Today's Stories

June 28 / 29, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Guess What "Surprise" Republicans Yearn For

June 27, 2008

Franklin C. Spinney
The Defense Reform Trap

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Encaging of Gaza

Brian Cloughley
Chaos in Afghanistan

Saree Makdisi
Occupation by Bureaucracy

Liliana Segura
Reactionary Change: Obama and the Death Penalty

Paul Krassner
Remembering George Carlin

William S. Lind
The War and the Yellow Press

Candace Cohn
Embracing Big Brother

Ron Jacobs
What's a Voter to Do?

Binoy Kampmark
Beached in Chile

Website of the Day
Zoom Uganda

June 26, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?

Nikolas Kozloff
Kinder and Gentler Assassination Techniques? Obama Waffles on School of the Americas

William P. O'Connor
The Drone of Experts

Saul Landau
McClellan's Mini Mea Culpa

Ashley Smith
Which Way Forward for the Antiwar Movement?

Dave Lindorff
Our Kids and Their Kids: Terrorists or Victims?

David Macaray
A Brief History of Union Negotiations

Binoy Kampmark
Warming Seats at the Hague: John Howard and War Crimes

Matt Reichel
There's No Hope at the Ballot Box

Remi Kenazi
You Don't Mess With the Racism!

Website of the Day
A Movement Afoot in the Heartlands

June 25, 2008

David H. Price
The Minerva Consortium: Social Science in Harness

Stephen Soldz
The Torture Trainers and the APA

Andy Worthington
Six Years Late, Court Throws Out Gitmo Case

Marjorie Cohn
Scalia Cites False Information in Habeas Dissent

Joanne Mariner
What Boumediene Means

Ralph Nader
Starving AMTRAK

Robert Weissman
High Flyers and Soaring Inequality

Christopher Brauchli
Blackout at the EPA

Suren Pillay
A Picture of Things to Come?

Seth Sandronsky
UC Workers Avert Walkout

Website of the Day
Obama Talkin' White

June 24, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Obama: the Big Let Down

P. Sainath
They've Got the World by the Belly

Nikolas Kozloff
Charlie Black's Play Book: McCain Needs Another 9/11

Gregory Kafoury
Obama's Rightward Lurch

Betty Shamieh
Fear of Flailing: Erica Jong's "Arabs and Other Animals"

Mike Whitney
Gas Price Gouging: Don't Blame the Saudis

Andy Worthington
Italy's Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo

Bill Christison
Towards a World Parliament

Philippe Marlière
Spoiling Sarko's Euro-Show

Website of the Day
Who Owns You?

June 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
How Should the Middle East Invest Its Oil Profits?

John Ross
Killing Farmers with Killer Seeds

Peter Montague
Environmental Enron: the Clean Coal Con

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's Dying Children

Robert Fantina
McCain, Racism and the Supreme Court

Robert Weitzel
A MAD Foreign Policy: America's Irrational Defense of Israel

David Macaray
The Supreme Court's Hostility to Organized Labor

Howard Lisnoff
Where's the Anger?

Richard Rhames
Grieving Mr. Gotcha: Russert, GE and Neutron Jack

Gail Dines
Penn, Porn and Me

Tim Matson
Bright Ideas for Storms and Blackouts

June 21 / 22, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Russert Send-Off

Jeffrey St. Clair
Adventures in the Endangered Skin Trade

Pam Martens
A Secret Oil Gusher Inside Citigroup

Mike Whitney
The Game is Over: an Interview with Michael Hudson on the Economy

Chris Floyd
Torturegate

Tim Wise
The Ugly Side of Disaster: Katrina and the Midwest Floods

Paul Craig Roberts
A Totally Lawless Regime

Michael Winship
How Countrywide Leveraged Washington

Ron Jacobs
Vietnam Blues

Ramzy Baroud
Palestine in the American Imagination

Alan Farago
The Off-Shore Drilling Scam

Michael Yates
Paul Krugman on Race: Ignorant and Disingenuous

Dave Lindorff
Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists

Bernard Chazelle
Why Israel Won't Accept a Two-State Solution

Linda Mamoun
Mearsheimer and Walt in Tel Aviv

Jo-Shing Yang
Dying of Hunger, Dying of Thirst

Robert Jensen
Fear and Hope on a Runaway Train

Website of the Weekend
Slavery By Another Name

June 20, 2008

Robert Oscar Lopez
Brownout in Black Camelot: Obama and Latino Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
John Yoo, Totalitarian

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Real Arab AIPAC

Bill Quigley
The Big Lock-Up

Moshe Adler
Is Cuba Done With Equality?

Patrick Cockburn
An End to Iraq Contractor Immunity?

Andy Worthington
John McCain, Torture Puppet

Norman Solomon
Health Care and the Ghosts of War

Martha Rosenberg
Can Wyeth Fool American Women Twice?

June 19, 2008

Ralph Nader
Why Won't Corporations Take On Big Oil?

Chellis Glendinning
Techno-Fascism: Every Move You Make

Neve Gordon
Learning to Drive in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Killing the News in Iraq

Sheldon Richman
Habeas Corpus Saved--Barely

George Bisharat
Obama's Missteps

Jackie Corr
Dear Mr. Kilowatt

Farzana Versey
Will Gorkhaland Become a Reality?

Website of the Day
Trouble on the Range

June 18, 2008

Nicole Colson
Hunger and Humiliation in the Belt-Tightening Economy

Rev. William E. Alberts
The "F" Word and the White Press

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Genuflections to the Swing Lobby

Parvez Ahmed
Oil Prices, Market Regulation and the Election

Bob Moss
Judicial Warfare in Boumediene

Dave Lindorff
The Elephant in the Room

David Wilson
Bush in London

June 17, 2008

Conn Hallinan
The Brain Trauma Vets

Wajahat Ali
Chomsky Speaks: On Iran and Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
Reviving Habeas Corpus

Uri Avnery
Two Professors: Mearsheimer and Walt in Israel

David Macaray
Adversarial Relationship

Rannie Amiri
Forgotten Lives in a Forgotten War

Website of the Day
Pentagon Money

June 16, 2008

Uri Avnery
An Apology

Corey D. B. Walker
The Racial Politics of Symbols

Howard Lisnoff
Files Upon Files

Dennis Loo
2008 Elections: Of Whales and Worms

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny

June 13 / 15, 2008

Douglas Valentine
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

Alexander Cockburn
Change, What Change?

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft

Peter Linebaugh
On Wat Tyler Day

Ishmael Reed
The Colossus: Sonny Rollins, Take One

Joe Bageant
Old Dogs and Hard Time

Harry Browne
Ireland Shows the Way!

Andy Worthington
The Supreme Court's Gitmo Decision: What Does It Mean?

Jeff Sharlet
The F-Word

Binoy Kampmark
They Gassed Us: Agent Orange in OZ

Alan Farago
His Little Piece of the Pie

Brian Cloughley
America the Detested: the Pakistan Airstrikes

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
How to Stretch Gasoline

Reza Fiyouzat
Oil and Racism

Patrick Bond /
Richard Kamidza
How Europe Underdevelops Africa

David Yearsley
Music in the Rubble

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!

Ronnie Cummins
Don't Panic; Go Organic

Dan Bacher
Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds

Michael Dickinson
Jesus in Megiddo Prison

Seth Sandronsky
My Father's World

Poets' Basement
Tu Fu / Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Torture and the American Psyche

June 12, 2008

Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die

Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases

Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal

Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling: Government by Crony

Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy

Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?

Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate

Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?

Website of the Day
Fire in Watts

June 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High

Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers

Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama

Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"

Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly

Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black

Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word

Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women? My Bill Clinton ... and Ours

Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall

June 10, 2008

Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps

James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut

John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People

Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism

Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks

Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation

Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?

Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start

Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?

June 9, 2008

Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"

Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry

Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"

Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed

Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation

Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley

James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?

Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.

Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty

Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War

Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death

Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security

Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House

Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing

David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question

Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana

David Yearsley
Disaster Music

James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat

Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy

P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur

David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?

B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One

Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)

Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines

Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!

Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

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CounterPunch Diary

Guess What "Surprise" Republicans Yearn For

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Everybody knows it, but it took a tacky Republican operator to come right out and say it. Charlie Black, John McCain’s campaign adviser, recently let drop to Fortune magazine that another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" for the Republican presidential candidate.  Of course McCain lost no time in distancing himself from Black’s remark, with the same bogus moral outrage with which he decries racist slurs on his opponent.  "I cannot imagine why he would say it. It's not true. I've worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear." Black duly threw on some sackcloth and echoed McCain: "I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate. I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration.”

Now, Black is no novice in campaign tactics. Nearly 40 years ago he helped put Jesse Helms in the US senate, and has been an innovative dirty trickster ever since. He knew exactly what he was doing when he let drop that remark to Fortune, just as McCain no doubt approved the indiscretion.  Both men know that McCain’s last best hope of beating Barack Obama in the November election is to rattle the nation’s teeth  with vivid evocations of national emergency,  and stampede the fearful voters into  putting a “war hero” into the Oval Office. Both men also know that almost seven years after the Trade Towers went down, the possibility of a terrorist attack is not the prime source of disquiet for most Americans, who can barely afford to drive to work or pay the mortgage on their homes.

The signs that the “war on terror” is losing its political edge are manifold. In the months after the 9/11 attack the Bush administration faced no serious opposition in trampling the US constitution under foot in the name of national security. The Patriot Act shot through Congress with just one senatorial “No” vote, from Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.  The symbol of U.S. “resolve” around the world  became the prison at Guantanamo, filled to this day with men against whom no formal charges had been laid, subjected to appalling tortures and denied the right to legal counsel.

This month the U.S. courts have delivered two resounding rebuffs to the White House’s efforts to say that prisoners  haled to Guantanamo had no rights under U.S. law. On June 12 , in the case of Boumediene v. Bush , the US Supreme Court  ruled, 5-4, that Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian citizen seized in October 2001,  was entitled to habeas corpus – i.e., the right under the US constitution to have an independent court of law review the legality of  his detention. Justice Anthony Kennedy stated ringingly in his draft of the majority opinion, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

The right erupted in fury, denouncing “the Boumediene Five”.  The Wall Street Journal bellowed in an editorial that the majority justices had signed the death warrants of American soldiers fighting terror overseas. At a town hall meeting in Pemberton, N.J., McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” For his part Obama  reiterated his "firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution."

Then, this last Monday, a three-judge federal court in Washington followed swiftly in the tracks on the June 12 ruling, declaring that Hozaifa Parhat, a 33-year-old Uighur Muslim from the oppressed Xinjiang province of China, seized in Turkmenistan in 2001, had the right to seek release immediately through a writ of habeas corpus. Thus, in the space of less than a fortnight, the US courts sliced away what Bush and his lawyers have insisted for seven years to be the vital right to hold terrorists indefinitely, without charges or rights of any sort.

Judges mostly rule in tune with the temper of the times, and the decisions this month are no exception. The surmise of those who dream, like Black, of a new terrorist attack, is that if one had rocked America on June 1 of this year the judges might well have held their hand. David Addington, senior aide to vice president Dick Cheney was quoted last year by Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department lawyer, as having said yearningly that "we’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious court,” referring to the  secret and in fact compliant FISA court that oversees clandestine wiretapping.

Almost every presidential election sees allegations of an imminent “October surprise”. There’s zero doubt what sort of surprise McCain and the desperate Republicans are yearning for. 

The Truth About Petraeus’ Surge , the Sixties, and much else besides

Watching the princes and princesses of the Fourth Estate last week mourning Russert, their fallen champion, I brooded as no doubt did many other CounterPunchers on the staggering failures of the Fourth Estate in the Bush era. How effortlessly they rolled from the WMD debacle into the chipper early reports of the war’s glorious progress, then into promotion of the surge and now, for well over a year, into ecstatic bulletins on the Surge’s success.

As antidote, I strongly recommend a detailed repot by that excellent journalist and historian. Gareth Porter, in our latest CounterPunch newsletter. Here’s how Porter begins his detailed report:

Throughout 2007 and 2008, Gen. David Petraeus successfully directed the development of a propaganda scenario portraying a fierce struggle for Iraq between shadowy figures in Iran, fueling “proxy war” against the United States through its support for “special groups,” and U.S. forces working to roll up those Iranian-sponsored networks.   

That story line was extraordinarily useful to the Bush administration – or, more precisely, to the Bush-Cheney White House and the U.S. military command in Iraq.  It served three distinct purposes simultaneously. First, it provided a new rationale for U.S. occupation in Iraq  that promised to stretch years into the future – fighting Shiite foes, which were supposedly sponsored by Iran. As al Qaeda’s power seemed to fade during 2007, that purpose filled what would otherwise have been a void in regard to reasons for a continued U.S. military role in the country.   

Second, the assertion of Iranian troublemaking in Iraq provided a rationale for the limited attack on Iranian bases, which was Dick Cheney’s ambition, and, thus, for a possible trigger for an Iranian response that could justify an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

But it also serves to divert attention from the embarrassing fact that the Bush administration and Iran have been backing the same horse in Iraq. Since early 2005, Iranian strategy has been centered on support for Shiite-dominated regime in Baghdad, because those governments were led by and dependent on the political support of loyal Iraqi agents of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the time the IRGC had created the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. The Baghdad regime, therefore, represents a joint U.S.-Iranian condominium. 

The “proxy war” propaganda claim has revolved around one central lie, which is that Iran has used “special groups,” meaning militia groups that have broken away from Sadr, to try to force the United States out of Iraq and destabilize the Iraqi regime. The term “special groups” itself was invented not by Iran but by the U.S. military…”

Porter goes on to build up a devastating case against the mendacious constructs of Petraeus and his staff. He pinions  the eager gullibility of Congress and press in swallowing the story. His piece alone is worth a subscripton to our twice-monthly newsletter. 

Another excellent piece in the same newsletter is former US Senator Jim Abourezk’s  account  of the  White Clay whiskey peddlers selling alcoholic beverages to the Indians. This squalid epic goes back to the 1800s, and stretches forward to the present day.  Jim was born on the Rosebud reservation, and became the nation’s first Arab-American senator back in the 1970s,  serving with great distinction. He remains a crusading lawyer in Sioux Falls and recounts his ongoing efforts to shut down the illegal liquor trade in White Clay which has caused so much human disaster.

Moving from the epic to the ridiculous, I have to hand Gerard DeGroot: The 60s Unplugged. A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade.  You think Todd Gitlin is silly? They just never let go. I write an unflattering assessment of DeGroot’s  preposterous work. All in the CounerPunch newsletter. Now, all you have to do is subscribe.

Ahmed Shawki and “Democracy Now”

Ahmed Shawki is usually a jovial fellow, as well as being one of the leading lights of the Trotskyist tendency known as the International Socialist Organization. What has made the Chicago-based Ahmed distinctly less jovial in the years since 9/11/2001 is unendingly bad treatment at airline security. Because of his name and ethnic contour he gets screwed around in all manner of outrageous ways.

Imagine, therefore, the fury and distress of Ahmed and his family when Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, on the unlucky day of Friday, June 13, ran a story on Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen captured and detained in Iraq by United States military forces, without legal process and with no meaningful access to counsel.  Democracy Now chose to illustrate this story on its site with a photograph of Ahmed Shawki, of Chicago. Dilligent efforts were immediately made to get Democracy Now to fix the problem on its site, but without getting any satisfaction from an apparently indifferent crew at the Temple  of Goodman. Finally, in the middle of the following week, Goodman did okay a correction, albeit relocating Ahmed from Chicago to California.

I queried the ISO’s Sharon Smith, who is married to Shawki,  about the facts of the matter and here’s how she answered:

Hi Alex,

No, Ahmed hasn’t suddenly moved West. He still lives in Chicago, as he has since 1983. But an Ahmed Shawki with a California address is all we got in the way of a correction from DN! on Wednesday of this past week.

And even that took 5 days. After the photo appeared on Friday, June 13, presenting a photo of Ahmed Shawki from Chicago as the alleged terrorist Shawqi Ahmed Omar (please be sure that I do not wish to imply that Omar is an actual terrorist), Ahmed’s photo stayed there for all the world to see until the following Monday morning. So for several days, Ahmed’s photo was associated with a convicted Iraqi terrorist, and we had to wait until Wednesday for a broadcast correction (that erroneously stated Ahmed’s residence as in California rather than Illinois).

Needless to say, this was a very traumatic experience for Ahmed. He faced racism before 9-11, but since then he has been pulled off airplanes and our family was driven out of our last neighborhood due to anti-Arab racism. And as we all know, various government agencies are not looking for facts, but only excuses, to further harass and incarcerate Arabs and Muslims. So this was a big deal for us. We had no direct contact with anyone at DN! but relied on mutual acquaintances to state our case, as soon as the photo appeared. We became increasingly frustrated, as the days went by and no action was taken to make this correction—which at some future point, could be crucial if Ahmed is targeted by one of the many agencies empowered to do so. Because we had no direct contact with DN!, we can’t state with any accuracy what DN!’s official response was to this error on their part. And no one from DN ever attempted to contact Ahmed directly, either to apologize or to get the facts straight.

Needless to say, we are extremely disappointed by this outcome. We expected better from Democracy Now! which we have had, until now, nothing but respect. For those who purport to be bringing integrity back into the news media, we expected, well, a bit more integrity.

Sharon

In Russert’s Wake

My dry-eyed remarks about Tim Russert here last week elicited a large number of enthusiastic letters from CounterPunchers astounded at the commotion at his passing. In a separate piece I did on Russert I concluded thus:

After the Watergate scandal was over in 1974 and Nixon bundled off in disgrace to California, Katharine Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company and employer of Woodward and Bernstein, cautioned journalists: ““The press these days,” she sternly told them, “should ... be rather careful about its role. We may have acquired some tendencies about over-involvement that we had better overcome. We had better not yield to the temptation to go on refighting the next war and see conspiracy and cover-up where they do not exist.”    Out of that warning came the failures to see conspiracy where it did exist, in the manufacture of the WMD threat and in the treatment of politics as business-as-usual, somewhat like a game --  an approach in which Russert excelled and which made him many friends and far too few enemies.  He never had to lunch alone. In the 1880s, Joseph Pulitzer hung a sign in the newsroom of his paper, the New York World, which read: “The World has no friends.” Russert, as the recent obsequies attest, had far too many.

A few days later, on June 25m  came this amusing sequel from Chicago-based CounterPuncher, John Mauck:

Hey Alexander, Today on the Washington Post website, they had an online discussion with Len Downey [The Post’s dreary  editor]. Per your column I asked a simple question: Chicago: Hey Len, What is your opinion of Katharine Graham's quote: "The press these days should be rather careful about its role. We may have acquired some tendencies about over-involvement that we had better overcome. We had better not yield to the temptation to go on refighting the next war and see conspiracy and cover-up where they do not exist."

To this I got an amusing answer: Leonard Downie Jr.: It's timeless wisdom. She said that many years ago, and it was true then and it's true now. We keep that responsibility in mind every day.” I thought that might crack you up. Keep up the Counterpunching!

A few other notes from my Russert mailbag:

Alex, You wrote, “Final question: Since NBC had a huge stake in Tim Russert’s future (“Meet the Press” brought in $50 million a year and they paid him around $5 million a year) you’d have thought the network’s executives would have taken a look at the tv screen and raised the alarm. Across the past three months  he looked in increasingly awful shape, bright red in the face, overweight and sometimes with a slightly glazed, sad look. I told people I thought he was set to die of a heart attack right there in the studio, which is exactly what happened.”

You weren't the only one, I never watched, but my mother-in-law, a retired nurse, thought the same thing.  She saw him on MTP the Sunday before he died, and thought, he looks awful.  She was really alarmed and wanted to call and urge that he get immediate medical attention!

Richard Estes

And this one from Tom Layman, in Champaign, Illinois:

Alex: Very insightful. I don't know how many times the honor-givers mentioned his interview with Cheney prior to the war as if merely asking a question lit a fire under Cheney's feet. But what stands out to me (& I have yet to bring this up elsewhere where I can reply) is his question to Dennis Kucinich in the primary debates about UFOs. The "Journalist of record" was making an obvious attempt to marginalize Dennis as a nut case. I don't recall anyone ever making that kind of leap with, say, Bush's claim that God wanted him to invade Iraq.

Tom

An architect  in Nashville send this larger perspective on Russert:

Alexander:

Bravo! Finally someone speaks the truth.  Sat. I was on a very challenging bike ride for my age (58, same age as Russert).  I got back into biking after a bad back injury and was told it might help and was riding for a while beside a younger man(50) who was well.. rich he was riding an expensive bike. Anyway, he commented that he had left his high stress job where he was a CEO and got into this biking as it lowered his BP ( his BP was through the roof when he was CEO.) and that his Dad had died much as Tim Russert had at about the same age.   "Hell he looked awful these past months" he commented.

I noted to him a number of male acquaintances, friends etc that had died of heart attacks between what I think are the make or break it years for men age 50-60.

The conversation started when he yelled to me "Hey have you noticed how no one is saying why Tim Russert died.. like working himself to death a true American role model".

He noted that he had the money but was heading in the same direction so he bought his "vanity bike" to try something else and it had led him to a better life.

Certainly there were other options for Tim also.  Maybe not as drastic as giving up the helm as this ex CEO had but certainly working less hours and integrating some exercise or family and friend time in.  I don't buy the family man stuff either.  Way back when I had  a more high profile job when my kids were very young one day they said "Daddy will you ever be home for Dinner?".  I worked literally 20 minutes away and had nor been home in almost 2 years for dinner because of my job.  I had gained 20 plus and smoked like hell and no exercise.  Well this "OL" Marine quit that job (those type of jobs do not allow or at least in those days a way to work less) I was in my late 30's then and I still look back knowing it was the right move.  I am still alive and saw my kids grow and shared much with them. I fared on the lousy side for a time for income and have not worked onprestigious projects but that all seems to mean less and less as I age.

Tennessee Architect
Nashville.

A distinctly unflattering one:

Alex,

Thanks for the article on the " Russert Send-Off ". The are some very revealing points. Like that of Russert not having any enemies despite 20 Years in the News Business. I was curious as to what his salary was and the figure you quote, 5 Million Dollars, is also revealing. Why should that be so revealing ?  Let me touch upon a subject that was not brought up in your article.

In the Russert Send-Off NBC put a number of video interviews of News Media "Luminaries" and bio pieces on their website. One of those bio pieces focused on Russert's father who is quite elderly. And like most Octegenarians Russert's father has not been able to tend to his own needs. Up until recently the elder Russert has been forced to accept the generosity of his neighbors who prepared his meals and took care of his clothes. It was also revealed that Russert wanted to put his  father in a "Senior Citizen's Home" against his father's wishes. You know, those places where you are warehoused until you have the dignity to kick-off. For someone like the younger Russert, with all his money, to do that to do that to his father shows you what type of family man he really was. I wonder if Russert Sr' s neighbors really know what old Tim's net worth really was ? And if they do what they think of him now ? Some "Family Man" !

Sincerely

Bob Marston

A man of the cloth had this to say:

I was sadden but not surprised that the news media ran amok and raised Mr. Russert higher than God. However, I do remember Mr. Russert, as you stated in the amen corner for the war, and I also remember that when the White House wanted to send out propaganda and disinformation, Russert was their man. Dick Cheney knew who to call, and why would Libby throw Russert name in the hat of who was told what? However, the mainstream news media had to make themselves look good especially after Scott McClellan throw them under the bus, so Russert’s grandiose send off was a pat on the back for themselves.  Furthermore, Russert grilled Obama about Farrakhan, but he seemed not to care about the war, poverty, economical downturns, and many of the social issues and other pertinent issues that this country faced, and Brian Williams was a part of the grilling team too. After all, these two so-called powerhouses could get away with it, just like Williams fabricated his story in Tennessee by stating that McCain was received well at the anniversary of Dr. King.  McCain was booed so loudly, one could not hear the broadcast.

And to add to the knighting and apostleship of Russert, the media said that the rainbow in the sky was Russert's rainbow. However, someone’s hermeneutics is displaced because the last time that I read  the Old Testament, the rainbow was a covenant and a token to remind us that God would not destroy the earth in seed time and harvest by flood, and after seeing the floods in Illinois and Wisconsin, we certainly needed that reminder. Some may call me a busy body fanatical preacher, but so many lives have been lost because of the lies told to get us to Iraq, and now the oil companies hope to prosper, and Bushes Executive order 13303 will aid them. Finally, the mainstream news media has blood on its hand like Pilate, yet soap and water will not remove the stains. So in order to remove the blood stains, why not use Russert the same way as they used him along with others to sell this heinous criminal war.

Rev. S.D. Whitaker

And lastly, from Louisiana:

Hearing all this noise about Russert being such an astute political observer, I wondered whether I had missed this. He seemed somewhat conventional & low-octane prosaic to me, and a lot of his "sharp questioning" missed the mark. But the real thing I have against him is having Rush Limbaugh in his show & going on & on about how Limbaugh was a modern Walter Lippmann. In fact, I was wondering whether it was some sort of a joke, as not even Limbaugh harbored such a pretension. Limbaugh is basically an entertainer of modest, if not mediocre accomplishments, as well as an out-and-out flâneur. He has never made any claims to have inhabited a heavy-thinker bureau, but Russert slobbered all over him as if he were a philosopher king. Maybe there are some reactionaries who would earn such an encomium, but not Limbaugh or that low-life snob, William F. Buckley, jr. I never did get over how Russert was so gulled by Limbaugh & fawned over him disgustingly. Pretty soon we shall be free of all this weeping & moaning over Russert; but why didn't someone cite Don Vito Corleone? Remember when he asked Johnny Fontaine: "You spend time with your family?"

Donald Juneau

As the commotion began to subside, the New York Times ran a news story stuffed with self-aggrandizing quotes from doctors, all to the general effect that Russert had seemed to be in the best of health, his vital indicators seemed to be in the comfort zone, his pills seemed to be working, and then, gosh darn it, he keels over. Moral: the Reaper strikes when he wants and there ain’t a thing a bunch of overpaid doctors can do about it.

So how come plenty of people were able to to a free, unsolicited diagnosis of  T. Russert on TV and say, My God, call a doctor someone. That guy’s in awful shape.

My Life with Thomas Mann

In his always entertaining and instructive column on this site  The Musical Patriot David Yearsley this weekend describes the appalling sunburn inflicted on him by Thomas Mann, for reasons I shall not divulge, except to say Yearsley took Mann with him on holiday.

How many arms has Thomas Mann turned into spaghetti, lugging his vast novels around Europe in the vain hope that on some beach or restful glade the traveller will finally settle accounts with the Joseph Trilogy. When I left Oxford I took my girlfriend Jenny Barnes plus Joseph and his weighty Brothers on a tour of Mallorca. The vehicle was a Lambretta, and Thomas Mann x 3 rode postillion, right behind Jenny, who was right behind me.  I wasn’t used to the Lambretta or to the weight of three hardback vols of T. Mann. I would over-rev, the Lambretta would rise on its rear wheel and fall over backwards on top of Jenny and me and Thomas. One time this happened was right outside the gates of Robert Graves’s house in Deya. I ripped my pants and sat on the Mann vols as Jenny sewed the pants up. Mann tagged along the whole of the trip, but I never got anywhere with him.