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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Report From the Afghan Front
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Report From the Afghan Front
It's Obama's War and It's Going Very BadlyExclusively for CounterPunch subcribers, Patrick Cockburn files a special report from Kabul: the Taliban's tightening grip on most of the country; plumetting US popularity in a bankrupt country rotted by corruption. For fifty years, Seymour Melman waged intellectual war on Pentagon capitalism, making the case for peaceful conversion. David Price brings to light decades of FBI secret surveillance. Senator Jim Webb is launching the first determined bid in forty years to overhaul the US criminal justice system at whose call is the American gulag. Alexander Cockburn reports on the prospects for his success. 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 gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories June 26-28, 2009 Jeffrey St. Clair 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 June 18, 2009 Uri Avnery Robert Sandels / Anthony DiMaggio Robert Weissman Joshua Frank Jonathan Cook Reza Fiyouzat Norman Solomon Ali Jawad James Ridgeway Website of the Day June 17, 2009 Carl Boggs Dr. Bryant Welch Winslow T. Wheeler Liaquat Ali Khan Jonathan Cook Binoy Kampmark Karim Makdisi Dave Lindorff David Swanson Gene Marx Website of the Day June 16, 2009 Patrick Cockburn John Ross Afshin Rattansi Marc Levy Paul Craig Roberts Behzad Yaghmaian Brian M. Downing Merle Lefkoff David Macaray Robert Jensen David Swanson Website of the Day June 15, 2009 Michael Hudson Reza Fiyouzat Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway Marjorie Cohn Rannie Amiri Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Leonard Schwartz Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day June 12-14, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney Mark Ames Esam Al-Amin Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Andy Worthington Heather Gray Felice Pace Ron Jacobs George Wuerthner Jeffrey Buchanan / David Ker Thomson Renaud Lambert Kevin Zeese David Macaray Evelyn Pringle Chris Genovali David Michael Green Brian J. Foley Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
June 11, 2009 Kathy Kelly / James Bovard Tristan de Bourbon Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Ralph Nader Harvey Wasserman Nicole Colson Mark Weisbrot Dan Bacher Website of the Day June 10, 2009 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine Kathy Kelly Paul Craig Roberts Rev. William E. Alberts Peter Lee Carol Miller Emily Ratner Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day June 9, 2009 Winslow T. Wheeler Mike Whitney Stan Cox Sibel Edmonds Jonathan Cook David Macaray Robert Jensen Nadia Hijab Mark Weisbrot Website of the Day June 8, 2009 John Ross Paul Craig Roberts Franklin C. Spinney Franklin Lamb Uri Avnery Jonathan Cook Eric Toussaint Jim Goodman Norman Solomon Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day June 5 -7, 200 Alexander Cockburn George Galloway Paul Craig Roberts Jennifer Loewenstein Franklin Lamb Mike Whitney Andy Worthington Missy Comley Beattie Farzana Versey Stanley Heller John V. Whitbeck Robert Weissman Lee Sustar Dave Lindorff William Blum Ernest Callenbach / Greg Moses Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Tim Stelloh Belén Fernández David Ker Thomson Karyn Strickler Christopher Brauchli Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Weekend Edition Making Crime EasierGun Control: What's the Agenda?By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS Some years or decades ago I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America’s first gun control laws. New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims. The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier. As the first successful gun control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the US today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies. Consider the propagandistic term, “gun violence,” popularized by gun control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate objects are imbued with the ability to act and to commit violence. Guns, of course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from people who use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists, to commit violence. Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term, “gun violence.” Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other causes of child deaths. Yet, gun control advocates have created the false The National MCH Center for Child Death Review reports that 174 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2000. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that 125 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2006. http://webapp.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe In 2006 there were 77,845,285 youths in that age bracket. In 2006 violence-related firearm deaths of eighteen year olds and under totaled 2,191. A large percentage of these deaths appear to be teenagers fighting over drug turf. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, drugs are “one of the main factors leading to the total number of all homicides. . . . murders related to narcotics still rank as the fourth most documented murder circumstance out of 24 possible categories.” According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the following reasons: “competition for drug markets and customers, disputes and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug market, [and] the tendency toward violence of individuals who participate in drug trafficking.” Another dimension of drug-related crime is “committing an offense to obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use.” Obviously, decriminalizing drugs would be the greatest single factor in reducing incarceration rates, the crime rate, and the homicide rate. Yet, gun control advocates do not support this obvious solution to “gun violence.” Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape, and murder. All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal, and they keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed. So what is the real agenda? Why do gun control advocates want to override the Second Amendment. Why do they not acknowledge that if the Second Amendment can be over-ridden, so can every other protection of civil liberty? There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent one to two million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home robberies, rapes, and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions that suffer from gun control ordinances. Other studies show that most states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes against persons. Why do gun control advocates want to increase the crime rate in the US? Why is the gun control agenda a propagandistic one draped in lies? The NRA is the largest and best known organization among the defenders of the Second Amendment. Yet, a case might be made that manufacturers’ gun advertisements in the NRA’s magazines stoke the hysteria of gun control advocates. Full page ads offering civilian versions of weapons used by “America’s elite warriors” in US Special Operations Command, SWAT, and by covert agents “who work in a dark world most of us can’t even understand,” are likely to scare the pants off people who are afraid of guns. Many of the modern weapons are ugly as sin. Their appearance is threatening, unlike the beautiful lines of a Winchester lever action or single shot rifle, or a Colt single action revolver, or the WW II 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, guns that do not have menacing appearances. Everyone knows that they are guns, but they are also works of art. A little advertising discretion might go a long way in quieting fears that are manipulated by gun control advocates. The same goes for hunters. Recent news reports of “hunters” slaughtering wolves from airplanes in Alaska and of a hunter, indeed, a poacher, who shot a protected rare wolf in the US Southwest and left the dead animal in the road, enrage people who have empathy with animals and wildlife. Many Americans have had such bad experiences with their fellow citizens that they regard their dogs and cats, and wildlife, as more intelligent and nobel life forms than humans. Wild animals can be dangerous, but they are not evil. Americans with empathy for animals are horrified by the television program that depicts hunters killing beautiful animals and the joy hunters experience in “harvesting” their prey. Many believe that a person who enjoys killing a deer because he has a marvelous rack of antlers might enjoy killing a person. This is not a screed against hunters. There are many families with the tradition of bringing in the venison once or twice a year. With the near extermination by man of deer predators, deer are so abundant in many localities as to have become a nuisance and a danger to motorists. Nevertheless, the defense of gun rights has little to gain from TV programs depicting the fun of killing Bambi’s mother. In the US, shooting is a hand-eye coordination sport. It is likely that 99% of all ammunition is fired at paper targets, metal silhouettes, or clay and plastic discs. It is a sport for amateur physicists who are interested in ballistics and who experiment with different combinations of powder and bullet seeking the most accurate for their rifle or pistol. Few of these shooters hunt as their interest in shooting is unrelated to killing. Shooting is a sport that offers comradeship and competition in which even old people can participate, people who do not or cannot play golf or tennis or bowl. There is a vast variety of events from black powder muskets to antique military and frontier weapons to distance shooting. Sports shooters punching holes in paper targets comprise the vast majority of active gun owners. They are a threat to no one. Accidents are extremely rare at gun clubs. A large network of small businesses provide the parts and supplies necessary for shooting. There is no reason to strip gun owners of their hobby and possessions and family businesses of their livelihood, as has been done in Great Britain and as the gun control lobby intends to do in the US. The NRA is correct to insist that “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” We have known this since the Sullivan Act. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com |
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Spell Albuquerque: Waiting for
Lightning
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