home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! One-State Solution for Palestine? Michael Neumann, author of The Case Against Israel, tackles the thorny issue of the One-State Solution for Palestine. Is it a viable alternative or risky illusion? Who's been killing hundreds of girls around Juarez since the 1990s: Satanists, organ traffickers, drug gangs, cops? Debbie Nathan lays bare the political and psychic economy of femicide. PLUS R.F.Blader on why feminists shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents. Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year !

Today's Stories January 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair McCain vs. Clinton? January 29, 2008 Franklin C. Spinney Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off Mike Whitney The Great Credit Unwind of 2008 Alan Farago Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association Patrick Cockburn "The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction" Gary Leupp "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline R. F. Blader A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania Ahmad Faruqui Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect Fran Shor Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In" Jeremy Scahill Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters Allan Nairn Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All Website of the Day The Ghost of Rambo   January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah Paul Craig Roberts The End of American Liberty Allan Nairn The Breaking of the Gaza Wall Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza Martha Rosenberg Obit for the "Front Page" City Corporate Crime Reporter How They Rip Us Off David Michael Green Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War Jennifer Van Bergen What's Left? Nancy Oden Survival Tips for Hard Times Divya Karnad Saving India's Sea Turtles James L. Secor Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Website of the Day Yellow Journalism?   January 26 / 27, 2008 Uri Avnery Worse Than a Crime JoAnn Wypijewski How the Clintons Lost It, Whatever the Outcome in S. Carolina Ralph Nader Ambition, Power and the Clintons Paul Craig Roberts How Bush Destroyed the Dollar Paul Watson I'm Proud to be a Pirate! John Ross Murder and Cover-Up in Mexico Fred Gardner Ross v. Raging Wire: Employer's Right to Fire Workers Held Sacred by California Supreme Court Allan Nairn Little Hands with Fever: Some Consequences of Poverty Death Joshua Frank Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey Binoy Kampmark Société Générale and the Economic Meltdown James T. Phillips America's Sick Comedy: Bringing the War Home Stan Cox The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants Eamonn McCann Hillary's Lie: "I Brought Peace to Northern Ireland" Ron Jacobs The Horizons of History: What's at Stake in Bolivia Seth Sandronsky California's Health Care Crisis Ben Terrall The Future is Unwritten Poets' Basement Tripp, Gardner, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend City of Immigrants     January 25, 2008 Douglas Valentine Operation Two-Fold: How the CIA Infiltrated the DEA Patrick Cockburn US Troops Will Be In Iraq for 10 More Years: an Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari JoAnn Wypijewski Down to the Wire in South Carolina Heather Gray Are We Seeing a Racial Shift in the South? Conversations with South Carolina Voters Marjorie Cohn Senate Democrats Poised to Fold to Cheney on FISA Erica Rosenberg Environmentalists Out on a Limb: the Perils of Collaboration Alan Farago Jeb Bush Goes Nuclear Robert Weissman Reclaiming Economic Freedom Laura Carlsen Wild Cards: Mining the Hispanic Vote in Nevada Stephen Lendman Israeli Repression in the Hebron Website of the Day The FIX is In   January 24, 2008 JoAnn Wypijewski Obama as Anthologist of Uplift Paul Craig Roberts President Hillary Alexander Cockburn Hillary Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember Her Nursing Home Scam? Kathleen Christison One and Two State Solutions and the Myth of International Consensus Jeff Halper Power to the (Palestinian) People! Stanley Heller The Siege of Gaza is Broken George Wuerthner The Moronic Sport: ORVs on the Public Lands Patrick Cockburn Desperate Iraqi Farmers Turn to Opium Jeff Sher Just How "Good" is Your Health Insurance? Patrick Irelan Musharraf, the Steadfast Ally? Charles Modiano Restoring the Anti-War King Website of the Day An Illustrated History of Trepanation   January 23, 2008 David Rosen The Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics of Sex David Isenberg Is It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons Program? Farzana Versey Hillary's Harem Paul Craig Roberts The Empire That Must Be Obeyed Alan Farago Where Did All the Good Times Go? Allan Nairn Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights Activist Kenneth Couesbouc Another Turn of the Screw Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West was Re-Sold Michael Donnelly Obama Strikes Back Norman Solomon The Power of Love Website of the Day Rafah Today   January 22, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Farewell to Old Economic Nostrums JoAnn Wypijewski King Day in Columbia, South Carolina Al Giordano Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada Felice Pace Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon Paul Wolf Bolívar's Sword Robert Weissman Deregulation and the Financial Crisis Dave Lindorff The Bush Dollar Trap Marjorie Cohn Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction Richard Neville Keeping Shakespeare in a Box Don Fitz / Zaki Baruti St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform Ben Terrall Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness Sam Husseini Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr. Website of the Day Defend the Mapuche!     January 21, 2008 Kevin Alexander Gray Playing the Race Card Linn Washington, Jr. Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy Pam Martens How Wall Street Blew Itself Up David Macaray Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party? Uri Avnery Look Who's Talking Omar Barghouti Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide Joe DeRaymond Protest and Trial in D.C. B.R. Gowani Why Islam Should Tolerate Images Shepherd Bliss The False U.S. Economy Jean-Guy Allard Philip Agee Versus the CIA Dan Bacher Leaping Steelhead! Website of the Day Destroyed By a Rising Flood January 19 / 20, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Campaign in Black and White Saul Landau Good Time Charlie's War China Hand Endgame for Pakistan? Conn Hallinan Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About? Ron Jacobs No Retreat Dave Lindorff A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess Andy Worthington Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture Paul Armentano What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think Seth Sandronsky High Crimes and Economics Michael Donnelly Dodging Ecocide Patrick Irelan The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki Martha Rosenberg The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit Sherwood Ross Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade David Michael Green So You Want to be My President, Eh? James Rothenberg Unimpeachable: Under House Protection Daniel Gross Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King Peter N. Carroll In Memory of Milton Wolff Susie Day Croakin' on Hudson Paul Krassner Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu Poets' Basement Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski Website of the Day Rocky Mountain Blues   January 18, 2008 Allan Nairn Killing Civilians, Carefully Ralph Nader When the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill? Joanne Mariner Terrorism and Preventative Detention Alan Farago The Stimulus and the Meltdown P. Sainath Pity the Brahmins R.F. Blader Beyond Steinem's Feminism Andy Worthington A Letter from Guantánamo John Jonik Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health Brian McKenna Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan Women's Prison Daoud Kuttab This Time Next Year? Website of the Day Those South Carolina Voting Machines   January 17, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Leader and Vassal Christopher Brauchli The FBI's Bills Come Due Robert Fantina Leadership, Bush and the New York Times Patrick Irelan Eternal War Paul A. Moore When the Rich Pay No Taxes Stephen Lendman Institutionalized Spying on Americans Beena Sarwar Bhutto and the "State Within a State" Walter Brasch Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment Brenda Norrell Bush Legacy in Texas Sours Adam Federman End of the Left? Website of the Day Democrats for Romney   January 16, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Return of the Native Franklin Lamb The Bombing at Qarantina Julian Sanchez David Weigel Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters? Sharon Smith Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope? Allan Nairn Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market Ayesha Ijaz Khan How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation Andy Worthington A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo Richard Behan Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach! Website of the Day Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!   January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds Wajahat Ali An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy and the Prospects of War with Iran Joe Bageant Getting Out the Bling Vote Ralph Nader The Candidate Taboos John Ross Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse Elaine Cassel Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified? Peter Morici The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy Beena Sarwar Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade Robert Weissman Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought Binoy Kampmark Going Tata in India Dave Zirin Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame Website of the Day David Lynch on the iPhone   January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH   January 8, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old) Russell Mokhiber The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative Robert Fantina The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz Dave Zirin Butts on Parade Shamako Nobel I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop John Ross Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves Brenda Norrell Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security Laura Carlsen Why Bolivia Matters Patrick Irelan Remember the Maine! Evelyn J. Pringle The Holes in Bush's FDA Jonathan M. Feldman After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace Movement Michael Dickinson Playing Soldier Website of the Day Sean Hannity on the Run!   January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd There Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities John Blair Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana Uri Avnery The Case of the White Bird Andy Worthington Who Are the Gitmo Saudis? Binoy Kampmark Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court David Macaray Women on Strike Ralph Nader Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood Michael Donnelly It's the War Vote(s), Stupid! Ron Jacobs Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough? Gideon Levy The Hostile President Dave Lindorff A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb Website of the Day Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea   January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Good Guys in Black Hoods Kevin Young The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq Richard Rhames Saddam Who? Saul Landau Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory Marc Lynch Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing Robert Fantina Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War Donna Volatile Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr. Jelle Bruinsma Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands Bob Sutcliffe Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist Harvey Wasserman Anti-Nuclear Renaissance Missy Beattie Why Obama Can't Save Us David Swanson Remembering the Separation of Powers Jacob Hornberger The Importance of the Padilla Case Shepherd Bliss Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms Ron Jacobs Bleeding Kansas Poets' Basement Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski Website of the Weekend Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint   January 4, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Good Night in Iowa Jonathan Cook War Crimes Airbrushed from History Paul Craig Roberts Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime Stan Goff Ron Paul's Monkeywrench Dave Lindorff Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds Niranjan Ramakrishnan To Pindi Station Allan Nairn U.S. Elections Over Before They Began Joshua Frank The Failures of Sectarianism Peter Morici Economy on the Skids Mary McInnis Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease Website of the Day The Return of Obama Girl   January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Farewell to Wadi Bua Pam Martens The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos Joanne Mariner The Presidential Candidates and Torture Zoltan Grossman Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web David Domke The Echoing Press and Huckabee Norman Solomon Edwards Reconsidered Nikolas Kozloff Return of the Faux Liberal Jacob G. Hornberger The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus Martha Rosenberg Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick Russell Means This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands Website of the Day WolfQuest       Subscribe Online

January 30, 2008 Adios Rudy! Farewell Edwards! Hello Ralph! McCain vs. Clinton? By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Before his handlers told the press Bill Clinton wouldn't be taking any more questions, the former president gave it as his considered opinion that his wife and John McCain are a lot alike, and that assuming the two become their parties' nominees, the fall campaign would be "the most cordial in history." Setting aside such well-known traits as ill-temper towards subordinates, what Mrs Clinton and McCain certainly do have in common is a readiness to hang their own party out to dry when it's a matter of personal advancement. McCain has steadily amassed political capital by promoting himself as the Republicans' maverick, on campaign reform, pork barreling, immigration. He lashes the Christian right. He voted against the Bush tax cuts and denounced Don Rumsfeld early on for his management of the war. Hillary's been a career triangulator and indeed introduced her husband to the dark art, by recruiting Jesse Helms' pollster, Dickie Morris, when Bill was trying to come back from defeat after one term as the governor of Arkansas. It was Hillary who told Bill firmly in the summer of 1996 that he should sign the Republicans' bill destroying welfare. The chilling aspect to this counsel was that it came at a moment when it was clear Bill was going to hammer Bob Dole in the presidential contest. Hillary's view was that it would be better for them to be seen as running athwart the old liberal lions, like Ted Kennedy who waited twelve long years for his revenge, in the form of his endorsement on Monday of Obama. McCain's victory in Florida on Tuesday is a measure of the terrible shape the Republican Party now finds itself in. They now have a front-runner that no faction in the party really likes. He's old, short, bald, with a history of serious skin cancer and a record of psychological instability. He is favor of a war deeply disliked by about 70 per cent of all Americans and has publicly proclaimed that the U.S. may well be in Iraq for a hundred years. With the country is poised on the lip of recession he calls for budget cuts. In Michigan he told distraught auto workers, --many of them "Reagan Democrats", that their jobs were never coming back. In Florida he said he didn't know much about economics but that Social Security would have to be fixed --i.e. privatized. Over half the people voting in Florida's Republican primary were over 60 and the Arizona senator's blithe endorsement of privatization would have scarcely been encouraging as they read the slumping bottom lines on their private 401K retirement accounts. Small wonder the Clintons are licking their lips at the likelihood, deemed inconceivable only a few short weeks ago, that McCain will be the Republican nominee in the fall. The Republican right may well be making the calculation that it would no bad thing to have Hillary Clinton in the White House for four years, encumbered with the mess in Iraq and an economy in recession. Just as she did in Michigan Hillary flouted a pledge to shun Florida's Democratic primary and then went on the networks to tout a glorious victory. Obama was nowhere to be seen, showing once again that he's no rough and tumble campaigner, preferring to maintain a lofty posture at all times, reminiscent of Gene McCarthy trying to vie with Bobby Kennedy back in 1968. (Whereas Ted and Caroline came out for Obama, Bobby's children have endorsed Hillary.) Looking at Super Tuesday, on February 5, it's hard to see how Obama can overcome the Clintons' back-alley political methods and their institutional advantage in holding the party levers. The day of the Florida primary Hillary won the endorsement of the black Los Angeles congresswoman Maxine Waters, to whom the Clintons should be anathema on drug policy, on mandatory sentencing, on welfare. Obama also faces formidable obstacles in trying to win over Hispanic voters, whose loyalty to Hillary certainly cost him the Nevada caucuses. As Sergio Bendixen, a pollster working for Hillary, put it in the New Yorker, "The Hispanic voters ­- and I want to say this very carefully --have not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates." So much for the Rainbow Coalition. There is a way Obama could make an impact on these millions of Hispanics he has thus far failed to set on fire. It would ratchet up the animus between the Obama and Clinton campaigns, but he needs to do this. Across the next crucial days he could declare bluntly that while Mrs Clinton may profess profound sympathy for the concerns of Hispanics, the substantive record of the Clinton presidency was terrible. The Free Trade bill ratified by Bill Clinton in 1994 sent hundreds of thousands of Mexicans north across the border out of Mexico's reeling economy, there to be met by criminal sanctions - aimed at the poor generally - harsher on Clinton's watch than on Bush's. It was Senator Obama, not Senator Clinton, who was a co-sponsor of the Immigrant Reform Bill, a major issue of 2007 for the Latino population. To stay in the game with the Clintons Obama has to play it rougher. He has very little time to escape from the box into which Hillary and Bill have been trying to trap him as the black candidate Hispanics should not trust. The campaign does offer some pleasures. There was the rout of the Clintons in South Carolina and now the humiliation of Rudy Giuliani in Florida. He spent $60 million and, in the entire campaign until his withdrawal, won precisely one delegate. In September he had a favorability rating of 55 per cent. In January it was down to 20 per cent. People just couldn't stand him. It's really too bad one can't throw Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee into some kind of blender. Huckabee has a great sense of humor, and has been the only candidate to evince a spontaneous sense of class politics. In Florida he denounced the stimulus package as a trickle-down tactic that wouldn't any kind of long-term solution for people in need. He called for a huge public works program, adding a couple of lanes to 1nterstate 95. It's true he wants to substitute the Ten Commandment for the Bill of Rights, but the US Supreme Court would no doubt stop him in his tracks. Among both Republicans and Democrats Ron Paul is the only one who talks with any passion about defending the Constitution and ending the war. It's true he should have been more vocal, denouncing those racist newsletters that went out over his letterhead, but one the other hand there's his forthright statement to Wolf Blitzer on CNN on January 10: I attack two wars that blacks are suffering from. One, the war overseas. In all wars minorities suffer the most. So they join me in this position I have against the war in Iraq. And what about the war on drugs? What other candidate will stand up and say I will pardon all blacks, all whites, everybody who were convicted for non-violent drug acts and drug crimes. And this is where the real discrimination is. if you want to look for discrimination, it's the judicial system. So I am the antiracist because I am the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, who [wants to] protect the minority against these vicious drug laws. Did anyone on the left, flailing away Paul, ever hold Dennis Kucinich's feet to the fire for all those years attacking choice, before his presidential ambitions prompted to jump the fence and change his views? Not for Kucinich the rigorous adherence to principle that prompted Paul to launch a nutty attack on social security to a mostly elderly audience in Florida. Small wonder he ended up arm wrestling Fred Thompson for fifth place. Still, even Giuliani, in his strange farewell address, confessed that "Ron Paul won every debate." So we advise Paul to quit wasting his money in the Republican money and instead to launch off as an independent or libertarian, denouncing the war and going to the inner cities on a redemption tour to talk about racism and the judicial process --which got significantly worse in Clinton time. The left keeps laboring the obvious, that Paul is not a leftist and has some bad positions. His posture on immigration is awful. But the Clinton record is substantively far, far worse, in terms of the terrible harvest reaped by NAFTA and the WTO and by Bill Clinton's own record on immigration and the treatment of Hispanics in the drug war. John Edwards has now announced that it's all over for his campaign, conclusively derailed by his lame showing in South Carolina, which was his native state and the scene of his victory in 2004. Despite being the only white male in a state that seemed primed for his populist message, he finished a distant third, with 17 per cent. The conventional wisdom among the pundits is that Edwards' supporters will now transfer their loyalties to Barack Obama who, probably with an eye to this possibility, has been injecting some Edwardsian themes into his airy Aeolian homilies. However, the supersensitive antennae of Dickie Morris twitched alertly on Tuesday night on the Fox Channel as he pored over exit polls in Florida and declared that (a) he could detect signs that the Republican Party was lurching to the left because of the economy and (b) that such votes as Edwards was getting in Florida came from people who could not bring themselves to vote for a woman or a black. Maybe that type of voter will switch allegiance to Ron Paul on Super Tuesday. Edwards out means Nader in. In the same hour as news of Edwards' withdrawal, CounterPunch received an alert from Nader's camp, which had tactfully waited 30 seconds after Edwards's exit, to announce the formation of "the Nader 2008 presidential exploratory committee". Yes, there's already a website, www.naderexplore08.org.

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn   Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont     CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed