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Today's Stories November 2, 2010 Vincent Navarro November 1, 2010 Ted Honderich Steven Higgs John Ross Dean Baker Ralph Nader Justin E. H. Smith Marjorie Cohn Scott Boehm Brian Tierney Trish Kahle Martha Rosenberg Bathrobe Erectus: Feting Hugh Hefner Website of the Day
October 29 - 31, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Joe Bageant Peter Lee David Rosen Mike Whitney David Smith-Ferri Afghanistan: "Is This Normal?" David Macaray Chamber of Horrors: Turbo-Lobbyists for the Ruling Class Rannie Amiri Jonathan Cook Ramzy Baroud Ellen Brown Dr. Nina Pierpont Dave Lindorff Brian Horejsi Daniel Raventós Worldwide Concentration of Wealth: What the Figures Say Richard Anderson-Connolly David Thomson Christopher Brauchli Bob Fitrakis / Harvey Wasserman Charging Rove With Racketeering Roberto Rodriguez Arizona Blues: a Time and Decade of Betrayal Ron Jacobs Farzana Versey Michael Donnelly Gerald E. Scorse John Grant Mickey Z. Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Peter Stone Brown David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
October 28, 2010 Paul Craig Roberts Joseph Grosso Kirkpatrick Sale Michael Winship Sherwood Ross Mark Weisbrot Sam Smith Washington: Where Smart People Go to Do Stupid Things Nicholas Arguimbau Sheldon Richman Franklin Lamb Website of the Day October 27, 2010 Conn Hallinan Michael Schwalbe Dave Lindorff Gareth Porter Dean Baker Clancy Sigal Ram Etwareea Stewart J. Lawrence Alan Farago Binoy Kampmark Offshoring Middle Earth: Prostituting the Hobbit Website of the Day
October 26, 2010 Pam Martens Joann Wypijewski Clarence Lusane Sold Brothers: the Bizarro World of Juan Williams and Clarence Thomas Gareth Porter Stephen Soldz Lawrence Davidson Alan Farago Dean Baker Jerica Arents Gerald E. Scorse Messing with Mankiw: Whining About Taxes and Work Website of the Day
October 25, 2010 Nancy Scheper-Hughes Patrick Cockburn Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Bill Quigley Winslow T. Wheeler David Macaray Stewart J. Lawrence Ray McGovern Missy Beattie Website of the Day
October 22 - 24, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Lee Ballinger Franklin C. Spinney Rannie Amiri Ralph Nader Laura Carlsen Avi Shlaim Mike Whitney Josh Stieber Kathy Kelly Sasan Fayazmanesh Conn Hallinan Linn Washington, Jr. Christopher Brauchli Mark Weisbrot Stan Cox Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Benjamin Dangl Peter Stone Brown Julie Hilden David Ker Thomson Missy Beattie Suzy Dean Charles M. Young M. Shahid Alam Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 21, 2010 Diana Johnstone Joanne Mariner Mike Whitney Lawrence Davidson Bill Quigley / Alan Farago David Smith-Ferri Tolu Olorunda Educational Heroes and Myths Website of the Day October 20, 2010 Philippe Marlière Tariq Ali Anthony Pahnke / Mark N. Hoffman David Smith-Ferri Patrick Madden Ishmael Reed Dean Baker Mike Roselle Dave Marsh Pete Redington Website of the Day October 19, 2010 Pam Martens Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Clarence Lusane Sherwood Ross Trudy Bond Sherry Wolf Yves Engler Camilla Fox / Erin McManus Website of Day October 18, 2010 Mike Whitney Jonathan Cook Martha Rosenberg Stewart J. Lawrence P. Sainath James Zogby Ken Cole, Ralph Maughan / Brian Ertz Patrick Brennan Jack Heyman John Grant Website of the Day October 15 - 17, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Slavoj Žižek Paul Craig Roberts Adrienne Pine / Peter Lee Jonathan Cook Bitta Mostofi Franklin Lamb Rannie Amiri Robert Alvarez Joe Paff David Rosen David Correia Sam Hitchmough Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Graham Usher Gary Leupp David Macaray Ron Jacobs Peter Cervantes-Gautschi Lawrence Swaim Linn Washington David Ker Thomson Norman Solomon Michael Dawson John Stanton Jayne Lyn Stahl Paul Buchheit Ziad Abbas Anthony Papa Hardy Jones Missy Beattie Charles R. Larson Peter Stone Brown David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 14, 2010 Mike Whitney Jonathan Cook Dean Baker Marjorie Cohn Stewart J. Lawrence Carl Finamore Dave Lindorff Raúl Zibechi Willie L. Pelote Website of the Day October 13, 2010 Vijay Prashad Uri Avnery Dean Baker Winslow T. Wheeler Patrick Bond Michael Winship Myles B. Hoenig Tom Turnipseed Website of the Day October 12, 2010 Ralph Nader Franklin C. Spinney Mike Whitney Robert Alvarez Deepak Tripathi Chris Genovali / Camilla Fox Harvey Wasserman Robert Jensen Mark Weisbrot Charles R. Larson Website of the Day
October 11, 2010 Michael Hudson Bill Quigley Linn Washington Paul Krassner Jonathan Cook Cal Winslow Sherry Wolf Peter Stone Brown David Michael Green Jayne Lyn Stahl Website of the Day October 8 - 10, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Alain Gresh Patrick Cockburn Rannie Amiri Conn Hallinan Ramzy Baroud Saul Landau Sam Smith Yvonne Ridley Ellen Brown Santwana Dasgupta David Macaray Labor Secretaries: Frances and Elaine Gerald E. Scorse Tony Newman David Ker Thomson Christopher Brauchli Jon Mitchell Kevin Zeese Steven Best Missy Beattie Binoy Kampmark Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Dave Marsh David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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November 2, 2010 Punishing the Desperate for Being DesperateProne PioneersBy LINH DINH Don’t sit. Don’t lie. I mean, lie all you want to, especially if you’re sitting in office, but don’t sit or lie on a San Francisco sidewalk between 7AM and 11PM, should Proposition L pass this week. Repeated offenders could be fined up to $500 or jailed for 30 days. Across the land, new laws are being introduced to criminalize our most vulnerable and destitute. In Santa Cruz, one can now be arrested for sleeping outdoors, including “in, on or under any parked vehicle,” between 11PM and 8:30AM. Venice Beach is also banning sleeping in parked vehicles. Punishing our most desperate for being desperate is not only cruel, it’s also a self defeating proposition. The homeless can’t pay their fines, and if you jail them, it’s only a waste of tax money. Take Boulder, which has a law prohibiting camping outside overnight. Like all of our other municipalities, Boulder doesn’t have nearly enough beds in its shelters. In the last four years, Boulder has handed out over 1,600 tickets to its homeless. Hundreds have been arrested when they can’t pay up. After a night or two in jail, they end up on the streets again. The idea, I think, is to chase these people from Boulder altogether. They can become someone else’s problem. As this depression becomes more undeniable, as more homes are foreclosed, more jobs evaporate, more businesses shut down, as our homeless population explodes, you can count on seeing more laws passed against helpless people sitting, camping or maybe just coughing on the sidewalk. Each city and town will try to dump its economic casualties onto the next. The homeless of Manhattan can trek over to Newark. Those in Newark can shuffle to Manhattan… While we’re at it, we should pass laws against curling up in a dumpster or being frozen to death outside. We already lead the world in incarceration rate. More than one percent of American adults are jailed. With many more to be locked up, expect more prisons to be privatized. Lowest bidders will get the contracts. Privately run means more efficiency, means trimming costs. Just pack them in and, instead of sloppy joe, just feed them soy burgers or whatever. There’s a growth industry for all you investors out there. Sign displayed by some bongo banging guy in Boulder: “Sleep is an Involuntary Action. Which is NOT ILLEGAL.” Yet sleeping on the sidewalk, even when you have nowhere else to sleep, is already illegal in many American places. During too late late capitalism, just about any street activity is illicit or a nuisance. Don’t beg. Don’t peddle. Don’t busk. Don’t even loiter. Just walk straight in to that big box store, why don’t you, and be a good American. A transplant from Detroit, Ed later told me that he had been dancing in downtown San Francisco for more than a decade, and that he made several more times than his wife, with her straight job in a retail store. Unlike most of us, Ed can’t be fired, but he can certainly be thwarted by a policeman. If we can’t make a dime on the street, will Big Brother leave us alone if we just putz putz around in our own backyard? Not so fast. In Michigan, House Bill 6458, introduced by two Democrats, Gabe Leland and Mike Huckleberry, will prohibit farming in any city with a population of 900,000 or more. Why didn’t they name Detroit outright, since it’s the only one that qualifies? And what’s going on here, exactly? Urban farming is about the only positive development in Detroit right now. If more Americans planted their own vegetables and raised their own chickens, ducks and rabbits, etc, even in the cities, they wouldn’t have to rely on the toxic factory farms. Detroit is also the only American city without a supermarket chain, so access to food, even crappy stuff, is already limited. With factories gone, jobs gone, can’t a person plant an odd cabbage without being branded a criminal?! There seems to be a pattern here. In Chicago, school cafeterias are banned from using vegetables grown on school ground, by the children themselves. Big Brother is even messing with the Amish. Dan Allgyer, of Kinzers, PA, has been harassed by our Food and Drug Administration for supposedly selling unpasteurized milk, a charge he denies. Even if he was, I’d rather drink milk from any Amish farm than the diseased product on supermarket shelves. As all of our interlocking systems unravel in the years ahead, each of us will have to become more self-sufficient and resourceful. Each community, each neighborhood, will finally be introduced to itself. For better or worse, you will be welcomed home. You will be home, at last. As we stagger forward, don’t scorn the ones who are scraping by on the fringe, the day-laborers, odd job men, buskers, scroungers, the peddlers pushing carts, even the homeless, for they are the point men, the pioneers of our time. Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories and five of poems, and the recently published novel, Love Like Hate. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.
CounterPunch Print Edition Exclusive! CLASS WAR IN THE U.K. AND FRANCE Susan Watkins, editor of New Left Review, reports on Britain’s Tri-partisan Electoral Monolith and how the Slash-and-Burn Tory Coalition is picking up from where New Labour left off. Larry Portis reports from France on the mass protests and the shrivelling of Sarkozy. Peter Lee gives us an rivetting piece on the awful tragedy of China’s Yellow River.
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! By Andrea Peacock
Yellowstone Drift:
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! RED STATE REBELS: Edited by Buy End Times Now! of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Grand Theft Pentagon Spell Albuquerque:
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Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed |