Today's Stories

October 22, 2008

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

October 14, 2008

Robert Richter
McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bailout and the Smell Test

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Wall Street Coup and the Bailout Scam

Steve Conn
Made in Alaska: Fear of the Fringe

P. Sainath
The Race Could be Over, But Race Isn't

Gregory Elich
How the Nobel Peace Prize Was Won

Stephen Martin
A Tectonic Shift in Hegemony at the G7

Rev. William Alberts
Don't Blink Twice

Laura Carlsen
The Fall of the Bush Dynasty Plan

Joanne Mariner
The Uighurs Come to Washington

Howard Lisnoff
Left Behind: a Biden Fundraiser and the Children of Holyoke

David Macaray
A Tale of Two Unions

Website of the Day
Six Degrees of Hank Paulson

October 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Farewell to Daniel Cassidy

Michael Hudson
Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

Patrick Cockburn
Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Chris Floyd
The God That Failed: the 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

Fidel Castro
The Law of the Jungle: Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy

Robert Weitzel
Olmert's Depths of Reality

Derek Wright
How Chrysler Killed My Uncle

Stephen Soldz
Guantánamo's SERE Standard Operating Procedures

David Michael Green
Greed is Not Good

Norman Solomon
Requiem for the Bailout: a Storyline

Charles R. Larson
Toni Morrison on Her Own Terms

Lisa Massaciuccoli
The Shoplifting Association of the Americas

Website of the Day
Arlo Guthrie: "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae"

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Douglas Valentine
Mission CREEP: From John Mitchell to John McCain

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Ralph Nader
The Derivatives Game

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Missy Beattie
Going North: the Coming Nation of Alaska

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 22, 2008

History Revised

McCain's Disdain for Spain

By JEFF BIRKENSTEIN

There the McCain-Palin administration goes again, gosh darnnit.
The odd topic of Spain came up in the first two debates (one presidential, the other vice-presidential), but not in the third or fourth.  Of course, McCain wasn’t going to raise the embarrassing subject again; and Obama probably thought that he and Biden had already made the point that Spain-gate was just one more example of McCain becoming ever more unstable.  The non-response from both McCain and Palin in the debates was damning.  The charge: if elected president, McCain would not deign to meet with the president of our NATO ally, Spain.  The rebuttal:  silence. 

Maybe it was a moot point by the time the third debate had rolled around, a “town hall” format where the “town” was controlled and all but irrelevant.  Maybe McCain’s lurching about the stage was just as telling.  “Lurching” is Biden’s word, but in truth that’s the only word for McCain’s aimless ambling about the stage whenever Obama was speaking.  Nevertheless, it was an apt metaphor, representing both McCain’s discomfort at having to debate “that one” and his ever-changing and contradictory positions regarding the economic meltdown.  This interpretation was widespread, including from his supporters.  Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot used the word in more or less the same context on Meet the Press on October 12th.  On the same day Bill Kristol said on Fox News Sunday that McCain was “flailing.”

I am interested in this bizarre Spain-gate flap for two reasons.  In the early days of the Iraq War I lived in Spain and was married to a Spaniard.  But more importantly, because McCain has now raised the issue of Spain, I am able to correct a little but important piece of history concerning Spain and the so-called “Global War on Terror” (GWOT).  I have been waiting four years to correct the neocon lie which claimed that Spain, when they elected a new president after the Madrid train bombings, kowtowed to the terrorists.  And with this correction, I would like to suggest another interpretation to McCain’s spurning of Spain, one not yet discussed. 

But to set the record straight, I cannot be with President Bush, but against him.  I say this because I know he has nothing but disdain for anyone who would attempt to better understand history, if it counters his own narrow version of it.  Already in June of 2003, a short time after Bush invaded Iraq, he was becoming increasingly peeved that anyone would dare to question the veracity of his claims.  Famously, he said on June 16th of that year that "This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq…Now there are some who would like to rewrite history--revisionist historians is what I like to call them.”  Of course, in 2008 we know that just about every justification Bush gave us was a lie or a manipulation or both.  But even back then, after we had gone in, Bush was his own revisionist historian, though without realizing it:  “Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted…And this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies."  Even so soon after the war, the only thing that Bush could tell us for sure in June of ’03 as justification for his war was that with Hussein gone, well, Hussein was gone.

Like just about anything, of course, historical revisionism can be both good and bad.  In this case, Bush spurned anything that might cast doubt on his own set of “facts.”  But as we constantly learn more, we must explain things as we understand them to be, based on all available evidence.  All historical understanding comes under the revisionist mantle.  I don’t expect Bush to care about any of this. 

But we should.     

By now you’ve probably heard that, if elected, John McCain does not plan on meeting with the president of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.  Or, maybe he is planning on meeting with him.  It’s not clear and neither McCain nor his running mate wants to clear it up.  This, despite taking caustic hits from first Obama and then Biden during the debates.  Biden called McCain’s dissing of Spain “incredible.” Echoing this, on MSNBC Jane Harmon said the decision was “astounding.”  “I would understand,” she said, “if they were [speaking] about Hugo Chavez…[but this] makes no sense whatsoever to me.”  It is a widely held opinion. 

The semi-conventional wisdom says that McCain just misunderstood an interviewer’s question, or was confused, or some of both.  Then, to live up to his shoot-from-the-hip maverick style (or “maverick-y” as Tina Fey as Sarah Palin would have it), he just plowed ahead, not bothering to clarify or go back on his original remarks.  For such soldiers, retreat is never an option; and it’s all personal. 

But there might be something else going on here, something that goes to the core of McCain’s temperament and philosophy.  Despite protestations to the contrary, this philosophy is more or less the same as Bush’s:  decide with your gut (VP Palin, anyone?), default to the “you’re either with us or against us” worldview, and don’t look back.  And it is this philosophy which requires that we (America) punish Spain for even electing Zapatero, who, once elected, promptly fulfilled a campaign pledge to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.  In the GWOT calculus and Bush’s own words, this act removes Spain from our list of allies with whom we “acted.”     

First, a little background. 

McCain was interviewed recently by Radio Caracol Miami (though the interlocutor had an accent, the interview was in English without a translator).  After being asked about this Latin America country and that one, the interviewer then turned to Spain (thanks to rawstory.com for the transcript, though I have listened to the interview myself):

INTERVIEWER: Senator finally, let's talk about Spain. If elected president would you be willing to invite President Jose Rodriguez Louis Zapatero to the White House, to meet with you?

McCAIN: I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion.  And by the way President Calderone of Mexico is fighting a very, very tough fight against the drug cartels. I'm glad we are now working with the Mexican government on the Merida Plan, and I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders to the White House.

INTERVIEWER: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government? To the president himself?

McCAIN: Uh, I don't, I, ya know, I, honestly, I have to look at the situations and the relations and the priorities. But I can assure you, I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.

INTERVIEWER: So you have to wait and see. If he's willing to meet with you, would you be able to do it? In the White House?

McCAIN: Well, again, I don't -- All I can tell you is I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region. [my italics]

INTERVIEWER: OK, what about Europe? I'm talking about the president of Spain.

McCAIN: What about me what?

INTERVIEWER: OK. Are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

McCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those who are not.

Raw Story’s own headline says that McCain “seems confused.”  David Kurtz, of talkingpointsmemo.com, says that “it becomes pretty obvious that McCain has no idea who [the interviewer’s] talking about.”  Newsday.com calls it a “gaffe.”  Marc Ambinder at theatlantic.com wonders at first if McCain had “a senior moment? Did he get confused?” 

But then Ambinder followed up with Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief foreign policy adviser.  The story gets curiouser and curiouser.  Schuenemann wrote Ambinder saying that “McCain knew precisely what the questioner meant, and that, indeed, ‘Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview.’"

On its face, this is illogical.  Spain is an ally and a member of NATO.  What was going on?  Not satisfied, Ambinder asked for further clarification, because this position seemed also to contradict an earlier comment by McCain.  Ambinder continues:

But in April, McCain strongly hinted that he'd let bygones be bygones and expected to invite Zapatero to the White House.

Why, I asked by way of follow up, did McCain seem to change his mind?

Here's what Scheunemann e-mailed back:

In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally. If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance.  He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries.   It's called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama who has publically committed to meeting some of the world's worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.

Ambinder surmises:   “Maybe McCain will meet with Zapatero but not in Washington.  Malta anyone?”

Curiouser and curiouser.  When Ambinder refers to letting bygones be bygones above he is referring to Zapatero’s withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq (Spanish troops are still in Afghanistan).  It may be, of course, that everyone is right and that McCain had something of a senior moment.  It’s been a long campaign and he’s clearly getting more and more frustrated that, according to the polls, the country is moving away from him and his lightweight “America first” VP pick. 

It was clear from the debates that McCain had nothing but disdain for his opponent, which is troubling enough.  But the “with us or against us” philosophy he shares with Bush is something for us all to consider.  I would like to suggest that McCain, as a proponent of this philosophy, has, like Bush, a score to settle with Spain.  It matters not that they are an ally.  Or a NATO member.  Or a strong Western European democracy.  For the last seven-plus years we haven’t seen Bush back up his alleged love of democracy.  After all, he thought Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a coup d’état, was one of our greatest allies and that Hamas, when elected in Palestine, could not be recognized.  There are many other such examples which lay waste to Bush’s lofty rhetoric on democracy and freedom.  And McCain, who has been one of Bush’s biggest cheerleaders on such issues these past eight years, certainly has much the same “with us or against us” temperament. 

But why the need to punish Spain?  In order to explain why McCain’s Spain response has morphed into a harbinger of more Bush-like belligerence to come, I need to correct the false history that Bush and his neocons (or is that the neocons and their Bush?) wrote in the aftermath of the ’04 Spanish election and the lead-up to the ’04 American election.    

First, there was 9/11. 

After 9/11, then-Spanish President José María Aznar was able to increase international pressure on ETA, using Bush’s ill-defined but apparently interminable GWOT to further internationalize the understanding of the ETA threat.  ETA is the established acronym for Euskadi ta Euskatasuna which in Basque means “Basque Homeland and Liberty.”  ETA formed in 1958 as both a response to the draconian actions of the Franco regime against the Basques, as well as what many considered to be insufficiently strong resistance to Franco from the major Basque political party, the PNV.  Though ETA’s tactics have long been debated (the US State Department lists them as a “terrorist organization”), few dispute that Franco’s regime was indeed brutal to the Basques.  The world’s first use of indiscriminate air bombing against a civilian population was carried out in the Basque town of Guernica (April 26, 1937), subsequently portrayed in Picasso’s painting of the same name (started but a week later in Paris).  Franco also suppressed the Basque language in any official capacity, including the schools.  The Basques and then ETA have been fighting back ever since.  The only problem is that Franco is long gone and the time for violence is over. 

Also in September 2001, Plan Ibarretxe was announced by the Basque president, Juan José Ibarretxe (the ‘tx’ in Basque is roughly equivalent to the American ‘ch’).  Immediately controversial in the Basque Country and beyond, its organizers claimed that complete independence from Spain is not part of the plan.  Nevertheless, it did contain significant new measures of autonomy.  True, many Plan Ibarretxe detractors I know from Euskadi (the Basque word for Basque Country) felt that this was just the latest move towards independence and wondered why, as the European Union works to unify business practices across international lines, the Basque government would want to make international trade still more difficult. 

Then, 3/11 happened.

The Spanish call it as 11-M (the 11th of March; pronounced “ohn’-seh  eh’-meh”).  Not as familiar with this moniker, Americans certainly remember the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 and wounded over 2,000.  Then-president Aznar immediately seized on this apparently golden opportunity to blame and then further clamp down on ETA, which, he felt, would help him politically as a tough election loomed.  Bush, too, seeing a way to further his own GWOT narrative, facts be damned, made this statement on the same day as the Madrid attacks:  “I appreciate so very much the Spanish government's fight against terror, their resolute stand against terrorist organizations like the ETA.”   The war between ETA and Spain is long and, sadly, sometimes violent.  But it requires negotiation from both sides, not violence.

Mimicking his good friend Bush, Aznar thought that he had learned how to manipulate and quiet a populace post-9/11 by using the “fear of terror” card.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the election, held just three days after the attacks.

Aznar lost.

But how could this be?  How could the “fear of terror” card work so effectively in America for years and not last a week in Spain?  Though Spain was overwhelmingly against Aznar’s decision to support Bush in Iraq, Aznar was, according to the polls on the eve of the election, just about to win.  This was probably due to the strong Spanish economy, for which Aznar received much credit.  As I was informed repeatedly and vociferously by many actual Spanish voters, Aznar did not lose because of the Madrid bombing.  They did not kowtow to terrorists.  No, just the opposite: they boldly stood up to the “fear of terror” card played by their own president and promptly threw the bum out of office.  Aznar lost because after the attack he lied, lied immediately, and continued to lie about the identity of the attack’s apparent perpetrators (as I have said, for political reasons he blamed ETA), even after the rest of the world was provided sufficient evidence that it was probably an al-Qaeda attack.  Unlike in America during the build-up to Iraq, Spaniards were immediately angry that they had been lied to, angry enough to change their choice at the last minute from Aznar to Zapatero.

In America, we did just the opposite.  We read the writing on the wall, but continued to allow ourselves to be fooled.  Or half of us did, anyway; enough to re-elect Bush.   Many Americans felt safer being blinded by fear, and then voting for he who would claim protect us from that fear, than acknowledging that that their government had manipulated them, blatantly and repeatedly.  And so we got Bush for four more years.  Aznar’s loss to Zapatero was a significant part of this deception.  Discussing the Spanish election, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma echoed many (neo-)conservatives when he said that, “If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election.  It's that simple.”  In other words, Aznar’s defeat was characterized as a win for bin Laden, and, by extension, if Kerry won, then we would all be guilty of kowtowing to the cave-bound terrorist.  There are countless googlable (you can quote me on that) examples of this neo-con talking point.    

Though demonstrably false, the narrative that claimed bin Laden had brought an entire country to its knees through terror was highly useful in threatening the American public with death and chaos if the “wrong” people were elected.  What had happened to Spain could not be allowed to happen here, the story went. 

And it’s happening again in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, even if in less direct, 9/12 language.  With McCain’s interview and his campaign’s reaction to it, it is clear that he thinks Spain must be punished (which few people on this side of the Atlantic are worried about or even understand) and the American people threatened (which should worry us all).  McCain is continuing Bush’s policies.  Zapatero has been persona non grata in Washington, D.C. since he was elected; the fear card endures. 

Even though Spain-gate may have started with a McCain “senior moment,” I believe it highlights a dangerous and righteous anger in this candidate that, if he is elected, threatens to keep us as a country from moving forward.  In his own book, Worth the Fighting For, McCain famously writes:

As a politician, I am instinctive, often impulsive…I don't torture [sic] myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can. Often, my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint. 

I, however, will not live with the consequences of McCain’s rashness without complaint.  Seen by his advocates as one of his greatest strengths, this faith-based way of decision-making is too much like Bush for us to take the chance.  But playing the terrorist card remains effective.  Without it, and one its biggest wielders, Sarah Palin, this election would not be so close:

[Regardless of what Ayers has done, such rhetoric of equivalence can be, uh, counterproductive.  I still remember Cheney and Rumsfeld used to pal around with that old terrorist Saddam.  And If Ayers is a terrorist, as were those who hit us on 9/11, can bin Laden really be that bad?  Further, if Ayers is that bad, why does McCain deign to go on stage with one an Ayers’ pal?  Palin’s “logic” can work both ways, after all.]   

He has the power to inculcate people with fear and desperation and to label it, “hope.” He has the power to divest people of patriotism and then present himself as the person who can restore it. —George Putnam, Newsmax.com

Revising history?

Is it, at long last, a new new morning in America?

Hopefully.  Good morning, 9/12.

Jeff Birkenstein is a professor of English at St. Martin's University in Lacey, Washington. He can be reached at: jbirkenstein@stmartin.edu 

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