Today's Stories

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 15, 2009

Helen Thomas Asks the Question

Habeas at Bagram?

By DAVID SWANSON

If you missed Tuesday's press conference at the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs got himself into some trouble, and it all started with those two little syllables:

"Helen."

Upon which Helen Thomas one again abandoned propriety and asked an actual question:

"Why is the President blocking habeas corpus from prisoners at Bagram? I thought he taught constitutional law. And these prisoners have been there --"

Here's where Gibbs stepped in with a brilliant defense of his boss's unconstitutional behavior.

"You're incorrect that he taught on constitutional law."

Ouch. Nailed that one. But Helen kept talking as if Gibbs had missed the point.

"-- for many years with no due process."

But Gibbs was ready and still had a card to play. It was a bit tattered and stained, but he pulled it out and held it up high so that everyone could read the four-letter word printed on it: FEAR.

"Well, there are several issues relating to that that have to do differently than in some places than others, particularly because you have detainees in an active theater of war. There's a review that's pending of court cases and decisions, and we want to ensure -- we want to ensure protection and security of the American people as well as rights that might be afforded."

Helen: "Are you saying these people in prison are a threat to us?"

Now watch how many words it takes for Gibbs to say yes to the question he wanted asked and how quickly he moves on without ever addressing the initial question Helen had asked:

"Well, I think that part of that is the determination based on our detainee policy that the President announced on the 21st of January, that that's part of that review, yes. Chuck."

Later a man not identified by name in the transcript asked this:

"Robert, I wanted to follow up on Helen's question about Bagram. While it is true that it's an active theater of hostilities, the individuals who have brought these court challenges were not detained in that theater. Those people are claiming that they were detained somewhere else and flown to Bagram. Given the President's comments during the campaign about his concerns about a legal black hole, how is it any different as a moral matter to fly someone to Bagram versus flying them to Guantanamo?"

This poor sap obviously didn't get the memo about how well-known Guantanamo was as a BAD PLACE and how few T-shirts had ever been printed demanding the closure of Bagram. Sheesh. Gibbs explained it to him:

"Well, one of the things that's being undertaken as part of this review are part -- are the claims that you mentioned, the status of who's there and why, and that while that review is pending, the Justice Department concluded that it was necessary to appeal the ruling because it might arguably permit access to U.S. courts by a detainee in Bagram who claims he's not an Afghan citizen and was captured outside of Afghanistan. So the ruling is -- the judgment that was made is consistent with that as part of the detainee review process."

But the questioner, clearly unfamiliar with the grammar of Gibbs' home planet, ignored most of this and asked:

"So it's just bad luck that they were flown to Bagram where they have no rights, versus flying them to Guantanamo where the President thinks they would?"

Gibbs did not address the hypocrisy or explain why a review was needed to determine in each part of the world separately whether human beings should have habeas corpus, but he did say:
"I think a review is going to determine their status. I won't speak to the luck of somebody that finds themselves at any of those places.Yes, Wendell."

The fun wasn't over. Someone named David asked:

"Another Spanish question. There is a judge in Spain, according to reports, who is close to -- it may have even happened this afternoon -- to indicting Gonzales and five other former Bush officials for torture of Spaniards who were in Guantanamo. If they go ahead and do this, would the U.S. government cooperate with any information requests from Spanish prosecutors involved in the case? And do you think this is an appropriate action for another government to take?"

Here Gibbs does not answer the question of whether it is appropriate for another nation to prosecute our criminals, knowing as he almost certainly does that Spain has told the Obama administration that it wouldn't prosecute if the United States would, and knowing that our laws and treaties require us to prosecute whether Spain suggests it or not. Gibbs also does not answer the question of whether the U.S. government will share information, on the grounds that this is a "hypothetical," the indictments not having yet happened. Yet Gibbs' acceptable hypotheticals elsewhere in the same press conference included these:

"The President's proposal would save $94 billion -- billion with a "b" -- over a 10-year period of time by taking the banks out of the middle of this process."

and

"I know later this afternoon, weather permitting, the dog will be outside -- if not, the dog will be inside."

Here was Gibbs' "answer":

"Well, I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals. We may have some reaction based on what ultimately happens. David, as you and many others know, that there's pending court cases about information that the administration is involved in as we speak about information.

Then Gibbs goes on to stress that although he will studiously avoid mentioning that crimes have been committed he intends to reiterate ad nauseam that those crimes will no longer be committed:

"I think it's important to understand, above all, that the President has taken strong and swift actions to ensure that whatever actions were either permissible or carried out previously are no longer the policy of this government and will no longer be undertaken by this government. I think that is important for people to hear throughout the world."

"Whatever actions were either permissible or carried out"? Is he serious? This either means torture or it means nothing at all."

The same questioner went on:

"Just to follow up, have you had any conversations with the Spanish government about this pending case?"

We know that the US government has had such conversations, and it's safe to assume that the reporter was at the White House to ask about the actions of the government, not of Robert Gibbs. Nonetheless, he got this answer:

"I have not spoken with the Spanish."

Q Or the Justice Department?

MR. GIBBS: I would send you to Justice. Like I said, I've not spoken --

Q I'm not talking about --

MR. GIBBS: I don't know. I haven't talked to Bill, either, come to think of it, on this. Yes, sir."

And there was yet another question asked but not answered:

"Q Robert, thank you. Senators Kennedy, Leahy, and Feingold have introduced legislation that would roll back the use of state secrets privilege for DOJ. Repeated attempts to get comment from the White House have not been returned, and I'm wondering why the White House is so sensitive about commenting on this when Vice President Biden co-sponsored that bill in the last Congress.

MR. GIBBS: I have -- I would have to take a look at what they've called for and how it relates to the actions that the Justice Department --

Q It's the same bill as Congress.

MR. GIBBS: You'll find it hard to believe I didn't read that bill either, but I'm certainly -- we're happy to take a look at it and provide you some comment.

Q Thank you."

Thank you?

David Swanson is the author of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. He can be reached at: david@davidswanson.org

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