Today's Stories

July 30, 2008

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

July 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How Bush is Wiping Out McCain

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Alaskan Oil Spills

James G. Abourezk
The Surge Has Worked?

Joseph Nevins
Death as a Way of Life on the Borderlands

Uri Avnery
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks

Linn Washington, Jr.
Politics and Injustice in Philadelphia

David Yearsley
Sodomy, Snuff Scenes and the Berlin Opera

Binoy Kampmark
Socializing Losses: Bailing Out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Saul Landau
Truth in Comedy: Stop Whining It's All in Your Head!

Joshua Frank
Big Sky Rebels

Brendan Cooney
Europe's Hypocrisy

Jonathan Cook
Settlers Eye Historic Jerusalem Neighborhood

Robert Fantina
McCain, Iraq and the Campaign

Lee Sustar
Will the US Get Its Way with Iran?

Michael Winship
The Company We Keep

David Macaray
Organized Labor Makes a Convenient Target

Missy Beattie
Pelosi's Panhandling

Robert Weissman
The Scourge of the IMF

Kim Nicolini
Batman and the Old Order

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Ford and McEnteer

Website of the Weekend
Bad Hoosiers

July 25, 2008

Harvey Wasserman
NRC: New Nukes Not Ready for Prime Time

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Facts About Israel?

Alan Farago
Where's the Outrage?

Paul D'Amato
The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic and the Selective Prosecution of War Crimes

Gary Leupp
War With Iran? State Dept. Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Eyes Wide Shut in India

Mike Whitney
Obama Dazzles Old Europe, While McCain Cries, "No Mas!"

Paul Krassner
Inside Camp Mogul

Mike Roselle
All Hail Nero!

Website of the Day
Pressing Starbucks

July 24, 2008

Greg Moses
Who Killed Azem Hajdari?

Andy Worthington
Folly and Injustice: Salim Hamdan's Guantanamo Trial

James Bovard
Daniel Ellsberg's Lessons for Our Time

Joe Bageant
Life in the Post-Political Age

George Wuerthner
Boondoggle in the Fields

DC Larson
Shutting Out Ralph Nader

William Willers
The Forest Products Industry in Public Education

David Macaray
On the Prospects for a SAG Strike

Website of the Day
Pacifica Radio Archive of 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago

July 23, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
An Air Force in Free Fall

Paul Craig Roberts
The Mother of All Messes

Ralph Nader
Pavlov's America

Mike Whitney
Visualizing Dow 6,000

Susie Day
Senator Sicko: Jesse Helms and the Theatre of the Depraved

Website of the Day
"A Kinder and Gentler Machine-Gun Hand..."

July 22, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Ten Years On, Bolivarian Revolution at Crossroads

Patrick Cockburn
Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal

Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch
Torture After Dark

Moshe Adler
Everyone Must Share, Not Just Charlie Rangel

Martha Rosenberg
Protecting Bones from Drugs that Protect Bones

Dan Bacher
Bechtel and the Big Dig

Harvey Wasserman
Is Gore Inching Toward Solartopia?

Anthony Papa
A Slugger's Drug Redemption

Binoy Kampmark
Mad Over Benedict

Website of the Day
Hiroshima: A-Bombed Objects

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

Andy Worthington
Dictatorial Powers Upheld: the Meaning of the Al-Marri Decision

Scott Pellegrino
Should "Meet the Press" Desegregate?

John Ross
McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

Robert Weitzel
Blowback Through the Looking Glass

Mike Stark
I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

Website of the Day
Pinky Solves the Illegal Immigration Crisis

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Beat a Mining Company: Why a Gold Goliath Threw in the Towel

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

Website of the Day
What If Edward Said Had Told This Joke?

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D. C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U. S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U. S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be"Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U. S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N. D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on"Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

July 30, 2008

Day Dawns in Wicked City

Against Bike Lanes

By DAVID KER THOMSON

Dufferin Grove watershed, Toronto.

In the principal city of my adopted country—a northern land famous for accepting runaway slaves and the artful dodgers of various drafts (what else were we doing here, after all?)—I was meandering along on the sidewalk enjoying the evening sun.  There was an American car across the sidewalk—the cars here are unselfconsciously American—and a young man with a Tree Hugger t-shirt emerged.

“You should be in the bike lane,” he told me.

I looked from the car with its American logo to the lad with the green logo, but said nothing, suspecting irony.  The car was blocking the bike lane.

“I’m just loading some stuff,” he said.  “I won’t be long.”  It was near sunset. I scanned the area for more irony, but detected none.  It seemed safe to proceed.

I permitted myself a final arched eyebrow at the car/tree juxtaposition, but as I squeezed my bike past the car I had to admit to myself that it was even worse than the young man had thought.  Even if he hadn’t been blocking the bike lane, I might not have used it. 

I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of users of these spillways, the kind who pretend that they aren’t perfectly positioned for parked cars to swing doors into, and those who don’t.  The non-pretenders are fewer in number, but as they inch across the city, they imagine a thousand deaths, and so move from disaster to disaster and become, with such a hesitant manner, something of a traffic hazard themselves.  It’s hard not to compare the confident ones and the whimpy ones to the righteous and the wicked in the book of Proverbs.  “The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” says the good book, “but the righteous are bold as a lion.” 

Of this select group of wicked ones I count myself a member.  We slouch awkwardly through the city, looking for love in all the wrong places—in the street till we can bear no longer the thought of our own deaths, on the sidewalk till we can brook no longer the muttering and looks of contempt.  We lurk in alleys, park our bikes too far from our destinations and walk the rest of the way.  Free at last from the shackles of our bicycles, we come out onto the sidewalks of the boulevards and admire the righteous, their prim clusterings at red lights even when there is no cross traffic, their gallantry and confidence in the bike lanes reminiscent of the Charge of the Light Brigade or something equally valiant, their willingness to imagine bike lanes even when the lanes fade in and out, as they do every few blocks, their swank little bells like the ones on children’s tricycles, which they deploy to let the cement trucks know that they, like the cement truckers, are legal and bold and righteous.  This is a city that used to be called “The Good.”  Goodness is still rife. 

My first time in the city, arriving from smokier and badder lands abroad, a whiff of brimstone lingering about me, I saw a quiet tableau of seven righteous bikers stopping two lanes over from a streetcar as a passenger boarded, and the righteous looked neither to the left, nor to the right, but held firm in their resolve, and I knew I was among the pure in spirit, and I fell onto my knees.  That time it was because I had tripped on a pigeon while craning my neck to look at the bikers, but truly the air of sanctity is a marvel, and there is so little discord between the righteous bikers and the people in the American cars you’d almost think that they were the best of friends.  And indeed when I talk to the righteous they assure me that they are working for a common good, and I understand that they hope soon—in 2013, I think—to be rewarded for their excellent behavior by being given still more bike lanes in which to express their gallantry.

It’s such a chummy vision of politicians and citizens in unison that it seems ungenerous to point out that bike lanes, like their disastrous parent democracy, are a form of institutionalized anarchy.  Democracy was founded in, and flourishes amongst, slave-holding societies.  Here’s how to be a democratist today: take an American car, give your soul away in Faustian bargains to American military adventures and backroom corporate deals to get it, fill it (the soul, the car) with gas obtained from other implicit concessions to the American Sixth Fleet in a process called “being a close friend and ally” (exchange a “good” war in Afghanistan for a bad one in Iraq), drive to get food which has been delivered to the store in a truck which parks in the bike lane, spew cancerous fumes on the children on the way, flatten a squirrel or two to let the children know they shouldn’t play hockey in the street, park your car, open your door into the bike lane and don’t check your mirror.  If anything goes wrong you can be shocked—shocked—at the bicyclist who comes out of “nowhere.” 

This nowhere, where does it begin?  Is this not a nowhere, now here, of our own devising?

The China-helmeted democratist righteous biker, fresh from nowhere, glued to the inside of an American car door.  Can you think of a better icon of democracy in action?  A wash-and-wear action figure to accessorize your basic Detroit box.

In nowhere, a place too depleted to have a capital ‘n’, live the laborers who make our clothes and the gimcracks and gewgaws we got so cheaply at Walmart.  We cannot pay them properly now, but if they are good, we will give them democracy, starting in China.  Then they can be like us, righteous, and bold enough to send their anarchy elsewhere.  And they can have righteous cities like ours, where if everyone stays in his or her proper place, one day almost two percent of the open spaces will be for people and the space for cars will drop from 99% to 98.  Perhaps even then people won’t know what those two long thin things that hang from our buttocks are for, but we will know how to vote, and how to send someone waddling off to the capitol to do stuff for us, and then we can continue not having to do it ourselves. 

Each generation of democratists threatens the next with the folly of not doing their bit, as if this having done a bit to bring slightly less ruinous politicians, and therefore ratifying the ruinous system itself, were not the greatest of follies.

Time long past for the gentle wicked.  Leave anarchy and radicalism for the anarchist radicals in Washington.  This is my neighborhood, my shit to take care of.  Now is the hour of gentle wickedness and love, slow bikes on sidewalks, pedestrians stalled in X-walks to admire birds, more and bigger potholes, potholes big enough for trees, children sprung from daycare playing in the street.  Time to admit how many “pedestrians” are actually drivers getting to their cars.  The delivery trucks and the cars can’t take back the bike lanes, because they already own them, both physically and spiritually.  Let the bikerighteous and the cementers have as many bike lanes as they want.  Perhaps today we’ll pick up litter in the parks and place it in its appropriate receptacle, the lair of the righteous. 

Drivers love bike lanes, because such official marginalia acknowledges the right of drivers to dominate the city.  We acknowledge no such right.  We are the wicked, and there is a wicked heart in each of us who has hungered to walk simply beneath the cope of heaven. 

One day this, one day that.  That’s bike lane talk.  But in the real city, there is no “one day,” only the now, this moment.  And in this moment the city is already ours.  Democratists interlope, Detroitist detritus comes and goes, but we are here right now.  Sun’s coming up in the city. What kind of day is it going to be?  

David Ker Thomson (Ph.D. Princeton) is in the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where he teaches graduate courses on cities and ethics. He is finishing a book on traveling in England with his family entitled, View from a Kettle.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont