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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! How Cops Extort Confessions;
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
How Cops Extort Confessions;
How the U.S. “Justice System” Really WorksNinety-two per cent of felony convictions in the U.S. are obtained by plea bargains or confessions. Without them the “justice system” would grind to a halt. In an important piece in our latest newsletter, available only to subscribers, Emily Horowitz shows how totally innocent people will “confess” under police pressure, even without physical torture. Horowitz outlines the powerful case for banning confessions altogether. Also in this new edition Marcus Rediker, co-author of the legendary The Many Headed Hydra, writes of popular heroism and resistance in the favelas of Medellin, Colombia. Alexander Cockburn reports on how America’s oldest bank, patronized by the global elites, washed billions smuggled out of Russia, and how the Russians might win their money back, shaking the world’s banking system if they do so. Serge Halimi describes the real battle for the soul of Europe. Get your copy 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 August 16 / 17, 2008 Conn Hallinan Robert Fantina
August 15, 2008 Steve Niva David Remington Michael Winship Paul Craig Roberts Farzana Versey Harvey Wasserman Felice Pace Julian Critchley Website of the Day August 14, 2008 Saul Landau / Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Reza Fiyouzat Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China Jack Bradigan Spula Patrick Irelan John Walsh Dan Bacher Website of the Day
August 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts David Remington Brian Cloughley Glen Ford Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Tom Lewis Stan Cox Alan Farago Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day August 12, 2008 Uri Avnery Anthony DiMaggio Bill Christison Eric Walberg Kate Connolly Diane Farsetta Peter Morici Thom Rutledge Lee Patton Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day August 11, 2008 Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Douglas Kammen William Willers Greg Moses Jeff Leys Cynthia McKinney Alan Farago Website of the Day August 9 / 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Bruce Jackson Kevin Young Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Robert Fantina Brendan Cooney Mark Almond Lois Gibbs Rev. William Alberts Kathy Kelly John Ross David Michael Green Bill Moyers / Ron Jacobs Richard Rhames David Yearsley Lee Sustar Brenda Norrell Ben Terrall Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 8, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia, Jr. M. Shahid Alam Andy Worthington Lawrence J. Korb David Model Alan Farago Diop Olugbala Firmin DeBrabander Website of the Day August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond William Blum Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Robert Weitzel Jacob G. Hornberger Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ace Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
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Weekend Edition Why Stephen Colbert is a Dead EndWhat's So Funny 'Bout Bush, Lies and Torture Memos?By LISA MARTINOVIC When an ACLU email directs you to a Stephen Colbert take on torture, you know it's time to reassess the news-as-entertainment phenomenon. Colbert was riffing on the Justice Department memo advising the CIA that its agents could legally use waterboarding and other so-called harsh interrogation techniques if they had an “honest belief" that their actions did not cause severe pain-even if that belief was "unreasonable.” Colbert has a gift for spinning conscience-shockers like this into satiric gold. But is that a good thing? At the level of our media saturated group-mind, political jibes, by their very ubiquity, make familiar the unacceptable. The more familiar a circumstance, the more likely it is to become entrenched, and the harder it is to change. From this perspective, might the pervasiveness of political satire unwittingly serve to normalize the very practices it would condemn? This line of inquiry started to gel a few years ago as I listened to my savvy ten-year-old nephew gleefully recount a scene from Scary Movie II. The protagonist, prowling through a dark, creepy basement, comes upon a pile of ashes: It's the Florida ballots! The presidency and entire course of history turned on this monstrous act of fraud and it's reduced to a sight gag in a kid's movie. It's all very clubby when everyone's in on the joke. But if it's a joke, how can we take it seriously? And if we don't, why would the man behind the curtain? Indeed, in our culture of extreme irony, President Bush felt secure enough to parody his own fallacious excuse for invading Iraq. Recall the 2004 White House Correspondents Dinner slideshow of Bush searching the Oval Office-under furniture, behind curtains-for weapons of mass destruction. “Nope,” he shrugs, “no weapons over there…. Maybe under here.” Wait-was he poking fun at a silly boo-boo or a war crime? Iraq decimated, thousands dead and maimed-now upwards of a million-our national coffers being sucked dry and our moral authority on the world stage trashed. All this oh so amusing to the man who led the charge. Consider all that ails our nation-from a teetering economy and war without end to global warming, peak oil and the end of civil liberties as we've known and loved them. The very fact that we can routinely joke about these issues before national audiences helps to create a false sense of security. Heck, if we can ridicule the President-a President who ridicules himself-we must have freedom of speech, the Democrats will surely restore our civil liberties some day, and Obama-Man will vanquish the dark night of our nation's soul. Guys like Colbert and Jon Stewart use humor to bring much needed attention to issues that many in corporate media ignore or at best downplay. But even the most daring comedic expose has little value beyond mere entertainment if viewers are so sated by its wit that they feel no urge to assume any responsibility for the information they've been handed. After chortling over the lawyerly parsing of torture, for example, how many of Colbert's 1.2 million fans took a moment to call their congressperson to demand hearings, corrective legislation-something? Precious few, judging by how fast the story vanished. We didn't even make enough noise to generate the attention slathered on something as trifling as John Edwards' affair. Life without humor would be its own form of torture; no one wants that. Laughter makes us feel good. It lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, and triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, producing a general sense of well-being. But like anything else that gives us pleasure, it can be abused if we indulge in it so much that we neglect the unglamorous, in-the-trenches work that makes up so much of life. How much easier it is to crack wise about the latest wound Bush inflicts on the body politic than to organize a campaign to impeach him. On a deeper and more ominous level, the principles of neuroplasticity suggest that the more time we spend laughing at things like the tortured logic of torture memos, the more we come to associate such insanity with positive feelings: even as we hate the content of the news we're hearing, we love the comic delivery. These neural linkages are created below the level of conscious awareness, whether we like it or not. And, night after night we program ourselves-just as methodically as Pavlov trained his dogs-to salivate in anticipation of the next blistering critique from Comedy Central . . . and the physiological relief it will bring. Because a spoonful of humor does help the injustice go down. But indiscriminately applied it belittles the truth and robs atrocity of its full weight by making it a source of amusement. We would do well to remember that it wasn't always thus. During the Vietnam War era, we had Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley. They served the news straight up, and it burned going down. When reports came of a US military officer declaring that “We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” I don't remember anyone trying to find a way to make that funny. Because it wasn't funny. We didn't laugh. We were outraged. We wept. We howled. We demonstrated. And we ended a war. Now, isn't it about time we all get serious? Lisa Martinovic is an essayist, slam poet and cartoonist based in Berkeley, California.
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