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Inside Iraq's Resistance HOT HOT HOT New CounterPunch Print Edition! Meet actual Iraqis and not just Western caricatures. Laith al-Saud interviews top man in Iraq's national resistance. It's not just Abu Ghraib and bids to kill Fidel Castro. Torture and assassination are integral parts of America's imperial machine. Don't miss Andrew Wimmer's searing journey into the soul of a nation that tortures as a way of life. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the killing of General Kassem. PLUS Sam Sillen's rollicking exhumation of Edmund Wilson as Malthusian Trostskyite. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only 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! CounterPunch Writer Daniel Wolff in Portland on Race, Music and Ashbury Park Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories October 6, 2005 Robert Pollin Is the Dollar Still Falling? October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines Robert Jensen Is Bush a Racist? Ramzy Baroud Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire Col. Dan Smith Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad" Dave Zirin Barry Bonds Laughs Last Paul Craig Roberts Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over Alan Maass Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work   October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt. Mike Roselle Houston, You've Got a Problem Joshua Frank The Scoop on Harriet Miers John Chuckman War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say Alan Farago Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys Mickey Z. An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski Christine & Ethan Rose Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims Gary Leupp An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History Website of the Day Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan   October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Desperation at Holyoke Paul Craig Roberts Condi Rice: Gunslinger Joshua Frank An Interview with Cindy Sheehan Seth Sandronsky The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens Jeffrey St. Clair The Great Green Scare   October 1 / 2, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze Dave Marsh A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan Ralph Nader Gutless, Spineless and Clueless Flavia Alaya Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza Uri Avnery The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory Chris Kutalik The Battle at Northwest Airlines Greg Moses Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues Brian J. Foley I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet Nicole Colson Hunger Strike at Gitmo Ray McGovern Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility Fred Gardner Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit Justin Felux Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby! Will Youmans "Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine Mike Ferner What Else Shall We Do? David Krieger The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant Agustin Velloso Samson Returns to Gaza Saul Landau The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema Ben Tripp Right Down the Middle Poets Basement Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert Website of the Weekend Holler If Ya Hear Me   September 30, 2005 Mary Geddry Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill Paul Craig Roberts Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars Dave Lindorff Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time Gregory Wilpert "The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" Benjamin Dangl "Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo James McMurtry We Can't Make It Here Anymore T.R. Johnson Return to the Ninth Ward   September 29, 2005 Sen. Russ Feingold Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America Carl G. Estabrook Obama the Enabler Ramzy Baroud Rhetoric and Reality of War Dave Lindorff What Opposition Party? Mike Whitney Brownie's Comic Opera Jozef Hand-Boniakowski What Noble Cause? Gary Handschumacher Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan Winslow T. Wheeler No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans   September 28, 2005 Dr. Eyad Serraj Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like William A. Cook Bush's Security Barrier Liaquat Ali Khan The Invention of Porno Torture Mike Whitney Apartheid Justice in America Joshua Frank Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home? CounterPunch Wire New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Chris Genovali Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest Linn Washington, Jr. White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top   September 27, 2005 Forrest Hylton Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement Jason Leopold The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist Jennifer K. Harbury Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration Ray McGovern Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent? Mike Ferner Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon Antony Loewenstein When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia Harry Browne Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms   September 26, 2005 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend Joshua Frank Democrats Flee Peace Protests Lamis Andoni The Railroading of Taysir Alony Mike Marqusee Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement Rep. Cynthia McKinney They Can't Fool Us Anymore Ron Jacobs A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement Norman Solomon The Media and the Antiwar Movement John Chuckman Bush in a Bottle Paul Craig Roberts America is Running Out of Time   September 24 / 25, 2005 Kathy and Bill Christison Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage Ralph Nader Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina Saul Landau The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada Greg Moses A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau Roger Burbach Hugo Chavez's Mission Vijay Prashad America's Shame Laura Carlsen After NAFTA Robert Fisk When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful Dave Lindorff A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They? Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration Maj. Anthony Milavic The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti: the Time for Action is Now   September 23, 2005 CounterPunch News Service In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly Diane Farsetta Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks Robert Sandels Militarizing the Market Christopher Brauchli Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations Alan Farago Bird Flu Takes Flight Dave Zirin When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968 Maxine Conant A Simple Test for Bush David Price Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering   September 22, 2005 Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa Patrick Cockburn Iraqis: This Government has No Authority Manuel Garcia, Jr. Thinking is Religious Freedom Lucia Dailey Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One Mokhiber / Weissman Are You a Speed Freak? Russell D. Hoffman The Nukes in Rita's Path Kona Lowell God's Hurricane? Jason Leopold GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina Website of the Day Robert Pollin on the Global Economy   September 21, 2005 Jorge Mariscal Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen? Linda S. Heard Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak Joshua Frank NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan Eric Ruder "The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia Pierre Tristam The Struts and Bull Presidency Dave Lindorff The Real Story of the German Elections Mike Ferner Sit Down in DC Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Katrina Bling Bling Jeffrey St. Clair W Marks the Spot Website of the Day New Orleans: Survivor Stories   September 20, 2005 Steve Breyman Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice George Galloway Et Tu, Greg Palast? Patrick Cockburn What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion? M. Shahid Alam Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out? Mike Whitney The Gitmo Hunger Strikers Winslow T. Wheeler It's Not Rocket Science Niranjan Ramakrishnan Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit Paul Craig Roberts Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?         Subscribe Online

October 6, 2005 "Take That, Tom Friedman" Indian Elites' Neoliberal Idol Shattered Yet Again: Urban Masses Stubbornly Reject NYT's Hero By P. SAINATH Editors' note: Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Paul O'Neill and the New York Times sang his praises. The World Bank threw money at him. Chandrababu Naidu, who ruled the state of Andhra Pradesh was the great Indian posterboy of Neoliberalism Then in 2004 in national parliamentary polls and in state legislature elections the voters of this south-eastern state of some eighty million had their chance to issue a verdict on Naidu's "reforms". The verdict took the form of a ferocious NO. To the stupefaction of India's elites and media pundits who had been predicting victory for the ruler of "Cyberabad", Naidu and his Telugu Desam party were tossed from power. Soon the excuses began to mince their way into the editorial columns. Naidu was stained by association with the BJP, also rejected in 2004. Naidu had concentrated too much on the cities, and rural voters were mad at him, etc etc. But at the end of last month voters in Andhra Pradesh's municipal elections had a second chance to register their opinion of Naidu and his party. Andhra had its urban polls to municipal councils and corporations. What did urban Andhra Pradesh voters say? They handed Naidu a thrashing that exceeds the two earlier electoral defeats in its scale. No excuses left this time. Most political and media analysts are evading the event ­ which shows what ordinary people (that means urban people too) think of the pro-rich orgy that has passed for reforms in India. AC/JSC The scale of the Telugu Desam's rout in the Andhra Pradesh municipal elections exceeds that of the party's defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. The message from urban Andhra Pradesh goes far beyond the borders of the State. The more so given Chandrababu Naidu's unchallenged status for years as the poster boy of the `reforms' in this country. And as "CEO" of a State The New York Times called the "darling of western governments and corporations." Interestingly, none of the excuses trotted out for his party's disastrous show in the 2004 polls holds good this time. And yet again, the media - even entrenched sections of the Telugu media - missed the public mood. Reports of the great crowds drawn by Mr. Naidu re-kindled illusions last seen in 2004. With the same results. But first, the score. Winning more than twice the number of wards the Telugu Desam did, the Congress takes the post of chairperson in 75 of 96 municipalities. It won an absolute majority in 68. The TDP managed that in just six. Of the remaining 22 that are `hung' more will go the Congress way as the smoke clears. The Congress could end up controlling 10 of 11 municipal corporations. It has won a majority in eight. And it could manage the numbers in two more. The Telugu Desam has taken a drubbing in Mr. Naidu's home district of Chittoor. The TDP has been smashed even where it won Assembly seats in May 2004. In East Godavari for instance, it lost every one of 30 wards in the Tuni Municipal Council. (In 2004 it had annexed the Tuni Assembly seat.) And this despite the sitting MLA, its former Finance Minister, heading its poll campaign there. This Congress Government has had more than its share of follies in the past year. But the TDP's agenda this election did not go beyond personal attacks on Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. Given its own record in office, the TDP was unable to push the real issues. Its campaign was more panic-driven. In nine years of Mr. Naidu, the State did not issue a single below-the-poverty-line (BPL) ration card. That is, till just before the last polls. In one year of the Congress, lakhs of such cards were newly made out. This is a State where hunger and food have been huge issues even in urban areas. Also, the Reddy Government has not, so far at least, imposed giant burdens on urban dwellers. Contrast that with Mr. Naidu's Golden Age. In his time, the public were repeatedly hit by hikes in water charges, power rates, and a number of other costs. Also, Mr. Naidu's union-bashing (so richly praised in The New York Times) did not help his party much. The present Government's approach to labour is relatively less confrontational. Who will Mr. Naidu (and user-friendly columnists) blame this time? The messiah of hi-tech now says the Electronic Voting Machines were partly to blame. He clearly feels no need to introspect. One TDP excuse for the earlier defeats was its tie-up with the BJP. That party's communal taint, the TDP argued, had hurt its own secular image. This time, there was no such alliance. The BJP itself has been obliterated. And the MIM too, has taken a beating. Muslims have voted far less for it this time around. Meanwhile, the Left has greatly improved its position. The second oft-repeated rant was this: "The Maoists helped the Congress party in 2004." Well, now they're at war with each other. And Mr. Reddy has still got his mandate. The third major excuse for Debacle 2004 was the Congress alliance with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi. But there was no such tie-up this time. And the TRS is, if anything, a bigger loser than the TDP. The party holding aloft the banner of Telangana was humbled in that region. With TRS and Congress candidates slugging it out, the TDP should have gained. It didn't. So the plea of the pundits of 2004, that it was all just `electoral arithmetic,' does not wash. The Congress also fought the Left in over half the seats the latter contested. Despite a few adjustments at the local level, the two clashed bitterly in many places. As in Kurnool, where the TDP tried to cash in on the fight between Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The attempt failed and the TDP lost even where its enemies were at loggerheads. Nor can we pin it on the failures of lesser bosses of the Telugu Desam. Mr. Naidu is that party's one and only leader. In the Congress you can always blame a defeat on the "failure of the State unit." Or on the High Command being misled. Such pleas don't work for the TDP. No second rung leadership exists in it that counts for anything. All this, in urban Andhra. One lesson the pundits drew from the 2004 rout was this: maybe Mr. Naidu doted too much on the cities. Neglect of rural Andhra Pradesh was the sole problem. But even in the 2004 polls, the cities and towns went firmly against him. In mighty Cyberabad, image capital of the world, the TDP managed just one out of 13 Assembly seats last year. Despite its then tie-up with the BJP. This time, urban Andhra Pradesh allowed no illusions at all about how much he had done for them. The TDP's share of the urban vote dropped three per cent in just over one year. What has been common in three successive defeats is that the party was beaten across the spectrum. Rural, urban, city, town, Telangana, Rayalaseema, and coastal Andhra. The TDP can run, but it can't hide. Nobody loves the Congress. The public in this State has often shown its exasperation with that party in the past two decades. It will doubtless do that again at some point. This time, it gave it a mandate. The Telugu Desam itself was born of the electorate's disgust with the Congress in the early 1980s. It has moved a long way from that point. And public anger with the TDP has not declined in the 16 months it has been out of power. So can we start asking if, maybe, the policies of the Telugu Desam had something to do with its hara-kiri? See how badly the Congress was routed in States where its Chief Ministers admired the `Naidu model.' It's telling that the Congress swept these polls in Andhra Pradesh while being crushed in local body elections in Kerala. To be fair, the basis for the Naidu model was laid down by, first and foremost, the Congress. Mr. Naidu, however, raised it to an art form the latter could admire but copy only at grave risk. If Modi's Gujarat was Hindutva's laboratory, Naidu's Andhra Pradesh was the playpen of neo-liberal economics. It is the policies of that era the TDP needs to ponder on. Anti-poor policies The notion that Mr. Naidu was pro-urban and anti-rural was a seductive one. More so for analysts explaining their own failures. The polices of his government were anti-poor, whether urban or rural. The effects in rural areas were more devastating, as the suicides of thousands of farmers showed. But Andhra Pradesh is still a State where many in the cities remain linked to the countryside. Lots of city dwellers have a brother or father who is still a farmer. Again, despite its failures, the present Congress Government did ensure that at least some families of suicide victims were compensated. It did set up an excellent commission to go into the crisis of agriculture in the state. It acknowledged widespread distress. The TDP was the party of Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao. A charismatic leader who never tasted this kind of wipe-out even when beaten at the polls. Against all the heckling and ridicule of the media, NTR gave rice to the poor at Rs.2 a kg. In the first half of his years in power, Mr. Naidu gained much from the goodwill his father-in-law enjoyed. Just before elections, he would revert to some of those policies. Cut-outs of NTR would emerge from the mothballs. After the polls, it would be business as usual. Only, in 2004, an outraged electorate - rural and urban - decreed otherwise. And Mr. Naidu was out of business. His legacy is still fresh in the minds of people. As is their anger. This time Mr. Naidu was out of power. He still had great media support. But there was less of the cloying `national' media. Despite their bluster in covering their tracks after Debacle 2004, they were less keen to burn their fingers this time around. And there was no stream of high-flying hacks from adoring foreign media whose stories could have been written without once leaving their own countries. And no visits by Bill Gates, Bill Clinton or Paul O'Neill. For the Congress there is a mandate. But also the lesson that pushing policies similar to Mr. Naidu's will invite the same results. For the media, yet again, is a chance to learn something about how people view the pro-rich, anti-poor measures that pass for `reforms' in this country. P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu (where this piece initially ran) and the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: psainath@vsnl.com.                                       CLARIFICATION ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH We published an article entitled "A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the "Website"). Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism. As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website. We are pleased to clarify the position. August 17, 2005

Coming in the Fall from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Coming This Fall Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair