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

Targeting Anti-Death Penalty and Anti-War Activists

I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

By MIKE STARK

When I received a voice mail last Wednesday from the Maryland ACLU, I assumed it was about the fight against Maryland's death penalty. Executions in Maryland have been shut down since 2006, and the state's General Assembly has authorized a commission to make recommendations on the future of capital punishment. The commission's plans are the topic of constant conversation among abolitionists.

It turns out the ACLU call was about the death penalty, but not exactly in the form I was expecting.

When I called back, ACLU staff attorney David Rocah explained that my name had appeared repeatedly in a 46-page report documenting a clandestine surveillance and undercover investigation conducted by the Maryland State Police for more than a year, from March 2005 to May 2006.

The report was released to the ACLU after it sued the Maryland state police for refusing to disclose information-gathering activities aimed at peace activists. "Detailed intelligence reports logged by at least two agents in the police department's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division reveal close monitoring of the movements as the Iraq war and capital punishment were heatedly debated in 2005 and 2006," the Washington Post reported.

"Organizational meetings, public forums, prison vigils, rallies outside the State House in Annapolis and e-mail group lists were infiltrated by police posing as peace activists and death penalty opponents, the records show. The surveillance continued even though the logs contained no reports of illegal activity and consistently indicated that the activists were not planning violent protests."

The infiltration of the CEDP was carried out during the one-term reign of former Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who ended the moratorium on executions that had been imposed by his predecessor when the flaws in the death penalty system became impossible to overlook.

The surveillance began after the first execution overseen by Ehrlich--of Steven Oken in 2004--and continued during the CEDP's campaigns to save Wesley Baker, who was put to death in December 2005, and Vernon Evans, who won a last-minute stay of execution in February 2006.

* * *

HEARING THE news, I thought it was a bad joke. Undercover cops investigating public meetings of civil and human rights activists against the death penalty? Police infiltration of discussions held at the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee hall?

My first reading of the surveillance report reinforced thiis response. It was full of factual errors, botched names and mistaken identities and associations. According to the report, the "national socialists" (i.e., Nazis) were organizing against racial bias in Maryland's death penalty. Not just wrong, but a dumb kind of wrong.

The report ludicrously described one well-respected activist and ardent pacifist, Max Obuszewski, as a "terrorist." As for me, they couldn't figure out if I was an anarchist or socialist.

Their confusion on this last point is at least somewhat understandable since we have people from a wide variety of political and religious affiliations who come together to oppose capital punishment. But in the event the Maryland police are still wondering, in the proud tradition of anti-death penalty attorney Clarence Darrow, I'm a socialist.

The report does get one thing right. Nowhere in the 46 single-spaced pages is a single illegal activity conducted by anti-death penalty activists (observed or imagined) described. Not a single statement, note, e-mail or comment made publicly or illegally obtained through surveillance can be construed as illegal, improper or even rude. Instead, the list of events documented in the report--distributing fliers, petitioning--are about as scandalous as the minutes of a local Rotary club.

I've read enough history to know something of the long and sordid story of these kinds of spy operations in the U.S. I've also attended events in support of imprisoned activists, such as Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Maryland's own Eddie Conway, who have paid a terrible price when paranoid policing takes hold.

The surveillance of the CEDP and antiwar activists seems ludicrous by comparison, especially with the ineptitude of the Maryland cops shining through on every page.

But this kind of inanity is dangerous--to the lives and livelihoods of the people who are subjected to it, and to the constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech, assembly and petition of grievances of everyone.

And it's there that the joke stops. Because sending cops into activist meetings on college campuses, community centers and Quaker meeting halls to write down lists of names and the activities of the participants can only be described as one thing: state repression.

Any state-organized act designed to prevent or disrupt the efforts of ordinary people to effect change must be vigorously opposed and organized against, to stop similar acts from occurring again. The current governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley, has assured the public that the surveillance has stopped. This is a first step, but until the laws are changed and the responsible parties publicly brought to account for treading on our liberties, it's not enough.

* * *

ANTI-DEATH penalty author and activist Sister Helen Preajen once counseled activists that "support for the death penalty may be a mile wide, but it's an inch deep." She meant that while many people support capital punishment in the abstract, their support is based on misinformation and is easily turned when faced with the facts.

Prejean is right. The more light that is shown on this archaic and barbaric practice, the more it loses its hold. My own experience has shown me time and again that a five-minute conversation with even the most ardent death penalty supporter can often turn someone from a booster to a critic. Those conversations have helped turn the tide of public opinion away from support for the death penalty.

Nowhere has this been clearer than my home state of Maryland, where by every indication, capital punishment is on its way out. A moratorium on executions (the second halt in executions since 1999) has been in place since 2006. The number of people on death row has shrunk from 17 prisoners in 1998 to only five; new capital prosecutions and convictions are down; and support for the death penalty remains on the decline.

Perhaps that's why a shrill and die-hard supporter of the death penalty like Ehrlich and his team decided it was necessary to send undercover agents and surveillance vans to our meetings. Ehrlich came into the governor's mansion in 2003 determined to restart executions in Maryland, and he discovered that was necessary to resort to underhanded tactics and dirty tricks to prop up the tottering house of cards.

As CEDP National Director Marlene Martin put it, "How incredible it is that the Maryland state police wasted money to spy on a group of folks trying to stop the execution of a poor Black prisoner. But then again, I guess the little people, Black and white, coming together to fight against a blatant, unfair and racist barbaric practice like capital punishment, has always scared those in power who want to maintain an unfair and unequal society."

In the Maryland police report, alongside the names of long-time anti-death penalty activists, there's a special focus on the activities of the family of death row prisoner Vernon Evans.

According to the logic of the report, the Evans family represented a unique kind of threat--because of the power of their personal efforts to stop the state from killing their son, brother, cousin and father, and because of how broadly their story of pain, redemption and hope resonates in an often beaten-down city like Baltimore.

Their voices are a powerful antidote to the politics of fear and revenge practiced by death penalty supporters. They are precious to our movement against the death penalty and to build a better world, and we have to defend them.

What you can do

If you want to express your outrage at the surveillance of Maryland activists, contact the office of the current Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and demand a full investigation of the Maryland State Police, the public release of all documents obtained through its illegal activities and a specific commitment that the anti-death penalty and antiwar movements will not be targeted again. Call 800-811-8336.

Mike Stark, a national board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP), was one of many targets of a Maryland State Police investigation into anti-death penalty and antiwar activism.

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