Today's Stories

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 21, 2009

Obama Cowers Before Insurance Industry

Code Red for Single Payer

By JOHN V. WALSH

Many activists have worked tirelessly for decades to win single payer, aka national health insurance, aka Medicare for all.  Rallies, letters to legislators, binding and non-binding referenda in many states have all been tried.  The one clear result is that 66 per cent of the public now favors single payer.  The battle of ideas has been won.  And now at this moment of opportunity when the health care system is in a very deep crisis with increasing numbers unemployed and hence in need of health insurance, all may be lost – and that due to the very man, Barack Obama, whom so many of these same activists worked so hard to elect.  Such a betrayal is breathtaking. 

Obama betrays single-payer movement to insurers.

At the White House Conference on Health Care Reform several weeks back Obama made it abundantly clear that single-payer was off the table.  Not so much as one single payer advocate was invited while the room was stuffed to the gills with representatives of the insurance industry and CEO’s of every stripe.  Several weeks earlier at a White House meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. John Conyers, the author of H.R. 676, the House single-payer bill asked Obama if he might attend along with a physician advocate of single-payer.  In an email reply, Obama said no.

In response Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and other organizations threatened a demonstration of docs in white coats in front of the White House on the day of the conference.  Obama quickly reversed himself and admitted Conyers and PNHP president, Dr. Oliver Fein, to the conference.  So far so good.  The threat was an exercise in power and it worked.  It also demonstrates that Obama does respond to pressure - but not to polite requests.  Very important.

However, Obama also made it clear Conyers and Fein were to sit down and shut up, unlike Karen Ignani, spokesperson for the insurers who was a prominent speaker,.  Unfortunately Fein and Conyers obeyed.  In my estimation, this was a mistake as was the decision to cancel the demonstration without gaining more from Obama.  Imagine if Dr. Fein had spoken up; imagine if he had to be forcibly excluded from the conference.  Single payer would have been put before the nation right then and there.  The admission of Fein and Conyers to the forum has been presented as a victory and I suppose it was a small and partial one.  But it was certainly a lesson, one that should not be forgotten or have to be relearned.

Obama has organized a series of regional health care forums and at none of them have single payer advocates been invited to address the room or join the discussion – the forums are by invitation only.  I was part of a single-payer demonstration at the one for New England in Vermont hosted by Obama’s buddy, Mass governor Duval Patrick.  As at the White House, some single-payer advocates managed to get in but they did not challenge Patrick or by extension Obama.  With two hundred others we demonstrated outside for single payer.  I was bowled over when the principal physician speaker at the demonstration proclaimed, “President Obama is on our side.  But he cannot put his foot in the water for us because it is shark infested.”  As she explained, the sharks in this case are the insurers.  Is that not another way of saying that Obama has sold out to the insurers?

Our group joined the demonstration with a banner reading:

OBAMA, LIAR
On Single Payer.
2003: “It’s the Best.” 
2009: Get Lost. (1)

And so it is.  Obama rose to prominence in Chicago in part by pledging to labor and to prominent activists, like national PNHP coordinator, the wise and witty Dr. Quentin Young, once upon a time Obama’s personal physician, that he was committed to single payer.  And you can be sure that Obama was thoroughly educated by Quentin Young on single-payer.  But Young somewhat ruefully admitted to Amy Goodman that Obama was “dishonest” on single-payer (2).  That is another word for liar.  And here is Dr. David Himmelstein, a founder of PNHP and one of its leading thinkers, on Obama: “The President once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he’s caving in to corporate healthcare interests and completely shutting out advocates of single payer reform,” Himmelstein said. “The majority of Americans favor single payer….”  And yet if one looks at the PNHP web site home page there sits a picture of Obama embracing Quentin Young.  Strange tribute to a sworn adversary, but a sign of confusion about Obama that reigns in all too many quarters.

So let us be clear.  Obama is not on the side of single-payer – far from it.  He has actively sought to remove it from public consideration.  It may be hard for some to see Obama as the enemy since he is an appealing persona, a physically attractive man in appearance and speech, a politician of color, and one who looks especially good after years of Bush.  But the Bush standard is a low bar indeed, and persona is no substitute for policy.  Health care reform is not a matter to be judged according to the values of People magazine or by wishful thinking or a desire to be “part of the crowd”; it is a life and death matter for millions of people in this country.

How to win the Medicare-like option in the Obama plan.  Make the perfect the ally of the apparent good.

Some now argue that Obama must be supported, because he will include a public sector, Medicare-like option for everyone in his “reform” plan.   The insurers will not be able to compete, or so goes the argument, and hence they will eventually be driven from the scene.  So do not give Obama too much flack, we are told.  However, it is unclear whether this option is presented by Obama in a serious way.  Jack Beatty of the Atlantic said on April 17 on NPR that the White House is sending out signals it is backing off this option in the face of insurance industry opposition.  And the Wall Street Journal and others are already assailing this option as a disguised assault on the health insurance industry and the American free enterprise system and liberty itself. 

Let us suppose that you are a supporter of this public sector, Medicare-like option and that you are interested in the tactics to win it.  What is the best path?  I submit that the best path is an all-out battle for single payer.  In that way, the public sector option is the compromise position between all-out insurance company domination and single-payer.  It permits politicians who might want single payer to say to the insurers:  “Give me this public sector option, because I need to give my constituents that - at the very least.”  It is horse trading, of course – but that is what tactical politics is all about.  In other words the perfect can well be the ally of the apparent good – to alter a well-worn phrase used to discredit single payer.  To give up on single payer or to fight for it half-heartedly will only make the eventual outcome worse.  And of course this strategy also opens the possibility that single-payer might prevail.  And would that not be sweet.

So job one now is to get single-payer back on the table.  This will not be easy.  In some sense we are now in a worse state now than we were in the early 90s when the Clintons raised the issue of health care reform.  At that time there was much debate about single payer, and the newspapers were filled with charts comparing it to the convoluted plans put forward by the Clintons. Obama has been much more successful in serving the insurance industry and paralyzing the single-payer movement than the Clintons ever dreamed of.

Now the question is how to get single payer back on the table.  It would be a profound mistake to see the main effort as educational.   Single payer, aka Medicare for All, is easily understood; and 67 per cent of the American people already support it.  The battle of ideas has been won.  Now we must win the political battle.  And that cannot involve polite discourse alone.  Obama needs his progressive base to win election again – as do many congress members.  Simply put, we must tell Obama and company that this base will desert them if we get only McCain lite from them.  That is the key; without that we have no leverage.

Militancy will be necessary.  Non-violent civil disobedience must be considered.  Congressional offices and Obama appearances must be targeted for forceful and plain-spoken demonstrations – not polite tete a tetes out of the public view.  And there is urgency to this.  The Congresspeople and the president must be put on notice that we will not support them if they do not meet our demands.  No more Mr. Nice Guy on the movement’s part.

Many people have worked for  many decades trying to win single-payer.  What a tragedy it would be if we allowed ourselves to be diverted by a deceptive Messiah at a moment of possible breakthrough. Both PNHP and SinglePayerAction.org are willing to continue the battle, but too many others are not.  This must change.  The specifics of the struggle will demand imagination, militancy and more.  But if we do not fight, we surely will not win.

John Walsh is an activist in PNHP. He also ran for Congress twice in the early 90s on a single-payer platform, inter alia, but lost each time by about 1 million ….dollars. He can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com

1. For picture see: http://www.makethemaccountable.com/ 

2. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/  You can also get a link to Obama’s 2003 speech praising single-payer to an AFL-CIO meeting in Chicago.

3. http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=1

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