Today's Stories

May 22, 2008

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Three's Company, But Two's a Crowd

Restoration Boulevard

By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN

With great admiration for her spirit and tenacity, a fraction of which if either Al Gore or John Kerry had he would have become President, I still refuse to support Hillary Clinton.

My reason: no senator who helped start the Iraq War deserves to be elected; even less so if that person then offered a cock-and-bull story about having thought the vote was to strengthen the President's hand to send in weapons inspectors to Iraq. Not only does the title of the bill (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002) render this claim nonsensical, is it also not rather silly to say something which can be demolished by an obvious question,

"Why then, Senator, you must have protested from the rooftops on March 20, 2003, when you found out that the President had gone to war without trying to put inspectors back in?"

That she puts forth this claim shows the contempt with which politicians view a press which has given fresh meaning to "Times New Roman", to say nothing of their respect for a public which is beyond caring even about the most brazen lies. No sane dispensation would have refrained from making that question its permanent refrain. But then we are talking of Bush's America.

So what exactly did Hillary Clinton do on March 20, 2003, when began the war that would spell her presidential Waterloo? Her Senate website reproduces her speech on the Senate floor that day. It contains some references to the war, but no hint of protest at her vote on the War Resolution having been misused by the president to validate a preemptive war. Far from registering indignation, it does not even express regret that the war was launched. Instead it ends with these words:

"I hope Madam President that we will decide to put aside previously existing ideological and partisan positions and come together in this Senate as we're coming together in this country on behalf of the military and on behalf of the country that they are fighting to defend. Thank you."

If Senator Clinton's was an act of commission, her rival's was one of (progressive) omission. Here is Obama's run up to the wicket (a cricket expression for trajectory):

March 3, 2003: Obama condemns Democratic weakness in a few well-chosen words:
“What’s tempting is to take the path of least resistance and keep quiet on the issue, knowing that maybe in two or three or six months, at least the fighting will be over and you can see how it plays itself out,” said Obama, a state senator from Chicago. (AP)


March 17, 2003:
Thousands of demonstrators packed Daley Center Plaza for a two- hour rally Sunday [two days before Bush issued his ultimatum against Saddam and four days before the invasion], then marched through downtown in Chicago's largest protest to date against an Iraq war. Crowd estimates from police and organizers ranged from 5,000 to 10,000.... State Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago) told the crowd, 'It's not too late' to stop the war." (Chicago Sun Times)

March 20, 2003: On the day of the War itself, Obama began mouthing the mom-and-apple-pie political line which any viewer of cable news can repeat in his sleep:
“Once the president makes the decision to go in, our priority has to be with the safety and success of our troops,” state Sen. Barack Obama, D-Chicago, said from Springfield, where the state Legislature is in its spring session. (AP)

On March 28, 2003, on Aaron Brown's CNN show (by now any moral disquiet is quickly banished. This is a now a pol in full running-for-office gear.)
BARACK OBAMA, ILLINOIS STATE LEGISLATURE: Well, I think that, obviously, the overriding concern right now is safety of the troops. And, you know, I’ve been traveling around the state and at least once or twice a day, I’ll have people come up to me whose son’s were reservists who have been called up, daughters who have been called up. And, obviously, people really are concerned about making sure they’re safe. And that’s true across the board, whether people support or do not support the war. But I do think there’s an underlying anxiety, in part because of their concerns about America’s role in the world and the aftermath of the war. And, in part, because they’re concerned about domestic policy and how this war is going to impact the economy, which is going through very tough times in Illinois.

It didn't occur to (then) State Senator Obama to add that of course, the safest thing for the troops would have been to keep them away from an unnecessary (per his previous position) war.

Caution was now firmly ensconced. Andrew Young's autobiography is called, An Easy Consience, but the title about covers Obama's career the next few years. This is how the Boston Globe saw it last year, looking back:
But a review of Obama's record during his 26 months in Congress reveals that he has taken a more nuanced and cautious position on the war than the full-bore opposition.

Campaigning for the Illinois Senate seat in 2003 and 2004, Obama scolded Bush for invading Iraq and vowed he would "unequivocally" vote against an additional $87 billion to pay for it. Yet since taking office in January 2005, he has voted for four separate war appropriations, totaling more than $300 billion.

(That $87 billion, presumably, is the figure that featured in the famous 'I was for it before I was against it' episode which helped sink the USS John Kerry in November 2004. Of course, standing against the Grand Canyon that summer to declare that given the same Iraq vote now, he would vote exactly the same way, might have also contributed).

Bill Clinton, who whatever his faults is not politically ignorant, and can spot political posturing as well as anyone, caught Obama out on this, calling his record and Hillary Clinton's practically indistinguishable once Obama got to the US Senate. Instead of following up, as he might have hoped, a bulldog media unrelenting in its pursuit of triviality instead latched on to his use of the words, 'fairy tale'. He may also have missed a tactical truism: who supported the war and who opposed it is scarcely the question either Democrats or the talk show hosts want to (re)visit. They are keenly aware of their rights under the Fifth Amendment even as they might occasionally forget those under the First.

Thus we have three choices for President: one off-his-rocker gaffe-of-the-day Republican warmonger, an oily man hoping to replace the oilmen now in power. Then we have the two Democratic candidates, both of prodigious intelligence matched by prodigious dishonesty. Clinton's fibbing on issues large and small has been been well recorded, including in a scorching article by Jeffrey St. Clair on Counterpunch yesterday. Elsewhere, Counterpuncher Evelyn Pringle has written a multi-part expose of Obama and his alleged corruption problems.

But we're getting big on symbolism in America (another sign of third-world status?), and make much of the red-hot prospect of a woman or a black-white candidate becoming president, even as the latter runs away from his whiteness as eagerly as the former is happy to flaunt hers. It is imporatant to note that if one attitude is racist, so is the other. It is a wonder McCain doesn't use his senior-citizen cache, but then even he knows America is not partial to age.

This is the choice eight years -- of what should have been political graduate school for the country -- has left us with. At the end of it all, popular will has been weak where it has not been wanting, with no systematic political effort to build or bolster it Attending a Barack or Hillary rally and shouting Yes We Can or Hill-A-Ry is good in normal times, but in times of executive abuse, people's power is built when men and women are ready to do more, including going to jail. About only public figure who has shown willingness to do so is Cindy Sheehan, with whom neither Democratic Candidate would be caught dead, and whom the press views as deranged. Not for nothing did Gandhi caution Indians not to be confuse freedom with the end of British Rule:

"Real Swaraj (freedom) will come, not by acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when abused."

Thomas Jefferson said something similar. How free are we, by this reckoning? Abuse after abuse has punctuated our recent public life, with so many of our so-called leaders watching mutely, in those instances when they have not actively connived. Obama actually celebrates the fact that in this election, George Bush and Dick Cheney will not be on the ballot, and the crowd cheers. If he is angry that his country let two war criminals get away he doesn't mention it.

Some election, this. Some leadership. Eight years after Florida, the Democratic Party still goes along with elections without paper trails. Ready on Day 1? Not ready on Day 2920 (365 times 8) is more like it.

I have a suggestion: Ron Paul and Ralph Nader should unite to put together a platform with an single-point agenda: to restore the Constitution and the Rule of Law. All else can follow.

Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com.

 

 

 

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