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Stunning New Print Edition of CounterPunch Will the US Labor Movement Rise Again in Chicago? Or is this just a power play at the top? JoAnn Wypijewski details what's really at stake in the great showdown as some of labor's most powerful bosses threaten to quit the AFL-CIO. No-holds-barred profiles of the SIEU's Andy Stern, Hoffa of the Teamsters and the other "insurgents". Jeffrey St Clair tells the incredible saga of the $30 billion bailout of Boeing. How the scandal reached the White House and Don Rumsfeld screamed, Let the woman take the fall. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the Judy Miller story. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch's Hot New T-Shirts for Women! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories July 14, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton July 13, 2005 Brian Cloughley Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq George Galloway We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop Carlos Fierro A Supreme Waste of Time Sarah Knopp Hate on the Border Norman Solomon "Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors Mickey Z. Water on the Brain Jim Minick The Right Tree in the Right Place Pat Williams American Indian Education for All Andrew N. Rubin Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set" Website of the Day "London's Burning": the Mikey Mix   July 12, 2005 Laith al-Saud Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement Kara N. Tina "This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield William A. Cook The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This? Jack Bratich 2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma Amina Mire The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others Dick J. Reavis Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke Kevin Zeese Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets Paul Craig Roberts No-Think Nation Website of the Day Coke Gags Indian Artist   July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander Cockburn After the Bombings Uri Avnery War of the Colors in Israel Sheldon Rampton Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London Bill Christison Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement? Robert Fisk Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed Stephen Winspear Collateral Damage in London? Saul Landau Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken Behrooz Ghamari Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem Karl Beitel False Promises and Real Debt Relief Brian Concannon, Jr. Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires Fred Gardner Sentencing Season John Whitlow And What Does the Market Say? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us? Lila Rajiva Witches and Bastards Laura Carlsen CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities Jackie Corr Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket Dave Lindorff "My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter" N. D. Jayaprakash Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference Seth Sandronsky Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq Norman Madarasz The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party Ben Tripp The Inevitability of George W. Bush Poets' Basement Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel Website of the Weekend The Mother of All Enemies Lists   July 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception Tariq Ali The London Bombings: Why They Happened Monica Benderman One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality Rick Jahnkow Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement Christopher Brauchli Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra Kim Peterson Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror Joshua Frank Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments? Norman Solomon Messages from the Carnage Website of the Day An Interview with Ray McGovern July 7, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr John Walsh More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry Mike Marqusee Message from London Gilad Atzmon London's Burning Nicole Colson Showdown at the Supreme Court Jack Random Judith Miller, Anti-Hero Norman Solomon Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War Len Colodny Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig? Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr     July 6, 2005 Elaine Cassel Political Necrophilia in Florida: Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair Sean Donahue Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor Jeremy R. Hammond State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard Joshua Frank Will Rove be Indicted? Ali Khan The "Gift" of US Democratization Michael Dickinson Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers Norman Solomon How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility Dave Zirin Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad Gary Leupp Accusing Ahmadinejad Website of the Day Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"     July 5, 2005 Behrooz Ghamari What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency Elaine Cassel Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor Ron Jacobs Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice Bob Libal The Right's Assault on Academia Dr. Peter Rost Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO Mark Engler The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee? Gideon Levy They Broke the Public's Heart Dave Zirin The Great Olympics Scam Sameer Dossani The Trouble with Gleneagles     July 2 / 4, 2005 Alexander Cockburn "Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi? Lenni Brenner Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July Laura Carlsen Zapatista's Red Alert James Petras The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment William A. Cook Kings of Serpents Brian Cloughley Quagmire of the Vanities Saul Landau The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership Tom Crumpacker Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles? Greg Moses Dylan's America Dr. Susan Block My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service Fran Shor Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land Fred Gardner Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer Moshe Adler The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs David Model The Downing Street Memo: So What's New? Seth Sandronsky California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style Ramzy Baroud Managed Democracy in the Middle East Suzan Mazur Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton Ben Tripp Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap Justin Taylor Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint" Brendan Bailey Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony Poets' Basement Albert, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Radical Reference     July 1, 2005 Christopher Brauchli With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf Pat Williams What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver Gary Leupp Summer Surprise? John Stauber Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie John Chuckman The Blessings of Canada Justicia y Paz Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least! Cockburn / St. Clair It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court   June 30, 2005 Kathy Kelly An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis John Stauber Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America Virginia Rodino All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement Jason Leopold Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy Dave Lindorff What Was Bush Thinking? Greg Moses Racism at Cape Cod Norman Solomon Memo to the Iraq War Joshua Frank Israel's Theocrats Alexander Cockburn The Political Function of PBS   June 29, 2005 Mike Schaefer How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq Sharon Smith Democrats Shift into Reverse Sam Husseini A Quick Way to End the Insurgency John Stauber Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton Ahmad Faruqui Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan? Linda S. Heard Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo Stew Albert Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero Ray McGovern Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course     June 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts A Defeat Bred in Deceit Landau / Hassen Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics John A. Murphy Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania Mike Whitney More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents CounterPunch News Service JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook? Dave Zirin Pining for the Pistons Dave Lindorff Showtime in Washington Patrick Cockburn Iraq: a Bloody Mess     June 27, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans Mike Marqusee G8: Who are the Hijackers? Mark Scaramella When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz Leigh Saavedra Press Apologists for Torture Kathy Kelly Where is the UN? June 25 / 26, 2005 Alexander Cockburn The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals Jennifer Van Bergen America's Parallel Legal Systems George Corsetti This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo Kevin Zeese Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids P. Sainath Russian Roulette in Vidharbha John Stauber How to Bury a Mad Cow Scott Handleman Gay in the Third World Tom Barry The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists John Walsh Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places Justin E.H. Smith The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution Alan Wallis The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood Ben Tripp Negative Space: an Artful Lesson Frederick B. Hudson Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock Poets' Basement Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert     June 24, 2005 Ray McGovern The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed" Jorge Mariscal "They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq Desiree Hellegers Portland vs. the FBI Zeynep Toufe What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It? Joshua Frank Call Him Senator Con Job David Lindorff Which Flag Would Jesus Burn? Michael Neumann Victory and Recruitment Website of the Day Gagging Dr. Dean June 23, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge Clay Conrad Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform Standard Schaefer A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism P. Sainath Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks Mark Engler CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death Norman Solomon Voluntary Amnesia in America Cockburn / St. Clair Frank Calzon Kathy Kelly Where You Stand Determines What You See   June 22, 2005 Kevin Zeese The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner William S. Lind Afghanistan: the Other War Arsalan Iftikhar Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act Dan Nagengast Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas David Krieger To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World Kathleen & Bill Christison Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making     June 21, 2005 Brian Cloughley Destroy the Unbelievers! Mike Whitney President Disconnect Dave Lindorff Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway? Mark Weisbrot Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez Matthew R. Simmons The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis Dave Zirin The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man" Virginia Rodino The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment Paul Craig Roberts A War Waged by Liars and Morons   June 20, 2005 Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Tariq Ali To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel! Mickey Z. WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo William Blum Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends Gary Leupp Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq Jason Leopold Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War Dave Lindorff Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Uri Avnery Condi and Hamas Website of the Day Crimes Against Poetry                                                       Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

Bastille Day July 14, 2005 War Myths and the Press It's the Empire, Stupid By ROBERT JENSEN To put the problems of U.S. foreign and military policy into the quip-ridden language of contemporary politics: "It's the empire, stupid." Understanding this big picture is crucial as we struggle to respond politically to the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yes, the Bush administration is a threat, but it's not the threat. True, the neocons are a danger, but not the danger. The threat and danger -- the rot at the core of U.S. actions abroad -- is not a single politician or school of thought, but the project of empire-building. That has gone forward through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, most intensely and recklessly since the end of World War II, when U.S. power and domination peaked. Take what is probably the single most obscene enterprise in this period -- the U.S. attack on Indochina, what we call "the Vietnam War." Its roots were in the policy of a moderate Midwestern Republican (Dwight Eisenhower), who supported French attempts to recolonize Vietnam and undermined a political settlement after the Vietnamese kicked out the French. The violence necessary to prop up a client regime in the South was ramped up by the darling of liberal East Coast Democrats (John Kennedy), and then intensified to truly barbaric levels by a rough-edged Southern Democrat (Lyndon Johnson) and a rough-edged Western Republican (Richard Nixon). In U.S. political mythology, we were either a well-intentioned giant that simply misunderstood the nature of Vietnamese society (the liberal view), or a well-intentioned giant kept from victory by a fifth column at home (the reactionary view). In the mythology of U.S. journalism, the news media played the role of tough critic, holding the powerful accountable for their mistakes. In this story, reporters and editors are either heroes for their courage (the liberal view) or traitors for their contribution to defeat (the reactionary view). The problem is that both myths are myths. The U.S. assault on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was part of a wider attack on independent movements in the Third World, which U.S. policymakers were eager to destroy. And the U.S. press was mostly boosterish about the war, especially in the early years, becoming skeptical only when larger forces in society turned critical. At a point when abandoning these myths is crucial to building a left/progressive political movement that can challenge the U.S. empire, media critic Norman Solomon has written an engaging book that helps explain how the myth-making machine works. War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death outlines how politicians and corporate journalists typically see the world in similar fashion, sometimes squabbling over the finer points of empire construction and maintenance but with the same basic worldview. Solomon's book is organized around 17 specific myths that presidents and pundits -- even when they may be locked in what seems to be conflict -- work together to maintain. The first is most central to the imperial enterprise: "America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower." It is this American exceptionalism -- the belief that unlike other great powers, the United States is motivated not by the self-interest of some set of elites but by benevolence -- which allows policymakers to sell wars that are designed to extend and deepen U.S. power as a kind of international community service. In the words of pundit Charles Krauthammer, "We run a uniquely benign imperium," a claim that is regarded as absurd around the world but is shamefully easy to peddle to the U.S. public. Because we are this benign power, "Our Leaders Will Do Everything They Can to Avoid War." Solomon methodically goes through the evidence for the opposite conclusion: U.S. leaders often strive to make war inevitable. Most important here is Solomon's attention to the first Gulf War and Yugoslavia. In the aftermath of the Bush II debacle in Iraq, too many folks (including, sadly, some on the liberal/progressive side) talked wistfully about how George W.'s father "did it right" in 1990-91 by building an international consensus before going to war. Yes, George H.W. displayed more savvy in derailing diplomacy and then bullying/bribing other nations to fight that war -- which was necessary only to demonstrate U.S. power and establish greater dominance in the Middle East -- but that's hardly something to celebrate. In the Clinton attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 -- a war that many liberals were willing to believe was "humanitarian" in intent and execution -- Solomon describes how the United States made sure diplomacy would fail in negotiations by insisting on conditions no nation could accept, clearing the way for war. None of this should surprise anyone; it's how empires behave. In an empire that has expansive political and expressive freedom, however, we want to believe that journalists can check such abuses. Here, Solomon explains the folly of believing that "If This War Is Wrong, the Media Will Tell Us." The strength of Solomon's analysis is that he doesn't caricature the news media. Journalists often do excellent work, and when the political conditions are right, they can be an important part of a healthy political culture. But Solomon points out that while stories that critique the powerful do get written, challenges to the conventional wisdom typically run once, often buried inside the paper. Meanwhile, the pronouncements of the powerful are repeated day after day, often on the front page. Accurate and important reporting is usually overwhelmed by the drumbeat. Solomon explains that in addition to the ideological similarities between journalists and policymakers, one key reason for this is the slavish reliance of corporate journalists on so-called official sources: politicians, policy advisers, military leaders, think-tank hacks, and the other "experts" created by the public-relations machinery. We have a free press, but one that doesn't use that freedom to act in consistently independent fashion. How bad is it, really? Karen DeYoung, a Washington Post reporter and former assistant managing editor, put it bluntly in an August 12, 2004, Post story that looked at the paper's failures in the run-up to the Iraq War: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." DeYoung explained that contrary arguments tend to get pushed off the front page, down in the story where many will never read. That's how bad it is. An experienced reporter can acknowledge that journalists routinely allow themselves to be used as conduits for lies; one of top newspapers in the country can publish that acknowledgement; and the game between politicians and journalists rolls along without much interruption. There are indications, however, that more and more people are tired of empire and the news media's capitulation to power. We shouldn't overestimate the percentage of the U.S. population that is becoming critical; Bush and politicians of his ilk continue to dominate the political landscape, and much of the rest of the voting population accepts the empire-with-a-human-face that John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and most Democrats continue to sell. But the seeds of a principled and committed anti-empire movement are here. On the media front, things are similar; polls show that a majority of the public accepts the idea that the media's main problem is that they're too liberal. But the seeds of not only a limited media-reform movement but also a more expansive and critical media-justice movement also are taking root. Solomon is hopeful but not naïve. He knows long-term grassroots organizing is necessary, and he's on the lookout for issues that can engage people. In recent weeks he's written about the possibility of pressing for Bush's impeachment after the "smoking gun" memo from Britain, which made clearer the Bush administration's lies to manufacture the pretext for a war on Iraq. He's not promising Bush could actually be impeached but arguing that a serious movement could "push over the media obstacles and drag politicians into a real debate about presidential war crimes and the appropriate constitutional punishment." What will lead people to want to be part of that movement? No doubt some of the motivation will come from a realization of self-interest -- while imperial conquest enriches a small elite segment of this country and provides some short-term material benefits to average Americans, it's inherently destructive and unsustainable. But Solomon ends his book by pointing out that U.S. citizens also have a lot of moral self-reflection to do. "While going to war may seem easy, any sense of ease is a result of distance, privilege, and illusion," he writes in the book's conclusion. Can we be the people we claim to be -- with the values we claim to hold -- and support empire, whether it's Bush's full-bodied version or the Democrats' empire-lite? The answer is clearly no. But breaking through the "War Made Easy" mythology is difficult, especially in a mass-mediated age. As Solomon points out, "The mass media are filled with bright lights and sizzle, with high production values and lower human values, boosting the war effort." But his final words contain the hope we need: "Conscience is not on the military's radar screen, and it's not on our television screen. But government officials and media messages do not define the limits and possibilities of conscience. We do." It's up to us not just to critique what politicians say and what's on television, but to understand where conscience must lead us: Taking seriously the responsibility and risks that will be required to help dismantle the U.S. empire. Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, and the author of "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.