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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY OR UNCLE SAM? The answer at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags the tail. Fifty years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg in the East Village. Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered them up. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
Today's Stories May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad Joan Roelofs Kathy Kelly Michael Neumann Dr. Susan Block Daniel Cassidy Christopher Reed Mike Roselle Saul Landau Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Evelyn Pringle Fred Gardner Stanley Heller Conn Hallinan Valentina Palma Novoa David Krieger Col. Dan Smith Christopher Brauchli Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Dave Lindorff Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner Brian Kwoba Chris Kromm Kai Diekmann David Swanson Virginia Tilley Website of the
Day
May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Jonathan Cook Tariq Ali Wayne S. Smith Mike Whitney Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Mickey Z. Francis Boyle Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson Website of the
Day
May 10, 2006 Werther Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Ramzy Baroud Kevin Zeese Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Sharon Smith Website of the Day
May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern M. Shahid Alam Moshe Adler Walter MIgnolo Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor William S. Lind Todd Chretien Dave Lindorff Ishmael Reed Website of the
Day
May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Ingmar Lee Robert Jensen Ricardo Alarcon Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair Ariel Dorfman Joe Allen Fred Gardner Jeff Taylor Saul Landau Stephen Philion Trish Schuh Ralph Nader Robert Fisk Paul Cantor John Holt James Ryan Lawrence R. Velvel Greg Moses Laray Polk Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad Robert Fisk David Swanson Mearsheimer / Walt Dave Lindorff Sarah Ferguson CounterPunch
News Service Corporate Crime Reporter Website of the
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May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Jonathan Cook Roger Burbach Chris Dols Christopher Brauchli Tony Swindell Website of the Day
May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Paul Craig Roberts James Petras Lee Sustar David Bolton Joshua Frank Jeffery R. Webber Website of the
Day
May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Tariq Ali Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Sen. Russell
Feingold Anthony Papa Website of the
Day
May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Christopher Reed Michael Donnelly Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Gilad Atzmon Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh Ralph Nader Robert Bryce Rev. William
Alberts Lee Sustar John Chuckman Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Fred Gardner Don Monkerud Tommy Stevenson Lettrist International Contratiempo St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
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May 15, 2006 CounterPunch DiaryAbe Rosenthal's Times By ALEXANDER COCKBURN A.M. Rosenthal died last week at the age of 84. There were respectful obituaries describing how Rosenthal "saved" the NYT in the 70s by pepping up its news coverage, introducing the supplements and so forth. By the same token Rosenthal sowed the seeds for the Times' present difficulties. He was a bully with the bully's usual penchant for favorites. A culture of favoritism always produces servility, since the bully affirms his power by conspicuous punishment for the disloyal. So the Times that nourished Judy Miller and blared her lies across its front pages year after year was A.M. Rosenthal's Times. The Times that has painted, in two decades worth of dispatches from Latin America and Asia and the former Soviet Union, its infantile cartoons of a world speeding towards beneficial neoliberal "reform" was also in large part a reflection of the cretinism of Rosenthal's politics, hence of the reporters he favored. One of the most ludicrous passages written to honor Rosenthal's memory was a paragraph in the commemorative column composed by neoliberalism's P.T. Barnum, Thomas Friedman, an epigone of Rosenthal, who wrote last weekend:
"Straight"? As CounterPuncher Chris Reed pointed out in his obituary of Rosenthal in The Guardian:
Naïve souls often imagine that editors and, behind them, owners, issue orders and reporters click their heels and file the stories imperiously requested. That can happen, but mostly supervision is not such an explicit process. Every reporter and editor in the news business has a compass in their heads which alerts them within the fraction of a degree to the prejudices and preferences of the boss, whether it's Katharine Graham, or Ben Bradlee, or Rosenthal or Murdoch or the Executive Network News Producer, or whoever is construed as ruling the roost. So Rosenthal hired and fostered platoons of editors and reporters who knew survival and advancement depended to an important measure on catering to his prejudices and not causing offense. Offending the Executive Editor, particularly for an overseas correspondent, could bring swift and disastrous retribution, as happened to Bonner, publicly disciplined and ultimately returned to overseas duties as a more or less broken soul. The Times that published James LeMoyne and Stephen Kinzer in the 1980s, week after week slanting the news from Central America towards the outlook of the US Embassy, was the Times of A.M. Rosenthal. The idea, bizarrely advanced by Friedman, that Rosenthal's politics remained obscure till his column began to appear on the NYT's op ed page is ludicrous. But it was, nonetheless, a pleasing moment to be able to point to the ravings appearing under his name as vivid confirmation of everything one had been writing about the man down the years.
Here we go. Wal-Mart's planning to move strongly into organic food. The company's CEO, Lee Scott said at Wal-Mart's last annual general meeting, "We know that customers at all ends of the income spectrum want organic and natural food. But, frankly, most of them just can't afford the high prices the specialty stores charge. Well, we don't think you should have to have a lot of money to feed your family organic foods". It's a far cry from the 1970s, when organic food meant a bin of expensive potatoes looking like something out of Hieronymous Bosch, in the local hippy Co-op. Wait a decade or two and every potato coming out of the state of Idaho will be labeled "organic", a word already under very serious stress. The process will be entirely predictable. The big food companies will buy federal and state legislation designed to put the small producers out of business, same way the meat companies finished off the small packers and processors years ago, by insisting on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stainless steel and other "sanitary" equipment, all intended to bankrupt the local sausage or ham maker. Wal-Mart's buying power will drive down organic food prices and start to drive small farmers to the wall. Imports of organic food will go up, as suppliers like Chile turn off some of the pesticide and fertilizer sprays. It's all about the rate of return. CEO Scott exults about the organic cotton yoga outfits sold at his company's Sam's Club division. "We sold out in just 10 weeks...by using organic cotton instead of regular cotton, we saved the equivalent of two jumbo jets of pesticides." says Scott. Business Week cites estimates that "already 10% of organic foods like meat and citrus are imported into the U.S. Silk soy milk, for instance, is made from organic soybeans that are bought in China and Brazil, where prices tend to be substantially lower than in the U. S. Cascadian Farms buys its organic fruits and vegetables from China and Mexico, among other countries." Repositioning of the definition of "organic" is already proceeding apace. Again according to BW, "Last fall, the Organic Trade Assn., which represents corporations like Kraft, Dole, and Dean Foods, lobbied to attach a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill that would weaken the nation's organic food standards by allowing certain synthetic food substances in the preparation, processing, and packaging of organic foods. That sparked outrage from organic activists. Nevertheless, the bill passed into law in November, and the new standards will go into effect later this year." It's true, of course, that organic food in any acceptable use of the term -- is better for us and good that consumer demand is prompting this huge shift. Last year, California showed an increase of 40,000 acres, or 27%, in organic livestock production. The number of acres dedicated to organic vegetable production increased by 5,000 acres, or 12%. But the priorities of corporate farming are not those of the small organic producer. The bottom line will be premised on large-scale production, relentless lowering of costs and attrition of standards. Wal-Mart doesn't want the Co-op or the farmer's market as competition, any more than Safeway did. Leave the last word to Nietzche, in his second essay in On The Genealogy of Morals
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |