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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 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly 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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June 25, 2009 The Iranian Protests and the Mainstream MediaYou Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info WarBy JACK Z. BRATICH We can all remember a moment when we gazed up at the sky and used our imagination to make familiar shapes out of the clouds. In folk wisdom, seers practice aeromancy, a form of divination that involves observing atmospheric phenomena and nephomancy, the divination by studying clouds). What we are witnessing in the Iranian situation resembles this practice, only now the clouds are made of information. This infosphere is not the same as the old chestnut, the “fog of war.” It’s more like what I call the fog-machine of war, and its analysts are performing infomancy. People are seeing their hopes, fears, and their shadows in this data mist. One of these faith-based assertions is that more info equals more democracy. It’s not just that observers consider the anti-regime protests to be democratic, but they believe the use of social media is inherently democratic (i.e. more freedom of expression). But we were given official notice early in Obama’s administration that cyberwar is a renewed threat, so why not take heed and understand Iran as a case of warfare? In that light, more info = more infowar; more information means more disinformation. Propaganda used to come in print form and be dropped from the skies. Now it’s laterally spread through peer-to-peer networks, creating a bottom-up disinfosphere. What happens then? Info droplets get absorbed by more traditional news outlets. Cable news now functions as a mechanism that selects from a haze of unverifiable information and amplifies its choices. CNN seems to be the best example. At least they’re upfront about it: an anchor previewed an upcoming story by saying they’d be bringing us reports “true or not.” Jack Cafferty noted that the information from Iraq was “Alive but Cloudy”. Even their original segment on Green martyr Neda opened with the disclaimer “the facts surrounding her life and death are difficult to confirm.” This didn’t stop them from replaying the garish spectacle so often that it begs comparison with the paltry coverage of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani victims of US aggression. Professional journalism has been criticized for years for its disproportionate reliance on official sources. With the Valerie Plame case and other escapades in the secret sphere, journalists’ dependence on anonymous insiders also came under scrutiny. In Iran, the anonymous sources are covered in “people power.” The question remains: are they insiders? Are people tweeting from the streets or from other lands? Are they eyewitnesses or I-spies? Perhaps these news outlets could take a tip from entertainment tabloid television program EXTRA!, which at least makes an attempt at info-sorting with a regular segment called “Rumor Control.” A member of CNN’s gushing Twitterati, Ali Velshi acknowledged that the biggest problem is getting the true story. In a nod to the power and problems of crowdsourcing he admitted, “We are as good as you are.” Well, if that’s the case then we’re in trouble: CNN ought to keep its weekly program Reliable Sources, but refer to its other 167 week hours as Unreliable Sources. Witting or not, these news networks collectively retool the famous line allegedly telegraphed by William Randolph Hearst, updating it for the digital age: “You furnish the tweets, we’ll furnish the war.” Meanwhile, key actors in the Iran uprising remain obscured. Take Mostafa Hassani, whom the Nation calls the “the whiz kid who came up with the idea of using green.” The Guardian UK gives him a bigger role than just the resident graphic designer, stating that he is “leading Mousavi's green campaign.” Some basic searches turn up almost nothing else on this shadowy character. You would think such a figure would get more attention, but that’s the way it goes when infomancy is performed poorly: sometimes you ignore the important patterns in order to project your wishes. In sum, the very basics of reporting (when, where, who, what?) have become unverifiable. However, the “why” seems relatively clear for pundits, anchors, and other infomancers. Lingering Cold War fantasies dominate their visions, now with a theocratic twist: People Power vs. Iron Fists, Democracy vs. Dictatorship, Freedom vs. Repression. Neglected is the soft control of information warfare. We could call this a Cyborg Fist in the Velvet Glove. Or maybe it’s leather. Dr. Strangelove, anyone? Jack Bratich is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. He is also a zine librarian at ABC No Rio in New York City. This summer he will be co-teaching a course on Affect and Politics at Bluestockings Bookstore through their Popular Education program. He can be reached at jbratich@gmail.com |
Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
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