Today's Stories

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U.S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U.S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N.D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on "Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

July 15, 2008

A Bellwether Battle Against Neoliberalism in the Americas

Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

By JOHN ROSS

The countdown to the denouement of the great debate over privatization of Mexico's oil industry looms just weeks away and both sides in this bellwether battle against neo-liberalism are sharpening up their knives.  With formal debate in the Senate set to end July 22nd, President Felipe Calderon's privatization imitative is on the legislative fast track for a quick vote - Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel urges legislators from Calderon's rightist PAN party, which holds a slim majority in both houses, to call a special session the moment debate ends to vote up the proposed "energy reform" package over the objections of the opposition.

Last April, during a similar putsch by the PANistas and their allies in the once-ruling PRI to fast track privatization, leftist senators and deputies seized the podiums of their respective houses and paralyzed the legislative process for 13 days to force a national debate on the issue.  Thousands of women formed brigades - "Las Adelitas", inspired by women soldiers during Mexico's revolution - donned long skirts, big sombreros, bandaleros, hoisted toy carbines, and surrounded the Senate building in support of the striking legislators of the Broad Progressive Front or FAP. The PAN accused the Adelitas of waging a guerrilla war against the legislative process and threatened to call the military.

Led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), from whom the rightists swiped the 2006 presidential election exactly two years ago this July 2nd, the PRD has called for a "national consultation" July 27th to test national opinion on Calderon's privatization package.  Although the Mexican constitution has no provisions for referendum (the PAN and the PRI have perpetually rejected amending the nation's magna carta to allow for such consultations), popular "consultas" have been a strong suit for AMLO in the past - he once turned out millions to reject a government scheme to load up Mexican taxpayers with billions of dollars in private bank debt (the measure passed anyway).  The rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation has also conducted two multitudinous "consultas populares."

Claiming that it is not constitutionally mandated to carry out such a consultation, the highly discredited Federal Electoral Institute, which orchestrated the stealing of the 2006 election from AMLO, has refused to organize the vote.  But in Mexico City, where a fifth of the nation's voters reside and which has been controlled by Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) for a decade, the local electoral institute has volunteered its services.  In addition to the capital, the July 27th Consulta will take place in PRD-controlled states and municipalities in central Mexico - subsequent consultas will be held in August in southern and northern states and cities. 

The prospect of a peoples' vote on his pet privatization project horrifies Calderon and he puts in a lot of primetime railing against the consultation.  As usual, Televisa and its junior partner TV Azteca, which control the nation's screens, are in lockstep attack mode and criminalize the Consulta nightly.  Jesus Reyes Heroles, Calderon's director of PEMEX, the still-nationalized petroleum monopoly, declares that the issue is much too complex to let the people vote it up or down. Backers of the Consulta counter that PEMEX accounts for 40% of the government budget and 100% of the social budget and the fate of the oil company is too crucial to allow the politicians to decide.

Although the Calderonistas will refuse to recognize the results of the balloting, an expected heavy no vote could pressure the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) into splitting its 120 votes the PAN needs to win passage.  For weeks, the political columns have been abuzz with rumors of $20,000 USD "canonazos" that Calderon's people are dangling before the always greedy eyes of the PRI - indeed, during its seven decades in power, the PRIistas pioneered the tendering of such "canonazos" to buy off the opposition.

With Mexican light crude hovering above $120 a barrel on world markets when it was budgeted at $49, PEMEX has accumulated about $20,000,000,000 in "exedentes" that Calderon could use to buy off the PRIs.

The PRI had long dipped into PEMEX largesse.  Mexico's "revolutionary" oil workers union was a building block of its 71-year hold on power.  PEMEX buys labor peace with multi-million dollar "canonazos" - union chieftain Carlos Romero Deschamps is said to spend more time at Las Vegas blackjack tables than he does tending to the union's business.  Back in 2000, PEMEX funneled $110,000,000 USD through the oil workers' pipeline and into the coffers of PRI presidential candidate Francisco Labastida, the so-named "PEMEXGATE" scandal. PEMEX director Rogelio Montemayor subsequently fled the country and Romero escaped prosecution only because as a PRI senator he enjoyed immunity.  Labastida, who lost the election, is himself now a PRI senator, the chairman of the Senate Energy Commission where Calderon's legislation is being shaped, in fact.

The PRD, which is badly split over control of its party's presidency, and the FAP of which it is a key member, are not immune from the PAN's "canonazos" - many of their leaders are ex-PRIistas. 

Despite the oil workers' deep investment in continuing nationalization of the industry, Romero Deschamps has been reluctant to testify at any of the 23 debates on the Senate floor - unlike the Mexican Electricity Workers Union (SME), which strongly opposes the sell-off and the privatization of electricity generation that is also part of the Calderon's package.

Over the course of 13 lively debates held every Tuesday and Thursday through the end of June, the Calderon proposal has been repeatedly bashed on economic, technological, historical, and constitutional grounds.  Those who oppose privatization insist the measure is unconstitutional because it provides for "risk" contracts that give away Mexican oil or its equivalent in dollars to transnational drillers, a practice specifically outlawed by Article 27 of the Constitution.  Calderon's initiative opens up exploration, refining, pipelines, and transportation to private investors. 

The president and his associates protest that they are not privatizing PEMEX - they use euphemisms like the "association of private capital" to describe their machinations.  One Thursday in late May, a former PEMEX engineer took the Senate stand and read a passage from Hannah Arndt in which the Jewish philosopher observed that the Nazis never called it fascism either. 

The Great Debate has tilted to the Left - which in fact forced it by taking the tribune in congress - from the first session.  Most of the initiative's defenders have visceral ties to Big Oil.  According to a Proceso magazine investigation, 36 of the 45 speakers in favor of privatization now work or have once worked for Shell, Halliburton, Repsol, Schlumberger, or McKinney Associates, a leading petroleum consultant. 

The Great Debate has hardly been confined to the hallowed halls of the Senate.  Every week, hundreds gather beneath a sagging tent in the great Zocalo plaza to interact with the hearings on the big screen.  "Coruptos!" (corrupted ones), "Vendepatrias!" (those who would sell the country) they yell at those who support the bill.  Sometimes they stand and sing the national anthem. 

As is his peculiar talent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador once again filled the Zocalo with tens of thousands of worshipful supporters June 29th to strategize on the coming Consulta.  Two years after the presidency was kidnapped by the Calderonistas, no other politico in the land can fill plazas like AMLO does. 

Since his last massive love fest in Mexico City in April, Lopez Obrador has been on the road, holding rallies in all 31 state capitals and 93 outlaying municipalities, building a national movement to defend the "petrolio."  According to his count, the "brigadistas" who numbered 30,000 "Adelitas" and "Adelitos" two months ago now top 200,000 citizens prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience when and if privatization is rolled out on the floor of congress. 

AMLO also claims to have signed up over 2,000,000 members for his National Democratic Convention, which is expected to soon split from the PRD and emerge as his own political party.  But for now, Lopez Obrador seems to be trying hard to ignore party turbulence.  He has backed off from challenging the "Chucho" faction that claims to have won tainted PRD elections in March and has embraced Marcelo Ebrard, his successor as Mexico City mayor and probable rival for the Left presidential candidacy in 2012. 

Although AMLO urgently needs Marcelo's support to carry off the Consulta in the capital, Ebrard failed to show up at Lopez Obrador's pro-Consulta rally June 29th - the Mexico City police's deadly mishandling of a raid on an after school discothèque in a working class neighborhood that took 12 young lives (including three police officers) has not made Marcelo the most beloved left-wing mayor in the city's history.  In a not-very veiled critique of Ebrard's performance, the Zocalo meeting began with a minute of silence for the slain youths.

The date of the rally was pertinent, three days shy of the second anniversary of the infamous 2006 fraud, and AMLO sounded almost wistful about those heady days when millions marched (police estimates) and tens of thousands encamped on the city's key thoroughfares.  For most of the time since the election was handed to Calderon, Lopez Obrador has been barnstorming Mexico, bringing his crusade to the distant corners of the country, and what he has seen out there puts hurt on his heart. 

People are more desperate and much less secure and the rulers have to lock themselves up in protected rooms and bulletproof limousines to live their lives - "if you can call that a life" he mused to the huge turnout.  "Felipe Calderon has no moral authority and does not legitimately hold power," he told his people - Calderon's pollsters give him 60% approval, second only to Alvaro Uribe's in Latin America (Uribe and Calderon have the same pollster.)

Two years of Calderon's leadership has the country hungry - Lopez Obrador recited a litany of price hikes of basic goods.  He spoke of solidarity with the Zapatistas in Chiapas and the bruised popular movement in Oaxaca and he fulminated at the destruction of a sacred mountain in San Luis Potosi by a transnational mining corporation and the installation of a transnational toxic waste dump on indigenous land in Hidalgo.

The privatization of PEMEX will only compound social unrest, AMLO warned, counseling peaceful resistance.  With 200,000 brigadistas eager to go into the streets, Lopez Obrador commands the most significant grassroots movement in the country today.

The jubilant mob never tired of chanting that AMLO was their "presidente!" - recently, the IFE fined the FAP for running TV spots that labeled Lopez Obrador "the legitimate president of Mexico" and the Institute's misstep has become a national joke.  On stage at the Zocalo rally, the always-animated master of ceremonies Jesusa Rodriguez wore an outsized tee shirt that shouted "LEGITIMO!" as the crowd roared out AMLO's legitimacy.  Indeed, the title "legitimate president of Mexico" seems a part of Lopez Obrador's name now. 

Brigadismo has given the movement to defend the petrolio a feel of camaraderie.  The brigades are organized around neighborhoods and workplaces and most brigadistas are veterans of AMLO's 2006 struggle for the presidency.  In the past two months, tens of thousands of brigadistas have gone house to house and Colonia to Colonia, passing out 18,000,000 (AMLO's count) comic books urging the Mexican people to defend their "petrolio." 

The graphics of the movement are sharper too.  The oil well logo is ubiquitous - supporters wear oil well hats on their head and oil well pins and belt buckles and tee shirts.  The movement is also producing alternative products - "Mi General" wholegrain bread to compete against "Bimbo" white bread baked by a major Calderon supporter, and cleaning products "for a real house cleansing."

When Lopez Obrador called his first meeting to defend the petrolio last March 18th, the 70th anniversary of the expropriation and nationalization of the nation's oil, the audience was dominated by old people.  100 days later, the young are in the forefront.  Now with its expansion into 31 states, the movement to defend the petrolio is driving social change in Mexico. 

One reason, of course, is that the movement is not really just about oil.  What is at stake here is direct democracy - how are these issues going to be decided and who will decide them?  Reyes Heroles' argument that the privatization is too complicated a subject for the common people to understand is put to the lie every Tuesday and Thursday under the big tent in the Zocalo when hundreds of Mexicans, mostly people the color of the earth, gather to take part in the debate.

The movement is also about sovereignty. Adolfo Gilly, the renowned left writer, mused during a recent National Autonomous University forum on privatization that the U.S. had to murder a million Iraqis in order to give Iraqi oil back to the same companies from which Saddam Hussein once expropriated them.  In Mexico, Felipe Calderon wants to obtain the same outcome without firing a shot. That is not going to happen, Gilly advises Calderon.  "Oil is not just a mineral - for us it is patria."

At a crucial moment early in the new millennium when the globalizers are feverishly fighting to keep the world in their thrall, the outcome of the struggle to halt the privatization of Mexican petroleum is the bellwether battle against neo-liberalism in the Americas today.
FIN

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