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Today's Stories

November 24, 2010

Jeffrey St. Clair
BP's Inside Game

November 23, 2010

Pam Martens
Ten Ideas to Starve the Wall Street Beast

Patrick Cockburn
The Dangers of Embedded Journalism

Ben Rosenfeld /
Lauren Regan
When the Constitution is No Obastacle for the FBI: Legal Lessons From the Green Scare

Franklin C. Spinney
Another Free Ride for the Pentagon?

Dean Baker
Sinking Ireland

Ralph Nader
Obamabush: Semper Fi, Barack

Ray McGovern
Bush the Warmonger in His Own Words

George Wuerthner
Livestock and Predators: How to Stop the Killing

Don Monkerud
America's New Entertainment

Clare Bayard
Healing From Empire

Website of the Day
The American Galapagos

 

November 22, 2010

Michael Hudson
Why Paul Krugman Waves the Flag for Uncle Sam

James Abourezk
Honoring Helen Thomas

Paul Craig Roberts
Insouciant Americans

Sasan Fayazmanesh
When Sanctions Are Not Enough

Richard Forno
TSA and the New "Americanism"

Gary Leupp
Ignorance There ... and Here

Martha Rosenberg
Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest are Disguised

Lawrence Davidson
Obama Plays the Fox

Patrick Bond
"Leave the Oil in the Soil!"

Michael Dickinson
Kiss My Ring: the Vatican Versus Jesus

Website of the Day
Globeistan

November 19 - 21, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Time for a Real Mutiny

Jeffrey St. Clair
Let Them Eat Oil

Mike Whitney
Tying Bernanke's Hands

Joanne Mariner
The Banalization of Torture

Gareth Porter
The Fatal Flaw in the Iran Missile Docs

Karen Greenberg
Guilty Until Proven Guilty

Thomas Christie, Pierre Sprey, Franklin Spinney et al.
How to Cut the Defense Budget

Rannie Amiri
Way Beyond Chutzpah: Cantor Crosses the Line

Dr. Jim Morgan Haiti's New Normal: Dispatch from Cite Soleil

Lawrence Swaim
Israel's War Against the Dead

Ramzy Baroud
Education at Gunpoint

Ron Jacobs
No Alternative in Afghanistan?

Robert Alvarez
Shelving START

Russell Mokhiber
War is a Drug

P. Sainath
India's Great Drain Robbery

David Macaray
194 Years of Scabs

Carl Finamore
Hyatt's Dirty Safety Record

Brian Tierney
Hotel Workers Rising

Franklin Lamb
How the US and Israel Hope to Destroy Hezbollah

Gerald E. Scorse
The Truth About Capital Gains

Joshua Brollier
Natives Without a Nation

Missy Beattie
So Many Messages

Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Supporters Win Big Victory in California

Brenda Norrell
On the Border: Where Skin Color is the Dividing Line

Christopher Brauchli
Pot and the Deficit: the Hidden Cost of Prohibition

Carol Polsgrove
The Governor and the Power Plant

David Ker Thomson
Against Jane Jacobs

Dave Lindorff
No News is Not Good News

Jeff Deasy
Here Come the FrankenSalmon

Bill Manson
The Politics of Nice

Clifton Ross
Dancing With Dangl

Charles R. Larson Twain: the Last Word, One Hundred Years Later

Richard Estes
"Carlos:" An Orientalist Masterpiece

David Yearsley
Schumann and the Warm Bath of Memory

Poets' Basement
Springate, Orloski and Cirino

Website of the Weekend
Buy Nothing

November 18, 2010

Diana Johnstone
NATO's True Role in US Grand Strategy

Mike Whitney
Ireland's Suicide Pact with the EU

Behzad Yaghmaian
Facing a Leaderless Globalization

Kenneth E. Hartman
Are They Really Opposed to the Death Penalty?

Norman Solomon
Wooing the Economic Royalists

Michael Winship
Don't Ask, Don't Care

Patrick Bond
Will Zimbabwe Regress Again?

Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Anti-Incumbent Movement Failed

Website of the Day
Free Speech on Trial

November 17, 2010

Vicente Navarro
The Hypocrisies of Mario Vargas Llosa

James Bovard
The Political Slaughterhouse

Jonathan Cook
Obama's Bribe

Dean Baker
Seoul Searching on Trade and Currency

Ralph Nader
Bush at Large

Nick Turse
Off-Base America

Sherry Wolf Alienation 101: the Online Learning Rip Off

Judith Scherr
Why Aristide's Party Won't Vote

Peter Certo
Defense Cuts Go Mainstream

Website of the Day
The Last Outsider Director: an Interview with Jean-Luc Godard

 

November 16, 2010

Pam Martens
How the Fed and the Treasury Stonewalled Mark Pittman to His Dying Breath

Richard Forno
TSA and America's Zero Risk Culture

Gareth Porter
The Unending Occupation of Iraq

Harry Browne
Bruce Springsteen's "Promise" and the Price You Pay

Peter Lee
QE2 as Self-Inflicted Wound

Alan Farago
How Much Gold Does George Bush Own?

Franklin Lamb
Is the American Public About to Toss Israel?

Frank Green
Conspiracy in Theory: Truthers Slog On

Sheldon Richman
Blood on His Hands

Thomas H. Naylor
Shattering the Myth of Vermont

Website of the Day
Peaceful Uprising

November 15, 2010

Michael Hudson
Obama's Greatest Betrayal

Steve Hendricks
More Torture, Please?

Paul Craig Roberts
Eyes Only on Burma

Harvey Wasserman
Accidents in Progress: America's Eggshell Nukes

Lawrence Davidson
Palestine and the Fate of the UN

Clancy Sigal
The Long Disease of War

David Macaray
The War Over Food Stamps

Tom Engelhardt
The Stimulus Package in Kabul

Steven Fake
Liberating Thought

Website of the Day
Whatever ...

November 12 - 14, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
A Very Bitter Woman

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Stalemate Ends

Mike Whitney
Erin Go Broke

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Militarization of the World: the Case of Iran

Dean Baker
The Perverse Priorities and Fatal Flaws of the Deficit Commission Report

Gareth Porter
Intel Failure in Yemen

William E. Alberts
Why Are the Feds Targeting Black Officials?

Bill Hatch
Jerry Brown's Parable of the Rocking Boat

Jonathan Cook
Re-Unifying the Palestinian Nation

Patrick Madden Mystifying the Crisis: Deadlock at the G20

Ramzy Baroud
Another Baghdad Massacre

Rannie Amiri
The Quest for Power in Iraq

James Zogby
Whither Obama's Middle East Agenda?

Ron Jacobs
Palestine, a Family's Story

Mark Weisbrot
Why It Could Get Even Worse for the Democrats

Tanya Golash-Boza
Targeting Jamaicans

Paul Wright
The Case Against Stacia A. Hylton

Steve Early
TDU in Chicago: Still Punching

Martha Rosenberg
Vioxx All Over Again?

Celia McAteer
London Calling: Student Militancy a Welcome Surprise

Larry Portis
Imperialist Architecture in Egypt

Michael Winship
Riding the Rails, Looking for Work

Brian McKenna
Anorexia and Capitalism

Gerald E. Scorse
Channeling Reagan on Tax Reform

Christopher Brauchli
Making Oklahoma Safe From Sharia Law

Roberto Rodriguez
Arizona: Where Fear is the Predicate

Dr. Susan Block
My Porn Star Girlfriend

J. T. Cassidy
Unlocking Imagination in Japan

Linh Dinh
Revolution Number 10

Farzana Versey
The Misinterpreters of Kashmir's Maladies

David Ker Thomson
The Elizabethan Era: Life in the Ice Age

Phil Rockstroh
Public Like a Frog

Charles R. Larson
Abused Women ... Still a Growth Industry

David Swanson
Tall Tillman Tales

Saul Landau
"Stone:" Walking Invisibly in the American Crowd

Kim Nicolini
An Intimate Look at How Things are Made in China

David Yearsley
The Esserzici Work-Out Book

Poets' Basement
Three by Lee Stern

Website of the Day
Bombs Away!

 

November 11, 2010

Peter Linebaugh
Laying Down of Arms

Paul Craig Roberts Licensed to Kill

Bill Quigley
Bush Pens True Crime Book

David Macaray Dissing the Boss: the NLRB Files a Landmark Complaint on Free Expression in the Workplace

Liaquat Ali Khan / Jasmine Abou-Kassem
Why the Oklahoma Shariah Law is Unconstitutional

Dedrick Muhammad
Race and Economics

Robert Bryce
Cars for the Elite: Obama's Electric Vehicle Fetish

Alan Farago
What, No Phone Books?

Website of the Day
London Calling

November 10, 2010

Allan Nairn
US-Backed Death Squad Files Surface in Indonesia

Dean Baker
Wall Street's TARP Gang Rides Again: Now They're Coming After Your Social Security!

Nicola Nasser
Waiting for Godot in Palestine

Missy Beattie
Running Scared: My Colonoscopy Saga

Sergio Ferrari
Worrying Signs From Venezuela to Ecuador

Patrick Cockburn
Can Iraq's Leaders Do a Deal?

Dave Lindorff Mumia: New Lawyer, New Round

Sherwood Ross
How Affirmative Action Brought Willie Mays to the Giants

Joshua Frank
Sinking the Breakwater

Website of the Day
Stiglitz: "Throw the Bankers in Jail to Save the Economy"

November 9, 2010

Uri Avnery
Obama's Defeat

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Dollar Policy

Jordan Flaherty
The Incarceration Capital of the US: the Crisis Inside New Orleans' Jails

Afshin Rattansi
Red Poppies

Annie Gell
Haiti's Unnatural Disasters

Dean Baker
The Fed's Second Shot

Dave Lindorff
BS From the BLS: Things are Much Worse Than They are Telling Us

Stewart J. Lawrence
The Nancy Monster That Refuses to Die

Walter Brasch
Love and Loss Among the Wild Horses

Website of the Day
Cut This: an Open Letter to the Tea Party

November 8, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
Phantom Jobs

Thomas Healy
An Interview with Wendell Berry

David Swanson
A CIA Kidnapping in Milan

David Smith-Ferri
What Laila Sees

Ralph Nader
When Betrayed Voters Go to the Polls

Ray McGovern Torture Sans Regrets: Bush's Confessions

John Feffer
The Lies of Islamophobia

Christopher Ketcham
TV Toxicosis: What the Stewart / Colbert News Clowns Are Really Up To

Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Rand Paul and Mike Pence

November 5 - 7, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Now for the Good News

Vijay Prashad
Obama in India: a Tide of Turbans

Patrick Cockburn
If al-Qa'ida Really Want to Hit the West, They Can

Darwin Bond-Graham
Guess Who's Not Coming to Tea?

Mike Whitney
Dollar in the Dustbin

Linn Washington, Jr.
An Epidemic of Brutality: Oakland Filmmaker Feels Police Wrath

Rannie Amiri
STL = Sandbag the Lebanese

Ramzy Baroud
The Middle East's Stagnant "Change"

Larry Portis
Chou Sar? What Happened in Lebanon?

Gary Leupp
The Yemeni Toner Cartridge Bomb Story

William Loren Katz
Are Cruel Years Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?

Brian Cloughley
Spheres of Influence

Mark Weisbrot
The Fatal Mistake

Rubén M. Lo Vuolo, Daniel Raventós / Pablo Yanes
Basic Income in Times of Economic Crisis

Joseph Nevins
Ecological Privilege and the Frequent Flyer Activist

Neve Gordon
Thought Crimes

Alan Farago
The Bhopal Economy

Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Policy After the Midterm Elections

James R. King
The Other Side of Yemen

Ron Jacobs
How Ken Kesey Turned On America

Franklin Lamb
Israel Claims Victory in US Midterm Elections

James McEnteer
Beyond the Rational: the Alamo Election

Richard Phelps
Guy Fawkes and the Pressure of a Terrorism Spotlight

Saul Landau
Where's the Sanity Clause?

David Ker Thomson The Long Argument

Evelyn Pringle
The Vaccination Profiteers

Joseph G. Ramsey Until Pigs Fly: the Morning After With Michael Moore

Stanley Heller
Up Yours, John Stewart

Missy Beattie
The Big Universe

Harvey Wasserman
Vermont's Great Green Election Day Victory

Billy Wharton
Where Did Everybody Go?

Shamus Cooke
Democrats Run to the Right

Linh Dinh
War Games: Guns and Balls

Windy Cooler
Rallying Through This

Charles R. Larson
Witnesses of Haiti's History
: Edwidge Danticat's "Create Dangerously"

Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards' Demon Life

David Yearsley
Bach and the Music of Time

Website of the Weekend
Smearing Jean-Luc Godard as an "Anti-Semite"

November 4, 2010

Doug Peacock
Desert Solitaire, Revisited

Andrew Cockburn
Why Summers Goes and Geithner Stays

Iain Boal
Crisis at Pacifica: the Two-Percent Putsch

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotence of Elections

Chase Madar
Guantánamo: Exception or Rule?

Dave Lindorff
Take That You Smug Bastards!

Russell Mokhiber
Bought and Paid For

Laura Flanders
Lessons From Elizabeth Warren

Website of the Day
Moyers: the Howard Zinn Lecture

November 3, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
America the Clueless

Franklin C. Spinney
Democratic Debacle

Chris Floyd Dissatisfied Mind: Flickers of Hope in a Deadly Political Cycle

William Blum
Jon Stewart and the Left

Sheldon Richman
Provoking Yemeni Terrorism

Stephen Soldz
Fleecing Members, Colluding in Torture

Mark Weisbrot
Dilma's Victory in Brazil

Stewart J. Lawrence
Court Sends Mixed Signals on Arizona Immigration Law

Manuel Garcia, Jr. Election Night in Oakland

Norman Solomon
Now What?

Website of the Day
Save Our Social Security

November 2, 2010

Vincent Navarro
What's Happening in Europe?

Ishmael Reed
Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, T-Shirts

Uri Avnery
The Occupation and Political Corruption in Israel

Mark Driscoll
When the Pentagon "Kill Machines" Came to an Okinawan Paradise

Mike Whitney
Midterm Day of Reckoning: "Let the Landslide Begin"

Linh Dinh
Prone Pioneers: Punishing the Desperate for Being Desperate

David Macaray
Bring Back the Fifties! America's Most Misunderstood Decade

Randall Amster Wikilessons: War is a Joke, But It Isn't Funny

Betsy Ross
How the Banks Trumped Keynes

Yves Engler
A Sad Spectacle: Canada and the Jewish National Fund

Website of the Day
Gulf Oil Toxic to Humans

 

November 1, 2010

Ted Honderich
The Farce of Fairness

Steven Higgs
Don't Act Don't Sell: Why Liberals Will Get What They Deserve on Election Day

John Ross
A Ding-Dong Year for Death in Mexico

Dean Baker
A Darkening Future: Why Growth Still Feels Like a Recession

Ralph Nader
When Corporations are the Government

Justin E. H. Smith
The People Without History

Marjorie Cohn
Hyping Fear

Scott Boehm
Juan Williams and Katrina

Brian Tierney
The Struggle of DC's Nurses

Trish Kahle
Jon Stewart, Are You Really That Sane?

Martha Rosenberg Bathrobe Erectus: Feting Hugh Hefner

Website of the Day
Scary New Wage Data

 

 

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November 24, 2010

PIISD Off?

Private Insurance Induced Stress Disorder?

By RUSSELL MOKHIBER

Pissed off?

Maybe it’s your insurance company.

A Maryland psychiatrist thinks it might be.

Writing in the current issue of Psychiatric Times, Dr. Carol Paris lays out the diagnostic criteria for something she calls Private Insurance Induced Stress Disorder (PIISD).

“Mental illness can sometimes be triggered by abnormalities of brain chemistry,” Dr. Paris said. “But in this case it’s triggered by outside forces – in particular, large corporations.”

Dr. Paris lays out four criteria for diagnosing PIISD.

Criteria A: The person has been exposed to a traumatic insurance-induced event in which both of the following have been present:

* The person has experienced a health insurance traumatic event, due either to lack of access to health insurance, or due to failure of their health insurance to meet their health care needs.

* The person’s traumatic response involved intense fear, helplessness, anger, and confusion and was caused by financial considerations that seriously complicate their (or their patient’s) medical treatment and recovery.

Criterion B: The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

* Feelings of anger, frustration, and shame at the thought of one’s inability to access (or provide) needed care.

* Feelings of alienation from and abandonment by one’s countrymen and elected officials, precipitated by exposure to any form of corporate-controlled news media coverage of the health care crisis.

* Feelings of inadequacy, as an individual, as a family member, or as a physician/provider, due to the repeated inability to obtain needed care for oneself, one’s family member, or one’s patient.

* Avoidance of seeking, or providing, needed care due to fear of serious financial strain or even bankruptcy.

* Fear of an acute confusional state or other cognitive disorder following attempts to understand one’s EOBs (explanation of benefits).

Criterion C: Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness, as indicated by three or more of the following:

* Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations about anything related to health insurance or healthcare.

* Efforts to avoid interactions with physicians, hospitals or health care centers that arouse recollection of the trauma. In the case of physicians, efforts to avoid patients who are experiencing health insurance trauma.

* Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities.

* Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others.

* Restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to experience feelings of wellbeing)

* Sense of foreshortened future (e.g. does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span). In the case of physicians, does not expect to remain in practice, anticipates early retirement or disability due to consequences of health insurance trauma.

Criterion D: Persistent symptoms of increased arousal, as indicated by two or more of the following:

* Difficulty falling or staying asleep, due to intrusive thoughts about the health insurance trauma.

* Irritability or outbursts of anger. In the case of physicians, this often results in sanctions, possible loss of hospital privileges, and being labeled a “disruptive physician.” In the case of patients, it often results in suspiciousness directed at one’s physician, often being labeled a “difficult patient.”

* Difficulty concentrating, resulting in functional impairment and further jeopardizing career, health, and sense of wellbeing.

* Hypervigilance, (e.g., won’t let children play on playground equipment for fear of minor injury resulting in possible retraumatizing need to interact with one’s health insurance company).

Criterion E: The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Dr. Paris warns in the article that “this diagnosis is not currently reimbursed by health insurance carriers.”

Russell Mokhiber edits SinglePayer Action.


 

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The Best Tea Partier Corporate Money Could Buy

Pam Martens on the rise of the Tea Party’s Rand Paul. What was wrong with Prop 19? Fred Gardner on California’s failed bid to legalize pot. John Sugg on the rise and fall of Steve Emerson, “terror expert.” Daniel Wolff on the framing of Ernest Withers” – was he an FBI informant? Subscribe now! If you find our site useful please: Click here to make a donation. CounterPunch books and t-shirts make great presents. Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year!


    

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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