Today's Stories

April 17-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

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

Weekend Edition
April 17-20, 2009

Why No One Talks About the Military Budget

Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

There are few statistics as stunning as the following simple, single number:  The United States spends two times more on its military than all the other countries of the world, combined.

Yes, that’s right.  All 200 or so of them.  Combined.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, last year, the US dropped about $625 billion in taxpayer dollars on its military, while all the rest of the world together spent $500 billion.  (The aggregate global figures come from 2004, but have been steady over the prior decade.)  However, if you also add in nuclear weapons costs handled separately by the Energy Department, Veterans Affairs, interest on money borrowed to fund previous wars, and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the total rises to a jaw-dropping one trillion dollars per year.

Think of how astonishing that is.

Imagine if you lived down the street from a guy who insisted that his house had to be two times bigger than all the other houses in the neighborhood, combined.  You and your neighbors live in 2,000 square foot houses, but he has to have an 800,000 square foot house.  That’s one that would be the length of three football fields long, and three football fields wide.

Imagine you and all your fishing buddies tied up next to a guy who had to have a boat that was twice as big as all of yours combined.  You guys have 15 footers.  His would be 6,000 feet long, or six Queen Marys, length-to-length.

Imagine that you knew someone who had to spend double on dinner what everyone else dining in a decent restaurant was spending.  The average meal for the rest of you costs 25 dollars.  This guy insists on spending $10,000 on one meal, of the same food, prepared by the same chef.

This is an astonishing ratio in so many ways.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about it is that nobody particularly talks about it.  It’s one thing to say that military spending has now joined Social Security as the third rail of American politics – you touch it, you die.  And, of course, now we are treated to the visage of the “liberal” – even “socialist” and “defeatist” “pal of terrorists” – guy in the White House actually increasing military spending, and doing so at a time when the federal budget is hemorrhaging red ink as if it were the Exxon Valdez, drunken captain at the helm and all.  But it’s actually even worse than that.

Not only can you not seriously discuss cutting military spending in America, you can’t even know about this spending ratio relative to the rest of the world, or contemplate what it means.  Do you know of any single politician who ever mentions this?

It’s also astonishing because the Cold War is over, the once Nazi-controlled Germany has turned into one of the most pacifist countries in the world, Japan is all about making cars and TVs, and there isn’t a serious enemy of the United States anywhere on either the geographical or temporal horizon.  Right now, we are spending vast sums of money to fight gaggles of angry young men armed with box-cutters, and scraggly mullahs hiding in remote mountainous caves.  And they’re winning.

It is conceivable that China might, maybe, someday, spend something like what the US does on its military.  But for what?  Right now China spends a tenth of what the US does on its military, and considerably less than that if you count the other items that bring the US total up to a trillion per year.  If it reached parity, what would that permit it that is now impossible, apart from perhaps taking back Taiwan and creating a twentieth century Latin America-style neighborhood it could dominate even more than it does already?  Would it allow China to invade the United States, or bend it to Chinese will for fear of a military confrontation?  Of course not.

Which is another reason this ratio is so astonishing.  Say whatever you want about nuclear weapons from a moral perspective.  They have nevertheless changed the dynamic of international politics radically.  No state will ever again invade another one which possesses a nuclear arsenal and the means to project it in quantity.  The doctrine of mutually-assured destruction may indeed be mad from a psychological perspective, but it works – at least apart from situations in which the attacking country’s leadership is either so bonkers or so determined on an issue that national suicide isn’t a deterrent.  Of course, non-state actors like al Qaeda are a problem, because they provide little target for retaliation, but would spending another $100 billion on more destroyers or fighter jets solve that problem?  Of course not.

This grossly disproportionate ratio of military spending to other countries is also astonishing, and astonishingly obscene, for what it costs this country in missed opportunities.  We are by far the richest country in the world – no one is even close.  And we have no real enemies.  And, as noted, we spend double the entire world combined in order to defend against those non-enemies.

Such thoughtful priorities also entitle our lucky population to have a national healthcare system that is ranked 37th from the top, worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.  Isn’t that special?  Morocco does better than we do.  So do Colombia, Chile and Costa Rica.  And Dominica.  Does anyone really even know where Dominica is?  All those weapons systems don’t just purchase for us a lack of security, they also buy a country where 50 million Americans lack health insurance of any kind, and countless others are grossly under-insured (including those who don’t know it yet, but will find out fast if they ever get sick).

In part because of this fine health care system, the United States also ranks 29th globally on infant mortality.  And the longitudinal trend isn’t pretty.  We were 12th in the world in 1960, and 23rd in 1990.  Now we are tied with Poland and Slovakia.  The good news, though, is that we are still by far and away first worldwide on obesity, with 31 percent of the population qualifying for that distinction, over six percent higher than our nearest competitor!  The rest of the world can kick us around all day long, but nobody can ever take that distinction away from us.  Oh, and we had almost twice as many plastic surgery procedures as any other country in the world.  I guess these figures also partially explain why the richest country in the world, by far, is ranked 47th in the world in terms of life expectancy, below Boznia-Herzegovina, Jordan and Guam.  Cool.  Go USA!

Dollars paying for a bloated military are not only not spent on healthcare, they also aren’t spent on social development either.  The United States had more teen pregnancies per capita than anyone in the world by far – about half-again as many as our nearest competitor.  We have the highest number of prisoners per capita, right up there (but still well ahead of) Russia and Belarus.  The US has two million prisoners, about half a million more than China, despite having about one-fifth the Chinese population.  We also have more crimes committed than any other country in the world, about twice the number as the number two country on the list.  Oh, and by far the highest divorce rate in the world.  I’m pretty sure you won’t see this stuff mentioned in the tourist literature.

Expenditures on the military also mean dollars not spent on teaching our kids (especially about comparative national statistics!).  The richest country in the world is ranked 39th on education spending as a percent of GDP, below Tunisia, Bolivia, Jamaica and Malawi.  As a result, the US shows up as 18th in mathematical literacy, and 15th in reading literacy.  Woo-hoo!

Spending on rockets and guns does not bode well for economic development, either.  Despite being in hock for more national debt than any other country in the world – even before recent events – we rank only 16th in broadband access per capita.  And, we are a dismal 92nd in the world in terms of the equitable distribution of family income within our society.  Cameroon does better.  So does Russia, Uzbekistan, Laos and Burkina Faso.  Along with most of the rest of the world.

In short, in exchange for the privilege of dwarfing the entire rest of the solar system in military spending, in order to defend ourselves against an enemy we don’t have, the United States has purchased a second rate healthcare system, a second rate educational system, and social and economic characteristics within spitting distance of Sub-Saharan Africa.

For all of these reasons, our devotion to military spending is really quite amazing, and really begs the question of what could explain so patently foolish a national policy.  Undoubtedly, there are many explanations.

To begin with, this would hardly be the first essay ever to note the American propensity toward paranoia.  A country twisted enough that it can spend six years fighting a brutal and costly war in Iraq on the basis of 9/11 attacks that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with is certainly a country capable of outspending the entire rest of the planet on its military, two times over.

What does it say, moreover, about our near-complete failing at the practice of diplomacy, that we feel compelled to sit atop a military arsenal of such outrageous proportions, and to send bombs and military bases, rather than diplomats, as our calling card around the world?

Without question, furthermore, such an obscene military budget is grossly inflated because of sheer greed.  It wasn’t some long-haired, Birkenstocks-wearing, pipe-smoking, Berkeley professor of French literature, after all, who warned us of the dangers of the metastasizing military industrial complex.  It was Dwight Eisenhower – conservative Republican president, lifetime military man, commander of NATO and hero of World War II.

Eisenhower was right, of course, although it would have been nice had he acted on his wisdom during his two terms, rather than sounding hypocritical warnings about this danger only as he walked out the door.  In any case, as in so many other domains – but with an intensity unmatched elsewhere – when it comes to providing military hardware, corporate America has come to see the federal government as little more than a handy centralized collection system, to which it then avails itself.  But, of course, everybody is in the act now, with members of Congress from every district in the land fighting to protect their defense dollars, and selfish Americans screaming about deficit spending on Sundays, and then going to work at the local defense boondoggle plant on Mondays.

And there is another explanation, as well.  You don’t need to spend a trillion bucks per year in order to protect the United States from attack by another country.  The existing stockpile of nuclear warheads more or less guarantees that that will never happen.  You also don’t need to spend that money in order to fight some sort of conventional war on land or sea, as occurred during World War II.  No country comes remotely near the United States in terms of battlefield and naval hardware, and even those who possess significant quantities of such materiel almost entirely lack the capability of projecting such military power beyond their borders.  Finally, you don’t need all that money to fight ragtag bands of terrorists either.  On that front, smarts go a lot farther than dollars (not that we would know, of course).

The only thing that such a seemingly bloated military is good for is power projection.  If you want to intimidate developing countries into selling you their natural resources at ridiculously low prices, a giant military is the only way to do it.  If you want to force weaker countries into joining political alliances they are otherwise not remotely interested in, some good old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy is the way to make that happen.

Or, at least, was.  The United States is no longer very much able to shove around other countries like it used to, and yet, even the so-called liberal Obama administration is now seeking to spend even more on the American military than the monsters of the last regime did.

It was one thing – albeit still a stupid bargain – to forgo health, education, and the good life for an empire.

But what Americans should be asking themselves right now is, whether giving away happiness and prosperity in exchange for a non-empire is finally a bridge too far, even for a country so justly famous for its chronic political immaturity.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.  More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net

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