump records, in 1936 a wind gauge
was added as an option. So Shinnick's mark can be accepted by
the IAAF under that rule. More recently, Carl Lewis was named
the Olympic Champion and world record holder in the 100-meter
dash world record in 1988, after losing to Ben Johnson who was
later disqualified for steroid use. Retroactive evaluation of
records and titles, according to tests for performance enhancing
drugs, and other circumstances, has been set as a precedent.
Shinnick's mark could likewise be accepted according to this
principle. Yet, the IAAF, the world governing body for amateur
athletics, remains steadfast in its view that Shinnick is easier
to ignore than address. This is partly due, Shinnick believes,
to his radical past. After his athletic career ended, Shinnick
was a political activist throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He fought
to get China invited to the Olympics. When nuclear weapon proliferation
heightened between the US and USSR he organized peace delegations
of athletes and scholars to travel behind the iron curtain to
study how sports and competition were organized. Shinnick estimates
that he must have brought "200-300 people" into the
USSR for "friendly sport competition". At the heights
of the Cold War he helped found the Moscow Peace marathon. With
age, Shinnick's activism never waned and in the early 1980s,
he founded Athlete's United for Peace.
The IAAF declined to comment on Shinnick's
case or whether his political history has played any role in
this process.
In 1985 Shinnick went into medicine and
today has a client list that includes singer Roberta Flack and
he used to treat, fittingly enough, current long jump record
holder Michael Powell. Yet through it all, he never forgot that
day in Modesto. After almost thirty years, Shinnick finally felt
compelled to act in 1992 when he was elected to the University
of Washington sports Hall of Fame. .
"I was there being honored and my
dad look looked over to me and said, 'Why are so unhappy? I mean
here you all in the Hall of Fame at the University of Washington,
80,000 people honoring you. I said I was miserable because my
jump was never recognized and I will never be happy about that.'
I realized that it had gotten down deep and under my skin, it
really bothered me...My Dad gave me the push to actually do something
about it."
Now that the record has been recognized
by the USTFA, the IAAF is next in his sites. But Shinnick says
that this quest is not for validation "I knew the record
was okay from the very beginning and there has never been a doubt
in my mind that it wasn't a world record. Others say, "Oh
this is going to be so good, you'll get recognized. It's so good
because you'll get what you deserve." I already got what
I deserved, a great world record jump beating the Olympic Champion
because of my hard training and talent. In my mind it happened,
I broke the record. In my mind, it was unjust that it didn't
get recognized officially, and that's my driving force."
Dave Zirin
is the News Editor for the Prince George's Post. His sports writing
can be read at www.edgeofsports.com.
He can be reached at: editor@pgpost.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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