Today's Stories

December 18, 2008

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

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 18, 2008

"How Does One Build Socialism Here?"

Postcard from Venezuela

By SAUL LANDAU

“The construction of socialism in Venezuela is ratified, and now we will take charge of deepening it.”

-President Hugo Chavez, after learning the results of the November 23 elections.

Hugo Chavez’s PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) won 17 of 23 governorships, approximately 60-40%. But his party lost in states with large populations and much oil as well in the mayor’s race for the crowded capital of Caracas.

Consumer-dominated societies fill spiritual voids with loud sounds and pictures: “BUY BUY BUY!”

Consumerism doesn’t seem compatible with historical awareness. Young Venezuelans I met seem oblivious to their recent history. Indeed, the majority of them were barely conscious or not yet born when successive gangs of kleptocrats – calling themselves political party leaders -- stole the nation’s oil revenue. In 1989, under the second round of super thief President Carlos Andres Perez (a supposed socialist), repressive forces killed as many as 2,000 demonstrators on the streets of Caracas during an uprising (the “Caracazo”) in response to Andres Perez’s decision that poor Caraqueños, not his wealthy amigos, should shoulder the burden of the IMF’s austerity plan for Venezuela.

Rich Venezuelans and US officials shook their heads in sympathy. Poor Carlos Andres had to take desperate measures to maintain necessary order! It was unthinkable to place the burden of doing with less on those who had most.

From the early 1960s through the mid 1990s, corruption and looting characterized both Christian and Social Democratic governments. Voters, disgusted with the larcenous behavior of one regime, would elect a successive group of politicians to steal the oil wealth. 

In 1998, Chavez won the presidency. He swore to end “elite” rule and redirect the country’s oil wealth to education health and welfare – to the poor.

In ten years, hundreds of thousands have received medical care, some education and primary forms of welfare. He and his allies continue to win seats in free elections, and Chavez has announced he will hold a referendum in February to ask the people to allow him to hold presidential power until 2021.

Anti-Chavez sentiment, which inspired a failed military coup in 2002, has grown smarter. Newly elected opposition governor Capriles Radonsky participated in that coup, but now he has pledged to work with Chavez’s government to confront national problems. Didn’t McCain say that to Obama?

The good opposition cop finds its antithesis on the radio. On 747 AM, the talk show host sounds like a Spanish-speaking Rush Limbaugh. “I hate Chavez,” he screamed on December 1. Sound effects followed: gun shots reverberated as if to enhance the drama of his soliloquy on the evils of Chavismo, including 30 thousand Cuban doctors who offer primary care to Venezuela’s poor.

A taxi driver in Margarita, a forty minute flight from Caracas, also despised Chavez. Assuming I was a US tourist, and thus logically against Chavez, he sneered at “Senor Presidente.”

“Imagine, he angered the mighty United States and invited the Soviet Union or whatever they call themselves these days to bring in their warplanes and ships.” Another cab driver worried about crime and expressed cynicism about the possibility Chavez could realize his socialist goals.

“Corruption in this country,” said another cabbie from Margarita, “goes deep. The cop in the street to cabinet Ministers to the President’s family (referring to rumors of close Chavez relatives getting business favors in the state of Barinas).”

I look out the window at Margarita, a tropical island, once a perfect picture postcard, with brooding mountains, flapping palm trees, warm ocean water and tropical birds. Then came the developers who must have hired an evil teenager with acne of the soul to design the architecture. The rows of high-rise condo blocks should make Frank Lloyd Wright turn in his grave. Billboards carry gaudy ads for Digitel. Posters of busty young women in skimpy bras and dental floss bottoms urge: “buy.” Those who “need” a second or third home – including foreigners – purchase condos.

“How does one go about building socialism here?” I ask my friend who lives in Caracas.

We see the obstacles dramatically on the downtown streets of Venezuela’s teeming capital (4-5 million estimated), with wall-to-wall traffic twelve hours a day, spewing pollution and noise. For $2, a Venezuelan can fill his gas tank. How does one ban cars and shopping in downtown Caracas and expect to get reelected?

From a jammed McDonald’s in Chacaito we see masses of humanity, resembling Asian cities, pushing and shoving en route to shopping. Behind downtown, situated in a long valley, lie the barrios, etched into the surrounding hills. In these slums live Venezuela’s poor majority, Chavez supporters. They received little from the oil-rich governments of the past. Chavez has put back some of the wealth in the form of medical, educational and basic welfare programs. Cuban doctors have built modular clinics and members of literacy brigades have offered basic education in the poorest areas – free of charge. In addition, the Chavez government has offered healthy meals to the most down-trodden.

Unlike his mentor in the socialist island to the north, Chavez won power through the ballot box, not guerrilla war. Fidel Castro exported his enemies, with, ironically, US cooperation. Why not? In 1960, the powerful in Washington and the wealthy exiles biding their time in Miami, believed they could dispatch Castro and the revolution without even sending in US troops. In April 1961, the new President, John F. Kennedy, discovered their mistake when the CIA’s exile force fell to Cuba’s fledgling army at the Bay of Pigs.

As W prepares his exit, Castro remains vital in his new career as a writer (La Paz en Colombia, published in November). However, Chavez cannot export his enemies. Venezuela’s elite and the US government learned that lesson after 50 frustrating years of trying to overthrow the Cuban revolution from Miami.
           
An organized opposition makes political noise especially through elections – charges and counter charges, TV, radio and billboard ads. Imagine if Cuba’s revolutionaries would have had to transform the island’s economic and social structure with the presence of one million vocal opponents! Fidel had to deal with an angry Washington, but not with the daily stings and bites of his own wealthy classes who would pay for newspaper, TV and radio assaults and mount an international gossip network to demonize him.

Hugo Chavez’s socialist vision has emerged amidst a collapsing environment and world economy, in a country whose outward culture reeks of the worst of consumerism: maddening sounds of car horns, traffic jams, playing to the pounding of reggaetón reverberating over car and public speakers. Caracas reeks with dangerous anarchy – vast areas of poverty amidst the unshared wealth of a small minority. Consumption has become the spiritual value of capitalism: obsession with the superficial (Venezuela supposedly leads the world in number of boob jobs per capita).

Venezuela is still very much capitalist, not socialist. Chavez has learned in 10 years as President that change does not come easily through legislatures and courts when wealthy opposition politicians also use the media to help provide a formidable obstacle course to a just distribution of wealth.

Chavez lacks a large disciplined cadre to carry out his policies, a seasoned political party of people dedicated to doing nothing in life but work to change the course of their nation’s history.

“Oil in the hands of corrupt governments has corrupted this place,” says Jesus Marrero, who in 1973 underwent brutal torture supervised by Commissar Basilio. “He was obviously a big shot in Venezuelan intelligence circles (DISIP).” Marrero belonged to the Insurrectional Revolutionary Movement (MIR). “This man [Basilio] radiating cold cynicism” supervised sessions for months in which his men applied electric shocks to Marrero’s ears, testicles and penis.

“I escaped from prison in 1975,” he said, “and rejoined my comrades in the mountains. In October 1976, we saw the newspaper report on the bombing of a Cuban airliner in mid air killing everyone on board. The newspaper photo was none other than Basilio, identified as Luis Posada Carriles.”

Marrero wants to testify against Posada “as soon as Obama realizes this man is a real terrorist, unlike the Cuban Five (referring to five Cuban intelligence agents who provided material to the FBI on Cuban exile terrorism in Miami and got arrested and sentenced to long prison terms in federal penitentiaries).”           

Marrero says Venezuela faces an awesome challenge. But “Chavez has illuminated the healthy road and we must overcome the garbage that clutters our minds and on our streets and work for justice and equality in a green world.” I nod. He has maintained revolutionary zeal through decades of exile in Mexico.

In 1998, he returned to work toward the same vision that enticed him to become a revolutionary forty years earlier. He helps bring solar energy to remote rural areas, to use the sun’s heat to make potable water and other necessities. If Chavez wins the referendum to continue until 2021, thousands more could join Marrero in his attempt to bring clean energy to the needy.

Saul Landau received the Bernardo O’Higgins award from the Republic of Chile for his work on human rights. His latest book is A Bush and Botox World (AK/CounterPunch Press).

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