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What You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter JAMES WEBB: IF THE DEMOCRATS WANT A POPULIST,
IT'S HIM, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSEJoAnn Wypijewski on how Webb really talks on his home turf in Virginia and on the two faces of populism, dark and lite. The New Yorker helped sell the war in Iraq. Now see how it shills for the drug companies at home. Fred Gardner finds Malcolm Gladwell, at the bottom of the New Yorker's deep barrel. David Petraeus is the favorite general of Bush and the New York Times. Alexander Cockburn on how the salesman of surge sold himself. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now
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Today's Stories February 2, 2007 Chris Kutalik February 1, 2007 Diane Farsetta Marjorie Cohn Mark Scaramella Ranni Amiri Christopher Ketcham Winston Warfield Corporate Crime Reporter Thomas P. Healy Website of the Dau
January 31, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Jean Bricmont Tao Ruspoli James T. Phillips William Johnson Tim Wilkinson Evelyn Pringle Joshua Frank Ramzy Baroud Mickey Z. Website of the Day
Werther Kathy Kelly Uri Avnery Franklin Spinney William S. Lind Pariah Mike Whitney Rev. William
E. Alberts Fran Shor Anthony Arnove Website of the Day
Nurit Peled-Elhanan Patrick Cockburn JoAnn Wypijewski Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Reza Fiyouzat Pat Williams Website of the Day
January 27 / 28, 2007 Diana Johnstone Eliza Ernshire Patrick Cockburn David Rosen Greg Moses Bernard Chazelle Tao Ruspoli Hermán
Uribe Ralph Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Fred Gardner Brian Cloughley James Abourezk John V. Whitbeck Seth Sandronsky Alan Cabal Pam Martens Website of
the Weekend
Charlotte Laws Mike Ely /
Linda Flores Joe DeRaymond Phil Donahue Zia Mian Jeb Sprague Evelyn Pringle Missy Beattie Martha Rosenberg Website of
the Day
Patrick Cockburn John Ross Jeremy Scahill Frida Berrigan Paul Craig Roberts Jason Yossef
Ben-Meir Christopher Brauchli Holger W. Henke Dave Lindorff Julia Landau Website of the Day
January 24, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Paul Craig
Roberts Lt. Gen. William Odom Sharon Smith Brian M. Downing Heather Gray Ron Jacobs James Brooks Robert Day Website of
the Day
Trish Schuh Robert Bryce
Stephen Soldz John Blair Gloria La Riva Joshua Frank Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Uri Avnery Website of the Day
January 22, 2007 Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Jen Marlowe George McGovern Paul Craig
Roberts Norman Solomon Amira Hass Mike Whitney Ramzy Baroud John Walsh Website of
the Day
January 20/21 2007 Alexander Cockburn
Gail Dines
Newton Garver
Gilad Atzmon
Seth Sandronksy
Raphaelle Bail
Jim Goodman Larry Portis
Website of
the Weekend
Jonathan Cook
Glen Ford Dave Lindorff
Larry Portis
Website of
the Day
William Peace
Virginia Tilley
Michael Donnelly
B.R. Gowani
Larry Portis
Jason Hribal
Website of
the Day
Franklin Spinney John Ross Susan George Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank David Lindorff
Col. Sam Gardiner
Marjorie Cohn
Saul Landau
Ron Jacobs
Susan Block Ken Couesbouck Website of
the Day
Roger Morris Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly William Blum Ralph Nader Saul Landau January 12 / 14, 2007 Patrick Cockburn David Rosen William S.
Lind Laith al-Saud Paul Craig
Roberts John Ross George Ciccariello-Maher Christopher Brauchli Robert Buzzanco Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD. Mike Whitney Yifat Susskind Saul Cohen Missy Beattie Stephen Lendman Website of
the Weekend
January 11, 2007 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Dave Lindorff Jeff Leys Richard W.
Behan Col. Douglas MacGregor Website of
the Day Speech of the Day
Peter Linebaugh Robert Fantina Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Ben Tripp Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Mike Ferner Dave Zirin Website of
the Day Bootleg of the Day
R. T. Naylor Jonathan Cook Mike Ely and Linda Flores Joshua Frank Norman Solomon Sen. Russell
Feingold Joe Allen James T. Phillips Brian Concannon Leonard Peltier Website of the Day
January 8, 2007 Werther Jeff Leys Paul Craig Roberts Shulamit Aloni Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor Seth Sandronsky Dr. Susan Block Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Franklin C.
Spinney Paul Craig
Roberts Ralph Nader Walden Bello Marleen Martin Brian Cloughley Uri Avnery Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Joseph Nevins William S. Lind Gary Leupp Elisa Salasin George Ciccariello-Maher Beyond Chavistas and Anti-Chavistas: Deepening the Bolivarian Revolution Stefan Wray Michael Leonardi Richard Rhames Jeffrey St. Clair Barbara LaMorticella Website of the Weekend Song of the
Weekend
Jorge Mariscal John Walsh Christopher Brauchli Travis Sharpe Tom Barry Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese Tiffany Ten Eyck Mahmoud El-Yousseph Lucinda Marshall Website of
the Day
Patrick Cockburn Winslow T.
Wheeler M. Shahid Alam Raed Jarrar Bert Sacks Kathy Rentenbach Stephen Fleischman George Bisharat Peter Rost, MD Evelyn Pringle Website of the Day
January 3, 2007 Kathy Kelly Paul Craig
Roberts William Johnson Stan Cox Trita Parsi Declan McKenna Joe Bageant Nicola Nasser Missy Beattie Website of
the Day
Michael Watts Amina Mire James Brooks Alevtina Rea Al Krebs Peter Rost Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Stanton Website of the Day
January 1, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Joshua Frank
December 30
/ 31, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Tariq Ali Paul Craig Roberts Douglas Valentine Brian M. Downing Michael Donnelly Stephen Lendman Fred Gardner Bailly / Caudron / Lambert Ralph Nader Nick Dearden Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Missy Beattie Ron Jacobs Dan La Botz Andrew Wimmer Dr. Carol Wolman, MD Martha Rosenberg Dick J. Reavis Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Music Video of the Weekend
Norman Finkelstein John Borowski Abid Mustafa Greg Moses Uri Cohen Bailly / Caudron
/ Lambert Website of
the Day
December 28, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Anthony Cowell John Ross Hilaria Cruz Greg Moses Brittany Bond Website of
the Day
December 27, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Faruq Ziada Christopher Brauchli Michael Ortiz
Hill Nikolas Kozloff Mark Schneider
Peter Stone
Brown Tito Tricot Gary Leupp John V. Walsh Reza Fiyouzat Ron Jacobs Website of
the Day
Saul Landau Lang / McGovern Michael Dickinson Website of
the Day
Marjorie Cohn Jeffrey L.
Gould Diane Christian William Loren
Katz Greg Moses M. Shahid Alam Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Azmi Bishara Ralph Nader Seth Sandronsky William Hughes Ron Jacobs Jeffrey St.
Clair
December 22, 2006 David Rosen Christopher
Brauchli John Ross J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. Rahul Mahajan Arthur Neslen Peter Rost, MD Website of
the Day
Rosa Mariam
Elizalde Arundhati Roy Brian Cloughley Daniel White John V. Whitbeck Sam Smith Paris Reidhead Kevin Wehr Website of the Day
Gabriel Kolko Winslow T.
Wheeler Tariq Ali Saree Makdisi Bruce Jackson Dave Lindorff Leslie Radford Dave Jansson Johnny Barber Website of
the Day
Alexander Cockburn Jonathan Cook Greg Moses Sean Penn Dave Lindorff Ralph Nader Laura Carlsen Carlos Villarreal Website of
the Day
Luis J. Rodriguez Norman Solomon Uri Avnery Ron Jacobs Phil Gasper Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi William Blum Jim Goodman James Brooks Maria C. Khoury Website of the Day
Vijay Prashad Saul Landau Anthony Arnove Paul Cantor Annie Nocenti Nicole Colson Stephen Gowans Jordan Flaherty Fred Gardner P. Sainath Seth Sandronsky Nadia Hijab Deb Reich Susie Day Albert Wan Missy Beattie Martha Rosenberg Lee Ballinger Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
December 15, 2006 Eliza Ernshire Virginia Tilley Mike Ferner John Ross Fred Wilhelms Kevin Zeese David Severn Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor Website of
the Day
December 14, 2006 Jonathan Cook Riz Khan Jason Hribal Pennick / Gray Richard Levins Pat Williams Peter Rost, MD Website of
the Day
December 13, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Greg Moses Elizabeth Schulte Joshua Frank Debra Eschmeyer Leon Hadar Peter Rost, MD Margaret Knapke Reza Fiyouzat Fred Wilhelms Website of
the Day
Fernando A.
Torres Paul Craig
Roberts Stephen Soldz Uri Avnery William S. Lind Missy Beattie Dave Lindorff George Pyle Norman Solomon Website of
the Day
December 11, 2006 Virginia Tilley Roger Burbach Col. Douglas MacGregor Fawwas Traboulsi Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Mary McGrane Bernardo Ruiz Website of the Day Video of the
Day
December 9
/ 10, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Sen. Gordon Smith Greg Grandin
Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Rev. Willliam Alberts James T. Phillips Bennis / Leaver Dave Lindorff Nikolas Kozloff Seth Sandronsky Lucinda Marshall Mike Whitney John V. Whitbeck Faisal Kutty Hugh Sansom Robert Gold Boots Riley Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Leutisha Stills Norman Finkelstein Will Youmans Peter Rost, MD Jonathan Demme Ray McGovern Lucinda Marshall Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn Website of
the Day
December 7, 2006 Alex Friedman Maureen Webb Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Matt Vidal Yifat Susskind Rodriguez / Jones Website of
the Day
Robert Bryce
William S. Lind Zoe Blunt Corporate Crime Reporter Amira Hass Richard W. Behan Sophie McNeill
Virginia Tilley Sharon Smith Joe Bageant Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Mike Whitney Derrick O'Keefe Julian Assange Missy Beattie Website of
the Day
December 4, 2006 Alexander Cockburn George Ciccariello-Maher Ray McGovern John Ross Walden Bello Peter Rost,
MD Stephen Lendman Gideon Levy Website of the Day
December 2
/ 3, 2006 Barucha Calamity
Peller Paul Craig
Roberts Ralph Nader Winslow T.
Wheeler Amira Hass Maymanah Farhat Dave Lindorff Fred Gardner Col. Dan Smith Raed Jarrar Seth Sandronsky K.-Y. Taylor Yifat Susskind David Rosen Ron Jacobs Nikolas Kozloff Talli Nauman Alan Gregory Joe Allen St. Clair /
D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
December 1, 2006 Greg Grandin Linn Washington,
Jr. George Ciccariello-Maher Brian J. Foley Dave Zirin Joshua Frank Chris Floyd Ingmar Lee Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Website of the Day Video of the
Day
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February 2, 2007 Some Inconvenient Truths About the Politics of Environmental CrisisListen GoreBy MITCHEL COHEN Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," raises the issue of global warming in a way that scares the bejeezus out of viewers, as it should since the consequences of global climate change are truly earth-shaking. The former Vice-President does a good job of presenting the graphic evidence, exquisite and terrifying pictures that document the melting of the polar ice caps and the effects on other species, new diseases, and rising ocean levels. But, typically, the solutions Gore offers are standard Democratic Party fare. You'd never know by watching this film that Gore and Clinton ran this country for 8 years and that their policies -- as much as those of the Bush regime -- helped pave the way for the crisis we face today. Gore never critiques the system causing the global ecological crisis. At one point, he even mourns the negative impact of global warming on U.S. oil pipelines. Oh, the horror! What it all comes down to, for Gore and the Democrats, is that we need to shift away from reliance on fossil fuels and tweak existing consumption patterns. Even there, Gore and Clinton did nothing to improve fuel efficiency in the U.S. -- a topic which Gore talks about in the movie without any hint that he'd once actually been in a position to do something about it. The question Gore poses is, Who can best manage the relatively minor solutions he recommends, the Democrats or Republicans? For Gore, it's sort of "trust US, not THEM, to deal with this situation because they are liars and we're not." Well, should we trust him? As Joshua Frank writes, during the campaign for president in 1992 Gore promised a group of supporters that the Clinton-Gore EPA would never approve a hazardous waste incinerator located near an elementary school in Liverpool, Ohio, which was operated by WTI. "Only three months into Clinton's tenure," Frank writes, "the EPA issued an operating permit for the toxic burner. Gore raised no qualms. Not surprisingly, most of the money behind WTI came from the bulging pockets of Jackson Stephens, who just happened to be one of the Clinton-Gore's top campaign contributors."(1) But failing to shut down toxic incinerators is just the tip of their great betrayal. In the film, Gore references the Kyoto Accords and states that he personally went to Kyoto during the negotiations, giving the impression that he was a key figure in fighting to reduce air pollution emissions that destroy the ozone layer. What he omits is that his mission in going to Kyoto was to scuttle the Accords, to block them from moving forward. And he succeeded. The Clinton-Gore years were anything but environment-friendly. Under Clinton-Gore, more old growth forests were cut down than under any other recent U.S. administration. "Wise Use" committees -- set up by the lumber industry -- were permitted to clearcut whole mountain ranges, while Clinton-Gore helped to "greenwash" their activities for public consumption. Under Clinton-Gore, the biotech industry was given carte blanche to write the US government's regulations (paltry as they are) on genetic engineering of agriculture, and to move full speed ahead with implementing the private patenting of genetic sequences with nary a qualm passing Gore's lips. You'd think watching this film that Gore is just some concerned professor who never had access to power or held hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Occidental Petroleum (driving the U'wa off their lands in Colombia), let alone was the Number Two man actually running the U.S. government! "Gore, like Clinton who quipped that 'the invisible hand has a green thumb,' extolled a free-market attitude toward environmental issues," writes Frank, who goes on to quote Jeffrey St. Clair: "Since the mid-1980s Gore has argued with increasing stridency that the bracing forces of market capitalism are potent curatives for the ecological entropy now bearing down on the global environment. He is a passionate disciple of the gospel of efficiency, suffused with an inchoate technophilia."(2) Before Kyoto, before the Clinton-Gore massive depleted uranium bombings of Yugoslavia and Iraq, before their missile "deconstruction" of the only existing pharmaceutical production facility in northern Africa in the Sudan (which exacerbated the very serious problems there, as we're seeing in Darfur today), there was NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The task of Clinton-Gore was to push through this legislation which not even strong Republican administrations under Reagan or Bush Sr. had been able to do. Since its inception, NAFTA has undermined U.S. environmental laws, chased production facilities out of the U.S. and across the borders, vastly increased pollution from Maquilladoras (enterprise zones) along the U.S./Mexico border and helped to undermine the indigenous sustainable agrarian-based communities in southern Mexico -- as predicted by leftists in both countries, leading to the Zapatista uprising from those communities on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect. Clinton-Gore also approved the destructive deal with the sugar barons of South Florida arranged by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, which doomed the Everglades. (In fact, Clinton was on the phone with Alfonso Fanjul, Jr., the chief of the sugar barons, while Monica Lewinsky was busy doing her thing in her famous blue dress under Clinton's desk.) Early in Clinton-Gore's first administration, they pledged they would stop the plunder of the Northwest forests, writes former Village Voice columnist James Ridgeway. "They then double-crossed their environmental backers. Under Bush Sr., the courts had enjoined logging in the Northwest habitats of the spotted owl. Clinton-Gore persuaded environmentalists to join them in axing the injunction. The Clinton administration went before a Reagan-appointed judge who had a record as a stalwart environmentalist and with the eco toadies in tow, got him to remove the injunction, and with it the moratorium on existing timber sales."(3) Then Gore and Clinton "capitulated to the demands of Western Democrats and yanked from its initial budget proposals a call to reform grazing, mining, and timber practices on federal lands. When Clinton convened a timber summit in Portland, Oregon, in April 1994, the conference was, as one might expect, dominated by logging interests. Predictably, the summit gave way to a plan to restart clear-cutting in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest for the first time in three years, giving the timber industry its get rich wish."(4) Gore and Clinton sent to Congress the infamous Salvage Rider, known to radical environmentalists as the "Logging without Laws" bill, "perhaps the most gruesome legislation ever enacted under the pretext of preserving ecosystem health." Like Bush's "Healthy Forests" plan, the Clinton-Gore act "was chock full of deception and special interest pandering. 'When [the Salvage Rider] bill was given to me, I was told that the timber industry was circulating this language among the Northwest Congressional delegation and others to try to get it attached as a rider to the fiscal year Interior Spending Bill,' environmental lawyer Kevin Kirchner says. 'There is no question that representatives of the timber industry had a role in promoting this rider. That is no secret.'"(5) What the Salvage Rider did was to "temporarily exempt ... salvage timber sales on federal forest lands from environmental and wildlife laws, administrative appeals, and judicial review," according to the Wilderness Society -- long enough for multinational lumber and paper corporations to clear-cut all but a sliver of the U.S.'s remaining old growth forests. "Thousands of acres of healthy forestland across the West were rampaged. Washington's Colville National Forest saw the clear cutting of over 4,000 acres. Thousands more in Montana's Yak River Basin, hundreds of acres of pristine forest land in Idaho, while the endangered Mexican Spotted Owl habitat in Arizona fell victim to corporate interests. Old growth trees in Washington's majestic Olympic Peninsula -- home to wild Steelhead, endangered Sockeye salmon, and threatened Marbled Murrieta -- were chopped with unremitting provocation by the US Forest Service."(6) The assault on nature continued with Gore's blessing. Around the same time, Clinton-Gore appointee Carol Browner, head of the EPA, was quoted in the NY Times as having said that the administration would be "relaxing" the Delaney Clause (named after its author, Congressman James Delaney, D-NY). Congress had inserted this clause into section 409 of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1958. It prohibited FDA approval of any food additive found to cause cancer in humans or animals. Alone among all food-related directives, this legislation put the onus on the manufacturers to demonstrate that their products were safe before they were allowed to become commercially available. (7) A federal appeals court in July 1992 expanded the jurisdiction of the Delaney Clause, ruling that it was applicable to cancer-causing pesticides in processed food. Browner retracted her comment, claiming she'd never said it, but the proof was in the pudding. The ban on cancer-causing additives (the "Precautionary Principle") that had held through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush, Sr. administrations was finally removed, not by the Republicans but by the Clinton-Gore administration. Instead of expanding the Delaney clause to protect produce and other unprocessed foods, the new Food Quality Protection Act legislation permitted "safe" amounts of carcinogenic chemicals (as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency) to be added to all food. (According to Peter Montague, editor of Rachel's Weekly, "no one knows how 'safe amounts' of carcinogens can be established, especially when several carcinogens and other poisons are added simultaneously to the food of tens of millions of people.) Nevertheless, the Clinton-Gore administration spun this as "progress." The Clinton administration, with guidance from Gore's office, also cut numerous deals over the pesticide Methyl Bromide despite its reported effects of contributing to Ozone depletion and its devastating health consequences on farm workers picking strawberries. Much is being made these days about the need to save the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. But Clinton-Gore opened the National Petroleum Reserve " 24 million untouched acres adjacent to the refuge, home to a large caribou herd and numerous arctic species " to oil drilling. The chief beneficiaary of this was Arco, a major ($1.4 million) contributor to the Democratic Party. At the same time, writes James Ridgeway, "Clinton dropped the ban on selling Alaskan oil abroad. This also benefits Arco, which is opening refineries in China. So although the oil companies won the right to exploit Alaskan oil on grounds that to do so would benefit national development, Clinton-Gore unilaterally changed the agreement so that it benefits China's industrial growth."(8) Not once in the entire film does Gore criticize this awful environmental record or raise the critical questions we need to answer if we are to effectively reverse global warming: Is it really the case that the vast destruction of our environment that went on under his watch and, continuing today, is simply a result of poor consumer choices and ineffective government policies? Is the global environmental devastation we are facing today rectifiable with some simple tuning-up, as Gore proposes? Neither he -- as point man for the Clinton administration on environmental issues -- nor Clinton-Gore's Energy Secretary Bill Richardson (with major ties to Occidental Petroleum), nor the Democratic Party in general offer anything more than putting a tiny Band-Aid on the earth's gaping wounds, which they themselves helped to gash open. Clearly, the vast destruction of the global ecology is a consequence not just of poor governmental policies but of the capitalist system's fundamental drive towards Growth and what passes for Development -- Grow or Die. Environmental activists won't find in Gore the kind of systemic analysis that is needed to stop global warming. Instead, we need to look elsewhere for that sort of deep systemic critique. Mitchel Cohen is co-editor of "G", the
newspaper of the NY State Greens. He can be reached at: mitchelcohen@mindspring.com NOTES 1. Joshua Frank, Counterpunch, May 31, 2006, Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and edits www.BrickBurner.org 2. Jeffrey St. Clair, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature, Common Courage Press, 2004. 3. James Ridgeway, "Eco Spaniel Kennedy: Nipping at Nader's Heels," Village Voice, Aug. 16-22, 2000. 4,5,6 Joshua Frank. 7. The battle over the Delaney Clause has been ably documented by Rachel's Weekly, at www.rachel.org 8. Ridgeway, op cit. |
CounterPunch Books / AK Press 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! ![]() 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 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. ![]() The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |