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Today's Stories October 13 / 14, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Al Gore's Peace Prize Wajahat Ali Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy: an Interview with P. W. Singer October 12, 2007 Cindy Sheehan Leadership Void Brendan Cooney Washington's Holocaust Deniers Alan Farago Gore Still Lost Florida Jan Oberg Gore's Peace Prize, a Grand Misjudgment M. Shahid Alam The Mercenary State: Pakistan's Killer Elites David Macaray Lies About Teachers and Unions Julia Kendlbacher Urban Legend, We Love Our Forest People Peter Rost, MD Drug Money and the Clinton Campaign Website of the Day Nader Live: "Things are a Lot Worse Than We Thought" October 11, 2007 Al Giordano Bill Clinton as Ambassador to the World? Saul Landau Killing for Profit: Blackwater in Iraq Jacob G. Hornberger The Failed Legacy of Interventionism William S. Lind The Iraq Mirage Joshua Frank Big Sky Rebels Josh Mahan Colorado River Blues Pat Williams Where Are You, Paul Wellstone?     October 10, 2007 Michael Yates Travels Across Greenspan's America Gary Leupp Spreading Awareness or Smearing a Religion? David Macaray How Wal-Mart Can be Beaten Alan Farago Corruption and the Law of Intended Consequences Tom Clifford Homeless in Their Own Land: Iraq's Deepening Refugee Crisis Col. Douglas MacGregor Washington's War Sunsara Taylor Nooses at Columbia George Wuerthner Behind the Bovine Curtain Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Indigenous Peoples' Day Michael Dickinson Forgetting Lennon's Birthday Website of the Day Paying for War   October 9, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Blinded by Ideology: Cato, Trade and Outsourcing Andy Worthington Fourth Whistleblower Rocks Guantánamo Alan Farago The Fall of Florida's Largest Land Developer Brian Eno Exporting Democracy with Missiles David Rovics The RIAA vs. the World Farzana Versey Two Lovers and the Funeral of Secularism Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich Musharraf's Landslide Website of the Day Romney and the Wheelchair Bound Medical Marijuana Patient   October 8, 2007 David Macaray Lesbians for Hillary? or Teamsters for Hillary? Jeff Ballinger Nike, Steroids and Marion Jones Brian Eno This Ban Won't Stop Us Christopher Brauchli Translating Bush Louay Safi End the Disgrace of Guantánamo Matt Reichel Homocide by Cops at the Phoenix Airport Dave Lindorff Finally, A Good Day for the Constitution Thomas P. Healy The Politics of Mercury Pollution Martha Rosenberg E. Coli Spreading Slaughter Allowed to Stay Open Richard Rhames A Democrat's Lament Website of the Day Not All Italians Love Columbus   October 6 / 7, 2007 Alexander Cockburn A Rainbow Over a Graveyard Norman Finkelstein Jeffrey Goldberg's Prison James Bovard Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners? Patrick Cockburn The Invasion of Afghanistan, Six Years Later Jeffrey St. Clair At Disaster Falls Ralph Nader Where Are the Lawyers of America? Ray McGovern So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Saul Landau A River Runs Through It Ben Tripp Bring on the Next War! Terry Lodge The Grateful Dead Body Parts Delivered to Your Door Reform Act Seth Sandronsky Market Mystification and the Liberal Virus Kevin Funk / Steve Fake Divestment and Darfur Missy Beattie In the Custody of Bush and Cheney Website of the Weekend Snoop Dogg vs. Bill O'Reilly   October 5, 2007 Andy Worthington The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo David Macaray De-Skilling America's Labor Force Lee Sustar The Democrats and Iran: Can They Sink Any Lower? Dan La Botz Cincinnati Six Years After the Killings and the Riots Aaron Hess Hate Week Comes to Campus William A. Cook Unmasking AIPAC Website of the Day Range of Memory   October 4, 2007 Uri Avnery The Power of the Israel Lobby Dave Marsh Dick Cheney, a Eulogy Valerio Volpi How Italy Became a Launching Pad for the US Military Cecilie Surasky Dissenting at Your Own Risk Dave Lindorff Remaking Iraq, as Vietnam Norman Solomon Sputnik, 50 Years Later Laura Carlsen Costa Rica and CAFTA: Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme Walter Brasch When Compassion Fails: Bush and the Children's Health Act Ben Terrall Haitian Human Rights Advocate Kidnapped William S. Lind Beyond the OODA Loop Website of the Day Musicians in Handcuffs   October 3, 2007 Vijay Prashad Gang of Four Anita Sinha Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans Winslow T. Wheeler Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight? Sharon Smith The Kucinich Quandary Jeff Leys Our Bonhoeffer Moment Sen. Russ Feingold We Must End This Tragedy Mohamad Bazzi Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad Brenda Norrell A Cry from the Top of the World Robert Weissman No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF Website of the Day Jena by Mellencamp   October 2, 2007 Ibrahim Warde Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth Gary Leupp "I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official David Macaray The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote Conn Hallinan Religion and Foreign Policy John Ross The Great American Chess Match Alan Farago Ripping Off Miami's Poor Sonja Karkar The Right to Exist: States or People? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Meteor and the Mahatma Website of the Day Grandin on Che's Legacy   October 1, 2007 Al Giordano The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors Paul Craig Roberts From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West Moshe Adler The Crimes of Microsoft Ingmar Lee My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast John V. Walsh Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy Norman Solomon Political Science and Truth of Consequences Roger Burbach Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left Ramzy Baroud The Politics of Assassination Stephen Lendman The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy Susie Day Honey, I Shrank the Military! Website of the Day Letters from Fort Lewis Brig   September 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back? Uri Avnery So What About Iran? Andrew Cockburn Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable Jeffrey St. Clair Through the Gates of Lodore Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi Andy Worthington The Curse of the Military Commissions Don Santina Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco Ralph Nader Free Lunches, for Corporations! Fred Gardner The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Seth Sandronsky The US Economy Since 1980 Gideon Levy The Children of 5767 William S. Lind A Ticking Bomb Reza Fiyouzat An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran Richard Rhames Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog David Michael Green Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret Zach Mason Hate and Hope in Herndon Poets' Basement Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss Website of the Weekend Domestic Crusaders     September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny ... Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time               Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition October 13 / 14, 2007 Cry "Monicaaaa!" Here Come the "Bankrupted Social Security" Scamsters, Again By RICHARD RHAMES "[Comptroller general David] Walker is heading a group of analysts from the political left and right on a nationwide 'Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,' speaking to dozens of Rotary clubs and newspaper editorial boards. Pollsters are holding focus groups in which citizens, once informed of the nation's fiscal future, usually say they'll accept tax increases or cuts in benefits." USA Today, 10/9/07 The game continues. In the aftermath of World War II, when it looked like the New Deal would be continued and completed with universal health care and greater democratization of the economy, elites set out on a sort of long march. Their aim was to "re-conquer" the ideological and political ground they had lost to the majority in the 30s and 40s. Through propaganda, subversion, and the agency of a perpetual warfare state their aims are lately, perhaps, within reach. There's a grotesque and embarrassing bipartisan consensus now that economic and social rights should only be available to those who can purchase them. No Child Left Behind (at the federal level) and "school consolidation" (in my home state) have painted a target on the back of public education. And finally, the ground is being prepared for the final assault: What Reagan's budget guy David Stockman called, "storming the twin citadels of the welfare state--Social Security and Medicare ... " Last time out, under Clinton, the "final assaulters" (FAs) got pretty close. William C. had his minions working out the numbering system for the so-called "private accounts" which WOULD HAVE bankrupted Social Security. Luckily for the public, Monica Lewinsky and her oval office Johnson worship saved the day. Rather than raid the public's retirement fund William was forced to bomb a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant and kill some Iraqis in order to engorge his softening political capital. Before Monica killed their buzz, the FAs had been saturating the media with scare stories about a "Demographic Tidal Wave" of greedy geezers soon to make landfall and drown society in fiscal red ink. As the baby boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) all got old and retired, society was supposedly doomed economically. The FAs brandished Social Security Trustee annual reports, newly laden with grim and frankly a-historical projections. Most interesting of all their suicidally depressed assumptions, the Trustees foresaw a 75 year planning period characterized by near-recession level economic growth. Even given their assumptions of a highly sedated economy the "problem" was still decades out. (2046 according to the GAO.) No matter. The FAs roamed the country, with traveling road shows like the Pew Charitable Trust's "Americans Discuss Social Security." To get on the panel of experts featured in this snake-oil sales event one had to have drunk the Kool Aid and swallowed the dishonest "looming bankruptcy" story. Back then, I attended Pew's South Portland event. Dissent was not easily tolerated. It was considered very bad form to remind people that the baby boomer retirement had long ago (1983) been foreseen and dealt with. The Trustee report of 1983 stated that the system would "be able to pay benefits on time for the next 75 years under all but the most pessimistic of the various sets of assumptions ... " (The darkest assumptions? -- A post-2000 growth rate of 2 percent or less, persistent unemployment numbers over 6 percent, and interest rates never getting below 6.6 percent). In 1983 the system had been retooled under recommendations of Reagan's "Greenspan Commission." Social Security was now to be "advance funded" with a huge trust fund surplus in the trillions earning interest and awaiting the pay out to boomers and beyond. Even under the still darker scenarios in more recent trustee reports, the trust fund has the money to pay all claims on time for almost 4 decades -- that's three decades after Hillary / Rudy leaves office and just before US mercenaries begin to trickle out of Iraq. But as the first of the boomers reach retirement age and with elites hungry for fresh meat, the FAs are readying another assault. USA Today's October 9 front page screamed, "Social Security hits first wave of boomers: Drain on the system picks up in Jan., when millions born in '46 start taking benefits." The piece features a picture of "the first boomer," Kathleen Casey-Kirschling (born, Jan. 1, 1946 at 12:00:01 AM) sitting on the stern of her rather upscale boat/yacht. In keeping with the conventional story line, "McPaper" defines her signing up for early (75%)retirement benefits as "a symbolic jump toward the retirement system's looming bankruptcy." Using terms like "deluge" the story features only Kool Aid sippers and FAs like the paleo-conservative Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl. He calls cutting oldsters' meager checks, "the single greatest economic challenge of our era." The shell game is again presented as a bipartisanly inevitable. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) furthers the drowning metaphor with, "Partisanship on this issue is as foolish as a food fight on the Titanic." Get it? That mad captain FDR set us steaming too fast among those pre-climate change icebergs. Now we've come to ruin with a gash in our economic hull and, food fights aside, we must rationally and cooly decide who gets the boats and who gets the briny deep. To aid in the process, we're to be guided by something called the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour." USA Today calls this PR push "a group of analysts from the political left and right ... " As usual of course, there will be nobody passingly leftish in this crew. It's headed up by the right-wing Concord Coalition's Robert L. Bixby, who, prior to the New Hampshire whistle-stop told "PR Newswire" that this supposedly imminent mass drowning is " One thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on." It will, he warns, "require hard choices, " but should be seen it as an "opportunity." "Who for?" you might ask. The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour's Manchester event was to be held at "The Derryfield Country Club, 625 Mammoth Rd." The Class War Open, featuring a killer water hazard. Tee it up. Again. Richard Rhames is a dirt-farmer in Biddeford, Maine whose place is just north of the Kennebunkport town line. Since 1990, Rhames has been the chair of the Biddeford Democratic City Committee, an organization charged with "promoting the ideals of the Party." He can be reached at: rrhames@xpressamerica.net

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" 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!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"