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Today's Stories

November 10 / 11, 2007

Alain Gresh
Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard

November 9, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK

Mohammed Hanif
Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle

John Ross
Blackwater Goes to Mexico

Mike Whitney
Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate

Tom Barry
In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy

Corporate Crime Reporter
Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care?

Badruddin Khan
Pakistan and the Israel Lobby

David Macaray
The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back

Martha Rosenberg
The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents

Website of the Day
Stryker Blockade!

 

November 8, 2007

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine

William Loren Katz
Waterboarding in American History

Mike Whitney
The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes

Sheldon Richman
Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life

Liaquat Ali Khan
Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers

Marc Gardner
The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights (or Homes)

Jackie Corr
The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the Investment Banker?

Brenda Norrell
Between Bombs and Border Walls

Dave Lindorff
Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times

China Hand
Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity

Sen. Russ Feingold
FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act

Website of the Day
The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez

 

November 7, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor?

Vijay Prashad
The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf

Alan Farago
To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse

David Macaray
The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey

Charlotte Laws
What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign

Daniel White
Zahid's Story

William Cook
The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby

Website of the Day
Safe Lawns

 

November 6, 2007

Mike Whitney
Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution

Ralph Nader
Who Determines the Price of Oil?

Andy Worthington
The Torture of Ali al-Marri

Pam Martens
Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Dark Future

William Schroder
The Return of Water Torture

Stephen Lendman
Punishing Gaza

William Blum
Cuba and Original Sin

Former US Intelligence Officers
A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey

 

November 5, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer

David Macaray
How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer)

Gary Leupp
General Musharaff's "State of Emergency"

Dave Lindorff
Those Minot Nukes

Ludwig Watzal
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan

Peter Stone Brown
John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past

Michael Simmons
Yo! What Happened to Peace?

Website of the Day
Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students

 

November 3 / 4, 2007

Tariq Ali
Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night

David Price
Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship

Jeffrey St. Clair
Splitsville

Alan Farago
The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class

Paul Krassner
He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards

Rannie Amiri
Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals

P. Sainath
Indexing Humanity, Indian Style

Ayesha Ijaza Khan
Pakistan in a Daze

Robert Fantina
Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran?

Seth Sandronsky
The Politics of Health Care in California

Ron Jacobs
The Bebop of Baraka

Ramzy Baroud
A Case for Arab Dignity

Heather Gray
When Capitalists Get a Free Ride

 

November 2, 2007

Dr. Mary Pipher
Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations

Saul Landau
How Pete Stark Became a Pariah

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as House Arrest

Sharon Smith
A Tale of Two Stadiums

Gary Leupp
Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood

Gregory Harms
The Chorus of Slander on Palestine

Christopher Brauchli
Racism in High Places

Peter Morici
The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit

Dave Lindorff
The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran

David Penner
Zombie Nation

Website of the Day
Fall in Yosemite

 

November 1, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
The Wages of Hegemony

Patrick Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Dam in the World

Dave Lindorff
The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight

Jonathan Feldman
The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South

Mike Ferner
They Met the Resistance in Iraq

William S. Lind
A Question for Would-Be Presidents

Diana Johnstone
"Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business"

Jacob Hornberger
The War on Telephone Privacy

A..K. Gupta
The Apocalypse will be Televised

Lyuba Zarsky /
Kevin Gallagher

The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley

Felice Pace
Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?

Website of the Day
This One's for You, Ed Abbey

 

October 31, 2007

Bill Quigley
New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System

Rev. William E. Alberts
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News

Ray McGovern
Attacking Iran for Israel

Eric Walberg
Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War

V. G. Smith
The Second Death of Guy Môquet

Luis J. Rodriguez
"Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA

Sheldon Richman
Bush has Time to Run the World

Walter Brasch
A Real Halloween Scare

Website of the Day
Boogie Rocks!


October 30, 2007

David Price
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual

M. Shahid Alam
The Pakistan Question

Andy Worthington
The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo

Patrick Cockburn
The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba

Anthony Papa
The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws

Floyd Rudmin
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means

Sherwood Ross
Giuliani and Torture

Website of the Day
The Worst Lobby? You Decide

 

October 29, 2007

Lisa Hajjar
Inside Israel's Military Courts

Joe DeRaymond
The Politics of Lethal Injections

Patrick Cockburn
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan

Isabella Kenfield /
Roger Burbach

Corporate Murder in Brazil

Fred Gardner
The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner

Farzana Versey
Caricaturing Islam

Stephen Fleischman
The Greening of the Oligarchy

Marcelle Cendrars
The Congressional Rip Cord

Eamonn McCann
Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables

Martha Rosenberg
For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter!

Website of the Day
Campaign 2008

 

October 27 / 28, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Dam That Isn't There

James Bovard
Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture

Ralph Nader
Beyond the Rule of Law

M. Reza Pirbhai
The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming!

Robert Sandels
Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations

Jacob G. Hornberger
Ruling By Decree

Missy Beattie
The Arsonists in the West Wing

John Ross
U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca

Robert Fantina
Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader

Ron Jacobs
Labor at the Crossroads

Ali Moayedian
In Search of Logic About Iran

David Michael Green
What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism?

Poets Basement
Block, Davies and Ford

Website of the Day
Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video

 

October 26, 2007

Brian Cloughley
Revenging Bloodshed

Saul Landau
Portrait of Rudy

Ahmad Al-Akras
Getting Justice in the HLF Case

Franklin Lamb
Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

Mike Whitney
Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest

Dave Lindorff
Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians

Alan Farago
A Castro Behind Every Bush

Yifat Susskind
Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror

Website of the Day
Dead Life in a Political Prison


October 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Iraq's Environmental Crisis

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homes of the Crash Test Dummies

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fraudulent War on Terror

Col. Dan Smith
The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment

Alan Farago
The Way to Paradise?

Chris Kutalik
The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels

Brian McKinlay
John Howard and the Curse of Bush

Cindy Sheehan
Pete, Nancy, George and WW III

Website of the Day
Support the America's Program!

 

October 24, 2007

Natalie Washington-Weik
White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicides

Michael Birmingham
What Happened in Nahr Al Bared?

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Nuclear Democrats

Tariq Ali
Bush's Cuba Detour

Farzana Versey
Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf

Dave Zirin
White Noise

James Murren
What "Support Our Troops" Means

Todd Chretien
Looking Reality in the Face

Martha Rosenberg
What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage?

Website of the Day
Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power

 

October 23, 2007

Ralph Nader
Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric

Lawrence R. Velvel
Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept.

Vijay Prashad
The Nuke Deal is Dead

Bonnie Bricker /
Adil E. Shamoo

The True Cost of War for Oil

Dave Lindorff
Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment

Mike Whitney
The Big Squeeze

Farzana Versey
Race with the Devil

Stanley Heller /
Ben George

Something New from the Antiwar Movement

Marcelle Cendrars
You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive

Regan Boychuk
Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response

Website of the Day
King Corn

 

October 22, 2007

Ishmael Reed
Should Blacks Go Green?

Marjorie Cohn
Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie

Rannie Amiri
Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness?

Diane Farsetta
Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams

Todd Alan Price
Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education

Robert Jensen
The Quagmire of Masculinity

Stephen Lendman
The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers

Jemima Khan
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf

Sunsara Taylor
David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth

Binoy Kampmark
No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections

Website of the Day
Support the Center for International Policy

 

 

October 20 / 21, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld

Tariq Ali
A Massacre Foretold

Jeffrey St. Clair
Greetings from Echo Park

Andy Worthington
The Shame of Diego Garcia

Mike Whitney
Housing Flameout

Daniel Wolff
Play It As It Lays

David Rosen
Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution

Saul Landau
David and Goliath in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
COINTELPRO and the Panthers

Robert Fantina
The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones

David Heleniak
Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm

Joe Allen
Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS

Prairie Miller
Lions for Lambs

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Crash!

 

October 19, 2007

John Ross
Che's Mexican Legacy

Sheldon Rampton
Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda

Rahul Mahajan
A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha

Devra Davis
Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer

Christopher Brauchli
Blasphemous Science

Wadner Pierre
Haiti After the Deluge

Bill Quigley
Jailed for Justice

Website of the Day
Textbook Sticker Shock

 

October 18, 2007

Saree Makdisi
Academic Freedom is at Risk

Meg Dwyer
What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead?

Alevtina Rea
Sketches of Russian Life

Norman Solomon
The United States of Violence

Kristoffer Larsson
Something is Rotten in Sweden

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes are Back and So are We

Website of the Day
Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"

 

October 17, 2007

Steve Niva
Counter-Insurgency, American-Style

Andy Worthington
The Case of Mohamed Jawad

Alan Farago
The Credit Shock

Russell Mokhiber
The New Billionaire-Criminal Class

Sharon Smith
Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered

Mike Whitney
Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman

Robert Fantina
Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual

Chris Irwin
Where Have All the Rednecks Gone?

Website of the Day
Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University

October 16, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize

Paul Findley
Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby

Robert Bryce
Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts

Uri Avnery
The Mother of All Pretexts

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraqi Genocide

Ray McGovern
What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It?

Norman Solomon
The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal

Martha Rosenberg
The Curse of Cymbalta

William S. Lind
Out of the Frying Pan

Joel S. Hirschborn
Time to Boycott Voting

Website of the Day
Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play

 

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition
November 10 / 11, 2007

For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls

The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street

By MIKE WHITNEY

What a week for the stock market. On Wednesday the market took a 360 point nosedive followed, two days later, by a 220 point belly-flop. By the time it was over, the trading pits looked more like a sausage-packing plant than the world's financial epicenter. After the bell, downcast traders could be seen tiptoeing through the carnage on their way to the local liquor store to load up on "Stoly" and boxes of Franzia---anything that would steady their nerves and put the week behind them.

Everyone could see it coming; the train-wreck. It was mostly carry-over from the night before when Asian stocks took a thumping on reports of slower growth in the US and growing troubles in the credit markets. That put the first domino in motion. Fed chief Bernanke's announcement that the economy will face "a sharp slowdown from the housing market's contraction" and an "inflationary surge from sharply higher oil prices and the weaker dollar", didn't help either. His remarks triggered a blow-off in the currency markets while equities were frog-marched to the chopping-block.

The Shanghai market took the worst hit dropping nearly 5% before the trading-day ended. Taiwan and Hong Kong followed suit, sliding 3.9% and 3.2% respectively. Share prices in Japan fell 2%. The next morning, Wall Street crashed. It was a massacre.

This is a bear market now. The last bull was dragged from the Street on Friday with a harpoon in its chest.

The subprime contagion has now spread beyond the US and Europe to markets in the Far East. No one is fooled by Bernanke's sunny predictions that the economy will bounce back next year with a strong showing in the first quarter. That's baloney and everyone knows it. The economy has stumbled down the elevator shaft and is just waiting to hit bottom. Consumer confidence is flagging, housing is falling, foreign capital is fleeing, and the greenback is one flush away from the sewage-treatment plant. Bernanke's soothing bromides are meaningless.

"I don't see any significant change in the broad holdings of dollars around the world. Dollars remain the dominant reserve asset and I expect that to continue to be the case," Bernanke said to the Congressional Economic Committee.

Really? So why is the greenback plummeting if people aren't dumping it, Ben? What an absurd comment. The dollar has lost 63% against the euro and dropped to record lows against a basket of world currencies. Foreign central banks and investors have been ditching it as fast as they can before it loses more value. The dollar's tumble has been the most dazzling currency-flameout in modern times and Bernanke is acting like he's still asleep at the switch. It's madness.

The greenback is getting clobbered by the Fed's "low-interest" snake oil and the gargantuan current account deficit. If Bernanke clips rates again to bail out the stock market, the dollar will slip into irreversible respiratory failure. Food and oil prices will shoot to the moon overnight and the remains of the greenback will be carted off to the nearest boneyard.

September's trade deficit was another blow to the waning dollar. The Census Bureau reported on Friday that the deficit clocked in at $56.5 billion. That's $684 billion per annum! Bush has been crowing about the "shrinking deficit", but the numbers are nothing to boast about. We're still borrowing more than we're producing. We're still living beyond our means. The lower numbers just reflect the decline in home construction which is import-intensive. The fact is, we're addicted to debt-fueled consumption and forgotten that, eventually, the trillions that we've borrowed from foreign creditors, will have to be repaid. If the dollar is replaced as the world's reserve currency, then we'll have to pay back $9 trillion of outstanding debt. We might as well hang out the "Foreclosed" sign right now and get fitted for Chinese workers-suits.

This is from Bloomberg News:

"As the dollar tumbles, concern is growing that its weakness may augur the end of the U.S. currency's 62-year reign as the world's specie of choice for trade, financial transactions and central-bank reserves..The dollar owes its position as the world's premier international currency to its status as a haven during times of turmoil, the absence of a suitable rival, weak domestic demand in other countries and plain old inertia. Geopolitics also play a role."

Nonsense. Who believes this rubbish? The dollar is the so-called "international currency" because the Federal Reserve and its well-heeled patrons are the directors of the US-Euro-Japan banking cabal which is at the center of the global Fiat money scam. There's nothing more to it than that. Notice the recent "unilateral" clamp-down on Iran by the US-led banking syndicate. The action was initiated without UN approval for the simple reason that the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and thousands of NGOs are just more of the Central Banks' prime properties. Don't expect the father to ask the child for permission to punish one of his errant children. The banks are the one's who really call the shots and--behind the curtain of feigned respectability---they are the driving force behind the endless wars.

The Fed's plan to "devalue" our way to prosperity appears to have hit a few ill-placed speed-bumps. The stock market is hanging by a thread and consumer confidence is at its lowest ebb since the start of the Iraq War. The falling dollar is expected to put a damper on Christmas spending and knock equities for a loop. That can't be good for economy--especially when 72% of GDP comes from consumer spending.

We're already begun to see the telltale signs that the consumer is loosing ground and about to slip into a debt-induced coma.

According to data from the University of Michigan:

"Consumer confidence reached its lowest level in more than two years this month amid concerns over record-high oil prices, continued trouble in the housing market and higher inflationAlthough consumer attitudes deteriorated across the board, the substantial drop in expectations contributed heavily to the sizeable decline in the overall index."

The average working stiff doesn't put any stock in Bernanke's palavering. He sees what's going on for himself every time he pulls up to the gas pump or goes the grocery store. He doesn't need the University of Michigan to tell him he's getting screwed; he knows it! The economy is sinking, inflation is skyrocketing, and the country is adrift. Every farthing in the public till has been shoveled into a black hole in the Middle East. Does Bernanke really think working people don't know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone knows the economy is on life-support; just like everyone knows the country is collapsing from mismanagement. Even the flag-waving, war-mongering maniacs on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page are starting to shutter from the avalanche of bad news. They see what's going on and they're scared---scared sh**less.

Unfortunately, the sudden shift in consumer sentiment is the hurting retailers who depend on Christmas to carry them through the year. We've already seen the sluggishness in housing and auto sales. Now it's showing up in retail. Abercrombie, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Chicos, Dillards, The Gap and Nordstrom are all reporting sagging sales. Walmart, Lowes and the other big-box stores are lowering their projections as well. It's going to be a lean Christmas.

The poor US consumer is finally maxed-out and can't tap into his home equity anymore for presto-credit. He's mortgaged "to the hilt" and he's already run up 6 or 7 credit cards to their limit. In fact, credit card debt is a growing concern for the banks, too.

The commercial banks are the victims' of their own success. After years of seductive promotions and saturation mailings the credit card industry is at its zenith leaving consumers with a staggering bill of nearly $1 trillion. ($915 billion) More and more customers are finding themselves unable to make even minimum payments on their balances and defaults are piling up at a record pace. This is the next phase of the subprime fiasco and it has the potential to be nearly as disruptive as the housing meltdown. The problem is complex, too. After all, most credit card debt in the last 6 years has been "securitized" and passed on to investors in the secondary market. (pension funds, hedge funds etc.) That means we can expect more tremors in the stock market as corporate earnings go south after credit card-backed bonds are downgraded. It's just more of the same "structured finance" chicanery; debt stacked on debt, until the whole edifice caves in.

It's looking more and more like Reagan's "shining city on the hill" was erected on a mountain of toxic debt. It's a wonder it hasn't sunk already.

The country is headed for recession and there's nothing that Bernanke can do to stop it. The only question is whether we'll be facing a colossal economy-busting meltdown like 1929 or a milder 5 or 6-year slump. That's up to the Federal Reserve. If the Fed chief decides to pit himself against the falling markets by slashing rates and destroying the currency; then we are likely to be digging-out for years. But if Bernanke steps aside, and lets the chips fall where they may, then the pace of recovery will be quicker.

Whatever choice he makes, there's no avoiding the inevitable downturn. The hammer is poised to strike the anvil. The stock market will fall, the over-extended banks and hedge funds will collapse, and the country will go into a protracted, economic tailspin. That much is certain. Economic fundamentals can only be shrugged off for so long. When markets correct it's like a tidal-surge that sweeps-away the deadwood of bad bets and over-levered investments leaving behind a broad-expanse of empty beach.

Recession is a normal part of the business cycle. It can't be avoided. The economy needs to unwind so debts can get written off and businesses can retool for the future. The upcoming recession is shaping up to be worse than its predecessors---a real doozey.

The damage caused by the Fed's excessive credit has been considerable. It'll take years to mop up the red ink and set the house aright. The markets are in a shambles, investors have been battered and confidence is gone.

Structured finance has been an unmitigated disaster. It needs to be scrapped. We need a new financial system for a new epoch; a system that is heavily regulated and supervised to discourage the crooks and con-artists; a system that it maintains its essential link to the real, productive underlying economy and avoids the galaxy of complex derivatives, "securitized" liabilities, and opaque debt-instruments that have brought on the present crisis; a system that responds to the needs of working people and takes into consideration the looming problems of environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and climate change; a system that reinvests in communities, education and health-care rather than fattening the bottom-line of corporate racketeers and brandy-drooling elites. It's time to remove the rotten scaffolding and rebuild the whole contraption brick by brick.

The system is broken. Maybe Greenspan did us all a favor by blowing it up with his "low interest" dynamite. Good riddance.



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