Today's Stories

September 8, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Godfather as President

Malini Johar Schueller /
Ed White
Not About Me: Obamamania, Racial Porn-fest and Palinama

September 6 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Sarah Palin and the Good Book

Jeffrey St. Clair
That Dam Senator: A River Ran Through Him

Linn Washington, Jr.
The GOP Excluded Black-Owned Businesses from Contracts at St. Paul Convention

Patrick Cockburn
Did Bush Spies Monitor Iraqi Allies?

Gary Leupp
The September 3 Attack on Pakistan: a Precursor to More War Crimes?

Nancy Kurshan
CHI-town Lowdown: Memories of 1968

William Blum
Has Obama Already Lost?

Michael Winship
The St. Paul Police vs. the Independent Media

Fred Gardner
Joe Biden, Drug Warrior

Nikolas Kozloff
Sarah Palin and the Wal-Mart Moms: the Cultural Packaging of VP Candidates

Wajahat Ali
The Cryptkeeper and His Pitbull: the Past and Future of the GOP

Robert Fantina
Change Agents?

Karyn Strickler
Palin by Comparison: Sarah and the Hillary Voters

David Yearsley
What Their Fanfares Told Us About the Candidates

Richard Rhames
Bad Campaign Moon Rising

James L. Secor
Bandwagon Politics

Missy Beattie
Missy for Vice POTUS

Eric Patton
Baseless in Obamaland

Ben Terrall
Haiti and the Washington Consensus

Thom Rutledge
Mr. Magoo and the Kind Stranger: a Serious Political Problem

Dan Bacher
Arnold and the Manufactured Drought

David Macaray
Is Union Democracy at Risk?

Jane Stillwater
The Admiral's Child: a Psychological Reason for McCain's Flip Flops

Grady Harper
Should Hunting Really be High on Our Priority List?

Poets' Basement
Wolff, Payne and Holt

Website of the Weekend
We'll See Your Sarah Palin and Raise You With Maria McKee

September 5, 2008

Elizabeth Walters
Old Fears, New Worries in Louisiana

Bill Quigley
Gustav's Path of Destruction

Alan Farago
Nothing Means Anything: The Fantasy of John and Sarah

Dave Lindorff
The Things They Left Behind (Including McCain's First Wife)

Ira Glunts
A Lesson Before Lying: How Republicans Solved Sarah Palin's Jewish Problem

Peter Morici
The Big Slump

Deepak Tripathi
Politics, Morality and the GOP: John McCain as John Major?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Energy of a Hurricane

Michael Donnelly
Change. God. POW.: a Summary of McCain's Big Speech

Martha Rosenberg
Free to Good Home, SUVs

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Air War: On Wolves and Bears

September 4, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Real McCain

Paul Craig Roberts
Who is Wrecking America?

Ron Jacobs
The Perishing Republicans, the RNC 9 and the Twin Cities Cops

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Soft Surge

Andy Worthington
Rendered to Egypt for Torture

Osama Dawoud
How I Lost My Fulbright Scholarship

Stephen Lendman
Katrina Redux: the Militarization of New Orleans

Fidel Castro
Hurricane as Nuclear Strike

Website of the Day
Is McCain Palin's Bitch?

September 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
The Fake U.S. Victory in Iraq

Sen. Mike Gravel
Good Luck, Sarah!

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Left and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin, Hunting and the American Psyche

Ralph Nader
Repeal Taft-Hartley

Howard Lisnoff
Forty Years in the Streets (And They're Still Beating Up Journalists)

Steve Early / Cal Winslow
Can SEIU Members Exorcize the Purple Shades of Jackie Presser?

Shepherd Bliss
A Field Report From Slow Food Nation

Bill Quigley
Living in the Car After Gustav

Website of the Day
Growing Up Okie: an Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

September 2, 2008

Marjorie Cohn
Raiding Democracy in St. Paul

Jonathan Cook
Palestinian Village Faces Army Reign of Terror

Robert Weitzel
Biden and Israel

Corey D. B. Walker
Where Do We Go From Here?

John Ross
The Kidnapping Boom in Mexico

Eric Walberg
Wag the Dog in Georgia

Judith Scherr
No Day in Court for Ronald Dauphin

Richard Morse
Haiti, 2008

B. R. Gowani
What If the Israel Lobby was the African-American Lobby?

Michael Greenberg
Loofah Day in Cleveland

Website of the Day
Thanks for the Memories!

September 1, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Making a Killing in Iraq: McCain and the Telecoms

C. G. Estabrook
The War Will Go On

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Will a Russo-American Nuclear War Happen (Soon)?

David Macaray
An Elegy for Labor Day

B. R. Gowani
The Lobby as Juggernaut

Saul Landau
Real Gold Winners

Charles Orloski
Going Down to Hell's Cul-de-Sac

Gloria La Riva
Profit and Disaster in New Orleans

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Factory

August 30 / 31, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Speech; McCain's Palinomy

Bill Quigley
Gustav is Coming

Jeffrey St. Clair
Valley Boy: The Rise and Fall of Richard Pombo

Andy Worthington
Shining a Light on the Dark Prison

Deepak Tripathi
The Race for the White House: Notes From a European Observer

Stanley Howard
A Prisoner's Tale of Abuse

Dave Lindorff
Troopergate in Alaska

Wajahat Ali
Palin on the Prowl: a Cougar for the PUMAs?

Robert Fantina
McCain and Palin

Josh Schlossberg
A Bias for Life: the Role of the Environmentalist

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Voting

Missy Beattie
Stars, Stripes, War and Shame

Howard Lisnoff
Better Cuba Than Florida?

Suzan Mazur
Rethinking Evolution with Stuart Newman

Rev. Jim Rigby
What Would Jesus Ride to the Conventions?

David Yearsely
Katy Perry Meets Mozart

Serge Quadruppani
Italy's Years of Lead

B.R. Gowani
What If the Israeli Lobby Was the Islamic Lobby?

Richard Rhames
Empty Political Calories

Poets' Basement
Holt, Davies, Corsale and Landau

Website of the Day
Return of the Druids

August 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
How the Chicago Boys Wrecked the Economy

Brian Cloughley
Resurgent Russia

David Ker Thomson
Jacko and Me: Dispatches From Fifty

Joanne Mariner
A UK Window on CIA Abuses

Neve Gordon
The Ordeal of Sahar Vardi, Refusenik

Chris Genovali
Of Whales and Off-Shore Drilling

Ron Jacobs
What's a Godfearing Country to Do?

Michael Donnelly
Honest Abe in Denver?

August 28, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
The Battle of Chicago

Paul Cantor
Who Killed Victor Jara?

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassen
Axis of Evil Defeats Neocons

Andy Worthington
Clearing Out Guantánamo

Ben Terrall
Return to Port-au-Prince

Leonard Peltier
Message to Obama: Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Miasma of Bi-Partisanship

Donna J. Volatile
The Obama Construct

Website of the Day
Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker and Maya Angelou on the Meaning of Obama

August 27, 2008

Anthony DiMaggio
The Myths of Joe Biden

Jordan Flaherty
Three Years After Katrina

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Avoidance

Melissa Checker
Carbon Offsets, More Harm Than Good?

Bob Sommer
Blaming the Sixties

Cynthia McKinney
How the Democrats Helped Bush Hijack the Country

Ali Khan
Pakistan's Flawed Presidency

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim

Dave Lindorff
Strip-Search Nation

David Macaray
Labor's Hard Lessons

Website of the Day
Stagnant Income in an Eroding Economy

August 26, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
The Big Questions About Iraq

Michael D. Yates
Obama and the Working Class

Paul Craig Roberts
Is War With Russia on the Agenda?

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicide Report

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
Obama's Promised Land?

Huwaida Arraf
Sailing into Gaza

Joseph Grosso
Back to the Future: New York's Housing Crisis

Sheldon Richman
What About the Ossetians?

Binoy Kampmark
Impasse at Singur

Website of the Day
Taser Bait in Denver

August 25, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
US Out of Iraq by "2011"

Bill Quigley
Katrina, the Pain Index

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State

James McEnteer
Death by Paranoia

Uri Avnery
The Devil's Hoof

Will Potter
The State Deparment's Green Scare Wing

Robert Jensen
Technological Fundamentalism

Stephen Lendman
Reinventing the Evil Empire

Wajahat Ali
Biden His Time

Carl Finamore
The Future of Trade Unions in China

Website of the Day
Don't Blow Up the Mountain, Boys

August 23 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
"Change," "Hope"...Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Salmon with Paul O'Neill: Power, Profits and the Future of the Columbia River

Patty O'Grady
John McCain in a New Context: Why the Senator is No War Hero

Nicole Colson
Obama and Big Corn

Steve Conn
Obama and the Mining Cartel

Deepak Trapathi
Pakistan in Uncertain Times

Robert Fantina
Once Upon a Time in America: a McCain Administration

Jonathan M. Feldman
Obamanomics: Does the Left Have Anything to Say?

Joshua Frank
Targeting Pelosi (and the War Machine): an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Osama Qashoo
Sailing to Gaza

Howard Lisnoff
The Long Silence: American Jews and the Palestinians

David Michael Green
Sen. McShame and the Wreckage: John McCain Discovers America

Dave Lindorff
Why Not Let the Republicans Deal With This Mess?

Christopher Brauchli
A Banner Month for Passports

Alan Farago
Who Crippled the Government?

Michael Winship
Cash Register Conventions

Richard Rhames
Vlad the Derailer: Can Putin Save America From Itself?

David Rosen
The Culture Wars Are Over: But Culture Warriors Are Still Terrorizing America

Patrick B. Barr
Don't Try to Tame the Lightning Bolt

Jamie Newlin
Western Turf Wars: the Politics of Public Lands Ranching

Poets' Basement
Glendinning, McEnteer and Bonner

Website of the Weekend
Cafe Reconcile, New Orleans

August 22, 2008

Boris Kagarlitsky
Fallout from the Georgian War

Laura Carlsen
Obama and Latin America: Change or Continuity?

Bob Barr
No War for Georgia

Marwan Bishara
From Russia with Love: Putin Hits Georgia, Bloodies Bush

Peter Morici
Is the Fed Still a Central Bank?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Big Heat

Charles Mostoller
The Battle for the Amazon

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Obama is Not a Muslim: But Would It Be So Terrible If He Were?

Keith Rosenthal
Standing Up to Union-Bashing

John F. Miglio
The Devolution of the Baby Boom Generation

Website of the Day
Fire Sale in the Markets!

August 21, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
Is Georgia 2008 a Repeat of Hungary 1956?

Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It

Ralph Nader
The Problem with Problem Banks

Joanne Mariner
The Military Commissions, So Far

Wajahat Ali
Descent Into Chaos: an Interview with Ahmed Rashid on Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban

Ron Jacobs
Georgia and Historical Farce

Rostam Purzal
The Left and Iran

Anthony Papa
Unlocking the Power of Art to Counter Injustice

Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain Way

August 20, 2008

Michael Neumann
Russia and Georgia: Proportion and Distortion

Ray McGovern
Musharraf Out Like Nixon

Eric Walberg
Georgia's Ossetian Debacle

Fidaa Abed
Blocking a Gazan's Path to San Diego

Daniel Haack
The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit

Mike Whitney
Greenback Surges, Euro Shrivels

Website of the Day
Hands Off South Africa's Centre for Civil Society

August 19, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

Deepak Tripathi
A New Age of Torture

Marwan Bishara
The Politics of Evil in the US Elections

Saul Landau
Baseball Diplomacy or Just Baseball?

William S. Lind
Leave Georgia Alone, George

Martha Rosenberg
Whole Foods and Other Food Offenders

James Brittain
The Road to Tyranny in Colombia

Pratyush Chandra
Krugman's Great Illusion

David Macaray
AFSCME's Strike Against the University of California

Website of the Day
McCain Plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn

August 18, 2008

Tariq Ali
Pakistan After Musharraf

Gary Leupp
Russia's Georgia Campaign and the Expansion of NATO

Uri Avnery
The Anger, the Longing, the Hope

John Ross
Inside America's Death Chamber

Farooq Sulehria
An Afghan Woman Who Stands Up to the Warlords

Luis Rodriguez
The Power of Art and Youth

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
A Laser Weapon of Plausible Deniablity?

Noah Baker Merrill
We Can Do Better

Charles Thomson
Betrayal of Trustees at the Tate

Website of the Day
Gonzo Environmentalism

August 16 / 17, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Don't Know Much About History...

Jeffrey St. Clair
Last Stand in the Big Woods: Resistance and Ignominy at Cove/Mallard

Deepak Tripathi
A Pawn in Their Game: From Georgia to the Brink of a New Cold War

Conn Hallinan
Georgia on My Mind

Mike Whitney
Revisiting the "Battle of Tskhinvali"

Robert Fantina
Russia, Georgia and Bush

Ray McGovern
Out Damn Blot: a Letter to Colin Powell

Nicole Colson
Bled Dry by the Oil Giants

Fatima Bhutto
The Impeachment of Musharraf

Jean-Luis Rocca
The Middle Kingdom's Middle Way

David Michael Green
My Army Went to Iraq and All I Got was This Lousy Air Lift

Ramzi Kysia
Standing Up for Justice in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Forging the Case for War

Lisa Martinovic
What's So Funny 'Bout Bush, Lies and Torture Memos?

Richard Rhames
Single-Payer, a Dream Denied

Don Santina
Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Rannie Amiri
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim vs. the Ugly Dictator

Ramzy Baroud
Family Politics and the New Gaza Crisis

John Stanton
The Army's Human Terrain Systems: From Super Concept to Super Farce

Howard Lisnoff
The Deportation of Jeremy Hinzman

Ron Jacobs
Sweat and Sacrifice Make History

Seth Sandronsky
Arianna Huffington's Blind Spot

Poets' Basement
Landau, Darwish and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Summer Screening: CounterPunch's Favorite Films

August 15, 2008

Steve Niva
The Surge in Iraqi Female Suicide Bombers

David Remington
Sharpening Occam's Razor on the Forged Intelligence Documents

Michael Winship
The Imperial Presidency

Paul Craig Roberts
The Neocons Do Georgia

Farzana Versey
Taming the Islamic Shrew

Harvey Wasserman
McCain Goes Nuclear

Felice Pace
The Politics of Smoke

Julian Critchley
All Experts Agree: Legalize Drugs

Website of the Day
The Farting Preacher

August 14, 2008

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
The Shape of Cuba's Reforms

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Surge in Afghanistan

Mike Whitney
Georgia and U.S. Strategy

Reza Fiyouzat
U.S. and Iranian Relations: What Does Normalization Entail?

Ralph Nader
Single-Payer Health Care in an Age of Two-Party Politics

Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China

Jack Bradigan Spula
Plowing Through the Farm Bill

Patrick Irelan
After the Flood

John Walsh
Buyers Remorse Over Obama

Dan Bacher
Schwarznegger Pimps the Water Bond

Website of the Day
Zevon: Renegade

August 13, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?"

David Remington
Forgery, Fakery and Fatigue (Scandal, That Is)

Brian Cloughley
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press

Glen Ford
Are Black Politics Headed Toward the Graveyard?

Brendan Cooney
A Shattered Myth in Georgia

Dave Lindorff
This War Has Been Approved By Your Government

Tom Lewis
Morales After the Bolivian Referendum

Stan Cox
Let's Handcuff the Property Cops

Alan Farago
Crimes Against the State: Bushism and the Florida Mortgage Crisis

Martha Rosenberg
Fear and Loathing Behind the Plexiglass Curtain

Website of the Day
Here Today, Here Tomorrow: Young Workers and Social Security

August 12, 2008

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Middle East

Anthony DiMaggio
Master of Ambiguity: Obama's Non-Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

Bill Christison
No NATO Membership for Georgia

Eric Walberg
War a la Carte: How the US Invited a War in S. Ossetia

Kate Connolly
Old Cold Warriors Never Die: Brzezinski Compares Putin to Hitler

Diane Farsetta
Cracking the Pentagon Pundit Code

Peter Morici
The Trade Deficit and Job Losses

Thom Rutledge
Equal Opportunity Judgment: Reason, Morality and the Edwards Scandal

Lee Patton
How to Swiftboat McCain

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Technological Titans, Moral Midgets

Website of the Day
Mr. Hot Buttered Soul

August 11, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Politics of the Race Card: McCain Gurgles in the Slime

Paul Craig Roberts
The Moronic Party: From Off-Shore Drilling to the Georgian War

Gary Leupp
The Neo-Cons' Dream Forgery: the Habbush Letter Revisited

Douglas Kammen
Rice and Circus in East Timor

William Willers
New Paths Toward the Loss of Our Public Lands: Subsidies, Volunteerism and Outsourcing

Greg Moses
The Smell of Propaganda in the Morning: Press Calls for War in the Caucasus

Jeff Leys
Showdown at Fort McCoy

Cynthia McKinney
We Are Not Hopeless

Alan Farago
The Olympic Spectacle and the New China

Website of the Day
Mahmoud Darwish, RIP

August 9 / 10, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
You Want More Still Proofs the Crony, Old-Line Press is Dead?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pools of Fire: the Looming Nuclear Nightmare in the Backwoods of N. Carolina

Bruce Jackson
Hamdan's Secret

Kevin Young
Targeting Civilians: the Path to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Chris Floyd
The Serpent's Egg: Solzhenitsyn and the Origins of the American Gulag

Joshua Frank
Inside Obama's Fundraising Operation

Robert Fantina
Of Campaigns and Timelines

Brendan Cooney
The Eagle is Wounded

Mark Almond
Plucky Little Georgia?

Lois Gibbs
The Lost Lessons of Love Canal

Rev. William Alberts
Blind Patriotism? McCain's Counting On It

Kathy Kelly
The Big Voice

John Ross
The Cutthroat Games: the Decline of the Olympics from Mexico City to Beijing

David Michael Green
The Fire This Time: the GOP and the Economy

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
A Novel Approach to Politics

Ron Jacobs
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy (Or Why John McCain Wants Cindy to Show Her Tits)

Richard Rhames
The Greatest Degeneration

David Yearsley
Once More Unto the Albert Hall, Dear Friends

Lee Sustar
Justice for the Freightliner Five: a Struggle for the Soul of the UAW

Brenda Norrell
Turning Sewage into Snow on the Sacred San Francisco Peaks

Ben Terrall
Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Jenkins, Ibn Salma and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tuli Kupferberg's Fig Leaf Olympics

August 8, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Nationalist Surge

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Voting: a Ritual of Justifying Biases

M. Shahid Alam
The Zionist Stratagem

Andy Worthington
Salim Hamdan's Sentence

Lawrence J. Korb
Bad Advice from Generals

David Model
Instant Genocide

Alan Farago
When Miami Goes Bust: the Politics of the Housing Crisis

Diop Olugbala
What About the Black Community, Obama?

Firmin DeBrabander
When the Olympics Went Green--with Algae

Website of the Day
Summer Reading: CounterPunch's Favorite Novels

August 7, 2008

Dr. Trudy Bond
Fixing Hell and Curing Obesity

William Blum
Breaking Young Hearts: Obama and the Empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Do You Feel Safe Now?

Ralph Nader
Gouged in the Skies: Gotcha Capitalism in the Airline Industry

Robert Weitzel
Obama and the Two Walls

Jacob G. Hornberger
Why Wasn't Ivins Declared an Enemy Combatant?

Binoy Kampmark
Driving Bin Laden

David Macaray
What Does a Radical Labor Union Look Like?

Howard Lisnoff
Echoes of the Sixties: Refusing to Recite the Pledge

Website of the Day
Bono's Retirement Fund

August 6, 2008

Marc Herold
Obama and Afghanistan

Greg Moses
The Unnecessary Execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin

Sheldon Rampton
The Anthrax Cover-Up

Kevin Young
The Atomic Bombing of Japan: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Re-Examines the Japanese Surrender

Michael Estrada
What I Re-Discovered in Mexico

Robert Weissman
The Commercial Games

Dr. Susan Block
The Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church Killings: Did Rightwing Talk Shows Drive Him to Kill?

Cindy Sheehan
This is Horseshit

Ace Hoffman
The Unholy Trinity

Website of the Day
Over to You, Paris

August 5, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Anthrax Attacks and the Assault on Civil Liberties

Jeff Halper
An Israeli Jew in Gaza

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Better? With Three Wars Going On?

Nancy Welch
"What Did My Father Do to Deserve Such Treatment?" An Interview with Laila al-Arian

Peter Morici
Rear View Mirror Economics

Sousan Hammad
The Antisemitism Incitement Craze

Eamon Martin
The Audacity of Despair

Shepherd Bliss
Slow Food Nation Gains Momentum

Tim Matson
Keeping Cool and Saving BTUs

Website of the Day
Top Heavy Greens?

August 4, 2008

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Exit

Saul Landau
Reflections on the Cuban Revolution

David W. Remington
The Face of the Modern War Criminal

Rev. Jesse Jackson
The Question Conscience Asks

Dave Lindorff
The Cheney Doctrine: Shoot Your Friends First

Peter Morici
The Lingering Economic Malaise

Joanne Mariner
Debating Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism in Britain

Ramzy Baroud
Through the Israeli Looking Glass: Obama Joins the Club

Christian Wright
Why We're Protesting at the Democratic Convention

Website of the Day
The US and Karadzic

August 2 / 3, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Really Running Iraq?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is the King of Pork Dead?

James Abourezk
Lies the Oil Companies Peddle

Andy Worthington
The CIA's Secret Prison on Diego Garcia

Brian Cloughley
Baleful Imperial Power

Robert Fantina
Redefining Progress in Iraq

Benjamin Dangl
Total Recall in Bolivia

Marlene Martin
Living in Hell for Life

David Yearsley
The Sound and Fury of Wet Balloons Rubbed with a Big Sponge: Yes, Bill O'Reilly, This Your Kind of Music!

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Qualifies "Them" for the Death Sentence?

David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis

Harvey Wasserman
Meet the Real Terrorists of the 1960s

Jason Hribal
Moja Has Mojo: How a Few Elephants Turned the Zoo Industry Upside Down

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Geary Street: an Interview with Rock Photographer Dominque Tarle

Laray Polk
Tongues of Fire, Plains of Grace: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ron Jacobs
Jerry Garcia Meets Barack Obama

David Macaray
Labor, Management and the Adversarial Relationship

David Rosen
Teen Prostitution in America

Dan Bacher
Schwarzengger's Water Empire

Joe Allen
Batman's War of Terror

Poets' Basement
Graham, Stevens, Cory and Fleming

Website of the Weekend
Get Your War On: the Watch List

August 1, 2008

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain's Mad Dog Advisor Max Boot

Rannie Amiri
Islamobamaphobia: a New Word Enters the Lexicon

Peter Morici
U.S. Economy Loses Another 51,000 Jobs

Christopher Brauchli
South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Coup in the Great Caspian Play

Patrick Cockburn
Turkish Court Says Ruling Islamic Party Can't be Shut Down

James J. Brittain
The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

Dan Bacher
Warren Buffett, Salmon Killer

Website of the Day
Shark Genocide: 100 Million Deaths a Year

July 31, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Next Big Bail Out: State, Local and Private Pensions

Carl Finamore
Protest Politics and the Democrats: A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan

Joshua Frank
Obama's Green Coal: Another Myth from the Change Agent

Andy Worthington
The Peculiar Case of Jarallah al-Marri

Ralph Nader
The Living Legacy of Rosa Parks

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Wave of Capitol Crimes

Robert Weissman
The Collapse of the WTO Talks

Dave Lindorff
Bush Judge Does the Right Thing on Executive Immunity

Website of the Day
Perils of the New Pesticides

July 30, 2008

Brian M. Downing
Assessing the Surge

Chuck Spinney
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan? A Thought Experiment

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

David Ker Thomson
Against Bike Lanes

Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

Mike Whitney
Apocalypse Down Under

Martha Rosenberg
Heifer Palooza

James Murren
Where Your Life is Worth One Bullet

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Hearing

Ron Jacobs
A Conspiracy to Kill Iraqis?

Website of the Day
Mapping Job Loss to China

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

September 8, 2008

Arrogance, Ignorance and Cowardice

Pop Music and 9/11

By ROBERT JENSEN

Given the disastrous decisions made by U.S. officials in the seven long years since September 11, 2001, it would be easy tonight simply to catalog those many mistakes and condemn the bipartisan depravity of the Republican and Democratic politicians who -- starting almost immediately after the towers fell -- manipulated people’s anger and fear to build support for illegal and immoral wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It would be especially easy for those of us in the anti-war/anti-empire movement to feel self-righteous and say, “We told you so.” By the end of the day on 9/11, many of us saw where the nation was heading and tried, in vain, to argue for a saner strategy. For example:

It need not be said, but I will say it: The acts of terrorism that killed civilians in New York and Washington were reprehensible and indefensible; to try to defend them would be to abandon one’s humanity. … But this act was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism -- the deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes -- that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime.

Let us not forget that a military response will kill people, and if the pattern of past U.S. actions holds, it will kill innocents. Innocent people, just like the ones in the towers in New York and the ones on the airplanes that were hijacked. To borrow from President Bush, “mother and fathers, friends and neighbors” will surely die in a massive response.

[I]f we are to be decent people, we all must demand of our government -- the government that a great man of peace, Martin Luther King Jr., once described as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” -- that the insanity stop here.

With help from friends in my political circle, I wrote those words late in the day on September 11, 2001. The full essay was posted on the web the next day and appeared in the Houston Chronicle on September 14, prompting a flood of angry responses from people who thought that the piece was outrageous and that I was a traitor. Yet analyses like this, which were so controversial at the time, seem rather unremarkable today. In a recent report, the establishment think tank Rand Corp. concluded that the United States made a fundamental error in portraying the response to 9/11 as a “war on terrorism” and that “the U.S. strategy was not successful in undermining al Qa’ida’s capabilities.” [Seth G. Jones, Martin C. Libick, “How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida,” 2008.]

Looking back at the statements and writings of the anti-war activists who spoke up right away, I think it’s fair to say that in general we were honest in our assessments of history and accurate in our projections of what was to come. We shouldn’t feel too cocky about that, however; predicting that an imperial power will act like an imperial power is no great accomplishment.

So, now I want to do more than review the crimes that the Bush administration committed with the cooperation of Democrats, and to go beyond self-congratulation. That would be the easy path, but the easy path is rarely the most useful. Instead, let’s focus on ourselves and our fellow citizens. Let’s try to be honest about who we are and who we have been, in the hopes we can learn lessons that will be valuable in the future.

I’ll start with the rule of thirds, assuming it can be helpful to divide any human population roughly into thirds on any particular question. Based on the past seven years, how would we describe 21st century Americans in political terms? I would suggest that 9/11 showed us that we the people of the United States are arrogant, ignorant, and cowardly. About a third of us are arrogant and proud of the United States’ aggressive posture in the world. Another third of us are ignorant and hide behind the excuse that we don’t, or can’t, know what’s really happening. And the final third -- the group in which I would place myself -- are cowardly, avoiding the moral consequences of what we aren’t willing to do.

That may sound harsh, but these are irrefutable claims -- and I have the pop songs to prove it. Of course songs lyrics do not an argument make, but I will illustrate my points the work of popular musicians, whose story-telling reflects the society from which it comes.


Arrogance

Let’s start with Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which he wrote a few days after 9/11 and which appeared on his 2002 CD, “Unleashed.”

Keith articulates a desire to strike back that is easy to understand. This reflex to respond violently to a violent attack is part of being human; we all have the capacity for such action. But that does not mean, of course, that military responses are always morally justified. We may feel a desire to strike, but such a desire should be examined in the light of history and contemporary politics. Let’s consider one of Keith’s verses:

Oh justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U S of A
‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way.

Was justice served when the United States rejected diplomacy and launched an illegal invasion of Afghanistan? Has the United States ever advanced the cause of justice in the Middle East and Central Asia, especially during the post-World War II period of its unparalleled dominance? Do U.S. policymakers go to war only when our cage is rattled? Or, in fact, has the United States consistently used war to extend and deepen economic dominance, especially in that post-WWII period?

Sadly, the only thing Keith gets right is the recognition that violence is the American way. From the moment Europeans landed in the Americas, they acquired land and resources through the kind of barbaric violence that is all too familiar in human history and a consistent feature of the American story. However, basic moral principles suggest that’s not something to celebrate.

Keith claims that the song has been misunderstood, that it was more patriotic than pro-war, and his claim is easy to believe -- in the United States patriotism is often fused with an assumption of dominance and the inherent righteousness of U.S. violence, which is precisely the problem. But before we write off Toby Keith as part of some reactionary fringe, let’s remember that “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” was a popular song that advanced his career. Also consider the fact that he’s supporting Barack Obama in the current presidential race. Last month Keith, who has said “me and Michael Moore would agree on a lot of things,” offered this analysis:

There’s a big part of America that really believes that there is a war on terrorism, and that we need to finish up. So I thought it was beautiful the other day when Obama went to Afghanistan and got educated about Afghanistan and Iraq. He came back and said some really nice things.

There is nothing inconsistent in Keith’s song and these comments. The arrogance that is at the heart of his song has been expressed by Democrats and Republicans alike since 9/11. The assertion that the United States fights for justice in its wars abroad is routinely asserted across the conventional political spectrum and echoed in corporate commercial media. The fact that all of contemporary history refutes that assertion is irrelevant, because we live in a country in which ignorance can be celebrated.


Ignorance

This brings us to Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning,” from his 2002 CD, “”Drive.”

Rather than critique the sentimental self-indulgence of Jackson’s song -- since everything is always about America, it’s hardly surprising that in the dominant culture what’s most important is how Americans feel -- let’s focus on this verse:

I’m just a singer of simple songs
I’m not a real political man
I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell you the difference
in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us
And the greatest is love.

What does it say about the culture when a popular entertainer, who has ready access to as much information as he needs to understand the world, cannot distinguish between Iraq and Iran? He can’t tell the difference between the two most important regional powers in the most strategically crucial area of the world, home to the lion’s share of the planet’s petroleum, a place on which the majority of his country’s military power is focused? Through six decades in Iraq and Iran, the United States has been directly responsible for widespread death and incredible misery as a result of covert operations, direct attacks, and support for brutal dictators in each country. Yet even though he goes to the trouble of watching CNN, Jackson still is uncertain about which is which.

This is “willed ignorance,” the product of a conscious choice not to know what could be easily known and what one has a moral obligation to know. Again, Jackson is not idiosyncratic; I would suggest this stance is the norm in the United States. Rather than being embarrassed by his ignorance and taking steps to correct it, he offers it up as an indication of higher virtue, evidenced by his understanding of the centrality of love. I agree that faith, hope, and love should be central in our lives. But having faith, hope, and love doesn’t require ignorance. Knowledge is a good thing, too, something we can seek out ourselves and help each other acquire.

However, we also must recognize that knowledge won’t change the world unless we also have courage.


Cowardice

I have never been a fan of Toby Keith or Alan Jackson, and I don’t listen to much country music. I’m more of a Neil Young kind of guy. So, let me illustrate the cowardice of the American public by looking at Young’s music.

That may strike some as odd, given that Young’s 2006 “Living with War” CD was a direct challenge to the Bush administration and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But the key to my criticism is the year -- 2006. An anti-war record three years into the war should not be cause for uncritical accolades for a musician who claims to be a dissenter. We should be asking Neil Young, “Where were you in 2001?” The answer: He was writing and recording “Let’s Roll,” which was released on his 2002 CD, “Are You Passionate?”

That song is a tribute to the United Flight 93 passengers who intervened in the 9/11 hijacking of that plane and forced it down in Pennsylvania. One of those passengers, Todd Beamer, is said to have uttered the famous words, “let’s roll” as they took that action. Even if we want to interpret the song apolitically, as a simple tribute to human courage, it adds to the cultural mythology about U.S. heroism, which contributes to U.S. arrogance and does nothing to correct the ignorance crucial to engineering people’s consent for war. Beyond such a tribute, the song suggests a need for war:

No one has the answer
But one thing is true
You’ve got to turn on evil
When it’s coming after you
You’ve gotta face it down
And when it tries to hide
You’ve gotta go in after it
And never be denied
Time is runnin’ out
Let’s roll.

While Young was writing that song, the anti-war movement was trying to counter the country’s hyper-patriotism, warning where it would lead -- to more U.S. aggression in the service of empire, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, to death and destruction, to the policies that Young eventually would oppose in “Living with War.” When the movement could have used an eloquent musical voice, Young was on the other side.

My goal is not to single out Neil Young, but to ask us all to reflect on how easy it was for so many to fall in line with that hyper-patriotism after 9/11, and how easy it might again be in the future. The task of responsible citizens in the empire is not to critique illegal and immoral wars when they go sour, but to resist those wars of aggression from the start. With that in mind, Young’s 2006 lyrics from “Living with War” ring just a bit hollow:

I join the multitudes
I raise my hand in peace
I never bow to the laws of the thought police
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
To never kill again

Courage requires taking risks. Most of the liberals who now are vocal in their opposition to the war did not take risks right after 9/11; most ducked and covered, claiming that America was too emotionally vulnerable for politics at that moment, as the politicians kept right on pushing their politics of empire, driving an arrogant and ignorant public to war.


My cowardice

Again, while it’s always easy to catalog the flaws of others, it’s far more useful for all of us to attempt honest self-reflection, including those of us who opposed both wars from the start.

While I have worked hard over the years to learn about the Middle East and Central Asia, I recognize that it has been relatively easy given the resources and privileges available to me as a professor, and I also am aware of how much I still don’t know about those regions and about other parts of the world. I struggle for humility and try to learn more, though there’s ample room for criticism of me on those counts. But the virtue in which I feel most deficient these days is courage.

I have no problem defending the decision I made to speak out immediately after 9/11 and to contribute to anti-war organizing; at the time I thought those were the right things to do, and none of the criticism of those decisions -- from conservatives or liberals -- has ever offered a coherent moral or intellectual case against those actions. I am haunted not by what I did but by what I didn’t’ do, by my own cowardice. Why did those of us who opposed U.S. policy not take more risks and push harder? It’s fine to be right in one’s analysis; it’s better to be right and effective. And, in retrospect, the only thing that might have been effective in impeding the mad rush to war was for those dissenting from that madness to take real risks, to put our bodies in the path of the war machine. Mario Savio, one of the leaders of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, articulated this so passionately on the University of California campus in December 1964:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

Activists in the anti-war movement are sometimes accused of being cowards, of being afraid to fight. That is a slur designed to derail the anti-war movement’s honest critique of (1) the violence of the powerful, (2) the propaganda the powerful use to persuade ordinary people to support the violence, and (3) the economic motives of the elites whose wealth and privilege depends on that violence. But those of us in the anti-war movement should ask ourselves: Have we built a political culture that provides the support we need to act with courage? Do we have the real courage necessary to undermine the U.S. empire? While people suffer and die around the world as a direct result of U.S. military and economic policies, what are we doing to stop the machine? Are we willing to put our bodies upon the gears, the wheels, the levers? If forced to choose between our relative affluence and real sacrifices that conscience might demand, how do we choose?

This is not a question on which I have standing to pontificate. The answer is simple: I have not done enough. We haven’t done enough, because the machine is still grinding away, still grinding down people at home and around the world. Perhaps if anti-war activists had upped the ante and we had put our bodies in the way of the machine, the world would look very different tonight. Or perhaps all that would have happened was that we’d be in jail or dead because the machine would have rolled right along and rolled over us. There’s no way to know.

But I do know this: In the months after 9/11, when the political stakes seemed so high, I never really seriously considered putting my body on the gears and I never heard others in my political circles seriously discuss such options. We had not built movements and a political culture in which that question was on the table for most of us. When I think about that today -- not that I didn’t do something more drastic, but that I never really considered it -- I feel ashamed. That recognition doesn’t lead me to want to rush out and risk my life to prove something, but rather reminds me that I should rethink the strategies with which I’ve grown comfortable.


Facing difficult realities

This rethinking requires facing some difficult realities, that lead me to these recommendations:

--Drop the arrogance and face a painful truth: The troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are not fighting for our freedom or for justice. Whatever the individuals who serve in the military believe or do -- and I realize that many believe they are defending us, and I know that many regularly act in compassionate and humane ways in the field -- the U.S.