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Today's Stories

October 31, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Change That Really Means Something

October 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain's Women Problems

Vijay Prashad
Smearing Rashid Khalidi

Paul Craig Roberts
World Tires of Rule by Dollar

Glen Ford
Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Stanley Heller
Wall Street Bonus Madness

William Loren Katz
"Kill Him!:" a Political Chronicle

Joshua Frank
Memo to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After the Election?

James McEnteer
The Year of Unreliable Witnesses

Felice Pace
The Big Change: Can "Civic Unreasonableness" Save the Earth?

Jonathan Cook
The Executions at Kafr Qassem

Reza Fiyouzat
Boycott the Elections!

Website of the Day
An Open Letter to Whole Foods

 

October 29, 2008

Arno J. Mayer
The US Empire will Survive Bush

Eric Toussaint
How the Food and Financial Crises are Interconnected

Matt Gonzalez
What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

Steven Conn
Obama and the Camp Followers

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Visit to a Father's Grave

Patrick Bond
Strauss-Kahn Strikes Again!

Ramzi Kysia
A Freedom Rider in Gaza City

Douglas Valentine
A Glimpse Inside the Head of Joe the Plumber

Stephen Martin
What America is Owed

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Alternatives to Incarceration

Amee Chew
Support Obama, Vote McKinney?

Website of the Day
N-Word Chant Doesn't Phase Palin

 

October 28, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Bail Out the Taxpayers

Andy Worthington
The Empty Chair at Guantánamo

Gary Leupp
The Specter of the Sixties: Palin v. Ayers

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of the American Road

Mike Whitney
Meet the World's New Currency

Gregory V. Button
What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA

Ralph Nader
Share the Sacrifices, Share the Benefits

P. Sainath
Haunted by Socialism

Martha Rosenberg
Melting Pot in Hell

Charles R. Larson
Palin/Wurzelbacher 2012!

Website of the Day
Why You Can't See Across the Grand Canyon

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

Barbara Rose Johnston
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

John Dinges
Palling Around with Dictators: McCain and Pinochet

Mike Whitney
Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War

Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power

Alan Farago
Origins of the Fall

David Michael Green
Remind Me Again: Who Won the Cold War?

Andy Worthington
The Collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo Trial

George Wuerthner
Is Ranching Sustainable? The Story of Bob the Rancher

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Obamanations of Barack

Website of the Day
Heartland of Darkness

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bomber
s

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

 

 

October 31, 2008

Start the Rebellion Now

The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

By MORTON SKORODIN

The period we're living in now is the Bush-Obama-McCain Administration. Bush obligingly initiated Obama's bombing campaign on Pakistan. The three of them colluded on the recent wealth transfer (about $840 billion) from the American people to Wall St.

The 24 hr/7 days/wk media Wurlitzer distracts us from looking at these white elephants too closely. The circus is so loud and visually entrancing that it hides the deeper structure of society. The U.S. is a military dictatorship with scientific public relations. Part of this scientific PR is the careful cultivation of and trumpeting of America’s democratic trappings. The important thing to remember is that McCain and Obama were carefully vetted by the moneyed rulers and this is not particularly a secret. It’s called “campaign contributions”. After that, we the people get to choose from two approved candidates.

The fix is in. McCain's a patsy. Obama's repeatedly been anointed sovereign on the cover of Time (That's of Time-Warner, the media conglomerate he won't break up.)

There's no left to speak of in the US. There are material reasons for this- weak unions, few strikes. (The reasons why unions are weak are beyond the scope of this discussion.) So left-wing stars like Ralph Nader and Amy Goodman are tethered to nothing, like bloated Macy parade balloons that have floated up and become more bloated. Their efforts, however well-intentioned, don't have force behind them and are sometimes completely ineffective.

The Society of the Spectacle meets the neo-totalitarian total information awareness society. The state has technology for and has commandeered the resources to spy upon everyone with 16 or 18 “intelligence” agencies and control us as much as possible with the media of five corporations that are pretty well unified as to how and how much the populace is “informed”. On the other hand, the populace is atomized (deprived of meaningful ties to others); the only major non corporate-government institutions are the cooptable churches.

The handsome prince and his foil, the wicked, but comely, queen. They're comic book superheroes- perfect for TV, the key instrument of oppression and ignorance. (Notice the immense effort to make sure everybody has digital TV by next Feb. I wish they cared that much to give water to our brethren in New Orleans.)

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are too good to be true:
Barack Obama- that name is foreign beyond foreign, mother a hippy who had a black's child, an actual African (gasp). This sounds as scary to many whites as the orchestrated excesses of the police state such as the Daarth Vader outfitted police with their North Korea style truncheons at the Republican convention seem to anxious liberals and righteous activists.

Sarah Palin - superhero mom, she'll serve milk and cookies for you while on the way to running and ruining the world. She’s not regular pro-gun, church, etc. She is the cartoon version- actually shoots wolves from helicopters; associates with, to put it a little too politely, “white nationalists”.

This dichotomy serves only the rulers. What the vast majority on both sides need are exactly the same things: peace, economic relief, and freedom from the intrusive state.

Divide and conquer. The rulers have been promoting race war as a counter to class struggle since the 1600s. They are very good at it.

After the election the economy may get still worse and there will be further military adventures. As things unravel the game will be: blame the Black guy. This process has already started.

As far as U.S. military planners go, the election cycle and the public’s feelings are only a factor in determining the timing and announcement of aggressive actions, kind of like taking into account the weather for an optimal time for the Normandy landing in WW2.

It’s a military dictatorship with Handsome Presidents. The election is a joke, but more importantly, a waste of the people’s time (except, perhaps some local races). Get over it. Think and find effective ways to rebel.

Morton Skorodin lives in Oklahoma and can be reached at mortonskorodin@sbcglobal.net

 

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Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
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Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side

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RED STATE REBELS:
Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland

Edited by
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Joshua Frank


How the Press Led
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Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism

 

 

 

 

 


The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn

 

 

 


Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont

 


 

 


CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed