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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! How Cops Extort Confessions;
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
How Cops Extort Confessions;
How the U.S. “Justice System” Really WorksNinety-two per cent of felony convictions in the U.S. are obtained by plea bargains or confessions. Without them the “justice system” would grind to a halt. In an important piece in our latest newsletter, available only to subscribers, Emily Horowitz shows how totally innocent people will “confess” under police pressure, even without physical torture. Horowitz outlines the powerful case for banning confessions altogether. Also in this new edition Marcus Rediker, co-author of the legendary The Many Headed Hydra, writes of popular heroism and resistance in the favelas of Medellin, Colombia. Alexander Cockburn reports on how America’s oldest bank, patronized by the global elites, washed billions smuggled out of Russia, and how the Russians might win their money back, shaking the world’s banking system if they do so. Serge Halimi describes the real battle for the soul of Europe. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories August 16 / 17, 2008 Conn Hallinan Robert Fantina
August 15, 2008 Steve Niva David Remington Michael Winship Paul Craig Roberts Farzana Versey Harvey Wasserman Felice Pace Julian Critchley Website of the Day August 14, 2008 Saul Landau / Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Reza Fiyouzat Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China Jack Bradigan Spula Patrick Irelan John Walsh Dan Bacher Website of the Day
August 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts David Remington Brian Cloughley Glen Ford Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Tom Lewis Stan Cox Alan Farago Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day August 12, 2008 Uri Avnery Anthony DiMaggio Bill Christison Eric Walberg Kate Connolly Diane Farsetta Peter Morici Thom Rutledge Lee Patton Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day August 11, 2008 Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Douglas Kammen William Willers Greg Moses Jeff Leys Cynthia McKinney Alan Farago Website of the Day August 9 / 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Bruce Jackson Kevin Young Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Robert Fantina Brendan Cooney Mark Almond Lois Gibbs Rev. William Alberts Kathy Kelly John Ross David Michael Green Bill Moyers / Ron Jacobs Richard Rhames David Yearsley Lee Sustar Brenda Norrell Ben Terrall Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 8, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia, Jr. M. Shahid Alam Andy Worthington Lawrence J. Korb David Model Alan Farago Diop Olugbala Firmin DeBrabander Website of the Day August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond William Blum Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Robert Weitzel Jacob G. Hornberger Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ace Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
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Weekend Edition "You Fought in Spain"Taps for the Abraham Lincoln BrigadeBy DON SANTINA "You fought in Spain.” When the underground leader, Victor Lazlo, spoke this immortal line to Rick Blaine in the 1942 film classic “Casablanca,” he was acknowledging that the cynical nightclub owner played by Humphrey Bogart had already stood up to the Nazis and could be counted on to stand up again. Rick was one of the good guys. On March 21, we squeezed into in the packed Friday night emergency room of Oakland Kaiser Hospital with Ted Veltfort, another one of the good guys. He had fallen earlier in the day and was having trouble breathing. In panic, his wife Leonore had run out into the street and flagged down a taxi to take him to the hospital instead of calling 911 for an ambulance. Ironically, Ted had driven an ambulance for the Spanish Republic during the civil war. His father never forgave him for following his political beliefs to Spain in 1937. After almost two hours, the ER doctor told us that Ted had pneumonia and they were keeping him at least overnight. Before we left, I told the doctor to take special care of him because he was one of the last veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who had fought in Spain before World War II. She looked at me blankly. “You have to get well for the monument,” I said to Ted before we left. “It’s a week from Sunday.” He nodded. The battle for the Spanish Republic from 1936 to 1939 is regarded by many historians as the first battle of World War II. Five months after free elections, the fledgling democratic government of Spain was attacked by a clique of army officers who had support of troops from Fascist Italy and airpower from Nazi Germany. When the democracies of Europe and the United States declared a policy of nonintervention, the desperate Spanish government put out a call for international volunteers. Young men and woman from all over the world poured into Spain to defend the republic. Approximately 2,800 of these volunteers came from the United States to form the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, later known as the Lincoln Brigade. They came from all walks of life: seamen, students, dock workers , ranch hands, carpenters, nurses, teachers. They were multi-racial: the Brigade was the first integrated American military unit and the first to have an African-American commander, Oliver Law. They fought major battles with the Fascists in the Jarama Valley, at Brunete, Aragon, Teruel, and the Ebro River, often against overwhelming odds and with heavy casualties. Those odds worsened daily as the Nazi air force and Fascist artillery pounded the blockaded and beleaguered republic. After three years of bloody battles, the republic was defeated and the international volunteers were withdrawn. Eight hundred volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade did not return home. “No man ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain,” Ernest Hemingway proclaimed, but as the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn noted just as accurately, “there were no rewards in Spain. They were fighting for us all, against the combined forces of European fascism. They deserved our thanks and respect, and20they got neither.” Back home the Lincolns were subjected to years of harassment from their own government. But while they were being blacklisted and hounded out of their jobs during the epoch when Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover were riding roughshod over the Bill of Rights, the veterans stood firm on their political convictions and remained active participants in the battles for peace and justice—demonstrating that same idealist spirit that drew them to the cause of Spain. Richard Bermack, photographer and author of The Frontlines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, noted that while doing the book “I realized that you can keep your own ideals, though it’s not an easy thing to do at all. The point of the book is to show that none of them left the struggle.”
There were about a hundred veterans left in August, 2000 when the late San Francisco supervisor, Sue Bierman, introduced a resolution to the Board to honor the Abraham Lincoln Brigade with a monument on the waterfront. The waterfront was chosen because it was the site of the historic 1934 Strike which changed labor relations on the West Coast forever. A number of participants in the strike became volunteers in Spain and returned to the City not only to work on the docks but also to become actively involved in civil right and antiwar activities, including shutting down the shipment of goods to apartheid South Africa. The monument resolution passed the Board of Supervisors unanimously. Eight years later, on Sunday, March 30, 2008, the first American government-sanctioned monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was dedicated with much fanfare on San Francisco’s embarcadero. The monument, designed by Ann Chamberlain and Walter Hood, sits on a grassy area not far from the historic Ferry Building and Harry Bridges Plaza. The dockworkers are gone now, along with the cargo hooks, conveyors, and the low rumble of idling engines of cross country trucks waiting to be loaded. Stevedores, seamen and strike breakers have been replaced by joggers, bicyclists and tourists. “Our monument is to remember a group of people who stood up to take a stand,” Peter Carroll, the historian, stated to the hundreds of people who gathered for the event. < /span>Carroll is the author of The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Eleven veterans were there for the ceremonies. Among them were Abe Osheroff, whose car was firebombed while he was helping rebuild churches in Mississippi during the Klan’s reign of terror in the 1960’s; Dave Smith, who survived the Jarama Valley bloodbath, but lost a piece of his shoulder in a later battle--he could not return to his job as a machinist so he became a high school teacher and union activist; Nate Thornton, an out of work carpenter who joined the Brigade with his father, and Hilda Roberts, a combat nurse who also served in the Pacific during WWII and ultimately--as a silent antiwar witness with Women in Black. At the dedication, Abe Osheroff stated that “the stuff we’re made of never goes away, with or without a monument because the bastards will never cease their evil, and the decent human beings will never stop their struggle.” Abe died a week later. Ted Veltfort never made it out of the hospital; he died there on April 7; Dave Smith within a few months. Milt Wolff, the last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, died in January. There are only about twenty five Lincolns left now, and soon they too will pass into history. Dolores Ibarruri, the fiery spokesperson of the Republic also know as “La Pasionaria,” spoke these words of farewell as the Lincoln Battalion and the International Brigades left Spain in 1938: “You can go with pride. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of the solidarity and the universality of democracy…We will not forget you; and when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves, entwined in the with the laurels of the Spanish Republic’s victory, come back!” Salud, brigadistas. Don Santina is a cultural historian. He wrote the monument resolution that Sue Bierman introduced to the SF Board of Supervisors. He can be reached at lindey89@aol.com
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