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How the SEC Abetted Madoff's Heist, Then Covered Its Tracks
First the Swindle, Now the Whitewash. Eamonn Fingleton on how the SEC helped Madoff steal $50 billion and has now covered its tracks. Danny Weil on the latest big chapter in the smash and grab saga of neo-liberalism: privatizing Public Schools. Goodbye unions; hello “private contractors”. Now it’s Los Angeles’ turn. But, yes, we can fight back. Weil tells how. “All I ask is that the poor family I give the cow to promises never to send it to the abattoir.” Meet Lachchu, the man who saves cows. P. Sainath reports from India. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and t-shirts make great presents.
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Today's Stories October 2-4, 2009 Saul Landau October 1, 2009 Andy Worthington Carl Ginsburg Mary Lynn Cramer Col. Douglas Macgregor Brian M. Downing John V. Walsh Ramzy Baroud Norman Solomon Dan Bacher Brenda Norrell Website of the Day September 30, 2009 Vijay Prashad Gareth Porter Andy Thayer Paul Craig Roberts Dean Baker Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Laura Flanders Dave Lindorff Seumas Milne Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day September 29, 2009 Marshall Auerback Alan Farago Jeff Sher Bruce Jackson Gareth Porter Jonathan Cook Bouthaina Shaaban Dave Lindorff Stephen Soldz Sara Mann Website of the Day September 28, 2009 Laura Carlsen Anthony DiMaggio Paul Craig Roberts Neve Gordon Bill Quigley Harvey Wasserman Nicola Nasser Ben Rosenfeld Murder in New Orleans: Remembering Kirsten Brydum Website of the Day September 25-7, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Daniel Wolff Rev. William E. Alberts Mike Roselle Saul Landau Eshan Azari Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Jensen Jonathan Cook Nelson P Valdés David Michael Green Ramzy Baroud John V. Whitbeck Andy Worthington David Ker Thomson Seth Sandronsky Jim Goodman Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Website of the Weekend September 24, 2009 Steven Higgs Christopher Brauchli Marshall Auerback Stephanie Westbrook Nadia Hijab Sen. Russell Feingold David Macaray Binoy Kampmark Joe Allen Website of the Day September 23, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Gabriel Kolko Uri Avnery Shamus Cooke Missy Beattie Gareth Porter Mark Weisbrot Dr. Susan Block Norm Kent Richard Neville Website of the Day September 22, 2009 Franklin C. Spinney The Huge Hole in Gen. McChrystal's Afghan Counterinsurgency Strategy Russell Mokhiber Greg Grandin Nikolas Kozloff John Ross Ron Jacobs Tariq Ali Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Vijay Prashad Kareem Shora Website of the Day September 21, 2009 JoAnn Wypijewski Carl Finamore Uri Avnery Nikolas Kozloff Paul Simpson, M.D. Alan Nasser Ray McGovern Dave Lindorff Lina Thorne Jeb Sprague Website of the Day September 18-20, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Russell Mokhiber Mike Whitney David Michael Green Jonathan Cook Nadia Hijab Mark Weisbrot Michael Winship Michael Leonardi Andy Worthington Fred Gardner David Macaray David Rosen Jason Mark Mike Ferner Farzana Versey Ron Jacobs elin o'Hara slavick Gilad Aztmon David Yearsley Charles R. Larson Lorenzo Wolff Website of the Weekend
September 17, 2009 Joshua Frank Brenda Norrell Robert Weissman Pam Martens Franklin Lamb Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Jed Bickman Alan Farago Website of the Day September 16, 2009 Ray McGovern Stephen Green Andy Worthington Dean Baker Anthony DiMaggio Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Benjamin Dangl Robin Willoughby Eric Walberg James Ridgeway Website of the Day September 15, 2009 Mike Whitney Mutadhar al-Zaidi Marshall Auerback Afshin Rattansi Jonathan Cook Gareth Porter: Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Franklin Spinney Karen Korenoski / David Macaray Susie Day Website of the Day September 14, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts M. G. Piety Shamus Cooke Bouthaina Shaaban Alvaro Huerta John Ross Harvey Wasserman Adam Federman Stephen Fleischman Robert Jensen Website of the Day September 11-13, 2009 Alexander Cockburn JoAnn Wypijewski Carl Ginsburg Leonard Peltier Franklin Lamb Benjamin Dangl Mike Whitney John Berger Saul Landau Russell Mokhiber Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Felice Pace Jordan Flaherty Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Correia Robert Bryce Christopher Brauchli Paul Krassner Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend September 10, 2009 Joshua Frank Dean Baker Brian M. Downing Franklin C. Spinney Andy Worthington Chase Madar Farzana Versey Ronnie Cummins Binoy Kampmark Timothy Lebrón Charles R. Larson Website of the Day September 9, 2009 Richard Neville Melissa Checker Nadia Hijab Robert Weissman Jonathan Cook Russell Mokhiber James Ridgeway Richard W. Behan James McEnteer Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day September 8, 2009 Henry A. Giroux Stephen Soldz John Ross Jeff Leys Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution Shamus Cooke Ellen Brown Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington Deepak Tripathi Laray Polk Charles R. Larson Website of the Day September 7, 2009 Vicente Navarro Bouthaina Shaaban David Macaray Paul Craig Roberts Jonathan Cook Conn Hallinan Walter Brasch Mark Weisbrot Carl Finamore C. G. Estabrook Website of the Day September 4-6, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Carl Ginsburg Jonathan Cook George Wuerthner Marc Levy Ray McGovern Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Joe Paff Gareth Porter Devin Beaulieu Anthony Papa David Ker Thomson Don Fitz Lee Sustar / Jim Goodman Wajahat Ali Ron Jacobs Helen Redmond John V. Walsh Charles R. Larson Mark Scaramella David Yearsley Ben Sonnenberg Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend September 3, 2009 Marcus Rediker Ron Jacobs Mike Whitney Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Saul Landau Anat Matar Tanya Golash-Boza Dave Lindorff Andy Worthington Website of the Day September 2, 2009 John Ross Vijay Prashad Rev. Jim Rigby Joanne Mariner Missy Beattie Soren Ambrose Diane Farsetta Nadia Hijab Shamus Cooke Charles R. Larson Website of the Day September 1, 2009 Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts Mark T. Harris Dean Baker Jeffrey Buchanan Robin Mittenthal Ellen Brown Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day
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Weekend Edition Revenge FantasyTarantino Scalps His AudienceBy HARRY BROWNE What does Quentin Tarantino have to do to be taken seriously? Okay, granted, maybe for a start he should stop peppering his chat with references to trash cinema of the Seventies, a passion even most of his sympathetic critics tend to indulge rather than share. But can Tarantino’s motormouth alone be the explanation for the reaction to Inglourious Basterds? With honorable exceptions, this has divided between: (1) “he’s trying to have stupid fun with the Holocaust and World War 2, and it’s a mess”; and (2) “what great, stupid fun!” Although audiences have embraced the movie – it’s already his biggest-ever hit – the reviews wouldn’t exactly send sensitive souls dashing to the pictures. I’m a Tarantino fan – even Kill Bill brought admiring tears to my eyes – and I still might not have bothered with Inglourious Basterds if I hadn’t read Gilad Atzmon’s excellent and intriguing article in this CounterPunch: Atzmon argues that the film is, among other things, a critique of present-day Zionism. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m still hmm-ing about this part of Atzmon’s thesis, but not about the underlying supposition: that this is a brilliant, astonishing and important piece of movie-making with a profoundly serious motivating purpose, albeit one that is playfully executed. And, this being Tarantino, I suspect that purpose involves, primarily, a moral exploration-cum-critique of cinema rather than of Middle-East politics. The central method by which this is accomplished is by toying with our movie-conditioned expectations – a point dimly grasped by those who have noted that in this film the Germans are cultured and the Americans/Jews savage, but who have gone on to comment as though this were either an accident or an aberration. It seems to me that it’s central to Tarantino’s purpose. Despite appearances to the contrary, this director is not careless. Take, for example, the sadistic military officer who is reduced to a caricature that barely goes beyond his ridiculous accent. In this peculiar WW2-movie, he’s not German, he’s American, and played by a big movie star (Brad Pitt) to boot. Or take the band of Nazi-scalping Jews that he commands, the “basterds” of the title. Our expectation as viewers, from both the title and the apparent genre, is that the film will not only follow, explore and explain their exploits, but it will individuate them, man by man. Instead it barely pauses on them, with the only clue about “back-home” coming when one of them beats a brave German to death with a baseball bat, then launches into a Boston-accented radio commentary in which he stars as Red-Sox hero Ted Williams. Tarantino apparently shot, but abandoned, back-story scenes, and shows no interest in the group’s internal or external command structure while at war. The only “mechanics” that the movie-director dwells on in this movie are the gorgeous gears of an old film projector. Tarantino delivers violence, to be sure, but it’s not genre-typical: the movie’s one gunfight is finished in a blur. Instead, virtually everything worth knowing about in this film happens around a table, and usually involves talk, a lot of talk: whether it’s in a farmer’s kitchen, a fancy restaurant, a Parisian café, a provincial bar or an empty bistro, someone is making a decision while someone else tries, and usually fails, to conceal something. In the last of these table-talks, the film’s compellingly horrible German officer, Major Landa, tries to recall the English expression, “the shoe is on the other foot” – but really what he should say is: “the tables have turned.” One character is an English critic who specializes in German films. When he tells his superiors in 1944 that he hasn’t seen any German movies of the previous three years, we recognize, perhaps, that this is a permanent film-historical black hole, that even Germany’s non-propaganda is largely forgotten. And maybe we also recall that World War 2 is perhaps the central event in the history of the medium, a conflagration in the midst of Hollywood’s Golden Age that somehow failed to remove its retrospective glow: indeed, Hollywood was enriched by its refugees. Like a 21st-century Brecht, Tarantino invites us to stand back and consider the dimensions and conventions of his fictive universe. Inglorious Basterds relies upon, but also implicitly interrogates, certain cinema shorthand: we like the basterds because they’re Jews – no more needs to be said, and it isn’t; we really like Shosanna Dreyfus (her surname a reminder of French anti-Semitism) because not only is she a Jew but because she loves a black man; we can hate the rather sweet young Fredrick Zoller because not only is he German but because he has a convenient egotistical tantrum just when we might have softened toward him. Shosanna, in fact, softens toward him briefly because he happens to have a sensitive moment on the cinema screen. Perhaps most importantly, the Germans who fill the cinema for the movie’s climactic scene are obviously sadistic beasts who deserve to die because they cheer and laugh at screen violence…. Oops – what’s a Tarantino-fan to make of that? Other bits of deliberate table-turning abound, at various levels: the Jewish basterds take their tactics from the history of the Apaches, victims of American genocide; the parallel plots to kill the German high command converge but steadfastly refuse to meet; the British characters (including an immobile, grunting Churchill, and a general who sounds precisely like Austin Powers because it’s Mike Myers under all that make-up) are played by a Canadian, an Australian and an Irishman, another case of the empire striking back. Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine is, like Tarantino, a part-Italian Italian from Tennessee. So when Raine falls on Landa (as their names tell us he must) to inscribe him with a swastika, then in a shot from Landa’s point-of-view declares the carving to be his masterpiece, we may assume he speaks for the director. Tarantino’s masterpiece marks us all – as humans but especially as cinema-goers – as potential Nazis. Inglourious Basterds is, it seems, being widely enjoyed as a revenge fantasy. But the final revenge takes virtually all the “good” characters and leaves the worst alive. Tarantino has often implicated the audience in onscreen violence before; but this time the dream of revenge ends up like a nightmare. Harry Browne lecturers at Dublin Institute of Technology. Contact harry.browne@gmail.com
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift: Spell Albuquerque: Waiting for
Lightning
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