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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! The Cult of the Stranglers
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
The Cult of the Stranglers
William Pinch writes a dazzling essay on criminal conspiracies and religious violence, and the state’s uses of “terror”, from the Indian “thugs” to 9/11. Andrew Cockburn describes Wall Street’s triumphant routing of financial reform. Serge Halimi on the deficit bogy, weapon of the rich. 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 December 25-27, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Mark Rudd Ralph Nader Nicola Nasser Rannie Amiri Christopher Brauchli Ramzy Baroud John Blair Michael D. Yates David Macaray David Yearsley December 24, 2009 Carl Ginsburg Franklin C. Spinney For Better or Worse? the Afghan Escalation and Women's Rights Nadia Hijab Mike Whitney Jayne Lyn Stahl William Loren Katz Martha Rosenberg Stephen Fleischman Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
December 23, 2009 David Price Dean Baker Andy Worthington Neve Gordon Helen Redmond Debayni Kar Fred Gardner Brian Tokar Dave Zirin Randall Amster Website of the Day December 22, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Ralph Nader David Rosen Laurie Kirby Ron Jacobs Dick J. Reavis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Norman Solomon Rannie Amiri Website of the Day December 21, 2009 Alan Farago Marjorie Cohn Uri Avnery Mike Whitney Mary Lynn Cramer Mark Scaramella Walter Brasch David Michael Green Ingmar Lee Farzana Versey Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day
December 18-20, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Michael Colby Jeremy Scahill Stewart J. Lawrence Mike Whitney Andy Worthington James Ridgeway Saul Landau John Ross Danny Weil Rannie Amiri Franklin Lamb Steve Early Liaquat Ali Khan Fred Gardner D. K. Wilson Missy Beattie Jim Goodman George Wuerthner Charles R. Larson Lorenzo Wolff David Yearsley Ben Sonnenberg Lordura di Napoli: the Best DVDs of the Year Wajahat Ali Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend December 17, 2009 Steven Higgs Barbara Koeppel Dave Lindorff Ramzy Baroud Ron Jacobs Shamus Cooke Christopher Brauchli Binoy Kampmark Norm Kent Patrick Bond Website of the Day December 16, 2009 James Bovard Gregory V. Button Dan Schiller Gareth Porter Farrah Hassen Nicola Nasser Daniel C. Maguire Martha Rosenberg David Macaray Ellen Brown Robert Bryce Website of the Day December 15, 2009 Ellen Cantarow Chris Floyd Anthony DiMaggio Dean Baker Andy Worthington Mike Whitney Jayne Lyn Stahl Jeff Ballinger Raymond Lawrence David Rovics Website of the Day December 14, 2009 Daniel Wolff Bill Quigley Patrick Cockburn Michael Hudson Paul Craig Roberts Rob Stone, MD Dr. Susan Block Pervez Hoodbhoy Mike Whitney Shepherd Bliss Website of the Day
December 11-13, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Carl Ginsburg Joshua Frank / Franklin C. Spinney Anna Vigna Mike Whitney Bill Moyers / Julien Mercille Brian Cloughley Benjamin Dangl Conn Hallinan Christopher Brauchli Fred Gardner David Macaray Limone Tatatjavy Joseph Shansky Belén Fernández Ingmar Lee Ron Jacobs Brenda Norrell Farzana Versey Ramzi Kysia Missy Beattie Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend December 10, 2009 William Blum John Ross Björn Kumm Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Jayne Lyn Stahl Gareth Porter Rannie Amiri Norman Solomon James Faris Website of the Day Kevin Alexander Gray Joe Bageant Stephen Soldz Anthony DiMaggio David Swanson Dave Zirin Thomas Power Martha Rosenberg Susie Day US Peace Groups Website of the Day December 8, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Mike Whitney Brendan Cooney Stephanie McMillian Ron Jacobs Benjamin Dangl Kevin Mink Dave Lindorff Helen Redmond David Macaray Franklin Lamb December 7, 2009 Margot Kidder Patrick Cockburn Gareth Porter Marshall Auerback Clancy Sigal Jeffrey Blankfort Jonathan Cook Brian McKenna Bouthaina Shaaban Charlotte Laws Harry Browne Website of the Day December 4-6, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Vijay Prashad Muhammad Idrees Ahmad Linn Washington, Jr. Eamonn McCann Rannie Amiri Lebanon: an End to Sectarian Politics? David Rosen Benjamin Dangl Dave Lindorff Dan Meek Geoff Berne Todd Alan Price Frank Green John Halle Brian Tokar Brian M. Downing Jim Goodman Bruce E. Levine Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend December 3, 2009 Jeff Ballinger Paul Fitzgerald / Elizabeth Gould Christopher Brauchli Laura Flanders Franklin Lamb Mark Weisbrot Gary Leupp Stephen Fleischman Bill Christison December 2, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Gareth Porter Zoltan Grossman Mike Whitney Ron Jacobs M. Shahid Alam D.K. Wilson Fran Shor Susan Galleymore Jayne Lyn Stahl Website of the Day December 1, 2009 David Price Afshin Rattansi Carlos Benemann Dean Baker Bouthaina Shaaban Rejecting Westocentrism David Rosen Susan Galleymore David Macaray Miriam Pemberton Farzana Versey Website of the Day November 30, 2009 Gary Leupp Mara Ahmed / Mike Whitney Steven Higgs P. Sainath Jonathan Cook Norm Kent Dave Lindorff Normon Solomon David Michael Green How Dare You Clean Up Our Mess? Website of the Day November 27 - 29, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Carl Ginsburg Mike Whitney Franklin Spinney Joshua Frank Saul Landau Heather Gray John Ross David Macaray Franklin Lamb Shamus Cooke David Ker Thomson Martha Rosenberg Ramzy Baroud Ron Ridenour Amanda Mueller James Rothenberg Travis Kelly Don Monkerud Ron Jacobs Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend November 26, 2009 Vijay Prashad Greg Moses Jayne Lyn Stahl Jeff Cohen John Blair Ann Robertson / Farzana Versey Sam Husseini Tom Mountain Website of the Day November 25, 2009 Dave Lindorff Marjorie Cohn Belén Fernández Ralph Nader Rannie Amiri Missy Beattie Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing? Norm Kent Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry Ron Ridenour Website of the Day November 24, 2009 Mary Lynn Cramer Dean Baker George Ciccariello-Maher Eric Walberg Andy Thayer David Macaray Laura Carlsen Gary Leupp Adam Federman William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas? Website of the Day November 23, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Jonathan Cook Edward S. Herman / David Peterson Bouthaina Shaaban Helen Redmond Rannie Amiri Dave Lindorff Rev. William E. Alberts Mike Whitney Mark Weisbrot David Michael Green November 20-22, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney Fred Gardner James J. Brittain Jonathan Cook Alan Farago David Macaray Binoy Kampmark Ben Sonnenberg Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Brenda Norrell Ron Ridenour |
Christmas Weekend Edition CounterPunch DiaryDisappointments in SamarraBy ALEXANDER COCKBURN Hazlitt got gloomily drunk for a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, accurately anticipating that decades of reaction lay ahead, now that Boney had been definitely put away, with the Holy Alliance in the saddle and the French contagion safely bottled up. Smart fellow, that Hazlitt. He should have stayed drunk for a month. Sometimes, on the edge of a new decade, things look dismal but one has the feeling that something good just might be around the corner. The 70s for example: at their onset, Nixon was in the high noon of his first term, drenching Vietnam in blood, while his attorney general John Mitchell pored over plans to lock up the left at home. It looked as though darkest night was falling. And yet there was a certain edgy, desperate hope in the air – and four short years into the 70s the hopers, no longer desperate but exultant, saw Nixon clamber into a helicopter and take off from the White House lawn towards his version of St Helena, in San Clemente; and nine months later on April 30, 1975, Gunnery Sgt. Bob Schlager and 10 other Marines finally caught the last helicopter off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Ah, those raucous, wonderful 70s! Those who missed them will never know the sweetness of life, as Talleyrand said of the Ancien Regime. Sweet and sharp. I spent them in New York and there was no better place to be. With the Eighties you could feel the air beginning to seep out of the tires. For one thing, Death kept missing his appointments in Samarra, after years of rigorous punctuality with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedy brothers. He’d already fumbled two dates with Gerald Ford, when his chosen messengers, Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme, messed up. On March 30, 1981, another of death’s chosen messengers, John Hinckley, tried to shoot Reagan and failed to get his man. That would have been a game changer! We’d have had three months of Ron instead of eight weird years when America plunged into fantasy, where it still resides. We wouldn’t have heard Ron give the Star Wars speech, or Nancy just saying No. Or Ron saying he expected Armageddon to come in his lifetime. Or Nancy running the country with the help of Mrs Quigley, her astrologer. We’d have had George Bush Sr… surely a one-termer. It would have all been different… But would it really? Clinton and the Nineties suited each other fine, and Bill gave us our last known dose of politics as fun, with the Lewinsky affair, but the decade would have had the same general contour – though a Republican president would have had much bigger problems getting the poor tossed off welfare. And then in 2000 we had Bush and Gore, and the American people very reasonably couldn’t figure out which one to go for. The folks who knew Al best – the voters of Tennessee, went for George. And then in September of Bush’s first term we had a game changer here in America. Death finally rounded up a gang of messengers with a real commitment to getting the job done. But game changer isn’t quite the word for the event that launched the Noughts. 9/11 just speeded up basic tendencies which were already in train. Invasion of Iraq? The onslaught had been in full spate through most of Clinton-time via a lethal embargo and almost daily bombings – and the course of Iraqi politics had been set back in 1963 with the Kennedy administration okayed CIA complicity in the overthrow and murder of the Iraqi nationalist, General Kassim, setting the stage for the CIA’s man, Saddam Hussein. The Afghan mess, now about to get messier, was set up in the late 1970s, when the Carter administration supervised the overthrow of Afghanistan’s one shining moment of hope, the left reformist governments that took power in 1978. That’s when Osama was ushered onto the stage of history, as one of the CIA’s men. Israel, the Palestinians? Rewind the decades back to Truman and beyond. What made the American 70s exciting was that the left – in its broadest antinomian contours - had life in it, still pumped up by radical successive radical generations all the way back to the beginning of the twentieth century. The last time we saw that left in action was in the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 and the solidarity movement during Reagan’s wars in Central America. In 1992 the left went hook, line and sinker for Bill Clinton and lost all independent traction. By 1996 fealty to the Democratic Party had become a habit. There was the brief flare up in Seattle during the WTO confab, but that turned out to be more of a final flicker than a new ignition point. Same story in 2000. Same again in 2004 (all in behind the Democrat Kerry, in case you forget) and finally, most deliriously, there was the left’s love affair with the salesman of hope in 2008, Barack Obama. Yes, there are many candles in the darkness. Brave souls soldier on, whether battling the military recruiters, defending Palestine, or advancing labor’s cause. Gaze out across the political landscape and there are many vigorous, dogged people at work. But, as a vital, compelling, creative force in American political life, the left is dead and gone, many of its erstwhile or potential members lost in the new Age of Superstition, fretful captives in the thickets of kookdom, whether in the form of 9/11 conspiracism – au revoir Cindy Sheehan! – or gazing aghast at Michael Mann’s bogus hockey-stick graph instead of improving their minds and political potential by reading the Eighteenth Brumaire. What a grim and revealing irony that it was the Medieval Warm Period – which Al Gore and the IPCC have sought to purge from natural history – that gave birth to some of the most glorious chapters in human intellectual and artistic achievement! The corporations run the show and the only vivid opposition comes from Christian populists, who’ve bought several million copies of Sara Palin’s memoir. The teens? Raise your glass along with Mr William Hazlitt. Happy Ending! Don’t forget, The End is Nigh. No, not the Mayan calendar. We’re talking 2009. Get those deductions before midnight December 31 strikes. Squeeze in that last minute 2009 deduction against your donation to CounterPunch. CounterPunch Mamas calendar going fast What better way to look at 2010 in a happy frame of mind than to get a copy of the Country Mamas 2010 calendar supervised into triumphant production by our Business Manager, Becky Grant, whose idea it was from the start. You can see the cover photo right here on the home page, three down on the right hand side. It’s already a big hit with CounterPunchers. So order up this fresh recruit to the great tradition of America’s country calendars. Who could be more beautiful than the women of the Mattole Valley, proud and happy to decorate a kitchen wall with this zestful march of the months! Slaves to Kali? Who were the Thugs, as they were called? Were they simply members of a unified all-India cult devoted to satisfying the bloodlust of an ever-thirsty goddess, Kali, or was the religion in thug violence simply a language of expression for acts that had myriad social and economic origins? The story, set forth in our latest newsletter by William Pinch, has profound reverberations in our terror-transfixed times. As Pinch concludes, “moments of dramatic expansion of state power are often accompanied by a demonization of criminal conspiracies as a thing of evil that need to be fought on a quasi-war footing.” Also in this latest newsletter, you’ll find Andrew Cockburn on how Wall St effortlessly wiped out the possibility of serious financial reform ever emerging from Congress. Serge Halimi, director of Le Monde Diplomatique, writes on the political uses of fear-mongering about deficits. Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com |
Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
"Powerful and shocking ..
Waiting for
Lightning
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