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Today's Stories

April 26, 2010

Daniel Kovalik
Colombia's Deadly "Democracy"

April 23 - 25, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Marijuana, Boom and Bust

Steve Hendricks
The Unquiet Grave: Indian Country, the FBI and the Death of Anna Mae Aquash

Mike Whitney
Lehman's Liar's Loans and Other Cons

Carl Ginsburg
The Envy of the World

Jeffrey St. Clair
Black Hole, Black Death: How Much is a Miner's Life Worth?

Andy Worthington
Guantanamo and Habeas Corpus

Karl Grossman
The Consequences of Chernobyl

Nelson P. Valdés
Hillary's "Feelings" About Cuba and the Castros

Scott Boehm
The Trial of Baltasar Garzón

David Macaray From Labor Champion to Wall Street Flack: Dick Gephardt Disgraces Himself ... Again

Dave Lindorff
Demonizing Iran

Saul Landau
The Decline of the Church?

Carles Muntaner
Samaranch: the Death of a Catalan Fascist

Ellen Brown
Computerized Front-Running

Alvaro Huerta
Razing Arizona: Enough with the Draconian Anti-Immigrant Laws

David Swanson
Death by Imperial Profile

Mark Brenner
Where are the Pitchforks?

Jefferson Chase
Why Obama's Middle East Peace Plan Will Fail

Fred Gardner
The POT Conference

Brenda Norrell
Playing Soccer With Evo Morales

Ira Glunts
The Shill on the Hill

Kamran Mofid / Steve Szeghi Economics in Crisis

Laura Flanders
Is the SEC Up to the Job?

Sheldon Richman
The Washington-Wall Street Kabuki Dance

Binoy Kampmark
Re-Regulating the Market

Paul Buchheit
Shut Up, Tea Partiers, We're On the Same Side ... Sort Of

Missy Beattie
War is Failure

Bianca Mucyenyi / Yves Engler
China and Cars

Harry Browne
World Cup: Can Spain Win at Last?

David Ker Thomson
Atlantis Under

Farzana Versey
Grin and Bear It: Profiting From the Prophet

Randy Shields
Kitten Stompers at the Supreme Court

Charles R. Larson
On the Streets, On the Skids

Ron Jacobs
When the Music Could Only Do So Much

David Yearsley
Sorry, Ms. Hahn, Your Notes are All Too Good

Poets' Basement
Ahmad, Yankevich and Moser

Website of the Weekend
The Ahava Protest

April 22, 2010

Stan Cox
Cold War: Militarism, Torture ... and Air Conditioning?

James Bovard
The Slippery Definition of Extremism

Patrick Cockburn
Vicious War on Pakistan's N.W. Frontier

Mike Whitney
The Real State of the Housing Market

Kim Ives
For $10 Billion in Promises, Haiti Surrenders Its Sovereignty

Christopher Ketcham
The Real Socialist Threat is the Military

Brian Tokar
The Advent of Green Consumerism: 40 Years of Earth Days

Jed Brandt
High Noon in Nepal

Norman Solomon
Who Let the Blue Dogs Out?

Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Return of Hormone Replacement Therapy

Website of the Day
Conservatives Gay-Bash Sen. Lindsay Graham

April 21, 2010

Andrew Cockburn
Wall Street's Bad Dream

Vijay Prashad
My Investment in Israel: Are You an Anti-Semite?

Esam Al-Amin
Israel's Enabler in the U. S.

Evelyn Pringle
Inventing Disorders: the Psychiatric Drugging of Children

Marshall Auerback
Economic Plague in the Euro Zone

Julien Mercille
Another Drug Record for Afghanistan

Leonard Peltier
Indigenous People and the Environment

David Macaray
Nike's Crimes

Robert Fantina
The New Christian Right and Christianity

Heather Gray
Texas Rewrites History

Harvey Wasserman
Nuking Earth Day

Website of the Day
Scenes From the American Police State: TSA and the Applesauce Caper

April 20, 2010

James Bovard
A Lethal Hypocrisy: Bill Clinton on Violence and Government

Dean Baker
The Multiple Scams of Goldman Sachs

Bill Quigley
The Guantanamo Deception

Alan Farago
Eating the Dead in the Everglades

Evelyn Pringle
An American Phenomenon: the Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers

Bouthaina Shaaban
Writing in an Age of Despair

Joanne Mariner
Fairness in Sanctions?

Eric Walberg
Iran's Disarmament Conference

Franklin Lamb
The Case for Palestinian Rights in Lebanon

Billy Wharton
Anti-Apartheid in 8 1/2 Hours

Website of the Day
Deficit Summit Pushback

April 19, 2010

Pam Martens
The Death of a Salesman

Mike Whitney
Goldman Sachs' Bloody Nose

Gareth Porter
Kandahar Campaign Doomed Before It Begins?

Jeb Sprague
Death in the Desert

Gregory Harms
The Procedural Relationship

Michael Leonardi
Emergency in Afghanistan: Raiding a Hospital

Dave Lindorff
Good Riddance, Daryl Gates

Greg Moses
Tax Day Tea Party Tosses Markets Overboard

Robert Jensen
The Diversity Dead-End

Gary Leupp
The Icelandic Volcano Speaks

Website of the Day
Dead Cat Walking

April 16-18, 2010

Cockburn / St. Clair
This Will be Obama's Legacy

Alan Nasser
Social Security in the Bullseye

Russell Mokhiber
Prosecuting Massey for Homicide

Ray McGovern
Lie to Congress; Get a Fourth Star

Gareth Porter
McChrystal Backtracks in Kandahar

Mike Whitney
High-Frequency Trading as High-Tech Robbery

Mark Weisbrot
The China Charade

Paul Krassner
Kent State Anniversary Blues

Steve Early
The Cost of Labor Civil War

David Rosen
The New York Times vs. the Pope: a Case of Selective Journalism

Nadia Hijab
How Obama Must Deal With Israeli Avoidance Methods

Ramzy Baroud
Dispatch From China: Number 15 Has Left the Building

Tom Turnipseed
Big Coal; Big Lies

Dr. Margaret Flowers, MD
Frontline Fronts for Corporations, Not the Public

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Presidential Elections: Kuwait Casts Its Vote

John Ross
Time-Traveling Down the Mississippi

Richard Grossman
On the Supreme Court

Missy Beattie
Fatal Math

David Michael Green
Of Mice and Men

Emily J. Kirk, John M. Kirk and Norman Girvan
Selective Commendation, Selective Indignation

David Macaray Down With Democracy

David Ker Thomson
Atlantis: Beyond the Sinking Feeling

Alexia Eastwood
The Return of Economic Man

Charles R. Larson
A Thirsty World

David Yearsley
Bach and Taxes

Kim Nicolini
"Fish Tank:" Class Claustrophobia

Poets' Basement
Birnbaum, Chaet and D'Alessio

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

April 15, 2010

Jonathan Cook
Israel Targets Ha'aretz

Mike Whitney
Housing Crashes Again

Clancy Sigal
SNCC: Same Lesson, 50 Years On

Alan Singer
Upper Big Branch Mine and the Race to the Bottom

Tolu Olorunda
The Youth Scare

John Stanton
Human Terrain Systems and Military Intelligence

Laura Flanders
Tax Grousing

Bill Piper
Don't Just Smoke a Joint on 4/20

David Rovics
Breaking Ranks

Website of the Day
Inside Microsoft's Chinese Sweatshop

April 14, 2010

Dean Baker
The New War on Social Security

Robert Sandels
Convincing Cubans: Your Tax Dollars at Work

Julien Mercile
Nuclear Insanities

Patrick Bond
The Loan That Could Break South Africa's Back

Julie Hilden
The Case of the Decoy Prom

Kevin Zeese
An Avoidable Tragedy: Holding Massey, and Its CEO, Criminally Liable for Miner Deaths

Ron Jacobs
End of the Revolution

Benjamin Dangl
The Carlsberg Strike: "We Need Our Beer!"

Binoy Kampmark
Rudd's Refugee Woes

Susan Galleymore
The Virtues of Compost

Website of the Day
Petition: Remove Blankenship From Chamber of Commerce

April 13, 2010

Gareth Porter Shooting in the Dark

Zoltan Grossman
The Global War on Tribes

Mike Whitney
Will WaMu Pay for Its Crimes?

Corey D.B. Walker
SNCC at 50

Nadia Hijab
Parsing Petraeus

Jonathan Cook
Mossad Operation Threatened Against Reporter

Joshua Frank
The Privatization of Wildlife: How Ted Turner Scored Yellowstone's Bison

Will Allen /
Ronnie Cummins

Is This Factory Farming's Tobacco Moment?

Dave Lindorff
Where Your Taxes Go

Cal Winslow
No Knock-Out Blow in SEIU's Courtroom Showdown

Website of the Day
Cost of War

April 12, 2010

Conn Hallinan
Behind the Afghan Fraud

Ralph Nader
The Black Death

Adrienne Pine
WOLA vs. Honduran Democracy

Uri Avnery
The Big Gamble

Gary Leupp
The Pope's Cover-Up: a Timeline

Mike Whitney
Is the Fed Helping the Big Banks to Cook Their Books?

Franklin Lamb
Hiba's Story

Jayne Lyn Stahl
The Savaging of Dawn Johnsen

Jeff Klein
Martin Kramer, Harvard and the Eugenics of Zion

Stephanie Westbrook
Marketing the F-35

Website of the Day
The Coal Miner's Grave

April 9 - 11, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The Cover-Ups That Exploded

David Price
Silent Coup: How the CIA is Welcoming Itself Back Onto American University Campuses

Dean Baker
The Big Break-Up

Michael  Hudson
The Looming European Debt Wars

Jonathan Cook
The Dark Underbelly of Israel's Security State

Mike Whitney
Give Greenspan an Oscar

Saul Landau
The Most Dangerous Man in the World

Jean Casella /
James Ridgeway

The Machinery of Death

Rannie Amiri
A New Wind Blows in Egypt

Gila Svirsky
How Israel Gagged on Its Own Gag Order

Alan Farago
Why They Call It King Coal

Dave Lindorff
How Massey Energy Does Business

David Macaray
The Price Tag on Safety

William L. Anderson
The Railroading of Tonya Craft

Harry Browne Maradona and Messi: Immortality Beckons

Missy Beattie
Mourning Has Broken: Death and the Bottom Line

Mark Weisbrot
The Losing Battle Against National Self-Determination

Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Charades in Prague

Farzana Versey
The White House Whitewash Job

Charles R. Larson
Eccentric Obsessions

David Yearsley
Storm Over Cameron Carpenter

Kim Nicolini
Hot Chicks Who Rock

Poets' Basement Three Poems by Jared Carter

Website of the Weekend
Birding Oregon

April 8, 2010

James Bovard
Subverting Freedom

Andrew Cockburn
Financial Reform Bids Collapse Into Farce

Mike Ely
Blasted in a West Virginia Mine

Gareth Porter
Killings and Cover-Ups in Afghanistan

David Swanson
Murder is the New Torture

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's PR Problem

Richard Neville
Dracula's Army

Website of the Day
Economist Need Their Own Uncertainty Principle

April 7, 2010

Jonathan Cook
What Makes an Israeli

Dean Baker
The Myth of Market Fundamentalism

Julien Mercille
Is Iran Producing Medical Isotopes?

Julie Hilden
The Case of the Topless Teenager: a Legal Win for Sexting Teens

Robert Elias
The Foreign Policy of Baseball

Ron Jacobs
Misrepresenting the Left

Linda Greene
Pushing WellPoint Back to Nonprofit?

David Macaray
Labor's Family Tree

Joshua Brollier
Kick Up the Volume on Palestine

Randy Shields
America on Vacation

Website of the Day
Of Coal Mines and Methane

April 6, 2010

Mike Whitney
China's Flawed Economic Model

Ralph Nader
Becky McClain's Crusade Against Pfizer

Patrick Cockburn
The Post-Election Struggle in Iraq

William Blum
Fallujah's Sick Babies

Stephen Soldz
Covering Up Civilian Deaths

Dave Lindorff
Welcome to Obama's War

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Resurrection

Roger Burbach
Evo's Way

Laura Flanders
Shaky Foundations for the Economy

Charles R. Larson
Why I am a Muslim

Website of the Day
Collateral Murder

April 5, 2010

Bill Quigley
The Ongoing Torture of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Uri Avnery
Israel's Bellicose Threats Against Iran

Saul Landau
Human Rights Hypocrisies

Nikolas Kozloff
James Cameron in the Amazon

Xavier Monthéard
Welcome to Hanoi

Mark Weisbrot
Slow, Small Changes at the IMF

Suzan Mazur
The Peer Review Fig Leaf

Billy Wharton
How Single-Payer Could Have Saved Newburgh, New York

Damien Millet, Sophie Perchellet and Eric Toussaint
Public Debt as Blackmail

Johanna Isaacson Valuable Things: "Shutter Island" and the Radical Viewer

Website of the Day
Being in the World

April 2 - 4, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The White House Egg Roll v. Gulag Ag

Pam Martens
The Guys Who Got It Wrong: Obama's Economic Brain Trust

Afshin Rattansi
Meet Lt. Col. Chris Gough: Killing by Drone and Proud of It

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's New Kingmaker

Anthony DiMaggio
The Afghanistan Paradox

Ramzy Baroud
The Israel Lobby v. America

Bruce E. Levine
Drugged Warriors: Sharp Rise in U. S. Military Psychiatric Drug Use ... and Suicides

M. Shahid Alam Fractures in the
U. S. / Israeli Relationship?

Rannie Amiri
Rescue Me: Abbas' Humiliating Plea

Stewart J. Lawrence
Should Yoga be Regulated?

John Ross
Frozen Heartland to Spring Thaw

Adam Parsons
Do We Care About Urban Poverty?

Rev. William E. Alberts
Resurrection is for the Living

Alvaro Huerta
Racism on Campus

David Ker Thomson
Now / Then

Ron Jacobs
The Mighty Pen of Edward Said

Dave Lindorff
The Case for the Impeachment of Barack Obama

Greg Moses
A King's Easter

David Rosen
Globalizing the Culture Wars

Laura Flanders
California Scheming

Nikhil Aziz
Ghosts Threaten to Return to Haiti

Alan Farago
No More Fish? Let Them Eat Cake

Chris Genovali, Paul Paquet and Misty MacDuffee:
Courting the Next Exxon Valdez

Missy Beattie
Mrs. Albright, Beyond Creepy

Charles Davis
"You're Such a Good Guy, Mr. President"

David Rovics
How to Light a Prairie Fire

Jack D. Forbes
The Right to Life: What Does It Mean?

Farzana Versey
Sex and Sanctity

Charles R. Larson
Coming Through Slaughter: Chang-Rae Lee's "The Surrendered"

David Yearsley
How Cameron Carpenter Blew It in Ithaca

Lorenzo Wolff
Priestess: the Ladykillers of Metal

Poets' Basement
Rico, Corseri and Wilkinson

Website of the Weekend
Occupied Washington

April 1, 2010

Gareth Porter
McChrystal's Night Raiders

Daniel Kovalik
The Bodies of the Innocent: Mass Graves Used to Cover-Up Atrocities in Colombia

Ellen Brown
Cutting Out the Middlemen

Emily J. Kirk /
John M. Kirk

Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti: One of the World's Best Kept Secrets

Tanya Golash-Boza
ICE on the Border: the Politics of Deportation

David Macaray
The Secret of Southwest Airlines

Russell Mokhiber
How to Talk About Single Payer to a Conservative

Binoy Kampmark
Tinted with Blood: Rio Tinto Dumps Stern Hu

Website of the Day
Teabonics

March 31, 2010

Samuel Singer
Strange Alliance at the Supreme Court

Dean Baker
The Housing Bubble and the Washington Crew

Esam Al-Amin
The Iraqi Elections: Winners and Losers

Gareth Porter
Inside Afghanistan's Jails

David Rosen
GOP in Freefall?

Mike Whitney
HAMP to the Rescue

Anita Sinha
Color-Coded Citizenship

Michael P. Bradley The Dawning of a Liberal Apologetics for Iraq

Nikolas Kozloff
The Real Thing: Bolivia's Coca-Colla

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Scapegoating of Low-Income Seniors

Website of the Day
The New START Deal

March 30, 2010

Conn Hallinan
A New Middle East War?

Kathy Kelly
Atrocities in Afghanistan

Rafael Hernandez
Dissidents and Politics in Cuba

Russell Mokhiber
Madoff was Like Heroin

Poyan Nahrvar
Ann Coulter Runs, Whines, May Sue

Ralph Nader
When the Banks Own the Congress

Alan Farago
An Economy Without Firewalls

Anthony Papa
The $250,000 Joint

Laura Carlsen
Juarez, Murder Capital of the World

Lawrence Reichard
Can the Census Count to Ten?

Website of the Day
The Business of Art

March 29, 2010

Vijay Prashad
Bad Aid: Throw Your Arms Around the World

Uri Avnery
Bibi's Canossa

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Post-Election Labyrinth

Mark Weisbrot
Re-Thinking the Euro

Dave Lindorff
Obama in Afghanistan

Kevin Zeese
The Bottom Line on Health Care: What We Got; What Remains to be Done

David Swanson
The Bases of Empire

Harvey Wasserman
Paying Now for the Next Three Mile Island

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Where Sarah Gets Her Guns

Martha Rosenberg
The Price of Cheap Easter Eggs

Website of the Day
Profit-Sharing Among Somali Pirates

March 26 - 28, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
T'was a Famous Victory

Pam Martens
The Most Vital Ingredient in Wall Street Reform Goes Missing

Mike Whitney
The Looming Trade War With China

Andrew J. Bacevich
Afghanistan: War of Illusions

David Yearsley
A Boy in Church: Alone With Father Tom

Anthony DiMaggio
Boons for Business: the Real Winners in the Health Care Bill

Dave Lindorff
Social Security Scare Tactics

Jonathan Cook
Provocation at Al-Aqsa

Robert Alvarez
After Yucca Mountain: What to Do With Nuclear Waste?

Linda Greene
Enhanced Prosecutorial Techniques

Ramzy Baroud
My Children, Ralph Nader and the South China Sea

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Nukes by the Numbers

David Swanson Frank Olson, Enemy Combatant: LSD, Murder and the CIA

Laura Flanders
How Bias at the NYT Helped Kill ACORN

Rannie Amiri
Al-Azhar's New Grand Sheikh

Mark Schuller
Haiti: Tectonic Shifts?

David Macaray
Fed Ex Buys an Exemption From Labor Laws

Robert Jensen
The Collpase of Journalism / the Journalism of Collapse

Boris Kagarlitsky
The Class War on Leninsky Prospekt

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Mullen-Petraeus Report on the Middle East

David Ker Thomson
Beyond Democracy

Charles R. Larson
It's Still Race, Stupid

Prairie Miller
Teabagger Cinema: a Weak Brew

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by DJ Moser

Website of the Weekend
Chertoff's New Gig

March 25, 2010

Jonathan Cook
The Jerusalem "Compromise"

Dean Baker
Will the U. S. Lose Its AAA Rating?

Laura Carlsen
Voting Under the Gun in Colombia

Mats Svensson
Apartheid on Two Continents

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Blair Strikes Oil in Iraq

Patrick Irelan
Bolsheviks in the Cornfields

Rose Ann DeMoro
On to Health Care Reform!

Christopher Brauchli
System Failure at the FBI

Sandy Mayes
No More Michael Moore

Website of the Day
The Curious History of the CIA's Secret Interrogation Program

March 24, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
Good-Bye

Ralph Nader
Congress, Israel and U. S. National Security

Saul Landau
Taunting Havana

Vijay Prashad
March From Marjah

Robert Alvarez
Flying and Radiation Exposure: Whole-Body Scanners Will Compound the Risk

Dave Lindorff
Testing Phobia: Texas Set to Execute Another Possibly Innocent Man

Laura Flanders
What I Learned From the Health Care Debate

Chris Floyd
Closing Time

Brian M. Downing
When Wounded Vets Booed John Wayne: War Movies and Veteran Memory

Gregory Elich
Taking on the Religious Right

Rosie Wong
Responding to the Honduran Coup

Website of the Day
What the Watchdogs Were Watching While the Economy Tanked

March 23, 2010

Noor Elashi
The Case of the Holy Land Five

Carl Ginsburg
Welcome to the Family Intake Center

Paul Craig Roberts
How Washington Murdered Privacy at Home and Abroad

Jonathan Cook
Israel's "No Renting to Arabs" Policy

Clancy Sigal
Married to the Cause

Sonja Karkar
Who is Killing Whom?

Don Monkerud
Recovery for the Rich

Greg Moses
America, Health Care and the Common Life

Shamus Cooke
Defeat in Victory

John V. Walsh
Health Insurance Bonanza

Website of the Day
Clinton's Haiti Apology

March 22, 2010

Uri Avnery
Israel, Obama and the Doomsday Weapon

Craig D. Rose
On to the Unemployment Crisis

Mike Whitney
Obama's Bloody War in Mexico

Allan Nairn
Indonesian Assassins

Gareth Porter
The Uncertain Fate of Afghan Detainees

Andy Worthington
Seven Years of War in Iraq

John Ross
Riding the Spine of America

Gary Leupp
Fight the Real Enemy: the Pope's Message to Sex Abuse Victims

Dan Bacher
Shame on the Riverkeeper!

David Michael Green
Stumbling Through the Graveyard of Empires

Dave Lindorff
Panhandling in Yosemite

Charles R. Larson
Tea Party Antics

Website of the Day
Dave Marsh Interviews Smokey Robinson

March 19 - 21, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
"My Fellow Americans, Tonight I'm Going to Talk Frankly About a Pesky Little Nation Called Israel ... "

Jeffrey Blankfort
Why Israel Always Prevails

Alan Nasser
The Jobs Bill and Other Faux Remedies

Dean Baker
The Holes in the Fed

Barbara Rose Johnston
Secrets of the Tribe: Anthropologists in the Amazon

Mike Whitney
Greenspan Returns

M. Shahid Alam
Will the Taliban Reclaim Control of Afghanistan?

Rannie Amiri
The "I-Word" Hillary Didn't Use

Alan Farago
A Time-Release Depression

Wajahat Ali
The Saga of Jihad Jane

Christopher Ketcham Technophilia, Technotyranny, Techno-infantilism

David Rosen
The Third Front: Sexual Assault in the U. S. Military

Patrick Bond
What Will Robert Zoellick Break Next?

Todd Gordon / Jeffery R. Webber
Imperialism Re-Booted in Latin America

Mark Weisbrot
An Ugly and Dangerous Game

Norman Solomon
Congressional Health Care Follies

Ramzy Baroud
Activism is Change

Martha Rosenberg The Wild Man

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Jihad Against Violence

Laura Flanders
The Femivore's Dilemma

Clare Bayard / Sarah Lazare
Rebirthing the Anti-War Movement

David Ker Thomson Buy This Article: the Politics of Doing Squat

Binoy Kampmark
The Female Eunuch Turns 40

Charles R. Larson
Troubled Relationships on the Land

David Yearsley
The Pope's Brother and Those Regensburg Choirboys

Ron Jacobs
Jimi Hendrix: Spirits of the Red House

Poets' Basement
Emerson and Beaudin

Website of the Weekend
Coal's Toxic Sludge

March 18, 2010

JoAnn Wypijewski
"When You're Dying You Explore Radical Medication"

Neve Gordon
Rachel Corrie's Memory, Israel's Image

David Macaray
The Toyota Way: Workers Warned Mgt. About Cutting Corners

Patrick Cockburn
Sadrists Rising

Ralph Nader
The Graveyard of the Congress

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Pretend Ethics on Capitol Hill

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuke Pushers to Vermont: Drop Dead

Missy Beattie
Notes From DC: Stop Killing Civilians

Tolu Olorunda
Texas Says Hip Hop is Not a Significant Cultural Movement

David Swanson
Kucinich and the Media

Website of the Day
RIP Alex Chilton

March 17, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
The Off-Shored Economy

Mike Whitney
Carte Blanche for the Banksters

Anthony DiMaggio
The Empathy Problem: Poverty, Privilege and Health Care Reform

Christopher Fons
Why Obama is a Disaster for Urban Educators

Mark Weisbrot
Greenspan's Nightmare

Dave Lindorff
The War on Afghan Civilians

Joe Allen
The Persecution of Curtis Flowers

Carl Finamore
Union Democracy on Trial

Yifat Susskind
Oh, Those "Disappointing" Iraqis

Laura Flanders
What Did Geithner Know, When Did He Know It?

Website of the Day
Big Snort: Is Cocaine Use Driving Climage Change?

 

April 26, 2010

More Than 150,000 May Have Been Killed

Colombia's Deadly "Democracy"

By DANIEL KOVALIK

In his book, Colombia: the Genocidal Democracy, Father Javier Girardo, a Jesuit priest and long-time human rights activist in Colombia, estimated that, between 1988 and 1995, more than 60,000 Colombians lost their lives to the internal conflict in Colombia – most of them at the hands of the state, either in the form of the official Colombian military or the paramilitary forces supported by the state.

As for the Colombian state’s support for the paramilitaries, also known as “death squads,” that is well-known. Thus, as the U.S. State Department has concluded in its annual human rights reports, the paramilitaries have received active support from the Colombian government and from the Colombian military which has provided the paramilitaries with weapons, ammunition, logistical support and even with soldiers. Given that the U.S. has aided the Colombian military with over $7 billion in military assistance since 2000, all the while knowing the military’s close collaboration with the murderous paramilitaries, the U.S. itself is complicit in the paramilitaries’ crimes.

The extent of the Colombian state’s connections with the paramilitaries continues to be exposed, with former paramilitary leaders revealing the heights of the government support for their activities. Within the past days, for example, former paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso confirmed that the current Colombian Vice-President, Francisco Santos, and the Defense Minister, Juan Manual Santos, had close ties with the paramilitary forces. Juan Manual Santos is expected to be the next President of Colombia.

Up till recently, the prevailing estimate of civilians killed specifically by the paramilitaries has been around 30,000. Father Girardo, citing new estimates by Colombia’s own Prosecutor General, has now shattered those original estimates, announcing that the Prosecutor General is currently investigating 150,000 extrajudicial killings by the paramilitary groups – killings which took place between the late 1980’s and the current time. Even the prior, more conservative estimates would have made Colombia the worst human rights abuser in South America in recent times, having victimized more than Argentina’s fascist junta and Chile’s Pinochet dictatorship.

The new estimates place Colombia in a category all of its own as the worst human rights abuser in the Western Hemisphere. And, in terms of peoples internally displaced as a result of the conflict in Colombia – over 4 million – Colombia ranks only second in the world to the Sudan. And, not too surprisingly given the U.S.’s usual support for the worst human rights abusers, the Washington Post reported in an article by Juan Forero on April 19, 2010, that Colombia is “Washington’s closest ally on the continent.”

In this same Washington Post article, Forero relates that, even as the U.S. has provided Colombia with massive amounts of assistance – most of it military, of course – Colombia has continued to slip deeper and deeper into poverty, with 43% of its population now living in poverty and 23% living in “extreme poverty.” As the Washington Post explained, Colombia is “the only major country in Latin America in which the gap between the rich and poor has increased in recent years, according to a report by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America.”

Of course, as Father Girardo noted in The Genocidal Democracy – a book which is sadly out of print – this is all according to Washington’s plan to make Colombia a compliant country open to unchecked exploitation by U.S. companies with an endless well of hunger for Colombia’s vast reserves of oil, coal, fruits, flowers and precious metals and gems, as well as for a desperate workforce willing to accept barely-subsistent wages.

With President Obama continuing to solidify the U.S.’s relationship with Colombia through a new deal which will give the U.S. access to 7 military bases, and through a Free Trade Agreement which Obama is now pushing, despite his campaign pledges to oppose it, this deadly game plan continues unabated. Only massive resistance in this country can end such destructive foreign policies.

* * *

As this article was going to publication, we learned that Javier Girardo, and his human rights group, Justicia y Paz, have received death threats in retaliation for the above-mentioned revelations about the paramilitaries. Please take a moment to write a note of concern for the life of Father Javier to Hillary Clinton (Fax 202 647-2283) and President Alvaro Uribe at the Colombian Embassy in D.C. (Fax 202 232-8643).

Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer working in Pittsburgh, Pa.


 

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Was Lost
By Paul Craig Roberts

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time

by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

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Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side

of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

2010 Country Mamas of Petrolia
Calendar Now Available!

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals

of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

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"The Case Against Israel"
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

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RED STATE REBELS:
Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland

Edited by
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Joshua Frank


How the Press Led
the US into War


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The Secret Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy
WINNER OF THE
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!


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

By Harry Browne


Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal

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 Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"

By Tennessee Reed

 

 

 

"Powerful and shocking ..
see this film"
-- Joseph Stiglitz on American Casino

 

  

 

 


The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn

  
Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
 
  
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed