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Stunning New Print Edition of CounterPunch Will the US Labor Movement Rise Again in Chicago? Or is this just a power play at the top? JoAnn Wypijewski details what's really at stake in the great showdown as some of labor's most powerful bosses threaten to quit the AFL-CIO. No-holds-barred profiles of the SIEU's Andy Stern, Hoffa of the Teamsters and the other "insurgents". Jeffrey St Clair tells the incredible saga of the $30 billion bailout of Boeing. How the scandal reached the White House and Don Rumsfeld screamed, Let the woman take the fall. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the Judy Miller story. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Show the New York Times You Don't Believe a Word of It: CounterPunch's New 14 Per Cent Club T-Shirts Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories July 12, 2005 Kara N. Tina "This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield Website of the Day Coke Gags Indian Artist   July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander Cockburn After the Bombings Uri Avnery War of the Colors in Israel Sheldon Rampton Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London Bill Christison Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement? Robert Fisk Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed Stephen Winspear Collateral Damage in London? Saul Landau Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken Behrooz Ghamari Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem Karl Beitel False Promises and Real Debt Relief Brian Concannon, Jr. Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires Fred Gardner Sentencing Season John Whitlow And What Does the Market Say? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us? Lila Rajiva Witches and Bastards Laura Carlsen CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities Jackie Corr Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket Dave Lindorff "My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter" N. D. Jayaprakash Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference Seth Sandronsky Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq Norman Madarasz The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party Ben Tripp The Inevitability of George W. Bush Poets' Basement Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel Website of the Weekend The Mother of All Enemies Lists   July 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception Tariq Ali The London Bombings: Why They Happened Monica Benderman One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality Rick Jahnkow Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement Christopher Brauchli Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra Kim Peterson Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror Joshua Frank Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments? Norman Solomon Messages from the Carnage Website of the Day An Interview with Ray McGovern   July 7, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr John Walsh More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry Mike Marqusee Message from London Gilad Atzmon London's Burning Nicole Colson Showdown at the Supreme Court Jack Random Judith Miller, Anti-Hero Norman Solomon Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War Len Colodny Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig? Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr   July 6, 2005 Elaine Cassel Political Necrophilia in Florida: Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair Sean Donahue Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor Jeremy R. Hammond State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard Joshua Frank Will Rove be Indicted? Ali Khan The "Gift" of US Democratization Michael Dickinson Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers Norman Solomon How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility Dave Zirin Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad Gary Leupp Accusing Ahmadinejad Website of the Day Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"   July 5, 2005 Behrooz Ghamari What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency Elaine Cassel Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor Ron Jacobs Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice Bob Libal The Right's Assault on Academia Dr. Peter Rost Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO Mark Engler The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee? Gideon Levy They Broke the Public's Heart Dave Zirin The Great Olympics Scam Sameer Dossani The Trouble with Gleneagles     July 2 / 4, 2005 Alexander Cockburn "Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi? Lenni Brenner Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July Laura Carlsen Zapatista's Red Alert James Petras The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment William A. Cook Kings of Serpents Brian Cloughley Quagmire of the Vanities Saul Landau The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership Tom Crumpacker Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles? Greg Moses Dylan's America Dr. Susan Block My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service Fran Shor Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land Fred Gardner Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer Moshe Adler The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs David Model The Downing Street Memo: So What's New? Seth Sandronsky California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style Ramzy Baroud Managed Democracy in the Middle East Suzan Mazur Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton Ben Tripp Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap Justin Taylor Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint" Brendan Bailey Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony Poets' Basement Albert, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Radical Reference     July 1, 2005 Christopher Brauchli With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf Pat Williams What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver Gary Leupp Summer Surprise? John Stauber Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie John Chuckman The Blessings of Canada Justicia y Paz Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least! Cockburn / St. Clair It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court   June 30, 2005 Kathy Kelly An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis John Stauber Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America Virginia Rodino All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement Jason Leopold Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy Dave Lindorff What Was Bush Thinking? Greg Moses Racism at Cape Cod Norman Solomon Memo to the Iraq War Joshua Frank Israel's Theocrats Alexander Cockburn The Political Function of PBS   June 29, 2005 Mike Schaefer How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq Sharon Smith Democrats Shift into Reverse Sam Husseini A Quick Way to End the Insurgency John Stauber Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton Ahmad Faruqui Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan? Linda S. Heard Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo Stew Albert Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero Ray McGovern Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course     June 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts A Defeat Bred in Deceit Landau / Hassen Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics John A. Murphy Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania Mike Whitney More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents CounterPunch News Service JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook? Dave Zirin Pining for the Pistons Dave Lindorff Showtime in Washington Patrick Cockburn Iraq: a Bloody Mess     June 27, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans Mike Marqusee G8: Who are the Hijackers? Mark Scaramella When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz Leigh Saavedra Press Apologists for Torture Kathy Kelly Where is the UN? June 25 / 26, 2005 Alexander Cockburn The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals Jennifer Van Bergen America's Parallel Legal Systems George Corsetti This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo Kevin Zeese Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids P. Sainath Russian Roulette in Vidharbha John Stauber How to Bury a Mad Cow Scott Handleman Gay in the Third World Tom Barry The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists John Walsh Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places Justin E.H. Smith The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution Alan Wallis The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood Ben Tripp Negative Space: an Artful Lesson Frederick B. Hudson Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock Poets' Basement Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert     June 24, 2005 Ray McGovern The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed" Jorge Mariscal "They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq Desiree Hellegers Portland vs. the FBI Zeynep Toufe What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It? Joshua Frank Call Him Senator Con Job David Lindorff Which Flag Would Jesus Burn? Michael Neumann Victory and Recruitment Website of the Day Gagging Dr. Dean June 23, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge Clay Conrad Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform Standard Schaefer A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism P. Sainath Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks Mark Engler CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death Norman Solomon Voluntary Amnesia in America Cockburn / St. Clair Frank Calzon Kathy Kelly Where You Stand Determines What You See   June 22, 2005 Kevin Zeese The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner William S. Lind Afghanistan: the Other War Arsalan Iftikhar Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act Dan Nagengast Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas David Krieger To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World Kathleen & Bill Christison Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making     June 21, 2005 Brian Cloughley Destroy the Unbelievers! Mike Whitney President Disconnect Dave Lindorff Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway? Mark Weisbrot Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez Matthew R. Simmons The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis Dave Zirin The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man" Virginia Rodino The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment Paul Craig Roberts A War Waged by Liars and Morons   June 20, 2005 Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Tariq Ali To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel! Mickey Z. WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo William Blum Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends Gary Leupp Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq Jason Leopold Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War Dave Lindorff Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd Alan Maass The GM Job Massacre Uri Avnery Condi and Hamas Website of the Day Crimes Against Poetry                                                                               Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

July 12, 2005 The London Bombings Why Has It Come to This? What's It All About? By WILLIAM A. COOK These simple questions come naturally to mind in light of the London atrocities, except to Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Bush and Blair, indeed the whole infestation of neo-con disciples of Leo Strauss who remain oblivious to such queries and, indeed, cannot afford to confront them. History is replete with the devastation wrought by those who did not understand the perceptions of the adversary and failed to see through their opponent's eyes. This nest of nihilists conjured up an understanding of the route to world dominance based on theories created in the void of Strauss' classroom, theories lacking the blood, guts, and resolve of human behavior, massaged that ream of still-birthed beliefs in closed meetings they fostered among their apostles, and then propagated this "still born" concept of the American Century through well-funded and self-worshiping think tanks that spread their fodder to a benumbed Yale graduate and the public. Predictably their responses to the bombings regurgitate their prior pablum. Unfortunately, those who manufacture the slaughter rarely suffer the loss of eye or limb or mind or death, the horrific consequences of their acts, they only slink away to their retirement and have ghost writers pen their bloated memoirs of lies. Such will likely be the fate of this crew of chicken-hawks that caused the innocent to suffer once again. Neither Blair nor Bush ride the rails of reality in everyday life; they avoid contact with normalcy as they are whisked from rendezvous to rendezvous by military helicopter and armed escorts; they have not experienced the inconvenience of freedoms removed and hence find no irony in mouthing their platitudes that "They will not succeed in taking away our freedoms." They do not comprehend that the very foundation of their act of war, their neo-con pillars of irrationality, eradicates freedom as a given replacing it with a right given to those in power to determine for all how they will live. For Bush to tell the world that he will take his war to the "terrorists" by pre-emptive act, to knowingly gain his end by deception, erases any semblance of freedom a citizen of the United States had to determine for self what action he or she would and should pursue. That same blind belief in his right to determine what course this nation would take determined the options available to those he would subdue. Freedom does not exist in states that dictate truth, determine for all what is "good" and what is "evil," and force conformity of behavior through fear. Yet that in essence is the modus operandi of this administration. The people reap the consequences of Bush's ideology and Blair's blind adherence to neo-con nonsense. Two and a half years ago, two weeks after Osama sent citizens of the United States a letter explaining why America had been attacked, I wrote an open letter to Osama, published in these pages, reacting to the three dominant reasons he offered for the wanton slaughter of three thousand innocent men, women and children. Neither Blair nor Bush nor any of the coital locked ideologues in this administration responded to the London bombings by referencing these three reasons, their minds locked into their repetitive tripe about freedom being the terrorists' target. But Osama made it clear that the 50 years of humiliation and devastation wrought by the Israelis on the Palestinians and the theft of their land, made explicitly possible by America's unholy alliance with Sharon's savage government, the imposition of the United States in the holy lands of Islam and its control of puppets that dance to American corporate tunes, most specifically in the land of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the continued forced corporate globalization of capitalistic consumerism and their conquest of natural resources in Arab lands, and the evangelically expressed desire to crusade against Islam to justify these transgressions as fulfillment of God's word required a response if the peoples of the mid-east were not to succumb to western power and greed. The London atrocity brought home to Blair what the words of George Galloway, Robert Fisk and the people of Britain did not, illegal invasion and occupation of another country will not be tolerated by its citizens and distance will provide no security for the preemptive aggressor. These attacks, like those in Madrid and those that killed citizens of 17 other countries that have supported Bush's invasion, mirror Bush's actions by preemptively striking a government that coddles to neo-con ideology. Worse than that, they duplicate the atrocities that Bush used and continues to use against the innocent civilians of Iraq, the "shock and awe" of unbelievable and wanton devastation that tears away arms and legs, sears and shatters the skin, irrevocably creates psychological trauma that lasts forever, and this for those that survive, while proclaiming justification in the name of freedom and liberty guaranteed by his God, he being but the messenger to ensure fulfillment of His prophecy. Ironically, belief in one's own superiority presumes capitulation of the enemy not acceptance and imitation of the superior one's insanity. "Why has it come to this?" Because Bush, with Blair as his compliant sidekick, pseudo-leaders of the neo-con vipers, have given license to lies and deceit to control their citizens and impose their will, promulgated unilateral attacks against perceived enemies regardless of identifiable provocation, justified extrajudicial execution nullifying thereby the rule of law, incarcerated hundreds upon hundreds of men without charge, without counsel, without trial in a no man's land expressly designed to avoid international interference, ordered the slaughter of civilians to force capitulation to their will, accepted, nay dictated the use of torture - of inhumane humiliation, infliction of excruciating pain, and psychological devastation - to impose their will, and, to attain these insidious ends, they have instituted draconian laws that control free speech by controlling the main stream press and television channels making it impossible for the people to discriminate between fact and fiction. All of these actions were taken, apparently, without consideration to the consequences that might result when their desires ran counter to the desires of those they wished to control. Arrogance feeds itself on ignorance, blinded by its own perceived brilliance and, hence, unable to understand how its victims perceive their acts and how they will respond. Having ignored the reasons proffered for retaliation, having made irrelevant the international community as represented in the UN, having created justification of unilateral action, having disposed of international law as meaningless in their new world, the Bush administration has unleashed on the world a frightening specter of insanity equal to its own, uncontrollable by any power, and doomed all to suffer the destructive heat of its own design, a future not unlike that inflicted on the citizens of Falujah and Iraq through the use of napalm and depleted uranium, a slow, debilitating and painful path to everlasting ruin. Until Bush accepts the legitimate rights of the Palestinians as determined by international law stated eloquently by the International Court of Justice in its decisions regarding the Israeli apartheid wall, until Bush and his corporate hordes dissemble their control of the economies that have been imposed on mid-eastern, Asian and African countries, until the Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders who accept all God's creatures confront the fanatics who would impose their beliefs on all, the catastrophic consequences of neo-con ideology will wreck havoc on the earth. That is what it is all about. William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU