Today's Stories

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
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

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 2, 2009

"Laws are Rules Created and Paid for by the Rich"

Resistance to the War on the Wild

By MICHAEL DONNELLY

The University of Oregon Law School’s annual Public Interest Environmental Law Clinic (PIELC), more commonly known as E-LAW, is the nation’s and world’s premier gathering of Environmental attorneys, law students, policy wonks, Indigenous activists and eco-activists. www.pielc.org

Planned and conducted by a new group of Law students each year, this one-of-a-kind gathering held its 27th annual at the plush NIKE, er Knight, Law School building at the U of O the last weekend of February. The hallways of the Law School are lined with tables full of literature from a wide range of activist groups. The next door Native Longhouse is the site of many discussions of what is going on on Native Lands and to Native peoples worldwide.

Established by visionary eco-lawyers and professors John Bonine and Mike Axline, E-LAW is always the place for some though-provoking panel discussions and plenary keynote speeches. This year did not disappoint.

In past years, we were treated a legendary showdown between Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd and Ward Churchill over the Makah tribe’s renewed whaling. I've always seen it as a rout won by Watson. But others, to this day, see it as a clear Churchill victory. http://www.counterpunch.org/watson06042007.html

Another time, Julia Butterfly Hill was confronted by bare-chested women who saw her rise to prominence as an awful example of “looksism” sidetracking a movement. Certainly a number of other less-photogenic folks lived in (and continue to) trees longer than People Magazine’s “most beautiful person” Butterfly, but they never got/get the press. And, certainly, Hill’s preachy, “can’t we all just get along” style rubbed many the wrong way.

In 1994, CounterPunch co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair and I joined a panel with environmental nemesis Ron Arnold, the founder of the Wise Use Movement and coiner of the crackpot label “eco-terrorist.” Fifteen years later, non-profit professional greens still excoriate St. Clair and me for seconding Arnold’s spot-on analysis of the Democrat-captive, Big Green Money Machine.

In 2004, I wrote:

“A decade ago, Jeffrey St. Clair and I were on a panel discussion at the University of Oregon's annual Environmental Law Conference (E-LAW). The panel remains the best attended panel in E-LAW history. Over 1200 people crammed into the sweltering auditorium to hear...not Jeffrey and I, but Ron Arnold, the Wise Use architect, who was on the panel with us. Jeffrey gave a rousing speech and Arnold then put everyone to sleep with a quite accurate yet numbers-heavy damning analysis of the Big Greens.”

Then there was the time that Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman got an entire crowed of DC policy wonks, government factotums, attorneys, would-be attorneys and crusty activists to join him in a spirited wolf howl.

“Sitting around the fire, playing music and swapping lies is the oldest form of civilization.”

--- Mike Roselle

Another EF! co-founder, Mike Roselle, who will have none of Foreman’s more recent forays into Big Green eco-respectability and of late, eco-soft-porn author; has long been a fixture of E-LAW.

Mike never attends any panels. He roams the halls, as that is where he believes the real work occurs. This year, Mike and most of the southern gang are pre-occupied and couldn’t make it, as they are waging a strong battle against the odious practice of Big Coal called Mountaintop Removal. Yep, no euphemism there. Entire Appalachian chains of peaks are being leveled and creeks smothered with “overburden” – all for coal to power our unsustainable society.

Great music is also on the agenda, both sanctioned by E-LAW and at venues around Eugene. In years past, John Trudell, Casey Neill, Alice DiMicele, and others have performed. This year, Friday night saw a benefit for the indispensable Civil Liberties Defense Center held at the legendary, historic Workers of the World Hall. CLDC’s tireless attorneys work on a shoe-string budget defending those caught up in the Green Scare pogrom.

Saturday night, the definitely not-sanctioned by PIELC, Outlaw Party is held by local Earth First!ers. Local musicians play for a crowd of all ages - outside with the traditional bonfire. Even some of the DC crowd attends. Often, huge effigies of bulldozers, oil derricks, etc. are burned to the delight of the crowd.

Back to the Land, redux

This year the tone of the conference dramatically changed. Sure, there were the usual tweaking-policies-around-the-edges and foundation-funder toadying distractions. Even Mark Rey, the former Big Timber lobbyist who, in a classic fox-in-the-hen-house role, recently served as Bush the Lesser’s Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in charge of the Forest Service, bored folks on a panel about just what one could expect of the 111th Congress. (“This election was clearly not a transformative one,” said Rey as he cherry-picked margin of victory stats and defended his woeful tenure.)

The usual wonkdom aside (remember, this is for aspiring attorneys), this year it boiled down to: Prepare the Armageddon Hideout and/or “get out the camo and prepare for Armed Revolution.”

Similar to the Bush Crime Family buying a huge Estancia in Paraguay, over the largest intact aquifer left; many minions of the Pew Trust-controlled Big Greens have been buying land in Alaska’s rain forest. Taking the advice of Gaia theorist James Lovelock, they hope to establish personal sanctuaries from Climate Change. Despite all their rhetoric about Obama bringing about a “sustainable” this and that, many of these Me First!ers, with their keen sense of self-preservation, are hedging their bets and "heading north."

("Grizzlies. It's up to you. Here comes Treadwell's relatives," said St. Clair when told of this trend.)

“The War was declared long ago”

Despite the continuing E-LAW tradition of keynote speakers like Pablo Fajardo Mendoza, who has led a fight against Big Oil in Ecuador; Baja defenders Carla Garcia Zendelas and Fernando Ochoa Pineda; and others – people who have literally put their lives on the line for the planet; the big draw this year was author Derrick Jensen.

Jensen, author/co-author of 15 books, including the seminal Endgame and the great graphic novel As the World Burns, spoke on numerous panels, narrated a moving slideshow of past revolutionary heroes at the CLDC Benefit and spoke to an overflow crowd at the University Ballroom.

In his speech, fumbling thru a mixture of written notes and stream-of-consciousness forays, Jensen laid out his view of how untenable it all is. He asked the crowd, “Who here believes that our society will voluntarily adopt sustainability?”

Not a hand or voice was raised. The rest of his speech was how that reality should impact our strategies.

Jensen ran thru a detailed analysis of our culture of violence – on the Earth, towards women and Indigenous cultures – and how the violence is top-down, flowing from the wealthy at the top to the poorer folks each step below. He cited numerous cases proving how it’s only when the violence goes up the grid that it is ever an issue. When the cops shoot someone – the cops are always innocent. But, let anyone shoot a cop and we get convictions no matter the circumstances; and a State Funeral. “Garbage collectors are the public employees with the most dangerous job. Yet, when was the last time you saw a State Funeral for a garbage collector?”

He correctly noted that “Laws are rules created and paid for by the rich,” while in delicious irony, student staff turned late arrivals away from the speech as the room was “over the Fire Marshal’s capacity limits.”

The speech was brilliant, funny, angry, despairing and hopeful - all at once. The college crowd missed some of the jokes that brought uproarious laughs from the hard-core activists. He especially got them right off with a retelling of the Star Wars script whereby instead of Luke et al. going waging war against the Death Star (itself a great analogy of techno war on life), the Rebel Alliance spends their time on letter-writing campaigns, lobbying, elections and benefit concerts, etc.

Jensen ended up with a call for activists to form Militias as “the war was declared long ago.” He spoke of this armed revolt and his latest book that’s due out soon on how to start your own militia and asked “Am I the only one here with an AK-47?”

My buddy George Atiyeh, tireless defender of Opal Creek, turned to me, laughed and said, “As if we’re gonna tell.”

Aside from the reality that most of the crowd would rather hear an author rail on about eco-war than listen to folks who are actually front-line soldiers in that war; other concerns were raised. Later, at the Outlaw Party, some noted that we may well have young people in jail – the folks the brilliant, tireless Lauren Regan and the CLDC have been defending - because they took Jensen’s (and other's) call for revolt seriously.

Of course, many of us with experience with COINTELPRO - SDS, AIM, Black Panther veterans -aren't about to blindly go toe-to-toe with the Beast. (Speaking of: RIP Bob Robideau - the American Indian Movement champion who was acquitted on grounds of self-defense for his role in the AIM/FBI shootout that claimed the lives of two FBI agents and AIM member Joe Stuntz. Bob's cousin Leonard Peltier unjustly rots in prison over this incident to this day - no thanks to Bill Clinton who should have pardoned him. Bob passed away a couple weeks ago at 61.)

One paranoid activist questioned whether Jensen “may be a deep-cover agent,” as all through the Green Scare events there are shady characters who were/are government-paid agent provocateurs. It’s not the first time people have been labeled “wimps” for not destroying things and bullied into ever more risky acts. And being paranoid is justifiable, given we now live in times where Animal Rights activists have been charged with “terrorism” simply because they wrote messages in chalk on a public sidewalk outside a vivisectionist’s home!

These understandable concerns aside, Jensen’s speech was the best I’ve heard in 25 years of attending E-LAW. He hammered the Green establishment; he called out the class war in America; he slammed wishful thinking of the Butterfly Hill variety (he once was chased down the street by angry, white Buddhist pacifists who took exception) and, of course, he called for resistance - even filing lawsuits. He noted that while Harriet Tubman carried a gun, her Quaker allies never did. He also noted that only 3% of the Irish Republican Army ever carried a gun on missions – a figure similar even in the US Army. In the end, Derrick's an ‘every tool in the box” kind of guy.

Of course, there is no chance he’ll be invited back. After all, he used the word “fuck” repeatedly.

MICHAEL DONNELLY is of the Armageddon hideout, permaculture wing of the Resistance. He’s even known to have filed a lawsuit or two.

He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com

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