`home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers!

Why Hillary Clinton has Always Been a Republican

In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.

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

Today's Stories

July 21 / 22, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Giuliani and the Dogs of War

Werther
How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate

Ralph Nader
Atomic Blowback

David Keen
Buy Hard: How to Sell an Endless War

Fred Gardner
Karl Rove, Pothead: When Good Drugs Happen to Bad People

Gary Leupp
Edelman's Edict: Is Hillary "Reinforcing Enemy Propaganda?"

Robert Fantina
Fear in Iraq

Saker
The Future of Palestine: an Interview with Jonathan Cook

Rannie Amiri
Nasrallah in the Crosshairs: How will the Third Lebanon War Start?

Mike Whitney
The Crisis in Hedgistan

Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD
The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness: Linking Alienation and Dissociation

Monica Benderman
Facing the Truth

Dan Bacher
Deltagate: the Politics of Fish Kills

Michael Baney
Fujimori's Long Race From Justice

Missy Beattie
Here, There and Everywhere

Ron Jacobs
Tremble, Tyrants

Thomas Naylor
California Split: an Open Letter to Schwarzenegger

 

July 20, 2007

Eliza Szabo
Fatal Neglect: Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan

Pam Martens
Doctoring the News: CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Laura Bush and Merck

Alan Farago
Winners and Losers in the Housing Market Crash

Harvey Wasserman
Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed "No Nukes!"

Marjorie Cohn
Iraqis will be the Deciders

Dave Zirin
White Noise and the Black Athlete

Anthony DiMaggio
American Public Opinion and Israel

Scott Liebertz
Oaxaca on Edge

Linn Washington, Jr.
British Cops Assault Rape Allegations

Bill Piper / Anthony Papa
Flying High?: The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar

Ramzy Baroud
Bush's War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing

Website of the Day
The Prankster Art of Mark Jenkins

 

July 19, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Next Invasion of Iraq

Remi Kanazi
Is This Ben Gurion or Hell?: a Palestinian Adventure Through Israel's Largest Airport

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Surging Costs of the Iraq War

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Health Care: Behind the Rhetoric

Dave Lindorff
Killing Cabbies in Iraq

Conn Hallinan
Have Gun, Will Travel: Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan

D. K. Wilson
The Michael Vick Case Pulls Back the Veil on Who We Really Are

Joshua Frank
Democrats as Leviathan: Another Step Toward War with Iran

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of Wayne Morse

Russell Hoffman
Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks at the World's Largest Nuke

Ray McGovern
Bush's Wooden Headedness Kills

Website of the Day
Protesting Power


July 18, 2007

Brenda Norrell
Spy Towers on the US Border

Col. Dan Smith
How the US Could "Lose" Saudi Arabia

Martha Rosenberg
Lord of Crookharbour: the Trial of Conrad Black

Conn Hallinan
Bombing and Spraying Afghanistan

Binoy Kampmark
The SIM Card Terror Case

Patrick Bond /
Rehana Dada

Who Killed Sajida Khan?

Tom Johnson
The Long Road ... to Nowhere

Paul Craig Roberts
A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?

Bob Quellos
Pushing the Poor Out of House and Home

Felice Pace
Falling for Lieberman's Iran Resolution

Robert Weissman
National Health Insurance: More Humane and More Efficient

CP Newswire
Shocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists in Torture

Website of the Day
Gilad Atzmon Live!

 

July 17, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 Fathers, Mothers and Children Killed

Marjorie Cohn
Out of Control: Executive Power Plays

Evelyn Pringle
Inside Bush's FDA

David Rosen
Moral Hypocrisy on the Hill: the Christian Right, Sexual Scandal and the Pleasures of the Courtesan

Susan Miller
Width Matters: Displacement and Israel's Wall

Franklin Lamb
Did the UN Cave to Israel on Lebanon's Shabaa Farms?

Don Monkerud
Considering Victory in Iraq

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Surge

Russell Hoffman
Japan Dodges a Radioactive Bullet

Dave Lindorff
Feingold Turns to Dross

Dave Zirin
Reclaiming Sports as True Fiction

Website of the Day
Che at the UN: 1964

 

July 16, 2007

Gary Leupp
Cheney Urges Bush to Strike Iran

Ellen Cantarow
The Untold Story of Iraqi Women

Paul Craig Roberts
Impeach Now

Allan J. Lichtman
The D.C. Madam's Public Service

Dan Bacher
Cheney and the Klamath: Was the Veep Behind the Nation's Worst Salmon Kill?

Patrick Cockburn
The Killing of Khalid W. Hassan

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Property is Racism

James Brooks
AIPAC and Mahmoud Abbas: the Undemocratic Road to Defeat

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Judicial Crisis in Pakistan

Julie Flint
Suleiman Jamous in Limbo

Website of the Day
Free Suleiman Jamous!

 

July 14 / 15. 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Support Their Troops?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majhid Khan, Dubious US Convictions and a Dying Man

Ralph Nader
Lawlessness, Waste and Incompetence

Robert Fantina
The Illegalities of the Iraq War

Ron Jacobs
Architecture as Military Strategy

Joshua Frank
Eat, Fight, Screw, Pray: An Interview with Joe Bageant

Conn Hallinan
Guns, Foundations and Free Trade: How the Right Targets Africa

Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD
War and Dissociation

John Ross
No En Nuestro Nombre!: a Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement

Fred Gardner
Who's Afraid of Cannabidiol?

Rannie Amiri
A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak

Charles Modiano
ESPN's Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man

Anthony DiMaggio
America's Parochial Press

China Hand
Executive Orders and Coercive Diplomacy

Missy Comley Beattie
Reprobate Rhetoricians

Dr. James J. Murtagh, Jr.
Harry Potter Battles Big Brother

Kenneth Rexroth
On Thomas More's "Utopia"

Poets' Basement
Engel, Davies and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
GOP Sex Hypocrites: a Slideshow

 

July 13, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Decider in Denial

Winslow T. Wheeler
Bush's Iraq Benchmarks Assessment: Grading on a Curve for the Wrong Test

Imran Khan
When Dictators Serve US Interests

Todd Chretien
The Wal-Mart of Garbage

Sam Husseini
Killing the Constitution

Dr. Herman Mindshaftgap
Why, in Truth, There is No Surge

Anthony Papa
The Hard Road Home

D. K. Wilson
The Wonderful World of Mike Greenberg and Barry Bonds

David Michael Green
In the Last Throes, Judiciously

Website of the Day
Strange Attraction: Mrs. Thompson and Mr. Wolfowitz

 

July 12, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Restoring the People's Power

Robert Jensen
Lessons from the Lal Masjid Tragedy

Dr. Susan Block
Hookergate II: The Senator and the Veep

Joshua Frank
The Liberal Thrashing of Ward Churchill

John Chuckman
How Terror Lost Its Meaning

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Problem with Bribeline

Mike Whitney
Demonizing Putin

Nicola Nasser
Will New Delhi's Palestinian Policy be Neutralized?

Richard Rhames
Requiem for the Paxilated

William S. Lind
Not Fourth Generation Warfare

Website of the Day
Video: World's Largest Nuclear Explosion

 

 

July 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Benchmark Blame Game

Richard Neville
Is This Man a Psychopath? Bomber McNeill, the Faceless Pol Pot of the Sky

Debra McNutt
Privatizing Women: Military Prostitution and the Iraq Occupation

John V. Walsh
A Plea to Ralph Nader

Scott Liebertz
Where's the Outcry? Mexico's Monitor Radio vs. RCTV

George C. Wilson
Beware the Iran Hawks

James McEnteer
My Impossible Dream Candidate

Philip Rizk
Submission or Resistance in Gaza?

Johnny Hazard
Mexico Commemorates a Fraud

Dave Lindorff
On the Road with Impeachment

Website of the Day
Sly Stone's Higher Power

 

July 10, 2007

James Ridgeway
True North: Big Oil in the Arctic

Tariq Ali
New Clashes in Islamabad: Judges and Jihadis Torment the Regime

Javed Hussein
Pakistan's Waco?: The Storming of the Red Mosque

William Blum
Neocons, Theocons, Demcons, Excons and Future Cons

Ralph Nader
Grown in China

Jay Arena
New Orleans, Public Housing and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Anthony DiMaggio
A Begrudging Reversal: The New York Times and the "Anti-War" Turn

Eva Liddell
Has Ann Coulter Got the Hots for John Edwards?

Jerry Kroth
Democratic Defectors and the Israel Lobby

Alice Woodward
White Supremacy and the Jena Six

Nikolas Kozloff
Where's Jerry?: On Cheney Impeachment, Rep. Nadler's a No Show

Paul Shannon
It's Time to Reform Sex Offender Laws

Website of the Day
March for Remembrance

 

July 9, 2007

Fidel Castro
The Killing Machine: Reflections from a Target of the CIA

Diana Johnstone
King Sarko the First

John Walsh
Will the Greens Seize the Moment?

Uri Avnery
The Jordanian Option

Ramzy Baroud
The Palestinian Left: a Lost Opportunity?

John Ripton
The New West Bank Palestinian State

Stephen Lendman
Making Gaza Scream

Bruce Jackson
Bush Going Down: the Correct Way to Affix a Stamp

Michael Donnelly
What's the Matter with Winchester?

Doug Giebel
Wanted: Old Men with Nothing to Lose

Website of the Day
Ron Paul on This Week with George

 


July 7 / 8, 2007

Saul Landau
Blame the Puppet

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Parasitic Imperialism

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
What Lies Beneath: Dispatches from the Frontlines of t he Burqa Brigade

Alan Maass
Will "Sicko" Spark a Movement?: a Film, Militant Nurses and a New Opportunity for Single Payer Health Care

John Ross
The Fire Last Time

Pat Williams
The Supreme Court and Mr. Peanut

Rannie Amiri
The Unbreakable Mordechai Vanunu

Farzana Versey
Does the Taj Mahal Deserve to be a Wonder of the World?

Bart Gruzalski
Bush, the Revolution and the Iraq War

Paul Rockwell
An Army of None

Reza Fiyouzat
Tax Cuts for the Rich Only Benefit the Economy of the Rich

Monica Benderman
Americans, Honestly!

Kenneth Couesbouc
Total War: From Clausewitz to Clinton and Bush

Dave Lindorff
Poll: Impeach the Bastards

Charles Modiano
History's Hit Job on Thomas Paine

Missy Beattie
King Cretin

Dal LaMagna
A Peacemaker's View of Baghdad

Jean Gerard
Those So-Called Oil Contracts in Iraq

Anne Dachel
Autism: an Epidemic of Fairly Recent Origin

Ron Jacobs
Modes and Melodies of Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Engel and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Van Morrison and Bob Dylan in Athens


July 6, 2007

Daniel Ellsberg
When the Crimes of the White House are Unpunishable

Gary Leupp
The Cracks in Cheney's World

Harvey Wasserman
Leonard Peltier vs. Scooter Libby: the Hero and the Henchman

Omer Subhani
Our Dead are Not the Same: Ignoring Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Marjorie Cohn
Compassion, Conspiracy and Commutation

Christopher Brauchli
Kingly Edicts: Bush's Executive Orders

David Michael Green
Scalia Time: the Wrecking Ball Court

China Hand
Catfish Blues: Food Safety, the FDA and the Emerging Trade War with China

Renee Saucedo
and Todd Chretien
The New Challenges Facing the Immigrant Rights Movement

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Crime Wave Behind the Media Curtain

Website of the Day
Jean Bricmont on the Humanitarian Interveners

 

July 5, 2007

Andy Worthington
Two Americas, Both Unjust: Scooter Libby vs. the "Enemy Combatants"

Mike Stark
Double Standards of North Carolina "Justice"

Norman Solomon
The Keyboard Hawks: a Bloody Media Mirror

Michael Schwartz
Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

Susie Day
Killer Lesbians Mauled by Killer Court (and Media Wolfpack)

Jacob Hornberger
A Tangled Web of Lies: Bush and the Libby Case

Bill Hatch
Smoking with Arnold: The Strange Return of Toxic Mary Nichols

Don Fitz
When Building Green Ain't So Green

John Wright
The Crisis of Imperialism

Website of the Day
Anti-Flag and Tom Morello: "This Land is Your Land"

 

July 4, 2007

St. Clair / Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambitions

Vijay Prashad
Democrat (Punjab): Obama and Outsourcing

Carl G. Estabrook
The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Exist

Ron Jacobs
Texas Wants to Kill Another Man, the Law be Damned: the Disturbing Case of Kenneth Foster

David R. Dow
The Quality of Bush's Mercy: the Ghosts of Texas

Claudia Johnson
Is My Doctor a Terrorist?

William S. Lind
What Israel's Defeat in Lebanon Means for Defense Industry Fat Cats

Gregory Afghani
Truth and Tenure: Finkelstein and the Perils of Impeccable Scholarship

Paul Edwards
End It Now!

D. K. Wilson
The Sliming of Tank Johnson

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Mr. President: Bush/Cheney for Dummies

Thomas Jefferson
The Spirit of Resistance: Lethargy is the Forerunner of the Death of Public Liberty

Cindy Sheehan
Call Out the Instigator

Website of the Day
Springsteen: 4th of July, Ashbury Park


July 3, 2007

Bill Quigley
Injustice in Jena: Black Nooses Hanging from the "White" Tree

Gary Leupp
Civil Strife in Palestine: a Broader Context

Lynda Brayer
Norman Finkelstein and the Catholic Church

Richard Thieme
Mind Wars: Brain Research, Nanotech and the Military

Helen Redmond
They Don't Come Back the Same: the Mind of the Returning Iraq War Vet

David Swanson
Scooter and the Commuter: When Presidents Pardon Their Own Crimes

Jacob Hornberger
Martha Stewart vs. Scooter Libby: Commutation as Cover-Up

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Pakistan's New Jihad

Franklin Lamb
The Edginess of Lebanon

Ray McGovern
Unimpeachably Impeachable: Start with Cheney

Kevin Zeese
The Air Force vs. Rev. Lennox Yearwood

Dave Lindorff
Nancy Pelosi and the Low Bar Democrats

Website of the Day
A Military Guide to the Iraq War


July 2, 2007

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Whistleblowers

Nina Serrano
The Assassination of a Poet: Memories of Roque Dalton

Jack Hirschman
The Nation and the Assassin: a Shameful Blunder

Paul Craig Roberts
Enter Turkey

Bill Williams
The Commissar Two-Step at DePaul

Anthony Papa
A Taste of the Gulag: What Paris Learned

Sonja Karkar
Who Will Save Palestine?

Louay Safi
Steve Emerson's Fantastic Obsession

Anthony Gregory
When Killer Cops Walk

Monica Benderman
In Consideration of War

Website of the Day
Dylan's Masters of War, at West Point, 1990

 

June 30 / July 1, 2007

John Ross
Free Frida Kahlo!

Alan Farago
Fakery, Inflation and the Housing Market

Peter Quinn
The Political Paranoia Over Immigration: Two Centuries and Counting

Christopher Brauchli
Cheney Does the Constitution

Robert Fisk
Abu Henry and the Mysterious Silence

Uri Avnery
A Dark Summit

Judith Siers-Poisson
The Politics and PR of Cervical Cancer

Saul Landau
Israel is Bad for Jewish Ethics

Abbas Zaidi
The Ad Hominem World of Pakistan Politics

Ron Jacobs
Ending the War, Organizing for Change

Ralph Nader
Move Over Oprah: a Summer Reading List

Donald Worster
Which City is Worse Off Today, New York or New Orleans?

Mike Whitney
The Fed's Role in the Bear Stearns Meltdown

Jacob Hill
Fast Track to Trade Failure

Kenneth Couesbouc
Why Global Trade is Rarely Fair

Missy Beattie
Kakistocracy

Mohammad Kamaali
Envoy for the Quartet

Ramzy Baroud
Finding Lessons in Gaza's Bloodshed

Leonard Peltier
A Gathering at Oglala

Phyllis Pollack
Seven Hours of Banging with the Stones

Poets' Basement
Reed, Orloski and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
A Podcast Interview with Cpt. Ward Boston on the USS Liberty

 

June 29, 2007

St. Clair / Frank
Toward a New Environmental Movement

Brian Cloughley
Losing the War in Afghanistan: One Civilian Massacre at a Time

Patrick Cockburn
End the Occupation: an Open Letter to Gordon Brown

Gilad Atzmon
The Peace Envoy: Tony Blair on Work Release

Dave Lindorff
Subpoenas, Executive Privilege and Liberal Pipedreams

Jennifer Matsui /
Carl Kandutsch

Electric Larryland

Kevin Zeese
A Different Kind of Peace Candidate

Daniel Klimek
Fasting for Justice at DePaul

David Michael Green
The Founding Fathers Never Met Dick Cheney

John Chuckman
The London Car Bomb

Website of the Day
BAM!

 

June 28, 2007

Bill Quigley
How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps

Vijay Prashad
Once More on the New York Times

Margaret Kimberley
The Whitening of Marianne Pearl: When White Actors Play Black Characters

Winslow T. Wheeler
House of Pork: Changing Lightbulbs in the Democrats' Bordello

Philip Rizk
The Failing of Gaza

D. K. Wilson
The Black Villains Club

Bill Williams
Strange Calculus at DePaul

Mahmoud El-Yousseph
The Deportation of Yardlin Jimenez

Richard Rhames
The Liberation of Paris

Paul Krassner
Bong Hits for Repression: the Giant Sucking Sound of the Supreme Court

Website of the Day
Free Lightnin' Hopkins

 


June 27, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Targeting Dissent: FBI Spying on the National Lawyers Guild

Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD
Sick and Sicker: Two Models of Health Care Rationing

Alan Farago
Bush and the Everglades: Rebranding Failure as Success

Carla Blank
"America, the Beautiful": the Queen, Jamestown and the Eye of the Beholder

Matthew Abraham
The Smearing of Robert Trivers, Dershowitz-Style

Sunsara Taylor
The Deadly Consequences of Compromise: Abortion Rights Under Assault, Where's the Women's Movement?

Russell D. Hoffman
16 Dirty Secrets About Nuclear Power

Robert Weissman
Blackstone and Capital's Grand Scam

Sen. Russ Feingold
Secrecy and the Federal Death Penalty

Paul Buchheit
The Footprints of Democracies

Website of the Day
Anarchy for the USA: an Interview with Josh Wolf

 

June 26, 2007

Jonathan Cook
Divide and Rule, Israeli-Style

Ralph Nader
Sicko and the Politics of Health Care

Corporate Crime Reporter
Which Side Are You On, Michael Moore?

Ron Jacobs
Are the Neocons Really Going?

Martha Rosenberg
Mad Cow in God's Country

John Chuckman
China's New Weapons

Denny Haldeman
Ethanolics Anonymous

Anthony DiMaggio
Free Speech Hypocrisy at the Supreme Court

Stephen Fleischman
The Tightrope Economy

William S. Lind
Legitimacy, Toujours Legitimacy

Website of the Day
The CIA's Family Jewels

 


June 25, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Goodbye to the City on the Hill

Jennifer Loewenstein
The Triumph of US / Israeli Policy in Palestine

Bob Anderson
The Grooming of Bill Richardson: New Mexico's Nuclear Governor

Robert Pollin
The Realities of Microlending

Patrick Cockburn
Chemical Ali Faces the Hangman: the Life and Crimes of al-Majid

Eva Liddell
Why They Want to Fire Ward Churchill

Dan Bacher
Democrats and the School of the Americas: 42 House Democrats Back Torture Academy

Larry Atkins
The Case of the Judge and the $54 Million Pair of Pants: an Embarrassment, Not an Argument for Tort Reform

Mark Brenner
SEIU Ends Nursing Home Partnership

James Rothenberg
Hillary Does Iraq

Website of the Day
"A Long Train of Abuses"

June 23 / 24, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Zyklon B on the US Border

Jeff Taylor
The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama

Oren Ben-Dor
Israeli Apartheid is the Core of the Crisis in Gaza

Gary Leupp
In Defense of Academic Freedom: the Ward Churchill Case

Robert Fisk
The Bumbling Envoy

David Rosen
The Hidden Cost of War: Genital Injuries, Prosthetic Devices and the War on Terror

Russell Mokhiber
Ins and Outs for 2008: Up with Spoilers!

Alison Weir
USA Today and the USS Liberty

Robert Fantina
The Floundering Congress

D. K. Wilson
Of Gangstas and Spearchuckers, Sex and Zulus

Nicole Colson
Litigating Gitmo

Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson
Torture, Psychologists and Colonel James

Dave Lindorff
Exodus of the Puppets: Bush's Incredible Shrinking Coalition

Benjamin Dangl
Cerámica de Cuyo: a Profile of Worker Control in Argentina

Michael Dickinson
The Catholicization of Tony

Poets' Basement
Davies, Engel, Gerard and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Incarcerex: a Drug War Video

 

June 22, 2007

Andy Worthington
A Tunisian in Gitmo: the Story of Prisoner 660

Sherwood Ross
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret: the Big Profits in Biowarfare Research

Eliana Monteforte
The Torture Academy

Robert Weissman
Things Can Be Different

Richard Rhames
Farmer Preservation

Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Uighurs: an Encounter in Albania

Ramzy Baroud
Chronicle of a Chaos Foretold

Ehud Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon
Facing an Imminent Threat of Expulsion: Palestinians in S. Hebron Hills Need Your Help!

David Michael Green
If Reid Were Rove

Kathryn Webber
Boycotting DePaul

Website of the Day
Stop Me Before I Vote Again!

 

June 21, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
The Day of the Rope

Natsu Saito
The Regents and Ward Churchill: Now is the Time to Speak Out

Ron Jacobs
The Intimidation of a Vet

Saree Makdisi
The West Chooses Fatah, But Palestinians Don't

John Stauber
Blessed Unrest: an Interview with Paul Hawken

Scott Liebertz
Fox News and Venezuela: an Analysis of How the Network Deliberately Misinforms Its Viewers

Tom Clifford
The Ghost Prisoners

Robert Jensen
The Last Sunday?

Michael J. Smith
Who Among Us Will Step Up to Destroy the Democratic Party?

Jeb Sprague
Pain at the Pump in Haiti

Website of the Day
Dion: Hey Paris


June 20, 2007

Omar Barghouti
A Secular-Democratic State Solution

Andy Worthington
Repatriated to Torture

Margaret Kimberley
Supreme Injustices: the Bush Court

Robert Weissman
Sicko, Part One: the Human Tragedy

Russell D. Hoffman
Time to Choose: Meltdowns or Solar Power?

Rannie Amiri
Mideast Alight

Stephen Lendman
The New York Times vs. Hugo Chavez

Dave Lindorff
Democratic Disconnect

David Swanson
Booing Hillary: Platitudes from the Drone Machine

Anne Dachel
Autism & Vaccines: Why are They Afraid to Look?

Website of the Day
Revolution By the Book

 

June 19, 2007

Ralph Nader
Hillary's Stock and Trade: the NAFTA Two-Step

Dr. Shepherd Bliss
Torture's Long Reach

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Demostrating Against the Catholic Church in Santa Fe

Jeff Leys
Swarming Congress: Building a Resistance to the 2008 Iraq War Supplemental Funding Bill

Dave Zirin
The Unforgiven: Barry Bonds and Jack Johnson

Chris Floyd
Hitchens Takes a Roll in the Hay

Ben Terrall
Iraq Union Leaders Speak Out Against the Occupation

Anthony Papa
Veronica's Story: a Dying Wish to Governor Spitzer

VIPS
Countering Terrorism: How Not to Do It

Linda Flores
Criminalizing the Classroom

Website of the Day
Sign On to the Iraq Moratorium


June 18, 2007

John Ross
The Annexation of Mexico

Paul Craig Roberts
The Reign of the Tyrants is at Hand

Martha Rosenberg
Let Cheney at Him: Richardson the Oryx Hunter

Norman Solomon
War at the Remote

Don Santina
Memo to the Queen: Bobby Sands Died for Your Sins

Isabella Kenfield
Landless Rural Workers Confront Lula

James Brooks
America's Guilty Silence

Eva Liddell
Planning to Lose: Democratic Stratagems

Sam Husseini
Clinton Health Care Scam Revisited

Akiva Eldar
Ariel Sharon's Dream

Website of the Day
Frank Zappa: the Cop Interview

 


June 16 / 17, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Psychopathology of Shrinks

John Halle
Finkelstein and "The Progressive"

Robert Fisk
Welcome to "Palestine"

Andy Worthington
Return to Torture?

Uri Avnery
The Gaza Cage

Fred Gardner
Paris Hilton's Punishment: a False Parable

Saul Landau
Our Gang of Thugs: The 1970s as a Context for Terrorist Violence

P. Sainath
Heaven Can Wait: Creditors and the Widows of Vidharbha

Missy Comley Beattie
Calling Evil Its Name

Alan Gregory
When ADM Comes to Town: Killer Tax Breaks for Wildlife Destruction

Walter Brasch
Bush and the Philosophy of Swiss Cheese

Website of the Weekend
Obama Girl

 

June 15, 2007

Alan Farago
View from the Construction Crane: Sex, Taxes and Real Estate Scams in Miami

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of Ali al--Marri

Michael Simmons
Terrorizing Artists in the USA

Franklin Lamb
Blowback Across Lebanon: The Failed Sunni Army Solution

Gary Leupp
The Day After We Attack Iran

John Ross
Ballot Burning Time in Ol' Mexico

Website of the Day
The American Rationalist

 

June 14, 2007

Michael Donnelly
Charred SUVs and the End of Citizen Eco--Activism

Faisal Kutty
Scare Canada: The No--Fly List's False Sense of Security

Harry Browne
Ireland's Green Party Sells Out

Charles Jonkel
From the Arctic to Yellowstone: Bears in a World of Indifference

Steven Higgs
Murder in a Small Town: "Gay Panic" in Indiana?

Bruce Dixon
Black Power Through Low Power Radio

Bruce K. Gagnon
What Do We Do Now? A 10--Step Plan for Antiwar Activists

Website of the Day
Finkelgate

June 13, 2007

Glen Ford
Obama's Siren Song

Marjorie Cohn
Repression in Oaxaca

Bill Christison
A Grave Injustice at DePaul University

Charles Jonkel
Bears in a World of Indifference

Silvia Cattori
"I Was Not Prepared for the Horrors I Saw": an Interview with Hedy Epstein

Richard Gott
Racism and TV in Venezuela

Firmin DeBrabander
How the Neocons Misread Machiavelli

William S. Lind
The Perfect (Sine) Wave: Bombing Railroad Stations in Iraq

Keith Rosenthal
Workers Score a Victory at Harvard

Website of the Day
GOP and Monty Python Explain: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

June 12, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Sell a War

Paul Craig Roberts
The Neocon Threat to American Freedom

P. Sainath
India's Plutocrats and the Press

Ralph Nader
The Biggest Scam in the World

Omar Waraich
A Black Day for Pakistan's Press

Dave Lindorff
Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You

Harvey Wasserman
Confessions of an Anti-Nuke Jerk

Malini Johar Schueller
It Takes a Bomb

Ramzy Baroud
War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Empire

Website of the Day
Palestinian Chronicle Needs Our Help!

 

June 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The War on Journalists

Paul Craig Roberts
Losing the Economy to Mythology

Uri Avnery
40 Bad Years: the Rot of Occupation

Norman Solomon
The Silence of the Bombs

Eva Liddell
Paris Hilton Doesn't Do Dishes: How Barbie Stood Up to Allen Ginsberg

Rannie Amiri
Groundhog Day in Pakistan

Rachel Voss
Poetry and Politics in Nassau County

Christopher Brauchli
A Wild West Tale, Starring Rev. Dobson and Bill O'Reilly

D. K. Wilson
Untangling Michael Vick from the Dogs

Website of the Day
Paris, Mixed Up


 

 

Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition
July 21 / 22, 2007

CounterPunch Diary

Giuliani and the Dogs of War

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Even as the Iraq war claims yet another casualty, in the form of Senator John McCain, another Republican sets himself up for political destruction by insisting that America, should persist in this unpopular enterprise. McCain, once hailed as his party's all-but-inevitable nominee for the presidency, is near the end, out of money and firing senior members of his campaign staff, who retaliate by denigrating those left on the sinking ship.

It's been obvious for months that the path to the White House in 2008 does not lie in endorsing Bush's disastrous enterprise. Yet McCain did so and is now having to pay the bill, voyaging to Iraq and insinuating from inside a vast security cordon, his venerable torso encased in body armor, that it was as safe to stroll around Baghdad and its suburbs as Phoenix, in his home state of Arizona. Most Americans scoffed with incredulity at this claim, one so obviously at odds with reality that CounterPunch coeditor Jeffrey St Clair speculated to me that McCain was setting the stage for a sudden turnaround on the war in the fall, saying that though he'd given Bush every chance, quitting time was here.

But, as often in life, satisfactory explanations from the pages of Machiavelli are no match for the bray of confident miscalculation. Flag-wagging isn't a vote-getter this campaign season, at least yet. Most Americans don't like the war, want the troops out, will vote for politicians who promise to get them home and punish those who don't. John McCain's treasury is empty. Money is flowing into the campaign accounts of the libertarian Republic peace candidate, Ron Paul, a remote outsider whose polling numbers shoot up on the rare occasions he can shoulder his way into the Republican debates.
Now, undeterred by McCain's impending political extinction as a the prime pro-war candidate, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is seizing the battle standard from the senator's stricken hand. Giuliani named his list of foreign policy advisers last week. This is an important political ritual, whereby political commentators can run their eyes down the list and assess at a glance what sort of headway the candidate is making in winning the support of the political establishment, starting with Henry Kissinger. Giuliani's list is heavily freighted with pro-war types, including the apex neo-con, Norman Podhoretz.

No candidate lofting tossing the name Podhoretz into the laptops of the press corps, is aiming at the peace vote. Podhoretz is former editor of the American Jewish Committee's Commentary magazine, the neocons' in-house journal. He's been touting war on Islam and pretty much everywhere on the planet else barring Israel ever since the mid-70s, when he worried that America would quit its support for Israel just as it slunk out of Vietnam. He denounced the Democrats as pro-Arab, pro-gay, pro-terror pinkoes and stumped for Reagan. His wife, Midge Decter, became a moving spirit in the Committee on the Present Danger, his so-in-law Elliot Abrams went to work for Reagan, plead guilty to lying to Congress about the US role in the Reagan-era shuttle of arms and money, labeled the Iran-Contras scandal. These days Elliot in the Bush White House and Norman is now at Giuliani's elbow.

By publicly identifying Podhoretz as one of his foreign policy advisers, Giuliani is not only emphasizing his view that the United States should stay in Iraq for the long haul. He's saying that he esteems the counsel of a man who is calling for an immediate attack on Iran. In "The Case for Bombing Iran", an essay in the June edition of Commentary, Podhoretz trundled his mid-70s arsenal of calumny out of the museum, rehabbed for current conditions: "Looking at Europe today," he wailed, "we already see the unfolding of a process analogous to Finlandization [a vintage neo-con slur from the Cold War years]: it has been called, rightly, Islamization." Podhoretz set for the choices in what he calls the Fourth World War. Either bomb Iran now, or "we could wake up one morning to find that Iran is holding Berlin, Paris or London hostage to whatever its demands are then."

Given their track record it's not implausible to argue, as many do, that by attacking Iran at some point in the coming months Bush and Cheney will try to revive their administration's fortunes and the presently abysmal prospects of Republican candidates--not just the presidential candidate--in the 2008 elections. Even though the ordinary folk are not enthused, there's considerable bipartisan support for such an attack among the political elites.

The Israel lobby has been publicly pushing for it for over a year. Senator Joseph Lieberman recently put up a resolution in Congress stigmatizing Iran as the prime instigator of the deaths of US personnel in Iraq and such supposed Democratic liberals as California's two senators--Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer--voted for it. Last week, around 70 Democrats let it be known they could not approve any plan for Iraq that didn't schedule an immediate start to withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Good for them, but that leaves two thirds of the Democrats in the House NOT supporting such a plan. Plus every Republican except Ron Paul, the only Republican in the House to vote with the 70-odd Democrats on this issue.

Giuliani--now vying with Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and the (to me) entirely unconvincing former Tennessee senator and actor Fred Thompson for the front-runner's spot on the Republican side for the presidential nomination--seems to have realised soon enough that waving the Iraqi battle standard isn't a vote-getter in the sticks. No sooner had he fronted Poddy as the Wise Man at his elbow than he also attacked Bush's strategy in Iraq, saying it was draining resources and attention from the true war on terror--which is the default option for Democratic contenders such as HRC. Staking his future on the war option, even as McCain's bier is hauled from the field, is a posture that may play well in New York and Washington, but probably not in the hinterlands of New Hampshire and Iowa, where Giuliani will have first to make his mark.

Vick, Pit Bulls and Pigs

The federal indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on conspiracy charges associated with his pit bull breeding and training operation at Bad Newz Kennels in Smithfield, Virginia, contains searing descriptions of dreadful cruelty towards these creatures. Tears stained the venerable cheeks of Senator Bobby Byrd as the former Klan Grand Cyclops* bewailed the monstrous conduct of the black football star and his co-conspirators.

Indeed, the cruelties as laid out in the indictment are horrible and Vick and his coconspirators deservedly face serious penalties, if convicted on the charges. But there are the usual double standards lightly vaulted over by those busy savaging Vick.

Judi Giuliani, the current wife of a candidate, hasn't caught much heat for her infamous past as a dog torturer and killer. Judi's job at US Surgical was allegedly to demonstrate her company's staple stitches' efficacy on cuts made on drugged dogs. According to Patricia Feral, president of the Connecticut-based Friends of Animals, US Surgical's reps did sales-demonstration stapling on hundreds of dogs through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Feral says the dogs were "either put to death following the sales demonstrations because they can't recover from them, or they die during them." The stapling had to be done on live dogs because, as one US Surgical CEO put it back in the 1980s, "A dead dog doesn't bleed. You need real blood-flow conditions, or you get a false sense of security."

For institutionalized cruelty to animals, consult any book on the meatpacking business. I recommend Dead Meat, put out in the mid-1990s by Four Stories, Eight Windows Press. It contained Sue Coe's extraordinary paintings and drawings of slaughter houses, along with the journal of this intrepid artist as she and her sister traveled from one abattoir to the next, at considerable risk to their lives. I wrote a 17,000 word introduction ( "A Short, Meat-Oriented History of the World, From Eden to the Mattole") to this volume, an essay ultimately published in its most complete form in New Left Review in 1996 which you can find in NLR's online archive. Here's a paragraph from it to remember next time you slice into your pork chop:

Such is the swollen empire of pork in North Carolina. Its reeking lagoons surround darkened warehouses of animals trapped in metal crates barely larger than their bodies, tails chopped off, pumped with corn, soy beans and chemicals until, in six months, they weigh about 240 pounds, at which point they are shipped off to abattoirs to be killed, sometimes by prisoners on work release from the county jail. Near the town of Tar Heel, in Smithfield's Carolina Foods abattoir, half the workforce are Latin American immigrants; a number of others are prisoners. The sows are killed after about two years or whenever their reproductive perfor- mance declines. It takes maybe eight to ten people to run a sow factory, overseeing two thousand sows, boars and piglets. A computerized 'fin- ishing' farm, where the pigs are fattened, may just require a part-time caretaker to check the equipment and clean up between arriving and departing cohorts of hogs. The noise in these factories is ghastly, and many workers wear ear pads against the squealing and crashing of the animals in their cages. When the Raleigh News and Observerdid a series on North Carolina's pig barons in early 1995-following a pioneering arti- cle in Southern Exposure in 1992-readers were told they could call the paper's number in Raleigh, 549­5100, extension 4647and listen to a recording of this terrible sound. Thus do we travel toward necropolis from Olmsted's visit to Porkopolis nearly a century and a half ago.

Just how high or low on the Klan totem pole is Grand Cyclops? As far as I can see, they were regional grandees. Here's the Klan's definition, in its "Order and Principles of the Ku Klux Klan, 1868:

Titles: Section 1.

The officers of this Order shall consist of a Grand Wizard of the Empire and his ten Genii; a Grand Dragon of the Realm and his eight Hydras; a Grand Titan of the Dominion and his six Furies; a Grand Giant of the Province and his four Goblins; a Grand Cyclops of the Den and his two Night Hawks; a Grand Magi, a Grand Monk, a Grand Scribe, a Grand Exchequer, a Grand Turk, and a Grand Sentinel.

Section 2. The body politic of this Order shall be known and designated as "Ghouls."

Territory and Its Divisions

Section 1. The territory embraced within the jurisdiction of this Order shall be coterminous with the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee; all combined constituting the Empire.

Section 2. The Empire shall be divided into four departments, the first to be styled the Realm and coterminous with the boundaries of the several states; the second to be styled the Dominion and to be coterminous with such counties as the Grand Dragons of the several Realms may assign to the charge of the Grand Titan. The third to be styled the Province and to be coterminous with the several counties; provided, the Grand Titan may, when he deems it necessary, assign two Grand Giants to one Province, prescribing, at the same time, the jurisdiction of each. The fourth department to be styled the Den, and shall embrace such part of a Province as the Grand Giant shall assign to the charge of a Grand Cyclops.

A Big Mile Marker on our March into the Police State

If you haven't checked out the executive orders flowing from Bush's White House like sewage into a pig-rearing lagoon, try this appalling order, signed by Bush on July 17. I remarked here last week that the sort of solidarity work done in the 1980s here in relation to Nicaragua and El Salvador would have one instantly facing serious federal conspiracy charges today. Bush's dictats have thus far aroused only trivial commentary in the