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Today's
Stories
April 3 / 5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
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March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
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March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
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March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
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March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
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March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
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March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
![](http://library.vu.edu.pk/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/000100A/http/web.archive.org/web/20040606081829im_/http:/=2fwww.counterpunch.org/nimmo1.jpg)
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
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March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
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March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
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March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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Weekend
Edition
April 3 / 5, 2004
CounterPunch Diary
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked!
Brian's Back; Fire-ants and Nursing Homes
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Six years after Kip Kinkel, dosed up with Prozac,
killed his parents and two students at Thurston High, in Oregon;
five years after Eric Harris, dosed with Luvox, embarked on his
day of slaughter at Columbine; well over a decade after nay-sayers
including Dr Peter Breggin, the Scientologists, and this columnist
raised the alarm about links between anti-depressants and violence,
the FDA has issued a warning that ten anti-depressants can cause
deeper depression and, for gosh sakes, even AGITATION, MANIA,
and other forms of VIOLENT behavior, even SUICIDE! Who says
government doesn't work?
The FDA issued this ruling on March 21,
and applies to Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Lexapro, Effexor,
Wellbutrin, Serzone Remeron and Celexa. Since the FDA cocks a
nervous eye at such important constituencies as the pharmaceutical
industry and that industry's political reps in the White House
and Congress, it is cautious about over-hasty and tasteless prying
into cause and effect. The FDA says it isn't yet clear whether
antidepressants contributed to the emergence of suicidal tendencies,
such as those that prompted Bill Forsyth, after several days
on Prozac, to kill his wife, then himself.
To move towards any conclusions in this
issue the FDA will be reanalyzing data compiled by analysts who
conducted the original clinical trials for each of the products
(technically, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs)
about which warnings have now been issued.
So there'll be a pause, during which
time the FDA can fend off concerns with comforting talk about
"a thorough-going review" and the drug companies can
continue to mine their usual extortionate mark-ups from the anti-depressants,
for which 213 million prescriptions were issued in the US in
2003. One estimate has 30 million Americans on anti-depressants,
with Zoloft in the lead at 32.7 million dispensed prescriptions
in 2003 and Prozac loping along in second place with 22.2 million.
The actual review will probably end up
with a ringing affirmation of the diligence of the FDA's procedures.
In an excellent article in Insight (Feb 17-March 1) Kelly Patricia
O'Meara quoted an attorney, Karen Barth Menzies, who has represented
victims of SSRIs. According to Menzies, the FDA's planned methodology
will be to go back and look at the number of "suicide events"
recorded during the drug companies' clinical trials. "The
only thing that can come from this panel's review of the data
is that they get the same number or FEWER (my caps) incidents
of suicide events which will now be based on the panel acceptiong
that the researchers' evaluation was correct." You follow?
And no, the FDA will not release the
names of the "independent experts sitting on the panel who
may or may not have ties (i.e. boatloads of research funding)
from the pharmaceutical companies whose procedures they are scrutinizing.
On one advisory committee mustered over a decade ago by the FDA
to take a look at Prozac five of the eight members had serious
conflicts of interest , including financial backing from Lilly,
the drug company selling Prozac.
The FDA only lifted its backside momentarily
off the cushion of indifference because the British Committee
on Safety of Medicines concluded last year that the "risks
of treating depressive illness in under 18s with certain SSRIs
outweighs the benefits of treatment". Zooft, Celexa, Paxil
and Effexor were found to increase the rate of self-harm. Prozac
got a thumbs-up as having a favorable benefit-risk ratio, a conclusion
that some have found astounding. A large-scale study of 2,770
patients on anti-depressants featured in the British Journal
of Psychiatry found that fluoxetine (Prozac) had the highest
risk of deliberate self-harm. Menzies told Insight that in her
view Prozac got excluded by the British
Committee because Eli Lilly has been dealing with the issue a
lot longer and "they're a lot better at hiding evidence
of a causal link between suicidality and Prozac."
On this point Menzies knows what she's
talking about. At the Forsyth trial her law firm got hold of
internal Lilly documents displaying a distinct aversion to truth
on the vexed business of suicidal ideation. Back in 1986, a draft
of proposed "Precaution and Adversion Reactions" on
a Prozac package contained this sentence, briskly edited out
of the final edition: "Mania and psychosis may be precipitated
in susceptible patients by antidepressant therapy." Another
memo in 1992 showed one Lilly employee confiding to another:
"re Adverse Drug Event Reporting Suicide Fluoxetine:
'I personally wonder whether we are really helping the credibility
of an excellent ADE system by calling overdose what a physician
reports as suicide attempt and by calling depression what a physician
is reporting as suicide ideation.'"
I don't see any way the pharmaceutical
anti-depressants will take any serious long term hit from the
FDA warning and impending review. It's like going after the cement
and highway lobby. There's just too much money involved. In the
case of "depression", a vast new territory opened up
for exploitation after the economy peaked in the mid-60s, and
people stopped drinking dry-martinis, the money is strung out
along a golden conveyor belt that stretches all the way from
the American Psychiatric Association's definitions of neurotic
and psychotic conditions in the periodically issued Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual, which end up sanctioning medical reimbursements
for drug therapy.
Brian's Back
It's great to see that The Life of Brian
is being reissued, after Mel Gibson has shown there's still a
buck to be made out of the crucifixion. Brian is most certainly
the world's greatest movie, made in partial response to the Pythons'
exposure via the Redgraves, Vanessa and Corin, to the Trotskyist
ravings of Gerry Healy's Socialist Labor League, which became
the Workers' Revolutionary Party.
Remember this?
Reg: What have they [the Romans] ever
given us?
Revolutionary I: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh. Yeah, yeah, they did give us
that, ah, that's true, yeah.
Revolutionary II: And sanitation.
Reg: Yeah, all right, I'll grant you
the aqueduct and sanitation, the two things the Romans have done.
Matthias: And the roads.
Reg: Oh, yeah, obviously the roads. I
mean the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from
the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads...
Revolutionary III: Irrigation.
Revolutionary I: Medicine.
Revolutionary IV: Education.
Reg: Yeah, yeah, all right, fair enough.
Revolutionary V: And the wine.
Revolutionary VI: Public baths.
Loretta: And it's safe to walk in the
streets at night now, Reg.
Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation,
the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads,
the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans
ever done for us?
Revolutionary I: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace! Shut up!
The Fire Ant Threat:
Permissive Liberals
to Blame, or Trashbin Policies Towards Seniors?
Here's the start of a story put out by
Associated Press recently, written by Janet McConnaughey
Fire Ant Attacks Up in Nursing Homes
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS (AP)--South American fire
ants are becoming an increasing danger for nursing home residents,
as the aggressive non-native pests spread throughout the country
and the U.S. population ages, according to University of Mississippi
researchers.
Scientists have documented at least six
attacks in nursing homes and as many other attacks in private
residences, apartments and hotels over the last decade, said
Robin Rockhold, a professor of toxicology and pharmacology at
the University of Mississippi Medical School.
In addition to the attacks researchers
documented in nursing homes--two each in Florida, Texas and Mississippi--fire
ants have also attacked a resident in a state institution in
Alabama. At least 4 nursing home residents have died within a
week of a fire ant attack."
Now here's what a cultural conservative
on, let's say, the Wall Street Journal editorial page would say:
"Kind of sums it all up really. First one fire ant, then
another. Of course they depend on a fifth column, the liberal
pinko pro fire ant crowd. 'Don't douse the nursing home in fire
ant repellent' , read the fire ants their rights, say it's okay
for gay fire ants to get married."
To which a kneejerk enviro would respond,
"I think you're taking a short term, purely tactical view
of the war against the fire ant. If you insist on doing that
you'll find yourself putting out fires and/or pissing in the
wind for the rest of your life.
Taking the strategic view, I say what
we need to do is fix the
global warming problem. Once we've done that, the US will be
so cool that the fire ants will all retreat to Mexico where they
came from (and where, if we hadn't screwed with Mother Earth
by driving gas-guzzling Chrysler LeBaron Imperials, they would
have stayed). Now on to the killer bee problem."
But CounterPunch says, Why nursing homes?
Fire ants go for the weakest defenses, the most decayed structures,
the inhabitants least able to defend themselves, and yes, in
this society that means nursing homes, whose owners laugh all
the way to the bank while the fire ants swarm through the cracks.
Take these nursing home owners, smear them with honey and handcuff
them to the gates of their own nursing homes. Call it shield
defense.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
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