Today's Stories

July 30, 2008

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

July 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How Bush is Wiping Out McCain

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Alaskan Oil Spills

James G. Abourezk
The Surge Has Worked?

Joseph Nevins
Death as a Way of Life on the Borderlands

Uri Avnery
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks

Linn Washington, Jr.
Politics and Injustice in Philadelphia

David Yearsley
Sodomy, Snuff Scenes and the Berlin Opera

Binoy Kampmark
Socializing Losses: Bailing Out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Saul Landau
Truth in Comedy: Stop Whining It's All in Your Head!

Joshua Frank
Big Sky Rebels

Brendan Cooney
Europe's Hypocrisy

Jonathan Cook
Settlers Eye Historic Jerusalem Neighborhood

Robert Fantina
McCain, Iraq and the Campaign

Lee Sustar
Will the US Get Its Way with Iran?

Michael Winship
The Company We Keep

David Macaray
Organized Labor Makes a Convenient Target

Missy Beattie
Pelosi's Panhandling

Robert Weissman
The Scourge of the IMF

Kim Nicolini
Batman and the Old Order

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Ford and McEnteer

Website of the Weekend
Bad Hoosiers

July 25, 2008

Harvey Wasserman
NRC: New Nukes Not Ready for Prime Time

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Facts About Israel?

Alan Farago
Where's the Outrage?

Paul D'Amato
The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic and the Selective Prosecution of War Crimes

Gary Leupp
War With Iran? State Dept. Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Eyes Wide Shut in India

Mike Whitney
Obama Dazzles Old Europe, While McCain Cries, "No Mas!"

Paul Krassner
Inside Camp Mogul

Mike Roselle
All Hail Nero!

Website of the Day
Pressing Starbucks

July 24, 2008

Greg Moses
Who Killed Azem Hajdari?

Andy Worthington
Folly and Injustice: Salim Hamdan's Guantanamo Trial

James Bovard
Daniel Ellsberg's Lessons for Our Time

Joe Bageant
Life in the Post-Political Age

George Wuerthner
Boondoggle in the Fields

DC Larson
Shutting Out Ralph Nader

William Willers
The Forest Products Industry in Public Education

David Macaray
On the Prospects for a SAG Strike

Website of the Day
Pacifica Radio Archive of 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago

July 23, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
An Air Force in Free Fall

Paul Craig Roberts
The Mother of All Messes

Ralph Nader
Pavlov's America

Mike Whitney
Visualizing Dow 6,000

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

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

July 22, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Ten Years On, Bolivarian Revolution at Crossroads

Patrick Cockburn
Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal

Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch
Torture After Dark

Moshe Adler
Everyone Must Share, Not Just Charlie Rangel

Martha Rosenberg
Protecting Bones from Drugs that Protect Bones

Dan Bacher
Bechtel and the Big Dig

Harvey Wasserman
Is Gore Inching Toward Solartopia?

Anthony Papa
A Slugger's Drug Redemption

Binoy Kampmark
Mad Over Benedict

Website of the Day
Hiroshima: A-Bombed Objects

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

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

Scott Pellegrino
Should "Meet the Press" Desegregate?

John Ross
McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

Robert Weitzel
Blowback Through the Looking Glass

Mike Stark
I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

Website of the Day
Pinky Solves the Illegal Immigration Crisis

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

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

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

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

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

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

July 18, 2008

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

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

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

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

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D. C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U. S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U. S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be"Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U. S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N. D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on"Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

July 30, 2008

On the Beach Revisited

Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

By KARL GROSSMAN

Most new large U.S. Navy amphibious assault ships would be required to be nuclear powered under the National Defense Authorization Act for 2009 which the House of Representatives has passed by a vote of 384 to 23. It now goes to the Senate where many senators are uneasy about the scheme as is the Navy and the shipbuilding industry in the U.S.

As to safe-energy and environmental advocates, “This reckless plan gives ‘we'll fight them on the beaches’ a whole new sinister meaning," says Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. "If one of these amphibious ships is hit, or has an accident, we would be fighting a tide of radioactivity on beaches that could leave them contaminated indefinitely."

“Expanding the use of nuclear technology as a form of propulsion puts our sailors at risk,” says Jim Riccio of Greenpeace U.S.A. Also, because “nuclear-powered vessels are already rejected from ports around the world, it undermines the ability to actually use them.” Further, they would be “more of a target” for terrorists. “And what if the Cole had been nuclear powered?”

Indeed, if the U.S.S. Cole, the destroyer struck by suicide bombers who crashed into it with explosives off Yemen in 2000 had been nuclear-powered, a nuclear disaster could have occurred killing many more than the 17 crewmembers who died.

The Navy is concerned about the cost of the plan. The price of the amphibious assault ships that would be mandated to be nuclear-powered is $1.5 billion-plus each. Adding nuclear propulsion would raise the price by $800 million each. And there would be the tens of millions in cost for their eventual radioactive decontamination and disposal.

The U.S. shipbuilding industry is worried about the impact on an industry already in precarious shape. Only two shipyards in the nation, Northrop Grumman’s Newport News, Virginia facility and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut are certified to build nuclear-powered ships.

The push for nuclear-powered amphibious assault ships is being led by Representative Gene Taylor, chairman of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. Taylor, a Democrat, also has in his Mississippi district a shipyard that is the major one for the construction of amphibious assault ships, Northrop Grumman’s Ship Systems facility in Pascagoula.

The rationale for the plan which his subcommittee had included in the act is, after its declaration that all new “assault echelon amphibious ships…must be constructed with integrated nuclear power systems,” that “the future naval force should not be reliant on the availability of fossil fuel for fleet operations. Removing the need for access to fossil fuel sources significantly multiplies the effectiveness of the entire battle forces.”

The National Defense Authorization Bill of 2008 required that all new U.S. aircraft carriers, cruisers and submarines be nuclear-powered. Although there was some reluctance to this in the Senate, it passed and was signed by President Bush.

Dr. Ralph Herbert, professor emeritus of environmental studies at Long Island University, sees the Bush administration, ardent about all things nuclear, seeking nuclear power for amphibious assault ships, too, because “it wants to get as much nuclear as it can in the pipeline before it’s finished it’s harder to get rid of once it’s in. The Bush administration will do anything it can to solidify its damage.”

The amphibious assault vessels to be built with nuclear power, if the Senate approves this year’s act, are those designated as LHA and LHD, ships with large flight decks for helicopters and vertical-take-off-and-landing airplanes, and the LPD, a smaller vessel mainly carrying landing craft and troops.

“The vessels’ position in combat can…vary from a ‘stand-off’ over-the-horizon location to be being moored to a pier in a combat zone,” noted The New Scientist, the British magazine, in a June 14 article on the plan. It added that “a U.S. Navy website confirms that such ships ‘are designed to get in harm’s way.’”

The Congressional Resource Service, in a December 2006 report to Congress, examined a variety of non-oil energy alternatives for Navy ships. Titled “Navy Ship Propulsion Technologies: Options for Reducing Oil Use,” it considered “integrated electric-drive propulsion,” fuel cells, solar power, nuclear energy and various “synthetic fuels” especially “alternative hydrocarbon fuels.” It noted that the Navy “started making its own biodiesel fuel” in a pilot program in 2003.

This report said that “shifting” amphibious assault ships to using nuclear power “might make them potentially less welcome in the ports of countries with strong anti-nuclear sentiments” and “reduce the number of potentially suitable location for forward-homeporting the ships.”

A May 2008 Congressional Resource Service Report, “Navy Nuclear-Powered Surface Ships: Background Issues, and Options for Congress,” related that in the 1960s the Navy began building nuclear-powered cruisers and nine were constructed, indeed at one point Congress mandated it, but after 1975 “procurement of nuclear-powered cruisers was halted…due to…costs.”

This report, in addressing environmental impacts, spoke of “those associated with mining and processing uranium to fuel reactors, and with storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel cores, radioactive waste water from reactors, and the reactors and other radioactive components of retired nuclear-powered ships.” Also, “a very serious accident involving a nuclear-powered Navy ship…or a major enemy attack on a nuclear-powered Navy ship might damage the ship’s hull and reactor compartment enough to cause a release of radioactivity.”

Another issue involves nuclear proliferation. “Military reactor fuel,” said the New Scientist, “can reach 90 percent enrichment level.” That is atomic bomb-grade. “This could make reactor maintenance sites at U.S. bases in ports around the world a tempting target for any thief intent on making weapons-grade fuel for a bomb.”

The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2009 does not include having nuclear-powered amphibious assault ships.

Will the Senate stick with common sense?

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury (www.karlgrossman.com) is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and writer and host of numerous television programs about nuclear technology ( www.envirovideo.com)

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