Louis Proyect
(Sent to Jeff St. Clair by one of my detractors who apparently thinks that my film reviews are more dangerous than a TOW missile.)
To whom it may concern:
Why aren’t your revenues and dispersements/expenditures totally transparent and easy to find and revenue?
Different opinions are valuable, but clumsy disinformation agents and sleazy attack dogs like Louis Proyect as a regular contributor on your magazine seems like something is incredibly amiss in your fundamental mission.
Honest critique is valuable–but Proyect’s style isn’t principled or even coherent.
It seems that you have made a bargain with this guy–where you only let him post essays in a narrow parameter (reviews of film and literature).
This seems an unseemly arrangement.
I don’t mind right wing views on issues–but only if the writer is cogent and ethical. Thus my objection is not left/right ideological.
Regrettably, I have watched a huge swath of what passes for left/progressive media dissolve into humanitarian imperialists and propagandists for US state violence abroad.
Libya , Ukraine, and now Syria have torn the mask off the left intelligentsia.
You featuring this dishonest man, Proyect, among your your cast of thinkers at Counter Punch is simply so incongruous that there is no way I will donate any money.
If you allowed this Proyect close to actually debate his absurd propositions it would be valuable–but your venue doesn’t even allow comments.
Eric Draitser’s work is compelling, and I especially like the one hour a week podcast.
Why only one hour a week?
Not worth my donating money for so paltry an offering.
You could arrange three or four hour podcasts per day, and generate revenue for providing cogent analysis on timely domestic and world events.
But you and the so-called “left” totally drop the ball when it is in your court.
Pacifica and Democracy Now! are horrendous–again, Libya, Ukraine, Syria.
It is as though they know they function as propagandists for the US empire on these topics so they choose to avoid compelling and regular discussion of these topics.
But back to my major point: why would I contribute money to an organization of the way money is spent is hidden?
Part of the left being almost extinct is that people that pose as critics become cooped, commodified personalities–and this lends them to become corrupted cynics, propagandists for US humanitarian imperialism.
If you had guts and imagination, you would dare to become radically different that the dozens of suspect left/progressive media sites that offer up weak tea as a matter of course.
You would analyze the failure of Pacifica and develop a hub for information that is transparent and valuable for democratic and cultural renewal.
But, first, your money structure would have to be totally transparent.
That this isn’t axiomatic simply makes people like me assume that there is standard corruption operating behind the scenes.
Steven H.
