Today's Stories

May 7, 2009

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

May 7, 2009

What Would Warren Harding Do?

Freeing Leonard Peltier

By JEFF ARMSTRONG

Barack Obama plainly aspires to join the select ranks of United States presidents who led the nation through national crises with relative wisdom and resolve. Obama and his supporters often invoke Lincoln, Kennedy, and FDR as historical exemplars. But in one important respect, Obama need reach no higher than to emulate the precedent set by Republican president Warren Harding.

Rightly reviled as one of the worst presidents in American history for the corruption and mendacity of his cabinet (known, for good reason, as the Ohio Gang), Harding should nevertheless be acknowledged for freeing 24 political prisoners (excluding, of course, most IWW activists) in his first year of taking office in 1921. Among the beneficiaries of Harding's conciliatory gesture was Eugene V. Debs, the socialist party candidate for president who polled nearly one million votes in the 1920 election from behind federal prison walls. Perhaps due to his unique status, Debs was granted special dispensation to leave prison unsupervised to meet with attorney general Harry Daugherty.

Debs, to his credit, spurned the attorney general's request that he renounce his revolutionary views in return for a full pardon Yet Harding commuted Debs' sentence and released him and other political prisoners less than one year into his term and two and one-half years into Debs' 10-year sentence, which he landed for speaking out against then-President Woodrow Wilson and the military draft at a socialist party convention shortly before the conclusion of what was then known as the Great War.

At first glance, Harding's call for a return to “normalcy” and Obama's ringing but amorphous promise of change would seem to have little in common. Yet both campaign slogans signified a sharp break from the immediate past, in the case of the former from the imperious and imperial presidency of Wilson and in the latter from the reckless and lawless regime of George Bush II. Like Harding before him, Obama has sought to reach out to his ideological opponents in the spirit of reconciliation and to bring the office of the presidency back down to earth. Harding went so far as to meet personally with Debs after liberating him from captivity to the cheers of his guards and fellow inmates alike.

Instead of extending his hand to the unresponsive GOP, however, Obama should be reaching out to Leonard Peltier and apologizing for two centuries of violence, oppression, and empty promises to the indigenous peoples of the United States.  If ever there was a sphere in which change, and one might even say a return to normality (in terms of normalized relations with Americans), is needed, it is in Indian Country.  Reservation Natives live in something of a parallel legal universe in which they are the only racial group victimized in a majority of criminal assaults by members of other races, yet tribal police are granted no criminal jurisdiction over non-Natives.

When it comes to civil rights, tribal governments, which again with limited exceptions have jurisdiction only over Indians, are virtually beyond the reach of not only the United States constitution but even their own tribal constitutions. With rare exceptions, tribal courts are subordinate arms of tribal councils, unable or unwilling to uphold any semblance of civil rights and liberties.  As if by cruel joke, that great guardian of civil liberties, the FBI, is responsible for upholding the civil rights of tribal members.

Likewise, individual voting rights on reservations have no protection under federal law, nor are there any reporting requirements on campaign contributions in tribal elections. This allows not only for electoral fraud and dictatorial governance, but also opens to door to external influence through unreported contributions to pliable candidates. Thus, while the U.S. has no qualms about critically evaluating elections throughout the world, even imposing sanctions on Haiti for failing to conduct runoff elections in two legislative races, it routinely turns a blind eye to vote fraud on reservations. Yet despite this elevated deference to tribal sovereignty, one of the unchallenged premises of federal Indian law is that Congress (in which indigenous nations have no formal or informal representation) has the unilateral authority to limit or obliterate tribal sovereignty without the consent of affected peoples. This happened most recently in the wake of World War II under Truman and Eisenhower, when the federal government embarked on the termination program, which sought to achieve the original American dream of extinguishing tribes as such and negating indigenous identity.

It is little wonder that Leonard Peltier's generation, which grew up in the shadow of termination in boarding schools, white foster homes, racist schools, and penal institutions, rose up in the turmoil of the Vietnam War and civil rights era to demand sovereignty and recognition under international law.  The American Indian Movement, led by urban Natives seeking to return to their traditional roots, came to the aid of tribal members against state and federal discrimination, but soon found to its chagrin that tribal government was more often than not part of the problem.

On Pine Ridge reservation in the 1970s, tribal chairman Dick Wilson was Richard Nixon's right hand man. Wilson denounced AIM after its takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Washington DC  at the culmination of the Trail of Tears march in November of 1972. He banned AIM members, including reservation enrollees, from meetings on the reservation and created with federal funds a private security force known to all as the goon squad. Led by officers of the official BIA reservation police, the goons terrorized Wilson's opponents, shooting up and burning down houses, beating, raping, and killing untold numbers of Oglala people with benefit of FBI ammunition, training, and protection. At the same time, the FBI was engaged in an intensive COINTELPRO operation against AIM tin an effort to create and exploit differences within the loosely-organized movement through various tactics, including infiltration and snitch-jacketing of activists.

Contrary to its media image, AIM did not respond with violence or retaliation. Its credo was armed self-defense of individuals and of tribal sovereignty, and it was never accused of shooting up houses or targeting goons or BIA police. Even the best-known FBI informant and provocateur, Douglass Durham, admitted publicly that AIM was non-violent and community oriented, though he later found profit by regurgitating the commie-terrorist hype on the John Birch Society lecture circuit. In the best tradition of guerilla resistance, AIM activists on Pine Ridge attempted to provide the space for people to develop community organizations that reflected their own traditions and served their needs. By no stretch of the imagination did a camp of a few dozen activists intend to engage in a shootout with the FBI on June 26, 1975, much less precipitate what was initially claimed as an ambush by the FBI. Unlike his codefendants, Bob Robideau and Dino Butler, Peltier was never allowed to present a self-defense argument, and the government withheld exculpatory evidence that only surfaced due to FOIA litigation that continues to this day. The 8th Circuit recently held that the F BI is allowed to suppress more than 10,000 pages of documents relating to Peltier's case, which has never been retried despite ample evidence of investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial bias and misconduct.

Executive clemency for Leonard Peltier is but a small first step that the Obama administration might take toward repairing relations with indigenous peoples, but it is an essential one. Many anticipated some action on the Peltier case in his vaunted first 100 days, but Obama is evidently no modern-day FDR. He can, however, still aspire to the more modest historical stature of Warren G. Harding.

Jeff Armstrong is a longtime writer on Native affairs, a graduate student in history, and a volunteer with the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee. He can be reached at: armstrong@plainsfolk.com

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont