Today's Stories

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U.S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D.C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington "Screwed Up" and "Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U.S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U.S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U.S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N.D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on "Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

Weekend Edition
July 19 / 20, 2008

CounterPunch Diary

It's a Dull Race by Recent Standards

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Barack Obama’s team worries that a politically significant slice of the American people think he’s not really a devout Christian as he claims, but a closet Muslim plotting to haul the green crescent up the White House flagpole. But what else have the American people got to chew on in this lull before the big party conventions a month and a half away, with the Olympics looming up? Now that Hillary Clinton is out of the race the campaign has gone flat. You can measure the tedium by the fatuous articles claiming that Obama, a mainstream corporate Democrat if ever I saw one, has somehow betrayed the heritage of Robespierre or at least the British Fabians and “lunged to the right”.

This time in the presidential race four years ago, the press was stuffed with rich fare about John Kerry’s love affairs and the ample millions of his tiresome Portuguese wife Teresa, formerly married to the Heinz ketchup fortune. Eight years ago there was an equally nutritious menu featuring George Bush’s taste for cocaine, his drunk driving rap and his de facto desertion from the National Guard. There were even, in an earlier time, orgies with Mexican hookers alleged in the “Bush suite” in the downtown Hilton in Midland, TX, while Laura smoked and read back home.

For those eager to detect conspiracy in high places (c. 98 per cent of all adult Americans) there was the membership of Bush Sr and Jr and also Kerry in Yales’ Skull and Bones club, where novices endured abominable rites, excitingly related on various Christian sites. Sample: “After this the initiate is brought before a picture of Judas Iscariot, whose name the group screams three times, and then he is led to the heart of the rite: the initiate is pushed to his knees before a human skull filled with blood placed at the foot of a human skeleton called Madame Pompadour. The crowd implores him to 'Drink it! Drink it! Drink it!’ and he does. Then he is hurried to a man dressed as the Pope. But not before the D whips him in the face with his tail.”

And before that there was Clinton time, ripe with scandal for eight delightful years.

By such high standards, the Obama-McCain face-off is dull stuff thus far. The nastiest financial scandal in John McCain’s life –- his efforts to protect Arizona banker Charles Keating – exploded 18 long years ago. His caddish behavior to the first Mrs McCain when he dumped her for the younger and very rich beer heiress Cindy Hensley was given a though workout in the Los Angeles Times last week. The Times reported that Nancy Reagan has never forgiven McCain for his foul conduct, hence her tepid endorsement of McCain. But since many Americans are divorced and stand accused by the betrayed partner as utter swine, McCain’s not going to face too much trouble on this one.

Stories swirl around McCain’s famously terrible temper and whether this has led to physical abuse of Cindy, prompting her to seek solace from gentler hands. But nothing credible by way of hard detail has surfaced this far. Her majestic credit card debt – as much as half a million owed to American Express –excites only envy.

John McCain’s conduct as a POW in North Vietnam has prompted fairly detailed accusations, many of them on this site that he collaborated with his captors and gave them significant details of US Navy flights plans. But these have not yet displayed any traction that might have dented his “war hero” status. Efforts by the New York Times some months ago to link him to an attractive young lobbyist == Vicki Iseman -- also failed to stick.

Obama weathered efforts to tie him to the Chicago real estate tycoon Tony Rezko, now convicted by a federal jury in Chicago on counts of fraud. Sillier attempts to turn Obama into a fan of the Weather Underground – a violent Sixties antiwar group - have failed, at least thus far. His married life with Michele seems beyond reproach. His career in the Illinois legislature and then the U.S. senate have not produced charges of direct corruption, though he has been a dutiful serf to large corporate interests, as has every member of the US congress with the possible exception of Ron Paul.

So, bleary Americans – well aware that neither candidate will do anything to improve their material condition -- have nothing much else to brood upon beyond the fact that Obama is half black, has “Hussain” as a middle name, spent formative years in his childhood in places like Indonesia surrounded by Muslims and is married to an attractive black woman who said earlier this year that she’d been ashamed of America till her husband ran for the presidency.

The New Yorker is creating a stir by running its cover of Obama in ethnic dress bumping fists with Michele sporting an Afro and a gun, with Osama bin Laden’s portrait on the wall behind him and an American flag burning in the grate. Obama says it doesn’t bother him, though it’s a slur on Muslims. Liberals whine that it fans the flames of prejudice. The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, claims to be stunned and upset that satire has been confused with reality. This is the magazine that has never apologized for running a very influential though entirely fake story by Jeffrey Goldberg before the Iraq war claiming seriously that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were bumping fists, while the American flag burned in the grate. Either Remnick is being disingenuous or he’s really stupid. Anyone familiar with editing material for the internet knows that satire is always taken as literal truth.

The latest New York Times-CBS poll shows that whites esteem Obama less than blacks and many of them don’t care for Michele. But the same poll shows that Obama leads McCain among Hispanic voters by 62 to 23 percent and that he’s leading McCain overall by 6 points.

The best thing, almost the only thing, that the Republicans have going for them is the race card, always a useful ace in the American political deck. Thus far, because McCain is playing a very weak game, it has not brought them significant advantage.

Oil and Bush: They’re Close

Sometimes reality is just the way you think it ought to be. Thus it is with the Bush family and oil. The relationship between the family and the commodity should be used as instructional material in schools, so that when it comes to appreciation of the coarse realities of political economy, No Child Will Be Left Behind.

Our latest CounterPunch newsletter has a marvelously concise article by the economist Michael Hudson which lays out the relationship between Bush, the oil lobby and the current high price of gasoline and diesel. Being unmarred by expletives or other vulgarities, beyond the essential crude saga, it may be read by adults and children alike. I urge you to seize this opportunity to subscribe to our newsletter where Huson’s piece is currently featured.

You will also have the bonus of yet another monstrous parable of corporate greed, this time involving that hardy standby-by, the Congo, in dirty business since King Leopold of the Belgians. And there’s also an unsparing assessment by me of that energetic toady to power, Fareed Zakaria. Click here and enjoy!

Footnote: a slightly shorter version of the first item currently runs in http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/

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