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Special Investigation: Why Did the World Trade Towers Fall? A scientific explanation at last, from a physicist and mechanical engineer. P. Sainath recalls Gandhi's 9/11, one hundred years ago; Chris Sands reports from Afghanistan on the rise of the Taliban. What you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories October 9. 2006 Saul Landau
October 7 /
8, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Peter Kwong Ralph Nader Mark Donham Dave Lindorff Peter Bosshard Ron Jacobs Lawrence R.
Velvel Fred Gardner David Green Jim B. Missy Beattie Michael Donnelly Jackson Thoreau Jon Hung CounterPunch
News Service Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alison Weir Tiffany Ten
Eyck / Mark Brenner Corporate Crime Reporter Juan Antonio
Montecino Walden Bello Christopher
Brauchli Brynne Keith-Jennings Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
John Walsh Carol Norris Paul Craig Roberts Ricardo Alarcón James Abourezk Nicola Nasser Kirkpatrick Sale Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Elizabeth Terzakis Paul Wolf Sean Penn Dave Lindorff Diane Farsetta Sharon Smith Felice Pace Sara Roy Website of
the Day
Jennifer Van
Bergen Greg Moses Stan Cox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Evelyn Pringle Fred Wilhelms Michael Abelman Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 2, 2006 Eric Hazan Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Assaf Kfoury Missy Beattie Arthur Neslen Paula J. Caplan Website of the Day
Sept. 30 /
0ct. 1, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Ben Tripp Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Christopher Reed Seth Sandronsky Fred Gardner Mokhiber /
Weissman Michael Dickinson Alan Gregory Poets' Basement
September 29, 2006 Bruce Jackson Michael J.
Smith Emira Woods William S.
Lind David Swanson Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
Sen. Russ Feingold Ron Jacobs Mokhiber /
Weissman Lee Sustar Robert Jensen John Chuckman Evelyn Pringle Nicola Nasser Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Camilo Mejia Ben Terrall Ridgeway /
Ng Joe Allen Andrew Wimmer Franklin C. Spinney Website of
the Day
Hani Shukrallah William Blum Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barbara Becnel Paul Rockwell Dave Lindorff Rich Gibson Anthony Papa Nate Mezmer Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook Joshua Frank Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Dr. Charles
Jonkel Michael Dickinson Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
September 23
/ 24, 2006 Jonathan Cook Jeffrey St.
Clair Dr. Anon Tom Barry Carl G. Estabrook Laura Carlsen Todd Chretien Dr. Charles
Jonkel Debbie Nathan Fred Gardner Fred Wilhelms Seth Sandronsky Ralph Nader Rev. William
Alberts Jon Van Camp Heather Gray David Vest Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Video of the Weekend
September 22, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Michael Donnelly Ramzy Baroud Evo Morales Stanley Howard Sarah Leah
Whitson JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad Justin E. H.
Smith Mike Roselle Amira Hass Deborah Rich Mickey Z. Saul Landau Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith Christopher
Reed John Ross Joshua Frank Arthur Neslen Norman Solomon Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Hugo Chavez Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jeff Leys Brian M. Downing Col. Dan Smith Liaquat Ali
Khan Ron Jacobs Nik Barry-Shaw
/ Yves Engler Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Photo of the Day Website of
the Day
Carl Boggs Uri Avnery Mike Stark / Jim Bullington Joshua Frank John Murphy Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Bill Quigley Website of the Day
Tariq Ali Eliza Ernshire Jeffrey St.
Clair Mairead Corrigan Maguire Brian Cloughley Ben Tripp Laura Carlsen Ralph Nader Ron Jacobs John Chuckman Robert Fisk Gary Leupp Lawrence R.
Velvel Missy Comley Beattie Adrienne Johnstone Mickey Z. Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
Diana Johnstone Diane Christian William S. Lind Lee Sustar Dave Lindorff Ramzy Baroud Mokhiber / Weissman Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
Franklin Lamb Tim Wilkinson Dick J. Reavis Sam Husseini Doug Giebel Bill Berkowitz Diane Farsetta Mary Turck Patrick Cockburn J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. Website of
the Day
Jack Bratich John Ross Christopher
Brauchli Dave Lindorff Antony Loewenstein Al Krebs Leonard Peltier Jim Bensman Website of the Day
Norman Finkelstein Seth Sandronsky John Walsh Alan Maass David Krieger Nate Mezmer Kathleen Christison
Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Col Dan Smith Dr. Susan Block Anthony Alessandrini Dave Lindorff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Joshua Frank Jean Bricmont Sprague / Emesberger Website of
the Day
September 9/10,
2006 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Greg Grandin Peter
Stone Brown Ralph
Nader Brian
Cloughley Col.
Chet Richards David
Model Dave
Himmelstein Ron
Jacobs Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Josh
Gryniewicz Daniel
Gross / Joe
Bageant Nicole
Colson Alexander
Billet Poets'
Basement
September 8, 2006 Uri
Avnery Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Quigley Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Keith
Bolin
September 8, 2006 Uri
Avnery Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Quigley Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Keith
Bolin Kristin
S. Schafer Jeffrey
St. Clair Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Sharon
Smith René
Drucker Colín Michael
Donnelly John
Borowski Lucinda
Marshall Charles
Sullivan Jeffrey
St. Clair Jonathan
Cook Website
of the Day
September 6, 2006 Stephen
Soldz Dave
Zirin Ramzy
Baroud Noel
Ignatiev Dave
Lindorff Norman
Solomon Binoy
Kampmark Jeffrey
St. Clair John
Ross Website
of the Day
September 5, 2006 Jonathan Cook Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney
Roland Sheppard James Petras Alexander Cockburn
September 4, 2006 Clancy Sigal Jeffrey St.
Clair Anthony Alessandrini Dennis Perrin
Daniel Cassidy
Paul Craig
Roberts
September 2 / 3, 2006 Uri Avnery Jeffrey St.
Clair Ralph Nader Noam Chomsky Allan Lichtman Stanley Heller Rana el-Khatib Peter Montague Laura Carlsen Dr. Susan Block Joe Bageant Scott Stedjan / Matt Schaaf Gary Leupp Stephen Fleischman Paul Balles Ingmar Lee Jane Stillwater Ron Jacobs St. Clair /
Bossert Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
September 1, 2006 Uri Avnery Paul Craig
Roberts Bill Ayers Kevin Zeese Xochitl Bervera Norman Solomon Alexander Cockburn Richard Neville Website of the Day
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October 9, 2006 Their Back PagesSex, Lies and Family ValuesBy WALTER BRASCH The parents of a 16-year-old Congressional page contacted their congressman, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.). Alexander says he contacted both Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) who oversees the page program. Reps. Shimkus, Reynolds, and House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) admit they knew about it in 2005. Kirk Fordham, Reynolds' former chief of staff, told the Associated Press that three years ago, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives to intervene." Reynolds and Boehner say they told Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), speaker of the house. Hastert says Reynolds may have told him about it, but he doesn't remember. At no time, did anyone contact police or the FBI. Their concerns for justice were shallow; their fears that a scandal would affect their re-elections were deep. The conservative Washington Times and several major conservative columnists have called for Hastert to resign. For his part, President George W. Bush says he supports Hastert, doesn't want him to resign, and called him a "father, teacher, coach who cares about the children of this country." Almost as an afterthought, he said he was "dismayed and shocked." What President Bush was "dismayed and shocked" about were the actions of Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida. The President apparently wasn't dismayed or shocked about the cover-up the Republican leadership undertook to keep the information from the public, the contacts with Foley to warn him about his conduct, and their failure to discipline one of their members. The story broke in early September when a relatively new blog, Stop Sex Predators (www.stopsexpredators.blogspot.com), reported that Foley, a six-term congressman who was co-chair of Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had sent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to the 16-year old male Congressional page. Within two weeks, ABC-TV's Brian Ross, and then the rest of the nation's major media, picked up the story. The day after Ross's first report, Foley resigned. Subsequent reporting revealed that Foley may have had other inappropriate contacts, dating back to at least 2003. Trying to spin his own actions, Foley said when he was a teenager he had been abused by a member of the clergy; he now admits he's gay, and has checked himself into an alcoholic rehabilitation facility. As for Reps. Alexander, Shimkus, Reynolds, Boehner, and Hastert, and dozens of other Republicans who knew of the problem, they shuffled and wobbled, but never acknowledged why they didn't take immediate action at least six months earlier. Spinning and diverting, Hastert is blaming liberals for their reporting of the scandal; others have dug through the archives to find that 23 years earlier a Democratic congressman was censured for having sex with a 17-year-old page. (On the other side of the aisle, and not reported by the Republicans, a Republican congressman that year had sex with a 17-year-old female page.) Many screeched out about former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and a rendezvous he had in 1988 with a woman on a boat called "Monkey Business," and of Ted Kennedy, MaryJo Kopechne, and the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969, hoping to cloud the blame for their own problems. Conservative Republicans devoutly proclaim themselves the party of "Family Values." They want the people to believe they have been anointed with divine wisdom, sacred trust, and the key to the Holy Morality. Democrats and liberals, they decree, are sin-spewing heathens. But, truth is not on their side. Rep. Robert Bauman (R-Md.), homophobic founder of Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union, and a darling of the Christian Coalition, lost his House seat in 1980 after disclosures that he solicited sex with a 16-year-old gay male; Bauman two years later acknowledged he was gay. Donald Lukens (R-Ohio) was sentenced to jail for having sex with a minor. The list of local and state Republican officials who were arrested and convicted of pedophilia or other sex crimes would choke even the most forgiving defense attorney. But, let's just look at the family values of some of the Republicans recently elected or re-elected to federal office. The list of "family values" Republicans who committed adultery, but continued to preach a doctrine of morality in government, would fill the telephone book of a small city. Among them are Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), and former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who were leaders of the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton; former presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas); former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.); former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), whom the Republicans planned to vote into office in 1999 as Gingrich's successor, but whose career came unraveled by his admission of "marital infidelities"; Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), who had a five-year extramarital affair with a woman 35 years his junior and who later accused him of repeated assaults; and former Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho), who told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that God pardoned her sins. Chenoweth was a "two-fer," committing both sexual and legal sins. While her campaign strategy was loaded with rhetoric about family values and morals, she accepted illegal campaign contributions and then failed to disclose receipt of more than $50,000 for her 1994 campaign. She served three terms before deciding not to run for a fourth term in 2000. Rep. Randall (Duke) Cunningham (R-Calif.), a seven-term Congressman, who accepted $2.4 million in bribes, pled guilty to charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), an 11-term congressman, was first forced to resign as House majority leader after being indicted on charges he conspired to violate Texas state election laws; amid growing evidence of financial and ethical irregularities over several years, DeLay resigned from the House in April 2006. The Republicans, whose "big tent" campaign rhetoric apparently still doesn't include many minorities, is represented by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Lott resigned as Senate majority leader in December 2002 after praising segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), suggesting that if Thurmond had been elected president on the Dixiecrat ticket in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years." Lott-who opposed the Voting Right Act and voted against creating Martin Luther King Day-recently asked, "Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me." The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal touched mostly Republicans, with one White House official charged with obstructing a federal investigation. And there's George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and John Ashcroft/Ambrose Gonzales, whose six year reign is pepper-shot with lies and violations of even the most basic codes of ethics. They are the cabal that had nodded off prior to the al-Qaeda attack upon the United States, and then lied to the people prior to launching an invasion of Iraq, which had no ties to the 9/11 plot, no ties to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups, and no weapons of mass destruction. The Administration has also diverted, according to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, about $700 million from the war in Afghanistan and the search for Osama bin Laden to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. They awarded a no-bid $7 billion contract to Halliburton, which is now accused of war profiteering, diversion of funds, and numerous other questionable, illegal, or immoral practices. Billions of other taxpayer-funded dollars went to other companies that are major contributors to Republican candidates. On domestic issues, the BushCheney Administration has violated the environment, and disregarded health care and the working class, while holding the pursuit of obscene profits to be their personal god. They have encouraged the use of torture to gain information from even the remotest of suspects, and have refused to give suspects a fair trial. They have created fake news releases, bribed journalists, released secret information about a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband speaking out against Bush's war in Iraq, illegally hacked into confidential Democrat strategy files, illegally spied upon both American citizens and the United Nations, invaded innumerable Constitutionally-protected personal rights of privacy, suppressed freedom of expression, and instilled fear as justification for its actions. Perhaps they should no longer be called "neocons," but Vegomatic Republicans since they believe they have a divine right to slice, dice, and chop the Bill of Rights. Sanctimoniously proclaiming themselves piously religious and patriotic, they have forsaken both the Bible and the Constitution. George W. Bush, when asked if he had consulted his father prior to the invasion of Iraq, devoutly declared that he had spoken to his "higher father." His actions prove that he has abandoned both his heavenly father and this nation's forefathers. So much for honoring thy father. The salacious "family values" Republicans have become the party of right-wing righteous indignation. But the closest any of them will come to righteousness is their fervent prayers for something tumultuous to happen so the media and the public forget these latest elephant-sized transgressions. Walter Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg
University, is an award-winning syndicated columnist and the
author of 15 books, most of them about social issues, the First
Amendment, and the media. His forthcoming book is America's
Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional
and Civil Liberties (Peter Lang Publishing.) You may
contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu
or at www.walterbrasch.com
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                       |
