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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! How Bill (and Monica) Saved Hillary from a Federal Indictment Here's the second in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's series as they describe Hillary Clinton's years in Little Rock and her narrow escape from federal charges that would have destroyed her political career for ever. PLUS KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY on how Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are failing Black America even as they hunt for votes in So uth Carolina's "Black Primary." 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 1 / 2, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services 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   August 15, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts "No American President Can Stand Up to Israel" Michael Neumann In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg Jordan Flaherty The Struggle to Free the Jena Six Sonja Karkar Can You Hear the Cries from Gaza? Felice Pace NPR Watch: Will Linda Gradstein Go to Gaza? Joshua Frank On Censoring Pearl Jam Dave Lindorff Terrorist Nation? Carla Blank Elvis Presley: King or Apprentice? David Vest Guralnick, Elvis and Racism Harvey Wasserman Why the Neocons Won't Miss Karl Rove Peter Rost, M.D. FDA Approved Drug Makes You Hypersexual and a Compulsive Gambler Russell Mokhiber An Arab American's Pocket Political Dictionary Website of the Day Stoners Busted   August 14, 2007 Paul de Rooij Humanitarian Wars and Associated Delusions Winslow T. Wheeler Congress's Busted September: Disingenuous Gestures Amid Catastrophe David Rosen The Case of Genarlow Wilson: Racism, Justice and Age-of-Consent Laws in America Gary Leupp Bush Warns Puppets Not to Praise Iran Clifton Ross Latin America at the Crossroads Muhammad Idress Ahmad The Politics of Democracy Promotion Jacquelyn Godin A Circle of Poison: Pesticides in the Plantations Uri Avnery Oslo Revisited Ramzy Baroud A Palestinian Miracle at the UN? James McEnteer Philistines as Cultural Critics Website of the Day When Cheney Called Iraq a Quagmire   August 13, 2007 Jeremy Scahill The Mercenary Revolution F. William Engdahl The Hidden Agenda Behind Bush's Biofuel Plan Alexander Cockburn The Veldt Will Never Be the Same Kathy Kelly Iraq's Refugees: "et to Work" Chris Floyd No Light, Light Tunnel: the Bipartisan Guarantee of More War in Iraq Paul Craig Roberts Hegemony of the Cockroach William Blum First Pullout, Then Bloodbath? Kenneth Couesbouc The Language of Dominion Rannie Amiri Tancredo's Screedo: a Lethal Mix of Ignorance and Insanity Brenda Norrell Priests Expose Secret Cycle of US Torture Fran Shor All Fall Down Ron Jacobs Dr. Strangelove Meets Dubya's Double Buzz Twofer Website of the Day The Beauty of Defiance   August 11 / 12, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How the Democrats Blew It in Only 8 Months Stan Goff The Cover-Up of Pat Tillman's Death Ralph Nader GM Radio: Payola to Rightwing Talk Shows? Vijay Prashad Destination Darfur: a New Cold War for Oil Greg Moses SubPrime People: Behind the Banking Crisis Alan Farago The Cratering Mortgage Market, WCI Communities and Amb. Al Hoffman Patrick Cockburn The Cracks in Saddam's Dam Ben Tripp On Fleeing the Country Robert Fantina Romney's Dance: The Rightwing Flip-Flop John Ross The Guelaguetza Strategy in Oaxaca Seth Sandronsky Organizing Nurses Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Mitt Romney to Bill Richardson Website of the Weekend Pearl Jam: Censored by ATT   August 10, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts China's Threat to the Dollar is Real Stan Goff How Pat Tillman Died Marjorie Cohn A Blank Check for Domestic Spying Saul Landau In the Age of Immigrant Panic Chris Floyd Goading Xerxes: the Coming Strike on Iran Daniel Ellsberg A Vision for Cindy Sheehan's Campaign Anthony Papa The Upside Down Flag: a Country in Distress Farzana Versey On the Heels of Sir Salman Sgt. Kevin Benderman Freedom or Totalitarianism? Nuri Nuri Memories of T99 Nelson Website of the Day Lessons in Obfuscation from Sen. Larry Craig: How to Talk About Looting the Public Domain   August 9, 2007 Stan Goff The Fog of Fame: Pat Tillman as Everyone's Political Football Paul Craig Roberts In the Hole to China Alan Farago The Terror of the Mortgage Pools William S. Lind The Surge's New Math: One Step Forward, Two Back Doug Giebel Letter from Montana: What the Bushvolk Have Done to America Harvey Wasserman Radioactive Bailout in Advance Jacob Hill The Tail End of Free Trade: NAFTA's Impact on the Manufacturing Sector Raul Zibechi The Dark Side of Agrofuels Dave Zirin The Making of Barry bin Laden Website of the Day "Babies Just Come with the Scenery"   August 8, 2007 Andy Worthington Backing Up Lt. Col. Abraham on Gitmo Abuse Jeff Halper The Catch in Israel's "Generous Offers" at Jericho Greg Moses No Light in August for Texas Refugees: Judge Orders Baby Sent to Palestine Nurit Peled-Elhanan The Murder of Abir Aramin, 9 Years Old Sukant Chandan British Prisons as Islamic Universities Robert Fisk A Lebanese Surprise George H. Strauss The Military Society D.K. Wilson Bonds, the Haters and 756: Why Bob Costas Can't be Trusted Bill Day Leonardo DiCaprio's Baggage: the Perils of Celebrity Environmentalism Tim Campbell Monkey See, Monkey Do Politics Website of the Day Periodic Table of Visualization Methods   August 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Why the Surge Has Failed Andy Worthington Why Do We Need the Democrats?: They Have Failed to Restrain Bush on Gitmo, Iraq and Domestic Spying Kathy Kelly The Little Girl of Hiroshima Stan Cox The Antiwar Majority: Look Quickly, You Might Miss It Sonja Karkar Israel's Settlement Project Sen. Russ Feingold A License to Wiretap--Anyone Alan Farago Dancing in the Light of Florida Norman Solomon Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman Binoy Kampmark Giving Good Face: What Jeremy Bentham and Facebook Have in Common Dave Lindorff The Gelding Congress John Stauber Coffee with the Troops at Yearly Kos Website of the Day George Carlin on Education       Subscribe Online

September 1 / 2, 2007 The Don't Show Me State Enquiry in America Today By BEN TRIPP The quality of enquiry, or quirth, is one that has largely evaporated from American life, like the water set to boil in a pot of frogs intended to demonstrate that frogs don't know they're being boiled if you raise the temperature slowly enough. Vestiges of that spirit (of enquiry, not frog boiling) endure, but they have become almost nonsensical: take Missouri's motto "The Show Me State", for example, which is not the condition of latent homosexual voyeurism it seems to describe, rampant among Republican senators in public lavatories; rather it is an expression of skepticism. Show me proof, and then we can talk. Not a bad sentiment. Unfortunately one no longer found in most quarters of the United States. This may come from the explosion of information to which we are subjected, in the form of advertising and storytelling (or the amalgamation of both, in the case of televised programming). 500 channels, we are promised. 500 channels of what? We now have an acronym for it, TMI, which stands for either "Too Much Information" or "Trombone Meat Infringement" if you prefer acronyms made up of random words. It is hard to formulate sensible questions when a million answers have been thrust upon one before the first question had a chance to get out. Some years ago, the nuclear energy industry in put out a preemptive "educational campaign" to allay fears expressed by the millions of Americans that lived alongside the railway routes by which said industry had decided to move nuclear waste. The industry patiently and unrelentingly answered all question about the safety of this program by saying, "this spent fuel" (they call it "spent fuel" because "nuclear waste" sounds, oh, you know, so negative) "this spent fuel cannot, and will not, explode." But can it get into the air or the groundwater? It will not explode. Can it be flung by that commonplace railway accident, the impact of two trains, out of its containers and into the sorts of places a fellow is likely to come in contact with it? Is not a single flesh-rotting molecule of the stuff an absolute guarantee of death? Hush, little commoners. It will not, cannot explode. You know what? I have no idea if they're shipping spent doomfuel around on trains these days, There were too many other things going on around then, and the subject just got swallowed up along with the fate of Joanie Loves Chachi or Twin Peaks or whether Boy George could stay off heroin-- I don't even remember what the distraction de jour was. I suppose they do ship the stuff by train; the old system with donkeys was hopelessly outmoded even then. The point is that I haven't even thought about it, me who prides himself on quirth in abundance. Jesus, I can't even remember what I was going to ask my fiancée when I go downstairs with an unmatched sock and a necktie in my hand. It's too much to imagine I'm also going to remember to ask what's happening to the nuclear waste, let alone demand an answer to whatever I asked last time. But is the only problem that we Americans suffer from Trombone Meat Infringement? I think there's something else, as expressed in a motto ginned up by the Clinton people: "Don't ask, don't tell". If ever there was a rubbishy catchphrase dredged up from the large intestine of a Madison Avenue disinformation factory, this is it. Are you gay? Don't ask, Sergeant. And Private Danglers, whatever you're thinking in those lathery showers, think away, but don't tell. Let's all pretend the issue isn't even there. Homophobia is one of the most pervasive and pointless problems facing us today: if a certain congressional poofter that recently made headlines with his clumsy solicitations to an undercover policemen had merely been able to say, "gold dang, I'm as queer as bull tits", he might still have a career. Instead, he was forced to make an elaborate defense of his solicitations by describing in nauseating detail every peculiarity of his seated bathroom habits (TMI) in an attempt to answer the explicit police report filed by the officer to whom he made the advances (whose name has not been released to the press, but apparently he goes by the moniker "Swingin' Hammer"). What I mean to say is Americans now expect to find something horrible under every Rock Hudson. [Note to editor: remove previous cheap gag and replace with simple word "rock"]. Ask the most innocuous question, like "when we inevitably do leave Iraq, what is our plan for doing so?" and the hideous truth flashes out like the fangs of a hideous truth: there is no plan. This all began when someone said, "is that pop combo Milli Vanilli really singing?" It's been downhill since then. Ask any question regarding the American Gertztramufiner('sup, yo') and if an answer is forthcoming, it will certainly be what you least want to hear. One finds oneself not asking. Then of course there's the explosion of faith-based thinking. We have started to think Word is better than word. The abstract authority of the preacher or the evangelist president, the simple demand that they be trusted, believed, is deadly to any spirit of free thinking, of doubt, and even the ability to absorb basic information that doesn't quite line up with what the Daddy Figure is telling you. You add that to the endless streams of falsehoods and fudging in which every American is bathed today, you got yourself a nation of dupes. So have we seen the end of the American tradition of self-reliant doubt? Will we, as a nation, ever work up the gumption to question the word of the 'expert', the 'authority', the 'talking head' out loud, even if we secretly lack any faith that we're being told the truth? It appears, I regret to say, that we're in for a further spell of incuriosity. Maybe it started with the Reaganite anti-intellectual vogue, or earlier, when Joe McCarthy turned inquiry into inquisition. It could be the decline of such subjects as rhetoric, or the decline of schooling in general. Maybe it was Trivial Pursuit. I (by which I mean me, or the guy most people think is me, because who can ever really know anybody?) hope we can restart that useful skepticism that helped us rebuff the blandishments of kings and courtiers. There are signs this is happening. Only a handful of truly damaged individuals still believe what the government is telling them any more. A lot of people are profoundly discouraged by the energy wasted on the fad for 9/11 conspiracy theories, replete with invisible airplanes, missiles disguised as jumbo jets, and a host of demolitions experts coordinated by a White House that couldn't organize a birthday party if the kid brought his own cake. This line of questioning may be misguided, but at least it's questioning, and I'm glad the doubt is there. Building seven: why did it drop? I don't know, but Bush sure as hell wasn't behind it. He couldn't drop his own pants. The Iran war is going to be a much harder sell than Iraq was, for an example of progress. You can already see the White House people getting out of breath just trying to keep the media drumbeat going, regardless of how compliant the reporting is. There are a million other distractions, for one thing; for the neocons it's like trying to write a best-selling novel while being eaten alive by locusts. It's not the media asking the questions, it's the American public. This is encouraging. If we imagine Wolf Blitzer or that most closeted of closeteers, Anderson Cooper, is going to pitch anything but the slowest of softballs to the evil sods destroying this and other nations, our imaginations have up and quit on us. But ordinary people, meaning consumers, consumers, and voters, in that order, are asking tougher questions. They're taking less on faith. They're starting to experience the thrill of quirth, that feeling of not believing an unproven answer, of not letting someone else ask the wrong question and trying to pretend the answer will suffice. Will it turn into a change in the national character? I don't know. Disco was just a fad, thank fuck, and probably the intense Evangelical frenzy gripping certain segments of the population will wear off once old-time religion turns out to be of less utility than Disco. One can hope. I'll take a slight decrease in the level of bovine credulity. Hey, Nancy, why are you really so determined not to oppose Bush? First ask the question, then question the answer, and at last you'll have a better idea of what the real question is. For me, it's enough that I remembered why I was boiling a pan of frogs on the stove. Ben Tripp, author of Square in the Nuts, is a hack in many mediums. He may be reached at credel@earthlink.net. Creative commons copyright 2007 by Ben Tripp   Your Ad Here

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