Today's Stories

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

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

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

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

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

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

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

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

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

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

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

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

March 5 , 2009

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

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

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

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

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

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

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

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

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

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

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

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

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

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

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

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

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

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 10 , 2009

The Mysterious "Amar Singh"

What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

By VIJAY PRASHAD

The citadel of the Clinton Foundation cannot be breached. The former President’s foundation settled on the 14th floor of an elegant building on 125th Street in Harlem, across the road, perhaps to Bill’s dismay, from a health food store. Flaxseed carrot juice is no substitute for a McDonalds’ milkshake, but fortunately for the former President there are many good West Indian take-aways just down the block. If Transparency International did a study of Foundations, Bill Clinton’s outfit wouldn’t do too well on the Global Corruption Barometer. What would trip it up is the exacting secrecy of the Foundation, which shies away from revelations about all aspects of its funding. When Hilary Clinton ran for president, the Foundation sniffed at calls to open up its list of donors. When President Obama appointed Hilary Clinton to be his Secretary of State, the curmudgeons of propriety asked the same questions again. This time it was harder to be a scofflaw. The Clinton Foundation sent two heavy hitters to meet with Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar of the Foreign Relations Committee to assuage them that no conflict of interest would exist: which is to say, that Bill Clinton would not actively raise money from those overseas whose interests might be in the diplomatic pouch of Secretary Clinton. The two senior people who went to see the Senators were Clinton Foundation CEO Bruce Lindsay (who has been called “Clinton’s consigliore”) and attorney Cheryl Mills (who is a member of “Hillaryland” and defended Bill Clinton in the impeachment trial). Kerry and Lugar could not shuck the two hard clams that sat before them. They didn’t get much, but at least it was something.

There was the symbolic gesture, which is that Bill Clinton agreed to step away from the day-to-day work of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). Created in 2005, the CGI is a kind of Clintonian Davos, a high-level conference of the glitterati to discuss the world’s problems, and to commit to some kind of action. It is vintage Bill Clinton, reminiscent of that famous Transition Economic Summit in Little Rock (December 1992), with Clinton surrounded by four hundred intellectuals and politicians, and mountains of binders, with his glasses in hand, leaning into them, learning, pushing, prodding. Unlikely that Bill Clinton is involved in the “day-to-day” of anything, so this is hardly a concession.

Additionally, Lindsay-Mills agreed to release a list of the 205,000 donors to the Clinton Foundation. Most of the names are of those who gave less than $250 (there are pages and pages of Smiths, for instance). But the real names are at the front of the list, those who gave in the millions. Here there are many obvious names. Foundations that share the mission of the Clinton Foundation on issues such as AIDS and health-care are legion: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the Princess Diana Memorial Fund and on. There are the wealthy moguls, whether lesser known American ones (real estate’s Stephen Bing and media’s Fred Eychaner) or better known foreign ones (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia’s richest man, Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi). There are some shadowy donors, such as the “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” but nothing extraordinary.

One name did raise serious questions in India, both within the parliament and in the media. Less attention has been paid to this name in the United States (except a brief mention in the New York Times, December 10, 2008). Amar Singh, an Indian politician, is said to have given the Clinton Foundation between $5 million and $1 million dollars. In India, the revelation created a modest firestorm. How did Amar Singh get the $1 million, let alone the $5 million? In an affidavit filed when he was nominated to the upper house of the Indian parliament, Mr. Singh said that his net worth totaled just over $7 million. This is not all liquid cash – most of it is in fixed assets such as property, jewelry, cars, and investments in mutual funds. It is plain that he does not have the means to release $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. When the pressure mounted on him, Mr. Singh told the press that he did not donate any money to the Clinton Foundation, and that his name might have appeared on the list because he had actively urged others to donate to the Foundation. In other words, he was being honored for his work to get people to donate, but not for his own donation. Who those people are who gave the millions in his name cannot be determined. The Clinton Foundation is silent, and so is Amar Singh.

Amar Singh is a member of the Samajwadi, or Socialist, Party, although its commitments to socialism ended a long time ago. It is now a populist party with a very close attachment to one or two major conglomerates (such as the Sahara Group). Pehle hum, samaj baad mein – first me, society afterwards. Clinton’s associate Bruce Lindsay does not like to be called his consigliore, but Amar Singh would welcome the title to define his relationship with the Samajwadi boss, Mulayam Singh Yadav. Yadav’s party remains a force in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh, where he has been the Chief Minister thrice (1989-1991, 1993-1995 and 2003-2007). During this third run, Amar Singh was the head of the Uttar Pradesh Development Council. From that perch, he reached out to Bill Clinton and his Foundation. Amar Singh wanted Clinton to come to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh’s capital, to inaugurate a Rural Health Mission. Clinton agreed to come in September 2005, although the terms of his four-day visit are not clear. The Uttar Pradesh government spent just short of $1 million on the Clinton trip (did they also donate funds to the Clinton Foundation in the name of Amar Singh?). The Chief Minister’s home, 5, Kalidas Marg, was converted into a palace, with wine in goblets and fish and kebabs on enormous trays, as well as Shaimak Davar’s dancers performing for the assembled glamor. Among the many famous guests (including industrialist Anil Ambani and Subroto Roy and actors Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan) was Sant Singh Chatwal. Boss of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, and money-meister in general, Chatwal came under a cloud of suspicion in 1994 over the bilking of $9 million from Indian banks, and in more recent times he was chased by the IRS and the New York State government over unpaid taxes (to the tune of $10 or so million). Chatwal is a trustee of the Bill Clinton Foundation, and apparently was the man who brokered the friendship between the Clintons and Amar Singh. “I am very honored that I have been invited here to work for HIV/AIDS,” said Clinton to the gathering. “I am honored that I have the opportunity to work for the socio-economic development of this great state.” Mulayam Singh Yadav then thanked Clinton for bringing Amar Singh onto his Clinton Global Initiative.

Thus far, nothing seems amiss. But things take a peculiar turn in the Summer of 2008. In early July, a series of hastily organized meetings brought Amar Singh to the center of Indian politics. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was eager to ink a deal with the United States that, among other things, would almost bring India into the nuclear club. Not being a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and of having tested nuclear bombs in 1998, India was a quasi-pariah state in the nuclear world. When the Bush administration sought an ally to help isolate Iran, it turned to India. If India set aside plans to create a “peace pipeline” from Iran through Pakistan to India, and if India took a “reasonable” (pro-US) position in the International Atomic Energy Agency, then the US would ensure that India gain access to nuclear fuel and technology, even as it was not part of the NPT regime. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance maintained its parliamentary majority through a unique mechanism, which is that the Communist parties supported it (although they did not join the Government), as long as the UPA followed through on a Common Minimum Program agreed upon by the Communists and the Congress-UPA. One of the elements in the Program is that India must follow an independent foreign policy. The nuclear deal was the dénouement, and the Communists threatened to withdraw their support. It was into this breach that Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav brought the thirty-nine Members of Parliament from the Samajwadi Party into the fray. With their support, and minus the Communists, the Congress-UPA would manage to squeak through a “trust vote” in the Indian Parliament. Amar Singh was the floor manager of the moment, ensuring the loyalty of most of his parliamentarians, striking the deal with the Congress, and pushing other independents to give their vote to the government in the name of “national interest” (at the same time as suitcases of cash found their way into the homes of dithering parliamentarians, or at least that is what some of them alleged on the floor of the Parliament during the trust vote on 22 July). Money might have changed hands. Rumor mills pointed to the Samajwadi Party as the bag carriers (and three members of the Hindu Right directly pointed their fingers at Amar Singh’s party). On a side note, it might not have been the money that sealed the deal: Samajwadi leader Kishore Samrite conducted a “sacrifice” (yagna), at which 319 animals were killed to appease Goddess Kamakhya, whose ministrations might have lead to a favorable trust vote.

The trust vote was not enough. Now the deal had to be passed by the US Congress. It is here that matters are murky. The long primary for the presidency and the rock-bottom support for Bush and his agenda meant that the US Congress had little incentive to do much of anything in the late Summer and Fall of 2008. Obama’s caution about the deal put the fear of failure through elite circles in New Delhi, and so pressure mounted to get Washington to act. Senator Hillary Clinton’s nod was considered to be essential. Amar Singh made a trip to Washington in mid-September 2008, and had a two hour dinner with Senator Clinton. When journalist Aziz Haniffa asked Singh if Senator Clinton “has promised and pledged to give all the support and try and pass [the deal] through in the Congress,” he said, “Yes…Because of the Clintons I am close to the Democrats and I had the occasion to meet people like (Congressman and India Caucus Chair) Gary Ackerman (chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South Asian Affairs) and Hillary and Bill. They all have a good regard for me. So, I did talk about the Indo-US nuclear deal and I wanted to get [their] assured support [for] the Indian government and [for] the deal.” When pushed, Amar Singh told Haniffa that Senator Clinton “assured me [of] her full cooperation and Sant Chatwal has been actively associated with it [lobbying on behalf of the deal].” Another lobbyist on India’s behalf was the government-financed, AIG, which spent $2 million on Congress’s vacillators between July and September (while on the government’s bailout pipeline). On October 2, 2008, Gandhi’s birthday, the Senate passed the deal. Hillary Clinton played a central role in the effort.

One of the outstanding questions left at the door of the Clinton Foundation is when did the money come in from “Amar Singh”? The Foundation refuses to say when it got the money, which means it is impossible to tell if the money came in during the summer of 2008, when Amar Singh had begun to lobby on behalf of the nuclear deal (and so, on behalf of the vast business interests served by this deal). The implications are staggering: did the money from “Amar Singh” strengthen the resolve of the Clintons to lobby on behalf of the deal in a Congress otherwise incapable of pushing any significant legislation? Did Amar Singh’s good friend act on ideological grounds or did their friendship have to be greased with a few million dollars? If only the Clinton Foundation would return my phone calls and satisfy my annoying curiosity.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu 

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