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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Report From the Afghan Front
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Report From the Afghan Front
It's Obama's War and It's Going Very BadlyExclusively for CounterPunch subcribers, Patrick Cockburn files a special report from Kabul: the Taliban's tightening grip on most of the country; plumetting US popularity in a bankrupt country rotted by corruption. For fifty years, Seymour Melman waged intellectual war on Pentagon capitalism, making the case for peaceful conversion. David Price brings to light decades of FBI secret surveillance. Senator Jim Webb is launching the first determined bid in forty years to overhaul the US criminal justice system at whose call is the American gulag. Alexander Cockburn reports on the prospects for his success. 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 gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories June 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly 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 June 18, 2009 Uri Avnery Robert Sandels / Anthony DiMaggio Robert Weissman Joshua Frank Jonathan Cook Reza Fiyouzat Norman Solomon Ali Jawad James Ridgeway Website of the Day June 17, 2009 Carl Boggs Dr. Bryant Welch Winslow T. Wheeler Liaquat Ali Khan Jonathan Cook Binoy Kampmark Karim Makdisi Dave Lindorff David Swanson Gene Marx Website of the Day June 16, 2009 Patrick Cockburn John Ross Afshin Rattansi Marc Levy Paul Craig Roberts Behzad Yaghmaian Brian M. Downing Merle Lefkoff David Macaray Robert Jensen David Swanson Website of the Day June 15, 2009 Michael Hudson Reza Fiyouzat Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway Marjorie Cohn Rannie Amiri Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Leonard Schwartz Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day June 12-14, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney Mark Ames Esam Al-Amin Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Andy Worthington Heather Gray Felice Pace Ron Jacobs George Wuerthner Jeffrey Buchanan / David Ker Thomson Renaud Lambert Kevin Zeese David Macaray Evelyn Pringle Chris Genovali David Michael Green Brian J. Foley Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
June 11, 2009 Kathy Kelly / James Bovard Tristan de Bourbon Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Ralph Nader Harvey Wasserman Nicole Colson Mark Weisbrot Dan Bacher Website of the Day June 10, 2009 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine Kathy Kelly Paul Craig Roberts Rev. William E. Alberts Peter Lee Carol Miller Emily Ratner Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day June 9, 2009 Winslow T. Wheeler Mike Whitney Stan Cox Sibel Edmonds Jonathan Cook David Macaray Robert Jensen Nadia Hijab Mark Weisbrot Website of the Day June 8, 2009 John Ross Paul Craig Roberts Franklin C. Spinney Franklin Lamb Uri Avnery Jonathan Cook Eric Toussaint Jim Goodman Norman Solomon Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day June 5 -7, 200 Alexander Cockburn George Galloway Paul Craig Roberts Jennifer Loewenstein Franklin Lamb Mike Whitney Andy Worthington Missy Comley Beattie Farzana Versey Stanley Heller John V. Whitbeck Robert Weissman Lee Sustar Dave Lindorff William Blum Ernest Callenbach / Greg Moses Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Tim Stelloh Belén Fernández David Ker Thomson Karyn Strickler Christopher Brauchli Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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June 25, 2009 Republican Sex Scandal of the WeekDon't Cry for Him, Argentina!By CHARLES R. LARSON All right, so another Republican hopeful has fessed up to his sexual indiscretions. A tearful Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina, has confessed that he messed up his life, and the lives of his wife and children, because of a mistress in Argentina. Well, don’t cry for him, Argentina, but perhaps it’s best not to discuss Sanford’s crocodile tears. Isn’t this the guy who thought that Clinton should be impeached for not having sexual intercourse with an intern? Why is it that the people who shout the loudest about the sexual lapses of others turn out to be the biggest hypocrites? Wasn’t it just last week that another Republican hopeful got caught with his pants down? Nevada Senator John Ensign—also railing that Clinton needed to be impeached—confessed to similar revelations about his inability to stay monogamous. And Ensign, like Mark Sanford, had Presidential aspirations, presumably thinking that hypocrisy would be one of the de rigueur requirements that would land him in the White House. And the week before Ensign’s fall from grace? Well, it wasn’t quite the same cookie, though the contaminated dough apparently came from the same batch. David Letterman got blasted for bringing up Bristol Palin’s abstinence campaign. To be fair, poor Bristol is little more than a pawn of her politically-driven mother (also a Presidential hopeful). Yet, sadly, sad little Bristol now has to walk a tight tightrope, poster girl for the Republican right’s campaign against sex before marriage. At least pathetic little Bristol doesn’t have Levi Johnston to worry about any longer now that Levi’s gotten smart and wondered if Bristol’s baby might not be his. And the week before Bristol? Just in case you’re counting, four weeks ago it was Newt Gingrich, ersatz voice of today’s Republican Party. The Republicans love him because he actually led the attack on Clinton’s impeachment at a time when the Republican Party had only one agenda: Get Clinton. Today, the Party of Hypocrisy, similarly, has one united agenda: Get Obama. And just in case you’ve forgotten, Newt was having an affair with another woman while his wife was recovering from uterine cancer. Makes you wonder just how low these people are willing to go. And the week before Gingrich? I confess that I’m getting them confused. There are too many. Puritans are still on the prowl. Was it Senator Larry Craig, caught tap dancing in a men’s toilet? Or was it Ted Haggard, once one of the country’s leading Evangelical ministers? Does it even matter? Well, it does, in fact, because of the holier-than-thou attitude that rules the GOP. We all know that politicians who are Democrats fall at the same rate for their hidden sex lives. The difference? The false morality, the phony values of the GOP make one question if there isn’t still another reason why Republicans sink more ignominiously than Democrats. I assure you, I’ve given this serious thought. All men are created equal with certain biological needs that, in theory, make us all brothers. We are all descendants of the same man (Adam in some versions of this story; Australopithecus Africanus in others). Thus, it may be best to look at an African example in order to get to the bottom of this perplexing moral conundrum. Sani Abacha—the ruthless Nigerian leader—died of a heart attack in 1998. Or so the official medical reports report. But the man on the street in Lagos will tell you that Abacha died from an overdose of Viagra while he was romping with prostitutes. If one Viagra works, consider how great the result if you take two. Or five. Or ten. We all know that the reasons why Republicans are against universal health care in the United States is that Big Pharma has always contributed massive amounts of money to their election campaigns. Ergo, that money might evaporate if the country begins to show concern for the uninsured. (And those uninsured don’t deserve universal health care because they’re lazy and unemployed, always trying to get something for free, but I digress.) So it’s all fairly simple. Big Pharma not only supports Republican candidates with cash contributions but, also, free samples of the latest billion-dollar ED products. “Elections for erections,” you could call it. (Or possibly, the other way around.) In short, Republican politicians pop too many of those magic little pills. If one works, try two… This has to be the only rational explanation—unless it’s a matter of eugenics (Republicans have smaller brains than Democrats) but we’d better not go there. In case you doubt my conclusion—Republicans are addicted to those little pills—then remember the one Republican hopeful who admitted that he was taking all those boner uppers: Bob Dole. Charles R. Larson is Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C. His email address is clarson@american.edu. |
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