Today's Stories

December 31, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminate the Senate

December 30, 2009

Stephen Green
A Lawless Presidency

Thomas Mountain
What Did Angelina Jolie Pay for Her Baby?

Stewart J. Lawrence
Baluchistan and the Af/Pak War

Ray McGovern
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Toys for Tots ... with Green Cards

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel Rules

Jeff Cohen
If It Was Wrong Under Bush, It's Wrong Under Obama

Binoy Kampmark
The Grand Placebo

Brenda Norrell
Hate and Death on the Border

Charles R. Larson
The Affluent Terrorist: Sexual Frustration and the Crotchbomber

Website of the Day
The Year in Coal

December 29, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Nuke Forgeries

Patrick Cockburn
Yemen Next

Steven Higgs Growing Up Toxic: Defeating Autism, Now

Susan Albulhawa /
Ramzy Baroud
Share the Land

Emily Ratner
Winding Our Way to Gaza

Dave Lindorff
Krugman's Health Care Sell-Out

David Macaray
Who is the Ideal Labor Leader?

Rev. William E. Alberts
Prince of Peace or Evangelistic Predator?

Deepak Tripathi
Compromised Domestic Policy, Militarized Foreign Policy

Walter Brasch / Rosemary Brasch
The Courage of Michael Vick: Dog Hanger as Model Citizen?

Website of the Day
Thinking Forward, Looking Back

December 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
Cast Lead II

Gary Leupp
Eyes on Yemen

Bouthaina Shaaban
Hearing is Not Like Seeing

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Decriminalize Political Speech

Sam Husseini
The Egyptian Puppet State

Greg Moses
Avatar's Jungle of Technology

Sonja Karkar
Gaza in Crisis

Patrick Bond
The Life and Death of Dennis Brutus

Michael Simmons
A Secret Masterpice: The Only Album "Bob Dylan" Ever Produced

David Michael Green
Good Riddance to the Devil's Decade

Alan McConnell
Who Will Organize the Organizers?

Website of the Day
Baucus: Shitfaced on the Senate Floor?

December 25-27, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Disappointments in Samarra

Mark Rudd
What It Takes to Build a Movement

Ralph Nader
Read, Then Act: the Year's Best Books

Nicola Nasser
Palestinians on the Brink of Explosion

John Ross
Where the Holidays are a Cruel Hoax

Rannie Amiri
Jimmy Carter's Yuletide Apology

Christopher Brauchli
When Prosperity Comes to Bad Men

Shamus Cooke
Who Will Pay For the Economic Collapse?

Ramzy Baroud
Paying the Price for Europe's Identity Crisis

John Blair
My Moral Dilemma on Hydrofracking

Michael D. Yates
Fear and Loathing at St. Vincent College

David Macaray
The Gift Nobody Wanted

Charles R. Larson
Love in an Inhumane Country

David Yearsley
From the Little Ice Age, a Hot Christmas from Purcell

Kim Nicolini
Further on Down the Road

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Gina Myers

Website of the Weekend
A Xmas Gift From Ray Charles

December 24, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Cooing with Cash

Franklin C. Spinney For Better or Worse? the Afghan Escalation and Women's Rights

Nadia Hijab
The Jailing of Jamal Juma

Mike Whitney
Obama, Progressives and the Press: an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Reform in Name Only: Individual Mandates

William Loren Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters

Martha Rosenberg
First, Kill No Celebrities: New Year's Resolutions for the Drug Industry

Stephen Fleischman
A Pound of Flesh: Interest and Profit

Anthony Papa
Chase Bank Says F-You to Students at Holiday Time

Dave Lindorff
An Afghan Christmas: a Visit From St. Barack

Website of the Day
A Tale of Two Pigs

December 23, 2009

David Price
Hollywood's Human Terrain Avatars

Dean Baker
Bernanke and the Corruption of Washington Culture

Andy Worthington
The Afghan Four

Neve Gordon
Breaking Palestine's Peaceful Protests

Helen Redmond
Beware the Progressive Democrat

Debayni Kar
Can Migrants Save the Global Economy?

Fred Gardner
The Calender Girl Conspiracy: Could Pot Have Saved Marilyn?

Brian Tokar
What Really Happened in Copenhagen?

Dave Zirin
More Than a Sportswriter

Randall Amster
Et Tu, Barack?

Website of the Day
How Einstein Divided America's Jews

December 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Relocating Guantanamo

Dave Lindorff
A Longer, Deeper Recession Looms

Ralph Nader
Obama in the Shark Tank

David Rosen
Sexual Politics in the Age of Obama

Laurie Kirby
Woodstock's Dirty Secret

Ron Jacobs
The Best Way to Stop a War

Dick J. Reavis
Insurance Reform, in Brief

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Palestine's Gift of Christmas

Norman Solomon
Flares in the Darkness

Rannie Amiri
The Death of the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri

Website of the Day
Nader: From W. to Obama: a Seamless Transition on the War

December 21, 2009

Alan Farago
Destroying the Everglades at 25 Cents Per Ton

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Af/Pak War is Illegal

Uri Avnery
Bordering on the Ridiculous: "Oybama" in Oslo

Mike Whitney
Bernanke Tightens the Noose

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Medicare Murder Mystery

Mark Scaramella
The Fate of California's Forests

Walter Brasch
Law & Order in Pennsylvania: Corruption, Murder and Race Hate

David Michael Green
Now, I'm Really Getting Pissed Off

Ingmar Lee
Why I Climbed the Flagpole

Farzana Versey
Whose Euthanasia Is It, Anyway?

Binoy Kampmark
The Conservative Dissident

Website of the Day
My Father Was a Freedom Fighter

December 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Turning Tricks, Cashing In on Fear

Michael Colby
The Health Care Charade: Bernie the Quitter Fools Us Again

Jeremy Scahill
Stunning Statistics About the War That Everyone Should Know

Stewart J. Lawrence
Pakistan's Refugee Disaster: Symptom of a Deeper Malady

Mike Whitney
Chavez's Venezuela

Andy Worthington
The Case of the Unwilling Yemeni Recruit

James Ridgeway
How Health Reform was Killed by Triangulation

Saul Landau
Almost Year One: an Assessment

John Ross
Tragicomedy in Ixtapalapa

Danny Weil
Race to the Slop

Rannie Amiri
Year 1431: Off to a Rocky Start in the Middle East

Franklin Lamb
Life in Lebanon

Steve Early
Green Mountain Mustering for the War at Home or Abroad?

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Sovereignty of Muslim Nations: a Casualty of U.S. Foreign Policy

Fred Gardner
Pot Specialists Plan to Study New Strains

D. K. Wilson
Tiger Woods: Lessons Not Learned ... Again

Missy Beattie
It Takes a Conscience

Jim Goodman
Hope is Dead: the Ongoing Tragedy of Rural Health Care

George Wuerthner
Turning Montana Into the Nation's Woodbox

Charles R. Larson
Windows Into Non-Western Cultures

Lorenzo Wolff
Recession Punks

David Yearsley
That Nauseating Peace Concert

Ben Sonnenberg Lordura di Napoli: the Best DVDs of the Year

Wajahat Ali
Invading Eden: James Cameron's "Avatar"

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Pommy Vega and Cirino

Website of the Weekend
Rage Against the Machine: Uncensored for Xmas

December 17, 2009

Steven Higgs
Heavy Metal Kids

Barbara Koeppel
How Banks Prey on the Unemployed

Dave Lindorff
Abort the Democratic Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
The Lobby Within

Ron Jacobs
Selling a "Just" War: From Panama to Afghanistan

Shamus Cooke
The Democrats' Faux Fight Against the Banks

Christopher Brauchli
Suffer Little Children

Binoy Kampmark
The "Inevitable" War?

Norm Kent
Death by Baggie

Patrick Bond
Green Market Punks

Website of the Day
Grayson: End the War Now

December 16, 2009

James Bovard
How Bush Redefined American Freedom

Gregory V. Button
The TVA Ash Spill One Year Later

Dan Schiller
It's a Wired World: the Communications Revolution

Gareth Porter
The Taliban's Offer

Farrah Hassen
The Cairo Detour

Nicola Nasser
U.S. Creates Its Antithesis in Iraq

Daniel C. Maguire
Why Obama Flunks the "Just War" Test

Martha Rosenberg
The Sex Scandal No One Wants to Talk About

David Macaray
Education's Dismal Cycle

Ellen Brown
An EU / IMF Revolt

Robert Bryce
The Copenhagen Conundrum

Website of the Day
Double Trouble for Polar Bears

December 15, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Resistance in Bethlehem's Villages

Chris Floyd
Blair, Obama and the Narcissist's Defense

Anthony DiMaggio
Larry Summers and the Jobless Recovery

Dean Baker
Financial Transaction Tax: Easy and Fun Money

Andy Worthington
Tortured in the "Dark Prison"

Mike Whitney
Malalai Joya Among Warlords

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War Rebate?

Jeff Ballinger
Advocating Sweatshops: NPR, NYT and Nick Kristof

Raymond Lawrence
Tiger's Fix

David Rovics
Report From Cop-enhagen

Website of the Day
Science, Politics and Salmon

December 14, 2009

Daniel Wolff
Styling: the Charter School Look

Bill Quigley
Why ACORN Won

Patrick Cockburn
The Rush for Iraq's Oil

Michael Hudson
The Problem with Paul Samuelson

Paul Craig Roberts
The Israeli Stranglehold

Rob Stone, MD
Fighting the Health Care Blues: a Shareholder Resolution for Universal Care

Dr. Susan Block
Tiger Woods Syndrome

Pervez Hoodbhoy
The Confessions of a Groveling Pakistani Native Orientalist

Mike Whitney
Battered Berlusconi

Shepherd Bliss
A Tribute to Fallen Leaves

Website of the Day
Mark Pittman Remembered

December 11-13, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Not Even a Peanut

Carl Ginsburg
The American Health Care Pyramid

Joshua Frank /
Jeffrey St. Clair
Targeting Earth First!: the First GreenScare Case

Franklin C. Spinney
Why the Time for Afghan Analysis is Over

Anna Vigna
Hell is the Tijuana Assembly Line

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Faux Recovery

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Land Mines Obama Won't Touch

Julien Mercille
The Poppy Pretext: Why the War on Drugs is Really a War on the Taliban

Brian Cloughley
Who Cares About Gaza?

Benjamin Dangl
Democracy in Honduras: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Conn Hallinan
An Af-Pak Train Wreck

Christopher Brauchli
Blackwater's Second Act

Fred Gardner
Stigma Strikes Out: Tim Lincecum's Pot Bust

David Macaray
Cindy Sheehan's Lesson

Limone Tatatjavy
Madoff's Verdant Suckers

Joseph Shansky
Latin America in the Age of Obama

Belén Fernández
Superficial Reality in Honduras

Ingmar Lee
The Silence of the North: When the Tailings Ponds Let Go

Ron Jacobs
Democracy on Its Deathbed

Brenda Norrell
Leave It in the Ground: a Message to Copenhagen From Big Mountain

Farzana Versey
Hawks and Hawkers

Ramzi Kysia
A Pacifist Critique of Obama's Nobel Lecture

Missy Beattie
The American Pathology

Charles R. Larson
Banned and Forbidden in Saudi Arabia

David Yearsley
Haydn, Hsu and the Baryton

Poets' Basement
Orloski and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Pacific Wild

December 10, 2009

William Blum
Yeswecanistan

John Ross
Loose in Obamalandia

Björn Kumm
Welcome to Norway: Where Peace, Like Obama, is Two-Faced

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Notorious Hannibal Procedure

Mike Whitney
Showdown in Athens

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Selective Subpoenas

Gareth Porter
Iran: the Road to Diplomatic Failure

Rannie Amiri
Why You Should Know About Ali Sibat

Norman Solomon
War is Not Peace

James Faris
On Population: Why the Climate Change Malthusians are Wrong

Website of the Day
Suckers!

December 9, 2009

Kevin Alexander Gray
Obama and Black America

Joe Bageant
The Devil and Mr. Obama

Stephen Soldz
The "Ethical Interrogation"?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Politics of Cynicism

David Swanson
Being Jay Bybee

Dave Zirin
The People Speak

Thomas Power
Clarifying the Tester Bill: Is It About Wilderness or Logging?

Martha Rosenberg
How to Kill a Carp

Susie Day
America Crashes the White House

US Peace Groups
On Obama's Peace Prize: an Open Letter to the Nobel Committee

Website of the Day
Logging Truths

December 8, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
Wall Street Snaps Its Fingers

Mike Whitney
Obama's "We Got No Money" Rap

Brendan Cooney
Obama and Honduras: The Man Who Wasn't There

Stephanie McMillian
The Buying and Selling of Jared Diamond

Ron Jacobs
The Baghdad Bombings

Benjamin Dangl
The Speed of Change in Bolivia

Kevin Mink
Religious Intolerance in Israel: Through the State Department Looking Glass

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Shameful War

Helen Redmond
Yes, This Health Care Bill Really is Worse Than Nothing

David Macaray
The Double Standard is Alive and Well

Franklin Lamb
Washington's New Lebanon Policy: a Christmas Guide

December 7, 2009

Margot Kidder
Ax Max

Patrick Cockburn
The March of Folly

Gareth Porter
The Taliban - Al Qaeda Schism

Marshall Auerback
Is the Government Out of Money or is Obama Out of His Mind?

Clancy Sigal
Obama's Mother and Mine

Jeffrey Blankfort
What the U.S. Elite Really Thinks About Israel

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Bedouins Denied Right to Elections

Brian McKenna
Even If Obama Passed Single Payer, Primary Care Doctors Still Wouldn't Get It

Bouthaina Shaaban
Burqa Committees and Minaret Referenda

Charlotte Laws
In Praise of Gate-Crashing

Harry Browne
Conspiracy, Blood and Filth

Website of the Day
Help Save Coal Country for Christmas

December 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
War Cries From a Defeated Man

Ishmael Reed
The Selling of "Precious": Hollywood's Enduring Myth of the Black Male Sexual Predator

Paul Craig Roberts
The Twin Frauds of Obama

Vijay Prashad
Children Afraid of the Night: the Regional Alternative to Escalation in Afghanistan

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Pakistan Creates Its Own Enemy

Linn Washington, Jr.
Juvenile Injustice in a Philly Suburb

Eamonn McCann
The Rape of Irish Children

Rannie Amiri Lebanon: an End to Sectarian Politics?

David Rosen
Top Sports Sex Scandals

Benjamin Dangl
Turning Activists Into Voters in Uruguay

Dave Lindorff
The Epicenter of Mendacity

Dan Meek
The Assault on Campaign Finance Reform

Geoff Berne
Barbarians at the Schoolhouse

Todd Alan Price
Milwaukee League Comes to the Defense of Public Schools

Frank Green
Slim Turnout at World Peace March

John Halle
Run, Ralph, Run

Brian Tokar
Repackaging Copenhagen

Brian M. Downing
Escalation and Exit in Afghanistan

Jim Goodman
The Trail of Broken Promises

Bruce E. Levine
Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?

Charles R. Larson
Obsession With Objects: Pamuk's Dazzling New Novel

Kim Nicolini
Fantastic Mr. Fox: Filming the Imagination

David Yearsley
A Mighty Fortress is Our Bach

Lorenzo Wolff
Owl City: From MySpace to the Billboard Charts

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Greg Keeler

Website of the Weekend
Banana Land Campaign

December 3, 2009

Jeff Ballinger
Helping Dicatators Look Good

Paul Fitzgerald / Elizabeth Gould
What are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?

Christopher Brauchli
Innocent Dead Men Walking

Laura Flanders
All-Too-Familiar Line on Afghanistan

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah's New Manifesto

Mark Weisbrot
Unavoidable Differences: Brazil vs. Washington

Gary Leupp
Obama's Tortured Rationale

Stephen Fleischman
Envisioning an Exit Strategy?

Bill Christison
Obama's Unjust Iran Policy

December 2, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Obama Puppet

Gareth Porter
The Power Struggle Behind Obama's Speech

Zoltan Grossman
Afghanistan: the Roach Motel of Empires

Mike Whitney
The Path to Full Employment: an Interview with Marshall Auerback

Ron Jacobs
The Escalation Begins: an Exchange with Anand Gopal

M. Shahid Alam
The Groveling of Pakistani Elites

D.K. Wilson
Is Tiger Woods Black Enemy Number One?

Fran Shor
Obama and the Dying Empire

Susan Galleymore
African Realities in the Wake of World AIDS Day

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Caught in the Cross Fire

Website of the Day
Rebel Without a Conscience

December 1, 2009

David Price
Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan

Afshin Rattansi
The Dubai Disaster: a Familiar Fall

Carlos Benemann
Dubai FUBAR

Dean Baker
Is "Helping Homeowners" Washingtonspeak for Bailing Out the Banks?

Bouthaina Shaaban Rejecting Westocentrism

David Rosen
America's Failing Sexual Health

Susan Galleymore
Global Connections and the Arc of War

David Macaray
Labor's Beating Heart

Miriam Pemberton
Bush-Style Military Spending Not Over Yet

Farzana Versey
Condoms, Hunks and the AIDS Celebrity Circus

Website of the Day
The Story of Cap and Trade

November 30, 2009

Gary Leupp
A "Necessary War" -- for a Gas Pipeline

Mara Ahmed /
Judith Bello
Pakistan and the Global War on Terror

Mike Whitney
Crisis in Dubai

Steven Higgs
Growing Up Toxic

P. Sainath
Pay-to-Print: "News" Stories for Cash Scandal Rocks India

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply

Norm Kent
On the Suicide of Mike Penner: Why the Transgendered Need Civil Rights Protections

Dave Lindorff
Obama as the Manchurian Candidate

Normon Solomon
The Hollow Politics of Escalation

David Michael Green How Dare You Clean Up Our Mess?

Website of the Day
The America's Program Needs Your Help

November 27 - 29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Auld Triangle Goes Jingle Jangle

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Mike Whitney
Blame Larry Summers

Franklin Spinney
Obama as LBJ

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

Saul Landau
The True Price of Oil

Heather Gray
Overtly Racist Regimes in the 20th Century

John Ross
The Timeline for a New Mexican Revolution Comes Due

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: 52 Words That Shook Washington

Shamus Cooke
The Devastating Consequences of the Corporate Health Insurance Bill

David Ker Thomson
The Transformers

Martha Rosenberg
Cash for Cheesedogs? The Recession Takes a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

Ramzy Baroud
A Paradigm Shift in Singapore?

Ron Ridenour
Post-War Internment Hell for Tamils

Amanda Mueller
Saving Grace: Negotiating Abortion and the Catholic Faith

James Rothenberg
China Kowtow

Travis Kelly
Mayday, 1960: the U2 Files

Don Monkerud
Big Beer Takes Over

Ron Jacobs
Science Fiction and Politics

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of Chinua Achebe

David Yearsley
What Father Made Us Sing Before the Turkey

Poets' Basement
Catherine Zickgraf and Mickey Z.

Website of the Weekend
Good to Be Alive

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

December 31, 2009

From Enron to TSA

"The System Worked"

By TOM STEPHENS

“The system worked.”

--Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, regarding the attempted Christmas 2009 bombing on an airplane landing in Detroit

The system worked. After an oppressively narrow and empty 2000 election campaign, George W. Bush the Younger stole the US presidency, although he failed to win the majority of votes. The campaign seemed to turn on the vital issues of Vice President Al Gore’s debate mannerisms and the orange tinge of his makeup. Election chicanery, faux news lies, and thuggery in Florida were approved by a particularly unprincipled 5-4 US Supreme Court decision. We knew this meant trouble. Like lambs being led to slaughter, we had no idea how deep. Bush and his evil puppet master Dick Cheney began to act like they’d actually won the election and had a mandate. They eschewed any moderation or compromise, in favor of ideological extremism and tax cuts for the rich. We started sliding into a nightmare decade. The system ratified abuses of illegitimate power.

The system worked. Eight months into the Cheney/Bush administration’s watch, eleven men with box cutters, pilot training and a bold plan hijacked our future and liberty. The US reacted clumsily, plunging the world into war, first in Afghanistan and two years later inexplicably in Iraq. Both these unwinnable aggressions based on lies continue today, seven years later, bankrupting the nation, hollowing out democracy and (in a rare bit of good news) undermining the US empire. US military families suffer the monstrous human consequences of multiple deployments to illegal occupations of foreign lands. Repeatedly doing the same basic things as before in Korea and Vietnam, expecting that somehow things will end up differently this time, displays systematic insanity. The system empowered warmongers, and enriched war profiteers.

The system worked. The 2001 collapse of Enron triggered a continually intensifying class war, culminating in trillions of tax dollars and credits supporting the very Wall Street banksters who crashed the economy. Homeless people and foreclosed, vacant houses proliferate throughout our cities, and poverty invaded even the sacred, middle class suburbs. Giant US auto companies were bailed out, and their workers were thrown out, while efforts to save the planet by converting industrial production to the future green economy languished. A continuing series of corporate scandals expose the ethical and legal rot at the heart of the economy. The system lavishly rewarded financial fraudsters, and savagely crushed working people’s dreams.

The system worked. It did a heckuva job in the wake of 2005 Tropical Storm and Societal Failure Katrina,[1] graphically exposing the consequences of massive inequality, racism and private profit-oriented “security” policies, after a long-predicted natural disaster. The system left the Gulf Coast’s poor people to drown, and then richly rewarded disaster capitalist “recovery” contractors for coming in afterwards to grab their land.

The system worked. A black man and a white woman stepped forward as the corporate-selected leading candidates in the 2008 quadrennial election extravaganza, occurring amid deep, intense and profound social crisis. Obama’s eventual victory reasserted the corporate domination of the so-called Democratic Leadership Council. Clinton, Gates, Summers, Geithner & Co. were appointed as safe hands for the same imperial, military and economic policies that drove the collapse in the first place. The system worked to perpetuate its own power and injustices, and to kill hopes for change.

The system worked. At our last best hope to prevent climatic/ecological catastrophe threatening the whole basis and web of life on Earth in Copenhagen 2009, our so-called (corporate state) leaders looked directly at the ghastly consequences, clearly heard what has to be done to prevent – or at least mitigate – them, and decided not to do so. The system proved unsustainable, unjust, and suicidal.

The system worked. With blinding speed and amid roaring nonsense over “death panels” and “socialism,” it converted health care reform into corporate welfare for insurance and drug companies. Health care options available to everyone – everyone – in other industrialized countries – all other industrialized countries – exotic choices like being able to afford seeing a doctor, will remain unavailable to tens of millions in the US, in an epic economic recession, while we are legally required to buy inferior insurance policies, all in the guise of “reform.” The system is apparently on the verge of destroying our physical, economic, social and emotional health, in order to boost corporate profits.

The system worked. Whenever people denounced the scams of the corporate state, Wall Street, and its political puppets in Washington, or even tried to educate ourselves about the real world instead of the corporate echo chamber, the backlash against such organized, principled and militant social movements – often even among self-proclaimed leading “liberals” - fiercely maintained “THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE,” like a hideous zombie Margaret Thatcher on steroids. The system excluded any and all real alternatives, and defeated all meaningful solutions for working people.

In a democratic society, what “the system” is, how it “works,” and most importantly whom it works for and whom it injures, would all be the subjects of open, robust, informed and effective public political debates. Our public debate was more constrained. We got the wit and wisdom of Joe the Plumber, and the threat of President Caribou Barbie if we didn’t pull the lever for Obama. Staggering under the weight of the military- and prison-industrial complexes, we choose between either trying to cut through the ten thousand tons of bullshit smothering our lives and communities, or groveling in the latest corporate entertainment crap as an attempt to avoid facing these overwhelming realities.

It’s worth considering for a moment why savvy politico Janet Napolitano made such an obviously untrue statement – indeed, it was almost unbelievably moronic under the circumstances. The explanation is pretty simple. A top government bureaucrat like the Secretary of “Homeland Security” needs to believe, or at least to claim, that “the system worked,” no matter what the facts. One implication of this is that they lie to us routinely, all the time. Duh. This widely accepted fact sheds considerable light on the real meaning of the phrase “the system worked.” It works like this: The dominant institutions and powers of our society, aka “the system,” perpetuate their own power and wealth, and they either fool or coerce us into not fighting back or changing things to improve our condition; i.e., they “work.” Simple, really. Deadly, but effective.

The consequences of these institutional dynamics after the last ten years strain human comprehension and the resilience of all life. New York Times Op-Ed writer Frank Rich recently observed that “We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth. … after a decade in which two true national catastrophes, a wasteful war and a near-ruinous financial collapse, were both in part byproducts of the ease with which our leaders bamboozled us, we can’t so easily move on.”[2]

Similarly, Hofstra University political science professor David Michael Green surveyed the last ten years and concluded that:

“Short of the 1860s or 1930s, this was perhaps the most disastrous decade in American history, and it deserves a good goddamed label to celebrate that fine achievement. … If there was one bright spot, it was the seeming recognition by the American public that the full glory of regressive politics was a fairly horrifying prospect to behold, once stripped by a sufficient dose of reality immersion to reveal the truth behind the marketing slogans. Americans seemed to finally come to their senses just a bit, and decide that the thirteenth century was best left in the history books, after all.
But then along came Barack Obama to provide the fitting end to it all. Crushing any sense of possible recovery or redemption (and even his own presidency) on the altar of perpetual obedience to corporate predation, he has now made the decade complete in every way. Not only has he abandoned any meaningful solutions for the multiple crises he inherited, he has absolved by silence the folks who produced those very catastrophes. No, strike that. He has more than absolved them, he has revivified them.
If there is any bright spot in the whole affair, it is that conditions are fertile for potentially big change in this country. But, then, this is America, a place where a corporate milquetoast like Harry Reid defines the supposed left, and is considered some sort of Bolshevik revolutionary. Or worse, I should say that it is an increasingly desperate, collapsing empire America, where the chances that such big change could be really ugly are lots higher than not.”[3]

We’re between the rock and the hard place. In spite of the risks, it’s time to change – indeed completely overturn and junk - a system that works for the fat cats and the power brokers, while it abuses you and me and billions of ordinary people. In the mean time, thanks to Ms. Napolitano for timely and publicly providing the awful 2000 -09 decade with a fitting moniker: The Decade that the System Worked.

Tom Stephens is a lawyer in Detroit. He can be reached at: jail4banksters@yahoo.com

Notes.

[1] Paul Street coined the phrase.

[2] “Tiger Woods, Person of the Year” 12/20/09

[3] “Well, That Sure Sucked: Good Riddance to the Devil’s Decade”

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