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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Report From the Afghan Front
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Report From the Afghan Front
It's Obama's War and It's Going Very BadlyExclusively for CounterPunch subcribers, Patrick Cockburn files a special report from Kabul: the Taliban's tightening grip on most of the country; plumetting US popularity in a bankrupt country rotted by corruption. For fifty years, Seymour Melman waged intellectual war on Pentagon capitalism, making the case for peaceful conversion. David Price brings to light decades of FBI secret surveillance. Senator Jim Webb is launching the first determined bid in forty years to overhaul the US criminal justice system at whose call is the American gulag. Alexander Cockburn reports on the prospects for his success. Get your new edition 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 June 26-28, 2009 Jeffrey St. Clair June 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly Jack Bratich Wendell Potter Charles R. Larson Alan Farago Jonathan Cook Gareth Porter Bitta Mostofi / David Macaray Mark Schuller Website of the Day June 24, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Dean Baker Andy Worthington James Bovard Diana Gibson / P. Sainath Gareth Porter Robert Alvarez Dave Lindorff Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi Website of the Day
June 23, 2009 David Price Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway / Dave Lindorff Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero Gary Leupp Brian M. Downing Robert Bryce Nicholas Dearden Yousef Munayyer Website of the Day June 22, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Chris Floyd Jack Z. Bratich Atash Yaghmaian Laura Carlsen Paul Craig Roberts Vijay Prashad Fred Gardner Andy Thayer David Macaray Website of the Day
June 19 - 21, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Al Giordano Henry A. Giroux Anthony DiMaggio Paul Craig Roberts John Ross Gareth Porter Carl Ginsburg Tommi Avicolli Mecca Joe Bageant Serge Halimi P. Sainath Jim Goodman Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Robert Fantina Harvey Wasserman Walter Brasch David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Ben Sonnenberg Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend June 18, 2009 Uri Avnery Robert Sandels / Anthony DiMaggio Robert Weissman Joshua Frank Jonathan Cook Reza Fiyouzat Norman Solomon Ali Jawad James Ridgeway Website of the Day June 17, 2009 Carl Boggs Dr. Bryant Welch Winslow T. Wheeler Liaquat Ali Khan Jonathan Cook Binoy Kampmark Karim Makdisi Dave Lindorff David Swanson Gene Marx Website of the Day June 16, 2009 Patrick Cockburn John Ross Afshin Rattansi Marc Levy Paul Craig Roberts Behzad Yaghmaian Brian M. Downing Merle Lefkoff David Macaray Robert Jensen David Swanson Website of the Day June 15, 2009 Michael Hudson Reza Fiyouzat Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway Marjorie Cohn Rannie Amiri Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Leonard Schwartz Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day June 12-14, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney Mark Ames Esam Al-Amin Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Andy Worthington Heather Gray Felice Pace Ron Jacobs George Wuerthner Jeffrey Buchanan / David Ker Thomson Renaud Lambert Kevin Zeese David Macaray Evelyn Pringle Chris Genovali David Michael Green Brian J. Foley Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
June 11, 2009 Kathy Kelly / James Bovard Tristan de Bourbon Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Ralph Nader Harvey Wasserman Nicole Colson Mark Weisbrot Dan Bacher Website of the Day June 10, 2009 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine Kathy Kelly Paul Craig Roberts Rev. William E. Alberts Peter Lee Carol Miller Emily Ratner Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day June 9, 2009 Winslow T. Wheeler Mike Whitney Stan Cox Sibel Edmonds Jonathan Cook David Macaray Robert Jensen Nadia Hijab Mark Weisbrot Website of the Day June 8, 2009 John Ross Paul Craig Roberts Franklin C. Spinney Franklin Lamb Uri Avnery Jonathan Cook Eric Toussaint Jim Goodman Norman Solomon Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day June 5 -7, 200 Alexander Cockburn George Galloway Paul Craig Roberts Jennifer Loewenstein Franklin Lamb Mike Whitney Andy Worthington Missy Comley Beattie Farzana Versey Stanley Heller John V. Whitbeck Robert Weissman Lee Sustar Dave Lindorff William Blum Ernest Callenbach / Greg Moses Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Tim Stelloh Belén Fernández David Ker Thomson Karyn Strickler Christopher Brauchli Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Weekend Edition The Musical PatriotYankee Prof Takes on DallasBy DAVID YEARSLEY Three weeks back, the Musical Patriot took aim at the modern phenomenon of the Arts Center, discharging several rounds in the direction of Dallas. Those sent over the heads of Los Angeles and New York were taken in good part. Not so in Texas, where the Dallas Observer website inaugurated a series on “People Who Hate Dallas” in my honor. Needless to say, I’ve been dining out on this honor since, and so I feel owe it to Arts Centrists of Dallas to offer them one more expression of thanks. The press information emanating from the backers of this outsized complex describe it as an “arts destination,” scheduled to open in October. Indeed, it is a destination rather than a “district” in the older, more vibrant sense of that term—that is, a quarter of a city with a human flavor because people are living in it. It is indeed a “destination”—a place one goes to, or more accurately drives to, and then leaves. Dallas’ mall for high brow entertainment — entertainment I gladly consume at other venues, albeit less grandiose ones — costs a billion dollars-plus and boasts a new opera house and performance square designed by Norman Foster; a theatre by Rem Koolhaas, a smaller “performance hall” by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. These flashy buildings take their place not so far from Meyerson Symphony Hall and the art museum. Now, a real city has to have its Lincoln Center, and if it can outdo that half-century old standard, all the better. I’m not accusing Dallas or any other art-proud place or potentate, from Louis XIV to Frederick the Great and beyond, of being philistine. Rather, I’m asserting the obvious fact that a sprawling campus for the arts is meant to make a statement to the world, not just be a nice place to go to the theater. But these Legolands for star architects are often chilling places – and, in case of the Dallas center, this is not just because of the lethal Texan air-conditioning. Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz is another jamboree for the same architectural elite, and provides a good comparison. This glitzy, overpowering array of buildings and spaces was seemingly unpacked and dropped down from the sky. None of them seem to have been built for the people who use them. The Potsdamer Platz — in contrast to the Dallas project it is a mixed-used development — arose in the No-Man’s Land between East and West Berlin south of the Brandenburg Gate as an unambiguous signal to the world about the outcome of the Cold War, and how the West won it. It is all steel and glass, with a few bricks thrown in as a post-modern reference to the colorful old district of the 1920s. But the new Potsdamer Platz is sterile and overwhelming. Even the teetertotters for kids in the central open area are a good ten times larger than the than human-scaled ones kids know and love. This playground, like the entire project, is a gimmick, whose appeal lasts a couple of ups-and-downs. Then the teeter-totters, like the development as a whole, begin to feel oppressive and gloomy. Potsdamer Platz is anything but uplifting. Will Dallas’s grand scheme fall victim to the same command approach to architecture, entertainment, and the arts? It certainly looks that way to me, as I survey plans and images, and examine the statistics that show that Dallas’s downtown is hardly experiencing a renaissance of urban life that will provide a viable context beside the roads ringing it. That the arterial—the Woodall Rodgers Freeway—running alongside the arts center roads is sunken and will be covered with a deck of grass, to be kept green by untold gallons of water in the hot Dallas summer, hardly integrates the complex with any real urban life. Some proud residents of Dallas took great offense at my polemic, but let me assure them that my critique was aimed at the brave new world of urbanism on steroids, not on whether they wear a cowboy hat to the opera house or not. As curator of my great grandfather’s Stetson, I think it a fine object to be seen with at the opera, and I plan to wear this very heirloom when I next go to the Met. My hat-loving Norwegian ancestor was the first elected sheriff of Dunn County, North Dakota, as nimble on the fiddle as he was with a shooting iron. And he was gifted with the perfect name for lawman: John Bang. I know he’d back me up in my digital range war with the posse now marauding at the perimeter my virtual ranch. Many assumed an anti-souther bias on my part. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as my dear cousins in Monroe, Louisiana will gladly testify, too. The Musical Patriot, like the Musical Republic he defends, recognizes no borders. I was surprised to see that so many of the irate D-towners have such a tin ear for irony. Given the money spent on concert hall and opera house, let's hope that their hearing is better equipped for symphonies and songs. As for the Mega-Projects of our present epoch: The Chinese have their National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. It's even more grandiose than anything Dallas can throw up, but both complexes share a kindred ideology. The mania for bigger and flashier—and costlier!—is not without its dangers for the arts and for people. If forced to choose between big boxes like WalMart and their high-art and high-concept counterparts, like Winspear Opera House in Dallas, I’ll take the latter any day. But the arts center and the mall share a disturbingly similar vision of “city planning,” even if it is one seen from opposite ends of the economic spectrum. The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is so much larger than life that it almost makes me want to stay home and listen to my iPod instead. Almost … David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
Spell Albuquerque:
Waiting for
Lightning
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