Today's Stories

March 6-8 , 2009

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

Weekend Edition
March 6-8 , 2009

Jack's a Dull Boy

Against Work

By DAVID KER THOMSON

O that we now had here 
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day! 

(Westmoreland to the king, inciting him to the St. Crispen’s Day Speech in Henry V)

When did hard work become such an unquestioned virtue?

Aren’t there virtues that are more, well, virtuous?  Not to get all mushy here, but what about love?  Abstract, sure, but it reeks of merit.  Or what about goodness, or mercy?  Beneficence is always nice, although maybe it has a little taint of self-righteousness.  Let’s see.  Oh, I know, peacefulness, or its altruistic twin, peaceableness.  Or compassion.

If it weren’t for the fact that hard work is the fetish virtue of the most powerful empire, it might not even rank as a virtue.  It might have come to be something more like a virtue’s helper, like endurance or fortitude or hope.  What dictator doesn’t get up in the morning and look forward to the day’s debaucheries with a heart full of hope and expectation?   Genghis Khan had hope for the young virgins in his neck of the woods, and to this day, they say, a significant percentage of the DNA is his.  “You can’t…” say the naysayers.  “Yes we can,” say those filled with hope.   I remember James Hunt in seventh grade, fine figure of a youth.  He used to drag me around the football field by the mouth guard of my football helmet.  He was filled with hope.  Seize the day.

Hard work as a virtue.  What this means is that if someone shows up at work with a bad cold and breathes and coughs on everyone, we’re meant to admire their pluck.

If it hadn’t become the religion of the empire, hard work might have been something unimportant but mildly virtuous, like thrift or courtliness or not swearing.  Or unimportant and unvirtuous, like change.  Change is the stuff left over after you’ve given away the real money.  It doesn’t become a virtue until you actually do something, like perform an action on a diaper.  These secondary potential virtues only become virtues if they’re linked to a real one, like the way an assist in hockey only counts if it’s connected to an actual goal.  And speaking of sports, it’s not hard to imagine a world in which hard work is so secondary that it’s something like hustle, the moderately virtuous little leg-and-buttock action performed to please Coach.  Definitely extra-curricular.

Hard work is a strangely neutral virtue upon which to found a social experiment.  My kids have intuited my ambivalence about it and have responded by seldom emptying the dishwasher, an act of minor malfeasance I repay here by taking the time to mention it in a journal with a wide international readership.  Not that they care.  But justice will out.  Hey, remember justice?  There’s a virtue for you.  Often named in the breech.

Readers of CounterPunch are likely to be familiar with Joe Bageant’s oddly satisfying missives from the working class front lines.  I say ‘oddly’ because Bageant gets the vernacular of a certain kind of suffering so nicely that readers are liable to enjoy the pieces even when we are being targeted, in one or other of our subject positions, as the problem.  Whether we are middle class, or are rehearsing the prejudices of our own liberalism, or forming half-cocked opinions of southern culture, we might well find ourselves with egg on our faces.   On the other hand, it’s not as if Bageant spares his own neighbors down there.  We see his fallen angels in all their patchy glory in his ribald nuts-and-nipples hagiographies.  I have been a street person and a professor for an equal number of years in my life, and I have wandered off-trail in the south—the South—in most of the nameless places, been chased as often as helped along, come to love and hate rednecks in equal proportions.  Have been called, in my turn, a redneck.  Have passed certain portions of the Jeff Foxworthy test, “You might be a redneck if…” Reading  Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus reminds us that the single defining virtue of a southerner, and the standard by which other cultures are judged, is this commitment to hard work.  My parents are on the Tennessee River downstream from the horrific spill reported here in CP by Mike Roselle (Jan. 9-11), but no one in their reddish neck of the woods is likely to make too much of a fuss against an employer like the TVA.  To me, this reticence is counter-intuitive.  Why would you work against your own interests?  But if work is the fetish virtue, all the rest follows.

We tend to think of southern culture as laggardly, but in fact it yields to no one in this most essential of American traits, its highest virtue.  To adopt wise King Solomon’s words about industry (the concrete form of the more abstract word ‘industriousness’):  Go to the Bageant, thou sluggard.  Consider its ways, and be wise.  We might have a whole class named after a minor and barely virtuous virtue, but they really are what’s made America. 

So about that first question, when did hard work become such an unquestioned virtue?  Thanks for asking, and the answer is 1637.

In the old days, classes were about possession of land.  On one whole set of continents, in what came to be known as the Americas, all the people possessed all the land, and were possessed by it.  Not a perfect system, but not bad, either.  Nice trees, too.   Elsewhere, not so good.  A landed class that was tiny.  A beholden class that got to do stuff on someone else’s land, like it was a privilege.  Courtliness a big virtue, not just a set of minor rituals like opening a door for a lady as it is now.  Common use in warfare of the trebuchet, a device invented by the French that combined the best of the catapult with the comfort and convenience of the indoor toilet.  I fucken love history.  And French people.

But the reason we have a working class in the Americas these days, instead of a class denominated by some other virtue—the justice class, the mercy class, “yeah, he has a goodness class background, real salt of the earth”—is because of the hidden revolution of 1637, where the conspirators took everything over and re-wrote the history books so thoroughly that no one noticed.  Now here’s a conspiracy theory even Alexander Cockburn could believe in.  The triumph of the works guys.  And we got—the works.  Just for the record, I’m not saying Cockburn’s even heard of this.

What we have been calling The American Revolution was actually a minor rivalry between some English aristocrats.  The king’s side found it so unimportant it used German mercenaries to do the fighting, and the king would often forget there was a war going on, though a bit of tea might occasionally be used to help him maintain focus.  The stakes were infinitely low, as the comparison state, Canada, makes clear (both pro-king Canada and anti-king America would end up driving the same Detroit cars in the end).  The squabbling in the late eighteenth century didn’t matter because everything important had been decided in 1637.  And the most important thing was work.

Someone should write a book on this.  Someone almost has.  Stop nagging me.  I’ve been working on it.  But not too hard.  Wouldn’t be much point in hustling.   It’s a book against hard work.  Form’s as important as content.  Still, I haven’t changed a diaper in a while.  Things are coming on apace.  There’s hope for me yet. 

David Ker Thomsonis the recipient of a year-long National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to write his book, A, a history of American radicalism since 1637.  He apologizes to the American taxpayer for the tardiness of the manuscript.  The latest portion is published in South Atlantic Quarterly, the “Home” special issue, January, 2009. He can be reached at dave.thomson@utoronto.ca

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