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Will the US Labor Movement Rise Again in Chicago? Or is this just a power play at the top? JoAnn Wypijewski details what's really at stake in the great showdown as some of labor's most powerful bosses threaten to quit the AFL-CIO. No-holds-barred profiles of the SIEU's Andy Stern, Hoffa of the Teamsters and the other "insurgents". Jeffrey St Clair tells the incredible saga of the $30 billion bailout of Boeing. How the scandal reached the White House and Don Rumsfeld screamed, Let the woman take the fall. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the Judy Miller story. 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! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly  Today's Stories July 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Tariq
Ali Robert
Fisk Dave
Lindorff Ricardo
Alarcón Col.
Dan Smith Brian
Cloughley Kevin
Zeese Bill
Quigley Fred
Gardner Rep.
Ron Paul Joshua
Frank Shivali
Tukdeo Gilad
Atzmon James
Petras Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 22, 2005 Heather
Gray David
Domke Lance
Selfa JoAnn
Wypijewski
July 21, 2005 Rose
Ann DeMoro William
Blum J.L.
Chestnut, Jr. Christopher
Brauchli Joshua
Frank Brian
Concannon, Jr. Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
July 20, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz Ray
McGovern Chris
Floyd Uri
Avnery Dave
Lindorff Norman
Solomon Bill
Quigley
July 19, 2005 Tariq
Ali John
Ross Davey
D. Greg
Weiher Brian
McKinlay Norman
Solomon Dave
Lindorff Bill
Christison Joshua
Frank
July 18, 2005 Joshua
Frank M.
Shahid Alam Jude
Wanniski Ron
Jacobs Mike
Whitney William
MacDougall Seth
Sandronsky Richard
Lichtman Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Weekend
July 15 / 17, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Jeffrey
St. Clair Paul
Craig Roberts Harry
Browne Uri
Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron Andrew
Rubin Patrick
Cockburn J.L.
Chestnut, Jr. Fred
Gardner Christopher
Brauchli Chris
Floyd Ben
Tripp Col.
Dan Smith Jason
Leopold Jack
Random Norman
Solomon George
Ochenski Website
of the Weekend
July 14, 2005 Jeffrey
St. Clair Subcomandante
Marcos Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Jude
Wanniski Dave
Zirin Kevin
Zeese Robert
Jensen Reza
Fiyouzat Carol
Norris Website
of the Day
July 13, 2005 Brian
Cloughley George
Galloway Carlos
Fierro Sarah
Knopp Norman
Solomon Mickey
Z. Jim
Minick Pat
Williams Andrew
N. Rubin Website
of the Day
July 12, 2005 Laith
al-Saud Kara
N. Tina William
A. Cook Jack
Bratich Amina
Mire Dick
J. Reavis Kevin
Zeese Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Uri
Avnery Sheldon
Rampton Bill
Christison Robert
Fisk Stephen
Winspear Saul
Landau Behrooz
Ghamari Karl
Beitel Brian
Concannon, Jr. Fred
Gardner John
Whitlow Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Lila
Rajiva Laura
Carlsen Jackie
Corr Dave
Lindorff N.
D. Jayaprakash Seth
Sandronsky Norman
Madarasz Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 8, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Tariq
Ali Monica
Benderman Rick
Jahnkow Christopher
Brauchli Kim
Peterson Joshua
Frank Norman
Solomon Website
of the Day
July 7, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair John
Walsh Mike
Marqusee Gilad
Atzmon Nicole
Colson Jack
Random Norman
Solomon Len
Colodny Cockburn
/ St. Clair
July 6, 2005 Elaine
Cassel Sean
Donahue Jeremy
R. Hammond Joshua
Frank Ali
Khan Michael
Dickinson Norman
Solomon Dave
Zirin Gary
Leupp Website
of the Day
July 5, 2005 Behrooz
Ghamari Elaine
Cassel Ron
Jacobs Bob
Libal Dr.
Peter Rost Mark
Engler Gideon
Levy Dave
Zirin Sameer
Dossani
July 2 / 4, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Lenni
Brenner Laura
Carlsen James
Petras William
A. Cook Brian
Cloughley Saul
Landau Tom
Crumpacker Greg
Moses Dr.
Susan Block Fran
Shor Fred
Gardner Moshe
Adler David
Model Seth
Sandronsky Ramzy
Baroud Suzan
Mazur Ben
Tripp Justin
Taylor Brendan
Bailey Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 1, 2005 Christopher
Brauchli Pat
Williams Gary
Leupp John
Stauber John
Chuckman Justicia
y Paz Cockburn
/ St. Clair
June 30, 2005 Kathy
Kelly John
Stauber Virginia
Rodino Jason
Leopold Dave
Lindorff Greg
Moses Norman
Solomon Joshua
Frank Alexander
Cockburn
June 29, 2005 Mike
Schaefer Roger
Burbach / Paul Cantor Sharon
Smith Sam
Husseini John
Stauber Ahmad
Faruqui Linda
S. Heard Stew
Albert Ray
McGovern
June 28, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Landau
/ Hassen John
A. Murphy Mike
Whitney CounterPunch
News Service Dave
Zirin Dave
Lindorff Patrick
Cockburn
June 27, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Mike
Marqusee Mark
Scaramella Leigh
Saavedra Kathy
Kelly
June 25 / 26, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Jennifer
Van Bergen George
Corsetti Mark
Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer Kevin
Zeese P.
Sainath John
Stauber Scott
Handleman Tom
Barry John
Walsh Justin
E.H. Smith Alan
Wallis Ben
Tripp Frederick
B. Hudson Poets'
Basement
June 24, 2005 Ray
McGovern Jorge
Mariscal Desiree
Hellegers Zeynep
Toufe Joshua
Frank David
Lindorff Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
June 23, 2005 Christopher
Brauchli Clay
Conrad Standard
Schaefer P.
Sainath Mark
Engler Norman
Solomon Cockburn
/ St. Clair Kathy
Kelly
June 22, 2005 Kevin
Zeese William
S. Lind Arsalan
Iftikhar Dan
Nagengast David
Krieger Kathleen
& Bill Christison
June 21, 2005 Brian Cloughley Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Mark Weisbrot Matthew R.
Simmons Dave Zirin Virginia Rodino Paul Craig
Roberts
June 20, 2005 Alan Maass Tariq Ali Mickey Z. William Blum Gary Leupp Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Alan Maass Uri Avnery Website of
the Day
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
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Weekend Edition CounterPunch DiaryIslamo-Anarcs or Islamo-Fascists?By ALEXANDER COCKBURN I guess the lesson of the week is, Don't run away from an English cop in the London Underground, or anywhere else, particularly if you're brown or black. This means, don't run for a train or a bus, particularly with a bag in your hand. If you want to run, or even surrender to the cops, take all your clothes off and put all your hands up, as Eldridge Cleaver recommended in Soul on Ice. One in every ten of these London cops is heavily armed and will kill you without compunction.
Yes, this is the Peter Werbe associated with an anarchist publication called The Fifth Estate, and host on a Detroit-based radio show, Nightcall, which goes out on Sunday, and on which both your CounterPunch editors have been sometime guests. Peter's a nice boy who probably flosses every morning and evening, but I fear he slips into the frilly black negligee of anarchism only as a kind of diversion when the stakes are, in his estimation, low. Comes election time and Werbe heeds the siren call, tosses his copies of Bakunin and Kropotkin in the trashcan and starts waving the blood-mottled banner of the Democratic Party. He did it late last year, writing hysterically to all and sundry that this time the states were SO high (they get that way punctually every four years, round about November) that the common good required all anarchists to vote for John Kerry who was at that time calling, as he still does, for more troops and a wider war. I remember being on Werbe's radio show and he turned apoplectic when I derided both major parties. Years ago I was in Detroit and went to a local gun show called Gunstock and wrote a column about it, extolling the cranky constitutionalists and UN haters as a spirited and genial bunch, united by a commendable hatred of authority, which is surely the heart beat of anarchism. Werbe had me on his show and acted as though I'd praised a bunch of cat-torturers. I forwarded Werbe's note to Tariq Ali who swiftly responded:
Thank you Tariq, although "Liberals with a bomb" seems snotty. Reviewing the intensity of anarchist bomb attacks and their decimation of crowned heads on presidents around the dawn of the twentieth century I sometimes wonder whether "propaganda of the deed" had an effect of inducing the ruling classes to take some stumbling steps into the progressive era and launch some basic social reforms. True, you can't pressure the ruling class into dissolving itself. But you can pressure them into doing things different. The IRA demonstrated that successfully in London some years ago. Tariq, who draws inspiration from Trotsky, took the same stance as Werbe towards John Kerry last year. Oh, they may be on different sides on Kronstadt, but when it came to Kerry they marched shoulder to shoulder under the banner of the Democratic Party. Incidentally, in his memoirs Bunuel was extremely caustic about the anarchists in Barcelona, some of whom used the cellars of Gaudi's Palau Guell, on the south side of the Ramblas, to torture their opponents.
John Roberts, Phony When it comes to Roberts, nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, the focus is almost entirely on his posture vis a vis Roe v. Wade. On pretty much everything else he gets a pass in the press, even A Double Plus. Your editors were almost alone in pointing out last week that Roberts' prime function has been as a shill for big business. We wrote:
Add to this his actual, as opposed to professed stance on federal power. When it comes to wiping out endangered species Roberts is all for the right of states (i.e., developers) to defy federal guidelines. When it comes to torture and war he's wags the federal flag. It's Roberts, foe of federal power, except when it comes to police powers, as in the Gitmo trials, and the French Fry case. Even last week, Roberts took time out from preparing for his confirmation hearings to issue a dissent in a case involving an illegal search of a car. Roberts was alone on the Appeals Court in siding with the cops, who conducted a full-blown car search after pulling the vehicle over for a faulty tail-light. There may be some haze obscuring Roberts' views on Roe v. Wade, but there's nothing disguising his animosity toward the 4th Amendment. As for hauling water for the White House there's the Gulf War vets' case. The vets brought suit against Saddam for Gulf War illnesses, encouraged to do so by the Bushies. Then, when Saddam was toppled, the Bush administration invoked "immunity" for the new Iraq government, a move which Roberts supported. Mrs Roberts sounds fun. I like the thought of her driving to Dewey Beach in her orange VW Beetle, where she spotted Mr Roberts sitting in his ample Midwestern bloomers, reading Dr Johnson and said to herself, He's the One. Jeffrey St Clair, another Hoosier (though one more likely to be caught reading Lord Rochester than Dr. J), tells me that this was around the time his wife Kimberly was driving to Rehoboth Beach just next door, in her own orange VW Beetle. Just think, I told him, a couple of wrong turns and a Shakespearian twist or two and Kimberly could have ended up as Mrs Roberts and vice versa.
Re: Abortion DNC Chairman Howard Dean told a student audience last week that "I think we need to talk about this issue differently. The Republicans have painted us as a pro-abortion party. I don't know anybody in America who is pro-abortion. [But surely he's read Katha Pollitt.] We do have to have a big tent. I do think we need to welcome pro-life Democrats into this party. "I think that we must be absolutely firm in being the party of individual freedom and personal freedom, which means that in the end the government doesn't get to decide, we do We believe a woman has a right to make up their own mind and they believe (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay should make it up and Rick Santorum should make it up for them." Much of the time Dean gets it wrong. But here he gets the tone right.
Animals and Expressions I took issue here last week with Roger Scruton's view, expressed in the Times Literary Supplement that "human beings are alone among the animals in revealing their individuality in their faces. The mouth that speaks, the eyes that glaze, the skin that flushes, all are signs of freedom, character and judgment, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within." In the course of my reproofs to the foolish Scruton, intent like the creationists on asserting the God-conferred uniqueness of hom. Sap., I should of course have mentioned Charles Darwin, an ardent dog owner , who loved to study faces, of humans and animals and in 1872 published The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Darwin included in his concept of "expression" body movement and posture as well as facial expression. His intent to show with hundreds of examples that both man and beast exist within the same continuum. As I did with my dog Jasper, Darfwin noted the delicacy of an animal expression: "The study of Expression is difficult, owing to the movements being often extremely slight, and of a fleeting nature." What an ass that Scruton is. He has bought a house in Rappahannock, Virginia, fro which to hunt foxes, whose expressions will be only too clear. The Times Literary Supplement was the site of my first job after leaving Oxford in 1963. I rattled along the District Line from Chiswick, got off at Blackfriars and entered the Times's new building. The editor then was Arthur Crook, who'd started his career at Printing House Square at the age of 14, in 1926, and gradually worked his way up to this distinguished position. He was a charming man, with enough of the editorial martinet in him to keep one up to par in editorial duties. Arthur died last week at the age of 93, a great age, though I'm told that these days half the under-fifteens one sees will live to be a hundred, though I'm sure the American food industry still has a few tricks up its sleeve to bring us back to the biblical norm. It was a golden era at the TLS. John Willett was assistant editor and anonymity of contributors was still the rule. Arthur or John used to write in pencil the name of each anonymous reviewer on the index card of the book reviewed. Almost books about America bore the name of D.W.Brogan and all books about the Soviet Union that of E.H.Carr, who sent in his reviews written in long hand on the back of the galleys of his history of the CPSU. I was given a slim Times house style book to memorize. I think it was selectively taken from Fowler and from the Reader's style book published by the Clarendon Press, then given a final polish by the London Times' editor in the early Sixties, William Haley. One entry began, "The Arabs have an unfortunate vagueness about their names". Note here the placing of the quotation marks inside the full stop, an English style I much prefer and try, futilely, to impose on all CounterPunch materials, though I have some moderate success with the newsletter. Haley had many lonely usages, including "oversea". My first day at work we went to the pub for lunch. I duly bought my round for Crook and Willett (Scotches), Charis Ryder, Nicholas Bethel and Derwent May and saw half my weekly salary of 12 pounds and ten shillings vanish into the till. "I can't afford to go to any more lunches", I complained to my fellow copyeditor, Nicholas Bethel. Then Willett threw a reprint of a grammar of Sanskrit on my desk and asked me to prepare a note on it for Books Received, known informally as The Graveyard. If you reviewed a book, you got to sell it at Gastons in Chancery Lane, off Fleet Street. It all had a whiff of Grubstreet and you half expected to see a decayed poet lying in the corner complaining about Pope's treatment of him in The Dunciad. I turned in a polished note on the Sanskrit grammar, and many other costly reprints and was duly rewarded at Gastons, enough to pay for my rounds and more. Arthur was a natty dresser, in rather elegant pinstripe and candy-striped shirts. I don't think the TLS was ever better than in his and Willett's tenure. Willett supervised the exciting special issues such as the two on the avant garde that rubbed the noses of the Garrick Club in concrete poetry and situationism. Crook reassured the Garrick Club and the Warden of All Souls that tradition was secure.
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