home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

New Print Edition of CounterPunch: Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... 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! New for Spring and Summer: CounterPunch Sweatshop-Free T-shirts! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories May 7, 2005 Gary Leupp Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism May 6, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood Erin Yoshioka Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison? Sam Husseini Talking with Syrians Dave Lindorff Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters Kevin Zeese Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty Joshua Frank An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War Dan Bacher Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid P. Saineth India's Bloody Water Wars   May 5, 2005 Carles Mutaner Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?" Carl G. Estabrook Is There Any Hope for the Pope? Farrah Hassen The US's Syrian Obsession Kevin Zeese "Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta Michael Leonardi May Day with an American Soldier in Rome Bennett Ramberg The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You Ray McGovern The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit Norman Solomon Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran Nicole Colson The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights Brian Concannon, Jr. Clearing the Fences in Haiti   May 4, 2005 Colin Kalmbacher Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested John Walsh Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War Greg Moses Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation" Ali Khan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart Chris Floyd Ring Them Bells Linda S. Heard D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics Dave Zirin The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle William S. Lind Fool's Paradise Gary Leupp Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution Website of the Day Kent State, May 4, 1970     May 3, 2005 Dave Lindorff Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice Brian Cloughley Halliburton's War Loot Ira Kurzban Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers Seth Sandronsky Towards Debtors' Prisons? Gilad Atzmon The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More Michael Donnelly Branding Eco Collapse Alex Sanchez Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush? Peter Linebaugh Magna Carta and May Day     May 2, 2005 Ron Jacobs Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement Stan Goff The Case of Hasan Akbar Karyn Strickler Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics Joshua Frank Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly Kevin Zeese Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam Vicente Navarro Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician       April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility" Gabriel Kolko Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later Jennifer Loewenstein The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood Lee Sustar City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago Saul Landau The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power T.W. Croft The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy Nikolas Kozloff Fox News v. Hugo Chavez William Blum Never-Ending Double Standards Dave Lindorff Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly Joshua Frank The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls Doug Giebel Saving Jane Fonda Steven Erlanger A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief Fred Gardner Washington State Doctor Harassed Mike Whitney Another Mad Bush Press Conference Kurt Nimmo Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine Joe DeRaymond A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania Michael Dickinson Flags Mickey Z. May Day at Yankee Stadium Justin Taylor The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy Poets Basement Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Save Barbados's Cowpastor   April 29, 2005 W. John Green Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death Squads? Luke Brothers Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT Norman Solomon War, Aid and Public Relations M. Junaid Alam The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption Jackie Corr The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens Hunter Greer Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally, a Use for Standardized Testing! Sharon Smith The New Assault on Women's Rights: Why are the Democrats Silent? Website of the Day Tony Blair's Election Rap   April 28, 2005 Omar Waraich Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview Kevin Zeese Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off? Dave Lindorff Bush's Torture Tort Reform Greg Moses Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes Toni Solo Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever? Niranjan Ramakrishnan Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums Werther George Will Revises the Vietnam War   April 27, 2005 John Ross Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death Joshua Frank DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias Ray McGovern The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets the Eye Mark Donham Government Pettiness and Wetland Destruction Dan Smith Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?     April 26, 2005 Dave Lindorff Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder Alevtina Rea Magic of the Yellow Emperor Greg Moses The Senator and the Narc Pirates of Highway 281 Joshua Frank Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards on Ruzicka Diana Johnstone The French are At It Again     April 25, 2005 Uri Avnery The Persecution of Vanunu Alison Weir The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT Minimizes Palestinian Deaths Lee Sustar Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life of Dave Yettaw Leonardo Boff A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger: a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power? Gary Leupp Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton             April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Time's Buried Hitler Cover Gary Leupp The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in China James Petras Elections for Democracy or Empire? Harry Browne Springsteen's "Devils and Dust" Fred Gardner The Custody Threat Ron Jacobs The Desterrados of Colombia: They are not Collateral Damage Elizabeth Schulte Why Backing Democrats is Pulling the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right Chris Floyd Oil, Guns and Banks   April 22, 2005 Saul Landau The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries Forever Kevin Zeese Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation Joshua Frank Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature Mike Whitney God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses Michael Flynn Wolfowitz on Top of the World Lee Sustar The One-Sided Class War Website of the Day Bitter Greens   April 21, 2005 Bill Quigley The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger Dave Lindorff Bush's X-Files Jason Leopold Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse Than the Exxon Valdez? Kathleen Christison Sharon's 92 Percent Solution: How the Misperceptions Roll On April 20, 2005   April 20, 2005 John Ross Lopez Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two) Kevin Zeese Halliburton: Poster Child of the War Profiteers Uri Avnery The 100 Days of Abu Mazen Website of the Day The House that Jack Built   April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard An Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for the White House?" Dave Lindorff What's Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight Neve Gordon Before the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories Brian Concannon, Jr Immaculate Evasions in Haiti Murray Hudson Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides Frank B. Ford Poem for Marla Ruzicka Monty Python Memo to Pope Rat Michael Dickinson Cardinal Sins Paul Craig Roberts Outsourcing the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism Website of the Day Strindberg and Helium April 18, 2005 Linda Schade / Kevin Zeese The Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest John Ross Mexico's Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness Brian McKenna Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan Mike Whitney The NYT in Fallujah Patrick Cockburn Iraqi Peace in Tatters Dave Zirin Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop Eli Stephens The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson Harry Browne War and Elections in Britain and Ireland Website of the Day A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest   April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Message in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada Mark Dow The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag Omar Waraich Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain Robert Buzzanco How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq Sherry Wolf Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation? Fred Gardner The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana Ron Jacobs Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities Mark Weisbrot CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages John Pardon The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen Yoshie Furuhashi Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit Industry Mike Roselle Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism? Ralph Nader Scientists or Celebrities? Ramzy Baroud Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair Jackson Thoreau Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter Michael Dickinson "Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul Richard Neville Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™ Poets' Basement Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney Website of the Weekend Rebel Angel     April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Diplomacy, Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice Bill Glahn No Child Left a Dime Mickey Z. One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich Stephanie McMillan Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit Josh Mahan Victoria's Dirty Secret David Russitano Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up? Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales "I am Joaquin" Tom Reeves Students Rise Again in Québec   April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Red States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act Pat Williams The Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West Jessica Pupovac What You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy Joshua Frank Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt. Jerzy Mankowski Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland Talli Naumann Right-to-Know in Mexico Antony Loewenstein The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch Virginia Rodino Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Bush's Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports Website of the Day The 13th Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland     April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Bolton in the Western Sahara Mike Whitney Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando Botero Terry Jones Let Them Eat Bombs Dave Lindorff A Sickening Error Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Ethnic Cleansing at Air America Kurt Nimmo Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran Don Fitz Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative to Pesticides Tom Crumpacker Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences JG The Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34 Jack McCarthy Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee Kevin Zeese Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou Jeffrey St. Clair How Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions   April 12, 2005 John Wheat Gibson The Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot Act Kevin Zeese The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now Alan Farago The Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida Dave Lindorff Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to White Alabamans Ron Jacobs Bob Dylan at the Crossroads Nelson P. Valdes Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie Dave Zirin War Games and War Names Website of the Day Parents Against the Draft     April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Negroponte and the Eclipse of the CIA Saul Landau Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead: Contempt for the Rest Us Monique Dols Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad Phil Gasper Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt Mike Whitney See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media Edwin Krales The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry Paul de Rooij Undermining Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects Website of the Day Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition     April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Torture Air, Incorporated William A. Cook Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights Abuses Gary Leupp My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru Alan Maass Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary Laura Carlsen Democracy Sinking in Mexico Joe DeRaymond Death and Displacement in Colombia Nikolas Kozloff Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again) Dave Lindorff The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar Greg Moses Growling at Hallliburton Fred Gardner Southern Station Session Justin Smith The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as Bad Old Days Ron Jacobs George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones M. Junaid Alam No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US Ira Kay West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the World Elizabeth Schulte From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left Jackie Corr Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana Christopher Brauchli From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment Leslie A. Fiedler On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is Over" Ben Tripp Pocket Furniture Poets Basement Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis Website of the Weekend Military Free Zones                                           Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition May 7 / 8, 2005 A Million in the Streets Uprising in Mexico City By LANCE SELFA Only days after more than 1 million people demonstrated April 24 in support of Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President Vicente Fox pulled the plug on a politically motivated prosecution against López Obrador. Hard-line Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, a former general who had led the charge against López Obrador, resigned. And Fox pledged to find a way to end the prosecution. For Fox and Mexico's political establishment--which is dominated by Fox's right-wing National Action Party (PAN), as well as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that ruled Mexico for 70 years before Fox won the presidency in 2000--this was a major defeat. For López Obrador, it is a triumph that will boost his chances to become Mexico's president in next year's elections. When he addressed the crowd on April 24, López Obrador sounded more like the president already, rather than a candidate for the office, according to news reports.   FOX'S CLIMBDOWN brought to an end a political crisis that some observers had worried would lead to ungovernability in the heart of the country. Macedo de la Concha and government prosecutor Carlos Javier Vega Memije, both Fox loyalists, had been preparing to indict López Obrador on a trumped-up charge of ignoring a 2002 court order barring construction of a road to a hospital. Although Fox tried to pass off responsibility on Macedo de la Concha, few Mexicans were fooled. Most knew that the April 7 vote in the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's Congress) to strip López Obrador of his immunity to being charged with a crime--known in Spanish as a "desafuero"--was arranged at the highest levels of the PAN and PRI. Under Mexican law, a person charged with a crime loses his political rights. López Obrador stepped down temporarily as Mexico City mayor. If he had still been under threat of trial--or convicted--by January 2006, the deadline for presidential candidates to file their intention to run, he would have been disqualified from the presidential race. The PAN and PRI knew exactly what they were doing--eliminating a rival who, according to current opinion polls, is leading any PRI or PAN candidate by 10 to 20 points. After the PRI-PAN bloc in Congress approved the desafuero, Fox and his cronies like Interior Minister Santiago Creel and PRI leader Roberto Madrazo traveled around Mexico giving speeches about how prosecuting López Obrador would uphold the rule of law. But few believed them. Opinion polls showed that López Obrador's popularity actually increased--and Fox's declined--after the desafuero. Whatever they thought of the charges against AMLO (as López Obrador is popularly known, by his initials), more than two-thirds of Mexicans believed they should still have a right to vote for him. This could be seen in the crowd that attended the "March in Silence" on April 24. People of all ages--including thousands of the elderly who receive a pension that was one of AMLO's reforms--marched. While earlier crowds in López Obrador's defense had been largely organized by and confined to members of the PRD, the March in Silence reached far more widely. The PAN and PRI had to notice that many of those rallying to AMLO's defense were their own supporters. For weeks, leading PAN and PRI politicians, including Fox himself, had been dogged at public appearances by protesters accusing them of selling out democracy. * * * THE OUTPOURING of outrage against the attacks on López Obrador captures the widespread disillusion in Fox's rule. After promising "change" from seven decades of authoritarian PRI rule, Fox has supported more of the same free-market policies that his PRI predecessors pushed. Last year, the PRI-PAN bloc in Congress approved drastic cuts in the country's social security system for retirees. Fox had pledged to find a solution--in "15 minutes"--to the oppression of indigenous people in Chiapas that led to the 1994 Zapatista uprising. But he stood by while the Congress voted down a Zapatista-supported plan for autonomy in Chiapas in 2001. The targeting of López Obrador also exposed the hypocrisy of politicians whose parties were convicted of laundering millions from foreign capitalists and stealing from the state-run oil company PEMEX to their finance their presidential campaigns in 2000. But support for AMLO goes beyond mere disappointment with Fox. It is another aspect of the revolt against free-market dogma that has spread across Latin America. AMLO is popular because he has supported certain reforms, like universal pensions and jobs programs, in Mexico City. Although a long-time politician, he took part in protests against oil drilling in his home state of Tabasco. His personal style is modest--driving his own car and not hobnobbing with the rich. He also calls for the prosecution of banks that swindled billions from the country during the 1995 peso collapse and a re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. And he opposes the privatization of Mexico's oil industry. His main campaign slogan calls for "putting the poor first." These are the real crimes for which Mexico's ruling parties want to keep López Obrador out of Los Pinos--Mexico's White House. Romulo O'Farrell, the 88-year-old billionaire publisher with close ties to Washington, summoned leading Mexican capitalists to his mansion to tell them that AMLO must be prevented from becoming president at all costs, according to journalist John Ross. The U.S. embassy, so ready to squawk about "democracy" in Lebanon or Ukraine, was silent about the PRI-PAN's disregard for it in the case of the desafuero. But that's because the extremists in Washington think López Obrador is a populist akin to Washington's new bogeyman in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. This is nonsense. Even López Obrador rejects the comparison with Chávez. "On a sliding scale, [López Obrador's] danger to U.S. hegemony in the Americas is probably at Lula-level, a notch below the return of Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega," wrote Ross. Ross is right. Despite his populist rhetoric and policies, López Obrador is no radical. Among his chief advisers is Manuel Camacho Solis, a former ally of right-wing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In 2000, he paid more than $4 million in city funds to the consulting firm of Republican Rudolph Giuliani to bring a U.S.-style "war on crime" to Mexico City. His election manifesto is full of generalities, but it supports the idea of "taking advantage of globalization, and not just suffering from it." As China has developed by exporting its labor power, he argues, Mexico can develop by exporting its energy resources. He promises more social reform and completion of the San Andrés Accords with the Zapatistas, but none of his proposals challenges private capitalism. Left-wing commentator Alejandro Nadal, writing in La Jornada, worried that AMLO's election manifesto--and the presence of advisers like Camacho Solis--signals that a number of "corrupt politicians, opportunists and architects of national pacts" are already lining up to jump on López Obrador's bandwagon. Zapatista leader Subcommander Marcos urged his supporters to oppose the desafuero, but withheld support from López Obrador and the PRD--which, after all, voted with the PRI and PAN to reject proposals for autonomy for indigenous people in Chiapas in 2001. As Mexican socialist Adolfo Gilly wrote April 30: "Without opposing or remaining on the sidelines of the popular movement that is fighting for democracy, rights and national sovereignty--and without tailing or becoming its uncritical supporters--the autonomous left that is independent of the institutions, advisers and parties of this crisis-ridden regime needs today once again to put forth its own ideas, defending the present and planning for the future." Lance Selfa writes for the Socialist Worker.