Today's Stories

September 27 / 28, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
September 27 / 28, 2008

"Trust Me...."

Election Drizzle

By SAUL LANDAU

Unrelenting gossip drenches the presidential election, nonstop media nattering about Sarah’s qualities or lack of thereof, McCain’s “heroic” character, Obama’s link with real people or lack of. In between such “analytical talk” media chatterers examine candidates’ sex lives and eating habits; their dress codes become subjected to tight scrutiny. Did he wear his flag pin? Does he look better without a tie?

As the US economy continues to slide down the metaphorical toilet at home and its image plunges around the world, neither its political politicians nor media seize the opportunity to tell the truth. Who on the presidential stump or in Congress would dare to say the $700 plus billion defense budget doesn’t defend the country, contributes to conflict around the world and sucks up urgently needed funds for social programs? In addition, the government has bailed out failing financial giants, the $85 billion for AIG being the latest.

McCain attributes the crisis to greed, but apparently forgot that his legislation gave greed the high road by institutionalizing financial insatiability. McCain backed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act written by his pal and economic guru former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. This law allowed banks, insurance companies and brokerages to merge. McCain blames the current mortgage crisis and financial meltdown on the very vice his act encouraged. Yet, he learned nothing from his mistake. He helped dismantle regulation that prevented such avaricious behavior, yet McCain, still pushes to deregulate more –like social security. Would you feel secure if your pension fell into the hands of the scoundrels who destroyed Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns etc.?

Amazingly, Wall Street crashes, McCain smiles and assures the electorate the US economy stands on firm foundations. Education, transportation and health systems teeter in various stages of crisis; roads, bridges, dykes and levees need rapid attention. Water and sewage systems require repair lest we drink what we flush – or have we already begun to do it?

Compare these needs to the exigencies of “defense.” McCain insists we need a new round of nuclear weapons and must for “security” maintain 761 bases around the world and continue to fight two dubious wars. The less bellicose Obama will intensify efforts only in Afghanistan, he says, while diminishing the one in Iraq. McCain and Palin almost assure the public they will maintain ongoing conflicts and start new ones -- if the peace-loving voters will only elect them.

Palin revealed in her September 11 ABC interview with Charles Gibson her unique combination of neo-con foreign policy and extreme right wing populism. “The Bush Doctrine?” She paused, thinking: “shaved or unshaved?

As Sarah met the press, McCain refused to allow members of the media to make a copy of his medical records. He simply assured everyone that his dangerous melanoma was cured and you better take the word of a hero and a patriot on that medical issue.

Meanwhile, the glitter from the Palin spectacle spread panic among some liberals. “My God, I’m leaving this country in McCain and Palin win.” Lawyers and doctors volunteered to walk Pennsylvania and Ohio precincts to register voters in key states. They registered voters and assured them of Obama’s superiority on issues of the economy, war and peace and, not least, his promise to appoint judges to the court who would not automatically reject any claim from a poor person or one of color.

Republican spinners gloat about Sarah and John as “regular people” and Obama as an elitist. No matter McCain owns nine homes (Paul Begala on “Real Time,” Sept.14) and has never represented a poor person. McCain the serious Christian cheated on his first wife – who was physically suffering -- and then left her for a billionairess. Is this the meaning of maverick?

He loves his country, supports the men and women in the armed forces but votes against veterans’ benefits and programs that help the poor. He has embellished the story of his own heroism – getting shot down over Hanoi, a civilian area, and enduring five years as a POW (a model one at that) -- illustrating the Talmudic saying: “When you add to the truth, you subtract from it.”

Obama called for teaching responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the use of birth control. Republican spinners insisted he wanted to teach kindergarten children all about doing the old nasty. Ironically, Republicans seem to think people won’t notice Sarah Palin’s “preggers” daughter. An example of abstinence advocacy? Palin refused to allow sex education in Alaska’s school system. Well, her daughter says she only slipped up once!

In a northern California coffee shop, two women discussed the election. “She may be a bitch,” said a middle aged housewife, “but she tells it like it is.”

I wondered what the “it” meant.

“That’s true,” said her younger companion, wiping egg yolk from her seven year old’s chin. “But she doesn’t seem to know much. I saw the whaddayacallit interview the other night and I’m not sure she’s ready for such a job. McCain’s maybe got you know cancer or something and might just die after he wins.”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” said the other. “I didn’t like Hillary all that much. She was like a snobby bitch. But I like Sarah. She kicks ass. I like what she did to protect her family members.” (This, I assumed, referred to the investigation of Sarah trying to fire an Alaskan state official who refused to fire her former brother in law who had wronged her sister or to the Enquirer stories about Sarah forcing the young man who impregnated her 17 year old daughter to marry her – against his will.)

Another market conversation: “I was going to vote for McCain, but then I realized, well, the thing about Sarah’s seventeen year old daughter. If she can’t control her own family, how is she gonna control the country?”

As H.L.Mencken observed, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” But after getting a Bush administered beating for eight years, after suffering ineptness and corruption on a scale that surpassed all previous administrations, the middle class public should say en masse: “enough of these people.” (Think ENRON, Cheney scandals about circumventing the Constitution to invade citizens’ liberties, bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, routinizing torture, the “response” to Katrina, the politicization of the Justice Department). But “think” is an inappropriate word in the mass anxiety age, where distraction and super stress rule the day.

Who’d you rather drink a beer with? Isn’t it neat Sarah calls her husband “First Dude”? What a colorful family! The big dude has an old DWI conviction and didn’t go to no college! He even wanted Alaska to secede! That family has character.

Such statements occurred as Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and AIG went under; others threaten to follow. Hewlett Packard laid off 25,000 workers. The world’s seventh largest economy, California, can’t come up with a budget that allots minimal funds to maintain its education and health systems.

Voters drive on crowded freeways, worry about losing jobs, arriving late to pick up a kid, paying $60 to buy gas. They listen to radio news or talk shows where issues congeal in the equivalent of a large audio spitball. At night, TV wraps this cacophony of woes with images, adds urgent screams, desperate pants and flirting winks about how you should forget the depressing messages (news) you’re just seen and heard and buy something. During elections, candidates must use this same media to convey their own urgent messages: vote for me and end global warming, solve high gas prices and, of course, get the proverbial chicken in every pot.

Office seekers assure citizens they represent their interests. But they don’t tell the truth! Truth-telling would compromise their electability, say political handlers. Campaign spinners employ the wisdom of Maimonides. “People like the opinion to which they have become accustomed… They cling to the opinions of habit.”

So, don’t think, or engage in dialogue. Just chant: “Yes We Can. USA USA USA!” as Wall Street collapses and its representative, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who presided over the collapse, asks Congress: “Trust me: Just give me $1 trillion of taxpayers’ money and I’ll transfer all the banks bad loans and worthless assets to the public.” USA USA USA

Saul Landau is an IPS fellow, author of A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD and producer of WE DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE and forty other films, available on dvd from roundworldproductions@gmail.com

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