Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives from July 2011
It is surely one of the great strategic screw-ups in the history of war and intelligence analysis. In March, after the second UN Security Council resolution used by NATO to launch its bombing campaign, the predictions were that Tripoli and thus Ghadafi would fall within t...
“The impact of war is self-evident, since economically it is exactly the same as if the nation were to drop a part of its capital into the ocean”
– Karl Marx, ...
The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, calls his boss, Adolf Hitler, by hell-phone.
“Mein Führer,” he exclaims excitedly. “News from the world. It seems we were on the right track, after all. Anti-Semitism is conquering Europe!”
“Good!...
With the world concerned about US financial credibility and the poor outlook for the US economy, now is not the time for the Republicans to grandstand on the public debt. The debt ceiling needed to be quietly raised. Instead, the Republicans started a fire and then thre...
“International markets are absolutely on tenterhooks, because up until now there really has been a pretty blithe assumption that sooner or later politicians would strike a deal, and it would probably be last-minute, but a deal would be done before Aug. 2...
The German Parliament voted last week to phase-out nuclear power by 2022. Thus far lacking a legislative commitment, Prime Minister Naoto Kan says even resource-poor Japan should wean itself from nuclear power. Seventy percent of Japanese parliamentarians agree with him. ...
Three years ago this month, T. Boone Pickens launched a multi-million dollar crusade to bring more wind energy to the US. “Building new wind generation facilities,” along with energy efficiency and more consumption of domestic natural gas, the Dallas billionaire cla...
It is self-evident that no sickness can be successfully cured without proper diagnosis of the illness. In their frantic efforts to remedy the plague of national debt and deficit, however, US policy makers tend to shy away from the root causes of the problem and focus, ins...
When President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried desperately to quell Yemen’s popular uprising, he appealed to tribalism, customs and traditions. All his efforts evidently failed, and the revolution continued unabated. When Saleh denounced women for joining men in demonstrat...
On July 9 I took part in a demonstration in front of the White House, the theme of which was “Stop Bombing Libya”. The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing of a foreign country, which the White House was selling as “humanitarian int...
The invasion was planned and the opportunity to execute it was highly propitious.
They say ‘time heals’ emotional wounds. If that is so why don’t I feel less enraged as the days go by since the outrageous invasion of Libya on ludicrous false prete...
Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner were at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. this week for a discussion about their book – ...
I ran into my friend Jeff Madrick a few weeks ago. Like a rabbit out of a hat, or so it seemed, he whipped from his coat a copy of his new book, ...
Consider the following quote from Progressive magazine editor Matthew Rothschild last October: “With economic pain at the highest level ever seen by most Americans, and with minorities especially hard hit, we’re seeing a revolt not by people of color, not th...
Modern industrial civilization weakens the family, which is not necessarily bad, since it allows children to escape tyrannical parents. In such a society, the home is not so much a socializing haven as a motel, where wage earners drive back each evening only to ignore eac...
The massacre in Oslo has focused attention on the toxic influence of the Islamophobic blogosphere from which Anders Breivik cut and pasted much of his manifesto.
But it’s important to recognise that the far right blogs do more than simply disseminate hatred ...
“The reason we have a Department of Defense is to break things and kill people. The problem we have now is that so much of the money is not going to the people who are breaking things and killing people.”
– Ret. Marine General Arnold L. Punaro...
“If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.”
- Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994...
The Norway killings by Anders Breivik and the death of Amy Winehouse would seem to have little, if anything, to connect them, apart from sharing a fateful historical moment. And yet these events, happening alongside each other, compel cultural self-reflection on the kind ...
The Group of Eight (G8) nations comprise around 53.0% of global nominal GDP and 42.5% of global GDP. A primary reason for this is because they control most of the world’s capital. This fact is directly related to these nations’ colonial and imperial histor...
We watch an aged man pull his cart out of Sylvio Cator Stadium’s back gate, maneuvering it precariously between a parked car and a steep gutter. His cart is heavy and stacked high with wood, tarp, and the bare essentials of his life. He pulls the cart behind him, mu...
I was listening to music when the plot of an old movie crashed through the guardrails of my mind. I searched for a title I couldn’t recall. Dennis Weaver’s face appeared. The actor portrays a motorist at the wheel of a sedan menaced by a huge tanker truck. Of ...
Go to the airport. Get on an airplane.
See how class flies.
Travel classes. Cabin classes: First Class. Business Class. Economy Class.
No attempt to hide class. Class inequality in your face. Up in the air.
Class bought. Booked. Unabashed class...
Partisan bitterness has become a familiar feature of Capitol Hill politics. But given the recent debt debacle, it was little surprise that two committee rooms full of congressional lawmakers were giddy at the chance to sing bipartisan praises and wave through legislation ...
Guns. You already know the right opinion to have on that topic, right? Well, maybe this is something you’ve not considered before.
Guns are the biggest issue that keep a good portion of country folks voting Republican even when it may be the Democrats who bes...