Today's Stories

March 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis?

March 25, 2009

Robin Blackburn
Media Revolution or Mirage?

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

David Rosen
Sexting: a First Amendment Challenge for Obama

Jonathan Cook
Turkey's Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers

Dean Baker
Billions More for Failed Banks

Ron Jacobs
Karzai on a String

Russell Mokhiber
Corporate Liberals vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Slice and Dice on Card Check

Dave Lindorff
Geithner's Power Grab

Sarah Knopp
LA Teacher's Sit-In Over Layoffs

Website of the Day
How to Create an Animal Rights "Terrorist"

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

March 26, 2009

Who is Van Jones Really Working For?

Behind the Green Collar

By TODD CHRETIEN

Van Jones , one of the Bay Area's most important activist leaders and a well-known progressive voice nationally, has been appointed to serve in the Obama administration as "green jobs czar," charged with developing policies for federal investment in environmentally sustainable economic projects.

While many have hailed Jones' appointment as good news for environmental policy, it poses an old question for the left--about the role of activism, and the relationship between social movements and state power.

Jones himself raised this concern in a March 16 interview with GreenBiz.com in which he said, "When Nelson Mandela came out and the ANC took over, people left the townships and went into parliament, and the movement politics and the township politics really suffered. I think that it had a negative impact."

Jones went on to say that he was "not concerned" about something similar happening as a result of his own appointment because the movement was "growing" and he could be replaced.

But, of course, any serious comparison of the strength of the South African freedom movement and the state of the American grassroots left makes it clear that if South Africa's social movements could be drained of their strength in the townships by joining the government, that danger is only greater here because the movement is weaker organizationally.

* * *

IN A March 11 interview with Cy Musiker on KQED radio, Jones said, "What's good for the environment is a job. Solar panels don't put themselves up, and wind turbines don't manufacture themselves."

Jones popularized these ideas in his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. The book is filled with ideas for reforming the economy in order to maximize job creation, especially for inner cities devastated by unemployment and racism, and reduce the free market's destruction of the environment. It has won praise from many quarters, including activists like Winona LaDuke, and it even boasts an introduction by Al Gore.

The fact that Barack Obama chose Jones to work in his administration is a welcome sign of his break with the know-nothing, oil-drenched policies of his predecessor.

Like the appointment of Hilda Solis as labor secretary, Jones' selection partially reflects Obama's belief in the need to restore labor to having some voice in government and to address the escalating environmental crisis--as well as a basic recognition that he owes his victory to pro-labor, pro-environment voters.

This, of course, has provoked the ranting of crackpot right-wing talk show hosts like Michael Savage, who called Jones a "thug from the gutters of the Bay Area," appointed by "Barack Hussein Obama" to create a "personal army of, not Brown shirts, but Green shirts."

This type of racist blather, no less dangerous for its delusional paranoia, must be squarely denounced and Jones, not to mention Obama, should be forthrightly defended from these forces.

But that doesn't change the fact that Jones' appointment raises another set of questions which the left must consider carefully.

In the same KQED interview, Musiker asked Jones, "You've always been a critic from outside the system. I wonder if you've thought about what happens if the president or people close to the president ask you to endorse policies you're not completely behind."

Jones replied, "Well, that's the part of what it means to work in an administration when you're not the president. I will argue vigorously for the right answer as I see it behind the closed door, but obviously you can't have an administration that gets anything done if people take those fights outside."

This response raises the question of what is the most effective way to fight for and win thoroughgoing, systemic change: working outside or inside the power structure--i.e., the state and the Democratic Party.

In fact, Jones himself raised these same questions in a May 1992 essay written in the days after the rioting and protests that followed the acquittal of the Los Angeles cops who beat Rodney King. The article, titled "Notes Under Curfew: West Coast Riots Indict both Left and Right," [1] was republished in May 2007 on HuffingtonPost.com in order, in Jones' words, to provide "aid and comfort to a new generation of racial justice activists." Here are Jones' conclusions in 1992:

These riots were not revolution; without revolutionary values and revolutionary organization, they were merely sharp outcroppings of the systemic chaos that social injustice breeds. But flashpoints of rage can never substitute for radical social vision or grassroots coordination...

Here, I am not speaking only of our political defeats, but also of our ideological surrenders. We no longer feel comfortable saying, "Feed the children because they're neat little people who deserve to eat." Instead, we say, "Feed them because it's an investment in the country's future economic competitiveness."

But when we base our arguments for social change on profit-mongering and American nationalism, we have already admitted defeat. By conceding the very terms of the debate, we may get a policy initiative pushed through here or there. But we leave dominant values unchallenged, and dominant institutions intact.

Thus, we have no real answers when racist juries acquit racist cops. Because we have already accepted the system that makes racism and police abuse necessary and inevitable.

And, having abandoned socialism as unworkable (or at least unfashionable), we no longer have a credible, well-developed, counter-view of how we would like to see wealth created and distributed...We must recognize that our opposition has become ideologically, tactically and morally bankrupt.

As we rebuild [Los Angeles], let us also build a radically feminist, antiracist, green and humanitarian people's movement--complete with a revolutionary theory that will both describe our dilemma AND point a way out...Let us build a real Opposition that can take down their paper tiger, once and for all.

Among other observations, Jones hits on three central questions here:

1. What is the role of the free market, and can we win social justice playing by its rules?

2. Do we need systemic, revolutionary change?

3. If so, how do we organize so our "radical social vision" can win?

These questions remain as legitimate today as they were back then, and Jones' political trajectory in the meantime provides a very good opportunity for examining them.

Here, the important issue to bear in mind isn't Jones' ideas "then and now," but rather the question of reforming the system from within versus revolutionary change as strategies for social transformation. From that point of view, let's examine Jones' 1992 conclusions in the light of 2009 reality.

* * *

FIRST, CAN we rely on the free market to solve our economic and social crises? Given the financial collapse and escalating unemployment, it would seem that this hardly needs much argument today. However, while President Obama has initiated an impressive array of social spending (including billions of dollars for green jobs), he has spent 10 or 20 times as much money trying to rescue the profit-driven, private, market-oriented banks and credit institutions.

At base, the reliance on the free market holds humanity's well-being hostage to the narrow, individual, competitive interests of big business.

In 1992, Jones' argued that "we have already admitted defeat" when we base the fight for social justice on "profit-mongering and American nationalism." However, today, he seems to have largely conceded to this point of view, arguing on March 11:

You just can't imagine the U.S. economy recovering in the long term if we don't have more energy independence, more clean energy, a smarter grid, a better-trained green workforce.

What's good for the environment is a job. Solar panels don't put themselves up, and wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. We're maturing as a country. We're getting comfortable with all classes and all colors and all kinds of people.

Of course, clean energy and a smarter (that is, more efficient) electricity grid are perfectly good ideas. But "energy independence" is normal Washington-speak for the whole line of argument about national security (American nationalism) being undermined by dependence on "foreign oil."

Green jobs manufacturing and installing solar panels are also wonderful ideas, but if "getting comfortable with all classes of people" means relying on big business (which building solar panels will inevitably become if we leave the market to determine our horizons), then rather than creating high-paying, union jobs with real benefits, workplace rights and job security, we will see the new "Green Economy" go exactly the way of all other industrial sectors based on the profit motive.

Second, can we change the world if, in Jones' words in 1992, "we have already accepted the system that makes racism and police abuse necessary and inevitable"?

Jones has a well-deserved reputation as an insightful and creative organizer against police brutality, the mass incarceration of California youth and the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

He rightly argued that these problems were not disassociated phenomena that simply "happened" to be occurring at the same time; rather, they were part of a system that had to be critiqued and challenged as a whole in order not to excuse one atrocity in the interest of organizing to stop a different one.

Yet today, as President Obama increases bombing attacks and special forces raids into Pakistan, sends another 17,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan, plans to leave some 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, and continues to give Israel a blank check, Jones is--in his words--caught "behind the closed door."

Instead of adding his powerful voice to building a serious antiwar movement--one that prevents the Pentagon from preying on precisely those inner-city youth Jones wants to target for green jobs--he must remain silent.

Worse, he must support the president's foreign policy in public. What is this teaching a "new generation of racial justice activists?"

Jones is making the calculation that he can do more good "inside" than "outside." Many honorable and dedicated people have made this choice with the best of motives. But there is a price to pay--accepting the totality of the system and working inside the boundaries it has developed to protect itself over the last 200 years.

* * *

THIRD, IF we decide that we can't rely on the free market, and we recognize that the changes the system will permit from the inside are severely limited, is it possible to organize a grassroots "real Opposition" that can win?

If that project is impossible--if transforming the system and eliminating the profit motive as the basis for our economy is a utopia--then we should accept working within the system as the only meaningful political strategy.

Such a conclusion would mean relying on the same economic forces that have led us to the current global meltdown to somehow chart a path for eliminating global hunger, saving the environment and providing future generations with fulfilling lives. If ever a political strategy could be called utopian, this would be it.

But is there an alternative? As Jones wrote in 1992, we need "a radically feminist, antiracist, green and humanitarian people's movement--complete with a revolutionary theory that will both describe our dilemma AND point a way out."

In my opinion, such a movement must be based on the ability of the vast majority of ordinary working-class people to participate meaningfully in the economic, social and political decisions that shape their lives.

It means mobilizing millions in new unions through organizing drives, protests and strikes. It means building a determined opposition within the military, among rank-and-file soldiers, to new deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. It means organizing and educating a new generation of student activists who will seize their campuses in opposition to budget cuts. It means developing community organizations that will speak out and march against police brutality.

It means returning to the lessons we learned from the great leaders and thinkers in our history, like Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And it means beginning a serious discussion of whether any of this is possible without challenging the basic notions of capitalism itself.

As the historian Howard Zinn once said, "What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in--marching outside the White House, pushing for change."

Jones seems to distance himself from this point of view in his March 11 interview:

I just want to serve. I think we've got a president who is committed to a green America that is green and just and inclusive. My big hope is that I can make it possible for some people who might be poor, might not have the educational opportunities right now, to participate to get in on the ground floor of this green revolution, which will be the cornerstone of the next American economy.

Despite using the word "revolution," Jones' emphasis is on the changes that President Obama intends to deliver to people and what Jones can do to support those efforts--in place of what demands ordinary people will fight for on their own behalf.

Again, good people can believe that this is a realistic and worthwhile strategy. But it leaves unanswered the question of whether we can truly transform the world, or we are condemned to merely make changes around the edges. It means leaving aside a "radical social vision" of a "real Opposition that can take down the Paper Tiger once and for all."

People on the left can come down on opposite sides of this issue and still find many areas within which to work in common. But this is a debate that must not be ignored.

Todd Chretien writes for the Socialist Work.

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