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THE ORIGINS OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY

"It was impossible to hold the line All we got was a battering from the Jews."
--John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, 1956

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Cockburn in San Francisco

Today's Stories

March 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Where are the Laptop Bombardiers Now?


March 23, 2007

Saul Landau
Return to Syria

Patrick Cockburn
Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Ban

Greg Moses
Protesting Immigrant Prisons in the Rio Grande Valley

Rep. Ron Paul
The War Funding Bill

Franklin Lamb
Will Hezbollah Hand Israel Its 6th Defeat?

Stephen Gowans
Mugabe Gets the Milosevic Treatment

Roger Burbach
Leftist Victory in Ecuador

Dave Lindorff
The Gutless Mini-Politics of the Congressional Democrats

William S. Lind
Candles in the Hurricane

Alan Mammoser
The New Rules of Food

Russell Hoffman
Al Gore's Nose is Glowing

Website of the Day
Global Outsourcing and the US Working Class

 

March 22, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Oil-Rich Kirkuk at the Melting Point

Robin Blackburn
Toxic Waste in the Sub-Prime Market

Michael Donnelly
Mr. Green Goes to Washington: Another Oscar Performance from Al Gore

Uzma Aslam Khan
Down Pakistan's No-Constitution Avenue

Lee Sustar
Bush's Braceros: The Ugly Truth About the Guest Worker Program

Robert D. Skeels
LA's Vicious War on the Homeless

Rev. William Alberts
The Forbidden C-Word

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Search for the Elusive Autism Gene

Mickey Z.
This is Your Brain on Meat

Website of the Day
Raimondo Does Hitchens

 


March 21, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Robbie Conal

James Petras
Meet the Global Ruling Class

Fred Gardner
A U.S. Army Pipe Dream

Corporate Crime Reporter
Cramer Comes Clean: Lies, Market Manipulation and Wall Street

Faisal Kutty
Too Guilty to Fly, Too Innocent to Charge?

Robert Fantina
U.S. Imperialism in Action

Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach
Brazilian Opposition to Bush-Lula Ethanol Accords

Lucinda Marshall
Missing in Action: Why is the Peace Movement Ignoring the Impact of War on Women?

Winslow Wheeler
Dem Budget Tricks: Reform Means What We Say It Means!

Website of the Day
Student Day of Action Against the War

 

 

March 20, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq is a Vast, Blood-Drenched Human Disaster

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Blank Check War

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Cojones: Our Bleached-Blond Thatcher?

Uri Avnery
The New Palestinian Unity Government

Stan Cox
Down-to-a-Trickle Economics

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Hating the Rich

Alan Farago
Why Al Gore Soft-Peddled the Environment in 2000

Richard W. Behan
Impeachment and Patriotism

Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On

David Krieger
The Treaty of Tlatelolco

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to Pfizer's CEO: $11 Million Salary, 36% Raise, 10,000 Fired Employees

Mickey Z.
A Cat-Eat-Cat World: Beyond the Pet Food Recall

Website of the Day
Bringing the War Home

Webclip of the Day
Sunsara Taylor Beats O'Reilly, Again

 

March 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Crime Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Patrick Cockburn
Operation Deepening Nightmare

Stauber / Rampton
Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?

Werther
Plame Wars: Valerie Plame, the Washington Post and the Ghost of Joe McCarthy

Noam Chomsky
In Memory of Tanya Reinhart

Jeff Leys
Tap Dancing on Graves: How Democrats Bought the War

Richard May
And Then There Were None: Europe's Afghan Backlash

Ron Jacobs
Lessons of the Antiwar Movement and the Washington Post's Lessons of the Iraq War

Mike Whitney
Rove in the Dock

Website of the Day
Ringtones That Roar

 

 

March 17 / 18, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Here Comes Another "Crime Wave"

John Scagliotti
A Sissy's Manifesto

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Green Imposter: When Al Gore Was Veep

Paul Craig Roberts
The Confession Backfired

Greg Moses
Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso

Harry Clark
Thrice-Told Tales: Those Israel-Syria Peace Talks

Brian Cloughley
In the Name of Improving People's Lives: Mounting Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq

Mehran Ghassemi
An Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh on the US, Israel and Iran

William Loren Katz
A Disturbing Expulsion: Racism and the Cherokee Nation

John Ross
Being a Zapatista Where You Live

Ralph Nader
Ban the Bomblets!

Walter Brasch
An Intolerant Minority: the Witch Hunt Against Gays in the Military

Samer Assad
The Palestinian Unity Government: Another for US Diplomacy

Dave Zirin
Bowie Kuhn: Death of a Baseball Reactionary

Ron Jacobs
The Darker Nation's: Remembering and Re-examining the Third World

Missy Beattie
No to War and Pace

Don Santina
First, They Came for the Democrats

Sami Adwan
What Hillary Should Know About Palestinian Schoolbooks

Dr. Susan Block
Gods of Spring: the Erotics of the Equinox

Poets' Basement
Reed, Landau, Engel, Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
God Save Helen Mirren

 

March 16, 2007

R. T. Naylor
The Political Economy of Diamonds

Paul Craig Roberts
The Last Days of Constitutional Rule

Joshua Frank
Obama's Israel Problem

Diane Farsetta
How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups

Tom Barry
Tancredo's Putsch: Anti-Immigrant Agenda Veers Hard Right

Stephen Lendman
Plays from a Political Fake Book: Congress's Phony Opposition to War

Al Krebs
Compounding Infamy: Chiquita, Its Workers and Colombia's Death Squads

Jackie Corr
Senator Schumer and the Corruption Culture

Ramzy Baroud
Palestinians Must Redefine Struggle

Reza Fiyouzat
The Chinese Way of Capitalism

Website of the Day
Introducing: the iRak

 

March 15, 2007

Alison Weir
Strip-Searching Children at Israeli Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Under Surge

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memo to Congressional Leaders on Iraq Funding: First Stop the Bleeding

Franklin Spinney
Of Character and Contractors: the Unauthorized Rumsfeld

Standard Schaefer
Biofuels and the Green Resistance

Conn Hallinan
The Right's Stuff in Africa: Neocons, Evangelicals and Sudan

Maureen Webb
Another Patriot Act Abuse

Sonja Karkar
Rachel Corrie and Palestine

Margaret Kimberly
The Profits of Self-Hatred: Malkin and D'Souza, Incorporated

Anthony Papa
The New Capones: It's Time to Rethink Drug Prohibition

Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost

Video of the Day
The Easiest Targets

Website of the Day
Memo to Kucinich: Watch Your Back!

 

March 14, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Peter Linebaugh on the Slave Trade, Magna Carta and the State of the Left

Philip Agee
The Decline of the US, the Rise of Latin America

Bruce Dixon
The Digital Redlining of African-Americans

John Walsh
How One Senator Could End the War

Sunsara Taylor
Red Light, Green Light: the Democrats and Iran

William Johnson
Still Reeling from Katrina: The Spirited Strike at Pascagoula Shipyards

Richard Thieme
Entitlement and Empire

Jeffrey Klein
Right-Wing Academic Values

Nicola Nasser
This Time, Israeli is Missing an Historic Opportunity

Dave Lindorff
Political Hide-and-Seek with the Democrats

Website of the Day
Oil Change

 

March 13, 2007

Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
Scenes from a Cop Riot

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Invastion of Lebanon

Robert Bryce
Beyond Redemption: the Legacy of George the Second

Corporate Crime Reporter
Coal-Powered Democrats

Pierre Rimbert
Libération and the Evolution of French Neoliberalism

Dave Lindorff
What's Good for Halliburton is Good ... for Dubai

Elizabeth Schulte
The Repackaging of John Edwards

Norman Solomon
The Pragmatism of Prolonged War

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats' Fraudulent Iraq Exit Plan

Jeff Conant
Greeting Rumsfeld in Taos

Website of the Day
Tacoma and the Big Heat

 

 

March 12, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Patriot Act Unbound

Col. Dan Smith
Ghost Prisoners, Shadowy Jails and Secret Trials

Paul Craig Roberts
Neocons in Kafkaland

Ingmar Lee
The Sentencing of Betty Krawczyk: a 78-Year-Old Eco-Heroine

Fred Gardner
Cannabis for the Wounded: Another Walter Reed Scandal

Ron Jacobs
Showdown at Port Tacoma: Confronting the War Machine in the Northwest

Ralph Nader
Send the Bush Twins to Iraq!

John Ross
Political Prisoners in Calderon's Mexico

Stephen Fleischman
Bush's Latin American Slip

Eva Carazo Vargas
Why We Reject CAFTA

Website of the Day
Mountain Justice Spring Break

 

March 9 / 11, 2007

Sameer Dossani
Interview with Noam Chomsky: War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st Century

Jeffrey St. Clair
Crude Alliance: The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil

Dave Marsh
Bono's Bullshit: Not One Red Cent

Patrick Cockburn
Shia Pilgrims Die Despite US Offensive

Jennifer Van Bergen
A Gonzo Argument: Alberto Gonzales's Defense of NSA Domestic Spying

James P. Stevenson
Pardon Whom? Libby and the Cheney Unseen

Arthur J. Versluis
Crusade for Commercialism

Corporate Crime Reporter
Not a Dime's Worth of Difference: Congress and Corporate Crime

Missy Beattie
Too Much Info, Newt!: Sex, God and Praying

Michael Simmons
Annie Get Your Gums: Why I Like Ann Coulter

Kevin Zeese
Making Democrats Pay the Price: Voting Against the War is No Longer Enough

David Swanson
Shocking Video: The Dark Side of the Democrats

John A. Murphy
Are the Congressional Democrats Spineless?

Dave Lindorff
Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico: Abetted by Democrats

Nikolas Kozloff
Lights! Camera! Chavez!

Christopher Fons
Bush Goes to Latin America: Is It All About (N)PR?

Mike Roselle
A Thousand Miles of Bad River

Mike Mejia
Justice for Sibel Edmonds

Susie Day
Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran!

Michael Donnelly
LA Story: Rock Stars, Porn Stars and Peace

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know (Parts 4 and 5)

Poets' Basement
Reed, Laymon, Mezmer and Harley

Website of the Weekend
Japanese Dolphin Massacre

 

March 8, 2007

Elaine Cassel
The Tragic Case of Jose Padilla

Yifat Susskind
Iraq's Other War: Violence Against Women Under US Occupation

Corporate Crime Reporter
Politics and the Prosecutors

Col. Dan Smith
The Sins of Walter Reed

William S. Lind
The Washington Dodgers

Mark Engler
Bush's Latin American Spring Break

Roger Burbach
With Negroponte as Tour Director, Bush's Trip Destined to Fail

Dana Cloud
Return of the Campus Witch Hunts: David Horowitz and the Thought Police

Isabella Kenfield
Brazil's Ethanol Pland: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental Degradation

Lucinda Marshall
We Stand with the Women of the World

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction (Part 3)

Website of the Day
Filibuster for Peace


March 7, 2007

Christopher Ketcham
What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?

Christopher Ketcham
The Kuala Lumpur Deceit: a CIA Cover Up

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Ketcham's Story: Coming in From the Cold

Winslow T. Wheeler
Mismeasuring the Defense Budget

Sean Donahue
Free Scooter Libby!

Dave Lindorff
The Fall Guy Has Fallen

Evelyn Pringle
Psychosis and Mania: ADHD Drug Warnings Come Too Late for Many

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction

Website of the Day
Debating Iraq: Gaffney Against the World!

 

March 6, 2007

Gary Leupp
Meet Eliot Cohen: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It Gets"

Uri Avnery
Esterina Tartman: The Big Mouth of Israeli Fascism

Patrick Cockburn
The War on Terror is a Bust: Bush is Now Al Qaeda's Top Recruiter

Saul Landau
World in Crisis, Candidates in Denial

Corporate Crime Reporter
John Edwards' Big Lie

Ron Jacobs
The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong!

Mike Roselle
Judi Bari: Ten Years Gone

P. Sainath
Neoliberalism and the Ideology of the Cancer Cell

Joshua Frank
Dump the Dems, Unite Against the War

Aniket Alam
Women's Day, Lenin and a Riot in Copenhagen

Dave Zirin
Resurrecting Don Barksdale: Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer

Website of the Day
Physicians for a National Health Program

 

March 5, 2007

Greg Moses
Holding Suzi Hazahza for Profit

Patrick Cockburn
Exodus of Iraq's Ancient Minorities

James Petras
Bush vs. Chavez

Frida Berrigan
US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran

Marjorie Cohn
Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial: the Case of Augustín Aguayo

Douglas Kammen and S.W. Hayati
The Rice Crisis in East Timor

Sen. Barack Obama
On Israel and AIPAC: "We Must Preserve Our Total Commitment to Our Unique Defense Relationship with Israel"

Michael Young
Sy Hersh and Iran: the Dark Side of Spun a Lot?

Dave Lindorff
It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al

Sonja Karkar
Raiding Nablus: Israel's Hot Winter Offensive

Website of the Day
How Obama Learned to Love Israel

 

March 3 / 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

Corporate Crime Reporter
"No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim Bias

Jeffrey St. Clair
Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite

Patrick Cockburn
War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply

Ralph Nader
Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America

M. Shahid Alam
American Mamlukes

Gilad Atzmon
From Esther to AIPAC

Fred Gardner
It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela

Rock & Rap Confidential
Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively for Blacks"

Gillian Russom
The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo

Michael McPhearson
My Small Act of Civil Disobedience

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom?

Sunsara Taylor
Four Years of an Unjust War

Wendy Thompson
Re-Organizing the UAW

Kenneth Rexroth
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"

Missy Beattie
Regarding Cheney

Don Monkerud
Jesus Turned Away at US Border

Tina Louise
Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams

Poets' Basement
Richards, Landau and Davies

Website of the Weekend
John Prine: Flag Decal

 

March 2, 2007

Roger Morris
Cheney's Bagram Ghosts

Phil Gasper
Prisoners of Ideology

Mike Roselle
Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scam

John V. Walsh
Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the War

Sherwood Ross
Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget

China Hand
Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb?

David Rosen
To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America

Chris Genovali
Connecting the Dots

Peter Harley
The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela

Website of the Day
Courage to Resist

 

March 1, 2007

Laura Carlsen
Return to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail

Paul Craig Roberts
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men

Ray McGovern
How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Theater of the Absurd

Najum Mustaq
America's Musharraf Dilemma

Brent Bowden
The War on Terror and the Terror of War

Tina Richards
Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds

Ethan Nadelman
Mexico and the Drug War

Mike Stark
"Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution

Wadner Pierre / Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN

Mike Whitney
Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan

Website of the Day
Dylan Hears a Who

 

February 28, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
An Amazing Disgrace

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Francisco Letelier

China Hand
The Shanghai Crash: Take the Money and Run

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Boumediene Case on Gitmo Detainees and Habeas Corpus Was Wrongly Decided

Sarah Olson
Is Lt. Watada an Isolated Case of Military Dissent?

Susan Van Haitsma
Mark Wilkerson: Standing for a Soldier's Right to Conscience

Nicole Colson
License to Torture

Harvey Wasserman
The Sham of Nuclear Power

William S. Lind
The Non-Thinking Enemy

Nicola Nasser
US Turnabout?: Engagement and Confrontation in the Middle East

Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld

 

February 27, 2007

Tariq Ali
The Khyber Impasse: the Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Tom Barry
America's Crusaders: Santorum and Lieberman

Uri Avnery
The Next War

Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar
Oil Grab: the Secret Scheme to Split Iraq

Jeff Nygaard
Howard Hunt and the National Memory System

Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Grenada: an Invasion Revisited

Mitchell Kaidy
Israel's Cluster Bombs: Made in USA, Ground-Tested in Lebanon

Carl Finamore
Airline Bankruptcies, Mergers and Profits

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Really Big Lie About Autism

Ramzy Baroud
Who is Really in Control?

Andrew Rouse
The Queen, Her Apothecary and the War on Iraq

Website of the Day
New York City Skyline

 

February 26, 2007

Franklin Lamb
US Israel Lobby Targets Lebanon's Jihad al-Bina

Bill Quigley
The Right to Return to New Orleans

Greg Moses
Suzi Hazahza in Haskell Hell

Col. Dan Smith
Calling All Carriers

Ralph Nader
The Bush Administration is a Threat to Our National Security

Paul Buchheit
The Income Gap

Jeff Leys
How Democrats Are Buying the Iraq War

Dave Zirin
Bojangling for Bigots: an Open Letter to Jason Whitlock

Mike Whitney
Doomsday Dick and the Plague of Frogs

Michael Dickinson
Free Kareem Amer!

Website of the Day
Beware the Chickenhawks!

 

February 24 / 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frightening Tales of Endangered Species

R. T. Naylor
Inside Islamic Charity

Gary Leupp
AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran

Saul Landau
Modern Day Miracle: Rev. Haggard Cured! Thank You, Jesus!

Ron Jacobs
Missile Defense Redux

Jeffrey Blankfort
A Debate on the Israel Lobby

Chris Sands
Afghanistan in Winter: Where Death Comes Cheap

Gary Freeman
The N-Word and Black History Month

Larry Portis
Zionism and the United States: the Cultural Connection

P. Sainath
Two Million People in "Maximum Distress"

Lee Sustar
What Next for the Immigrants' Rights Movement?

Kevin Wehr
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros: the Thrill isn't Gone, It's Just Moved

Ken Couesbouc
The African Card

Soffiyah Elijah
FBI Hunting Dead Panthers: Can John Bowman Ever Rest in Peace?

Kathlyn Stone
Iraqi Labor vs. Big Oil

Dave Lindorff
Breaking the Dam in Olympia

Jason Kunin
Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry

Kevin Zeese
Can Hillary be Trusted?

Remi Kanazi
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints

Missy Beattie
Five Words That Change Lives

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt and Rodriguez

Website of the Weekend
Caught on Tape: an Anti-War Movement Finding Its Feet?

 

February 23, 2007

Franklin Spinney
Top Gun vs. the Axis of Evil: Is This What We Have Become?

Jonathan Cook
Watching the Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
The True Extent of Britain's Failure in Basra

Kathy Kelly
Do Something Good

Chris Dols
Islamophobia at Urban Outfiters: the Case for Keffiyehs

Evelyn Pringle
The Neurontin Suicides: Risks Kept Hidden for Years

Stephen Pearcy
If Bush is a War Criminal, What About the Troops?

Dan Brook
Making Poverty History

Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Police Commit Rapes

Website of the Day
A Citizens Arrest of Patty Murray

 

February 22, 2007

Robert Fantina
Repeating History

Tariq Ali
Prodi's Soap Operatic Fall: Neoliberalism and War in Italy

Michael Shank
An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, the Democrats and Climate Change

John Ross
Calderon's War on Drugs

Christopher Brauchli
Stockcars on Dope: How NASCAR and the Tour de France are Bring the World Together

Cindy Litman
Paying for the Damage Done to Iraq

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Mr. Jefferson's Inheritors: Caution, Calculation and Cold Feet

Kevin Zeese
Finally, a Populist Antiwar Candidate for President

Aseem Shrivastava
The New Indian Way?: a Developer's Model of Development

Reza Fiyouzat
A Letter to the Israeli People: We are All Led by Mad Men

Illinois Students Against the War
Why We Protested at Obama's Speech

Website of the Day
An Interview with Mike Gravel

 

February 21, 2007

Maass / St. Clair
The Clintons: the Art of Politics Without Conscience

Sharon Smith
Inside the Imperial Budget

Greg Moses
Showdown Over Texas Immigrant Prisons

Margaret Kimberly
America the Stupid

Ralph Nader
Making Cancer Cool: Tobacco and Hollywood

Nicola Nasser
Evasive Diplomacy: Bush Adm. Shuns Middle East Peace Talks

Mike Whitney
The Second Great Depression

Tao Ruspoli
Revolutionary But Gangsta: a Conversation with Stic.Man of Dead Prez

Byeong Jeongpil
Beyond the "Protection Facility", Another Prison

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Hillary, Obama and Edwards Oppose Single-Payer Health Care

Josh Mahan
The Lost Art of Shattuck: a Good, Old-Fashioned Drinking Story

Website of the Day
Time to Free the Puerto Rican Nationalists


February 20, 2007

Sgt. Martin Smith
Structured Cruelty: Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine

Werther
How to be a Washington Expert

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing SAIC

Carl G. Estabrook
Common Sense About the Recent Past

China Hand
Setting Sun: The Diverging US-Japan Relationship

Joshua Frank
Cleaning Up Exxon's Greenpoint Oil Spill

Megan Boler
The Daily Show and Political Activism

John Feffer
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia

Daryll E. Ray
What's Inside the New Farm Bill

Alan Gregory
Midwest Wolves Fall Prey to Slob Hunters' PR Scam

Website of the Day
"Not a Target Rich Environment?"

 

February 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Economists in Denial: Blind to the Consequences of Offshoring

Gary Leupp
"A Genocidal, Suicidal Nation:" Mitt Romney Joins Iran's Hysterical Accusers

Ron Jacobs
The Mecca Agreements: the Future Remains Bleak

Michael F. Brown
The Peace Process Industry

Robert Jensen
Liberal Icons and War: Bi-Partisan Empire-Building

Roger Burbach
Ecuador Stands Up to US

Monica Benderman
America, Where Are You Now?

Sonja Karkar
Apocalyptic Archaeology: Israel's Provocations Threaten Jerusalem

John Walsh
Some Good News from Beantown

Talli Nauman
Colorado Delta Blues: Challenging the Law of the River

Website of the Day
"The Best Place to be in Town"

 

Feburary 17 / 18, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Sold to Mr. Gordon, Another Bridge!

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Patrick Cockburn, Part Two

Gary Leupp
Iran: A Chronology of Disinformation

Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Mesas in an Ancient Light

Roger Morris
The Undertaker's Tally: the Tragedy of Donald Rumsfeld

Uri Avnery
Facing Mecca

James Brooks
Palestinians and the "Diplomatic Horizon"

Sen. Russell Feingold
Congress Must Defund the Iraq War

Linn Washington, Jr.
"Death Row is a Web That Catches Only the Poor"

Michele Brand
Iran: the Proxy War?

Fred Gardner
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Music and Basketball in the Harlem Renaissance

Mitchel Cohen
Storming the Pentagon: Lessons from 1967

Mike Ferner
Democrats Keep Ohio Refugee Free: "No Iraqis in Our Backyards!"

David Swanson
Memo to Don Young: What Lincoln Really Said

P. Sainath
In the Theater of the Jungle Belt

Mike Stark
GoreAid: Gore Plans Concert with Musicians He and Tipper Betrayed in the 80s

Missy Beattie
The Object of My Disaffection

Jonathan Franklin
Carnival: Where Dance is Hope

Website of the Weekend
The Godfather and the Tenor: "It's a Man's World"


February 16, 2007

Marc Levy
Turning Point: Veterans' Voices Trigger Response

Andrew Cockburn
In Iraq, Anyone Can Make a Bomb

Glen Ford
Powell, Rice and Obama: Putting Black Faces on Imperial Aggression

Greg Moses
The Terror of Suzi Hazahza: Why Her Family Must Be Freed

Ron Jacobs
Marching on the Pentagon: Then and Now

John W. Farley
Hook, Line and Sinker: The Press and Stephen Hadley

James Marc Leas
Vermont Legislature Says: "Bring Them Home Now!"

Tim Rinne
The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth?: StratCom and the Coming War on Iran

Albert Wan
Star-Cross'd Lovers?: The Strange Romance of Hillary and David Brooks

Website of the Day
Did Wal-Mart Murder Tweety Bird?

 


February 15, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Muqtada al-Sadr?

Saul Landau
How to Obsess Your Enemies

Stephen Lendman
The Rules of Imperial Management

Evelyn Pringle
More Zyprexa Postcards from the Edge

Michael Simmons
Is the Joke Over?: an Evening with Ralph Steadman

Kevin Zeese
A Congressional Kabuki Show

Dave Lindorff
The Co-Dependent Congress

Pete Shanks
They Want You to Eat Cloned Meat--And They Don't Want You to Know It

Peter Rost
The Michelle Manhart Affair: the Air Force Listens!

Lenni Brenner / Gilad Atzmon
An Exchange

Website of the Day
Barack Obama vs. Huey P. Newton

 

February 14, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: A Conversation with Patrick Cockburn

Dick J. Reavis
War Without a Name

Margaret Kimberly
Medical Apartheid in America

Christopher Brauchli
The Perils of Charity: You Can be Prosecuted for Funding Terror Even If the Designation of the Group as a Terrorist Organization was Wrong!

Paul Craig Roberts
Cracks in the Pentagon

John Ross
The Plot Against Mexican Corn

Michael F. Brown
The Democrats and Palestine: New Chairman, Old Rules

Dave Lindorff
The Press Bites, Again: a Word of Caution on Those Iranian Weapons

J.L. Chestunut, Jr.
Texas-style Injustice in Black and White

Don Fitz
Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols

Michael Donnelly
Give Love, Give Life

Dr. Susan Block
The Chemistry of Love

Website of the Day
Code Pink Drops By Hillary's Office

 

February 13, 2007

Uri Avnery
Three Provocations: the Method in the Madness

Patrick Cockburn
Targeting Tehran

Ralph Nader
When Wall Street Whines (You Know They're Making a Killing)

Marjorie Cohn
Fool Us Twice? From Iraq to Iran

Col. Dan Smith
Iran Bashing Goes Prime Time

Col. Douglas MacGreagor
Empty Vessels: Gen. Patraeus and Other Hollow Men

Thomas Power
Coal Ambivalence: Mining Montana

Nicola Nasser
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Weekend Edition
March 24 / 25, 2007

Kyoto, Gore and the Atomic Lobby

Nuclear Saviors?

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Striding into Kyoto in December of 1997 claiming to be a mighty warrior in the battle against global warming was a familiar beast, the nuclear power industry. Some of the industry's biggest lobbyists, men such as James Curtis (a former deputy secretary of energy during the Reagan years), prowled the streets and sushi bars of this ancient city (itself running on juice from an aging nuke) angling for some positive words in the treaty for their troubled enterprise. The big reactor makers, GE, Westinghouse, and Combustion Engineering, were there too, dissing the oil and coal lobby, downplaying the long-term viability of natural gas and generally treating the eco-summit as if it were an international trade show.

On the eve of the Climate Change summit, I was slipped a copy of the nuclear industry's Kyoto briefing book prepared by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a $100 million a year trade organization. The book was written by researchers at Bechtel, the giant construction firm that has built dozens of nuclear plants across the globe. The document touts the latest "advanced light water nuclear reactor" as the most ecologically benign engineering feat since the solar panel and argues that only realistic way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels in the next ten years is to bring on-line at least an additional 50 reactors. "Nuclear energy has been the largest single contributor to reduced air pollution in the world over the past 20 years," the NEI's Kyoto global warming book boasts. "And it promises to play an even greater role in the future, especially in developing countries, like India and China, which need to increase their electricity supplies to accommodate their expanding populations and economies."

The NEI book tactfully avoids the unsavory subject of radioactive waste, but does go to some lengths to argue on behalf of China's vigilance in the battle against nuclear proliferation. China, the NEI suggests, would never secretly export nuclear technology because it "has expressed strong concern over the possibility of nuclear-armed neighbors." More significantly, the NEI warns that China "plans to standardize its nuclear generating technology, selecting one or two standardized reactor designs for future construction. If U.S. reactor manufacturers are barred from competing, China will not have the option of selecting the safest technology in the world, and the market will be permanently closed to U.S. suppliers."

With China and other Asian countries planning to build more than 70 nuclear plants by 2025 years, the financial stakes are staggering. American companies, such as GE, Westinghouse and Bechtel, desperately crave those multi-billion dollar contracts. "In theory these could all be US plants," boasted Ian Butterfield, CBS's vice-president for international affairs. With a little help from the US government.

The NEI's Kyoto packet includes a long list of endorsements ranging from Tom Clancy and the Pope to Hazel O'Leary and green guru James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis, who is quoted as saying, "Nuclear power has an important contribution to make." Also proudly displayed for the Kyoto conferees was a statement by Al Gore's good friend, Rep. Bob Clement, Democrat from Tennessee, who pronounced, "With the implementation of the Clean Air Act and the administration's increased concern about global climate change and acid rain, renewed attention has been focused on nuclear energy's significant environmental benefits. Environmental awareness coupled with increased basic needs for electricity are becoming critical in certain regions of the country. Nuclear energy, along with a strong conservation program and energy efficiency programs, is a smart choice."

Sadly for the credibility of the atom lobby, some of the more eye-grabbing numbers in the NEI's report simply don't check out. For example, the nuclear industry claims that the world's 447 nuclear plants reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent. But the true villain behind global warming is carbon. Existing nuclear plants save only about 5 percent of total carbon emissions, hardly much of a bargain given the costs and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear lobby likes to compare its record to coal-fired plants, rather renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Even when compared to coal, nuclear power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."

The activities of the Nuclear Energy Institute do not meet with universal approbation in the nuclear industry. The dues are onerous-the Tennessee Valley Authority is reputed to fork up no less than $10 million a year-while the results are in some cases at least, risible. Some years ago, for example, the watchdogs of the industry noted that The Simpsons, the enormously popular cartoon series, was depicting nuclear power in an unfavorable light. Bart Simpson's father Homer works at a local nuclear plant where the reactors are held together with chewing gum and a river fed by waste water from the plant is rife with three-eyed trout and other mutations. The NEI sprang into action, sponsoring intensive briefings and tours of reassuringly shiny nuclear facilities for the Simpson's creative team-all without any discernible effect on Homer Simpson, who continues to absent-mindedly drop radioactive fuel rods into his pocket at work and then toss them out of the car on the way home.

In many ways, the NEI's global warming initiative is largely a replay of their attempt to profit off of acid rain legislation in the late 1980s, a campaign which miserably failed to attract much sympathy from legislators and only seemed to anger the public. But in Clintontime the NEI encountered a somewhat warmer reception in the White House and on the Hill. Indeed, the weeks before the Kyoto conclave the nuclear industry has scored series of amazing triumphs not seen since the waning days of the Reagan administration.

One reason for its renewed success may be that the NEI began putting its money into more profitable investments than its campaign to greenwash The Simpsons, namely into the coffers of the DNC and RNC. In the four years before Kyoto the NEI and its members doled out $13 million in political contributions to key senate and house members, including John Dingell ($122,700) Tom Delay ($106.500), Dick Gephardt ($104,000) Thomas Bliley ($100,000), and David Bonior ($80,075).

Another reason is that the nuclear lobby has enjoyed a long and profitable relationship with both Clinton and Gore. Al Gore, who wrote of the potential green virtues of nuclear power in his book Earth in the Balance, earned his stripes as a congressman protecting the interests of two of the nuclear industry's most problematic enterprises, the TVA and the Oak Ridge Labs. And, of course, Bill Clinton backed the Entergy Corporation's outrageous plan to soak Arkansas ratepayers with the cost overruns on the company's Grand Gulf reactor which provided power to electricity consumers in Louisiana.

First came the deal to begin selling nuclear reactors to China, announced during Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit Washington, even though Zemin brazenly vowed at the time not to abide by the so-called "full scope safeguards" spelled out in the International Atomic Energy Act. The move was apparently made over the objections of Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who cited repeated exports by China of "dual use" technologies to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The CIA also weighed in against the deal, pointing out in a report to the President that "China was the single most import supplier of equipment and technology for weapons of mass destruction" worldwide. In a press conference on the deal, Mike McCurry said these nuclear reactors will be "a lot better for the planet than a bunch of dirty coal-fired plants" and will be "a great opportunity for American vendors"-that is, Westinghouse.

A day later Clinton signed an agreement to begin selling nuclear technology to Brazil and Argentina for the first time since 1978, when Jimmy Carter canceled a previous deal after repeated violations of safety guidelines and nonproliferation agreements.

In a letter to congress, Clinton vouched for the South American countries, saying they had made "a definitive break with earlier ambivalent nuclear policies." Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg justified the nuclear pact with Brazil and Argentina as "a partnership in developing clean and reliable energy supplies for the future." Steinberg noted that both countries had opposed binding limits on greenhouse emissions and that new nuclear plants would be one way "to take advantage of the fact that today we have technologies available for energy use which were not available at the time that the United States and other developed countries were going through their periods of development."

One the eve of the Kyoto meetings, the nuclear industry secured another startling windfall, this time a promise of nearly $400 million in research and development subsidies. The key man here was one of Al Gore's intellectual Svengalis, John P. Holdren. While a professor at Berkeley, Holdren portrayed himself as a mighty foe of nuclear weapons. His popularity among Berkeley students soared after he gave ecological backing to Carl Sagan's scary scenarios about nuclear winter. Now Holdren is ensconced at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he presides as the John and Teresa Heinz professor of environmental policy. Yes, that Teresa Heinz, she of the $2 billion fortune, wife of John Kerry, and head of a $200 million foundation which gives money for "practical solutions to global environmental problems." She is also a long-time board member of the nuke-happy Environmental Defense Fund.

Holdren was tapped by Gore and Clinton's science advisor Jack Gibbons to head a task force on energy and climate policy as part of the Presidential Commission on Science and Technology. Holdren's panel was well stocked with allies of the nuclear lobby, headlined by Bechtel's Lawrence Papay and William Fulkerson, former associate director of the Oak Ridge National Lab and a senior fellow at the Gore-endowed Joint Institute for Energy and Environment at the University of Tennessee. Masquerading as an academic was Charles Vest, a former president of MIT and a driving force behind the American Nuclear Society's Eagle Alliance.

Another prominent spot went to the person who must hold the all-time record for appointments to presidential commissions involving environmental matters, Virginia Weldon, chief flack for Monsanto. Weldon rarely misses an opportunity to praise irradiation as a cure for all of the dangers lurking in the US food supply.

Environmentalists were given two slots. One went to Daniel Lashof, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The other was reserved for one of Lashof's biggest funders, Hal Harvey, executive director of the Energy Foundation. In 1996, both Lashof and Harvey supported the disastrous bail out of the California nuclear industry.

With this roster of advisers, it's not surprising that the Gore-Holdren report largely parroted the line advanced by the Nuclear Energy Institute, calling for increased research and development subsidies for fusion and fission, export of US nuclear technology and the creation of a new Nuclear Energy Research Initiative to underwrite "new reactor designs with higher-efficiency, lower-cost and improved safety to compete in the global market."

Holdren's panel recommended that federal spending for research and development on commercial nuclear reactors be tripled from $40 million to $120 million, a bigger percentage increase than is recommended for either renewables or energy efficiency. The money is essentially a direct subsidy to help nuclear companies and utilities deal with the industries two biggest problems: radioactive waste disposal and aging reactors. "The interest is not so much in building new nukes in the US, but in finding a way to keep the old reactors up and running so that they can be relicensed," says Auke Piersma of the Critical Mass Energy Project. "It's a shame that people like Holdren use global warming as way to justify this handout."

"Nuclear energy currently generates about 17 percent of the world's electricity," Holdren writes. "If this electricity were generated instead by coal, world carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption would be almost 10 percent larger than they currently are. Given the desirability of stabilizing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to establish fission energy as a widely viable and expandable option. World leadership in nuclear energy technologies and the underlying science is also vital to the United States from the perspective of national security, international influence and global stability."

Incredibly, Holdren and his gang also recommended spending $280 million on fusion research, a proven waste of money in terms of energy production. Under even the most optimistic scenarios, fusion reactors will be able to generate electricity for about 50 cents per kilowatt hour, ten times more than the cost of natural gas turbines. But a boost in fusion research can go a long way toward solving a problem that has vexed the nuclear industry and the defense lobby: How to keep testing nuclear weapons technology under the restrictions of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty The answer: funnel fusion energy research money to places like the Lawrence Livermore Labs and its mammoth National Ignition Facility.

The Department of Energy didn't sit by idly either. Ever on the lookout for any opportunity to advance the cause of nuclear power was Dr. Terry Lash, the Energy Department's director of nuclear operations under Clinton and Gore. Lash as the man who almost single-handedly kept Hanford's Fast Flux Breeder Reactor humming along on "hot standby" until it can once again be fired up to make tritium for H-bombs and, in some distant future, be put to the more humanitarian use of making medical isotopes. To fund the Fast Flux project, Lash diverted $40 million a year from the strapped cleanup budget for Hanford, which the DOE itself calls the most toxic site in North America.

Lash also promoted nuclear power's global mission, fervently lobbying inside the DOE for nuclear trade pacts with China, India, Argentina and Brazil. "Lash was a shrewd and incredibly calculating operator," a senior DOE staffer told me. "He'd employ any argument for the cause of nuclear power. He pressed for sales of reactors to Brazil and China, saying that it was vital to combat the greenhouse effect."

Lash also played a key role in stuffing the annual clean air budgets with lavish handouts to the nuclear industry. Sources say Lash originally pushed for a $50 million "clean air" subsidy to utilities laden with nuclear plants, but the figure was eventually scaled back to $30 million by deficit hawks at the Office of Management and Budget.

Longtime anti-nuke activists remember Lash from his days as a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council in the 1970s, when the group touted itself as a fierce foe of nuclear power and raised millions off the Three Mile Island disaster. During his tenure there, Lash co-wrote a book for NRDC on nuclear waste. Lash's co-author was none other than John Bryson, a co-founder of the group. Bryson went on to become the CEO of Edison International (formerly Southern California Edison), which operates the San Onofre nuclear plant. In 1997, Bryson was fresh off an amazing victory, where he and his pals convinced the California legislature to stick ratepayers and taxpayers with $26 billion in "stranded costs" to make his company's nuke's "more competitive in the deregulated electricity market."

One last goal remained for the nuclear lobby: split the environmental community on nuclear power. There was every reason for optimism. Nuclear energy had divided the greens in the past, most spectacularly in 1969 when David Brower publicly attacked fellow Sierra Club leaders who helped Pacific Gas & Electric pick the Nippomo Dunes as the site for the company's Diablo Canyon reactor. This principled stance led to Brower's ouster as the Club's executive director. In 1990 scientists from the EDF and NRDC joined a onto a statement saying that nuclear power had an essential role to play in curbing air pollution.

As Al Gore packed his day pack for his whirlwind trip to Kyoto, a full-page ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal that must have warmed the hearts of the men at the NEI. Under the headline, "A Business Climate Challenge: America Needs to Get Serious About Climate Change," 60 corporate executives, led by Nike, Mitsubishi, CalEnergy, Pacific Energy, Mitchell Energy, and Ted Turner endorsed the need for a strong climate change treaty. The ad was also signed by Enron and Bechtel, two companies with interests in nuclear power. The companies had been rounded up by three environmental groups, World Wildlife Fund, Ozone Action and NRDC. "The idea for this really came from the Clinton administration," Brandon MacGillis tells me. "They said if we wanted to see a good treaty we needed to show that property owners and Republican business leaders cared about global warming."

Using a grant from the Ford Foundation, money from Ozone Action and contributions from Nike and Mitchell Energy, the groups began asking corporate leaders to sign on the ad. "We asked everyone we could think of," MacGillis says. MacGillis admits that they environmental reputation of the companies wasn't a factor. "Sure some wanted onto the ad purely for economic or pr reasons," MacGillis confessed. "But other companies really think they can make a difference. Nike, for example, believes that by improving air quality in its factories it can increase productivity." (This is a staggering admission. Up till then, Nike has rigorously claimed it has no control over the operations of its Asian factories.)

As all of this was going on, a coalition of environmental groups, spearheaded by Critical Mass Energy Project, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, drafted a letter to Clinton and Gore on the subject of nuclear power. The letter harshly denounced the Holdren report, DOE's budget for nuclear power and all "proposals to use nuclear power to reduce greenhouse emissions." More than forty groups signed the letter. One major group refused: NRDC.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net

 

 

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