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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.


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February 28, 2002

James T. Phillips
Baghdad, Spring 1992

Gideon Samet
Sharon Must Go

Rep. Ron Paul
Before We Bomb Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
Samuel Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars

St. Clair / Cockburn
Rumble from the Jungle:
Ecaudorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar

February 27, 2002

Eric Hobsbawm
The Future of War and Peace

John Troyer
About that WTC Memorial

Mokhiber / Weissman
Wired for Democracy
or Business?

Alexander Cockburn
Daniel Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?

February 26, 2002

Jonathan Steele
Kabul's Loss

Vasily Streltsov
The Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas

CounterPunch Wire
How Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence Politicians

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman
ABM Treaty: Alive or Dead?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich
A Prayer for America

February 25, 2002

John Clarke
Interrogated at US Border

Blankfort, Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL Blinks, Settles Spying Case

Alex Lynch
Naked from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian

John Chuckman
Ashcroft Speaks in Tongues

February 24, 2002

David Vest
Skate Date

February 23, 2002

Tom Turnipseed
Axis of Evil and
Media Monopolies

Bahour/Dahan
Cracks in the Occupation

February 22, 2002

Alexander Cockburn
Axel of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution

February 21, 2002

Gary Leupp
The Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War

David Vest
Reagan Clone Project?

Mokhiber and Weissman
Chicago School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core

February 20, 2002

Bernard Weiner
The Shallow Throat Document

Kay Lee
The Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes

February 19, 2002

David Orr
Waylon Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo

John Chuckman
The Devil and Georgie Bush

Prudence Crowther
Giblet Gravitas

Ramzi Kysia
Caught in the Iraq DMZ

February 18, 2002

Ron Jacobs
The US and Iran

George Lewandowski
Empire in Declline

Lenni Brenner
Life and Death of a Folk Hero

February 17, 2002

Robert Fisk
Lost in a Pit of Desperation

February 16, 2002

Phillip Cryan
Colombia in War Time

February 15, 2002

C.G. Estabrook
From New York to Porto Alegre

Robert O'Brien
The View from Porto Alegre

Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting the Assassins

February 14, 2002

Levy and Easton
Ante Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans

Joan Claybrook
Dear Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron

John Chuckman
Time for a Woman Prez

Alexander Cockburn
Banning the Koran

February 13, 2002

Sen. Russ Feingold
War Powers and
the War on Terror

Tom Turnipseed
Bush's Folly

George Monbiot
American Imperialism

February 12, 2002

Uri Avnery
The Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran

Tommy Ates
Black Land Loss

February 11, 2002

Walt Brasch
The Synergizing of America

John Troyer
Enron's Deep Throat?

February 9, 2002

John Blair
Criticize Cheney, Go to Jail

 


A Photographic Journal of Life in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann

Resources:
100s of Links About 9/11


CounterPunch:
Complete Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath


Five Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond

By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula

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Published Oct. 15, 2001

8-Page Special Issue

War Diary

CIA's Assassination Plan a History of Torture in US Prisons

bin Laden and Bush Business Connections

Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype of US Food Bombs

Peter Linebaugh on Pakistan

Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher

Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em


Search CounterPunch

Read Whiteout and Find Out How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden

Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the Press

by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism

By Rahul Mahajan

The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff

The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid

Edited by Roane Carey

 

A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair

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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

March 1, 2002

American Journal

Sex, Sweat , Feet
and the Working Class

By Alexander Cockburn

Chalk up another milestone for sex ed. The University of California at Berkeley has put a "male sexuality " class on ice after the campus newspaper, The Daily Californian, published allegations that as part of their course students were taken to a strip club where they watched their instructor have sex and also participated in an "orgy" at an party. A female sexuality course is also under review.

It seems these courses have been available under the university's "democratic education" or "de-cal" program, which are sponsored but not funded by the university. They are organized and run by student instructors and can be taken for credit toward graduation. Other courses include Blackjack, useful for those set on careers as croupiers east of the Sierras, in Las Vegas, and (for dissidents) Copwatch, which instructs students "how to safely and effectively assert their rights when interacting with police."

Christy Kovacs, a Berkeley freshman who was enrolled in the
male sexuality course last semester for two units told the Sacramento Bee newspaper that some students in the class were involved in an orgy at a party where some partygoers also took Polaroid pictures of their genitalia, to show that their bodies were not disgusting. Kovacs said the shots were viewed at the party in a "respectful way". Another student, Jessica McMahon, disclosed to the Daily Californian
that students in the male sexuality class chose
as their final project a trip to a gay strip club. Students apparently watched instructors strip and have sex.

Kovacs says her class also had an instructive excursion to the Garden of Eden strip club. There, a member of the group who was not a student or instructor stripped on stage. "They didn't even take off all their clothes, and there was no sex," the earnest Kovacs continued to the Bee reporter. "It was a class bonding experience," not to mention "positive".

This business of introducing yourself at a party by proffering a Polaroid of your genitals has distinct possibilities, particularly for fetishists. As news of the Berkeley ban came in I happened to be leafing through the analysis of a man code-named "Beta," the foot fetishist in Sexual Aberrations, written by Freud's sometime pal, Wilhelm Stekel. "I must mention," Stekel writes with perhaps excessive enthusiasm, "Beta wasn't in the least animated by women's ankles, legs or lovely shoes." No, the dirty beast "wanted to see the shoe fit tightly" and "is promptly enlivened by the sight of corns and envies every chiropodist he sees. He likes only male feet: red, swollen, dirty, sweaty and inflamed feet".

Beta craved to view and smell only the feet of the poor, not out of class solidarity but because their economic condition meant they had badly fitting shoes in which they worked hard all day: "On warm days, he goes to the Danube where poor working men may be found in droves, bathing their sweaty, swollen feet. It is the sight of these large, red feet which then gives him a thrill. He rushes home to masturbate."

One can imagine Beta politely introducing himself with a Polaroid of those feet. Ms Kovacs, following in Beta's wake as she witnessed his activities, would presumably have commented that it was all uplifting and entirely respectful of feet which, after all, have feelings too.