home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Special Issue for CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! The Battle Over the Israel Lobby As John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's long awaited "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" draws hysterical abuse, former CIA intelligence officers Kathy and Bill Christison define the Lobby's real nature, trace its history, and measure its actual power. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z         Subscribe Online

September 25, 2007 Ahmadinejad on Broadway Speech? Arrest Him for God's Sake By BRENDAN COONEY There was a big struggle on Broadway yesterday. It was a collective attempt among U.S. citizens to figure out what exactly is meant by this freedom of speech they had heard so much about. I was curious, too. So I asked people protesting a speech by Iran's president at Columbia University whether they agreed with New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind's statement that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God's sake." About half gave an instinctive yes. Some recanted, either after talking themselves through the arrest scenario or having someone standing near them do so. When one man said Ahmadinejad should be arrested "for crimes against humanity in Iran," an acquaintance disagreed. "Arrest him for what? That's not what this country's about," said Stephen Detherage, an ironworker from Detroit who had worked at "Ground Zero" after 9/11. He had a U.S. flag bandana tied around his head. While he was for Ahmadinejad's right to speak, that didn't mean he liked him. "Islam is trouble," he said. The other man nodded and they were back on the same page. As small circles of protesters chanted, "Don't talk with terror" and "Free speech in Iran" and "Shame on Columbia," Nina Bursky-Tammam, 22, a student at New York's Yeshiva University, told me, "There's a limit to what people should be allowed to say. He's just a terrorist." When I asked her how he qualified as a terrorist, she said he wanted to destroy Israel. "Does someone have to do something rather than say something in order to be a terrorist?" I asked. "If he's saying he wants to commit terrorist acts, doesn't that make him a terrorist?" came her reply. But her friend Talya Barth, a 22-year-old student at Queens College, referred to actions. She said in Iran one receives lashes 71, she had heard -- for speaking against the government. If there's no freedom of speech in Iran, why should we give him freedom of speech here? she wondered. Many people had signs saying, "Hitler Lives?", with Ahmadinejad's body torqued into a swastika. I'm noticing that ubiquitous caricatures of Ahmadinejad seem to dwell on those upturned eyebrows of his, whereas somehow Bush's angled brows conveyed to people the utmost sincerity after 9/11 when he declared himself to be a "peace-loving guy." Some of the Ahmadinejad sobriquets that I heard: "I'm-a-dick-in-the-head"; "I'm-mad-bi-jad"; "Ahmadi-jihad," and simply, "Ahmad-a-whatever the fuck his name is." Moshe Grussgott, a rabbi at Ramath Orah, an Upper West Side synagogue, said, "He should be arrested. He wants to nuke Israel. This person is really an enemy." When I asked if one could be arrested for wanting to do something, he amended his answer to say that Ahmadinejad is guilty of actions as well as words. His two main crimes are "supporting the insurgency in Iraq and killing Iraqi civilians" and "funding Hezbollah," Grussgott said. Two new acquaintances who saw eye-to-eye were protesters David Zucker, a 30-year-old Manhattan attorney, and Colleen Barry, a small business owner from Great Neck, N.Y. "We're at war with (Ahmadinejad)," Zucker said. "It doesn't make sense you would talk to him." He was holding a sign with a color picture of a young, pretty girl. It said, "My name is Shiri Negari and I would like to speak at Columbia too, but I was murdered when Iran gave money to Hamas to blow up the bus I was on." He said he had e-mailed her family to ask about using the picture. Zucker continued, "We can't arrest as many as we'd like to, because the UN is here. If the UN weren't here I'd have no problem with (arresting Ahmadinejad). ... He's actively murdering our boys and girls in Iraq. They have shrapnel in their backs and faces because of him." Barry agreed. "He's saying what I was going to say," she said. When I asked what their evidence for this supply line was, Zucker said, "CNN," and Barry said, "General Petraeus." When I asked if there were credibility issues with the U.S. military after the Iraq War, she said, "I trust the military." Assuming the supply story is true, does that mean the United States should be held accountable for all the uses to which the weapons they supply to the world are put? I wondered. "That's different," Barry said. "(Ahmadinejad) knows who the weapons are being used against." The foreigners I talked to were not struggling with the idea of free speech so much as the fact that Americans seemed so resistant to it. "It's very strange," said Jonathan Abranyos, 38, a physicist from Ethiopia. "I don't understand this idea that, 'I'm not going to talk to somebody I don't like.' It's like kids." Havovi Cooper, a Pakistani graduate student in journalism at Columbia, didn't get it either. "Okay, (Ahmadinejad) is stupid, because he keeps provoking the U.S. and he doesn't think about the consequences for his own people, but he's not a terrorist. Which country has he bombed?" Inside the gates the same struggle was going on, except that the battle was inside the head of Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger. In a talk before Ahmadinejad spoke, Bollinger praised his own commitment to free speech. Then he launched a preemptive strike on Ahmadinejad that, had he been addressing a U.S. instead of a foreign leader, might have concluded with him pinned to the floor yelling "Don't Tase me, bro." Bollinger was doing a good job heeding Assemblyman Hikind's call on New Yorkers "to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable." In addition to calling Ahmadinejad "ridiculous" and a "cruel dictator," Bollinger launched a series of accusations at his guest speaker. "Your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders," he said. It was a common charge outside the gates as well among those who wanted Ahmadinejad either gagged or arrested. Is freedom-of-speech really such a difficult concept to grasp? Or might it be that U.S. Americans are showing once again how susceptible they are to propaganda? Official demonization of Ahmadinejad, after all, has been in full-swing for quite awhile as the Administration prepares to make the case for another invasion (taking August off, of course, because "you don't introduce new products in August," as White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said five years ago of a different product, same fragrance.) And can you fully blame the people, when what they see on TV and read in the paper are reporters who are paid to think critically about their government but who show no inclination to do so? I mean, I found it interesting upon visiting Beijing 13 years ago that I couldn't find anyone who thought blood had been spilled at Tiananmen Square, but I can't say I blamed individuals for believing what they read in the People's Daily. In a story in yesterday's New York Times, Helene Cooper proves once again that the Times's reporters have a hard time detaching themselves from admin propaganda. By most accounts Bush has espoused not a few bewildering ideas over the years, but that adjective would be reserved for the editorial page rather than a hard news story. Yet the second sentence of her news story editorialized about Ahmadinejad's "bewildering thoughts." She goes on to describe John Coatsworth, a university dean and moderator of the event, asking Ahmadinejad, " 'Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?' "'We love all people,' Mr. Ahmadinejad dodged." Does Bush dodge questions at press conferences? Would a hard news story say, "Bush dodged"? Reporters have already bought into the Ahmadinejad-as-mad-monkey narrative, and so there is no risk for them in getting silly with their reporting. Examples like this are run-of-the-mill; Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald has already done an excellent job of exposing the NYT's Michael Gordon as an admin stooge. (The piece is here) If we devoted the same attention to all of the world's leaders, we could probably find dozens with views we would regard as objectionable or preposterous. But those views should have nothing to do with whether we bomb those countries. Mike Hunter, an African-American hip-hop artist, sees right through the smoke. The fact that Ahmadinejad's speech was so contested "shows you how draconian America has become," he said. "It's propaganda. They want to create a despot so that they can have the American people behind them for an invasion." A guy helping set up the evening shoot for the Fox TV crew declined to give his name but said, "It's interesting how our government calls (Ahmadinejad) a terrorist"basically they should be shot sight unseen"and we're letting him speak." A few yards away, Hunter had a different notion of the word terrorist. "This country's a terrorist to me," he explained. "They hung black people from the trees here in New York." Meanwhile, a heated debate broke out between a couple students and Woodley Rosier, a 34-year-old Bronx security officer. "America's the one that's used nuclear weapons," Rosier said. "Why can't (Iran) have it?" Rosier was all for open communication. "The same way you negotiated with Stalin, why can't you negotiate with him? Except Stalin did bad things. (Ahmadinejad) hasn't done nothing wrong." "Where do terrorists factor in here?" said one student. "How can we learn if we don't listen?" shouted Jacob Sabat, raising a fist in the air. In the other hand he held up a sign saying, "Free Speech in USA" on one side and "NeoCons are enemy number one" on the other. A beefy Fox employee kept him from holding it in the background of the broadcast. "Everyone in America is walking around with blinders on," Hunter said. "You won't be able to say anything in America pretty soon." Brendan Cooney is an anthropologist living in New York City. He can be reached at: itmighthavehappened@yahoo.com Your Ad Here

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"