Today's Stories

March 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis?

March 25, 2009

Robin Blackburn
Media Revolution or Mirage?

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

David Rosen
Sexting: a First Amendment Challenge for Obama

Jonathan Cook
Turkey's Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers

Dean Baker
Billions More for Failed Banks

Ron Jacobs
Karzai on a String

Russell Mokhiber
Corporate Liberals vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Slice and Dice on Card Check

Dave Lindorff
Geithner's Power Grab

Sarah Knopp
LA Teacher's Sit-In Over Layoffs

Website of the Day
How to Create an Animal Rights "Terrorist"

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

March 26, 2009

The Truth, the Whole Truth ....

Will the Cellphone Please Take the Stand?

By KEITH NEWELL

Police misconduct has always been a serious problem in the United States, and the police typically receive the benefit of the doubt in the justice system. The claims that officers make are taken seriously, even if they don’t add up.

But in the era of camera phones and video sharing Web sites like YouTube, civil rights advocates are gaining ground. It is now easier to document crimes, including unlawful police activity, and to share the video clips with millions of viewers on the Internet.

Early on New Year’s Day, at a subway station in Oakland, California, a policeman shot Oscar Grant in the back. Grant, a young black man, wasn’t fleeing a crime scene. He wasn’t armed or behaving in a threatening way. Detained by Bay Area Rapid Transit police as a suspect in a train scuffle, Grant had been restrained face-down, with his arms behind him, when Officer Johannes Mehserle drew his service pistol and shot him once. Grant was taken to the hospital, where he died.

It was a remarkable incident of police brutality. Officer Mehserle resigned in the aftermath of the shooting, and the Alameda County district attorney’s office charged him with murder. But perhaps more remarkable than the incident—or even the murder charge—is the crucial piece of evidence that prosecutors will use to make their case: amateur video footage of the shooting, filmed by witnesses with camera phones.

In court, Mehserle won’t be able to assert that Grant was brandishing a weapon, or that he had taken a hostage, or any of the other lies that might otherwise accompany a fatal police shooting. Instead, Mehserle will have to explain why, as the judge and jury will plainly see, he shot a restrained man in the back.

The influence of video evidence is enormous. Watching a police officer behave like a violent criminal is unsettling — it has a more powerful effect than other forms of evidence. The amateur footage of Rodney King’s beating by police infuriated the black community in Los Angeles, and helped lead to the rioting that erupted after the officers’ acquittal in April 1992.

In the week following Grant’s shooting, the camera phone footage aired on a local television channel, KTVU, and was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times from the channel’s Web site. The managing editor of the site told the San Francisco Chronicle that the video had “taken on a life of its own,” becoming “one of those phenomenons of the Internet world.”

The video fueled anger among Oakland residents, and protests in the city on January 7 devolved into riots. More than a hundred people were arrested after angry protestors smashed up cars and businesses.

Of course, most people will never witness a fatal police shooting, let alone film it. But amateur videos documenting other cases of police misconduct demonstrate the powerful effect of “citizen journalism.”

Last summer in New York City, at a Critical Mass bike ride in Times Square, rookie cop Patrick Pogan shoved a cyclist to the ground and arrested him, charging him with attempted assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct.

The incident was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube, where it has been viewed more than two million times, prompting coverage from the New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, the Associated Press, and CNN.

The police report about the incident, available online at The Smoking Gun, is farcical. Officer Pogan wrote that the cyclist, Christopher Long, knocked him to the ground: “the defendant [Long] steered the defendant’s bicycle in the direction of deponent [Pogan] and drove defendant’s bicycle directly into deponent’s body, causing deponent to fall to the ground and causing deponent to suffer lacerations on deponent’s forearms.”

The assertion is patently false. The footage clearly shows Pogan tackling Long and slamming him into the pavement, while witnesses on the street shout in surprise.

Pogan claimed that Long was cycling recklessly, “forcing multiple vehicles to stop abruptly or change their direction in order to avoid hitting the defendant.” In fact, there were no motor vehicles heading in any direction, just cyclists riding in the same direction. Pogan said Long swerved his bike toward him; the video shows that he swerved away from him.

As Long was being arrested, he told Officer Pogan, “You’re assaulting me. I’m gonna have your badge.” Thanks to the impact of the video clip, he was right. Prosecutors dropped the charges against Long, and Pogan was indicted for assault and filing a false report. He later quit the police department.

But as one Critical Mass cyclist told the New York Post, “If it wasn’t caught on video, people would not have believed it.”

Of course, there are risks involved in filming the police. Last month, a Roman Catholic priest, James Manship, was arrested in a convenience store in East Haven, Connecticut, after he videotaped officers who were harassing the shop’s Hispanic employees. The police report, published online by the New Haven Independent, suggests that cops subdued a dangerous man who silently crept up on them with a weapon, making Officer David Cari feel “unsafe”:

“This officer saw Manship withdraw an unknown shiny silver object out of his coat pocket and had cuffed [sic] the object with his hands in order to conceal the item from police…Manship stopped a short distance from this officer’s position behind a store shelf and had fully extended his arms forward and pointed his hands towards this officer while his hands were still cupped over a silver object…Not knowing if Manship was holding a camera or a possible weapon this officer asked Manship to show me what was in his hands. Manship did not answer this officer…”

These are serious charges. But Manship’s video footage, available online, shows what actually happened. Immediately upon noticing that Manship is filming him, Officer Cari asks, “Is there a reason why you have a camera on me?” Manship replies, “Yes.” Cari asks, “Why’s that?” Manship says, “I’m taking a video of what’s going on here.” Cari storms over, saying, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with that camera,” and snatches the device away, ending the recording.

The police report claims that Manship then “bladed his body in a [sic] aggressive manner,” repeatedly shouting, “I’m a priest and you cannot touch me.” Cari writes that Manship then “started to fight” with the police and “struggled” as he was arrested. The co-owner of the store, who witnessed the arrest, said that Father Manship submitted peacefully, without a word.

Although the shop in question has security cameras, the police arrested Manship outside their range, perhaps intentionally.

But when officers don’t know they are being filmed, as in a recent case in New York City, they behave very differently.

The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are currently investigating two officers in the rape of an intoxicated woman last December in the East Village neighborhood.

Unbeknownst to the cops, the security camera in a local bar recorded them as they escorted the woman—who was extremely drunk and had been vomiting in a taxi—into her apartment building nearby. The video shows the officers leaving the building seven minutes after entering. So far, so good—police apparently helping a vulnerable person get home safely.

But, as the video shows, the officers returned to her building twice that night, in one instance using the woman’s keys to get inside, and attempted to hide from the view of the building’s cameras as they snuck in and out.

During their second visit, police remained inside her apartment for 17 minutes; during their third and final visit, 34 minutes.

One of the cops, Franklin Mata, recently confessed to investigators that his partner, Kenneth Moreno, raped the woman while Mata stood by.

Anonymous police sources told the New York Post that witness statements and video evidence prove the woman was “falling-down drunk” and could not have consented to sex.

Hours after the officers left her apartment, the victim awoke “in pain and with signs of trauma,” and was hospitalized, the Post reported.

“I’ve been raped,” the woman told her friends. “It was the police.” According to the New York Times, her friends contacted the bar’s owner, who gave the video footage to the district attorney’s office.

Investigators searching Officer Moreno’s locker after the incident found a packet of heroin hidden in a cigarette box and a list of nearly a dozen women’s names and addresses.

Neither officer has been arrested; both have been put on desk duty while the investigation continues. But if the case makes it into court, the officers will have a hard time explaining what they were doing for almost an hour in the apartment of an inebriated woman who was hospitalized hours later after being raped.

And their attorneys will have to scour the NYPD Patrol Guide to find anything authorizing officers to confiscate the keys of an intoxicated person in order to facilitate breaking and entering and sexual assault.

Surveillance has traditionally been a tool of the powerful, not the powerless. As these examples demonstrate, that is changing.

After it was revealed that police spied on non-violent protest groups in the lead-up to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, city council member Charles Barron called for the resignation of police commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Barron said, “If [Kelly] wants to put somebody under surveillance around violence, he should do that to his police officers, who are out of control.”

It’s a good idea, and should be enacted in police departments nationwide. But citizens have already figured out how to do so on their own.

Keith Newell is an intern at The Nation. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. He can be reached at keith.p.newell@gmail.com

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