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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Now Available! How the Press Led the USA Into the Iraq War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition September 8 / 9, 2007 Two Very Different Kinds of Spy Movies Jason Bourne vs. James Bond By JOE ALLEN and PAUL D'AMATO The Bourne Ultimatum grossed $70 million on its opening weekend in early August, surpassing the revenues of the opening weekends of first two Bourne films, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. This has led to speculation that the Bourne films may supplant the long-running James Bond series as Hollywood's most popular spy-movie franchise. What is the appeal of Jason Bourne over James Bond? "Bond is fundamentally different from Bourne," says Matt Damon, who plays Bourne. "Bond is an establishment guy. He is a misogynist, an imperialist, he's all the things that Bourne isn't. He kills people then drinks a Martini." Damon adds, "By the end of the second Bourne movie Jason is apologizing for killing people. I've never seen that in a big Hollywood movie before." The James Bond series is based on the novels of Ian Fleming, a Second World War British Naval commander and intelligence officer. The books chronicle the adventures of a British MI5 agent known by his codename "007," which means he's licensed to kill. In 1961, Fleming sold the film rights to all of his Bond stories, and the following year Dr. No, starring Scottish actor Sean Connery, was released. The Bond series is considered the most popular and financially successful film series in history. Bond film producers Harry Saltzman and Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, realized that the films wouldn't be popular if they simply repeated Cold War clichÈs (the Fleming novels were usually about fighting the Russians), or if Bond was too much of an upper-class British snob, as he appears in Fleming's novels. Fleming wanted fellow aristocrat David Niven to play Bond. Saltzman and Broccoli chose the macho yet self-possessed Scot Connery to play Bond and made SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) his main adversary, hoping that these changes would give their creation greater box office appeal. Yet the Bond films were still shaped by the Cold War environment. Bond's MI5 (and its big brother, the CIA) is a benign institution fighting evil in the world. SPECTRE plays upon rivalries between Russia, China and the U.S. for its own benefit, dabbling in everything from stealing hydrogen bombs to trying to destroy the U.S. economy. There was always an over-the-top, fantastic quality to the Bond films, which were also infamous for their cavalier sexism, if not misogyny. Ernst Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, for example, is a one-eyed, German-accented monster who repeats silly evil one-liners while petting his cat. Women appear in the films for pure sexual titillation and have ridiculous names like "Pussy Galore," Honor Blackman's character in Goldfinger (1964). In Thunderball (1965), Bond deftly turns his dance partner so that she receives a bullet intended for him, sets her down on a chair, and says, "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead." The series was so much of a self-parody (even more so in the Roger Moore era) that it required only small adjustments for Mike Myers to lampoon them in the Austin Powers series. During the 1970s and 1980s, when the real ugly world of British and American intelligence was exposed for the world to see, the Bond films seemed outdated, though the films were still popular money makers. * * * IT WAS in this post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era that writer Robert Ludlum created the Jason Bourne character. According to one biographer, "His vision of the world was one where global corporations, shadowy military forces and government organizations all conspired to preserve (if it was evil) or undermine (if it was good) the status quo." The Bourne films are loosely based on novels by Ludlum, who died in March 2001, but who left behind outlines, rough drafts and unfinished manuscripts that continue to be published by ghostwriters. The first Bourne film debuted in 2002, the summer after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when the country was still gripped by extreme patriotism and intelligence agencies were given broad authority to do whatever was necessary to combat terrorism. Yet, instead of being propaganda pieces for the "war on terror," the Bourne films have take as their premise that the enemy is the CIA itself. According to Damon, "The director of The Bourne Identity, Doug Liman, said to me before we started the first one, ëJames Bond does not speak to me at any level and I think it would be cool to have a James Bond that people our age can relate to.' Bond is a character left over from the 1960s." The "James Bond character that people our age" can identify with is found floating on the ocean outside of Marseilles and is rescued by a boat of French fisherman. He is plagued by a crippling amnesia, but endowed with superior fighting skills and a knowledge of languages and electronics, not to mention superior driving skills that allow him to walk away from serious crashes with little more than a bad limp. Not since The French Connection (1971) and Bullitt (1968) have car chases been so thrilling. Bourne is forced to constantly run (and fight) because his employers have decided that he is a liability and must be killed. Through the three films, Bourne discovers that he is a specially trained CIA assassin who has killed a large number of people for reasons that he doesn't understand. As his memories begin to surface, he is wracked with guilt and pain over his actions. He can only overcome the psychological torture that turned him into a killer when he finds and confronts the people who did this to him. In short, Jason Bourne is not a spy, he's an anti-spy. Joe Allen is a movie buff, who writes regularly for Socialist Worker and the International Socialist Review. He lives in Chicago. Email: joseph.allen4@att.net Paul D'Amato is the author of The Meaning of Marxism. Your Ad Here

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