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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Drug Companies and Psychiatrists
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Drug Companies and Psychiatrists
Partners in CrimeEugenia Tsao reports on the upcoming revision of one of the most important books in America, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Here’s where the drug lords, the shrinks and the insurance companies collude in establishing hundreds of bogus psychic conditions requiring the psychotropic drugs from which they reap billions every year. There are about 250,000 migrant laborers in Israel, mostly from the Philippines and Thailand. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Palestinians can’t find work. From Tel Aviv, Yonatan Preminger reports on Israel’s vicious employment strategy. Also in this latest newsletter Andrew Cockburn updates his CounterPunch world exclusive on how the U.S. has secretly helped build Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Get your new edition 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 t-shirts make great presents.
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Today's Stories July 10-12, 2009 Alexander Cockburn José Pertierra John Ross Conn Hallinan Nikolas Kozloff Clifton Ross / Carl Ginsburg Michael Neumann Gilad Atzmon Ellen Hodgson Brown Jim Goodman Christopher Bickerton Wendell Potter Raymond Lawrence Walid El Houri Stephanie Westbrook July 9, 2009 Ronnie Cummings Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff James Bovard Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam Allan Nairn Andy Worthington Tomas Borge Nadia Hijab Paul Krassner Website of the Day July 8, 2009 Saul Landau Dean Baker Winslow T. Wheeler Eric Walberg Ray McGovern David Rosen Dr. Mona El Farra Ron Jacobs Benjamin Dangl Alan Farago Website of the Day July 7, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Uri Avnery Brian M. Downing Gary Leupp Gregory A. Burris David Macaray Laura Flanders Alan Farago Greg Moses Dan Bacher Website of the Day July 6, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Nikolas Kozloff Gary Leupp Jonathan Cook Tim Wise Franklin Lamb Charles R. Larson Carlos Benemann Shepherd Bliss Jerry Kroth Karyn Strickler Website of the Day July 3-5, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Eamonn Fingleton Jeffrey St. Clair Mike Whitney Pam Martens George Ciccariello-Maher Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Anthony DiMaggio Roger Burbach John Ross Nikolas Kozloff Gareth Porter Andy Worthington Saul Landau David Macaray Adam Federman Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney Robert Jensen Robert Bryce Belén Fernandez Missy Comley Beattie C. G. Estabrook Stephen Martin Charles R. Larson Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend July 2, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Nikolas Kozloff Wendell Potter Ellen Hodgson Brown Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent? Patrick Irelan Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq Nicola Nasser Brian Tokar Dan Bacher Website of the Day July 1, 2009 Vijay Prashad Alberto Vallente Thorensen Paul Craig Roberts Robert Weissman Manuel García, Jr. Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete Norman Solomon Franklin Lamb Martha Rosenberg Diane Rejman Website of the Day June 30, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Benjamin Dangl Jonathan Cook Franklin Lamb George Wuerthner Todd Gordon Ron Jacobs Kenneth Libby Julian Vigo Website of the Day
June 29, 2009 Ishmael Reed Nikolas Kozloff Clifton Ross Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Conn Hallinan James G. Abourezk Ralph Nader Carol Miller Greg Moses Website of the Day June 26-28, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Doug Peacock Daniel Wolff Mike Whitney John Ross David Rosen Emily Ratner Gareth Porter Farid Marjai Nadia Hijab Paul Craig Roberts Fred Gardner Carl Ginsburg Paul Watson David Ker Thomson Farzana Versey Geoff Berne Todd Alan Price Ramzy Baroud Jeff Sher Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value? Glen Johnson Charlotte Laws Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend June 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly Jack Bratich Wendell Potter Charles R. Larson Alan Farago Jonathan Cook Gareth Porter Bitta Mostofi / David Macaray Mark Schuller Website of the Day June 24, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Dean Baker Andy Worthington James Bovard Diana Gibson / P. Sainath Gareth Porter Robert Alvarez Dave Lindorff Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi Website of the Day
June 23, 2009 David Price Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway / Dave Lindorff Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero Gary Leupp Brian M. Downing Robert Bryce Nicholas Dearden Yousef Munayyer Website of the Day June 22, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Chris Floyd Jack Z. Bratich Atash Yaghmaian Laura Carlsen Paul Craig Roberts Vijay Prashad Fred Gardner Andy Thayer David Macaray Website of the Day
June 19 - 21, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Al Giordano Henry A. Giroux Anthony DiMaggio Paul Craig Roberts John Ross Gareth Porter Carl Ginsburg Tommi Avicolli Mecca Joe Bageant Serge Halimi P. Sainath Jim Goodman Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Robert Fantina Harvey Wasserman Walter Brasch David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Ben Sonnenberg Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Weekend Edition The President, the Gold Mine and the Politics of GreedThe Parable of the Golden ParachuteBy JEFFREY ST. CLAIR This is an excerpt from Born Under a Bad Sky. At the precise moment George H. W. Bush, famous sky-diver, burst back into the headlines by renouncing his long-standing and ill-used membership in the National Rifle Association, the putative architect of the New World Order quietly sold his services to a much more invidious enterprise: American Barrick Resources Company. In May 1994, I learned that Bush had signed on as a senior advisor on international affairs for this transnational mining company, breaching a promise he had made prior to leaving presidential office not to serve on any corporate boards. “President Bush doesn’t do boards,” Bush spokesman Jim McGrath told me. “This is the exception that proves the rule. President Bush is very concerned about avoiding any apparent conflicts of interest.” In fact, Bush’s position with Barrick appeared to be a direct payoff for the special attention his administration lavished on the multi-billion-dollar Canadian company. Barrick is the most profitable gold mining company in North America, owed largely to its ownership of the vast Goldstrike mine near Elko, Nevada. The 1,800-acre Goldstrike mine contains an estimated $10 billion worth of gold; yet, under the 1872 Mining Act, the land was “patented” by Barrick from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for less than $10,000. When Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt handed Barrick the title of the land in the spring of 1993, he called it the “greatest gold heist since Butch Cassidy”—a comment notable for its grotesque understatement. In fact, Barrick’s patenting of the Goldstrike mine was made possible by the Bush administration, which in the summer of 1992, secretly adopted a “fast-tracking” process to accelerate the Goldstrike mine’s patent-approval. Under the traditional procedures of the BLM, patenting of mine claims takes two to four years and is overseen by officials at the BLM. The “fast-tracking” approach developed by the Bush administration allowed Barrack to hire an “independent” consultant to supervise an abridged approval process. The Goldstrike mine was patented in six months. This was a triumphant maneuver. At the time, it appeared likely that the Congress would approve a mining reform bill ending patenting of federal lands and imposing a token 8 percent royalty on the value of minerals removed from federal lands. Ultimately, the bill failed by two votes. If the measure had passed, and Barrick had not been granted the fast track exemption, the Goldstrike mine would have been forced to pay the government about $80 million a year in royalty payments. Barrick is owned by Horsham Corp., a Toronto-based holding company controlled by Canadian financier Peter Munk. Munk is close friends with former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. It was Mulroney who recommended that Bush take the position as a senior advisor to Barrick. Mulroney and Bush developed an intimate personal relationship when forging both the US / Canada trade accords and the outlines of NAFTA. Barrick spokesman William Bork told me that former-President Bush would advise the company on “geopolitical issues” as it explores new mining opportunities in the Third World. The former President may be particularly helpful in Barrick’s pursuit of mining claims in the gold-laden mountains of Indonesia. A minor impediment to the swift extraction of this buried lucre is fierce opposition by native tribes in East Timor and Irian Jaya. For years, the Indonesian government has moved to brutally dislocate and suppress indigenous people in order to secure control of the country’s rich oil, timber, and mineral resources, which it could then sell off to Western corporations. The result has been a genocidal campaign (actively supported by the Bush and Clinton administrations) leading to the deaths of more than 500,000 people. By some accounts, more than 20 percent of the indigenous population in the mining region has been slaughtered in the past twenty years. Bush’s congenial relations with the Suharto regime helped speed Barrick’s entry into this spooky landscape of gold and death. Bush was joined on Barrick’s senior advisory board by former-Senator Howard Baker (whose law firm represented corporations seeking to exploit natural resources in Siberia and other Asian countries) and Vernon Jordan, consigliore to Bill Clinton. Jordan, who headed the Clinton transition team and still spends (non-billable?) hours as Bill’s golfing partner, presides as chief rainmaker at the notorious DC law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss (as in former Democratic Party chairman and Ambassador to Russia Robert Strauss), Hauer & Feld. One of the most powerful influence peddlers on Capitol Hill, Akin, Gump’s client portfolio represents a dark list of transnational corporations and vicious government regimes, including Bechtel, the governments of Chile and Colombia, Enron, Loral, RJR Nabisco, and Westinghouse. Clearly there are no hands too dirty or bloody for this liberal firm to hold and wash. It will be recalled that in the spring of 1993 Vernon Jordon was summoned to Houston for a consultation with Maxxam Corporation’s CEO, Charles Hurwitz, ransacker of redwoods and S&Ls. Jordon’s assignment was to use his influence with federal officials to shield the corporate raider from suffering a near certain indictment at the hands of Janet Reno’s Justice Department for his role in the pillaging of the United Savings Association of Texas and the illegal raid on the Pacific Lumber Company. Jordon also attempted to broker a federal buyout of the Headwaters redwood grove for the outlandish sum of one billion dollars. Vernon Jordan proved his worth to Barrick in the early days of Clintontime when he got the White House to pressure Babbitt to back off his campaign to reform federal mining policies. During the early months of the Clinton administration, Babbitt was eager to push mining reform as a top priority at the Interior Department. By the summer of 1993, however, the Clinton administration had totally abandoned its commitment to end the give-away of federal minerals. Most of the blame for this retreat was laid at the feet of Western governors and legislators, such as Cecil Andrus and Max Baucus. While they certainly were influential factors in the decision, a more decisive figure in this debacle was Vernon Jordon, who, according to a high level official at the Interior Department, personally advised President Clinton to delete mining reform from his political agenda. Bush and Jordon were also useful front-men for Barrick as the company advanced its interests in the international mineral marketplace. Outside the United States, Barrick’s most profitable existing operations are the huge Nevada and El Tambo mines in Chile. The company acquired the El Tambo property during General Augusto Pinochet’s wretched tenure as dictator. At the time of this deal, Pinochet’s regime was loudly praised by the Bush administration for opening up Chile’s economy to “western investment.” At the time, Jordan’s firm, Akin, Gump, represented the Chilean government (business-suited followers of Pinochet), and judiciously advised them to accelerate the General’s policies of selling off the country’s vast forest and mineral resources at cheap prices to North American corporations. In return, Jordan (and Bush, for that matter) actively promoted the inclusion of Chile (which he called the “greatest democracy in South America”) in a post-NAFTA free-trade pact—a move supported by Newt Gingrich. Dismaying as these events may appear, such nefarious activities are standard operating procedure for the power elite in DC these days—people who sell their services to the highest bidder, regardless of the company’s resumé of crimes against the environment and humanity. Indeed, the worse the rap sheet, the higher the consulting fees. In George Bush’s case, the door revolved slowly, but lucratively. Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
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