Today's Stories

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Blood, Sweat and Tears in California's Vineyards

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

Weekend Edition
October 24 / 26, 2008

CounterPunch Diary

Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

So what happened to the Bush/Cheney pre-election attack on Iran? It’s like everything else. You think you have months. You put it on one side, in the “things to be done tomorrow” pile. Suddenly it’s a matter of weeks, then days. Then the moment just slips away. The father of one of my neighbors here in Petrolia had been a captain in the Wehrmacht and fought at Stalingrad. He’s dead now but a few years ago my brother Andrew once asked him, “Captain, what happened at Stalingrad?” “Vell, Andrew, the Fuehrer wanted to avoid casualties. Und then the equipment was running out. A tank here, a tank there. Und then..then it was too late!”

I guess Bush and Cheney are too busy working on the pardons to have time for anything else like an attack on Iran. . But don’t fret. Joe Biden hints that he and Obama are working on it, though they may declare war on Russia first. Or Venezuela. So much to do in those first 100 days. An empire in October will still be an Empire next January. We’ll have continuity.

"Mark my words," Biden said solemnly at a Seattle fundraiser last Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden went on. He mentioned the Middle East and Russia. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.”

What exactly is Biden hinting at in that last sentence? From the context of that whole paragraph it’s clear enough to me he’s suggesting that despite hopes that post-Bush/Cheney America might backpeddle from hasty military confrontations, President Obama will stand tall and lose no time in going eyeball to eyeball with those who would test his resolve.

When JFK was worried that his mettle was being tested and he might look like a wimp, we got the Berlin crisis of July, 1961. We got right to the brink of World War Three.

So don’t write off that attack on Iran quite yet. On Iran Obama is more hawkish than McCain; on Afghanistan and Pakistan too.

A Ha’aretz story for July 28 of this year reported that in their meeting of July 24 "Obama reportedly told Olmert that he is interested in meeting the Iranians in order to issue clear ultimatums. "If after that, they still show no willingness to change their nuclear policy, then any action against them would be legitimate," an Israeli source quoted him as saying."

As CounterPuncher Marc Schuler, who sent me the quote, remarks, “To me, Obama is saying he'll 'fix' the negotiations just like the intel on Iraq was 'fixed'. This sounds very much like Bush-style negotiations. Deliver an ultimatum, then if the other side doesn't just surrender and comply, start the military attacks.”

"I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know," Biden says. It’s probably true. In the US Congress the bar is set very low. I remember in the debate with Sarah Palin Biden was praised in the press for his effortless mastery of detail. Jonah Goldberg wrote a funny piece in the Los Angeles Times about this chorus of approval for Biden’s knowledgeable aplomb:

Biden was at ease; he easily rattled off a string of falsehoods and gasbaggeries.

According to the master senator, the U.S. and France "kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." Afterward, according to Biden, "I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it.' " Perhaps Biden meant to say the U.S. and France kicked Syria out of Lebanon. But even this is woefully glib. Syria never fully abandoned Lebanon. And there was no "vacuum" for Hezbollah to fill. The terrorist group was already firmly in control of southern Lebanon and part of the government. No one remembers Biden and Obama fighting for the stupidly impossible NATO move either….

The constitutional law professor scornfully mocked Dick Cheney because the vice president "doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president. That's the executive branch." Wrong. Article I defines the Legislature, Article II the executive branch. Both define the role of the VP.

The scrapper from Scranton boasted about bonding with the common folks at a restaurant that's been closed for two decades.

Biden’s lucky in having an opponent for the vice presidential slot who’s now drawing about 95 per cent of the press coverage for the entire campaign. There’s no space for nasty questions about his very special  relationship to MBNA, the largest independent credit card company in the world, or for the immense favors he did for  the credit card industry as a whole with the bankruptcy bill that even Bill Clinton vetoed before Bush finally signed it.  But did anything ever so clearly indicate the truly incredible stupidity of McCain’s team of strategists, handlers and consultants than the disaster the Palin candidacy has become?

I thought the original choice of Palin wasn’t a bad one, from  the point of view of the McCain campaign.. Most people would certainly rather look at the governor of Alaska on TV than, say, the governor of Massachusetts and, after some judicious voice coaching for which we haven’t yet seen the price tag, even rather listen to her too. On the general principle that state troopers are the scum of the law-enforcement pond, I was all for the Palins’ efforts to fire the Taser-happy former in brother-in-law.  She was a fresh gust in the rank, stale air of Campaign 008. So instead in buying Palin a couple of new outfits in slightly upgraded sync with her unpretentious Alaska wardrobe the handlers went hog wild in Nieman Marcus and unleashed $150,000. Then they dropped $24,000 in two weeks on her hair stylist. So much for the spokeswoman for the ordinary folk. The only encouraging aspect of the $24,000 was that it was twice what McCain’s economic and foreign policy advisers were paid, showing a correct sense of priorities. Mind you, the economist should be off the payroll altogether, since he destroyed McCain’s only shot at the White House by not advising him to oppose the bailout. The foreign policy man presumably has his subsidies from the Georgian president to fall back on.

Sarah Palin’s job was to firm up the evangelical base, which has never trusted McCain. She’s done that. But then the handlers send her into a metrosexual, ultraliberal sinkhole like  Saturday Night Live where she gets made a fool of. A Christian evangelical friend of mine called  mournfully the next mourning to tell me than he’d previously rated Palin at 100 per cent, but after seeing her consorting on SNL with the likes of Alec Baldwin he’d dropped his approval to 75 per cent and would never think about her in the quite the same way again. (Mind you, he told me a few days later he wasn’t bothered about the wardrobe and hair expenses and said Palin fans in his part of the country thought it was one more sign of the bias of the liberal media. “She’s a star now, Alex. You can’t blame her for wanting to look pretty.”)

All the same, a real  instinct for populism, right or left, means going to Muncie, Indiana and sounding as though you cared that half the city is out of work, not chirping about Alaska’s god-given resources. You would have thought that even Palin would have realized that. The way things are going for the Palin-Wurzelbacher ticket, she’ll have plenty of time for post-mortems and if-onlys back in Alaska. At least McCain has remembered to come out for parents’ choice on infant vaccination.

So far as the progressives and the left are concerned, Palin’s useful function has been to detain them from misgivings about the Democratic ticket which 98 per cent of them are going to vote for. From the vantage point of 2008 I wouldn’t blame Al Gore or John Kerry from feeling that maybe there’s been a double standard at work here, between the rough treatment they got from the left and from radical environmentalists, as compared to the well-mannered silence about Obama’s call for a 90,000 increase in the Armed Forces, his endorsement of nuclear power, “clean coal”,  warrantless wire-tapping, tort reform,  real ID, groveling to the bankers and the Israel lobby and so forth. K St loves Obama. So do the defense contractors.  They love Biden too. Just to refresh your memories of what a progressive platform actually looks like, take a look at the website of the Nader campaign.  Like the U.S. senators’ knowledge of foreign policy, the bar these days for what the left finds bearable is awfully low. The more the left holds its tongue, the lower the bar will go.

Only in CounterPunch

A week goes by and it’s easy to forget the world has changed. There’s no check in my mailbox from Ben Bernanke, or sweet little note from Hank Paulson telling me he’ll be handling my mortgage payments from now on.  But the world has changed, and one of the ways you can get a really encouraging reminder of this is in our latest CounterPunch newsletter. Here Michael Hudson and Jeff Sommers spell out the contours of what could be a new era in a post neo-liberal world.

“The U.S. economy,” Hudson and Sommers write, “rose to dominance as a result of Progressive Era regulatory reforms prior to World War I, reinforced by popular New Deal reforms put in place in the Great Depression. Neoliberal economics was promoted as a means of undoing these reforms.”   And now? “A much better economy can be created by rejecting Washington’s financial model of austerity programs, privatization sell-offs and trade dependency financed by foreign-currency credit. Prosperity cannot be achieved by creating a favorable climate for extractive foreign capital, or by tightening credit and balancing budgets decade after decade. “

Read their full article in our newsletter. Read too the up-sum by your CounterPunch coeditors Cockburn and St Clair on Election 2008. And read too David Bonner’s brilliant portrait of a police spy, active in the late 60s and recently deceased. The discovery of a Tsarist spy, Roman Malinovsky, in their highest party echelons came as deadly fuel for paranoia to Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks. The late George Demmerle wasn’t a provocateur of that caliber or importance, but Bonner’s piece is a worthy addition to the snitch file. Only in CounterPunch newsletter.

And… yes, the time is nigh. Once a year CounterPunch has its fundraiser. We only ask once a year, and it’s starting next Monday. It’s a crucial part of our annual budget and what enables us to bring you this site free, 365 days a year, with original articles. Without the money you donate to CounterPunch in this annual fundraiser we couldn’t do it. Can the massed financial support of CounterPunch’s millions of readers each month add up to even half Sarah Palin’s clothing expenditures in Minneapolis? We’re betting it can, which means we’re betting on you. We don’t get money from anyone else.  So get in early, this very weekend. 

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at: alexandercockburn@asis.com

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