Today's Stories

June 16, 2008

Howard Lisnoff
Files Upon Files

June 13 / 15, 2008

Douglas Valentine
McCain: War Hero or Go-To Collaborator?

Alexander Cockburn
Change, What Change?

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft

Peter Linebaugh
On Wat Tyler Day

Ishmael Reed
The Colossus: Sonny Rollins, Take One

Joe Bageant
Old Dogs and Hard Time

Harry Browne
Ireland Shows the Way!

Andy Worthington
The Supreme Court's Gitmo Decision: What Does It Mean?

Jeff Sharlet
The F-Word

Binoy Kampmark
They Gassed Us: Agent Orange in OZ

Alan Farago
His Little Piece of the Pie

Brian Cloughley
America the Detested: the Pakistan Airstrikes

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
How to Stretch Gasoline

Reza Fiyouzat
Oil and Racism

Patrick Bond /
Richard Kamidza
How Europe Underdevelops Africa

David Yearsley
Music in the Rubble

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!

Ronnie Cummins
Don't Panic; Go Organic

Dan Bacher
Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds

Michael Dickinson
Jesus in Megiddo Prison

Seth Sandronsky
My Father's World

Poets' Basement
Tu Fu / Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Torture and the American Psyche

June 12, 2008

Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die

Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases

Saul Landau
The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal

Christopher Brauchli
Bush Bling-Bling: Government by Crony

Norman Solomon
Deadly Diplomacy

Helen Redmond
Why Can't We All Get KennedyCare?

Laura Carlsen
No Rest for the Working Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
Threats Against Iran Escalate

Anne Landman
Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer?

Website of the Day
Fire in Watts

June 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High

Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers

Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama

Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"

Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly

Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black

Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word

Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women? My Bill Clinton ... and Ours

Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall

June 10, 2008

Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps

James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut

John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People

Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism

Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks

Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation

Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?

Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start

Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?

June 9, 2008

Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"

Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry

Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"

Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed

Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit

Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation

Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley

James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?

Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.

Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty

Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War

Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death

Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security

Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House

Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing

David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question

Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana

David Yearsley
Disaster Music

James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat

Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy

P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur

David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?

B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One

Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)

Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines

Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!

Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski

Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

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The 2008 Elections

Of Whales and Worms

By DENNIS LOO

Many people regard Obama’s upcoming nomination for president as a sign that change is underway and that the nightmare of Bush and Cheney will be over beginning in late January 2009. New York Times columnist Frank Rich, for example, sees Obama’s emergence as a changing of the guard. Others have cited Obama’s campaign as indicative of millennials beginning to take the political stage. Millions are pleased that finally an African-American is going to be nominated by one of the two major parties and see this as in and of itself a step forward.

For the well-meaning people who are feeling this way, I have this question: How can the same Democratic Party, and the same specific individuals, who have co-operated in, permitted and/or legalized the Bush regime’s atrocities – including torture and war crimes – now tell us that the candidate that they endorse is the solution to the horrid things that this system and these individuals have themselves facilitated and colluded in?

This is like the offspring of the Alien mother in the movie Alien coming out not hellishly grotesque looking and drenched in saliva but instead a fuzzy Beagle puppy.

This is like George W. Bush delivering a poetic and surpassingly beautiful two-hour speech extemporaneously.

This is like a worm giving birth to a full-grown whale.  

* * *

If Obama really was a solution, why has a White House in open defiance of the law been allowed to go on for eight years unsupervised, unrestricted and unsanctioned?

If Obama really was a solution, then why have been told to wait while more than a million Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans are tragically dead (thousands of Americans killed in action plus eighteen per day committing suicide) in a war based on lies, with no penalty for the perpetrators of these war crimes whatsoever? 

If Obama or McCain really were a solution, then why have they personally stood by while innocent people have been tortured and habeas corpus was abrogated? Since when has morality and justice depended upon whether you have the votes to stop a horrid bill? That’s what a filibuster is for. Had either Obama or McCain done anything to stop any of the White House’s crimes for the last eight years, would there be a need for the change that Obama and McCain say we should vote for them to carry out? 

If Obama really were a solution, then why should we expect him to have an awakening upon taking office if he’s been slumbering, morally and legally, all of these years?

If Obama really were a solution, and did have such an awakening in the White House, why would the same system and same individuals who cooperated all these years with the monsters running our country let Obama do an about-face in the White House?

If elections really were a solution, then why hasn’t the Democratic majority in Congress, ended the war, the torture, and the massive, warrantless surveillance over all of us and impeached the sorry excuses for human beings in the White House? Pelosi and Reid claim that they haven’t had the votes to stop the war. Nancy and Harry: that’s what your leadership posts are for. You don’t need the votes. All you have to do is block the funding bills from coming out of committee. If you don’t like the telecommunications amnesty bill or the spy-on-all-Americans bills, then all you have to do is keep the bills from coming up for a vote. You can kill these bills in the same way you’ve been killing the impeachment resolutions against Cheney and Bush. But then, Nancy and Harry already know this.

If elections really were a solution to these towering, world-historic crimes, how can it be so simple to fix these horrors as pushing a button and electing a new president and vice-president?

Why aren’t real collective efforts and civil resistance by the American people needed in a time when both major parties and the mass media have betrayed the people, when lie after lie after lie pass without comment, the liars caught red-handed are excused, when unjust wars and unspeakable practices are routine, when reason and science themselves are under attack, and when the country is in more danger than the conditions that sparked the American revolution and when the fate of the planet hangs in the balance?

* * *

Many people think that because Obama is black that his nomination by one of the two major political parties means that something extraordinary has happened.

It is extraordinary that in a country with a long history of white supremacy that finally there will be a presidential nominee who is black.

But what’s most extraordinary here isn’t his coming nomination.

What’s most extraordinary are the circumstances giving rise to his nomination.

The Rupture

The Bush regime has been spearheading an extraordinary rupture from the norm, de jure and de facto, much of it in the shadows, but increasingly in the open, and the majority of people of this country are deeply disturbed by it.

This is in spite of the fact that only a fraction of the people are aware of the magnitude of this rupture because the mass media and the Democratic Party have been actively minimizing and/or concealing this.

In addition, all too many Americans are “opting out” of taking responsibility for the barbaric acts being committed in our names because they themselves are anesthetized by their material comforts.

The rupture’s dimensions, nonetheless, are so far-reaching that it is impossible for this country’s leadership class to conceal entirely the jagged rips and tears going on.

The distress among the people has not been openly expressed enough – far from it – but the dismay, frustration and anger, even based on very partial and incomplete knowledge of what’s going on, are evident just beneath the surface.

It has not only been apparent in the polls that show this presidency to be the most unpopular since polling began; it is also evident around the water cooler, on the neighborhood stoop, at the coffee shop, in the classroom and baseball park, everywhere you go, in people expressing worry, concern, desperation, grief, and among tens of millions, fury.

You especially hear it if you say something – or display something - that opens up the conversation to them and that shows people that you feel strongly about it.

Then it comes pouring out from folks.

They say: I feel the same way! I can’t believe they’re still in office. I can’t believe they’ve been getting away with it all! What’s wrong with America? What’s wrong with all of us? What can I do?

Some say: I wish I could do something that would really matter.

Some say: I did something. I marched. I wrote letters. I voted. But it’s still all going on.

Others, and sometimes the same people that said the preceding, also say: I can’t do anything. It’s too big. Why aren’t other people doing something?

And some say, indeed, millions say: Maybe a new president will change things. Bush and Cheney will be gone soon. Hopefully, things will change.

* * *

We don’t need hope based on wishful thinking.

We need hope based on cold, hard facts and cold, clear-eyed realism.

We need hope based on an understanding of how this system actually works and how political power is actually exercised.

People have to get over naïve ways of seeing the world.

Just because he’s black, he’s going to change things?

Just because he’s smart and Bush is stupid? Just because he’s hipper than Dick Cheney and flatfooted George Bush? Just because he can write books and Bush needs a coloring book entitled The Presidency for Dummies?

Is this – true though these things are - what ultimately, decisively, matters?

If you think so, think again, because so much is at stake.

The whole world is at stake.

It’s at stake now and over the next several months, before the November 2008 election.

* * *

We’re talking here about who’s going to lead the sole remaining imperialist superpower. We’re talking about the head of state of the most powerful country in a world in which the richest 451 individuals have more wealth than the bottom half – more than 3 billion people - of the world’s population combined. We’re talking about the president of an empire that spans the globe and that has over 700 military bases abroad. We’re talking about the commander and chief of a country that spends more on its military than all of the other countries in the world combined. We’re talking about an immense bureaucracy that rests upon and exists to protect and expand that empire. We’re talking about a campaign for president that has lasted over fifteen months to date and that has required a quarter million dollars per day per candidate to be sustained.

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Some people will allow what I have said in the preceding but then say: so you’re saying we should elect McCain?

People have to get outside the suffocating confines of electoral politics and see that real political power isn’t exercised based on it and public policy isn’t made by their votes.

In 1964 the Democratic candidate, Lyndon Johnson, ran against the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater. Johnson defeated Goldwater in a landslide, propelled in particular by the widespread belief that the GOP candidate was a warmonger and that the Democratic candidate would keep us out of war. That time, a mushroom cloud threat was also invoked, against the GOP candidate.

What did LBJ, the peace candidate, then proceed to do? Escalate inexorably the war in Vietnam, leading to the deaths of some 2,000,000 Indochinese and over 50,000 Americans. He did this even though, according to historians, he didn’t even like the idea or believe that it would ultimately work. But he was hemmed in by the institutional forces around him and by what the military told him.

Why would today’s “peace candidate” Obama be any different? Because he’s black? Because he’s smart?

Many people want to believe Obama when he says that he’s against the Iraq war. They want to believe that voting for him will restore sanity in Washington. But people need to pay closer attention to what Obama is actually saying and to what he has done as a Senator.

Some people hope that in spite of words of Obama’s that worry them, he’s really a stealth candidate.

Obama’s a stealth candidate all right, except that he’s a stealth candidate for a wing of this country’s leadership class. His political views are carefully crafted, canny, and consistent. Like John Kerry, Obama’s differences with Bush and Cheney are over execution, not goals.

Obama claims, as did Kerry, that he can do a better job than the current White House of accomplishing the same ends and that what is wrong with Bush and Cheney isn’t that they have been waging wars (of conquest and domination) but that they’ve been carrying them out poorly. “I’m not opposed to all wars,” Obama said in October 2002 about the Iraq war, “What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”

Obama took the same line on the Military Commissions Act. He should have characterized the very idea of legalizing torture as monstrous and the elimination of habeas corpus - a right that dates from the Magna Carta, almost 900 hundred years ago - as unthinkable and he should have blocked its passage by filibuster, a step that the New York Times called for: “If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.” Instead, Obama merely voted against it, allowing it to pass, and objected to the MCA in his remarks as “sloppy.”

On July 27, 2004, while running for the Senate, Obama said about Iraq:  "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute." The Chicago Tribune went on to say that Obama, "now believes US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation, a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration."

While Obama has since this promised to draw down troops from Iraq, as one of Obama's former policy advisers, Samantha Power, said in April 2008, “Obama would weigh security conditions in Iraq in implementing a withdrawal. She told a BBC interviewer Obama ‘will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or U.S. senator,’ and he would take into account the advice of generals on the ground.’”

Not “rely on some plan he’s crafted as a presidential candidate.”

As the New York Times reported on May 16, 2008: “Mr. Obama has likened his foreign policy approach to that of the so-called pragmatists in the administration of the first President George Bush… ‘I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm.’”

Obama openly admires Ronald Reagan for bringing us together:

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path … I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating…. Ronald Reagan was a very successful president, even though I did not agree with him on many issues, partly because at the end of his presidency, people, I think, said, ‘You know what? We can regain our greatness. Individual responsibility and personal responsibility are important.’ And they transformed the culture and not simply promoted one or two particular issues.”

The “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” included the civil rights movement, without which a black man, such as Barack Obama, wouldn’t have had a chance to run for the US Senate and now have a chance to become the President. It included the women’s movement, without which Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have had a chance at the presidency. It included the anti-war movement, without which – and the other “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” - this author would likely not have been able to imagine the idea that there is an alternative to this hellish nightmare and type these words.

Obama wants to restore “American power and influence” by which he means pursuing the Empire’s interests, including waging unjust and illegal wars on other countries. As a very sharp and recent indication of this, right after securing the nomination he spoke to AIPAC and dramatically adopted the entirety of the fraudulent rationale being offered by the Bush gang for a war on Iran, telling them, in off-the-text remarks: "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything."

Obama opposes impeachment.  On June 28, 2007 he said: “I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the President’s authority.”

When Obama was asked about holding the Bush gang responsible for torture – certainly a “grave, grave breach” if there ever was one – on the very day that Bush finally admitted that he had approved waterboarding – i.e., torture - of a detainee, Obama said this:

“[O]ne of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances.”

Thus, according to Obama, what’s wrong with torture isn’t that it’s barbaric and against the law, and on top of which, as any intelligence officer and anyone who has survived torture will tell you, it doesn’t work in getting you good information. What’s wrong with torture, according to the man who wants to be our president, is that it’s “dumb.”

As I wrote in my blog: “What country has Obama been living in? What presidential actions has he been following? What is more grave a breach of authority than torturing people and making this policy? Launching an immoral, illegal, unjust war based on lies? Refusing Congressional subpoenas, issuing hundreds of signing statements that negate Congressional acts, spying on hundreds of millions of Americans without warrant and without cause? Savaging FEMA, undermining New Orleans' levee system by slashing funds for repairs, allowing private interests to destroy necessary marshlands that are natural protectors against storms, allowing a fabled and storied city to be ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and not coming to people's aid in a timely fashion, then lying about what you did and knew? Military threats based on lies against Iran? Censoring science, breaching the Church/State divide? What more do you need?”

Yesterday’s GOP vs. Today’s GOP

The choice the two major parties are offering us is between the proto-fascist GOP candidate or the GOP-lite, late 1980s, early 1990s, GOP president. The choice on the ballot says “Democrat” v. “Republican.” But the choice is between present-day GOP v. latter-day GOP. This is what this system, left to itself, is giving us.

That’s all this system, left to itself, is capable of giving us.

You can either go back to the old, old model – McCain, who is old in more than one way - or you can have the slightly less old model, in brand new packaging.

The whole question of Obama or McCain, Ron Paul or Obama/McCain or even Nader or Obama, misses the main point.

All too many people are wrapped up debating whether there are enough lifeboats on the Titanic while the Titanic hurtles towards an immense iceberg visible to the naked eye. One candidate/captain is offering us a few more lifeboats. That’s the difference. Both candidates are, moreover, telling us that that iceberg is Iran and the ship is strong enough to slice into that iceberg, so we’re headed straight for it.

The point isn’t who gets elected. What happens in the next four to eight years isn’t going to be principally determined by who is in the White House.

If there is anything else to come from the horrors that have come to characterize Washington, a mass movement among the people that is independent of the plans of both major parties and that drastically alters the overall political atmosphere must arise.

If the social and political atmosphere is changed, then who is in the White House actually doesn’t matter very much. It would, in fact, be better to have a mass movement in the society and in the streets and a Republican in the White House than a Democrat in the White House and no mass movement. I’m not advocating that McCain be elected. I’m pointing out that what really matters here is whether or not there’s a mass movement of the people, independent of electoral campaigns and electoral politics.

Some people say, well, then, the situation’s hopeless because there aren’t going to be millions doing that.

Well, why not?

IF a black man can get the Democratic Party nomination for president because he’s skillful at parlaying the thirst of tens of millions for a “change” from that brought to us by the government,

IF there is enough of a groundswell of desire for something so different that the powers-that-be had to put forward and actively and intensively promote a black man this time for the first time in history in order to divert people’s attention from the fact that Bush and Cheney are still in office and their policies are still being carried out and getting more extreme by the day,

IF they had to start the presidential race much earlier than ever in order to distract people from that fact,

IF there is that much dissatisfaction that even in the Party of the Plutocrats that the “maverick” GOP candidate got the nomination,

IF, for the first time in history, not only a black man but a woman stood a chance of becoming a major party presidential candidate because “change” is so much the desire for a majority of Americans,

IF this government is on the verge of yet another invasion of another country – Iran - and the possibility of a convulsive, possibly apocalyptic, storm that rebounds from the Middle East to the U.S. to Pakistan and beyond is staring us pointblank in the face,

THEN why can’t something else emerge from this than a recycling of the same old monstrousness? 

If tens upon tens of millions of people are going to vote and millions are contributing money and time and energy to back their favored candidate, in other words, crossing their fingers, hoping that this will make a difference, that their votes will be counted this time and not be stolen like the last two presidential elections, then why can’t three or four million do something that will make a difference?

Why can’t 1% of the American people, three million, do something that actually means something?

In the 1960s, as Henry Kissinger, who served under Nixon, said in his memoirs, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) exercised influence far exceeding its actual (and relatively small) numbers because there was a credibility gap: most of America didn’t believe what the government was saying. LBJ would say something in a national address and most people would say: he’s lying. Nixon would say something in a national address and most people would say: he’s lying.

It’s deeply immoral for the Democratic Party and the mass media to countenance torture and “pre-emptive” wars based on fraudulent premises. Obama and Pelosi and McCain are fully aware of this. They want us to follow their lead and get us to act as if this isn’t the present reality – that we should ignore their collusion in crimes against humanity and support them as fellow colluders.

That is what these elections are really about: herding people into supporting crimes against humanity and declaring that it’s the people’s will.

Is that what you want? Is that the kind of person you are? Is this the legacy we want for our children and future generations - that we stood by and let tyrants and monsters ravage the planet?

Even if you now think that Obama should be “given some slack” for what he’s saying, do you think it is proper to put your faith in one person and faith in the same party that has betrayed us all? Even if you plan to vote for him, do you think that simply voting discharges your responsibility to protest, everyday from now until it is no longer necessary, the moral outrages being committed by our government?

The Moral High Ground

Why can’t a relatively small group of people take the moral high ground and by so doing, spark the actions of much larger numbers of people, beginning at this point, in relatively small numbers and then growing on the basis of their stand, determination, the facts and the truth – so outstandingly lacking from the other side - into eventually much larger numbers, thereby creating a similar situation to that which was so distressing and worrisome to Kissinger?

Why can’t 1% of the people, beginning from a much smaller number now, but spreading, wear or display orange daily to show their solidarity with those being tortured in our names, and as a public statement of their repudiation of our government’s policies?  Why can’t and why shouldn’t people be giving their money and/or their time to groups such as World Can’t Wait that seek to hold torturers such as John Yoo and the Bush gang accountable, to expose military recruiters for their lies to young people, and to build mass mobilization against both the war on Iraq and the pending war on Iran?

If this happens, if a movement of a few million, representing the desires of the majority, comes into being, then anything and everything is possible.

If such a movement does not materialize, then nothing but terrors await.

Ask yourself: what is the moral – and realistic - choice to be made here? Has closing one’s eyes to truths too terrible to tolerate ever led to a good outcome? Hasn’t such a strategy always resulted in people being engulfed in horrors beyond their imagination?

Every single person who reads this and who steps forward does so in the name of millions of others and creates the conditions for many, many others to step forward.

Don’t we as individuals have a personal responsibility to take a stand against grave injustice and not pass that responsibility on to others to take care of it for us? The people who many people think are supposed to take care of things are obviously not doing it.

So what are you waiting for? Yes, you. 

Dennis Loo is an associate professor of Sociology at Cal-Poly Pomona. He is the co-author of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney. He can be reached at http://dennisloo.blogspot.com.

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