Today's Stories

August 22, 2008

Laura Carlsen
Obama and Latin America: Change or Continuity?

Peter Morici
Is the Fed Still a Central Bank?

August 21, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
Is Georgia 2008 a Repeat of Hungary 1956?

Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It

Ralph Nader
The Problem with Problem Banks

Joanne Mariner
The Military Commissions, So Far

Wajahat Ali
Descent Into Chaos: an Interview with Ahmed Rashid on Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban

Ron Jacobs
Georgia and Historical Farce

Rostam Purzal
The Left and Iran

Anthony Papa
Unlocking the Power of Art to Counter Injustice

Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain Way

August 20, 2008

Michael Neumann
Russia and Georgia: Proportion and Distortion

Ray McGovern
Musharraf Out Like Nixon

Eric Walberg
Georgia's Ossetian Debacle

Fidaa Abed
Blocking a Gazan's Path to San Diego

Daniel Haack
The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit

Mike Whitney
Greenback Surges, Euro Shrivels

Website of the Day
Hands Off South Africa's Centre for Civil Society

August 19, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

Deepak Tripathi
A New Age of Torture

Marwan Bishara
The Politics of Evil in the US Elections

Saul Landau
Baseball Diplomacy or Just Baseball?

William S. Lind
Leave Georgia Alone, George

Martha Rosenberg
Whole Foods and Other Food Offenders

James Brittain
The Road to Tyranny in Colombia

Pratyush Chandra
Krugman's Great Illusion

David Macaray
AFSCME's Strike Against the University of California

Website of the Day
McCain Plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn

August 18, 2008

Tariq Ali
Pakistan After Musharraf

Gary Leupp
Russia's Georgia Campaign and the Expansion of NATO

Uri Avnery
The Anger, the Longing, the Hope

John Ross
Inside America's Death Chamber

Farooq Sulehria
An Afghan Woman Who Stands Up to the Warlords

Luis Rodriguez
The Power of Art and Youth

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
A Laser Weapon of Plausible Deniablity?

Noah Baker Merrill
We Can Do Better

Charles Thomson
Betrayal of Trustees at the Tate

Website of the Day
Gonzo Environmentalism

August 16 / 17, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Don't Know Much About History...

Jeffrey St. Clair
Last Stand in the Big Woods: Resistance and Ignominy at Cove/Mallard

Deepak Tripathi
A Pawn in Their Game: From Georgia to the Brink of a New Cold War

Conn Hallinan
Georgia on My Mind

Mike Whitney
Revisiting the "Battle of Tskhinvali"

Robert Fantina
Russia, Georgia and Bush

Ray McGovern
Out Damn Blot: a Letter to Colin Powell

Nicole Colson
Bled Dry by the Oil Giants

Fatima Bhutto
The Impeachment of Musharraf

Jean-Luis Rocca
The Middle Kingdom's Middle Way

David Michael Green
My Army Went to Iraq and All I Got was This Lousy Air Lift

Ramzi Kysia
Standing Up for Justice in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Forging the Case for War

Lisa Martinovic
What's So Funny 'Bout Bush, Lies and Torture Memos?

Richard Rhames
Single-Payer, a Dream Denied

Don Santina
Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Rannie Amiri
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim vs. the Ugly Dictator

Ramzy Baroud
Family Politics and the New Gaza Crisis

John Stanton
The Army's Human Terrain Systems: From Super Concept to Super Farce

Howard Lisnoff
The Deportation of Jeremy Hinzman

Ron Jacobs
Sweat and Sacrifice Make History

Seth Sandronsky
Arianna Huffington's Blind Spot

Poets' Basement
Landau, Darwish and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Summer Screening: CounterPunch's Favorite Films

August 15, 2008

Steve Niva
The Surge in Iraqi Female Suicide Bombers

David Remington
Sharpening Occam's Razor on the Forged Intelligence Documents

Michael Winship
The Imperial Presidency

Paul Craig Roberts
The Neocons Do Georgia

Farzana Versey
Taming the Islamic Shrew

Harvey Wasserman
McCain Goes Nuclear

Felice Pace
The Politics of Smoke

Julian Critchley
All Experts Agree: Legalize Drugs

Website of the Day
The Farting Preacher

August 14, 2008

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
The Shape of Cuba's Reforms

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Surge in Afghanistan

Mike Whitney
Georgia and U.S. Strategy

Reza Fiyouzat
U.S. and Iranian Relations: What Does Normalization Entail?

Ralph Nader
Single-Payer Health Care in an Age of Two-Party Politics

Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China

Jack Bradigan Spula
Plowing Through the Farm Bill

Patrick Irelan
After the Flood

John Walsh
Buyers Remorse Over Obama

Dan Bacher
Schwarznegger Pimps the Water Bond

Website of the Day
Zevon: Renegade

August 13, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?"

David Remington
Forgery, Fakery and Fatigue (Scandal, That Is)

Brian Cloughley
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press

Glen Ford
Are Black Politics Headed Toward the Graveyard?

Brendan Cooney
A Shattered Myth in Georgia

Dave Lindorff
This War Has Been Approved By Your Government

Tom Lewis
Morales After the Bolivian Referendum

Stan Cox
Let's Handcuff the Property Cops

Alan Farago
Crimes Against the State: Bushism and the Florida Mortgage Crisis

Martha Rosenberg
Fear and Loathing Behind the Plexiglass Curtain

Website of the Day
Here Today, Here Tomorrow: Young Workers and Social Security

August 12, 2008

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Middle East

Anthony DiMaggio
Master of Ambiguity: Obama's Non-Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

Bill Christison
No NATO Membership for Georgia

Eric Walberg
War a la Carte: How the US Invited a War in S. Ossetia

Kate Connolly
Old Cold Warriors Never Die: Brzezinski Compares Putin to Hitler

Diane Farsetta
Cracking the Pentagon Pundit Code

Peter Morici
The Trade Deficit and Job Losses

Thom Rutledge
Equal Opportunity Judgment: Reason, Morality and the Edwards Scandal

Lee Patton
How to Swiftboat McCain

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Technological Titans, Moral Midgets

Website of the Day
Mr. Hot Buttered Soul

August 11, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Politics of the Race Card: McCain Gurgles in the Slime

Paul Craig Roberts
The Moronic Party: From Off-Shore Drilling to the Georgian War

Gary Leupp
The Neo-Cons' Dream Forgery: the Habbush Letter Revisited

Douglas Kammen
Rice and Circus in East Timor

William Willers
New Paths Toward the Loss of Our Public Lands: Subsidies, Volunteerism and Outsourcing

Greg Moses
The Smell of Propaganda in the Morning: Press Calls for War in the Caucasus

Jeff Leys
Showdown at Fort McCoy

Cynthia McKinney
We Are Not Hopeless

Alan Farago
The Olympic Spectacle and the New China

Website of the Day
Mahmoud Darwish, RIP

August 9 / 10, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
You Want More Still Proofs the Crony, Old-Line Press is Dead?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pools of Fire: the Looming Nuclear Nightmare in the Backwoods of N. Carolina

Bruce Jackson
Hamdan's Secret

Kevin Young
Targeting Civilians: the Path to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Chris Floyd
The Serpent's Egg: Solzhenitsyn and the Origins of the American Gulag

Joshua Frank
Inside Obama's Fundraising Operation

Robert Fantina
Of Campaigns and Timelines

Brendan Cooney
The Eagle is Wounded

Mark Almond
Plucky Little Georgia?

Lois Gibbs
The Lost Lessons of Love Canal

Rev. William Alberts
Blind Patriotism? McCain's Counting On It

Kathy Kelly
The Big Voice

John Ross
The Cutthroat Games: the Decline of the Olympics from Mexico City to Beijing

David Michael Green
The Fire This Time: the GOP and the Economy

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
A Novel Approach to Politics

Ron Jacobs
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy (Or Why John McCain Wants Cindy to Show Her Tits)

Richard Rhames
The Greatest Degeneration

David Yearsley
Once More Unto the Albert Hall, Dear Friends

Lee Sustar
Justice for the Freightliner Five: a Struggle for the Soul of the UAW

Brenda Norrell
Turning Sewage into Snow on the Sacred San Francisco Peaks

Ben Terrall
Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Jenkins, Ibn Salma and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tuli Kupferberg's Fig Leaf Olympics

August 8, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Nationalist Surge

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Voting: a Ritual of Justifying Biases

M. Shahid Alam
The Zionist Stratagem

Andy Worthington
Salim Hamdan's Sentence

Lawrence J. Korb
Bad Advice from Generals

David Model
Instant Genocide

Alan Farago
When Miami Goes Bust: the Politics of the Housing Crisis

Diop Olugbala
What About the Black Community, Obama?

Firmin DeBrabander
When the Olympics Went Green--with Algae

Website of the Day
Summer Reading: CounterPunch's Favorite Novels

August 7, 2008

Dr. Trudy Bond
Fixing Hell and Curing Obesity

William Blum
Breaking Young Hearts: Obama and the Empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Do You Feel Safe Now?

Ralph Nader
Gouged in the Skies: Gotcha Capitalism in the Airline Industry

Robert Weitzel
Obama and the Two Walls

Jacob G. Hornberger
Why Wasn't Ivins Declared an Enemy Combatant?

Binoy Kampmark
Driving Bin Laden

David Macaray
What Does a Radical Labor Union Look Like?

Howard Lisnoff
Echoes of the Sixties: Refusing to Recite the Pledge

Website of the Day
Bono's Retirement Fund

August 6, 2008

Marc Herold
Obama and Afghanistan

Greg Moses
The Unnecessary Execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin

Sheldon Rampton
The Anthrax Cover-Up

Kevin Young
The Atomic Bombing of Japan: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Re-Examines the Japanese Surrender

Michael Estrada
What I Re-Discovered in Mexico

Robert Weissman
The Commercial Games

Dr. Susan Block
The Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church Killings: Did Rightwing Talk Shows Drive Him to Kill?

Cindy Sheehan
This is Horseshit

Ace Hoffman
The Unholy Trinity

Website of the Day
Over to You, Paris

August 5, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Anthrax Attacks and the Assault on Civil Liberties

Jeff Halper
An Israeli Jew in Gaza

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Better? With Three Wars Going On?

Nancy Welch
"What Did My Father Do to Deserve Such Treatment?" An Interview with Laila al-Arian

Peter Morici
Rear View Mirror Economics

Sousan Hammad
The Antisemitism Incitement Craze

Eamon Martin
The Audacity of Despair

Shepherd Bliss
Slow Food Nation Gains Momentum

Tim Matson
Keeping Cool and Saving BTUs

Website of the Day
Top Heavy Greens?

August 4, 2008

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Exit

Saul Landau
Reflections on the Cuban Revolution

David W. Remington
The Face of the Modern War Criminal

Rev. Jesse Jackson
The Question Conscience Asks

Dave Lindorff
The Cheney Doctrine: Shoot Your Friends First

Peter Morici
The Lingering Economic Malaise

Joanne Mariner
Debating Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism in Britain

Ramzy Baroud
Through the Israeli Looking Glass: Obama Joins the Club

Christian Wright
Why We're Protesting at the Democratic Convention

Website of the Day
The US and Karadzic

August 2 / 3, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Really Running Iraq?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is the King of Pork Dead?

James Abourezk
Lies the Oil Companies Peddle

Andy Worthington
The CIA's Secret Prison on Diego Garcia

Brian Cloughley
Baleful Imperial Power

Robert Fantina
Redefining Progress in Iraq

Benjamin Dangl
Total Recall in Bolivia

Marlene Martin
Living in Hell for Life

David Yearsley
The Sound and Fury of Wet Balloons Rubbed with a Big Sponge: Yes, Bill O'Reilly, This Your Kind of Music!

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Qualifies "Them" for the Death Sentence?

David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis

Harvey Wasserman
Meet the Real Terrorists of the 1960s

Jason Hribal
Moja Has Mojo: How a Few Elephants Turned the Zoo Industry Upside Down

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Geary Street: an Interview with Rock Photographer Dominque Tarle

Laray Polk
Tongues of Fire, Plains of Grace: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ron Jacobs
Jerry Garcia Meets Barack Obama

David Macaray
Labor, Management and the Adversarial Relationship

David Rosen
Teen Prostitution in America

Dan Bacher
Schwarzengger's Water Empire

Joe Allen
Batman's War of Terror

Poets' Basement
Graham, Stevens, Cory and Fleming

Website of the Weekend
Get Your War On: the Watch List

August 1, 2008

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain's Mad Dog Advisor Max Boot

Rannie Amiri
Islamobamaphobia: a New Word Enters the Lexicon

Peter Morici
U.S. Economy Loses Another 51,000 Jobs

Christopher Brauchli
South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Coup in the Great Caspian Play

Patrick Cockburn
Turkish Court Says Ruling Islamic Party Can't be Shut Down

James J. Brittain
The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

Dan Bacher
Warren Buffett, Salmon Killer

Website of the Day
Shark Genocide: 100 Million Deaths a Year

July 31, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Next Big Bail Out: State, Local and Private Pensions

Carl Finamore
Protest Politics and the Democrats: A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan

Joshua Frank
Obama's Green Coal: Another Myth from the Change Agent

Andy Worthington
The Peculiar Case of Jarallah al-Marri

Ralph Nader
The Living Legacy of Rosa Parks

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Wave of Capitol Crimes

Robert Weissman
The Collapse of the WTO Talks

Dave Lindorff
Bush Judge Does the Right Thing on Executive Immunity

Website of the Day
Perils of the New Pesticides

July 30, 2008

Brian M. Downing
Assessing the Surge

Chuck Spinney
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan? A Thought Experiment

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

David Ker Thomson
Against Bike Lanes

Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

Mike Whitney
Apocalypse Down Under

Martha Rosenberg
Heifer Palooza

James Murren
Where Your Life is Worth One Bullet

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Hearing

Ron Jacobs
A Conspiracy to Kill Iraqis?

Website of the Day
Mapping Job Loss to China

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

August 22, 2008

Putin Hits Georgia, Bloodies Bush

From Russia with Love...

By MARWAN BISHARA

The geopolitics of Russo-American relations is best portrayed by an old Swahili proverb that says 'when the elephants fight, the grass gets crushed, and when elephants make love the grass gets crushed'.

In that way, post-Cold War rapprochement between Washington and Moscow allowed the latter to brutally crush Chechnya and for Putin to neutralise political dissent with little opposition from Washington.

It also allowed the Pentagon to use Moscow's military bases in the former republics of the Soviet Union for various aggressive operations and paved the way for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, renewed tension and conflict between the old Cold War nemeses has opened the way for the destruction and mayhem in Georgia. If continued, it will lead to a deterioration of the situation in the Middle East and trigger or escalate conflicts and arms races around the world.

Who started it?

While the bullying of smaller, weaker countries has been a feature of the international system since communities organised into states, it is imperative to determine who started the war in Georgia in order to chart where this conflict is heading.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, blames the Russians for starting the war by amassing great military power on the border in the beginning of August while he was in Italy.

But many reckon the ambitious pro-Western Georgians started the military escalation and timed it as international media attention was focused on the Olympic games in Beijing.

Saakashvili's "foolishness", says the Economist, has backfired.

But "Did Washington purposely encourage an irresponsible and unpredictable regime in this misadventure?" to use the rhetorical question of Sergy Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.

The answer, according Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president, is an emphatic yes. He believes Saakashvili "would not have dared to attack without outside support".

If Washington's support for Saakashvili was aimed at cornering Putin, Russia's retaliation against Georgia has bloodied George W's nose. After less than a week of fighting, Russia won the day and began withdrawing troops.

Shocking, hardly surprising

The swift deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow over the latter's military intervention is shocking, but hardly surprising.

Their 'marriage of convenience' has been strained for some time now.

Last summer's casual summit at Kennebunkport, Maine, marked a turning point as Putin and Bush sent the relationship into deep freeze. Heated disagreement over the deployment of the controversial Missile System in Eastern Europe and over Ukraine and Georgia's membership of Nato at the Alliance's Bucharest summit last April, have all but paved the way towards open conflict.

Despite Russia's swift but tough retaliation against Georgia, the Bush administration reiterated its commitment to Tiblisi's membership of Nato and signed the strategic agreement with Poland that allows for deploying what it considers "defensive" and Moscow deems "offensive" missile systems.

Although the Bush administration was not capable of deterring Russia's retaliation/invasion and force it to withdraw unconditionally, its strategic commitments to Eastern Europe and Georgia and its refusal to allow Russia to join Nato's military exercises in the Mediterranean have all but reinstated the Cold War calculus.

Soul-mate ... to checkmate

Theirs was presumably a love at first sight. But it feels like a lifetime since Bush looked into Putin's eyes and was able to get a sense of his soul.

The two had reportedly gotten along well. So much, that Bush had more chemistry with the ex-KGB head than with his ally, Tony Blair.

But as in Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love, smooth talk and sophisticated mannerisms only hid plots and counterplots.

When Bush tried to lecture his Russian host, yet again, about democracy during the 2006 G8 summit, Putin took a direct jab at the US president: "We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly."
At that time, the US were six years into the Afghanistan war and three years into Iraq's; the US was growing insecure because of the loss of its strategic capital and financial prestige around the world.
In the meantime, the robust and confident Russian leadership under Putin benefited from higher oil prices and grew bolder vis-à-vis the Bush administration's foreign policies.

While the ridiculing of the macho Texan did not go down too well, Bush's need for Putin's help with a number of strategic challenges around the world stretching from North Korea to Iran helped defuse tensions.
But the personal chemistry had all but vanished.

And now, Georgia's miscalculated adventure gives the ultranationalists and Cold War romantics in Moscow and Washington the alibis to escalate the rhetoric and eventually break off the engagement.

Now what?

As he considers his next move, Bush might be entertaining the idea of dealing a final blow to Russia's relationship with the West before leaving office and paving the way to a McCain presidency.

If tensions continue to escalate, expect further deterioration of the arms race around the world and especially in the Middle East region where Cold War-type apprehension could only lead to further polarisation of existing regional conflicts.

Russia, which has long criticised American/Israeli military sales and support for the Georgian army, might supply Syria, Iran and others with advanced armaments to balance America's $50 billion commitment of arms sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia, among other client states.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's visit to Moscow this week might come in handy in this regard.

Cold War?

Though for many of us outside Europe the Cold War was pretty hot, some long for the bipolar system because of the Bush administration's abuse of its power in a uni-polar world.

Putin's nostalgia is evident as he grows more powerful within Russia and more feared in neighbouring countries. He is frequently quoted to have said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the [20th] century".

But while for Putin, the Warsaw alliance is no more, the US is exploiting the Georgian tragedy to reinvigorate the Nato alliance and solidify its leadership at the helm.

Since the end of the Cold War (without a single shot), Nato has gone through a major identity crisis with Europe becoming an ever hesitant partner.

Thanks to the Georgian crisis, Washington no longer needs to plead with its wary European partners to expand and strengthen Nato as they tried disparately during their April summit in Bucharest.

During the Cold War, Nato had a much defined European mission to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.

For all practical purpose, Washington will insist on this definition but will also try to expand it worldwide under the guise of confronting terrorism and rogue states.

Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's Senior Political Analyst.

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