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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! From Nixon to Sarah Palin
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
From Nixon to Sarah Palin
What’s happened to the Republican Party? What’s happened to populism? Read Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair on the life and death of Nixonland, and the class politics of the war over Sarah Palin. ALSO in our new subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter, read Serge Halimi on how Russia gave Georgia and the U.S.a well-deserved black eye. PLUS Carrie Dann’s wonderful first-hand account of the fight of the Western Shoshone to reclaim their land. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories September 9, 2008 Michael Colby Chellis Glendinning Vijay Prashad Pierre M. Sprey / Marc Gardner September 8, 2008 Mike Whitney Tariq Ali Pam Martens Bill Quigley Malini Johar Schueller / Robert Jensen Uri Avnery Win McCormack Howard Lisnoff Maria C. Khoury Website of the Day September 6 / 7, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Linn Washington, Jr. Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Nancy Kurshan William Blum Michael Winship Fred Gardner Nikolas Kozloff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Karyn Strickler David Yearsley Richard Rhames James L. Secor Missy Beattie Eric Patton Ben Terrall Thom Rutledge Dan Bacher David Macaray Jane Stillwater Grady Harper Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend September 5, 2008 Elizabeth Walters Bill Quigley Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ira Glunts Peter Morici Deepak Tripathi Manuel Garcia, Jr. Michael Donnelly Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day September 4, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Andy Worthington Osama Dawoud Stephen Lendman Fidel Castro Website of the Day September 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Sen. Mike Gravel Vijay Prashad Nikolas Kozloff Ralph Nader Howard Lisnoff Steve Early / Cal Winslow Shepherd Bliss Bill Quigley Website of the Day
September 2, 2008 Marjorie Cohn Jonathan Cook Robert Weitzel Corey D. B. Walker John Ross Eric Walberg Judith Scherr Richard Morse B. R. Gowani Michael Greenberg Website of the Day September 1, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff C. G. Estabrook Manuel Garcia, Jr. David Macaray B. R. Gowani Saul Landau Charles Orloski Gloria La Riva Website of the Day August 30 / 31, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bill Quigley Jeffrey St. Clair Andy Worthington Deepak Tripathi Stanley Howard Dave Lindorff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Josh Schlossberg Benjamin Dangl Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Suzan Mazur Rev. Jim Rigby David Yearsely Serge Quadruppani B.R. Gowani Richard Rhames Poets' Basement Website of the Day
August 29, 2008 Mike Whitney Brian Cloughley David Ker Thomson Joanne Mariner Neve Gordon Chris Genovali Ron Jacobs Michael Donnelly August 28, 2008 Judy Gumbo Albert Paul Cantor Saul Landau / Andy Worthington Ben Terrall Leonard Peltier Niranjan Ramakrishnan Donna J. Volatile Website of the Day
August 27, 2008 Anthony DiMaggio Jordan Flaherty Ralph Nader Melissa Checker Bob Sommer Cynthia McKinney Ali Khan M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Dave Lindorff David Macaray Website of the Day
August 26, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Michael D. Yates Paul Craig Roberts Andy Worthington Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Huwaida Arraf Joseph Grosso Sheldon Richman Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day August 25, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Bill Quigley Jonathan Cook James McEnteer Uri Avnery Will Potter Robert Jensen Stephen Lendman Wajahat Ali Carl Finamore Website of the Day August 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patty O'Grady Nicole Colson Steve Conn Deepak Trapathi Robert Fantina Jonathan M. Feldman Joshua Frank Osama Qashoo Howard Lisnoff David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Christopher Brauchli Alan Farago Michael Winship Richard Rhames David Rosen Patrick B. Barr Jamie Newlin Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 22, 2008 Boris Kagarlitsky Laura Carlsen Bob Barr Marwan Bishara Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. Charles Mostoller Sumbul Ali-Karamali Keith Rosenthal John F. Miglio Website of the Day August 21, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It Ralph Nader Joanne Mariner Wajahat Ali Ron Jacobs Rostam Purzal Anthony Papa Website of the Day August 20, 2008 Michael Neumann Ray McGovern Eric Walberg Fidaa Abed Daniel Haack Mike Whitney Website of the Day August 19, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Deepak Tripathi Marwan Bishara Saul Landau William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg James Brittain Pratyush Chandra David Macaray Website of the Day August 18, 2008 Tariq Ali Gary Leupp Uri Avnery John Ross Farooq Sulehria Luis Rodriguez Manuel Garcia, Jr. Noah Baker Merrill Charles Thomson Website of the Day August 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Deepak Tripathi Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Robert Fantina Ray McGovern Nicole Colson Fatima Bhutto Jean-Luis Rocca David Michael Green Ramzi Kysia Dave Lindorff Lisa Martinovic Richard Rhames Don Santina Rannie Amiri Ramzy Baroud John Stanton Howard Lisnoff Ron Jacobs Seth Sandronsky Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
August 15, 2008 Steve Niva David Remington Michael Winship Paul Craig Roberts Farzana Versey Harvey Wasserman Felice Pace Julian Critchley Website of the Day August 14, 2008 Saul Landau / Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Reza Fiyouzat Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China Jack Bradigan Spula Patrick Irelan John Walsh Dan Bacher Website of the Day
August 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts David Remington Brian Cloughley Glen Ford Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Tom Lewis Stan Cox Alan Farago Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day August 12, 2008 Uri Avnery Anthony DiMaggio Bill Christison Eric Walberg Kate Connolly Diane Farsetta Peter Morici Thom Rutledge Lee Patton Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day August 11, 2008 Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Douglas Kammen William Willers Greg Moses Jeff Leys Cynthia McKinney Alan Farago Website of the Day August 9 / 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Bruce Jackson Kevin Young Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Robert Fantina Brendan Cooney Mark Almond Lois Gibbs Rev. William Alberts Kathy Kelly John Ross David Michael Green Bill Moyers / Ron Jacobs Richard Rhames David Yearsley Lee Sustar Brenda Norrell Ben Terrall Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 8, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia, Jr. M. Shahid Alam Andy Worthington Lawrence J. Korb David Model Alan Farago Diop Olugbala Firmin DeBrabander Website of the Day August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond William Blum Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Robert Weitzel Jacob G. Hornberger Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ace Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
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September 9, 2008 "Viva Mexico! Let's Go Kill Some Gachupines!"Mexican Flag WrapBy JOHN ROSS Mexico City. September is the most patriotic month on the Mexican calendar each year marked by military parades, intense flag-waving, and stirring speeches. Every public space is swathed in red, green, and white, the national colors, from the National Palace to cantinas and restaurants getting ready for "La Noche Mexicana" (The Mexican Night) September 15th, the eve of Independence Day and the time-honored "Grito" of the country priest Miguel Hidalgo who back in 1810 let fly the cry that launched the nation's war of liberation from Spain: "Viva Mexico! Let's Go Kill Some Gachupines!" ("Spur-riders" i.e. the Spanish.) Other patriotic occasions commemorated in September include the Day of the Heroic Children ("Los Ninos Heroes") September 13th, honoring a group of young cadets who in 1846 rather than to submit to the Yanqui invaders advancing on the capital wrapped themselves in the Mexican flag and threw themselves from the balustrades of Chapultepec Castle. Wrapping oneself in the flag is popular camouflage in September. Presidents, politicos, party hacks, and other assorted scoundrels cloak themselves in the national colors to push their respective agendas. Even the "putas" (prostitutes) working the streets of the red-light La Merced district wave little Mexican flags to attract patriotic customers. But aside from the patriotic feeding frenzy, September 2008 seems likely to be a month of definitions in the murky political ambiance that has prevailed here since President Felipe Calderon's questionable 2006 election. Last April, Calderon sent a proposal on to congress that would privatize the state-owned oil company PEMEX. Although the President insists the measure does not include privatization, the proposal openly calls for "the association of private capital" in the state corporation's exploration, refining, distribution (pipelines), and transportation divisions. With the connivance of the once-ruling PRI (71 years) whose red, green, and white party colors are the same as the flag, Calderon's rightist PAN party fast-tracked the initiative but was foiled when leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), from whom Calderon is thought to have purloined the 2006 vote, mobilized his base to block passage. 13,000 women dressed as "Adelitas", woman soldiers during the 1910-1919 Mexican Revolution, surrounded the Senate of the Republic while inside the precinct, lawmakers from the Broad Progressive Front or FAP seized the tribune for 13 days, paralyzing the legislative process. 71 days of debate followed during which experts, academics, engineers, lawyers, PEMEX officials, business persons, trade unionists and Mexican Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina (chemistry) paraded before the Senate Energy Commission to diss or acclaim the privatization proposal. A popular referendum ("consulta"), held in August, turned out 2.6 million voters, 98% of them against the president's plans for the oil giant. In addition to the Calderon project, the PRI has submitted a proposal that it maintains prohibits the privatization of PEMEX although 28 out of its 49 clauses are identical to the Calderon-PAN document. Also submitted to the Energy Commission: proposed legislation drawn up by 120 "Sabios" or wise men and women, amongst them prominent scientists, intellectuals, writers, and artists, that attacks wholesale corruption within the PEMEX corporate structure - if such corruption were to be eliminated, the "Sabios" posit, PEMEX would have no need for private capital. All three initiatives wrap themselves in the Mexican flag. Petroleum is a patriotic fluid in Mexico, expropriated from Anglo-American owners and nationalized by President Lazaro Cardenas in 1938. Indeed, Lopez Obrador and his colleagues accuse Calderon of betraying "La Patria" (The Fatherland) by seeking to sell off the nation's oil industry. With Congress called back into session September 1st as the Mexican Constitution dictates, the privatization legislation will be the first order of business for both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Historically, September 1st is an ultra patriotic date when the Houses of Congress are swaddled in the national colors and the President delivers his State of the Union address ("El Informe") to the nation. When the PRI commanded congress, September 1st was a day of maximum obeisance to an imperial presidency. The head of state, always a PRIista, would address the legislators, droning on for hours to tout his administration's puffed-up accomplishments. Afterwards, the political class, foreign ambassadors, Bishops of the Catholic Church, and other invited dignitaries would queue up for the obligatory "besamanos" ("kissing of hands".) But these séances also exposed the President to the catcalls of the opposition, derogatory banners, walkouts, and worse - turncoat leftist Ruth Zavaleta, ex-president of the Chamber of Deputies, claimed last week that Lopez Obrador's deputies had once smuggled a case of Molotov cocktails into Congress. This September 1st, this ostentatious ceremony was finally laid to rest. The "Informe" itself was delivered to Congress unread in a plain green box and Calderon had to buy commercial spots on the nation's two-headed TV monopoly to broadcast his State of the Union address to the citizenry. The privatization of the national petroleum industry is certainly not the only item that separates the right from the left as Mexico nears the bi-centennial of its Independence in 2010, a mega-patriotic event. Mexico City's abortion on demand law (in the first trimester of pregnancy) has been a bitter bone of contention between the capital's left-leaning government and the Roman Catholic Church and its historical allies in Calderon's PAN party. Last January, Calderon's attorney general and the ombudsman of the National Human Rights Commission filed an appeal with Mexico's Supreme Court to have the abortion legislation declared unconstitutional. According to Bernardo Barranco, a dissident Catholic journalist and radio commentator, the nation's most powerful prelate Cardinal Norberto Rivera has been personally lobbying the justices to revoke the abortion law under pain of possible excommunication. On successive days this August, 12,000 photographs of women who support abortion on demand were displayed upon the floor of the Zocalo, the great plaza at the heart of Mexico's political body, to represent the 12,000 women who have availed themselves of the procedure since it was introduced in 2007. The photographs were followed by 12,000 crosses placed there by abortion foes, and finally, by huge black mourning bows ("monos") when on August 28th, the Supreme Court voted eight to three to uphold the constitutionality of Mexico City's abortion on demand law. Cardinal Rivera became so agitated at the Court's decision to legalize abortion that he ordered all church bells in Mexico City to be rung for an hour in protest - the tolling of church bells is a traditional form of protest for the Church when it feels aggrieved by civil authorities. The right-to-lifers and Calderon's right-wing PAN struck back on August 30th when they staged a huge "white" march through Mexico City to protest left-wing mayor Marcelo Ebrard's porous performance in safeguarding the city's rich following the kidnap-murder of the young scion of a sporting goods fortune. Tens of thousands (80,000 police estimated, 400,000 organizers insisted) tramped through the city, holding lighted candles "to illuminate Mexico" and flying white balloons advocating the death penalty (Mexico has no death penalty.) The rightists paused in front of City Hall to "invite" Ebrard to resign. The "white" march was a repeat of a much larger protest orchestrated by the PAN and the Church in 2004 against the then-wildly popular mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The morning after the right-wing white march, leftist Obrador summoned tens of thousands of his supporters to the Monument of the Revolution to discuss plans to block Calderon's privatization scheme when it comes up for a vote in congress. In keeping with the season, the humongous Monument, home to the tombs of the heroes of the Mexican Revolution, was draped in what appeared to be a kilometer of red, green, and white patriotic colors. Although reluctant to give out logistical details, AMLO presented 66 brigades numbering several hundred activists each that are prepared to commit civil disobedience if the PAN and the PRI try to ramrod privatization of PEMEX through Congress - nationally, Lopez Obrador informed the huge crowd, 200,000 brigadistas are signed up to block highways and shut down cities to defend Mexico's "petroleo." Characterizing the white march as a feint to distract attention from the coming showdown over the nation's oil, AMLO convoked his supporters to assemble in the Zocalo September 15th to emit Padre Hidalgo's Grito of Independence, the same night Calderon is expected to offer his Grito from the presidential balcony of the National Palace in the same plaza. Sweating a crumbling economy (even Haiti's economy is expected to outgrow Mexico's this year), massive dissatisfaction with his administration (50,000 workers and farmers marched in Mexico City September 1st), and an ugly political climate, last Sunday (September 6th), Calderon opted to get away from it all and took a long bike ride around the grounds of Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, out in Chapultepec Park. Perhaps distracted by his troubles, the dubiously elected president hit a bump and went flying head over handlebars, fracturing his shoulder and contusing his knee. The mishap has incited much mirth around the counter at the Café La Blanca, a landmark in the old quarter of the capital. "The least we can do is take up a collection to buy the President some training wheels," chuckles greeter Daniel Torres, "it's our patriotic duty…" John Ross is wrestling with "The Left Hand of El Monstruo - A Left History of Mexico City From the Pleistocene to Next New Year's Eve" (new working title.) Check out www.johnross-rebeljournalist.com or write johnross@igc.org if you have further information.
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