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

 

Thanks CounterPunchers!

A tremendous outpouring of support over the past two weeks allowed us to meet and exceed our $30,000 fundraising goal, meaning we will also receive the full share of that matching grant. Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to all contributors! But here's a sobering thought: CounterPunch gets 70,000 visitors each day, but only 550 of you kicked in. It's not too late to support this website or buy a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else. The current issue features a startling report by economist Robert Pollin on peasant suicide rates in developing nations, such as India. And remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

CounterPunch Events: St. Clair in Olympia / Tariq Ali in Seattle / Yigal Bronner in Berkeley

Now Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)

Today's Stories

December 6 / 7, 2003

Saul Landau
"Reality Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq

December 5, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston

Jeremy Scahill
Bremer of the Tigris

Jeremy Brecher
Amistad Revisited at Guantanamo?

Norman Solomon
Dean and the Corp Media Machine

Norman Madarasz
France Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination

Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan: the Road Back


December 4, 2003

M. Junaid Alam
Image and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein

Adam Engel
Republican

Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI

Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia

Gary Leupp
The Fall of Shevardnadze

Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr

December 3, 2003

Stan Goff
Feeling More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money

Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates

George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?

Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart

John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario

Harry Browne
Shannon Warport: "No More Business as Usual"

 

December 2, 2003

Matt Vidal
Denial and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom

Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas

Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?

Norman Solomon
That Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test

Josh Frank
Trade War Fears

Andrew Cockburn
Tired, Terrified, Trigger-Happy


December 1, 2003

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam

Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland

Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media

Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?

Gilad Atzmon
About "World Peace"

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes


November 29 / 30, 2003

Peter Linebaugh
On the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone

Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos

Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math

Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative

Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview with John Pilger

Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam

Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream

Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia

Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser

Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali

Standard Schaefer
Unions are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes

Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay Bridge

Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again

Adam Engel
The System Really Works

Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool

Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans

Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace

Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith

 

 

November 28, 2003

William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes

David Vest
Turkey Potemkin

Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks

Wayne Madsen
Wag the Turkey

Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited

Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?

South Asia Tribune
The Story of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words

Website of the Day
Bush Draft


November 27, 2003

Mitchel Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving

Jack Wilson
An Account of One Soldier's War

Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas

Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD

Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer

Neve Gordon
Gays Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa

 


November 26, 2003

Paul de Rooij
Amnesty International: the Case of a Rape Foretold

Bruce Jackson
Media and War: Bringing It All Back Home

Stew Albert
Perle's Confession: That's Entertainment

Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities

David Orr
Miami Heat

Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists on the Beach

Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami

Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates

Kathy Kelly
Hogtied and Abused at Ft. Benning

Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement

 


November 25, 2003

Linda S. Heard
We, the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy

Diane Christian
Hocus Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators

Mark Engler
Miami's Trade Troubles

David Lindorff
Ashcroft's Cointelpro

Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas


November 24, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
The Miami Model

Elaine Cassel
Gulag Americana: You Can't Come Home Again

Ron Jacobs
Iraq Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?

Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant

 

 

November 14 / 23, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime: Was It Really a Golden Age?

Saul Landau
Words of War

Noam Chomsky
Invasion as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl

John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills

Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith

Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees

Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins

M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory

Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete

Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil

Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?

William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics

Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First

Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners

Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly

Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review of Bush in Babylon

Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq

Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions

Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?

David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead

Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film

Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors

Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam

 

Congratulations to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!

 

November 13, 2003

Jack McCarthy
Veterans for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade

Adam Keller
Report on the Ben Artzi Verdict

Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time

Vijay Prashad
Confronting the Evangelical Imperialists

November 12, 2003

Elaine Cassel
The Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?

Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo

Jonathan Cook
Facility 1391: Israel's Guantanamo

Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home

Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike

John Chuckman
Forty Years of Lies

Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency

Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left

Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops

 

 

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


Search CounterPunch

 

December 6 / 7, 2003

The Fate of America's Most Corrupt City

The San Francisco's Mayor's Race

By BRUCE ANDERSON

Next week's Frisco election is shaping up as a pivotal one, not only for America's most corrupt small city, but for the even more corrupt two-party dictatorship ruling US and the rest of the world. If Matt Gonzalez, a member of the Green Party, is elected mayor of San Francisco, it will be a dagger straight into the rotted heart of the Democratic Party because Baghdad by the Bay is home to the party's biggest wigs. Which is reason enough to vote for Gonzalez, but he's also better on the issues -- all of them -- than his opponent because he wants to represent the many against the fortunate few the present mayor has faithfully represented for years now.

Naturally, the Frisco Democrats, all of whom are millionaires, as is their vacuous candidate for mayor, are portraying Gonzalez as a dangerous radical because he's a Green. The Green Party represents reform, not revolution. (In Mendocino County the Greens barely represent that much. So far, the Mendo Greens have boldly stood for an advisory measure aimed at abolition of the laws restricting marijuana production and consumption and are presently behind a comparably wimpy measure that would prohibit the growing of genetically altered foods in the county, an issue of no local pertinence except to child-like persons whose politics revolve about their own smoking and eating practices. The Mendo Greens also operate a public radio station partly sponsored by the corporations promoting genetically altered food products.) Thank the goddess a few persons with real ability put themselves forward as Green Party candidates.

Terence Hallinan is also running for reelection as District Attorney for San Francisco. Hallinan is the first DA in the modern history of The City to stand up to the SFPD, a police department recently presided over by men who should have been packed off to prison themselves a long time ago. Lots of rank-and-file cops are supporting Hallinan because they understand that framing people for murders they didn't commit and attempting to cover up crimes committed by well-connected off-duty police officers as in the fajitagate episode, makes the whole department look like a bunch of thugs.

Chris Cunnie, president of the San Francisco Police Officers' Association, unintentionally made the case for Hallinan's re-election in last week's Chronicle. Cunnie told the Chronicle that the Police Officers' Association was supporting Kamala Harris for DA because "When the district attorney indicts 10 officers in one year, that's a problem." When ten cops are indictable in a year is a much bigger problem, Cunnie, and if you can't see that elephant standing next to you one wonders what else you don't see.

Harris' qualifications for office are that she's a she, she's a member of an ethnic minority, she's a former girl friend of Willie Brown. (As are about half the upscale babes in The City.) Which nicely summarizes Democratic Party principles these days -- race, gender and indiscriminate, serial humping. And lib-labs are still walking around scratching their heads trying to figure out why there's an imbecile in the White House with a home grown Taliban functioning as his brain!

The funniest non-issue in the Frisco mayor's race arose Monday when Newsom, Demo Hackdom's candidate, claimed that someone in the Gonzalez camp sent out an e-mail asking Greens to picket Al Gore. Gasp. Something wrong with that? But to picket Gore you'd have to somehow get in front of the limo ferrying plastic man from Feinstein's mansion one of Getty's palaces. Anyway, picketing Gore makes about as much sense as a sit down demo at Hubert Humphrey's grave.

Bruce Anderson is the publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, America's best weekly newspaper.



Weekend Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003

Peter Linebaugh
On the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone

Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos

Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math

Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative

Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview with John Pilger

Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam

Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream

Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia

Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser

Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali

Standard Schaefer
Unions are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes

Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay Bridge

Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again

Adam Engel
The System Really Works

Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool

Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans

Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace

Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith


Keep CounterPunch Alive:

Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /