home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

Inside the New Print Edition of CounterPunch: How Go the Democrats?

Democrats on the Brink: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair; Innocent Lads, Depraved Killers and Predatory Priests by JoAnn Wypijewski; Torture Air, Inc.: the Road to Rendition: by Jeffrey St. Clair. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print edition of CounterPunch. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Coming Soon from CounterPunch Books
Other Lands Have Dreams:
From Baghdad to Pekin Prison
by KATHY KELLY

Click Here to Order!

Today's Stories

March 29, 2005

Carl G. Estabrook
The Subversive Commandments

 

March 28, 2005

Jeremy Scahill
Sgrena Sets the Record Straight: "There was No Checkpoint; No Self-Defense"

Sonali Kolhatkar
Forgetting Afghanistan...Again

Sasha Kramer
The UN's Betrayal of Haiti

Kevin Zeese
Don't Just Blame the Democrats

Tom Stephens
Sacred Law; Traditional Wisdom: Environmental Justice and Indigenous Peoples

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
We're Walking Into a Trap

Newton Garver
Reflections on Bolivia

Paul Craig Roberts
A Bail Out Draft for a Cakewalk War?

Website of the Day
Stumped? Ask a Librarian, 24/7

 

March 26 / 27, 2005

Gary Leupp
God's Imperialists

Peter Linebaugh
To Render, to Impeach, to Habeas Corpus

Marc Robert
A European Student's Experience at Columbia University

Laura Carlsen
The Threesome in Crawford: Summit as Traveling Stage Show

Saul Landau / Puja Patel
The Price of Privatized "Development"

Dave Foreman
Nature's Crisis

Fred Gardner
Will San Francisco Pander to the Prohibitionists?

Jennifer Matsui
Terri Schiavo: America's Most Desperate Housewife?

Dave Lindorff
Provoking Iran

Dharma Adhikari
The Reversal of Democracy in Nepal

Joshua Frank
The Howard Dean Doctrine

Patrick Barr
Have Box Cutter, Will Travel: a True Story

Christopher Brauchli
F-16s to Pakistan

Ramzy Baroud
Israel's Record is "Not Reassuring"

Jackie Corr
When the Gov. of Montana Declared Martial Law in Butte

Ben Tripp
Off with Your Appurtenances!

Dr. Susan Block
Break a Taboo for Easter: Springtime for Sex and God

Mickey Z.
How Three Unrelated Books Relate

Justin Taylor
Beware of "Beware of God"

Richard Joseph
Cochabamba!: the Water War in Bolivia

Poets' Basement
Martin, Smith, Ford, Bortz and Albert

 

 

March 25, 2005

Scott Richard Lyons
Horror and Hope at Red Lake Nation

Yoshie Furuhashi
No Troops; No Wars

Pat Williams
How a Town Got Poisoned: Libby, MT and the Labor Movement

Mark Engler
Remembering Archbishop Romero: 25 Years After His Assassination

Rahul Mahajan
Culture of Life or Culture of Living Death?

Lance Selfa
Can the Democrats be Moved to the Left?

Ralph Nader
Corporate Cyborg: Cal Nurses Take on Schwarzenegger

John R. Llewellyn
Why Utah's Prosecutors are Soft on Polygamy: a Former Sheriff Speaks Out

Jo Guldi
Beyond Belief: Holy Week in France

 

March 24, 2005

Joshua Frank
The Selling (Out) of the Antiwar Movement

Talli Nauman
Vicente and George: Security by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter

Martin Espada
Why I Refused Coke's Money: a Poet Speaks Out About Colombia

Dave Lindorff
Another Social Security Snow Job

Elaine Cassel
When Fools Rush In: the Legal Implications of the Schiavo Case

Jack McCarthy
Jeb Bush's Mob: Snatch, Grab, Insert Tube

Jack Random
Juxtaposition: Terri Schiavo and the Red Lake Massacre

Barbara Ferguson
Wolfowitz Dating Muslim Woman and World Bank Employee

Suzan Mazur
Peak Oil: Debate or Vendetta?

Dorreen Yellow Bird
Suffering Red Lake Nation Endures the Worst of Days

Andrew Wimmer and Mark Chmiel
Torture: Old Hat or Open Wound?

 


March 23, 2005

Patrick Bond
A New War? On Wolfowitz's World Bank

Mike Whitney
Railroading Moussaoui

Becky White
Why I Hung from a Bridge to Defend the Wild Forests of the Siskiyou Mountains

Michael Donnelly
Dissecting the Changeling: How the AuCoin Express Was Really Derailed

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Remembering Ram Manohar Lohia: the Che of Non-Violence

Ashley Smith
Bush is What Hypocrisy Looks Like

David Swanson
The More Bush Talks, the Less Popular Privatization Becomes

Derrick O'Keefe
Enter Bono, Stage Right

Paul A. Moore
The Fire This Time: the Bush Bros. Racist Crackdown in Florida

Dalton Walker
My Reservation Will Never Be the Same

Patrick Cockburn
The US Frees Iraqi Kidnappers to Become Spies

 

March 22, 2005

William Blum
Anti-Empire Report: Democracy--or is it the US Military--on the March

Jim Vallette
Cheney's Oil Change at the World Bank

Greg Moses
A Palm Sunday Chat with Sis Levin

John Farley
Bush's Culture of Life: Let the Insurance Companies Pull the Plug When the Sick Cost Too Much

Ron Jacobs
Halt the Anniversary Rallies and Stop the Damn War

M. Junaid Alam
How the Democratic Party Fosters Conservatism

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
An Immoral and Illegal War: Destroying Iraq Isn't Enough for Them

Dave Lindorff
"Saving" Schiavo; Killing the News

James Petras
Fateful Quadrangle: Cuba and Venezuela Face Off Against the US and Colombia

 

 

March 21, 2005

John Walsh
In the Bars on the Road to Fayettevile: War Support Paper Thin

Werther
The Legacy of George Kennan, Chief Architect of the Cold War

Mike Stark
Where is the "Culture of Life" in Maryland? Time is Running Out for Vernon Evans

David Swanson
Feeding Tubes for the Third World: Put the Hungry into Comas, Then Feed Them!

James T. Phillips
Happy Meals: Behind the Grill at a Baltimore Diner

Mike Ferner
Serving, Refusing, Impeaching

Robert Jensen
The World Waits for an Answer

Paul Craig Roberts
A Threat Greater Than Terrorism

Stew Albert
Vegetable Nation

Website of the Day
American Press Blotter: Jacko, Terry and Steroids vs. the World

 

 

March 19, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Three-Card Monte and the One-Party State

Tom Reeves
Exposing the Coming Draft: a Draft by Any Other Name is Still Wrong

Saul Landau
The Grandchildren of Roy Cohn: the Politics of the Repressed

Alan Maass
Making Bankruptcy a Life Sentence

Ron Jacobs
Submit or Else: the Nuclear Demon that Won't Go Awayy

David Green
The Holocaust Industry Comes to the University of Illinois

John Blair
Hey, Dick! I'm Still Free: a Blow for Freedom of Speech in Indiana

Steve Greenfield
The Decline of the Green Party: the Numbers are In

Ben Tripp
Nature isn't Real

Mike Roselle
A History of White People in the Conservation Movement

Joshua Frank
Hope in Red State America: Lessons from the Big Sky Country

Mark Weisbrot
The World Bank: a Bigger Problem Than Wolfowitz

Dave Lindorff
Congress on Steroids

Sarah Schaffer
Lula's Nukes: Bush Bullies Iran, Ignores Brazil's Nuclear Ambitions

Warren Hastings
Why the Queen Should Chop Off Tony Blair's Head for Treason

Poets' Basement
Lodge, Albert. Landau, Engel, Davies, Capaccio

 

March 18, 2005

Dave Zirin
The Congressional Urine Testers: Baseball's Theater of the Absurd

Richard Thieme
The Church Committee Candidate: I was a Victim of the KGB

John Walsh
Misdirecting the Anti-War Movement

David Swanson
Hunger Striking for a Living Wage at Georgetown

Ben Terrall
In the Spirit of Rachel Corrie: Confronting Caterpillar in San Leandro

David Boyle
Just Say "No" to Harvard

Dorreen Yellow Bird
Coping with Teen Suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation

Mokhiber / Weissman
Global Bully Goes to Guatemala

Greg Moses
They Don't Shoot Donkeys...Do They?

Website of the Day
800 Protests: Find One Near You

 

March 17, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
Rendered Unto Caesar: the Etymology of Torture

Bill Quigley
The St. Patrick's Four and the Resistance to the War in Iraq

Brian Cloughley
Bush's Herds: Willing to Kick Anyone in the Face

Gary Bass / Adam Hughes
Inside the Bush Budget: Rhetoric vs. Reality

Dave Lindorff
The Incredible Shrinking Coalition

Jude Wanniski
Wolfowitz at the World Bank: a Perfect Fit

Alexander Billet
Irish Republicanism at the Crossroads

John Ross
Wal-Mart Invades Mexico

Website of the Day
Campus Resistance

 

March 16, 2005

Ralph Nader
Filling the Congressional Cop-Out Gap: an Idea for Local Peace Activists

William Cook
Resurrecting the Neo-Con Failures

Kevin Zeese
Two Years of Occupation: Both US and Iraq are Worse Off

Jackie Corr
Why is Dick Cheney Laughing? The New Tax Cut Patriotism

Alan Maass
Bush's Class War Budget

David R. Kolker
Jailed Without Charges in Haiti

Cindy Ellen Hill
Speculative Policing in Northern Ireland

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Has-Been Economy

 

 

March 15, 2005

Gary Leupp
The Plan is Still on Track

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh!

Greg Moses
The Fix-It Guys and Their Electoral Filters

Hadas Their / Katrina Yeaw
Military Recruiters Target Campus Activists

Alison Weir
Uprising on the Anniversary of Rachel Corrie's Death

Matt Koehler
A Line in the Ancient Forest: 50 Arrested in Blockade to Save the Siskiyous

Evelyn Pringle
Labeling Kids Mentally Ill for Profit

Harry Browne
War and Peace in Ireland

 

 

March 14, 2005

Ralph Nader
Restarting the Anti-War Movement

David Miller
Ministry of Defence in the Control Booth: Did the BBC Broadcast Fake News Reports?

Stan Cox
Look Deeper, Mr. Moyers

Mike Roselle
Why Women Should Take Over the Environmental Movement

David Swanson
Nursing Against the Odds: the Workers' View

Simona Sharoni
To End the War, Listen to Soldiers

Dave Lindorff
Corporate Surveillance

Dorreen Yellow Bird
Incidents at Standing Rock: Suicide on the Reservation

Tom Barry
John Bolton's Baggage

Website of the Day
Spinwatch

 

 

March 12 / 13, 2005

David H. Price
The CIA's Campus Spies

Noam Chomsky
The Toothpaste Election

Laura Carlsen
Women's Rights Eroding in Latin America

Stan Goff
On Revolutionary Optimism: the View from Cumberland Co, NC

Valentina Nicoli
The Game of Role-Playing and the Ambush of Giuliana Sgrena

Michael Leonardi
Head Shot: Lifting the Veil on the Sgrena / Calipari Incident

Saul Landau / Sarah Anderson
Blood Money and the Riggs Bank: Pinochet's Bank Finally Pays Up

Joe Bageant
It Ain't Easy Being White

Manuel García, Jr.
The Question of American Guilt

Greg Moses
Electoral Lessons from Cuyahoga and Harris Counties

James J. Brittain
Run, Fight or Die in Colombia

Ben Tripp
Communist Watch

Joshua Frank
A Red State Paradox: Montana on the Cusp

Fred Gardner
Pesticides Made Her Sick; Pot Got Her Well

Walter Brasch
Bush's Horse Killers

Ramzy Baroud
Reining in Syria on Behalf of Israel

Christopher Brauchli
Going All the Way for Usurers

Michael Donnelly
The Humiliation of Les "Timber Toad" AuCoin

Ron Jacobs
ZAP Comics: Still Kicking US Culture in the Ass

Richard Oxman
The Eternal Reciprocity of Tears

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Ford, Louise and Albert

 

March 11, 2005

Jerry Fresia
Targeting Giuliana

Ron Jacobs
Making Lebensraum in the Middle East for Tel Aviv's Fears & Washington's Dollars

Dave Lindorff
America's Magical Kingdom

William James Martin
Ben Gurion and the Origin of the "Pushing into the Sea" Myth

Muqtedar Khan
Modi's Operandi: American Business and Genocide Linked Again

Kathryn Ledebur
Bolivia on the Brink

Mike Whitney
Saddam's Capture: Just Another Bush Lie?

Dave Zirin
Neo-McCarthyism Slugs Baseball

Website of the Day
William Rivers Pitt, Another Hack for the Occupation

 

 

March 10, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
So Much for the New Bush Economy

John Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin and Ashley Smith
Vermont Vs. the War

Larry Birns
The Pathological John Bolton

Michael Donnelly
The Re-Reinvention of an Oregon Timber Beast

Luis Gomez
In Bolivia, Reality Changes Once Again

Jackie Corr
Whatever Happened to the Social Security Trust Fund?

Uri Avnery
Bush's Guru: Natan Sharansky

Website of the Day
Red Alert in the Siskiyous!

 

 

March 9, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Dirty Harry's Fear of Flying: Making Love, War and Profits at Boeing

Ward Churchill
Who's the Terrorist?

Robert Fisk
Another Species of Cedar: a Half Million Lebanese March for Syria

Bernice Powell Jackson
No Justice for America's Nuclear Guinea Pigs in the Marshall Islands

Mickey Z.
The Revolutionary of Potential Art

Dave Zirin
NHL Says: "Bring On the Scabs!"

Michael Donnelly
Standing Up to Ecocide in Oregon

James Reiss
Stopping by Words in Favor of Privatizing Social Security

Vijay Prashad
Get Modi: a State Terrorist Visits Florida

 

March 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Syrian Delusion

Robert Fisk
Lebanon's Nightmare

Kurt Nimmo
War is Peace: John Bolton to the UN

Suzan Mazur
Time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Polygamy?

Evelyn Pringle
Neil Bush and Crest: Another Profiteering Scheme

Giuliana Sgrena
My Truth: "The Americans Don't Want You to Return"

Elaine Cassel
The Appalling Case of Abu Ali

 

March 7, 2005

Dave Zirin
Bloodlust in Annapolis: Gov. Ehrlich Wants to Kill Vernon Lee Evans

Brian Cloughley
More War Crimes

John Chuckman
The Creature Walks Among Us

Mike Whitney
Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments

Mark Weisbrot
Haiti's Torment: Why Are US Human Rights Groups Silent?

Fred Gardner
The Cannabinoid Messenger

Richard Neville
The Italian Job

Uri Avnery
The Next Crusades

 

 

March 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Arnold vs. the Nurses

Gary Leupp
What's Happening in Lebanon: an Interview with Fadi Agha, Advisor to President Lahoud

Ron Jacobs
Lies Military Recruiters Tell

Tom Reeves
Haiti: One Year After the Coup

Jenna Orkin
Memories of Kawaggi, Saudi Arabia

Tom Barry
Negroponte: Intel Czar or Policy Hack?

Joshua Frank
The Trials of Max Baucus

Moshe Adler
When Pfizer Came to New London: Corporate Giveways vs. Eminent Domain

Jane Stillwater
My Jury Questionnaire: "Do You Agree that a Corporation is a Person?"

Omar Barghouti / Jacqueline Sfeir
Double Standards on S. Africa and Israel: an Open Letter to UNESCO

Christopher Brauchli
Target: Al Jazeera

John Pilger
The Fall of Saigon: 30 Years Later

Raúl Zibechi
Colombia: Militarism and Social Movements

David Krieger
Saving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement

Three Takes on Nepal

Surendra R. Devkota
Another Blow to the King of Nepal

Bhishma Karki
Nepal in Twilight

Joseph Pietri
Murder at the Palace

Ben Tripp
The Good Old Days

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Chief Running Late, Wuest, Albert and Collins

Website of the Weekend
O'Shaughnessy's: All About Medical Pot

 

 

March 4, 2005

Frederick Hudson
Caught in a Cage

 

March 3, 2005

Pat Williams
"Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old"

Brian Cloughley
Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions

Dave Lindorff
Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan?

Amira Hass
Oslo All Over Again

Greg Moses
In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go?

Lynne Landes
Exit Poll Madness

Nelson P. Valdés
Rapture Takes Leftists

John Ross
Mexico's Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist

 

March 2, 2005

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The "Noble Liars" Attack Syria

Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental Dissent

M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism

Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah

Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"

Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass

Jeffrey St. Clair
Uncle Bucky Makes a Killing

Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey

 

 

March 1, 2005

Scott Richard Lyons
Million Dollar Bigotry

David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions

Patrick Cockburn / David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled

Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security

Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black Prince

Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam

Paul Craig Roberts
The Coming End of the American Superpower

Website of the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran

 

 

February 28, 2005

Gary Leupp
Year 4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?

Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers

Mickey Z.
The Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter Thompson and the "Right to Die"

Paul de Rooij
Why Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel

David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media

Mario Lamo Jimenez
Maria Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars

Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge of Academia

Diana Johnstone
Censorship and the Empire

Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!

 

 

February 26 / 27, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
An American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence

Noam Chomsky
Nuclear Terror at Home

Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground

Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited

Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami Mafia

Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda

Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts

Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind

Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars

Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee

Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America

Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood

Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin

John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns

Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style

Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace

Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation

Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert

 

 

February 25, 2005

Roger Burbach
Murder in the Amazon

Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making

Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats

Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party

John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians

Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil

Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs

David Smith-Ferri
When the Battlefield has No Borders

Website of the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D

 

February 24, 2005

Omar Waraich
The Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician

Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame & 30 Pieces of Silver

Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons

Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?

Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill

James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush

Diane Christian
Bad Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq

Website of the Day
The Gray Line

 

 

February 23, 2005

Werther
The Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq

W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground Rules

James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?

Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby

Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and Cops)

Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism

Alexander Cockburn
Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo

Website of the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?

 

February 22, 2005

Naseer Aruri
The Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East

Richard Manning
The Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan

William A. Cook
Righteous Racism Running Rampant

Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability

Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out

Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL

Kirkpatrick Sale
Imperial Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire

 

 

February 21, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson
"He Was A Crook"

John Ross
Mexico: the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq

Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did I Say It?

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to You by the US Navy

David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State

Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake

Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST

Michael Neumann
Strategies in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky

 

 

February 19 / 20, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Back to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"

Kathleen Christison
Struggling for Justice in Palestine

Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata

Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to Commit Suicide

Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues

Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior

Scott Richard Lyons
Ward Churchill and the Identity Police

Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage

George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in Oregon

Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels

Manuel Garc'a, Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?

Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War

Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?

John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past

Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?

Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal

Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark

Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard

CounterPunch News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland

Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller

Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin

 

February 18, 2005

Ben Moxham
In East Timor, the Nightmare Continues

Dave Lindorff
The Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte

Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery

Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy

Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads

Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward Churchill

Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?

Mickey Z.
"One Man Has Stopped Killing"

 

 

February 17, 2005

Joshua Frank
Hogtying of the Deaniacs

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media

Robert Fisk
Under the Shadow of Death in Lebanon

Christopher Brauchli
Where Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be Cannon Fodder?

Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions

Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples the Laws It Wrote"

Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill

 

 

February 16, 2005

Robert Fisk
Lebanon: a Battlefield for the Wars of Others

Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect Retirement

Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...

Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration

Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff

Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities in Texas

Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre

Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel

Website of the Day
The World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch

 

 

February 15, 2005

CounterPunch News Service
Dean a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch

Robert Fisk
The Killing of Mr. Lebanon

Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh, We Have Come Back Again"

Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal

Mickey Z.
Radio Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook

Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean

Nadia Martinez
Ending World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now

Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of Magical Thinking in Politics

Paul Craig Roberts
The American Job Sell Out

 

 

February 14, 2005

Robert Jensen
Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11

Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style

Patrick Cockburn
Outcome of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War

Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?

Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?

Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood

Elaine Cassel
The Lynne Stewart Verdict

 

February 12 / 13, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill's Genes

Saul Landau
Alarcon Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba

Paul Craig Roberts
Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself

Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All Major Roads into Baghdad

John Feffer
Bush v. N. Korea: Round Two

Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak

Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!

Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich

Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)

John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll

Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"

Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice

Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin

Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour

Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado

Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?

Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan

Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting

Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman

 

 

February 11, 20055

Manuel Garcia, Jr
The Eight Percent War

Kurt Nimmo
Ann Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need Him?

Dave Lindorff
Guckert or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In

Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott Abrams

Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz

Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion

Jennifer Van Bergen
Lynne Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All

 

 

February 10, 2005

Dave Lindorff
What Academic Freedom?

Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed

Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?

Suzan Mazur
More on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha

Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition

Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little Hope"

Greg Moses
Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers

Website of the Day
The Missionary Positions

 

 

February 9, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Duck and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers

Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say

John Ross
Hecho en Mexico: the Iraqi Election

Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon

Conn Hallinan
The Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely Forbidden"

Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions

Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

 

 

February 8, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral Pact, Not a Party"

Brian Cloughley
Out of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"

Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"

Harry Browne
"Don't Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland

Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President and Ward Churchill

Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the Same Beast

Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper

David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq

 

 

February 7, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's War on Jobs

Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher Ed

Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill

Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill

Patrick Cockburn
The Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism

Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried

Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI

Tariq Ali
Imperial Delusions

 

 

 

February 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs

Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day

Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill

P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust

Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story

Pamela Olson
West Bank Story

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court

Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents

Robert Fisk
History by Laptop

David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome

Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada

Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love

Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life

Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside

Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy

Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the Game

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert

Website of the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File

 

February 4, 2005

Brian Cloughley
The Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"

Bill Christison
Election Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?

Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft

Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal

Ron Jacobs
The Downward Spiral in Iraq

 

 

February 3, 2005

Ward Churchill
On the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications and Gross Distortions

Sharon Smith
Resisting Soldiers Need Our Support

Mickey Z.
Leslie Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?

Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union

Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan

Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq

Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence

Dave Lindorff
The Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies

 

 

February 2, 2005

David Domke / Kevin Coe
Bush's Brand of Christianity

Noam Chomsky
Iraq After the Elections

M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me in Its Crosshairs

Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen

Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean

Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT

Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn

Website of the Day
War is a Racket

 

 

February 1, 2005

Joshua L. Dratel
The Torture Memos

Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi

Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"

Uri Avnery
The Stalemate

Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal

Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel

Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades

Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
American Police State

Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 22, 2004

James Petras
An Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre Historical Amnesia

Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel

Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge

Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column

Kathleen Christison
Imagining Palestine

Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos

 

 

December 21, 2004

Greg Moses
The New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV

Dave Lindorff
Losing It in America: Bunker of the Skittish

Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk

Dragon Pierces Truth*
Concrete Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam

Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"

Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti

Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report

Paul Craig Roberts
America Locked Up: a System of Injustice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot Stories

Alexander Cockburn
Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

Subcomandante Marcos
The Death Train of the WTO

Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens as Model Apostate

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?

Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians

Steve J.B.
Prison Bitch

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War

Wendell Berry
Small Destructions Add Up

CounterPunch Wire
WMD: Who Said What When

Cindy Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

Click Here for More Stories.

 

 

Subscribe Online

 

March 29, 2005

Anarchism Against the Laws of Kings

The Subversive Commandments

By CARL G. ESTABROOK

Ignoring government assaults on the Bill of Rights (for which, admittedly, the remedy under the present US Constitution is impeachment, the responsibility of Congress) the US Supreme Court has instead fastened its attention on a political fetish-object: the Ten Commandments. In the midst of an illegal war, a torture scandal, and lawless administration actions -- such as imprisoning an American citizen, Jose Padilla, for almost three years now without trial or charge -- the court recently heard arguments on the question (as the New York Times put it), "what does it mean for the government to display a copy of the Ten Commandments? ... a six-foot red granite monument that has sat since 1961 on the grounds of the Texas Capitol, and framed copies of the Ten Commandments that were hung five years ago on the walls of two Kentucky courthouses."

In an impressive confirmation of the Postmodernist-cum-Humpty-Dumpty theory of the meaning of words ("The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all"), both sides (as we say) tell us what the Ten Commandments mean. Conservatives defend the postings in Kentucky and Texas on the grounds that the Ten Commandments "formed the foundation of American legal tradition." Liberals on the other hand insist that the posting is an "establishment of religion," contrary to the first amendment to the Constitution. In fact, both are wrong: the Ten Commandments in their historical setting are a revolutionary manifesto, dedicated to the overthrow of traditional authority and religion.

The Ten Commandments (unnumbered) were written down perhaps as early as the fifth century BCE in two passages in the Hebrew bible (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21), but they represent a view that goes back perhaps another eight centuries to the beginnings of the people of Israel -- who were probably not originally what we would call "an ethnic group." As described by Norman Gottwald in his magisterial _The Tribes of Yahweh_, the Israelites as a people began in a revolution of slaves against the Egyptian empire, a massive rejection of the society of the time. That society was one of authority and religion, presided over by a king whose position was guaranteed by the gods. The Hebrews (the word seems originally to have meant "outlaws") rejected both the kings and the gods.

The Exodus events of perhaps the thirteenth century BCE were not so much a migration (as is pictured in the bible story) but a "going out" (exodus) from a society and its assumptions. The Ten Commandments are a proclamation of that revolution, a "Declaration of Independence of Liberated Israel."

The text begins with the presentation of a liberator, styled YHWH (a form of the Hebrew verb "to be"), "who brought you out of the house of slavery." YHWH is not a god in the sense of the surrounding society. Gods guarantee authority, and YHWH destroys it: "You shall have no gods." Idolatry is the greatest sin in Judaism, Christianity and Islam because it means bowing down before symbols of oppression. Even an image of YHWH is forbidden -- the only image of YHWH is humanity (Genesis 1:26). To "misuse" the name of YHWH is not a matter of saying "goddamn": it is to use the name to wield numinous power, as was done with the names of the gods -- that is to say, it is to practice religion. The Ten Commandments forbid religion (Exodus 20: 1-7).

The commandment about the sabbath has nothing to do with going to church. On that day, "You shall not do any work": it is a commandment against the idolatry of work. The revolutionary Israelites were slaves, valued only for their work. "We are people, but you have forgotten it." The next commandment is similar. "Honor your parents" has nothing to do with obedience: it means not to discard people just because they are too old to work.

The rest of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-17) are a picture of the society that was being rejected, a society that claimed the power of life and death ("You shall not kill"). The commandment against adultery is not primarily about sex (the Hebrew bible isn't very interested in sex) and the commandment against stealing is not about property -- they're against stealing people. Biblical scholars have recognized for many years that these commandments are condemnations of the powerful who invaded households to steal concubines and slaves.

Such a society is based on greed ("You shall not covet") and requires the protection of lies ("You shall not bear false witness"). The Ten Commandments sketch the sort of society that the Israelites thought themselves called upon by YHWH to construct. The commandments are not primarily individual but communal, a demand for a just community, without the domination and stratification of most previous (and most subsequent) civilization.

Three-quarters of the history of Christianity had gone by before the Ten Commandments became, on the eve of the Reformation, the primary expression of morality in western Europe -- and then only after a revolutionary reinterpretation, as the modern attempt to discover their original intent (as the lawyers would say) shows. For over a thousand years, the tradition of the seven deadly sins, from late antiquity, formed the basis of Christian moral exhortation -- not the Ten Commandments. The historian John Bossy writes, "For Chaucer, and indeed for Dante, these had been a high doctrine, to be left to divines; there were still in the sixteenth century quite well-informed Catholics ... who had never heard of them ... [the] transition to the Ten Commandments as the moral system of the West ... may fairly be described as revolutionary."

What prompted the revolution in moral theory was the rise of capitalism, as can be seen in the reinterpretation of the crucial commandment in the early modern world, that about "honoring your father" ("and your mother" -- set aside for obvious reasons). An entire structure of obedience is spun out of it -- and the other commandments are reinterpreted in its light -- now that the (quite different) notions of of authority in the thousand-year reign of feudalism are coming to an end. Protestants and Catholics alike rather suddenly turned to the Commandments, wrenched from their historical context and twisted in an authoritarian direction.

The Ten Commandments in their proper historical context commend atheism in regard to the religion of the gods and anarchism in respect to the laws of the kings. Arising from a revolutionary people, they support the overthrow of authoritarian structures in the name of human community. That sounds pretty good to me.

C. G. Estabrook is a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois and conducts two weekly programs (one on politics, the other on poetry) on WEFT Champaign, 90.1 FM. He can be reached at: mailto:galliher@uiuc.edu