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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Cockburn/St. Clair: Bush and Blair's Chickens Come Home to Roost; No Poultry for the Press?; Amanpour Admits CNN Cowed by Bush and FoxNews; WMDs, Misdirection and Iraqi Defectors on the Take; Cockburn in London: David Kelly's Mistress; The Bahai Spy; Corruption at Harrod's; A Tribute to Edward Said; John Donne's Vision of Paradise as Modern Airport; The Caledonian Road; Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 70,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 CounterPunch Events: Cockburn in Berkeley / Saul Landau in No. Cal

Now Available from CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included) Today's Stories October 11 / 13, 2003 Alexander Cockburn Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings Saul Landau Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles Phillip Cryan The War on Human Rights in Colombia Kurt Nimmo Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites Nelson P. Valdes Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way Lisa Viscidi The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference Maria Trigona and Fabian Pierucci Allende Lives Larry Tuttle States of Corruption William A. Cook Failing America Brian Cloughley US Economic Space and New Zealand Adrian Zupp What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight? Merlin Chowkwanyun The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin Ben Tripp Screw You Right Back: CIA FU! Lee Ballinger Grits Ain't Groceries Mickey Z. Not All Italians Love Columbus Bruce Jackson On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire" William Benzon The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2 Adam Engel The Eyes of Lora Shelley Walt Brasch Facing a McBlimp Attack Poets' Basement Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney October 10, 2003 John Chuckman Schwarzenegger and the Lottery Society Toni Solo Trashing Free Software Chris Floyd Body Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women   October 9, 2003 Jennifer Loewenstein Bombing Syria Ramzi Kysia Seeing the Iraqi People Fran Shor Groping the Body Politic Mark Hand President Schwarzenegger? Alexander Cockburn Welcome to Arnold, King for a Day Website of the Day The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark   October 8, 2003 David Lindorff Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Centrist Dems Ramzy Baroud Israel's WMDs and the West's Double Standard John Ross Mexico Tilts South Mokhiber / Weissman Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust James Bovard The Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster Michael Neumann One State or Two? A False Dilemma   October 7, 2003 Uri Avnery Slow-Motion Ethnic Cleansing Stan Goff Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta Ron Jacobs Yom Kippurs, Past and Present David Lindorff Coronado in Iraq Rep. John Conyers, Jr. Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required Cynthia McKinney Who Are "We"? Elaine Cassel Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case Walter Lippman Thoughts on the Cali Recall Gary Leupp Israel's Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now? Website of the Day Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot   October 6, 2003 Robert Fisk US Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria Forrest Hylton Upheaval in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity Benjamin Dangl Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War Bridget Gibson Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus Nicole Gamble Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials JoAnn Wypijewski The New Unity Partnership: A Manifest Destiny for Labor Website of the Day Guerrilla Funk   October 3 / 5, 2003 Tim Wise The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment Peter Linebaugh Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW Gary Leupp Occupation as Rape-Marriage Bruce Jackson Addio Alle Armi David Krieger A Nuclear 9/11? Ray McGovern L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers Col. Dan Smith Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean Mickey Z. In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest Roger Burbach Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq John Chuckman Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus William S. Lind Versailles on the Potomac Glen T. Martin The Corruptions of Patriotism Anat Yisraeli Bereavement as Israeli Ethos Wayne Madsen Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can M. Junaid Alam The Racism Barrier William Benzon Scorsese's Blues Adam Engel The Great American Writing Contest Poets' Basement McNeill, Albert, Guthrie   October 2, 2003 Niranjan Ramakrishnan What's So Great About Gandhi, Anyway? Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill The Ashcroft-Rove Connection Doug Giebel Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair Hamid Dabashi The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003) Elaine Cassel Chicago Condemns Patriot Act Saul Landau Who Got Us Into This Mess? Website of the Day Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya! October 1, 2003 Joanne Mariner Married with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families Robert Fisk Oil, War and Panic Ron Jacobs Xenophobia as State Policy Elaine Cassel The Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act Shyam Oberoi Shooting a Tiger Toni Solo Plan Condor, the Sequel? Sean Donahue Wesley Clark and the "No Fly" List Website of the Day Downloader Legal Defense Fund   September 30, 2003 After Dark Arnold's 1977 Photo Shoot Dave Lindorff The Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well Tom Crumpacker The Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers Robert Fisk A Lesson in Obfuscation Charles Sullivan A Message to Conservatives Suren Pillay Edward Said: a South African Perspective Naeem Mohaiemen Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill Does a Felon Rove the White House? Website of the Day The Edward Said Page September 29, 2003 Robert Fisk The Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies Iain A. Boal Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli! Lee Sustar Paul Krugman: the Last Liberal? Wayne Madsen General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark Benjamin Dangl Bolivia's Gas War Uri Avnery The Magnificent 27 Pledge Drive of the Day Antiwar.com   September 26 / 28, 2003 Alexander Cockburn Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist David Price Teaching Suspicions Saul Landau Before the Era of Insecurity Ron Jacobs The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and the Patriot Act Brian Cloughley The Strangeloves Win Again Norman Solomon Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama Robert Fisk Bomb Shatters Media Illusions M. Shahid Alam A Muslim Sage Visits the USA John Chuckman American Psycho: Bush at the UN Mark Schneider International Direct Action The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada William S. Lind How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security Douglas Valentine Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia Chris Floyd Vanishing Act Elaine Cassel Play Cat and Moussaoui Richard Manning A Conservatism that Once Conserved George Naggiar The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said Omar Barghouti Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized Lenni Brenner Palestine's Loss is America's Loss Mickey Z. Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice Tanweer Akram The Legacy of Edward Said Adam Engel War in the Smoking Room Poets' Basement Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie Website of the Weekend Who the Hell is Stew Albert?   September 25, 2003 Edward Said Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony Robert Fisk Fanning the Flames of Hatred Sarah Ferguson Wolfowitz at the New School David Krieger The Second Nuclear Age Bill Glahn RIAA Doublespeak Al Krebs ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime Michael S. Ladah The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs Fran Shor Arnold and Wesley Mustafa Barghouthi Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights Alexander Cockburn Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate Heart Website of the Day Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help! September 24, 2003 Stan Goff Generational Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War William Blum Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark David Vest Politics for Bookies Jon Brown Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin Robert Fisk Occupation and Censorship Latino Military Families Bring Our Children Home Now! Neve Gordon Sharon's Preemptive Zeal Website of the Day Bands Against Bush September 23, 2003 Bernardo Issel Dancing with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand Gary Leupp To Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo Gregory Wilpert An Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela Steven Higgs Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and Radical Stan Cox The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth? Robert Fisk Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq William S. Lind Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent Elaine Cassel First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers Yigal Bronner The Truth About the Wall Website of the Day The Baghdad Death Count September 20 / 22, 2003 Uri Avnery The Silliest Show in Town Alexander Cockburn Lighten Up, America! Peter Linebaugh On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet Anne Brodsky Return to Afghanistan Saul Landau Guillermo and Me Phan Nguyen Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie Gila Svirsky Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open Gary Leupp On Apache Terrorism Kurt Nimmo Colin Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja Brian Cloughley Colin Powell's Shame Carol Norris The Moral Development of George W. Bush Bill Glahn The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda Adam Engel An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector Dave Lindorff Good Morning, Vietnam! Mark Scaramella Contracts and Politics in Iraq John Ross WTO Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold Justin Podur Uribe's Desperate Squeals Toni Solo The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane Steven Sherman Workers and Globalization David Vest Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America Ron Jacobs Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps Poets Basement Krieger, Guthrie and Albert Website of the Weekend Ted Honderich: Terrorism for Humanity? 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 Search CounterPunch

Weekend Edition October 11 / 13, 2003 CounterPunch Diary Bush, Straw, Seize Broken Reed:Kay's Misleading Report; CIA/MI6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Bush seized upon the report of David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, to assert that Kay's interim conclusions showed that Saddam had been in hot pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, as demonstrated in particular by the DEADLY VIAL. Kay made a cautious bid to help Bush and Blair out, but it's a case of trying to bake bricks without straw. The best dissection of the Kay report came in The Independent from Dr Glen Rangwala of Cambridge (UK). Click here to continue.   Contradictions Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles By SAUL LANDAU Don't bother him with details! Nobody's totally consistent! If you remember long ago, in 2000 to be precise, George W. Bush eschewed expensive and ambitious projects like nation building and called for less spending on overseas operations not directly connected to immediate US interests. He called himself a "compassionate conservative" and pledged, among other things, to "leave no child behind." One wit reminded me that Bush had not left one child behind; rather, he'd left millions of kids in far worse shape than before he took office. It's because of the economy, stupid! In 1980, his daddy shouted "Voodoo economics" when Republican candidate for President, Ronald Reagan, announced his "no tax and spend freely" program as the cure-all for America. Click here to continue.   The War on Human Rights in Colombia Three Variations on a Theme from Uribe By PHIILIP CRYAN When Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez accused human rights organizations of "serving terrorism" in September 8 and 11 speeches, the international response was, thankfully, strong. The United Nations, European Union, various newspapers, NGOs and members of the U.S. Congress made statements reproaching Uribe for the comments, pointing out that within the logic of Colombia's conflict the President's words would be understood by right-wing paramilitaries as a green light to execute human rights defenders. The "terrorist" NGOs "hide cowardly in the flag of human rights," said Uribe in the first speech. "When the terrorists begin to feel weakened, they send out their spokespeople to talk about human rights." Click here to continue.   A Lawless Cowboy Rattles His Sabre Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites By KURT NIMMO In order to please crucial "swing" voters in his brother's state, Junior has ratcheted up the anti-Castro rhetoric. Bush has not threatened Castro outright -- not yet anyway -- but instead has said he will increase "restrictions" on Cuba. "The transition to freedom will present many challenges to the Cuban people and to America, and we will be prepared," declared Bush. He told Secretary of State Colin Powell and Housing Secretary Mel Martinez to "plan for the happy day when Castro's regime is no more and democracy comes to the island." It wasn't all that long ago Bush said the same about Iraq. Click here to continue.   Traveling to Cuba Where There is a Will, There is a Way By NELSON P. VALDES Do you want to travel to Cuba but believe you are not allowed by the U.S. government? Well, do not despair! The official position of the United States government is that you CAN travel to the island but you cannot spend any money while you are there. Click here to continue.   The Guatemalan Elections Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference By LISA VISCIDI On Nov 9, 2003, Guatemalans will cast their votes for President, congressmen and local municipal leaders. A second round involving the two strongest presidential contenders will follow on Dec 28 if no candidate wins an absolute majority. The electoral environment is marked by an ambiguous definition of presidential candidates and party platforms, allegations of fraud and electoral violence being committed by the government party, and a high percentage of apathetic voters. Click here to continue.   Allende Still Lives 30 Years Since Chile's Military Coup By MARIA TRIGONA and FABIAN PIERUCCI For Latin Americans, Sept. 11 marked a cataclysmic event well before that same date in 2001 was etched in the conscience of the U.S. populace by terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Organization headquarters. On that date in 1973, Chile awoke to a U.S.-supported military coup against its democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. By 12:15 p.m., Allende lay dead in La Moneda, Chile's presidential palace. To commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the attack, activists from across the continent gathered in what was more a celebration of the man and his government than a requiem. The International Seminar "At 30 years, Allende lives!" took a close look at the surge of grassroots organizing that grounded Chile's agrarian reforms, as well as struggles for housing and dignified employment during Allende's three years as president. Participants stressed the need for similar popular participation to increase democracy in today's Chile. Click here to continue.   The Toxic Revolving Door States of Corruption By LARRY TUTTLE In August, two EPA bureaucrats finalized air quality roll backs for power plants, promptly abandoned their government jobs, and immediately found lucrative positions in the power-generating industry. Down the street, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton's top lieutenant, Steven Griles, was dutifully short-circuiting environmental regulations for oil, gas, and mineral mining enterprises, the same industries his Washington, DC lobby shop represented until 2001. EPA employees who double-deal away public health no longer raise my ire. Neither am I outraged about Steven Griles' sleaziness. I already know that Washington, DC is irreversibly corrupt. But mostly I'm not irate or outraged because DC corruption is trivial when compared to the malignancy administered by state environmental agencies. DC corruption might increase the parts-per-million of arsenic in your water glass. But if you lived in tiny Riddle, Oregon, during the last 10 years, the Oregon state government permitted millions of gallons of heavy metals to enter your municipal watershed every month. Click here to continue.   Failing America Duplicity at Home and Abroad By WILLIAM A. COOK Have the American people capitulated to the manufactured fear fabricated by Bush, Ashcroft and Ridge? Are we the sheep Churchill mocked when he said, "Sheep don't need whipping"? Do we sit passively in front of our television sets listening to lie after lie and do nothing, knowing now that these lies sent American boys abroad as administration aggressors, yea, as unprovoked invaders of a foreign land, as occupiers entrusted with securing the natural resources of that land to be used to pay for the reconstruction caused by the invasion? Had we known the truth would we have agreed to be the mercenaries of the Cabal, to secure for them the millions they will accrue from contracts paid for by our tax dollars while we suffer the indignity of being labeled across the globe, "foot soldiers of the corporate elite"? Has the "dumbing down" of America, that has turned our Democracy into a "Corpocrisy," turned us as well into corporate robots to be used at will by those who buy our politicians? Click here to continue.   Bush and the WTO Bullies US Economic Space and New Zealand By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY It wasn't the most earth-shaking event of recent times but was certainly a step in the direction of improving trade, trust and cooperation in at least part of Eurasia. The announcement that Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine are to form a Common Economic Space (CES) was welcome in terms of specific cooperation and overall concepts of furthering development and improving living standards. Any initiative that contributes to growth and harmony should be greeted with enthusiasm, but the Bush administration is trying hard to at least neutralise and preferably destroy the CES and much else besides. The advantages of economic groupings are manifold, and the most obvious one is increased commercial cooperation. The shambles of the World Trade Organisation jamboree at Cancun showed only too clearly that nations fighting for economic improvement and even survival cannot expect sympathetic treatment from the European Union or the US. The WTO has spawned powerful and malevolent sub-groupings of rich nations, energetically intent on profit at the expense of developing countries. Click here to continue.   What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight? By ADRIAN ZUPP The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and temporal leader in exile and the man believed by Buddhists to be the 14th incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, does not see himself as a miracle worker. "I'm a skeptic," he said at his recent sold-out appearance at Boston's FleetCenter. "If someone truly has healing power, I'd like to call about my knees." It was a good quip ... and the Dalai Lama has a few. But while he may not possess preternatural powers, there can be no argument that he has considerable international clout--at least potentially. Consider the following. Before coming to Boston (primarily for a conference at MIT on Buddhism and science) as part of a 20-day, five-city US tour, the Dalai Lama met with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other US leaders--an audience not always accorded to heads of state. Click here to continue.   Can Artists Unify America? Grits Ain't Groceries By LEE BALLINGER All the major supermarket chains are set to go on strike in Southern California tomorrow. I was in the Pavilions across the street from my house today. A lot of the customers were talking to the employees about the strike, offering sympathy, stocking up so they wouldn't have to cross the picket line. In the middle of the store, managers were giving instruction to a group of about 25 replacement workers who will start work tomorrow when the strike commences. These replacement workers were an absolute cross-section of LA: Black, white, Mexican. Teenagers and senior citizens. Some dressed up, some ghettoed down. The fact that they were there, preparing to break the strike, didn't seem to faze anyone. Click here to continue.   A Strange and Tragic Legal Journey The Case of Sherman Martin Austin By MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN On Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003, Sherman Martin Austin began serving one year in federal prison under terms of a plea agreement for which he was sentenced on Aug. 4, 2003. Austin, the 20-year-old African-American founder and former webmaster of the anarchist website www.raisethefist.com, pleaded guilty to "distribution" of information about making or using explosives with the "intent" that the information "be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence." Such was deemed illegal under a relatively obscure federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 842 (p)(2)(A), pushed through Congress by Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the late 1990s. The offending material, which Austin repeatedly has emphasized he did not author, was housed on an isolated section of Austin's web server, and a small portion of it contained amateurish instructions on how to assemble simple explosives. Click here to continue.   Screw You Right Back CIA FU By BEN TRIPP I may be terribly old-fashioned--I still wear a waistcoat and spats- but I've always lived by the simple dictum "don't dick with the Central Intelligence Agency". This is the agency, let us recall, that parts the hemispheres of people's brains with a spatula in the course of ordinary conversation. It's the same organization that has overthrown several dozen governments, assassinated countless persons, and hunted down Robert Redford in '3 Days of the Condor'. The CIA is a collection of the baddest cats this world has ever seen, and while I do not share in its ideals or goals (although they did help to keep the price of bananas down by overthrowing the government of Guatemala, so props for that) I do extend to the CIA my very greatest respect. It doesn't need my admiration; it is a vile machine. But you don't mess with the CIA, any more than you would mess with a Kodiak bear at the helm of an M1-Abrams tank. Thus it came as something of a shock to discover the Bush administration thought it could, with impunity, invent a bunch of phony intelligence ('hooey' in CIA-speak), get caught, and blame it on the CIA. Click here to continue.   Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day! Not All Italians Love Columbus By MICKEY Z. America is a nation built upon myth (starting with its "discovery") but the greatest myth of all is that the land of the free is gonna last forever. But, alas, my History Channel-watching brethren, all genocidal empires must fall. Just ask Italy. Once the proud birthplace of DaVinci, Verdi, and my father; Italy must now bear the blame for producing Buttafuoco, Guiliani, and Janice Soprano. While the children of old Italia once rose up in defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, today's paisan is busy trying to explain Fabio. Click here to continue.   Culture Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire" Three Films That Tried to Tell the Story of The Blues, One That Did By BRUCE JACKSON Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire" is one of the three historical episodes in Martin Scorsese's seven-segment PBS series on the blues.* The other two were Scorsese's "Feel Like Going Home" and Wim Wenders "Soul of a Man." Burnett's is by far the most fully achieved and most interesting of the three. This is the film's story: Junior (Nathaniel Lee, Jr.) , an 11-year-old boy living in Los Angeles, is sent home to Mississippi to be baptized. His blues-loving fast-living Uncle Buddy (Tommy Redmond Hicks) picks him up at the New Orleans train station. Buddy introduces Junior to the black South, to the music it produced, to sex, to their shared past and present. Junior does little in the film but look and listen; Buddy does little but give Junior lectures, plop Junior into adult social situations in which he is puzzled or astonished or eroticized, or provide lead-in lines for sequences of archival footage. If it weren't for the music and the archival footage, Burnett's film would be unbearably tendentious. But there is the music and archival footage, a great deal of both, and the way Burnett weaves them in and out of that remembered Mississippi boyhood summer of sin make for a film that is surreptitiously wonderful. It is a film that has to be seen a second time. Click here to continue.   The Door Is Open Scorsese's Blues 2 By WILLIAM BENZON "No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you." Franz Kafka, "Before the Law" With "Red, White, and Blues," in which Mike Figgis tells the story of British blues, and "Piano Blues," by Clint Eastwood, Scorsese's series came to an ending that is as strong at its beginning was weak. Eastwood was more generous with the music itself than any of the other directors, though some of his own comments were more sentimental than sage, while Figgis gave us the most artful collection of interviews in the series and some disarmingly powerful blues from one of the masters of the Las Vegas supper circuit. Click here to continue.   Possessed by Genius The Eyes of Lora Shelley By ADAM ENGEL Lora Shelley's nudes, like Lucien Freud's, are more than nude, they are naked. Her subjects are often caught in Maurice Sendack-like fairy-tale-fun-macabre dreams "It makes a lot of sense to me," says Lora Shelley of the 'Freud meets Sendack' comparison. "I admire these qualities when they are combined in other artists work (including these two). There is something that really gets me about thinking something is scary and funny at the same time. It's a very exciting feeling." Click here to continue.   It's Only the Beginning Facing a McBlimp Attack By WALT BRASCH Beneath a clear blue Fall afternoon, I was lying face down on the parkway outside city hall. On top of me, cursing and screaming they'll never take us alive, was Marshbaum. The last thing I had remembered before being hit with a flying tackle was looking up. So, I looked up again. "Stay down!" Marshbaum barked. "Snipers?" I fearfully asked. When you're a political satirist, you never know who you may have offended. "Blimp," whispered Marshbaum ominously. Click here to continue.   Poets' Basement 12 Haiku By MICKEY Z Unanticipated Consequences By STEW ALBERT The Sun Has Riz on Bethlehem By LARRY KEARNEY Click here to read.   Weekend Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003 Tim Wise The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment Peter Linebaugh Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW Gary Leupp Occupation as Rape-Marriage Bruce Jackson Addio Alle Armi David Krieger A Nuclear 9/11? Ray McGovern L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers Col. Dan Smith Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean Mickey Z. In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest Roger Burbach Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq John Chuckman Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus William S. Lind Versailles on the Potomac Glen T. Martin The Corruptions of Patriotism Anat Yisraeli Bereavement as Israeli Ethos Wayne Madsen Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can M. Junaid Alam The Racism Barrier William Benzon Scorsese's Blues Adam Engel The Great American Writing Contest Poets' Basement McNeill, Albert, Guthrie Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /