Today's
Stories
March 15,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Under Surge
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
The Politics of Archaeology in Jerusalem
David Swanson
Iran War Talking Points
Columbia Coalition
Against the War
Why We Are Striking
Website of the Day
Our Friends at Antiwar.com Need Your Help
February
12, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
Scapegoating
Iran
Paul Craig
Roberts
How the World Can Stop Bush: Dump the Dollar!
John Walsh
A Splintered Antiwar Movement: Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome
Dr. John Carroll,
MD
What Next for Haiti's Cite Soliel?: a Journey Through the World's
Most Miserable Slum
Greg Moses
An Outrageously Sickening Immigration Policy
Nicole Colson
The Frame-Up That Fell Apart: Jury See Through Another Botched
Federal "Terrorism" Case
Dave Lindorff
Acting in Bad Feith: Inappropriate
Behavior and Impeachment
Ray McGovern
The Kervorkian Administration: Are Bush and Cheney the Biggest
Threats to the Existence of Israel?
Doug Giebel
Rampant Cyncism
David Swanson
Twisted: Sex and Torture in America
Website of the Day
The Texas Model: Executing Women in Iraq
February
10 /11, 2007
Weekend Edition
Alexander Cockburn
Will
They Nuke Iran?
Gabriel Kolko
Israel, Iran and the Bush Administration
Patrick Cockburn
Now
It's War on the Shia
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Till the Cows Come Home: How the West was Eaten
Kevin Alexander Gray
Barack Obama: Not a Bold Bone in His Body
M. Shahid Alam
The Pacification of Islam
Greg Moses
The Words of Mohammad: an 11 Year-Old Prisoner
Paul Craig
Roberts
Brzezinski's
Damning Indictment
George Ciccariello-Maher
Coups and Democracy in Venezuela
Kevin Zeese
"You Can't Oppose the War and Fund the War:" a Conversation
with Anthony Arnove
Turner / Kim
The World's Factory: China's Filthiest Export
George Duke
Has Jazz Lost Its African-American Core?
Walter Brasch
A Dream Still Unfulfilled: America Remains Divided
Shepherd Bliss
Veterans' Love Story
Missy Beattie
Fear and Diversions: Anna Nicole, Wolf Blitzer and the Missing
Body Count in Iraq
Peter Harley
Mr. Hyde and Uncle Sam: Reading Stevenson in an Age of Shock
and Awe
Pat Wolff
Oprah's Strange Endorsement of "The Secret"
Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Engel and Louise
Website of the Day
The 25 Most Corrupt Members of Bush Administration
February 9, 2007
Conn Hallinan
The
Najaf Massacre: an Annotated Fable
Gary Leupp
Charging
Iran with "Genocide" Before Nuking It
Lee Sustar
An Interview with Patrick Cockburn
Nikolas Kozloff
Bombing Venezuela's Indians
Newton Garver
Politics
and Apartheid
Yitzhak Laor
Under the Steamroller
Dave Lindorff
Truth or Consequences: Some Questions for Bush
David Swanson
The Politics of Self-Congratulation: Democrats Change Gas, Claim
It's a New Car
Website of the Day
Why Corporate Social Responsibility is Not Working for Workers
February
8, 2007
John V. Walsh
Filibuster
to End the War Now!
Marjorie Cohn
Watada Beats Government
Trish Schuh
The Salvador Option in Beirut
Ron Jacobs
The Case of the San Francisco 8
Laura Carlsen
Mexico at Davos: the Split with Latin America Widens
Ramzy Baroud
Countdown for Iran
Brenda Norrell
"Leave It in the Ground": Indigenous Peoples Call for
Global Ban on Uranium Mining
Bryan Farrell
The Splinter and the Beam: Violence in the Eye of the Beholder
Judith Scherr
BP Beds Down with Cal-Berkeley
Website of
the Day
Peace TV
February
7, 2007
Daniel Wolff
"The
Road Home is a Joke": Playing Politics with the Recovery
of New Orleans
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews:
A Conversation with Oliver Stone on Art, Politics and the Future
of Cinema in Bush's America
Tony Swindell
The
Looming Shadow of Nuremberg
Sharon Smith
Why Protest Matters
Ken Couesbouc
Delenda Est Baghdad: Why Republics End Up as Empires
Jeff Cohen
Jonah
Goldberg's Gambling Debt
Col. Dan Smith
The Self-Destructive Logic of War
Tom Kerr
McCain to Wounded Soldiers: When Words Fail Fundamentally
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran
Adam Elkus
Surging Right Into Bin Laden's Hands
Stephen Fleischman
The Good News About War on Iran
Website of
the Day
Vote Vets: Battling Escalation
February
6, 2007
Diana Johnstone
Frenzy
in France Over Iranian Threat
Gregory Wilpert
Did Chavez Over-reach?: Venezuela's Enabling Law Could Enable
Opposition
Norman Solomon
A Kangaroo Court Martial: Making an Example of Ehren Watada
Dave Lindorff
Borat Goes to Washington: Don't Experiment with the Economy?
William Blum
Space Cowboys: Full Spectrum Dominance
Mike Ferner
War Opponents Occupy Congressional Offices
CP News Service
Nader's CNN Interview: "Hillary's a Panderer and a Flatterer"
Evelyn Pringle
Eli Lilly and Zyprexa: Even the Insurance Companies are Bailing
Christopher Brauchli
Corporate Advice from the Office of Detainee Affairs
Alan Cabal
How Charles Manson Kept Me Out of Vietnam
Website of the Day
Free Josh Wolf: the Longest Jailed Journalist in US History
February 5, 2007
Dave Zirin
Super
Bore: When Hawks Cry
Uri Avnery
The
Fatal Kiss: Wars and Scandals
Ron Jacobs
The
Looming War on Iran: It's Not About Democracy
Paul Craig Roberts
The Real Failed States
Newton Garver
Bush
and the Old Hands: Decider vs. Negotiator
Bruce Anderson
The Genocidal Namesake of the Hastings School of Law
Saul Landau
The Golden Globes After a Mud Bath
Ralph Nader
The Good Fight of Molly Ivins
James T. Phillips
Road Outrageous: Tailgating and Iraq
Mike Whitney
Quarantine USA: Bird Flu Panic and Profiteering
Kenneth Rexroth
Clowns and Blood-Drinking Perverts: Imperial History According
to Tacitus
Website of the Day
Richard Thompson's Anti-War Song: "'Dad's Gonna Kill Me"
February 3 /4, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Who
Can Stop the War?
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Censorship
and Liberation
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Thrill is Gone: the Withering of the American Environmental
Movement
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis
on the Run
P. Sainath
They Take the Early Train
Sen. Russell Feingold
A Symbol of a Timid Congress
Diane Christian
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The Vishnu Strategy
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Felipe's First Fifty Days
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The Government Blinks: Freedom for the Ibrahim Family
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Iraq in Fragments
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Shameless in Gaza
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Nader Still in the Crosshairs
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What's Goin' On?
|
March
15, 2007
Confronting BP
Biofuels
and the Green Resistance
By STANDARD SCHAEFER
Now that Al Gore has his "green"
Oscar and George W. Bush has closed a deal in Brazil by which
American will burn up the cane fields in the name of environmental
salvation, it is time to get serious about the realities of biofuel.
Clearly research into biofuels is necessary, but few people are
aware yet how this research will be carried out, how constrained
ideologically it will be, how corrupting an influence it might
become on American universities, and how dangerous its products
might be to the ecology of the planet. Fortunately, a movement
is a foot on the campus of UC Berkeley that may create a wave
of resistance to and awareness about consequences of a biofuel
economy, especially one governed by oil companies.
The still nascent Stop BP movement
began as a response to British Petroleum's offer to fund a secretive
half-billion dollar bio-energy laboratory on the University of
California at Berkeley campus. Ostensibly, the idea is to genetically
engineer plants to yield more ethanol, but other likely projects
include research into better burning ethanol. BP learned awhile
back in New South Wales that high ethanol content burns out engines.
They learned this from their customers who were livid to discover
the damage after they had breakdowns and stopped buying BP products.
But such incidents now seem to serve BP's interests since they
make the issue of biofuel research seem pressing, thus helping
them push research deals through quickly and out of sight.
The Stop BP at Berkeley Campaign,
however, worries not only about a lack of oversight, but also
that there is no guarantee that BP or UC Berkeley will devote
any of this research treasure to ensuring the safety of food
supplies and fragile ecologies as these new organisms (or products)
are grown and released.
So far, in pursuing this deal,
UC Berkeley has tried to avoid public scrutiny, has tried to
cover up the fact that BP might be able to control an enormous
amount of the curriculum as well as research trajectories. It
has disrupted the students right to demonstrate in front of California
Hall-this at the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. Two
students were arrested for pouring what appeared to be oil on
the steps of the building. The substance turned out to be organically
grown molasses. Nevertheless, when the demonstrators offered
to clean it up with mops and rags that they had brought, the
campus police refused and physically intimidated several demonstrators.
Since then a cadre of dissident professors roiled the Academy
Senate at UC Berkeley demanding that the deal be properly discussed,
but were largely rebuked even though the meeting occurred because
of the rising outrage and opposition to British Petroleum on
campus.
During the meeting, Associate
Professor Ignacio H. Chapela clarified the issue, "What
would certainly come out of the BP-Berkeley facilities would
be a large number of genetically altered, reproducing, living
organisms to be released in the public environment. In Berkeley,
in the MidWest and around the world. Genetically-modified (or
"GMO") grasses, trees, algae, bacteria, viruses destined
for intentional, large-scale release in the public environment.
These organisms do not represent Science. If anything, they may
represent our failure as scientists to assume the deep inadequacies
of our understanding about living organisms and the ecology of
our planet. Despite a third of a century and more than $350 billion
dollars invested in the trinket, a hurricane remains more predictable,
and a wildfire remains more controllable than GMO organisms."
As a professor of biological
ecology, Chapela has spoken out frequently against GMOs, but
in this new campaign, he points out that biofuels are not likely
to be the best solution for "the crazed consumerism
binge of the short two centuries we have spent burning our fossil-fuel
accounts." He warns of recent evidence to the contrary:
"Indonesia without Biofuels used to be close to 20th in
the world as producer of CO2 in the atmosphere. In a few years
with biofuels it is now third, only behind the US and China."
Chapela went so far as to suggest that in overlooking the potential
hazards and
obscuring the amount of control
BP will have over the research UC Berkeley has resorted to prostitution.
There is no question UC Berkeley
Chancellor understands the conflict of interest. He came to the
position in part as a result of similar deal the university had
signed a with Novartis even while going on record as saying,
"Few would put a great deal of confidence, I suspect, in
the objectivity of lung cancer research funded by tobacco companies."
It's just that he doesn't think the fact corporations are using
public resources to produce research exclusively to topics that
may yield profits for the company necessarily compromises the
objectivity of the professors. Double-speak from administrators
is nothing new, but what is new is amount of money oil companies
are devoting to plundering public university intellectual resources
in the chase for future biofuel patents. Chevron, for instance,
has already sought out UC Davis for its own bio-energy lab in
much the same manner as BP at Berkeley.
Such deals with their lack
of oversight and their analogues in the pharmaceutical industry-many
of which have produced well-documented dangers and immense profits
from public subsidies-have been the forefront of Stop BP campaign
so far. But the campaign is beginning to address the more global
concerns about pursuing biofuel research drawing attention to
the need for social and ecological considerations to be placed
on par with scientific research. For example, prices for corn
and corn products (from which ethanol can be made) have already
spiked in the US and other countries, making food all the more
expensive for those who already struggle to afford it. Furthermore,
as Bush's deal with Lula in Brazil suggests, the ideology of
free trade is rampant in promoting biofuel, even though the US
insists on a 54-cent-a-gallon levy on fuel shipped to the U.S.
Under free trade ideology, the US through the World Trade Organization
has forced developing countries to devote their agricultural
industries to exports rather than for producing food for the
domestic market. This has lead to a new feudalism in which the
people who grow the food often cannot afford to eat it.
There are other potential problems.
In Indonesia, ancient forests are being burned up to make room
for oil-palm biofuel. They're already digging up the rainforests
in Brazil to plant soybeans that will be used in NutriSystem
microwavable food packages designed to help fat American's lose
weight. As demand for ethanol increases to be equal to current
oil consumption, it is almost guarantees forests will be dug
up in the Global South to plant more sugar cane, since after
all that is where it grows best. How then can ethanol be called
carbon neutral when it will increase deforestation, when its
promoters such as BP are notorious human rights violators, when
companies such as BP are under a grand jury investigation for
spilling 267,000 gallons of oil in Prudhoe Bay?
But that is where most Americans
become giddy. To prevent these problems, most Americans believe
technology is the answer. The attitude is captured in one letter
sent to Stop BP activists:
I believe the potential social
benefits of this collaboration dwarf the potential risks. Providing
inexpensive, carbon-neutral energy to the world could resolve
an array of social problems. Achieving that goal will require
the help of industrial partners who can help overcome global
challenges to providing new energy systems to all the world's
people.
Not a word here about the need
to decrease consumption. Not a word about the consequences on
farmers or the poor.
As professor Iain Boal, a historian
of Technics and the Commons, said at a recent teach-in, we are
living in an age where constant Climate Change Emergencies maybe
invoked as a blunt instrument to silence dissent. Recalling Naomi
Klein's phrase "disaster capitalism," he described
science's long history of creating crises that then force capitulation
to a neoliberal models, where the very forces that brought us
global warming are offering to quell it for a price.
Boal said, "The capitalist
'market' is about monopoly and crushing competition, and it always
has been. Knowledge-making, however, which is the business of
the university, depends on an economy of the gift, of collegiality
and cooperation...I am speaking of a critical, liberatory science
rooted in an ethic of care and equity, in restorative justice
and rightful reparation to the communities and natural systems
worldwide which have been devastated in the deadly pursuit of
private enrichment. A science, finally, that will be at home
in a world no longer dominated by private tyrannies, one that
partakes of an open, ample life in common."
It's toward such a vision that
I suspect the Stop BP campaign is inspired. But for now it's
on the hard work of organizing and demanding a wider debate that
its activists such as Kamal Kapadia, Lee Worden, Hillary Lehr,
Ali Tonak and many others are focused. Along with them and their
professors such as Miguel Altieri, Ignacio Chapela, Iain Boal
and many more, I submit their names to go with those mentioned
in Jeffrey St. Clair's recent
piece on maverick environmentalists. And I recommend Judith
Scherr's fine Counter Punch piece here
on the situation.
Check out the many resources
at Stop BP Berkeley.
STANDARD SCHAEFER is a writer and teacher in San Francisco.
He can be reached standardschaefer@sbcglobal.net.
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