Today's Stories

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

Weekend Edition
February 27 - March 1, 2009

The Gods Will Be Really Angry

Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

By JOHN ROSS

The governor of Mexico state, the most populated and powerful in the Mexican union, and the early frontrunner for the once-ruling PRI party's presidential nomination in 2012, is striking a god-like pose these days.  In fact Enrique Pena Nieto seeks to annex the City of the Gods - Teotihuacan - whose famed pyramids of the sun and the moon are designated by the United Nations as the patrimony of humankind, to stage a spectacular tourist-oriented light and sound show dubbed "The Splendor of Teotihuacan."

The governor's designs on the City of the Gods are universally rejected by Mexican archeologists, anthropologists, indigenous peoples, the Mexican congress, and the citizens of his own state. 

A recent visit by representatives of UNESCO's Monuments & Sites Committee (ICOMOS) to inspect damages wrought upon the pyramids by Pena Nieto's contractors, has led to speculation that Teotihuacan is in danger of being removed from the roster of world heritage sites.

Teotihuacan, 45 kilometers north of Mexico City, was first settled in the second century before Christ when newly discovered underground springs attracted corn growers to the area.  As the vanguard corn culture in the Americas, Teotihuacan soon became the New World's first real city with a population of 200,000.  To assuage the gods and maintain the agricultural cycle in balance, the lords of Teotihuacan undertook the construction of two enormous pyramids to venerate the sun and the moon - unlike later Aztec culture, human sacrifice was practiced in moderation and a benign and prosperous civilization emerged.

But after several centuries, the water source began to play out and the carrying capacity of the land collapsed.  By 600 AD, the City of the Gods, plagued by marauding Chichimecas from Mexico's wild north, was virtually abandoned and the pyramids fell into ruin.  Excavation in the early 20th century and a revived interest in the nation's indigenous past rescued Teotihuacan from oblivion. 

Since 1939, with the establishment of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the City of the Gods has been transformed into Mexico's most visited ruins and one of this neighbor nation's top tourist lures. Now, to supplement the staging of his "espectaculo" at Teotihuacan, Governor Pena Nieto projects a tourist corridor to envelope the site with five-star hotels and world-class golf courses.

Opponents of the governor's plans for the City of the Gods decry extensive damage inflicted upon the pyramids by the installation of light and sound fixtures.  8000 perforations in the volcanic rock of which the pyramids are constructed to nail down the light fixtures have irreparably degraded Teotihuacan, charges INAH anthropologist Sergio Gomez, who compares the desecration to recent acid attacks on 23 two millennium-old giant Olmec heads at La Venta Tabasco by evangelical activists, at least one of whom is a U.S. citizen. The Christians claimed to have "a mandate from God" to destroy "these works of the devil."  Damaging archeological sites in Mexico is a criminal offense.

Writing in the left daily La Jornada, anthropologist Javiar Arranda Luna accused Pena Nieto of entertaining the same mindset as the Talibans whose destruction of Afghanistan's ancient giant Buddahs earned worldwide reproof.

Despite the outcry, Pena Nieto's contractors continue to occupy Teotihuacan.  Bowing to public pressure, construction workers removed 8000 expansive screws holding down the light fixtures, further wounding the pyramids in the process.  The installation of aluminum light casings on the heights of the pyramids is seen as an eyesore and the sound reverberations from the show are expected to cause further hurt to this World Heritage site.         

The script for "Splendor of Teotihuacan", written by a private contractor for the Secretary of Education that oversees the INAH, compares the building of the City of the Gods with Leggo construction.  The lighting component for the spectacle has been contracted out to the Philips Corporation, which won the concession to supply the bulbs to illuminate the pyramids - Philips has even patented a "Teotihuacan"-brand light bulb.  Recent test lightings of the two pyramids transformed them into what one indignant INAH worker described as "giant jukeboxes" that could be seen from as far off as 14 kilometers. 

Anthropologists and archeologists who oppose the project accuse INAH director Alfonso Maria y Campo of colluding with Pena Nieto and his state tourism director Alfredo del Mazo Maza, the cousin of a powerful PRI "cacique" or political boss, to promote the governor's presidential ambitions. 

Enrique Pena Nieto's availability for the presidential nomination is also being flogged by Mexico's two-headed television monopoly, Televisa and TV Azteca.  The governor is currently under scrutiny by the nation's Supreme Court for having prompted extensive human rights abuses during protests at another Mexico state hot spot San Salvador Atenco May 3rd-4th 2006, during which hundreds of activists were arrested, two young protestors were killed, and a score of woman sexually abused by Mexico state and federal police. 

In a message of solidarity from exile, America del Valle, the daughter of Atenco farmers' leader Ignacio del Valle who is currently serving a 112-year prison sentence as the result of the police crackdown, insisted "Enrique Pena Nieto will not pass over the City of the Gods - he has too many murders and other barbarities on his hands.  The organization of the people will halt the profaning of Teotihuacan."     

The unfortunately named "Splendor of Teotihuacan" is not the first time the City of the Gods has come under assault from the political and commercial interests of a Mexico state governor.  In 2004, Arturo Montiel, who was eventually forced to resign amidst allegations of corruption, granted the Wal-Mart Corporation permits for a mega-store to be located in Teotihuacan's third archeological perimeter.  Priceless artifacts uncovered during store construction were reportedly trucked off to a local dump and workers fired when they revealed the carnage to the press.  Demonstrations by Indians and anthropologists grew heated and a police car was torched. 

Similarly, Teotihuacan security forces have been deployed to suppress protests over Pena Nieto's putsch to turn the City of the Gods into what INAH workers term "Disneylandia."  When the local Aztec dance troupe, Quetzalcoatl Naucampa sought to perform at the foot of the Pyramid of the Sun - Quetzalcoatl, "the Plumed Serpent" was a Teotihuacan deity – the dancers were attacked by the police who claimed that the sounding of their "caracoles" or conch-shell trumpets would "damage the monuments and annoy the tourists."  The Teotihuacan police chief ordered the dancers, who were in full Aztec regalia, to go home and "change into normal clothes."

Protests against the exploitation of the City of the Gods for commercial purposes date back to the 1960s when Mexico City scholar and writer Salvador Novo led the outcry against the use of Teotihuacan for the filming of the post-Johnny Weissmuller "Tarzan In The Golden Valley" - Novo's newspaper columns led to revocation of the film crew's permits by the Interior Secretariat.

Nonetheless, during the past decade, the mercantilization of Mexico's sacred sites has been routinely blessed by the directors of the INAH and Secretary of Tourism honchos as a ploy to pump up tourist revenues.  Such fabled Mayan ruins as Chichen Itza and Uzmal on the Yucatan peninsula now have light and sound "espectaculos" and are rented out for private concerts. In Chiapas, Mayan ruins at Palenque and Tonina are reportedly slated for the same treatment. An annual pop music festival at El Tajin in northern Veracruz has damaged pyramids and earned the enmity of local Totonaco Indians for whom Tajin is a sacred site.  X'caret, the sacred Mayan "cenote" or fresh-water well on Quintana Roo's tourist-saturated Tulum corridor, features a hot-ticket sound and light show that has reportedly deeply degraded the site.  But Pena Nieto and his cohorts remain undeterred, citing similar "espectaculos" at such world-class treasures as Angkor Wat and the Roman Coliseum as being big money spinners. 

As the showdown in the City of the Gods approaches, a thousand anthropologists, cultural workers, local residents, and representatives of indigenous communities gathered February 3rd, the 70th anniversary of the INAH, at the foot of the Pyramid of the Sun and arm-in-arm surrounded the great structure in a "human embrace."  If Pena Nieto and his backers fail to call off the "Splendor of Teotihuacan", INAH workers have threatened to shut down all of Mexico's 111 archeological sites and over 300 museums.  The failure of the Mexico state governor and future PRI presidential candidate to heed their warning and cancel this profanation of Teotihuacan, risks the wrath of the Gods.   

John Ross remains north of the border dealing with medical troubles. These dispatches will continue at ten-day periods until he returns to Mexico. Ross's "El Monstruo - True Tales of Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published in late 2009 by Nation Books.

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