Today's Stories

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Keep the Germ Labs Quarantined

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
September 27 / 28, 2008

CounterPunch Diary

How McCain Blew It

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

In whatever years remain to him – and the health prognoses for McCain are cloudy at best – McCain should look back at the 48 hours up to and including Friday night’s  debate in Mississippi as the Rubicon he was too frightened to cross. He spurned a huge chance to turn the tables on his all-too-decorous opponent.

McCain should have furiously denounced the bailout. There was no ideological impediment, since the Arizona senator has no firm convictions beyond the precepts of his bankrollers – which can be quickly summed up as: less taxes for the rich. Everything else, the thundering about earmarks, the calls for an abolition of “cost plus” in defense contracting (actually, a truly radical proposition if McCain believed a word of it), is hot air.

A McCain “No” to bailout would have put Obama in a difficult position, exposing the timidity of his own posture, and leaving him with the options of continuing as  Wall Street’s errand boy, his  role to date, or if he tried to outflank McCain from the left, as a wild-eyed radical.

But McCain’s nerve failed him. In the opening exchanges of the debate even the sedate Jim Lehrer became impatient as McCain and Obama fled the all important matter of the economic crisis and the proposed bailout and retreated into campaign boilerplate about earmarks and tax cuts.  Sacrifices? It should not have been hard for Obama to say, right up front in stentorian tones, “You ask, Senator McCain, what I propose to cut in this hour of crisis. John, I propose to cut the war in Iraq. Here’s what it has cost to date…” Long minutes went by before he even touched on this issue.

Weirdly, McCain refused to look at Obama. It was a big mistake.  A couple of straw polls from CNN and CBS right after the debate  called it for Obama. In the CNN poll “undecided” women and older people plumped solidly for Obama. It’s in these sectors that the race will be won.

I’ll bet that a lot of those pro-Obama votes from women stem from McCain’s inability to look Obama in the eye. How many women have had to put up with that crap from sulky male spouses and partners? Ask Cindy. Ask any woman.

The biggest win Friday night was for dullness. The two candidates trudged through their dutiful exchanges with even more tedium than the chorus in a Greek tragedy hashing over the whims of fate.

The post-match analysts said that McCain seemed asleep at the wheel during the initial exchanges on the economy, the $700 billion bailout proposed by the Fed and the Treasury, but got snappier when the topic shifted to Iraq and Iran.

Indeed it was clear McCain had forfeited his best shot at turning the tables on Obama the moment he declared that he would vote for the $700 billion bailout package for Wall Street proposed by Bernanke at the Fed and the US Treasury Secretary Paulson  and endorsed by President Bush.

The bailout is hugely unpopular across the United States. In the past four days I’ve not been in a cash register line in any supermarket where vivid denunciations of  Wall Street haven’t mingled with sarcasms about the tycoons’ hirelings in Congress now trying to commit taxpayers’ money to bail out their losses. All this while the hoppers riffle through the National Enquirer for news of Sarah Palin’s love life and about the Youtube films of Bristol.

Every politician in Congress is being told by their office staffs that phone calls are running at least 90 to 10 against the bailout. This is why the Republicans in Congress have found it east to resist the frantic appeals of Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, and instead to say No, leaving the Democrats to whinge and trim, with half-hearted “conditions” attached to the bail-out and fake populist squeaks about reducing executive compensation. Will the Democrats also demand that the tycoons surrender all the money they stand to make if a bailout sends the value of their stock holdings soaring? I don’t think I see the bankers’ whore, Senator Charles Schumer, insisting on that.

Last  Wednesday McCain woke up to a thunderbolt crashing into his campaign hq. It arrived in the form of a Washington Post-ABC poll reporting showing that for the first time, among likely voters, Obama was leading McCain by 52 percent to 43 percent. A week earlier the race had been even. This sudden crushing lead told McCain and his campaign managers that the “Palin bounce” had evaporated. The worst financial crisis since the Depression had taken center stage and the voters were clearly assessing McCain as being out of touch.

Perhaps as a relict of his days as a navy pilot, McCain is capable of quick decisions and drastic changes of course. His pick of Palin, snuffing out  Obama’s post-Denver glow, showed that. That Wednesday morning, amid the ghastly shock of the Washington Post-ABC poll McCain seized the initiative. The nation was in danger! He would speed to Washington. He urged Obama to do the same. The debate would have to be postponed.

Obama was already meekly playing along, with talk of bipartisanship. And then… McCain blew his golden opportunity. Since he’s now lagging ominously in the ratings, McCain needed to ignite at least one or two firestorms Friday night, starting with the bailout. Now the chance has gone.

The first function of any presidential debate is to demonstrate to the Big Money that both candidates are “safe”, first  on the matter of keeping the rich secure from worry. The second function is to assure all relevant lobbies that they are ready and willing to blow up the world if American “security” requires it.

In the requisite demonstrations Obama and McCain sang in unison. They are as one with Wall St. They are ready to blow up the planet. Three times Obama said he completely agreed with the elderly madman opposite him. The interactions became progressively more hackneyed and absurd. Obama pledged to “take out” Osama bin Laden. McCain vowed to prevent another Holocaust of the Jews. Obama respectfully agreed with McCain that Putin is a potential problem and that plucky Georgia needs America’s succor. It was nauseating. Most of the world and its problems didn’t feature at all. Latin America? Free trade?

Between the two of them, the candidates affirmed, often in identical terms, almost every lunatic policy position that has doomed George Bush’s presidency and made America an object of derision and loathing among the nations.

It should have been a no-brainer for Obama simply to chain his opponent to all the disasters of the Bush years, about which the American people have reached a firm and hostile verdict. Obama should be setting forth a new agenda. Instead we got Bush/Cheneyspeak from the Democrat about taking out Osama, repeating all the disasters of Iraq in Afghanistan and invading Pakistan presumably when President Zardari is in Alaska, pursuing Sarah Palin. (Who knows? In the event she doesn’t get to Washington as veep, Sarah can dump Todd and the kids and move on to Islamabad, working for Christ and Empire from the inside.)

A born trimmer, Obama is incapable of going for the jugular or even sounding as though he can take a firm stand on anything. This guy’s no leader. He comes across as a trimmer and a wimp.   McCain looks decisive by comparison.  He’s a throat slitter by temperament. He nicked Obama a couple of times, but the Wall Street tycoons went unscarred. At a ripe tactical moment McCain declined the role he affects to love. When the chips are down, he’s no maverick.

McCain’s Women

Among all the sticks with which to whack McCain we should surely be hearing more about the scoundrely banker Charles Keating, the financier and anti-porn crusader, whose fraudulent operations with Lincoln Savings and Loan very nearly derailed McCain’s career after exposure of Keating’s lavish patronage of McCain as one of his protectors in Congress. (Keating spent time in prison and now lives a subdued life in Arizona.)

In 1986, Cindy and her father James invested $400,000 in a shopping center being developed by Keating. An indefatigable traveler, given to impulsive excursions around the world in his private jet, Keating took along Cindy and the children and, occasionally, John. Amid these voyages, Cindy developed with Keating the idea of financing the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT) to supply aid to disaster-struck areas. Keating, an ardent Catholic, also introduced Cindy to Mother Teresa. This relationship led to Cindy’s adoption of a baby born in Bangladesh. The adoption came as a complete surprise to McCain.

These trips and the relationship with Keating  attracted the scrutiny of investigators probing McCain for ethical misconduct. Beleaguered by accusations that he had been shielding a top-rung corporate criminal, McCain appears to have blamed his wife for the political millstone Keating had become.

According to two emergency room physicians in Phoenix, , who tell us they don’t want their names used, interviewed by CounterPunch, it was at this time that Cindy McCain sought medical attention in the Phoenix area for injuries consistent with physical violence: bruises, contusions and a black eye . There were at least two more visits for medical attention in the Phoenix area by Cindy, with similar injuriesi, between 1988 and 1993.

For the full story of McCain’s treatment of Cindy and of his first wife Carol, I urge you to subscribe to our newsletter. There are crackerjack reports from Jeffrey St Clair and myself and also an update of McCain’s shameful conduct as a POW from Doug Valentine. Also in this latest issue, David Price’s shocking account of how subscribe US intelligence agencies re trying to strong arm an impoverished scholar into being a spook. 

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Footnote: An earlier version of this column also appears in The First Post.

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

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