Alexander Cockburn reviews Roger Deakin’s Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, a journal of country life by a leading British environmentalist. Cockburn describes a gentle, wistful book, not at all the sort of thing the pugnacious title of the newsletter leads to expect (and which he usually delivers.)
All posts in category Counterpunch
Counterpunch, 1-31 December 2008
Posted by acilius on February 9, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/02/09/counterpunch-1-31-december-2008/
Counterpunch, 1-15 Oct 2008
Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair review some stories connected with soon-to-be-over presidential campaign. They report that “a friend of ours in Landrum, South Carolina” has been making some inquiries. Pretending to be a McCain/ Palin campaign worker, this friend attracted snarls of disgust in towns that voted almost unanimously for Bush/ Cheney in 2004. In the countryside, the friend found that the GOP strategy of trying to tie Mr O to terrorists and other scary types has had the effect of keeping elderly rural Republicans from putting up yard signs for McCain/ Palin. Apparently they’re afraid Mr O will send the Weather Underground to bomb them.
David Bonner reminisces about George DeMerle (aka George Demmerle, aka Prince Crazy, Son of Yippie,) a John Bircher who became a professional FBI informant in the 60s underground. DeMerle earned his pay from the FBI by exposing his associates Jane Alpert, Sam Melville, Dave Hughey, and Patricia Swinton as they were in the act of planting bombs under US Army trucks at the 69th Regimental Armory in Manhattan. DeMerle seems to have enjoyed playing the role of a far-out hippie and revolutionary radical, and even after he was exposed and rendered useless as an FBI asset he continued to live as Prince Crazy.
As a fan of the Flashman novels, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Counterpunch website today has an article by Cockburn comparing Crazy John McCain to Sir Harry.
Posted by acilius on November 1, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/11/01/counterpunch-1-15-oct-2008/
Counterpunch, 16-30 September 2008
Is McCain sicker than we know, ask Alex Cockburn and Fred Gardner. Cockburn’s attitude towards McCain is properly lurid and sensationalistic; here he speculates that Crazy John might be in the terminal stages of melanoma.
Posted by acilius on October 24, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/10/24/counterpunch-16-30-september-2008/
Counterpunch, August & September 2008
August- Alexander Cockburn reviews Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. Cockburn has a lot of fun reminiscing about the 1964-1974 period, but denies Perlstein’s thesis that the American political scene hasn’t changed much since then. “It’s a different, less strident, less violent, less creative time.” He and Jeffrey St. Clair then offer “One cheer for Sarah Palin.” “The liberal attacks on Sarah Palin are absurd to the point of lunacy… Given the highly experienced maniacs who have been destroying this country and the rest of the world decade after decade, one would have thought that the E word would be an immediate disqualification.” They also point out that the three-point oil plan she introduced as governor of Alaska are now on display as the three-point oil plan of one B. Obama: “a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, an energy rebate tax, and the development of a transcontinental natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay across Canada to the Midwest.” They don’t mention that Obama has been a presidential candidate longer than Palin has been governor, so it’s not so clear who came up with the idea first.
1-15 September- Promoted on the Counterpunch website as “The Timebomb Who Would Be President,” this issue features two front-page articles about Crazy John McCain. In “McCain’s 14th Amendment Problem,” Douglas Valentine argues that since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits traitors from holding public office, the man the North Vietnamese codenamed “Songbird” while he was their prisoner is not eligible to be elected president. Cockburn and St. Clair tell the story of Crazy John’s two marriages, including this: “According to two emergency room physicians in Phoenix, interviewed by Counterpunch and who tell us they don’t want their names used, it was at this time” [when Crazy John was under investigation for his ties to corrupt financier Charles Keating] “that Cindy McCain sought medical attention in the Phoenix area for injuries consistent with physical violence: bruises, contusions, and a black eye. There were at least two more visits for medical attention in the Phoenix area by Cindy, with similar injuries, between 1988 and 1993.” True? Who knows? But those who paid attention to the 2004 Illinois Senate race can’t help but remember the end of Blair Hull‘s campaign.
Posted by acilius on September 26, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/26/counterpunch-august-september-2008/
The high cost of living
The June 16-30 issue of Counterpunch ran a piece I’ve been meaning to note. “How Bush has pushed up oil prices,” by economist Michael Hudson. The first sentence: “The American people are being misled about the cause of soaring oil prices, and deceived about how easily the Bush administration could cut the oil price in half simply by following the policy that Bush Sr. did at the outset of the First Iraq War.” At the outbreak of the Kuwait war, the USA released oil from the Naval Petroleum Reserve onto the open market; in consequence, the oil price remained generally stable throughout the August 1990-February 1991 period. By contrast, for the last several years the Naval Petroleum Reserve has continued to buy oil. A passage is worth quoting at length:
At the just-ended 10th Post-Keynesian Economic Conference at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, my friend Paul Davidson (who, like me, used to work for Continental Oil and has a long oil background) pointed out that if the Bush administration did want to lower oil prices, all it would have to do is sell 10% of the oil reserve on the forward oil market. Right now, he points out, the forward prprice of oil is higher than the spot price. That means that buyers and sellers think the the price will rise, and hence that it pays to hold onto oil to sell later rather than to sell now. But if the US Naval Petroleum Reserve would start selling the oil it has been buying since the start of the Iraq War, this supply would abruptly stop the price rise. Speculators would dump their positions, and, in Prof. Davidson’s estimate, oil prices would fall back to about $90.
Of course, some parts of this three month old story are now dated. Oil prices are falling now. But the Naval Petroleum Reserve is still buying oil.
Here is an article Davidson wrote for the July/ August issue of Challenge in which he explains his views on this summer’s oil prices.
Here‘s the website of the 10th International Post-Keynesian Conference. Davidson’s paper there was called “The Sub-Prime Crisis, Securitization, and Market Failure as Analyzed by Keynes’ Liquidity Preference Theory vs the Efficient Market Theory.” That title doesn’t sound like anything to do with the Naval Petroleum Reserve. It sounds like what Hudson is citing is a side conversation he and Davidson had at the conference.
http://econ.bus.utk.edu/faculty/davidson/challenge%20oilspeculation9wordpdf.pdf
Posted by acilius on September 12, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/09/12/the-high-cost-of-living/
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