|
|
|
The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! How Cops Extort Confessions;
|
home / subscribe / donate / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
How Cops Extort Confessions;
How the U.S. “Justice System” Really WorksNinety-two per cent of felony convictions in the U.S. are obtained by plea bargains or confessions. Without them the “justice system” would grind to a halt. In an important piece in our latest newsletter, available only to subscribers, Emily Horowitz shows how totally innocent people will “confess” under police pressure, even without physical torture. Horowitz outlines the powerful case for banning confessions altogether. Also in this new edition Marcus Rediker, co-author of the legendary The Many Headed Hydra, writes of popular heroism and resistance in the favelas of Medellin, Colombia. Alexander Cockburn reports on how America’s oldest bank, patronized by the global elites, washed billions smuggled out of Russia, and how the Russians might win their money back, shaking the world’s banking system if they do so. Serge Halimi describes the real battle for the soul of Europe. Get your copy 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.
|
Today's Stories September 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Sen. Mike Gravel Vijay Prashad Ralph Nader Bill Quigley September 2, 2008 Marjorie Cohn Jonathan Cook Robert Weitzel Corey D. B. Walker John Ross Eric Walberg Judith Scherr Richard Morse B. R. Gowani Michael Greenberg Website of the Day September 1, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff C. G. Estabrook Manuel Garcia, Jr. David Macaray B. R. Gowani Saul Landau Charles Orloski Gloria La Riva Website of the Day August 30 / 31, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bill Quigley Jeffrey St. Clair Andy Worthington Deepak Tripathi Stanley Howard Dave Lindorff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Josh Schlossberg Benjamin Dangl Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Suzan Mazur Rev. Jim Rigby David Yearsely Serge Quadruppani B.R. Gowani Richard Rhames Poets' Basement Website of the Day
August 29, 2008 Mike Whitney Brian Cloughley David Ker Thomson Joanne Mariner Neve Gordon Chris Genovali Ron Jacobs Michael Donnelly August 28, 2008 Judy Gumbo Albert Paul Cantor Saul Landau / Andy Worthington Ben Terrall Leonard Peltier Niranjan Ramakrishnan Donna J. Volatile Website of the Day
August 27, 2008 Anthony DiMaggio Jordan Flaherty Ralph Nader Melissa Checker Bob Sommer Cynthia McKinney Ali Khan M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Dave Lindorff David Macaray Website of the Day
August 26, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Michael D. Yates Paul Craig Roberts Andy Worthington Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Huwaida Arraf Joseph Grosso Sheldon Richman Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day August 25, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Bill Quigley Jonathan Cook James McEnteer Uri Avnery Will Potter Robert Jensen Stephen Lendman Wajahat Ali Carl Finamore Website of the Day August 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patty O'Grady Nicole Colson Steve Conn Deepak Trapathi Robert Fantina Jonathan M. Feldman Joshua Frank Osama Qashoo Howard Lisnoff David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Christopher Brauchli Alan Farago Michael Winship Richard Rhames David Rosen Patrick B. Barr Jamie Newlin Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 22, 2008 Boris Kagarlitsky Laura Carlsen Bob Barr Marwan Bishara Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. Charles Mostoller Sumbul Ali-Karamali Keith Rosenthal John F. Miglio Website of the Day August 21, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It Ralph Nader Joanne Mariner Wajahat Ali Ron Jacobs Rostam Purzal Anthony Papa Website of the Day August 20, 2008 Michael Neumann Ray McGovern Eric Walberg Fidaa Abed Daniel Haack Mike Whitney Website of the Day August 19, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Deepak Tripathi Marwan Bishara Saul Landau William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg James Brittain Pratyush Chandra David Macaray Website of the Day August 18, 2008 Tariq Ali Gary Leupp Uri Avnery John Ross Farooq Sulehria Luis Rodriguez Manuel Garcia, Jr. Noah Baker Merrill Charles Thomson Website of the Day August 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Deepak Tripathi Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Robert Fantina Ray McGovern Nicole Colson Fatima Bhutto Jean-Luis Rocca David Michael Green Ramzi Kysia Dave Lindorff Lisa Martinovic Richard Rhames Don Santina Rannie Amiri Ramzy Baroud John Stanton Howard Lisnoff Ron Jacobs Seth Sandronsky Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
August 15, 2008 Steve Niva David Remington Michael Winship Paul Craig Roberts Farzana Versey Harvey Wasserman Felice Pace Julian Critchley Website of the Day August 14, 2008 Saul Landau / Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Reza Fiyouzat Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China Jack Bradigan Spula Patrick Irelan John Walsh Dan Bacher Website of the Day
August 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts David Remington Brian Cloughley Glen Ford Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Tom Lewis Stan Cox Alan Farago Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day August 12, 2008 Uri Avnery Anthony DiMaggio Bill Christison Eric Walberg Kate Connolly Diane Farsetta Peter Morici Thom Rutledge Lee Patton Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day August 11, 2008 Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Douglas Kammen William Willers Greg Moses Jeff Leys Cynthia McKinney Alan Farago Website of the Day August 9 / 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Bruce Jackson Kevin Young Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Robert Fantina Brendan Cooney Mark Almond Lois Gibbs Rev. William Alberts Kathy Kelly John Ross David Michael Green Bill Moyers / Ron Jacobs Richard Rhames David Yearsley Lee Sustar Brenda Norrell Ben Terrall Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 8, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia, Jr. M. Shahid Alam Andy Worthington Lawrence J. Korb David Model Alan Farago Diop Olugbala Firmin DeBrabander Website of the Day August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond William Blum Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Robert Weitzel Jacob G. Hornberger Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ace Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
|
September 3, 2008 They're Still Beating Up JournalistsForty Years in the StreetsBy HOWARD LISNOFF There is absolutely nothing as exhilarating as challenging authority and winning! I think that is why the 1960s have such an unshakable hold on me, and others who fought for civil rights, were in the antiwar movement and the women’s movement. I took on the power of the United States government and I won. It wasn’t easy, and it disrupted my entire life, but it taught me many lessons about activism and exactly what confronting enormous power means. The e-mail I received, the day after Barack Obama was nominated as the candidate for president of the Democratic Party, from the group The World Can’t Wait, described the difficulty antiwar protesters were experiencing dealing with the police and the low numbers of demonstrators who had turned out to confront the neoliberal message of the convention in Denver. By the convention’s end three thousand protesters finally marched in the streets of that city. The distance from Denver in time and miles is so long from where I am today in terms of activism. The heady days of the 60s and early 70s when everything seemed possible in terms of personal and political change often seem like they are the memories from another life. There is a story about two activists who meet at the end of the decade of the 1970s. One friend had remained active, while the other had moved away from activism and had immersed herself in a career. The former activist was embarrassed by the commitment of her old friend, finding it implausible that someone would remain involved in political action so long after it had become unfashionable, and consumerism and the various movements of self-exploration had become so prevalent. I remained an activist. I became involved in the movement to grant war resisters amnesty during the Carter administration. Having been a war resister during the Vietnam War, I benefited directly from Carter’s amnesty; being one of only several thousand out of tens of thousands who received upgraded discharges. The entire amnesty program was flawed and was a reflection of the society’s hostility to those who had opposed the war. Draft resisters were treated more cordially than their counterparts who had been in the military. When I joined the antinuclear movement in the early 1980s I knew something had radically changed in the nature of activism. Although I met some very fine people along the way, something had changed. An activist in his or her thirties no longer spent entire days with fellow activists, as had been the case during the 1960s and the early 1970s. People had their individual and private lives and went home to their families after organizing meetings or a demonstration. While camaraderie was certainly present in the nuclear freeze movement, there was something missing which could never again be reclaimed. The nuclear freeze movement was the first movement that I had been involved in that had intrinsic limitations. The group I belonged to in Rhode Island spent a great amount of time canvassing huge swaths of neighborhoods collecting signatures for a petition that had absolutely no force whatsoever. Indeed, Ronald Reagan would completely ignore the movement and actually expand the country’s military while pursuing the policy of low-intensity warfare in Central America. In Nicaragua this type of war would devastate the country and remove the Sandinistas from power. During Reagan’s presidency a huge fault line formed in the way I began to view activism and some of the fellow activists I knew. For the first time I began to meet many activists whose religious beliefs motivated them. While there had always been a powerful and positive religious presence in antiwar activism during the Vietnam War, much of my activism now brought me in direct contact with people whose activism was driven by their religious beliefs. Nothing illustrated the latter better than my movement between pro-abortion groups and anti-death penalty activism. One week would find me escorting at a local women’s health clinic, and the next meeting at the main offices of a major religious denomination in Rhode Island to work against attempts to try to put the death penalty on the ballot as a referendum in a state that had no death penalty. I had become used to the freewheeling secular activism and activists of the 1960s; however, I maintained cordial relationships with people from both groups. Among my heroes is the late Abbie Hoffman who typified what an activist meant to me. I knew Abbie enough to say hello to him as we passed in the Law Commune located on Broadway in New York City. Abbie used the commune throughout his years as an activist, and especially for his defense during the trial of the Chicago Eight. I needed the commune when I became a resister to the Vietnam War. It was Abbie’s book, Steal This Book that introduced me to the Law Commune. Abbie wrote a great essay, “The Young Must Be There.” In it he rightly held that any movement in the U.S. must be driven by the presence and energy of young activists. Today, the relentless draw of consumerism and the absence of the threat of conscription has seen only small numbers of the young protest. In addition, the baby boom, a period of relative economic affluence, and the reaction to the staid conventions of the 1950s all helped to propel the movements of the 1960s and early 1970s. When the Soviet Union crumbled, and the U.S. became the sole superpower, anything but the end of history ensued. The first Gulf War was a statement by President George H.W. Bush that force would prevail where diplomacy would not even be attempted. The war, one operation of which was described as a “turkey shoot” by a U.S. pilot, was the opening salvo of the unquestioned military might of the U.S. and its shameless use of it. A decade of sanctions against Iraq followed, killing well over one hundred thousand Iraqis who most often had nothing to do with the regime of Saddam Hussein. The torch of global power was passed from the neoconservative Bush to the neoliberal Clinton who maintained the same military posture toward Iraq, while making it harder for Americans on the edge of a global economy to make ends meet and making it easier to dispose of those in the prison system who were expendable within that economic system. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the reign of George W. Bush as president! To a 60s person his administration was a kind of lethal and slow-acting poison. The last eight years have been as if chapters were lifted directly out of Orwell’s 1984! The endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq! The attacks against the civil liberties of ordinary Americans! It is as if the fiendish plan hatched by Osama bin Laden had extended after September 11, 2001. But it was officials of the U.S. government who were conducting an experiment in the destruction of what is left of democratic traditions and institutions in the U.S. Even the environment has been made to suffer by these enemies of the nation! Each Saturday at noon I gather with a few folks in front of the town hall in a small town in western Massachusetts. Usually three or five people show up at the spot for the vigil where its first participant has been standing weekly since the Iraq War began in March 2003. I go each week out of habit. Not a bad habit, but a habit nonetheless. I have been doing this for so long that it seems like second nature now. Most people driving or walking by voice their support for our action. A few express their anger through their middle fingers. It is a long, long way from the streets of Denver or Minneapolis, but these are the streets nevertheless. A November victory by John McCain is inconceivable to me, but not impossible. A glimpse of a McCain presidency has been the outrageous beating of the press covering the Republican National Convention! Clear echoes of the Democratic National Convention of 1968! November’s choice will be between a neoconservative and a neoliberal. A neoconservative will inevitably mean the beginning of the end for many activists like myself who have held on to the illusion of a reformed society for so many, many years! A neoliberal will mean continued militarism on the part of the U.S. government, environmental destruction, but at perhaps a slower pace, and a chance at improved prospects for a saner Supreme Court. No third party has yet to build a sustained movement during my lifetime. Their flash in the pan candidates, while more desirable than the candidates of the two major parties, have no chance of winning. Huge corporations call the tune in the electoral system. Yogi Berra was perhaps the most prescient of unintentional political observers when he said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Howard Lisnoff is an educator and freelance writer. He is working on a novel about the 1960s. He can be reached at howielisnoff@gmail.com.
|
Now Available from CounterPunch Books! The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
RED STATE REBELS:
Edited by  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!  Click Here to Buy! Click Here for Dates & Venues Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz  Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order! How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism     
    
 Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont               CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed                   |
