Today's Stories

June 3, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
As the Dollar Falls Off the Cliff...

June 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Racists for Democracy

Robert Weissman
Bankrupt Thinking

Conn Hallinan
Shadow Wars

Gideon Spiro
Obama and Israel's Nuclear Arsenal

Roger Burbach
US-Cuba Policy: "Still Stuck in the Past"

Dylan Quigley
My Experience with Dr. Tiller

Dave Lindorff
The American Taliban Claim Another Victim

Ray McGovern
Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack

Belén Fernández
Israel's Newfound Concern for UNIFIL

Martha Rosenberg
Give It Up, Wyeth

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
GOP: California's for the Rich (Poor People Should Move)

Website of the Day
You Bet Your Health

June 1, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Braces for New Cops on the Beat

Yitzhak Laor
Washington's Mirror

Mark Weisbrot
More Stimulus, Not Deficit Reduction

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu's New Quest

Saul Landau
Dancing the Afghan Jig

Eugenia Tsao
Smug Toronto Seethes as Tamils "Go Too Far"

Afshin Rattansi
Women in Darfur: "We Saw No Evidence of Genocide"

Debra Sweet
The Murder of Dr. Tiller

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Obama's Trip Egypt and American Muslims

Bill Quigley
Haiti's Revolutionary Priest Gerard Jean-Juste: Presente!

John Wright
The Tragedy of Susan Boyle

Website of the Day
Young Neo Con Anthem

May 29-31, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPs

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: The Mother of All Corruption Scandals

Vijay Prashad
Reeling Republicans

Gary Leupp
The Destabilization of Pakistan

Ray McGovern
The Impossible Rehab of Colin Powell

Rannie Amiri
Spies, Lies and Mr. Lebanon's Demise

Bill Hatch
The Mechanic's Tale: a Short Chapter in the History of Foreclosures

Chellis Glendinning, Stephanie Mills and Kirkpatrick Sale
Three Luddites Talking ... on a Computer!

Phyllis Pollack
Dosed, But Not Spiked: an Interview with Grace Slick

David Yearsley
Eros and Susan Boyle; Fakery and Simon Cowell

Jean-Christophe Servant
A River of Acid: Mined Out in Zambia

Dave Lindorff
Sotomayor's Problem Isn't That She's Too Latina

James McEnteer
Straw Dogs: the Media and Sonia Sotomayor

Missy Beattie
A Place Called Despair

James C. Faris
On Evolution: a Critique of Darwinism

David Macaray
When Workers' Rights Go Unenforced

Harvey Wasserman
The Catastrophic Economics of Nuclear Power

Adam Federman
Drilling the Marcellus Shale Through the Halliburton Loophole

David Ker Thomson
Turtle Island: Adventures in Recycling

Mark Seth Lender
Great Egrets Return

Stephen Martin
Big Trouble in Little Britain

Joseph Nevins
Sin Nombre is Only Part of the Border Story

Sophia Mihic
Star Trek and the Continuing Mission of American Imperialism

Lorenzo Wolff
Dylan Kelehan Gets What He Needs

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Shields and Greer

Website of the Weekend
Petition: Grant Parole to Leonard Peltier

May 28, 2009

Joan Roelofs
The Philanthropies and the Economic Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts
Torture and the American Conscience

Ralph Nader
Corporate Frankensteins

Mouin Rabbani
The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East

Joe Bageant
Plain Truths From Appalachia: a Redneck View of Obamarama

James McEnteer
America Held Hostage

Dedrick Muhammad
Obama and the Harsh Racial Reality

Richard Morse
On Speaking Out in Haiti

David Macaray
Have We Turned Into Sheep?

Harvey Wasserman
The 8 Green Steps to Solartopia

Website of the Day
Col. Peters: Just Kill the Gitmo Detainees

May 27, 2009

Joanne Mariner
Military Commissions, Round Three

Paul Craig Roberts
Doublespeak on North Korea

Walden Bello
Can China Save the World From Depression?

Dave Lindorff
Recidivism and Guantánamo

Brian M. Downing
Along the Durand Line

Carlos Villarreal
Separate But Equal Just Fine in California?

Nadia Hijab
Israel's Next Move: Armageddon Now?

Adam Federman
The PCBs of the Hudson River

Laray Polk
RadWaste and Texas' Future

Isabella Kenfield
The Fall of a Brazilian Financier

David Michael Green
Overcoming the Poverty of Ambition

Website of the Day
The Case Against Shell

May 26, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Fearful Pride: North Korea's Second Nuclear Test

Mike Whitney
The Next Leg Down: When Deflation Becomes Entrenched

Sharon Smith
Obama and Abortion Rights: What We Learned at Notre Dame

Marjorie Cohn
The Gitmo Appeasment Plan: Obama Buckles on the Constitution

Dean Baker
Waterboard the Fed

Deepankar Basu
Was the Indian Election a Debacle for the Left? If So, Why?

Fred Gardner
The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans for Sale

Josh Ruebner
Rethinking the Costs of Peace

Brian Cloughley
The Man Who Murdered Count Foulke Bernadotte

Website of the Day
The Montana Town That Wants to Become the New Gitmo

May 25, 2009

Diane Christian
Looking at Torture

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Kenneth Hartman
The Trouble With Prison

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

Fred Gardner
"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops": the Punishment of Sgt. Northcutt

Cindy Sheehan
Day of the Dead

Sen. Russell Feingold
Prolonged Detention and the Rule of Law: a Letter to Barack Obama

Sibel Edmonds
Two Sides of the Same Coin: From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps

Franklin Lamb
Der Spiegel Tries Again

Dave Lindorff
Memorial Day in the Land of the Weak and Wussy

Daniel Wolff
Learning to Read in the Pacific Northwest

Website of the Day
Decoration Day

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

June 3, 2009

The End of Idealism in China?

Tiananmen Square, Twenty Years After

By BEHZAD YAGHMAIAN

June 4th marks the twentieth anniversary of the violent crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests by the Chinese army. The American Dream—capitalism and Western democracy—inspired the students who occupied the square for nearly two months. The protests ended when tanks rolled into the square, but what brought a final defeat to the student movement was a new dream, the Chinese Dream—capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

Two decades after June 4th, 1989, nationalism, and pride in China’s new power has replaced student idealism. An economic powerhouse, and a global stakeholder, China is now at par with Japan, England, and other “foreign invaders” who left deep and humiliating scar in Chinese people’s collective memory. Proud of their country’s new international standing, the post-Tiananmen Square generation is mistrustful of those criticizing China’s politics, and its economic practices. Their nationalism is rooted in economics, and the successes of China’s model of development in the past thirty years.

Using fax machines, and eagerly engaging foreign journalists, the Tiananmen Square protesters brought the attention of the world to their plight, making their showdown with the government a global spectacle. Unwilling to rock the boat, and longing to join China’s prospering new middle class and share the fruits of economic reforms, the post-Tiananmen Square generation is resentful of the negative coverage of China by foreign media.

Traveling in China for an eyewitness account of ordinary people’s experience with economic reform, I encountered a new generation of youth interested not in making social change, but saving, and benefiting from the status quo. Many had not heard of the Tiananmen Square protests. Others were skeptical of the protesters’ motives. “Students are impressionable. They can easily get misled by others,” said a twenty-two year old university graduate who was told of the protests by a sympathetic professor.

No doubt, political repression and fear played an important role in creating this generational change. Equally important, however, is the visible achievements of the economic reforms in molding a generation of loyal youth willing to sacrifice political reform for a share of China’s new riches. China has entered the age of development, a national project requiring the faithful participation of everyone. Politics and activism create “chaos” and derail development. This has become the motto of the post-Tiananmen Square generation.

The occupation of Tiananmen Square began by the students from Beijing University, but soon, arriving in trucks and on foot, thousands of other students, factory workers, and ordinary citizens joined the protests. Setting up roadblocks and street barricades, workers from nearby factories protected the students by slowing down the movement of tanks and soldiers to the square. They endured most of the casualty in the final days of the protests.

Today, however, prejudice, conflict of interest, and, in cases, outright hostility, separate students from the new Chinese working class, millions of underpaid internal migrants working tirelessly, and under severely substandard conditions, in the country’s export-processing factories. The alliance that once threatened the power of the Communist Party of China is now broken. It is replaced by economic pragmatism on the part of the students, and the fear that increased workers’ power would endanger growth, and their chances for a stable and prosperous future.

“What could unions do other than destroy the stability China is enjoying now?” said a social work major when I made a case for independent unions to improve the living conditions of migrant workers. Unions lead to “chaos and revolution,” he told me. China could not help all its citizens at the same time. Someone had to get rich first; others—migrant workers and farmers—had to wait their turn, said others.

“Why do you focus on the migrant workers so much? They are not a representative group. It is not fair to judge a nation on the basis of a small group of people. This is what foreigners liked to do,” a graduate student of English literature told me. “Look at America. Many Indians were killed in the beginning, but America is now the greatest country in the world. The Indians were sacrificed for progress. Why should China be any different?” she said.

June 4th will be an anniversary of the death of idealism in China.

Behzad Yaghmaian is a professor of political economy at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and the author of Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West. Yaghmaian is currently working on a book about China. He can be reached at behzad.yaghmaian@gmail.com.

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