home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
SHOULD SCOOTER LIBBY'S LAWYER BE DISBARRED? Law school dean Lawrence Velvel says, Maybe he should, if he sat idly by while client Libby spouted lies. What lies at the core of Zionism? Michael Neumann tortures Alan Dershowitz, without a warrant! "Sex-mad adulterer from British aristocracy claims to have 'revolutionized' philosophy." Yes, Bertrand Russell, they mean you! Alexander Cockburn on Smearing 101 in the British press. Get the answers you're looking for in the 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! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
December 10 / 11, 2005 Ralph Nader December 9, 2005 Linn Washington,
Jr. Dave Zirin
/ Mike Stark Patrick Cockburn Alexander Cockburn Lila Rajiva Gary Leupp Jason Leopold Bruce K. Gagnon Andrew Cockburn Website of the Day
December 8, 2005 Kathy Kelly James Petras William S.
Lind Laura Carlsen Justin Akers Thomas Graham, Jr Norman Solomon Tariq Ali /
Robin Blackburn Website of
the Day
December 7, 2005 John Ryan Gary Leupp Fran Quigley Jeremy Brecher
/ Brendan Smith Joshua Frank William W.
Morgan Dave Lindorff Patrick Cockburn Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
December 6, 2005 Ron Jacobs Patrick Cockburn Yifat Susskind Mike Whitney Pat Williams Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
December 5, 2005 John Walsh Brian Cloughley Mokhiber /
Weissman Robert Jensen Norman Solomon Peter Rost, MD Lila Rajiva Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Rev. William Alberts Saul Landau Ralph Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Mike Whitney Allan Lichtman Dave Lindorff Brian Concannon,
Jr. Fred Gardner Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Carol Wolman St. Clair /
Vest / Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
December 2, 2005 Stan Goff Mike Ferner Christopher Brauchli Niranjan Ramakrishnan Manuel Talens Peter Phillips J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. Website of
the Day
December 1, 2005 John Walsh,
MD Ron Jacobs Jenna Orkin Joshua Frank Tiffany Ten
Eyck Missy Comley Beattie Eli Stephens Elaine Cassel Website of
the Day
November 30, 2005 Allen / D'Amato Mike Whitney Kevin Zeese Norman Solomon Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Stephen Soldz
November 29, 2005 Phil Gasper Behzad Yaghmaian Joshua Frank Walter A. Davis Gary Leupp Len Colodny Jeffrey St.
Clair Bill Quigley Website of
the Day
November 28, 2005 Chris Reed David Isenberg Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Justin E.H. Smith Mickey Z. Mike Whitney David Swanson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
November 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley John Ross Gary Leupp Fred Gardner Christopher Brauchli Dave Lindorff P. Sainath Timothy J.
Freeman Lila Rajiva Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Joaquin Bustelo Lewis Alper Will Youmans Phyllis Pollack St. Clair /
Vest Barbara LaMorticella Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
November 25, 2005 David Price Brian McKenna Jeff Halper Ray McGovern Leigh Saavedra Ingmar Lee Website of the Day
November 24, 2005 James Petras Bob Shirley Mike Fox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Greg Moses Alexander Cockburn
November 23, 2005 Ramzy Baroud Mike Whitney Stan Cox Linda S. Heard November 22, 2005 Kevin Gray
/ Mike Hersh Ralph Nader Michael Donnelly Mike Ferner Pierre Tristam Marshall Auerback Website of
the Day
November 21, 2005 Mike Marqusee Josh Frank Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Russ Baker Robert Jensen Paul Craig
Roberts
November 19 / 20, 2005 Fred Gardner Rep. Cynthia McKinney Ron Jacobs David Vest J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. John R. Bomar John Ross Phillip Cryan Dave Lindorff Dick J. Reavis Jeremy Scahill Dan Wright John Stanton St. Clair / Vest / Walker Phyllis Pollack Dr. Susan Block Poets Basement
November 18, 2005 Michael Neumann Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer Don Monkerud Tom Kerr Trish Schuh
November 17, 2005 John Walsh Rep. John Murtha Brian J. Foley CounterPunch
News Service Dave Lindorff Mark T. Harris Cockburn /
St. Clair
November 16, 2005 John F. Sugg Noam Chomsky Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Sam Husseini Pierre Tristam Greg Bates Farrah Hassen Bill Christison Website of
the Day
November 15, 2005 Todd Chretien Leah Caldwell Frederick Hudson Harry Browne Jason Leopold Ingmar Lee Diana Barahona Tom Andre Website of the Weekend
November 14, 2005 Diana Johnstone Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Joshua Frank Christopher
Reed
November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gwyneth Leech Elmas Mallo Michael Neumann Saul Landau Sam Husseini Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Michael Donnelly Joe Allen Roland Sheppard Justin E.H.
Smith Ben Tripp St. Clair /
Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Eli Stephens David Swanson M. Junaid Alam Matt Reichel Naima Bouteldja Jeff Halper Website of the Day
November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Diana Johnstone Roosa / Nevins Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Ross Mike Whitney Mark Engler Juliano Mer-Khamis Ron Jacobs Jill S. Farrell Missy Comley
Beattie Mitchel Cohen Evelyn J. Pringle Reza Fiyouzat Charles Sullivan Zachary Richard Ben Tripp St. Clair / Vest
November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Lindorff Phillip Cryan Christopher Brauchli William S.
Lind Daryl G. Kimball George Beres Peter Montague
November 3, 2005 James Petras Saul Landau Rep. Cynthia McKinney Michael Dickinson Joshua Frank Remi Kanazi Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
November 2, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Robert Oscar Lopez John Walsh Brian J. Foley Ramzy Baroud M. Junaid Alam Todd Chretien Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs Gary Leupp John Ross Bill Quigley Joseph Nevins Dave Lindorff Linda S. Heard Heather Gray Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St. Clair
October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Mark Weisbrot Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Farooq Sulehria Nicole Colson Madis Senner Paul Craig
Roberts
Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Steven Higgs Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Joshua Frank Laura Santina Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs Dr. Susan Block Vanessa S. Jones Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
Subscribe Online
|
December 10 / 11, 2005 It's Up to Us to Protect Our RightsAbortion and the Bush CourtBy ELIZABETH SCHULTE The future of women's right to a safe, legal abortion is on the chopping block as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on a New Hampshire parental notification law. On November 30, the Court--led by Bush crony and new Chief Justice John Roberts--began hearing arguments in the case of Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which will decide the constitutionality of a state law barring doctors from providing an abortion to a minor abortion without notifying a parent, and requiring a 48-hour waiting period. More than 40 states already have parental notification or consent laws, but what makes New Hampshire's different is that it doesn't include an exception for a woman's health. The only exception is "imminent death." While this law may fall short of directly challenging Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal nationwide, it piles on yet another obstacle to women seeking abortions. Its victims are among the most vulnerable--young women who may not be in the position to talk to a parent about their choice. If Ayotte is upheld, it sets a precedent for further restrictions--such as the ban on a late-term procedure misnamed "partial-birth" abortion by the right. In some states where this ban has gone into effect, all abortion procedures have been halted--because the legislation is so vaguely worded and doesn't use real medical terminology. A federal ban on what the right claims are "partial-birth" abortions was passed in 2003, but the courts blocked it from taking effect because the law lacked an exception for the woman's health. But a Supreme Court decision upholding Ayotte could change that. As if this weren't bad enough, the Senate will begin confirmation hearings January 9 on Samuel Alito, the Bush administration's pick to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Last week, press reports exposed the existence of a 1985 memo showing that in Alito's application for a promotion within the Reagan administration, he outlined a strategy for overturning Roe v. Wade. Alito's method was to avoid a "frontal assault" and instead chip away by "mitigating its effects." "[T]he Constitution," the likely next Supreme Court justice argued, "does not protect a right to abortion." Also last week, Alito's membership in the rabidly anti-affirmative action (even anti-coeducational!) group "Concerned Alumni of Princeton" was revealed. There's no doubt that Alito's nomination is meant to tip the balance of the Court further to the right--putting rights we take for granted today, like the right to choose abortion, in jeopardy. EVERY U.S. schoolchild can probably rattle off the same phrases about the U.S. Supreme Court--part of a delicate system of checks and balances, wise and educated men standing above the fray of partisan politics. But what goes on behind the gleaming marble walls is very different. While the idea of hiring your best friends to one of the most important jobs in Washington--for life--may seem like a uniquely George W. Bush way to do things, crony appointments of Supreme Court justices goes back to Andrew Jackson at least. Early on, presidents handed out Court appointments to their buddies and business associates, with the assurance that their political agenda would be carried on. The idea that the Supreme Court isn't really neutral is hardly lost on the American public. A Newsweek poll following the 2001 Bush v. Gore decision, which stopped the Florida vote recount and awarded the presidential election to Bush, found that 65 percent of those surveyed believed politics or partisanship played a role in the Court's decision. Today, there's an important difference in how the mainstream political debate about Supreme Court justices plays out. For liberals, the question is preserving the "balance" of the Court; for conservatives, it's about thwarting "activist judges." Both sides assume that, first, justices have no opinions of their own (which, of course, they do), and, second, they make decisions based on some sort of pure legal ideal. The Court's real role, however, is to act in the interests of the rich and the powerful. In some cases, the justices and the powerful are one in the same. This was true in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the Court, divided between Northern and Southern interests, ruled in favor of the slave masters. As the Albany, N.Y., Evening Journal commented, "Five of its nine silk gowns are worn by Slaveholders. More than half its long Bench is filled with Slaveholders. Its Chief Justice is a Slaveholder. The Free States, with double the population of the Slave State, do not have half the Judges. The majority represent a minority of 350,000. The minority represent a majority of twenty Millions!" When the interests of Corporate America are at stake, the highest court heeds their call. In the early part of the 20th century, the Court overturned several laws designed to improve workers' living standards or make it easier to organize unions. The justices also undid congressional attempts to shorten the workday, outlaw child labor and impose a minimum wage for women. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the debate within the U.S. ruling class over New Deal programs was expressed in the Court, which blocked so many anti-poverty policies that Franklin Roosevelt tried in 1937 to pack the Court by appointing more justices. Likewise, in wartime, the Court has pitched in, rolling over civil liberties in the interests of U.S. imperialism. During the First World War, the Court gave the green light to the persecution and imprisonment of pacifists and "foreigners" under the federal Espionage Act. It okayed the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in internment camps during the Second World War. During the Cold War, the justices came back early from vacation to speed along the executions of so-called "atomic spies" Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. WHEN THE views of the status quo dominate in society, the Supreme Court usually echoes them. But when these ideas come to be questioned in society at large, the effect is felt among the justices. One example is racial segregation in the U.S. South. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which overturned the "separate but equal" standard established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, was a response to the changing political climate concerning race in the U.S.--the clash between racist laws and an African American population that was no longer going to stand for this. Likewise, during the early 1970s, the Court responded to changing attitudes and the political demands of social movements. In 1972, a Court led by Richard Nixon appointee Warren Burger ruled against the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia, stating that capital punishment was "cruel and unusual punishment." In 1973, it ruled in favor of a woman's right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. What led up to these groundbreaking wins wasn't superior legal argument or some sort of Supreme Court change of heart, but the pressure of social movements grown so strong that they couldn't be ignored. The movement for abortion rights had been building, with individual states repealing anti-abortion laws and a vocal activist minority tying abortion rights to the fight for women's liberation. At the same time, other social movements--demanding Black Power, gay liberation, Native American rights, and withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam--blossomed, giving confidence to all the struggles. This helped shift the political climate generally, which in turn forced a shift in the Supreme Court, even though it was made up mostly of Nixon appointees. JUST AS these rulings didn't come without pressure, the gains they promised don't come without struggle either. For example, Brown v. Board of Education would have meant little had civil rights activists and students in the South not taken action to force local governments to comply. The same is true about Roe. Almost immediately after the ruling, the conservatives set out to gut it. And in the absence of a strong and sustained movement, they've gained a lot of ground. The political climate can be shifted back--if our side gets organized and creates a vocal opposition to the Bush administration's assault. This means organizing protests in the streets--but also making the arguments that puts the political debate back on our terms, As historian and activist Howard Zinn wrote recently in the Progressive magazine: "It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice... "The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away. The rights of working people, of women, of Black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves." Elizabeth Schulte writes for the Socialist
Worker.
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |