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CHINA'S GREAT LEAP BACKWARDS Peter Kwong gives us the "New China" without illusions: from the "millionaires' fair" in Shanghai, with $60,000 diamond-studded dog leashes to one of the most savagely repressed working class and peasantry on the planet. How China's leaders swapped Marx and Mao for Milton Friedman. Alexander Cockburn on What's wrong with the U.S. left. They're sitting in darkened rooms weaving conspiracy fantasies about 9/11; they're blogging; they're confusing a medium with a movement; they're not doing enough to stop the war in Iraq. John Ross takes us along the stormy trail of the Mexican election. 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! |
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Today's Stories July 6, 2006 Jonathan Cook July 5, 2006 Mike Whitney Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud Missy Comley Beattie Arthur Neslen Vincent Maruffi Paul Cantor Paul D. Johnson David Price
Col. Dan Smith Chris Floyd Marjorie Cohn James Brooks Medea Benjamin Matt Reichel Elisa Salasin Rick Wilhelm Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Dr. Bouthaina Shaban Julia Olmstead Dave Lindorff Andres Gomez Alan Singer Alexander Cockburn
Paul Craig
Roberts Stephen T.
Banko Daniel Cassidy Fawzia Afzal-Khan Jeff Taylor John Ross Greg Moses Laura Carlsen Justin E.H.
Smith Brian Cloughley Anthony Papa Mike Ferner Jerry Tucker Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement
June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Heather Williams Burbach / Cantor Nick Dearden Michael J.
Smith Brian Concannon Virginia Tilley
Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Paul Craig
Roberts June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Greg Moses Mark Weisbrot Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff William S.
Lind Mike Ferner Zoltan Grossman
Marjorie Cohn Benjamin /
Jarrar William Hughes Doug Giebel Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn
June 26, 2006 Don Santina Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz Evelyn Pringle Jonathan Cook
June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Col. Dan Smith
June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Winslow T.
Wheeler Tanya Reinhart Mike Marqusee William Blum
June 21, 2006 Ramzy Baroud Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Greg Moses
June 20, 2006 Fred Gardner Omar Waraich Christopher Reed CP Newswire Jonathan Cook
June 19, 2006 Bill Quigley John Walsh Mike Whitney Alexander Cockburn
June 16 / 18,
2006 Kathy / Bill
Christision Joseph Nevins Farrah Hassen Greg Moses Nicole Colson John Scagliotti Mokhiber / Weissmann
June 15, 2006 Kathy Kelly Norman Solomon Ron Jacobs Sam Bahour Ramzy Baroud CounterPunch Wire Gabriel Kolko Website of the Day
June 14, 2006 Nicole Colson Jonathan Cook Joseph Schechla Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Ward Churchill Rev. William E. Alberts Website of the
Day
June 13, 2006 Medea Benjamin Anthony Alessandrini Paul D'Amato Dave Lindorff John Ross Gabriel Garcia Hilton Obenzinger Yitzhak Laor Juan Antonio
Ocasio Rivera Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of the
Day
June 12, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Mike Marqusee Lee Sustar Robert Fisk Michael J. Smith Felice Pace Jennifer Loewenstein Website of the Day
June 10 / 11,
2006 Robert Fisk Diane Christian Joe Allen Ralph Nader Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin /
John Cox Dennis Perrin Greg Moses John Chuckman Michael J. Smith Roger Burbach Ira Moskowitz Sam Bahour Seth Sandronsky Michael Berg Kirsten Roberts Ron Jacobs Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
June 9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Eric Ruder Evelyn Pringle Mickey Z. Michael J. Smith Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
June 8, 2006 Chris Floyd Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs William S. Lind Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Lloyd Williams Bill Christison Website of the Day
June 7, 2006 Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor John Walsh David MacMichael Mickey Z. Evelyn Pringle Myles Palmer Laura Ribeiro Website of the Day
June 6, 2006 Diane Christian Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Norman Solomon Darmont / Genovali Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Subcomandante Marcos Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
June 5, 2006 Bruce Jackson Chris Floyd Michael Neumann Heather Gray William Hughes David Swanson Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
June 3 / 4, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Rosemary Radford Ruether Harry Clark Jeffrey St. Clair Ron Ridenour Ron Jacobs Fred Gardner Peter Montague John Walsh Greg Moses Sean Donahue Mike Whitney Dave Patten Ali Khan Robert Dotson,
MD Hammond Guthrie St. Clair / D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Day
June 2, 2006 Kathy Kelly Alan Maass Mickey Z. Dave Lindorff Chris Kutalik Sunsara Taylor Sam Husseini Mike Ferner Website of the
Day
June 1, 2006 Brian Cloughley David Peterson Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Paul Rockwell Clifton Ross Kevin Zeese Website of the
Day
May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
Day
May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
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July 6, 2006 Are You Better?Who Mourned the Victims of US Covert War on Chile?By SAUL LANDAU On Memorial Day, I read the following in a Chilean magazine: "In November 1977, 'Mamo' [General Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA, Chile's Secret Police and Intelligence] asked him to cook up a bacteria soup to 'incapacitate' Mena [General Odlanier Mena, head of CNIA, the secret police-Intelligence agency that would replace DINA]. 'I spoke with Eugenio Berrios [DINA's chemist] . he told me he would make a tetanus or botulism poison. and give the concoction to Major Vianel Valdivieso - who could drop it in his tea.'" These are Michael Townley's words from a 2005 deposition about how Contreras planned to kill Mena. (Jorge Molina Sanhueza, La Nación, May 23, 2006) To understand what lay behind such a Macbethian act of murder, described by Townley, one of DINA's assassins, one must remember a scene in the Oval Office, in September 1970, 36 years earlier. Dr. Salvador Allende had just won the presidential election. President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger ordered the CIA Director into the Oval Office. According to Kissinger, Nixon told CIA director Richard Helms "that he wanted a major effort to see what could be done to prevent Allende's accession to power. If there were one chance in ten of getting rid of Allende we should try it; if Helms needed $10 million he would approve it." Helms later boasted to a Senate committee: "If I ever carried the marshal's baton out of the Oval Office it was that day." The Senate report published Helms' notes of the meeting with Nixon.
(1975 Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities or Church Committee, named after Senator Frank Church, D-ID) To provoke a coup before Allende's slated November inauguration, CIA officials paid $50,000 to gunmen from Patria y Libertad (a pseudo Nazi gang) to assassinate Chief of Staff General Rene Schneider. Agency officials also bribed generals and admirals to launch a coup and paid congressional leaders to create legislative obstacles to Allende's assumption of power. The plots failed. In November 1970, Allende took the oath of office. But the CIA continued to "destabilize" Chile. They made the Chilean economy scream. Mysteriously, international lending agencies cut Chilean credit and denied loans. The CIA financed strikes in strategic sectors - like truck drivers, doctors and bank clerks. The attack on the Allende government also included routine violence and sabotage carried out by CIA thugs, and a concerted disinformation campaign run through the anti-Allende media to diminish confidence in the Allende government. In June 1973, some military commanders even rehearsed coup (el tancazo). When the actual coup took place in September, according to a former National Security official who would not allow his name to be used, U.S. Navy ships, coincidentally on maneuvers off the Chilean coast, used their eavesdropping equipment to monitor Chilean military bases so that they could warn the coup makers about units that might remain loyal to Allende. By alerting the plotters, the Navy provided assurance that the uprising would not result in a dreaded civil war. Army General Augusto Pinochet led the new junta. He became one in a steady stream of U.S.-backed military dictators. In the mid 1970s, military rulers from six countries worked with the CIA, who offered a centralized computer in Chile to weave together a network of their secret police and intelligence agencies, which they called Condor. This network of intelligence services also included Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. According to a memo written by FBI Special Agent Robert Scherrer, stationed in Buenos Aires, Condor formed "special teams from member countries to travel anywhere in the world to non-member countries to carry out sanctions [including] assassinations." In January 1979, Michael Vernon Townley, a Condor agent, told a defense lawyer in a Washington DC court that he had no regrets about assassinating Orlando Letelier, Allende's Ambassador to Washington (1970-72) and Defense Minister at the time of the coup. Letelier worked at the Institute for Policy Studies at the time of his death, as did Ronni Moffitt, a passenger in his car. "He was a soldier and I was a soldier," declared Townley, as if the jury would see the clarity in his explanation for his designing and placing a bomb in Letelier's car, killing him and his associate, Ronni Moffitt. "I received an order," Townley explained, "and I carried it out to the best of my ability." Had he memorized a script written by Adolph Eichmann from his trial for war crimes in Jerusalem, where he repeatedly stated that he was "only following orders" when he supervised the massacres of millions in Nazi death camps? Like a miniature Eichmann, Townley gave hollow testimony, which has become a macabre joke. Townley signed a plea bargain with the Justice Department in which he would serve only five years for killing Letelier and Moffitt and could not be prosecuted for other crimes. In exchange, Townley agreed to rat out all of his former "army" buddies - all murderers, like him. Semper fi! Each time Townley gives a deposition - and he has give them regularly - he reveals more sordid information about how the U.S.-backed Pinochet regime murdered its opponents - above and beyond the 3,000 officially dead and disappeared and tens of thousands tortured and the hundreds of thousands forced into exile. What Townley described included not only "bacteria soup" that DINA chemist Berrios would prepare for General Mena, but possibly a brew that felled former President Frei in 1982. Frei family lawyers are investigating Pinochet's role in the former President's death. Townley told FBI agents how in 1974 he assassinated by a car bomb former Chilean Chief of staff General Carlos Prats and his wife in Argentina, and how in 1975 he set up the kill for exiles Chilean Christian Democratic leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife in Rome. They were both critically wounded but did not die. He also related details about his orders to kill Socialist Party leaders Carlos Altamirano and Claudio Almeida, exiled in Europe, and how he with his wife and Virgilio Paz, an anti Castro Cuban who also helped kill Letelier and Moffitt, tried to assassinate the entire exiled leadership of Allende's Unidad Popular government in Mexico. FBI Agents also heard Townley confess to carrying Sarin gas from Chile into the United States, which he intended to use against Letelier before he convinced himself that a bomb would prove more convenient. FBI Agent Scherrer testified to that fact before a House FAA oversight committee in 1981. The FAA did not take action against Lan Chile, the Chilean airline, even though Scherrer proved that high Lan officials had collaborated in the Letelier assassination plan (knowingly or unknowingly) by violating FAA rules. Washington's progeny, the Pinochet regime, played with biological and chemical weapons. Instead of going after these dangerous "criminals," U.S. Presidents backed 17 years of military fascism in Chile. In 1975, Treasury Secretary William Simon and Kissinger provided legitimacy for Pinochet by visiting him as he disappeared and tortured his political opponents. They advised him to clean up his image, not his act. Currently, as details leak thanks to a civilian government that has finally begun to investigate the crimes committed during those years, some memory cells should become activated, the ones that scream for a measure of justice. Presidents did not think about bombing Chile or invading it after its agents struck down people in Washington DC and elsewhere, even though any of them could have stated correctly that "the world is better off without Pinochet." The public still doesn't know how much the CIA involved itself in the Pinochet crimes, in the little laboratory where they made botulism soup and nerve gas - weapons of mass destruction. Berrios, the chemist, fled to Uruguay and was assassinated there before he could tell about his venomous cocktails and soups, and how many people had imbibed from his deadly brews. On Memorial Day, Americans supposedly recall their deaths in war. How many of them thought about the deaths imposed by the United States not only in dubious wars like Vietnam and Iraq, where millions died, but in the covert CIA wars, like the one Nixon and Kissinger waged on 9/11? 9/11/73, that is! Saul Landau is a fellow at the Institute for Policy
Studies. His forthcoming book, A Bush and Botox World,
will be published by CounterPunch Press this fall.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                    |
