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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! How Cops Extort Confessions;
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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.
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Today's Stories August 23 / 4, 2008 Nicole Colson 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
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Weekend Edition The Politics of Public Lands RanchingWestern Turf WarsBy JAMIE NEWLIN For those interested in understanding and maybe influencing the management of public lands, a new and so far under-appreciated resource is making its way onto the bookshelves. It’s Western Turf, Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching, by Mike Hudak. Western Turf Wars is a window into the lives of individuals dedicated to improving public lands management, through the medium of interviews with scientists, activists and public lands agency personnel. Although the book focuses on grazing issues, anyone interested in the subject of reformers versus government agencies, or reformers versus the vested interests and traditions that hide behind government agencies, should find interest in reading Western Turf Wars. The interviews provide insight into the relationships between both citizen-activists and concerned government personnel, and the agencies that manage US public lands. Through the interviews, we get a sense of the relationship between the agencies and the resource users that in a de facto sense manage the agency personnel and their bosses. Western Turf Wars shows us paths of influence. It shows why the more agencies change, the more they pin up the green bunting, the more things stay the same. These insights are applicable to the politics of all resources on public lands, -sheep, lumber, gravel, recreational uses, you name it. The interviews with now-retired agency personnel, -some retired a bit early because of their efforts to manage for the resources instead of for livestock interests, are particularly telling. It should be noted that these commentaries are likely to be relevant and useful for generations to come. The comments of out-going range managers will give new activists a lifetime of experience to draw upon, experience that will be every bit as useful twenty years from now as it was yesterday. Management, at least for the better, changes slowly on public lands. But Western Turf Wars isn’t just tales from the last of the agency curmudgeons. It also features interviews with citizen activists, who in their turn find out why the agency personnel are so slow and so few to jump on the reform bandwagon. From social and political pressure to PR front groups and in some cases to death threats, established resource users are quick to defend their interests against reformers of either the governmental or citizen stripe. If you’re going to be idealistic enough to tackle a subject like public lands resource abuse, you need to be cynical enough to know when everything presented to you by both the resource users and the managing agencies is pure cow manure. It can get downright surreal, the layers of denial. Along these lines I was particularly struck by Julian Hatch’s interview. Julian lives in rural Utah. He recounts, rather starkly and unflinchingly, everything from control of local government and federal agencies by livestock interests to the shooting of his dog by a rancher, apparently in revenge for complaining about cattle being let into Hatch’s vegetable patch. This one interview is worth the price of the book, and there are many good interviews. Perhaps more than most conservation issues, the public lands grazing issue goes in and out of fashion, and then stays out of fashion. It always suffers as an issue in terms of its accessibility to the public, compared to obvious catastrophes like clear-cut forests or the impending extinction of spectacular animals. Thus the industry is easier to protect with PR structures than other resource extraction industries. Yet grazing is the dominant use of the USA’s western public lands, and arguably the dominant influence on the public lands environment in terms of habitat degradation. Roughly 80 percent of federal public land in the west is grazed. Livestock have shaped the western habitat so completely that we now perceive degraded states as natural. Thus Western Turf Wars is a welcome reminder, a window into an issue to which most of us are blind. It’s a great book to browse. Opening it is like going to a public land management fiesta, of the reformist variety to be sure, and finding everyone you had hoped to talk to all under one roof. The more I look through this book, the more I am grateful that someone took the time to collect this wealth of experience and make it available to all of us. Without Hudak’s efforts, the experience of all the individuals interviewed would surely have been lost. Efforts to reign in the negative effects of the livestock industry have so far been limited in results. The tide of rangeland improvement may even be running out again in this age of agency-mandated “categorical exclusions” from environmental protections, of congressional trimming of environmental laws, of professional ranching apologists, of rising food prices, and climate change. Too few people turn their attention to this issue. So far, as activist Steve Johnson put it while being interviewed for Western Turf Wars: “ Progress has been very slow. So slow, in fact, that we can’t really afford it.” Read the book, and get inspired to reverse the decline. Jamie Newlin lives in El Paso, Texas.
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