Today's Stories

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 9 , 2009

Gay Activist Triggers Sex Panic Against Buddhist Monks

Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

By STEVE AULT

More than two hundred red-shirted followers of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra introduced homophobia for the first time into Thailand’s festering political scene when on Saturday, February 21, they forced cancellation of a lawful and peaceful gay pride parade and rally in Chiang Mai. The disruption was organized by Rak Chiang Mai 51, the local faction of Thaksin-supported United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD). Despite reassurances by local authorities that the parade would be allowed, the police made no effort to provide a buffer separating the disrupters from the marchers. Many of the disrupters wore red masks to avoid being recognized.

About two hours before the parade was to begin, spoilers blockaded a compound where organizers had come earlier to prepare for the event. Later, thugs yelling homophobic insults prevented other parade organizers from entering the site. Also, 30 violence-threatening spoilers forced organizers of the concluding rally to dismantle a stage set up at the rally site.

Two days before the event, warnings had already circulated in the area telling tourists to stay away from the planned parade route. In addition, for several days local radio stations controlled by the Thaksin clique urged its followers to disrupt the event. The logistical complexity of the disruption, which also included a fleet of sound trucks blaring homophobic epithets and threats of violence, indicated a significant level of planning and financing.

Outnumbered, and fearing the certain possibility of violence with no protection from the police, organizers were obliged to call off the event. And adding insult to injury, organizers of the parade and rally -- under duress-- were forced to apologize to the Red Shirts for “offending Thai culture”.

Soon afterwards the disrupters began to disperse. A group of organizers and supporters who had been holding a candlelight vigil outside of a nearby Buddhist temple were then able to enter the compound to join their trapped comrades. The ensuing scene was extremely emotional with many wailing loudly as they embraced. They then fixed lighted candles to the ground and joined hands in a short ceremony calling for peace and understanding. Aside for some thrown eggs, no injuries or acts of violence were reported, although the author of this report, who was participating in the vigil, was nearly hit by a flying whiskey bottle hurled by one of the masked red-shirted demonstrators.

In 2006 a military coup overthrew elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In the upside down world of Thai politics, where appearance and reality are often separated by a great divide, this apparent act of repression was, in fact, progressive. Thaksin (it is proper in Thailand to refer to people by their first name) is a master of crony capitalism and corruption. A media tycoon and one of the wealthiest individuals in the country, he systematically bought off anyone and anything to gain and consolidate power.

When an escalating protest movement and yet more affronts by Thaksin brought the county to a state of near anarchy, the military instigated a bloodless coup. In Bangkok, people responded by showering smiling soldiers with flowers as children played on the tanks. But the coup leaders were indecisive and incompetent, and areas that have been Thaksin strongholds started developing a counter protest movement of their own.

Two governments, essentially serving as proxies for Thaksin, were brought down by a combination of judicial mandates and protests organized by the yellow shirt wearing anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), comprised of social progressives and anti-corruption activists. These protesters are militant but non-violent. However, in the face of mounting violent attacks by red shirted pro-Thaksin demonstrators, the anti-Thaksin forces took measures to defend themselves.

Yet another government has been formed, but this time with leadership opposed to Thaksin. Consequently, it is now the pro-Thaksin UDD that does most of the demonstrating. With much of his known assets in Thailand frozen and having been thrown out of Great Britain and declared unwelcome in Japan, Thaksin is becoming increasingly marginalized and desperate. So are his supporters. Chiang Mai is one of their strongholds.

Thailand has long enjoyed a reputation for tolerance, and deservedly so. Visiting western gays are amazed by the relative paucity of homophobia in Thai Buddhist culture. The country is often referred to as a gay paradise. So, what caused this first and explosive manifestation of overt homophobia in Chiang Mai, which has the reputation for being especially laid back and carefree?

Is it merely a temporary local phenomenon confined just to Chiang Mai? Has latent homophobia simply been conveniently manipulated for political advantage? And if so, has the sleeping dragon now been roused by the troubling public speaking of one baffling, ambition-driven individual, namely Natee Teerarojjanapongs, Thailand’s best known gay activist.

Natee first gained prominence twenty years ago with pioneering work on HIV/AIDS in Thailand. His creative and highly successful campaign for safe sex education and compassion for people with HIV/AIDS was directly responsible for saving many lives. Possibly, the number totals in the thousands.

Now, years later, the charismatic public speaker and author of popular books on gay issues and on HIV/AIDS has attained celebrity status, and has become a favorite of the national media.

A dispute erupted between Natee and organizers of the Chiang Mai 2009 Gay Pride Festival, ostensibly over the character and plans of the event. It was not a debate about bare-breasted women or of floats transporting giant phalluses. Rather, many of the participants viewed the objections raised by Natee as, in fact, a red herring: the real controversy was over leadership and control rather than political substance.

Appealing to local authorities to cancel and forbid the parade, Natee went so far as to call a meeting of various local officials where he publicly denounced the forthcoming event as well as its organizers. Considerable media were in attendance. In the end, the authorities permitted the event to take place. With ever increasing publicity over the dispute, a national television debate between the two sides raised it yet higher. And with Natee’s oratorical skills in full bloom, many viewers became convinced that the gay pride parade would somehow “defile” the culture of Chiang Mai.

Ironically, Natee comes across more as a conservative homophobe in this debate than as a premiere gay activist.

With high visibility and national publicity, Natee embarked on a campaign to expose sexual misconduct by Buddhist monks involving novices (boys) in a temple in a nearby city. Though analogies can be made with scandals within the Roman Catholic Church, a senior Buddhist monk notes that in contrast, the problem is not endemic, but rather an isolated incident with which the Buddhist monastic order can and does deal effectively. That is to say, serious transgressions of this nature are not swept under the rug. The senior monk added that misconduct among monks generally involves matters related to money. Lay Thais corroborate this position, and agree with the senior monk that Natee’s national media approach is highly inappropriate. Feedback from talk radio programs indicates a resulting state of near panic, with parents fearing to take their sons to be ordained as novices in local monasteries. And, not surprisingly, expressions of homophobia, never before heard, are now being broadcast over the airwaves.

By creating an atmosphere of fear over predatory gay monks and going public with the dispute within the burgeoning gay movement, Natee Teerarojjanapongs, Thailand’s foremost gay activist, has created conditions that led to an upsurge of homophobia where virtually none had existed beforehand.

And again, not surprisingly, right-wing, violence-prone Rak Chiang Mai 51, frustrated and angry in an increasingly futile attempt to regain lost power, heard Natee’s call and assumed the role of the enforcer of public morals and decency. They “saved” the city, in their view, from an act of “defilement”. The hue and cry, however, tells a different story: by threatening violence and thereby forcing the cancellation of a peaceful action in support of human rights, the disrupters from Rak Chiang Mai 51 are, in fact, the real ones guilty of defiling Chiang Mai.

Natee privately condemns the Red Shirts’ disruption of the parade and rally. He argues that the event should have gone forth. However, as of this writing, he will not publicly condemn the disrupters nor accept any responsibility for what happened.

Addendum to article: A reliable source reports that the police were paid off by the Red Shirts not to intervene.

Steve Ault has been a gay activist since 1970 including co-chair of the first national gay march on Washington, DC in 1979. Ault has been extensively involved in the peace movement from the 1960s onward.  He resides in New York City and for the past 20 years has made frequent visits to Thailand.   Email him at:  stgault@earthlink.net

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