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Today's Stories November 3 / 4, 2007 David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship 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!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition November 3 / 4, 2007 117,000 Women Dead From Childbirth, But, Take Cheer, the Market is Soaring! Indexing Humanity, Indian Style By P. SAINATH It all happened around the same time. The day the Sensex crossed 19,000, India clocked in 94th in the Global Hunger Index--behind Ethiopia. Both stories did make it to the front page (in one daily at least). But, of course, the GHI ranking was mostly buried inside or not carried at all that day. The joy over the stunning rise of the media's most loved index held on for a bit the next day. The same day, India clocked in as the leading nation in the number of women dying in childbirth. In this list, the second, third and fourth worst countries put together just about matched India's 117,000 deaths of women in childbirth. This story appeared in single column just beneath the Sensex surge. Next came the fall of several hundred points in the Sensex. That is, barely a couple of days later. It took minutes for the top guns to swing into action. Fingers were in every dyke. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram lost no time in reassuring worried investors via the media. Other top officials were all over television, doing the same. "FM soothes the Market's nerves" ran the ticker. The barrage--both media and official--kept up through the day. The panels of experts convened to celebrate the 19K summit were reconvened to explain why they'd tripped off the cliff. They then droned on about the merits of P-Notes, regulation and the future. What stood out, of course, was the swiftness of both government and media response to each twitch in the index. No Minister came forward to calm the nation when India hit the 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index. That's out of 118 countries. The daily, DNA, though, did capture the essence of the story with its report: "Ethiopians manage hunger better than us." For indeed, they do these days. At least by the measure of the International Food Policy Research Institute's Global Hunger Index. Draw the baseline anywhere in the 1990s, and you'll find Ethiopia worked better at reducing hunger than we did. Pakistan ranks ahead of us, too, at 88. China logs in at 47. All our South Asian neighbours do better than us on this index, except Bangladesh. And who knows when it will overtake us? None of the countries boasts an economy growing at 9 per cent a year. You'd think it was an issue worth some attention. But it was hard to find panels debating this on television, or any editorials in the newspapers doing the same. No Ministers or top babus soothed the nerves of the hungry. No experts with furrowed brows warned that the trends could continue, even worsen. The GHI is by no means the only measure of what's happening. The United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organisation put it simply in 2006. Its State of Food Insecurity in the World report confirmed yet again that we have the largest number of undernourished people in the world. The 2004 edition of the report had shown that India had added more people to the "newly hungry" in the planet than the rest of the world together. There, too, nations much worse off had done far better. Between the years 1995-97 and 2000-02, hunger grew in India at a time when it fell in Ethiopia. There was also another link begging to be made. It's not just between the Sensex and hunger stories. Let's revert to the latest maternal mortality figures released by the WHO and others. Some 536,000 women died in childbirth in 2005. Of these, every fifth one of them, at least, was an Indian. That is, 117,000 of them. A total that could only be matched by Nigeria, Afghanistan and Congo together. Almost 99 per cent of all these deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries. Much of this, again, is amongst the poorer sections of the population. If we were to look at specific groups or communities, this would be even clearer. Let alone on the hunger index, India's rank in the U.N.'s Human Development Index is anyway dismal. There, at 126, we are below Bolivia, Guatemala and Gabon. Yet even that rank does not tell the full story. If we were to isolate the rich and the better off as a group, they might enter the top 10 nations. Efforts last year to look at adivasis [The roughly 70 million people belonging to "Scheduled Tribes" in India, Eds] as a group led pretty much in the reverse direction. One study found that if we were to derive the HDI for our tribes only, they would rank in the worst off 25 nations of the world. That's quite easy to believe. Canada has always been among the top 10 nations of the world in HDI rankings. In fact, it occupied the top slot for some years. Yet, a survey of its native or indigenous people towards the end of the last decade placed them at rank 63. That is, all those natives living on "reservations." Across the world, tribal people mostly have a poor HDI profile. And so it is in India, too, where they are pretty much at the bottom. The study that found their HDI to rank amongst the bottom 25 nations of the world, also found things to be worse by the region. The tribes of Orissa, it reports, fall below even the low end of the HDI of sub-Saharan African nations. This is by no means the only study to tell us how India's tribes are doing. There are tons of official data to show us that in great detail. But there's no rush to debate their survival in expert panels. They mostly get covered when they resist displacement, often with loss of life. They make up just eight per cent of the population, but account for over 45 per cent of those losing their lands to projects. The furore now on the import of wheat is welcome. At least the media have begun to look at the issue. But surely, it is also worth discussing how we came to import wheat in the first place. And how a nation with so many in hunger ended up exporting millions of tonnes of grain this decade. That too, at prices lower than those we offer to millions of poor people in this country. No matter how the Sensex is doing, the misery index for the poor scales new heights in one sector after another. Health costs still mount. They push people into debt even faster than before. A study done for the WHO in six Indian States found that 16 per cent of households it looked at were pushed below the poverty line by heavy medical costs. Nearly 10,000 families from lower income groups were covered by the survey for the years 2002-05. Some 12 per cent had to sell their assets to meet health expenses. Over 43 per cent had to resort to loans for the same reasons. Our answer to this has been: more of the same. More privatization. Less and less of a public health system. In Mumbai, extortion by hospitals has become so frequent as to actually find mention in the media. But journalists do not get to make the link between the gutting of public services and the public's misery. Much less can they track this in terms of private profiteering. That would go against the publication or channel's stand of privatization as a cure for all ills. More than once this year, the Bombay High Court has warned hospitals against the cruel practice of holding back the body of a patient--demanding hundreds of thousands of rupees from the family before returning it. It still happens. Now even at government hospitals leased out to private managements. So a low income family is suddenly told it owes the hospital a huge sum of money, and that the body of its five-year-old girl will be released only when that sum is paid. A fine example of public-private partnership as it works today. In fact, it would be good to devise a health index spanning the reform years. One that looks at how both rich and poor have done health-wise. How many years of life, for instance, are taken away from you by ill-health if you are one of India's less well off citizens? In the world of the media, though, only one index matters: the Sensex. Watching it has spawned a whole little industry in itself. The numbers who pronounce on and debate it (in the media, anyway) are impressive. The oracles reading equity's entrails for omens. Maybe we need a media relevance index. An MRI scan of mass-produced mediocrity. P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu and the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: psainath@vsnl.com.   The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! Israel's Very Dangerous Gamble STEPHEN GREEN reports on the real motivations behind Israel's MISSILE STRIKE on SYRIA. PETER MONTAGUE on the NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE or How the Nuke Industry is using Gore's Prize and Global Warming to Plot Its Big Comeback. WILLIAM BLUM on the DEVALUING of "ANTI-SEMITE" or How to Make a Term Meaningless. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Your Ad Here

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"