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Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories May 3, 2005 Peter
Linebaugh May 2, 2005 Ron
Jacobs Stan
Goff Karyn
Strickler Joshua
Frank Kevin
Zeese Vicente
Navarro
April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gabriel
Kolko Jennifer
Loewenstein Lee
Sustar Saul
Landau T.W.
Croft Nikolas
Kozloff William
Blum Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Doug
Giebel Steven
Erlanger Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Kurt
Nimmo Joe
DeRaymond Michael
Dickinson Mickey
Z. Justin
Taylor Poets
Basement Website
of the Weekend
April 29, 2005 W.
John Green Luke
Brothers Norman
Solomon M.
Junaid Alam Jackie
Corr Hunter
Greer Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 28, 2005 Omar
Waraich Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Greg
Moses Toni
Solo Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Werther
April 27, 2005 John
Ross Joshua
Frank Ray
McGovern Mark
Donham Dan
Smith
April 26, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Alevtina
Rea Greg
Moses Joshua
Frank Diana
Johnstone
April 25, 2005 Uri
Avnery Alison
Weir Lee
Sustar Leonardo
Boff Gary
Leupp
April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp James
Petras Harry
Browne Fred
Gardner Ron
Jacobs Elizabeth
Schulte Chris
Floyd
April 22, 2005 Saul
Landau Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Mike
Whitney Michael
Flynn Lee
Sustar Website
of the Day
April 21, 2005 Bill
Quigley Dave
Lindorff Jason
Leopold Kathleen
Christison
April 20, 2005 John Ross Kevin Zeese Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard Dave Lindorff Neve Gordon Brian Concannon, Jr Murray Hudson Frank B. Ford Monty Python Michael Dickinson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese John Ross Brian McKenna Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Dave Zirin Eli Stephens Harry Browne Website of
the Day
April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Mark Dow Omar Waraich Robert Buzzanco Sherry Wolf Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Mark Weisbrot John Pardon Yoshie Furuhashi Mike Roselle Ralph Nader Ramzy Baroud Jackson Thoreau Michael Dickinson Richard Neville Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Bill Glahn Mickey Z. Stephanie McMillan Josh Mahan David Russitano Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales Tom Reeves
April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Pat Williams Jessica Pupovac Joshua Frank Jerzy Mankowski Talli Naumann Antony Loewenstein Virginia Rodino Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen Website of the Day
April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Mike Whitney Terry Jones Dave Lindorff Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Kurt Nimmo Don Fitz Tom Crumpacker JG Jack McCarthy Kevin Zeese Jeffrey St.
Clair
April 12, 2005 John Wheat
Gibson Kevin Zeese Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Nelson P. Valdes Dave Zirin Website of the Day
April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Saul Landau Monique Dols Phil Gasper Mike Whitney Edwin Krales Paul de Rooij Website of the Day
April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair William A. Cook Gary Leupp Alan Maass Laura Carlsen Joe DeRaymond Nikolas Kozloff Dave Lindorff Greg Moses Fred Gardner Justin Smith Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Alam Ira Kay Elizabeth Schulte Jackie Corr Christopher
Brauchli Leslie A. Fiedler Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 8, 2005 Rob Eshelman Hom Raj Acharya
/ Sally Acharya Felice Pace Neve Gordon Mike Whitney Don Monkerud Adam Engel Vicente Navarro Website of the Day
April 7, 2005 Joshua Frank Yitzhak Laor Alan Maass Steven Sherman Dave Lindorff Gerry Adams John Chuckman Michael Dickinson John Ross Website of the Day
April 6, 2005 Peter Camejo Kevin Wehr Matt Vidal Robert Creeley
/ Bruce Jackson Nikolas Kozloff Sea Shepherd Crew Brenda Child Terry Eagleton David Swanson Cindy Ellen
Hill Website of
the Day
April 5, 2005 Jim Connolly Paul Craig
Roberts Gary Leupp Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Dan Smith Mark Engler Richard Oxman Greg Moses Website of the Day
April 4, 2005 Kevin Zeese Paul Craig Roberts Larry Birns
/ Sarah Schaffer Karyn Strickler Joshua Frank Michael Dickinson Surendra R.
Devkota Derrick O'Keefe Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 2 / 3, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Stan Goff John Ross Saul Landau Robert Creeley Mike Roselle Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Greg Moses Fran Quigley Kurt Nimmo Nicole Colson Chris Genovali Alan Farago Lawrence Reichard Ben Tripp Avantika Regmi Lee Sustar Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 1, 2005 Tom Barry Rahul Mahajan Charlie Cray
/ Jim Vallette Dave Lindorff Zeynep Toufe Suzan Mazur Michael Dickinson Stan Cox Ra Ravishankar Daniel Wolff
March 31, 2005 Sharon Smith Ron Jacobs Tariq Ali Michael Dickinson Kanak Mani
Dixit Mitchell Zimmerman Xuan-Trang
Ho Dave Zirin Joe Bageant Jeff Halper Website of
the Day
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
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May 3, 2005 Stewart Brand's Hole in the EarthBranding Eco CollapseBy MICHAEL DONNELLY Salem, Oregon As if the "give us the money instead" plea titled the "Death of Environmentalism" written for a claque of Environmental Grant Makers wasn't enough of a verification of how lame the Big Green bureaucrats, their funders AND the report's authors who wish to merely replace the losing team with themselves are; we now have an even more ludicrous State of Gaia analysis popping up from Stewart Brand. Brand was the erstwhile publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog back in that ancient era of the back-to-the-land movement. He later shifted his musings to the Internet with "The Well" which he aggrandizes as "the first electronic community." Now, in his late sixties, Brand weighs in pimping Nuclear Power as the solution to Climate Change; waxes on about the benefits of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) even calling on the creation of GMOs that would kill off "invasive" species, such as zebra mussels, whose only "crime" is to colonize other habitats when the opportunity is provided (given our own specie's deadly expansion, one can't get much more Anthropocentric than that!) and he dismisses the notion that there even is a problem with what Earth First! co-founder Howie Wolke calls the Human Outbreak in his own treatise responding to the afore-mentioned "Death of Environmentalism." Going for a perverse Grand Slam, Brand concludes that if there even is any problem related to humans breeding beyond the Earth's carrying capacity, then the solution is more urbanization!
What on the blue-green planet is going on here? Right off the bat, Brand uses a false analogy to justify his call for the "mainstream of the environmental movement (to) reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani-zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power." Brand claims that environmentalists once fully embraced Smokey the Bear's pro-timber jihad against wildfire and have now come to their senses and support fire's use as another management tool. Not only was this Fire as the Great Satan policy that of the federal land managers and never that of the forest activist community, the "new" use of fire as a management tool is driven mainly by the goal of "protecting" industry's source of fiber and humans' residences built in or adjacent-to fire-dependent ecosystems. As long as fighting/allowing or using fire as a management tool and defense of property issue, rather than accommodating fire's inextricable role in life on the planet, is the starting point; not a whole lot has yet changed. Industry and foresters salivate over the opportunity to log any recently burned forest. Yet, a burned forest is STILL a living forest. Adopt that paradigm and maybe one can claim that a transformation has begun. How did these forests ever get along before foresters? Again, just when did enviros embrace Smokey? Similar shaky reasoning underpins Brand's assertion that human population is in the midst of a decline. While citing but five countries (out of 193) that are currently reproducing at less than the 2.1 children per woman replacement rate, he extrapolates a "fierce" decrease in overall human numbers and claims it is already underway! And, incredibly, that increased urbanization is the reason we're irreversibly on our way to LESS humans as I write and you read this. That the five lamented population-shedding countries are Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia speaks volumes.
Urban Decline Under Brand's equation, more megalopolises like the 37 million citizen Mexico City are the solution to the Human Outbreak. For Brand, even the over one billion illegal urban squatters on the planet are somehow doing rural ecosystems a service. I can hardly imagine a more unlivable sci-fi future. (Don't get me wrong. As a wild ecosystems defender, I and my buddies have no problem with people clustering in cities and leaving the wild Earth to other species and only visiting, leaving no trace of that visit. Our usual self-congratulatory comment when hiking in some stunning, remote place is: "There are about 6.3 billion people on this planet and we're here!") I'm undecided as to just how we shed our over-consuming, over-the-carrying-capacity numbers. I imagine as articulated often by my buddies Mike Roselle and Steve Spahr that Nature will go the virus route with us and population will indeed drop off "fiercely." Again, I'm not sure if that's how, though I do feel the draw-down a question of when, not if. But I have no doubt that increased urbanization won't do the trick.
Our Ecological Footprint Brand doesn't address consumption THE issue in the population question, if not all four issues he presents as resolvable if us "romantic" enviros could just "admit mistakes or change direction." Where does he think these expanding urban areas, these "humanedominant human habitats" will get their resources? And what level of consumption will drive the level of resource extraction obviously centered on formerly wild places? A good friend recently took one of those Ecological Footprint tests. It queries one's consumption habits and then extrapolates how many Earths' worth of resources it would take if the entire global population consumed at the same rate. My buddy is a vegetarian; lives off-the-grid (not even solar panels); doesn't even have running water; works for minimum wage and drives very little, working in the collective where he lives. His result? It would take three Earths if all of 6.3 billion on us lived the same, frugal by American standards lifestyle.
The Sun Rises in the West Perhaps the scale of Brand's fuzzy thinking can be grasped by noting whom he gives credit for hybrid cars: "Years ago, environmentalists hated cars and wanted to ban them. Then physicist Amory Lovins came along, saw that the automobile was the perfect leverage point for large-scale energy conservation, and set about designing and promoting drastically more efficient cars. Gas-electric hybrid vehicles are now on the road, performing public good." That's gotta be news to the good engineers at Honda and Toyota. As one long-time eco-defender noted, "The sun rose in the Far East, Stewart Brand didn't see the light but heard Amory crowing." Brand also gives another of his echo chamber a nod; defending turncoat Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, a commercial fish farmer who now is a Big Timber spokesman most noted for calling Ancient Forest clearcut extraction in British Columbia "sustainable." Brand whines that Moore has "been privately anathematized by other environmentalists" without presenting the other side at all. Here's what a few folks who have had to deal with Moore have to say:
Going Nuclear Brand does observe that all these issues are trumped by the issue of Global Climate Change. Agreed. But, Brand's solution to it is to move from a fossil fuel-dependent society and embrace the Nuclear Option. He goes so far as to state that "the storage of radioactive waste is a surmountable problem." Yet, there is no credible science behind that dreamy notion even though he fully idolizes scientists and dismisses "romantics" at every turn. He goes far over the top and calls Nuclear power plants "clean," "high yield" and "low cost." (Yup. And it'll be so cheap there will be no metersBrand views nuclear somewhat like George Bush pronounces it with some exotic lexicon only they and their sycophants can embrace as real.) Conservation is far cheaper, safer and quicker to achieve than ANY other energy source. Conservation, like consumption, is not even mentioned in Brand's saving-the-planet-without-giving-up-the-American-lifestyle quixotic treatise.
Buyer Beware This "moralistic, rebellious romantic" back-to-the-lander once took Stewart Brand's (and Ken Kesey's) advice and bought a woodstove raved about in the Whole Earth catalog --- turned out to be a cheap, inefficient tin can responsible for many house fires. In fact, most products I bought because of their promotion in Whole Earth tuned out to be inferior, though the prose interspersed with the ads was exquisite; some of it has aged quite well. Stewart Brand's latest sales pitch though calls for some far more expensive, dangerous but, with a bit of luck and Gaia's likely intervention; improbable fixes. MICHAEL DONNELLY, now urbanized in Salem, Oregon has back-to-the-land roots; has solarized six cabins; helped build two small hydro-electric systems; helped restore over 100 buildings; built a Planned Parenthood clinic; has planted and grown thousands of trees; established Preserves in three states and has successfully sued the government over forest mismanagement in his life-long "romantic" efforts to off-set human impacts on his favorite planet. He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com
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