Today's Stories

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

Weekend Edition
November 13-15, 2009

CounterPunch Diary

One in a Hundred

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

On official Pentagon statistics about one per cent of members of the US armed forces today are Muslims, though the actual quotient is no doubt higher, since the 1 per cent number is based on initial declarations of religious persuasion on an official form. The Army high command bristles at demands from the Christian right that there should be some sort of loyalty review or even winnowing. General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said firmly last Sunday that his concern was that Major Nidal Hasan’s lethal rampage at Fort Hood – on Thursday he was charged with killing 13 -- might “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”   Casey went on earnestly to the effect that “It would be a shame—as great a tragedy as this was—it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well” and that a “diverse Army gives us strength.”

The general obviously doesn’t have Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on his bedside table. Gibbon wrote flatly that the introduction of foreigners “into Roman armies became every day more universal, more necessary and more fatal. Rome was captive before she was taken."

The last time we heard rumblings about the dangers of ethnic or confessional diversity in the US military was during the Vietnam war, particularly after World Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali announced in the spring of 1967 that he was refusing to be drafted. In words that echoed round the world Ali said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong…they never called me nigger. You want me to do what the white man says and go fight a war against some people I don’t know nothing about--get some freedom for some other people when my own people can’t get theirs?”

At that time Ali gave the US government this wallop on the chin, 12.1 per cent of enlisted men in the U.S. Army  were black. There were innumerable reports of refusal to obey orders, acts of sabotage, assaults on officers and kindred acts of mutiny through the military, white and black.

Hasan's military colleagues displayed a touching eagerness to give him the benefit of the doubt, regarding all-round steadiness of temperament. Why, they tell reporters, on every topic aside from religion he was as meek as a lamb. Granted, he would use the occasion of medical seminars to rail angrily against the US war on Islam, to laud suicide bombers as endowed with the courage of Japanese kamikaze pilots, to declare "I am a Muslim first and an American second", to say – if we are to believe the British Telegraph’s report, that unbelievers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats – (a process evidently  requiring the most exquisite timing), but withal, a “polite and gentle nature … when not discussing religion”.  A decorous optimism prevailed. At Walter Reed hospital some of his colleagues thought the budding psychiatrist was possibly “psychotic” but thought to head off disaster by sending him to university lectures on terrorism, Islam and the Middle East “in the hopes of redirecting his increasing preoccupation with the conflicts felt by Muslim American soldiers on the front lines.”

This indulgent posture towards the omens offered by Hasan’s political and psychic profile stretched from the FBI - which saw no excessive cause for alarm in his emails to the radical Imam Anwar al Awlaki, now based in Yemen, and a vocal enthusiast for jihad in its most violent forms – to his medical colleagues who in early 2008 they discussed Hasan’s indifferent performance and, in the words of an AP report, “saw no signs of mental problems, no risk factors that would predict violent behavior.” They seized on “other factors” that suggested Hasan would continue to thrive in the military.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell”, the famous summation of the Clinton-sponsored Army posture on gays seems to have become a more general  maxim , whether it concerned the phone intercepted emails  to the Imam, the praise for suicide bombers, the business card announcing him cryptically to be “a soldier of Allah”,  or even the Arabic bumper sticker (“Allah is love”) which got his car scored with a key by a vet fresh back from the Crusades.

Talking of “Don’t ask”, it does seem reasonably clear that somewhat akin to some members of the Hamburg cell carrying out the 9/11 attack, if Hasan was hoping – a vulgar myth, to be sure -  for the reward of virgins in the aftermath of martyrdom, their sex might have been an issue. No girlfriend; local virgins not pious enough for marriage; fainted while watching childbirth during medical training; at Walter Reed would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers; killed a pregnant woman in his lethal rampage (her dead embryo may constitute the fourteenth charge of homicide in the string for which he faces the death penalty); mentored 18-year old Duane Reasoner, a convert to Islam he met at the local mosque and with whom he seems to have cemented ties of loyalty and affection. Reasoner, who was with Hasan at his apartment not long before the major’s lethal excursion, declines to condemn him, saying fiercely in his BBC interview that Hasan’s victims “were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims.”

It’s the rationale most respectful to Hasan. No kook he, but indeed a Soldier of Allah.  Of course, amid the thunderings of the Right about the army’s hospitality to a gay Palestinian terrorist  General Casey retreats into the well-mannered sanctuary of “diversity”, even if there are no doubt enlisted men in Afghanistan saying right now , “No Muslims in my foxhole.” In Fort Hood the war came home with a vengeance, as it has been doing there at regular intervals with the suicides and savage domestic violence of vets driven crazy by what they’ve done in the service of Empire.

Too Fat to Fight (continued)

A big reaction from CounterPunchers to last week’s diary on America the Fat.. No reproofs for being an adiphobe-- though I’ve been alerted that  some worthy tract called “The Social Construction of Fatness” will soon come puffing up my driveway.

From Martha in Maine:

My husband's Dutch cousins just visited us from Holland for the past 3 weeks.  I can testify that the typical Dutch person eats the following for breakfast:  FOUR slices of hearty whole-grain bread, each slice topped with butter, then cheese, then either ham, jam, Nutella (chocolate/hazelnut paste), or tomato.  For good measure the Dutchman or woman also enjoys a bowl of cereal with (full-fat) milk, (full-fat) yogurt and fruit.  We simply cannot believe how much our invariably tall, skinny cousins eat!!

The cousins do not own a car in Holland, so they ride a bike, walk or take a train everywhere.  Also they have never dieted in their lives, so they have active metabolisms.  From personal observation, I really believe it's not the amount of food Americans eat so much as the built-in inactivity of our lives.  If America had alternative transportation, a 35-hour workweek, and mandatory 6-week paid vacations, we'd be nearly as slim as those lucky Dutch!

Damn socialists........(ha-ha)

From B in art school:

A relative who works there says that at Disneyland the employees are encouraging corporate to start charging by the square foot for people who are too lazy to walk so they bring in electric carts to drive in. Some fat couples rent carts for two and with their bulge hanging over the sides they take up a whopping 20 square feet. They've had to start making the rides have bigger seats and for the rollercoaster they've had to change safety standards because fatties have made older rides dangerous. They recently had to change the capacity allowed to make up for the mass people take up now - they can actually accept fewer people in because of the space restrictions.

My art has been called "size-ist" because I make sculptures of thin women-

From Paul:

When we used to live in cities where services were relatively close and we walked or took the bus or the streetcar wherever we went, we were thinner and in better shape.  It is suburban life and the pervasiveness of the private auto that has had, I am convinced, a lot to do with the obesity epidemic in the US and in Canada (I think we’re not quite so bad but I haven’t checked the stats).  And it’s a well-known fact (which is my excuse for not having to produce any evidence) that the more exercise you get the more you want.  And the more time you devote to exercise the less you are likely to spend vegging in front of a tv.

Didn’t somebody write a book about the Big Petroleum/Big Auto conspiracy to promote urban sprawl?

Hopefully, this will all change when gas costs $20 a gallon.

From Tomas:

For the last 15 years I (a native born US) have lived in between Mexico and Havana. I get back to the States once a year to research at the University of Texas. I tell my students that each time I go back to the US everything gets bigger: the people, the cars, the houses. 

I think there is causal connection here…bigger people=bigger cars, bigger cars=bigger garages, which equals bigger houses, etc. When I was a kid you could fit 5 Americans into a VW bug. My family of 10 lived in a house similar in space to most contemporary US suburban garages.

The irony of all of this is that the “other sized” movement in the US seems to blame their largess on “big bones” (in the vernacular) or their “metabolism” (the sophisticates outlet of denial).

When I first arrived to live in Cuba during the height of the “Special Period” one of the first things I noticed (like you in Europe) was that there were absolutely NO FAT PEOPLE in Cuba, none.

Year after year, after returning from skinny Cuba I would encounter people in the US whose “bones” had become progressively bigger, or whose “metabolism” had slowed to a snail’s pace, and they always bearing the same “genetic” excuse.

My point, extrapolating from yours, is that this whole “other sized” movement in the US is a movement in denial, and the denials and waist-lines grow bigger each time I chance a return visit. I was once fat myself. I am 100 pounds lighter than I was at my apex at 19. I have kept that weight off for 30 years through two simple things: a proper diet and daily exercise. 

I saw my first truly obese person in Cuba in a plaza in Bayamo around three years ago. I noted this to my Bayamese family. They informed me that he was a cousin from Miami visiting relatives in Bayamo.

Now almost half the food we eat in Cuba is imported from the United States. And now apparently we are importing our “big boned” US relatives as well. So real obesity is returning to Cuba, but it arrives on a chartered jet plane full of US relatives at Jose Marti.

Cuba is an island full of people who dream of the day each night of being saddled with the affliction or the "genetic" malady of being “metabolically challenged.”  I hope it never comes to that.

From Brito: 

"There's an ass for every seat"....and you can sell anything to the sheeple so long as it's packaged properly.  So I wouldn't blame the processed food industries as quickly as you.  After all, there's no gun being put to anyone's head to buy crap for food.  Stupid does as stupid is.

Aside from the lack of self-control, part of the problem is too much meat in the American diet.  This comes from years of affluence - now gone forever.  My farmer parents in Portugal (or "peasants" if you're a Marxist) ate meat only once a week - on Sundays after Mass.  The rest of the week was spent on potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, black bread, sugarless coffee, and tons of fruit. When a pig was slaughtered, everything - and I mean everything was eaten - even the blood was fried.

Regards,

A Brito

From Chris K:

At Ecole Jean de La Fontaine in a suburb south of Paris, I’m asking the kids in the schoolyard about McDonald’s. “My mother she said the McDo, it’s degueulasse,” an eight-year-old says in sing-song, and sticks out her tongue and says “Bleccchh!” and starts jumping rope.  Impressed, I reply “Well, goddamn!” in English, and she just looks at me -- but then the afterschool flood is let, and here comes my daughter, screech-laughing and running.

The girl’s words were choice.  If mom were present, she would have scolded her for using degueulasse – an offensive slang that more or less means ‘disgusting’ or ‘filthy,’ but also can be used to denote something ‘physically and/or morally repugnant,’ per the authoritative Robert dictionary.  The mother would probably suggest her little darling use the gentler degoutant.  Degueulasse has a telling etymology, deriving from degueuler, which means ‘to puke, to spew’; degueuler itself derives from gueule, defined as the ‘the mouth of certain animals, especially flesh-eaters.’  It’s a freighted word – calls up the image, for me at least, of a dog vomiting meat, but it was music coming from this girl: For how often do you hear an eight-year-old anywhere sock it to the crapola that is McDonald’s?
  
It was a sign of hope for her generation, because the signs otherwise are full of grim forebodings: French kids are getting fat.  You can see even fat little French girls now, you can see them in the streets of Paris where just seven or eight years ago you saw no such thing – you didn’t imagine it possible, this race of lithe, slim, trim, handsomely formed people, seemingly immune to obesity by some genetic grace.  But there they are, the McDo generation: Rotund little beings in the Jardin de Luxembourg; or older, rounding out on the Metro with a 20 ounce of Coke; soon to be cursed with the affliction into young adulthood and bound, probably inexorably, toward a premature death.

From Bill:

I remember several years ago, while living in Oakland, I heard on KPFA one night a rather heated debate on whether obese citizens should have their own weekly show at the station in order to counter societal discrimination against them.

One particularly angry caller demanded that the hosts stop using the standard descriptive terms such as obese and overweight, and suggested a new, more neutral sobriquet which does not have so much "hateful" baggage:  "Persons of size."

So there we have it. Completely PC regarding gender, race, creed, political party and the digital readout on the bathroom scales.

Creeping Towards the Finishing Line

As you know, assuming that you are among the tens of thousands of people around the world who check in at this  CounterPunch site every day or two, these past three weeks we’ve been featuring our annual appeal for donations and saying that without the necessary $75,00 to be raised in these weeks, we’ll have to cut back drastically on what we do and what all you site readers who don’t subscribe to our newsletter, get every day for free.
But, with only a few days left, we’re still short of our target. To those who have not yet rallied to our call we say this:  Please DO believe our forecasts that times will be grim indeed for CounterPunch and CounterPunchers if you don’t reconsider seriously and click on the donation link.

Kevin Gray, Mark Rudd, Bruce Franklin … The Gang’s All Here!

Ten months into Obama-time, the plight of black Americans is terrible. Yet overwhelmingly they rally behind the president. In a powerful report from South Carolina Kevin Alexander Gray asks the question: what should the black political agenda be?

New to CounterPunch, Mark Rudd contributes an important piece on movement-building – task number one for the left today. He counterposes “organizing” with “activism” and describes what it will take to build a movement.  H. Bruce Franklin gives a chronology of the march into Afghanistan.

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Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

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