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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Drug Companies and Psychiatrists
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Drug Companies and Psychiatrists
Partners in CrimeEugenia Tsao reports on the upcoming revision of one of the most important books in America, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Here’s where the drug lords, the shrinks and the insurance companies collude in establishing hundreds of bogus psychic conditions requiring the psychotropic drugs from which they reap billions every year. There are about 250,000 migrant laborers in Israel, mostly from the Philippines and Thailand. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Palestinians can’t find work. From Tel Aviv, Yonatan Preminger reports on Israel’s vicious employment strategy. Also in this latest newsletter Andrew Cockburn updates his CounterPunch world exclusive on how the U.S. has secretly helped build Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and t-shirts make great presents.
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Today's Stories
Manuel Garcia, Jr. July 14, 2009 Eamonn McCann Joanne Mariner Franklin Spinney Steve Heilig Ali Abunimah Dave Lindorff Nikolas Kozloff Ellen Brown Alice Slater Ron Jacobs Joe Allen Website of the Day July 13, 2009 Uri Avnery Mike Whitney P. Sainath Gareth Porter Paul Moore Tim Wise Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions David Macaray Cal Winslow Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day July 10-12, 2009 Alexander Cockburn José Pertierra John Ross Conn Hallinan Nikolas Kozloff Clifton Ross / Carl Ginsburg Michael Neumann Gilad Atzmon Jeffrey St. Clair Ellen Hodgson Brown Jim Goodman Christopher Bickerton Wendell Potter Dave Lindorff David Ker Thomson Anthony DiMaggio Raymond Lawrence Walid El Houri Stephanie Westbrook Roger Gaess David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
July 9, 2009 Ronnie Cummings Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff James Bovard Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam Allan Nairn Andy Worthington Tomas Borge Nadia Hijab Paul Krassner Website of the Day July 8, 2009 Saul Landau Dean Baker Winslow T. Wheeler Eric Walberg Ray McGovern David Rosen Dr. Mona El Farra Ron Jacobs Benjamin Dangl Alan Farago Website of the Day July 7, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Uri Avnery Brian M. Downing Gary Leupp Gregory A. Burris David Macaray Laura Flanders Alan Farago Greg Moses Dan Bacher Website of the Day July 6, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Nikolas Kozloff Gary Leupp Jonathan Cook Tim Wise Franklin Lamb Charles R. Larson Carlos Benemann Shepherd Bliss Jerry Kroth Karyn Strickler Website of the Day July 3-5, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Eamonn Fingleton Jeffrey St. Clair Mike Whitney Pam Martens George Ciccariello-Maher Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Anthony DiMaggio Roger Burbach John Ross Nikolas Kozloff Gareth Porter Andy Worthington Saul Landau David Macaray Adam Federman Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney Robert Jensen Robert Bryce Belén Fernandez Missy Comley Beattie C. G. Estabrook Stephen Martin Charles R. Larson Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend July 2, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Nikolas Kozloff Wendell Potter Ellen Hodgson Brown Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent? Patrick Irelan Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq Nicola Nasser Brian Tokar Dan Bacher Website of the Day July 1, 2009 Vijay Prashad Alberto Vallente Thorensen Paul Craig Roberts Robert Weissman Manuel García, Jr. Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete Norman Solomon Franklin Lamb Martha Rosenberg Diane Rejman Website of the Day June 30, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Benjamin Dangl Jonathan Cook Franklin Lamb George Wuerthner Todd Gordon Ron Jacobs Kenneth Libby Julian Vigo Website of the Day
June 29, 2009 Ishmael Reed Nikolas Kozloff Clifton Ross Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Conn Hallinan James G. Abourezk Ralph Nader Carol Miller Greg Moses Website of the Day June 26-28, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Doug Peacock Daniel Wolff Mike Whitney John Ross David Rosen Emily Ratner Gareth Porter Farid Marjai Nadia Hijab Paul Craig Roberts Fred Gardner Carl Ginsburg Paul Watson David Ker Thomson Farzana Versey Geoff Berne Todd Alan Price Ramzy Baroud Jeff Sher Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value? Glen Johnson Charlotte Laws Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend June 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly Jack Bratich Wendell Potter Charles R. Larson Alan Farago Jonathan Cook Gareth Porter Bitta Mostofi / David Macaray Mark Schuller Website of the Day June 24, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Dean Baker Andy Worthington James Bovard Diana Gibson / P. Sainath Gareth Porter Robert Alvarez Dave Lindorff Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi Website of the Day
June 23, 2009 David Price Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway / Dave Lindorff Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero Gary Leupp Brian M. Downing Robert Bryce Nicholas Dearden Yousef Munayyer Website of the Day June 22, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Chris Floyd Jack Z. Bratich Atash Yaghmaian Laura Carlsen Paul Craig Roberts Vijay Prashad Fred Gardner Andy Thayer David Macaray Website of the Day
June 19 - 21, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Al Giordano Henry A. Giroux Anthony DiMaggio Paul Craig Roberts John Ross Gareth Porter Carl Ginsburg Tommi Avicolli Mecca Joe Bageant Serge Halimi P. Sainath Jim Goodman Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Robert Fantina Harvey Wasserman Walter Brasch David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Ben Sonnenberg Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Killing Hope, Sowing TerrorThe Assassination BureauBy MANUEL GARCIA, Jr. In June of 2009, Leon Panetta, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) -- the American Praetorian Guard guiding the course of the Dollar Area Empire -- cancelled a program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders, which had been initiated by Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney in 2001 following the 9-11 attacks, and which program Cheney had ordered be kept secret from the US Congress. (1) Why make this cancellation public, and now? Because openly airing a few dirty underpants will distract simple short-attention span minds from the unavoidable stench of much worse that is rotting under hasty burial. Did this program metastasize into a wider ranging disease that consumed Benazir Bhutto, and other foreign political leaders? (2) The concept of a Phoenix Program targeting al Qaeda leaders reflects the banal inelegance and grandiose ambition of the small minds that devise our national intelligence schemes. As aerial bombardments and missile strikes from drone aircraft were killing too many innocent bystanders (a concern, but insufficient to stop the practice), a more "surgical" tool was wanted, an assassination bureau. The assassination bureau is a perennially popular idea in politics. In Alexandre Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers, Cardinal Richelieu dispatches the femme fatale Milady de Winter to ensure the Duke of Buckingham remains in England rather than leading English forces to the aid of the Huguenot rebels at La Rochelle during the 1627-1628 siege of that city by the Catholic forces of Louis XIII, King of France. The historic Duke of Buckingham was assassinated on 23 August 1628, stabbed. Between 1968 and 1972, during the Vietnam War, the US Phoenix Program, aimed at the Communist Party in South Vietnam, "neutralized" 81,740 members of the National Liberation Front, of whom 26,369 were killed. The problem was that poor intelligence, a reliance on liars and conflicted stool pigeons, and corrupt bureaucrats padding their kill quotas and covering up their rake-offs, led to many politically inconsequential people being victimized, abused, tortured and killed. The network of resistance to the puppet regime of South Vietnam had grown in response to, and was maintained by the continuing presence of French and American imperialism in Vietnam, and this had long predated and far outpaced the weeding effort of the Phoenix Program. A very drôle movie on the concept, The Assassination Bureau (1969), is based on an unfinished novel by Jack London, and set in Europe during WW1. The charm of this film lies entirely in the decorum of the main characters, and the degree of honor they display by adhering to the rules of their game. The contemporaneous Phoenix Program showed that real politics was far dirtier than this cinema comedy. The 1972 film of the 1969 novel The Godfather was closer to the grit and malevolence of programs like Phoenix, but though presented with Homeric grandeur it was focused on the relatively small scale of crime-family inner-city violence, in comparison to the vast campaigns of covert international warfare. (3) (4) Cheney's CIA assassination bureau scheme was envisioned as a US copy of the Israeli program of assassination of Palestinian leaders and other designated enemies. This type of program is run by a nation's spy agency, which then calls on the military as needed to provide the firepower for an assassination, whether by commando units, aerial bombardment or missile strikes. Aside from any moral considerations (which never enter), the politically corrosive aspect of this covert assassination program is that an unaccountable and well-protected "intelligence" clique -- which is freed of all democratic political and legal restraints -- is conducting an undeclared and unacknowledged foreign war, thus making the nation's citizens unwitting enemies of -- and targets to -- much of the rest of the world. The fact that Cheney gave the CIA orders to keep his program secret from the US Congress -- and that this was obeyed! -- shows that the American Praetorian Guard is as dangerously unregulated as was its Roman template. (5) The CIA does not serve the interests of the American people, but instead milks them for the subsidy that funds the careerism of its covert bureaucrats, who engage in international crimes and intrigues that degrade peace, justice and honor generally, and stoke well-justified resentments abroad, which degrade the psychological basis of effective long-term security: goodwill. It would take an incredible revolution of popular democracy in the U.S. to regain control of the CIA and abolish it completely (as Constantine the Great did to the Praetorian Guard in the year 312, even to the point of razing its fortress in Rome, and grinding up the tombstones of its dead). Such an event seems as logically and politically impossible as it would be gloriously uplifting. Ironically, though death is permanent, assassination does not terminate the ideas motivating the designated enemies du jour of the state. Killing people does not kill ideas. Campaigns of assassination can remove the intelligentsia and leadership cohort of a minority rights and social justice movement, but since such campaigns can only stall and frustrate liberation movements and not satisfy them, assassinations only prolong and coarsen the resistance to imperialism and domination. By removing the early, more educated, moderate and politically-oriented leaders, assassinations clear the way for impatient militants, whose resort to pitiless brutality is all too easily justified and supported by their constituencies, because of the failure of honest engagement by domineering powers (whether foreign imperialists or domestic authoritarian regimes). As the liberation struggles degenerate intellectually, militarily and humanistically, the prospects for a stable negotiated resolution diminish because: the popular leaders with demonstrated political skills -- those who personify the ideas of the struggle -- have been assassinated; careerist militants gain control of the war, be they rebels, insurgents, or government agents; and outrages committed out of despair by the frustrated and radicalized (or now "fundamentalist") liberation movements, and out of hubris by the imperialist or authoritarian forces, blind reason to vengeance. Victoria Brittain explains these consequences in her heart-rending, richly detailed scholarly work on assassinations by western states, committed in Africa and Palestine, primarily during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but stretching to recent years, and titled "They Had To Die: Assassination Against Liberation" (2006). (6) The U.S. supported the apartheid regime in South Africa during its 1966-1989 Border War with Angola, Namibia and Zambia (and Zimbabwe), and it allowed former US military officers to work as free-lance mercenary assassins for the South African Defense Force (SADF). Though it is technically illegal for US citizens to act as mercenaries and work as assassins for foreign governments, this technicality was conveniently ignored in those cases where the success of a "private business deal" was of political interest to the US State Department and the CIA (who "winked" and afterwards debriefed). Former members of the US military who had combat experience or superior training as members of elite commando-type units (e.g., Special Forces, Army Rangers) could earn enough to fund a very comfortable and immediate retirement, far beyond what was likely with any tenure in the US military, with just one or two undercover operations for the SADF. The American and European agents dispatching the targets described by Victoria Brittain were merely politically expendable labor (some were captured and executed), though well-trained thanks to earlier taxpayer investments. (7) South Africa lost its border war, so foreign troops (Cubans aiding, and South Africans invading) left Angola in 1988, Namibia gained its independence in 1989, and agitation in South Africa against the apartheid state swelled from 1990 till apartheid was overturned in 1994. The ad hoc labor market for mercenary forces was systematized after the South African Border War, and today the public is familiar with private military companies (PMCs) like Blackwater USA (now Xe) and DynCorp International, because of their "exploits" in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. Today's PMCs can provide a variety of non-combat services that support traditional military forces, specialized technology for armed attack (e.g., helicopter gunships); as well as do the classic mercenary jobs of providing personal protection, and supplying small to moderate-sized infantry units. The PMC business is now worth $100B a year, sapping trained personnel from the ranks of numerous national special forces ("money talks and bullshit walks"), and encouraging the growth of PMCs in many countries. There is always a demand for war services, and the "miracle of the free market" ensures a competitive corporate response to that market demand. Today's PMCs are the Pinkertons of globalization. And, it is no doubt safe to assume that assassination is still a profitable business. It just doesn't solve anything; it is the equivalent of midnight dumping of historical toxic waste into our collective future. Manuel Garcia, Jr., a former physicist at Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory, can be reached at mango@idiom.com Notes. [1] CIA Had Plan To Assassinate Qaeda Leaders [2] CIA Linked To Bhutto's Murder? [3] The Assassination Bureau [4] John Stockwell, "The Third World War" [5] John Stockwell, from "The Praetorian Guard" [6] Victoria Brittain, "They Had To Die: Assassination Against Liberation" [7] John Stockwell,
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
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