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How Bill (and Monica) Saved Hillary from a Federal Indictment

Here's the second in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's series as they describe Hillary Clinton's years in Little Rock and her narrow escape from federal charges that would have destroyed her political career for ever. PLUS KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY on how Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are failing Black America even as they hunt for votes in So uth Carolina's "Black Primary." 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 1 / 2, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services

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

 

August 15, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
"No American President Can Stand Up to Israel"

Michael Neumann
In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg

Jordan Flaherty
The Struggle to Free the Jena Six

Sonja Karkar
Can You Hear the Cries from Gaza?

Felice Pace
NPR Watch: Will Linda Gradstein Go to Gaza?

Joshua Frank
On Censoring Pearl Jam

Dave Lindorff
Terrorist Nation?

Carla Blank
Elvis Presley: King or Apprentice?

David Vest
Guralnick, Elvis and Racism

Harvey Wasserman
Why the Neocons Won't Miss Karl Rove

Peter Rost, M.D.
FDA Approved Drug Makes You Hypersexual and a Compulsive Gambler

Russell Mokhiber
An Arab American's Pocket Political Dictionary

Website of the Day
Stoners Busted

 

August 14, 2007

Paul de Rooij
Humanitarian Wars and Associated Delusions

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress's Busted September: Disingenuous Gestures Amid Catastrophe

David Rosen
The Case of Genarlow Wilson: Racism, Justice and Age-of-Consent Laws in America

Gary Leupp
Bush Warns Puppets Not to Praise Iran

Clifton Ross
Latin America at the Crossroads

Muhammad Idress Ahmad
The Politics of Democracy Promotion

Jacquelyn Godin
A Circle of Poison: Pesticides in the Plantations

Uri Avnery
Oslo Revisited

Ramzy Baroud
A Palestinian Miracle at the UN?

James McEnteer
Philistines as Cultural Critics

Website of the Day
When Cheney Called Iraq a Quagmire

 

August 13, 2007

Jeremy Scahill
The Mercenary Revolution

F. William Engdahl
The Hidden Agenda Behind Bush's Biofuel Plan

Alexander Cockburn
The Veldt Will Never Be the Same

Kathy Kelly
Iraq's Refugees: "et to Work"

Chris Floyd
No Light, Light Tunnel: the Bipartisan Guarantee of More War in Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
Hegemony of the Cockroach

William Blum
First Pullout, Then Bloodbath?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Language of Dominion

Rannie Amiri
Tancredo's Screedo: a Lethal Mix of Ignorance and Insanity

Brenda Norrell
Priests Expose Secret Cycle of US Torture

Fran Shor
All Fall Down

Ron Jacobs
Dr. Strangelove Meets Dubya's Double Buzz Twofer

Website of the Day
The Beauty of Defiance

 

August 11 / 12, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
How the Democrats Blew It in Only 8 Months

Stan Goff
The Cover-Up of Pat Tillman's Death

Ralph Nader
GM Radio: Payola to Rightwing Talk Shows?

Vijay Prashad
Destination Darfur: a New Cold War for Oil

Greg Moses
SubPrime People: Behind the Banking Crisis

Alan Farago
The Cratering Mortgage Market, WCI Communities and Amb. Al Hoffman

Patrick Cockburn
The Cracks in Saddam's Dam

Ben Tripp
On Fleeing the Country

Robert Fantina
Romney's Dance: The Rightwing Flip-Flop

John Ross
The Guelaguetza Strategy in Oaxaca

Seth Sandronsky
Organizing Nurses

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Mitt Romney to Bill Richardson

Website of the Weekend
Pearl Jam: Censored by ATT

 

August 10, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
China's Threat to the Dollar is Real

Stan Goff
How Pat Tillman Died

Marjorie Cohn
A Blank Check for Domestic Spying

Saul Landau
In the Age of Immigrant Panic

Chris Floyd
Goading Xerxes: the Coming Strike on Iran

Daniel Ellsberg
A Vision for Cindy Sheehan's Campaign

Anthony Papa
The Upside Down Flag: a Country in Distress

Farzana Versey
On the Heels of Sir Salman

Sgt. Kevin Benderman
Freedom or Totalitarianism?

Nuri Nuri
Memories of T99 Nelson

Website of the Day
Lessons in Obfuscation from Sen. Larry Craig: How to Talk About Looting the Public Domain

 

August 9, 2007

Stan Goff
The Fog of Fame: Pat Tillman as Everyone's Political Football

Paul Craig Roberts
In the Hole to China

Alan Farago
The Terror of the Mortgage Pools

William S. Lind
The Surge's New Math: One Step Forward, Two Back

Doug Giebel
Letter from Montana: What the Bushvolk Have Done to America

Harvey Wasserman
Radioactive Bailout in Advance

Jacob Hill
The Tail End of Free Trade: NAFTA's Impact on the Manufacturing Sector

Raul Zibechi
The Dark Side of Agrofuels

Dave Zirin
The Making of Barry bin Laden

Website of the Day
"Babies Just Come with the Scenery"

 

August 8, 2007

Andy Worthington
Backing Up Lt. Col. Abraham on Gitmo Abuse

Jeff Halper
The Catch in Israel's "Generous Offers" at Jericho

Greg Moses
No Light in August for Texas Refugees: Judge Orders Baby Sent to Palestine

Nurit Peled-Elhanan
The Murder of Abir Aramin, 9 Years Old

Sukant Chandan
British Prisons as Islamic Universities

Robert Fisk
A Lebanese Surprise

George H. Strauss
The Military Society

D.K. Wilson
Bonds, the Haters and 756: Why Bob Costas Can't be Trusted

Bill Day
Leonardo DiCaprio's Baggage: the Perils of Celebrity Environmentalism

Tim Campbell
Monkey See, Monkey Do Politics

Website of the Day
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

 

August 7, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Why the Surge Has Failed

Andy Worthington
Why Do We Need the Democrats?: They Have Failed to Restrain Bush on Gitmo, Iraq and Domestic Spying

Kathy Kelly
The Little Girl of Hiroshima

Stan Cox
The Antiwar Majority: Look Quickly, You Might Miss It

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Settlement Project

Sen. Russ Feingold
A License to Wiretap--Anyone

Alan Farago
Dancing in the Light of Florida

Norman Solomon
Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman

Binoy Kampmark
Giving Good Face: What Jeremy Bentham and Facebook Have in Common

Dave Lindorff
The Gelding Congress

John Stauber
Coffee with the Troops at Yearly Kos

Website of the Day
George Carlin on Education

 

 

 

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Weekend Edition
September 1 / 2, 2007

Remembering Princess Diana

Who's Cheating?

By MICHAEL DICKINSON

There must have been more than a few who suddenly stiffened at the opening words of the Bishop of London, Right Reverend Dr Richard Chartres, when he took the pulpit to address the congregation gathered in the Guard's Chapel near Buckingham Palace, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

For several long moments he stood there, his head bowed in silence, before he looked up and asked a simple direct question.

"Who's cheating?"

Again he paused, uncomfortably long for several members of the royal family and invited guests to ask themselves if he could possibly be talking about them. They would have wiped the metaphorical sweat from their brow and breathed a sigh of relief as the Bishop continued.

"Those were the words of Princess Diana to a pair of elderly inmates playing a game of Beggar My Neighbour' at an old folk's home which she was visiting. How they all laughed."

His question was not a challenge to the morals of the congregation, but merely a reminder of the natural fun and spontaneity of the princess and her intuitive rapport with members of the public, which he went on to eulogize. But still, his first stark question seemed to linger in the air like a bad smell, stronger than the perfume of the profusion of English roses that decked the chapel.

"Who's cheating?" Who's playing around? Who's being unfaithful to their wedding vows? Who's having an extra-marital affair? Who is committing adultery?

Many eyes may have shifted for a moment from the pontificating priest in the pulpit to ponder uncomfortably on the backs of the heads of three of the most important guests in the front pew Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Edinburgh, and their son, the Prince of Wales. How had the question affected them?

At least Elizabeth could not accuse herself, her fidelity unquestioned, (or was there more to her close relationship with Lord Porchester in the fifties and sixties than a shared passion for racing, and Prince Andrew the result?); but she may have reflected sadly on her role as a world-famous cuckquean, cheated on countless times in the past by the sour-faced old man sitting next to her, the man she used to call "my viking prince".

Apart from a long term affair with the Queen's cousin, Princess Alexandra, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was a well-known womaniser in his hey-day, with a string of affairs with polo wives, duchesses, countesses, and several famous actresses, including, it is alleged, Jane Russell, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Shirley MacLaine. Yet this was the man who wrote to his daughter-in-law Diana calling her a "harlot and a trollop", telling her that she should put up with his son's long running affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Yes, to the lugubrious-faced son, sitting next to the Duke on the front pew at the service in memory of his ex-wife, the question, "Who's cheating?" must have rung most accusingly. If he had abandoned mistress Camilla after the fairy-tale wedding to his adoring virgin bride Diana, and remained faithful to her alone, then there would have been none of the scandalous mire of events that led Diana to her conducting her own extra-marital affairs, most notably with red-haired cavalry officer James Hewitt (rumoured to be Prince Harry's real father), and eventually to her tragic untimely death in the Paris car crash with her latest amour, Harrod's heir Dodi al-Fayed.

But Charles admitted in a television interview in 1994 that he had never loved Diana, and that during the marriage he had been carrying on an affair with Mrs Parker Bowles, who he had originally met at a polo match may years before.

"There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," a teary eyed Diana explained for the break up with Charles in her own retaliatory TV interview.

The place next to Charles on the front pew at the memorial service was conspicuously empty. His now wife, Her Royal Majesty, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, although invited by her stepsons, had decided it more appropriate that she not attend, saying that she feared her presence would detract from what should be a celebration of Diana's life. Instead, the woman whom Diana called "the Rottweiler" watched the service on television alone at her country home. Next week she plans to jet off without her husband for a holiday in the Meditteranean with a small group of girlfriends.

Camilla had originally intended to be there at her husband's side, and is said to be furious at having been pressured by royal aides to decline, but perhaps it's just as well she wasn't.

Although a strong-minded woman, perhaps she too might have quailed and trembled at the Bishop of London's sudden question from the pulpit. An accusation from beyond the grave from the ex-wife of the man she had secretly committed adultery with, and caused such pain and misery:

"Who's cheating?"


Michael Dickinson, whose artwork graces the covers of Dime's Worth of Difference, Serpents in the Garden and Grand Theft Pentagon, lives in Istanbul. He can be contacted via his website http://yabanji.tripod.com/ or at mdickinson@kablonet.com.tr






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