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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Drug Companies and Psychiatrists
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Drug Companies and Psychiatrists
Partners in CrimeEugenia Tsao reports on the upcoming revision of one of the most important books in America, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Here’s where the drug lords, the shrinks and the insurance companies collude in establishing hundreds of bogus psychic conditions requiring the psychotropic drugs from which they reap billions every year. There are about 250,000 migrant laborers in Israel, mostly from the Philippines and Thailand. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Palestinians can’t find work. From Tel Aviv, Yonatan Preminger reports on Israel’s vicious employment strategy. Also in this latest newsletter Andrew Cockburn updates his CounterPunch world exclusive on how the U.S. has secretly helped build Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. 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 July 8, 2009 Saul Landau July 7, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Uri Avnery Brian M. Downing Gary Leupp Gregory A. Burris David Macaray Laura Flanders Alan Farago Greg Moses Dan Bacher Website of the Day July 6, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Nikolas Kozloff Gary Leupp Jonathan Cook Tim Wise Franklin Lamb Charles R. Larson Carlos Benemann Shepherd Bliss Jerry Kroth Karyn Strickler Website of the Day July 3-5, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Eamonn Fingleton Jeffrey St. Clair Mike Whitney Pam Martens George Ciccariello-Maher Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Anthony DiMaggio Roger Burbach John Ross Nikolas Kozloff Gareth Porter Andy Worthington Saul Landau David Macaray Adam Federman Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney Robert Jensen Robert Bryce Belén Fernandez Missy Comley Beattie C. G. Estabrook Stephen Martin Charles R. Larson Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend July 2, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Nikolas Kozloff Wendell Potter Ellen Hodgson Brown Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent? Patrick Irelan Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq Nicola Nasser Brian Tokar Dan Bacher Website of the Day July 1, 2009 Vijay Prashad Alberto Vallente Thorensen Paul Craig Roberts Robert Weissman Manuel García, Jr. Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete Norman Solomon Franklin Lamb Martha Rosenberg Diane Rejman Website of the Day June 30, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Benjamin Dangl Jonathan Cook Franklin Lamb George Wuerthner Todd Gordon Ron Jacobs Kenneth Libby Julian Vigo Website of the Day
June 29, 2009 Ishmael Reed Nikolas Kozloff Clifton Ross Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Conn Hallinan James G. Abourezk Ralph Nader Carol Miller Greg Moses Website of the Day June 26-28, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Doug Peacock Daniel Wolff Mike Whitney John Ross David Rosen Emily Ratner Gareth Porter Farid Marjai Nadia Hijab Paul Craig Roberts Fred Gardner Carl Ginsburg Paul Watson David Ker Thomson Farzana Versey Geoff Berne Todd Alan Price Ramzy Baroud Jeff Sher Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value? Glen Johnson Charlotte Laws Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend June 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly Jack Bratich Wendell Potter Charles R. Larson Alan Farago Jonathan Cook Gareth Porter Bitta Mostofi / David Macaray Mark Schuller Website of the Day June 24, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Dean Baker Andy Worthington James Bovard Diana Gibson / P. Sainath Gareth Porter Robert Alvarez Dave Lindorff Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi Website of the Day
June 23, 2009 David Price Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway / Dave Lindorff Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero Gary Leupp Brian M. Downing Robert Bryce Nicholas Dearden Yousef Munayyer Website of the Day June 22, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Chris Floyd Jack Z. Bratich Atash Yaghmaian Laura Carlsen Paul Craig Roberts Vijay Prashad Fred Gardner Andy Thayer David Macaray Website of the Day
June 19 - 21, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Al Giordano Henry A. Giroux Anthony DiMaggio Paul Craig Roberts John Ross Gareth Porter Carl Ginsburg Tommi Avicolli Mecca Joe Bageant Serge Halimi P. Sainath Jim Goodman Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Robert Fantina Harvey Wasserman Walter Brasch David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Ben Sonnenberg Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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July 8, 2009 Progressive DemolitionIn AmazoniaBy SAUL LANDAU From May 2000 to August 2005, Brazil lost more Amazon land to “development” than all of Greece. Since 1971, corporate ranchers and agribusiness cleared tens of thousands of acres for grazing, lumber and mining interests. During that period, Brazilian policies and World Bank projects to promote “progress” also helped decimate some 232,000 square miles of Amazon rainforest. On June 17, my wife and I decided to see the place before “progressive” demolition grew beyond reparable stages. In Manaus, we boarded the 16-passenger Otter, with two friends and eight others eco-tourists. The 3-day cruise up the Rio Negro took us into land ruled in the late 19th Century by Brazil’s rubber barons who aspired to make Manaus into a South American Paris. A story that developed into lore had Henry Wickham a British gonif (Yiddish for a transgressor of moral or civil law) stealing the much coveted and protected rubber seeds and sneaking them into Malaysia, a British colony. Wickham inflated his easy-to-accomplish theft into the equivalent of a pink panther job to draw investors’ attention to one of his Asian business schemes. Wickham got knighted for his “contribution” (stripping the rubber monopoly from greedy Brazilian tycoons and allowing British tycoons to sell it on the world market). With competition, the high price of rubber dropped dramatically. The British cartel controlled rubber sales and poured it onto the world market. (Warren Dean, ''Brazil and the Struggle for Rubber'' Cambridge, England) Manaus slid from boom to semi-bust. But while riding high, the jungle city’s self-made gentry, using other people’s labor, did some elaborate construction. Contemporary Manaus is rife with their palaces and statues. To build a Customs House (the Alfandega,1906), the elders imported stones from Scotland to give it that European look. The Opera House, copied from the Paris original in 1896, contains the tell-tale high ceiling and four tiers with box seats for the special people. The interior dome was painted in the flowery style of the times; gew gaws stick out of the gold-enameled posts and railings, offering further testimony to the rubber moguls’ bad but spare-no-expense taste. The Manaus elite convinced themselves they would perpetually control the monopoly on rubber. They behaved like typical nouveau riche: pretentiously. Now called Teatro Amazonas (refurbished in 1990) remains as reconstructed proof of their once golden era. A chamber orchestra and a guitar ensemble with a virtuoso soprano –no admission fee – filled the vast space with classical sounds. The half empty house – many tourists in the audience – showed that the steamy tropical city’s 1.7 million current residents had little interest in old world culture. The noisy, commerce-crazy streets, however, display the culture of hawkers and cockroach capitalists announcing their less than alluring merchandise -- unless you needed cheap cell phones, emergency underwear or a pair of Havaianas rubber beach sandals), as we did for our Rio Negro cruise. The glimmering black river – at record high-water level –reflected mirror images of surface plants growing in or beside it. We didn’t need the insect repellent, as the anticipated bug attack did not occur on the boat or the smaller canoe that made its way through smaller Amazonian streams. The Rio Negro’s black appearance, explained the guide, resulted from immense plant runoff that seeped into the water. Trees and other vegetation leak tannic acid into the 80-degree river, making it the equivalent of a vast flow of strong tea. The river’s extremely low ph level vitiates mosquito and other insect reproduction, but not so for fish or animals – of which we got some glimpses when they surfaced. On the first morning piranhas –remember them from Hollywood movies – dined on raw beef on our baited hooks. In the afternoon, the little nippers got fed to grateful – we assumed -- sweet-water dolphins, the males of which are pink. In the canoe, in the velvety black of Amazon night, the guide flashed his battery powered torch through the trees. The canoe stopped. He prodded a branch with the paddle: A six foot long tree boa waiting to wrap itself around a frog or caiman attacked the paddle instead. Our curiosity disturbed the boa’s nightly wait for prey, or so I imagined. Did the Genesis writers draw inspiration to postulate such a “curiosity” effect on Eve? Did this primitive creature cause Man’s downfall? It only wanted to catch a frog; instead inquisitive people bothered it. Snakes have had their revenge – biblically, anyway. The chirping of unseen frogs provided sound effects for the scene as the guide provoked the irritated boa to squirm from the tree to his canoe paddle so we could see his flitting tongue and angry – or just hungry – eyes. The Milky Way lit the sky, more vast than in the expanses of the West in summer time. The guide alerted us to watch for glowing red eyes – a black caiman awaiting his dinner. This nocturnal, meat-eating reptile thrives in slow-moving rivers and rain forests. He also would have enjoyed a piranha dinner, but instead he got caught as the guide steered the canoe in the direction of a glowing red light – his eyes. The guide lay along the front of the craft, reached down and grabbed the beast by the throat. The tourists held and felt the two foot baby caiman and examined his powerful tail, which he uses to push himself through the water, his mighty jaw and webbed feet. Then, the guide him tossed back into the water, humiliated perhaps but physically unharmed. We watched brightly colored Toucans and Macaws perched on trees, and harpy eagles above us. Later, in the Manaus zoo we examined up close the talons that resembled dockers’ hooks and the feet and legs, thick and muscled as a boxer’s forearm. I spotted a Hoatzin. This red-eyed, blue faced avian about the size of a large chicken sports a feathered head crown. It seemed about to fall off its tree perch just before it hopped awkwardly to another branch. The night time canoe rides through the narrow rivulets and swampy waters got me a nasty wasp sting, but not a glimpse of the onca, the feared jaguar of the Amazon whose fabled jaws can crack a human skull. None of these creatures would “think” of fouling their nests to provide raw material for packaging, chopsticks or fuel for the vehicles so beloved by the “thinking” member of the earth. The one mammal that “thinks” is also the only creature that has used thought to imperil its own future. Other species assume reproduction as their driving force. An Amazon tree casts its brown seeds in the black water to mature for three months until the green shows and the shell opens as a new shoot emerges. Executive of large corporations don’t think; they plan for profits. They need to “own” the Amazon, chop down its trees, purloin its medicinal plants and change its interdependent nature, thus affecting the world’s rainfall: outwitting the grand design. Their PR departments will call it “improvement.” The Indians of this gigantic expanse have seen their population reduced, their habitat soiled, their cultures polluted: the toll of “Progress.” Scientists differ as to how much more rainforest loss will serve as the tipping point for irretrievable global warming and out-of-control weather disasters. But they agree that it will happen if the “developers” continue to cut away at the Amazonian rainforest. As we watched the merging waters of the Amazon and the Rio Negro outside of Manaus, and we stared up stream at the vast expanse of water and jungle, we felt tiny, insignificant and fortunate to have learned – once again – the nature of our place in the larger scheme. During President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s years in office the profit-seeking invaders have destroyed more Amazon rain forest than during other four-year periods since 1988, according to Instituto Socioambiental. Since 2003, developers, loggers and ranchers eliminated an area of forest cover larger than South Carolina. Lula did increase enforcement of environmental regulations, and has slowed the destruction engine -- a little. He acknowledges tree destruction contributes to global warming. But Brazilian lobbies, like those in the United States, have made strict enforcement difficult. As unrelenting human predators continue to covet Amazon wealth the world watches anxiously. In 1968 in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention demonstrators chanted to the police beating them: The whole world is watching.” It didn’t stop the cops. Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD was published by Counterpunch/AK. His films are available on dvd from roundworldproductions@gmail.com
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
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