Today's Stories

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 2, 2008

The Untouchables

Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City.

The fiery November 4 crash of a private Lear jet here not a mile from Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, that killed President Felipe Calderon's closest collaborator Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino was largely buried by the U.S. press, coming as it did on Election Day USA.

As Interior Secretary responsible for internal security, Mourino who had just met with outgoing U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to map out bi-lateral drug war strategies, was the second most powerful official in Mexico.

Also killed in the crash that took a total of 19 lives was Mexico's former drug czar Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcellos, himself a frequent assassination target for Mexican drug gangs.  Last spring Vasconcellos was replaced as top dog at the SIEDO ("Sub-prosecutor for Special Investigations into Organized Crime") which he had directed for eight years and appointed special drug war advisor to Calderon.

Despite public incredulity the Calderon administration has fought hard to spin the plane crash as an accident, pinning the mishap on the inexperience of the pilot and co-pilot of the privately owned Lear Jet, both of whom were killed on impact.  Transportation Secretary Luis Tello has held serial press conferences presenting the black box retrieved from the crash and flogging expert testimony from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Aeronautics Administration. The bamboozlement campaign has been accompanied by a burst of government-bought print ads and electronic spots that are designed to boost the president's credibility as the second anniversary of his chaotic swearing in approaches. 

Nonetheless, the public remains archly skeptical. In a country where the government and the media relentlessly fudge and lie about everything from unemployment numbers and the depth of the recession to its questionable successes in the drug war, no one quite believes the plane crash was an accident.  Indeed, ever since writer Sara Sefchovich whose new hot title is "A Country of Lies", launched an Internet page inviting readers to list Calderon's biggest lies, the "accident" has been at the top of the list.

The  plane crash in which Mourino and Vasconcellos were killed is an apt metaphor for the current state of Calderon's drug war, which, after an embarrassing round of high level arrests of anti-drug officials, appears to be similarly going down in flames.

Felipe Calderon first declared his anti-drug crusade just days after being sworn in as Mexico's president two years ago this December 1st, a job he was awarded in a July 1996 election that half of all Mexicans thought he won by fraud.  In a move to bolster his pretensions of authority, the new president sent 30,000 troops into the field to confront the drug cartels - that number has since increased to 45,000, a third of the Mexican Army. 

Since December 2006, 6000 Mexicans have been slain in drug war combat, 4000 alone this year, with no notable reduction in the drug flow north to the U.S.  Hundreds of troops and police officials have perished in the past 23 months in addition to dozens of innocent civilians gunned down by soldiers at highway checkpoints and other collateral damage and over a thousand complaints against the drug war troops have been registered with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH.)  Between 20 and 30 corpses, many without heads, are clocked in every 24 hours in battleground states like Chihuahua and Sinaloa, with no end in sight.

Rattled by persistent scandal, Mexico's lead anti-drug agencies are in turmoil and the detention of dozens of top officials in recent months, including the nation's liaisons to the United Nations Drug Agency, Interpol, and even the U.S. Embassy here, has shaken Washington. 

Among those in custody is Santiago Vasconcellos's replacement at the SIEDO, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who is reportedly being held on a 40 day investigation warrant at the agency's heavily fortified headquarters in the Ixtapalapa delegation (borough) of the capital, charged with accepting $450,000 USD monthly payments from a branch of the Sinaloa Cartel under the thumb of the Beltran Leyva brothers. The Beltran Leyvas are presently embroiled in a bloody turf war with their former boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" ("Shorty") Guzman, the dean of Mexican drug lords. 

At the time of his detention, Noe Ramirez served as Mexico's representative before the United Nations Drug Agency in Vienna. 

According to the released testimony of ex-SIEDO intelligence officer Fernando Rivera, now in a U.S.-run witness protection program, agency officials have been servicing the Sinaloa Cartel since 2004.   In addition to Ramirez and Rivera, four military officers have been arrested for feeding drug war intelligence to the Sinaloa boys. 

Another drug warrior currently under arraignment is Ricardo Gutierrez who headed up the national office of Interpol and sat on the agency's international commission.  According to the Interpol Internet page, such commissions "share crucial information about crimes and criminal activity with other police agencies", a job description that must send shivers down the spine of U.S. drug fighters who worked with Gutierrez. Gutierrez's successor at Interpol Rodolfo de la Guardia is also in custody.

As a bonus to the public's incredulity, the Calderon administration is spinning the scandals as "Operation Clean House" ("Limpiaza"), an in-house investigation into drug war corruption, and promotes the revelations of dirty dealing as a "victory" in its anti-drug crusade.  "Operation Clean House" has triggered a festival of stoolies and "soplones" ("snitches"), many of whom are being held incommunicado at the fortress-like SIEDO headquarters in Ixtapalapa. Other key whistleblowers are in U.S. custody - reportedly, it was Washington that tipped Mexican authorities to the Sinaloa Cartel pay-offs after an informer known only as "Felipe" spilled the beans to Drug Enforcement Administration agents. 

The current round of recriminations is reminiscent of the 1997 arrest of General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, then head of the Mexican Drug War apparatus under president Ernesto Zedillo, for protecting Juarez Cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo who earned his nickname "The Lord of the Skies" by flying DC-6s loaded with Colombian cocaine into the country under the nose of the Mexican military.  The general, who is now serving a 45-year sentence, was found to be living in a luxury apartment paid for by Carrillo's agents who showered him with lavish gifts of fine tequila and classic cars. At the time of his arrest, General Gutierrez had just returned from Washington where he attended a White House drug conclave and was lauded by Bill Clinton's drug czar General Barry McCaffrey as having "an impeccable reputation for integrity."  

One of the more enigmatic personages swept up in the Operation Clean House dragnet is Javier Herrera, once number two at the Federal Investigation Agency or AFI, a knock off of the U.S. FBI, and an entity deemed so corrupt that Calderon has ordered it dismantled.  Herrera was dismissed after his brother, a police commander in the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas, was cited on a narco-list compiled by the murderous "Zetas", enforcers for the Gulf Cartel. 

The AFI and the Federal Preventative Police or PFP that operates under the aegius of the Secretary of Public Security (SSP), commanded by Calderon disciple Genaro Garcia Luna, have gone nose to nose over drug war jurisdiction ever since 2006 with frequent confrontations between the two agencies, and in cleaning out his desk at the AFI, Javier Herrera carried off a raft of documentation that appears to implicate Garcia Luna in what he terms "a simulation" favoring the Sinaloa Cartel over other drug gangs. 

Indeed, the former AFI commander was en route to an interview with a Televisa prime time news show when he was arrested November 17 by the PFP and his documentation confiscated.  According to his lawyer, Sylvia Raquenel Villanueva who presented x-rays to the press, Herrera was beaten so badly that he suffered several broken ribs.

Raquenel Villanueva is herself a Mexican drug war legend.  The lawyer, who has represented many of the nation's most notorious drug barons, has been repeatedly shot by her clients or their rivals (lung, head, buttocks, and stomach) - one cartel gunslinger plugged her eight times.  Bombs have been tossed at her Monterrey offices and she was once imprisoned for her alleged involvement in the kidnap-killing of a police commander.  Raquenel wears the ultimate badge of her trade - two narco-corridos (drug ballads) have been composed in her honor: "La Mujer de Acero" ("The Woman of Steel") and "The Ballad of the Bullet-proof Lawyer."

Despite the daily dollop of scandal hanging over his head, Public Security Secretary Garcia Luna continues to cling to his job, an "Untouchable" in the Chicago sense of the word.  Just this past week (Nov. 25), Garcia Luna's former personal secretary Mario Arturo Velarde, was dragged into Ixtapalapa for questioning. Velarde is being defended by one-time attorney general Antonio Lozano and high-priced litigator Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, both prominent members of Calderon's PAN party.  Speculation about why Calderon continues to stick by Garcia Luna centers on two hypothesis: (a) Calderon is reluctant to fire his Secretary of Public Security because it would be the final blow to the president's credibility and (b) Garcia Luna knows too much. 

Calderon's attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora, who preceded Garcia Luna at the SSP, seems to be cloaked in a similar shroud of impunity.

The disarray in Calderon's drug war hierarchy has grave implications for both U.S. and Mexican national security. In an interview with Proceso magazine's J. Jesus Esquivel published this Sunday (Nov. 30), out-going White House drug advisor John Walters warns that Mexico is at risk of becoming a narco-state. 

The threat of compromised intelligence looms large.  Nonetheless, Washington now has the legal and diplomatic wherewithal to take matters into its own hands. Under the recently ratified Merida anti-drug Initiative and the ASPAN or North American Security and Prosperity Agreement that provides a framework for the integration of the security apparatuses of the three NAFTA nations, Washington reserves the right to take action south of the border should it feel its national security threatened. 

Designated as the U.S. southern security perimeter by the Colorado-based North Command that is charged with protecting the homeland from terrorist infiltration, preventative incursion into Mexico to neutralize the drug cartels is one possible scenario for the incoming U.S. president Barack Obama.   

John Ross is back in the Centro Historico ring to fight the final round with "El Monstruo - True Tales of Dread & Redemption from Mexico City."  If you have further information write him at johnross@igc.org or visit www.johnross-rebeljournalist.com

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