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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!

ISRAEL'S IRON HEEL

It began when Harry Truman was in the White House. It has continued under every U.S. President since, and in this extended report we lay out the consequences of 60 years of brutal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Feroze Sidhwa details the human price of systematic, intentional destruction of the Palestinian social and economic fabric: physical and mental deterioration, traumatized youth, a savaged environment. Nancy Glass and Reem Salahi describe the Kafka-esque conditions in which Palestinian lawyers try to defend their people in Israel's courts. 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 holiday presents.

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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories

December 12, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
What's Really Happened During the Surge?


December 10 / 11, 2007

Uri Avnery
How They Stole the Bomb From Us

Debbie Nathan
The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn

JoAnn Wypijewski
Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do?

Steve Kelly
Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness

Donna J. Volatile
Welcome to the Revolution

 

December 8 / 9, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Coup Against Bush and Cheney

Brenda Norrell
Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists

Saul Landau
The Ruins of Empire

R. F. Blader
A Rape in Every Drink?

Ray McGovern
Spinning Iran's Centrifuges

Allan Nairn
Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia

Linn Washington, Jr
Spotlight on Death Row

Paul Craig Roberts
When Will Bush Come Clean?

 

December 7, 2007

Sean Penn
Piano Wire Puppeteers

Arthur Versluis
Mining Water in the Desert

M. G. Piety
Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence

Pam Martens
Banksters Gone Wild

Alan Farago
Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis

Allan Nairn
It Takes (Out) a Village

Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday

Alice Slater
The Iran Opening

Robert Weissman
The Story of Stuff

Website of the Day
Something About Mitt

 

December 5, 2007

Mike Whitney
Why the CFR Hates Putin

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats

James Petras
Venezuela in the Aftermath

Ron Jacobs
The Iran Charade

Dave Zirin
Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One? Time to Choose

Peter Zinn
Covered in New Orleans

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Impeach Pelosi Instead

Alan Farago
The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida

Heather Gray
US Meddling in Australian Politics

Website of the Day
A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas

 

December 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lies at the End of the American Dream

Ray McGovern
No-Nuke Iran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small

Allan Nairn
The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food"

Russell Mokhiber
The USA v. Al Arian

Nikolas Kozloff
As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left

John V. Walsh
Peace Movement Paralyzed

Ghada Ageel
Will Peace Cost Me My Home?

Stephen Soldz
The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations

Website of the Day
Hands Off the People of Iran

 

 

December 3, 2007

Tariq Ali
Venezuela After the Referendum

Bill Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers

Eric Walberg
The Bible and Middle East History

Uri Avnery
After Annapolis

Marjorie Cohn
Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed

Dave Lindorff
Vengeance Isn't Sweet

Stephen Fleischman
Homeless in Paradise

Martha Rosenberg
Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile

Website of the Day
So Just Lead!

 

December 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West

Mike Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen

Shemon Salam
A Visit From the FBI

Roger Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia

Benjamin Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia

Brian M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge?

Greg Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story

Sonja Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference

Saul Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston

Margaret Kimberley
Black America Left Behind

John Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?

Reza Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran

Judith Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays

Lance Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots

Robert Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony

Dan Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island

Michael Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency

Website of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices

 

November 30, 2007

Peter Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan

Wajahat Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information

Allan Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers

Alan Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash

John Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution

Corporate Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals

Lucia Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future

James Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle

Website of the Day
Bio-Bling?

 

November 29, 2007

R. F. Blader
The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran

Stephen Soldz
War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire

Sheldon Richman
Iraq 3.0

George Wuerthner
Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws

Felice Pace
Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?

Col. Dan Smith
The Meaning of Annapolis

Harvey Wasserman
Terror Target Nukes

Nikolas Kozloff
Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08

Paul Krassner
Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike!

Dave Lindorff
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?

CP News Service
The One State Declaration

Website of the Day
A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter

November 28, 2007

James Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela

Jeff Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street

Pam Martens
Crashing Citigroup

Peter Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession

Mohammed Khatib
Separate and Unequal in Palestine

Helen Redmond
The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America

William S. Lind
In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm?

Ben Tripp
We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges

Jeff Berg
Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran

Website of the Day
The Lies of Joe Klein

 

November 27, 2007

Joe DeRaymond
On the Road to the Torture School

Paul Craig Roberts
Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy

Marjorie Cohn
Remembering Victor Rabinowitz

Mike Whitney
A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp

Ron Jacobs
The Myths of Military Progress

Col. Dan Smith
The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work

Ralph Nader
Family Learning

Karim Makdisi
Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut

Christopher Ketcham
Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop

Ronan Bennett
Martin Amis Does a Coulter

Website of the Day
Celebrating the Uncensored Media

 

November 26, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Heading for Annapolis

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of All That

David Macaray
Enter Mediator

Sameer Dossani
Pakistan's Wounded Dictator

Roger Burbach
The Final Battle in Bolivia

Mark Scaramella
Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire

Brian McKinlay
Howard's End

Rick Kuhn
The Fall of a Racist Union Buster

Binoy Kampmark
Ruddslide and Dull Alec

Monica Benderman
What Do You Know of War?

Brenda Norrell
Return to Alcatraz

Website of the Day
Ghostworld by DJ Spooky

 

November 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD

Robert Fisk
Darkness Falls on the Middle East

Saul Landau
Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P.

Jeffrey St. Clair
Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism

Rannie Amiri
Beirut's Black Friday

Christopher Brauchli
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace

Daniel Gross
The Gap and Black Friday

Mike Whitney
"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"

Marjorie Cohn
Iran and the 2008 Elections

David Rosen
Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans

David Michael Green
If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom ....

Kenneth Rexroth
When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan

Muhammad Iqbal
Trans. Shahid Alam

Ghazal

Website of the Day
Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill


November 23, 2007

Gary Leupp
Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley

Laura Carlsen
Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP

David Macaray
Keeping Labor Unions Out

Andy Worthington
Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden

Clifton Ross
Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant

Seth Sandronsky
Battling Sodexho

Dan Bacher
Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation

William A. Cook
The Myth of Middle East Peace

Website of the Day
Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film

 

November 22, 2007

Alan Farago
Who Lost America's Everglades?

Greg Moses
A Thanksgiving Basting

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment is Back on the Table

Mike Ely
Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving

Omar Azfar
Gore for President of Pakistan?

 

November 21, 2007

Vijay Prashad
Our Dictator, Their Democracy

Martha Rosenberg
Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Epiphany on the Glacier

John Ross
The Last Days of Mexican Corn

Brian McKenna
Cancer Terrorists Unmasked

Stephen Soldz
Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo

Monica Benderman
Needing Peace

Ben Terrall
Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar

Website of the Day
Mercy for Animals

 

November 20, 2007

Oren Ben-Dor
Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist" as a Jewish State

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Norman Finkelstein

Alan Farago
The Dark Arts and the Bush Dynasty

Marjorie Cohn
Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

Ralph Nader
Green is Gold?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Whistleblower Launches a New Attack on Rigged Tribunals

Sara Olson
When Going AWOL is the Only Escape

Dave Lindorff
Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence

Paul Krassner
The First Amendment, a Dialogue

Website of the Day
Joanne Mariner on Torture

November 19, 2007

Winslow T. Wheeler
Why Congress Won't Reform

China Hand
The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan

Allan Nairn
Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia

Uri Avnery
How to Get Out?

David Macaray
The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements

Dave Lindorff
Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008!

Bill Quigley
Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials

Ron Jacobs
Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie

Sunsara Taylor
Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs?

Binoy Kampmark
Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead!

Heather Gray
Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois

Website of the Day
The Meat Market

 

 

November 17 / 18, 2007

P. Sainath
Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India

David Rosen
The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery

Mike Whitney
Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?

George Wuerthner
Saving the Big Wild

Brenda Norrell
The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent

George Ciccariello-Maher
Of Submarines and Loose Screws

Karim Makdisi
Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread

Marie Trigona
Wal-Mart in Argentina

Valerio Volpi
The Catholic Church, Incorporated

Fred Gardner
The Straight-Ahead Runner

Robert Fantina
The White House Press Office

Mike Ferner
Thank God for the Senate Republicans!

Missy Comley Beattie
The Radical Majority

Kenneth Couesbouc
Circles of Power

Patrick O'Hayer
A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet

Poets' Basement
Davies, Buknatski and Ford

 

November 16, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War

Dave Zirin
The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System

Gary D. Barnett
A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent

Alan Farago
Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption

Dave Lindorff
Two Brothers and Two Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?"

Robert Ovetz
Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea

Brenda Norrell
"Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border

David Swanson
Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate

Peter Letheby
Outside the Box on the Great Plains

Website of the Day
Why Activism Fails

 

November 15, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
Hillary Clinton in Arkansas

Adolfo Gilly
The Spirit of Revolt

Peter Bohmer
10 Days That Shook Olympia

Andy Worthington
The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier

Gray / Derks
Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups

Liaquat Ali Khan
Liberating Pakistan

Dave Lindorff
Where's the Party?

Christopher Brauchli
Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip

Anthony Papa
Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences

Martha Rosenberg
Merck's Big Write Off

Ben Terrall
Thank You, Ehren Watada

Website of the Day
On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies


November 14, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Making of Hillary Clinton

James Petras
Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets

Al Giordano
Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lobby

Andy Worthington
Innocents and Foot Soldiers

Stephen Lendman
Torturing Palestinian Detainees

Fatima Bhutto
Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy

Martin Smith
Norman Mailer and the "Good War"

Jeff Leys
Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding

Website of the Day
Why the Writers are Striking

November 13, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It

Jeffrey St. Clair
Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter

Robert Bryce
The Pakistan Fuel Connection

David Macaray
The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike

Mike Whitney
Bulletins from the Titanic

Ralph Nader
Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers

Nikolas Kozloff
Chavez Blasts the Spanish King

Jordan Flaherty
Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana

B. R. Gowani
Dear Mrs. Bhutto

Website of the Day
Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"

 

November 12, 2007

Vicente Navarro
Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed

Ben Brown
Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father

Omar K.
A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency

Sadia Abbas
The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military

Farzana Versey
Mailer's Miasma

Richard W. Behan
The Political Crimes of Complicity

Paul Krassner
Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert!

Cindy Sheehan
Faith and War

Peter Stone Brown
The Return of Levon Helm

Dave Lindorff
Dennis, You are Not Alone

Website of the Day
Police Attack in Olympia

 

November 10 / 11, 2007

Alain Gresh
Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard

Mike Whitney
For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street

Ron Jacobs
A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Jeffrey St. Clair
The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story

Alan Farago
Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism

Binoy Kampmark
When Language Drowns: Torture in America

Robert Fantina
Legitimizing Torture

Fred Gardner
Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The General in His Labyrinth

Nicola Nasser
NATO's Southward Drift

Philip Rizk
The Blame Game in Gaza

Michael Dickinson
Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins

Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties

Paul Krassner
Flunking Out of the Electoral College

Wadner Pierre /
Joe Emersberger
The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti

 

November 9, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK

Mohammed Hanif
Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle

John Ross
Blackwater Goes to Mexico

Mike Whitney
Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate

Tom Barry
In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy

Corporate Crime Reporter
Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care?

Badruddin Khan
Pakistan and the Israel Lobby

David Macaray
The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back

Martha Rosenberg
The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents

Website of the Day
Stryker Blockade!

 

November 8, 2007

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine

William Loren Katz
Waterboarding in American History

Mike Whitney
The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes

Sheldon Richman
Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life

Liaquat Ali Khan
Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers

Marc Gardner
The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights (or Homes)

Jackie Corr
The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the Investment Banker?

Brenda Norrell
Between Bombs and Border Walls

Dave Lindorff
Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times

China Hand
Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity

Sen. Russ Feingold
FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act

Website of the Day
The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez

 

November 7, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor?

Vijay Prashad
The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf

Alan Farago
To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse

David Macaray
The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey

Charlotte Laws
What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign

Daniel White
Zahid's Story

William Cook
The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby

Website of the Day
Safe Lawns

 

November 6, 2007

Mike Whitney
Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution

Ralph Nader
Who Determines the Price of Oil?

Andy Worthington
The Torture of Ali al-Marri

Pam Martens
Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Dark Future

William Schroder
The Return of Water Torture

Stephen Lendman
Punishing Gaza

William Blum
Cuba and Original Sin

Former US Intelligence Officers
A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey

 

November 5, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer

David Macaray
How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer)

Gary Leupp
General Musharaff's "State of Emergency"

Dave Lindorff
Those Minot Nukes

Ludwig Watzal
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan

Peter Stone Brown
John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past

Michael Simmons
Yo! What Happened to Peace?

Website of the Day
Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students

 

November 3 / 4, 2007

Tariq Ali
Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night

David Price
Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship

Jeffrey St. Clair
Splitsville

Alan Farago
The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class

Paul Krassner
He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards

Rannie Amiri
Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals

P. Sainath
Indexing Humanity, Indian Style

Ayesha Ijaza Khan
Pakistan in a Daze

Robert Fantina
Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran?

Seth Sandronsky
The Politics of Health Care in California

Ron Jacobs
The Bebop of Baraka

Ramzy Baroud
A Case for Arab Dignity

Heather Gray
When Capitalists Get a Free Ride

 

November 2, 2007

Dr. Mary Pipher
Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations

Saul Landau
How Pete Stark Became a Pariah

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as House Arrest

Sharon Smith
A Tale of Two Stadiums

Gary Leupp
Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood

Gregory Harms
The Chorus of Slander on Palestine

Christopher Brauchli
Racism in High Places

Peter Morici
The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit

Dave Lindorff
The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran

David Penner
Zombie Nation

Website of the Day
Fall in Yosemite

 

November 1, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
The Wages of Hegemony

Patrick Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Dam in the World

Dave Lindorff
The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight

Jonathan Feldman
The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South

Mike Ferner
They Met the Resistance in Iraq

William S. Lind
A Question for Would-Be Presidents

Diana Johnstone
"Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business"

Jacob Hornberger
The War on Telephone Privacy

A..K. Gupta
The Apocalypse will be Televised

Lyuba Zarsky /
Kevin Gallagher

The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley

Felice Pace
Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?

Website of the Day
This One's for You, Ed Abbey

 

October 31, 2007

Bill Quigley
New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System

Rev. William E. Alberts
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News

Ray McGovern
Attacking Iran for Israel

Eric Walberg
Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War

V. G. Smith
The Second Death of Guy Môquet

Luis J. Rodriguez
"Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA

Sheldon Richman
Bush has Time to Run the World

Walter Brasch
A Real Halloween Scare

Website of the Day
Boogie Rocks!


October 30, 2007

David Price
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual

M. Shahid Alam
The Pakistan Question

Andy Worthington
The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo

Patrick Cockburn
The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba

Anthony Papa
The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws

Floyd Rudmin
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means

Sherwood Ross
Giuliani and Torture

Website of the Day
The Worst Lobby? You Decide

 

October 29, 2007

Lisa Hajjar
Inside Israel's Military Courts

Joe DeRaymond
The Politics of Lethal Injections

Patrick Cockburn
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan

Isabella Kenfield /
Roger Burbach

Corporate Murder in Brazil

Fred Gardner
The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner

Farzana Versey
Caricaturing Islam

Stephen Fleischman
The Greening of the Oligarchy

Marcelle Cendrars
The Congressional Rip Cord

Eamonn McCann
Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables

Martha Rosenberg
For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter!

Website of the Day
Campaign 2008

 

October 27 / 28, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Dam That Isn't There

James Bovard
Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture

Ralph Nader
Beyond the Rule of Law

M. Reza Pirbhai
The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming!

Robert Sandels
Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations

Jacob G. Hornberger
Ruling By Decree

Missy Beattie
The Arsonists in the West Wing

John Ross
U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca

Robert Fantina
Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader

Ron Jacobs
Labor at the Crossroads

Ali Moayedian
In Search of Logic About Iran

David Michael Green
What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism?

Poets Basement
Block, Davies and Ford

Website of the Day
Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video

 

October 26, 2007

Brian Cloughley
Revenging Bloodshed

Saul Landau
Portrait of Rudy

Ahmad Al-Akras
Getting Justice in the HLF Case

Franklin Lamb
Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

Mike Whitney
Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest

Dave Lindorff
Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians

Alan Farago
A Castro Behind Every Bush

Yifat Susskind
Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror

Website of the Day
Dead Life in a Political Prison


October 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Iraq's Environmental Crisis

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homes of the Crash Test Dummies

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fraudulent War on Terror

Col. Dan Smith
The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment

Alan Farago
The Way to Paradise?

Chris Kutalik
The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels

Brian McKinlay
John Howard and the Curse of Bush

Cindy Sheehan
Pete, Nancy, George and WW III

Website of the Day
Support the America's Program!

 

 

 

 

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December 12, 2007

"Lose Control and You're Done"

No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers

By MARTHA ROSENBERG

Chicago, IL

A year after English prostitutes Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls and Paula Clennell were found murdered within ten days of each other, Ipswich is breathing a little easier.

Only six women are still working the streets, down from 40, thanks to the drug rehabilitation and financial services offered by the charity the Iceni Project.

Over 100 johns--kerb-crawlers as UK calls them--have been arrested through license plate recognition cameras. And a suspect, Steve Wright, 49, of London Road, Ipswich, is in custody and goes on trial in January.

Vancouver, British Columbia, is also breathing easier with the conviction of pig farmer Robert Pickton for six of 50 prostitute murders he is suspected of after a ten month trial with 128 witnesses.

Hopefully they are the only murderers!

After arresting Gregory Clepper for the wave of grisly sex worker slayings in the 1990's in Chicago--he allegedly confessed to strangling 40 women--police had to arrest Geoffrey Griffin for seven more murders of women in high risk lifestyles, Hubert Geralds for six and Andre Crawford for 11. And no one feels safe even yet.

Nor is Atlantic City, New Jersey back to normal.

Key suspect Terry Oleson, 35, was released and not charged with the murders of Kim Raffo, Barbara Breidor, Molly Jean Dilts and Tracy Ann Roberts, who were found murdered a year ago behind the $27-a-night Golden Key Motel where he was staying, on Black Horse Pike road.

And women continue to work the area.

Like Shorty, a sex worker from Philadelphia, PA who told the Associated Press she stills works Pacific Avenue but not Black Horse Pike.

"I try to stay in control," she says. "I tell them where I'll go with them. Lose control, and you're done."

Caution was also the watchword for China soon after her cousin Kizzy Macon,17, was murdered in Chicago, thought to be one of Gregory Clepper's victims.

"She [Kizzy] thought it was a game. I kept telling her to slow down. It ain't no game. But Kizzy would get high with anybody," China told the Chicago Tribune in 1996 while admitting she also got high and was intimate with Clepper and was still on the streets taking risks after he was arrested. "I didn't know he would kill her," China said.

But others say, you only feel safe--that street prostitution is a daily subpoena to death.

You get in a car to get high, say drug-using women who've survived, and when you emerge not robbed, cheated, raped, knifed, shot, beaten up, strangled, abducted or arrested but paid--that's an even bigger high.

And you do it again.

It's cash, love, sex, attention, drugs and the thrill of getting away with it rolled into one is how prostitute Pam Bolton described it to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1995, weeks before being fatally shot herself by a man in a red car. "This street life is more addictive than cocaine. More addictive than heroin," she said.

For years Hollywood has shown prostitutes in movies like Pretty Woman, Risky Business and Trading Places as victims of pimps, johns and bad childhoods who just need a little love. Even the news media like to focus on women who are trafficked and forced into sex work. But the truth is women don't get in cars because they have low self esteem, abusive parents or bills to pay. And even the 12-year-old prostitute Travis so famously saves in Taxi Driver would likely be back on the street tomorrow. Mom and Dad, stuffed animals and homework are no match for a street addiction.

Some women who survived the Chicago scourge appear in a documentary, "Turning A Corner," by the Prostitution Alternatives Roundtable (PART), a network of prostitution survivors and public agencies advocating for legislative change, produced by Salome Chasnoff of Beyondmedia as part of a Chicago Coalition for the Homeless campaign last year.

Nothing could break her addiction says one prostitute until a john dragged her two blocks with his car while fleeing the police and she almost lost an eye and had her face nearly scraped off.

Another's "wake up call" happened, she says, when her friend was found dead in the alley--and sexually mutilated.

"If I risk a date again, I'll use," says a third. "And if I use, I'll die."

It's not easy leaving the street behind agrees Brian Tobin director of the Iceni Project which is helping women recover from the streets in Ipswich,

"I have got a lot of respect for the women who after many years, are working so hard to live a healthy and better existence," says Tobin. "We have the easy part. It is the women themselves who are having to elicit so much change and I think that is fantastic."

Martha Rosenberg is staff cartoonist on the Evanston Roundtable. She can be reached at mrosenberg@evmark.org









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