Today's Stories

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

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 14, 2009

The Great Beast Lashes Out

Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

By MIKE WHITNEY

Mike Morgan is a registered investment adviser and a scrappy shoot-from-the-hip guy who doesn't mince his words. Recently Morgan has come under fire from investment giant Goldman Sachs for his hard-hitting web site "Facts about Goldman Sachs". According to the U.K. Telegraph:

"Goldman Sachs is attempting to shut down a dissident blogger who is extremely critical of the investment bank, its board members and its practices. The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.
 
According to Chadbourne & Parke's letter, dated April 8, the bank is rattled because the site "violates several of Goldman Sachs' intellectual property rights" and also "implies a relationship" with the bank itself.
 
Unsurprisingly for a man who has conjoined the bank's name with the Number of the Beast – although he jokingly points out that 666 was also the S&P500's bear-market bottom – Mr Morgan is unlikely to go down without a fight. He claims he has followed all legal requirements to own and operate the website – and that the header of the site clearly states that the content has not been approved by the bank.  
 
On a special section of his blog entitled "Goldman Sachs vs Mike Morgan" he predicts that the fight will probably end up in court.
 
"It's just another example of how a bully like Goldman Sachs tries to throw their weight around," he writes." (UK Telegraph)

Morgan agreed to answer a few questions about Goldman Sachs, the TARP and the ongoing financial crisis.

Mike Whitney: Is Goldman Sachs trying to shut down your web site?

Mike Morgan: Yes

MW: Why?

Morgan: The legal answer to that would be . . . you need to ask them the question.  I would think it is because we are exposing the truth . . . and the truth hurts.

MW: Have you libeled them or published privileged information?

Mike Morgan: No.

MW: Could you tell us something about yourself so that readers can trust your criticism of G-Sax?

Morgan: I am 53 years old and believe all of the answers for how we should live are in the Bible...God gave David the choice of paying the consequences at the hands of David's enemies or at the hand of God.  David chose God's consequences.  Hank Paulson and the thousands of wicked men like him deserve the wrath of the millions of lives they have destroyed. We must go after the crooks and make them pay the consequences for their greed and the total disregard for anyone other than themselves. We need to start with Hank Paulson, who as CEO of Goldman Sachs, was more responsible than any 10 men combined, for the violent Depression we are about to enter.

MW: Why  was G-Sax given $10 billion out of the TARP funds before federal regulators checked their books to see if they were solvent?

Morgan: Because King Henry (Henry Paulson) said so.   As former CEO of Goldman Sachs, the last thing he wanted to see was a collapse of Goldman Sachs.  And as Treasury Secretary with a big stick, he could do whatever he pleased . . . and he did.

MW: It was widely believed that most of the five biggest investment banks were leveraged 30 to 1. If that's the case, then G-Sax probably would not have survived the downturn in the market without government assistance. Do you agree with this analysis?

Morgan: I agree.

MW: After Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. defaulted, Merrill Lynch quickly sold out to Bank of America.

Morgan: Merrill was being run by John Thain, the former Goldman Sachs executive that helped Hank Paulson force out Jon Corzine who at the time was c--CEO with Paulson.

MW:That left Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as the next likely candidates to be taken down by short sellers.

Morgan: Short seller are not the issue.  If short sellers drive down a stock below market value, then it becomes an opportunity for anyone that thinks the stock is a buy to bury the shorts.

MW: This is when SEC chief Christopher Cox--who had never intervened in the market prior to this--put emergency rules in place to stop the short selling of financial institutions. What was Cox’s  action all about?

Morgan: The SEC is toothless and I still don’t know why Cox is not in jail.  He not only looked the other way on the Madoff issue, but since he left, the SEC has gone after more than a dozen scams.  Are you going to tell me everything was fine three months ago on Chrissy Cox’s watch?  No, but I can tell you there is much more to this story....As for the SEC and short sellers, that was King Henry. Period.  Full Stop.

MW: Was this mainly an attempt by Washington elites to pull G-Sax's bacon out of the fire?

Morgan: Goldman Sachs and other companies affiliated with Goldman Sachs.  Kinda like the old MCI Friends and Family Program.

MW: Recently it was revealed that G-Sax had been paid more than $12 billion for credit default swaps (CDS) it held with insurance giant AIG. Financial institutions that buy these CDS know that they are accepting additional risk because they are unregulated and outside government oversight. That said, Treasury's payoff to G-Sax on these CDS was equivalent to paying off a gambler’s losses at the race track. Why was G-Sax compensated for their CDS; why was it kept secret; and who authorized it?

Morgan: King Henry and his loyal lieutenant Neil Kashkari.  Most people don’t realize, Neil Kashkari was King Henry’s lieutenant at Goldman Sachs.  Neil is 35 years old with little experience other than being a very private executive assistant to King Henry when he was CEO of Goldman.  Let’s ask ourselves . . . why exactly is Kashkari still on the job?  Easy answer . . . because our President and Chris Dodd were both bought with Goldman Sachs’ money.  These two men have received more money from Wall Street than any politician in the history of the United States.  By the way, Obama was only around for two years, while Dodd was there for more than a decade.  Obama received more money from Wall Street in two years than Dodd did in a decade.

MW: What is the nature of the relationship between G-Sax and the political establishment in Washington?

Morgan: If I answered that question I would need to increase the thickness of my Kevlar body suit.

MW: Why is Treasury a revolving door for investment bankers that are tied to Wall Street?

Morgan: Because the American public allows it.  Benjamin Franklin said . . . Well done is better than well said.  Too many Americans gripe and moan, but when it comes time to doing anything . . . they sit back on the couch with a bag of chips and the TV.  We think it is cute to use the TV to amuse our toddlers.  Do you think it is any different for 75 per cent of the American public?

MW: Are special interest groups dictating policy in the Obama White House?

Morgan: I can’t count that high.  But if you just look at Wall Street and where the money came from, you will realize that Barack Hussein Obama is nothing more than a puppet of Wall Street.

MW: an article which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, had this to say:

"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States… recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression we're running out of time." 

Do you agree with Johnson that banks have a stranglehold on the political process and that "we are running out of time"? If so, how do we go about removing these people from office and replacing them with people who will operate in the public's interest?

Morgan: First, I think guys like Simon Johnson are the guys that should be running the show.  Simon along with William Black, Elizabeth Warren and Ron Paul.  There are more, but if we had that trio at the helm, we’d be moving to a world of light, instead of a world of deep, violent darkness.

As to your question about how to remove these people from office, I believe it will be very violent . . . and very well deserved.  We are two Biblical generations removed from the Great Depression of 1929.  In 1969 we had race riots.  We lost a true leader when we lost Martin Luther King, and the country paid the consequences.  Here we are 40 years later . . . a Biblical generation, as we enter what I believe will be a period of violence beginning this summer.  When you can’t feed your kids, and the folks at Goldman Sachs are sitting around the pool sipping cocktails and munching on snacks . . . that’s when those without go after those with. 

The problem now is very simply . . . companies like Goldman Sachs created a financial system that was double stacked.  One, they skimmed trillions of dollars out of our pension fund and other fiduciary money under their management.  Two, like drug dealers they provided very creative financing to hundreds of millions of people around the world . . . which those folks can no longer afford to pay back.  But the boys and girls and Goldman Sachs have already walked off with the money, leaving the people that bought the debt with little more than a piece of paper . . . and those that owe the debt, with the inability to ever pay it back.

MW: Will you fight Goldman in court?

Morgan: Yes. I'm prepared to fight them with several attorneys and law professors that are anxious to take this one on. I hope they do press the issue in court, but I kinda doubt it.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached fergiewhitney@msn.com

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