"The impact of war is self-evident, since economically it is exactly the same as if the nation were to drop a part of its capital into the ocean"
-- Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1857-58.
Acknowledging this obscenity, Ralph Nader wrote in the Chicago Tribune (July 20) that big firms should be judged based on their "corporate patriotism." They like to take tax breaks and be rescued by marines when it suits them, but they are unwilling to invest their untaxed profits to build up the productive capacity in the United States. Corporations, Nader wrote, "receive all the benefits of American corporate personhood and avoid all the expectations of patriotic behavior and the responsibilities that go along with those privileges and immunities." Hand-over-fist they make money in the financial casinos and by defrauding workers across the world. Meanwhile, they are party to the view that the U. S. needs to balance its budget and cut "entitlements" so that the debt can be managed – but without their own positive contribution to that $14.46 trillion hole.
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The message from this corner of America is simple: no more bombing houses in Droneland, no more foreclosing houses in America.
"On Friday evening, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek gave a lecture in a bookstore in Central Tel Aviv teeming with familiar faces of leftwing activists. It was hosted by Udi Aloni, an Israeli-American artist and BDS activist, who just completed a book entitled What Does a Jew Want, which is edited by Zizek.http://contested-terrain.net/zizek-%E2%80%9Cantisemitism-is-alive-and-kicking-in-europe%E2%80%9D/
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Sitting in a room full of Israeli activists, some of whom consider themselves on the forefront of the fight against Israeli occupation and apartheid; who devote much of their time going out to the West Bank in solidarity with Palestinians, in confrontation with Israeli military and who favor a total boycott of the country, I could feel the disappointment in the room from certain people that Zizek was not speaking more critically and disapprovingly of Israel. He barely said the word occupation, did not mention the word apartheid even once. He did not directly speak that much about Israel itself or what should be done.
This was a bold move with such an audience – and I’m not sure if people got it or not, but in many ways, I think that Zizek was actually levying criticism against the very activists sitting in that room. They are so caught up with the “evils” of Israel that they have lost perspective on what is going on in the rest of the world, and may have lost sight of the very real dangers of continued antisemism, which has all sorts of consequences.
As someone familiar with Zizek’s ideas and who is well acquainted with his poignant criticism of Israel, I was quite pleased, because I didn’t need to hear over again from him how Israel is occupying the Palestinians. And really, as a philosopher who spends his time in Europe, what could he renew for us on that? But of course, an activist in the audience was not happy that he did not devote enough time to criticizing Zionism, so she asked him why that is.
He proceeded to say that Zionism is not the worst evil in the world. He mentioned the strangling of the West Bank by Israel as a colonization project and said that there should be maps everywhere hanging of what belongs to whom in the West Bank so people who can really see Israel’s domination.
But he also stated that someone from the Democratic Republic of Congo would sell his mother into slavery in a heartbeat for the chance to move to the West Bank."
Chapter 5: Capital Evolves from The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (258k PDF)
"You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this [tax cut] is our due"
"For those who think that a default won’t happen because it is in nobody’s interest, think back on World War I. It was in nobody’s interest. Yet it destroyed Europe’s common civilization and ushered in nearly a century of economic instability and war. World War I occurred because both sides dug in and assumed the other would have to blink first. But that was a miscalculation. Instead of a last-minute deal, we got four years of trench warfare, economic ruin, and millions of wasted lives. Oops.
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This may sound churlish at such a moment, but in addition to blaming the recklessness of today’s Republican party, the man who deserves substantial blame for this impending economic doomsday is Barack Obama. For two and a half years, he has been all but training the Republicans, Pavlov fashion, to keep rejecting compromise. He has done this by rewarding them with a treat every time they up the ante or move the goal posts."
"Whatever happens at the UN in the fall, the policy of Jewish Voice for Peace will not change. We will continue seek an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; security and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians; a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on principles established in international law; an end to violence against civilians; and peace and justice for all peoples of the Middle East. The United States has been a (the?) major obstacle to the realization of these goals. Therefore, as U.S. citizens, we will continue to demand that our government pursue a foreign policy based on promoting peace, democracy, human rights, and respect for international law."
Even after the massacre in Norway, right-wing pundits in the U.S. have come out in defense of Breivik’s analysis, if not actions. On Monday, Pat Buchanan wrote at The American Conservative, quote, "As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right," unquote.…AMY GOODMAN: Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly lambasted the press for referring to Anders Breivik as a "Christian terrorist," on the grounds that Breivik was not actually practicing Christianity. O’Reilly said no true Christian can be a terrorist and insisted Christian fundamentalists are essentially different from Muslim fundamentalists.
BILL O’REILLY: On Sunday, the New York Times headline, "As Horrors Emerged: Norway Charges Christian Extremist." Number of other news organizations, like the L.A. Times and Reuters, also played up the Christian angle. But Breivik is not a Christian. That’s impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith. Also, Breivik is not attached to any church and in fact has criticized the Protestant belief system in general. The Christian angle came from a Norwegian policeman, not from any fact finding. Once again, we can find no evidence—none—that this killer practiced Christianity in any way.…Robert Spencer didn’t shoot anybody. Chuck Colson didn’t shoot anybody. And they didn’t call for shooting anybody. They do produce a rhetoric that kind of walks right up to the edge of things. I mean, if you are out there, like Robert Spencer or some of these other American conservatives, and saying, "Islam is a religion of violence. There can be no accommodation with it. They are trying to destroy us," you know, and then you sort of say, "And what to do about it? I don’t know. You decide." Well, Breivik decided. Breivik took a kind of logical next step from that rhetoric. And that’s part of why I think it’s troubling when people sort of attempt to dismiss him as a madman and not deal with the politics that are very much a part of our, unfortunately, mainstream political discourse, that walk right up to the edge of violence.
Incidentally, on the topic of Breivik, we have had an enquiry from a reader noting that Breivik’s “Manifesto” has plagiarized material from William Lind, erstwhile Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation, and asking that since CounterPunch published material by Lind, what is our precise relationship to this contributor. The inference seems to be that we published racist neo-Nazi propaganda which helped inflame Breivik. God knows what he would say about our contributor William Blum, considering the late Osama bin Laden famously cited Bill as one of his favorite writers.
As any CounterPuncher can quickly establish by reviewing Lind’s contributions through our “Search” function at the top of this home page, we published columns on the conduct of America’s wars by Lind between 2003 and 2007, in the Bush years because, from a conservative position, he was a trenchant and knowledgeable military analyst and critic of the US onslaughts on Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. Lind had been a participant of the military reform group, trenchant critics of the Pentagon.
His column was distributed by the Center and we would pick it up if it was on themes we cared for, which did not include Lind’s commentaries on many other matters, the cultural downslide of America and so forth.
CounterPunchers should know that its editors stand responsible for pieces CounterPunch publishes – though we obviously don’t agree with every word in the roughly 3,000 pieces we put up on this site every year. We publish and where necessary edit articles for the edification of a large and intelligent regular readership. We don’t publish anti-Semitic or Nazi propaganda, as assessed by any rational person. I add this because many people eager to throw these terms around are irrational and usually malevolent. If you read our website with any frequency you will know where we’re at, as a left, radical enterprise. We’ve always held it as part of our brief – stemming from political appreciation of the actual prospects here in the USA – that we should acknowledge positive political work and insights on the libertarian front and the right and from original viewpoints. Every once in a while some Trotskyite purist like Louis Proyect will hoist his skirts and jump up on the kitchen table, aghast at the sight of an “incorrect” thought or assault by CounterPunch, often specifically me, on the canons of political and cultural PC as sedulously observed by this politically and intellectually demure old Trot. Then, when I say something he likes he’ll dispense a grateful bouquet.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07292011.htmlWe don’t hold ourselves responsible for articles our contributors publish elsewhere. We have neither the time nor inclination to dredge through their lifetime archive on the internet to scrutinize articles they may have written one, five, ten or twenty years ago. These days we get regular requests from contributors to purge our archives of their seditious thoughts because they are up for a job, or are in a tenure battle. A new search site has just been launched to enable the internet bloodhounds to person their blacklisting tasks more efficiently. That’s not our world.
Troy Polamalu, All-Pro for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he said, "I think what the players are fighting for is something bigger. The fact is it’s people fighting against big business. The big business argument is 'I got the money and I got the power, and therefore I can tell you what to do.' That’s life everywhere. I think this is a time when the football players are standing up and saying, 'No, no, no, the people have the power.'"
THE FABLE OF OBAMA AND KING SOLOMON
Two women come to King Solomon, shrieking and rending their garments. Both women claim the same baby as their own, but no-one in the village can be sure. Wise King Solomon draws his sword and tells the two women: if you can't agree on whose child this is, I will cut it in two, and you can each take half a baby! Both mothers are distraught, and screaming. But Obama comforts them: you know what? All things considered, that's not a bad deal.John Eskow: The Fables of Obama
"US favourable ratings, in most Arab countries, have now fallen to levels lower than they were in 2008, the last year of the Bush administration. In Morocco, for example, positive attitudes towards the United States went from 26 per cent in 2008 to a high of 55 per cent in 2009. Today, they have fallen to 12 per cent. The story was much the same in Egypt, where the US rating went from nine per cent in 2008 to 30 per cent in 2009 and has now plummeted to five per cent in this year's survey."
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the lack of coverage over the weekend in the United States was stunning, from Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, this story where so many young people were killed, massive terror attack, hugest terror attack in Norway in its history. Yet in this country, when you go to the networks, cable networks, known for covering a story for many hours at a time, this one almost fell from all the networks except the occasional headline.http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/26/glenn_greenwald_norway_attacks_expose_us
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, that was completely predictable. I mean, on Friday, when the attack actually took place, there was quite substantial and intense interest in what had taken place. Everybody was talking about it. There were complaints that—on Friday, that CNN wasn’t running continuous coverage. But in general, there was a lot of media interest, because at the time people thought, based on what the New York Times and other media outlets had said, based on nothing, that this was the work of an Islamic—a radical Islamic group. And at the time, I wrote, when I wrote about the unfolding story, that if it turns out to be something other than an Islamic group that was responsible, especially if it turns out to be a right-wing nationalist who’s anti-Muslim in his views, that interest in this story was going to evaporate to virtual non-existence.
Yet even after losing 682,000 jobs to NAFTA since it took effect in 1994, and 2.4 million to China since it joined the World Trade Organization, Washington continues in its blind faith that somehow these trade deals are good for us. This summer Congress is expected to take up three new trade deals - with Korea, Panama, and Colombia. These trade pacts are bad for American workers, bad for our domestic economy, and bad for democracy.http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/10-4
"For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.
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By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-industry operatives.) Once the health-care law was signed, the president still slighted the unemployment crisis. A once-hoped-for WPA-style public-works program, unloved by Geithner, had been downsized in the original stimulus, and now a tardy, halfhearted stab at a $50 billion transportation-infrastructure jobs bill produced a dandy Obama speech but nothing else."http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/04-1
"I have served as chair or co-chair of 13 Ph.D. students in my career, a number I’m guessing is typical of most research faculty. Population growth of that magnitude is a Malthusian melt-down in the making and simply isn’t sustainable. We’re not creating enough academic jobs to absorb all those Ph.D.s, and in today’s economy, applied jobs are disappearing as well.
Of course, it is possible, as my coffee buddy assures me, that the market will start improving in a couple of years and we will need all the Ph.D.s we’re churning out. Maybe so, and if it does, I can always start accepting students again. But I’m no longer willing to pin my students’ prospects for their futures on an ephemeral job market that shines in the distance like a mirage."
"Law students get a diploma in three years. Medical students receive an M.D. in four. But for graduate students in the humanities, it takes, on average, more than nine years to complete a degree. What some of those Ph.D. recipients may not realize is that they could spend another nine years, or more, looking for a tenure-track teaching job at a college or university — without ever finding one."
My approach has been that the job market is apparently very random. We can follow all the best advice in the world, but it still comes down to the preferences of a handful of people at some randomly-chosen department and the outcome of a power struggle that probably no one outside the situation could ever fully understand or predict. So aside from broad guidelines (try to publish in good journals! present at conferences! get teaching experience! finish!) that 95% of PhD candidates are following anyway, there’s essentially no way of tailoring yourself to the job market.http://itself.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/the-ritual-satisfaction-of-stating-the-grim-facts-about-the-job-market/
"Stewart is a liberal pundit operating in the mass media, and his program tends to privilege Democratic and mainstream liberal points of view, while skewering conservative ones. As a result, his limited insights are unlikely to uncover the larger problem in the American political-media system. This larger problem, simply stated, is the consistent correlation between political attentiveness and media consumption across all media outlets, and the corresponding increase in political misinformation resulting from this exposure. ...
Of course Fox viewers display a staggering ignorance; but at the end of the day, that ignorance is not substantively different from that seen among most media consumers."
"What President Obama announced tonight is not a strategy, there still is no clear definition of a "military victory" in this endless war. In the first weeks after his inauguration, the new commander-in-chief announced he was sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and "then" he would decide on a strategy. ...That 21,000 was followed, after months of discussion, another 33,000 (it was first going to be 30,000, but you know how it goes…) that made up the official "surge." The first 21,000 apparently weren't to be counted at all. So in his first year in office, President Obama escalated the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan from a little more than 30,000 to almost 100,000 troops (along with the 100,000 mercenaries) – tripling the troop numbers. With a token pull-back of 10,000 troops over the next six months, and maybe another 23,000 by the end of 2012 (presumably timed for maximum pre-election publicity) that still will leave almost 70,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for years ahead – almost twice the number there when he took office. Not to mention the 100,000 Pentagon-paid contractors and 50,000 NATO soldiers, who apparently aren't going anywhere."
And yet who living in this riven, confused, semi-paralyzed country of ours truly believes that, in 2011, Americans can achieve whatever we set out to accomplish? Who thinks that, not having won a war in memory, the U.S. military is incontestably the finest fighting force now or ever (and on a “climb to glory” at that), or that this country is at present specially blessed by God, or that ours is a mission of selfless kindheartedness on planet Earth?
