|
|
Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! STABBED IN THE BACK Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year ! Meet & Debate (Perhaps Even Date) CPers Online at CounterPunch's New Facebook Page! |
home / subscribe / donate / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
STABBED IN THE BACK
Eamonn Fingleton gives a stunning account of how the elite press – the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the New York Times and Washington Post - pilloried US autworkers while systematically concealing the hidden subsidies which have allowed Japan and Korea to destroy Detroit. All this with the connivance of the US government. Also in our latest newsletter: Michelle Obama comes to Merced. Bill Hatch, the Balzac of the Central Valley, gives an uproarious account of Michelle’s state visit to UC’s new campus. 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.
How the U.S. Press Helped Destroy the Auto IndustryOrder CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !
Meet & Debate (Perhaps Even Date) CPers Online at CounterPunch's New Facebook Page!
|
Today's Stories June 12-14, 2009 Mike Whitney 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 June 4, 2009 Arno J. Mayer Mike Whitney Gareth Porter Ayesha Ijaz Khan Mouin Rabbani Jordan Flaherty Adam Turl Nikolas Kozloff Yifat Susskind Website of the Day June 3, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Kathy Kelly Alan Farago Franklin Lamb Bill Hatch Nadia Hijab Dean Baker Binoy Kampmark Manuel Garcia, Jr. Remi Kanazi Behzad Yaghmaian Website of the Day June 2, 2009 Uri Avnery Robert Weissman Conn Hallinan Gideon Spiro Roger Burbach Dylan Quigley Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Belén Fernández Martha Rosenberg Willie L. Pelote, Sr. Website of the Day June 1, 2009 Pam Martens Yitzhak Laor Mark Weisbrot Ramzy Baroud Saul Landau Eugenia Tsao Afshin Rattansi Debra Sweet Abdul Malik Mujahid Bill Quigley John Wright Website of the Day May 29-31, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Vijay Prashad Gary Leupp Ray McGovern Rannie Amiri Bill Hatch Chellis Glendinning, Stephanie Mills and Kirkpatrick Sale Phyllis Pollack David Yearsley Jean-Christophe Servant Dave Lindorff James McEnteer Missy Beattie James C. Faris David Macaray Harvey Wasserman Adam Federman David Ker Thomson Mark Seth Lender Stephen Martin Joseph Nevins Sophia Mihic Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend May 28, 2009 Joan Roelofs Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Mouin Rabbani Joe Bageant James McEnteer Dedrick Muhammad Richard Morse David Macaray Harvey Wasserman Website of the Day May 27, 2009 Joanne Mariner Paul Craig Roberts Walden Bello Dave Lindorff Brian M. Downing Carlos Villarreal Nadia Hijab Adam Federman Laray Polk Isabella Kenfield David Michael Green Website of the Day May 26, 2009 Manuel Garcia, Jr. Mike Whitney Sharon Smith Marjorie Cohn Dean Baker Deepankar Basu Fred Gardner Jordan Flaherty Josh Ruebner Brian Cloughley Website of the Day May 25, 2009 Diane Christian John Ross Kenneth Hartman Uri Avnery Fred Gardner Cindy Sheehan Sen. Russell Feingold Sibel Edmonds Franklin Lamb Dave Lindorff Daniel Wolff Website of the Day May 22-24, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Michael Teitelman Mike Whitney Ray McGovern Sonia Cardenas / Clive Hamilton Conn Hallinan Fred Gardner Carlo Cristofori Dean Baker Rannie Amiri Andy Worthington David Macaray Nadia Hijab Franklin Lamb Ted Newcomen David Ker Thomson David Rosen Mark Weisbrot Robert Fantina Heather Gray Farzana Versey Chris Genovali Ron Jacobs Jay Diamond Dr. Susan Block Ben Sonnenberg David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend May 21, 2009 Jeffrey St. Clair / Paul Craig Roberts Chris Floyd Gerald Paoli Zach Mason Uri Avnery Andy Worthington Niranjan Ramakrishnan Norman Solomon Dave Lindorff Website of the Day May 20, 2009 Michael Hudson Gary Leupp Michael D. Yates Jonathan Cook Peter Lee Binoy Kampmark Peter Zinn William Loren Katz Gary Lapon Trudy Bond Website of the Day May 19, 2009 Kristoffer Rehder Mike Whitney Ray McGovern Vijay Prashad Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam Mustafa Barghouthi Andy Worthington Binoy Kampmark John Walsh David Macaray Website of the Day May 18, 2009 Dave Lindorff Abdul Malik Mujahid Jonathan Cook Ben Rosenfeld Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Stephen Soldz Eugenia Tsao Walter Brasch Roberto Rodriguez Charlotte Laws Website of the Day May 15-17, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair David Rosen Mike Whitney Bruce Page Jeremy Scahill Fred Gardner Tom Barry Mats Svensson Ramzy Baroud Mark Engler Mark Weisbrot Farzana Versey Ron Jacobs Hannah Wolfe Cal Winslow David Macaray Christopher Brauchli Mark Seth Lender Robert Fantina David Ker Thomson Stephen Martin Charles R. Larson Chase Madar Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend May 14, 2009 Michael Hudson Andy Worthington Paul Craig Roberts Jonathan Cook Ray McGovern Lance Selfa David Green Dave Lindorff Frida Berrigan Sue Udry Website of the Day May 13, 2009 Brian M. Downing Gareth Porter Robert Sandels Ricardo Alarcón Eric Walberg Dave Lindorff Deepak Tripathi William S. Lind Kevin Zeese Franklin Lamb Website of the Day May 12, 2009 Gary Leupp Richard Neville Wajahat Ali Dean Baker Franklin Lamb Norman Solomon Paul Craig Roberts Lisa M. Hamilton Bob Fitrakis / David Macaray Website of the Day May 11, 2009 Andrea Peacock Michael Hudson Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader John Kelly Saul Landau Dave Lindorff David Michael Green Anthony Papa Paul Krassner Website of the Day
|
Weekend Edition What We Meant When We Said YesAmericanaBy DAVID Ker THOMSON Remember America? Remember TV? What about Jesus? God, I was nostalgic for all that before I ever even thought of leaving it. I loved it and lost it in every breath. And the women. Oh my God, the Tennessee women I could have, the North Carolina and Alabama women I couldn’t. The loft and spread of the cheekbones on that half-Cherokee woman in the moonlight. And virginity. Remember that? My half virginity, and the half virginity of an exaggeratable number of girls who were women while I was still a boy, and the puddle of mist in Shenandoah over, wait…not this rise, not this rise—there! Take me home. The mountain women and the holler women and later the highplains women with eyes so blue you could see the rapture in them. Always and everywhere Jesus in every notch and defile of the landscape. The never quite having sex. Holding out, holding on. The truth of desire. And the not having failed much, remember that? There have only been two things I’ve ever had any talent for: cliff-skiing and writing. The one is generally too dangerous for an adult to practice on a regular basis, and as for the other, I do a little now and then if my knee is feeling okay. Cliffs and pages, you just keep going down. You learn to manage the descent. As a family, we’ve come to rest at the bottom, in a big city phalanxed onto the dried clay bed of Lake Iroquois, most of which flowed off down the St. Lawrence about seven thousand years ago. So it must not be the absolute bottom. It’s a good place, and all the people of the world come here. Good enough, certainly. From here we can see America, indulge our old capacity for simultaneous loving and leaving. Following directions in the new city, my wife, my pledgling, remembers left and right at each corner by quickly citing the beginning of the Pledge of Allegiance and touching her hand to her heart. You bide your time. One does. You screw up your courage, plan a trip. Shuffle your pronouns, like the way old environmentalists—they—used to deploy aliases, not merely to hide from the government, but to implicate everyone. Leave open the possibility that anyone could be a serious environmentalist, that your enemy might be your friend, that strife might be an illusion of subjectivity. That the infiltrator might have been infiltrated by love. Take a few years to rest on the lakebed, then suddenly one night you’re shuffling off alone to Buffalo in a Dodge, and you find that you’re really going to do it. Come down into America from the top. Fall. Later, you’re writing about it—we, you plural, I, and so on—and you (singular) shift the register, because there’s too much love and anger to tell it straight. So you go: Fortunately I have never had a head for politics, or I might have faulted myself for misunderstanding the premise of America’s northern frontier. The government’s (governments’) repeated insistence that this is the world’s longest undefended border appears, to my deficient understanding, to be entirely correct. Although there is no lack of armament, and no apparent unwillingness to use it at the least provocation, any activity so carefully calculated to dispose visitors to despise the nation could hardly be the work of its friends, and one is inclined to feel as if therefore the nation’s enemies were guarding the border, which of course amounts to no guard at all. And so we find ourselves agreeing that surely this must be the world’s longest undefended border. We were thus a little surprised to find ourselves in a vehicle called Dodge—already a strange place for an honorable member of City Without Cars—with two bigbooted men standing in front of us, their fingers as twitchy for their six-guns as in the classic showdown, while a third berated us savagely on a point of protocol with which he happened to differ with the government of Canada. Here in the OK Corral we were all assiduously following the script of a number of classic westerns (I was providing the part of the cringing tavern keeper) when the guards suddenly and unexpectedly waved our Dodge, my Dodge, into the country. A deviation from the script. That level of brutality, pistol whipping with the mouth, if you can imagine that, should have been a prelude to shooting me, but here I was not only allowed to get away, but invited into the country. Curiouser and curiouser. Down into America I come, acquiring poets, pushing through the night. With the logic of desire rather than sequence—Buffalo, Finger Lakes, Catskills, but presided over always by the same moon—one of those women with whom I never had sex is riding shotgun. She’s a half poet now. We’re all a little older, and we’re singing low bridge, everybody down, low bridge ‘cause we’re coming to a town, and you’ll always know your neighbor, you’ll always know your pal, if you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal. “Ever never,” we say, “ever never gated.” And the woman’s boyfriend the poet is riding jumpseat, and he chants a schoolboy song of California. Of America we sing. In the klieg lights of the toll booths the greenbacks seep red, and the woman thinks I’m joking when I say I’ve never seen that before, since if I’m not America, who is, and I couldn’t possibly have been gone that long. Crossing the Hudson my friends call out America. Even the non-rhyming poet, who can write past the censors, is calling out America in his own way. My left hand is on the wheel and my right hand is in the place it would be if I were to follow my heart. The road running one way in space will surely run another way in time, and I’ll come home to you, my love. Are you hearing me? You had put aside your book of Lacan and had said, stay true to your desire. The only pronoun (you) was implied. But it was enough. I’m coming home to you. David Ker Thomson was in the company of poets at the Bard College Language and Thinking summer program. Dave.thomson@utoronto.ca
|
Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
|
