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Today's
Stories
March 23, 2009
Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?
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?
Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?
Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame
Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama:
Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda
Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop
Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers
Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture
Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?
Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers
Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan
Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit
Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel?
The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution
Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes
Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster
Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate
Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else
John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused
Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards
Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities
Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker
Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir
David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!
Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs
Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"
Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star
Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray
Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire
February 26, 2009
Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress
Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles
Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?
Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put
Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"
Tim Wise
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
February 25, 2009
Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central
M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion
Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan
Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind
Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method
Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle
Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over
Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz
Dennis Loo
The Water Line
Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd
February 24, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost
Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory
Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?
Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History
Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)
Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?
Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality
Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government
Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench
Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?
Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done
James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial
Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor
February 23, 2009
Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting
Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia
Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq
Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator
Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North
Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash
Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?
Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan
Dennis Loo
The Water Line
Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk
Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong
Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com
February 20 / 22, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale
Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem
Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats
Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire
Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon
Saul Landau
On the Road Again
Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)
Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford
Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers
David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings
David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act
James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha
Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama
Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss
Richard Rhames
Got Farms?
Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending
Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor
Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?
Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti
Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove
Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)
Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?
February 19, 2009
Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza
Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust
Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie
Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road:
From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan
Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight
Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem
Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading
Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?
Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!
Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?
Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU
February 18, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests
Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury
M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls
Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last
Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory
Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?
Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt
Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks
Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament
Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid
Website of the Day
Red Gold
February 17, 2009
Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan
Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch
Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress
Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies
John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations
Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck
Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?
David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions
Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change
M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?
Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul
Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access
February 16, 2009
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor
Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?
Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options
P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?
Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression
Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts
Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits
Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?
Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call
Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?
Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa
February 13 - 15, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks
Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal
Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party
George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT
Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum
Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink
Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance
Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys
Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation
Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?
Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200
Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon
Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution
Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts
Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas
Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush
Saul Landau
Bowled Over
Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia
Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power
David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union
Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes
Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind
David Yearsley
On the Road Again
Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes
Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French
Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation
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March 23, 2009
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad
Someprofits vs. Nonprofits
By CHRIS IRWIN
We need an intervention with the 501 non-profit world.
There are good 501 non-profits. There are non-profits that work hard—and do good work.
But no serious social change, or dare I say it, no real populist movement will ever come from the non-profit industrial complex. This is simple math. Everyone cannot work as staff for a non-profit and as such its not a model which the mass of people can exist in for change. People have to be able to fight for change and the environment from working class jobs—these are the true mass movement models. For real mass movement the non-profit model can at best assist—and worse impede—real movements for change in America.
The ones that impede the environmental and larger movements in America I am going to call “someprofits” instead of “non-profits.”. Non-profits are the groups that exist and do help or at least don’t impede mass social change. Then there are the final groups that are organic and organize as volunteers and as bi-products of true movement rumblings--I am going to call these true grassroots movements “less-than-profits.”
For folks who are grass roots organizers that deal with the non-profit community, and many within—we all know the symptoms of someprofits. They are the ones always 5 years late on the true populist grassroots campaigns. Someprofits become so oriented in following the campaigns that are being funded they miss the ones that will be and always come to campaigns late in the game to start a non stop campaign to seize control of what they do not understand.
Viewing someprofits as a disease--how can we treat a nonprofit when it’s making the slide to the dark side? The first part of treatment is to identify the symptoms. Here are symptoms of someprofits.
Someprofits get what my Aikido instructor calls bighead. Someprofits come into campaigns late in the game and then drift towards centralizing control. They call them “steering committess” where they form “coalitions” that always seems to boil down to fewer people making decisions.
Someprofits think that since they are getting paid to organize—that they must be professionals and really good at it. This expert head cripples in that the very nature of conflict is that no two are the same. It also makes them arrogant and gives them a sense of entitlement when they seize, and then drive right deep into the dirt—the campaigns.
Someprofits cannot be trusted at press conferences, rallies or events as they will always steer attention back to themselves rather than the issue at hand. Any issue they get invited to speak at they always seem to steer attention to the work they are doing—not the work the listeners are there to do.
Someprofits must have attention NOT for resources to get campaign work done—but to maintain their infrastructure. It’s literally a bread and butter issue for them to capture attention to themselves and to hijack others work. Forming alliances with someprofits is like drawing in the sand on a windy day—they will stab you in the back the first chance there is profit in it.
Someprofits drift along like a ship without a rudder because they are out of touch with the real campaigns being fought by real people. Their only real rudder is grabbing credit and money—they follow the dollar and the attention that gets the dollar despite all claims to the contrary. They have to make money to keep feeding the staff and overhead.
I have seen someprofits kill other groups grants in acts of sabotage in a way that would make Machiavelli blush. I have seen someprofits steal others work to gain credit for it and get rewarded with huge grants for their efforts. Someprofits are almost an enemy of the people in how they rip off from both sides equally—ripping off the issue and ripping off the people who made it an issue in the first place.
Not all someprofits were started as someprofits—some began as non-profits then slid to the dark side. And occasionally, rarely—a someprofit finds its lost soul and becomes a true non-profit again.
To often when you see a nonprofit make the metamorphsis you don’t know how to intervene. Its like seeing a friend developing personality disorders.
Someprofits are dangerous because they are in the between world. Full profits have their moral and ethical orientation out there for you to see at least—making money. Non-profits exist not to fund themselves—but to provide resources and tools for the betterment of our world. Someprofits have the orientation of for profits with the exterior of a non-profits with none of the focus and drive of the less-than-profits. They will sell out the less than profits, suck up to the for profits—and pretend to be non-profits while stabbing them in the back if any media or grant opportunity happens.
Someprofits with their expert heads and driving need to get attention for their bottom line actually interfere with momentum and actual grassroots groups. They are hijacking stealing thugs who wear sheeps clothing while engaging in behavior that if an individual got caught doing it would be called reprehensible.
If you had a friend that began acting like someprofits you would at least attempt an intervention before cutting them off. How do we intervene? Are there self-help groups or books for someprofits?
You cannot trust someprofits with media sources and stories that are developing, political contacts, grant resources, membership list—if you offer any of these they will snatch them up and you will never see or hear from them again.
I guess if a someprofit was a kid you would try to get them away from their unhealthy someprofit friends and point out that nice nonprofit kid down the block—try to get them in a better crowd. Maybe change their environment—cause even if the intervention works—when they go into the environment that created them they always seem to slide back into bad habits.
If a someprofit was an adult you would confront them with their behavior and offer clear consequences if they do not modify their antisocial behavior.
The cutthroat competitive botchery of the someprofits are giving the real non-profits a bad name and are impeding the less-than-profits from doing the real grassroots mobilization. This is doubly damaging coming out of the destructive Bush administration trying to correct in the window of the Obama administration. The less-than-profits don’t need the someprofits screwing it up as they wander into campaigns as they find attention—grab them and drive them right off a cliff in their ignorance.
The someprofits need to get the hell off the fence and either become real again or take off the mask and declare themselves a profit making enterprise. This in-between state is damaging the potential for real change in America.
There are rumblings of less-than-profits mobilizing to force real change in this country. There are good non-profits that are staying out of the way—and are even helping to facilitate this mobilization. But we as a community need to confront these someprofits with their behavior because how many of them are acting is damaging, inappropriate and just plain bad manners.
Chris Irwin is a member of unitedmountaindefense.org and blogs at http://dirtycoaltva.blogspot.com/. He can be reached at: christopherscottirwin@yahoo.com
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