Today's Stories

November 20, 2008

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

November 11, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Vote Against Your Own Interests

Allan J. Lichtman
What Obama Can Learn From FDR

Eric Toussaint
Financing the Bailout: a Holy Union for a Deuce of a Swindle

Ron Jacobs
Moving Beyond Hope: a Leftist Looks at the Near Future

Peter Montague
Green Coal?

Corporate Crime Reporter
BP's Big Spill on the North Slope

Laura Carlsen
Latin America Sends Obama a Piece of Its Mind

Col. Dan Smith
A New Unifying Paradigm?

Morton Skorodin
The Machine Grinds On

David Michael Green
My Michelle Moment

Charles R. Larson
Ask Your Doctor for a Free Sample

Website of the Day
Will Old Faithful Be Sucked Dry?

November 10, 2008

David Roediger
Obama's Victory and the Future of Race in the United States

Paul Craig Roberts
Conned Again?

Peter Lee
Obama's Man in Afghanistan

Corey D. B. Walker
And We Are Not Saved

Jeff Halper
A Bone in America's Throat

Bill Hatch
Look on the Bright Side, Dammit!

Andy Worthington
Guilty By Torture

Bill Quigley
Anger and Hope: Haitian Families Furious Over School Collapse

Peter Morici
Paulson's Folly

Anthony Olszewski
The Advent of a New Black Politician

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill

Cpt. Paul Watson
Farley Mowat's Last Book? Maybe Not

Website of the Day
Boondocks, Another Banned Episode

November 7 / 9, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to the Chief of Staff

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Fire

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Indian: the Many Faces of Sonal Shah

Tariq Ali
Great Expectations

Jean Bricmont
Our Obama Problem

John V. Whitbeck
Obama, Emanuel and Israel

Saul Landau
Politics Among the Ruins: Obama Faces an Economic Disaster

Peter Morici
Gone, Baby, Gone: Another 240,000 Jobs Lost

Lawrence Velvel
Obama and Afghanistan: the Return of Clintonia?

Karyn Strickler
Don't Govern From the Middle

Nativo V. Lopez
Banking on Obama with Open Eyes: Latinos and Obama

Christopher Fons
A Generational Moment: From Jackson to Obama

Alan Farago
Sarah Palin's Limited Engagement

David Yearsley
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Christopher Brauchli
Pardoning Industry: Bush's Latest Executive Orders

Samah Sabawi
Gaza's New Cemetery

Dave Lindorff
Getting the Change We've Earned

Deepak Tripathi
A Revolution to Remember

Beth Sherouse
In the Wake of Lost Initiatives: the Gay Glass is Half Empty

Patrick Irelan
La Belle Dame Sans Regrets: Back to Alaska

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Temple

Richard Rhames
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

J. Murray
White Cherokee Mythology

Lorenzo Wolff
Anthems for the Average Kid

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill: Art Meets Realism in "The Exiles"

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Fleming and Browne

Website of the Day
Take Who Takes You (For the New Big O)

November 6, 2008

Frank J. Menetrez
Now What?

John Chuckman
The Big Leap: From Hope to Change

P. Sainath
A Magic Moment (But Still Behind the Global Curve)

Joshua Frank
A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration

Edna Canetti
Come, Obama, Change My Life: a Plea from Israel

John Ross
Brad Will is Still Dead

Norman Solomon
Sorry Joe: a Mandate for Spreading the Wealth

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Morning After: Pakistan and Its New Bedfellow

Robert Weissman
Mordor Brightens: Obama's Challenge--and Our Own

Harvey Wasserman
A Blow to Nuclear Power in Chicago

Website of the Day
Pot Wins Big

November 5, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Why McCain Lost

Chuck Spinney
How Obama Won

Ishmael Reed
Morning in Obamerica: the Promised Land?

Chris Floyd
A Prism for the New Paradigm: "What If Bush Did It?"

Binoy Kampmark
Obama's Victory: a Nation Divided

Michael Donnelly
The Rebooting of America, 2008

David Macaray
Who Should be Secretary of Labor?

Peter Morici
Obama's First Moves on the Economy

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Real Change Should Bring

William Willers
Will We be Forced to Sell Off the Public Lands?

Website of the Day
The Killing Fields of South Africa

November 4, 2008

Kathleen Christison
McCain, Obama and Khalidi

James Ridgeway
A New World?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Cleaning Out the Pentagon Pig Sty

Mike Whitney
Obama's Little Red Book

Conn Hallinan
A New Foreign Policy

Holly M. Barker
The Inequities of Climate Change and the Small Island Experience

Ashley Smith
Where is the Occupation of Iraq Heading?

Andy Worthington
Guilty Verdict Fails to Justify Gitmo Trials

Martha Rosenberg
AIG: Too Big to Play Fair

Stephen Martin
Breakdown of the Globalisation Agenda

Doug Lummis
Full Moon Over Okinawa

Carlos Fierro
An Anarchist View of Elections

Website of the Day
La Pequeña as Sarah Palin

November 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Friends Like These

John Kennedy O'Hara
Voter Lockdown: Prosecuting Voters

Peter Montague
Is Nuclear Power Green?

Steve Conn
Nader and the Youth Vote

Andrew Gebhardt
How Much Do the Differences Between Obama, McCain and Bush Really Matter?

Ron Jacobs
Bombing Syria: Borders are for Sissies

Ralph Nader
Between Hope and Reality: an Open Letter to Senator Obama

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Cleaning Up After Bush

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Order of the Optimists

Dave Lindorff
Studs and Me

Fred Gardner
Adieu, Rimonabant

DC Larson
You Are How You Vote

David Michael Green
McCain Finally Gets Tough

Val Strange
Hopeless Hoi Polloi or Step in the Right Direction?

Tuli Kupferberg /
Jeffrey Lewis
Wailing Wall Street:
Bring Spare Money!

Website of the Day
Pranking Palin (the Uncut Version)

October 31 , 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Change You Can See

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Leroy Jackson: the Indian Wars Have Never Ended

Douglas Valentine
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: McCain's 14th Amendment Problem

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Great Bailout Fraud: Misrepresenting the Financial Crisis

Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski
Is the Global Economy a Mistake? an Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Alan Maass
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Spreading the Wealth?

William P. O’Connor
Reflections of an Average Joe

Patrick Irelan
Johnny's Tantrums: McCain the "Gook Hater"

Brian Cloughley
Out of Control: Memo From Islamabad

Mats Svensson
The Last Dance in Ramallah

Binoy Kampmark
Into Syria We Went

Steve Conn
The Future of Ted and Sarah

Alan Farago
The Division of Florida: the Politics of Growth

Morton Skorodin
The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

Robert Bryce
Not McCain

Wajahat Ali
Dear John McCain, Please Stop...

David Yearsley
Palin's Flute, Obama's Voice

Dennis Loo
What to Do with Bush and Cheney?

Pam Martens
Why 2008 Feels Like 1932

Stephen Martin
Defense Strategies in Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Nothing for Something: the Doomed Rustic's Lament

Ramzy Baroud
A Third Palestinian Intifada

Missy Beattie
I'm Sick of Their Voices

Howard Lisnoff
Burning Reason: More From the Religious Right

Richard Neville
Pickled Heads: First the Revelation, Then the Revolution

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassan
Bush Ultra Lite: Oliver Stone's Oedipal Problem

Kim Nicolini
Max Payne: Vigilante Violence as Sex Story

Lorenzo Wolff
Dance to the Music--or Else!

Poets' Basement
Four Poems from the Japanese Trans. by Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Art Against Empire

October 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain's Women Problems

Vijay Prashad
Smearing Rashid Khalidi

Paul Craig Roberts
World Tires of Rule by Dollar

Glen Ford
Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Stanley Heller
Wall Street Bonus Madness

William Loren Katz
"Kill Him!:" a Political Chronicle

Joshua Frank
Memo to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After the Election?

James McEnteer
The Year of Unreliable Witnesses

Felice Pace
The Big Change: Can "Civic Unreasonableness" Save the Earth?

Jonathan Cook
The Executions at Kafr Qassem

Reza Fiyouzat
Boycott the Elections!

Website of the Day
An Open Letter to Whole Foods

October 29, 2008

Arno J. Mayer
The US Empire will Survive Bush

Eric Toussaint
How the Food and Financial Crises are Interconnected

Matt Gonzalez
What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

Steven Conn
Obama and the Camp Followers

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Visit to a Father's Grave

Patrick Bond
Strauss-Kahn Strikes Again!

Ramzi Kysia
A Freedom Rider in Gaza City

Douglas Valentine
A Glimpse Inside the Head of Joe the Plumber

Stephen Martin
What America is Owed

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Alternatives to Incarceration

Amee Chew
Support Obama, Vote McKinney?

Website of the Day
N-Word Chant Doesn't Phase Palin

October 28, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Bail Out the Taxpayers

Andy Worthington
The Empty Chair at Guantánamo

Gary Leupp
The Specter of the Sixties: Palin v. Ayers

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of the American Road

Mike Whitney
Meet the World's New Currency

Gregory V. Button
What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA

Ralph Nader
Share the Sacrifices, Share the Benefits

P. Sainath
Haunted by Socialism

Martha Rosenberg
Melting Pot in Hell

Charles R. Larson
Palin/Wurzelbacher 2012!

Website of the Day
Why You Can't See Across the Grand Canyon

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

Barbara Rose Johnston
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

John Dinges
Palling Around with Dictators: McCain and Pinochet

Mike Whitney
Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War

Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power

Alan Farago
Origins of the Fall

David Michael Green
Remind Me Again: Who Won the Cold War?

Andy Worthington
The Collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo Trial

George Wuerthner
Is Ranching Sustainable? The Story of Bob the Rancher

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Obamanations of Barack

Website of the Day
Heartland of Darkness

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

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?

November 20, 2008

Pulse of the Planet

How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

By BRIAN McKENNA

"I'm surprised if anybody is surprised by this," said an outraged Rahm Emanuel, President-Elect Obama's new Chief of Staff. "This [Bush] administration, from day one, has always chosen polluters over the environment," he told the Chicago Tribune last May. The event he was fuming over was indeed deplorable - the firing of Mary Gade, the Environmental Protection Agency’s top Midwestern official.

In 2007 Gade used emergency powers to force Dow Chemical to clean up four areas contaminated with the dioxin, one of the world's most toxic and deadly chemical compounds. Dioxin is highly carcinogenic and considered by some scientists to be the most toxic substance known. Even at the most minute levels dioxin damages the immune system: there is no safe level of exposure to dioxin. One of the areas, a park along the Tittabawasse River downstream from Midland, Michigan, Dow's headquarters, recorded dioxin at 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.

A year later Gade, a former corporate lawyer and Bush appointee, was stripped of her powers and told to quit or be fired by June 1, 2008. She resigned. "There is no question that this is about Dow," she told the Tribune. "I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did."

Gade was a hope for Michigan's environmentalists, led by the Lone Tree Council, who are seeking redress for a quarter-century-decade-long dioxin scandal against the most powerful chemical company in the U.S. Some were indeed surprised by the foul treatment of Gade, a federal official. Michigan activists are more used to that happening in their own homelands where Dow rules like a colonial power. Dow showers tens of millions on Michigan's politicians, communities, universities, public health departments and media (including PBS) to chill debate, suppress critics and garner the best public relations about its activities. (See Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan, April 18, 2005 in CounterPunch)

A Chlorine Cloud of Terror

Dow Chemical's resistance to federal Department of Homeland Security guidelines is equally outrageous. President-elect Obama enters an arena where there are 7,000 high risk U.S. chemical facilities. They store or use highly toxic volatile chemicals like chlorine, sulfur dioxide and anhydrous ammonia. If airborne these agents could form a toxic cloud killing or injuring up to a million people in places like New Jersey. People would asphyxiate and die painful deaths. According to risk models from the DHS, an accident or terrorist act at just one plant could result in as much as $100 billion in economic damage. Simple, inexpensive regulations requiring corporations to substitute relatively harmless agents for the dangerous ones could prevent this scenario.

According to the EPA just four toxic-by-inhalation gases account for 55 percent of all chemical processes that threaten communities nationwide. These are: anhydrous ammonia (32.5%, 8,343 processes), chlorine (18.3%, 4,682 processes), sulfur dioxide (3%, 768 processes) and hydrogen fluoride (1.2%, 315 processes). These can be transformed into chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

High risk water facilities that rely on chlorine gas are also a significant danger. Legislation has been introduced (but stalled) that would require safer precautionary alternatives include liquid bleach, ozone and ultraviolet light.

Dow Chemical, DuPont and the industry at large have spent millions to effectively lobby Congress and the President to stop them from invoking safer measures. Chlorine is one of the backbones of the Dow Chemical Empire and the firm does not want to be told that they cannot use it as they see fit. Dow argues that its their own security measures (e.g. cordoning off high risk tanks and conducting background checks on employees) are effective enough deterrents.

To date Congress has only passed an interim law, in 2006, that actually removes power from the Department of Homeland Security. You heard it right. The chemical industry succeeded in using one branch of the federal government to stop the other, more aggressive one. The law prohibits the federal government from requiring companies to take the most important step: replacing dangerous chemicals and processes with inherently safer ones. Even the New York Times has editorialized against it, castigating members of Congress who "have been more worried about currying favor with the chemical industry, a major campaign donor, than with safeguarding their constituents from this serious threat."

The Dow Lobby

In 2006 Senators Obama and Biden supported alternative legislation, the "Chemical Security and Safety Act" (S. 2486), introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) that would, among other things, require the industry to adopt inherently safer technology, permit state authority to be protected when its safeguards were stronger than the federal government and offer stronger protections for whistleblowers. It has gone nowhere.

During the Presidential campaign season momentum, for chemical change has heated up. The bipartisan Partnership for a Secure America gave the Bush Administration a "C" for its efforts to prevent nuclear terrorist, chemical terrorism and biological terrorism. In its September 2008 report they asserted that a major terrorist attack on the U.S. is "still very real," and the country is "still dangerously vulnerable."

In October, thirty environmental, labor and government groups began a counter lobbying effort to push Congress to establish far tougher chemical factory security regulations. These groups include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the United Steelworkers, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. On October 10th they sent a letter to all members of Congress citing its "unfinished business." The letter said, "US chemical plants remain one of the sectors of America's infrastructure most vulnerable to terrorist attacks. . .however the failure of the 110th Congress to replace the flawed temporary law with a comprehensive chemical security statute continues to leave millions of Americans in danger of unnecessary risk."

The interim law is set to expire on October 4, 2009. Dow Chemical, DuPont and the industry are ferociously working behind the scenes to make this interim law permanent.

Obama and Biden rarely addressed this issue on the campaign trail.

Is Obama Courting Dow's CEO for Energy Secretary?

As is clear when it comes to questions of homeland security, Dow endangers or destroys environmental health on two levels: chronically, via the steady toxic invasion of land and blood (like dioxin, air pollution, pesticides) or through the risk of a dramatic "pulse" event like an accident, explosion or act of terrorism.

How will an Obama Presidency respond to Dow? Will it be prepared to contest a powerful corporation that flaunts its disobedience to federal homeland security guidelines to such a degree that it is one of the weakest links in preventing another catastrophic 911?

Early indications are disconcerting. According to the Saginaw News of November 12, Dow's CEO Andrew Liveris is being considered for the Energy Secretary Post. So widespread were reports (trial balloons?) of this prospective appointment that Liveris released a statement last week: saying "While it is certainly an honor for me to be mentioned in some reports about this incredibly important leadership role, my focus is on leading the Dow Chemical Company and making our company competitive in this ever-changing and extremely challenging global economic environment."

Such a choice might seem a surprise when considering Dow Chemical's multiple public health assaults, risks and destructions. Why reward such an entity? The answer seems clear when considering Liveris's ideological views on energy, and his growing celebrity status in the corporate world. Like Obama, Liveris strongly supports nuclear power, offshore drilling and "clean coal." He is also an advocate for increasing efficiencies through alternative energy sources (Dow manufactures solar roofing shingles and wind turbine blades).

New Industrial Policy: U.S. To Pay for Dow's Oil?
Lower its Tax Rate?

But there's more. In a revealing interview in USA Today (August 17, 2008) Liveris cautioned that without US federal support to protect profit margins the chemical industry will be forced to move factories and jobs overseas. "Frankly, when free markets prevail, we have to shut down factories and replace them overseas in places like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, Russia, Brazil, Thailand, China and Oman, where governments lock in energy availability, guarantee prices and de-risk our investment. The chemical industry is down 120,000 jobs in the USA in the last five years. Manufacturing as a whole is down 3 million jobs. Dow is investing $40 billion to $50 billion in the next five to seven years. A lot of that is already in flight to countries where governments work with us through their national oil companies. In Brazil, it's through a company that converts sugar cane into ethanol, a much better energy converter than corn."

"So we lose jobs unless the government subsidizes your energy costs?" Liveris was asked.

"It's common in many countries to regulate the price of energy inputs to spur economic downstream investment. It's saying that energy is a national resource. You can burn it or add value to it. For every $1 Dow Chemical uses in oil or gas, we generate $20 of GDP. You need to give certainty to those making large capital investments. Not just chemicals but steel, paper, metals, even cars. That's how other countries are building industries," he replied.

Instead of responding to homeland security demands to use safer chemicals and technologies - which would cost relatively little - Dow Chemical is going on a buying binge. After a recent merger with an $11 billion Kuwaiti petrochemical company, Dow flaunted its power by purchasing Philadelphia's chemical giant Rohm and Haas for $15 billion this summer. By orchestrating this massive concentration and centralization of chemistry capital, Liveris is in better position to garner influence. That, and the fact that Liveris is going on a Pied Piper campaign for a new "energy policy" and gasp, "industrial policy" for the U.S.

In September Liveris announced to the Detroit Economic Club that Dow Chemical and Ford Motor Co. will co-chair a National Summit on energy and industrial policy next June 2009 at Ford Field. Molded after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which Liveris attended, some 5,000 business, political and academic leaders are expected to attend this conference. . Liveris titled the Detroit speech "Working Towards a (New) U.S. Industrial Policy." One of its chief planks: lowering the corporate tax rate.

Dow's Industrial Legacy: Fines, Cover-Ups and 9/11s

How much authority should Dow Chemical be granted over national industrial policy when it brazenly causes case after case of industrial pollution, news of which arrives at such a rapid fire clip to require constant monitoring by groups like the Dow Accountability Network?

In February 2008 the Center for Public Integrity published a censored government report that revealed that Great Lakes Chemical pollution affects up to 9 million people in the region, including cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee. The 400 page leaked study was called, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern. Elevated rates of infant mortality and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer are said to be related to toxic stews of dioxin, PCBs, lead, mercury and six other hazardous pollutants. The report was commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation's top public health agency at the request of the International Joint Commission, a joint U.S./Canada body. The report has been reviewed and re-reviewed since 2004 and even though there were a few legitimate issues about its content, after its completion in 2007, it was suppressed for 7 months.

In June 2008 Dow was ordered, along with Boeing, to pay 12,000 Colorado homeowners $925 million for contaminating their properties with plutonium waste that leaked from their Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons factory.

In August 2008 Dow indicated that it is preparing to sue Canada over Quebec's province-wide ban on the residential use of weed-killing chemicals. Dow argues that NAFTA offers legal protections for U.S. investors against this ban.

A fascinating look at the corporate culture of Dow Chemical was reported by journalist Marla Cone in the Los Angeles Times (9/19/08). In 2006 twelve of the largest chemical companies including Dow, BASF, DuPont and Rohm and Haas (now owned by Dow) hired consultants to explore ways to help make the chemical industry more environmentally friendly. The consultants concluded, after a year of research, that the industry was "fiercely defensive" with a "bunker mentality" that was impeding progress. They said that Dow's environmental initiatives were "reactive not proactive." The report was published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Dow's reactive nature is evident when we one considers its current resistance to federal Homeland Security mandates which risk another 9/11. But it is made even clearer when one adopts an anthropological perspective to reveal how Dow Chemical has already been a party to two other events that parallel 9/11.

Two other parallel 9/11s? Yes, if we define "a 9/11" as a cataclysmic event that results in immediate wholesale killing, terror, and destruction of a homeland and its people. And if, to boot, it took place on September 11th.

Dow's First Involvement in an Event that Paralleled 9/11

The first 9/11 involved a man who, like Obama, was a community organizer who was elected a senator in his country. Appalled at the widespread injustice he witnessed, he decided to run for President. Although a long shot he won. Salvador Allende was the first democratically elected Marxist President. It was Chile in 1970.

Allende began a series of reforms to benefit Chile's workers and peasants. As part of this effort he nationalized some US companies like Anaconda (involved in copper extraction) and Dow Chemical. As a result many U.S. companies including Dow formed a Chile Ad Hoc Committee. It was dedicated to working with the U.S. government in "handling the Chile problem." Dow Chemical joined others in a destabilization campaign that included delayed payments, office closings and credit denial. Three years later Chile's General Pinochet, with the support of the US government, toppled Allende killing about 3,000 people in the immediate aftermath.

The date of the coup? September 11, 1973.

Dow was the first company to receive a phone call from Pinochet's military asking it to come back, which Dow readily accepted (a Dow official later saluting the economic "miracle" of Pinochet), according to E.N. Brandt, a 40 year public relations man at Dow who made this observation in his official history of the corporation titled, Growth Company, DOW Chemical's First Century (1997).

Dow's Second Involvement in an Event that Paralleled 9/11

On February 6, 2001 Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide dramatically improving its market share and becoming the country's second largest chemical company at that time. But Dow also assumed liability the worst industrial accident of all time, even though it argued that the terms of the acquisition protected it. The accident took place in Bhopal India on December 3, 1984. Just after midnight, 40 tons of poisonous substances leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide plant there exposing a half million people to the gases, which hung over the city for hours. It remains the worst industrial accident of all time, with an estimated 7,000 deaths and 190,000 injuries the first few days and over 15,000 claims of deaths to date. Given the death counts, the prolonged agony, and the persistent callous treatment of its victims, the Union Carbide disaster is worse than the Sept. 11 tragedy.

Dow Chemical has been the object of an international campaign against it for eight years now. Legally Dow was sued as early as November 2001 when a U.S. federal judge upheld 7 of the 15 complaints by Bhopal plaintiffs. It seems incredible, but true, that nearly 5,000 death claims have yet to be compensated, and the 10,237 claims that were paid averaged just $3,000 per life. Union Carbide did not clean up its site after the explosion; nor has Dow Chemical.

The site still contains about 8,000 tons of carcinogenic chemicals, but the cleanup has been blocked by court battles and debates over corporate responsibility. Dow argues that India should clean it up. But the Indian government argues in court that Dow should pay about $25 million to clean up the site.

Dow is not in the clear by any means. In February 2008 India's Chemical Ministry delivered an unexpected blow to Dow arguing, "If there is any legal liability [for Bhopal], it would have to be borne by Dow Chemical." The Ministry argued that unless remediative action is taken, some of Dow's investments in India could be at risk. And, on another front, just this past November 3rd, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York reinstated a lawsuit which contends that thousands of people in India were exposed to polluted drinking water after the 1984 Union Carbide toxic-gas disaster in Bhopal. The Court said that a lower court improperly threw out the case and sent the lawsuit back to a Manhattan federal court judge for further proceedings.

Summary Advice for Obama (no Illusions)

Dow Chemical, like the failed bankers of Wall Street, acts like a drug addict in its quest for profits. The company admits as much. "Growth [is] the opiate we're all hooked on. . ." said Frank Popoff, former CEO of DOW Chemical in Growth Company, DOW Chemical's First Century. Indeed, Dow seems to view anyone who challenges its growth manifesto as a terrorist. Keith McKennon, DOW research director from 1985-1990 told a writer that "During that period Dow transmogrified from the company that sets up antiaircraft guns to shoot down EPA flyover planes to the company that exists today." The flyover planes were employed by the EPA to collect air samples because Dow would not permit the EPA to enter its premises. McKennon doesn't say if he's kidding or not about the guns.

If Rahm Emanuel, the new Chief of Staff, was indeed outraged at the Bush Administration's firing of the EPA's Mary Gade, then one of Obama's first acts as President should be to rehire her. Then the President should orchestrate a Midwest summit on environmental health pollution, using the suppressed CDC report as a blueprint. Michigan's Michelle Hurd Riddick, a nurse and leader of the Lone Tree Council should be invited as a keynote speaker.

The President should next resuscitate his "Chemical Security and Safety Act" (S. 2486) of 2006 and conjoin that with the calls of the Kean Commission as well as labor and environmental groups calling for: safer and more secure chemicals and processes, including all categories of facilities in this coverage such as water treatment plants, allow states to set more protective security standards if they so wish, require collaboration between the Department of Homeland Security, the EPA and other agencies to circumvent regulatory redundancy, and dramatically protect the rights of industry whistleblowers.

Regarding whistleblower protection, Jeff Ruch should be considered to head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ruch is head of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and has done a remarkable job over the past decade in monitoring the federal government's environmental crimes and misdemeanors all while fighting to protect government whistleblowers. As Ruch told E Magazine recently, "If you brought in somebody that believed in the mission and surrounded himself with others that believed in the mission, it would be like water in the desert. The desert flowers would bloom." Ruch is such a man.

I recommend epidemiologists Dr. Devra Davis and Dr. Ruth Etzel, M.D. as candidates for the Centers for Disease Control. Davis is the award winning author of the Secret History of the War on Cancer (2007). Etzel is the writer of the groundbreaking "Green Book" of Pediatric Environmental Health (2004) that informs busy clinicians about environmental causes of maladies. Both have extensive government experience.

Both Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren, two well-known educational scholars and activists, should be considered to lead the U.S. Department of Education.

Of course these appointments are merely tactics in an overarching strategy that is holistic and transformative.

Ecological Socialism: The Change we're Looking For

In the fall the right wing spent a good deal of time castigating Presidential candidate Obama as a socialist or Marxist. Neither one is true. But the intended effect is to close off all debate on allegedly discredited forms of social analysis and practice. The ruling class is worried. Last weekend President Bush was busy reminding assembled world leaders that there is no need to throw out capitalism.

In fact, issues of socialism or barbarism rise to the fore at this historic time just as they did with the last Great Depression. And so we can be reminded that it was a chemical industry executive, Irenee DuPont, a former President of DuPont and a founder of the American Liberty League, who was involved in the alleged plot to overthrow FDR in the 1930s. Dow Chemical apparently took a pass on that one.

If one looks squarely at reality they would have to concur with anthropologist Laura Nader who writes with coauthor Ugo Mattei in their just released book, Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal (2008) that "Corporate control over political institutions, in the USA and abroad, is part of what we have described as plunder or what the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration regarded as fascism in 1938. As a result of these transformations, today, of the 200 strongest economies in the world, only 99 are states, the majority being politically unaccountable, profit-motivated global corporations." (Mattei and Nader: 212)

One would have to adopt the anthropological perspective of her brother Ralph who famously asserted at an American Anthropology Association conference in 2001 that "anthropologists need not go to all Four Corners of the globe to deconstruct the ideologies of corporate power." For example, he noted, "General Motors has more rights than most U.S. citizens. The most animistic, inorganic institution in the world is the modern corporation . . .it's given the constitutional right to remain silent. He said that "studying up means getting behind those images."

In this tradition, the writings of social theorist James O'Connor have never been more apropos. In his powerful and prescient book "Natural Causes, Essays in Ecological Marxism (Guilford Press: 1998) he argues that the dynamics of capital revolve around not one, but two central contradictions. The first involves the traditional understanding of the contradiction between capitalism's productive forces and its productive relations. Capitalism's relentless motions to accumulate and "grow" come up against the necessary contradictions of overproduction, underproduction, the proletarianization of labor and worker unrest. The second contradiction of capital addresses the ecological crises of our times. It arises from the way capital limits itself by impairing its own social and environmental conditions. O'Connor is tough on the traditional Marxists for undertheorizing the role of ecology. But he is equally tough on most (liberal) ecologists for not reading enough political economy and Marx.

Dow Chemical's current drive to create a new social structure of accumulation, borne of monopolization, green efficiencies, capital flight threats, widespread pollution (external costs of production) and a move towards a more forceful role in "industrial policy," with Dow as a principle beneficiary, confirm the theory.

The two contradictions of capitalism are on full display, if only one looks a little harder. One would hope that the Obama Administration takes this holistic, cross-cultural, and necessarily radical (or root) view of reality. The seeds are there. After all, Obama's mother was an anthropologist.

Brian McKenna lives in Michigan. He can be reached at: mckenna193@aol.com

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