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Today's Stories

June 5 -7, 200

Alexander Cockburn
High Words, Low Truths

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama in Cairo

Jennifer Loewenstein
How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?

Franklin Lamb
Watching Obama's Speech in Lebanon

Missy Comley Beattie
Peace Be Upon You?

Farzana Versey
Walk Like an Egyptian: the Oprahfication of Obama

Stanley Heller
Obama's Non-Starter

Robert Weissman
GM: the Path Not Taken

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

June 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
The Future of Israel and the Decline of the American Empire

Mike Whitney
Bond Market Blowout

Gareth Porter
Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuke Documents to Israel

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Clearing Misconceptions on Pakistan's War in Swat

Mouin Rabbani
Paradigmatic Progress?

Jordan Flaherty
Life in Gaza

Adam Turl
Is Card Check Dead?

Nikolas Kozloff
Iran's Elections: the Latin America Factor

Yifat Susskind
Obama's Double Standard

Website of the Day
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Slams Israel

June 3, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
As the Dollar Falls Off the Cliff...

Kathy Kelly
A Weaver's Welcome to Pakistan

Alan Farago
Bailing Out the Land Speculators

Franklin Lamb
Israeli Spies and Fake IDs

Bill Hatch
Why Congressman Cardoza Stiffed Michelle Obama

Nadia Hijab
A Stifling Embrace

Dean Baker
Reporters With Pom-Poms: Cheerleading the Recovery

Binoy Kampmark
Whither GM?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Happened to Air France Flight 477?

Remi Kanazi
Oslo Redux?

Behzad Yaghmaian
The End of Idealism in China?

Website of the Day
A Time Comes: the Story of the KingsNorth Six

June 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Racists for Democracy

Robert Weissman
Bankrupt Thinking

Conn Hallinan
Shadow Wars

Gideon Spiro
Obama and Israel's Nuclear Arsenal

Roger Burbach
US-Cuba Policy: "Still Stuck in the Past"

Dylan Quigley
My Experience with Dr. Tiller

Dave Lindorff
The American Taliban Claim Another Victim

Ray McGovern
Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack

Belén Fernández
Israel's Newfound Concern for UNIFIL

Martha Rosenberg
Give It Up, Wyeth

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
GOP: California's for the Rich (Poor People Should Move)

Website of the Day
You Bet Your Health

June 1, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Braces for New Cops on the Beat

Yitzhak Laor
Washington's Mirror

Mark Weisbrot
More Stimulus, Not Deficit Reduction

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu's New Quest

Saul Landau
Dancing the Afghan Jig

Eugenia Tsao
Smug Toronto Seethes as Tamils "Go Too Far"

Afshin Rattansi
Women in Darfur: "We Saw No Evidence of Genocide"

Debra Sweet
The Murder of Dr. Tiller

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Obama's Trip Egypt and American Muslims

Bill Quigley
Haiti's Revolutionary Priest Gerard Jean-Juste: Presente!

John Wright
The Tragedy of Susan Boyle

Website of the Day
Young Neo Con Anthem

May 29-31, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPs

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: The Mother of All Corruption Scandals

Vijay Prashad
Reeling Republicans

Gary Leupp
The Destabilization of Pakistan

Ray McGovern
The Impossible Rehab of Colin Powell

Rannie Amiri
Spies, Lies and Mr. Lebanon's Demise

Bill Hatch
The Mechanic's Tale: a Short Chapter in the History of Foreclosures

Chellis Glendinning, Stephanie Mills and Kirkpatrick Sale
Three Luddites Talking ... on a Computer!

Phyllis Pollack
Dosed, But Not Spiked: an Interview with Grace Slick

David Yearsley
Eros and Susan Boyle; Fakery and Simon Cowell

Jean-Christophe Servant
A River of Acid: Mined Out in Zambia

Dave Lindorff
Sotomayor's Problem Isn't That She's Too Latina

James McEnteer
Straw Dogs: the Media and Sonia Sotomayor

Missy Beattie
A Place Called Despair

James C. Faris
On Evolution: a Critique of Darwinism

David Macaray
When Workers' Rights Go Unenforced

Harvey Wasserman
The Catastrophic Economics of Nuclear Power

Adam Federman
Drilling the Marcellus Shale Through the Halliburton Loophole

David Ker Thomson
Turtle Island: Adventures in Recycling

Mark Seth Lender
Great Egrets Return

Stephen Martin
Big Trouble in Little Britain

Joseph Nevins
Sin Nombre is Only Part of the Border Story

Sophia Mihic
Star Trek and the Continuing Mission of American Imperialism

Lorenzo Wolff
Dylan Kelehan Gets What He Needs

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Shields and Greer

Website of the Weekend
Petition: Grant Parole to Leonard Peltier

May 28, 2009

Joan Roelofs
The Philanthropies and the Economic Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts
Torture and the American Conscience

Ralph Nader
Corporate Frankensteins

Mouin Rabbani
The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East

Joe Bageant
Plain Truths From Appalachia: a Redneck View of Obamarama

James McEnteer
America Held Hostage

Dedrick Muhammad
Obama and the Harsh Racial Reality

Richard Morse
On Speaking Out in Haiti

David Macaray
Have We Turned Into Sheep?

Harvey Wasserman
The 8 Green Steps to Solartopia

Website of the Day
Col. Peters: Just Kill the Gitmo Detainees

May 27, 2009

Joanne Mariner
Military Commissions, Round Three

Paul Craig Roberts
Doublespeak on North Korea

Walden Bello
Can China Save the World From Depression?

Dave Lindorff
Recidivism and Guantánamo

Brian M. Downing
Along the Durand Line

Carlos Villarreal
Separate But Equal Just Fine in California?

Nadia Hijab
Israel's Next Move: Armageddon Now?

Adam Federman
The PCBs of the Hudson River

Laray Polk
RadWaste and Texas' Future

Isabella Kenfield
The Fall of a Brazilian Financier

David Michael Green
Overcoming the Poverty of Ambition

Website of the Day
The Case Against Shell

May 26, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Fearful Pride: North Korea's Second Nuclear Test

Mike Whitney
The Next Leg Down: When Deflation Becomes Entrenched

Sharon Smith
Obama and Abortion Rights: What We Learned at Notre Dame

Marjorie Cohn
The Gitmo Appeasment Plan: Obama Buckles on the Constitution

Dean Baker
Waterboard the Fed

Deepankar Basu
Was the Indian Election a Debacle for the Left? If So, Why?

Fred Gardner
The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans for Sale

Josh Ruebner
Rethinking the Costs of Peace

Brian Cloughley
The Man Who Murdered Count Foulke Bernadotte

Website of the Day
The Montana Town That Wants to Become the New Gitmo

May 25, 2009

Diane Christian
Looking at Torture

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Kenneth Hartman
The Trouble With Prison

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

Fred Gardner
"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops": the Punishment of Sgt. Northcutt

Cindy Sheehan
Day of the Dead

Sen. Russell Feingold
Prolonged Detention and the Rule of Law: a Letter to Barack Obama

Sibel Edmonds
Two Sides of the Same Coin: From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps

Franklin Lamb
Der Spiegel Tries Again

Dave Lindorff
Memorial Day in the Land of the Weak and Wussy

Daniel Wolff
Learning to Read in the Pacific Northwest

Website of the Day
Decoration Day

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

 

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Weekend Edition
June 5 -7, 2009

Nothing Comes From Nothing

Cairo: a Post Mortem

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

President Barack Obama's much anticipated speech in Cairo was truly astounding.

After all the months of lead-up and hype, few could have imagined that this speech would contain nothing of substance. Surely Obama would feel the need to announce some new initiative on at least one of the major matters of concern to the Muslim world. Perhaps a decision to develop a fully fleshed-out plan for a two-state solution, unilaterally or with the Quartet and/or the Organization of the Islamic Conference (King Abdallah of Jordan's "57 Muslim countries" willing to make peace with Israel), dealing with all the difficult issues, and to present it to Israelis and Palestinians as the last best chance for peace based on partition and the acceptance of Israel by the Muslim world. Or perhaps an international conference involving all concerned regional parties to seek solutions to the interlinked problems involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and/or Iran.

Surely he had to have some hopeful surprise up his sleeve. Wrong. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There were, of course, many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotes from the Holy Quran (as well as the Bible and the Talmud). Obama obviously believes that America's unchanged objectives with respect to the Muslim world are more likely to be pursued successfully by being polite and complimentary than by being rude and intentionally insulting. But the mood-music paragraphs dealt with atmospherics or the past. When it came to the present and the future and to concrete matters of American objectives and policies, there was nothing new. Nothing hopeful. Nothing.

He certainly offered nothing new or hopeful to the Afghans and Pakistanis, to whom he implicitly promised perpetual war, saying (in a verbal and intellectual formulation uncharacteristically childish for him) that American troops will keep fighting in their countries so long as there are "violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can" -- which there are guaranteed to be so long as the Americans keep fighting in their countries.

He certainly offered nothing new or hopeful to the Iranians, again adopting the views of the Israeli, rather than the American, intelligence agencies on the issue of whether Iran has a current nuclear weapons program and menacing that "when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point".

He certainly offered nothing new or hopeful to the Iraqis, opining that they were "better off" as a result of America's invasion of their country.

Most certainly and emphatically, he offered nothing new or hopeful to the Palestinians, promising to pursue a two-state solution "with all the patience that the task requires" -- i.e., with no sense of urgency (unlike his pursuit of Iran) and without any firm deadline, as would be essential for there to be even a miniscule hope of success. This commitment to infinite patience constitutes an effective promise to pass the problem on, in an even more intractable and hopeless condition, to his successor.

Gaza? It rated one mention: "The continuing humanitaraian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security." Israel's security? Nothing about the holiday-season massacre of over 1300 Gazans? Nothing about the crippling Israeli blockade and siege? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Jerusalem? Obama expressed the hope that the city could become "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together". Mingle? In the context of Obama's repeated references to two states, one might have expected a vision of the city as the shared capital of those two states living together in peace and reconciliation. No. No sharing. That would have contradicted his pledge in his speech to AIPAC's National Conference last summer. Just a right to mingle, so long as Christians and Muslims did so "peacefully", without raising awkward questions about any rights in or to Israel's eternal and undivided capital.

And then, of course, Obama had to say this: "To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements and recognize Israel's right to exist" -- unbalanced, even in a speech ostensibly intended to reach out to the Muslim world, by any hint that, to be worthy of interaction with civilized people, Israel must renounce violence, recognize past agreements and recognize Palestine's right to exist.

This tired, morally bankrupt American mantra essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and the Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of injustice must renounce violence, submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table -- a principle dear to the hearts and minds of those who are happy with the status quo but not one likely to win hearts and minds among those who are not or, indeed, anyone who believes that justice should be pursued and injustice resisted.

As if that were not enough, Obama also felt the need to declare that America's bonds with Israel are "unbreakable" -- a statement one would expect in a speech to AIPAC or on the American campaign trail but one which one would not normally have thought essential to include in this particular speech before this particular audience. At least it is a statement consistent with one of Obama's Quranic citations -- "Speak always the truth". It constitutes a proclamation (or admission) that America is not and will never be a truly independent nation and that this is just fine with Barack Obama.

If Israelis were looking for assurance that any public "pressure" from Obama to improve their behavior would be purely rhetorical and could be ignored with impunity, here was that assurance.

Nevertheless, one intriguing paragraph in the speech is worth considering: "Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. The same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia."

Comparing the position of today's Palstinians to that of black slaves in America or native South Africans under that country's apartheid regime can only be constructive. However, Obama has not thought through the context or his conclusion. As he rightly notes, those oppressed peoples and victims of injustice whom he cites were seeking "full and equal rights", not the partition of their countries.

If the goal of an oppresed people is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize their land, settle it and keep it (eventually emptying it of them and their fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

Nonviolence is clearly morally preferable to violence. Democracy and equal rights are clearly morally preferable to apartheid and partition. The better goal and the better tactic are a perfect match, the only match that truly offers hope. If and when the current Palestinian leaderships, or the Palestinian people under a new and better leadership, draw the only rational conclusion from Barack Obama's Cairo speech -- that he offers them neither change nor hope and that they must rely exclusively on themselves in the pursuit of justice -- they should courageously press their own "reset" button and unite to pursue democracy and equal rights by nonviolent means.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck".

 

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