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Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 14, 2007 Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 14, 2007 This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption By ALAN FARAGO The building boom in Florida is in cinders. It is going to take a long time to tally the costs and devastation to the public interest. “Developer gives up fortune,” reads a bankruptcy story in The Miami Herald about Juan Puig who “lived the high life during the housing boom: a Gables Estates waterfront mansion, a condo near Aspen. A fleet of 10 luxury cars, including a 1966 Ferrari and 1969 DeTomaso Mangusa. A 59-foot Ferretti Yacht. More than 70 pieces of art. A gold Cartier watch with diamonds. Extensive wine collection. Welsh Hunter pony. But now he and his wife must give it all back.” Puig’s flameout was caused by bad bets on the arbitrage between rental values and condos. But the $100 million in debt that Puig owes and can’t account for is a pinhole compared to the massive speculation and overinvestment in the hyper-inflated construction bubble that mars the Florida landscape. Back in 2003, Jeb Bush loyalist and campaign finance chair, Al Hoffman who was then chairman of WCI Communities, Inc.—crowed to the Washington Post that suburban sprawl was “an unstoppable force”. Today, WCI is now struggling against a stronger force: reality. The cost to international credit markets from the exuberance of builders and the development lobby in fast-growing states like Florida is already measured in the tens of billions, a landscape of structured mortgage products and financial derivatives fertilized by Wall Street without friction, impedence, or meaningful regulation. For the public interest, of course, what is left from the building boom are massive deficits, degraded wetlands, bad water quality, and a trail of public corruption that seems to have no end. Take Palm Beach County, for example.Former county commissioner Tony Masilotti is headed to prison, for taking a piece of the action on property he was involved in, as a zoning matter. Current county commissioner Warren Newell just plead guilty to criminal charges on another land deal where more than $300K lined his pocket from a success fee paid to an engineering consultant. As reported by the Palm Beach Post, a key figure in the cases is Enrique Tomeu, president and co-owner of Palm Beach Aggregates. Tomeu’s company also figured in the corruption case of former County Commission Chairman Tony Masilotti. In a transaction that led to Masilotti’s political demise and conviction, Tomeu helped Masilotti gain control of$7.7 million worth of land in Brevard County. In return, Masilotti engineered a vast zoning increase allowing 2,000 homes on 1,200 western-county acres that had been limited to 120 units. Tomeu persuaded a state agency, closely managed by the Governor’s Office in Tallahassee, to purchase 1190 acres of his property to be used as “water storage”. An engineering consultant, Dan Shalloway, engineered the $190 million land deal for the Palm Beach Aggregates rock pit to be used for “water storage”. He is now facing a professional-misconduct complaint. On Monday, the South Florida Water Management District filed the complaint with the Florida Board of Professional Engineers, according to the Palm Beach Post. The four count complaint includes allegations that Shalloway lied to the district in 2001 about his relationship with Palm Beach Aggregates, a Loxahatchee mining company that was trying to sell 1,190 acres of rock pits to the district for water storage. “Please let me clarify that neither my firm nor I works for Palm Beach Aggregates, “ Shalloway wrote to then-district Executive Director Frank Finch. “We were merely pointing out to water available to the public as good citizens.” Shalloway and (Palm Beach County Commissioner Newell) made arrangements as far back as 1998 to share the profits from any sale of the pits.The media has yet to explore the links between Tomeu and Governor Jeb Bush, who was elected to his first term in 1998, and had clearly articulated the twin goals, economic development and environmental protection, that were well served by entrepreneurs like Tomeu—a Geoge W. Bush Pioneer and contributor to the US Senate campaign of Mel Martinez—who keeps up appearances with Florida environmentalists. And that is another price of the building boom: the extent to which environmentalists were compelled to cozy up to land speculators and entrepreneurs like Tomeu.If any of the greens were aware of the behind-the-scenes manoevering including the corruption of local government in Palm Beach, through land deals pushed by Tomeu, no one is raising their hand.Nor did conservationists have any leverage when the State of Florida agreed to the per acre benchmark established by the Palm Beach Aggregates deal, at more than $180,000 near lands owned by Big Sugar and coveted by the environmental community for the restoration of the Everglades. The outrageous purchase price was justified for its “environmental benefit”: in fact, it was a price pushed by corruption. Period. But the consequences are extreme: inflated values which supported wealth creation of the growth machine have pushed the cost of environmental restoration into the stratosphere on the one hand and buttressed by well-financed property rights advocates on the other, establishing precedents by which future land values will be measured. For county commissioners and bankrupt developers, there is always a chance to start over. And for career bureaucrats, another rung on the professional ladder.But there is no starting over for the train of destruction that greed has etched on the Florida landscape. In June, Nicole Brochu, columnist for the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, wrote, “Count me as thrilled federal prosecutors are cleaning up the halls of government and tossing the scoundrels out of office. But when you watch as low-life drug dealers get 10 and 20 years for their craft, or vandals get enhanced hate-crime penalties for spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue, or even button-down CEOs like Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling get 24 years in the slammer, you expect the same iron fist to come down on the dirty politicians who infect the democratic process and victimize the entire community.”But the same iron fist is not coming down on those who illegally facilitated the growth machine. The tale of $100 million disappearing down the drain of the housing bust, of county commissioners shuffled off to jail, tells another story: why Florida voters are ready to take away the power from elected officials for new changes to comprehensive land use plans. (See, Florida Hometown Democracy atfloridahometowndemocracy.com) Here is the hard scrabble truth: while the beneficiaries and entrepreneurs of the late, great housing boom may be able to “start over”—after their fortunes have been lost and declaring bankrupcy, or, business plans burnt to a crisp—the communities they wrecked by promoting terrible zoning changes, allowing the costs of infrastructure to be deferred, wetlands destroyed, water quality: these results cannot be reversed.There is no starting over for Florida. The legacy of the building boom—the call by the growth machine for “streamlined permitting”, “more protection, less process”—all the ways in which Floridians have been promised a higher quality of life, while the public interest has been dragged under the bus—these are reasons Floridians will vote for the Florida Hometown Democracy measure if they are given a chance. It should come as no surprise to the construction and development lobby that it reaps what is sows: profound citizen discontent over the trashing of Florida and barriers erected against the public interest—like Amendment 3 approved by a state-wide vote in 2006 that raises the threshold to 60 percent of the electorate, for changes to the Florida Constitution by referendum. The Herald reports that the Puig bankruptcy “is the biggest yet to come out of the slumping housing market”. But it is certainly not the last. And Florida is far, far from totaling the damage. Alan Farago of Coral Gables, who writes about the environment and the politics of South Florida, can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com. Your Ad Here

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