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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! How Bill (and Monica) Saved Hillary from a Federal Indictment Here's the second in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's series as they describe Hillary Clinton's years in Little Rock and her narrow escape from federal charges that would have destroyed her political career for ever. PLUS KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY on how Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are failing Black America even as they hunt for votes in So uth Carolina's "Black Primary." 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

Today's Stories August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat 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 Pe--a 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   August 25 / 26, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki James Petras The Great Financial Crisis Jeffrey Buchanan / Chris Kromm Where Did the Katrina Money Go? Marjorie Cohn Turning Iraq into Vietnam Rev. William E. Alberts Jesus, the Theological Prisoner of Christianity Robert Fantina Ari Fleischer, Freedom Watch and the Pro-War Lobbyists Brian Concannon Whitewashing the History of Abolition Ralph Nader What Do They Have to Hide? Laura Carlsen Extending NAFTA's Reach Fred Gardner Notes from Hempfest David Michael Green History, the Last Refuge of Scoundrels Stephen Soldz Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award Mike Ferner Combatants for Peace: Former Enemies Find New Way Forward Paul Krassner Mort Sahl's Punchline Ben Tripp Resistance is Impossible--But Not Futile Missy Beattie President Druzilla Website of the Weekend Blue Print for Gulf Renewal   August 24, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts A Hegemonic Hubris Greg Moses A Cruel and Unusual Excuse William Schroder Bush, Vietnam and Iraq Alan Farago The Pain of Paper Millionaires Jackie Corr Uncle Ben Bernacke and the Nanny State Jeff Ballinger Naomi Klein and the Path Not Taken Bill Quigley Pere Jean-Juste Comes Home Dave Zirin Inching Toward Insanity Richard Rhames Deaver and the Making of Reagan Ryan Haygood How Newark Can Mend Website of the Day Lindorff's Iraq Rag   August 23, 2007 Kathy Kelly We Shouldn't be Causing This P. Sainath Meeting the Mahatma Ron Jacobs Bush, Vietnam and 14 More GIs Dead Christopher Brauchli Beyond Kafka: Mistakes, Soreheads and Eavesdropping D.K. Wilson When Sports Journalists Talk Race Joshua Frank The Weeds of Willapa Bay Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's True Lies About Dams and Canals Brenda Norrell Bush's House of Snakes: Indians, Border Biometrics and Migrating Corporations John Wright The Ongoing Tragedy of Afghanistan David Vest Elvis and Racism, Round 2 Website of the Day Urgent Plea: the Black Agenda Report Needs Your Help!   August 22, 2007 Norman Finkelstein Remembering Raul Hilberg Marc Levy Sleepless in Iraq Lawrence R. Velvel When Courts Bow Down to Secrecy Ray McGovern Bush's Iran War Drums Beating Louder Norman Solomon How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Road Show Michael Dickinson Little Brother is Watching You William S. Lind Operation Kabuki?: the Credibility of David Petraeus Bill Hatch A Short Walk into the Valley of Death Kenneth E. Foster and John Joe Amador How We Will Protest Our Executions David Vest Predictable Parallels: CNN and PBS Website of the Day The Once and Future Steve Perry August 21, 2007 Saul Landau The FBI's New Power Alan Farago Sand Houses and Missing Beaches John Stauber Iraq: the Gift that Keeps on Bleeding Phillip Rizk Gaza and the Jordanian Option Debbie Nathan Giuliani's Garden District Binoy Kampmark The Art of Sinning Martha Rosenberg The Fastow Economy Sunsara Taylor Back to School During Wartime Website of the Day Coffee with the Troops   August 20, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Padilla Jury Opens Pandora's Box Uri Avnery Stumbling Toward Another War Rannie Amiri Nasrallah's Surprise: a Warning from Beirut's No Bluff Zone John Ross The Fine Art of Bad Elections Harvey Wasserman The Senate's Radioactive Rip-Off Robert Billyard Canada's Disgrace: the Cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr Dave Lindorff Excuse Us, Nancy Pelosi James Rothenberg Why Your Vote Will Never Matter David "DC" Larson To Smear a King Website of the Day Bird Cinema August 18 / 19, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Exit Karl Rove, Everyone's Useful Demon Saul Landau The FBI in War and Peace Ralph Nader Greed and Folly on Wall Street Patrick Cockburn A Bloody Week in Iraq Robert Fantina Cannon Fodder: Beau Biden and other "Deployable Assets" Robert S. Eshelman Azar's Story: an Iraqi Refugee Living in Syria P. Sainath The Last Battle of Laxmi Panda Dave Lindorff Tossing Fuel on a Fire: US Military Aid to Israel Anthony DiMaggio Iraq, Iran & the Vanishing Context in American News Fred Gardner The Politics of Schizophrenia Ron Jacobs The Virtues of Resistance Tom Turnipseed War Profiteering and Corruption: From Lexington, S.C. to the White House Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: Special Preachers, Priests and Clerics Edition! Ben Tripp I'm So Screwed Andrew Wimmer Living With Grief Nancy Oden Where Inmates Can Grow for Free N.D. Jayaprakash India Backtracks on Disarmament Rick Smith Reflections on Cuba: an Interview with Doug Morris Missy Beattie The Suicide Bomber Poets' Basement Engel, Ford, Orloski and McLellan Website of the Weekend Imperial Storm Troopers in Action August 17, 2007 Joanne Mariner Terrorizing Social Protest Paul Craig Roberts China is not the Problem Shepherd Bliss Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Chile, 30 Years Later Dave Lindorff Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans John Muthyala The Water and the Road: Katrina, Poverty and the American Dream Patrick Cockburn Deepening Divsions in Iraq Sherwood Ross Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo Phil Doe The Old West Moves East: the Political Science of Colorado River Water David Michael Green Karl Rove and the Damage Done Website of the Day Gorilla Slaughter: a Personal Account August 16, 2007 Jonathan Cook The Second Lebanon War, a Year Later Christopher Brauchli Babes in Toxic Toyland Norman Solomon Backspin for War Lee Sustar / Orlando Sepuldeva Victory on the Picket Line: How Immigrant Workers Won Their Strike Against Cygnus George Bisharat Boycott Movement Targets Israel Binoy Kampmark Tasteless: Gordon Ramsey and the Death of Gastronomy Evelyn Pringle Protection Racket?: the FDA and Avandia Hugo Blanco The Epic Struggle of Indigenous Andean / Amazonian Website of the Day Burning Man: the Field Recordings   August 15, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts "No American President Can Stand Up to Israel" Michael Neumann In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg Jordan Flaherty The Struggle to Free the Jena Six Sonja Karkar Can You Hear the Cries from Gaza? Felice Pace NPR Watch: Will Linda Gradstein Go to Gaza? Joshua Frank On Censoring Pearl Jam Dave Lindorff Terrorist Nation? Carla Blank Elvis Presley: King or Apprentice? David Vest Guralnick, Elvis and Racism Harvey Wasserman Why the Neocons Won't Miss Karl Rove Peter Rost, M.D. FDA Approved Drug Makes You Hypersexual and a Compulsive Gambler Russell Mokhiber An Arab American's Pocket Political Dictionary Website of the Day Stoners Busted   August 14, 2007 Paul de Rooij Humanitarian Wars and Associated Delusions Winslow T. Wheeler Congress's Busted September: Disingenuous Gestures Amid Catastrophe David Rosen The Case of Genarlow Wilson: Racism, Justice and Age-of-Consent Laws in America Gary Leupp Bush Warns Puppets Not to Praise Iran Clifton Ross Latin America at the Crossroads Muhammad Idress Ahmad The Politics of Democracy Promotion Jacquelyn Godin A Circle of Poison: Pesticides in the Plantations Uri Avnery Oslo Revisited Ramzy Baroud A Palestinian Miracle at the UN? James McEnteer Philistines as Cultural Critics Website of the Day When Cheney Called Iraq a Quagmire   August 13, 2007 Jeremy Scahill The Mercenary Revolution F. William Engdahl The Hidden Agenda Behind Bush's Biofuel Plan Alexander Cockburn The Veldt Will Never Be the Same Kathy Kelly Iraq's Refugees: "et to Work" Chris Floyd No Light, Light Tunnel: the Bipartisan Guarantee of More War in Iraq Paul Craig Roberts Hegemony of the Cockroach William Blum First Pullout, Then Bloodbath? Kenneth Couesbouc The Language of Dominion Rannie Amiri Tancredo's Screedo: a Lethal Mix of Ignorance and Insanity Brenda Norrell Priests Expose Secret Cycle of US Torture Fran Shor All Fall Down Ron Jacobs Dr. Strangelove Meets Dubya's Double Buzz Twofer Website of the Day The Beauty of Defiance   August 11 / 12, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How the Democrats Blew It in Only 8 Months Stan Goff The Cover-Up of Pat Tillman's Death Ralph Nader GM Radio: Payola to Rightwing Talk Shows? Vijay Prashad Destination Darfur: a New Cold War for Oil Greg Moses SubPrime People: Behind the Banking Crisis Alan Farago The Cratering Mortgage Market, WCI Communities and Amb. Al Hoffman Patrick Cockburn The Cracks in Saddam's Dam Ben Tripp On Fleeing the Country Robert Fantina Romney's Dance: The Rightwing Flip-Flop John Ross The Guelaguetza Strategy in Oaxaca Seth Sandronsky Organizing Nurses Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Mitt Romney to Bill Richardson Website of the Weekend Pearl Jam: Censored by ATT   August 10, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts China's Threat to the Dollar is Real Stan Goff How Pat Tillman Died Marjorie Cohn A Blank Check for Domestic Spying Saul Landau In the Age of Immigrant Panic Chris Floyd Goading Xerxes: the Coming Strike on Iran Daniel Ellsberg A Vision for Cindy Sheehan's Campaign Anthony Papa The Upside Down Flag: a Country in Distress Farzana Versey On the Heels of Sir Salman Sgt. Kevin Benderman Freedom or Totalitarianism? Nuri Nuri Memories of T99 Nelson Website of the Day Lessons in Obfuscation from Sen. Larry Craig: How to Talk About Looting the Public Domain   August 9, 2007 Stan Goff The Fog of Fame: Pat Tillman as Everyone's Political Football Paul Craig Roberts In the Hole to China Alan Farago The Terror of the Mortgage Pools William S. Lind The Surge's New Math: One Step Forward, Two Back Doug Giebel Letter from Montana: What the Bushvolk Have Done to America Harvey Wasserman Radioactive Bailout in Advance Jacob Hill The Tail End of Free Trade: NAFTA's Impact on the Manufacturing Sector Raul Zibechi The Dark Side of Agrofuels Dave Zirin The Making of Barry bin Laden Website of the Day "Babies Just Come with the Scenery"   August 8, 2007 Andy Worthington Backing Up Lt. Col. Abraham on Gitmo Abuse Jeff Halper The Catch in Israel's "Generous Offers" at Jericho Greg Moses No Light in August for Texas Refugees: Judge Orders Baby Sent to Palestine Nurit Peled-Elhanan The Murder of Abir Aramin, 9 Years Old Sukant Chandan British Prisons as Islamic Universities Robert Fisk A Lebanese Surprise George H. Strauss The Military Society D.K. Wilson Bonds, the Haters and 756: Why Bob Costas Can't be Trusted Bill Day Leonardo DiCaprio's Baggage: the Perils of Celebrity Environmentalism Tim Campbell Monkey See, Monkey Do Politics Website of the Day Periodic Table of Visualization Methods   August 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Why the Surge Has Failed Andy Worthington Why Do We Need the Democrats?: They Have Failed to Restrain Bush on Gitmo, Iraq and Domestic Spying Kathy Kelly The Little Girl of Hiroshima Stan Cox The Antiwar Majority: Look Quickly, You Might Miss It Sonja Karkar Israel's Settlement Project Sen. Russ Feingold A License to Wiretap--Anyone Alan Farago Dancing in the Light of Florida Norman Solomon Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman Binoy Kampmark Giving Good Face: What Jeremy Bentham and Facebook Have in Common Dave Lindorff The Gelding Congress John Stauber Coffee with the Troops at Yearly Kos Website of the Day George Carlin on Education       Subscribe Online

August 30, 2007 A View from a Bantustan Global Financial Apartheid By DENNIS BRUTUS and PATRICK BOND In three months, the G20 group of major financial powers will join us in South Africa, hosted near Cape Town by the gregarious finance minister Trevor Manuel. As usual the ministers will wine and dine, and protesters will suck teargas. But elite self-congratulation will be muted, for the economic officials were reminded during the recent financial meltdowns that when Wall Street has a cold, others get pneumonia. Or consider a metaphor that better spreads the blame: what president Thabo Mbeki terms Global Apartheid, like Apartheid itself during the bad old days, apparently needs a few Bantustans to kick around. We are witnessing a boot to the bum of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which lost nearly US$100 billion--17% of its value--between July 23rd and last Friday. Yet SA Treasury director-general Lesetja Kganyago is in an emollient, even denialist mood: 'We should not be too worried about further volatility' (he wrote last week). 'We must continue to strengthen our shock absorbers', which include 'a floating exchange rate'. Did the relaxation of exchange controls represent a shock absorber or volatility-amplifier? Since dropping the 'financial rand' dual exchange rate system in 1995, the SA Treasury has suffered four intensive speculative attacks on the currency (the most of any substantial country) and last year managed the world's worst-performing major currency. The country's vulnerability also stems from Treasury's decisions to happily repay $25 billion worth of apartheid-era debt (which should have been labeled 'Odious' under international law), and then permit the largest SA firms' financial headquarters to escape to London starting in 1999. Because of periodic currency crashes and Mbeki's refusal to reimpose currency controls, the last dozen years witnessed record-high real interest rates. As a result, domestic private fixed investment has been extremely weak and inflows of 'hot money'--portfolio investments--destabilised the economy. So real estate and the stock market have boomed while manufacturing withered, leaving us with a trade and payments deficit exceeding 7% of GDP this year, in the high danger zone. Last month, even the IMF's annual Article IV Consultation report admonished Manuel's team for the enormous current account deficit, far higher than even the USA's (and than Thailand when it melted down a decade ago). According to the IMF, South Africa 'could be adversely affected by weaker appetite for emerging market assets, a global slowdown, or a sharp deterioration in the terms of trade.' But both the IMF officials and Pretoria's two respondents--Peter Gakunu and Goolam Aboobaker--argue that 'sound macro-economic fundamentals, particularly the low external debt together with a well managed and stable financial sector and a flexible exchange rate regime would assist in mitigating this risk.' As a result of this myopic approach--so similar to the IMF's soft-peddling of East Asia's problems just prior to its 1997-98 crashes--South African financial analysts have taken to blaming the victim: the USA's vast network of 'Ninja' borrowers (No Income, No Job or Assets). Yet as consumer advocate Ralph Nader argues, 'The corporate capitalists' knees are shaking a bit. Their manipulation of the sub-prime housing market has led to a spreading credit crunch and liquidity crisis.' South African financiers have experimented just a little with crazy schemes, but even without a derivatives culture in mortgage bonds, enough liquidity was pumped into local real estate to drive average prices up 200% between 1997-2004, compared to just 60% in the US. This leaves South Africa at risk of becoming a new Bantustan within Global Financial Apartheid. Consider Apartheid's three minimum requirements for the homelands, in which roughly half of black South Africans were segregated: -- politicians allied to Pretoria repeatedly gave it legitimacy when under pressure (today, witness how South African officials laud the 'international community' and 'multilateralism': synonyms in the same tradition of 'separate development'); -- these agents expressed a willingness to put down local demonstrations using repressive means (and witness regular police brutality against widespread contemporary municipal protests); and -- the old Bantustans also had the responsibility to supply cheap migrant workers to the outside world as labour reserves (witness SA's post-1994 doubling of unemployment along with its new commitment to export-orientation). The Bantustan capitals were equipped with 'toy telephones' which the old rulers could always play with, but which had no connection to power. Pretoria's racist regime simply imposed its will, occasionally allowing the local tyrant to serve as 'point man' for whatever relatively harmless local crisis bubbled up (as George W. Bush termed Mbeki when it comes to Zimbabwe). Given these power relations, the challenge faced by the infamous Bantustan dictators--Buthelezi, Matanzima, Mangope, Cebe and the rest--was to disguise the faulty line to their constituents and pretend they had the ear of the powerful. They needed continual reaffirmation that there was dignity and upward mobility associated with their sleazy jobs. Today the sleazy work entails proclaiming never-ending reforms to Global Financial Apartheid. When US war criminal Paul Wolfowitz was appointed by Washington as World Bank president in April 2005, Manuel--then chair of the Bank's Development Committee--welcomed him as a 'wonderful individual perfectly capable.' Flash forward two years, past one fatal nepotism scandal and another rigged appointment process controlled entirely by George W. Bush, and again Manuel welcomes Wolfowitz's successor, Robert Zoellick (a fellow member of the Project for a New American Century, that notorious pro-war thinktank): 'We consider Zoellick to be very competent and hope he will be able to operate in the same manner as he demonstrated in the World Trade Organisation negotiations when he served as the US trade representative.' Manuel's five-year fuss about 'voice' and 'democracy deficits' and 'global governance'--and mild-mannered toy-telephone conversations--have generated exactly naught. There was not even the decency of a European Union call to consult Mbeki or Manuel last month when another neoconservative, Rodrigo de Rato, stepped down as International Monetary Fund managing director and was replaced, minus any Third World consultation, by French ex-finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn. After Strauss-Kahn's visit to Pretoria, Mbeki meekly remarked, 'He is a very competent person and we think he would add enormously to the work of the IMF--including improving the system of governance of the IMF, making it more representative of the developing world.' Reflecting the same subservience at a Maputo meeting last week with de Rato, Manuel and seven other African finance ministers announced: 'The African Governors stressed the need to protect and even increase the voting share of low-income countries as a group.' The obvious mismanagement of global financial markets means this is the perfect moment for a latter-day Bantu Holomisa--former Transkei Bantustan military official who turned anti-apartheid and hosted the African National Congress during the late 1980s--to rise up, tell it like it is, and foment serious protest. Indeed there is such a figure, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who on his last trip to South Africa--for the Joburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002--made this very point: 'We have to have a radical change in the formats of these summits... We just read a speech There is no proper dialogue, it seems to be a dialogue of the deaf. Some people go from summit to summit. Our people go from abyss to abyss.' Around 30,000 people marched that week from the abyss of Alexandra to the elite abyss of Sandton, decrying Mbeki's role in water privatisation, climate change and rising poverty. The same happened a year earlier, at the World Conference Against Racism here in Durban, where Mbeki removed from the summit agenda two central issues--Zionism and reparations for slavery, colonialism and apartheid--and received a 10,000-strong protest in response. These are the kinds of precedents which make the G20 summit of finance ministers scheduled for mid-November such an interesting moment. South Africa's independent left, which most vigorously contests the corporate globalization agenda, is licking various wounds, including several that are self-inflicted. And there will be far too much dust in the air concerning the ANC's post-Mbeki leadership succession race--which culminates in December--to justify the attention of trade unions and Communist Party attention to one more elite talkshop. Like Buthelezi decrying 1980s apartheid (while killing its genuine Zulu opponents), Manuel has already given the game away. Last year, upon his return from the G20 summit in Melbourne where 10,000 protesters demanded an end to Global Apartheid, Manuel told reporters, 'There is still a case to be made for the IMF and World Bank to exist ... but they have to become more relevant than they are'. (If he desires an argument to the contrary, Manuel should read the new collection of seminal critiques from across the world edited by our colleague David Moore, The World Bank, published by UKZN Press.) The G20 attendees will be: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union. Of these, the only even mildly progressive governments are Argentina's and Italy's, and the world's most serious reformers--the Norwegians--won't be there. What is required, as ever, is for progressive civil society to do the serious anti-Apartheid organising, both within the Bantustans with their unemployment, inequality, disease, squalor, obsequious leaders and intensifying social protest, and far beyond. Dennis Brutus is honorary professor and Patrick Bond director of the UKZN Centre for Civil Society.   Your Ad Here

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