Today's Stories

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

December 18, 2008

Ken Salazar and the Status Quo

The Man in the Hat

By PHILLIP DOE

The first time I met Ken Salazar, the man Barack Obama has tapped as the next Secretary of Interior, he was the Attorney General for the state of Colorado.  That was in 1999 or thereabouts – well before he’d been told to glue that silly cowboy hat on his head so that everybody would know he was a true westerner, an old time westerner, a man bred of the land, comfortable in a saddle or behind the wheel of a pickup. 

It used to be people were known by their words, not their props, but Paul Bremer with his suit and combat boots in Iraq and Ken Salazar with his screwed on cowboy hat want to employ a sartorial meta-language – you know their seriousness by seeing their props.

Watching how Salazar dealt with public resource issues back then gives me considerable pause as to whether he should be given legal control over one-fifth of the U.S. land area as Interior Secretary.  After reviewing a few of these accounts you will be able to understand my unease.

At that first meeting, we had come to him to ask for the release of engineering reports bearing on the water rights claims of the Ute Indians.  These claims would become a driving force behind construction of the long-stalled federal Animas-La Plata project – a $600 million boondoggle to sequester enough water for the domestic needs of more than a million people.  Among our concerns was that the Utes numbered only 3,000 people and already controlled over 150,000 acre feet of water, mostly from other federal projects.

Colorado’s Open Records Act requires state records to be made available within five working days of a request.  As Attorney General, Salazar was responsible for enforcing that law.   He told us he couldn’t release the engineering reports because he might have to someday protect the people of Colorado against the claims of the Utes.  The information in those records, he reasoned, might give an unfair advantage to them if made public.  The law would have to wait.  We were to find out much later that these reports had already been reviewed by an engineering consultant for the Indians.

Indeed, later still, in a private meeting, after we brought suit over the matter, we were told by Salazar’s office that we would never get any information from them.  Well, some heavily redacted records were eventually dribbled to us, but I think this incident provides a clear indication of how Salazar, left to his own devises, might live up to Obama’s promise of openness and accountability in his administration. 

Another telling episode from that period was Attorney General Salazar’s involvement in the Summitville Mine Superfund cleanup.  Previously, Salazar’s mentor Governor Roy Romer had approved the gold mining operation at Summitville, arguing that jobs were needed.  To grease the startup, Romer had accepted the Canadian operator’s on-site equipment in lieu of a cash bond as required by state law.  It didn’t take long before the operation failed, dumping cyanide into the river and poisoning it for miles downstream. 

Salazar announced he would personally lead negotiations with the Canadian mining company.  In the end, the taxpayers picked up virtually all of the millions of dollars in cleanup.  Salazar’s lack of success in negotiating with the mining company and failure to prosecute should have gotten more attention, but all the costs had been transferred to the United States, thus diluting the costs to the people of Colorado.

As AG, Salazar was also involved in a longstanding water case between Colorado and Kansas over the use of the Arkansas River, a case that had festered for years and certainly cannot be laid at Salazar’s feet entirely.   Up to now, the case has cost the taxpayers of Colorado approximately $50 million in penalties and attorney fees.  The U.S. Supreme Court in reaching its verdict against the state, and in awarding punitive damages, was scathing in its condemnation of Colorado’s actions, stating the Colorado knew or should have known for years that it was stealing water from Kansas.

Normally, when a person steals from another, the thief either goes to jail or makes restitution.  In the Arkansas River case, the public pays for the theft, while the actual thieves, a few hundred ranchers and farmers on the lower Arkansas, pay nothing. 

In addition, Ken and his brother, John, support a large federal pipeline project to bring potable water to towns in the lower Arkansas valley because the agricultural return flows from these same thieving ranches are so polluted they reportedly make the river unsuitable as a source of public drinking water.  The preliminary costs of this pipeline are said to be between $200 and $300 million, with the public picking up the costs. Since most large federal water projects usually have cost overruns of up to 300 percent, this scheme, if funded, might actually cost up to a billion dollars. 

In a rational economic world, we would expect the public’s representatives to first go to those causing the problem and tell them to stop, reform their operations, and pay a significant portion of the damages and remediation costs.  The public might be asked to participate, but only secondarily.  But that is not the way water in the West is governed, and it is not the way Salazar sees it.  He has a long history of supporting water development on a large scale at public expense. 

He advertises himself as the senator for rural America even though, apparently unbeknownst to him, the state he represents is one of the most urbanized in the nation.  Neither does his self-description necessarily mean that he is an advocate for rural workers who are among the poorest of the working poor. 

Instead of standing for rural interests, Salazar seems to be more an advocate for preserving old land and ranching interests.  Much is made of the fact he grew up in rural Colorado without electricity.  Less is made of the fact his family has received over $200,000 in farm subsidies over the last 10 years, with his brother, the congressman, being the chief beneficiary.  Not surprisingly, the Salazar brothers are stout defenders of these agri-business subsidies – a stance seemingly at odds with Obama’s promise to eliminate waste in government. 

He has been praised lavishly for opposing the Bush administration’s drilling plans on some of the most valued wild land in the state, the Roan Plateau.  He did the right thing, no question, but it was also the easy thing since the plan was unpopular among most state voters.  It was not a high-risk endorsement.  In fact the risk would have been in not getting on the bandwagon. 

Newspapers like the Denver Post refer to Salazar as a centrist.  Apparently this is some sort of code meant to suggest a person Obama can be comfortable with, just as he seems to be comfortable with Ivy League retreads from Wall Street and the Clinton administration.  But the Obama campaign was about “CHANGE” – I still have that sign.  I hope it means something because millions of people who don’t give a damn about centrism or any other ism are depending on it. 

Unfortunately, from where I sit, Ken Salazar as Secretary of Interior does not represent change, as Obama promised.  Salazar represents defending the status quo and always has.

Phillip Doe lives in Colorado. He can be reached at: ptdoe@comcast.net

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