Today's Stories

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

May 7, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
Drowning in Dollars

Joanne Mariner
Torture After Dark

Col. Dan Smith
It's Lying and It's Murder: How KBR Electrocuted US Troops

Brian M. Downing
Reports From Foreign Provinces

Andy Worthington
Who are the Prisoners Released with Sami al-Haj?

John Stauber
Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Christopher Brauchli
Outsourcing Tax Collection

Nelson P. Valdés
Cinco de Mayo and Cinco de Agosto: Mexican History and Manufactured Identities

Rep. Keith Ellison
High Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights

Dan Bacher
Undam the Klamath, Mr. Buffett!

Website of the Day
Green Porno

May 6, 2008

Pam Martens
The Obama Bubble Agenda

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. is Promoting Secession in Bolivia

Marjorie Cohn
Under U.S. Law Torture is Always Illegal

Ralph Nader
America's Pay-or-Die Health Care System

Yigal Bronner
Archaeologists for Hire

Brian Cloughley
No Laws for Bush America

Jacob Hornberger
Killing Enemies Without Trial

Walter Brasch
People Who Don't Need People

Paul Krassner
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Running Mates from the Imaginary Plane

Website of the Day
Some People

May 5, 2008

Pam Martens
Obama's Money Cartel

Conn Hallinan
The Syrian Affair

Corey D. B. Walker
The End of Politics

Uri Avnery
Crusader Anxiety: Israel at 60

Dave Zirin
Refocusing Olympic Protest

Corporate Crime Reporter
Wiist's Crusade Against Corporations

Robert Jensen
The Selling and Shaping of Our Souls

Daniel White
What People Want to Hear About in Austin, Texas

Benjamin Dangl
May Day Raid on General Dynamics

Website of the Day
McCain's Pastor of Hate: "Starve. I Don't Care. Starve."

May 3 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Has Rev. Wright Cost Obama the Presidency?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Diane Farsetta
What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side

Tariq Ali
New Labour is Dead

Harry Browne
The USA's Other Island: Irish Leaders and the War on Terror

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny? An Exclusive Interview with Fatima Bhutto

David Yearsley
A Challenge to Jeffrey Eugenides

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Fred Gardner
The Greatest Story Never Told

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Standardizing Learning

Binoy Kampmark
Brown, Boris and the British Council Elections

Howard Lisnoff
The Lost First Amendment

Daniel Cassidy
Slanguage: Paddy Works on the Erie

Bill Moyers
Shrink-Wrapping the Theology of Rev. Wright

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
John Holt / Akbar Khan

Website of the Weekend
Ed Abbey, Patron Saint of the Walker's Rights Movement

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

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"Good Europeans"

Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

By HARRY BROWNE

Dublin.

How Europe’s political elite must curse the memory of Raymond Crotty.

It was as a result of a legal case taken by the veteran economist and activist that the Irish Supreme Court decided in 1987 new European treaties require amendment of the country’s constitution and, therefore, approval by the Irish people in referendum. That’s what leaves the Lisbon Treaty, like all its predecessors for the last two decades, hanging on the mere whim of the Irish electorate. No other state requires a popular vote every time the EU changes its institutional arrangements.

Mostly through the years we have behaved like “good Europeans”--who knew on which side our bread was buttered, cattle subsidised, roads widened etc--and voted Yes. In the midst of the Celtic Tiger boom, however, we rejected the Nice Treaty in 2001, though it got the nod in a 2002 re-run after some nice words were added in a “declaration” addressing Ireland’s tradition of military neutrality.

Now it’s the turn of a treaty allegedly negotiated in Lisbon last year. But actually by common consent this treaty is just a minimal revision of the EU Constitution that was scrapped after French and Dutch voters--Ireland never got its chance--rejected it in referenda in 2005. (A constitution, it seems, would require a popular mandate in places beyond these shores; mere treaties don’t, and Lisbon’s has of late been sailing through parliamentary ratifications across Europe.)

The Irish referendum is set for June 12th, and the polls suggest it could be close. In light of the EU’s semantic bob-and-weaving, it would seem the least we can do as “good Europeans” is to stand beside our French and Dutch brethren and reject what they no longer have the power to reject. After all, Paris and Amsterdam have long since replaced the local chapel as favoured weekend destinations for Ireland’s low-fare-flying bourgeoisie. If voting No is good enough for such smart and stylish continentals, surely it is good enough for us?

That’s not how most politicians here see it, of course.  Not only do they want to be spared the embarrassment of another rejection, but by and large they are ideologically committed to the vision of an expanded, more “efficient” Europe represented by the Treaty, with closer cooperation on foreign policy and military matters, and a firm commitment to privatisation of public services and other neoliberal measures within and beyond European shores.

In fact, the close fit between the ideologies of Dublin and EU elites makes something of a mockery of some of the current left-wing No arguments, those that focus on the ceding of sovereignty to Brussels. Left to its own devices, any conceivable Irish government for the foreseeable future would be at least as reactionary as any EU directive might dictate. Indeed, right-wing No campaigners are marginally more plausible when they worry that further EU integration could ultimately threaten Ireland’s exceptionally corporate-friendly tax regime.

However, we should also of course think optimistically of the unforeseeable future, when Ireland and the EU in general might produce politicians and governments who might not wish to be tied down to the emphasis on competition and trade liberalisation that is spelled out in the Lisbon Treaty.  Lisbon in effect codifies some of the worst aspects of today’s neoliberal orthodoxy, even as events in the real world discredit it.

Oddly enough, the most visible wing of the No campaign thus far has consisted of a couple of leading Irish capitalists, advancing right-wing arguments against the Treaty that are rather different from the “Europe will force abortion in Ireland” line of a few conservative fruitcakes in previous referenda. A previously non-existent organisation, Libertas, set up by one millionaire with strong US military ties, Declan Ganley, and supported by another, Ulick McEvaddy, has plastered the country with billboards opposing the Treaty, and has employed one of Ireland’s most politically connected PR agencies to ensure Libertas is the first name on every lazy journalist’s lips when it comes to reporting the No side.

These Libertas guys are Euro-sceptics in the British Tory mold, not exactly Ireland’s usual cup of tea, and their connections to US intelligence circles have raised eyebrows among the few people who pay attention to such things. Their ambition, it seems, is to win this referendum as a first step toward a pan-European network of right-wing ‘libertarians’ who oppose the alleged regulatory monstrosity that is the EU. Coincidentally, McAvaddy has had one or two business scrapes with said monster.

Their ideas have some popular traction because the EU is indeed a bit of a beast. The term “democratic deficit” has floated around for the last few years as a nice way of saying that Europe is ruled by unelected commissioners who govern by fiat, their directives having the status of law in all the member states. With the EU expanding to 27 countries, under Lisbon each state will not even have one of its own as a commissioner for five out of every 15 years. (In Ireland’s case this will be a blessing, since historically governments here have sent to Brussels a few ex-politicians who are too nakedly neoliberal for even our domestic political scene, the current “internal market and services” commissioner Charlie McCreevy being a case in point.)

The Lisbon Treaty does strengthen somewhat the oversight role of the European Parliament, which would, incredibly, still lack any power to introduce legislation. A few decent liberal Europhiles are encouraged by the development of the parliament as an institution, saying that it is where alternative ideas about the development of Europe can be thrashed out, and the “democratic deficit” represented by the Commission, the Council of Ministers and, under Lisbon, the new unelected president and foreign minister, can be addressed. This brave and hopeful scenario ignores two salient facts: one, the parliament’s powers remain distinctly limp; and two, it has been long since thoroughly discredited across Europe as a costly talking shop where lesser politicians go to avail of a more-than-liberal expenses regime. (Lesser journalists too: the parliament has quietly paid to fly reporters to its sessions in order to garner the coverage that would persuade the public that something relevant might actually be happening there.)
In short, the vision of the European Union that prevails at both ends of the political spectrum, that of a self-perpetuating elite that has managed to consolidate its authority without too much regard for the niceties of mere democracy, contains rather more than a grain of truth.
The “Charter of Fundamental Rights” thrown in with the Treaty is mere window-dressing, given the increasingly pro-business basis of EU legal decisions in recent years.

Another idea was commonplace five or six years ago, when “old Europe” stood vaguely up to the Bush administration prior to the invasion of Iraq: that the EU might act as an important and even progressive counterweight to the US in global affairs. This notion lost currency as the impotence of that opposition was revealed in the fullness of time, and when the EU played a destructive role in Palestine by cutting off aid as punishment for the election of Hamas.

Moreover, in 2008 global hopes, perhaps equally naive, are pinned not on the EU but on the prospect of President Obama. If November instead yields President McCain, the argument about counterweights will return, and the debate about whether EU military cooperation has an independent streak or is structurally subordinate to NATO and the US will regain some salience.

But the limits of that debate should be clear already, and Ireland itself provides ample evidence. Despite increasingly hollow Irish claims of military neutrality, Ireland’s airports, especially Shannon, have facilitated US military flights and troop transports, as well as CIA rendition flights. This cooperation with US imperialism was not directed by Europe--indeed the European Parliament’s most notable achievement in recent years has been critical, albeit impotent, scrutiny of US renditions through EU countries, to the great annoyance of the Irish Government. And now Irish troops are serving in Chad, in a mission coordinated by the EU and rubberstamped by the UN (the latter a requirement for Irish involvement), a mission that rather clearly serves the interests of French neo-colonialism in Africa.

Ireland’s present-day activities show clearly that a European state, indeed a proudly postcolonial one that boasts of neutrality, can both assist US imperialism and bolster indigenous European imperialism in third-world countries, even without the increased military spending, enhanced military cooperation, and expanded list of “tasks” for which EU troops might act outside Europe that are all spelled out in the Lisbon Treaty.

This article is not a despairing argument for voting Yes. However, the No campaigners from various perspectives who paint a picture of Irish authorities being coerced by an all-powerful EU into military and economic policies that they might otherwise resist seem rather fanciful to me.  Yes, ratification of Lisbon would help elites here to shruggingly act on all their own worst instincts, but that’s only the beginning of an argument for a No vote.

The right reasons for voting No--a Sartre-esque, existential No--go far deeper than nationalist appeals to sovereignty. Voting No (however it might please theoretically a few spooks in Washington) is an act of global solidarity: with those whose votes have been ignored elsewhere in Europe; with those working for and availing of public services that are at risk of privatisation; with those in the developing world who have been at the sharp end of vicious EU trade and military policies already, and those who might be in the future; with those who know in their hearts that another arrogant, unaccountable, neoliberal superpower is the last thing our fragile global community needs right now.

See www.caeuc.org and www.pana.ie for more substantial left-wing, anti-imperialist arguments against Lisbon. and www.indymedia.ie for the strange story of Libertas.

Harry Browne lectures in Dublin Institute of Technology. His book, ‘Hammered by the Irish: How the Pitstop Ploughshares disabled a US war-plane – with Ireland’s blessing’, is forthcoming from Counterpunch Books. He can be reached at: harry.browne@gmail.com

 

 

 

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