Today's Stories

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Futher Into the Afghan Abyss

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

March 27-29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Fall Guy

Arno J. Mayer
Too Big to Fail?

Michael Hudson
How the Scam Works

José Pertierra
Gesture for Gesture: How to Free the Cuban Five

Andy Worthington
A Letter to Obama From a Guantánamo Uighur

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Hog Wallow

Winslow T. Wheeler
What Does an F-22 Cost?

Souad N. Al-Azzawi
Iraq: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves

Dave Lindorff
A Financial History Lesson

Ian Masters
The Zombie Presidency

Barbara Rose Johnston
Water Culture Wars

Jami Tarn
Smearing Tristan Anderson

Diane Farsetta
The Nuclear Industry Targets Wisconsin

David Ker Thomson Against Democracy

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu and the Future of the Peace Process

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Shiites' One-Word Demand

Wajahat Ali
Writer as Fighter: the Genius of Ishmael Reed

Nick Egnatz
Whatever Happened to the Fierce Urgency of Now?

Gregory A. Burris
The Insolents Abroad: a Defense of Iceland

Missy Beattie
This Land

Stephen Martin
The Broken Stone of Corporatism

Charles R. Larson
Obama, Smoking and Me

David Yearsley
How They Built Bach's Face (Is the Bard Next?)

Ben Sonnenberg
Won't You Please Get Thee Behind Me? Buñuel's Simon of the Desert

Kim Nicolini
The Mafia Without Moralizing: Garrone's Gomorrah

Lorenzo Wolff
Pat Boone Syndrome

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Paulann Petersen

Website of the Weekend
Ann Coulter: a Portrait by Ben Tripp

March 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis?

Sharon Smith
Another Blow to Labor ... from the Democrats

Neve Gordon
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Shame

Patrick Madden
Why the Geithner Plan Will Fail

Gareth Porter
The Big Con on Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Why Do We Need a Health Insurance Industry?

Hannah Safran
The Israeli Resistance: "Ready to be Traitors"

Keith Newell
Will the Cellphone Please Take the Stand?

Todd Chretien
Behind the Green Collar

Nelson P. Valdés
When It Comes to Cuba and the Media Anything Goes

Website of the Day
G20 Meltdown

March 25, 2009

Robin Blackburn
Media Revolution or Mirage?

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

David Rosen
Sexting: a First Amendment Challenge for Obama

Jonathan Cook
Turkey's Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers

Dean Baker
Billions More for Failed Banks

Ron Jacobs
Karzai on a String

Russell Mokhiber
Corporate Liberals vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Slice and Dice on Card Check

Dave Lindorff
Geithner's Power Grab

Sarah Knopp
LA Teacher's Sit-In Over Layoffs

Website of the Day
How to Create an Animal Rights "Terrorist"

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

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

April 1, 2009

Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match?

Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

By DON FITZ

The election for mayor of St. Louis is only a few days away: April 7.  The first big face-off between sitting Mayor Francis Slay, Green Party challenger Rev. Elston K. McCowan, and “independent” Maida Coleman was Sunday, March 29.

The online Saint Louis Beacon reported that “McCowan was the most aggressive of the three, repeatedly challenging the mayor’s performance and accusing the mayor of doing more harm than good.”  The story detailed how McCowan, a black minister who preaches a fiery environmental sermon, hammered away at Slay for snubbing a stimulus package meeting with President Obama so he could attend a Mardi Gras parade.  McCowan, who is also Public Service Director for SEIU Local 2000, denounced the mayor’s role in attacking public schools and the teacher’s union as well as heightening racial tensions by unjustly firing the City’s first black fire chief, Sherman George.

Mayor Slay had insulted the black community by refusing to participate in the primary debates at the historically black Harris Stowe State University.  Green Party supporters were elated when McCowan clearly got the best of the reluctant mayor on March 29.

Later that night, McCowan, his wife Joyce, and their children, Sikudhani (13), Janey (11) and Elston Jr. (10), were awaken as their van burst into flames 30 feet from their home.  Next door neighbor Christopher Jackson, whose yard also sports a Green Party “McCowan 4 Mayor” sign, reported that he heard a loud “Boom!” and saw flamers pouring from the van and a white Malibu “flying” around the corner as fire trucks arrived.

With “Star Grace Missionary Baptist Church” painted on the side, the van had many purposes.  Rev. McCowan used it every Sunday to pick up parishioners for church.  It served as a second car for Elston and Joyce, parents with multiple jobs.  And, during the last few months, it was the main organizing and literature distribution vehicle for the Green Party of St. Louis. 

When news of the attack went out, Mayor Slay’s campaign manager Jeff Rainford snapped that any suggestion that the mayor might have anything to do with it was “asinine” and “stupid” and that it was a waste of their time to have to respond.  Absent from his diatribe was any concern, compassion or pledge to vigorously investigate who might be behind the attack. 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which has run regular front page ads for Francis Slay that are thinly disguised as “news” stories, sent Jake Wagman to cover the arson.  Wagman, whose writing consistently praises the mayor, walked around the burnt-out van, sneering at “conspiracy theories” and wondering out loud why anyone would think the mayor might be involved in such an act.

It’s not at all certain that the mayor’s team is above such tactics.  The day after Maida Coleman announced that she would run against Slay as an “independent” (Coleman was a State Senator and on the Democratic Party’s State Committee), a family member had the windshield broken out of his car.  A few weeks later a teacher who was passing out Coleman literature was attacked by five unidentified men.

The series of incidents are the basis for the request for an investigation that McCowan is sending to the US Justice Department. The complaint includes discrimination in voting practices in St. Louis.  It charges that predominantly black wards have fewer voting locations, which forces people to travel farther to vote and stand in line longer.  The Justice Department is also being informed that it is a violation of the St. Louis Charter for Judge Margaret Wash, a classified employee of the City, to be listed as a Slay endorser.

Concern that the fire bombing might be more than a random act is heightened by the vigorous nature of McCowan’s campaign.  As a labor organizer, he has conducted an activist campaign stepping on quite a few toes.

A sore toe on Slay’s political footing is childhood lead poisoning.  It has a perverse intertwining with the mayor’s efforts to privatize education by replacing public schools with charter schools.  Allowing lead to remain in older public schools provides an argument for shutting them down. 

When the elected school board would not do his bidding, Slay manipulated behind-the-scenes to remove its power by replacing it with an appointed Special Administrative Board (SAB).  In October, 2008, Slay’s SAB representatives heard from parents questioning the movement of the Wilkinson Early Childhood Center to the highly lead contaminated Roe School.  SAB appointees claimed that there was no money in the budget for lead abatement.

Green Party candidate McCowan organized a December 2 picket at Roe to draw attention to the crisis.  His press statement pointed out that at the same time the unelected SAB was claiming that no money was available to remove lead, Francis Slay was caught spending $2 million to “beautify” the Grand Avenue bridge. 

Two days after the picket, the SAB suddenly announced that they were looking in earnest for the $4.5 million needed to remove lead from 27 schools.  On March 17, 2009 they announced they had found funds for lead removal, a discovery that would not have been made without Green Party pressure.

The Green Party has also ruffled the feathers of Ameren UE, which holds a monopoly on St. Louis electric power. Elston McCowan is the only candidate for mayor speaking out against a proposed second nuclear reactor in Callaway Missouri.  Ameren UE is advocating the repeal of Missouri’s “No CWIP” law in order to force taxpayers to cover the cost of constructing a new reactor. 

CWIP refers to “construction work in progress.” In 1976, by a nearly 2 to 1 margin, Missouri voters approved a law prohibiting ratepayers from being charged for construction of a plant until it is “fully operational and used for service.” 

“If Ameren gets its way on this, St. Louis residents could be paying for the nuke forever,” charged a McCowan press statement.  “A second nuke at Callaway could cost us $9 to $15 billion. The number of people who could not pay their electric bills would skyrocket.”

St. Louis Greens believe that government should encourage new businesses to produce solar and wind power.  Renewable energy companies can be started with a relatively small amount of capital.  In contrast, power plants require billions.  McCowan repeatedly explains that the two are incompatible: “Every dollar you throw at nuclear power is a dollar you take away from renewable energy.”

Neither the current mayor nor the “independent” Democrat see any need to make connections between a bloated military budget and decay in US cities.  But the Green Party has been quick to link the destruction of St. Louis services like schools, hospitals, homes and mass transit to military spending. 

When Israel began its attack on the Gaza Strip in December 2008, Greens immediately called for a halt to the violence.  The attacks followed Israel’s brutal siege of Gaza which caused immense suffering for its 1.5 million Palestinian residents by interfering with the importation of necessities of life including medicine, food and fuel.

On December 28, 2008 McCowan joined the Instead of War Coalition for a rally outside Missouri Senator Christopher (“Kit”) Bond’s office.  He spoke of US complicity in selling arms to Israel, which he criticized for crossing the line from self defense to war crimes. 

Along with other Green Party and Instead of War activists, McCowan worked to organize a January 10, 2009 march.  The event attracted hundreds, including many Palestinians worried about their relatives and friends in Gaza. 

In the 2005 St. Louis mayoral election, Willie Marshall, a retired black postal worker, received 21% of the vote.  Leading the Green Party ticket, Marshall took over 40% of the vote in three black wards.  The utility companies, Boeing’s St. Louis office and charter school profiteers don’t want that percentage to grow in the upcoming election.

Slay works closely with real estate developers to grab homes and businesses from low income owners who are largely black.  The Green Party has hosted numerous events with a focus on “No eminent domain for private gain!”  While the other candidates fret that “The mayor cannot stop evictions,” McCowan pledges “a moratorium on evictions, foreclosures and utility shut-offs.”  He vows to use the authority of the mayor’s office to instruct the sheriff to refrain from putting anyone out of their home.

The McCowan van was burned the same day that a third of St. Louis bus lines were shut down, the largest closing in the country.  As other candidates were wringing their hands and promoting their “legislative experience” in dealing with problems, McCowan announced that, as mayor, he would fill 100 buses for a trip to Washington to demand that “If Congress can find trillions to throw at banking swindlers, it can surely find enough money to keep buses rolling for working people to get to their jobs.”

The McCowan-for-mayor campaign is not exactly popular with corporate shills like Civic Progress.  Did one of them take time off from union busting to burn the McCowan van?  Or was it a Slay crony?  Or was it just someone wandering the neighborhood looking for a church van to burn?

At this point, we can’t be certain who torched it.  But we do know that St. Louis is in the midst of a feeding frenzy of rich white men devouring every profitable chunk of the black community they can cram down their gullets.  As Reverend McCowan says, “There are so many hogs feeding at the trough of wickedness, we aren’t sure which one came to dinner with a match.”

For the full platform of the Green Party of St. Louis or to learn more about the campaign, go to mccowan4mayor.com. 

Don Fitz is Editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought and is a senior advisor to the McCowan Campaign. He can be reached at: dfitz@artsci.wustl.edu

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