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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 July 6, 2009 Patrick Cockburn 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 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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July 6, 2009 "We Want to Protect Them From the Enemy"Operation Khanjar BeginsBy GARY LEUPP Operation Khanjar or “Strike of the Sword” in Helmand province is the first major operation under President Obama’s strategy to “stabilize” Afghanistan as he adds 21,000 more U.S. troops. Marine spokesman Capt. Bill Pelletier explains with no apparent sense of irony that the operation aims to show “the Afghan people that when we come in we are going to stay long enough to set up their own institutions. We do not want people of Helmand province to see us as an enemy, we want to protect them from the enemy,” he adds. The fact is, the Taliban so expeditiously toppled in 2001 were able to gradually reestablish their own institutions at the local level in much of the country where they are not necessarily seen as the enemy and where foreign soldiers are likely viewed at minimum with suspicion. “The US has totally lost control of all the east,” says Gilles Dorronsoro, a specialist on Afghanistan at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adding that the Taliban already control the majority of the population in the south. President Hamid Karzai is often referred to as “the mayor of Kabul” while the west and north are run by Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara warlords of the Northern Alliance. U.S. military officers, frustrated with lack of success, suggest that the war cannot be won by military means alone but by economic development and political reform. But the dirty little secret here is that to overthrow the Taliban the U.S. relied on those Northern Alliance warlords who had ripped the country apart during their era of misrule which lasted from the fall of the pro-Soviet regime in 1993 to the establishment of the Taliban regime in 1996. They don’t want political or social reform and their idea of economic development is opium and human trafficking. Karzai for his part has been obliged to wheel and deal with them and his own brother has been implicated in the narcotics trade. The Obama administration is not happy with him and would prefer another candidate win the upcoming presidential election but it looks as though Karzai may have it sewn up. The economic development the generals talk about, including gas pipeline construction, requires stability. (Helmand is one of the provinces through which the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is scheduled to run). But Afghanistan, like Iraq, was destabilized precisely by a U.S. attack and occupation in the first place. More ominously, Pakistan been destabilized by the invasion of the next-door country. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen told Congress last month that successes against the Taliban in Afghanistan “may only push them deeper into Pakistan,” admitting, “we may end up further destabilizing Pakistan without providing substantial lasting improvements in Afghanistan.” Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, replying to a question from a reporter in Pakistan about a new influx of refugees from Afghanistan as a result of the surge of 21,000 new troops in that country, declared in early June: “I don’t want to be alarmist here, but I’m predicting some massive influx. There are concerns that there may be some spillover as there was in the past.” That these comments are made almost cavalierly in passing should cause alarm. All that the “Coalition” campaign against the Afghan Taliban has accomplished in eight years, aside from reviving the Afghan opium trade, is to generate a second Taliban in Pakistan, knock off balance the world’s second most populous Muslim country, divert the Pakistani Army from the border with India as the U.S. consolidates its alliance with the emerging South Asian “superpower,” kill over 2000 Pakistani soldiers and 7000 Pakistani militants and produce over two million Pakistani refugees. It has not destroyed al-Qaeda, which was a loose-knit anomalous outfit to begin with and has (apparently) merely found new hosts across the border. The real al-Qaeda operatives are laughing at the U.S. effort in “Af-Pak” which simply boosts their case that the U.S. is waging war on Islam, especially the most simple and devout. The Osama bin Ladens and Ayman al-Zawahiris are far more sophisticated than the illiterate Mullah Omars and Baitullah Mehsuds; theirs is a global vision of a worldwide caliphate, while the latter are Sunni fundamentalist Pashtun nationalists more interested in imposing traditional norms locally than changing the world or confronting the U.S. globally. The former know how to use both the latter and to provoke the U.S. leaders to achieve their general open-ended objective: to exacerbate the conflict between the U.S. and Muslims everywhere. In retrospect, whether as a result of brilliant planning or mere happenstance, the results of the 9-11 attacks can hardly have been more advantageous from the al-Qaeda point of view. Bin Laden plotted 9-11 from Afghanistan, trusting that the Pashtunwali code of hospitality to guests would involve his hosts in the attack and make them targets of U.S. retaliation. This worked fine; Afghanistan was bombed, the Talibs toppled but still the strongest political force in the country, capable of regrouping and tying down the foreign occupying forces. Karzai has offered for many months to negotiate with Mullah Omar, who dismisses such gestures as admissions of weakness. A critical mass of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders was able to flee into Pakistan, enjoy hospitality and protection, and build local organization even as outrage at U.S. drone attacks bolstered such organizing efforts. There are now some 2000 Tehreek-e- Taliban fighters in South Waziristan alone, and a smaller force was able to take over the Swat Valley. It is as though the U.S. delivered Osama a new friend, Baitullah Mehsuh, on a golden platter. It is as though pathologically anti-Muslim people in the State Department were imagining possible scenarios of inflicting pain on Muslim societies and cooperating with bin Laden in involving the U.S. in an ongoing Crusade. They opted for this one: provoke the Pashtuns, a nation of 40 million straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan, in one of the most backward, devoutly Muslim, and least governed regions of the planet---in other words, where conditions entirely favor local tribesmen and jihadis of all types while disadvantaging state forces and foreign troops. (The Pakistani Army has been badly bloodied, the Afghan National Army remains largely a concept.) Retired CIA analyst Bruce O. Riedel, who chaired a special interagency committee to develop President Obama’s policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the Council on Foreign Relations last month:
More and more frequently, in increasingly shrill tones, State Department and Pentagon officials have acknowledged “the existential threat” to Pakistan of “the continuing advances” of the Taliban in the country. But they act as though it were someone else’s fault. In fact Washington can only blame itself. By sending off young men and women, brainwashed with the view that they are in Afghanistan to protect people from “enemies” and to help build “institutions” that the Afghans couldn’t build if left to their own devices; by imposing its simplistic buttheaded categories on the real world and failing to distinguish between simple ideologues and terrorists; by routinely bombing civilians; it has not only mired itself in another Vietnam (which was indeed the Soviets’ Vietnam) but provoked the possible Talibanization of a key ally of 173 million people. It is hard to see the logic in this, even from a neocon point of view. If the objective is to create a jihadist state with nuclear weapons, which Israel would immediately define as its main “existential threat” and likely attack with its own nukes, thus provoking World War III, then the plan is perhaps on schedule. But I don’t think that’s Obama’s intention. The fact that Holbrooke is apparently pursuing negotiations with some rebel leaders; that Obama is wavering on further troop increases; and that Gen. David McKiernan was removed from his position as top commander suggest that policy is in flux and that there is division in the leadership about how to proceed in Afghanistan. This “largest military operation since the fall of 2001” is perhaps a test to see whether current U.S. counterinsurgency strategy can diminish the Taliban’s strength in Helmand. So far the militants are avoiding combat and simply disappearing among the masses. According to AP: Haji Akhtar Mohammad, from Gereshk village now living in Helmand’s capital of Lashkar Gah, said the U.S.-led force will not have community support in the region weary of any foreign interference. “It is difficult to tell who is Taliban and who is civilians,” Mohammad said. “They all have the same face, same beard and same turban,” he said. “It is very difficult to defeat them.” Let us say they are not defeated, either in Afghanistan or Pakistan, by current strategies---a likely bet. They may either maintain their local-regional focus or be won over increasingly to an al-Qaeda global jihadist agenda. None of this is happening in a vacuum. Most Pashtun peasants may be illiterate but they will hear about what is happening on the West Bank and in Gaza in the coming months, and they will hear about it if/when Israel or the U.S. attacks Iran. These larger matters may affect their perception of the foreign troops in their midst. Capt. Bill Pelletier, who wants the people of Helmand to see him not as an enemy but someone protecting them from the enemy, someone who wants to help them build their institutions, may not be thinking about this broader picture. Few U.S. military officers understand why there is massive hatred for the U.S. government and military in the world and their training does not encourage critical thinking about this question. “…when we come in we are going to stay long enough to set up their own institutions.” The confusion there about what’s “theirs” and “ours” helps explain the indignation and hatred, and the failure in Afghanistan to date, and bodes an inglorious outlook for Operation Strike of the Sword. Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
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