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

Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. 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

Now Available! How the Press Led the USA Into the Iraq War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? 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   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition September 8 / 9, 2007 Cruise Control into a Ditch The Governor and the Growth Machine By ALAN FARAGO The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the growth machine have pledged to spend $65 million--or whatever it takes--to defeat the citizen referendum that is closing in on the number of voter signatures to quality for a state-wide ballot. Florida Hometown Democracy proposes that new changes to comprehensive land development plans should first pass the test of voters before going to local elected officials. It is a battle for the soul of Florida. In an interview with the editor of the Florida Northwest Daily News, Governor Charlie Crist (Rep.) may have inadvertently boosted the misinformation against the citizen's initiative: He said, " in terms of Hometown Democracy, and how that affects us in our future, (I think) that if you have to have a permit for every single new business that wants to go up, and you have to have a vote of all the people in order to get it accomplished, that can slow down things tremendously and therefore maybe thwart the opportunity for economic growth and new jobs coming into the state, and it concerns me in a significant way." Is Governor Crist on the wrong side of facts, deliberately or simply because he had a bad day? When enough voters sign petitions (print out your petition here)to qualify for the ballot, Floridians will have a chance to vote on a simple measure: new changes to comprehensive development plans that have already been approved by local government will first go to voters, then to local government. Florida is the abject example of growth gone haywire, and the responsibility lies squarely with elected officials who benefit each and every time the true costs of growth are deferred. Now that the building boom is in cinders, the results are plain as day. But don't count on newspaper executives, whose bonuses may be tied to advertising page revenue increases, to shed much light. "I would agree," says the newspaper editor from the region where massive new developments are being primed that could accomodate millions of new residents to Florida when finally demand returns to collapsed housing markets. "That's what you have your local officials for is to review those different changes to the land development code, the growth management act. Under (a hometown democracy) amendment, you'd have to have a referendum for that. And I think that's what you have elected representatives for." Let recent experiences in Miami-Dade County, Florida's largest county, inform Governor Crist who worries that Florida Hometown Democracy will require "a permit for every single new business that wants to go up". That is simply untrue. In Miami, unlike northwest Florida, the growth machine has already left behind the detritus of suburban sprawl for 2 million residents and taxpayers funneled into unabsorbed costs as meekly as cattle in a factory farm. Here, in the 2005 round of applications by developers and land owners to move the Urban Development Boundary-which required new changes to the county land use plan-citizens were forced into <a href="http://udbline.com/">a multi-year game of cat-and-mouse </a> with the growth machine, tended by land use lawyers, engineering consultants, and an army of lobbyists who long-ago corralled a majority of county commissioners through bundled campaign contributions. It is all well and good for high public officials to praise volunteers and giving back to the community (as President Clinton apparently does, in his new book, 'Giving'), but the Florida example of democracy in 2007--as it relates to growth--makes a mockery of "giving". It is draining, demoralizing, and frustrating for homeowners, taxpayers, and even some business interests when the outcome of changes to land use plans is predetermined by the influence of big campaign contributors from developers, land speculators, and big farmers. By all means, let Governor Crist (and newspaper editors) spend a couple of years trundling down the road to changes to the land use plans, strewn with virtual IED's by the growth machine. See what ordinary people face in the daily struggle to protect communities from unsustainable development. Giving citizens the right to vote on new changes to comprehensive land use plans before local elected officials do redresses the imbalance that has ruined representative government in Florida because of the outsized influence of building and construction. It is wrong to suggest that the balance between the environment and the economy is what is at issue in the Florida Hometown Democracy movement. It is about respect for fiscal responsibility. It is about the soul of Florida. The building and development industry--its greed, excesses, coupled with strong-arm tactics by state and local legislatures contributed mightily to the housing bubble and the costs the bubble's burst has imposed on Florida taxpayers. In 2005, a majority of county commissioners in Miami-Dade County would have voted to approve each and every amendment to the county comprehensive development plan outside the urban growth boundary, despite overwhelming objection by citizens. What counted, then, wasn't the law--and the legal challenges that citizens would have been forced to mount--but slick powerpoint presentations that confidently predicted endless demand for suburbia. Only quiet intervention by the State of Florida, related to concerns about the availability of fresh water, stopped these amendments. Because local legislatures are controlled by political contributions from the growth machine, because people don't have the time or financial resources to spend years, time after time, addressing the same applications for ill-advised development, the land use planning process has turned into a a fifth grade school play, with all the stock characters in their bad costumes, a marathon contest whose results are indelibly etched in the built landscape of Florida. Right now, in Miami-Dade County, the real cost of infrastructure deficits because growth does not pay its own way is close to $10 billion. It is a number that elected officials won't talk about and newspapers won't print. But every day, citizens in Miami experience that number through gummed-up roadways, classrooms for children in air-conditioned trailers, unkempt and inadequate parks and playing fields, pollution, degraded wetlands and a declining quality of life. This isn't a "gloomy point of view". This is reality. The $10 billion that the growth machine won't talk about represents the imposition of an unfunded mandate on Miami-Dade taxpayers. But local elected officials won't talk about that unfunded mandate, the one imposed by unsustainable growth. Why should the people of Florida acquiesce to the fiscal irresponsibility that is at the heart of the growth machine's objection to Florida Hometown Democracy? The reasons to support Florida Hometown Democracy are all around us: the highest foreclosure rates in history, housing inventories so saturated that it will take years to absorb, degraded wetlands and public corruption. Let the people vote on new changes to comprehensive land use plans that local elected officials have already approved. Give the people of Florida a hand to democracy, Governor Crist. We know it is possible. We have faith. Alan Farago of Coral Gables, who writes about the environment and the politics of South Florida, can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com. Your Ad Here

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"