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Calling All CounterPunchers!
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Calling All CounterPunchers!
Annual Fundraising AppealWe interrupt your regular reading habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch needs your financial support!
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Today's Stories October 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Vijay Prashad October 29, 2008 Arno J. Mayer Eric Toussaint Matt Gonzalez Steven Conn Jonathan Cook Patrick Bond Ramzi Kysia Douglas Valentine Stephen Martin Margaret Dooley-Sammuli Amee Chew Website of the Day
October 28, 2008 James G. Abourezk Andy Worthington Gary Leupp Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Gregory V. Button Ralph Nader P. Sainath Martha Rosenberg Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 27, 2008 Michael Hudson Barbara Rose Johnston John Dinges Mike Whitney Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power Alan Farago David Michael Green Andy Worthington George Wuerthner Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day October 24 / 26, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Ishmael Reed Mike Whitney Don Santina Scott Boehm Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Binoy Kampmark Linn Washington Jr. Nicole Colson Bernard Chazelle Brian Jones Christopher Brauchli Benjamin Dangl Val Strange Steve Early David Macaray Allison Kilkenny Richard Rhames Jim Bell Kris De Welde Barry Clemson Adam Engel Mark Scaramella Tuli Kupferberg Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 23, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Todd Chretien John Ross Peter Morici Mats Svensson Marlene Martin Robert Jensen / Margaret Kimberley Deepak Tripathi David Morris Website of the Day October 22, 2008 Brian Cloughley Heather Gray Jeff Birkenstein Ralph Nader DC Larson David Swanson Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth Larry Everest Robert Fantina Martha Rosenberg Stephen Martin Website of the Day October 21, 2008 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig Roberts Corey D. B. Walker Steve Breyman Eric Toussaint Wajahat Ali Robert Weitzel Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing Patrick B. Barr Omar Barghouti Website of the Day October 20, 2008 Michael Hudson Anthony DiMaggio Tariq Ali Uri Avnery Bill Quigley Ben Rosenfeld David Michael Green William S. Lind Chris Genovali Stephen Martin Howard Lisnoff David Yearsley Website of the Day October 17 / 19, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Pam Martens Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whtney Michael D. Yates Suzanne Smith Carl Boggs Ralph Nader Fidel Castro Dave Marsh Saul Landau Jo Guldi Kevin Zeese Larry Everest Steve Early David Macaray Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Helen Redmond Dan Bacher Wajahat Ali Farzana Versey Vladimir Frolov Kim Nicolini Poets Basement Website of the Day October 16, 2008 Mike Whitney Jonathan Cook Ayesha Ijaz Khan Alan Maass Chuck O'Connell Mary Lynn Cramer P. Sainath Andy Worthington Peter Gelderloos Stephen Martin Douglas Valentine Website of the Day
October 15, 2008 Steve Conn William P. O'Connor Robert Weissman Jonathan M. Feldman Ron Jacobs Conn Hallinan Justin Podur Karl Grossman Dave Lindorff Eric Walberg Martha Rosenberg Uri Avnery Monica Benderman Website of the Day
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October 30, 2008 Now is the ChanceTurning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's CitiesBy GLEN FORD The demise or ill health of U.S. investment banks has deprived finance capital of its headquarters sector, the evil geniuses who hatch long range schemes for ethnic cleansing of the nation's cities. Now, more than ever, progressives must become city planners, and in the process of devising these plans forge unity among the various contesting communities that comprise the city. Community empowerment begins with community planning. The void left by finance capital's catastrophe demands that the Left - most particularly, the Black, urban left - make sense of the chaos and stench left by wounded and dying corporate elephants. The breathtaking statistics on paper wealth suddenly extinguished and once mighty bastions of capital laid low, do not begin to describe the economic meltdown's effect on finance capital's ability to rule the rest of us. It is not merely that giants such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others have been swept into the historical dustbin, as if by a righteous, wrathful storm. The demise of investment banking as a central tool of capitalist planning means the rich have at least temporarily lost the ability to remake the cities as they see fit. While some gentrification projects are on hold, due to the death or ill health of the investment bankers at the heart of most "Black removal" schemes, tenant and community forces must seize the time to devise their own plans for rational ways of living in post-meltdown urban America. Progressives must become city planners, and in the process of devising these plans forge unity among the various contesting communities that comprise the city. Corporations have always dominated the mechanisms of urban planning, not just through bribery and subversion of all potential opposition, but because capital always has a plan. It is the giant investment banking firms that provided the generalship, the strategic and tactical headquarters, for most of the grand schemes to purge the Harlems of America of non-white working class populations. Before residents and community organizations have any inkling they are about to be exiled from their neighborhoods, corporate planners have already researched every aspect of the targeted area, rationalized the new corporate project's impact on conditions (and profits) elsewhere in the city and region, drawn up enabling zoning and other laws and regulations to legalize the theft, and enlisted local non-white allies to run political interference. The investment bankers, the generals of finance capitalism, had their Waterloo in September, victims of fundamental contradictions made more explosively lethal by greedy genius. At the moment, the "system" has no command center - the strategic function of investment bankers, now dead, dying, or on "capital injection" support. Disoriented, capital's various sectors behave like chickens with their heads cut off - because that is almost literally what has happened. If there is any juncture in history for progressives to formulate their own "development" plans, it is now, while the beast lies crippled and incoherent. In New York's Harlem, epicenter of the national corporate vision to remake the cities without their existing populations - the New Orleans exodus without the flood - finance capital's darker political vassals are experiencing their own crisis. Sugar daddies like Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Bank were great sources of bribes, and gave critical support to dependent social service and cultural outfits, as sweeteners for their toxic scheme to reap billions from the methodical expulsion of black and brown residents. While working class folks should be savoring a reprieve from exile - dancing at the Wall Street wakes! - the bankers' black and brown political dependents mourn the tragic loss of "their" fat cats. It is a pitiful sight, like house servants tearfully burying the "good" master who only sold off the field slaves. The crash - of which we have seen only the beginning - is more than an opportunity for progressives and popular forces to seize the initiative in planning the nuts and bolts of a new dispensation. The void left by finance capital's catastrophe demands that the Left - most particularly, the black, urban left - make sense of the chaos left by wounded and dying corporate elephants. The banker-bought ghetto politicians and poseurs are now at their weakest, cut off from their sources of funds and ghetto fabulousness. With the corporate trickle-down dried up, these masterless samurai lose their reasons for existence. Progressive organizers are obligated to step into the vacuum while the bamboozlers are still reeling and scratching, to provide explanations (analysis) of what has occurred and introduce the process of democratic, informed, inclusive community planning - the indispensable first step toward community empowerment. The discipline of city planning forces various organizers from diverse ethnic backgrounds to find rational solutions to common problems. Personalities and prejudices diminish as obstacles when people are compelled to tackle the complex, material problems of making neighborhoods and cities work for the folks who live there. During a discussion of the "Wall Street Bust and the End of the NYC Real Estate Boom" at the City University of New York (CUNY) Social Forum earlier this month, a young Chinese American organizer recounted how she and her colleagues debated how to resist corporate efforts to gentrify Chinatown. "Some said, ‘We need to unite as Asians...I don't care about the Latinos or the Blacks,'" said the activist. Her organization chose "the alternative, to unite as working people to fight this racism." But of course, it can and will happen, because the moment demands it. People cannot forever tolerate living under constant threat of removal. Corporate gentrification requires the deployment of what Harlem Tenants Council executive director Nellie Hester Bailey calls "weapons of mass displacement" in the form of zoning laws and abuse of eminent domain. Organizers must counter such corporate weapons with inclusive community planning that excites and involves the people so that they combine as an even more powerful weapon: communities in defense of themselves and each other. But there's gotta be a plan. Glen Ford is BAR's executive editor. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com where this piece also appears.
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 Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont               CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed                   |
