Today's Stories

April 10 / 12, 2009

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

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

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

Weekend Edition
April 10 / 12, 2009

The Past and Future of Binghamton

Death of the Square Deal

By JEFF HOWISON

Last Friday on April 3, 2009, Binghamton, New York, became the most recent example of what has become an increasingly ordinary occurrence in the United States: a profoundly troubled man, armed to the teeth with semi-automatic weapons, gunned down unsuspecting and entirely defenseless civilians in a public place. These events offer an opportunity to reflect on the larger changes that have defined life in the United States, particularly in Rustbelt cities like Binghamton.

Like other instances of these episodes (how shall we call them?), most of the killing here took place inside of a classroom. Although the gunman, Jiverly Wong, was in his early 40s, it has been widely-reported that he felt degraded and unpopular, largely because of his bad English, and that his decision to target his fellow students of English at the local American Civic Association (ACA), which was established in Binghamton in 1939 as an immigration services center, had something to do with these insecurities and resentment.

Also consistent with other recent examples of American killing sprees, the guns used in the shooting were acquired in full compliance with state law. Wong had permits for the semi-automatic 9mm and .45 caliber handguns used in the shootings, and is reported to have purchased at least one of them locally at Gander Mountain – essentially a Wal-Mart for hunters, “outdoorsmen”, and plain gun nuts. The store is full of rifles and handguns (real ones and toy versions for the kids), ammo, deadly bows and arrows, and camouflage gear. Its foyer is plastered with photographs of men and boys crouched over the carcasses of a wide assortment of dead wildlife: a lot of deer, black bears, and even a few wolves.

Despite the similarities between other shootings and the “Massacre on Front Street”, as it has been called in the local Press & Sun Bulletin, an important difference is that (with one exception) the victims were all immigrants to the United States. They had settled in Binghamton for a variety of reasons: the “normalcy” of small town life, the proximity to New York City, the low cost of living, the chance for economic security, or because of the state university here. In addition to two women working at the ACA, one of whom was born in Ukraine and the other the United States, there were two from Vietnam (including the shooter), one woman from the Philippines and one from Pakistan, a married couple from Haiti now survived by their two young children, four from China, and a visiting mathematician from Brazil. Layla Khalil was also present at the ACA on Friday morning in the English class. She came to the United States seven months ago after leaving her native Iraq out of fear for her personal safety and the well-being of her family. Mrs. Khalil is reported to have survived three car bombings in Baghdad, in addition to a potentially-deadly kidnapping. She did not survive Friday’s shootings. The profound and tragic irony bound up in this horrible and despicable act makes the killings even more heartbreaking.

Although a story appearing in the New York Times the day after the shootings describes Binghamton as “a town with few immigrants”, nothing could be further from the truth.  Located near New York State’s southern border with Pennsylvania in the Eastern half of the state at the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers, the city has been a historic center of immigration. There are sizeable communities of Eastern Europeans, Africans, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners, Irish, and Asians. Italian immigrants introduced the Southern Tier of New York to their version of marinated meat on a stick. It took hold, giving rise to the local delicacy of the “spiedie” (pronounced “speedy”), and every summer Binghamton’s annual Spiedie Fest and Balloon Rally draws thousands from around the region. Many of these immigrant communities were formed during the early decades of the 20th century when work was easy to find.

The legacy of the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company continues to define much of the city’s history and built environment, although the jobs are long gone. In the lore of Binghamton local history, it is said that immigrants arriving from around the world via New York City needed only to ask, “Which way, E-J?”, and employment, housing, education, health care, profit sharing, and the rest of the social contract with George F. Johnson’s company was just around the corner. The arrangement was part of the “Square Deal”, a phrase still etched in stone on the arches over Main Street, which runs from Binghamton through the nearby former industrial villages of Johnson City and Endicott to the West. For Gerald Zahavi, who wrote a book about Endicott Johnson, “the Johnsons built an ideology whose primary goal was the establishment of an industrial community in which the interests of workers and managers would be perceived as inextricably bound.” Part of the Square Deal was an absolute rejection of labor unions, and Johnson was fond of saying that “the employer is the natural labor leader”.

Local neighborhoods in the “Triple-Cities” of Binghamton, Endicott, and Johnson City are full of reminders of E-J’s legacy and the Square Deal. There is of course George F. Johnson Middle School, the C. Fred Johnson Bridge over the Susquehanna River (named for George’s brother), the thoroughfare Harry L. Drive (named for a different brother; the Johnsons often used only their first names and middle initials, shunning surnames), and an ample scattering of small municipal parks, some of which contain sizeable statues of “George F.”, or “Daddy Johnson”. In Recreation Park on the city’s Westside, a grandfatherly Johnson is seated, flanked by a child offering flowers on one side and a kneeling worker contemplating a shoe on the other. Underneath these two pillars of corporate paternalism, the inscription reads, “HAVE FAITH IN THE PEOPLE” and “LABOR IS HONORABLE”, respectively.

During WWII, shoe manufacturing reached its peak in Binghamton. As the company was churning out boots for soldiers fighting in WWII, E-J was among the largest vertically-integrated companies in the world. The company owned everything from the cows, to the tanneries, to the retail outlets and everything in-between. But in the immediate postwar decades, the slow decline of the local shoe industry began and by the end of the 1960s most of the shoe factories had been torn down. But with the decline of shoe manufacturing, these Triple Cities found a new benevolent corporation to replace E-J. In 1924, the Computing – Tabulating – Machine Company changed its name to International Business Machines, and a new “partnership” between corporation and community had begun. According to IBM’s website, Endicott became not only the company headquarters, but also the center of its education and training activities. The former IBM “schoolhouse”, reminding us to “THINK”, still stands across from the old art deco factories and offices. Instead of municipal parks, libraries, and paternalistic statues, IBM left something else in its wake. IBM’s legacy of using toxic chemicals in the processing of electronic chipboards has made downtown Endicott, birthplace of “Big Blue,” contaminated with harmful toxics, including, but not limited to, trichloroethylene or TCE, which has been the focus of an ongoing clean-up effort since 1979, when IBM first reported its spill. Most Endicott residences and businesses have since been equipped with “vapor mitigation systems” – pipes not unlike chimneys – to allow the poisonous underground plume to be released into the air instead of into homes and workplaces.

In the immediate aftermath of Friday’s shooting, it was initially reported that the shooter Jiverly Wong had once worked for (and had been fired by) IBM – a point that IBM was quick to refute, saying they had no record his employment. This confusion can be explained. Around 2000 – 2002, by which time IBM had largely left town, Endicott Interconnect Technologies, Inc. (EI) took over most of the site and operations of the former IBM compound in Endicott. It was a changeover that is largely unclear in the minds of the community, and even for some of the workers, many of whom were retained during the “changeover”. It is not uncommon for local workers and residents to refer to the buildings and current production activities as “IBM”, even though the factories no longer have any legal connection to the corporation. Both on the facades and within the buildings, IBM references and logos still abound. Wong apparently did work at the old IBM site during 2001 and / or 2002, so it makes sense that some knew him to have worked “at IBM”. According to Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski, it was Wong’s father who had been recently laid off by IBM, and Wong himself had more recently lost his own job at the small manufacturing site of Shop Vac Corporation in the township of Union (which is partially adjacent to the village of Endicott) when the company announced to workers on the day before Thanksgiving 2008 that the factory would be shut down.

The local reaction to the killings has been largely one of collective mourning and community support. In the first memorial services for the victims, city officials, local religious leaders, university representatives, and citizens gathered at the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier for the funerals of Layla Khalil (of Iraq) and Parveen Ali (of Pakistan). There are many organizations in Greater Binghamton that have played their part in the healing process for the victims and city residents. But there is also an underside of local reaction to the shootings that goes hand in hand with the story of de-industrialization in Binghamton, and which needs to be brought to light.

In spite – or perhaps because of the historic diversity of Binghamton’s population, there has always been a reactionary and occasionally racist element in the city. Binghamton was briefly the New York headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, and to this day there are elements of a certain reactionary populism on issues ranging from nationalist anti-immigration rhetoric, to taxes, from gun control to explicit racism.  

An opinion piece in the Press & Sun Bulletin that appeared three days after the shootings, warned against “those around us who will take political advantage of sorrow for their own schemes and agendas” of pushing for stricter gun laws. “Because it is unreasonably difficult to secure licensing for a handgun [sic – apparently not for Wong], maniacs can walk confidently into public buildings assured that armed resistance will not be encountered….Had one or more of the people inside the Civic Association building been armed, the outcome might have been dramatically different.” Despite fears that Obama will send his liberal minions into the homes of law-abiding citizens to begin massive gun confiscation, there is a more insidious element of the reactionary response to the shootings.

One of the figureheads of conservative populism in Binghamton, Garo Kachadourian, was immediately on the scene snapping pictures and chatting with the Binghamton Police Department on the morning of the shootings. It was Kachadourian who dutifully informed the world (via MSNBC) about the recent troubles for “local” Binghamtonians. The anchor asked Kachadourian, “Has there been this kind of violence in Binghamton in recent years? Have you seen any kind of similar large-scale violence?” Of course, the most direct and accurate answer would have been, “No, there has not been”. Yet Kachadourian managed a thinly-veiled attempt at linking the shooting with a popular target of local reactionary discourse: the perception of increased crime as a consequence of black and Latino people emigrating from New York City and parts of New Jersey, bringing drugs, gangs, and a crime wave. Without flinching, Kachadourian replied, “Well, we have had some crime increases in the area, but nothing of this magnitude.”

This underbelly of area racism was clearly evident in the aftermath of a largely underreported incident a few years ago. In December of 2006, Johnson City police officer Matthew Romano claimed to have been stabbed by a pair of black men while on patrol in the Cavalry Cemetery. Flyers with a composite sketch of the suspect, a 20-something, dark-skinned, big-lipped and -eyed, wide-nosed young man with short dreads was posted in gas stations, restaurants, groceries, and pubs, not to mention being splashed across our television screens. The sketch would have been more offensive had it not looked so ridiculously laughable and amateurish. The wanted posters were taken down when Romano was indicted on a felony count of filing false information. It soon seemed clear enough that the attack never took place – at least the way that Romano described it. It was revealed during the subsequent trial that Romano was having marital problems and had been generally unstable during the time of the supposed attack. Romano was eventually acquitted by Judge Martin Smith in November 2008.

Doug Drazen, the Independence Party candidate for Binghamton mayor in the 2005 election, ran on a “law and order” platform and billed himself as the next “Rudy Giuliani of Binghamton”. He was embraced by local Libertarian-types, while playing to fears of “big government” and the supposed wave of black crime. He outperformed expectations when he finished only 1100 votes behind Matthew Ryan, the current progressive Democratic mayor of the city. Although Drazen saw himself in the mold of Giuliani, he more closely resembled the “Reagan Democrats” in their not-so-subtly racist outlooks on crime and immigration. It is worth remembering that it was not far from Binghamton, in parts of Pennsylvania, where McCain and Palin supporters outrageously displayed “Obama monkeys”, complete with mini-nooses, during the Presidential campaign of 2008. On I-81, just north of Binghamton, there is a prominent display of anti-tax, anti-Democrat road signs on private property urging energy companies to “drill here, drill now!” This has a double-meaning in these parts: on one hand, it refers to support for domestic oil drilling in places like the Artic National Wildlife Refuge; on the other, it has to do with the recent discovery that local property owners might benefit from the abundant natural gas reserves in this area.

Of course, the perception of the “wave of crime” has nothing to do with immigration or race, although on the surface there may appear to be a relation. Rather, Binghamton’s current social problems are directly traceable to its decimated economy. Like my former home of Toledo, Ohio, and so many other cities in the Rustbelt of the United States, Binghamton has been gutted and abandoned by the corporations that once made this place their home. In short, the Square Deal is gone and so is anything resembling a sustainable economy. The city is currently shrinking, and because of the collapse of Wall Street and New York’s state tax base, local residents can expect their tax burdens (some of which are already nearly double the national average) to continue to climb.

There is a connection between unemployment, economic and social instability, and violence such as the Massacre of Front Street. The era in which Binghamton will serve as a beacon for immigrants coming to the United States seeking a decent life and some chance at upward economic and social mobility is over. These horrific shootings last week underscore that point. In fact, the massacre is something of a microcosm for a larger unfolding story of social change. Christopher Voss, a retired FBI hostage negotiator explained about Wong’s actions, “In our industry, we have something called the double-whammy. It might be a job loss coupled with some other personal loss. My guess is that additional losses will be uncovered.” Indeed. There are endless potential “whammies” for the people of Binghamton, particularly for immigrants here.

Initial reports of Wong’s anti-Americanism were sensationalized. He apparently once told a co-worker at Shop Vac, “America sucks”. Another of Wong’s co-workers relayed an anecdote to the New York Times, “I asked him who he was going to vote for and he said, ‘I don’t really care, I’d shoot both of them’”. As the days pass since the shooting, it is becoming increasingly clear that Wong’s shooting spree had little to do with anti-Americanism. Instead we might think of the tragedy as an opportunity to reflect on the increasingly bleak prospects for the future of Binghamton, whether for “locals” or anyone else living here for that matter. Our immediate shock has turned to reflection.

Marshall Berman has suggested the concept “urbicide”, defined as the killing of cities. If Binghamton is to recover from this most horrific day in its history, we must deal with the larger social death that has slowly but steadily taken hold in our city and in other cities like it, and to address its causes and consequences. Only then will we find solutions to our many problems. May the victims of the “Massacre on Front Street” rest in peace knowing we are working toward that end.

Jeff Howison is a graduate student in Sociology at Binghamton University – formerly SUNY-Binghamton – and a resident of Binghamton, New York. He can be contacted at jhowiso1@binghamton.edu. 

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