Today's Stories

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

October 14, 2008

Robert Richter
McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bailout and the Smell Test

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Wall Street Coup and the Bailout Scam

Steve Conn
Made in Alaska: Fear of the Fringe

P. Sainath
The Race Could be Over, But Race Isn't

Gregory Elich
How the Nobel Peace Prize Was Won

Stephen Martin
A Tectonic Shift in Hegemony at the G7

Rev. William Alberts
Don't Blink Twice

Laura Carlsen
The Fall of the Bush Dynasty Plan

Joanne Mariner
The Uighurs Come to Washington

Howard Lisnoff
Left Behind: a Biden Fundraiser and the Children of Holyoke

David Macaray
A Tale of Two Unions

Website of the Day
Six Degrees of Hank Paulson

October 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Farewell to Daniel Cassidy

Michael Hudson
Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

Patrick Cockburn
Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Chris Floyd
The God That Failed: the 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

Fidel Castro
The Law of the Jungle: Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy

Robert Weitzel
Olmert's Depths of Reality

Derek Wright
How Chrysler Killed My Uncle

Stephen Soldz
Guantánamo's SERE Standard Operating Procedures

David Michael Green
Greed is Not Good

Norman Solomon
Requiem for the Bailout: a Storyline

Charles R. Larson
Toni Morrison on Her Own Terms

Lisa Massaciuccoli
The Shoplifting Association of the Americas

Website of the Day
Arlo Guthrie: "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae"

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Douglas Valentine
Mission CREEP: From John Mitchell to John McCain

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Ralph Nader
The Derivatives Game

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Missy Beattie
Going North: the Coming Nation of Alaska

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 20, 2008

Questions That Will Not Go Away

The Last Man in America

By STEPHEN MARTIN

“Rep. Peter Welsh: Mr Turner…I think you said that the SEC office of Risk Management was reduced to a staff, did you say of ……’One’?

Lynn Turner: Yeah, when that gentleman would go home at night he could turn the lights out. In February of this year we had gotten down to just one person at the SEC responsible for identifying the risk of all the institutions.

Rep Peter Welsh: So that included the 62 trillion dollar credit default swap?

Lynn Turner: That’s correct.”

House Oversight Committee Hearing, AIG, 7 October

I am not now, nor ever have been, a member of that select financial coterie known as ‘Goldman Sachs’ Alumni’.

I am not now, nor ever have been a Banker.

I emphasise the first letter in that last word of immediately preceding sentence for reasons pursuant to honoring truth.

What a staggering insight the above extract from Committee Hearing is!

Sixty two trillion dollars in credit default swaps (CDS’s) overseen by a staff of just one individual?

As in ‘reduction’?

Here’s a parallel idea.
Get rid of all the Border Security in America. Get them all to stand down.

Replace them with just one individual - how about Joe the Plumber?

It doesn’t need a Rocket Scientist to work out the results of what that little harebrained  scheme would be.

As with border security and checks on legitimacy of persons ‘in transit’; so with financial security and checks on legitimacy of credit default swaps ‘in transit’.

When the people in charge make such an obvious, harebrained ‘mistake’ in their decision making concerning allocation of budget, consequence being such ‘reduction’, you can bet your bottom dollar there is method in such madness.

It isn’t harebrained at all, in fact.

It’s part of some method as providing underlying reason.

But still; sheer madness none the less.

We are all in the midst of the results of such madness borne to fruition as tragedy right now.

The thorns in the whirl wind sown, cutting into flesh.

But not of the few as guilty.

The pain is for now of the many as innocent.

Of  the honest, loyal, decent and hardworking.

Families of same - men and women alike;  facing loss of livelihood, loss of home.

Of the hard working, looking at life savings in anguish and despair, as decimated; staring into abyss.

Of growing lines of unemployed individuals keen and able, willing; yet unable to find work.  Of  no money for Health Care or Education.  Of Main Street withering under such onslaught; good, decent, long established Companies which provide livelihoods and trade honestly going under daily.

Of ‘suckers going down’ as POTUS 43 could put it.

Not to use ‘that one’- as in the current reprehensible, not to say despicable, vernacular of political dialogue as sideshow evident.

What of the focus of mainstream media/free press?

Joe the Plumber, indeed.

Why so full of trivia; so blind, so devoid of compassion; sense of truth?
Why not as serving the interests of the people; of Democracy?

Apropos of ‘plumbing’ here’s a question:

Who is at the moment the most powerful individual in America? (surely a matter of some small interest; lest President being eclipsed by unelected eminence grise  being as of no import? – Not that it would take much to so eclipse, alas).

Would not ex inmate Swift Trail Camp Arizona John Ehrlichman as former mentor to Henry Paulson as said eminence grise, and patterns evident in recent American Political History,   be of greater relevance concerning fascination with plumbing?

Or concerning ‘spreading wealth’?

Or indeed; concerning corruption and greed as anathema to Democracy?

Never mind Joe the Plumber. Let him live in peace.

The American Economy is seriously weakened-   the  human sufferance is immense and growing.

Even if this were an accident, which it is not; the response to such consequences of financial collapse would be unforgivable.

Think of Hurricane Katrina and FEMA.

But the real tragedy: this no accident.

Or result of ‘force majeure’.

Here some questions; put to you as that all Citizens should be asking in midst of  such disaster, form of financial meltdown;  demanding answer.

Why was the budget of the SEC cut so?

Why was the Glass-Steagall Act repealed?

Why was Lehmann Brothers allowed to fail?

Why were no Economists consulted in the Paulson Bailout Plan?

Why the volte - face so sudden in the biggest bailout ever?

What really happened at the G7 meeting in October?

Why has Europe failed to fall in ‘lock step’ with the plan?

How can 2.3 trillion dollars go missing in a budget?

Why has history repeated itself?

Why is failure in Wall Street rewarded, but Main Street failure punished?

Where has all the money gone?

Where is our Roosevelt to come from this time around?

I don’t have the answers to these questions.

But the right to ask questions remains, as ever; key component of lifeblood of Democracy.

Those who would have such questions not asked, off the Agenda, far let alone answered;  are not Democratic.

Being privy to such mindset as would repress is not the same as being of such mindset.

The questions above may be those as born of paranoia, but such their consequence implied for the way we are now forced to live as they deserve answering; and such focus as attendant towards in the demand thereby.

This crisis no ‘happenstance’ -  but rather product of wilful and deliberate scheme?

A scheme which has failed ?

If tomorrow, God forbid, thousands of people were suddenly to develop an illness all of a sudden, we would not be inclined just to ignore it.

We would want to know how it happened, why it happened, so that we could prevent it from happening again.

For illness read financial malaise, and for thousands read millions.

Does the importance of knowing how and why change,  ceterus paribus?

To Democracy the questions about how this financial meltdown occurred are as will not go away - no matter the pretence, or shameful indulgence/complicity to perverse desire contrary  - as in the tameness of mass media.

No matter the bums steers out running ‘wild’.

No matter the stooges fielded.

The plain fact is that there is too much sufferance for there not to be such questions.

They are as elephant in the room.

They are such only as can be deferred in the answering of, to subsequent demand concerning speaking up.

Martin Niemoller wrote the poem about failure to speak up.

As to whom, rather than what taken, albeit.

But ask questions to challenge Democracy; as can be wide in the embrace; to tired, to poor, to huddled masses yearning to breathe free, to wretched refuse of teeming shore, to homeless tempest tossed.

Ask the questions demanded.

Towards the furthering of  Democracy?

For we are more of us joined so right now such embrace; midst ‘financial meltdown’.

I do not know.

But what I do know is a rat when I smell one, and I can tell you of  my understanding such as it is.

There are rats out there right now, gathered together by force of plan as has come unstuck; desperate in the back peddle and grasping with gnashed teeth at ‘Plan B’.

The stench is unbearable.

Ever seen rats in a cage?

When one bites they all start biting.

Much and loud the squealing consequential.

Paraphrasing  the man with no eyes: “What we got here, with such rats, is a failure to communicate.”

What  required here is the flipside of a McCarthy witch hunt.

Someone who instead of being evil in persecution of the innocent, could serve good by prosecuting the guilty.

Someone who instead of serving Fascist trends, serves Democratic trend.

Someone who instead of serving money, serves the people.

Someone who asks the right questions; who will not be deflected. 

Someone who can tell a bum steer or a stooge at fifty paces; and see through smoke and mirrors.

Who can detect the truth from lie without polygraph; but by such as look in eye, sound to ear, in understanding non verbal.

Who has olfactory sense unparalleled concerning the odor of rat.

Someone whom given only lies most part; can reveal truth .

Someone, some body, with the vigour and authority to get in there; peg on  nose and protective suit and gloves as required - and invade every aspect of the ‘lives’ of the soulless and  treasonous and  reveal their nefarious schemes for expansion of power as have led to the sufferance of so many.

The cronies.

The financial records.

The meetings.

The plans.

The chronology of events.

The works.

Call it a ‘rat hunt’.

A root and branch shutdown of the sewer as provides sustenance to vermin - and poison to Democracy in form of financial control and manipulation this instance.

To punish them for such sufferance caused in their wilful deliberation; way of avarice.

By taking away from them that which they covet most; their control of Finance; their filthy lucre, their assets as they have stolen – and as enabled them to carry out their grand scheme  - to  such manifold sufferance of Citizen.

Depriving them of the liberty to do so ever again.

That  Democracy may be poisoned no more.

That there may be  recovery.

That their treason not soil Constitution further to such stench consequential.

That never again such sufferance; such shore.

America needs a ‘cleanout’.

Not a bailout.

That this cleanout be in Democracy realised and recovered in expression of the voice and power of the Citizen found.

Because what has been done for money by this small proportion,  in deed as by intent; treason no less; and as standing for long time yet alas; in the sufferance; the misery caused, to all Citizens of America as part of body humanity innocent; as monstrous revulsion.

Treason against:  labor useful and pure as can be; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; in the ideal - and in the reality made as misery.
And that is unforgivable.

A change of lexicon; of emphasis as to that which counts; that prioritised:

Cleanout.

Not Bailout.

That America shall arise from such disaster befallen - to be Beacon burning bright once more..

As haven to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In such, Humanity shall surely rejoice.

That once again, such as Roosevelt may step up to the plate.

To rebuild through Presidential Vision and loyalty true.

To life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 Overcoming fear, calming panic, implementing measures required. 

Getting America working again.

 Nothing to  fear, but fear itself.

 - But not without the treasonous vermin, as engineered such fear and monumental sufferance in the first place, being taken care of.

Not without Cleanout.

This time around.

The questions as to how and why, and by whom indeed; answered in form of necessary actions taken.

‘The Last Man in America’?

Other than as in extract from House Oversight Committee Hearing concerning the one man as last of the SEC Office of Risk Management, (Lynn Turner resigning honorably from SEC Office in 2001) reference is to the intended title of ‘1984’ by George Orwell.

He wanted it to be ‘The Last Man in Europe’

The ‘world’ portrayed in 1984 is as far from the real world of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which  Democracy can facilitate as ever inscribed on the immemorial tablet of truth concerning political possibility by hand of man.

In it’s clarity of Dystopian vision, ‘1984’ undoubtedly held warning; a forbearance for humanity.

For this, the World surely owes much to Eric Arthur Blair.

Concerning letting  treasonous ‘individuals’   keep control of their ill gotten gains; expropriation can be a two way street - and the wilful destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness such scale is Treason.

Carried out by so few; causing sufferance for so many, and for such little gain.

Were they as carried such out in the attempt ‘American’?

No.

They were as self confessed Stateless; in their free market, and in their aspiration of Global Financial Dominance.

‘Loyalty’ to nought but profit maximisation leading.

They knew the risks – they knew the ‘downside’.

It is a downside we are all living in midst of now; as financial meltdown.

But still as more than pattern in their scheming Weltanschuung as they would have us be, lest we are ever on our guard.

As Citizens yet. 

In Democracy yet.

They, without loyalty to humanity -  far let alone country of origin as of birth within and  nurture;  these parasites to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Their true State, as of their origin; Hell.

God willing that they may return to same soon.

That they be hoisted as by their own petard through expropriation and in denial of their liberty– for they have shown America no mercy, let alone the rest of the World in such as they have done in abuse ofLiberty; given them by grace of State and God; and as has led to such sufferance of the many greater and good in and under same; Nation and Kingdom.

Sufferance of every man, woman and child as humanity in America as once Great, and soon to be again by courtesy of same, and under grace of God;  Nation.

Long live Democracy – may the Citizen ever be victorious.

As it will be.

Of that I have no doubt – let alone fear.

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.

Justice Robert H Jackson.

Stephen Martin can be reached at: stephenmarti@yahoo.com

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