Today's Stories

September 24, 2009

Steven Higgs
Doctors Support National Health Insurance

Christopher Brauchli
Death Pays

Nadia Hijab
Know Your Dictator

September 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Economy is a Lie, Too

Gabriel Kolko
The United States in Afghanistan: Eight Years Later

Uri Avnery
The Waldorf-Astoria Summit

Shamus Cooke
The First Shots of the Trade War

Missy Beattie
The Sound of Money

Gareth Porter
Taliban Rising

Mark Weisbrot
How Much Repression Will Hillary Clinton Support in Honduras?

Dr. Susan Block
The Murder of Annie Le

Norm Kent
Pot and the Right to Pursue Happiness

Richard Neville
Apocalypse Porno

Website of the Day
In Carver Country

September 22, 2009

Franklin C. Spinney The Huge Hole in Gen. McChrystal's Afghan Counterinsurgency Strategy

Russell Mokhiber
Who's the Pimp?

Greg Grandin
Zelaya's Brazilian Gambit

Nikolas Kozloff
Salvaging Democracy in Honduras Will Be Tricky

John Ross
Mexico Convulsed by Paranoia

Ron Jacobs
Gen. McChrystal's Salespitch

Tariq Ali
The Afghan Folly

Dave Lindorff
NYT Trashes Single-Payer

Harvey Wasserman
Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique

Vijay Prashad
Is Anything Better Than Nothing?

Kareem Shora
After the CIA Torture Report

Website of the Day
Did a State Dept Official Sell Nuclear Secrets?

September 21, 2009

JoAnn Wypijewski
Will Trumka or the Steelworkers Push Labor Into Battle?

Carl Finamore
Backstage at the AFL-CIO Convention

Uri Avnery
Sliming Goldstone and His Report

Nikolas Kozloff
Joe Wilson's Immigration Hypocrisy

Paul Simpson, M.D.
Why Your Doctor May Have PTSD

Alan Nasser
New Deal Liberalism Writes Its Obituary

Ray McGovern
CIA Torturers Running Scared

Dave Lindorff
Thoughts on Saving an Old Barn

Lina Thorne
Women, War and Afghanistan

Jeb Sprague
Confronting the G20

Website of the Day
Petition: Save the Yellowstone Grizzly

September 18-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
When Gossip Came Back and Our Modern Age was Born

Russell Mokhiber
Meet the Real Death Panels

Mike Whitney
The Post-Bubble Malaise

David Michael Green
Can America be Salvaged?

Jonathan Cook
Boycott Derails Jerusalem Rail Line

Nadia Hijab
Sinking the Goldstone Report

Mark Weisbrot
Recession, Recovery and Reform: Will Anything Change?

Michael Winship
Let's Make a Deal, Beltway Edition

Michael Leonardi
The Nuclear Dump in the Mediterranean Sea

Andy Worthington
The Kuwaiti Who Met Bin Laden

Fred Gardner
The Prohibitionists' Manifesto

David Macaray
What Happens in Congress Stays in Congress

David Rosen
System Failure and the Garrido Case

Jason Mark
Hacking the Sky

Mike Ferner
In Praise of Senator Baucus

Farzana Versey
The Great Indian Rope Trick

Ron Jacobs
Dr. Guillotin and Dr. Faustus: an Interview with Marc Estrin

elin o'Hara slavick
Flags for Hiroshima: Artist's Statement

Gilad Aztmon
Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds

David Yearsley
Mendelssohn as Organ Maestro

Charles R. Larson
Darkness, Dignity and Hope in Liberia

Lorenzo Wolff
Dialing Up The Clash

Website of the Weekend
Meet Your Conservative Movement

September 17, 2009

Joshua Frank
Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler

Brenda Norrell
Cry Me a River: Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis, One Year Later

Pam Martens
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists

Franklin Lamb
Palestinian Camps Are Ready to Erupt

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: An Insult to Humanity

Jed Bickman
Drone War Over Pakistan

Alan Farago
The Mayor of Coconut Creek Gets Butterflies

Website of the Day
C.R.O.C.

September 16, 2009

Ray McGovern
Torture and Accountability

Stephen Green
America's Strange Health Care Debate

Andy Worthington
Is Bagram Obama's New Secret Prison?

Dean Baker
Short Sellers: the Unsung Heroes of the Financial Crisis

Anthony DiMaggio
Killing the Messenger

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: The Unheard Call

Benjamin Dangl
Justice Follows Direct Action

Robin Willoughby
The World Seed Conference: Good for Farmers?

Eric Walberg
EuroPeace, the Sounds of Silence

James Ridgeway
Bring That "Boy" Down

Website of the Day
Baucus' Bogus Bill

September 15, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall

Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The Story of My Shoe

Marshall Auerback
Government Spending is the Solution--Not the Problem

Afshin Rattansi
The Deal That Led to the Srebrenica Massacre: Former UN Spokeswoman Fingers Holbrooke and the Clinton Administration

Jonathan Cook
How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers

Gareth Porter:
Niger Redux? IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Nuke Docs Were Forged

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs More Catcalls

Winslow T. Wheeler
Obama and Pentagon Pork

Franklin Spinney
Bin Laden's Latest Message and the Nuttiness of the War on Terror

Karen Korenoski /
Michael Yates
Up in Wood Smoke: Boulder's Dirty Little Secret

David Macaray
Government Cheese

Susie Day
President Mao-bama's Little Red Primer

Website of the Day
The Cotton Pickin' Truth: the Persistance of Slavery in Mississippi

September 14, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit

M. G. Piety
The Danes Do It (Health Care) Better

Shamus Cooke
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier

Bouthaina Shaaban
Three Faces and a Homeland

Alvaro Huerta
In Defense of the Undocumented: Immigrants and Health Care

John Ross
Mexico Loses Its History

Harvey Wasserman
The Supreme Court and Corporate Money

Adam Federman
The Plight of the Bumblebee

Stephen Fleischman
The Federal Twist

Robert Jensen
Can Journalism Schools be Relevant in a World on the Brink?

Website of the Day
The Origin of Sex Offender Registries

September 11-13, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric

JoAnn Wypijewski
Trumka Takes Over AFL-CIO

Carl Ginsburg
The Patient as Profit Center

Leonard Peltier
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

Franklin Lamb
Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel

Benjamin Dangl
Throwing Bullets at Failed Policies

Mike Whitney
How to Fight Deflation

John Berger
In Search of Antonello

Saul Landau
Watergate and Modern Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Disgraceful Democrats

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Pryor's Judgment

Felice Pace
NPR's Linda Gradstein Has Done It Again on Gaza

Jordan Flaherty
The Battle Over Discriminatory Housing Laws in New Orleans

Ron Jacobs
It's Time to be Impolite About Afghanistan

David Macaray
The Utility of Boycotts

David Correia
Welcome to the Business-Friendly Carpenter's Union

Robert Bryce
Wind Turbines and Bird Kills

Christopher Brauchli
Defenders of the Classroom

Paul Krassner
Aha! A Few Words About the 9/11 Truth Movement

Charles R. Larson
Deracination

Kim Nicolini
"Extract:" An Exercise in Economic Realism

David Yearsley
Tall Buildings: the Sound and the Silence

Lorenzo Wolff
In Defense of the One Hit Wonder

Poets' Basement
McEnteer and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Pizarchik: the Wrong Choice

September 10, 2009

Joshua Frank
Inside Hanford's B Reactor: a Tour of the World's Most Toxic Nuclear Site

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Bad Money

Brian M. Downing
The State of U.S. National Security

Franklin C. Spinney
Portrait of an Afghan Firefight: Up Close and Personal

Andy Worthington
No Escape From Guantánamo

Chase Madar
Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

Farzana Versey
A Tale of Two Slums

Ronnie Cummins
Whole Foods, Fair Trade and Organics

Binoy Kampmark
Health Care, Obama and the System

Timothy Lebrón
The Conservative Case for Health Care Reform

Charles R. Larson
A Solution to the Health Care Dilemma

Website of the Day
The Debtor's Revolt Begins!

September 9, 2009

Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

Melissa Checker
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses

Nadia Hijab
Settling for ... Settlements?

Robert Weissman
The Stakes at the Supreme Court

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike

Russell Mokhiber
Pollan, Mackey, Whole Foods and Single Payer

James Ridgeway
The Dotty Factor: Will Demented Geezers Wreck the Economy?

Richard W. Behan
Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

James McEnteer
The Photo and the Secretary: How to Appall Robert Gates

Martha Rosenberg
Hatchery Horrors

Website of the Day
Belmondo Verité

September 8, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations

John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd

Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War

Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech

Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?

Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington

Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation

Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?

Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor

September 7, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen

David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card

Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews

Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles

Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday

Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million

Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation

C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech

Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go

September 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry

Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami

Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission

Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran

Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam

Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA

David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia

Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7: What the Police Won't Apologize For

Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections

Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?

Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater

Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost

Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book

David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants

Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig

Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready

Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

September 24, 2009

"We Sent Them to Kabul and They Came Back Dead"

Italy's Fallen Soldiers

By STEPHANIE WESTBROOK

On Monday, walking through the center of Rome, you couldn't help noticing the Italian flags on display at shops, bars and restaurants. Merchants associations had printed up color copies of the flag to be placed in shop windows with the words "In honor of the fallen soldiers," referring to the six Italian paratroopers killed by a car bomb last Thursday in Kabul, Afghanistan.

For days, news of the soldiers' deaths - and corresponding political debate on the Italian mission in Afghanistan - filled the pages of newspapers and was the lead story on the TV news. There was live coverage as the bodies of the soldiers arrived in Rome on Sunday morning. The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, together with Defense Minister La Russa, and leaders of the center-right government were present for the solemn ceremony held at the airport.

The live coverage continued the following day, which was declared a day of national mourning. The flag draped coffins, aboard six open flatbed military trucks, slowly made their way from the Celio military hospital near the Coloseum to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Rome's second largest church after Saint Peter's, where state funeral services were held.

Attending were Prime Minister Berlusconi, leaders of both houses of Parliament, top-level cabinet members, deputy secretaries, a former president and exponents of majority and opposition parties.

The Pope sent a telegram which was read during the service, and afterwards the Frecce Tricolori, the Italian Air Force's acrobatic flying team, flew over the church leaving their signature green, white and red smoke trails representing Italy's flag.

While there was definitely an outpouring of solidarity for the families of the soldiers, it was also a remarkably well orchestrated show of "patriotism" - few words were reserved for the 15 Afghan civilians who were also killed that day - aimed at keeping the focus on the fallen soldiers and off the question of the Italian military presence in Afghanistan. Italy currently has 3,300 troops in Afghanistan, officially taking part in a "peace mission."

But there was no getting away from the debate. Umberto Bossi, Minister of Reforms and leader of the right-wing Northern League party, immediately expressed his hope to bring all Italian forces home by Christmas. "The mission in Afghanistan is over." Speaking with the press at the funeral services, Bossi commented, "We sent them to Kabul and they came back dead. This isn't what we voted for." Defense Minister La Russa and exponents of Berlusconi's party initially distanced themselves from Bossi's statements saying that, at the moment, talk of full withdrawal was not on the table.

Berlusconi himself first reacted by calling the mission in Afghanistan "essential" but did talk of the necessity to "bring our boys home as soon as possible." He later began to talk of plans to bring some troops home, though limiting it to the 500 who were recently deployed on a temporary mission in advance of the Afghan elections and without specifying a date. He also spoke of the need for a "transition strategy," words echoes by Foreign Affairs Minister Frattini.

The center-left "opposition" party, Partito Democratico, issued a statement against withdrawal from Afghanistan but calling for an international peace conference resulting in "diplomatic measures to put in place alongside the military presence."

In a recent poll, only 26% of those surveyed were in favor of maintaining troops in Afghanistan; just 40% among center right voters. And that was a few days before the car bombing brought the war home to the Italian public.

Outside the church on Monday there were some calls for withdrawal from Afghanistan. And during the service, a man managed to commandeer the microphone at the altar to yell "Peace Now!" Cartoonist Vauro issued a stinging comment on this incident the following day on the leftist newspaper Il Manifesto. Above the caption "Man who shouted from the altar immediately removed by security" was a drawing of secret service agents carrying the crucifix out of the church.

Minister of Education, Mariastella Gelmini had issued a memo calling on all schools to observe a minute of silence. Parents called regional school boards as well as the Ministry to register their objections, which were not meant as disrespect for the fallen but in protest of the decision to single out the soldiers in what was seen as an overt political use of their deaths. A number of schools publicly declined to participate. One teacher asked why there were never calls for a minute of silence for any of Italy's 1300 on-the- job deaths each year.

It's interesting to compare how the deaths of soldiers are covered by the media and dealt with by the government in the U.S. and Italy. Who can forget the stir Nightline's Ted Koppel caused in 2004 by simply reading the names of the 700 soldiers killed in Iraq at the time, with Sinclair Broadcasting refusing to air the program on stations it owned.

And it was only this past April that the 18-year government imposed ban on media coverage of fallen soldiers returning to Dover Air Force was finally lifted, leaving the decision up to the family members. To his credit, it was President Obama who asked Secretary Gates to review the policy, though this came only after years of lobbying on the part of veterans' and peace groups. Contrary to what supporters of the ban had said, in the first few weeks following the lift, 14 out of 19 families gave permission for media coverage.

In early September, Associated Press was at the center of a controversy for having distributed the photo of a dying marine in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard. Admittedly, the debate centered more on the fact that the soldier's father had requested that the photo not be distributed. AP justified the decision, which was called "appalling" by Secretary Gates, saying, "We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is."

Reuters' columnist Bernd Debusmann recently reported on the undercounting of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan by concealing contractor casualties, which now amount to 1,360 according to a report by the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obviously, in the different approaches by Italy and the U.S., historical and cultural differences come into play, as do the number of troops deployed and the number of military deaths suffered by each country. Italian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan total 54, while the U.S. count is at just over 6,500 - including contractors.

There are also some similarities reminiscent of the Bush years that come along with being involved in an unpopular war. Defense Minister La Russa was quick to assert the illogical but oft-repeated mantra, "We have to carry on with the mission to honor the fallen." Any attempts to call into discussion the mission in Afghanistan were equated with disrespecting the soldiers and their families. And there is little or no mention of the civilian deaths.

I couldn't help think of something a veteran once told me. "The best way to honor the fallen is to stop making more of them."

Stephanie Westbrook is a U.S. citizen who has been living in Rome, Italy since 1991. She is active in the peace and social justice movements in Italy. She can be reached at steph@webfabbrica.com

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