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Today's
Stories
December 9, 2003
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
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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December
9, 2003
Craig Beneville's
Quiet Thunder
On
the Passing of a Gentle Warrior
By MICHAEL DONNELLY
Nature lost a warrior. Earth First! lost a hero.
I lost a friend. We all gained perspective.
Last week, Craig Beneville accidentally
fell to his death from high up in the forest canopy. He was using
his climbing skills to create habitat.
Of late, Craig had also been climbing
in a number of groves themselves slated for death by the Bureau
of Land Management's tireless efforts to, as they themselves
put it, "implement the Clinton Northwest Forest Plan."
Y'all remember the 1994 Forest Plan?
The Big Greens said this, "our greatest victory," had
ended Ancient Forest logging and saved the forests, the spotted
owls and other species that depend on it. Well, of course, it
did none of that.
Craig and climbing buddy Mick Garvin
are best known for two things -- as the sly geniuses behind the
Seattle WTO "siege engine" that the cops bought as
real, thus diverting police action until hundreds of people could
successfully lock-down at the various intersections around the
WTO Conference Center and as stalwart defenders of Warner Creek,
Oregon, truly one of our greatest victories. Craig and other
hardy champions spent two winters in the snows successfully defending
the area from Forest Service plans to "implement the Forest
Plan" there.
One of the requirements of the Forest
Plan is that the agencies involved have to do biological surveys
of species dependent on the forests before any logging can take
place. Of course, the agencies have botched it. Lawsuits have
been won forcing them to comply. Even then, they have always
come up short. So, folks like Craig and Mick have been climbing
the trees looking for active nests of the Red Tree Vole, a  rodent that spends almost its entire life
living hundreds of feet up in the tree tops and is a major food
source for the endangered Northern spotted owls--the Indicator
Species for the health of this majestic ecosystem.
Word quickly spread through the larger
community he was an integral part of--the forest protection community,
the river rafting community, the rock climbing community. Some
two hundred folks from all over descended on Eugene last weekend
for a Celebration of Craig's Life. Amid the tears, hugs, laughter
and tales, we came to terms as best we could with our loss. Usually,
as a group, we're not too good with emotional sentiment, and
like Craig, we generally use anger and wisecracking to deflect
it. But, this time, we matured.
A number of us had gathered the Saturday
before on the Oregon Coast for an after Thanksgiving dinner party.
Craig was there flashing his sly smile and cracking his wry wit.
He was headed to his Joshua Tree winter retreat soon. We planned
a trip to a desert hot springs next month. Of course, those of
us fortunate to have spent this last weekend with Craig were
stunned, but thankful we had last seen him in such good spirits.
Saturday, after another huge meal surrounded
by photos and other Craig memorabilia, we gathered around the
fire to celebrate. Now, Craig would usually have had nothing
to do with such a show of sentimentality. Accordingly, in Craig's
honor, Mike Roselle boycotted and stayed behind guarding the
kegs--one a local microbrew and one an organic root beer for
us nondrinkers.
Jonathan Paul's booming voice rose over
the crowd as he started things off with a rousing recap of what
Craig meant to him and to us all. Many stories were shared and
toasts raised to our fallen comrade--that "sexy mo-fo."
It was noted that Craig was seldom a seeker of the limelight
(except when his alter-ego Thunder Craig would take the stage).
In a movement beset with large egos and petty authority and leadership
issues, Craig wanted none of that. Yet, as Hazel noted, when
the call came, there was Craig volunteering to do the surveys
as he always volunteered to do the stuff he deemed most effective.
On Sunday, the Cascadia Wildlands Project
(CWP) arranged for a bus skillfully driven by Eugene's former
Communist Party City Councilor Kevin Hornbuckle. We loaded on
the bus and headed for a grove where Craig had recently found
five vole nests. This remnant 35-acre grove of 400-year-old giants
is part of a larger 600 acres slated for logging.
Jeremy Hall and James Johnston of CWP
led us through the pouring rain into the "Thunder Grove."
As we stood at the base of an ancient fir tree, we read Craig's
writing on a ribbon announcing the presence of two vole nests
above. Things came into clear perspective there in the damp.
We all vowed to help preserve this grove in his honor.
The long ride there and back allowed
us to catch up with one another. Every person on that bus is
giving their lives to the planet. I talked with person after
person who has dedicated their life to defending Mother Earth.
I learned a lot.
I learned that the community has come
out fully to defend against California's latest Recall. Pacific
Lumber (MAXXAM), the scourge of the Redwoods, has decided that
they cannot defend themselves against the $300 million Civil
Fraud environmental degradation lawsuit filed by the Humboldt
County District Attorney, Paul Gallegos. So, they've funded a
Recall against, as Daveau put it, "the sole elected politician
I've ever liked." MAXXAM pumped in over $40,000 at the last
minute, paying gatherers $8 per signature which gave them just
enough to force the Recall and has plans for another $400,000
to influence the March 2nd election.
I learned how the San Francisco contingent
has been working hard to elect one of their own, Matt Gonzalez,
their new mayor. I heard of many campaigns to rollback degradation
-- people working to limit bird-killing wind farms, against trucking
nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, for changing forest practices
laws, for coalition building with forest workers. I also found
out for the first time that some of the community (who'll remain
prudently anonymous) have been traveling to the "Occupied
Territories" and serving as medics in Jenin, Ramallah and
elsewhere. Every person on that bus is a hero.
LEARN THE RULES. PLAY
TO WIN
We've also learned that we need to reexamine
tactics and come up with new strategies. As Mikal Jakubal, the
original tree-sitter noted, the public polls with us 80% of the
time, massive amounts of cash have been raised on our campaigns
(not that much trickles down to the grassroots), yet we get beaten
politically worse and worse each time, the Stealthy Timber Initiative
("Healthy Forests Initiative") being the latest example.
So, some of us have decided to hold our noses and look into setting
up our own Political Action Committee (PAC) and just funnel money
directly to politicians' campaigns -- just as our opponents have
been doing and beating us.
As a group we relearned the necessity
of undertaking dangerous missions with a buddy. Hard and traumatic
as it was for Mick to be there when his best buddy fell (and
my heart goes out to Mick), we all are thankful that Mick was
there.
We learned a hard lesson about Living
Wills. Not wanting to look at our own mortality, as a group we're
pretty unprepared for something like this. Our "wake"
was nothing like the one his bereaved parents held in California.
They put on the full Catholic funeral, complete with Rosary and
talk of how "Craig loved Jesus." Sure, Craig loved
the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and lived his life accordingly.
Yet, I doubt he wanted to go out this way. And, had he survived
in some vegetative state, I know he would have wanted someone
to pull the plug. So, Dana Stoltzman decided that for every one
of her friends' birthdays from now on, she would give them a
Living Will kit. So will I.
But the greatest lesson gleaned from
this sweet man's untimely passing has to be the acknowledgment
from a lot of folks that life is precious, our days are numbered
and we damn well better appreciate our friends now. More gatherings
are planned. We will gather with people he loved and we'll do
our best to defend the places he loved. There's nothing else
to do.
Around the fire that night, someone yelled
out, "Who here never kissed Craig?" One sheepish voice
said, "I never got the chance." She was met with a
collective, "You don't know what you missed."
I do know and I'll miss him dearly. Thunder
is out there ahead of us again--smiling that glorious smile and
blazing trail. We're left with the comfort that his was a life
well lived, our work is worthy and we are among friends well
loved.
Michael Donnelly
first met Craig Beneville when Craig worked as an editor with
the Earth First! Journal collective. He can be reached at: pahtoo@aol.com
To find out more information on Craig's
work and how you can help end Ancient Forest logging, contact
James Johnston at: jdj@efn.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
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