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CounterPunchers! We Still Mean It!
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CounterPunchers! We Still Mean It!
Please Read This, Then ActThese last days, assuming that you are among the tens of thousands of people around the world who check in at this CounterPunch site every day or two, we’ve been featuring our annual appeal for donations and saying that without the necessary $75,00 to be raised in these weeks, we’ll have to cut back drastically on what we do and what all you site readers who don’t subscribe to our newsletter, get every day for free.
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Today's Stories November 13-15, 2009 Tariq Ali November 12, 2009 Robert Weissman Franklin Spinney Nadia Hijab Afshin Rattansi Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Belén Fernández Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Jayne Lyn Stahl November 11, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Mike Whitney Rev. Jesse Jackson Jeff Nygaard Stewart J. Lawrence James Ridgeway Eamonn McCann Michael Ortiz Hill Shepherd Bliss Walter Brasch November 10, 2009 Ellen Cantarow Dean Baker Rose Ann DeMoro Ramzy Baroud Peter Lee Dave Lindorff Roberto Rodriguez Winslow T. Wheeler Alan Farago Joseph Grosso November 9, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Linn Washington Carl Ginsburg Jeff Leys John A. Murphy John Halle Bouthaina Shaaban James Ridgeway Dave Lindorff David Macaray Stephen Fleischman Website of the Day November 6-8, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Mark Grueter Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney James Bovard Dean Baker Robert Lawless Saul Landau Jayne Lyn Stahl Stephanie Westbrook M. Shahid Alam Marc Levy Franklin Lamb Ron Jacobs David Ker Thomson John V. Whitbeck Julien Mercille Rannie Amiri John Ross David Michael Green Carl Finamore Farzana Versey Missy Comley Beattie Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement November 5, 2009 Pam Martens Vijay Prashad Brian Gallagher Norman Solomon Nadia Hijab Joseph Shansky Andy Thayer Tracy Rosenberg Website of the Day November 4, 2009 Stan Cox Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs? Robert Weissman Susan Galleymore Ralph Nader Michael Leonardi Bitta Mistofi Robert Bryce Martha Rosenberg Dave Lindorff Website of the Day November 3, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Franklin C. Spinney Laura Carlsen Serge Halimi John Stanton Sophia Weeks Dave Lindorff November 2, 2009 Steven Higgs Ishmael Reed David Macaray Bouthaina Shaaban David Michael Green David Swanson Ellen Brown Adam Federman James McEnteer Stephen Fleischman Website of the Day October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair / Carl Ginsburg Mike Whitney Joe Bageant Gareth Porter Saul Landau Anthony DiMaggio Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Niranjan Ramakrishnan Jayne Lyn Stahl Rev. William E. Alberts Alvaro Huerta Martha Rosenberg Binoy Kampmark Norm Kent Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 29, 2009 Michael Neumann Mike Whitney Gary Leupp Conn Hallinan Marshall Auerback Laura Flanders Eamonn McCann David Macaray Mark Weisbrot Stephen Soldz Christopher Brauchli Website of the Day October 28, 2009 Moshe Adler Dave Lindorff Frank Joseph Smecker Alexandra Early M. Shahid Alam Vijay Prashad John Ross Franklin Lamb Gregory Travis Susan Galleymore Website of the Day October 27, 2009 Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Stewart J. Lawrence Alan Farago Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Bouthaina Shaaban Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around Iain Boal Carl Finamore Jayne Lyn Stahl Website of the Day October 26, 2009 Bill Quigley / Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Mike Whitney Michael Snedeker Shamus Cooke David Michael Green Martha Rosenberg Patrick Bond Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day October 23-25, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Christopher Ketcham Jeff Gore Gareth Porter Jayne Lyn Stahl Saul Landau Mike Whitney Nikolas Kozloff Ron Jacobs Russell Mokhiber Missy Beattie Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Stephen Lendman David Ker Thomson Rannie Amiri Ronnie Cummins Norm Kent Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Ben Sonnenberg Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 22, 2009 Dan Pearson / Jonathan Cook Paul Craig Roberts The US as Failed State Mark Engler Johann Hari Brian M. Downing Eric Toussaint Tom Mountain Israel Shamir Charles Thomson Website of the Day October 21, 2009 Pam Martens Linn Washington, Jr. Liaquat Ali Khan D. K. Wilson Franklin Lamb Norman Solomon Stephen Fleischman Patrice Higonnet Binoy Kampmark Kevin Coval / Website of the Day October 20, 2009 Sharon Smith Tariq Ali Mark Brenner Bouthaina Shaaban Michael D. Yates Dean Baker Dave Lindorff John Ross Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Kevin Zeese Gilad Atzmon Website of the Day October 19, 2009 Mike Whitney Greg Moses John Ross Michael Donnelly Jayne Lyn Stahl Eric Walberg Russell Mokhiber Barbara Rose Johnston John V. Whitbeck Christopher Ketcham Website of the Day October 16-18, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Carl Ginsburg Ralph Nader Nikolas Kozloff Carlo Galli Dave Lindorff Catherine Rottenberg
/ Neve Gordon Marshall Auerback Nicola Nasser Windy Cooler James L. Secor Ron Jacobs Wes Jackson Jesse Lerner-Kinglake David Ker Thomson Against Leaders Missy Beattie Emily Ratner Stephen Martin Michael Snedeker Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Peter Stone Brown Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 15, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Brian M. Downing Ramzy Baroud Danny Weil M. Idrees Ahmad Margaret Kimberley Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Harvey Wasserman Nirmal Ghosh Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 14, 2009 Michael Neumann M. Reza Pirbhai Gareth Porter Paul Craig Roberts John Strausbaugh Fortress Moon Ralph Nader Dean Baker Charles Modiano Nadia Hijab Walter Brasch Website of the Day October 13, 2009 Peter Linebaugh Shamus Cooke John Ross Brendan Cooney Frida Berrigan Yves Engler David Macaray Dave Lindorff Mark Weisbrot Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day October 12, 2009 Pam Martens Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg Jessica Arents Eamonn McCann Bill Hatch Sen. Russell Feingold Niranjan Ramakrishnan Gideon Levy Iyad Burnat Alan Cabal Dan Bacher Website of the Day October 9-11, 2009 Alexander Cockburn James Bovard Kathleen and Bill Christison Andy Worthington Marc Levy Tariq Ali Mike Whitney Paul Craig Roberts Alan Nasser Jack Z. Bratich Steve Breyman David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Paul Buchheit Jim Goodman Missy Beattie Michael Leonardi Nadia Hijab Mel Packer David Macaray James T. Phillips Charles R. Larson Michael Donnelly David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 8, 2009 Saul Landau Paul Fitzgerald / Linn Washington, Jr. Marshall Auerback Dave Lindorff David Rosen Chris Darimont / Misty MacDuffee John V. Walsh Stewart Lawrence Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 7, 2009 Brendan Cooney Paul Craig Roberts Dean Baker Jonathan Cook John Stanton Joanne Mariner Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Stephen Lendman Sen. Russell Feingold Mary Lynn Cramer Website of the Day October 6, 2009 Mike Whitney Gareth Porter Jonathan Cook Boris Kagarlitsky Iain Boal Ron Jacobs John Ross Michael Dickinson Stephen Fleischman Ira Glunts Missy Beattie Website of the Day October 5, 2009 Pam Martens Mike Whitney Paul Craig Roberts Harry Browne Sara Mann Omar Barghouti Shamus Cooke Brenda Norrell Fred Gardner Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap Website of the Day October 2-4, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Diana Johnstone Greg Moses William Blum Brian Cloughley Russell Mokhiber John Ross Ellen Brown David Ker Thomson David Macaray Gary Engler Robert Fantina Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer Anthony Papa Joe Allen Harry Browne Ron Jacobs Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Weekend Edition The Domestic Face of ImperialismThe Purpose is PorkBy MANUEL GARCIA, Jr. Logically, it is a bad investment for a nation to spend enormous sums on an inefficient, non-versatile, rapidly-aging, fragile or defective technology or system that is intended to fill a military need, or operate as an economic aid, or serve as a reliable part of the public works infrastructure. Experts, concerned that their government may be making such a bad investment in the field of their interest, will sometimes publish editorials as a patriotic effort to both save the public purse and to move their government's policy toward more effective alternatives. One such editorial appeared on the 10th, in Counter Punch, "The Self-Dismembering F-35," by Winslow Wheeler. Wheeler's concern is that a new fighter-bomber airplane, the F-35 being developed by the Lockheed Martin Corporation, will not equal the performance of either the fighter airplanes (F-16, F-18) or the ground-attack airplanes (A-10) it is intended to replace, and that the F-35 airplanes will be so expensive that only a limited number will ever be fielded by the US Air Force. A smaller fleet of less robust and agile airplanes would put any future military campaign at greater risk: it is harder to win a chess game with fewer pieces. In the U.S. today, there are many other examples of similarly "illogical" government policies. We have the insanity of trillions of dollars flushed from the US Treasury to wipe up the speculative losses of the Wall Street banks in the stock market crash of October 2008, and to maintain the odious bonuses of the officers of those banks, who engineered the current economic collapse, and would hardly seem to deserve any reward for their performance in the blowing-up and popping of the economic bubble, and the hoodwinking of many thousands of their customers now facing business failures, retirement fund and job losses, and home foreclosures. This policy of post-facto over-insuring of rich speculators is supposedly to infuse fresh capital into the lending-and-spending cycle that is the present form of the U.S. economy, and by that means to trickle down to the lower economic strata an uplift -- eventually -- to each and every wage-earner and tax-payer in the land. An alternative would have been to directly subsidize the lower economic classes with capital infusions from the Treasury (a negative federal tax of about $8500 for many US households), and then allow the inevitable spending for: food, clothing, energy, housing, durable goods, health, child and personal services, and education, to pump up the many businesses that interlace as the U.S. economy. Another example of "misguided" (the quotes will be explained) US policy is the spending on nuclear weapons experimentation and manufacture. These bombs are totally useless in any actual combat because they are so outrageously destructive and dirty (radioactive debris). Can you actually believe that the economic and power elites of the nuclear-armed nations would allow any dispute among them to escalate into a nuclear exchange? Of course not: big capital is invested transnationally, and it will not allow the managers of its national units to diminish the totality of transnational assets because of a turf war between rival nation-state administrators. National boundaries and sovereignty are seen as defining by the lower economic classes, who retain the sentimental illusion of some degree of ethnic and cultural solidarity that continues historical threads of national identity. The economic elite is transnational and their primary allegiance is to class, not nation. Even supposedly major rivalries like that of the U.S. and Russia, and the U.S. and China, are much less than they seem, because the respective power elites have much more in common with each other than with their national populations: keeping the proletarians disorganized, productive, and undemanding. This is what "globalization" is all about (from the US perspective, it is outsourced management of offshore slaves). Even against smaller weaker nations like Iran, the U.S. and its Security Council associates would find nuclear weapons to be a liability rather than an asset as tools of intimidation or instruments of invasion. Who imagines occupation troops could be sent into a territory subjugated by nuclear bombardment? What about as deterrents, don't US nuclear arms make foreign enemy groups fearful to attack "the homeland?" Nuclear weapons are as useless at defending the US population from attack by sub-national enemies as cannons are at controlling mosquitos, as was so evidently demonstrated by Al Qaeda on 11 September 2001. However, all these government policies may not actually be "illogical" or "misguided," but instead only appear so to people with mistaken assumptions about the actual goals. If instead of producing a better combat airplane, reviving the economy, and engineering an effective national defense, the actual goals of these policies are to subsidize the Pentagon and the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the Wall Street banks, and the nuclear weapons facilities and contractors, then these policies are honed to perfection. "Pork barrel" is the label for government spending intended to benefit a local or special interest in return for its political support of the sponsoring politicians. The phrase originated in the U.S. as a description of mid 19th century household larders, which in simple circumstances could be a barrel of salt pork. The derogatory use of the phrase, to label politically motivated government spending, dates from 1873. The practice itself is ancient. The difficulty facing the people of the U.S. today is that pork barrel is the dominant motivation behind their government's policies. Our politics is like a rugby scrum by sumo wrestlers: those with the most, push out the rest and get what they want of the national treasure. Our elections are nearly meaningless because our politicians are bought ("campaign contributions" is the US euphemism, "corruption" is the term generally used elsewhere). Since they are largely the representatives of special (a.k.a., monied) interests, the activity in the U.S. Congress is one of: (a) unity in protecting capital from popular democracy (witness the hyperventilated resistance to the overwhelming popular desire for a universal-access public single-payer heath-care plan), and (b) contention in carving out subsidies for their respective sponsors, from the federal economic pie. The rivalry between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is entirely about controlling the pork barrel dispensing apparatus of government. Since both are tools of corporate capital, government policy is nearly seamless between administrations, and the aspirations of the working (wage-earning, tax-paying and 'dis-employed') classes are consistently excluded from serious consideration. Pork barrel spending can occur as a nibble, like the $398M Gravina Island Bridge proposal pushed in 2008 by Ted Stevens, then a Republican senator from Alaska (to replace the ferry connecting the island's 50 residents and the Ketchikan International Airport to Revillagigedo Island and Ketchikan). It can occur as a massive bite, like the $14.6B Big Dig in Boston, Massachusetts, which was pushed by Democratic senator Tip O'Neill in the 1980s (rerouting Interstate 93 into a 5.6 km [3.5 mile] tunnel under the city). The biggest bites of pork are ripped out as the subsidies to the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, agro-business, fossil energy business, and Israel, which is just pork barrel for AIPAC ($3T total up to 2003). But wait, doesn't the failure to produce the better combat airplane, or fix the economy for the general population, or devise credible defense systems diminish the power of the government and the prosperity of the people? Yes, but so what; the targeted pockets were lined, and that's all that counts in the psychology of me-first immediate satisfaction of pure individualized greed, which is championed as "the free enterprise system." Consideration for others is necessarily a limiting factor to any personal agenda, and the economic friction it introduces is resented as "socialism" or "communism" by those intent on economic exploitation. The root cause of our difficulties is that this attitude is quite popular. So, we dismiss many technical inefficiencies, like a costly yet ill-suited military establishment, defective economic, health-care and educational systems, and wasteful and polluting energy systems, because the services they are intended to provided are not actually their primary purpose -- since those services are "socialist" -- but instead they are designed, jury-rigged and gerrymandered into a division of spoils, a consensus of pork barrel, and a careerist network of cronyism. Technical failures occur because our social systems are twisted to the needs of insider personal aggrandizement instead of societal value: U.S. soldiers are killed in Iraq or Afghanistan for Israel and oil; disadvantaged and ill-educated people die prematurely to beef up insurance industry profits; civilians, workers and soldiers are harmed by poisoned environments or defective products or terrorist attacks or a woeful decay of educational access and quality, because of an over-riding concern for select special interests. Such technical failures are always seen by pork barrel apologists as isolated "accidents" that are regrettable but cast no guilt on the systems in play; or they are consequences that happen to "losers" who somehow deserve less consideration because they "failed" to develop the attitudes and personal fortunes that would have enabled them to be "players," "investors" and even "winners." The systems described are long-lived because they work very well for the people who run them, and their inconveniences are socialized, outsourced, 'offshored,' and trickled down to a population with no say in the matter. Returning to the case of the F-35, Winslow Wheeler was very concerned about the diminished capability of a future US Air Force with a smaller number of less effective F-35 fighter-bomber airplanes instead of today's array of F-16, F-18 and A-10 fighter-bomber and attack aircraft (a smaller number of more expensive and less versatile F-35s replacing a larger number of more agile single-purpose airplanes). One can generalize this concern to all the systems of the US government and economy, and worry about an overall degradation of US power and prosperity brought about by the parasitic effects of chronic pork barrel distortions of national purpose. The situation begs the question: given the nature of US foreign and domestic policy (a.k.a., the American Empire and the free enterprise system) would a diminution of US power and prosperity be a bad thing? Obviously, the "good" or "bad" here depends on "for whom?" If a degradation of American power is seen as a bad thing, then the beneficiaries of US pork barrel are being unpatriotic (to the U.S., as opposed to, say, Israel) by sapping the nation's strength. One can imagine this being a logical and popular domestic view. If, on the other hand, a degradation of American power is seen as a good thing -- for example in Latin America -- then the beneficiaries of US pork barrel are still unpatriotic, but the weakening they cause is felt as a welcome relief in those parts of the world where oppressive US involvement decreases. Our preference is for is for no pork barrel and no empire, which puts us in the "communist" red zone of political indicators from a Wall Street Journal "free enterprise system" perspective: a regulated economy with essential systems like currency and banking, health, energy, mass transit, communications, education and defense, all socialized. Also, legislation would ban private money from politics, and strip corporations of "personhood," so they would have no First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights (and no right to lobby Congress). US pork barrel is the domestic face of US imperialism. So long as the working classes of the U.S. and the wider world have to endure these linked forms of exploitation, they can enjoy some degree of poetic justice in the fact that pork barrel behavior is intrinsically corrosive to the imperial structure. They can only disappear together. Manuel García, Jr. is a retired physicist, and can be reached at mango@idiom.com.
Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Obama and Black America Ten months into Obama-time, the plight of black Americans is terrible. Yet overwhelmingly they rally behind the president. In a powerful report from the Deep South Kevin Alexander Gray asks the question: what should the black political agenda be? Mark Rudd counterposes “organizing” with “activism” and describes what it will take to build a movement. H. Bruce Franklin gives a chronology of the march into Afghanistan. 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.Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
"Powerful and shocking ..
Waiting for
Lightning
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