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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 4, 2007

Jean Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

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

 


 

 

 

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September 4, 2007

Roll Over Frank Little

Home Depot Comes to Butte--With Its Begging Bowl

By JACKIE CORR

Out on Harrison Avenue in Butte, Montana there are a couple of cemeteries with an airport between them. In one of these Frank Little, the murdered wobbly guy, is buried.

It's changed quite a bit since I was a kid when there wasn't much out here. Sully's ancient truck stop and Ham's Motor Court, Cote's old road house, a drive-in theatre called the Motor-Vu, the Peris road house, and of course, Calla Shea. who had a clip joint with slots, shaved dice along with strippers and hookers for the suckers. Some of the wise guys around town at the time said a rube could be served a mickey in the dive if his wallet justified a little spike in his drink. The place was called the Paddock when it was in its glory but I was too young to get in and by the time I was old enough to get in, it was gone and today we find a big Town Pump in its place. I also remember a dog track and a motor speedway called the Butana and finally in the late 1950's a bowling alley.

But that was yesterday and now there is a giant Wal-Mart right across the street from where the IWW' s Frank Little is buried, an irony, the IWW and Wal-Mart, that never escapes me. North of the cemetery much of the ground is still vacant but not for long as we are going to get a "union free" Atlanta, Georgia based Home Depot box store next to Frank Little and all the dead miners from the Speculator. Not only that, Home Depot is coming to town begging and they already have the tin cup out.

You see there is a hole in the gound on the Home Depot property next to the cemetery where Frank Little and a lot of dead Butte union miners from the Speculator - Granite Mountain disaster are buried under a monument erected in 1917..

And the hole needs a patch before Home Deport can build a its 2,165th box store and parking lot on this spot. And that patch job is going to cost $2 million and Home Depot wants Butte-Silver Bow County to split the cost with them and it looks like a done deal..

So I looked to see what Home Depot was capped at on the New York Stock Exchange and they tell me its $75,630 million dollars. So then I think What if a guy come up to you and asked you for a buck even though he had $75,630 in his wallet. Now you might think that is a little strange.

But I guess that is the way they do things at Home Depot and from what I have been finding out, at the top of the Home Depot totem pole, there are some life styles that burn up a lot of money.

Now Home Depot had a CEO who recently moved on to Chrysler. His name is Robert Nardelli and he was hired by co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank in 2000 and a good deal that was for the new CEO whose annual pay at Home Depot was $26 million plus perks..And when Nardelli left in January after five years on the job, his going away package was - now get this - $210 million.

Then there is co-founder Arthur Blank who shelled out $545 million for the Atlanta Falcons football team in 2001. And the other co-founder, Bernie Marcus is pumping $200 million into a downtown Atlanta Aquarium to further promote Bernie's benevolent image..

And besides the life styles there are the politics. And people in the Democratic stronghold of Butte might be interested in that union hating Home Depot is part and parcel of the Republican Party money machine.

From my inquiry I can see that the most glorious event in the history of Home Depot took place in Atlanta on a Sunday afternoon in May, 2004. In his private gym, CEO Nardelli, along with the two Home Depot co-founders, hosted a very pricey dinner for George Bush with 300 chosen guests.The dinner itself cost $15,000 a plate and seats at Bush's table went for an additional $50,000 a couple.The three hour gathering earned the Bush campaign a "phenomenal" $3.4 million. The state GOP chairman called it "the largest private fund-raiser in the history of the state of Georgia."

Now to add to the Republican flavor here I will mention that former Home Depot CEO Nordelli, who was just appointed CEO at Chrysler, is one more example of how the Corporate Republican good old boy network, which has all but ruined the country, really works.

You see Chrysler has been recently taken over by a hedge fund outfit called Cerberus Capital Management. John Snow, formerly Bush's treasury secretary is CEO there. And Snow is the guy who led the country into record deficits while pushing for more tax cuts

Better yet, former Vice-President Dan Quayle, a certified neo-conservative war monger, is Cerberus' chairman of global investments. I am not kidding, the same Dan Quayle of potato spelling fame has a real hiigh-profile job at the place and I swear I am not making up a tale..Also neo-con royalty Donald Rumsfeld is an investor in Cerberus which requires a $1 million buy in.

And there's more. The current CEO at Home Depot,.Francis Blake, was formerly the deputy energy secretary in Bush's first term. And remember Tom Ridge the Homeland Security guy who specialized in color coded alerts.. After leaving Homeland Security, Ridge was appointed to the board of directors at Home Depot.

And we can't forget Ashley's Story which was part of the big Republican TV spending spree during the last three weeks of the 2004 campaign. And Ashley's Story" turned out to be the most expensive TV ad buy of the campaign, which blanketed nine key states -- Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri. Many give it credit for Bush's win over John Kerry.

The ad featured Ashley Faulkner, 11, whose mother had been killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, describing her meeting with a caring and compassionate Bush. Home Depot's Bernie Marcus was given a preview showing and Bernie was so touched he chipped in a $million.

Another interest of Bernie's is something called the American Justice Partnership of which he is listed as a co-founder. This group; will take a position and fund favored candidates in all 50 state attorney general races. According to their websiite. the goal is to stop abuses of the legal system at the state level and to lobby for tort reform

Other participants here are the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce along with Altria, the parent company of the cigarette maker Phillip Morris.

Now I read in Bloomberg that "Home Depot Inc. and Altria Group Inc., stung by the regulatory fervor of Eliot Spitzer and other state attorneys general, are among companies spending millions of dollars to support business-friendly candidates in coming elections."

And the key words above are "Eliot Spritzer," a name that seems to make Home Depot's Bernie Marcus's blood boil. ``The business community has woken up to "Spitzerism," and they're fighting back,'' is the word from Bernie on the dangers of the likes of Eliot Spritzer.

Then there is the next president and it looks like Home Depot is covering both sides as far as the Republican front runners go. Take February, when Arthur Blank hosted an Atlanta fundraiser for Mitt Rommeny at $1000 a ticket

Or April, when Bernie Marcus held an Atlanta fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani at his palace. Bernie has close ties to Israel and Rudy played to the house at this event with fierce words, blasting Democrats as being "highly irresponsible" for including a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq in their funding bill for the war.

And maybe no better example of Bernie's ability as a money raiser for Republicans came in March of 2006 when he held an Atlanta fundraiser for Georgia Lt. Governor candidate Ralph Reed (remember him?) which raised $585,000.and is considered the state record for a single fundraiser in a statewide race. Unfortunately the money didn't do Ralph much good and he lost badly despite Bernie's efforts.

So if you want to support the vast Republican right-wing conspiracy and you don't have any use for labor unions and live in the Butte, Montana area you can show your true colors by simply shopping at Home Depot if everything goes as planned. And don't forget to drop your spare change in the little tin cup. These Home Depot high rollers could certainly use it.

Jackie Corr lives in Butte, Montana. He can be reached at: jcorr@bigskyhsd.com






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