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Today's
Stories
March 16, 2009
Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?
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 16, 2009
Juan Cole's "Engaging the Muslim World"
A Call for Common Sense
By RON JACOBS
When it comes to Washington's dealings with the so-called Muslim world, common sense rarely enters the equation. Instead, fear, anger, and myth dominate the thinking behind those dealings. Al too often, in instances where Washington might otherwise attempt to negotiate a resolution in its favor if the people it was dealing with weren't Muslim it seems that negotiations are not even considered.
Prime examples of this reality are the beginnings of the current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both US attacks on Iraq were not preceded by ultimatums, not negotiation. Those ultimatums were accompanied by outright lies about Iraq's intentions and capabilities.
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was also preceded by a series of ultimatums that were called negotiations by Washington and the complicit US media. When the Taliban government in Kabul at the time attempted to honestly negotiate with Washington over the ultimatums it had been handed, the ultimatum was modified to include demands Washington knew Kabul could not meet. To use a sports analogy, every time it looked like Baghdad or Kabul might be able to meet the demands of Washington, the goalposts were moved. Washington had no intention of negotiating anything and its so-called negotiations were nothing more than preparations for war. A similar scenario seems to be at play in Washington's dealings with Iran.
Although the recently departed Bush administration made the approach described above into a diplomatic art form that drew more from television wrestling than any treatise on statecraft, they did not invent this approach. Nor will they be the last US administration to utilize it. Already, Obama's Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has made  comments regarding Iran that are equivalent to any threat made under George Bush's watch. Furthermore, the men and women doing Obama's work in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world are following the same trail already worn down by Bush's people. Despite the hopes of millions who voted for Barack Obama, very little seems to have changed in the way Washington deals with its enemies. Into this impasse comes commentator and Mideast scholar Juan Cole and his new book titled Engaging the Muslim World.
Nothing less than a call to use some common sense in dealing with that part of the world Washington defines as the Muslim World, Cole takes a sweeping look at the history of the region from Egypt to Iran; from Pakistan to Gaza; and asks what it is that causes Washington to deal with the peoples of these nations in a manner often quite different from the manner in which it deals with other nations. Cole ends each chapter with a brief series of suggestions as to how Washington might better approach the problems it believes exists with regard to the issues of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and the various Islamic popular movements that have all recently been placed on Washington's enemies list. He asks questions that need to be asked yet seem to not even be considered. Why are US troops still in Iraq? Why does a nation (the US) that has the notion of religious freedom encoded into its constitution insist on making the religious beliefs of these nations a cause for enmity? If Washington won't negotiate with its enemies, than who will it negotiate with? If Tel Aviv and Washington support democracy, why do they refuse to acknowledge the democratic victory of Hamas?
Despite bringing up these issues, the real strength of Cole's book is in the history he provides. Written for a western audience, the history surveyed here covers the genesis of the Islamist movements, their interaction with governments both local and internationally, yet it does not dwell on the religious aspects of those movements. instead, it discusses the political and economic role these movements have played and continue to play in the overall history of the nations involved. The anti-imperialist nature of the movements is discussed as is their popularity among the Muslim world precisely for their anti-imperialism. Underlying the historical narrative herein is a sincere and usually successful discussion of the complexities involved in that history. Unlike the dichotomous version of the world presented by the Bush administration and its allies, where Washington leads the good guys against the bad guys of Islam, Cole's nuanced presentation of the history and current situation of US dealings with the Muslim world provide the reader with a clearer understanding of not only what is at stake, but also what is really going on. His perspective removes the often overwrought fears that have predominated mainstream US discourse on the subject at hand.
If we are to have a future world where peace prevails, it will require Washington and its allied governments to coexist with the the part of the world we know as the "Muslim world." The approach that demanded its subjugation to Washington's whims has been shown to be bankrupt. To achieve coexistence, one must have understanding. Juan Cole's Engaging the Muslim World is the ideal primer.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
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