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 28 / 30, 2005 Richard Lichtman We Wuz Framed! the Consolations of George Lakoff Dave Lindorff Whigged Out: the Dems Have Become Merely a Vestigial Opposition Party   May 27, 2005 Gary Leupp It Really is a Crusade! Daniel Estulin Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005 Kevin Zeese Iraq Withdrawal Vote: If Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones Can See the Light, Why Can't Nancy Pelosi? Robert Fisk Mubarak's Goon Squads Dave Zirin Why Pat Tillman's Parents Are No Longer Silent Website of the Day Stuckists   May 26, 2005 Yuki Tanaka Firebombing and Atom Bombing Ray McGovern Bolton, the Monomaniac Who Would Be Ambassador Arthur Mitzman Agenda for a Sustainable Europe Jack Random Afghanistan: the Forgotten Occupation Britt Bailey and Brian Tokar Big Food Strikes Back Rebecca Rush The New Banana Wars: Chiquita's Threat to the Caribbean Islands Jorge Mariscal Santiago v. Rumsfeld Paul Craig Roberts Uncovering a DOJ Cover-up: The Murder of Kenneth Trentadue Website of the Day The F Word   May 25, 2005 Camilo Mejia Prisoners of Conscience Dave Lindorff Brain Dead Democrats William S. Lind Of Cabbages, Cessnas and Kings Chris Floyd Tattoo Nation: Abu Ghraib as Normalcy Brian Cloughley The Stench of "Progress": the Torture and the Lies Continue Lenni Brenner The Plot to Stigmatize My Book on Nazi-Zionist Collaboration Sean Cain A Review of Naomi Klein's "The Take" Karl Shepard Extinction, Kansas and "Intelligent Design" John Ross Sweet Revenge at Terminal Island Website of the Day SWARM the Minutemen   May 24, 2005 Dave Zirin Palestine's Big Visitor: Not Laura, but Ronaldo Michele Bollinger Criminalizing Abortion in S. Carolina: Why Did Gabriela Flores Go to Jail? Winslow Wheeler The Pork War Uri Avnery Wagner at the Holocaust Memorial Michael Donnelly Behind the Green(back) Curtain Joshua Frank Chavez's Economy: Is It Sustainable? Stephen Dunifer The Folly of Media Reform Paul Craig Roberts Is Bush a Sith Lord?   May 23, 2005 Esther Sassaman / Thomas Nagy An Exclusive Interview with George Galloway Mike Whitney Free Jose Padilla: Three Years in Prison, Not a Shred of Evidence Ramzy Baroud Fallout from a Forged War: Battling Windmills While Iraq Burns Michael Dickinson Pictures at an Exhibition: Censoring the "Carnival of Chaos" Walter Brasch In Praise of Bob Barr Dick J. Reavis The Newsweek Scandal: an Unmentioned Detail Maria Tomchick Galloway and the US Press Norman Solomon Let's Play "Media Jeopardy" Kevin Zeese Inventing a Pretext for War: an Inte4rview with James Bamford Website of the Day Drawings of Darfur: Genocide Through Children's Eyes   May 21 / 22, 2005 David H. Price CIA Skullduggery in Academia Gabriel García Márquez My Visit to the Clinton White House, Bearing a Message from Fidel on Terrorism Oren Ben-Dor To Create Academic Freedom in Israel, a Boycott is Needed Gary Leupp Nights in White House Satin with Jeff Gannon Laith al-Saud An Anatomy of the Iraqi Resistance Elaine Cassel Bush and the Angry God: Twilight of Secular Democracy in America? Greg Moses The Saints of Mischief and Halliburton Fred Gardner Martyring Dr. Carol Wolman Dave Lindorff The GOP's Police State Alan Maass Uzbekistan's Karimov: Bush's Favorite Terrorist? William Blum The American Myth Industry Tom Crumpacker Send Posada Carriles to Venezuela Niranjan Ramakrishnan Newsweek: a Contest of Hypocrisies Doug Giebel The Grand Illusion Evelyn J. Pringle No Child Left Unmedicated: TeenScreen, State-drugging and Suicide Carolyn Baker Spiritual Abuse by the Religious Right Chris Floyd Justice in JebWorld Frederick B. Hudson Black and Gay?: a Review of "Brother to Brother" Ben Tripp Him Talk Plenty Long Time: Busting the Filibuster Poets' Basement Davies, Engel and Louise     May 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff Newsweek and White House Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese As Insurgency Increases, New US Military Recruits Fall Paul de Rooij "Private": a Film in Search of a Cliché Christopher Brauchli How Insurance Companies Exploited 9/11 Mark Engler Triumph Over Debt? Joshua Frank Bush to Dine with Porn Star Robert Jensen TV Talk, No Evidence Required Jeffery R. Webber Bolivia Erupts     May 19, 2005 Bill Forman An Interview with Alexander Cockburn Stan Goff Hey, Democrats, Listen to Galloway and Learn Something Neve Gordon From Ghettos to Frontiers: What Will Happen After Israel Withdraws from Gaza Michael Dickinson The Trouble with Menwith: Tagging British Peace Activists Karyn Strickler The Texas Nexus: How Racial and Political Gerrymandering United Andrew Freedman Nazi Science at NIH Paul Craig Roberts The Politics and Economics of Outsourcing     May 18, 2005 Jean Bricmont Vive La France? Laura Carlsen Bush's Posada Carriles Quandry: an Anti-Cuba Terrorist is Still a Terrorist Mike Whitney The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales: 10,000 Swept Up Joshua Frank Flushing the Koran: Why Newsweek Got It Right George Galloway Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens) Manuel Garcia, Jr. Writing Tickets for American War Crimes Dwight D. Eisenhower How the GOP will Destroy Itself Dave Lindorff The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse May 17, 2005 Mickey Z. GIs Behaving Badly Petuuche Gilbert The People of Acoma Still Fight to be Free Paul Craig Roberts Lies That Kill: Why Isn't Bush in the Dock? Ramzy Baroud The New Palestinian Uprising Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood Pinning the Blame on Newsweek Stan Cox Poisoning Patancheru: the Severe Side Effects of India's Drug Industry Dave Zirin American Anthem: Ozzie Guillen and Fining for Freedom Diana Barahona Reporters Without Borders Unmasked Website of the Day Revolutionary Flower Pot Society May 16, 2005 Michael Gillespie The Family Released a Statement: Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy Jason Leopold BP Stains the Arctic Jesse Muldoon How Many Schools Left Behind? Norman Solomon Media and the War: "The Bombs in Iraq Explode at Home" Robert Cray Twenty Patrick Cockburn Iraq is a Bloody No Man's Land Website of the Day Bolton's Divorce Papers: She Took It All Away, Including Most of the Furniture   May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Join the 14 Per Cent Club! Saul Landau Lessons from Vietnam: Wars Kill Empires as Well as People Gary Leupp Whither Yale? Towards the Imperial University JoAnn Wypijewski The Glory that is Lockhart, Texas Ben Tripp The Wayward Airplane: a Cautionary Tale Brian J. Foley Was Jesus Gay? Tom Barry Bolton the Eavesdropper Mitchell Verter Barbarous Oaxaca: Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the "Law of the Club" Mike Ferner War on COs: Army Files Additional Charges Against Kevin Benderman Dan Smith Perceiving Darfur Mark Scaramella Death with Pitfalls Don Fitz Mommy, Is This a Finger in My Rice Puffs?: Splicing Human DNA into the Food Chain Diane Farsetta PR Industry Imitates Big Tobacco: the Senate's "Fake News" Hearings Michael Dickinson Soldier Crawling: Military Conscription in Turkey Ron Jacobs The Jackson State Murders Fred Gardner "Hydroponics? Ridiculous!": A Real Farmer Looks at Medical Marijuana Farrah Hassen Far From Heaven: a Review of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" Douglas Valentine 50 Cent's Plea Poets' Basement Louise, Ford, Engel, & Albert Website of the Weekend Military Base Closings and the South May 13, 2005 Tom Stephens A Chronology of US War Crimes and Torture, 1975-2005 Patrick Cockburn "They Destroyed Everything" Mike Whitney Tom Friedman, Imperial Chronicler Chris Floyd Miami Vice: the Sleazy World of Jeb Bush Jenna Orkin Ground Zero's Toxic Dust Dave Lindorff Googling for Fun Joshua Frank Yale Fires an Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar: an Interview with David Graeber Website of the Day Botero: Pinta El Horror de Abu Ghraib   May 12, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts America is Losing: More Phony Jobs Hype Uri Avnery Death of a Myth Greg Moses Neo-Con Logic at the Border Carolyn Baker The Politics of Dominionism: the New Religious Right in America Pat Williams Amateurish High Jinks on Roadless Areas William S. Lind Reality Gap: the Myth of US Invincibilty Jack Random The Dubious Wisdom of George W. Bush Gary Leupp Douglas Feith Bares His Soul to Jeffrey Goldberg     May 11, 2005 Patrick Cockburn The Rise, Fall and Rise of Ahmed Chalabi: King of Jordan to Pardon His $300 Million Bank Swindle Kevin Zeese The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day Christopher Brauchli Coffee, Tea or Torture?: A One Way Ticket to Uzbekistan Zalman Amit The Collapse of Academic Freedom in Israel: Tantura, Teddy Katz and Haifa University Robert Shull Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops: Senate Gives DHS Power to Waive All Laws Mike Whitney God, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Anti-Arabic Week at a Southern High School Norman Solomon Political Bluster and the Filibuster   May 10, 2005 Richard Drayton The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check Dave Zirin Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP Jackie Corr The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall Dave Lindorff Silence of the Scams: Economists on China Michael Donnelly From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory Reza Fiyouzat Nomadic Abstracts Scott Parkin Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton Stephen Babcock The Burden of Knowing Better Alan Farago Florida, Water and Lobbyists Michael Neumann Naomi's Courage Website of the Day One Nation Under Plagiarism   May 9, 2005 Louis Proyect Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher Robert Fisk "Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two Kevin Zeese Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman Joshua Frank Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage Sasha Kramer A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons Andrew Wimmer Create and Resist Jeffrey Webber Back to the Streets in Bolivia? Jeffrey St. Clair Straight to Bechtel   May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Who Beat Hitler? Gary Leupp Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism Saul Landau Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups Joe DeRaymond Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega Daniela Ponce Seeing Chile in Nepal Heather Williams Hollywood Does Enron Gregory Elich Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice Anis Memon To Cuba and Back John Chuckman The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism" Mike Whitney Hard Right Rage Against the Truth Ron Jacobs Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On Colin Kalmbacher Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont. Lance Selfa Uprising in Mexico City Fred Gardner "Getting High is a Little Like Cuba" Ben Tripp Letters on Wittgenstein Mickey Z. The Mother of All Days Richard Joseph Those Patriotic Magnets Dr. Susan Block Come As You Are: Masturbation 101 Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert     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. Sainath 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                                             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 28 / 30, 2005 A Montana History Lesson on Assfulness New York City's Lost Memory By JACKIE CORR "It should be presented to the city as a permanent curiosity, as a monument to one of the strangest of millionaires, a reminder of our recent past, a treatise on copper, and a tribute to the state of Montana." THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1929 "With forty years experience of human assfulness and variety at banquets, I have never seen anything of the sort that could remotely approach the assfulness and complacency of this coarse and vulgar and incomparably ignorant peasant's glorification of himself." Poor Senator Clark! That is what Mark Twain said about the Montana Copper King a century ago. And Mark Twain wasn't alone. Montana Senator William A. Clark's New York mansion, inspired by the architectural excess of the 1900 Paris Exposition, was completed in 1904 at 77th.and Park Avenue. The spectacle, astronomical tower and all, was to be the highlight of his effort to be the biggest apple in the Big Apple. Instead, it made him a further object of ridicule. America's most popular weekly, Colliers Magazine, was aghast: "Senator Clark's taste in architecture is equal to the theatrical syndicate's taste in plays." The magazine gleefully added "Clark's house would have seemed the ideal dwelling to the late Mr. Barnum. It looks like a compromise between a state capital and a Hindu temple." Of course, a century ago, New York's "Millionaire's Row" was world famous, a stretch of Fifth Avenue between 72nd and 104th facing Central Park. And such wealthy notables as Senator Clark were not a dime a dozen like today. In Clark's heyday there were less then 5,000 millionaires in America, a tiny fraction of the adult population. And Senator William Clark was one of the ten or twenty richest persons in America. As for us, we can only guess how many millions the Clark palace, complete with 500 seat private theater and stage as well as a showing room containing America's greatest private art collection, actually did cost. But it cost a lot and New York had never seen anything like it.. The art collection included Jan van Goyen's View of Rhenen (1646) and portrait pendants by Thomas Gainsborough. These masterworks were complemented by the 18th-century pair, The Departure and Camping by Jean Baptiste Pater; a Chardin, Scullery Maid (1738); and the Portrait of Madame du Barry by Marie Louise Vigée Le Brun (1782), two Corot's, the Moored Boatman and Souvenir of an Italian Lake (1861) and La Bacchante au Tambourin, as well as Edgar Degas' The Ballet Class (1880). Eugène Delacroix's Tigre et Serpent (1862) and Henri Fantin-Latour's masterpiece, Arcadia. Then there was the complete 18th-century period room that Clark imported from France. Even the crimson and gold curtains were based on the original French architect,s vision of the room. New York journalist and muckraker Henry George had this to say about what was then Gotham's most spectacular example of conspicuous consumption: "The ambition of Senator Clark respecting his house may be measured by the cornerstone, which weighs sixteen tons. This stone had to be brought from the quarry in a specially built railroad car. A single mantelpiece is expected to cost $100,000 dollars. Impatient at delay in getting bronze fittings and ornaments, a famous foundry was purchased and enlarged specially to meet the needs of this house, which also is to contain a theater capable of seating five hundred persons." And poor Senator Clark. All his efforts and expense and so little to show. Today, at Park Avenue and 77th Street you can find a little plaque saying: "In 1904 on this site Lord, Hewlett & Hull built an extravaganza of a town house for Senator William A. Clark, the copper king from Montana. Said to have been the most outlandishly ornate mansion ever built in New York, it took six years to construct, yet fell victim to the wrecker's ball only twenty-five years later." But the New Republic questioned the mansion being razed in an 1929 editorial: "The Clark house was a scandal even more than it was a joke. Decent people were indignant and considered it an affront to the city and to themselves. But time has consecrated its ugliness and it is almost an act of vandalism to tear it down .It should be presented to the city as a permanent curiosity, as a monument to one of the strangest of millionaires, a reminder of our recent past, a treatise on copper, and a tribute to the state of Montana." So its poor Senator Clark. But unlike Bob Gannon and the Montana Power/Touch America mob, at least he made it to New York City. CLARK'S BUTTE LEGACY First, on a positive note, unlike today's wealthy, the Senator didn't seem to be in the Christian racket or did he claim his devotion to Jesus as the reason for his fortune. The one religious gesture that I am aware of, was a donation of an organ for St. John's Episcopal Church, on the corner of Broadway and Idaho across from the Butte Public Library. But I can't recall any mention of him ever attending services there, or any other church for that matter. Nor did he have a chapel in his New York palace, as some of the other high rollers of the time did. As for Butte, unlike New York, both church and mansion are still around. St. John's Episcopal is located a block downhill from Senator Clark's 3 story, 34-room Butte mansion. It is said that more money was spent on that building in 1884 then on the then new Silver Bow County courthouse in 1883. As for the family, the Senator's children, by Katherine, would inherit an estate worth at least $200 million in 1925 dollars. By 1935 they had sold the assets, bitterly divided the remaining loot and gone separate ways, never to be seen again in Butte or Montana, the source of the Senator's great wealth. And the 800 piece Clark art collection, one of the world's greatest, went to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. Of course, the source of this great gift was the bloody Butte hill, once known as "the richest hill on earth." Thus, there is a lesson to be learned here, an idea that Montana has yet to grasp as former governor Marc Raicot's Montana Power/Touch America deregulation debauchery showed. What is good for the very wealthy, what is good for Wall Street, is always bad for the Big Sky. Which is the unforgiving lesson of Montana history. Jackie Corr lives in Butte, Montana. He can be reached at: jcorr@bigskyhsd.com