This Week on CP+

January 16-22, 2022 CP+ [Shortage by Design]( by Joseph Grosso While a pandemic tying global supply chains in knots is a fresh experience for the American political chorus, it hasn’t stopped the chorus from cranking up its familiar refrains. Conservatives have predictively targeted unions and lazy workers, both for their usual alleged goldbricking and for supposedly blocking automation projects that would make American ports more efficient. Since the pandemic, they have added vaccine mandates. For his part, in October, President Biden sought to partner with the country’s largest retailers to fix the crisis as well as calling on the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle about 40 percent of the country’s imports, to work around the clock to unload the dozens of ships backed up off the coast. Around this time it was reported that some of the largest retailers were chartering their own, albeit much smaller cargo ships to get around the backlog and dock at smaller ports around the country (the top 5 U.S. importers by volume are Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ashley Furniture). [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [DOWNLOAD IN PDF FORMAT]( [Spector Calling]( by Jeffrey St. Clair On the night of February 3, 2003, the actress Lana Clarkson was working as a hostess in the VIP room at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, when she encountered music producer Phil Spector. Spector almost immediately fixated on the 6-foot-tall blonde. He dumped his date for the night, drank excessively and continuously summoned Clarkson to his table. After the club closed for the night, a visibly drunken Spector hung around and somehow convinced Clarkson to get into his limo and return to Pyrenees Castle, his sprawling, spooky mansion in Alhambra, where she was found slumped in a chair the next morning, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Her broken teeth were scattered on the floor. Clarkson’s body was discovered by Spector’s Brazilian limo driver, Adriano de Soaza, who told the cops that he saw Spector exit the mansion from the back door with a gun in his hand, mumbling: “I think I just killed somebody.” [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [DOWNLOAD IN PDF FORMAT]( [Capitalism and Fascism]( by Pete Dolack Six years is an eternity in politics. Consider what was common opinion at the start of 2016: That changing demographics in the United States favored the Democratic Party; it would soon be impossible for Republicans to win a national election unless they sharply changed from their primary strategy of sending dog whistles to their base of conservative white people, a dwindling percentage of the U.S. population. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [DOWNLOAD IN PDF FORMAT]( [Coming of Age in Chukotka]( by Ed Rampell As a film historian/critic who specializes in chronicling, critiquing and deconstructing celluloid stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, Russian Philipp Yuryev’s The Whaler Boy made a big impression upon me. On the one hand, the Moscow-born writer/director’s debut full-length feature is a strikingly original movie set among the Native people in Siberia’s Great White North. On the other hand, the Russian auteur’s The Whaler Boy reminded me of several other films plus a classic book. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [DOWNLOAD IN PDF FORMAT]( [CP+ Video]( [Jacqueline Keeler on Native Struggle and Rethinking America]( [CounterPunch+ Archive]( [Check Your Subscription Status]( CounterPunch | 707-629-3683 | [email us](mailto:counterpunchbiz@gmail.com) | [homepage]( Connect with us [[Facebook] ]( [[Twitter] ]( [[Pinterest] ](#) CounterPunch | P.O. Box 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Update Profile]( | [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by counterpunch@counterpunch.org powered by [Trusted Email from Constant Contact - Try it FREE today.]( [Try email marketing for free today!](