home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! The Lesser of Two Evils: Bill or Hillary? Alexander Cockburn profiles the couple, as they battle to recapture the Oval Office PLUS Why You Can't Discuss Immigration without Dealing with "Free Trade". Alexandra Early on why 42 per cent of ALL Salvadorans would leave for the U.S. if they had a chance. PLUS Israel and Palestine: One State or Two? Kathleen Christison makes the case for One State. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents. Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !

Today's Stories February 14, 2008 Kathleen and Bill Christison Palestine in the Mind of America February 13, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Meet John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America Alan Farago Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line Christina Kasica King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America Vicente Navarro How to Read the U.S. Primaries Hall Greenland Australia's Finest Hour Lee Sustar Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most David Macaray The Writers' Strike Finally Ends Roderick Frazier Nash Celebrating Wilderness Patrick Irelan Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT Anthony Papa Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases Carl Finamore Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted by Politicians Website of the Day John He Is   February 12, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez The Case Against Alan Dershowitz Paul Craig Roberts War Without End Dr. Trudy Bond The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the Torture? Col. Dan Smith The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away? Ronnie Cummins Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road Ralph Nader Open the Government John V. Walsh Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered Dave Lindorff Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms the Candidate Michael Donnelly Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules Ron Jacobs La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life" Ben Tripp Beggars Collide Website of the Day Springsteen and Youngstown   February 11, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate? Wajahat Ali A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby Ray McGovern Waterboarding for God and Country Allan Nairn The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta Uri Avnery An End Foreseen? Chris Floyd American Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech Martha Rosenberg School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows Stephen Fleischman The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics Marc Lamont Hill Not My Brand of Hope Liliana Segura Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation Peter Morici Challenges for the New President Christopher Brauchli A Drug Rant from a Former Taker Website of the Day Annie vs. the Blue Angels   February 8 / 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves? Patrick Cockburn Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold? Mike Whitney The Great Bust of '08 Anthony DiMaggio How the Press Covers Waterboarding Andy Worthington The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists? Linn Cohen-Cole Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto? Firmin DeBrabander Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency Cpt. Paul Watson The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales Kenneth S. Pope Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association Jacob G. Hornberger American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy Robert Bryce Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What? P. Sainath The Last of the Buccaneer Editors Allan Nairn Give Me Back My Land Fred Gardner / Pebbles Trippet "The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!" Andrew Wimmer Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death Robert Fantina America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr David Michael Green Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves Kevin Zeese Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd? Peter Morici Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence Chris Driscoll Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008? Prairie Miller Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen Poets Basement Davies and Buknatski   February 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Baghdad Will Explode Again Bill Christison Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians David Anderson NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings Ron Jacobs Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing Jane Rockefeller The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation Andy Worthington On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden Dave Zirin Instep Intifada Saul Landau The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln Susie Day Our Blob in the White House Website of the Day George Carlin on Voting   February 6, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Super Tuesday's Vote for Chaos Ben Rosenfeld Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters Vijay Prashad An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out Joe Bageant Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned Michael Donnelly What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths Allan Nairn Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion? Kathryn Gray Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit Ray McGovern Powell's UN Fiasco Sheldon Richman The Whining Empire Paul Cantor / Roger Sparks A Presidential Aptitude Examination John Chuckman Political Bits and Pieces Website of the Day Save the Albatross February 5, 2008 Winslow T. Wheeler The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget Tariq Ali Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair Stephen Soldz The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes? Chris Floyd Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War William S. Lind Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win Martha Rosenberg Live From the Killing Floor Heather Gray Conversations with Georgia Voters Ayesha Ijaz Khan Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics David Macaray Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice Eliza Ernshire Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run Brenda Norrell Hated Nation Website of the Day The Things I Used to Do     February 4, 2008 Marc Levy Winter in America Patrick Cockburn The Bird Market Bombings Saree Makdisi Strangling Gaza Uri Avnery From Stalingrad to Winograd Alan Farago Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer Ben Tripp Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter Paul Wolf Civil Wars North and South Paul Craig Roberts Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed? Joshua Frank MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change John Halle Whither Progressive Democrats? Website of the Day How to Cheat in School   February 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Hot Democratic Properties Pam Martens Bankers Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense Ralph Nader The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked John Ross Hilaria vs. "El Moreno" Wajahat Ali Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with Imam Zaid Shakir Robert Fantina A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American Empire B. R. Gowani Not All Veils and Guns James L. Secor China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow John V. Walsh The Invisible Green Primary Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble Dave Zirin Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul? Jeremy Scahill Blackwater and Blood Fidel Castro Reflections on Lula Joe Allen Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War Stephen Lendman Life in Occupied Gaza Patrick Irelan What Happened to the Streetcars? Andrej Grubacic Ziga Vodovnik Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo Josh Karpoff Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement Ron Jacobs Carl Oglesby's War Paul Krassner Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel Website of the Weekend Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart   February 1, 2008 Ray McGovern The Iniquities and Inequalities of War Diane Farsetta The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists Tariq Ali Et Tu, New York Times? Allan Nairn Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti Rannie Amiri Collective Punishment in Beirut Ramzy Baroud People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It Kenneth Couesbouc The Mother of All Snowballs Peter Morici Recession Looms Mumia Abu-Jamal Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro Rosemary Jackowski 27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President Scott Campbell Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges Website of the Day Betes et Hommes   January 31, 2008 Saul Landau Return to Afghanistan Andy Worthington Horror at Guantánamo Mike Whitney Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System Jeff Ballinger Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the "Suharto of the Steppe" Tiffany Ten Eyck The Saga of the Freightliner Five William Loren Katz Waterboarding: Torure or Mystery? Alan Farago Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble Col. Dan Smith Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget? China Hand Slouching Toward Islamabad Dave Lindorff The Usual Suspects Once Again Wadner Pierre Fake Democracy in Haiti Website of the Day One Big Union   January 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair McCain vs. Clinton? Christopher Ketcham The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex Robert Weissman America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union Neve Gordon An Experiment in Famine Paul Craig Roberts Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse? Joanne Mariner How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech David Macaray Labor's Only Real Weapon Liaquat Ali Khan Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan? Raymond J. Lawrence Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication Dan Bacher The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon Website of the Day Onward Through the Fog   January 29, 2008 Franklin C. Spinney Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off Mike Whitney The Great Credit Unwind of 2008 Alan Farago Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association Patrick Cockburn "The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction" Gary Leupp "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline R. F. Blader A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania Ahmad Faruqui Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect Fran Shor Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In" Jeremy Scahill Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters Allan Nairn Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All Website of the Day The Ghost of Rambo   January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah Paul Craig Roberts The End of American Liberty Allan Nairn The Breaking of the Gaza Wall Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza Martha Rosenberg Obit for the "Front Page" City Corporate Crime Reporter How They Rip Us Off David Michael Green Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War Jennifer Van Bergen What's Left? Nancy Oden Survival Tips for Hard Times Divya Karnad Saving India's Sea Turtles James L. Secor Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Website of the Day Yellow Journalism?   January 26 / 27, 2008 Uri Avnery Worse Than a Crime JoAnn Wypijewski How the Clintons Lost It, Whatever the Outcome in S. Carolina Ralph Nader Ambition, Power and the Clintons Paul Craig Roberts How Bush Destroyed the Dollar Paul Watson I'm Proud to be a Pirate! John Ross Murder and Cover-Up in Mexico Fred Gardner Ross v. Raging Wire: Employer's Right to Fire Workers Held Sacred by California Supreme Court Allan Nairn Little Hands with Fever: Some Consequences of Poverty Death Joshua Frank Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey Binoy Kampmark Société Générale and the Economic Meltdown James T. Phillips America's Sick Comedy: Bringing the War Home Stan Cox The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants Eamonn McCann Hillary's Lie: "I Brought Peace to Northern Ireland" Ron Jacobs The Horizons of History: What's at Stake in Bolivia Seth Sandronsky California's Health Care Crisis Ben Terrall The Future is Unwritten Poets' Basement Tripp, Gardner, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend City of Immigrants     January 25, 2008 Douglas Valentine Operation Two-Fold: How the CIA Infiltrated the DEA Patrick Cockburn US Troops Will Be In Iraq for 10 More Years: an Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari JoAnn Wypijewski Down to the Wire in South Carolina Heather Gray Are We Seeing a Racial Shift in the South? Conversations with South Carolina Voters Marjorie Cohn Senate Democrats Poised to Fold to Cheney on FISA Erica Rosenberg Environmentalists Out on a Limb: the Perils of Collaboration Alan Farago Jeb Bush Goes Nuclear Robert Weissman Reclaiming Economic Freedom Laura Carlsen Wild Cards: Mining the Hispanic Vote in Nevada Stephen Lendman Israeli Repression in the Hebron Website of the Day The FIX is In   January 24, 2008 JoAnn Wypijewski Obama as Anthologist of Uplift Paul Craig Roberts President Hillary Alexander Cockburn Hillary Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember Her Nursing Home Scam? Kathleen Christison One and Two State Solutions and the Myth of International Consensus Jeff Halper Power to the (Palestinian) People! Stanley Heller The Siege of Gaza is Broken George Wuerthner The Moronic Sport: ORVs on the Public Lands Patrick Cockburn Desperate Iraqi Farmers Turn to Opium Jeff Sher Just How "Good" is Your Health Insurance? Patrick Irelan Musharraf, the Steadfast Ally? Charles Modiano Restoring the Anti-War King Website of the Day An Illustrated History of Trepanation   January 23, 2008 David Rosen The Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics of Sex David Isenberg Is It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons Program? Farzana Versey Hillary's Harem Paul Craig Roberts The Empire That Must Be Obeyed Alan Farago Where Did All the Good Times Go? Allan Nairn Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights Activist Kenneth Couesbouc Another Turn of the Screw Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West was Re-Sold Michael Donnelly Obama Strikes Back Norman Solomon The Power of Love Website of the Day Rafah Today   January 22, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Farewell to Old Economic Nostrums JoAnn Wypijewski King Day in Columbia, South Carolina Al Giordano Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada Felice Pace Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon Paul Wolf Bolívar's Sword Robert Weissman Deregulation and the Financial Crisis Dave Lindorff The Bush Dollar Trap Marjorie Cohn Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction Richard Neville Keeping Shakespeare in a Box Don Fitz / Zaki Baruti St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform Ben Terrall Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness Sam Husseini Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr. Website of the Day Defend the Mapuche!     January 21, 2008 Kevin Alexander Gray Playing the Race Card Linn Washington, Jr. Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy Pam Martens How Wall Street Blew Itself Up David Macaray Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party? Uri Avnery Look Who's Talking Omar Barghouti Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide Joe DeRaymond Protest and Trial in D.C. B.R. Gowani Why Islam Should Tolerate Images Shepherd Bliss The False U.S. Economy Jean-Guy Allard Philip Agee Versus the CIA Dan Bacher Leaping Steelhead! Website of the Day Destroyed By a Rising Flood January 19 / 20, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Campaign in Black and White Saul Landau Good Time Charlie's War China Hand Endgame for Pakistan? Conn Hallinan Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About? Ron Jacobs No Retreat Dave Lindorff A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess Andy Worthington Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture Paul Armentano What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think Seth Sandronsky High Crimes and Economics Michael Donnelly Dodging Ecocide Patrick Irelan The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki Martha Rosenberg The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit Sherwood Ross Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade David Michael Green So You Want to be My President, Eh? James Rothenberg Unimpeachable: Under House Protection Daniel Gross Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King Peter N. Carroll In Memory of Milton Wolff Susie Day Croakin' on Hudson Paul Krassner Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu Poets' Basement Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski Website of the Day Rocky Mountain Blues   January 18, 2008 Allan Nairn Killing Civilians, Carefully Ralph Nader When the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill? Joanne Mariner Terrorism and Preventative Detention Alan Farago The Stimulus and the Meltdown P. Sainath Pity the Brahmins R.F. Blader Beyond Steinem's Feminism Andy Worthington A Letter from Guantánamo John Jonik Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health Brian McKenna Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan Women's Prison Daoud Kuttab This Time Next Year? Website of the Day Those South Carolina Voting Machines   January 17, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Leader and Vassal Christopher Brauchli The FBI's Bills Come Due Robert Fantina Leadership, Bush and the New York Times Patrick Irelan Eternal War Paul A. Moore When the Rich Pay No Taxes Stephen Lendman Institutionalized Spying on Americans Beena Sarwar Bhutto and the "State Within a State" Walter Brasch Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment Brenda Norrell Bush Legacy in Texas Sours Adam Federman End of the Left? Website of the Day Democrats for Romney   January 16, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Return of the Native Franklin Lamb The Bombing at Qarantina Julian Sanchez David Weigel Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters? Sharon Smith Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope? Allan Nairn Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market Ayesha Ijaz Khan How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation Andy Worthington A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo Richard Behan Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach! Website of the Day Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!   January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds Wajahat Ali An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy and the Prospects of War with Iran Joe Bageant Getting Out the Bling Vote Ralph Nader The Candidate Taboos John Ross Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse Elaine Cassel Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified? Peter Morici The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy Beena Sarwar Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade Robert Weissman Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought Binoy Kampmark Going Tata in India Dave Zirin Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame Website of the Day David Lynch on the iPhone   January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH       Subscribe Online

February 14, 2008 Flying Heads at Mexico City Airport Drug War Mayhem Boils Over From Border to Border By JOHN ROSS Mexico City. Tourists touching down at Mexico City International Airport are hereby forewarned not to trip over the human heads that may be rolling around at your feet when you disembark. Four have been found in recent weeks in and around the terminal complex although their corresponding bodies have not yet been located. Two of the heads reportedly once belonged to employees of a freight forwarding outfit, Jet Service. The other two, found by schoolchildren in a colony adjacent to the airport January 14th, have been identified as the heads of two mid-level operators for a Tepito drug gang. Tepito, a central city neighborhood infamous for its narco-bazaars, has been displaced as a Mexico City drug distribution center by the airport district, according to what a top-level cop tells the left daily La Jornada. Benito Juarez International Airport (its official name) has long been a nexus for drug smuggling from Andean cocaine cartel countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Although the "mulas" ("mules" - mostly women) who smuggle the drugs hidden inside their bodies cavities run a gauntlet of federal police, airport security, and customs inspectors, plenty of the cocaine and heroin they carry makes it through to the waiting areas where drug gang operatives are standing by to receive the loads. In addition to drugs, a virtual arsenal, including long guns, was confiscated last November when the weapons arrived in the mail at the airport post office. In the narco lexicon, Mexico City International Airport constitutes a "plaza" or hot spot for trafficking that is currently being contested by several of the country's most murderous drug cartels. Tourists are advised to keep their heads down - and attached. Upon taking office 13 months ago after a fraud-riddled election, President Felipe Calderon moved to test his dubiously-acquired authority by sending 30,000 troops into the field to wage the Bush White House's War on Drugs in the Mexican outback. 70% of all cocaine consumed in the U.S. passes through Mexico's borders. But although the campaign has curried much favor in Washington, it has not been a resounding success on the ground. Little cocaine has been taken by the troops -although large seizures have been made in West Coast ports on information supplied by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Marijuana seizures have hardly put a dent in Mexico's seemingly never-ending supply of the notorious weed. The military's drug war performance has been marred by egregious human rights violations. In one incident last June in the drug-saturated state of Sinaloa, soldiers at an army checkpoint and reportedly high on marijuana and alcohol, opened fire on an extended family of eight (seven of them women and children), killing five. This January, troops in Huetamo Michoacan killed a 17 year-old passenger when the driver failed to obey their signals. Another group of soldiers stands accused of raping five underage girls in the Michoacan hot lands. Underscoring that the use of the military in law enforcement operations during peace time is patently unconstitutional, National Human Rights Commission ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes appeals to Calderon to send the troops back to barracks, a sentiment reiterated by United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour during a Mexican stopover last week. Calderon insists that the army will continue in the streets throughout the remainder of his questionable mandate (2012.) Local citizens protesting killings and rapes by the military are accused of being in the employ of the narcos. A spokesperson for the Secretary of Defense (SEDENA) recently affirmed to the national daily El Universal that drug boss "El Chapo" Guzman was subsidizing protestors in Sinaloa and Coahuila states to the tune of 2000 pesos ($200 USD) per demonstrator. Meanwhile, Calderon's military offensive has failed to stem the harvest of death. Last year, with the troops in the field, 2791 victims (7.3 a day) were registered by authorities, 500 more than the 2221 counted in 2006 when the army was still under wraps. During the first 15 days of 2008, 114 victims were recorded - 11.7 a day - compared with 174 for the entire month of January 2007 - perhaps a fifth of the dead were beheaded or otherwise mutilated. Most of the victims are indeed attributable to gang rivalry and the driving philosophy of drug war managers here is to let the bad guys kill each other off. But innocents are regularly mowed down, caught in urban crossfires or the victims of "mistaken identity" shooting. One constituency that seems particularly prone to slaughter are "grupero" musicians. In past months, five luminaries of this raucous genre have bit the dust - the Sinaloa-based brothers Valentin and "El Flaco" Elizande; Sergio Gomez, lead singer with K-Paz in Michoacan; and Jose Luis Aquino, trumpeter with the popular Oaxaca group "LosCondes." After being wounded during a performance in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, grupero singer Zayda Pena was followed to the local hospital and shot dead by her assailants. Musicians are often paid handsomely to perform at private narco fiestas or write "corridos" (border ballads) that portray the kingpins as popular heroes, a strophe that sometimes earns the disapproval of a capo or the enmity of a rival drug gang. In northern states like Sinaloa where the narcos venerate their own lay saint, Jesus Malverde, druglords like the infamous, long-imprisoned Rafael Caro Quintero and the still very active Chapo Guzman, both farm boys from the mountain town of Badiraguato, are popular, Robin Hood-like figures. "(The government) wants to see more money in Mexico but they don't understand that it's the narcos who are keeping this country alive," one unsigned letter to the daily "Debate of Sinaloa" read, "let them work - the only ones who get hurt are the gringos. The narcos only hurt people who mess with them" Mexico's drug cartels are structured along classic capitalist models: they control the prime materials (Mexican cartels now plant coca fields in Andean countries), processing, transportation, and distribution. Each maintains a private army to open up new markets and routes and protect old ones from encroachment. At the top of the ladder is the Sinaloa or Pacific Cartel under the thumb of Chapo Guzman, a drug baron who broke out of a maximum security federal prison in 2001 and has not been seen since - scuttlebutt persists that Chapo ("short guy") has been replaced by another Sinaloa capo, "El Mayo" Zembrano. The Pacific Cartel's chief rival for dominance is the Gulf Coast syndicate operating out of northeastern Mexico, now headed by Heriberto Lazcano, "El Lazcas", who took over the reigns from the murderous Osiel Cardenas, extradited last year to the U.S. by Calderon. Cardenas, in turn, replaced Juan Garcia Abrego when he was extradited in the late 1990s. So long as demand for their product thrives in the U.S., lopping off the heads of these organizations seems, hydra-like, to only breed new heads. Since Calderon took the helm of state in 2006, 88 Mexicans accused of drug-related crimes in the U.S. have been shipped to El Norte to the delight of his Washington masters. Next on the list for extradition: Sandra Avila Beltran, "the Queen of the Pacific", whose amorous adventures with the capos of Colombia's Valle del Norte Cartel, are celebrated in song and story. Also on the cartel menu: The Tijuana Cartel controlled by the Arellano Felix family (also Sinaloa boys), most of whose members are either incarcerated or defunct. Although the gang is in serious decline, it still dominates the liveliest crossing on the northern border and is thought to have pioneered arrangements with Colombian cartels and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, according to U.S. drug fighters. The Juarez Cartel, which controls the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso Texas "plaza" but is seriously challenged by rival drug combines for this key border stronghold. The Juarez Cartel has lost much of its clout since the death of the legendary Amado Carrillo, "the Lord of the Skies" during cosmetic surgery at a private hospital less than a mile away from the Mexican White House. Other more regional cartels include: The Colima Cartel under the direction of the Amezcua family, major methamphetamine movers with an abiding interest in port facilities at Manzanillo through which tons of cocaine and ephedrine pass each year. The Michoacan or Millennium Cartel bossed by the Valencia family, which controls vast opium poppy, and marijuana plantations in that state's hot lands and shares an interest in shipping facilities at Lazaro Cardenas, another noted Pacific cocaine port. The Oaxaca Cartel run by the Diaz Parada family which has influence in the south of the country and is strategically located between the Guatemala border and the ports of Salina Cruz on the Pacific and Coatzalcoalcos on the Gulf. In June of 2007, the various cartels reportedly huddled on a narco ranch in the state of Tamaulipas to smoke the peace pipe and come together in a "federation" that would guarantee trade routes and stabilize the industry - but judging by the kill rates, the federation seems to be fracturing fast. Recently, the five Beltran Leyva brothers, El Chapo Guzman's right-hand men, purportedly broke ranks to form their own cartel. The arrest of the "pez gordo" ("fat fish") Arturo Beltran Leyva, "El Mochomo", in January proved a major score for Calderon. El Mochomo was subsequently installed in the same maximum-security prison from which his (former) boss Chapo Guzman walked away seven years ago. Each of the cartels employs squadrons of enforcers to safeguard transit routes and extract taxes from rival cartels moving their loads through highly coveted turf. The most sanguineous of these death squads, the notorious Zetas, was trained at the Center for Special Forces in Fort Bragg, North Carolina as part of the drug-fighting "Air-Mobile Special Force Group" or GAFE, and whom, upon their return to Mexican soil, promptly signed on with the Gulf Cartel as enforcers. A new generation of Zetas, who popularized the sport of beheading their enemies, continues to terrorize the border and Mexican drug sleuths say the hit squad has evolved into its own cartel with designs on the lucrative plaza of Nuevo Laredo, the high volume commercial crossing on the east Texas border. One of the more depressing downsides of Calderon's drug war has been the infiltration and corruption of Mexico's underpaid military. In 2007, 17,000 troops deserted the Mexican armed forces. How many joined the drug cartels which pay ten times what the army does, is open to speculation. One of these defectors, former GAFE lieutenant Jose Luis Ochoa, "El Ocho", put together a foiled plot to assassinate the nation's topdog drug prosecutor Santiago Vasconcelos this past Christmas. Inexplicably, once the plot had been uncovered, President Calderon was immediately put under the protection of an elite GAFE unit. Among the Zetas' offspring are such colorfully named aggregations of killers as "The Altruistic Anonymous Zyndicate" (Coahuila), "The Tarascos" (Michoacan), "The Pelones" (The Baldies), "The Halcones" (The Hawks - Mexico City), and FEDA ("Special Forces of Arturo" - Beltran Leyva) who every 24 hours litter the streets of Culiacan, Cancun, Acapulco and dozens of other Mexican cities with mutilated cadavers and/or their heads. But the northern border is where the drug war blows hottest. Despite the depletion of much of the Arellano Felix clan, the family's Tijuana operation continues to function under the rule of a sister, Enadena and her nephew Jose "El Cholo" Brisenas, a narco who does not disdain the spotlight. El Cholo recently competed in the famed Baja California Road Race and was filmed by an in-house crew of cartel members that crashed during the race, killing gang member Luis Medrardo Leon, "El Abulon" (The Abalone), an historic hitman implicated in the May 1994 whacking of Cardinal Juan de Jesus Posadas at the Guadalajara airport during a shootout between the Arellano Felix boys and then upstart Chapo Guzman. The Cardinal's killing was attributed to a case of "mistaken identity" although he was wearing a foot-long pectoral cross and was shot at point-blank range. The Abalone's body was subsequently kidnapped from the Ensenada Baja California morgue by a 50-member narco commando. El Abulon's untimely demise was followed by the arrest of another longtime Tijuana cartel pistolero, "El Popeye" AKA Arturo Araujo, also implicated in the Cardinal's death and a failed assassination attempt on crusading Tijuana editor the late Jesus Blancornelas. The Popeye, as was El Abulon, is a U.S. citizen, a member of the San Diego Barrio Logan "Crazy 30s" hired on by the Arellanos during the cartel's hay day back in the 1990s to do their dirty work. Despite starring on wanted posters for a decade, El Popeye was arrested in a middle class Tijuana subdivision where he had lived tranquilly for years, perhaps protected by the badges of the three police agencies found in his possession at the time of his arrest. Tijuana's daily quotient of bloodshed overflowed January 15th when three police chiefs were gunned down within four hours, one along with his entire family. While memorial services were being conducted several days later, a wild shootout between narcos and police erupted not two miles away. Caught in the middle of the crossfire were dozens of children at a local kindergarten "Mi Alegria" ("My Happiness.") Front-page photos showed ski-masked troops rescuing the toddlers while bullets ricocheted all around them - most papers blacked out the children's faces for fear of retaliation by the drug gangs. At the other end of the border on the Gulf where Calderon has sent in 6000 of the 30,000 troops he has in the field, Tamaulipas looks like "a war zone" in the words of New York Times correspondent James McKinley. The state, which has traditionally been a kill zone where Zetas battle both rival narcos and various corrupt police agencies for control of the eastern end of the border, blew up in mid-January with two full-bore gunfights on the dusty streets of Rio Bravo. Combatants opened up on each other for hours with bazookas, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers - a score of cops and robbers were killed and wounded. Among the ten bad guys arrested were three American hitmen, two of them from Detroit. According to the Mexican federal Secretary of Public Safety, some of the weapons taken from the narcos were traced to robberies at U.S. military bases. The Mexican government estimates that 90% of the drug cartels' arsenals originate in the U.S. and have demanded reciprocal action on the part of their counterparts north of the border to tamp down the trade. At the end of January, newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey flew into Mexico City pledging to stem the flow of heavy weaponry from the United States where enough guns are in circulation to arm every citizen twice. Whether "Operation Gunrunner" is anything more than a token U.S. gesture remains to be tested. The U.S. is arming both sides in Mexico's drug war. The drug gangs are loaded to the teeth with arms smuggled across the border and to balance this homicidal equation, Washington has produced "Plan Mexico", a major build-up of Mexico's drug-fighting capacity, the first phase of which will send a half billion dollars worth of used Bell helicopters, armored vehicles, and computer systems south once the appropriation clears congress. Mexico's drug war is made in the U.S.A. Calderon takes his orders from Washington and the U.S. is not only arming both sides but sending in soldiers to fill out the ranks of both bands - the Detroit hitmen vs. U.S. troops who are now authorized to wage war on Mexican soil by the North American Agreement on Security and Prosperity (ASPAN) signed by the three NAFTA counties in 2006 to advance integration of their security apparatuses. Even more pertinent to the U.S.'s central role in this war: the vast quantities of drugs over which all this blood is being spilled, is exclusively destined for U.S. consumers. John Ross is in Mexico City. He can be reached at johnross@igc.org

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn   Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont     CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed