home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

New Exposés in Special Print Edition of CounterPunch CIA's Overthrow Plans for Iran Agency musters Swiftboat vets, pumps funding into destabilization program aimed at Teheran. Trish Schuh reveals how White House approves race-baiting smears of Islam. Remember how Leadbelly got ripped off by Lomax, how Louis Armstrong's agent got richer than his most famous client? The rip-offs never die. Fred Wilhelms narrates how artists and musicians are being shafted in the age of the internet. Meet the real Judge John Roberts, serf for big business. Cockburn and St Clair dissect the Court's new nominee. Tailhook vet and self-proclaimed Tom Cruise model bites dust in Pentagon scandal: a defense industry parable. St. Clair on Duke Cunningham's Crash Landing. 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's Hot New T-Shirts for Women! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories July 28, 2005 Amina Mire Pigmentation and Empire: the Emerging Skin-Whitening Industry July 27, 2005 Roger Morris The Source Beyond Rove: Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal Gary Leupp Is Iran Being Set Up? Paul Craig Roberts US Falling Behind Across the Board Jackie Corr Class War on the Ruby River: the Billionaire with His Foot in His Mouth Mike Whitney The Coming End of the Housing Bubble Dave Zirin Why Lance Armstrong Must Break with Bush Christopher Bradley Why I Have Trouble Reading the News Norman Solomon Thomas Friedman, Liberal Sadist? Website of the Day Stormin' Norman   July 26, 2005 Suren Pillay The Enemy Within: When the "Other" is One of "Us" JoAnn Wypijewski Fission and Fizzle in Chicago: SEIU and Teamsters Quit the AFL Patrick Cockburn Iraq: the Unwinnable War David Anderson When the Greatest Outrage is the Lack of Outrage: NYC's Subway Searches Joshua Frank Hillary Clinton: Outflanking Bush from the Right Lenni Brenner Biography as Wish-Fulfillment: Jefferson, Hitchens and Atheism David Swanson Nuking Native Land   July 25, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts China-Mart Takes Over M. Shahid Alam Terrorism: America Defines Its Targets Uri Avnery March of the Orange Shirts Stan Cox Kreationism in Kansas Norman Solomon "Wagging the Puppy" Ramzy Baroud London Bombings: Barbaric, But Not Unexpected Mickey Z. No Gun Ri: 55 Years Later Website of the Day The Birth of a Hummingbird in 15 Images   July 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Islamo-Anarchs or Islamo-Fascists? Tariq Ali The War Comes Home Robert Fisk Something Happened Dave Lindorff Return of the Academic Witch Hunts Ricardo Alarcón Kidnapping in Miami: the UN, the US and the Cuban 5 Col. Dan Smith Living in a Twilight Zone: Troop Strength, Recruitment and the Draft Brian Cloughley The Pentagon's China Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese Growing Republican Opposition to Iraq War Bill Quigley Harrowing Hours in Haiti Fred Gardner The Reverberations of Raich Rep. Ron Paul The Patriot Act is a Threat to Liberty Joshua Frank Framing Abortion: Gonadal Politics and the Democrats Shivali Tukdeo Project Mumbai Makeover: Casualties of Development Gilad Atzmon Blair's "Evil Ideology" James Petras Baghdad: Barbarism and Civilization (a Fiction) Ben Tripp When Being American Was Fun Poets' Basement Krieger, Louise, Buknatski, Albert and Engel Website of the Weekend Remember the West Memphis 3 July 22, 2005 Heather Gray Home Grown Axis of Evil: Corp. Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott Decision David Domke The American Press and Credibility Lance Selfa Battle of the Insiders: No Heroes in the Plame Leak Scandal JoAnn Wypijewski Is This Really an "Insurgency" to Shake Up the Labor Movement?   July 21, 2005 Rose Ann DeMoro The Top 10 Problems with the "Crisis" in the Labor Movement William Blum London: Another Casualty in the War on Terror J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Whites Need to Learn Something: Dixie is Everywhere Christopher Brauchli Strange Affairs: Liberals and Alberto Gonzales Joshua Frank Plame Blame Game: the 5 Ws Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti's Elections: Time for a Reality Check Patrick Cockburn The True, Terrible State of Iraq and the Link to London Website of the Day Who Blew Up the Murrah Building?     July 20, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judge Roberts: Business as Usual Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Red Christmas Ray McGovern Did Dick Finger Valerie?: the Hand of Cheney Chris Floyd Judge Dread: John Roberts and the "Enemy Combatants" Uri Avnery "Silence is Filth" Dave Lindorff Westmoreland's Body Count Goes Up by One Norman Solomon Gen. Westmoreland's Death Wish Bill Quigley Travels in Haiti with a Wanted Priest       July 19, 2005 Tariq Ali An Isolated Regime John Ross Jihad Meets G-8 Davey D. More Clear Channel Censorship: "Don't F--K Around with Tha Police" Greg Weiher Muzzling Saddam: the Old Bait-and-Switch in Iraqi Jurisprudence Brian McKinlay An "Arse Licker" Goes to Washington: John Howard's Grand Tour Norman Solomon Nukes for India; Threats for Iran Dave Lindorff Get Back to Where We Once Belonged Bill Christison Bush's Itinerary: First Stop Syria, Next Stop Iran Joshua Frank Laura's Justice?: Meet Edith Brown Clement   July 18, 2005 Joshua Frank An Interview with Ward Churchill M. Shahid Alam A Muslim Problem: Did Thomas Friedman Flunk History? Jude Wanniski Memo to Patrick Fitzgerald Ron Jacobs A Weekend to Stop the War Mike Whitney The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station William MacDougall From "Bring It On" to "London Can Take It" Seth Sandronsky Temporary Recovery: New Frontiers in Labor Flexibility Richard Lichtman The Consolations of George Lakoff Paul Craig Roberts Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars? Website of the Weekend Novels of the Neo-Cons   July 15 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Don't You Dare Call It Treason Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton Paul Craig Roberts Economic Treason Harry Browne "What They Do to Us, They Will Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron A Warning from Israel Andrew Rubin End of the Enlightenment: an Open Letter to Stephen Plaut Patrick Cockburn Iraq's Ghost Battalions J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Changes in Selma: Standing Up to Racism in the South Fred Gardner A Professional Bust Christopher Brauchli An Olympic Feat: How to "Double" Aid with No New Money Chris Floyd The Great Iraq Oil Giveaway Ben Tripp The Dark Incontinent Col. Dan Smith General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked Jason Leopold What Did Rove Say and When Did He Say It? Jack Random Miller Time Norman Solomon War and Venture Capitalism George Ochenski Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All! Website of the Weekend Vote for CounterPuncher David Vest     July 14, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton Subcomandante Marcos This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona Dave Lindorff No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State Joshua Frank Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA Jude Wanniski Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove? Dave Zirin Storming the Castle Kevin Zeese Exit Strategy: Within Reach? Robert Jensen War Myths and the Press Reza Fiyouzat A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji Carol Norris Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged Website of the Day Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher   July 13, 2005 Brian Cloughley Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq George Galloway We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop Carlos Fierro A Supreme Waste of Time Sarah Knopp Hate on the Border Norman Solomon "Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors Mickey Z. Water on the Brain Jim Minick The Right Tree in the Right Place Pat Williams American Indian Education for All Andrew N. Rubin Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set" Website of the Day "London's Burning": the Mikey Mix     July 12, 2005 Laith al-Saud Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement Kara N. Tina "This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield William A. Cook The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This? Jack Bratich 2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma Amina Mire The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others Dick J. Reavis Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke Kevin Zeese Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets Paul Craig Roberts No-Think Nation Website of the Day Coke Gags Indian Artist     July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander Cockburn After the Bombings Uri Avnery War of the Colors in Israel Sheldon Rampton Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London Bill Christison Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement? Robert Fisk Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed Stephen Winspear Collateral Damage in London? Saul Landau Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken Behrooz Ghamari Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem Karl Beitel False Promises and Real Debt Relief Brian Concannon, Jr. Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires Fred Gardner Sentencing Season John Whitlow And What Does the Market Say? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us? Lila Rajiva Witches and Bastards Laura Carlsen CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities Jackie Corr Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket Dave Lindorff "My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter" N. D. Jayaprakash Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference Seth Sandronsky Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq Norman Madarasz The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party Ben Tripp The Inevitability of George W. Bush Poets' Basement Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel Website of the Weekend The Mother of All Enemies Lists     July 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception Tariq Ali The London Bombings: Why They Happened Monica Benderman One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality Rick Jahnkow Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement Christopher Brauchli Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra Kim Peterson Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror Joshua Frank Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments? Norman Solomon Messages from the Carnage Website of the Day An Interview with Ray McGovern   July 7, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr John Walsh More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry Mike Marqusee Message from London Gilad Atzmon London's Burning Nicole Colson Showdown at the Supreme Court Jack Random Judith Miller, Anti-Hero Norman Solomon Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War Len Colodny Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig? Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr                                                             Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

July 28, 2005 Water, Water, Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink Vision Mumbai Submerged By LILA RAJIVA Over the last two days hundreds of people have died in Mumbai and across Maharashtra as the South-West monsoon lashes the state. 37.1 inches fell in one day - the highest ever in the country. About 150,000 people were stranded in railway stations, tens of thousands of others on the road or in buses as commuter services were shut down. Electricity and phone links were cut in the city, some 76,000 farm animals have been killed and 1.7 million acres of crops have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of homes, along with roads, railway tracks, and bridges have been washed away. It's a story well-rehearsed in other parts of India, like Gujarat, also hit hard by the monsoons this summer. Just the familiar story of third-world countries too poor to defend themselves against Mother Nature's psychotic abuse. Or something else? Mumbai's commuter trains, which are considered its lifeline, pack over 700 people to a coach in rush hour though the international standard is 200. At least one or two passengers die or are injured every day.There are traffic jams a kilometer long on all major arteries, leaving people dangerously vulnerable in an emergency. Water easily floods badly paved roads without drainage. 55-60% of the population lives in the slums in flimsy huts that are easily washed away by heavy rains. Six million Mumbaiites without running water or sewage facilities and with inadequate health care easily fall prey to Mother Nature's fits. Place part of the blame for such disasters then on politicians who've repeatedly failed to do something about the massive inadequacy of public services in this teeming city. Why that's so and what's to be done about it varies with who's doing the telling. It turns out that Mumbai is a city of two tales.   TALE ONE: For some Mumbaiwallahs, it's a question of private investment needing to step in and stream-line the socialist public sector. According to McKinsey & Co., a global management consultancy and Bombay First, ostensibly a citizen's initiative, residents and businesses pay about $10 billion in taxes, 20% of India's overall tax revenue, but the government annually reinvests only $220 million of that into improvements in city infrastructure. Mumbai, India's business capital and a city of around 18 million people, is a congested megapolis of slums, pot-holed roads, inadequate transportation, and deteriorating buildings,the result of years of neglect combined with helter-skelter growth. Now for the last few years, the growth has declined but the rot continues. "No new industry wants to come here, no one wants to live here," moans Deepak Parekh, chairman of Housing Development Finance Corp., India's leading housing-mortgage firm, who also sits on committees pledged to the city's renewal. The solution? Vision Mumbai, released September, 2003, the ambitious brainchild of Bombay First and McKinsey, which plans for Mumbai to grow at about 8-10% rather than its recent 2.4%. It's not the first time Mumbai has worked with McKinsey, which has a high profile in such Asian cities as Bangkok, Shanghai, and Singapore. A decade ago, Bombay First hired it to advise Mumbaiites on "Positioning Maharashtra for leadership in the economic liberalisation era,. McKinsey's recommendations for turning Mumbai into a "world -class city" by 2013 include scrapping the coastal regulation zone rules, developing new industries in Mumbai's hinterland, reducing city taxes, and expanding public and private transportation. That's expected to lure investors and professionals back to the city.   TALE TWO: Jockin Arputham, Mumbai slum-dweller, former urban guerilla and Magasaysay Award winner has a different take on things. "It's the whole serving class that has made Mumbai a world-class city, not the middle class," he says. For Jockin, it's slum dwellers who do the building and cleaning of homes and offices, who look after the children, wash the clothes, drive the rickshaws and taxis, and work as coolies. They deserve the same chance as everyone else. There's plenty of land, he insists, pointing to the hundreds of acres of fallow land held by corporations like Godrej or given out generously to builders. He has a point. Bombay First might be a citizen's initiative but it includes representatives of multinationals. And behind Vision Mumbai's rosy proposals lies a problematic reality skewered in favor of business and elites. The unrestricted development of the coast envisioned in the plan dangerously undermines natural defenses against floods and tides. Coastal development that destroyed mangroves was one of the reasons why the tsunami last year wreaked such devastation. Developing new industries in the hinterland on the back of high-tech skills does nothing for Mumbai's illiterate slum dwellers who comprise half its population. In a city where motorized transport makes up only around 8% of traffic (but contributes 60% of pollution), reducing motor taxes while simultaneously planning on constructing enormously expensive expressways linking to the hinterland profits the car-driving elite at public expense. And with the state government in debt to the tune of some Rs.93,000-crore, dumping a quarter of the cost of this Rs. 200,000 plan on the public seems crass to say the least. Especially as public services have increasingly been cut back. In fact, any funding for public transport in the plan is from the World Bank. It turns out that while the developer/city mafia is desperate trying to attract the investing class back to the city, migrant labor from the villages is being turned back. Or as Vijay Kalam-Patil, a demolitions officer proclaims, " We want to put the fear of the consequences of migration into these people. We have to restrain them from coming to Mumbai." Consequently, part of the neoliberal Vision of Mumbai involves razing the slums and resettling the slum-dwellers. So far, the first part has been accomplished quite efficiently. Some 90,000 plus huts have been demolished and over 400,000 people made homeless in blunt violation of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights. The monsoons have proved so disastrous precisely because a good part of the population, already forced to live in make-shift housing, has been deprived even of that. It's true that many slum-dwellers live illegally on public property, but it's also true that the coalition Congress government whom they were instrumental in electing to power promised to regularize their huts and has reneged on that promise. And while foreign citizens - Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) - are being breathlessly considered for dual citizenship and thus voting rights, the City Municipal Corporation, hand-in-glove with elites, is pressing to wipe dispossessed slum-dwellers off the voting rolls altogether. Send them back to the villages is the cry. But there's no going home for these urban poor. Agriculture in India is reeling everywhere from the dire impact of multinationals. Everywhere, commercialization has displaced small and marginal farmers while mechanization has displaced landless agricultural labourers. Industries all over India have been claiming enormous portions of scarce ground and surface water for their permanent use, leaving citizens and communities unable to enunciate or defend their rights to water, even drinking water. The result - millions flee to the cities and feed the metastasis of fragile, unsanitary tenements.   NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK..... Death from excess of water it turns out is not unrelated to death from shortage of water. Only it's not caused by the consumption of the slum dwellers, as the McKinsey Report and the pro-demolition crowd suggest. The state's own report shows that only about 6% of the city's land area is occupied by slums and that only little over 5% of slum-dwellers even have access to individual water taps. It's not the benefits of the city that are pulling in the migrant workers but the drawbacks of the countryside that are pushing them out. Independent NGOs and enviromentalists point out that if the Rs. 10,000 crores targeted for Mumbai's car-drivers were instead put into irrigation in the countryside, most of the migration to the cities would stop. But water, like every other public necessity in India, has been turned into a market commodity and a weapon in the corporate war on communities. For instance, Maharashtra's Water Resources Regulatory Authority Bill of May 2005, taking its cue from Vision Mumbai, puts into practice plans that the World Bank has had for Indian water ever since 1998. The Bill follows the Andhra Pradesh model in setting up`Water Users Associations' with user fees. In Hyderabad, Andhra's capital and the showcase of the neoliberal project, similar associations sold treated water to soft drinks companies at 25 paise a litre while most areas of the city were getting water for half an hour once every two days. But the new Maharashtra Bill does the Hyderabad model one better. Not only does it plan to raise rates drastically and immediately, it premises access to irrigation on the adoption of drip or sprinkler irrigation, both of which add tens of thousands of rupees per acre to farmers' costs. This in areas which have already seen countless suicides from bankrupted farmers. It takes no genius to figure out where the next raft of ruined farmers and their families will end up. In 1993 there was one bus a week taking migrant workers from a depot in Andhra Pradesh to Mumbai. Today there are 34. So while Mother Nature must take a good deal of the blame for her excesses in Mumbai right now, let's not forget what's exacerbated the problem. Let's remember that the part of the population that is suffering the most from the deluge today was put squarely in the way of harm by a completely unnecessary man-made shortage of water. Lila Rajiva is a free-lance journalist and author of "The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media," (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at: lrajiva@hotmail.com NOTES: 1. "This Is What We Paid For," George Monbiot, The Guardian, May 18, 2004. 2. "A Blueprint for Mumbai," Anupama Katakam, Frontline, November-December, 2003. 3. "The bank and the big bang," P. Sainath, Hindu, May 8, 2005. 4. "Maharashtra's coming water wars," P. Sainath, Hindu, May 8, 2005. 5. "Why Bombay Has the Blues," Manjeet Kripalani, Business Week, November 1, 2004. 6. "McKinsey's Mumbai," Darryl D'Monte, InfoChange News, November, 2004. 7. "A Global Message," Jagdish Rattanani, Asiaweek.com, August 4, 2000.