Today's Stories

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D.C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington "Screwed Up" and "Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U.S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U.S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U.S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N.D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on "Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

July 18, 2008

Gas for Europe, Gas for India & Pakistan...Sanctions? Israel? No Problem

Iran Rising

By ROBERT BRYCE

The rise of Iran continues. And that rise was made abundantly clear during the 19th World Petroleum Congress in Madrid in early July.

A large, supremely confident Iranian delegation attended the triennial gathering that brings together energy officials from all over the world. The Iranian contingent in Madrid was many times larger than the one that attended the 18th World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg in 2005. Then, the National Iranian Oil Company had a small booth in the rear of the exhibit hall in Sandton, consisting of a small sign, two tables, a handful of chairs, and a couple bowls of pistachio nuts. This year, the Iranians had a huge installation inside the sprawling Madrid Fair exhibition space near the airport. The N.I.O.C. had a glitzy raised platform of glass, plastic, and colorful placards that rivaled the scale and flash of those of other national oil companies, including China’s Sinopec and the Kuwait Petroleum Company. Indeed, the Iranians’ exhibit was immediately next to (and almost exactly the same size as) Saudi Aramco’s, the world’s biggest oil producer.

The Iranians’ confidence was fully apparent during the July 2 “ministerial session” presentation made by Gholam-Hossein Nozari, Iran’s minister of petroleum. Speaking in Farsi, Nozari said that Iran plans to increase its oil and gas output dramatically over the next few years. He claimed that by 2014, Iran’s oil output will jump to 5.3 million barrels per day, from the current 4.35 MMbbl/d. Natural gas output is projected to soar to 1.5 billion cubic meters per day, from the current 540 million cubic meters per day. The Iranians also said they would invest some $141 billion on new projects between 2005 and 2014. And the high price of oil is allowing them to finance much of that amount themselves, with some $63 billion being provided internally.

Of course, the broader question about Iran’s energy sector is not about oil or gas. It’s about nuclear power. Iran’s nuclear power aspirations have been the pivot point for U.S. and European sanctions against the country. But have the sanctions made a difference? A look at the myriad projects now underway in Iran suggests that the impact has been limited. Several new greenfield refinery projects are underway, and the Iranians claim that they will have enough domestic refining capacity by 2011 to enable them to curtail their gasoline imports, which now average about 20 million liters per day, or almost one-third of the country’s total gasoline consumption.

The confidence that the Iranians displayed in Madrid is further confirmation of their growing influence in Europe and the Mideast. Indeed, their presence at the conference bolsters the belief that Iran may be the biggest winner of the Second Iraq War. And the oil and gas deals they are doing – with the Malaysians, Indonesians, Syrians, Venezuelans, Chinese, and others – provide evidence that America’s ability to influence global energy policy, particularly when it comes to policies that involve sanctions against Iran, is diminishing.

S.R. Kassaei Zadeh, managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company, reinforced that point in Madrid when he told me that the long-discussed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline deal is done. Kassaei Zadeh insisted that the prolonged pricing negotiations had been completed, and that the only remaining detail was to determine the line’s final route. “Yes, we are going to India,” he said. Kassaei Zadeh’s claim appears to be part of the ongoing push to finalize the years-long negotiations on the so-called “Peace Pipeline.” For the last several years, the three countries have insisted that a final agreement on the proposed $7.5 billion, 2,600-kilometer pipeline was imminent. And yet a settlement has remained elusive as the wrangles over pricing continued.

It’s worth noting that on July 1, the day before the Iranians’ presentation in Madrid, India's National Security Adviser, M.K. Narayanan, was in Tehran to continue talks. That visit prompted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to declare that the gas pipeline will help “regional security and fraternal cooperation….Iran considers implementation of the 'Peace Pipeline' project as an effective and helpful step which should be finalized and made operational as soon as possible."

The Iranians want to be a major player in the global gas market, but their plans have long been stymied by soaring domestic gas consumption and the lack of technical skill needed to develop new fields. There is no shortage of irony in Iran’s failure to be a major gas exporter. Indeed, although Iran sits atop the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves, it has been a net gas importer for more than a decade, and now relies heavily on Turkmenistan to help supply its internal needs.

Nevertheless, the Iranians declared in Madrid that by 2025 they want to be the second-largest gas producer in the world (they currently trail Russia, the U.S., and Canada), and claim a 10 percent share of the global gas trade, either through pipelines or liquefied natural gas. While Nozari mentioned several other projects, including the hoped-for growth in Iran’s LNG production capacity, he notably commented, “In our strategic gas export plan, we have allocated 150 million cubic meters per day [for] export to Europe via pipeline.”

Under U.S. pressure, Europe has refused to strike a deal with the Iranians for gas supply, even though it is in the E.U.’s strategic interest to do so. Bargaining with Iran would give the Europeans some leverage with Russia, which currently has a near-monopoly on the E.U.’s future gas supply plans, or at least on any gas that would be moved via pipeline. By including the mention of gas for Europe, Nozari made it clear that the Iranians are open to doing business with the E.U. It’s also worth noting that the title of the Iranians’ presentation was “Iran, Reliable Source of Energy Supply.”

In addition to the Bush Administration’s efforts to keep Iranian gas out of Europe, it has also been a leading opponent of the Peace Pipeline, first proposed in 1993. A leading critic of the pipeline project is Ariel Cohen, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who specializes in Russia and Eurasian studies. On May 30, Cohen and two other Heritage researchers, Lisa Curtis and Owen Graham, published an article arguing that the U.S. should do all it can to stop the pipeline project, because it “would give Iran an economic life­line and increase its leverage and influence in South Asia. U.S. policymakers argue that allowing the IPI pipeline to proceed would encourage the Iranian regime to defy the will of the international community, develop nuclear weapons, and support terrorism.”

Cohen and his cohorts argue that instead of getting gas from Iran, Pakistan and India should import gas from Turkmenistan via a pipeline through Afghanistan. This line has been discussed for more than a decade and has long been a non-starter due to the perpetual instability in Afghanistan.

Of course, none of this is to suggest that the Peace Pipeline is actually a done deal. Three years ago at the World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg, the Indian oil minister assured me that a deal was imminent.

So what about the ongoing sanctions against Iran? Have they been effective? Perhaps predictably, top N.I.O.C. officials say no. Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, president of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distributing Co., told me, “Over the past 30 years we [have gotten] used to it. In reality, we are not worried about it….There is enough money in the world, and it flows, you know. You cannot stop it.”

It is impossible to know how much of the Iranians’ attitude is bluster and how much is deserved self-confidence. Their showing in Madrid and apparent ability to self-finance many of their energy projects certainly imply that their regional aspirations may be fulfilled.

Several weeks after the Iranians’ presentation in Madrid, it is easy to look back and understand some of the reasons for their ebullience. It is now apparent that the Iranians were in negotiations with Russian gas giant Gazprom. On July 13, Gazprom’s CEO, Alexey Miller, was in Tehran to finalize an agreement on a “full package of projects” with N.I.O.C. that will give the Russians access to Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves. If George W. Bush and the E.U. were worried about the Russians’ ability to control gas flows to the West, they should be scared out of their wits at the prospect of a Russian-Iranian energy alliance. That new alliance likely makes the probability of any type of military action against Iran by the U.S. or the Israelis more remote. Why? Well, one obvious reason is that the Israelis are heavily dependent on Russia for their oil imports.

One other look back at Madrid Perhaps the most notable comment from the Iranians came after most of the crowd had left and the Iranian delegation was standing in the cavernous hallway that connected the various meeting rooms. A tall, distinguished-looking man, Nozari was surrounded by a dozen or so businesspeople, ministry personnel, and conference delegates. He was still fending off questions about the nuclear power program when he was asked, “Are you worried about Israel?”

Nozari looked directly at his interrogator, an English-speaking woman (who was not a reporter), and laughed loudly. His peers from the oil ministry joined in the merriment. And then – speaking in English for the first (and only) time – Nozari said, “This is a joke.”

Nozari was then hustled off to an interview with Spanish television, during which he gave several more non-substantive answers to questions about his country’s nuclear power plans.

Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence."

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