Today's Stories

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U.S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N.D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on "Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

June 30, 2008

Peter Lee
Did a Plutonium Generator End Up in the Ganges?

Jeff Sommers
Burying the Bloody Shirt; A New Age for Latvia Dawns? "Astatu Loskutovu!"

David Macaray
The AFL-CIO Votes to Endorse Obama

Martha Rosenberg
Sex Work is Different from Sex Slavery, aver Carnal Toilers

David Price
Blind Whistling Phreaks and the FBI's Historical Reliance on Phone Tap Criminality

Alexandra Early
Report from El Salvador: Why They All Keep Coming

June 28 / 29, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Guess What "Surprise" Republicans Yearn For

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nike's Bad Air

Joan P. Mencher
The Human Right to Eat

Nikolas Kozloff
Nader, Obama and White Talk

Jason Hribal
Tillie, Elephants and the Zoo

Alan Maass
Obama Swerves Right

Robert Fantina
Iraq and the New York Times

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
It Was Oil, All Along

Mike Whitney
A Glimmer of Light in Television Wasteland

Justin E. H. Smith
Collective Guilt and the Fate of Kosovo

Pham Binh
The Mendacity of Hope

David Yearsley
The Rest is Noise

Christopher Ketcham
19 Aphorisms

Jeremy R. Hammond
Bush and the Press vs. the Constitution

Kathleen M. Barry
An Open Letter to Barney Frank on Israel

Walter Brasch
Politics and Animal Cruelty in Pennsylvania

Brett Drugge
A Field Trip to the Reagan Library

Susie Day
Sex Sans the City

Website of the Day
How to Expose a Hypocritcal Politician

June 27, 2008

Franklin C. Spinney
The Defense Reform Trap

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Encaging of Gaza

Brian Cloughley
Chaos in Afghanistan

Saree Makdisi
Occupation by Bureaucracy

Liliana Segura
Reactionary Change: Obama and the Death Penalty

Paul Krassner
Remembering George Carlin

William S. Lind
The War and the Yellow Press

Candace Cohn
Embracing Big Brother

Ron Jacobs
What's a Voter to Do?

Binoy Kampmark
Beached in Chile

Website of the Day
Zoom Uganda

June 26, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?

Nikolas Kozloff
Kinder and Gentler Assassination Techniques? Obama Waffles on School of the Americas

William P. O'Connor
The Drone of Experts

Saul Landau
McClellan's Mini Mea Culpa

Ashley Smith
Which Way Forward for the Antiwar Movement?

Dave Lindorff
Our Kids and Their Kids: Terrorists or Victims?

David Macaray
A Brief History of Union Negotiations

Binoy Kampmark
Warming Seats at the Hague: John Howard and War Crimes

Matt Reichel
There's No Hope at the Ballot Box

Remi Kenazi
You Don't Mess With the Racism!

Website of the Day
A Movement Afoot in the Heartlands

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"Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all."

-- Maximilien Robespierre

Bastille Day Edition
July 14, 2008

Off the Script in Colombia

Betancourt Unbound

By MIKE WHITNEY

It was a perfectly executed rescue mission and they pulled it off without a hitch. A small group of Colombian military-intelligence agents, posing as aid workers on a humanitarian mission, touched-down in the heart of rebel territory, gathered up Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages, and whisked them away to safety while a small army of rifle-toting Marxist guerrillas looked on dumbfounded. The tale of the daring rescue by Colombia's finest was immediately splashed across the front pages of newspapers around the world. Finally, the Bush-Uribe combo could point to a decisive victory in the seven year-long war on terror. Score one for the good guys in the ongoing struggle against the forces of evil.

There's just one problem; the story isn't true.

Apart from the reports on Swiss Public Radio that "claim that the entire episode was nothing but a sham to disguise the payment of a ransom" and that "the operation had in fact been staged to cover up the fact that the US and Colombians had paid $20 million for their freedom." And, excluding the fact that "the wife of one of the hostages’ guards acted as a go-between to persuade her husband (who was a member of the FARC) to change sides." (Times Online) And, ignoring the fact that on June 3rd, Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba said that she had information that the government of Colombia was negotiating a deal with the FARC a to trade money for the release of Betancourt and the mercenaries" and that Mediaparte, the French web site founded by the former chief editor of Le Monde, reported that the rescue was “not an achievement of the Colombian military, but due to the surrender of a group of the FARC members” following “direct negotiations by the Colombian secret services with the guerrilla group that held Betancourt captive.” ("Mounting Questions about the Colombian Hostage Operation" Bill Van Auken)

On Friday, the FARC Secretariat issued a formal statement on their Bolivarian Press Agency website saying that they were betrayed by two members of their organization:

"The escape of the 15 prisoners on July 2 was a direct consequence of the despicable conduct of Cesar and Enrique, who betrayed their revolutionary ideals and the trust we had put in them."

Of course, none of the western media reported the statement because it casts doubt the Colombian government's version of the 100% scripted, Rambo-like rescue and calls into question the premature pronouncements of triumph in the war on terror. But it's clear that the official story has begun to unravel and will require some serious PR airbrushing to keep from falling apart altogether. It's looking more and more like the whole farce was concocted by Uribe to build public support for changing Colombia's constitution so he can run for a third term as president. So far, it's worked like a charm; Uribe's public approval ratings have soared to nearly 80%.

The daredevil rescue-mission has catapulted Betancourt into media mega-stardom. She has already made a number of appearances on TV and radio including CNN's "Larry King Live", “NBC Nightly News” the "Today Show". She has also announced her intention to write a play about her experiences as a hostage and the publishing industry is buzzing with news of a forthcoming book deal. In fact, as soon as news reached Paris that she had been freed, a 12 page letter she wrote to her mother as a prisoner was re-released in hardback form.

"I am in communication with God, Jesus and the Virgin every day," Betancourt writes. "Morning overcast, like my spirit...My beloved and divine Mamita...I haven't being eating; my appetite has shut down; my hair is falling out in clumps; I have no desire for anything...Here, nothing is one's own, nothing lasts; uncertainty and precariousness are the only constant. The order is given at any moment to pack up and one gets to sleep stretched out anywhere like an animal. Those are the particularly difficult moments for me. My palms sweat, my mind gets foggy, and I end up doing things twice as slowly as normal."

No one doubts that Betancourt suffered greatly or that she's been deeply traumatized by her 6 years of captivity in the jungle. Clearly, she was just a blameless victim in a much larger political game. Her medical report shows that she is in good health although she still refuses to discuss whether she was tortured by her captors. According to NPR, she fears she "may slip into depression" and speaks slowly about her ordeal.

"The important thing was to fill the day with activities that could be repeated like in a schedule so like to give you stability in a world of no stability. That was the key." She added, "I know that I have to give testimony about all the things I lived, but I need time. It's not easy to talk about things that are still hurting. Probably it will hurt all my life." (NPR)

To her credit, Betancourt has blasted the Uribe government saying, "That's the difference between me and Uribe. For Uribe, the end of the FARC means the reestablishment of peace in Colombia. For me, peace in Colombia will come from social transformations." (There's still a chance that Betancourt will return to Colombia and run for president. She has dual French-Colombian citizenship)

She also praised Hugo Chavez who worked tirelessly to secure her release in an earlier prisoner swap that was scotched by the Bush administration. Bush and Co. believed the exchange would boost Chavez's popularity, so Uribe made sure the deal wasn't consummated. Betancourt said, "It seems to me that Hugo Chávez is magnificent. He can tell the FARC things that they will hear. The FARC didn't like it at all when Chávez told them that the armed struggle in Latin American was obsolete, and that they had to think in a different way." Naturally, Betancourt's remarks about Chavez were not reported in the establishment media.

Betancourt and Chavez are right. Although the revolutionary struggle goes on, hostage-taking subverts the group's larger goal of a society built on laws and human rights. And even though the FARC was pushed out of the political process by a corrupt and ruthless oligarchy, which killed nearly 5,000 of its leaders and union activists, they will not achieve their objectives by adopting the same methods as the right wing paramilitaries they're fighting. It is impossible to defeat crime with more crime. Maybe, a presidential bid by Betancourt will provide the spark that is needed to focus attention on Colombia's glaring social inequities; the massive wealth gap, the deeply entrenched economic and political polarization, and the venal self-serving oligarchy that runs the government like a medieval fiefdom.

Although she is grateful to be free, Betancourt has not "pulled her punches" when talking about Colombia's shortcomings. On Friday she said, "Uribe and all of Colombia, should correct some things. We have reached the point where we must change the radical, extremist vocabulary of hate, of very strong words that intimately wound the human being."

It's too much to hope that one woman will be able to dismantle a repressive system of government that dates back hundreds of years and has the implicit support of the country's main industrial leaders, its most prestigious families and the United States of America. But the power of reconciliation is stronger than many realize and, as Betancourt said in an interview with Eleanor Beardsley, "The only thing I've settled in my mind is I want to forgive." That's a good place to start.

Colombia is America's last right-wing outpost in the hemisphere. There's a good chance that it will be swept along by the leftist current that has overtaken most of Latin America already. Perhaps Betancourt's role is simply to open the floodgates and let the tide rush in.

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