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

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 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   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   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 5, 2007 Still Left Behind Katrina's Forgotten Refugees By ELIZABETH SCHULTE WHEN HURRICANE Katrina hit the Gulf Coast two years ago, 79-year-old Carrie Lewis had to flee her assisted-living home in New Orleans. Two years later, she's still living in a trailer, 100 miles northwest of New Orleans. "I want to go home," Lewis told a reporter. "They don't have places for old people in New Orleans yet. What am I supposed to do? I don't want to die in a little trailer in the middle of a field somewhere." When Katrina hit, 65-year-old Phyllis Taylor also had to evacuate. But for Taylor, that meant leaving behind her downtown penthouse apartment for her 40,000-acre ranch in Foxworth, Miss. Taylor is the richest woman in the second-poorest state in the country. She became chair and CEO of Taylor Energy company--the largest privately held oil and gas company on the Gulf of Mexico--after her oilman husband died in 2004. In 2007, Forbes magazine estimated her net worth at $1.6 billion. After the storm, a window was broken in Taylor's penthouse, and the air-conditioning was out. Carrie Lewis lost everything. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina exposed to the world the reality of two Americas, standing side by side--one rich and one poor. Two years later, that harsh reality remains--but Katrina's victims are gone from the media's attention. Carrie Lewis is like tens of thousands of people still living in trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)--45,000 trailers in Louisiana, 20,000 in Mississippi, 17,000 in Texas and 400 in Alabama--because there is nowhere else for them to go. Pamela Lomis lives in a FEMA trailer with her two children at the Sugar Hill trailer park, in the middle of the cane fields near Convent, La. Somewhere between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, she's 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. There's only one bus that goes there. It leaves at 9 a.m. and returns at 4 p.m. "We just sit around here with life slipping by," Lomis said. "We're just on hold. Just waiting for something that never comes." With no homes to go back to--since no one put a priority on rebuilding the low-income housing that many of the poor and elderly once lived in--many are reaching the breaking point. "I want out of this trailer, out of this place," said Helen Felton, a resident of Renaissance Village trailer park. "But I get my little Social Security check. Do you know how far $660 goes?" And the Katrina refugees can expect matters to get worse--people still living in trailers in 2008 will have to start paying rent to FEMA. * * * IF THE trailers don't kill them, that is. As if their living situation wasn't bad enough, more and more trailer residents are reporting health problems as a result of formaldehyde poisoning. In early August, 500 people in New Orleans filed a class-action lawsuit against trailer manufacturers, making the case that the 14 companies providing some 120,000 trailers for FEMA ignored regulations on formaldehyde levels, which is resulting in illnesses. Formaldehyde, a chemical usually associated with embalming dead bodies, is widely used in pressed wood products, particleboard and plywood--which are typically part of FEMA trailers. High levels of formaldehyde are dangerous, causing respiratory diseases, bloody noses, burning eyes, headaches and insomnia--even low levels can cause respiratory problems and exacerbate already existing conditions. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies it as a human carcinogen. Nancy and Michael Sonnier were glad to get their trailer just before Thanksgiving, after their home was destroyed in Hurricane Rita. When they told a FEMA representative about the fumes in their trailer, "One of them laughed out loud and said, 'We hear that from all kinds of people. Just open your doors and windows,'" 63-year-old Nancy told Amanda Spake for her article "Running on Fumes," in Louisiana's Independent Weekly. According to evidence introduced at a congressional hearing in mid-July, when trailer residents reported health problems from formaldehyde fumes in their homes to FEMA field workers, top FEMA officials did their best to sweep their complaints under the rug. The House Committee on Oversight and Government made public some of the more than 5,000 internal e-mails that revealed a pattern of cover-ups and denials--what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) called "an official policy of premeditated ignorance." One man, dying of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was forced to move into a motel after he couldn't breathe because the formaldehyde had caused his lungs to swell. FEMA agreed to pay his motel bill--but only after a FEMA staff member wrote to superiors, "He said he had nowhere to go, and he was dying with cancer. He would not go back to the travel trailer as he had a violent reaction to the formaldehyde." Later, a FEMA attorney cut off the motel payment before it was set to end, suggesting the man try a charity. "One of the things that we're seeing is that there are more and more children who are having allergy problems and respiratory problems," Lourna Bourg, executive director of the New Iberia, La.-based Southern Mutual Help Association, told Spake. "Because of the closeness and smallness of the FEMA trailers, there's a number of people who just can't tolerate the fumes. We even had one lady who was living in a shed to get out of it." * * * BUT WHILE some former residents are desperate for a safe place to live, people like Phyllis Taylor see dollar signs when they imagine the new New Orleans. Last year, she told the Dallas Morning News, "We have an opportunity of a lifetime to build an urban Eden." Earlier this year, she added, "Our challenge is the rebuilding of New Orleans, especially taking advantage of the opportunity to rebuild in a better way." A better way--meaning one that doesn't include poor people. Some people are profiting big-time from the Katrina disaster. The Bush administration saw the opportunities right away--and assigned billion-dollar contracts for cleaning up the Gulf Coast to corporate friends like Bechtel and Halliburton. When it came to retrieving dead bodies, FEMA hired Kenyon International Emergency Services, a subsidiary of Service Corporation International, a Texas-based funeral services company run by Robert Waltrip, a close friend of the Bushes and major campaign donor, according to CorpWatch. The federal government claims to have earmarked millions to rebuild the area, but there's little proof of that on the ground. The federal government has supposedly promised more than $116 billion for rebuilding the devastated region. But according to a report from the Institute for Southern Studies, less than 42 percent of that money has actually been spent. The report found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received $8.4 billion to restore needed storm defenses. But as of July, less than 20 percent of the money had been spent. "Included in the oft-cited $116 billion spending figure is $3.5 billion in tax credits to jump-start business in Gulf Opportunity or 'GO' Zones across 91 parishes and counties in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi," noted the Institute for Southern Studies' Blueprint for Gulf Renewal Report. "But many of the breaks have been of questionable benefit to Katrina survivors. Take for instance the $1 million deal to build 10 luxury condos next to the University of Alabama football stadium--four hours from the Gulf Coast." The federal government is failing New Orleans--and that means the workers who are rebuilding the city, too. During the initial cleanup, dangerous work was subcontracted to companies who regularly abused workers, failing to provide them protective gear and underpaying them afterward. That's if they paid them at all. Undocumented workers reported companies that called in Immigration and Customs Enforcement when workers tried to demand the wages they were owed. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which spoke with more than 1,000 Gulf Coast workers, the majority didn't receive overtime pay, despite the fact that many worked 80 to 100 hours per week. While all these abuses were happening, the federal government looked the other way. Two years after Katrina, we are still seeing the divide between rich and poor exposed by Katrina--and it's growing worse all the time. Elizabeth Schulte is a reporter for the Socialist Worker. Your Ad Here

New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues   Now Available! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained! Buy End Times Now! Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair       The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"