Today's Stories

February 23, 2009

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

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

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

February 23, 2009

Letter From Iceland

A War Cry From the North

By EINAR MÁR GUOMUNDSSON

You who live with an island in your heart
and the vastness of space
a sidewalk beneath your soles.

Hand me the Northern Lights!
I shall dance with the youngster
who is holding the stars.

We peel the skin from the darkness
and cut the head off misery.

This poem, A War Cry from North, serves in many a way as a fitting beginning for this piece, not only because the poem describes the matter at hand; rather, I wrote it at the Sailors' Home in Klakksvik in the Faroe Islands in February, 1993, when the bank depression devastated the Faroes.

I was there on a reading tour and have related that story elsewhere and do not intend to draw the Faroe Islands into the financial crisis which Iceland now faces. Although the depression is said to be of an international nature, I intend to fix my sights on Iceland.

* * *

In the midst of all this turmoil, the first question that comes to mind must be: Was Karl Marx right? My friend, who has held on to all the volumes of Das Kapital and has read them, tells me this situation, as it appears now, is dealt with in the third volume. But few people, apparently, have read it because the second volume contains a lot of mathematics, according to my friend who does not stop at owning all the volumes but has read them, which is more than I, or most other people, have done.

This friend of mine says that Karl Marx talks about poetic capital, fictive capital, in the third volume of Das Kapital, where there is no real wealth behind the profits, simply an exchange of worthless documents between one individual and the next - worthless in the sense that there is in no reality in place.

Such a web of lies was woven by the Icelandic capitalists who were often called entrepreneurial Vikings and rumored to be spiffy and swell. In their own publications they appeared as demi-gods and pretended to be patrons of worthy causes, with wives who cared about children in Africa. They claimed they wanted to share something of themselves, that they were doing so well because their husbands worked so hard at the office and met with success in almost every endeavor. They bought their way into companies, gained majority stakes, formed new companies and sold them to one another and kept everything of value from the old companies, the possessions of the shareholders, for themselves. Such was the web of deceit. This was the fate of many a valuable company. Then they reappeared in their own publications, having bought ski slopes in the Alps, luxury apartments in Manhattan and yachts in Florida. These were the happy few indeed.

Note, I use the concept a web of deceit. Still, this is not quite the right phrase because all of this occurred in accordance with the laws of the market and with the blessings of the market. No laws, no rules, prevented the shenanigans of the financial grandees. The politicians of Iceland were fast asleep, shrugged their shoulders and clinked glasses with the financial grandees, they even felt insulted if they were not invited to the feast which was enveloped in Hollywood glamor and razzmatazz.

* * *

When libertarians speak of the market, they resort to religious terms: "This is up to the market." Or: "We'll let the market decide that." One only needs to replace the word "market" with the word "God" and the religious content of libertarianism becomes apparent. The invisible hand becomes the Will of God, irrespective of how people feel about God. But Mammon is shrewd and takes on many forms. This is to say, the entrepreneurial Vikings, the financial grandees, the Icelandic capitalists, or whatever you wish to call them, were only offering due sacrifices to the market or to Mammon. The rules of engagement were in place and they took advantage of them. In addition, there were the astronomical salaries, the options, the bonuses and more things of joy. In Iceland, a new class came into being, a class of the superwealthy who reduced the middle class to paupers and made fools of the lower class. All sense of values was thrown out of kilter. Ordinary vocations, like that of teaching, were considered declassé. No one took the bus anymore. Everyone jumped into a new car, even cars people didn't own but bought on installment, from the tires upwards.

The directors of the privatized banks proceeded without discretion. They considered their work such an accomplishment that they awarded themselves a monthly salary to the tune of a Nobel Prize. If this excessive generosity towards themselves was pointed out to them, they would grimace and threaten to leave the country. We should have taken a leaf from The Saga of Grettir, wished them a safe journey and asked them never to return. But they claimed to be in such demand abroad. One could even imagine they would be cloned so that the entire world could bask in their reflected glory. Then it was left to the Icelandic biopharmaceutical company Decode to discover the jealousy gene in those who had the temerity to criticize them. One of them even talked about getting a Ph.D. student to conduct research into why the Danes were so jealous of them.

* * *

I'll get to this later because Karl Marx now insists I give a more detailed account of his views. The difference, it is said, between Karl Marx and most modern economists is that Marx had a historical overview, that he considered history a classroom from which he drew lessons. In this respect his methods are not unlike those of epic novelists, just in a different field. The truth is concrete, said Marx, like the novelist who collects facts which form the basis of his work. Therefore there are correspondences here and they are not unrelated to modern literature, in that there is a correspondence between unrelated fields. Karl Marx would have discerned the reality of the poetic capital from the depression which ran rampant in the middle of the 19th century - in 1859 if I recall - the most dire depression civic society has witnessed, along with the Great Depression of 1930 and the one with which we are now faced. If these depressions are volcanic eruptions, other depressions are earthquakes, various sorts of reverberations, some of which are restricted to specific zones. Around the middle of the nineteenth century there were great transport developments in Europe which crumbled with the same resounding thud as the financial world is doing now.

We also know that the Great Depression of 1930 was caused by overproduction. But now the depression of 2008 is one of overinvestment. Therefore its origins are to be found in investment companies and banks. Faced with the greed which has followed in wake of this newly crumbled financial system, people are of course flabbergasted. For example, some of the Icelandic financial grandees have appeared on lists of the world's richest men. They travel by private jet and try to outdo one another with all kinds of displays of vanity. Bands like Duran Duran have performed at new year galas and Elton John has sung at their birthday parties. I'm not going to discuss their musical tastes as such, but there are those artists who have become court poets and painters to the billionaires.

* * *

Even the President has trotted around half the globe with them, maybe to watch a single football match and likened them to great men in toast speeches, exalted their daring. They have had the leaders of the social democratic movement in their pocket and these have been like ventriloquist dummies of the wealthy because, all things being equal, the billonaires needed to find an adversary and some of them have found that adversary in Davíð Oddsson who has occupied almost every position imaginable, that of mayor, prime minister, and now that of chairman of the Central Bank of Iceland.

The Baugur crowd, i.e. the wealthy men of Baugur Group, have blamed the financial depression on Davíð Oddsson and made liberal use of their own press for that purpose. The social democratic leaders, Ingibjörg Sólrún for instance, have aped the billionaires in respect to this ridiculous animosity, the billionaires who moan about their families being persecuted when attempts have been made to curb their crimes and immorality. Davíð Oddsson has accused them of greed and corruption, called them highrollers and made full use of his rhetorical skills to mock them.

But Davíð forgets one thing, that he and his party, the Independence Party, paved the way for these men by privatizing the banks and contributed to the utter lack of ground rules surrounding their activities. The Progressive Party, too, must shoulder much of the blame for this state of affairs. When the banks were privatized, Valgerður Sverridóttir, former Minister of Industry and Commerce, and one of the leaders of the Progressive Party, declared: "This is a significant watershed, as this is the most comprehensive act of privatization in the history of Iceland."

And she was in such a hurry to privatize the banks that summer houses and a valuable art collection were thrown into the bargain, free of charge. When someone had the temerity to criticize her for this, she mouthed off.

The politicians are therefore in the role of Dr. Frankenstein and the billionaires are the monsters who have utterly outgrown the economy and plunged the nation into debt to such a degree that when the moral criterion of the nation state is applied, the word "treason" comes to mind and therefore, given the situation in which the country now finds itself, there is no other recourse but to confiscate the properties of these men and then only to pay off debts, the debts they themselves have incurred.

* * *

On the surface, Davíð Oddsson's rhetoric concerning the corrupt and greedy highrollers is spot on because there has been no end to the disorder and doubledealing. I won't go so far as to say that we need to go back to Roman times to find parallels; rather we need go back to the twenties, the Roaring Twenties, when the Great Gatsby ruled the roost and fictional characters such as Babbit came into being. In fact, what Babbit has in common with the financial grandees is that the man, as such, is sympathetic but prone to the same shallow greed. But let's look closer to home. Joseph Stiglitz, Bill Clinton's economic advisor, himself a libertarian who became disgusted with libertarianism, wrote the book "The Roaring Nineties" which deals with exactly the same things that have been happening in the Icelandic economy, except people like those responsible for the Enron debacle have actually been taken to court in that country, whereas in Iceland the highrollers are invited to dine with the President at Bessastaðir, to whoop it up with the highrolling Martha Stewart who is apparently a friend of the First Lady. Someone might assume that the President owed us, his people, an explanation. When I say that the social democrats have been in the pocket of the billionaires, I do so without malice towards them. The position of the social democrats in recent years has changed in that they have shifted from left to right. They have become, without realizing it, a beast of burden for the libertarians. Tony Blair represents the original incarnation of this policy and Gordon Brown, who wants to finish us Icelanders off, has followed suit. Tony Blair attracted support from the left but implemented a de facto right-wing policy. This man was the greatest idol of the Icelandic social democrats and their leaders.

* * *

This development is not a question of a sudden change of heart, rather its causes are rooted in historical events such as the fall of the Berlin wall and the ensuing reality which has been associated with postmodernism. Nothing is absolute, all things are relative and the concepts of left and right are redundant and so on. This position goes hand in hand with the decline of trade unionism, the waning powers of organizations and lack of solidarity. This is crystallized in the fact that social democrats do not represent a policy but rather they come up with something they call deliberative politics which has parallels in postmodernist relativism. During the last election I remarked to a social democrat how sad it was that his party had such little concern for the working class. The social democrat looked at me and said, "The working class! What working class? This is a handful of foreigners." One cannot expect much of a policy from an environment where this is the prevalent spirit. It is exactly this position that has given the advocates of capitalism and libertarianism a free run and complete leeway to do as they please. The chairman of the Social Democratic Party - Samfylkingin - has sung the praises of the billionaires and commiserated with them in their self-pity and resentment, and almost made it her policy that they be given the run of practically everything, not just commerce and business, but also the media. In this environment there has been no opposition of note to the war in Iraq or anything at all for that matter. The politicians have been allowed to put on airs on talk shows, almost like actors delivering their lines, and a large number of our youth is lost to the worship of gadgets and financial snobbery. Boobification has run rampant, the penny dreadful is the literature du jour, revered by the shallow-minded.

As a consequence we are not only dealing with a financial depression which is rattling the homes of this country and all the foundations of society, but a profound spiritual depression which makes it even more difficult to face the financial one, or to be more precise, the ruling class will get off scot-free and the people will be left in the clutches of the IMF, which, given its record, will demand even further privatization and that the welfare system be demolished even more thoroughly than is already the case.

* * *

We find ourselves in a fairy tale called The Emperor's New Clothes and the weavers have said, "If you do not see how clever we are, then you're just stupid, and not only stupid but jealous, which is really worse than being stupid, because stupid people can be sent on a course in our good schools. Hand the fishing waters over to us, hand over the banks to us, and the water, the waterfalls, the energy companies, and we'll gallivant around the globe with the President and say: "We are the greatest in the world, and if you do not see this, you're not only stupid, but also jealous." Perhaps Iceland is a testing ground for things to come, and if not, an exaggerated version of the condition, the depression, which has been made apparent by the fact that the financial companies have run up a debt to the tune of the gross national product times twelve. If I recall, the American housing system was first shaken last summer, and it's an old and new philosophy that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold, but the Icelandic economy isn't just suffering from a cold, but from a case of pneumonia which is attacking its entire infrastructure. At the same time, it becomes more and more apparent that the US housing system which collapsed, and the Icelandic bank system, which has now also collapsed, are more like a pair of doppelgängers from the world of literature than two distinct marvels, although these are surely amazing phenomena.

Still, it's too early to determine what the depression means and how it will play out. It is apparent that a vast number of people are left bankrupt and perplexed and that the party has drawn to a close. The ensuing hangover will be a long-term one, but if the system has hit rock-bottom, we can expect better days ahead. The avarice can be seen as an addiction, a constant form of abuse, where imaginary money is pumped into the economy and the addiction demands more and more of it, and there is no way back until everything crumbles.

As is, the IMF will probably be given the task of picking the juiciest bits from the welfare system, privatizing our natural resources and welfare system, thus fulfilling the purpose of libertarianism. But you never know whether the fat servant will come to, now that he has become a whipped slave, and then the words of the poem will squeal at reality.

You who live with an island in your heart
and the vastness of space
a sidewalk beneath your soles.

Hand me the Northern Lights!
I shall dance with the youngster
who is holding the stars.

We peel the skin from the darkness
and cut the head off misery.

Einar Már Guðmundsson is one of Iseland's best-known poets and novelists.

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