home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

Inside Iraq's Resistance
HOT HOT HOT New CounterPunch Print Edition!

Meet actual Iraqis and not just Western caricatures. Laith al-Saud interviews top man in Iraq's national resistance. It's not just Abu Ghraib and bids to kill Fidel Castro. Torture and assassination are integral parts of America's imperial machine. Don't miss Andrew Wimmer's searing journey into the soul of a nation that tortures as a way of life. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the killing of General Kassem. PLUS Sam Sillen's rollicking exhumation of Edmund Wilson as Malthusian Trostskyite. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

CounterPunch Writer Daniel Wolff in Portland on Race, Music and Ashbury Park

Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories

October 11, 2005

Roger Morris / Steve Schmidt
Strategic Demands of the 21st Century

October 10, 2005

Cindy and Craig Corrie
Rachel's Words Live

Joshua Frank
Washington's War Dems

Gideon Levy
The Beautiful Life Without Arafat

Alan Wallis
The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square

Mickey Z.
In Defense of Liars

CounterPunch News Service
Vermont Independence Convention

Paul Craig Roberts
The Police State is Closer Than You Think

Website of the Day
Dylan's Chronicles

 

October 8 / 9, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People

Ralph Nader
Katrina and the Growls of Greed

Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case

Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream

Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas

Lenni Brenner
The Millions More Movement and Zionism

Nikolas Kozloff
Bird Flu and Bush

Brian Cloughley
Training Soldiers in Iraq

Alice Slater
A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl?

John Gautreaux
A View from Cajun Country

Fred Gardner
Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Leveethan Approach

M.G. Piety
Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard

Tom Gorman
The Hitchens Doctrine

Mike Whitney
Bunker Days with George

Aseem Shrivastava
Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan

Ben Tripp
Religion, an Epistle

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Ford

 

October 7, 2005

Larry Johnson
The Plame Case: the Real Issues

Will Youmans
Why Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus

Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?

Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison

Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle

Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs

Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir

Website of the Day
FBI Witchhunt


October 6, 2005

P. Sainath
"Take That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal Idol Again

Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged

Paul Craig Roberts
Blundering into Syria

Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion

Dave Lindorff
Easy Money in the Big Easy

Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell

M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason

Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot

Robert Pollin
Is the Dollar Still Falling?

 

October 5, 2005

Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines

Robert Jensen
Is Bush a Racist?

Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire

Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad"

Dave Zirin
Barry Bonds Laughs Last

Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over

Alan Maass
Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work

 

October 4, 2005

Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.

Mike Roselle
Houston, You've Got a Problem

Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers

John Chuckman
War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say

Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys

Mickey Z.
An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski

Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims

Gary Leupp
An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History

Website of the Day
Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan

 

October 3, 2005

Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi Rice: Gunslinger

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Seth Sandronsky
The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare

 

October 1 / 2, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze

Dave Marsh
A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan

Ralph Nader
Gutless, Spineless and Clueless

Flavia Alaya
Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza

Uri Avnery
The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory

Chris Kutalik
The Battle at Northwest Airlines

Greg Moses
Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues

Brian J. Foley
I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet

Nicole Colson
Hunger Strike at Gitmo

Ray McGovern
Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility

Fred Gardner
Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit

Justin Felux
Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby!

Will Youmans
"Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine

Mike Ferner
What Else Shall We Do?

David Krieger
The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant

Agustin Velloso
Samson Returns to Gaza

Saul Landau
The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema

Ben Tripp
Right Down the Middle

Poets Basement
Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Holler If Ya Hear Me

 

September 30, 2005

Mary Geddry
Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars

Dave Lindorff
Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time

Gregory Wilpert
"The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America"

Benjamin Dangl
"Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo

James McMurtry
We Can't Make It Here Anymore

T.R. Johnson
Return to the Ninth Ward

 

September 29, 2005

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America

Carl G. Estabrook
Obama the Enabler

Ramzy Baroud
Rhetoric and Reality of War

Dave Lindorff
What Opposition Party?

Mike Whitney
Brownie's Comic Opera

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
What Noble Cause?

Gary Handschumacher
Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan

Winslow T. Wheeler
No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans

 

September 28, 2005

Dr. Eyad Serraj
Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like

William A. Cook
Bush's Security Barrier

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Invention of Porno Torture

Mike Whitney
Apartheid Justice in America

Joshua Frank
Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home?

CounterPunch Wire
New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters

Chris Genovali
Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest

Linn Washington, Jr.
White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top

 

September 27, 2005

Forrest Hylton
Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement

Jason Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist

Jennifer K. Harbury
Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration

Ray McGovern
Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent?

Mike Ferner
Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon

Antony Loewenstein
When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia

Harry Browne
Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms

 

September 26, 2005

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend

Joshua Frank
Democrats Flee Peace Protests

Lamis Andoni
The Railroading of Taysir Alony

Mike Marqusee
Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
They Can't Fool Us Anymore

Ron Jacobs
A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement

Norman Solomon
The Media and the Antiwar Movement

John Chuckman
Bush in a Bottle

Paul Craig Roberts
America is Running Out of Time

 

September 24 / 25, 2005

Kathy and Bill Christison
Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage

Ralph Nader
Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina

Saul Landau
The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada

Greg Moses
A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau

Roger Burbach
Hugo Chavez's Mission

Vijay Prashad
America's Shame

Laura Carlsen
After NAFTA

Robert Fisk
When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful

Dave Lindorff
A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They?

Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor
Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration

Maj. Anthony Milavic
The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti: the Time for Action is Now

 

September 23, 2005

CounterPunch News Service
In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly

Diane Farsetta
Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks

Robert Sandels
Militarizing the Market

Christopher Brauchli
Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations

Alan Farago
Bird Flu Takes Flight

Dave Zirin
When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968

Maxine Conant
A Simple Test for Bush

David Price
Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering

 

September 22, 2005

Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield
Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis: This Government has No Authority

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Thinking is Religious Freedom

Lucia Dailey
Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One

Mokhiber / Weissman
Are You a Speed Freak?

Russell D. Hoffman
The Nukes in Rita's Path

Kona Lowell
God's Hurricane?

Jason Leopold
GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina

Website of the Day
Robert Pollin on the Global Economy

 

September 21, 2005

Jorge Mariscal
Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen?

Linda S. Heard
Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak

Joshua Frank
NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan

Eric Ruder
"The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia

Pierre Tristam
The Struts and Bull Presidency

Dave Lindorff
The Real Story of the German Elections

Mike Ferner
Sit Down in DC

Missy Comley Beattie
Bush's Katrina Bling Bling

Jeffrey St. Clair
W Marks the Spot

Website of the Day
New Orleans: Survivor Stories

 

September 20, 2005

Steve Breyman
Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice

George Galloway
Et Tu, Greg Palast?

Patrick Cockburn
What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion?

M. Shahid Alam
Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out?

Mike Whitney
The Gitmo Hunger Strikers

Winslow T. Wheeler
It's Not Rocket Science

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit

Paul Craig Roberts
Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?

 

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

October 11, 2005

No Jobs, No Healthcare, No Justice

New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again!

By BILL QUIGLEY

They are doing it again! My wife and I spent five days and four nights in a hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. We saw people floating dead in the water. We watched people die waiting for evacuation to places with food, water, and electricity. We were rescued by boat and waited for an open pickup truck to take us and dozens of others on a rainy drive to the underpass where thousands of others waited for a bus ride to who knows where. You saw the people left behind. The poor, the sick, the disabled, the prisoners, the low-wage workers of New Orleans, were all left behind in the evacuation. Now that New Orleans is re-opening for some, the same people are being left behind again.

When those in power close the public schools, close public housing, fire people from their jobs, refuse to provide access to affordable public healthcare, and close off all avenues for justice, it is not necessary to erect a sign outside of New Orleans saying "Poor People Not Allowed To Return." People cannot come back in these circumstances and that is exactly what is happening.

There are 28,000 people still living in shelters in Louisiana. There are 38,000 public housing apartments in New Orleans, many in good physical condition. None have been reopened. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated that 112,000 low-income homes in New Orleans were damaged by the hurricane. Yet, local, state and federal authorities are not committed to re-opening public housing. Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker (R-LA) said, after the hurricane, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

New Orleans public schools enrolled about 60,000 children before the hurricane. The school board president now estimates that no schools on the city's east bank, where the overwhelming majority of people live, will reopen this academic school year. Every one of the 13 public schools on the mostly-dry west bank of New Orleans was changed into charter schools in an afternoon meeting a few days ago. A member of the Louisiana state board of education estimated that at most 10,000 students will attend public schools in New Orleans this academic year.

The City of New Orleans laid off 3,000 workers. The public school system laid off thousands of its workers. The Archdiocese of New Orleans laid off 800 workers from its central staff and countless hundreds of others from its parish schools. The Housing Authority has laid off its workers. The St. Bernard Sheriff's Office laid off half of its workers.

Renters in New Orleans are returning to find their furniture on the street and strangers living in their apartments at higher rents ­ despite an order by the Governor that no one can be evicted before October 25. Rent in the dry areas have doubled and tripled.

Environmental chemist Wilma Subra cautions that earth and air in the New Orleans area appear to be heavily polluted with heavy metal and organic contaminants from more than 40 oil spills and extensive mold. The people, Subra stated, are subject to "double insult ­ the chemical insult from the sludge and biological insult from the mold." Homes built on the Agriculture Street landfill ­ a federal toxic site ­ stewed for weeks in floodwaters.

Yet, the future of Charity Hospital of New Orleans, the primary place for free comprehensive medical care in the state of Louisiana, is under furious debate and discussion and may never re-open again. Right now, free public healthcare is being provided by volunteers at grassroots free clinics like Common Ground ­ a wonderful and much needed effort but not a substitute for public healthcare.

The jails and prisons are full and staying full. Despite orders to release prisoners, state and local corrections officials are not releasing them unless someone can transport them out of town. Lawyers have to file lawsuits to force authorities to release people from prison who have already served all of their sentences! Judges are setting $100,000 bonds for people who steal beer out of a vacant house, while landlords break the law with impunity. People arrested before and after the hurricane have not even been formally charged by the prosecutor. Because the evidence room is under water, part of the police force is discredited, and witnesses are scattered around the country, everyone knows few will ever see a trial, yet timid judges are reluctant to follow the constitution and laws and release them on reasonable bond.

People are making serious money in this hurricane but not the working and poor people who built and maintained New Orleans. President Bush lifted the requirement that jobs re-building the Gulf Coast pay a living wage. The Small Business Administration has received 1.6 million disaster loan applications and has approved 9 in Louisiana. A US Senator reported that maintenance workers at the Superdome are being replaced by out of town workers who will work for less money and no benefits. He also reported that seventy-five Louisiana electricians at the Naval Air Station are being replaced by workers from Kellogg Brown and Root ­ a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Take it to the courts, you say? The Louisiana Supreme Court has been closed since the hurricane and is not due to re-open until at least October 25, 2005. While Texas and Mississippi have enacted special rules to allow out of state lawyers to come and help people out, the Louisiana Supreme court has not. Nearly every person victimized by the hurricane has a price-gouging story. Yet, the Louisiana Attorney General has filed exactly one suit for price-gouging ­ against a campground. Likewise, the US attorney has prosecuted 3 people for wrongfully seeking $2000 FEMA checks.

No schools. No low-income apartments. No jobs. No healthcare. No justice.

A final example? You can fly on a plane into New Orleans, but you cannot take a bus. Greyhound does not service New Orleans at this time.

You saw the people who were left behind last time. The same people are being left behind all over again. You raised hell about the people left behind last time. Please do it again.

Bill Quigley is a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans where he directs the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center and the Law Clinic and teaches Law and Poverty. Bill can be reached at duprestars@yahoo.com











 


 

 

 











 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 






 

 

 

 



CLARIFICATION

ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH

We published an article entitled "A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the "Website").

Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.

As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.

We are pleased to clarify the position.

August 17, 2005



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming in the Fall
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case Against Israel
By Michael Neumann

Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

WHAT'S INSIDE
Grand Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror

by Jeffrey St. Clair