Today's Stories

January 12, 2010

Bill Salganik
The Myth of "Cadillac" Health Plans

January 11, 2010

Patrick Cockburn
Only Fools Rush Into Yemen

Gareth Porter
Potemkin Tunnels: Iran Uses Fear of Secret Nuclear Sites to Avert Attacks

John Ross
Mexico Welcomes 2010 With Bombs and Riots

Gregory V. Button
TVA Health Assessment Report on Coal Ash Raises Troubling Questions About the Agency

Ralph Nader
The Last of the Prairie Populists: Losing Byron Dorgan

Tom Barry
Not System Failure, Failed System

Mikita Brottman
The Healing Powers of Facebook

David Michael Green Lost in the White House

David Swanson
Obama as the Secret Decider

Kevin Zeese
The Baucus 8 Are Free

Website of the Day
Solitary Watch: News From a Nation in Lockdown

January 8 - 10, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Acting Responsible

Andrew Cockburn
How the Teamsters Beat Goldman Sachs

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle to Claim the New West

Alison Weir
Calling Bono: Your Palestinian Gandhis Exist ... in Graves and Prisons

Peter Linebaugh
Some Principles of the Commons

Vijay Prashad
The Long March in Latin America

Saul Landau
Naked Empire

Tim Simons /
Ali Tonak
The Dead End of Climate Justice

Andy Worthington
Putting an Afghan Nobody on Trial

Missy Beattie
Shall We Gather at the CIA?

David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Labor

Ron Jacobs
A Life Worth Saving

Randall Amster
The Road to Health Care Reform is Paved With Bad Intentions

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is Accountability Expendable?

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan and the Afghan Insurgency

Dan Bacher
Big Ag's Big Lie About Feeding America

Christopher Brauchli The Senate and the Filibuster: a Helpless and Contemptible Body

Carl Finamore
Negotiating Separately, Fighting Together

Walter Brasch
Giving the Homeless the Cold Shoulder

Charles R. Larson
Is Tash Aw the Malaysian Graham Greene?

Kim Nicolini
"The Messenger:" a Story of Absent Bodies

David Yearsley
So You Want to Play in a Band in the Piazza San Marco?

Phyllis Pollack
Soul Serenade: the Legacy of Willie Mitchell

Lorenzo Wolff
Hoarding William Bell

Poets' Basement
Stevens, Kaung, & Yankevich

Website of the Weekend
Haitian Immigrant's Detention Story Leaves ICE Cold

January 7, 2010

Bruce Patterson
PTSD: Welcome Home, Hold Your Tongue

Alan J. Singer
How I Almost Became a Terrorist

Mark Weisbrot
Bail Out the Poor

William Blum
The American Elite

Joshua Frank
Bombing the Land of the Snow Leopard: the War on Afghanistan's Environment

Ramzy Baroud
The Media Vultures

Suzan Mazur
Turmoil at the NAS

D. K. Wilson
Guns, Race and Sports

Ray McGovern /
Coleen Rowley
CounterTerrorism in Shambles

Website of the Day
Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

January 6, 2010

Gareth Porter
The Iran Nuclear Trigger Forgeries

Mike Whitney
The Stimulus Killer: Rubin Rides Again

Dean Baker
The Undignified Death of the Washington Post

Adam Federman
Swimming in Natural Gas: the Greenwashing of an Industry

Tariq Ali
From Reconquista to Recolonization

Bouthaina Shaaban
2009: Some Arabs, Some Jews

Nikolas Kozloff
Converting Tiger Woods: Brit Hume's Slurs on Buddhism

Emily Ratner
Palestine Vivre!

Carl Finamore
The San Francisco Hotel Dispute

Anthony Papa
Panic in Needle Park: Return of the Fear Mongers

Website of the Day
Paul McCartney: the LSD Interview

January 5, 2010

Joseph Shansky
Killing Organizers in Honduras

Nadia Hijab
When Does It Become Genocide?

Steven Higgs
Evidence of Harm Revisited

Franklin Lamb
Obama Adds 675 Million Muslims to the Ultimate US Terrorism List

Frank Joseph Smecker
Coal's Ruptured Landscape

Paul Craig Roberts
The Law is Lost

Ellen Brown
Escape From Pottersville: the North Dakota Banking Model

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Time for a Peace Budget

Martha Rosenberg
Do You Know Where Your Child Is?

Laura Flanders
Dubai's Tower of Debt

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

January 4, 2010

Uri Avnery
The Iron Wall

Mike Whitney Bernanke in Atlanta

Patrick Cockburn
The Ugly Fortress

Dave Lindorff
Are U.S. Forces Executing Afghan Kids?

Dr. Susan Block
About a Boy: Inside the Two Heads of the Crotch Bomber

Lynda Brayer
Revenge and Retaliation in Gaza

Deepak Tripathi
Rebuff to Karzai or Occupying Powers?

David Michael Green
The Perils of Passivity

Lucinda Marshall
The Handmaid's Tale Comes to Life

K. Webster
A Flash of Anger, Then a Youth's Light Fades

Website of the Day
David Byrne: Art Funding or Arts Funding?

January 1 - 3, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye to 2009, Hello to 2010: Year of the Tiger

Afshin Rattansi
Hostage to Fortune

Jeffrey St. Clair
Disquiet on the Western Front

Ralph Nader
The Awful Truth

Andrew J. Bacevich
Obama's Post-Modern War of Attrition

Joanne Mariner
Terror Suspects and U.S. Courts

Judith Blau, M. Rafael Gallegos Lerma and Alfonso Hernandez
In the Face of Immigrant Bashing

John Feffer
Emulating Nixon: Peacemaker as Warmonger

Fatma Elshhati, Miho Seki, and Anthony Löwstedt
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: an Interview with Ilan Pappe

Kevin Gallaher / Timothy Wise
Lessons From NAFTA

Dave Lindorff
The Year of Our Discontent

Missy Beattie
Backward, Into Fear

David Macaray
Why Men Really Read Playboy

Natanya Robinowitz
Mexico's Abortion Laws

Franklin Lamb
The Israel Lobby's War on Al Manar TV

Bob Sommer
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

Floyd Rudmin
Kant on War

Jim Goodman
Obama's Wallflowers: Dancing With Those Who Brought You

Charles R. Larson
In the Cracks of the City

Gilad Aztmon
Avatar: a Humanist Call From Mt. Hollywood

Poets' Basement
Adler, Wróblewski and Wink

Website of the Weekend
Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency

December 31, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminate the Senate

Patrick Cockburn
Touch Yemen, Get Burned

Mike Whitney
Lining Up for the Wall Street Gravy Train

Greg Moses
The Fear Stimulus

Ramzy Baroud
Egypt's Steel Wall

Ron Jacobs
Interventions R Us

Tom Stephens
"The System Worked"

Dave Zirin
The Man Who Would Reclaim Sports

Paul Richards
Tiger Max, Evel Denny, Buffalo Brian and Mini-Max Jon

Nick Egnatz
The Lesser Evil

Website of the Day
Roger Waters Blasts Israel's Siege of Gaza

December 30, 2009

Stephen Green
A Lawless Presidency

Thomas Mountain
What Did Angelina Jolie Pay for Her Baby?

Stewart J. Lawrence
Baluchistan and the Af/Pak War

Ray McGovern
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Toys for Tots ... with Green Cards

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel Rules

Jeff Cohen
If It Was Wrong Under Bush, It's Wrong Under Obama

Binoy Kampmark
The Grand Placebo

Brenda Norrell
Hate and Death on the Border

Charles R. Larson
The Affluent Terrorist: Sexual Frustration and the Crotchbomber

Website of the Day
The Year in Coal

December 29, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Nuke Forgeries

Patrick Cockburn
Yemen Next

Steven Higgs Growing Up Toxic: Defeating Autism, Now

Susan Albulhawa /
Ramzy Baroud
Share the Land

Emily Ratner
Winding Our Way to Gaza

Dave Lindorff
Krugman's Health Care Sell-Out

David Macaray
Who is the Ideal Labor Leader?

Rev. William E. Alberts
Prince of Peace or Evangelistic Predator?

Deepak Tripathi
Compromised Domestic Policy, Militarized Foreign Policy

Walter Brasch / Rosemary Brasch
The Courage of Michael Vick: Dog Hanger as Model Citizen?

Website of the Day
Thinking Forward, Looking Back

December 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
Cast Lead II

Gary Leupp
Eyes on Yemen

Bouthaina Shaaban
Hearing is Not Like Seeing

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Decriminalize Political Speech

Sam Husseini
The Egyptian Puppet State

Greg Moses
Avatar's Jungle of Technology

Sonja Karkar
Gaza in Crisis

Patrick Bond
The Life and Death of Dennis Brutus

Michael Simmons
A Secret Masterpice: The Only Album "Bob Dylan" Ever Produced

David Michael Green
Good Riddance to the Devil's Decade

Alan McConnell
Who Will Organize the Organizers?

Website of the Day
Baucus: Shitfaced on the Senate Floor?

December 25-27, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Disappointments in Samarra

Mark Rudd
What It Takes to Build a Movement

Ralph Nader
Read, Then Act: the Year's Best Books

Nicola Nasser
Palestinians on the Brink of Explosion

John Ross
Where the Holidays are a Cruel Hoax

Rannie Amiri
Jimmy Carter's Yuletide Apology

Christopher Brauchli
When Prosperity Comes to Bad Men

Shamus Cooke
Who Will Pay For the Economic Collapse?

Ramzy Baroud
Paying the Price for Europe's Identity Crisis

John Blair
My Moral Dilemma on Hydrofracking

Michael D. Yates
Fear and Loathing at St. Vincent College

David Macaray
The Gift Nobody Wanted

Charles R. Larson
Love in an Inhumane Country

David Yearsley
From the Little Ice Age, a Hot Christmas from Purcell

Kim Nicolini
Further on Down the Road

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Gina Myers

Website of the Weekend
A Xmas Gift From Ray Charles

December 24, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Cooing with Cash

Franklin C. Spinney For Better or Worse? the Afghan Escalation and Women's Rights

Nadia Hijab
The Jailing of Jamal Juma

Mike Whitney
Obama, Progressives and the Press: an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Reform in Name Only: Individual Mandates

William Loren Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters

Martha Rosenberg
First, Kill No Celebrities: New Year's Resolutions for the Drug Industry

Stephen Fleischman
A Pound of Flesh: Interest and Profit

Anthony Papa
Chase Bank Says F-You to Students at Holiday Time

Dave Lindorff
An Afghan Christmas: a Visit From St. Barack

Website of the Day
A Tale of Two Pigs

December 23, 2009

David Price
Hollywood's Human Terrain Avatars

Dean Baker
Bernanke and the Corruption of Washington Culture

Andy Worthington
The Afghan Four

Neve Gordon
Breaking Palestine's Peaceful Protests

Helen Redmond
Beware the Progressive Democrat

Debayni Kar
Can Migrants Save the Global Economy?

Fred Gardner
The Calender Girl Conspiracy: Could Pot Have Saved Marilyn?

Brian Tokar
What Really Happened in Copenhagen?

Dave Zirin
More Than a Sportswriter

Randall Amster
Et Tu, Barack?

Website of the Day
How Einstein Divided America's Jews

December 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Relocating Guantanamo

Dave Lindorff
A Longer, Deeper Recession Looms

Ralph Nader
Obama in the Shark Tank

David Rosen
Sexual Politics in the Age of Obama

Laurie Kirby
Woodstock's Dirty Secret

Ron Jacobs
The Best Way to Stop a War

Dick J. Reavis
Insurance Reform, in Brief

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Palestine's Gift of Christmas

Norman Solomon
Flares in the Darkness

Rannie Amiri
The Death of the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri

Website of the Day
Nader: From W. to Obama: a Seamless Transition on the War

December 21, 2009

Alan Farago
Destroying the Everglades at 25 Cents Per Ton

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Af/Pak War is Illegal

Uri Avnery
Bordering on the Ridiculous: "Oybama" in Oslo

Mike Whitney
Bernanke Tightens the Noose

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Medicare Murder Mystery

Mark Scaramella
The Fate of California's Forests

Walter Brasch
Law & Order in Pennsylvania: Corruption, Murder and Race Hate

David Michael Green
Now, I'm Really Getting Pissed Off

Ingmar Lee
Why I Climbed the Flagpole

Farzana Versey
Whose Euthanasia Is It, Anyway?

Binoy Kampmark
The Conservative Dissident

Website of the Day
My Father Was a Freedom Fighter

December 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Turning Tricks, Cashing In on Fear

Michael Colby
The Health Care Charade: Bernie the Quitter Fools Us Again

Jeremy Scahill
Stunning Statistics About the War That Everyone Should Know

Stewart J. Lawrence
Pakistan's Refugee Disaster: Symptom of a Deeper Malady

Mike Whitney
Chavez's Venezuela

Andy Worthington
The Case of the Unwilling Yemeni Recruit

James Ridgeway
How Health Reform was Killed by Triangulation

Saul Landau
Almost Year One: an Assessment

John Ross
Tragicomedy in Ixtapalapa

Danny Weil
Race to the Slop

Rannie Amiri
Year 1431: Off to a Rocky Start in the Middle East

Franklin Lamb
Life in Lebanon

Steve Early
Green Mountain Mustering for the War at Home or Abroad?

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Sovereignty of Muslim Nations: a Casualty of U.S. Foreign Policy

Fred Gardner
Pot Specialists Plan to Study New Strains

D. K. Wilson
Tiger Woods: Lessons Not Learned ... Again

Missy Beattie
It Takes a Conscience

Jim Goodman
Hope is Dead: the Ongoing Tragedy of Rural Health Care

George Wuerthner
Turning Montana Into the Nation's Woodbox

Charles R. Larson
Windows Into Non-Western Cultures

Lorenzo Wolff
Recession Punks

David Yearsley
That Nauseating Peace Concert

Ben Sonnenberg Lordura di Napoli: the Best DVDs of the Year

Wajahat Ali
Invading Eden: James Cameron's "Avatar"

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Pommy Vega and Cirino

Website of the Weekend
Rage Against the Machine: Uncensored for Xmas

December 17, 2009

Steven Higgs
Heavy Metal Kids

Barbara Koeppel
How Banks Prey on the Unemployed

Dave Lindorff
Abort the Democratic Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
The Lobby Within

Ron Jacobs
Selling a "Just" War: From Panama to Afghanistan

Shamus Cooke
The Democrats' Faux Fight Against the Banks

Christopher Brauchli
Suffer Little Children

Binoy Kampmark
The "Inevitable" War?

Norm Kent
Death by Baggie

Patrick Bond
Green Market Punks

Website of the Day
Grayson: End the War Now

December 16, 2009

James Bovard
How Bush Redefined American Freedom

Gregory V. Button
The TVA Ash Spill One Year Later

Dan Schiller
It's a Wired World: the Communications Revolution

Gareth Porter
The Taliban's Offer

Farrah Hassen
The Cairo Detour

Nicola Nasser
U.S. Creates Its Antithesis in Iraq

Daniel C. Maguire
Why Obama Flunks the "Just War" Test

Martha Rosenberg
The Sex Scandal No One Wants to Talk About

David Macaray
Education's Dismal Cycle

Ellen Brown
An EU / IMF Revolt

Robert Bryce
The Copenhagen Conundrum

Website of the Day
Double Trouble for Polar Bears

December 15, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Resistance in Bethlehem's Villages

Chris Floyd
Blair, Obama and the Narcissist's Defense

Anthony DiMaggio
Larry Summers and the Jobless Recovery

Dean Baker
Financial Transaction Tax: Easy and Fun Money

Andy Worthington
Tortured in the "Dark Prison"

Mike Whitney
Malalai Joya Among Warlords

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War Rebate?

Jeff Ballinger
Advocating Sweatshops: NPR, NYT and Nick Kristof

Raymond Lawrence
Tiger's Fix

David Rovics
Report From Cop-enhagen

January 12, 2010

Super Criminals

Chiquita Lauded for Human Rights Abuses

By DAN KOVALIK

In its most recent edition, the magazine, “Super Lawyers,” gave its cover story to the General Counsel of Chiquita Brands International, praising him for navigating the complex and difficult waters of Colombia. What it failed to mention is the trail of tears in Latin America left behind by Chiquita (formerly United Fruit, the architect of the 1954 coup in Guatemala as well as the 1928 massacre of striking banana workers in Cienaga, Colombia memorialized in One Hundred Years of Solitude). The following letter, by union labor lawyer, Dan Kovalik highlights the contradictions in the applause given to Chiquita. We note that, just after this letter was written, Chiquita also received (quite ironically) a “sustainability award” for its business abroad.

Re: Super Criminals

Dear Mr. White,

I just had the unfortunate experience of reading the cover story of your recent publication, "Super Lawyers," which lauded the atrocities of Chiquita (formerly, United Fruit) -- a company with a laundry list of atrocities to its name, to be sure.

Your publication, which purports to highlight "not just the 'Usual Suspects,'" actually did focus on one of the "Usual Suspects" for war crimes in this issue. In this particular issue, you chose to applaud the General Counsel of Chiquita for what he claimed to be Chiquita's "extra-difficult decisions to save lives" by paying murderous paramilitaries over $1.7 million over a 7-year period. Nothing is said of the lives lost due to these payments, nor is there mention of the cache of arms provided to the paramilitaries by Chiquita's Colombian subsidiary (another count Chiquita pled guilty to).

According to Colombia's Attorney General, Mario Iguaran, Chiquita's payments to the paramilitaries were "not paid for protection, but rather, for blood; for the pacification of the Uruba banana region." Iguaran, hardly a liberal, having been appointed by President Alvaro Uribe, estimates that around 4,000 civilians were killed as a result of the assistance Chiquita gave to the paramilitaries. Moreover, Iguaran has opined that the very phenomenon of parmilitarism which has gripped Colombia for years and which has led to countless murders, rapes and other atrocities, would not have been possible without this assistance by companies like Chiquita.

Yet, notwithstanding these facts, you chose to give Chiquita's General Counsel your cover story to spew his apologies for his company's support for war crimes. Of course, I should not be surprised, the law, after all, being an instrument created and maintained to protect the rich and strong from the poor and oppressed. I might just suggest that, to keep up the facade of a justice system blind to the pocketbook of the parties coming before it, you might not want to be so obvious in your publication in highlighting the legal profession as a guardian of those who amass profit through acts of massive violence.

I guess Bob Dylan said it best when he wrote, "All the criminals in their suits and their ties, are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise . . . ."

I could end my note here, but a bit more is worth saying. Thus, even if we take Chiquita and Mr. Thompson at their word, their conduct hardly warrants congratulations. First, even by their own admissions to the Justice Department and to your magazine, it allegedly took them over 2 years to realize that the paramilitaries they were paying and providing arms to were designated by the U.S. State Department as "terrorists." Is this a mark of great lawyering? Most of us would be fired for taking so long to realize our client was engaged in such a high crime. Indeed, what you call "super lawyering" would simply be called "malpractice" by most reasonable observers. And, even if they were paying "protection" to these killers to grow and profit from bananas as they claim, is that also a reason for praise? The Justice Department, which certainly let these folks off quite easily (they should all be in jail), certainly didn't think this excused them from punishment.

I will end this by asking that you please refrain from ever sending me your publication again. You should be ashamed of yourself and your magazine. But, of course, we live in a world largely without shame, where petty criminals spend years in jail and the big criminals rule the world, thanks to the law you claim to be so dedicated to.

Sincerely,
Dan Kovalik

Dan Kovalik is a labor lawyer. He can be reached at: DKovalik@usw.org.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time
by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

Click here to Buy!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

2010 Country Mamas of Petrolia
Calendar Now Available!

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont