Today's Stories

March 5 , 2009

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

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 5 , 2009

Augmentation All Over Again

From Iraq to Afghanistan

By ROBERT FANTINA

In his first 45 days or so as president of the United States, Barack Obama has chalked up some impressive accomplishments. He has ordered an end to the torturing of political prisoners, set a date for the closing of the U.S.’s most notorious torture chamber in Guantanamo, and met with that Yankee Poodle wannabe, Canada’s Stephen Harper, to discuss measures to slow global warming. Undoing eight years of disastrous decisions cannot be undone overnight, or even in 45 days, but Mr. Obama is trying.

On another front, however, one seems to see a ‘business as usual’ attitude. Candidate Obama promised an end to the Iraq war within sixteen months of his inauguration. The fact that he has now stretched that out to nineteen months is not in itself significant. “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.” So said Mr. Obama during a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

On the surface, that is wonderful news. As the president himself stated, the Iraq war has been a long one “by any measure” and it is time to “bring our troops home with the honor they have earned.”

Noble words, indeed, but it is important to read the fine print: some number between 35,000 and 50,000 U.S. soldiers will remain in Iraq until the last day of 2011, more than two years after the ‘combat mission’ in Iraq will have ended.

Is this possibly the anti-surge? Instead of a large and significant increase (can we ever forget, try as we might, former Secretary of State Condoleezza (Oil Princess) Rice explaining with a straight face that the addition of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to Iraq was not an escalation but merely an ‘augmentation’?), what we are being given by Mr. Obama is a large and significant decrease in the number of soldiers in Iraq. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but it does not end the war. It does not even come close to ending U.S. involvement in the war. Perhaps it might be called a readjustment; surely Ms. Rice would approve of such semantics.

And why, one wants to know, is there still any ‘combat mission’ left in Iraq? Just what is it the U.S. hopes to accomplish there?

And need anyone point out to Mr. Obama that not all the soldiers who served in Iraq have done so with honor?

Mr. Obama made several other comments during that speech that should certainly send red flags flying all over the computer screens of those who seek the change we were told we could believe in. A look at a few is alarming:

• The U.S. military, said he, “exceeded every expectation” in suppressing the insurgency in Iraq. It did? Didn’t former president and war-monger George Bush declare, not three months after the invasion, ‘mission accomplished’? If every expectation was exceeded, why has the war dragged on for more than five years since that ‘accomplishment’? And why, one desperately wants to know, are Iraqi freedom fighters, who are doing exactly what one would expect U.S. citizens to do if foreign invaders were occupying U.S. cities and patrolling its streets, called ‘insurgents’ by Mr. Obama?
  
• “We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein’s regime and you got the job done”, he curiously told the soldiers in his audience. Why, one wonders, is that a good thing? Who or what ever gave the U.S. the right to depose dictators it doesn’t like? And didn’t the U.S. invade to prevent Iraq from using its non-existent weapons of mass destruction from being hurled against U.S. cities? Mr. Bush sent dedicated soldiers on a fools errand; Mr. Obama does them no service by perpetrating his lie.
  
• U.S. soldiers, said Mr. Obama, “cannot police Iraq’s streets indefinitely until they are completely safe.” The U.S. cannot make its own streets safe; no one expects it to make Iraq’s safe. And at the risk of repeating what has been said often before, the streets of Iraq were relatively safe prior to the U.S. invasion. And no, before anyone thinks otherwise, the U.S. cannot stay long enough to even bring Iraq back to where it was before that invasion.
  
• Al Qaeda in Iraq had been dealt “a serious blow.” Please, please tell us that Mr. Obama is not stooping to that old dog bone. Is there anyone left in the U.S. who still believes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, including a bipartisan Congressional study and report, that Iraq had any but the most minor, trivial association with Al Qaeda?

Adding to the questionable statements of President Obama listed here, is this non-reassurance coming from none other than Republican Senator John McCain, perhaps war’s biggest fan in the U.S. senate. He deemed Mr. Obama’s plan ‘reasonable’ and is ‘cautiously optimistic’ that it will be successful.

As was such a frequent problem during the tedious presidential campaign, Mr. McCain does not define ‘success’. One suspects it means that the U.S. will, at last, be able to steal all the oil it wants from Iraq. After all, there will still be between 35,000 and 50,000 U.S. soldiers to terrorize the countryside and assure that the oil goes just where the U.S. wants it to. That the Iraqis may have other ideas is not important; what on earth ever made them think that the oil under their sands belongs to them and not to the U.S.? After all, didn’t the U.S. overthrow their murderous dictator? We won’t bother to mention that Iraq never asked that their dictator be overthrown, or that in doing so the U.S. killed over 1,000,000 citizens, displaced over 3,000,000, destroyed the infrastructure and deprived significant portions of the population the basic services they need. So U.S. soldiers were never greeted with flowers tossed beneath their feet as former Vice President Dick Cheney predicted. Leave tens of thousands of soldiers behind to assure that the ‘success’ of the invasion and years-long occupation is what the U.S. defines it to be.

And while so many troops will remain in Iraq, Mr. Obama is turning his attention to Afghanistan. As usual when the U.S. focuses on any nation, the citizens of that nation have cause for alarm. Along with increased diplomacy (a word uttered only with scorn by Mr. Bush and his cronies for eight years), Mr. Obama is deploying at least 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Will the ‘readjustment’ of one war result only in the ‘augmentation’ of the other?

One hesitates to criticize Mr. Obama too strongly. Rarely, if ever, in the history of the United States has a president inherited such a colossal mess, ranging from the implosion of the U.S. and world economy, to two disastrous and ill-conceived wars. The president has made strides; he has already brought about greater transparency, and many of his actions are commendable. But the carnage must stop, and only he can stop it. Let us all hope that his diplomatic gestures overshadow his military ones, and that the hope the world embraced with his presidency is not disappointed.

Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006. 

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont