Today's Stories

May 27, 2009

Joanne Mariner
Military Commissions, Round Three

May 26, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Fearful Pride: North Korea's Second Nuclear Test

Mike Whitney
The Next Leg Down: When Deflation Becomes Entrenched

Sharon Smith
Obama and Abortion Rights: What We Learned at Notre Dame

Marjorie Cohn
The Gitmo Appeasment Plan: Obama Buckles on the Constitution

Dean Baker
Waterboard the Fed

Deepankar Basu
Was the Indian Election a Debacle for the Left? If So, Why?

Fred Gardner
The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans for Sale

Josh Ruebner
Rethinking the Costs of Peace

Brian Cloughley
The Man Who Murdered Count Foulke Bernadotte

Website of the Day
The Montana Town That Wants to Become the New Gitmo

May 25, 2009

Diane Christian
Looking at Torture

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Kenneth Hartman
The Trouble With Prison

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

Fred Gardner
"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops": the Punishment of Sgt. Northcutt

Cindy Sheehan
Day of the Dead

Sen. Russell Feingold
Prolonged Detention and the Rule of Law: a Letter to Barack Obama

Sibel Edmonds
Two Sides of the Same Coin: From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps

Franklin Lamb
Der Spiegel Tries Again

Dave Lindorff
Memorial Day in the Land of the Weak and Wussy

Daniel Wolff
Learning to Read in the Pacific Northwest

Website of the Day
Decoration Day

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

May 27, 2009

Banker With Ties to Citigroup Linked to Shooting of Landless Workers

The Fall of a Brazilian Financier

By ISABELLA KENFIELD

On April 18, seven members of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST) were shot by private security guards on a farm in the Amazon that belongs to Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara S/A, a company controlled by international banker Daniel Dantas. A billionaire with former ties to Citigroup, Dantas is Brazil's largest producer of cattle, and presently embroiled in a major financial and political scandal that reaches into the U.S. courts and financial system.

The violence took place at the Espírito Santo cattle ranch in the municipality of Xinguara, in the state of Pará. About 120 families organized in the MST have been occupying part of the thousand-acre ranch since February. The day before the shootings, they participated in a march to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of the massacre of 19 MST members who were gunned down by the military police in 1996, just 60 miles away in El Dorado dos Carajás. No one has ever been convicted or imprisoned for the massacre.

A judicial order for Dantas' arrest issued last July cites Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara S/A, owned by his sister Verônica, as part of a scheme by Dantas' Opportunity Fund and Citigroup's Brazilian subsidiary Opportunity Equity Partners Administradora de Recursos Ltd. for the "possible practice of acts of fraudulent management."

"Agropecuária Santa Bárbara owns the biggest cattle herd in Brazil, and the second largest in the world," reports Friar Henri Burin des Roziers, 78, from the Pastoral Land Commission's (CPT) office in Xinguara. The company led the drive that enabled Brazil to overtake Australia as the world's largest exporter of beef in 2004.

Brazil's explosive growth in its cattle population has overwhelmingly occurred in the Amazon, and Pará has the second largest herd in the country. "In the last five years in Pará, Daniel Dantas bought 52 farms in eight municipalities, totaling 800,000 hectares," reports Charles Trocate of the MST's national leadership in Pará.

Dantas' cattle empire is exacerbating the root of rural violence in Brazil: inequality in land ownership. In Brazil just 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable lands. Concentrated land ownership translates into extreme wealth disparity. Brazil is a country of about 190 million people, and some estimate that 50% of the population is living on less than two dollars per day.

Since February, the MST has organized several hundred landless rural families to non-violently occupy hundreds of hectares on three of Agropecuária Santa Bárbara's farms in Pará. There are presently 120 families living at the Espiríto Santo farm in Xinguara, where the violence in April took place.

According to Trocate, "These properties are involved in this system of [money] laundering, and of corruption of the national financial system … The MST demands that these lands be returned to the nation for the creation of projects on agrarian reform settlements." A communiqué from the CPT in Xinguara states that on Jan. 1, 2009, a state agrarian affairs judge blocked the registration of Agropecuária Santa Bárbara's title to the farm, and the state "reclaimed its legitimate ownership of the area."

On April 18, 20 MST members presently occupying Espirito Santo farm went to the forest to get firewood and wooden poles to reinforce the tarp shelters that the families are living in. The MSY reported, "The security guards arrived armed and threatened the MST. Rural worker Dialme Ferreira Silva was obliged to lie down on the ground, while the others ran away. He was imprisoned, humiliated, and hit by the security guards on Dantas' ranch." Later, Silva stated that the guards had shown him a list of local MST leaders, ordering him to identify where they were. "We are going to kill all of the leaders of the encampment," said one of the guards.

Back at the MST encampment, the families organized to rescue Silva, and marched back to the headquarters of Agropecuária Santa Bárbara. A YouTube video shot by a reporter from the right-wing national Globo news network who accompanied the security guards shows the MST marching to the company's farm headquarters, waving flags and farm tools. At the headquarters, they smashed the windows of, and overturned, a car. The farm's security guards were armed with shotguns and pistols and a shootout began.

Seven MST members and one security guard were wounded. Three wounded MST members were detained by the guards while the others ran away, alerted the military police, and blockaded the BR-150 highway while waiting for the police to arrive. Others began to send out alerts through the movement's national and international media network.

Meanwhile, the Globo reporter was airlifted off the ranch by Agropecuária Santa Bárbara. The Globo video, which does not discuss the events leading up to the conflict, was orchestrated to criminalize the MST and turn public opinion against it. Asked if he thinks Dantas was directly involved in the planning of the conflict, des Roziers responds, "Agropecuária Santa Bárbara does not do anything without being told to. It's obvious he took part."

The Fall of a Financier

When U.S.-born Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered in Pará in 2005 due to her work for the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a Catholic organization with roots in liberation theology, many Americans preferred to think that rural violence in Brazil is perpetrated by backwater, cowboy landowners. Yet the violence on April 18 in Xinguara highlights the relationship between financiers linked to Wall Street and violent conflicts over land in the Amazon, as two very different approaches to development for the region clash.

According to Trocate, "On one side are the large economic groups, allied to the multinationals and often to government offices, that use the concentrated ownership of land for the intensive exploitation of resources and the accumulation of capital. And the other side, the workers and the native population that want the deconcentration and sharing of land, protection and sustainable use of nature, food production, housing, and lives with dignity for the Brazilian rural poor."

A self-made billionaire, Daniel Valente Dantas is "a gifted financier who has serially fallen out with his business partners," according to The Economist.3 Born in Bahia state in 1954, in 1982 Dantas completed a doctorate at Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, then went on to post-graduate research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After MIT, Dantas returned to Brazil and began working for a Brazilian bank; he had a falling out with its board, left with a $70 million settlement, and founded Opportunity Capital Partners in Rio de Janeiro in 1994.

By all accounts, Dantas had a brilliant understanding of the process of consolidation of neoliberalism in Brazil in the late 90s. He became a facilitator for the privatization of Brazil's state-owned telecommunications industry. "Mr. Dantas positioned himself as the man with the needed expertise and contacts. He enjoyed easy access to the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, including meetings with the president himself. That influence carried through into the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva."

Dantas was hired by Citigroup, Inc. to help buy Brasil Telecom at a $19 billion privatization auction in 1998. Telecom Italia and some Brazilian state pension funds became the other major shareholders. When Telecom Italia's relationship with Dantas deteriorated, Citigroup backed Dantas.

But by 2005, Dantas' relationship with Citigroup had also soured and Citigroup ousted him from its $650 million fund in the Cayman Islands, CVC/Opportunity Equity Partners, which managed Citigroup's private equity investments in Brazil, including the stake in Brasil Telecom. While the Times claimed Citigroup "removed" Dantas from "its" fund, the Associated Press reported that Opportunity Equity Partners was Dantas' company in which Citigroup was the "sole investor." Citigroup asserted that Dantas had acted against its interests, but it may have been more a falling out among thieves. Evidence indicates that Citigroup knew about and participated in Dantas' illegal finance practices until they presented legal and public relations problems.

In 2004, it came to light that Brasil Telecom's management, appointed by Dantas, had hired the American firm Kroll to gather information on Telecom Italia executives to be used in litigation. But the investigation also targeted people who had since become high-ranking government officials in the Lula administration, which led to a police inquiry.

Last July, Dantas was arrested and indicted for money laundering, tax evasion, and racketeering to embezzle public pension funds in Operation Satiagraha—the country's largest financial and political corruption case in recent history. Dantas was accused of having used his Opportunity Capital Partners holdings (estimated by Bloomberg to be worth $11.3 billion in 2008) to mastermind a complex money laundering operation that included significant funds in the Cayman Islands and Delaware. In September, the Brazilian government froze $300 million of Opportunity's assets, and in December, Dantas was fined $5 million and sentenced to 10 years in prison for trying to bribe a police officer. He has appealed the charges. On April 28, the federal police formally accused Dantas, his sister Verônica, and four more directors of Opportunity for fraudulent management, debt evasion, formation of gangs, and money laundering.

According to documents from the Brazilian Federal Police, "We identified dirty and complex business practices, involving large maneuvers and crafty accounting utilized to hide the deviant assets … We verified that everything begins with the umbrella with Citigroup ..."

Back to the Land

Out on bail and awaiting appeal and new charges, Dantas' financial empire is crumbling, and he seems to be seeking to consolidate his landholdings. The violent attack on the MST at Agropecuária Santa Bárbara's farm in Xinguara may well have been an attempt to smack down what is the most powerful grassroots movement to stand in the way of Dantas pillaging what they consider to be the natural and economic wealth belonging to all Brazilians.

The MST and the CPT are members of the international food sovereignty movement La Via Campesina.12 Via Campesina supports food sovereignty, agrarian reform, and agro-ecology as solutions to the climate, food, and financial crises. Brazil is the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and deforestation is responsible for 75% of its emissions. Land converted to cattle grazing pasture is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon, where most Brazilian deforestation occurs. Worldwide, tropical deforestation is believed to be responsible for at least 20% of all greenhouse gasses; when land-use changes, transportation, and petroleum-based fertilizers and chemicals have all been accounted for, industrial agriculture is believed to contribute to about one-third.

Both the MST and the CPT have developed national policies for agro-ecology that mandate land be used for the sustainable production of healthy, culturally-appropriate food for local, regional, and national populations, produced by small and medium-sized family farmers, as opposed to industrial production of commodities for export—such as beef—on vast tracts of land controlled by a few wealthy landowners.

These grassroots policies and practices fly in the face of Dantas' plans for the region. With his financial business in shambles, his pending legal battles, and the country's agro-industrial boom, expansion of large-scale farming appears as a highly attractive business venture. With the expansion of production for bio-fuels and commodity export, lands in Pará stand to be converted from cattle ranching to the more lucrative production of soybeans or sugarcane, pushing the cattle-grazing deeper into the forest. Given the legacy of impunity for rural violence in Brazil, landowners are unafraid of repercussions when repressing those who resist agro-industrialization.

Within the region and nationwide, agribusiness and right-wing politicians have responded to the conflict by calling the MST criminals. Comments on media web sites have been disturbingly hostile toward the movement. Yet the occupation continues, and the state and federal governments do not appear ready to evict the MST. The governor of Pará has a good relationship with the MST, and the federal government has no interest now in aiding a discredited Dantas.

O Globo reports that on May 14 the Brazilian National Secretary of Justice sent documents to the U.S. Justice Department requesting it block more than $450 million of Opportunity's assets in the United States based on the findings of the Operation Satiagraha investigation. The United States responded that Brazil's request will be analyzed between August and September. The funds, which were due to be unblocked this week, will remain blocked in the interim.13 It is unclear if or how Citigroup's interests in Opportunity may be influencing U.S. decisions on the Dantas affair.

The money trail, specifically if and how Citigroup fully disengaged its assets from those of Dantas, is still difficult to trace. In March, Opportunity Equity Partners Administradora de Recursos Ltd., Citigroup's Brazilian subsidiary, sold its concession to the Rio de Janeiro metro, a business venture that is also mentioned in federal documents related to Operation Satiagraha as having been enmeshed in the corrupt relationship between Dantas and Citigroup.

Meanwhile, in Pará, the violence is escalating. On May 11, three MST members were shot by security guards on a farm owned by Agropecuária Santa Bárbara in El Dorado dos Carajás.16 According to an annual report released by the CPT in April, of 90 death threats against landless families, rural workers, organizers, and religious advocates in Brazil in 2008, 35 occurred in Pará (des Roziers had his life threatened last year); while of the 28 murders, 13 occurred in Pará.

"The conflict emerges exactly because we are denouncing all of this corruption, concentration, and destruction of the Amazon," says Trocate. "And we will continue struggling for this."

Isabella Kenfield is an analyst at Americas Program and an associate at the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley, California. She can be reached at isabella.kenfield(a)gmail.com.

This article was originally published by the Americas Program.

End Notes

Sexta Vara Federal Especializada em Crimes Contra o Sistema Financeiro Nacional e em Lavagem de Valores, Poder Judiciário: Justiça Federal, Decisão sem conteúdo sigiloso, Juiz Pedro Martain dos Sanctis, July 4, 2008, Pages 60-61.

"Ação dos Sem Terra em Xinguara," April 20, 2009.

"The Trial of a Brazilian Financier: Fall of an Opportunist," The Economist, December 4, 2008.

Wikipédia: a enciclopédia libre, http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Valente_Dantas.

"Brazilian Banker Daniel Dantas Arrested by Police," Bloomberg News.

"Citibank Ousts Manager of Investments in Brazil," The New York Times, March 11, 2005.

"Citigroup is Sued over Alleged Interference," Michael Astor, Associated Press, November 2, 2004.

Sexta Vara Federal Especializada em Crimes Contra o Sistema Financeiro Nacional e em Lavagem de Valores, Poder Judiciário: Justiça Federal. Decisão sem conteúdo sigiloso, Juiz Pedro Martain dos Sanctis, July 4, 2008. Pages 60-61.; Departamento de Polícia Federal, Superintendência Regional no Estado de São Paulo, (DRCOR) Delegacia de Repressão a Crimes Financeiros, "Relatório Parcial e Representação por Medidas Cautelares," Inquérito Policial n.o, Procedimento Criminal Diverso n.o 2007.61.81.010.208-7, July 10, 2008, Page 10.

"The Quiet Brazilian," The Economist, September 18, 2008.

Departamento de Polícia Federal, Superintendência Regional no Estado de São Paulo, (DRCOR) Delegacia de Repressão a Crimes Financeiros, "Relatório Parcial e Representação por Medidas Cautelares," Inquérito Policial n.o, Procedimento Criminal Diverso n.o 2007.61.81.010.208-7, July 10, 2008, Page 10.

Founded in 1993, La Via Campesina now has over 150 organizations on five continents. Learn more at www.viacampesina.org.

"Brasil pede os EUA para Manter Bloqueio de verba de involvidos na Satiagraha," O Globo, May 15, 2009.

Sexta Vara Federal Especializada em Crimes Contra o Sistema Financeiro Nacional e em Lavagem de Valores, Poder Judiciário: Justiça Federal, Decisão sem conteúdo sigiloso, Juiz Pedro Martain dos Sanctis, July 4, 2008, Pages 60-61.

"Integrantes do MST são baleados em fazenda," Diário do Pará, May 11, 2009.

Comissão Pastoral da Terra, Conflitos no Campo Brasil 2008, April 28, 2009.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont