Today's Stories

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Beat a Mining Company: Why a Gold Goliath Threw in the Towel

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

Website of the Day
What If Edward Said Had Told This Joke?

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D. C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U. S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U. S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be"Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U. S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N. D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on"Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

July 21, 2008

Mexico Backs "El Negrito"

McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

By JOHN ROSS

When presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain brought his road show to Mexico City on the eve of U.S. Independence Day, he had one mission in mind: to have his portrait snapped with Mexico's most popular pin-up, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Photographers caught the bald-domed senator in prayerful profile framed against the image of the Guadalupana, itself miraculously imprinted upon the "tilma" or cactus-fiber tee-shirt of the Indian Juan Diego, which hangs behind the alter at the Basilica of the Virgin in the north of the Mexican capital. The poster of the senator and the Brown Madonna is sure to be a hot item on the campaign trail as McCain vies for a potential 18.2 million U.S. Latino votes in an uphill battle with presumptive Democratic candidate Barack Obama, currently leading his opponent 59%-29% in so-called Hispanic preferences.

McCain winged in from Colombia where he was badly upstaged by the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 15 other hostages held by the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces or FARC. During his whirlwind sprint through the Mexican capital, the Arizona senator huddled with President Felipe Calderon, whose own election in 2006 remains deeply questioned here (one cannot imagine a U.S. president receiving a Mexican candidate); spent a few hours with the Guadalupana at the Basilica (McCain claims to be a born-again Christian) where he reportedly shed a few tears (a first, if true); addressed Mexican industrialists and the American Chamber of Commerce to boost NAFTA; and visited the nerve center of Mexico's War on Drugs out in Ixtapalapa, a rough Mexico City neighborhood.

The candidate was accompanied at all times by Washington's ambassador here, Tony Garza, a Bush crony from his Texas days, and two Suburban loads of what knowledgeable observers identified as Blackwater World-Wide security personnel - Blackwater has contractual relations with the U.S. State Department which oversaw McCain's junket.

If confirmed, the McCain accompaniment marks the first sighting of that much critiqued security firm inside Mexico - Blackwater recently opened an enormous western training center three blocks from the Mexican border on the Otay Mesa in San Diego. The Blackwater identification was made by Fernando Suarez del Solar, a San Diego resident, whose son Jesus was the first Mexican to die in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Suarez, who labeled the Blackwater intrusion a violation of Mexico's sovereignty, picketed the McCain visit along with Mexican anti-war activists.

As is de rigor for U.S. politicos when addressing Mexico issues, the presumptive Republican limited his rap to three subsets: immigration, drugs, and terrorism (the last two sometimes conflated as narco-terrorism.) When it came to confronting this triumvirate of evils, McCain's mantra was "biometrics." Biometric identification of all Mexicans will help the United States to be a safer country, he told a carefully culled press conference and then got back on the plane with the shot of the Virgin of Guadalupe under his arm. So ended another day on the Mexican campaign trail with a U.S. presidential candidate.

Although the photo with the Brown Madonna was clearly for U.S. Latino consumption, McCain's visit was also aimed at a niche constituency here - Americans living abroad of which Mexico, with slightly under a million eligible voters, tops the list (Canada, with 600,000 runs a distant second.) U.S. consular officials here calculate that another 125,000 Mexicans with duel citizenship are also in the voter pool.

Although trying to figure out for whom Americans abroad vote is problematic - only 30% actually vote and their votes are counted in the states where they have legal residency - pollster John Zogby gave Democrats abroad a big edge on Republicans 58% to 35% in the 2004 presidential race. On the other side of the aisles, over a million of the 4.4 million U.S. citizens living overseas are military and government personnel who overwhelmingly vote Republican.

Despite their not-very-significant numbers, U.S. absentee voters out of the country cannot be overlooked - in 2000, George Bush was awarded Florida and the U.S. presidency by 500 overseas ballots from a military base in Germany.

U.S. presidential elections signal an all-year get-out-the-vote drive for the two parties' front groups south of the border. Campaigners set up web pages and buttonhole potential voters at embassy functions. Both the Republicans Abroad and their Democratic counterparts are guaranteed a visit from someone close to the candidate - Al Gore campaigned for Bill Clinton in 1996 and John Kerry's sister materialized in 2004 but McCain's touchdown was a first for an actual U.S. presidential candidate in political memory here.

Last January, Democrats Abroad invited Fernando Lugo, then candidate for the presidency of Paraguay and now its president, to address a meeting at the swank Grand Hotel in the city's old quarter. When Lugo, an ex-Catholic bishop who defends poor farmers, expressed his conviction that both he and Hillary Clinton were about to become the leaders of their respective countries, the banquet room - which was plastered with blue Hillary signs - erupted in wild cheers.

It should be noted that the Lugo event took place on the eve of the Iowa primaries when Barack Obama would first become a household name. The tide quickly turned to the popular Illinois senator. In the global Democratic primary held on the Internet February 21st, Democrats Abroad-Mexico registered 65.8% for Obama to only 32.7% for La Hillary. This month, Democrats Abroad will host a 2500 peso a plate dinner with Barack's reportedly Spanish-speaking half sister, Maya Soetano.

While Americans living abroad seem seriously attached to their parties and their candidates, Mexicans see the "presidenciales" up in El Norte as a kind of three-ring circus. The prolonged duel between Hillary Clinton and Obama fascinated this reporter's neighbors. Cutting hair in his stall at the Pino Suarez market, Lalo Miranda, 72, had one ear cocked to the noon news - the Mexican media covered the Democratic contest closely. "You can't believe it! A woman and an Afro-American! It's not possible in the United States!" Lalo exclaimed incredulously - only he didn't use the word "Afro-American." "Negrito", with all its racist connotations, is the usual descriptive for Obama in the Mexican street.

Lalo's bewilderment is an accurate measure of the Third World's disbelief at this unlikely turn of the political wheel. "Can a black man ("negrito") really be the President of the United States?" Carlos Diaz, leaning on the counter of his restaurant in the city's Centro Historico, asks an American friend. "Won't they kill him first?"

Blacks and Latinos have not always been political allies and the divide has deep scratch on both sides of the border, surfacing in telling and sometimes comical ways. Last week (July 9th) a Houston Texas Wal-Mart pulled the Mexican comic book "Memin Penguin" whose title character is an extraordinarily stereotypical black adolescent, off its racks because of objections from Afro-American customers. Quannell X, the Houston spokesperson for the New Black Panther Party and an Obama supporter was specifically agitated by a recent issue (actually a reprint - the strip has been long out of circulation) whose cover depicted Memin with grotesquely thick lips and bulging eyeballs, holding aloft a sign that was inscribed "Memin for Presidente!" which Quannell X took to be a not-so-veiled racist attack on the presumptive Democratic Party candidate. The complaint was backed up by Obama's Houston office, which claimed the comic book was a McCain plot.

Memin, a beloved Mexican pop icon enshrined in the pantheon of peoples' art here that includes cowboy crooner Pedro Infante, the pacifist super hero Kaliman, and El Santo, the crime-busting masked wrestler, has been in trouble with U.S. Afro-Americans before. After the Mexican government issued a stamp bearing Memin's likeness in 2004, even the Bush White House felt called upon to express its distaste. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton flew to Mexico City to remonstrate with President Vicente Fox who compounded the brouhaha by complaining that Mexicans in the U.S. work at jobs not even black people would take.

The Memin issue sold more stamps than any other in Mexican history - there were lines around the central post office. To assuage hurt feelings, Fox ordered that none of the Memin stamps be used on letters sent to the U.S.

Indeed, U.S. black perceptions of Memin are based on assumptions not born out by the strip's content. Memin is a typical teenager, a leader and an inveterate prankster among his friends, all of whom are light-skinned, middle-class Mexican kids. Memin does not speak in a stereotypical dialect and his mom, Dona Eufrosina is not a maid.

Indeed, "Memin Penguin" is often a platform for speaking out against racial discrimination. In one adventure, Memin and his teammates travel to Dallas Texas to play American football. When a waitress refuses to serve Memin an after-game hamburger because he is a "negrito", his pals make a big fuss and are dragged off to jail.

Mexico has a small Afro-Mexican population - probably 100,000 or less (Mexico does not census by race) - living in the mountains of Veracruz and strung out along the Costa Chica in Guerrero and Oaxaca states. Mexico was a slavocracy (slavery was abolished when Mexicans achieved liberation from Spain in 1821) and fully a third of the population during the Colonial era was black. Their chromosomes are still on display every day in the many colors of "La Raza."

Although Mexicans don't make many political distinctions between candidates for the White House, Obama's complexion is sure to carry the kind of weight that John F. Kennedy being a Catholic had back in 1960.

Now that the scuffling between "Hilaria" (who had deep backing in the Latina community) and "Baracko" has mellowed with the consolidation of an Obama candidacy, it appears that for the first time in U.S. electoral history, Latino voters, a mixed bag at best that includes Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, other Caribbeans, and Central Americans, and split along generational and class lines in addition to national origins, will overwhelmingly vote up an Afro American candidate. Even McCain's enlistment of the Virgin of Guadalupe in his cause, will not get the Arizona senator anywhere near the 40% of the Latino vote George Bush claimed in 2004. Indeed, until the Brown Madonna lent her support, McCain's only creds in trying to win the vote of the U.S.'s new Numero Uno minority was his status as a border state senator, and a kind of "some of my best friends" chauvinism.

On the other side of the ballot, Obama's dismal Spanish, limited to expropriating Cesar Chavez's "Si Se Puede" ("Yes We Can) theme song, isn't his strong suit among Spanish-speakers.

If American Mexicans have a stake in 2008, Mexican Mexicans don't see much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Both Obama and McCain voted for an immigration "reform" (the bill carried McCain's name) that mandated 700 miles of border wall and would have shipped half a million "paisanos" home to Mexico, the most drastic forced repatriation in the history of the Americas. Both candidates laud Plan Mexico, the so-called "Merida Initiative" that will supply some of the most abusive security forces on the continent with advanced weaponry and eavesdropping equipment. Both McCain and Obama favor the privatization of petroleum and increased access to Mexican oil for U.S. producers. McCain is a big NAFTA booster, a trade pact that has forced 6,000,000 Mexican farmers and their families off their land. Obama says he wants to re-open the treaty but not the chapters that allow corporate U.S. growers to dump 10,000,000 tons of duty-free corn in Mexico each year.

As Berta Robledo, an activist friend, laughs both want to be the president of the biggest criminal gang in the world.

Some observers of power politics here consider that the coming U.S. election is so critical to the immediate future of Mexico that Mexicans should be allowed to vote. Asked for who she might cast a ballot in November, Sylvia Insunsa, the proprietor of the Paper Tower, a news stand in the Mexican Journalists Club, was right on point. "Why of course for the Negrito - Memin Penguin!"

John Ross is in the heat of the first draft of "El Monstruo - Tales of Dread and Redemption In The Most Monstrous Megalopolis On The Planet Earth" (or something like that.) These dispatches will be issued every ten days until the heat subsides.

Contact johnross@igc.org if you have further information.

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