Today's Stories

June 26-28, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

June 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Case of Netanyahu and the Curious Incident

Robert Sandels /
Nelson P. Valdes
U.S. Cuba Policy: a Case of Post-Diplomatic Strees Disorder

Anthony DiMaggio
The Iranian Elections and the Faith-Based Media

Robert Weissman
Obama's Financial Sector Reform Plan: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Joshua Frank
These Are Obama's Wars Now

Jonathan Cook
Canadian Ambassador Honored in Illegal Park Built on Razed Palestinian Homes

Reza Fiyouzat
Iranians in the Streets

Norman Solomon
Obama and the Antiwar Democrats

Ali Jawad
Reformists are Islamists, Too

James Ridgeway
Am I on Crack When It Comes to Flight 447?

Website of the Day
The Death of the Ghost Prisoner

June 17, 2009

Carl Boggs
Torture: an American Legacy

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Psychology and Sen. Daniel Inouye: the True Story Behind Psychology's Role in Torture?

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Obama Will Outspend Reagan on Defense

Liaquat Ali Khan
Obama's Gift to Pakistan: a Civil War

Jonathan Cook
Beating and Torturing Children

Binoy Kampmark
Gordon Brown's War Inquiry

Karim Makdisi
The Lebanese Elections: a Box Office Success?

Dave Lindorff
Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black

David Swanson
In Congress: 32 Heroes, 21 Frauds

Gene Marx
How Fox News is Helping to Nationalize the GI Sanctuary Movement

Website of the Day
The Diamond Mine That Ate Mirny

June 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Looming Peril: a Plague of Snakes

John Ross
Undermining Mexico

Afshin Rattansi
Guarding the Revolution

Marc Levy
How I Nearly Won the War

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?

Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Youth Make History

Brian M. Downing
Democracy in Iran

Merle Lefkoff
Israel's Angels in America

David Macaray
Charles Manson and Me

Robert Jensen
Finding a Stubborn Hope to Live in a Dead Culture

David Swanson
An Exit Strategy That Keeps Wars Going

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament Fundraiser

June 15, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Ending of America's Financial-Military Empire

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iranian Elections: Sure They Stole It...Up Front and Honestly

Patrick Cockburn
A Whole New Ballgame in Iraq

James Ridgeway
Did Composite Parts Bring Down Air France Flight 447?

Marjorie Cohn
Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam

Rannie Amiri
Iran and the End of the "Obama Effect" Myth

Dave Lindorff
How Obama is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform

Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Elections and the Hysterical Media

Leonard Schwartz
The Angel of History and the Ghetto of Gaza

Martha Rosenberg
Start Your Engines, Drug Reps!

Website of the Day
Single-Payer v. Public Option

June 12-14, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Who Needs Yesterday's Papers?

Gareth Porter
The CIA's Drone Wars

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Parlor Trick

Mark Ames
Elmer Fudd Nation

Esam Al-Amin
What Really Happened in the Lebanese Elections?

Franklin Lamb
Carter in Lebanon

Patrick Cockburn
Prisoner Swap in Iraq

Andy Worthington
The Long Ordeal of Mohammed El-Gharani

Heather Gray
A New Perspective on the Confederacy: Southern Greed During the Civil War

Felice Pace
Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement

Ron Jacobs
Flashback to the End of a War That Really Did End

George Wuerthner
Burning Questions: Why the National Fire Plan is a Trojan Horse for Logging

Jeffrey Buchanan /
Trinh Le
Biloxi Trailer Blues

David Ker Thomson
Americana

Renaud Lambert
Brazil: More Dependent Than Ever

Kevin Zeese
Congress and the Health Business Lobby

David Macaray
SAG Vote: A Lesson in Solidarity ... Not

Evelyn Pringle
FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers

Chris Genovali
Blood Sport Auction: Why eBay Should Stop Selling Guided Hunts for Bears, Wolves and Cougar

David Michael Green
The Rhetorical President

Brian J. Foley
Our Solar System is Not a Suicide Pact!

Charles R. Larson
No Safe Return

Kim Nicolini
Foreclosure is Hell: Sam Raimi's Frightfest

David Yearsley
Bach on Torture: Mr. Cheney, They're Playing Your Song

Lorenzo Wolff
Intent to Discord

Poets' Basement
Chris Jordan

Website of the Weekend
The Red Room

June 11, 2009

Kathy Kelly /
Dan Pearson
Down and Out in Shah Mansoor: With the Swat Refugees

James Bovard
The Latest Torture Cover-Up Scam

Tristan de Bourbon
The Toy Makers of Chenghai: the Financial Crisis Seen From China

Dave Lindorff
The Wheels are Coming Off the Recovery Program

Kevin Zeese
The Case for Disbarment of the Torture Lawyers

Ralph Nader
The Craft of Sam Maloof: a Visionary Woodworker

Harvey Wasserman
The GOP's Trillion Dollar Reactor Plan Goes Radioactive

Nicole Colson
The Anti-Abortion Movement's Climate of Violence

Mark Weisbrot
Showdown Over the IMF

Dan Bacher
Big Water's Big Lie Unravels

Website of the Day
Top 10 Most Absurd TIME Covers

June 10, 2009

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Obama's Doublespeak on Iran

Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine
The Dangerous World of Indefinite Detentions: From Vietnam to Abu Ghraib

Kathy Kelly
Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Fear Rules

Rev. William E. Alberts
First the Torture of Truth ...

Peter Lee
Obama and North Korea: a Warm-Up in the Offing?

Carol Miller
Why We Need a Holistic, Cradle-to-the-Grave National Health Care System

Emily Ratner
Dreams of Flight in Gaza

Robert Weissman
The IMF's Accountability Moment

Dave Lindorff
The Sutra of the Crushed Volvo

Website of the Day
Starving in Gitmo

June 9, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Back From the Dead: Pentagon Pork!

Mike Whitney
Is Hyper-Inflation Around the Corner?

Stan Cox
Biofuel's Drug Problem

Sibel Edmonds
The Battle Against the State Secrets Privilege

Jonathan Cook
Where the Victim is the Guilty Party

David Macaray
A Bad Time for Unions

Robert Jensen
In South Africa, Apartheid is Dead, But White Supremacy Lingers On

Nadia Hijab
The Obama Difference

Mark Weisbrot
Vulture Funds Descend on Argentina

Website of the Day
Waging Non-Violence

June 8, 2009

John Ross
Mexico: Politics as Drugs / Drugs as Politics

Paul Wright
Deconstructing Gus: How a Former Prisoner Took On and Took Down Corrections Corporation of America's Top Lawyer (and Cheney Pal)

Paul Craig Roberts
Long-Term Economic Memory Loss

Franklin C. Spinney
"Natural Growth:" Israel's Demographic Hogwash

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon's Elections: Return to the Status Quo

Uri Avnery
The Tone and the Music

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Loyalty Oaths

Eric Toussaint
/ Damien Millet
The Partisans of Capitalism Have Lost All Credibility

Jim Goodman
The Dairy Oligarchy

Norman Solomon
Words and War

Reza Fiyouzat
When Accusations Fly: the Spectacle of the Iranian Elections

Website of the Day
Latino Jobless Rate Soars

June 5 -7, 200

Alexander Cockburn
High Words, Low Truths

George Galloway
Our Convoy to Gaza

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama in Cairo

Jennifer Loewenstein
How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?

Franklin Lamb
Watching Obama's Speech in Lebanon

Mike Whitney
The Biggest Rip Off Ever?

Andy Worthington
Death at Guantánamo

Missy Comley Beattie
Peace Be Upon You?

Farzana Versey
Walk Like an Egyptian: the Oprahfication of Obama

Stanley Heller
Obama's Non-Starter

John V. Whitbeck
Nothing Comes From Nothing

Robert Weissman
GM: the Path Not Taken

Lee Sustar
The Fall of GM: Why Workers Will Pay the Price

Dave Lindorff
What a State-Run GM Could Do

William Blum
The Great, International, Truly Demonic Iran Threat

Ernest Callenbach /
Harvey Wasserman
A Green-Powered Trip Through Ecotopia

Greg Moses
By George! Austin Leads the National Recovery

Ron Jacobs
The Meaning of Yasser Arafat

David Yearsley
Art Set in Concrete:
the Desolate Urban Landscape of High Culture

Tim Stelloh
Pot Home Invasions: Bud and Blow Torches

Belén Fernández
The Joksters: Obama and Thomas Friedman

David Ker Thomson
The Academics

Karyn Strickler
Clean Coal: a Dirty Joke

Christopher Brauchli
Judicial Amnesia and the Federalist Society

Charles R. Larson
Leaving Tangier: Exile and Exploitation

Kim Nicolini
"Hunger:" Art With a Punch

Lorenzo Wolff
Good Head (Or Why the End of Hand-Crafted Music Isn't (Necessarily) the End of Music)

Poets' Basement
Jenkins, Orloski and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tankman

Weekend Edition
June 26-28, 2009

Can the Injustice be Any More Obvious?

People for Sale in a Hungry World

By RAMZY BAROUD

One might be tempted to dismiss the recent findings of the US State Department on human trafficking as largely political. But do not be too hasty.

Criticism of the State Department's report on trafficked persons, issued on 16 June, should be rife. The language describing US allies' efforts to combat the problem seems undeserved, especially when one examines the nearly 320- page report and observes the minuscule efforts of these governments. Also, it was hardly surprising to find that Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria -- Washington's foremost foes -- languish in the report's Tier 3 category, i.e. countries where the problem is most grave and least combated. Offenders in Tier 3 are subject to US sanctions, while governments of countries in Tier 1 are perceived as vigilant in fighting human trafficking.

One could also question the US government's own moral legitimacy; classifying the world into watch lists, congratulating some and reprimanding and sanctioning others, while the US itself has thus far (and for nine consecutive reports starting 2000) been immune to self-criticism.

Undoubtedly, the political hubris and self- righteous underpinnings of the report are disturbing, but that hardly represents an end to the argument. The fact remains that the report's rating of over 170 countries is thorough and largely consistent with facts as observed, reported by the media and examined in other comprehensive reports on the same issue. Indeed, the UN's own Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, launched by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in February 2009, affirms much of the State Departments' findings regarding patterns of abuse reported around the world, most notably in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.

The report examined governmental responses to the exploitation of people, including children, for the purposes of forced labour, sex and stolen organs. At least 12.3 million adults and children are used to sustain the thriving business of modern-day slavery, though the real number is probably much higher given that human traffickers have little interest in divulging exact data.

The global financial crisis has fuelled the demand for cheap labour, making the exploitation of the most vulnerable people part and parcel of the economic recovery plans of many companies, and even countries. Under these circumstances, there should be little doubt that the UN's once promising campaign to eradicate much of the world's hunger by 2015 is already a pipedream.

One of the testimonies cited in the State Department's report was that of Mohamed Selim Khan, who "woke up in a strange house and felt an excruciating pain in his abdomen. Unsure of where he was, Khan asked a man wearing a surgical mask what had happened. 'We have taken your kidney,' the stranger said. 'If you tell anyone, we'll kill you.'"

Khan's experience epitomizes the nightmare of millions of people around the world, as they struggle to provide for hungry families. Their plight is no secret. It can be seen on the streets of many cities around the world, from Europe to Asia and Central America to the Gulf, where worn out, haggard looking men in dirty uniforms are working long hours for little pay, trapped between pressing needs at home and the merciless demands of their "recruitment agencies".

But cheap or forced labor is not the only form of human trafficking. According to the UN's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, based on data collected in 155 countries, "the most common form of human trafficking [79 per cent] is sexual exploitation".

IRIN News, affiliated with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported on 18 June that "women from the former Soviet Union and China are still being trafficked across the border with Egypt into Israel for forced prostitution by organized criminal groups". Israel has been identified as a "prime destination for trafficking by both the State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime". One Israeli gang alone, according to the report, has trafficked over 2,000 women into Israel and Cyprus in the last six years.

One has to wonder the wisdom of international conferences and global efforts aimed at cracking down on Gazans smuggling food and medicine across the same Egyptian border to survive the Israeli siege when almost no efforts have been dedicated to ending the stark exploitation and abuse of thousands of women enriching Israel's sex industry.

Dare I say that while human trafficking is itself an apolitical issue, recognizing and combating, or failing to combat, the problem is very much political. Think of the banking crisis, which fuelled a global recession, and the way astronomical amounts of money have been dedicated to solving it, trillions of dollars in global bailouts ultimately rewarding those who caused the crisis in the first place. Compare these efforts to the pathetic attempts at halting the disgraceful commercialization of humans, their organs, their sexuality, their very humanity.

The problem is now compounded. UN food officials declared on 19 June that hunger around the world has passed the unprecedented threshold of one billion, that is one in six people. The alarming increase of 100 million hungry children, women and men from last year's estimates is blamed on the economic recession. While international institutions are efficient at recognizing such problems, proposed solutions often lack sincerity, or any sense of urgency.

"A hungry world is a dangerous world," said Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme. "Without food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate or they die." They also become products in markets ready to exploit those whose very survival is at stake.

When Julia, from the Balkans, was eight years old, she was taken along with her sisters to a neighboring country, where she was sold to beg. She was beaten every time she failed to return with her fixed quota of money. Once she became a teenager she was forced into prostitution. After escaping she was placed in a government orphanage from which she also escaped, returning to the streets. According to the State Department report, eventually "Julia was arrested on narcotics charges".

Can this injustice be any more obvious?

Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

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