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Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. 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

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

Today's Stories

September 5, 2007

Stan Goff
The End Begins

September 4, 2007

Jean Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

Patrick Cockburn
Cut and Run in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime

Tom Kerr
Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row

Gary Leupp
The Case of Jose Maria Sison

Sonja Karkar
The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine

Heather Gray
The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham

Fidel Castro
The Super-Revolutionaries

Jackie Corr
Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand

Sunsara Taylor
Katrina and the Progress of the System

Website of the Day
Colombia Journal

 

September 3, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Brits Flee from Basra

Eamon McCann
Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes

Joshua Frank
The End of the Green Party?

Chris Floyd
Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph

Marjorie Cohn
A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans

Walter Brasch
The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq

Matt Reichel
Redefining the American Dream

Website of the Day
Don't Get Fooled Again

 

September 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Entrapment Snares Larry Craig

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo

Saul Landau
The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five

David Keen
An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror

Patrick Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services

Diana Johnstone
Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket

George Longstreth, MD
& Karen Longstreth, RN
The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank

Linda M. Woolf
A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights

Ralph Nader
Wrapping the World with Advertising

Fred Gardner
The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD

Ben Tripp
Enquiry in America Today

David Michael Green
American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut

Missy Comley Beattie
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance

Michael Dickinson
Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark

Ron Jacobs
A Sports Nation of Millions

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z

 

August 31, 2007

Jeff Gibbs
Why I Am Not Going to the Protest

Paul Craig Roberts
The War Criminal in the Living Room

Ray McGovern
Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?

Robert Weissman
The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing

Matt Vidal
Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages

Robin Mittenthal
The Biofuels Trap

Chris Kutalik
Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis

Richard Forno
Watching Freedom's Watch

Binoy Kampmark
Dianified

Dave Zirin
Kenneth Foster Lives

Website of the Day
Free the Jena 6

 

August 30, 2007

Gary Leupp
Larry Craig on the Seat

John Ross
Dead Forest Defenders

Anthony DiMaggio
Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy

Jordan Flaherty
Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans

Michael Donnelly
The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir)

Russell Mokhiber
Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting

Dennis Brutus
and Patrick Bond
Global Financial Apartheid

William S. Lind
The Truth Tellers

Martha Rosenberg
They Call Him Dr. Cruel

Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell
Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project

Website of the Day
Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song"


August 29, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Costs of the Afghanistan War

David Rosen
The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet

Dave Zirin
Confronting Katrina

Paul Craig Roberts
More Shame, More Sorrow

Diane Farsetta
Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel

Ben Davis
Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One

Alan Farago
The Housing Crisis and the Environment

Jenna Orkin
Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero

Don Monkerud
The Vanishing American Vacation

Richard Nasser
Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR

Website of the Day
Don't Sleep on the Struggle

 

August 28, 2007

Uri Avnery
The Language of Force

Bill Quigley
Katrina, Two Years Later

Joshua Frank
The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains

China Hand
"I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy

Firmin DeBrabander
Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore

Charles Peña
Nuclear Fear Factor

Andy Worthington
Good Riddance, Gonzales

Ramzy Baroud
Abbas and the Abyss

Anthony Papa
Roger Stone's New Patsy

Ashley Smith
Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport

Website of the Day
B is for Bomb


August 27, 2007

Jorge Mariscal
The General Reports

Bill Christison
Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole

Anthony DiMaggio
Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press

Bruce A. Roth
India and the New Nuclear Era

John Walsh
Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2

Dave Lindorff
Gonzo's Gone

Ron Jacobs
Taking It to the Streets

Binoy Kampmark
Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty

Russell D. Hoffman
My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry

Website of the Day
George W. Told the Nation

 

August 25 / 26, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki

James Petras
The Great Financial Crisis

Jeffrey Buchanan /
Chris Kromm
Where Did the Katrina Money Go?

Marjorie Cohn
Turning Iraq into Vietnam

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, the Theological Prisoner of Christianity

Robert Fantina
Ari Fleischer, Freedom Watch and the Pro-War Lobbyists

Brian Concannon
Whitewashing the History of Abolition

Ralph Nader
What Do They Have to Hide?

Laura Carlsen
Extending NAFTA's Reach

Fred Gardner
Notes from Hempfest

David Michael Green
History, the Last Refuge of Scoundrels

Stephen Soldz
Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award

Mike Ferner
Combatants for Peace: Former Enemies Find New Way Forward

Paul Krassner
Mort Sahl's Punchline

Ben Tripp
Resistance is Impossible--But Not Futile

Missy Beattie
President Druzilla

Website of the Weekend
Blue Print for Gulf Renewal

 

August 24, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
A Hegemonic Hubris

Greg Moses
A Cruel and Unusual Excuse

William Schroder
Bush, Vietnam and Iraq

Alan Farago
The Pain of Paper Millionaires

Jackie Corr
Uncle Ben Bernacke and the Nanny State

Jeff Ballinger
Naomi Klein and the Path Not Taken

Bill Quigley
Pere Jean-Juste Comes Home

Dave Zirin
Inching Toward Insanity

Richard Rhames
Deaver and the Making of Reagan

Ryan Haygood
How Newark Can Mend

Website of the Day
Lindorff's Iraq Rag

 

August 23, 2007

Kathy Kelly
We Shouldn't be Causing This

P. Sainath
Meeting the Mahatma

Ron Jacobs
Bush, Vietnam and 14 More GIs Dead

Christopher Brauchli
Beyond Kafka: Mistakes, Soreheads and Eavesdropping

D.K. Wilson
When Sports Journalists Talk Race

Joshua Frank
The Weeds of Willapa Bay

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's True Lies About Dams and Canals

Brenda Norrell
Bush's House of Snakes: Indians, Border Biometrics and Migrating Corporations

John Wright
The Ongoing Tragedy of Afghanistan

David Vest
Elvis and Racism, Round 2

Website of the Day
Urgent Plea: the Black Agenda Report Needs Your Help!

 

August 22, 2007

Norman Finkelstein
Remembering Raul Hilberg

Marc Levy
Sleepless in Iraq

Lawrence R. Velvel
When Courts Bow Down to Secrecy

Ray McGovern
Bush's Iran War Drums Beating Louder

Norman Solomon
How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day

John Walsh
Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Road Show

Michael Dickinson
Little Brother is Watching You

William S. Lind
Operation Kabuki?: the Credibility of David Petraeus

Bill Hatch
A Short Walk into the Valley of Death

Kenneth E. Foster and John Joe Amador
How We Will Protest Our Executions

David Vest
Predictable Parallels: CNN and PBS

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Steve Perry


August 21, 2007

Saul Landau
The FBI's New Power

Alan Farago
Sand Houses and Missing Beaches

John Stauber
Iraq: the Gift that Keeps on Bleeding

Phillip Rizk
Gaza and the Jordanian Option

Debbie Nathan
Giuliani's Garden District

Binoy Kampmark
The Art of Sinning

Martha Rosenberg
The Fastow Economy

Sunsara Taylor
Back to School During Wartime

Website of the Day
Coffee with the Troops

 

August 20, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Padilla Jury Opens Pandora's Box

Uri Avnery
Stumbling Toward Another War

Rannie Amiri
Nasrallah's Surprise: a Warning from Beirut's No Bluff Zone

John Ross
The Fine Art of Bad Elections

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Radioactive Rip-Off

Robert Billyard
Canada's Disgrace: the Cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr

Dave Lindorff
Excuse Us, Nancy Pelosi

James Rothenberg
Why Your Vote Will Never Matter

David "DC" Larson
To Smear a King

Website of the Day
Bird Cinema

August 18 / 19, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Exit Karl Rove, Everyone's Useful Demon

Saul Landau
The FBI in War and Peace

Ralph Nader
Greed and Folly on Wall Street

Patrick Cockburn
A Bloody Week in Iraq

Robert Fantina
Cannon Fodder: Beau Biden and other "Deployable Assets"

Robert S. Eshelman
Azar's Story: an Iraqi Refugee Living in Syria

P. Sainath
The Last Battle of Laxmi Panda

Dave Lindorff
Tossing Fuel on a Fire: US Military Aid to Israel

Anthony DiMaggio
Iraq, Iran & the Vanishing Context in American News

Fred Gardner
The Politics of Schizophrenia

Ron Jacobs
The Virtues of Resistance

Tom Turnipseed
War Profiteering and Corruption: From Lexington, S.C. to the White House

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: Special Preachers, Priests and Clerics Edition!

Ben Tripp
I'm So Screwed

Andrew Wimmer
Living With Grief

Nancy Oden
Where Inmates Can Grow for Free

N.D. Jayaprakash
India Backtracks on Disarmament

Rick Smith
Reflections on Cuba: an Interview with Doug Morris

Missy Beattie
The Suicide Bomber

Poets' Basement
Engel, Ford, Orloski and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Imperial Storm Troopers in Action


August 17, 2007

Joanne Mariner
Terrorizing Social Protest

Paul Craig Roberts
China is not the Problem

Shepherd Bliss
Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Chile, 30 Years Later

Dave Lindorff
Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans

John Muthyala
The Water and the Road: Katrina, Poverty and the American Dream

Patrick Cockburn
Deepening Divsions in Iraq

Sherwood Ross
Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo

Phil Doe
The Old West Moves East: the Political Science of Colorado River Water

David Michael Green
Karl Rove and the Damage Done

Website of the Day
Gorilla Slaughter: a Personal Account


August 16, 2007

Jonathan Cook
The Second Lebanon War, a Year Later

Christopher Brauchli
Babes in Toxic Toyland

Norman Solomon
Backspin for War

Lee Sustar /
Orlando Sepuldeva

Victory on the Picket Line: How Immigrant Workers Won Their Strike Against Cygnus

George Bisharat
Boycott Movement Targets Israel

Binoy Kampmark
Tasteless: Gordon Ramsey and the Death of Gastronomy

Evelyn Pringle
Protection Racket?: the FDA and Avandia

Hugo Blanco
The Epic Struggle of Indigenous Andean / Amazonian

Website of the Day
Burning Man: the Field Recordings

 


 

 

 

Subscribe Online

September 5, 2007

On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco

Where's Nancy?

By BEN TERRALL

On Thursday, August 30, San Francisco anti-war activists held a "Peoples Town Hall Meeting" at the San Francisco Federal Building, site of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home office.

Given the Democratic Party leadership's tepid follow-through on opposing the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, peace activists CODEPINK have been pressuring Pelosi for months to meet publicly with her constituents about the war. Since her staffers consistently refused to cooperate, CODEPINK members camped and fasted outside Pelosi's San Francisco home for two weeks in August. The mock town meeting was a culmination of that campaigning, and featured a San Francisco resident, coincidentally also named Nancy, wearing a cut-out of Pelosi's face but tied to a chair to ensure that at least the Congresswoman's stand-in had to listen to critics.

CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin opened the proceedings as office workers on their way home began filing out of the building. Benjamin explained to the forty or so assembled San Franciscans that the last time Pelosi had a town hall meeting was well over a year ago, and though "this is the time of year when many Congresspeople have meetings in home districts [but] we couldn't get a meeting." Benjamin said, "while Nancy Pelosi didn't have time to meet with her constituents in August, we did our homework and found that she's gone to seven different states going from fundraiser to fundraiser, so she had plenty of time for that."

Antonia Juhasz, activist, policy analyst, and author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, spoke next. She described Pelosi as "the most powerful Democrat in Washington, DC," and said, "if I had the ultimate joy and privilege of being able to talk to her in her esteemed majesty I would tell her that Iraq's oil is not ours." Juhasz noted that Pelosi has said the oil law under consideration in Iraq, which was drafted and written in English by U.S. contractor BearingPoint and reviewed by the Bush Administration and the International Monetary Fund months before Iraqi legislators saw it, "is about revenue sharing." But Juhasz argued, "what we want them to do is to share the 2 cents they have left after we take the $200 billion away," since the law puts as a "benchmark" for the Iraqi government "that it must privatize its oil and turn its oil over to US oil corporations."

As an analyst with U.S. military consultants the RAND Corporation, Daniel Ellsberg leaked documents to the New York Times in 1971 known as "the Pentagon Papers," which contributed to mass disaffection with the Vietnam War. The veteran activist drew applause from the dissidents on August 30 by suggesting that they "recall to Nancy Pelosi and others that they were not elected for the single purpose of getting reelected." Referring to Pelosi and other leading Democrats, Ellsberg argued, "their failure to act better than they have has amounted to complicity not only in bad policy, or policies they don't agree with but haven't stopped, it involves them in complicity with grave unconstitutional behavior, destruction of our constitution, grave illegality, obviously the deaths day by day and hour by hour of many, many people ten to one non-American." Ellsberg stated he thought it "more likely than not" that Bush would attack Iran before leaving office, and noted that "Nancy Pelosi actually withdrew part of a bill in March of this year which did no more than say that he must come to Congress, as the constitution demands, before he attacks a new country. For Congress to say that is kind of the minimal thing that could be done, and Nancy Pelosi removed that from a vote. That was noted at the time in this country and in Iran, surely, as a total green light to the President using a free hand to do what he wants to do." Ellsberg also stressed that Bush's moves toward a police state "with the excuse of 9/11" encountered "no effective opposition from the Democratic Party when they were in the minority or in the majority."

Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (recently adapted into a documentary film narrated by Sean Penn), echoed Ellsberg's critique of the Democrats: "When we look at Congress today we see the distinction between the leadership and leadership. And when we look at the Speaker of the House and her own district, we're really seeing the refraction of several decades of the gap between the grassroots and the power elite in Washington." Solomon encouraged opponents of the status quo to "develop challenges, including at the electoral level," as "it's a travesty and a tragedy for San Francisco to be represented in Congress by someone who doesn't represent the views of the people in San Francisco."

At the protest's close, Dick Becker of the anti-war coalition ANSWER coalition stressed the importance of upcoming protests. On September 15, Congress will begin debating $195 billion in funding which Bush has requested for the Iraq war. Becker commented on the September 15 march on Washington, "it's not just going to be a march but a mass act of civil disobedience. On Monday the 17th CODEPINK has called for a march inside Congress, and the Iraq Veterans Against the War have called for shutting down the recruitment stations in Washington DC." Further demonstrations will take place throughout the U.S. on October 27. In San Francisco, Becker listed "the five Bay Area labor councils, United for Peace and Justice/Bay Area, the ANSWER coalition, the Stop Funding the War Coalition, the Episcopal Diocese" and other organizations as all focusing on that date for organizing, which meant "we have the possibility to see more people in the streets than at any time since the run up to the war."

Ben Terrall is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. He can be reached at bterrall@igc.org

 





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