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EXCLUSIVE! HOW THE FBI SPIED ON EDWARD SAID First look at secret files: How G-Men kept Said under surveillance from 1971. David Price traces years of snooping on US's best known Palestinian Bush says 30,000 dead in Iraq but real number caused by 2003 US attack is AT LEAST 180,000, maybe twice that as Andrew Cockburn digs out the real numbers Is the US Constitution worth saving? Hmmm, maybe ... New York Times takes a year to make up its mind. Cockburn and St Clair on NYT and NSA ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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December 28, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts December 27, 2005 Evan Jones Uri Avnery Mike Whitney Gideon Levy David Swanson Norman Solomon
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/ Ross Eisenbrey Joanne Mariner Eric Johnson-Debaufre Ray McGovern J. L. Chestnut,
Jr. Website of
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December 22, 2005 Ingmar Lee Elisa Salasin Christopher
Brauchli Robin Blackburn Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Francis A.
Boyle Stew Albert Website of
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December 21, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Lila Rajiva Joshua Frank Dave Zirin Ramzy Baroud Sonia Nettnin Ben Saul Jonathan Cronin Patrick Cockburn Website of
the Day
December 20, 2005 Jackie Corr Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Michael Donnelly Gian Paulo
Accardo Pierre Tristam Norman Solomon Sen. Robert Byrd Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
December 19, 2005 Mike Marqusee Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs John Blair Gideon Levy Kevin Zeese Missy Comley Beattie Don Santina Website of the Day
December 17 / 18, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Gabriel Kolko Susan Alcorn Werther Ralph Nader Patrick Cockburn Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Ned Sublette Lee Sustar Jason Leopold Laura Carlsen Jeff White Ray McGovern Chris Floyd William Loren Katz Rose Miriam
Elizalde Greg Moses Heather Gray Alison Weir St Clair /
Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of
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December 16, 2005 Tom Kerr Mark Engler John Bomar Patrick Cockburn Pierre Tristam William S. Lind Cyril Neville Robert Jensen Saul Landau Website
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Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Lawrence R. Velvel Wayne Garcia John Sugg Gary Leupp Ray McGovern Alan Maass April Hurley, MD Kevin Alexander
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Banko, III Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen Karl Grossman Niranjan Ramakrishnan Kevin Zeese Norman Solomon Michael G.
Smith Stew Albert Bob Dylan Phil Gasper Website of
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December 12, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Lawrence R.
Velvel Jessica Stewart George Bisharat Nate Mezmer Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Alison Weir Seth Sandronsky Patrick Cockburn Website of
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Alexander Cockburn Landau / Hassen Ralph Nader Linn Washington, Jr Bill Christison Mike Ferner Elizabeth Schulte Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner Linda S. Heard Ingmar Lee Ray McGovern John Chuckman John Ryan Dick J. Reavis Christopher
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Lind Laura Carlsen Justin Akers Thomas Graham, Jr Norman Solomon Tariq Ali /
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Morgan Dave Lindorff Patrick Cockburn Harold Pinter Website of
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December 6, 2005 Ron Jacobs Patrick Cockburn Yifat Susskind Mike Whitney Pat Williams Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
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December 5, 2005 John Walsh Brian Cloughley Mokhiber /
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November 29, 2005 Phil Gasper Behzad Yaghmaian Joshua Frank Walter A. Davis Gary Leupp Len Colodny Jeffrey St.
Clair Bill Quigley Website of
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Roberts Website of
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November 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley John Ross Gary Leupp Fred Gardner Christopher Brauchli Dave Lindorff P. Sainath Timothy J.
Freeman Lila Rajiva Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Joaquin Bustelo Lewis Alper Will Youmans Phyllis Pollack St. Clair /
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November 25, 2005 David Price Brian McKenna Jeff Halper Ray McGovern Leigh Saavedra Ingmar Lee Website of the Day
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November 23, 2005 Ramzy Baroud Mike Whitney Stan Cox Linda S. Heard November 22, 2005 Kevin Gray
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December 28, 2005 ANWR Dodges Another BulletThe Worst Day of Ted Stevens' LifeBy JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Before Bush boarded his helicopter for evacuation into the Maryland hill country for Christmas at Camp David, the president-in-lycra made the inexplicable observation that "it's been a great year for Americans." He probably wasn't speaking for the families of the 735 US troops who had been killed in Iraq in 2005, although increasingly the military death toll there is claiming the lives of recent Mexican immigrants, who Bush may not consider fully "American". Also Bush likely wasn't talking about the 300,000 people still displaced by Hurricane Katrina, perhaps because the First Mother has assured him that those who were dropped off in Texas have never had it so good. And he certainly wasn't referring to Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, once the most powerful man on the Hill, who whined in a threnody worthy of a passage from Aeschylus, that the close of this year's congressional session had been the worst day of his life. What tragedy could have cast such a gloomy pall across the mighty man from Anchorage, who, as chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, commands the flow of trillions of dollars from the federal treasury? The final days of congress are usually a joyous time for Stevens. This is the season when he gets to play Santa, by implanting into the final budget bills billions of dollars of porkbarrel projects in the states of senators who have shown him the proper obeisance over the previous year and by stripping out cherished projects from those few who had dared to defy him. But this year, it was Stevens who was rudely jolted by a last second reversal of fortune, when his brethren and sistren in the senate blocked his stealthy maneuver to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Surely, the Porcupine caribou herd raised their heads at Stevens's long-distance howl and snorted in celebration at the news that their calving grounds on the Arctic plain had been spared for yet another year from intrusion by oil derricks and pipelines and that their nemesis for the last 30 years had received a rare rebuke. Stevens's agony must be all the more acute because he was so tantalizingly close to achieving what he has said is his last major objective as a senator. Indeed, earlier this year, after the senator had slipped the ANWR drilling measure into the budget reconciliation bill in an effort to evade the senate filibusters that had frustrated his efforts in the past, Stevens told his hometown paper, the Anchorage Daily News, that his work in the senate was done and he could now retire a contented man. Stevens wasn't counting on the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to throw a monkey wrench into his devious plans. But that's exactly what happened this fall when 25 Republicans, staring at polar-bear friendly poll numbers and not wanting to risk aligning themselves with the oil company executives who had gloated about making record profits in the wake of Katrina, demanded that the ANWR provision be stripped from the budget bill. The defeat of ANWR in what Stevens contemptuously calls the "other body" may also reflect the collapse of House discipline now that Tom DeLay has been forced to stand aside as leader following his indictment in Texas. While the Sierra Club feted itself over a rare environmental victory in the GOP-ruled House, Stevens went back to his laboratory and brewed up another recipe from his book of legislative alchemy. The senator single-handedly affixed the ANWR measure to the Defense Appropriation Bill, hoping that Democrats and anti-drilling Republicans wouldn't have the guts to launch a last minute filibuster that might be seen as denying weapons, body armor, food and Humvees to the troops in Iraq. The senate also linked Katrina relief money to the ANWR measure. "There'll be no Katrina money without ANWR drilling," Stevens brayed. But Stevens's gambit failed, when he fell four votes shy of overcoming a filibuster. It is a sweet irony that within a matter of months, both houses had approved opening ANWR to drilling and, then, they both rejected it. In a mournful editorial, the Wall Street Journal called the turn of events "surreal." And for once they're right. Of course, next spring, with the regularity of migrating warblers, the ANWR drilling forces will press their case once more, with Ted Stevens leading the charge. But the window of vulnerability is closing for ANWR. Stevens is in his twilight. He seems a frail and diminished figure these days, ranting in the well of the Senate, a Republican version of Bobby Byrd, who also once ruled the appropriations game and steered federal wealth to the carved hills of West Virginia. Stevens must feel that the oil cartel has let him down, first by the orgy of profiteering in the wake of the hurricanes, then with the utterly unrepentant performance of the oil executives during the congressional show hearings into their record profits, where the CEOs refused to even feign the slightest blush of contrition. The final blow, though, was the distinct lack of vigor shown by oil industry lobbyists in the battle for ANWR. For Stevens this must seem like a kind of heresy. He is a crusader now, for whom the conquest of ANWR has assumed a religious fervor. Stevens wants to drill a well through the heart not only of ANWR, but the idea of ANWR, the paganistic precedent of a swath of public land in his state that is off-limits to industrial exploitation. "It's an empty, ugly place," Stevens snarled. "It's almost treasonous that environmentalists are sacrificing our national security for such a place." The mad senator raged that he planned to visit the states of each senator who voted against him to inform the citizens of their treachery. But for the oil companies it's always been about maximizing profits and there's mounting evidence that without generous federal subsidies or a major spike in global oil prices there might not be enough oil lurking under the permafrost of ANWR to justify the legislative fight and the years of protracted litigation. No one really knows how much oil lies under ANWR. There's only been a single test hole drilled in the area and that was on native lands and the results have been kept a closely guarded secret for years. The geology of ANWR is suggestive of an oil field holding between 5 billion and 10 billion barrels. But if the price of oil stays below $60 a barrel, fully 30 percent of that total won't be economically recoverable. That leaves somewhere between 3.5 billion and 7 billion barrels-a big find, but not huge. At peak production, ANWR oil, sluiced down the Alaska pipeline, might satiate about 5 percent of US oil demand. But only for about three years. Then production would begin a steady decline until the reserves are exhausted in 20 years or so. Add to this prospectus, the expense and risk of transporting the crude from the Arctic to US refineries in southern California-assuming the crude isn't shipped across the Pacific to refineries in China and South Korea. From the oil cartel's vantage, there's easier prey to be had in the Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve just west of Prudhoe Bay, in the Canadian Yukon or in the Gulf of Mexico. If Stevens can deliver them ANWR gift-wrapped with production subsidies as his senatorial swan song, so much the better. If not, there's no reason to sweat it. As Exxon and its brethren proved this year, oil shortages, real or engineered, yield eye-popping profits with little costs. And when the price gets high enough, every last drop of crude will once again be within their clutches. As for the environmental movement, ANWR has functioned as their own private cash reserve since the 1980s when James Watt put a bullseye on that austere stretch of Arctic coastline. There's been no more lucrative fundraiser for the Sierra Club than the annual threat of oil wells being drilled in the home of the polar bear and musk oxen. To the political cynic, it might appear that the environmental movement profits from having ANWR under perpetual threat. But with Stevens weakened and the oil industry distracted, it's time for the green cabal in Washington to push hard for permanent protection of the American Serengeti by demanding that the entire wildlife refuge to be designated a federal wilderness area forever immune from attack by the oil and gas companies, a stratagem they inexplicably chose not to pursue during Clintontime. Of course, a successful wilderness campaign might mean a diminished flow of revenues in the future. But these green groups are supposed to be non-profits, aren't they? Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature
and Grand
Theft Pentagon, just published by Common Courage Press.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                 |
