home / subscribe / about us / books / tower / events / archives / search / links /

Today's Stories August 11, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How the Democrats Blew It in Only 8 Weeks 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 August 6, 2007 Bill Quigley Fighting for the Right to Learn in New Orleans Kathy Rentenbach Guatemalan Gold, Guatemalan Bones Uri Avnery White Elephants: Bush's Middle East Arms Deals Col. Dan Smith Of Time and Iraq Ralph Nader Cruise Ship Blues James Neshewat War? What War?: a Report from the New SDS Confab in Detroit D.K. Wilson Barry, Bud and 755 Greg Moses Safe Passage for Willie Nelson Fidel Castro Hard and Obvious Realities Mike Whitney Judgment Week on Wall Street   August 4 / 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Rupert Murdoch and the Luck of the Bancrofts Peter Linebaugh Speaking in Irish Tongues Saul Landau Faith-Based War Alan Farago The Candidates and the Collapsing Economy Dave Zirin When Domes Attack: Even in Minnesota Barucha Calamity Peller Oaxaca is Not Over Anthony DiMaggio Double Standards in U.S. Aid to the Middle East Dave Lindorff Spy Power: Bush Demands, Democrats Deliver--Again and Again and Again Fred Gardner Write Off Your Congressman Nicola Nasser The Iranian Option Benjamin Dangl Privatizing Repression in Paraguay Rannie Amiri Bribe, Divide and Conquer Daniel Gross CSR on Trial: Starbucks Behind the Brand Sherwood Ross Obama Renounces Use of Nuclear Weapons Manuel Garcia, Jr A Bridge Truth Movement?: From 9/11 to Minneapolis Missy Beattie The First Mannequin and the "Crime Scene" Ron Jacobs The Outlaw Trip to Mexico: Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad Website of the Weekend Photos: Texas Immigrant Prison   August 3, 2007 Gabriel Matthew Schivone An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Responsibility, War Guilt and Intellectuals Jonathan Cook Israel's Jewish Problem in Tehran Patrick Cockburn Sunnis Walk Out of Iraq Government Little Steven Van Zandt Die, Greedy Swine! Die! Die!: How the Record Companies are Killing Rock Music Christopher Brauchli Bush Makes Putin Look Like James Madison D. K. Wilson Two Sides and a Middle: Michael Vick Ain't the One to Ask Linda Ford and Ira Glunts Maxwell's Silver Hammer: Syracuse University Enlists in the Global War on Terror Kelly Overton The Casualties of Green Scare: the Feds' War on the Animal Rights Mvt. Monica Benderman In Freedom's Name Manuel Garcia, Jr. Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Was Cheney at the Scene? Website of the Day A Cinematic Look at the Police State in Action   August 2, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Return of the Robber Barons Stanley Heller Report from the Land of Apartheid Eric Ruder Fighting PTSD; Fighting the Army Robert Fantina Still Getting It Wrong: the NYT and Iraq Alan Farago The Toxic Mortgage Waste Crisis Chris Floyd Chertoff, Chiquita and Death Squads Franklin Lamb Lebanon's Crucial Special Elections Sen. Russ Feingold Closing the Book on the Abramoff Era Anthony Papa Drug Treatment isn't a Silver Bullet Norman Solomon The Big Guns of August Website of the Day Louie, Louie Video Contest   August 1, 2007 Debbie Nathan More Secret Payments by Former NYT Reporter to Web Porn Star Surface in Nashville Courtroom Fred Gardner Ciao, Michelangelo Gary Leupp Why Iraq's Best-Loved Athlete Can't Go Home David Rosen America's Top 10 Political Sex Scandals Winston Warfield Is the Tillman Case Still a Coverup? Daniel McBride Lessons from Bomber Harris: If the US Strikes Pakistan Glen Ford The Corporate Plan to Crush Black Resistance Thomas P. Healy The Toxic Career of Indiana's Environmental Commissioner John V. Whitbeck The Five Percent Solution David Krieger Nuclear Weapons and the University of California Website of the Day The Tragic Story of Hisham Mohammed   July 31, 2007 Kathy Kelly Dancing in the Darkness: the Story of Abu Mahmoud Clancy Sigal The Ghosts of Passchendaele Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Baby Doll to Cheney Joe DeRaymond Return to the Republic of Death? Diane Christian "Winning": What Bush Could Learn from the Shade of Achilles Chris Floyd Good News is No News: Why the Bush Adm. Buries Accounts of Extremist Recantations Ramzy Baroud Bush's Real Agenda in Palestine Alan Farago Battle for the Soul of Florida Fidel Castro In Spite of Everything: Reflections on the Pan American Games Dan Bacher The Fish Terminator: Schwarzenegger's Campaign to Build the Delta Canal and More Dams   July 30, 2007 Marjorie Cohn: Independent Counsel Time Patrick Cockburn Four Million Iraqis on the Run Peter Quinn Irish in America Uri Avnery A Warning to Tony Blair John Ross Zapatista Intergalatica Lands on Earth Ron Jacobs Free the San Francisco 8 David Vest Farewell, Old Friend: Another Legend of the Blues is Gone Jeffrey St. Clair T99 Nelson: Seduced by a Legend of the Blues Website of the Day Collateral Repair Project   July 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Now the NYT is Selling "Bloodbath" as a Rationale to Stay in Iraq Ralph Nader Rotten Justice Robert Fantina American Lies and Iraqi Nationalism Fred Gardner Prohibitionists Attack, Reformers Fundraise   Yves Engler Handwashing and the Bottomline   July 27, 2007 John Ross Bombing Pemex--or Not? Arthur Neslen Gaza was a Gas for Blair Dave Lindorff Declaring the US a Battlefield: Martial Law is Now a Real Threat Julene Blair The Environmentalist Within Christopher Brauchli Bush Uses Children as Shock Troops in His War on Socialized Medicine Jesse Hagopian Fund the Wounded, Not the War Charles Modiano Manufacturing a Villain: Sports Illustrated's Vilification of Barry Bonds Bill Day The Hollow Environmentalism of Leonardo DiCaprio Walter Brasch Leaders Afraid to Lead M.D. Mitchell Farm Based Camps Website of the Day Fighting Sarcoma   July 26, 2007 Kathleen Christison The Siren Song of Elliot Abrams Andy Worthington Why the Pentagon's Gitmo Study is a Joke Clancy Chassay How the Bush White House Seeks to Destroy Lebanon Marjorie Cohn Showdown Over Executive Privilege Susie Day Apartheid Americana David Price Tour de Witch Hunt: Drugs, Diaries and Purges Marie Trigona Argentina's "Dirty War" Crimes Trial: The Torturer Priest Norman Solomon Media Spin on Iraq: We're Leaving (Sort Of) William S. Lind How to Win in Iraq Natsu Saito Ward Churchill and the Regents at the University of Colorado John Stauber Netroots and the Iraq War: Does Ending It Matter to Them Anymore? Website of the Day Sticking It to the Man   July 25, 2007 Andy Worthington Gains and Losses at Gitmo Gary Leupp Bush Speechwriter, Michael Gerson, Calls for Attack on Syria Ray McGovern The Sad Decline of John Conyers Dr. Susan Block Bonobo Bashing in the New Yorker Joshua Frank Hillary's Neocon: the Imperial Vision of Richard Holbrooke Tina Richards What Harry Reid Doesn't Know About His Own Bill Ben Terrall Indonesia's Bloody Brand of CounterTerrorism Farzana Versey God Acquitted!: Lessons from the Case of Darwood Ibrahim Mohammad Ali Salih A Bomb in My Briefcase? Laura Carlsen A Strange Homecoming: Reflections on the First US Social Forum Ron Jacobs Come to Kennebunkport! Sunsara Taylor Knocked Up is F**ked Up Website of the Day Wal-Mart's Flip Flops: Feet Killers July 24, 2007 Saul Landau How to Walk in Bushtime Kathy Kelly The Plight of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan Russell Mokhiber The Michael Vick / George Bush Thing M. Shahid Alam Islam Now, China Then Patrick Cockburn and Anne Penketh Meeting in Baghdad Dave Lindorff Overcoming John Conyers Binoy Kampmark You Tube You Can't: Failure of a Medium Richard Neville Murdoch's Transplant: a Warning to the Wall Street Journal Cindy Sheehan We Must Move Beyond Politics as Usual Evelyn Pringle Anti-Depressants and Birth Defects: Why is the CDC Downplaying the Risks? Norman Solomon Media Corrections We'd Like to See CP Newswire Reading Harry Potter Not Sinful Website of the Day Sea Islands Black Heritage Festival   July 23, 2007 Andy Worthington Narcolepsy on Gitmo Detainees Uri Avnery A Trap for Fools Patrick Cockburn Turkish Prime Minister Threatens to Invade Northern Iraq Sousan Hammad The Children Without a Title John Walsh Todd Gitlin's Nader Fixation Harvey Wasserman Spinning Kashiwazaki: PR Flacks Rush to Aid of Crippled Nuke Martha Rosenberg The Life and Times of a Hog-Hanging Farmer Collin Baber Here Come the MRAPs: Resurrecting Apartheid Armor for Iraq Reza Fiyouzat Iran's Forgotten Anti-Nuke Movement Stephen Lendman Saving a President: Scare-Mongering and Executive Orders Website of the Day The Port Huron Project   July 21 / 22, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Giuliani and the Dogs of War Werther How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate Ralph Nader Atomic Blowback David Keen Buy Hard: How to Sell an Endless War Fred Gardner Karl Rove, Pothead: When Good Drugs Happen to Bad People Gary Leupp Edelman's Edict: Is Hillary "Reinforcing Enemy Propaganda?" Robert Fantina Fear in Iraq Saker The Future of Palestine: an Interview with Jonathan Cook Rannie Amiri Nasrallah in the Crosshairs: How will the Third Lebanon War Start? Mike Whitney The Crisis in Hedgistan Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness: Linking Alienation and Dissociation Monica Benderman Facing the Truth Dan Bacher Deltagate: the Politics of Fish Kills Michael Baney Fujimori's Long Race From Justice Missy Beattie Here, There and Everywhere Ron Jacobs Tremble, Tyrants Adam Engel Radical Language: an Introduction Thomas Naylor California Split: an Open Letter to Schwarzenegger Poets' Basement Landau, Ford and Engel Website of the Weekend Surge in Action   July 20, 2007 Eliza Szabo Fatal Neglect: Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Pam Martens Doctoring the News: CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Laura Bush and Merck Alan Farago Winners and Losers in the Housing Market Crash Harvey Wasserman Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed "No Nukes!" Marjorie Cohn Iraqis will be the Deciders Dave Zirin White Noise and the Black Athlete Anthony DiMaggio American Public Opinion and Israel Scott Liebertz Oaxaca on Edge Linn Washington, Jr. British Cops Assault Rape Allegations Bill Piper / Anthony Papa Flying High?: The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar Ramzy Baroud Bush's War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing Website of the Day The Prankster Art of Mark Jenkins   July 19, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Next Invasion of Iraq Remi Kanazi Is This Ben Gurion or Hell?: a Palestinian Adventure Through Israel's Largest Airport Winslow T. Wheeler The Surging Costs of the Iraq War Sharon Smith Democrats and Health Care: Behind the Rhetoric Dave Lindorff Killing Cabbies in Iraq Conn Hallinan Have Gun, Will Travel: Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan D. K. Wilson The Michael Vick Case Pulls Back the Veil on Who We Really Are Joshua Frank Democrats as Leviathan: Another Step Toward War with Iran Norman Solomon The Ghost of Wayne Morse Russell Hoffman Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks at the World's Largest Nuke Ray McGovern Bush's Wooden Headedness Kills Website of the Day Protesting Power July 18, 2007 Brenda Norrell Spy Towers on the US Border Col. Dan Smith How the US Could "Lose" Saudi Arabia Martha Rosenberg Lord of Crookharbour: the Trial of Conrad Black Conn Hallinan Bombing and Spraying Afghanistan Binoy Kampmark The SIM Card Terror Case Patrick Bond / Rehana Dada Who Killed Sajida Khan? Tom Johnson The Long Road ... to Nowhere Paul Craig Roberts A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth? Bob Quellos Pushing the Poor Out of House and Home Felice Pace Falling for Lieberman's Iran Resolution Robert Weissman National Health Insurance: More Humane and More Efficient CP Newswire Shocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists in Torture Website of the Day Gilad Atzmon Live!   July 17, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 Fathers, Mothers and Children Killed Marjorie Cohn Out of Control: Executive Power Plays Evelyn Pringle Inside Bush's FDA David Rosen Moral Hypocrisy on the Hill: the Christian Right, Sexual Scandal and the Pleasures of the Courtesan Susan Miller Width Matters: Displacement and Israel's Wall Franklin Lamb Did the UN Cave to Israel on Lebanon's Shabaa Farms? Don Monkerud Considering Victory in Iraq Harvey Wasserman Nuclear Surge Russell Hoffman Japan Dodges a Radioactive Bullet Dave Lindorff Feingold Turns to Dross Dave Zirin Reclaiming Sports as True Fiction Website of the Day Che at the UN: 1964   July 16, 2007 Gary Leupp Cheney Urges Bush to Strike Iran Ellen Cantarow The Untold Story of Iraqi Women Paul Craig Roberts Impeach Now Allan J. Lichtman The D.C. Madam's Public Service Dan Bacher Cheney and the Klamath: Was the Veep Behind the Nation's Worst Salmon Kill? Patrick Cockburn The Killing of Khalid W. Hassan Manuel Garcia, Jr. Property is Racism James Brooks AIPAC and Mahmoud Abbas: the Undemocratic Road to Defeat Liaquat Ali Khan The Judicial Crisis in Pakistan Julie Flint Suleiman Jamous in Limbo Website of the Day Free Suleiman Jamous!   July 14 / 15. 2007 Alexander Cockburn Support Their Troops? Andy Worthington Gitmo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majhid Khan, Dubious US Convictions and a Dying Man Ralph Nader Lawlessness, Waste and Incompetence Robert Fantina The Illegalities of the Iraq War Ron Jacobs Architecture as Military Strategy Joshua Frank Eat, Fight, Screw, Pray: An Interview with Joe Bageant Conn Hallinan Guns, Foundations and Free Trade: How the Right Targets Africa Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD War and Dissociation John Ross No En Nuestro Nombre!: a Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement Fred Gardner Who's Afraid of Cannabidiol? Rannie Amiri A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak Charles Modiano ESPN's Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man Anthony DiMaggio America's Parochial Press China Hand Executive Orders and Coercive Diplomacy Missy Comley Beattie Reprobate Rhetoricians Dr. James J. Murtagh, Jr. Harry Potter Battles Big Brother Kenneth Rexroth On Thomas More's "Utopia" Poets' Basement Engel, Davies and Orloski Website of the Weekend GOP Sex Hypocrites: a Slideshow

Weekend Edition August 11 / 12, 2007 CounterPunch Diary How the Democrats Blew It in Only Eight Months By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Led by Democrats since the start of this year, the US Congress now has a “confidence” rating of 14 per cent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than the Republicans scored last year. The voters put the Democrats in to end the war and it’s escalating. The Democrats voted money for the surge. They voted for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement is to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wire tapping for “foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.” Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she’d really wanted to. But she didn’t. The Democrats’ game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base about to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government. The row over the U.S. attorneys and the conduct of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has always been something of a typhoon in a teaspoon. The Democrats love it since they imagine it portrays them to the public as resolute guardians of the impartial administration of justice, a concept whose credibility most Americans sensibly deride. The Democrats now plan to track Gonzales’s firing of the US attorneys back to that comic opera villain of the Bush era, Karl Rove, another great provoker of dust storms. The one Democrat acting on principle in the Gonzales affair has been Senator Russ Feingold. He at least tried to dig into the visit of chief White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, as he then was, to the bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft, to get him to sign off on the illegal wiretaps. And how did the Democrat-controlled Congress deal with Feingold’s efforts to nail Gonzales for his efforts to undermine the constitution and for his prevarications under oath? It promptly legalized the eavesdropping. Just as the Democrats work tirelessly to demonstrate to the voters that it makes zero difference which party controls Congress, the political establishment forces all candidates for the presidential nominations next year to sever any compromising ties to sanity and common sense. Has the left the political capacity to influence the conduct of the Democrats? In terms of substantive achievement the answer thus far has been No. People didn’t like it when I write that the antiwar movement was at a low ebb. They invoke the polls showing 70 percent of Americans want the troops to come home. This is presumptuous, like a barking dog claiming it made the moon go down. It didn’t take an antiwar movement to make the people antiwar. People looked at the casualty figures and the newspaper headlines and drew the obvious conclusion the war is a bust. Their attention is already shifting to the economic crisis: housing meltdown, credit crisis, threats from the Chinese to destroy the dollar. What war? The left is as easily distracted, currently by the phantasm of impeachment. Why all this clamor to launch a proceeding surely destined to fail, aimed at a duo who will be out of the White House in sixteen months anyway? Pursue them for war crimes after they’ve stepped down. Mount an international campaign of the sort that has Henry Kissinger worrying at airports that there might be a lawyer with a writ standing next to the man with the limo sign. Right now the impeachment campaign is a distraction from the war and the paramount importance of ending it. For sure, there are actions around the country: Quakers and Unitarians picketing outside shopping centers, campus vigils, resolutions by city councils and so forth. It’s all pretty quiet, in a conflict that has now - as my brother Patrick recently pointed out - gone on longer than the First World War. At the liberal blogger convention, Yearly Kos, held across the first weekend in August, the organizers nixed any serious strategy session on the war in Iraq. John Stauber of PR Watch had to force an impromptu (and very successful) session with leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. A war people hate, Gitmo, Bush’s police -state executive orders of July 17 -- the Democrats have signed the White House dance card on all of them, and guess what, their poll numbers are gong down. Bush’s, on the other hand, are going up by five points in Gullup from early July. People are beginning to think the surge is working, courtesy of the New York Times. So, are we better or worse off since the Democrats won back Congress? A Message from China Bush can smile as the air whistles out of the Democrats’ boomlet, but the respite in his troubles is fleeting. Dire economic news is shouldering Iraq out of the headlines. There’s a housing market meltdown consequent upon the puncturing of the subprime mortgage bubble. Auto sales have collapsed, the Chinese have threatened to destroy the dollar and the world’s credit system teeters. On Wednesday, August 8, spokesmen for the Chinese government pointed out that China’s large holding of US dollars and Treasury bonds “contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.” But, the spokesmen continued, if the US proceeds with sanctions designed to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, “the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.” As Paul Craig Roberts, number two in the US Treasury in the Reagan years, pointed out on this site, only hours after the Chinese announcement, “In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.” As Roberts also points out, If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, “Bush’s wars would end. With Bush’s budget in deficit and with no room in the US consumer’s budget for a tax increase, Bush’s wars can only be financed by foreigners.” So one little finger wag from the People’s Republic may carry the day, where the Democrats have so signally failed. Conspiracism Never Sleeps In the second part of his excellent series on the death of Pat Tillman – concluded here this weekend – Stan Goff took a devastating whack at the conspiracists now claiming that Tillman was the victim of a carefully planned conspiracy. For an example of the conspiracist mindset in action, I offer this communiqué to his readers by a former army officer who worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. It was monitored on the web by our man in Henderson, Nevada, John Farley. ----- Original Message ----- From: Al Cuppett To: abcuppett@earthlink.net Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:00 PM Subject: Near real-time "after action" assessment of the 1-35 MS River bridge "collapse" in MN FROM: Al Cuppett, US Army and Action Officer, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Retired. Subject: Near real-time "after action" assessment of the Interstate 35 Mississippi River bridge "collapse" in Minneapolis"In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word/matter be established." KJV Bible (many times)This is a "quick and dirty" as we used to say in the Pentagon, albeit short, analysis of what actually happened. A detailed letter will follow. First of all, first reports (at (9 PM EDT) from Minneapolis stated that Homeland Security (DHS) came out on TV/radio within 15 minutes of the 6:05 PM CDT event, saying it "was not terrorist related". Huh??? The US DHS/FEMA people we on their way home, or eating supper, when this happened; yet they knew it was "not a terrorist attack" within 15 minutes?? (1) The first witness, a female, said she "heard explosions and saw puffs of smoke". [These are known as "squibs" in demolitions terminology.] She would have heard 'bip bip bip bip.. in a rapid staccato -- or 'boom boom boom boom', and saw the corresponding "squibs" (2) This morning at 7:30 AM EDT, and I personally heard Matt Lauer say, "Witnesses said they hear a 'jackhammer' just before the bridge collapsed". A jackhammer sound is also a rapid staccato and such a noise is exactly how a layman would have described the times-sequenced explosions that brought down the bridge.I will send a detailed synopsis, with all the other recent "collapses" to include the "spin" put out by NBC this morning to convince the public that bridges do collapse. Yeah, they collapse when you use C4 or thermate [sic]. In the Name of the Lord, Al Cuppett P.S Anybody who disbelieves this please report please ask to be taken off my mailing list - like today. Thanks. One consequence of the bridge collapse is a torrent of news stories and editorials about America’s rotting infrastructure. This hardy perennial gets a trot around the block every five years, or whenever a gas main blows up or a bridge falls down. A decade ago the uproar was about the interstate system. To read the stories, you’d think half the major highways in the United States were in terminal disrepair. They’re not. I’ve driven over most of them, and they’re in pretty good shape. It’s mostly bunkum, designed to enrich concrete tycoons and advance pork barrel high projects. A Californian variant on this is Earthquake retrofitting, an amazing racket. Footnote: a version of the first item ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last week.

New From CounterPunch Books HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy   Now Available! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained! Buy End Times Now! Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Order Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair