Today's
Stories
November 19 - 21, 2010
Alexander Cockburn
Time for a Real Mutiny
Jeffrey St. Clair
Let Them Eat Oil
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?
Russell Mokhiber
War is a Drug
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
Joshua Brollier
Natives Without a Nation
Missy Beattie
So Many Messages
Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Supporters Win Big Victory in California
Carol Polsgrove
The Governor and the Power Plant
David Ker Thomson
Against Jane Jacobs
Dave Lindorff
No News is Not Good News
Clifton Ross
Dancing With Dangl
Charles R. Larson Twain: the Last Word, One Hundred Years Later
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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Weekend Edition
November 19 - 21, 2010
Grasping Eastern Europe
by MICHAEL SPRINGATE
Are you trying to grasp Eastern Europe?
Then tell me, do you believe what you hear
in the news? No matter how many are
on the ballot, is there really one party
governing? Is there, perhaps, a list for those
who can’t fly, a nomenklatura of resistance?
Although your country is rich in writers, thinkers,
intellectuals – all that – do foreigners perceive you
as a touch stupid, a bit dense? But then,
it’s not your fault, your people having
missed – what – the reformation? To discover
Eastern Europe, ask if there are public events
or disappearances which go unexplained.
Ask if academics speak in code, the best ones
unhired. Ask if the truth drifts like a trussed
body, one earring gone, the other held
in the hands of a searching child. America,
your mother is the naked corpse discovered
in the Hudson, the Brazos, the Mississippi,
the Colorado. And as you mourn, can you
recognize yourself, the orphaned serf,
shoulders bent in an old land?
Michael Springate is a writer/producer living in Vancouver, Canada. Recent poetry has been published in CounterPunch and Cyrano’s Journal and performed at “Chicago Calling” in collaboration with poet Wayne Allen Jones. He has collaborated with John Cha in translations of the poems of Song Kijo, published in Korean Literature Today and by Image Literatur. His play Dog & Crow was published by Guernica Press. He wrote the feature film Acts of Imagination directed by Carolyn Combs. He can be reached at michael@cdprod.ca.
Quakers and Powers
by CHARLES ORLOSKI
Past, like in a dream,
Charles II eagerly dispatched
Eccentric son William Penn
To the New World. --
Religious freedom,
Native Americans waited for his arrival,
Monitored him,
chuckled at the black dress,
the funny pointy mocassins,
the prayers for peace.
“Peace? What is peace?” reflected Chiefs.
William Penn came
To live in religious freedom,
And today,
The natural gas companies arrive,
And Pennsylvania’s
Department of Homeland Security
Stands look-out for people concerned
About drinking water quality,
those who protest
Eden’s oilfields wars.
Why doesn’t James Powers
Come to the table,
Drink holy water with me?
Among tall fir trees, Penn’s silhouette
appeared in the setting Susquehanna sun.
The old Quaker watched me,
His eyes look different, sad.
He outlived the powers --
Those slit-eyed garden snakes trained
to burrow the gassy earth, surface,
secure the Wyalusing Rock ridge,
bite what gets in the way.
The buried days of Philadelphia freedom,
the silhouette fades, outlives me --
I lost my brother;
The homeland security supreme,
Red , yellow, green Powers at Wellsboro town square,
Water tank-trucks pass by on Route 6,
the warm October exhaust is my comfort.
Charles Orloski lives in taylor, Pennsylvania. He can be reached aboveground at CCDJOrlov@aol.com
The Turtle’s Shadow
by LEONARD CIRINO
after Tomas Transtromer
Climbing this silence, the sky
looks blue but smells like the sea
that is green as a turtle’s shell
carrying all that fern and algae
while the rest of the world pumps out
smoke and fumes. The turtle’s shadow
is dark as the inside of a deep box
hidden under the full glare of summer
that bleeds on the flowers
where heaven becomes earth,
and humans, who are gods’ fodder,
move toward night, hoping for light
in the distance, the silence of morning,
when mules pack the dead across borders.
Leonard J. Cirino is the author of twenty chapbooks and fourteen full-length
collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses. He lives in Springfield, Oregon, where he is retired, does home care for his 95-year-old-mother, and works full-time as a poet. His book, Omphalos: Poems 2007, will be published by Cervena Barva Press in early 2010. His collection, after Yang Chi & others, is from March Street Press, 2009. His chapbook, Russian Matinee, is from Cedar Hill Publications, 2009. His full-length collection, Chinese Masters, is from March Street Press, 2009. Cirino was the featured poet at the Outsiders’ Art Festival, Lincoln, NE, in August 2010. He can be
reached at cirino7715@comcast.net.
Editorial Note: (Please Read Closely Before Submitting)
To submit to Poets’ Basement, send an e-mail to CounterPunch’s poetry editor, Marc Beaudin at counterpunchpoetry@gmail.com with your name, the titles being submitted, and your website url or e-mail address (if you’d like this to appear with your work). Also indicate whether or not your poems have been previously published and where. Attach up to 5 poems and a short bio, written in 3rd person, as a single Word Document (.doc or .rtf attachments only; no .docx). Expect a response within one month.
Poems accepted for online publication will be considered for possible inclusion of an upcoming print anthology. Please submit your poetry by Tuesday in order to be considered for the CounterPunch Weekend Edition of the Poets’ Basement. The Weekend Edition will now run on Fridays instead of Saturdays.
Marc does not archive poetry nor biographical sketches. (At the very least, tell us where you are from and how you can be reached through CP’s Poets’ Basement). For more details, tips and suggestions, visit CrowVoiceJournal.blogspot.com and check the links on the top right. Thanks!
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