Today's Stories

June 26-28, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

June 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Case of Netanyahu and the Curious Incident

Robert Sandels /
Nelson P. Valdes
U.S. Cuba Policy: a Case of Post-Diplomatic Strees Disorder

Anthony DiMaggio
The Iranian Elections and the Faith-Based Media

Robert Weissman
Obama's Financial Sector Reform Plan: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Joshua Frank
These Are Obama's Wars Now

Jonathan Cook
Canadian Ambassador Honored in Illegal Park Built on Razed Palestinian Homes

Reza Fiyouzat
Iranians in the Streets

Norman Solomon
Obama and the Antiwar Democrats

Ali Jawad
Reformists are Islamists, Too

James Ridgeway
Am I on Crack When It Comes to Flight 447?

Website of the Day
The Death of the Ghost Prisoner

June 17, 2009

Carl Boggs
Torture: an American Legacy

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Psychology and Sen. Daniel Inouye: the True Story Behind Psychology's Role in Torture?

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Obama Will Outspend Reagan on Defense

Liaquat Ali Khan
Obama's Gift to Pakistan: a Civil War

Jonathan Cook
Beating and Torturing Children

Binoy Kampmark
Gordon Brown's War Inquiry

Karim Makdisi
The Lebanese Elections: a Box Office Success?

Dave Lindorff
Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black

David Swanson
In Congress: 32 Heroes, 21 Frauds

Gene Marx
How Fox News is Helping to Nationalize the GI Sanctuary Movement

Website of the Day
The Diamond Mine That Ate Mirny

June 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Looming Peril: a Plague of Snakes

John Ross
Undermining Mexico

Afshin Rattansi
Guarding the Revolution

Marc Levy
How I Nearly Won the War

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?

Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Youth Make History

Brian M. Downing
Democracy in Iran

Merle Lefkoff
Israel's Angels in America

David Macaray
Charles Manson and Me

Robert Jensen
Finding a Stubborn Hope to Live in a Dead Culture

David Swanson
An Exit Strategy That Keeps Wars Going

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament Fundraiser

June 15, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Ending of America's Financial-Military Empire

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iranian Elections: Sure They Stole It...Up Front and Honestly

Patrick Cockburn
A Whole New Ballgame in Iraq

James Ridgeway
Did Composite Parts Bring Down Air France Flight 447?

Marjorie Cohn
Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam

Rannie Amiri
Iran and the End of the "Obama Effect" Myth

Dave Lindorff
How Obama is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform

Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Elections and the Hysterical Media

Leonard Schwartz
The Angel of History and the Ghetto of Gaza

Martha Rosenberg
Start Your Engines, Drug Reps!

Website of the Day
Single-Payer v. Public Option

June 12-14, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Who Needs Yesterday's Papers?

Gareth Porter
The CIA's Drone Wars

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Parlor Trick

Mark Ames
Elmer Fudd Nation

Esam Al-Amin
What Really Happened in the Lebanese Elections?

Franklin Lamb
Carter in Lebanon

Patrick Cockburn
Prisoner Swap in Iraq

Andy Worthington
The Long Ordeal of Mohammed El-Gharani

Heather Gray
A New Perspective on the Confederacy: Southern Greed During the Civil War

Felice Pace
Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement

Ron Jacobs
Flashback to the End of a War That Really Did End

George Wuerthner
Burning Questions: Why the National Fire Plan is a Trojan Horse for Logging

Jeffrey Buchanan /
Trinh Le
Biloxi Trailer Blues

David Ker Thomson
Americana

Renaud Lambert
Brazil: More Dependent Than Ever

Kevin Zeese
Congress and the Health Business Lobby

David Macaray
SAG Vote: A Lesson in Solidarity ... Not

Evelyn Pringle
FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers

Chris Genovali
Blood Sport Auction: Why eBay Should Stop Selling Guided Hunts for Bears, Wolves and Cougar

David Michael Green
The Rhetorical President

Brian J. Foley
Our Solar System is Not a Suicide Pact!

Charles R. Larson
No Safe Return

Kim Nicolini
Foreclosure is Hell: Sam Raimi's Frightfest

David Yearsley
Bach on Torture: Mr. Cheney, They're Playing Your Song

Lorenzo Wolff
Intent to Discord

Poets' Basement
Chris Jordan

Website of the Weekend
The Red Room

June 11, 2009

Kathy Kelly /
Dan Pearson
Down and Out in Shah Mansoor: With the Swat Refugees

James Bovard
The Latest Torture Cover-Up Scam

Tristan de Bourbon
The Toy Makers of Chenghai: the Financial Crisis Seen From China

Dave Lindorff
The Wheels are Coming Off the Recovery Program

Kevin Zeese
The Case for Disbarment of the Torture Lawyers

Ralph Nader
The Craft of Sam Maloof: a Visionary Woodworker

Harvey Wasserman
The GOP's Trillion Dollar Reactor Plan Goes Radioactive

Nicole Colson
The Anti-Abortion Movement's Climate of Violence

Mark Weisbrot
Showdown Over the IMF

Dan Bacher
Big Water's Big Lie Unravels

Website of the Day
Top 10 Most Absurd TIME Covers

June 10, 2009

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Obama's Doublespeak on Iran

Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine
The Dangerous World of Indefinite Detentions: From Vietnam to Abu Ghraib

Kathy Kelly
Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Fear Rules

Rev. William E. Alberts
First the Torture of Truth ...

Peter Lee
Obama and North Korea: a Warm-Up in the Offing?

Carol Miller
Why We Need a Holistic, Cradle-to-the-Grave National Health Care System

Emily Ratner
Dreams of Flight in Gaza

Robert Weissman
The IMF's Accountability Moment

Dave Lindorff
The Sutra of the Crushed Volvo

Website of the Day
Starving in Gitmo

June 9, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Back From the Dead: Pentagon Pork!

Mike Whitney
Is Hyper-Inflation Around the Corner?

Stan Cox
Biofuel's Drug Problem

Sibel Edmonds
The Battle Against the State Secrets Privilege

Jonathan Cook
Where the Victim is the Guilty Party

David Macaray
A Bad Time for Unions

Robert Jensen
In South Africa, Apartheid is Dead, But White Supremacy Lingers On

Nadia Hijab
The Obama Difference

Mark Weisbrot
Vulture Funds Descend on Argentina

Website of the Day
Waging Non-Violence

June 8, 2009

John Ross
Mexico: Politics as Drugs / Drugs as Politics

Paul Wright
Deconstructing Gus: How a Former Prisoner Took On and Took Down Corrections Corporation of America's Top Lawyer (and Cheney Pal)

Paul Craig Roberts
Long-Term Economic Memory Loss

Franklin C. Spinney
"Natural Growth:" Israel's Demographic Hogwash

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon's Elections: Return to the Status Quo

Uri Avnery
The Tone and the Music

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Loyalty Oaths

Eric Toussaint
/ Damien Millet
The Partisans of Capitalism Have Lost All Credibility

Jim Goodman
The Dairy Oligarchy

Norman Solomon
Words and War

Reza Fiyouzat
When Accusations Fly: the Spectacle of the Iranian Elections

Website of the Day
Latino Jobless Rate Soars

June 5 -7, 200

Alexander Cockburn
High Words, Low Truths

George Galloway
Our Convoy to Gaza

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama in Cairo

Jennifer Loewenstein
How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?

Franklin Lamb
Watching Obama's Speech in Lebanon

Mike Whitney
The Biggest Rip Off Ever?

Andy Worthington
Death at Guantánamo

Missy Comley Beattie
Peace Be Upon You?

Farzana Versey
Walk Like an Egyptian: the Oprahfication of Obama

Stanley Heller
Obama's Non-Starter

John V. Whitbeck
Nothing Comes From Nothing

Robert Weissman
GM: the Path Not Taken

Lee Sustar
The Fall of GM: Why Workers Will Pay the Price

Dave Lindorff
What a State-Run GM Could Do

William Blum
The Great, International, Truly Demonic Iran Threat

Ernest Callenbach /
Harvey Wasserman
A Green-Powered Trip Through Ecotopia

Greg Moses
By George! Austin Leads the National Recovery

Ron Jacobs
The Meaning of Yasser Arafat

David Yearsley
Art Set in Concrete:
the Desolate Urban Landscape of High Culture

Tim Stelloh
Pot Home Invasions: Bud and Blow Torches

Belén Fernández
The Joksters: Obama and Thomas Friedman

David Ker Thomson
The Academics

Karyn Strickler
Clean Coal: a Dirty Joke

Christopher Brauchli
Judicial Amnesia and the Federalist Society

Charles R. Larson
Leaving Tangier: Exile and Exploitation

Kim Nicolini
"Hunger:" Art With a Punch

Lorenzo Wolff
Good Head (Or Why the End of Hand-Crafted Music Isn't (Necessarily) the End of Music)

Poets' Basement
Jenkins, Orloski and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tankman

Weekend Edition
June 26-28, 2009

A Report From the 61st International Whaling Commission Meeting

Fear and Loathing in Madeira

By Cpt. PAUL WATSON

It’s hard to believe that Dr. Sidney Holt is attending his 50th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) here in Madeira. From that very first meeting he attended in Cambridge in 1959 until this very strange and weird and wacky whaling commission meeting today, he has seen a lifetime of frustrations, blatant greed, hysteria, hypocrisy, profound stupidity, awesome arrogance and incredible ignorance. He has also observed the threads of consistency that has tied every IWC gathering together - ineffectiveness, posturing, bureaucratic nonsense and confusion laid down on a patchwork foundation of grisly slaughter, greed and self-interest.

The IWC has always been and continues to be an insane cruel joke, certainly cruel to the whales and if not for the agonizing suffering of these intelligent and gentle creatures, these annual affairs would be hilarious. Most of these clowns posing as delegates share the same macabre character traits of the infamous Joker. They talk with casual insensitivity about the murder of sentient beings whose brains are larger and more complex than their own. It’s like what an annual conference of Nazi concentration camp guards would have been like if Hitler had been victorious.

I can imagine discussions like the importance of lethal medical research and a population assessment of the Jewish and Gypsy populations and the effect of their consumption patterns on German beer supplies. Or scientific panels to investigate if Jews actually feel pain and ways to make improvements for humane gas chambers. The type of delegates now attending the IWC meetings would be the same ones expected to condemn any measures to save Jews in established Jewish protection zones.

The Dr. Mengele wannabe’s in the Japanese Institute of Crap Cetacean Research are immune to the screams of dying pregnant whales. They measure and dissect whale foetuses with the same cold dispassionate professionalism as the butchers of Buchenwald displayed to the world only a mere year before the founding of the IWC.

Japan’s crappy science arguments were hysterically funny. They actually insisted on showing a power point presentation of the analysis of the contents of whale entrails during the lunch hour. The only research that Japanese whalers are conducting is product development and marketing of whale meat research. The current issue of New Scientist dismisses the credibility of this ridiculous ploy of scientific research whaling. In seeking to make fools of the rest of the world, the Japanese are making a laughing stock of themselves in the scientific community.

Last night I had to laugh to see Icelandic whaling boss Khristjan Loftsson sitting in the lobby of the Pestana Casino Park Hotel with three other men sipping on a pink fruity drink with little apricot coloured umbrellas.

The entire Icelandic whaling operation continues is because of this one girly man and the reputation of an entire nation is being sullied in blood because of this man’s particular cetacidal perversion. His insistence on penetrating innocent whales with the exploding harpoon replacing his little penis is nothing short of pathetic.

Meanwhile some of the African and Caribbean delegates were making good use of the funds slipped into their pockets by the Japanese in exchange for their votes. It’s amusing to see whores spending money on whores and tossing chips onto the roulette table like confetti while smoking Cuban cigars, all under the pretence of regulating whaling.

The delegates to the IWC are divided into four camps. On one side are the barbaric whaling nations of Japan, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark with their entourage camp followers of paid for third world rinky dink nations that have prostituted their vote out to their Japanese puppet masters. On the other side are the die hard whale conservation nations led by Australia, the United States, Great Britain, and New Zealand. The fourth camp are the aboriginal “subsistence” hunters who tend to confuse and muck up the entire process with their insistence that murdering whales is part of their culture.

The only thing all four camps can and do agree with is to condemn Sea Shepherd and
once again the Japanese whaling delegation has ensured that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society receives the maximum amount of attention at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission.

Dr. Sidney Holt wrote in the June 25th edition of Eco that, “The IWC has just spent much time again, discussing the interaction between the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (“the organization that they will not name”) and the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic last season. What concerns me is the injustice of such discussions in which only one side is heard – that of the government of Japan. If the IWC Commissioners want to act as judges and turn Plenary sessions into a rump court then the very least they could do is hear Sea Shepherd’s version of events; Paul Watson is in Funchal; why not invite him in? The Japanese video is not definitive. I, with millions of others have seen the Sea Shepherd’s helicopter footage, showing a very different story. I don’t know who is right or wrong but the IWC judgements of one side of a serious legal controversy is lamentable.”

For the third year in a row, the Japanese whaling delegation have taken up the delegates time and tried their patience by forcing a motion onto the floor to condemn the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The motion is labelled Safety at Sea and accuses Sea Shepherd of being a threat to the safety of Japanese whalers.

This year they seem to have an understanding that they are giving us free publicity and some of them are now referring to us as the organization that will not be named, or the “organization in question” or the “organization previously discussed.”

The issue of safety at sea is just another bad joke in an organization that specializes in bad jokes. We already know that Japanese whalers present a safety threat to Antarctic whales and they also present a safety threat to themselves.

This annual effort to condemn Sea Shepherd has only served to make us very visible in a meeting that were not allowed to participate in. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is the only organization in the world banned from attending the IWC meetings.

It is a honour we are extremely proud of, and we are flattered that the Japanese recognize that we are a pain in their ass by constantly promoting us as their primary opposition.

The Japanese government spends an outrageous amount of time trying to discredit and damage the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They are telling governments that we are terrorists yet they are not issuing any formal charges for fear of drawing more attention to their illegal whaling activities. They constantly try to bully other nations where our ships have been registered into taking our flag away from us. They have forced Canada, Belize, the Cayman Islands and Britain to submit but fortunately the Dutch don’t take their orders from Tokyo and we remain registered in the Netherlands. They tried to get us kicked out of the hotel where the IWC meeting is taking place and where we are registered guests but they were foiled in that effort also.

It is comical watching the fifty or so Japanese delegates trying to avoid the Sea Shepherd crew. They refuse to walk through the lobby when we are there, they walk out of restaurants if we are there and they tend to stay sequestered in their rooms, avoiding the bars, the casino and the pool. They seem to feel comfortable only behind the security guards and the police in the restricted area where the conference is being held. It’s like they are not even at the hotel. It’s great fun watching them pretend that we are terrorists and their feigned expressions of fear in our presence.

The Japanese have argued that the IWC has no authority or competence to discuss small cetacean killing, to keep the subject of their mass dolphin slaughters off the agenda yet they are demanding that the IWC exercise authority and competence over marine safety issues of which none of the delegates have any experience, authority, or expertise.

When it comes to the issue of safety however, the Japanese would be well advised to get their crews trained in proper safety measures. So far they have had two devastating fires, oil spills, numerous injuries and three deaths. The incompetence of the Japanese whaling fleet is staggeringly and lethally embarrassing.

Overall the IWC displayed the same level of incompetence as they did last year. They made no real decisions on anything. Discussion on the Greenland request to murder 10 Humpback whales went back and forth with even Australia being rumoured to support the killers. Remarkably they agreed that climate change was a real problem and that whale watching was a profitable industry. In the end, no one could agree on anything of importance and the Humpbacks were tabled for further discussion for next year.

Sea Shepherd crew had loads of fun running around with Styrofoam harpoons looking for delegate tissue samples for the Sea Shepherd non-lethal whaler research program.

“We were looking for hair samples to determine mercury levels,” said Laurens de Groot of the Netherlands Sea Shepherd. “We could not find any elusive Japanese whalers to sample amongst the delegates and then we saw Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett and realized that a hair sample was not always possible.”

After dropping a few million dollars into the Madeiran economy, the IWC ended it’s lock-down of the five star Pestana Casino Park hotel and adjourned until next year’s scheduled meeting in Agadir, Morocco for another round of silliness, inaction and subsidized holidays for third world bureaucrats.

All in all it was the typical Alice in Wonderland through the looking glass excursion into the dense and mysterious world of the International Weird and Wacky Whaling Commission where all is not what it seems, and reality is lost in an expensive haze of self-interested greed and anthropocentric arrogance.

Meanwhile in the world’s ocean the most highly evolved intelligence to have ever graced this planet swim in blissful ignorance of the fact that the most dangerous animal on the Earth continues to be obsessed with compulsive murderous desires and has been proven to be incapable of self control in ending the naturosociopathic addiction to senseless serial killing.

Captain Paul Watson is director of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

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