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Today's Stories August 7, 2007 Kathy Kelly The Little Girl of Hiroshima August 6, 2007 Bill Quigley Fighting for the Right to Learn in New Orleans Kathy Rentenbach Guatemalan Gold, Guatemalan Bones Uri Avnery White Elephants: Bush's Middle East Arms Deals Col. Dan Smith Of Time and Iraq Ralph Nader Cruise Ship Blues James Neshewat War? What War?: a Report from the New SDS Confab in Detroit D.K. Wilson Barry, Bud and 755 Greg Moses Safe Passage for Willie Nelson Fidel Castro Hard and Obvious Realities Mike Whitney Judgment Week on Wall Street   August 4 / 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Rupert Murdoch and the Luck of the Bancrofts Peter Linebaugh Speaking in Irish Tongues Saul Landau Faith-Based War Alan Farago The Candidates and the Collapsing Economy Dave Zirin When Domes Attack: Even in Minnesota Barucha Calamity Peller Oaxaca is Not Over Anthony DiMaggio Double Standards in U.S. Aid to the Middle East Dave Lindorff Spy Power: Bush Demands, Democrats Deliver--Again and Again and Again Fred Gardner Write Off Your Congressman Nicola Nasser The Iranian Option Benjamin Dangl Privatizing Repression in Paraguay Rannie Amiri Bribe, Divide and Conquer Daniel Gross CSR on Trial: Starbucks Behind the Brand Sherwood Ross Obama Renounces Use of Nuclear Weapons Manuel Garcia, Jr A Bridge Truth Movement?: From 9/11 to Minneapolis Missy Beattie The First Mannequin and the "Crime Scene" Ron Jacobs The Outlaw Trip to Mexico: Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad Website of the Weekend Photos: Texas Immigrant Prison   August 3, 2007 Gabriel Matthew Schivone An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Responsibility, War Guilt and Intellectuals Jonathan Cook Israel's Jewish Problem in Tehran Patrick Cockburn Sunnis Walk Out of Iraq Government Little Steven Van Zandt Die, Greedy Swine! Die! Die!: How the Record Companies are Killing Rock Music Christopher Brauchli Bush Makes Putin Look Like James Madison D. K. Wilson Two Sides and a Middle: Michael Vick Ain't the One to Ask Linda Ford and Ira Glunts Maxwell's Silver Hammer: Syracuse University Enlists in the Global War on Terror Kelly Overton The Casualties of Green Scare: the Feds' War on the Animal Rights Mvt. Monica Benderman In Freedom's Name Manuel Garcia, Jr. Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Was Cheney at the Scene? Website of the Day A Cinematic Look at the Police State in Action   August 2, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Return of the Robber Barons Stanley Heller Report from the Land of Apartheid Eric Ruder Fighting PTSD; Fighting the Army Robert Fantina Still Getting It Wrong: the NYT and Iraq Alan Farago The Toxic Mortgage Waste Crisis Chris Floyd Chertoff, Chiquita and Death Squads Franklin Lamb Lebanon's Crucial Special Elections Sen. Russ Feingold Closing the Book on the Abramoff Era Anthony Papa Drug Treatment isn't a Silver Bullet Norman Solomon The Big Guns of August Website of the Day Louie, Louie Video Contest   August 1, 2007 Debbie Nathan More Secret Payments by Former NYT Reporter to Web Porn Star Surface in Nashville Courtroom Fred Gardner Ciao, Michelangelo Gary Leupp Why Iraq's Best-Loved Athlete Can't Go Home David Rosen America's Top 10 Political Sex Scandals Winston Warfield Is the Tillman Case Still a Coverup? Daniel McBride Lessons from Bomber Harris: If the US Strikes Pakistan Glen Ford The Corporate Plan to Crush Black Resistance Thomas P. Healy The Toxic Career of Indiana's Environmental Commissioner John V. Whitbeck The Five Percent Solution David Krieger Nuclear Weapons and the University of California Website of the Day The Tragic Story of Hisham Mohammed   July 31, 2007 Kathy Kelly Dancing in the Darkness: the Story of Abu Mahmoud Clancy Sigal The Ghosts of Passchendaele Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Baby Doll to Cheney Joe DeRaymond Return to the Republic of Death? Diane Christian "Winning": What Bush Could Learn from the Shade of Achilles Chris Floyd Good News is No News: Why the Bush Adm. Buries Accounts of Extremist Recantations Ramzy Baroud Bush's Real Agenda in Palestine Alan Farago Battle for the Soul of Florida Fidel Castro In Spite of Everything: Reflections on the Pan American Games Dan Bacher The Fish Terminator: Schwarzenegger's Campaign to Build the Delta Canal and More Dams   July 30, 2007 Marjorie Cohn: Independent Counsel Time Patrick Cockburn Four Million Iraqis on the Run Peter Quinn Irish in America Uri Avnery A Warning to Tony Blair John Ross Zapatista Intergalatica Lands on Earth Ron Jacobs Free the San Francisco 8 David Vest Farewell, Old Friend: Another Legend of the Blues is Gone Jeffrey St. Clair T99 Nelson: Seduced by a Legend of the Blues Website of the Day Collateral Repair Project   July 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Now the NYT is Selling "Bloodbath" as a Rationale to Stay in Iraq Ralph Nader Rotten Justice Robert Fantina American Lies and Iraqi Nationalism Fred Gardner Prohibitionists Attack, Reformers Fundraise   Yves Engler Handwashing and the Bottomline   July 27, 2007 John Ross Bombing Pemex--or Not? Arthur Neslen Gaza was a Gas for Blair Dave Lindorff Declaring the US a Battlefield: Martial Law is Now a Real Threat Julene Blair The Environmentalist Within Christopher Brauchli Bush Uses Children as Shock Troops in His War on Socialized Medicine Jesse Hagopian Fund the Wounded, Not the War Charles Modiano Manufacturing a Villain: Sports Illustrated's Vilification of Barry Bonds Bill Day The Hollow Environmentalism of Leonardo DiCaprio Walter Brasch Leaders Afraid to Lead M.D. Mitchell Farm Based Camps Website of the Day Fighting Sarcoma   July 26, 2007 Kathleen Christison The Siren Song of Elliot Abrams Andy Worthington Why the Pentagon's Gitmo Study is a Joke Clancy Chassay How the Bush White House Seeks to Destroy Lebanon Marjorie Cohn Showdown Over Executive Privilege Susie Day Apartheid Americana David Price Tour de Witch Hunt: Drugs, Diaries and Purges Marie Trigona Argentina's "Dirty War" Crimes Trial: The Torturer Priest Norman Solomon Media Spin on Iraq: We're Leaving (Sort Of) William S. Lind How to Win in Iraq Natsu Saito Ward Churchill and the Regents at the University of Colorado John Stauber Netroots and the Iraq War: Does Ending It Matter to Them Anymore? Website of the Day Sticking It to the Man   July 25, 2007 Andy Worthington Gains and Losses at Gitmo Gary Leupp Bush Speechwriter, Michael Gerson, Calls for Attack on Syria Ray McGovern The Sad Decline of John Conyers Dr. Susan Block Bonobo Bashing in the New Yorker Joshua Frank Hillary's Neocon: the Imperial Vision of Richard Holbrooke Tina Richards What Harry Reid Doesn't Know About His Own Bill Ben Terrall Indonesia's Bloody Brand of CounterTerrorism Farzana Versey God Acquitted!: Lessons from the Case of Darwood Ibrahim Mohammad Ali Salih A Bomb in My Briefcase? Laura Carlsen A Strange Homecoming: Reflections on the First US Social Forum Ron Jacobs Come to Kennebunkport! Sunsara Taylor Knocked Up is F**ked Up Website of the Day Wal-Mart's Flip Flops: Feet Killers July 24, 2007 Saul Landau How to Walk in Bushtime Kathy Kelly The Plight of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan Russell Mokhiber The Michael Vick / George Bush Thing M. Shahid Alam Islam Now, China Then Patrick Cockburn and Anne Penketh Meeting in Baghdad Dave Lindorff Overcoming John Conyers Binoy Kampmark You Tube You Can't: Failure of a Medium Richard Neville Murdoch's Transplant: a Warning to the Wall Street Journal Cindy Sheehan We Must Move Beyond Politics as Usual Evelyn Pringle Anti-Depressants and Birth Defects: Why is the CDC Downplaying the Risks? Norman Solomon Media Corrections We'd Like to See CP Newswire Reading Harry Potter Not Sinful Website of the Day Sea Islands Black Heritage Festival   July 23, 2007 Andy Worthington Narcolepsy on Gitmo Detainees Uri Avnery A Trap for Fools Patrick Cockburn Turkish Prime Minister Threatens to Invade Northern Iraq Sousan Hammad The Children Without a Title John Walsh Todd Gitlin's Nader Fixation Harvey Wasserman Spinning Kashiwazaki: PR Flacks Rush to Aid of Crippled Nuke Martha Rosenberg The Life and Times of a Hog-Hanging Farmer Collin Baber Here Come the MRAPs: Resurrecting Apartheid Armor for Iraq Reza Fiyouzat Iran's Forgotten Anti-Nuke Movement Stephen Lendman Saving a President: Scare-Mongering and Executive Orders Website of the Day The Port Huron Project   July 21 / 22, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Giuliani and the Dogs of War Werther How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate Ralph Nader Atomic Blowback David Keen Buy Hard: How to Sell an Endless War Fred Gardner Karl Rove, Pothead: When Good Drugs Happen to Bad People Gary Leupp Edelman's Edict: Is Hillary "Reinforcing Enemy Propaganda?" Robert Fantina Fear in Iraq Saker The Future of Palestine: an Interview with Jonathan Cook Rannie Amiri Nasrallah in the Crosshairs: How will the Third Lebanon War Start? Mike Whitney The Crisis in Hedgistan Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness: Linking Alienation and Dissociation Monica Benderman Facing the Truth Dan Bacher Deltagate: the Politics of Fish Kills Michael Baney Fujimori's Long Race From Justice Missy Beattie Here, There and Everywhere Ron Jacobs Tremble, Tyrants Adam Engel Radical Language: an Introduction Thomas Naylor California Split: an Open Letter to Schwarzenegger Poets' Basement Landau, Ford and Engel Website of the Weekend Surge in Action   July 20, 2007 Eliza Szabo Fatal Neglect: Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Pam Martens Doctoring the News: CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Laura Bush and Merck Alan Farago Winners and Losers in the Housing Market Crash Harvey Wasserman Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed "No Nukes!" Marjorie Cohn Iraqis will be the Deciders Dave Zirin White Noise and the Black Athlete Anthony DiMaggio American Public Opinion and Israel Scott Liebertz Oaxaca on Edge Linn Washington, Jr. British Cops Assault Rape Allegations Bill Piper / Anthony Papa Flying High?: The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar Ramzy Baroud Bush's War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing Website of the Day The Prankster Art of Mark Jenkins   July 19, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Next Invasion of Iraq Remi Kanazi Is This Ben Gurion or Hell?: a Palestinian Adventure Through Israel's Largest Airport Winslow T. Wheeler The Surging Costs of the Iraq War Sharon Smith Democrats and Health Care: Behind the Rhetoric Dave Lindorff Killing Cabbies in Iraq Conn Hallinan Have Gun, Will Travel: Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan D. K. Wilson The Michael Vick Case Pulls Back the Veil on Who We Really Are Joshua Frank Democrats as Leviathan: Another Step Toward War with Iran Norman Solomon The Ghost of Wayne Morse Russell Hoffman Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks at the World's Largest Nuke Ray McGovern Bush's Wooden Headedness Kills Website of the Day Protesting Power July 18, 2007 Brenda Norrell Spy Towers on the US Border Col. Dan Smith How the US Could "Lose" Saudi Arabia Martha Rosenberg Lord of Crookharbour: the Trial of Conrad Black Conn Hallinan Bombing and Spraying Afghanistan Binoy Kampmark The SIM Card Terror Case Patrick Bond / Rehana Dada Who Killed Sajida Khan? Tom Johnson The Long Road ... to Nowhere Paul Craig Roberts A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth? Bob Quellos Pushing the Poor Out of House and Home Felice Pace Falling for Lieberman's Iran Resolution Robert Weissman National Health Insurance: More Humane and More Efficient CP Newswire Shocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists in Torture Website of the Day Gilad Atzmon Live!   July 17, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 Fathers, Mothers and Children Killed Marjorie Cohn Out of Control: Executive Power Plays Evelyn Pringle Inside Bush's FDA David Rosen Moral Hypocrisy on the Hill: the Christian Right, Sexual Scandal and the Pleasures of the Courtesan Susan Miller Width Matters: Displacement and Israel's Wall Franklin Lamb Did the UN Cave to Israel on Lebanon's Shabaa Farms? Don Monkerud Considering Victory in Iraq Harvey Wasserman Nuclear Surge Russell Hoffman Japan Dodges a Radioactive Bullet Dave Lindorff Feingold Turns to Dross Dave Zirin Reclaiming Sports as True Fiction Website of the Day Che at the UN: 1964   July 16, 2007 Gary Leupp Cheney Urges Bush to Strike Iran Ellen Cantarow The Untold Story of Iraqi Women Paul Craig Roberts Impeach Now Allan J. Lichtman The D.C. Madam's Public Service Dan Bacher Cheney and the Klamath: Was the Veep Behind the Nation's Worst Salmon Kill? Patrick Cockburn The Killing of Khalid W. Hassan Manuel Garcia, Jr. Property is Racism James Brooks AIPAC and Mahmoud Abbas: the Undemocratic Road to Defeat Liaquat Ali Khan The Judicial Crisis in Pakistan Julie Flint Suleiman Jamous in Limbo Website of the Day Free Suleiman Jamous!   July 14 / 15. 2007 Alexander Cockburn Support Their Troops? Andy Worthington Gitmo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majhid Khan, Dubious US Convictions and a Dying Man Ralph Nader Lawlessness, Waste and Incompetence Robert Fantina The Illegalities of the Iraq War Ron Jacobs Architecture as Military Strategy Joshua Frank Eat, Fight, Screw, Pray: An Interview with Joe Bageant Conn Hallinan Guns, Foundations and Free Trade: How the Right Targets Africa Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD War and Dissociation John Ross No En Nuestro Nombre!: a Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement Fred Gardner Who's Afraid of Cannabidiol? Rannie Amiri A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak Charles Modiano ESPN's Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man Anthony DiMaggio America's Parochial Press China Hand Executive Orders and Coercive Diplomacy Missy Comley Beattie Reprobate Rhetoricians Dr. James J. Murtagh, Jr. Harry Potter Battles Big Brother Kenneth Rexroth On Thomas More's "Utopia" Poets' Basement Engel, Davies and Orloski Website of the Weekend GOP Sex Hypocrites: a Slideshow

August 7, 2007 The Mission of Ven Thupten Ngodup Dancing in the Light of Florida By ALAN FARAGO Last weekend, the spiritual advisor to the Dalai Lama visited Florida, a state that does not lack for religious affiliations. It’s all here: from Promise Keepers in the Panhandle to voodoo in Little Haiti. Ven Thupten Ngodup, considered to be an oracle, brought an environmental message with a certain urgency regarding climate change, according to Miami TV reporter Michele Guillen on the local CBS affiliate website. The Dalai Lama’s Tibetan oracle advises us that humanity is at the verge: “It is what we call in our philosophy the time of the five degenerations. Outwardly you see that manifest in greed.” “Tibetans rely on oracles for various reasons. The purpose of the oracles is not just to foretell the future. They are called upon as protectors and sometimes used as healers.” Hmm. The last bit spurred me to imagine what would happen if Ven Thupten Ngodup met with Florida’s protectors and healers of nature: the state bureaucrats who preside over the commodity essential to life: water. In subdivision after platted subdivision, what is manifest in the housing boom now in cinders is that every step of the way was over objections by citizens to development that required a consumptive use permit for water. So many consumptive use permits have been issued by water managers to develop suburban sprawl in Florida's sandy counties that a whole new industry has sprung up to advise homeowners how to save their homes from sinkholes. Sinkhole insurance is killing property values in parts of Florida as surely as hurricanes. There is no question which one is man-made. Typically Tibetan oracles do not concern themselves with permits from government agencies. In Tibet, when the government is coming the best thing for a follower of the Dalai Lama to do is hide. So here is what is strange about the interconnectedness of the world: while Wall Street financiers and Federal Reserve governors haggle how to keep the disaster in the housing mortgage industry from creating a world-wide credit meltdown—their version of holistic health for the planet—at the same time the creation of financial derivatives Wall Street needs gave birth to ten thousand malls and sprawl, defiling Florida wetlands, draining Florida aquifers, ruining the Everglades and spawning an entrenched class of engineers, technocrats and apologists for unsustainable growth. In the battle between the River of Grass and the River of Easy Credit, the winner is liar loans and mortgage fraud and backroom deals to make sure the party still goes on, once the dust settles. Now I might not even care about the River of Grass, or in a Zen-like way be willing to trade it, if there was a shred of a chance that the pattern of development that defines Florida could host a society different from what Robert Putnam railed against in “Bowling Alone”. I don’t have any idea if the Dalai Lama, who visits New York City regularly, understands that the average cost of a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan, about $1.5 million, is kept aloft by billions of dollars of Wall Street bonuses tied to mortgage backed securities in the chain that turned nature as expressed by Florida’s Everglades into a ghostly shadow of creation. Ven Thupten Ngodup’s words set me to further thoughts of this imaginary meeting between a Tibetan oracle and water managers in one of the nation’s most politically influential states. I don’t know about the technical aspects of five degenerations, but greed and hubris are twinned around Florida’s trunk like snakes. Relative to their infestations in American politics and the environment, it would not take the oracle long to grasp that the water managers’ forty five minute powerpoint presentation, stuffed with graphs of how the state is spending billions to fix the Everglades, noting Congress has failed to live up to its end of the bargain, and repeating that “we’re doing everything we can” is not the whole story. In floods, where does the water go in Florida, if it is not used by the Everglades or farms or people? Ven Thupten Ngodup asks. In 2005, the water managers say, we had hurricanes and released many hundreds of billions of gallons of polluted water from Lake Okeechobee into the ocean. This leads the Tibetan oracle to an understanding. Because of so much pollution, massive algae blooms drape Florida's coastal waters, killing fish and harming local economies, causing real estate values to decline and common sense to vanish in a swirl of engineering reports and contracts and revolving doors between lobbyists, government agencies and public office holders. Perhaps the Tibetan oracle would imagine this chain of causality as part of the dark cloud that envelops human desire. Ven Thupten Ngodup shares, glacial ice melt in the Himalayas is occurring massively. Tibet has grown measurably warmer, four degrees Fahrenheit in only the last two decades. Glacial melt is our bank account. We have to be careful not to spend from our principal. The oracle adds, knowledge is not the same as wisdom. When it rains in Florida too much, the water managers admit, we don’t put the water in the Everglades because it would flood sugar, an industry that provides so much sweetness to the American diet. To which Ven Thupten Ngodup responds, yes but if I have a dollar and go to an American grocery store, I find my dollar buys 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice. Perhaps this is a Buddhist koan, a riddle the water managers have heard of but never experienced first-hand. To which the district managers might have answered with their own koan: Our water is fishable but not swimable, or, it is swimable but not drinkable. (Were they to say so, they would be referring to the recent classifications proposed by the State of Florida to redefine pollution of water in generic terms, as opposed to state requirements for numeric standards.) But this Monday, district officials were not exchanging koans. They were on helicopters for a VIP tour of the Everglades with Wal-Mart executives. That would be the same Walmart accounting for $27 billion in U.S. imports from China in 2006 and, in the five years beginning in 2001, for the loss of nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs according to the Economics Policy Institute. Now I’ve never had a VIP tour through the depleted Everglades, but I do like to fish and finding such plentiful bait in the appearance within a conscribed space of a Tibetan oracle, Walmart and water managers, that I am compelled to a few observations, some of which I've gleaned from knowledge and some from wisdom: The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the Congress encourages farmers to grow. The reason global warming will cause sea-level rise threatening Florida's future is that government policy ensures burning carbon is the cheapest source of fuel to power the US economy. The reason Wal-Mart produces in China is that it is the cheapest source of goods American consumers want. The reason that billions of gallons of polluted water is dumped into Florida’s estuaries and rivers and bays is because that is the cheapest political alternative. The reason government bureaucrats need cheap political alternatives is self-evident everywhere. And murdering followers of the Dalai Lama is what China needs, the nation that supports America’s standard of living through its purchase of hundreds of billions of US debt while supplying such goods as provided by Wal-Mart to US consumers. Americans neither want nor need the destruction of the Everglades, of the climate, or of human rights in Tibet. Thank you for visiting Florida, Ven Thupten Ngodup. Come back, soon. Alan Farago writes about the environment and politics. He can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com.

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