Today's Stories

July 24, 2008

Greg Moses
Who Killed Azem Hajdari?

July 23, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
An Air Force in Free Fall

Paul Craig Roberts
The Mother of All Messes

Ralph Nader
Pavlov's America

Mike Whitney
Visualizing Dow 6,000

Susie Day
Senator Sicko: Jesse Helms and the Theatre of the Depraved

Website of the Day
"A Kinder and Gentler Machine-Gun Hand..."

July 22, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Ten Years On, Bolivarian Revolution at Crossroads

Patrick Cockburn
Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal

Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch
Torture After Dark

Moshe Adler
Everyone Must Share, Not Just Charlie Rangel

Martha Rosenberg
Protecting Bones from Drugs that Protect Bones

Dan Bacher
Bechtel and the Big Dig

Harvey Wasserman
Is Gore Inching Toward Solartopia?

Anthony Papa
A Slugger's Drug Redemption

Binoy Kampmark
Mad Over Benedict

Website of the Day
Hiroshima: A-Bombed Objects

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

Andy Worthington
Dictatorial Powers Upheld: the Meaning of the Al-Marri Decision

Scott Pellegrino
Should "Meet the Press" Desegregate?

John Ross
McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

Robert Weitzel
Blowback Through the Looking Glass

Mike Stark
I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

Website of the Day
Pinky Solves the Illegal Immigration Crisis

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Beat a Mining Company: Why a Gold Goliath Threw in the Towel

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

Website of the Day
What If Edward Said Had Told This Joke?

July 18, 2008

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

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

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 25, 2008

A Free Market for Financial Criminals

Where's the Outrage?

By ALAN FARAGO

On the Wall Street Journal OPED page, James Grant-- of the outstanding Grant's Interest Rate Observer-- writes, "Through history, outrageous financial behavior has been met with outrage. But today Wall Street's damaging recklessness has been met with near-silence, from a too-tolerant populace." ("Why No Outrage", WSJ, July 19, 2008)

Grant is right, notwithstanding the near constant drumbeat from Counterpunch. If you live in Florida and have a sentient molecule in your brain, outrage can't be buried too deep. Few, for instance, could have been surprised by the devastating critique in the recent Time Magazine cover story, "Florida, The Sunset State?" (Time, July 10, 2008).

Why no outrage? I suppose the best answer is that Americans have become resigned to passivity, allowing themselves to be dominated by elites in ways both subtle and dramatic.

Consider for instance how the Miami-Dade County Commission-- the base layer of government in Florida's most populous county-- last week rejected out of hand, a year's worth of effort by dedicated citizens appointed to review the Charter that guides the operations of the county. The more important recommendations had to do with tempering the extent to which local government has deformed its purpose; from protecting the health, welfare and safety of citizens and taxpayers into a permitting mill for real estate speculators. (To watch the performance of the county commission on webcast is shocking.)

There has been no shortage of outrage about the conduct of local county commissioners and a status quo as fortified as a ten foot concrete bunker in North Korea. The permanent incumbency is buttressed by a campaign finance system dominated by real estate interests-- the same interests who prodded government collusion with Wall Street—whose principal accomplishment, beyond wrecking the US economy, is turning representative democracy into a charade.

On the local Miami Dade county commission, career politicians like Javier Souto regularly rant about Cuban spies and dark conspiracies but participate in an unreformable majority that is dictatorial in key respects, immune and insulated from change.

Within Miami-Dade County, there is a further example of the nested mess: the City of Homestead.

For decades, Homestead and its adjacent municipality, Florida City, represented the last outlying rural area in Southeastern Florida. Its location, adjacent to two national parks and within striking distance of Florida Bay, the coral reef, and a national marine sanctuary, made the area a principal battle ground in Florida between real estate speculators and a host of civic activists; from neighborhood groups trying to preserve their quality of life to conservationists.

A major battle in Homestead-- for the future of the Homestead Air Force Base-- engaged along these lines over a period of time in which the housing boom mobilized, wrapping up politics-- from local yokels now moved on to run amusement parks to the 2000 candidates for the presidency of the United States. Civic activists won the Air Force base battle, highly publicized as it was, and lost the war: the area was swamped by low cost housing, ratty subdivisions.

Homestead was the pride of lobbyists, political insiders like Miami-Dade mayor Alex Penelas-- the one Democrat who could have kept the 2000 presidential recount alive--and local bankers and developers from the Latin Builders Association. They shoved the subdivisions in the face of environmentalists and other "do-good'ers" and even in the midst of the housing bust, there is no sign of them stopping.

The Miami Daily Business Review reported on the carnage:</a> "One Homestead ZIP code — 33033 — leads Miami-Dade County with 263 homes in different stages of foreclosure. And 109 homes in that ZIP code have already been taken back by lenders, according to foreclosure.com. “In Homestead, 30 to 40 percent of the sales are distressed,” said David Dabby, president of the Dabby Group, a real estate advisory and valuation company in Coral Gables. “Homestead cannot recover until most of the foreclosure activity works its way through the system. At this point, we are in the middle of it.” Since 2002, almost 10,000 single-family homes, townhouses and condo units have been built, and 3,500 more are in the pipeline, including hundreds already under construction. Many are in cookie-cutter subdivisions that grew from agricultural fields east of Florida’s Turnpike near Campbell Drive.

So, where is the outrage?

Actually, there is an outstanding example of the outrage: it is a citizen's movement to change the Florida Constitution called Florida Hometown Democracy that seeks to allow voters the choice about changes to local "growth management plans" instead of allowing real estate dominated legislatures to rubber stamp them.

The initiative is inching forward on the backs of a few highly motivated individuals who have managed to collect all but a few thousand of the 611,000 signatures necessary to qualify for a state-wide ballot. It has engendered the wrath and anger of Florida's entire chain of interests related to real estate development, from the Chamber of Commerce to Associated Industries, from Farm Bureaus to builders throughout the state. These elites have pledged to spend “whatever it takes” to defeat the ballot initiative and made a shambles of the lawful right of citizens to petition their own government.

But aside from Sierra Club, for the most part state-wide conservation groups have shied away from joining the outrage; reading from the same laundry list of objections as the developers. That, for instance, the measure would not solve Florida's development 'problems', that it wouldn't level the playing field so much as create further opportunities for well financed insiders to bend the public interest to their will.

These examples lead to a certain refinement of James Grant's question: there is plenty of outrage, but why so much defeatism?

Why are conservation groups so beaten down, for instance, that they cannot understand or seize the opportunity to bring these issues to a head? Why, the timidity?

The usual response: political pragmatism. Under this rubric, conservationists acquiesce to insiders deemed to be savvy enough to play the game: if there is only one seat at the table, you better grab it and you better not bite the hand that feeds you. To get along, you have to go along.

Under such rationalizations, Florida Bay—one of the most unique shallow water wilderness areas in the world—has been turned into a floating cesspool for nutrient runoff from Big Sugar, other agriculture, and cities fringing the Everglades. Macroalgae chokes the coral reef. Those are just two examples.

Under the wisdom of the prevailing elite—crystallized by former two-term Governor Jeb Bush—only a strong economy can protect the environment. But look what happened under the claims of a strong and vibrant Florida economy: thievery pure and simple.

The Daily Business Review: "Homestead homeowners — many facing foreclosure or watching the value of their houses crater— are well aware of the crisis. Ten repossessed houses sit vacant on Alex Hernandez’s tree-lined street in a new gated subdivision 31 miles south of downtown Miami. “When those houses sell, the value of my house will drop, no doubt about it,” said Hernandez, standing in the driveway of his home looking out on the for-sale signs dotting his block in Pebblebrook II.

Three months ago, an independent real estate appraiser valued his five-bedroom home at $390,000, up from the $327,000 it cost him in December 2005, he said. But he fears the foreclosed properties will wipe out the equity he had in his home, Hernandez said. Foreclosures are pushing prices down more than 50 percent of what they sold at during the height of the housing boom, said real estate broker Hagen Hendrix. He markets repossessed homes in Homestead for lenders. One of his lender clients dropped the price of a two-bedroom town house from $189,000 to $60,000, he said."

An outstanding investigation by The Miami Herald on mortgage fraud reports, "... more than 10,000 criminals have been allowed to peddle home loans in Florida since 2000. Among them are bank burglars, cocaine traffickers and identity thieves who have gone on to commit at least $85 million in mortgage fraud."

10,000 criminals participating in the “free market”.

So, why are Americans defeatist in the face of the quick buck mentality that has shifted billions in wealth from the middle class to the Wall Street elite, buttressed by real estate-dominated legislatures and backed by criminals?

In large part, the corporatization of the mainstream media has deprived Americans of the dialogue and debate about the integrity of our democracy, subverted by powerful elites who co-opted executive suites of newspapers. In part, newspapers themselves have been hapless victims of a corporate conspiracy to wield advertising revenues as a way to suppress dissent.

For example, in The Miami Herald there is only one place to go for an honest reckoning of the damage done to the public interest by real estate speculators and developers: Jim Morin's cartoons on the editorial page. What does this say?

For one, that a picture is worth a thousand words especially when you lack the courage to print the 1000 words.

Or, that outrage is funny and belongs in graphic representations, not tough reporting in a daily battle with the assorted bums, crooks and lobbyists, some of whom dress as highly paid lawyers and cloak themselves in good civic works for local hospitals, charities, and the United Way.

But the "TV made me do it" excuse, only goes so far. Our pretense of progress is sustained by a mountain of debt.

As a culture, we are immune to insanity of leverage because everyone-- well, almost everyone-- has been doing it. Avoiding the meaning of fiscal and economic co-dependency is perhaps the signature feature of the past decade.

Consider, for instance, it took eight years for George W. Bush to say that "our nation is addicted to oil" and to admit to the man-made costs of global warming. Yet, in both cases White House policies are marked by fierce denial, redactions, and blood in the Mideast.

Certainly, the mainstream media must play a role in reversal, or, should. But how to extract or extrapolate, when so much of society is mired in the illusion of moving forward by driving backward and looking in the rear view mirror?

The American Way, built on assets and wealth created from manufacturing, dissolved in the past thirty years to an economy feeding its own services and housing stock, based on incredible flights of debt.

From Wall Street to Main Street, our defeatism is based on the fact it has been very profitable to be passive. Since outrage is the contra-indicator of passivity, it is in very short supply.

This is the phenomenon James Grant observes: "For every dollar of equity capital, a well-financed regional bank holds perhaps $10 in loans or securities. Wall Street's biggest broker-dealers could hardly bear to look themselves in the mirror if they didn't extend themselves three times further. At the end of 2007, Goldman Sachs had $26 of assets for every dollar of equity. Merrill Lynch had $32, Bear Stearns $34, Morgan Stanley $33 and Lehman Brothers $31. On average, then, about $3 in equity capital per $100 of assets. "Leverage," as the laying-on of debt is known in the trade, is the Hamburger Helper of finance. It makes a little capital go a long way, often much farther than it safely should. Managing balance sheets as highly leveraged as Wall Street's requires a keen eye and superb judgment. The rub is that human beings err."

And err, we have, measured by a debased currency valued in the trillions. The only ones who have gotten off scott-free are the smallest fraction of wage earners, paid in vast quantities of debased dollars.

Alan Farago writes on the environment, the economy and politics from Coral Gables, FL. He can be reached at:  alanfarago@yahoo.com

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