Today's Stories

May 29-31, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Reeling Republicans

May 28, 2009

Joan Roelofs
The Philanthropies and the Economic Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts
Torture and the American Conscience

Ralph Nader
Corporate Frankensteins

Mouin Rabbani
The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East

Joe Bageant
Plain Truths From Appalachia: a Redneck View of Obamarama

James McEnteer
America Held Hostage

Dedrick Muhammad
Obama and the Harsh Racial Reality

Richard Morse
On Speaking Out in Haiti

David Macaray
Have We Turned Into Sheep?

Harvey Wasserman
The 8 Green Steps to Solartopia

Website of the Day
Col. Peters: Just Kill the Gitmo Detainees

May 27, 2009

Joanne Mariner
Military Commissions, Round Three

Paul Craig Roberts
Doublespeak on North Korea

Walden Bello
Can China Save the World From Depression?

Dave Lindorff
Recidivism and Guantánamo

Brian M. Downing
Along the Durand Line

Carlos Villarreal
Separate But Equal Just Fine in California?

Nadia Hijab
Israel's Next Move: Armageddon Now?

Adam Federman
The PCBs of the Hudson River

Laray Polk
RadWaste and Texas' Future

Isabella Kenfield
The Fall of a Brazilian Financier

David Michael Green
Overcoming the Poverty of Ambition

Website of the Day
The Case Against Shell

May 26, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Fearful Pride: North Korea's Second Nuclear Test

Mike Whitney
The Next Leg Down: When Deflation Becomes Entrenched

Sharon Smith
Obama and Abortion Rights: What We Learned at Notre Dame

Marjorie Cohn
The Gitmo Appeasment Plan: Obama Buckles on the Constitution

Dean Baker
Waterboard the Fed

Deepankar Basu
Was the Indian Election a Debacle for the Left? If So, Why?

Fred Gardner
The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans for Sale

Josh Ruebner
Rethinking the Costs of Peace

Brian Cloughley
The Man Who Murdered Count Foulke Bernadotte

Website of the Day
The Montana Town That Wants to Become the New Gitmo

May 25, 2009

Diane Christian
Looking at Torture

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Kenneth Hartman
The Trouble With Prison

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

Fred Gardner
"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops": the Punishment of Sgt. Northcutt

Cindy Sheehan
Day of the Dead

Sen. Russell Feingold
Prolonged Detention and the Rule of Law: a Letter to Barack Obama

Sibel Edmonds
Two Sides of the Same Coin: From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps

Franklin Lamb
Der Spiegel Tries Again

Dave Lindorff
Memorial Day in the Land of the Weak and Wussy

Daniel Wolff
Learning to Read in the Pacific Northwest

Website of the Day
Decoration Day

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

Weekend Edition
May 29-31, 2009

A Critique of Darwinism

On Evolution

By JAMES C. FARIS

This is the 200th year celebration of Charles Darwin’s birth.  There are new books by the dozens, there is a tremendous amount of new research into evolution and its mechanisms, and in many ways, the specifics of Darwin’s ideas have been surpassed, shown to be wrong (or inadequate), or fleshed out in ways he would hardly recognize. While an essay on the topic of evolution may seem rather oblique to the central purposes and thrust of this website, I hope to demonstrate its relevance by way of critique-- certainly a method supported and favored by COUNTERPUNCH contributors and editors.

As befits the anniversary, the popular media today is filled with material on evolution. It has even permeated art and literature. In general, the issues of evolution vs. creationism (or intelligent design) are, despite the noise and smoke, peripheral battles--in that the forces of evolution have the ultimate power, not withstanding some of the strident media-hyped fears.  Any resistance from marginal segments and isolated regions are not of real significance, for the hegemonic assent of “evolution” is clear and its establishment secure.   I will argue, however, that it is not secure because of better argument or superior logic.  Quite the contrary, this short essay might be subtitled:  “Adaptation, survival of the fittest, sexual selection, selfish genes, selection for, and other truly awful ideas.”

A cardinal Darwinian notion of the mechanism of evolution is natural selection.  That is, nature acts against non-human individuals (plants or animals) or groups of individuals of the same species (not genes) by way of elimination—they are, in terms of natural selections, selected against.  This does not mean the survivors are selected for or favored, it simply means that survivors are not, at least for the time being, selected against.  Nature is not specifically purposeful—it is not seeking out individuals or groups to eliminate.  Indeed, it is benign to outcome, and individuals or groups, in a manner of speaking, make themselves available to elimination--by being too slow on the highway when a car speeds by, or by not being fast enough when a predator is chasing, or by being confined to an environment with insufficient food resource, or by not being able to breed, etc.--or (most important for non-humans), by being made available to natural selection by their social organization.  Specifically, we can only hope to know how units (individuals or groups) are selected against by speculation or examination of the deceased after the fact of their elimination. Even then, it is seldom clear.  That’s why the fossil record is often so inadequate. It is clear that some didn’t survive—but not always why, at least in an evolutionarily significant way.  This all seems straightforward enough and relatively undebatable. 

The problem, however, becomes apparent when people begin to talk with another logic (known as affirming the consequent—modus ponens—a frightful logical error) and speak of selection for one or another characteristic that can be seen on survivors, characteristically regarded by the analyst as essential to the creature’s success in not being selected against. 

Survivors in natural selection—those not selected against--are only survivors.  Of course they are minimally “fit” or they would not survive, but they do not have to be the “fittest,” nor can we easily attribute their survival to some supposedly advantageous characteristic.  To say they are well adapted simply is to say they have not yet been selected against.  Natural selection does not care, and any notion that survivors are “fittest” is logically indefensible--it is simply wrong.  Survivors are simply those minimally fit individuals (or groups) that are able to propagate successfully, and-- especially amongst non-humans—live successfully for the time being, according to the group dynamics and social organization that arranges individuals in time and space.  That is, the social organization of non-human animals (and some plants) arranges individuals across the landscape and through generations, commonly by way of territorial management, gender and hierarchical arrangements, making some available to natural selection, some to possible elimination.  These arrangements are also their means of population control (so they do not exhaust their food resources with excess numbers since they—unlike humans—have no way of expanding such food resources), and since in successful species, births always outnumber deaths.  

No animals or humans--who are alive (minimally “fit”)-- can be thought of as selected for, only as not yet selected against.  The only kind of selection for occurs in breeding experiments where deliberate characteristics are chosen to be artificially passed on to future generations—i.e., in the domestic crop field, barnyard, and research laboratories.  And this is where a lot of contemporary bad ideas about evolution had their origins.  The choice of ostensibly advantageous characteristics (that is, those most appealing to the person supervising the artificial breeding) is regarded as an example of how some natural process must operate.  Unfortunately, many of our evolutionary ideas (and some of Darwin’s) come from the barnyard and the forced breeding of the crop field or competition in Victorian England. and in human society rather than from deductions made from observing nature.

Moreover, as many experiments and countless observations indicate, any individual of any species (sometimes, but not always), including humans, has a vast store of unused genetic potential, and great capacities commonly unneeded and unexpressed.  Individuals of every species are brighter and more capable than the requirements made upon them by the species’ social organization or societal demands.  If this were not the case (particularly in the case of humans), there would be no significant change at all.  Consequently, the variation within species is the key to change.  Natural selection could not operate otherwise.  Natural selection is not the only mechanism at work (there is mutation, genetic drift, epigenetic and development potentials and change), but we’ll here confine our discussion to natural selection.

This leads to another bad idea associated with the notion of selection for is the notion of adaptation.  Humans (and all other living things) are commonly noted as being adapted if they are surviving.  But we can only say this if survivors are not as yet selected against, as argued above.  Adaptation is a lousy notion that most likely came about because it is difficult for Westerners to see evolution as anything but purposeful-- a mechanism that is forever ‘improving’ species, individuals, etc.  After all, goes the logic involved, if natural selection is at work, surely the survivors are somehow ‘better’ adapted.  But in fact we can only say they have not been selected against.  Nature, in the grand scheme of things, simply doesn’t care.  Thus, the idea of “selfish genes,” espoused by some biologists, makes no good sense.  There are some amazingly bizarre examples of species that no longer exist.  And there are some amazingly bizarre species that do exist.  But we cannot examine existing species or individuals in the environments in which they are found and say anything about adaptation and survival that is not trivial.  Measure the total of all species that have ever existed against those species that still exist, it can be seen that nature is ruthless.  Only a very miniscule percentage of all species of all time still exist today--so much for the alleged constant pressure toward greater or more successfully adapted species. 

The notion of adaptation is rampant in the social sciences, such as anthropology, as well as in biology.  It is seen as advantageous for species and social forms of humans to have.  But surely the “best adapted” species or social group is the species or social group that is on the most evolutionary thin ice, for without variation, environment change (especially if dramatic) leaves these “well-adapted” species or social forms vulnerable.  We read endlessly that various human groups are well adapted, and the archaeological literature if filled with examples.  But are these not the social forms that would be least likely to be able to adjust to significant change?  The successful form is surely the form that contains the most variation, the most alternative possibilities to adjust, accommodate, react to change—and to maintain and reward those possibilities and options.

This critique of adaptation in evolution is particularly applicable to humans. Like it or not, humans—amongst all other living things—are unique.  And Social Darwinians, Evolutionary Psychologists, Socio-biologists, and today, even literary Darwinians don’t like it.  Humans exist in all sizes, shapes, and environments.  And we have an amazing capacity to change our environment, produce and expand our food resources, breed in ways that do not combine deleterious recessive genetic combinations, and maintain dramatic differences between us.  In other words, we are characterized by amazing variation in genetic terms, and amazing variation in how we produce, transform, and live in all manner of environments.  And despite this array of different characteristics, we can all successfully breed.  Just how, then, do all these differences come to be?  Why do we not, with sufficient variations, speciate, like all other species have done in history?  And how do we persist (without speciation) in all this immense variation?  Can we say anything about the differences observable between humans that are not essentially trivial?  Black skin, white skin, etc., is found where it is because it was not selected against, but the functional significance of each skin color is not something that can be deduced easily from the fact that it is not selected against. 

Yet physical anthropology and human evolution scientists have spun the most amazing tales about it all—assuming that these various differences between humans in various environments must have some advantage.  In fact, they may only exist where they do because nothing is selecting against these specific characteristics.  And if there any significant pressures selecting against any particular characteristic, humans survive because they have pushed back such pressures, rendering them no longer very significant in natural selection.  The differences in phenotypes may be visibly clear, but why they exist is not so clear.  Consequence cannot be read as cause, and the invisible potentials in all individuals to be something else, in genetic terms, is lost to history, and remains only potential.  Indeed, we could go so far as to say that overall, natural selection in humans has been rendered insignificant today, save in trivial ways.  Since humans can transform and produce so much of their environments, they not longer are significantly subject to it. 

Thus, just how various skin colors came about in previous generations is largely of no significance to survival or natural selection.  There are advantages to dark skin and there are advantages to light skin in the environments in which they are found.  The important point, however, is that there is no longer any selective significance to dark or light skin in any environment in which humans are found today. 

As another example, it can be argued that secondary gender differences amongst humans also have ceased to have any selective significance.  Facial hair or beards, for example, still exist on mature males of most of the human species simply because there is nothing selecting against them.  They have no selective advantage and apparently no selective detriment.  Large breasts or the lack of abundant facial hair on many human females are similarly of no selective significance.  Indeed, sexual dimorphism in non-human species is also frequently unrelated to mating (or attracting a mate), and specific sexual characteristic of males (say, brilliant plumage of some male birds) are often directed toward other males (as in territorial management) rather than attracting females.  The concept of sexual selection probably stemmed more from Victorian social dress customs between sexes than natural law, for most dimorphism is related to territorial management, cooperation, and not to attracting a mate.

The view that any of our various individual or group differences might be fodder for natural selection is certainly true, but some of these differences are acquired by individuals during their lifetimes.  While nature can perhaps act against some of these differences, it is not significant, since acquired characteristics are not passed on to offspring.  While some believe (or believed) that acquired characteristics might be passed on or inherited-- the view that the giraffe acquired its long neck because it needed to reach leaves on trees--they have little support.  The observational facts are easy:  the giraffes’ long neck enables them to eat the leaves of trees.  But the deduction is wrong.  While there is a burgeoning new field called epigenetics (the study of the activation/stimulation or lack of activations of particularly genetic characteristics through time—or the inheritance of characteristics that are not reflected on the genetic sequences of the nuclear DNA), this is wholly different than inheriting genuinely acquired characteristics with no genetic basis.  This new field, indeed, relies heavily on a careful study of genetic potential and environmental interaction.

Getting back to the maintenance of immense human variation—just why is it that we, of all other species, are unique in having such immense variation without subsequent speciation?  While our capacity to produce our environment (and make no mistake, human hunters and gatherers produce their environments quite as much as do industrial social forms (through the use of poisons, fire, traps, sophisticated organizational techniques, sharing mechanisms, exogamy, etc.), unlike other animal hunters and gatherers, it is our unique kinship system that has effectively preserved our immense variations and store of vast genetic potential.  We do not marry (or breed with) our close kin.  This is not sibling avoidance, as found, say, amongst Egyptian gray geese avoiding nest mates, but a social rule known as the incest prohibition. Exogamic rules exist amongst all human populations.  The fact that close breeding sometimes does occur is not significant, for it is always accompanied by negative sanction.  Humans have had these rules for probably well over 100,000 years, and thus have since then preserved vast sources of variation.  Since we do not normally breed close, various possibly deleterious recessive genes are not expressed. We are literally genetic time bombs waiting to explode upon close mating.  We breed out, however, and are thus capable of successful propagation with all other peoples in the world, save our closest kin.  This means that every human is a repository of enormous genetic potential (much of it possible fatal) that is rarely expressed, and is indeed unknown, except through genetic counseling.

Racists, meritocrats, and others think otherwise.  They think the most “successful” humans must be the most fit, and that the poor (for example) are unfit because of their own lack of success, usually specified in some way as inherent in their being.  These folks are at work everywhere, in social sciences, biology, psychology, literature and art, and they are commonly powerfully placed.  They have not been eliminated by Obama’s election, and many of them rule in various institutions such as universities and governments.  It will be a constant struggle to expose them and their ideas. But so long as we live in hierarchical social forms, we must keep up that struggle.

James C. Faris is the author of Navajo and Photography. He lives in New Mexico.

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