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March 24, 2004
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
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
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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
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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
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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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March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
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March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
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|
March
24, 2004
Making Murder Respectable
Killing
Rachel Corrie Again
By MICHAEL DEMPSEY
They clung like burrs to the
long expresses that lurch through the unjust lands,/
Through the night, through the alpine tunnel; They floated over
the oceans;/
They walked the passes; they came to present their lives./
To-day the inevitable increase
in the chances of death; The walks by the lake/
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the fact of murder.
W.H Auden, Spain 1937
In his essay, Politics and the English Language,
Orwell writes that "political language is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity to pure wind." In no case has this statement
been truer than that of the Israeli- Palestinian dispute. For
over a half a century, an entire people have been denied not
only the right of self-determination, but the more basic right
of human recognition.
It is ironic that a nation such as Palestine,
with a rich history its best defense, has been forced to defend
against the scurrilous accusation that it is without a history
that it can call its own. Even stranger is the ease with which
this fact has been made to conform to the most contradictory
positions. For example, it is common to hear some glib commentator
talk about the danger posed to the state of Israel if the Palestinians
are granted the right of return, yet at the same time deny that
they were expelled from their homes in the first place. The same
creature is usually quick to decry the corruption of the Palestinian
Authority, without making any mention of the fact that it is
the Palestinian Authority, which, in the service of Israel and
its political pimp in Washington, has held back the movement
for Palestinian emancipation.
More recently, the line has caught on
that the American ruling class has committed itself to the implementation
of what it calls the "road map" to peace. Part of this
alleged peace plan was a cease-fire which was supposed to have
taken place last August. I was in Palestine last August, and
so long as I was not totally overcome by sunstroke, I can tell
you that there was no cease-fire. How astonished I was then to
return home and hear people who had been thousands of miles away
tell me how fortunate I was to have been to able to visit the
Holy Land during such a placid period.
Even more unnerving was the endless talk
amongst the liberals about how much the road map meant to them.
Meanwhile, the only concrete results to issue from the road map
were 1) that it made it easier for the credulous to sleep at
night, and 2) it made it easier for the people of Israel to sleep
at night. No more, no less.
Most impressive, though, has been the
way in which the "superstructure" of capitalist America
has failed to notice the one year anniversary of the killing
of Rachel Corrie, or indeed notice that she was killed to begin
with. The good American patriots have had nothing to say about
the killing of "one of their own" by an unknown member
of another clan, forcing one to ask: is jingoism really gone
for good?
After all, it was to protect a handful
of helpless American medical students, we were told, that the
United States military felt compelled to invade the imposing
Caribbean nation of Grenada, who at the time was supposedly colluding
with Cuba to launch an aerial assault on Miami.
Likewise, it was to head off a Sandinista
sponsored invasion of San-Antonio that the Reagan Administration
financed a scorched earth proxy war in Nicaragua. It was to preempt
the incineration of Manhattan that the heroic battle of Nassiriyah
took place
And, in a display of clairvoyance that
only a conspiracy nut would mistake for prior knowledge, the
Pentagon recently dispatched a squadron of American Marines to
Haiti to protect a handful of already well guarded diplomats
from a frenzied mob of dark-skinned slum dwellers. If they hadn't,
we were told, the defenseless peninsula state of Florida would
have experienced a "blackout" of cataclysmic proportions.
For if the year 2000 taught us anything, it was just how restive
large numbers of black people can be when they suspect that they've
been burnt by the torch of "democracy."
So, jingoism is doing fine.
The point is that had Rachel Corrie's
killing squared nicely with some higher propagandistic end, her
name would be a national security cliché by now. But then
noticing that this didn't happen is another of way recognizing
that it never would.
Yet, considered obliquely Rachel's killing
is significant for a less obvious but more than compelling reason,
regardless of whether or not this reason is apparent to all:
the killing of Rachel Corrie gives the lie to one of the most
cynical and most successful propaganda axioms of modern history,
namely, that the United States has been bleeding itself dry trying
to impose peace on a skeptical Israel and on an untrustworthy
and intransigent Palestine.
If this axiom were as solid as most politicians and pundits believe
it to be, or pretend it to be, then Rachel Corrie would be just
as much of a martyr in the United States as she is in Palestine.
Instead, she gets clumsily composed vitriol
such as that printed on the editorial page of The Wall Street
Journal by Ruhama Shattan, in which Ms. Shattan blames Rachel
Corrie for the bombing death of the State Department officials
that occurred in Gaza last October. The officials killed were
supposedly on site to interview potential candidates for the
Fulbright scholarship.
Ms. Shattam is apparently so distressed
by this that she laments, "There will be no new crop of
Palestinian Fulbright Scholars this year," implying that
she is a desperately committed proponent of higher education
for young Palestinians.
If this were the case, then, by induction,
Shattam would have written instead a column condemning the erection
of Israel's Apartheid Barrier, which threatens to prevent millions
of young Palestinians from receiving a remedial education by
making it impossible for them to complete even the commute to
school.
What makes the appearance of this editorial
so remarkable isn't the disingenuousness of its author. Rather,
it's that this same piece of slanderous sludge was published
in the Jerusalem Post a short while ago, and was thought to be
so repulsive by the American embassy in Tel Aviv that a member
of the embassy staff, Paul Patin, said so in a letter to the
editor.
Sir, - I want to pass on the US Embassy's
reaction to the article "A 'tribute' to Rachel Corrie"
(March 2). This article is nothing less than hateful incitement.
The author's disgusting abuse of the anniversary of the death
of this American citizen is inexcusable. The article reflects
a level of discourse unbefitting any serious newspaper.
We're disappointed that you chose to publish this article.
PAUL PATIN
US Embassy
Not only did the editors of The Wall
Street Journal choose to publish a column so vile and so vituperative
that even the American embassy in Tel Aviv- not known for its
equanimity when it comes to choosing sides in the Israel-Palestine
conflict- felt obliged to protest, but they also colluded in
Ms. Shattan's subterfuge by prefacing her piece with a short
"editor's note" that reads:
On March 16, 2003, 23-year-old Rachel
Corrie died in a bulldozer accident [my emphasis] in the
Gaza town of Rafah.
Died in a bulldozer accident?
Are we to believe that she was killed while installing a swimming
pool?
No Accident
The only party claiming that Ms. Corrie's
death was accidental is the Israeli government. But then they
also maintained that the house Rachel Corrie was protecting was
part of an underground gun smuggling operation, a claim which
was dispelled upon inspection after the house was destroyed and
no tunnels were discovered traveling beneath it.
Of course, the casuist would respond,
"But how would the army have known there were no tunnels
unless they destroyed the house?" But then casuists always
try and justify the unjust after the fact.
But why not just admit, yes, there were
indeed tunnels in Rafah. And they were being used to smuggle
aid to the Palestinian guerillas- aid to which they are entitled.
But, as was noted by former Israeli Colonel, now retired, Yom
Tov Samya, the practice of home demolitions in Rafah is not the
ancillary effect of a much broader military mission to discover
and destroy the underground catacombs of Rafah. Rather, the demolishing
of homes, he says, is commissioned so that Israel can plough
out of rubble the border it would like to establish (and is establishing)
with Egypt.
"The IDF has to knock down all the
houses along a strip of 300 to 400 meters. It doesn't matter
what the future settlement will be, this will be the border with
Egypt."
But, to be sure, The Wall Street Journal
is staffed by journalists, and journalists, be it out of laziness
or licentiousness, rarely tell the truth. So it is no surprise
that this unpleasant fact- that the Israeli military destroys
homes and levels neighborhood as a matter of policy- has yet
to be absorbed by a newspaper as widely read and respected as
The Wall Street Journal. But then only the superstitious would
expect otherwise.
Not that the liberal flank of the media
is any less mendacious. I was told by someone closely connected
to these affairs, that after agreeing to publish an op-ed by
Cindy Corrie, The New York Times insisted that it contain some
sentences about tunnels, and Mrs. Corrie was opposed. In other
words, the Times wasn't comfortable printing the piece without
it including the suggestion that although the Israeli's may have
done something "bad" in killing Rachel; they did so
only accidentally while attempting to carry on with a policy
that was otherwise perfectly permissible.
This is the same as a defense attorney
arguing that his client, the arsonist, is innocent of murder
because he only meant to burn down the house and not kill the
owner sleeping inside.
This line of defense- if the Times in
fact intended it as a defense, which it wouldn't be egregious
to suspect - is in fact no defense at all. Rather, apart from
not only failing to mitigate the accusation of murder, it serves
to aggravate it.
And if it is true, as I have been told
it is, that Mrs. Corrie declined the invitation to join in the
insidious campaign of innuendo directed against her beloved daughter,
who, I wonder, aside from the Jerusalem Post and The Wall Street
Journal, and The New York Times, could blame her?
Investigative Illusions
In an effort to uproot whatever illusions
I may have sown, let me say that I don't expect to see any serious
investigation undertaken into the murder of Rachel Corrie by
the Executive Branch any time soon. Nor do I anticipate the Congress
to act with any great haste to rescue the Rachel Corrie resolution
from stagnation. Thus far the resolution introduced by Congressman
Brian Baird (H Con Res 111) calling for an investigation into
the death of Rachel Corrie has done nothing but languish in a
somnambulist House of Representatives.
I spoke with Congressman Baird's press secretary, Mr. Matthew
Beck, (I was told that Mr. Baird was unavailable for an interview,
both now and in the foreseeable future) who, while assuring me
that Baird has been a stalwart on behalf of the Corrie family-
a dubious claim- explained to me that unfortunately, due to the
entrenched opposition of Tom Lantos and others, the resolution
has gone nowhere.
I attempted to provide the Congressman
and his dutiful staff a way out of this supposedly insuperable
impasse by suggesting to his aide that in the meantime Mr. Baird
might want to visit Rafah and do some fact-finding of his own.
Such initiative is not without precedent, I reminded him. I instanced
the example of the late Congressman Joseph Moakley. Moakley,
under the influence of a suspicion that the Pentagon-then headed
by Dick Cheney- might have been obstructing the investigation
into the murder of six Jesuit priests by the American backed
regime in El Salvador, traveled to that hemispheric heart of
darkness and elicited from the killers the admission that when
they shot to kill they did so only after being given the order
from on high.
And, concretely, the words "on high"
describe the camarilla of military compradors groomed and trained
at the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia.
American military aid to the regime was
temporarily arrested and the Congress, at the behest of then
Speaker of the House Tom Foley, convened a full inquiry into
the atrocities committed by Washington's clients. (The civil
war was formally ended in 1992, though, the class war that birthed
it, has continued unabated)
Mr. Beck did not respond well to my suggestion,
if only because he didn't respond at all. At one point I actually
thought the phone line may have been disconnected, or that maybe
some other extraneous interference had rendered him mute.
"Hello?"
"Yes."
"I thought I lost you."
"No, I'm here."
"Well, does Mr. Baird have any plans
to do that?"
"To do what?"
"To travel to Gaza and investigate,
like Joe Moakley did in El Salvador?"
"Don't know."
"What does he [Congressman Baird]
think happened to Rachel Corrie? Does he think her death was
deliberate, as all the eyewitnesses present at the time have
testified?"
"He'd like more clarification."
When I asked if the Congressman had read
the affidavits filed by the witnesses, his response was that
he was unaware that were any affidavits.
When I asked if the Congressman received
any money from AIPAC, he explained to me that fundraising did
not fall under his purview.
It turns out that Baird has not received
any money from AIPAC, but has received a pithy $1, 454 from the
National Jewish Democratic Council. No crime in this, and certainly
not an amount of money large enough to induce a politician to
adopt a particular position on a matter of policy. However, it
is worth noting that on its website, the NJDC condemns former
Representative Cynthia McKinney for stating that Jewish members
of congress have a conflict of interest when it comes to voting
on Israel. Then, on the same page, there is an article criticizing
Ralph Nader for his support for the Palestinian right of return
in which it is mentioned that Nader is "a first generation
Lebanese American who speaks fluent Arabic"
Alas, the hypocrite is never shy in showing his wares.
Guilt in the fact
of Murder
As I write, the people of Gaza are erupting
in anger. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the "spiritual" leader
of Hamas, was assasinated in a missile attack personally supervised
by Ariel Sharon. The Palestinian Authority has decried the assassination
as deplorable and incendiary, while the Palestinian people have
vowed a campaign of revenge the likes of which no Israeli government
has ever seen. In an unprecedented move, spokesmen for Hamas
have called on Islamic militias throughout the world to attack
Israel and America in retaliation for the killing of Yassin.
I recall a conversation I had late one
evening with a Palestinian man named Saleeh. He and I were sitting
atop his roof in the West Bank village of Jayyous, sipping tea
and chain smoking cigarettes, laughing profusely about something
I am now unable to recall. Saleeh had a good laugh. At night,
my apartment would become unbearably hot and the hordes of the
most vicious mosquitoes would come pouring in. I explained my
ordeal to Saleeh, and he suggested that I sleep with him on his
roof, where there was a nice breeze and where the mosquitoes
never flew.
One night we were sipping tea and smoking
Imperial cigarettes, and I heard the sound of a helicopter in
the distance. Due to the darkness I couldn't see it, but it sounded
as if it was coming closer and closer. "Apache", Saleeh
murmured.
I chuckled. "My father's company
makes those you know," I said. "Really?" asked
Saleeh.
Saleeh inhaled a drag of his cigarette
and held the smoke in his mouth. Maybe he was thinking about
my father. Maybe he was thinking about his father. I don't know.
A concerned frown then fell upon his face, and he looked at me
and said, "You know if things don't get better for us here,
I fear what will happen to America. I fear that."
So did Rachel - and that is what the
Patriots will never understand.
Michael Dempsey,
23, is a contributor to the radical youth journal Left Hook (http://www.lefthook.org),
staff writer for The Raw Story, and member of Boston to Palestine.
He can be reached here: mikedem80@hotmail.com.
First published in
Left Hook.
Weekend
Edition Features for 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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