Today's Stories

March 25, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

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

March 25, 2009

The Kraken Awakens

Europe in Crisis

By CONN HALLINAN

“Below the thunder of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea…
The Kraken Sleepeth”

--Alfred Tennyson

In Nordic mythology, the Kraken was a huge beast that lay in wait for ships that braved the restless North Atlantic, rising from the “abysmal” depths to wrap its great arms around the unwary or the over bold, pulling them down to its lair. As economies from the Baltic to Spain and from Ireland to Austria self-destruct, the Kraken metaphor may be an apt one for a crisis whose first victim was Iceland.

The saga of Iceland’s fall, from what Reuters called “One of the richest countries in the world per capita” to flat broke, is a tale that begins in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dismantled governmental and financial checks and balances, privatized everything that wasn’t nailed down, and turned the world’s economy into an enormous Ponzi scheme with promises of wealth that would make Las Vegas blush.

Tapping into the sea of high risk credit scams that floated the housing bubble, tiny Iceland—whose major export was cod—turned itself into a financial giant whose banks were worth 900 times more than the island nation’s gross domestic product. Icelanders bought townhouses in New York, imported expensive cars and lured back ex-patriots to cash in at the casino.

Such hubris stirred the Kraken.

Last month Icelanders were defaulting on car loans, unemployment was surging, and the country was in hock to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose standard formula for accepting its loans is the systematic savaging of education, health care, and social welfare programs. Iceland’s richest man, Asgeir Johannesson—who made out like a bandit over the past five years—runs a supermarket chain whose symbol is a cross-eyed pig, which suggests that while the northern gods may be vengeful, they have a sense of humor.

Iceland was just the first victim, an hors d’oeuvre for the beast. There are lots of others. The first to fall were smaller countries on the periphery—Latvia, Estonia, and Ireland—but the leviathans too soon felt the Kraken’s tentacles.

Germany’s export industry, the heart of its powerful economy, is off by 21 percent. France’s growth rate is projected to be minus 2 percent. Spain’s unemployment rate is 14 percent, and 22 percent in the country’s hard-hit south. Sweden’s industrial output in down 22.9 percent. Ukraine, an industrial giant with 46 million people, will see its economy shrink 6 percent. A $16.5 billion loan from the IMF is temporarily keeping the country solvent, but its foreign debts alone are $105 billion.

 England—whose Thatcher and Tony Blair share the blame for waking the Kraken in the first place—is a basket case. Its economy is projected to shrink 3 percent, and over two million are out of work. And because the Tories and Labor alike cut social welfare programs over the past 25 years, the jobless only get about $85 a week. As a result, every seven minutes a person in Britain loses his or her home.

Virtually no country in Europe remains unscathed, although the worst hit are those like Hungry, Latvia, and Austria that bought into the myth that the economy was a never-ending cornucopia.

Austrian banks shoveled loans into Eastern Europe, up to 60 percent of them in foreign currency. When the crisis came, countries like Hungary and Latvia found themselves trying to pay back loans in expensive Euros, Swiss Francs, and dollars, while their own currencies were tanking. Austria now finds itself holding $371 billion in debts, almost equal to the country’s annual GDP. Unemployment has jumped 23.7 percent.

The newer members of the European Union (EU), including most of the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, soon found that, when the going got tough, it was every man for himself.  When Hungary recently asked its fellow EU members for a bailout, it got heaved overboard. Indeed, the EU’s 27-member crew seems less concerned with fighting off the Kraken than with each saving itself, ready to turn on one another at the drop of a currency.

Madrid has launched a “buy Spanish” campaign, London is touting “British jobs for British workers,” and the French President is urging French carmakers to invest at home, not elsewhere in the EU. When the water reaches the quarterdeck, free markets go a glimmering.

The Obama Administration is pushing the Europeans to ante up a lot more cash for a bailout, but EU members are balking. “We don’t think we need to draw up new stimulus packages, and I’m supported on that by German Industry,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Financial Times.

 The Europeans, on the other hand, are demanding that the Americans accept global regulation of finance, because many in the EU blame the lack of such regulation for the current crisis. So far, however, Washington is resisting.

“The global economic crisis is relentlessly laying bare the EU’s flaws and limitations,” says former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “Without common economic and financial policies…the cohesion of [the] European monetary union and the EU—indeed, their very existence—will be in unprecedented danger.”

The combination of internal European squabbling—some of it fed by old fashioned panic—and differences with the Americans over regulation, means that besides pumping some money into the IMF, little is likely to come out of the upcoming Group of 20 meetings set for April 2 in London. The G20 is composed of developed and emerging countries.

As bad as things are in Europe, at least the region has some safety nets for its people, including mostly free medical care, low cost education, and social services that will blunt the worst aspects of the crisis. The same can’t be said for the United States.

The worst hit, of course, will be the world’s poor, the hundreds of millions of people in places like Africa and South Asia who currently eke out a marginal existence on a dollar or two a day, and who bear none of the blame for bringing on the world-wide economic crisis. The Kraken will make short work of them.

According to UNESCO’s Kevin Watkins, “With the slowdown in growth in 2009, we estimate that the average income of the 391 million Africans living on less than $1.25 a day will take a 20 percent hit. When you convert economic growth effect into human cost, the picture looks even grimmer. Best estimates point to an increasing infant mortality of somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 yearly.”

Not that the poor or the recently-made-poor are going quietly. A demonstration in Iceland drew 7,000 people, the equivalent of seven million in the U.S. A march and rally in Ireland drew 120,000—a little over three percent of the population—and Waterford Crystal workers took over their plant. Similar demonstrations have taken place in Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, France, and Greece. As the crisis deepens, so has the anger of those who will bear most its weight.

In John Wyndham’s 1950’s science fiction book, “The Kraken Wakes,” aliens, using the sea as their refuge, paralyze the world. But governments, caught up in the Cold War, are more interested in fighting one another than resisting the invasion. The “Kraken” is finally destroyed when the poor residents of a fishing village overcome their terror and assault the creatures with crowbars and axes. Their example spreads and the invasion is finally defeated.

Demonstrators alone will not overcome the current crisis, but they can demand that governments act in the interests of their people, not those of Goldman Sachs and AIG. Yes, the banks have to be saved, but the most effective way to do that is to nationalize them, and in a way that the people with the crowbars and axes have a say over how their money is spent.

According to the Asian Development Bank, the recession has cost the global economy $50 trillion. That is a figure straight out of the darkest nightmare one can imagine.

The G20—particularly the Germans and the Chinese—should bite the bullet and beef up the bailouts. They must also reinstate the checks and balances on credit, capital and banking that have been systematically dismantled over the years. And they must insure that the most vulnerable be protected.

If greed, selfishness, and timidity triumph, the Kraken waits.

Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net

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