Today's Stories

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

December 24, 2008

War With Contempt for Civilians

Torture, Slaughter and Lies

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

In September an Afghan journalist, Jawed Ahmad, was released from a US military prison in Afghanistan where his jailers " broke two of my ribs during the beatings." He worked for Canadian TV and the BBC, among other media outlets, and he had done nothing wrong. That is obvious, because he was freed without charge after a year of hellish treatment at the hands of uniformed filth whose claim to being human is at best feeble. If there had been the slightest genuine suspicion that he had committed a crime he should have been put on trial, but that is not the way the US system works, in these horrible days. Bush policy in Iraq and Afghanistan is never to admit that anyone can be innocent because everyone arrested is automatically guilty. But will it get any better under Obama? Can he alter what has become normal behavior on the part of the robotic minions of the commander-in-chief?

In February Jawed Ahmad was declared an "enemy combatant," which is a glib catch-all description used by Washington's foulest to describe any foreigner who, in shades of the horrible McCarthy years, they suspect of possibly being involved in what they term anti-American activities. These victim of hysteria, of whom there are countless thousands around the world, are locked up in prisons where their treatment varies from casual brutality to hideous torture. From the British-owned, US-leased island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the US colonial enclave at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, by way of Bagram and Kandahar in Afghanistan and equally horrible prisons in Iraq, the misery of innocent – or even guilty – detainees casts a dreadful blot on what the world used to think was a fair and free democracy.

Two Afghans were beaten to death by American soldiers in Bagram in 2002 (and these are the ones we know about). As recorded by McClatchy Newspapers "Spc. Jeremy Callaway, who admitted to striking about 12 detainees at Bagram, told military investigators in sworn testimony that he was uncomfortable following orders to "mentally and physically break the detainees." He didn't go into detail. "I guess you can call it torture," said Callaway." The maximum punishment awarded to the killers was three months in confinement. Imagine the penalty that would have been meted out if an American had been beaten to death by an Afghan. Imagine the sentence if an American in America had been murdered in this fashion : the death penalty, automatically. But Afghans don't matter. Nor do Iraqis.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be taken captive by US forces or intelligence people can expect nothing but the direst conditions, indefinite confinement without charge and without legal representation, and – oh joy – methods of interrogation that "have been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."

That quotation is from one of the worst Secretaries of State the US has suffered, the Bush protégé Condoleezza Rice, who wrote to Congress on 12 September that the "simulated torture techniques" administered to would-be members of US special forces during their training, would not harm them.

Right. Of course it wouldn't harm them : because these volunteers knew that the 'torture' would end immediately if they just once shouted Stop, Please Stop It. And they knew, also, that it would certainly end, sometime. Maybe in an hour or two; maybe longer. But they knew it would not go on indefinitely. And when it ended they would be free to boast that they got through it without any problem.

But real prisoners, held in filthy primitive conditions, beaten by vicious barbaric laughing guards and interrogated by demented sadists, have no idea when their torture is going to end. They can't hold up a hand and say "Stop." It is absurdly naive – or despicably pitiless – for Rice to claim that their treatment does not cause "significant physical or psychological harm;" but that's the way things are in psycholand.

Detention without charge, denial of access to a lawyer and refusal of trial have become normal in the US justice system as practiced by the US military. They arrested a Reuters' photographer, Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, in September, and the Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled on 30 November that there was no evidence against him and that he should be released from US military custody. In a staggering display of contempt for democracy, decency and the constitutions of Iraq and America the military refused to comply. He's still in jail; without justice, without hope. So much for democracy, US-style, in Iraq.

And contempt for democracy doesn't stop with sadism in prisons. Afghanistan, like Iraq, is supposed to have an independent government. This means that foreign activity in these countries should be subject to domestic laws and that there should be total cooperation between foreign armed forces and those of the country on which they are inflicted. When military operations are mounted, the authorities of the 'host' countries, appointed by democratically-elected governments, should be informed. Does this happen? Almost never. In a recent display of ignorance and criminal arrogance, US special forces attacked a police station in the town of Qalat in south eastern Afghanistan on December 10, imagining it to be a "militant hideout." The policemen thought the special forces were militants and opened fire.

The police were in their own country ; they were in a police post whose location should be known to foreign troops operating in their country ; they were not told that there would be any foreign operations in their area. So of course they opened fire. And what did the gallant special forces do? Did they "close with and kill the enemy, in any terrain, in any weather, by day or by night"? (This used to be the way we were taught but it seems to have gone out of fashion a bit.) Don't be silly: they called in airstrikes that killed the police commander, five of his men, and, inevitably, a civilian whose house they destroyed. Oh; and wounded "at least 13 others."

119 Afghan civilians (including policemen) were killed by US airstrikes in January to July 2008, The figure for the whole year will be much higher. The effect on Afghans cannot be measured accurately, but it is unlikely that their regard for foreign troops will be high. In fact it is inevitable that there will be much hatred engendered by these cowboy catastrophes, concerning which the first option is to lie if it is considered the truth is unlikely to surface.

Take the case of the killing of 90 people by US airstrikes in August in the Afghan village of Azizabad. The immediate reaction by the US military was to flatly deny that any civilians had been killed. An inquiry by the UN which confirmed the scores of civilian deaths was scorned by the military. Unfortunately for them, a local doctor had taken photographs showing 40 bodies, mostly children and young women. Many of them had been his patients.

After the slaughter, the Afghan Women's Association recorded a 25 year-old woman as saying that when she regained consciousness "I was in hospital, and they told me that all of my family were dead and already buried. Was my two-year-old child a terrorist? Then am I not also a terrorist? Why did they let me live?" And "Ghulam Azrat, 50, director of the middle school in Azizabad, said he collected 60 bodies after the bombing. "We put the bodies in the main mosque. Most of these dead bodies were children and women. It took all morning to collect them" [he told Associated Press]."

But even then, even after they had been forced to hold an inquiry that eventually had to admit that civilians were killed, the US military stated "US and Afghan forces did not commit any violations of the law of war or rules of engagement." This was because there were supposedly "22 anti-coalition militants" killed. In fact, of the fifteen males killed, only seven were under 40; the others were ancients.

One survivor said he heard shooting and was just coming out of his house when he saw his neighbor's sons running across. "They were killed right here; they were 10 and 7 years old." In the compound next to his, he said, four whole families, including those of his two brothers, were killed. "They bombard us, they hate us, they kill us," he said. "God will punish them."

Well, God might punish them, eventually. But they seem safe enough from justice while on earth. The sadistic torturers; the incompetent arrogant oafs who killed the policemen ; the gung-ho gangsters who murdered the children in Azizabad; the liars who tried to cover up – all will go unpunished.

Will there be change under Obama? Will he order a case review of the 15,000 people held without charge or trial, without legal advice, in hellish conditions, without hope, by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will he be able to release from captivity the unknown number of people kept in foreign jails by arrangement with US intelligence operatives? Will he make it his business to ensure that the demented out-of-control special forces be reined in? Will he order inquiries into torture? Will he, above all, insist on the truth being told? Watch this space.

Brian Cloughley's book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, has just been published by Pen & Sword Books (UK) and will be published in the US in May by Skyhorse (New York).

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