Today's Stories

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
A Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Boycott Israel

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

August 3, 2009

Pam Martens
Millions of Americans Pushed Into No-Law System by Colluding Banks

Anthony DiMaggio
Media Backlash: Obama and the Settlements

Udi Aloni
And Who Shall I Say is Calling? A Plea to Leonard Cohen

Mike Roselle
See the Mountains of WestVirginia ... Before They're Blown Up!

Dr. Susan Block
Beat It! Sex, Death and Michael Jackson

Roy Bourgeois / Margaret Knapke
School of Coups

Joe Bageant
A Yard Sale in Chernobyl

Dina Jadallah
Hiding the State

Dave Lindorff
Of Blue Dogs and Jellyfish

Martha Rosenberg
Grand Closings in Evanston: How the Recession is Hitting Illinois

Website of the Day
Why We Can't "Afford" Health Care

July 31 - August 2, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

Gabriel Kolko
Searching For Enemies

John Prados
The Intelligence Oversight Mess

Joe Bageant
The Bastards Never Die

Tim Wise
Rationalizing Racial Oppression

Carl Ginsburg
Frist First: Follow the Money (and Find the Plump Heart of "Health Care")

Michael Fox
The Honduran Coup as Overture

John Lindsay-Poland
Revamping Plan Colombia

Michael Winship
Pay-to-Play: Washington's Sport of Kings

Rev. William Alberts
White Men Can Jump ... to Conclusions

Andy Worthington
Judge Orders Release of Tortured Gitmo Prisoner

Steve Breyman
Counting the Unemployed

Cyrus Bina
Racism, Class and Profiling

Missy Beattie
Promises Ignored

Ron Jacobs
Into the Vapid: Consuming the Cultural Product

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Party of Concessions: Democrats Never Learn

Lucia Alvarez
Fall of the House of Kirchner? Return of the Right in Argentina

Dave Lindorff
David Brooks' White Guy Nightmare

Lawrence R. Velvel
Madoff: What Should be Done Now?

Omar Barghouti /
Sid Shniad
United for Freedom and Universal Justice

James L. Secor
The Name of the Game is Wipe-Out

Belén Fernández
Zelaya in Nicaragua: Has Another Constitution Been Violated?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frank Lloyd Wright in Hollywood: the Ennis House as Imperial Ruin

David Yearsley
Beauty in Dark Places: Berlin's Olympic Stadium

Brian J. Foley
Pre-Eating: a Threat to Restaurants Everywhere

Alan Cabal
Onward, Into the Fog: Thomas Pynchon's
"Inherent Vice"

Kim Nicolini
The Way War Feels

Lorenzo Wolff
The Way It Felt the First Time: the Jump Rope Magic of the Shangri-Las

Poets' Basement
Four Poems From the Chinese

Website of the Weekend
Obama's Ex-Doc Knocks ObamaCare

July 30, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

Gareth Porter
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

Greg Grandin
Honduran Coup Over?

Diane Farsetta
Pentagon Pundits Get a Pass

Stephen Soldz
The King Case, the APA and the Missing Ethics Investigation

Alan Farago
Learning How to Survive in a Depression From "Weeds"

David Macaray
Cops and Labor Unions

Mike Howells /
Jay Arena
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

Christopher Brauchli
Oatmeal Envy

Website of the Day
Changing the SOFA

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

August 24, 2009

The Acteal Killings, Twelve Years On
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City
With immense sorrow etched into his weather-beaten face, the Tzotzil Indian farmer slowly mounted the imposing granite steps of Mexico's Supreme Court.  Sebastian Perez Vazquez's job was a thankless one.  As president of the civil group "Las Abejas" ("The Bees"), he was obliged to communicate the bad news to the villagers who had trekked up to the capital from their homes in the highlands of Chiapas ("Los Altos") that, after 12 years, the killers who had been convicted of murdering their mothers and fathers and grandparents and children at Acteal on December 22, 1997 would now be freed from prison on the instructions of four out of five Supreme Court justices because of procedural errors in their prosecutions.

The Abejas had dressed in their best clothes for the court hearing, the men in their short ornamental chujs (serapes) and the women in their finest huipiles (traditional blouses) and long embroidered skirts they wear as emblems of their Tzotzil roots but they had not even been allowed inside the courtroom to bear witness to the verdict of the justices.  Heavily armed federal police patrolled the marble hallways of the court building on one corner of Mexico City's great Zocalo plaza intent on keeping the Indians out in the street.

Elena Perez Perez looked like the air had been sucked out of her.  She had expected the exoneration of the killers but still could not staunch the tears that washed her bladed cheekbones.  "We cry because we cannot find justice anywhere," Elena, who was 19 when the accused murdered her father and two eldest siblings, told a U.S. reporter.  Maria Vazquez had lost nine family members in the massacre.  She too had expected the justices' decision.  "This court releases the killers but it cannot resuscitate the dead."

Early on the morning of December 22, 1997 three dozen armed men gathered on a lonely roadside in Chenalho county in the Altos of Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, and began firing on women and children clustered around a clapboard chapel who were praying for peace on a promontory below.  A detachment of 40 Chiapas police officers were stationed at a schoolhouse just meters away but made no effort to stop the killing. 

The gunfire continued for the better part of the day, the shooters scouring the hillside for those who had escaped the first assault and finishing them off one by one.  When they were done seven hours later, 49 Abejas were dead: 15 children, 21 women, nine men, and four babies who had been cut out of the wombs of their mothers and dashed against the rocks.  The killers were determined to exterminate the "seed" of the Abejas.

The outside world learned of the massacre at Acteal when survivors straggled into San Cristobal de las Casas, the old colonial city that crowns the highlands, several hours later.  A call went out to doctors to come to the Civil Hospital to treat the many wounded.  One medic who responded to the call was Hermann Bellinghausen who doubles as correspondent for the left daily La Jornada in Chiapas.  Hermann has accompanied the rebellion of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) since it exploded in the mountains and jungle of this deeply indigenous state on January 1, 1994. The Abejas were supporters of the Zapatistas but rejected the insurgents' use of weapons.

Around 10 PM that night, a Red Cross ambulance braved gunfire to reach the village of Acteal enclaved in the saw-toothed mountains about 45 minutes above San Cristobal and discovered state police officers stacking the corpses of the Indians, apparently preparing them for burning.  Caught in the act, the cops gathered up the bodies and tossed them in a dump truck where they were driven down to the state capital in Tuxtla Gutierrez for "autopsies."

The contamination of the crime scene was corroborated by Bellinghausen and two colleagues, Jesus Ramirez Cuevas and Juan Balboa, the next morning and later that day, Hermann posted his first dispatch.  Bellinghausen would go on to write a book, Acteal: A Crime of State that has become a definitive text on understanding the massacre.

The Abejas are a civil association of honey gatherers and coffee growers who had been forced from their home villages in the months previous to the murders - the massacre took place at the height of the coffee harvest - by armed bands affiliated with the long-ruling PRI party and its surrogates in the "Cardenas Front."  Unlike the Abejas who were devout Catholics, the PRIistas lined up with the evangelical National Presbyterian Church that first established itself in Los Altos back in the 1930s.  Since spring, they had been burning the Bees' homes and stealing their coffee and their cattle.  Abeja families from Quextic had been particularly persecuted and the Zapatista community of Acteal offered them sanctuary on the hillside where they would later be murdered. 

All of the dead Abejas and those who killed them were Tzotzil Mayan Indians.

Although they supported the EZLN's struggle, the Abejas' allegiances were to the liberation bishop of San Cristobal Samuel Ruiz who had been instrumental in their formation.  The Bees were indeed a Sui Genero grouping amongst the Tzotziles of Los Altos.  They were resolutely non-violent and eschewed the "posh", sugar-cane aguardiente that is obligatory in many highland villages.  Unlike their neighbors, they defended the right of women to own land in the community.

Bellinghausen's reportage triggered a chain reaction of indignation around the world.  Demonstrators circled Mexican embassies in European cities.  Pope John Paul II expressed his grief and U.S. president Bill Clinton lamented the violence.  International human rights workers flocked to Chiapas.

As commander-in-chief, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo ordered U.S.-trained troops into the Chiapas highlands to restore order and separate the paramilitaries responsible for the massacre from the EZLN. The military invaded dozens of Zapatista villages purportedly looking for weapons but, at first, left the paramilitaries alone.  Fear of a new massacre panicked villagers and 10,000 Indians abandoned their homes and sought refuge in Polho, a Zapatista refugee camp.

The bodies of the dead were returned to the Abejas on Christmas day for burial.  As the funeral procession advanced up the mountain road from Polho to Acteal, the mourners encountered a truck speeding in the opposite direction that was carrying stolen Abeja coffee. The Abejas recognized the men in the truck as their killers - many of them were PRIistas who had run them off their land and at least one was the cousin of a victim.  Bishop Ruiz moved swiftly to prevent a lynching and 24 of the presumed assassins were taken into custody.  They would not be released until the Supreme Court's August 12th decree a dozen years later. 

Other suspects were rounded up by federal police during raids in Los Chorros, Quextic, and Pechiquil.  One old Indian farmer was reportedly handed a list of 100 suspects and forced to sign it.  Agustin Luna did not read or write Spanish.

According to Zedillo's attorney general Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, 124 arrest warrants were issued but apparently only 87 were ever served.  Almost all of those who were taken into custody were Tzotziles - 14 mostly mestizo public servants served less than six years for their roles in the massacre.  Two high-ranking Mexican Army officers who functioned as commandants in Chiapas public security agencies simply disappeared and more than a decade later remain at large.

The Indians were heavily punished for the killings, dealt 20 to 40 year sentences for premeditated homicide and possession of weapons that only the military was licensed to carry.  Two of the 70 Tzotzil defendants were let go because of old age and another died in custody.  Several more were re-sentenced and released.  Of the 57 Indians who remained in prison only five confessed to participating in the massacre.

There is little question that the prosecution of those rounded up for the killings at Acteal was slipshod.  Witnesses were pressured and declarations obtained by force.  In the Zedillo government's rush to judgment, many were swept up who were not in Acteal on the day of the massacre.  Translators who are required by law to be available to defendants who do not speak Spanish were not.  Weapons were seized that did not match the caliber of the bullets that killed the Bees.  The Supreme Court decried the disappearance of evidence and the destruction of the crime scene and the falsification of testimony. 

To mark the first anniversary of the killings, Madrazo's Federal Prosecutor's Office (PGR) published The White Book of Acteal that blamed the murders on "inter-communal conflicts" and underscored the savage nature of the killings, intimating that the violence had cultural roots.  Although many of the victims had been brutally slashed by machete blows, one autopsy lists gunshot wounds as the cause of death for 43 of the slain villagers and writer Carlos Montemayor, an outspoken defender of indigenous culture, concluded that the bodies of the Abejas were further brutalized by police to emphasize the "primitive" nature of the Indians.  Madrazo's White Book absolved the Zedillo government of all crimes of commission and omission.

Once convictions were obtained and the presumed killers sentenced, Acteal was relegated to the cold case file.  Although the PRI quickly washed its hands of the prisoners, the National Presbyterian Church soon came to their defense.  The evangelicals' point man was an influential politico and preacher, Hugo Eric Flores, who is described as being close to the "theology of prosperity."  During the 2006 presidential campaign, Flores, the founder and "moral leader" of Encuentro Social ("Social Encounter"), an evangelical political association that had been tied to the PRI, met with right-wing PAN party candidate Felipe Calderon and offered to deliver the evangelical vote (the PAN had none) if Calderon would agree to reopen the cases of those he described as "political prisoners." According to La Jornada op-ed editor Luis Hernandez Navarro, the deal went down that April.

Months later, after Calderon had been awarded the fraud-marred election, Hugo Eric Flores emerged as the director of the Environmental Secretariat's PRO-ARBOL ("pro-tree") program but within a year was fired from the post and barred from working for the agency for the next ten years.  No explanation has ever been offered for Flores' removal but despite the stain on his resume, the evangelical preacher had no difficulty finding "chamba" ("work") and today serves as back-up ("suplente") for a PANista senator.

Soon after he was fired from his environmental sinecure, Hugo Eric Flores hired on with the prestigious Center for Investigation & Teaching of Economics (CIDE), an entity of the Secretary of Public Education, and published a defense of those convicted for the Acteal massacre, The Other Acteal , chapters of which appeared in Nexos magazine, a glossy monthly edited by the prominent PRIista writer and Televisa talking head Hector Aguilar Camin who in 1997 on the tenth anniversary of the killings published his own three part vindication of the incarcerated paramilitaries.

Amongst Aguilar Camin's revelations: there had been no massacre at Acteal, a hypothesis that rested largely on the testimony of Lorenzo Perez Vazquez who at 17 was the youngest of the convicted killers.  According to Perez, the Abejas were caught in a crossfire between the Zapatistas and PRIistas.  Lorenzo Perez himself was one of the five paramilitaries who confessed to the murders.  Notwithstanding, his name was listed among the first batch of 20 the Supreme Court set free.

Eric Flores used his growing clout to recruit young lawyers from the CIDE's law clinic and in December 2007, the same month as Aguilar Camin's vindication appeared, they officially filed an appeal for the release of the 57 imprisoned indigenas, citing discriminatory treatment of Indians by the courts.  According to the CIDE's general secretary Dr Sergio Lopez Ayllon, the legal costs were offset by sizeable grants from both the Hewitt Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute.

How many of those released actually have blood on their hands? Miguel Angel De los Santos, a prominent human rights attorney in San Cristobal, thinks that the government case was so "flojo" (lazily assembled) that separating the guilty from the innocent at this late date may be next to impossible - in the Mexican justice system, "fabricando cupables" (literally "manufacturing the guilty") is an "art form."  De los Santos charges that government prosecutors often leave big holes in unpopular cases to establish grounds for appeal and ultimately absolution for the perpetrators.  "The release of the accused paramilitaries," he writes in La Jornada, "is a confession of the Mexican state's failure in the administration of justice."             

During a decade and more, imprisoned first at the crumbling old Cerro Hueco fortress above Tuxtla, those convicted of the Acteal murders  (the "material assassins" in legal jargon) have been demonized by the Abejas and the Zapatistas and their supporters as cold-blooded killers - the phrase "paramilitary" is an ugly curse in the rebels' lexicon and those who suggest that some of those railroaded by the Zedillo government's inept prosecution are not guilty are deemed "politically incorrect."

On the other hand, government officials who conceived, put in motion, and covered up the Acteal killings - "the intellectual authors" - have evaded justice for a decade.  

At the top of the list is ex-president Ernesto Zedillo whose xenophobic jeremiads against non-Mexican human rights workers animated a lethal atmosphere of fear and loathing in Chiapas.  As commander-in-chief of Mexico's Armed Forces, Zedillo signed off on the counter-insurgency initiative that culminated with the massacre at Acteal. The former Mexican president now heads up the Yale University Globalization Studies Institute and sits on the board of major U.S. corporations.

Zedillo's Secretary of Defense and the commander of Mexican Army forces in the region, Mario Renon Castillo, collaborated on a "Chiapas Campaign Plan", a counter-insurgency strategy to develop paramilitary groups in 39 municipalities in which the EZLN had influence.  Renon Castillo is a graduate of Center for Special Forces in Fort Bragg North Carolina where he was trained in counter-insurgency warfare. According to diplomatic cables unearthed by investigator Kate Doyle at the Washington-based National Security Archives, the Mexican military trained and financed paramilitaries in Chenalho - one corporal was briefly jailed as a trainer.
 
Chiapas Governor Julio Ruiz Ferro, a Zedillo appointee, had ample prior knowledge of the violence brewing in the highlands and did nothing to head it off. The deaths of 32 Indians in Chenalho in the months before the massacre set the stage for Acteal.  Ruiz Ferro was bumped up to agricultural attaché at Mexico's Washington embassy after he resigned as governor as reward for his inattention.

Interior Secretary Emilio Chuayffet, who supervised national security, was forced to resign for failing to anticipate Acteal but remained active in the PRI hierarchy and may soon become head of the PRI's majority delegation in the lower house of congress.

Former Attorney General Jorge Madrazo's flawed prosecution may have jailed innocent Indians for a dozen years. The National Fraternity of Christian Churches now demands that he be incarcerated.

Finally, Raul Vera, auxiliary bishop of San Cristobal during Acteal, suggests that by freeing the accused killers, the justices of Mexico's Supreme Court are now "accomplices" in this lurid plot.

Although the Supreme Court did not rule on the innocence or guilt of the prisoners and only considered the poisoned judicial procedures, 20 of the accused killers were released August 13 from El Amate prison on the western edge of Chiapas and transported to a small hotel outside of Tuxtla Gutierrez where they met with worried state officials behind closed doors for 12 hours.  Authorities are fearful that the ex-prisoners will return to Chenalho and seek revenge against the Abejas for their long incarceration. 

Indeed, fear permeates Acteal and Polho in the wake of the prisoners' release - the Abejas have long charged that the paramilitaries still have weapons cached in the region.  "I survived the first time but I won't survive another massacre," Catalina Perez, who was shot nine times during the attack, told La Jornada.

The freed Indians are also under the gun.  If they were not the real killers then they know who the real killers were and local "caciques" (rural bosses) will try and silence them.

Governor Juan Sabines, whose father was also Juan and served as Chiapas governor when dozens of Indians were gunned down by army troops in another massacre at Wolonchan in 1981, vowed that the prisoners' release would not rupture the fragile calm in the state.  The ex-prisoners would be relocated as far from Chenalho as the borders of Chiapas would allow and provided with land and animals and generous pensions.  Even though the accused were being closely watched by state officials, by week's end six had already escaped for parts unknown.

Conspicuously absent from the controversy over the released paramilitaries is the EZLN which has yet to comment on the Supreme Court decision. The Zapatistas' key public outpost in the highlands at Oventic has been reportedly closed to outside visitors since the Supreme Court ordered the paramilitaries released from prison.

Since the evangelical Summer Language Institute was installed in Los Altos by President Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s, the political clout of the "sects" as the Catholic Church labels the Protestants, has grown precipitously. 

Each Sunday, the Army of God marches in military cadence through San Cristobal.  With their red berets, spit-shined army boots, and camouflage cargo pants, the marchers are dead ringers for paramilitaries but Army of God commander-in-chief Esdras Alonso, a fiery highland preacher with connections to the National Presbyterian Church, claims that his followers are armed only with the "Word of God."  According to Bellinghausen, Esdras Alonso's home base is in San Cristobal's Hormiga Colony where the killers of the Abejas are said to have acquired their weapons.  Reverend Esdras also claims that fallen-away Zapatista comandantes have joined the Army of God.

Alonso's evangelicals have considerable influence in Mitziton just outside San Cristobal which Governor Sabines has designated as the starting point for a super highway that will connect up the tourist corridor between that old colonial city and the Mayan ruins at Palenque in the lowlands to the east.  Although the actual route remains under wraps, the new highway is expected to invade autonomous Zapatista communities and tensions are running tall in Mitziton where farmers are aligned with the EZLN's "Other Campaign."  This past July 21, when ski-masked protestors blocked road-building equipment, the Army of God counter-attacked, killing one villager.

Commander-in-chief Esdras responded to unfavorable news coverage of the confrontation by filing a complaint with the local prosecutor against both the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center, founded by Bishop Ruiz, and Hermann Bellinghausen for allegedly spreading libelous rumors on the Internet.  Esdras also demanded that Immigration authorities investigate Bellinghausen's immigration status - the Jornada reporter is a third generation Mexican. 

The Supreme Court's decision to free those convicted of killing 49 Abejas at Acteal is the latest finding of the high court to grant impunity to those deemed responsible for notorious crimes.  In 2006, the court barred citizens from access to ballots cast in the presidential elections, one of the most egregious frauds in Mexican electoral history.  In 2007, the justices absolved Puebla governor Mario Marin after evidence implicated him in the kidnapping of independent journalist Lydia Cacho who had blown the whistle on the governor's pederast associates.

In 2008, the Supreme Court declared Mexico state governor and current PRI presidential frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto innocent of ordering state mayhem at San Salvador Atenco where 200 protesters were attacked and arrested, a score of women sexually abused by Pena Nieto's police, and two young men gunned down by the cops.  Later that year, the justices concluded that Oaxaca governor Ulysis Ruiz had used "legitimate" force to suppress protests by the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly or APPO during which 26 civilians lost their lives. 

Just a week before the Acteal ruling, the Supreme Court concurred that a Sinaloa woman whose husband had been shot down at an Army checkpoint had no standing and turned the matter over to a military tribunal that has no civilian oversight.  By sustaining the military's "fuero" or immunity from prosecution by civil authorities, the court assured the army of continued impunity.

Release of those prisoners sentenced for the Acteal massacre because of judicial errors will have far reaching impacts on Mexican courts, observes Barbara Zamora, lawyer for the prisoners of Atenco and other high profile government targets.  Zamora affirms that she has never defended a case that was not contaminated by gross judicial error.  "The Mexican judicial system is rotten to the core. But from now on, whether they are guilty or not, anyone who can afford a powerful lawyer and has been sentenced for homicide, narco, kidnapping, or organized crime will be able to claim judicial impropriety and appeal to the Supreme Court to be set free.  This could empty out the jails," the lawyer adds with a mischievous smile.

John Ross's monstrous tome El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City will be published by Nation Books this November. The author is soliciting venues for book presentations this fall and next spring.  If you have further information, write johnross@igc.org

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