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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z Website of the Weekend On the Road with Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation   August 25 / 26, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki James Petras The Great Financial Crisis Jeffrey Buchanan / Chris Kromm Where Did the Katrina Money Go? Marjorie Cohn Turning Iraq into Vietnam Rev. William E. Alberts Jesus, the Theological Prisoner of Christianity Robert Fantina Ari Fleischer, Freedom Watch and the Pro-War Lobbyists Brian Concannon Whitewashing the History of Abolition Ralph Nader What Do They Have to Hide? Laura Carlsen Extending NAFTA's Reach Fred Gardner Notes from Hempfest David Michael Green History, the Last Refuge of Scoundrels Stephen Soldz Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award Mike Ferner Combatants for Peace: Former Enemies Find New Way Forward Paul Krassner Mort Sahl's Punchline Ben Tripp Resistance is Impossible--But Not Futile Missy Beattie President Druzilla Website of the Weekend Blue Print for Gulf Renewal   August 24, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts A Hegemonic Hubris Greg Moses A Cruel and Unusual Excuse William Schroder Bush, Vietnam and Iraq Alan Farago The Pain of Paper Millionaires Jackie Corr Uncle Ben Bernacke and the Nanny State Jeff Ballinger Naomi Klein and the Path Not Taken Bill Quigley Pere Jean-Juste Comes Home Dave Zirin Inching Toward Insanity Richard Rhames Deaver and the Making of Reagan Ryan Haygood How Newark Can Mend Website of the Day Lindorff's Iraq Rag   August 23, 2007 Kathy Kelly We Shouldn't be Causing This P. Sainath Meeting the Mahatma Ron Jacobs Bush, Vietnam and 14 More GIs Dead Christopher Brauchli Beyond Kafka: Mistakes, Soreheads and Eavesdropping D.K. Wilson When Sports Journalists Talk Race Joshua Frank The Weeds of Willapa Bay Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's True Lies About Dams and Canals Brenda Norrell Bush's House of Snakes: Indians, Border Biometrics and Migrating Corporations John Wright The Ongoing Tragedy of Afghanistan David Vest Elvis and Racism, Round 2 Website of the Day Urgent Plea: the Black Agenda Report Needs Your Help!   August 22, 2007 Norman Finkelstein Remembering Raul Hilberg Marc Levy Sleepless in Iraq Lawrence R. Velvel When Courts Bow Down to Secrecy Ray McGovern Bush's Iran War Drums Beating Louder Norman Solomon How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Road Show Michael Dickinson Little Brother is Watching You William S. Lind Operation Kabuki?: the Credibility of David Petraeus Bill Hatch A Short Walk into the Valley of Death Kenneth E. Foster and John Joe Amador How We Will Protest Our Executions David Vest Predictable Parallels: CNN and PBS Website of the Day The Once and Future Steve Perry August 21, 2007 Saul Landau The FBI's New Power Alan Farago Sand Houses and Missing Beaches John Stauber Iraq: the Gift that Keeps on Bleeding Phillip Rizk Gaza and the Jordanian Option Debbie Nathan Giuliani's Garden District Binoy Kampmark The Art of Sinning Martha Rosenberg The Fastow Economy Sunsara Taylor Back to School During Wartime Website of the Day Coffee with the Troops   August 20, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Padilla Jury Opens Pandora's Box Uri Avnery Stumbling Toward Another War Rannie Amiri Nasrallah's Surprise: a Warning from Beirut's No Bluff Zone John Ross The Fine Art of Bad Elections Harvey Wasserman The Senate's Radioactive Rip-Off Robert Billyard Canada's Disgrace: the Cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr Dave Lindorff Excuse Us, Nancy Pelosi James Rothenberg Why Your Vote Will Never Matter David "DC" Larson To Smear a King Website of the Day Bird Cinema August 18 / 19, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Exit Karl Rove, Everyone's Useful Demon Saul Landau The FBI in War and Peace Ralph Nader Greed and Folly on Wall Street Patrick Cockburn A Bloody Week in Iraq Robert Fantina Cannon Fodder: Beau Biden and other "Deployable Assets" Robert S. Eshelman Azar's Story: an Iraqi Refugee Living in Syria P. Sainath The Last Battle of Laxmi Panda Dave Lindorff Tossing Fuel on a Fire: US Military Aid to Israel Anthony DiMaggio Iraq, Iran & the Vanishing Context in American News Fred Gardner The Politics of Schizophrenia Ron Jacobs The Virtues of Resistance Tom Turnipseed War Profiteering and Corruption: From Lexington, S.C. to the White House Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: Special Preachers, Priests and Clerics Edition! Ben Tripp I'm So Screwed Andrew Wimmer Living With Grief Nancy Oden Where Inmates Can Grow for Free N.D. Jayaprakash India Backtracks on Disarmament Rick Smith Reflections on Cuba: an Interview with Doug Morris Missy Beattie The Suicide Bomber Poets' Basement Engel, Ford, Orloski and McLellan Website of the Weekend Imperial Storm Troopers in Action August 17, 2007 Joanne Mariner Terrorizing Social Protest Paul Craig Roberts China is not the Problem Shepherd Bliss Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Chile, 30 Years Later Dave Lindorff Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans John Muthyala The Water and the Road: Katrina, Poverty and the American Dream Patrick Cockburn Deepening Divsions in Iraq Sherwood Ross Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo Phil Doe The Old West Moves East: the Political Science of Colorado River Water David Michael Green Karl Rove and the Damage Done Website of the Day Gorilla Slaughter: a Personal Account August 16, 2007 Jonathan Cook The Second Lebanon War, a Year Later Christopher Brauchli Babes in Toxic Toyland Norman Solomon Backspin for War Lee Sustar / Orlando Sepuldeva Victory on the Picket Line: How Immigrant Workers Won Their Strike Against Cygnus George Bisharat Boycott Movement Targets Israel Binoy Kampmark Tasteless: Gordon Ramsey and the Death of Gastronomy Evelyn Pringle Protection Racket?: the FDA and Avandia Hugo Blanco The Epic Struggle of Indigenous Andean / Amazonian Website of the Day Burning Man: the Field Recordings         Subscribe Online

September 3, 2007 The Making of a Political Silhouette The End of the Green Party? By JOSHUA FRANK While the Democratic Party refuses to impeach President Bush, continues to fund the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan through 2009, spreads the same lies about Iran's nuclear ambitions, and gives the administration a blank check for domestic spying, what are the leaders of the Green Party up to? Fasten your safety belts kiddos because they are doing some astonishing things. Tearing Open Old Wounds After Ralph Nader spoke to the Greens during their national convention in Reading, Pennsylvania last July, the party looked incredibly united. Collectively they seemed to recognize that in order to be a party of opposition they better start acting like one now by distancing themselves from the failed policies of old. Within hours, however, a principal architect of the disastrous David Cobb "safe state strategy" in 2004 immediately began to unravel the unity of the Greens. Under the guise of what was purported to be a unification proposal titled "We Will Run", Phil Huckelberry, a vocal delegate from Illinois, opened up all the old wounds of 2004 by insulting the majority of Green Party members by condemning those who voted not only for the corporate candidate John Kerry, but also those who backed independent candidate, Ralph Nader. The first question one might ask is why does the Green Party still have an officer in place that helped devastate the party by supporting a losing strategy in 2004? As it turns out, not only is Huckelberry still a delegate to their National Committee, he has also been promoted to their Steering Committee. The Greens like to tell us how much they hate corporate crooks, yet with Huckelberry they have emulated the very worst of corporate America by promoting an insider who was party responsible for a major tactical failure in 2004. In any normal business setting, a manager who is responsible for lost revenues, customer depreciation, and closing of plants would resign in anticipation of being fired. Only the worst, the real corporate criminals, reward such employees. The Green Party has chosen a surprising model to emulate. The "safe states strategy", championed by officers like Phil Huckelberry and a sizable number of other Green Party delegates, emptied the Green Party's treasury, lost over 50,000 members, as well as the ballot lines gained by Ralph Nader's candidacy of 2000. Those officers still remain in charge. In an effort to head off an impending disaster, John Murphy, a delegate from Pennsylvania and a longtime Nader supporter, offered his own amendment to counter Huckelberry's. "My proposal would have fixed Huckelberry's proposal and guaranteed almost unanimous support," says Murphy. "But Huckelberry ignored the amendment until seven hours prior to the vote, which allowed delegates to tear each other apart for almost a month. We had almost been healed, but not now." Such persistent divisiveness seems to only exist within the rank and squalor of the Green Party, which does not function like a democratic parliamentary body. Instead of operating under "Roberts Rules of Order", the Green Party's National Committee runs under a bizarre system called "Consensus", which was designed as a budgeting tool for the Quakers. A Consensus approach might be of some use to a monolithic religious organization, but it was never intended for a highly diverse political party. Little things like the democratic process don't seem to bother the Green Party leaders all that much anyway; they gave the Green Party a presidential candidate in 2004 that only received a meager 12% of the vote in the primaries. The Green leaders believe in minority rule instead of majority rule. And they practice just that. Literally, in the Green Party ruling bodies, you must have super majorities -- 20% of the Green Party officers can overrule 80% of the Green Party officers. With the Green Party delegates busy tearing each other apart, Murphy took his frustration a step further and called for the resignation of those responsible for the disaster of 2004. Not an unreasonable request. Instead of those officers resigning, however, Murphy was removed from the Green Party's National Committee internet discussion groups by "forum managers" who are, as you might imagine, controlled by the Demogreens (the name given to those Greens who remain philosophically joined at the hip to the Democrat Party and were the "safe state strategists" of 2004). All Murphy had done was publicly oppose his party's failed leadership. The End of Debate and Dissent The Demogreens could not risk another Murphy calling for their resignation, so they are now voting on another proposal that will stifle debate and put an end to any dissent within the delegates' email discussion groups. The argument, and proposal, goes something like this: There are a few Greens who post too often so rather than letting the delegated decide what they read, the Greens have opted to prevent everyone from posting more than one letter per day. Apparently the Green Party delegates just can't handle excessive free speech. Of course the Greens could move to a blog format or even an online forum -- which would seem like a perfect solution. Nonetheless, one thing you have to admire about the Greens is their transparency. They actually let the public see these silly proposals. Anyone can go to http://gp.org/cgi-bin/vote/index and get an education as to how the officers of the Green Party really operate. Green Party Turns Hard Right Green delegates from Tennessee have recently advanced a proposal which they call "Moving the Money from Wall Street to Main Street". Certainly sounds innocuous enough. Tragically the delegates from Tennessee based their proposal on a presentation made to the Green Party delegates at their convention by a woman named Catherine Austin Fitts. Ms. Fitts, a Republican, was Assistant Secretary of Housing in the administration of George Bush Sr. and now supports libertarian causes. Why was Fitts invited to talk to the Green Party about banking issues? Nobody really knows. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the associates of Catherine Austin Fitts is Franklin Sanders, a leading thinker in the extreme right-wing Constitution Party. Sanders is also chairman of the Tennessee chapter of "The League of the South", yes, from the same state of the Green Party delegates who offered the proposal in the first place. The League of the South is quite an outfit. They advocate the ideology of "kinism", and would outlaw racial intermarriage and non-white immigration, expel all "aliens" (including Jews and Arabs), limit the right to vote to white landowning males over the age of twenty-one, and re-institute black slavery. The Green Party is about to adopt a proposal based on the philosophy of people like Fitts and Sanders. One has to wonder who would influence these guys if they were savvy enough to win elections. Nader Greens to the Rescue, Again When the Green Party delegates from Tennessee were made aware of the implications of supporting a proposal based on the motives of Fits and Sanders by delegates from New Jersey, Liz Arnone and Gary Novosielski (both Nader Greens) -- the folks from Tennessee decided to keep it anyway by simply removing the names of Sanders and Fitts. Take the gun, leave the cannoli. However, simply removing the names of the libertarian banker and the racist leader from The League of the South is still an open endorsement of these people and their positions. Who knows, maybe the Green Party delegates are just the most politically naïve leaders of any party in the nation. In any event, politically naïve or intentionally destructive, the Greens certainly do not need folks like this in leadership positions. Ralph Nader may very well pull the Green onions out of the fire if he runs on their ticket in 2008 by restoring many of their lost ballot lines. Nader would also increase their membership and replenish their treasury. The question simply remains: How long after November 11, 2008 will it take the people who savaged the Green Party in 2004 to squander the political capital once again gained by a Nader presidential campaign? The Demogreens work pretty damn quickly. My guess is, given its current leadership and their juvenile antics, by 2009 the last chapter will have been written and the book closed on the Green Party of the United States. A sad ending to a story which began with such noble aspirations. Joshua Frank is the co-editor of DissidentVoice.org, and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008. He can be reached through his website, BrickBurner.org. Your Ad Here

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