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Today's Stories

December 1, 2010

Russ Wellen
The Frontlines of Disarmament

November 30, 2010

Ralph Nader
Missing the Mark on Deficits

Paul Craig Roberts
Fabricating Terror: the Portland "Bomb" Plot

Bill Quigley
Why Wikileaks is Good for Democracy

Jonathan Cook
Wikileaks and the New Global Order

Dean Baker
When the Bubble Burst

James McEnteer
Indian Givers: South Africa is More Than Black and White

Tom Engelhardt
The National Security State Cops a Feel

Sherwood Ross
Holder v. Assange

Gina Ulysse
Haiti's Fouled-Up Election

Bill Manson
The Long Run to the Bottom

Website of the Day
Act Now to Save the Galapagos!

 

November 29, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
The Stench of US Economic Decay Grows Stronger

Israel Shamir
Assange in the Entrails of Empire

Mike Whitney
Hammering Ireland

Lawrence Davidson
Glenn Beck, Julian Assange and the Battle of Ideas

Winslow Wheeler /
Sanford Gottlieb Memo to Tea Party Senators: Cutting the Defense Budget

John Carroll, MD
The Road to Vote in Haiti

P. Sainath
Obama's Indian Outing

Carl Finamore
Pilot Protests Underscore Passenger Safety

David Macaray
Why Not Declare Class War and be Done With It

Dave Lindorff
The Yahoos are in Charge

Website of the Day
Mark Ruffalo Put on Terror Watch List for Screening Anti-Natural Gas Film

 

November 26 - 28, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Run, Russ, Run

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Defense Budget and the Deficit: How the Plans Compare

Ramzy Baroud
Obama Surrenders Palestinian Rights

Harry Browne
Ireland and the House of Cards

Bill Quigley /
Nicole Phillips
Haiti's Sham Elections

Saul Landau
Bombing the Senses: Ads to the Brain

Brian Cloughley
Thanksgiving of the Drones

Fidel Castro
The Lights of Rebellion: Evo Answers NATO

Francis Shor
Normalizing Blowback

Steve Heilig
How (Not) to Legalize Pot

Terrence Paupp
Obama's Fading Empire

Brenda Norrell
The Women of AIM: Watching for the Men in Shiny Shoes

Missy Beattie
The Greedy and the Needy

Linh Dinh
Power Grabs at the Airport

Christopher Brauchli
Gouged While Flying

Eric Walberg
Russia and NATO

Ellen Taylor
The Navy's Toxic Tentacles

Ron Jacobs
Zizek and the End Times

Bill Manson
Manufactured Hysteria and Relative Risks

Harvey Wasserman
Terror! Oil!! Opium!!!

Walter Brasch
Fairness and the Bristol Stomp

Michael Dickinson
World Strike Day 2012

Ingmar Lee
The Appalling BC Tar Sands Pipeline

Gwyneth Leech
Staying, Not Going:
Artists Loving New York City

David Ker Thomson
Asking For Whom the Bell Tolls

Charles R. Larson
Lynd Ward: America's First Graphic Novelist

Poets' Basement
Dennison, Chaet and Clark

Website of the Weekend
Don't Touch My Junk

November 25, 2010

Michael Hudson
A "Flat Tax" for the Rich?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Ireland: "Tell the EU and IMF to Shove It!"

Gareth Porter
Why Gen. Petraeus was Snookered by the "Taliban" Imposter

Sarah Anderson
Food Should Not be a Poker Chip

Karl Grossman
The Skin of Our Teeth: Avoiding Nuclear Destruction

David Ker Thomson
Canadian Thanksgiving: If We Didn't Have It, We'd Have to Invent It

Rajesh Makwana / Adam Parsons
Rethinking the Global Economy: the Case for Sharing

Charles R. Larson
Palintology 101 (Part One)

Website of the Day
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us"

 

November 24, 2010

Jeffrey St. Clair
BP's Inside Game

Paul Craig Roberts
TSA's Gestapo Empire

James Ridgeway Invasion of the Body Scanners: Is TSA Spreading Cancer?

Michael Scott
First a Hand on Your Crotch, Next a Boot in Your Face

Nick Dearden
The Climate Loan Crisis: Making Poor Countries Pay Twice

Russell Mokhiber
Private Insurance Induced Stress Disorder?

Daniel Moss
Tear Down the Dam; Restore the Commons

Farzana Versey
The Media as Middle Man

Yasin Gaber
The Marvels of Exile: Judith Butler on Edward Said

Dan Beaton
A Tale of Two Elections: Burma and Haiti

Website of the Day
Useless Gobshites!

November 23, 2010

Pam Martens
Ten Ideas to Starve the Wall Street Beast

Patrick Cockburn
The Dangers of Embedded Journalism

Ben Rosenfeld /
Lauren Regan
When the Constitution is No Obastacle for the FBI: Legal Lessons From the Green Scare

Franklin C. Spinney
Another Free Ride for the Pentagon?

Dean Baker
Sinking Ireland

Ralph Nader
Obamabush: Semper Fi, Barack

Ray McGovern
Bush the Warmonger in His Own Words

George Wuerthner
Livestock and Predators: How to Stop the Killing

Don Monkerud
America's New Entertainment

Clare Bayard
Healing From Empire

Website of the Day
The American Galapagos

 

November 22, 2010

Michael Hudson
Why Paul Krugman Waves the Flag for Uncle Sam

James Abourezk
Honoring Helen Thomas

Paul Craig Roberts
Insouciant Americans

Sasan Fayazmanesh
When Sanctions Are Not Enough

Richard Forno
TSA and the New "Americanism"

Gary Leupp
Ignorance There ... and Here

Martha Rosenberg
Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest are Disguised

Lawrence Davidson
Obama Plays the Fox

Patrick Bond
"Leave the Oil in the Soil!"

Michael Dickinson
Kiss My Ring: the Vatican Versus Jesus

Website of the Day
Globeistan

November 19 - 21, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Time for a Real Mutiny

Jeffrey St. Clair
Let Them Eat Oil

Mike Whitney
Tying Bernanke's Hands

Joanne Mariner
The Banalization of Torture

Gareth Porter
The Fatal Flaw in the Iran Missile Docs

Karen Greenberg
Guilty Until Proven Guilty

Thomas Christie, Pierre Sprey, Franklin Spinney et al.
How to Cut the Defense Budget

Rannie Amiri
Way Beyond Chutzpah: Cantor Crosses the Line

Dr. Jim Morgan Haiti's New Normal: Dispatch from Cite Soleil

Lawrence Swaim
Israel's War Against the Dead

Ramzy Baroud
Education at Gunpoint

Ron Jacobs
No Alternative in Afghanistan?

Robert Alvarez
Shelving START

Russell Mokhiber
War is a Drug

P. Sainath
India's Great Drain Robbery

David Macaray
194 Years of Scabs

Carl Finamore
Hyatt's Dirty Safety Record

Brian Tierney
Hotel Workers Rising

Franklin Lamb
How the US and Israel Hope to Destroy Hezbollah

Gerald E. Scorse
The Truth About Capital Gains

Joshua Brollier
Natives Without a Nation

Missy Beattie
So Many Messages

Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Supporters Win Big Victory in California

Brenda Norrell
On the Border: Where Skin Color is the Dividing Line

Christopher Brauchli
Pot and the Deficit: the Hidden Cost of Prohibition

Carol Polsgrove
The Governor and the Power Plant

David Ker Thomson
Against Jane Jacobs

Dave Lindorff
No News is Not Good News

Jeff Deasy
Here Come the FrankenSalmon

Bill Manson
The Politics of Nice

Clifton Ross
Dancing With Dangl

Charles R. Larson Twain: the Last Word, One Hundred Years Later

Richard Estes
"Carlos:" An Orientalist Masterpiece

David Yearsley
Schumann and the Warm Bath of Memory

Poets' Basement
Springate, Orloski and Cirino

Website of the Weekend
Buy Nothing

November 18, 2010

Diana Johnstone
NATO's True Role in US Grand Strategy

Mike Whitney
Ireland's Suicide Pact with the EU

Behzad Yaghmaian
Facing a Leaderless Globalization

Kenneth E. Hartman
Are They Really Opposed to the Death Penalty?

Norman Solomon
Wooing the Economic Royalists

Michael Winship
Don't Ask, Don't Care

Patrick Bond
Will Zimbabwe Regress Again?

Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Anti-Incumbent Movement Failed

Website of the Day
Free Speech on Trial

November 17, 2010

Vicente Navarro
The Hypocrisies of Mario Vargas Llosa

James Bovard
The Political Slaughterhouse

Jonathan Cook
Obama's Bribe

Dean Baker
Seoul Searching on Trade and Currency

Ralph Nader
Bush at Large

Nick Turse
Off-Base America

Sherry Wolf Alienation 101: the Online Learning Rip Off

Judith Scherr
Why Aristide's Party Won't Vote

Peter Certo
Defense Cuts Go Mainstream

Website of the Day
The Last Outsider Director: an Interview with Jean-Luc Godard

 

November 16, 2010

Pam Martens
How the Fed and the Treasury Stonewalled Mark Pittman to His Dying Breath

Richard Forno
TSA and America's Zero Risk Culture

Gareth Porter
The Unending Occupation of Iraq

Harry Browne
Bruce Springsteen's "Promise" and the Price You Pay

Peter Lee
QE2 as Self-Inflicted Wound

Alan Farago
How Much Gold Does George Bush Own?

Franklin Lamb
Is the American Public About to Toss Israel?

Frank Green
Conspiracy in Theory: Truthers Slog On

Sheldon Richman
Blood on His Hands

Thomas H. Naylor
Shattering the Myth of Vermont

Website of the Day
Peaceful Uprising

November 15, 2010

Michael Hudson
Obama's Greatest Betrayal

Steve Hendricks
More Torture, Please?

Paul Craig Roberts
Eyes Only on Burma

Harvey Wasserman
Accidents in Progress: America's Eggshell Nukes

Lawrence Davidson
Palestine and the Fate of the UN

Clancy Sigal
The Long Disease of War

David Macaray
The War Over Food Stamps

Tom Engelhardt
The Stimulus Package in Kabul

Steven Fake
Liberating Thought

Website of the Day
Whatever ...

November 12 - 14, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
A Very Bitter Woman

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Stalemate Ends

Mike Whitney
Erin Go Broke

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Militarization of the World: the Case of Iran

Dean Baker
The Perverse Priorities and Fatal Flaws of the Deficit Commission Report

Gareth Porter
Intel Failure in Yemen

William E. Alberts
Why Are the Feds Targeting Black Officials?

Bill Hatch
Jerry Brown's Parable of the Rocking Boat

Jonathan Cook
Re-Unifying the Palestinian Nation

Patrick Madden Mystifying the Crisis: Deadlock at the G20

Ramzy Baroud
Another Baghdad Massacre

Rannie Amiri
The Quest for Power in Iraq

James Zogby
Whither Obama's Middle East Agenda?

Ron Jacobs
Palestine, a Family's Story

Mark Weisbrot
Why It Could Get Even Worse for the Democrats

Tanya Golash-Boza
Targeting Jamaicans

Paul Wright
The Case Against Stacia A. Hylton

Steve Early
TDU in Chicago: Still Punching

Martha Rosenberg
Vioxx All Over Again?

Celia McAteer
London Calling: Student Militancy a Welcome Surprise

Larry Portis
Imperialist Architecture in Egypt

Michael Winship
Riding the Rails, Looking for Work

Brian McKenna
Anorexia and Capitalism

Gerald E. Scorse
Channeling Reagan on Tax Reform

Christopher Brauchli
Making Oklahoma Safe From Sharia Law

Roberto Rodriguez
Arizona: Where Fear is the Predicate

Dr. Susan Block
My Porn Star Girlfriend

J. T. Cassidy
Unlocking Imagination in Japan

Linh Dinh
Revolution Number 10

Farzana Versey
The Misinterpreters of Kashmir's Maladies

David Ker Thomson
The Elizabethan Era: Life in the Ice Age

Phil Rockstroh
Public Like a Frog

Charles R. Larson
Abused Women ... Still a Growth Industry

David Swanson
Tall Tillman Tales

Saul Landau
"Stone:" Walking Invisibly in the American Crowd

Kim Nicolini
An Intimate Look at How Things are Made in China

David Yearsley
The Esserzici Work-Out Book

Poets' Basement
Three by Lee Stern

Website of the Day
Bombs Away!

 

November 11, 2010

Peter Linebaugh
Laying Down of Arms

Paul Craig Roberts Licensed to Kill

Bill Quigley
Bush Pens True Crime Book

David Macaray Dissing the Boss: the NLRB Files a Landmark Complaint on Free Expression in the Workplace

Liaquat Ali Khan / Jasmine Abou-Kassem
Why the Oklahoma Shariah Law is Unconstitutional

Dedrick Muhammad
Race and Economics

Robert Bryce
Cars for the Elite: Obama's Electric Vehicle Fetish

Alan Farago
What, No Phone Books?

Website of the Day
London Calling

November 10, 2010

Allan Nairn
US-Backed Death Squad Files Surface in Indonesia

Dean Baker
Wall Street's TARP Gang Rides Again: Now They're Coming After Your Social Security!

Nicola Nasser
Waiting for Godot in Palestine

Missy Beattie
Running Scared: My Colonoscopy Saga

Sergio Ferrari
Worrying Signs From Venezuela to Ecuador

Patrick Cockburn
Can Iraq's Leaders Do a Deal?

Dave Lindorff Mumia: New Lawyer, New Round

Sherwood Ross
How Affirmative Action Brought Willie Mays to the Giants

Joshua Frank
Sinking the Breakwater

Website of the Day
Stiglitz: "Throw the Bankers in Jail to Save the Economy"

November 9, 2010

Uri Avnery
Obama's Defeat

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Dollar Policy

Jordan Flaherty
The Incarceration Capital of the US: the Crisis Inside New Orleans' Jails

Afshin Rattansi
Red Poppies

Annie Gell
Haiti's Unnatural Disasters

Dean Baker
The Fed's Second Shot

Dave Lindorff
BS From the BLS: Things are Much Worse Than They are Telling Us

Stewart J. Lawrence
The Nancy Monster That Refuses to Die

Walter Brasch
Love and Loss Among the Wild Horses

Website of the Day
Cut This: an Open Letter to the Tea Party

November 8, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
Phantom Jobs

Thomas Healy
An Interview with Wendell Berry

David Swanson
A CIA Kidnapping in Milan

David Smith-Ferri
What Laila Sees

Ralph Nader
When Betrayed Voters Go to the Polls

Ray McGovern Torture Sans Regrets: Bush's Confessions

John Feffer
The Lies of Islamophobia

Christopher Ketcham
TV Toxicosis: What the Stewart / Colbert News Clowns Are Really Up To

Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Rand Paul and Mike Pence

November 5 - 7, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Now for the Good News

Vijay Prashad
Obama in India: a Tide of Turbans

Patrick Cockburn
If al-Qa'ida Really Want to Hit the West, They Can

Darwin Bond-Graham
Guess Who's Not Coming to Tea?

Mike Whitney
Dollar in the Dustbin

Linn Washington, Jr.
An Epidemic of Brutality: Oakland Filmmaker Feels Police Wrath

Rannie Amiri
STL = Sandbag the Lebanese

Ramzy Baroud
The Middle East's Stagnant "Change"

Larry Portis
Chou Sar? What Happened in Lebanon?

Gary Leupp
The Yemeni Toner Cartridge Bomb Story

William Loren Katz
Are Cruel Years Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?

Brian Cloughley
Spheres of Influence

Mark Weisbrot
The Fatal Mistake

Rubén M. Lo Vuolo, Daniel Raventós / Pablo Yanes
Basic Income in Times of Economic Crisis

Joseph Nevins
Ecological Privilege and the Frequent Flyer Activist

Neve Gordon
Thought Crimes

Alan Farago
The Bhopal Economy

Stewart J. Lawrence
Immigration Policy After the Midterm Elections

James R. King
The Other Side of Yemen

Ron Jacobs
How Ken Kesey Turned On America

Franklin Lamb
Israel Claims Victory in US Midterm Elections

James McEnteer
Beyond the Rational: the Alamo Election

Richard Phelps
Guy Fawkes and the Pressure of a Terrorism Spotlight

Saul Landau
Where's the Sanity Clause?

David Ker Thomson The Long Argument

Evelyn Pringle
The Vaccination Profiteers

Joseph G. Ramsey Until Pigs Fly: the Morning After With Michael Moore

Stanley Heller
Up Yours, John Stewart

Missy Beattie
The Big Universe

Harvey Wasserman
Vermont's Great Green Election Day Victory

Billy Wharton
Where Did Everybody Go?

Shamus Cooke
Democrats Run to the Right

Linh Dinh
War Games: Guns and Balls

Windy Cooler
Rallying Through This

Charles R. Larson
Witnesses of Haiti's History
: Edwidge Danticat's "Create Dangerously"

Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards' Demon Life

David Yearsley
Bach and the Music of Time

Website of the Weekend
Smearing Jean-Luc Godard as an "Anti-Semite"

November 4, 2010

Doug Peacock
Desert Solitaire, Revisited

Andrew Cockburn
Why Summers Goes and Geithner Stays

Iain Boal
Crisis at Pacifica: the Two-Percent Putsch

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotence of Elections

Chase Madar
Guantánamo: Exception or Rule?

Dave Lindorff
Take That You Smug Bastards!

Russell Mokhiber
Bought and Paid For

Laura Flanders
Lessons From Elizabeth Warren

Website of the Day
Moyers: the Howard Zinn Lecture

November 3, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
America the Clueless

Franklin C. Spinney
Democratic Debacle

Chris Floyd Dissatisfied Mind: Flickers of Hope in a Deadly Political Cycle

William Blum
Jon Stewart and the Left

Sheldon Richman
Provoking Yemeni Terrorism

Stephen Soldz
Fleecing Members, Colluding in Torture

Mark Weisbrot
Dilma's Victory in Brazil

Stewart J. Lawrence
Court Sends Mixed Signals on Arizona Immigration Law

Manuel Garcia, Jr. Election Night in Oakland

Norman Solomon
Now What?

Website of the Day
Save Our Social Security

November 2, 2010

Vincent Navarro
What's Happening in Europe?

Ishmael Reed
Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, T-Shirts

Uri Avnery
The Occupation and Political Corruption in Israel

Mark Driscoll
When the Pentagon "Kill Machines" Came to an Okinawan Paradise

Mike Whitney
Midterm Day of Reckoning: "Let the Landslide Begin"

Linh Dinh
Prone Pioneers: Punishing the Desperate for Being Desperate

David Macaray
Bring Back the Fifties! America's Most Misunderstood Decade

Randall Amster Wikilessons: War is a Joke, But It Isn't Funny

Betsy Ross
How the Banks Trumped Keynes

Yves Engler
A Sad Spectacle: Canada and the Jewish National Fund

Website of the Day
Gulf Oil Toxic to Humans

 

November 1, 2010

Ted Honderich
The Farce of Fairness

Steven Higgs
Don't Act Don't Sell: Why Liberals Will Get What They Deserve on Election Day

John Ross
A Ding-Dong Year for Death in Mexico

Dean Baker
A Darkening Future: Why Growth Still Feels Like a Recession

Ralph Nader
When Corporations are the Government

Justin E. H. Smith
The People Without History

Marjorie Cohn
Hyping Fear

Scott Boehm
Juan Williams and Katrina

Brian Tierney
The Struggle of DC's Nurses

Trish Kahle
Jon Stewart, Are You Really That Sane?

Martha Rosenberg Bathrobe Erectus: Feting Hugh Hefner

Website of the Day
Scary New Wage Data

 

 

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December 1, 2010

Bihar's Mythic Development

No Looking "Backwards"

By FARZANA VERSEY

Mumbai.

India, once considered a natural democracy, now needs shaky excuses to be so sanctified. Bihar, one of the most backward states in the country, has elected Nitish Kumar’s party, the Janata Dal (United), to power in a ‘stunning victory’. The bellicosity of commentators to be flagholders for such a myth has to be read to be believed.

It is amazing that this glorification is for his second term. Everyone knows that ruling parties have an edge to bulldoze their agendas. Such agendas may include pushing all the real issues under the carpet.

Bihar’s backwardness had little to do with the existence of scheduled castes and more to do with the manner in which they were treated. In Nitish Kumar’s utopian state, caste has got sidelined. This is not cause for celebration but concern. We are talking about a large segment of society being covertly discriminated against by two deceptive options – co-opting and debarring. The larger political spectrum that is being hailed has, in fact, narrowed it to the pyramidal apogee by selective probity.

One report came up with a rather dodgy analysis: “The Bihar results will have rippling effects in other areas where negative agendas of caste and communal forces do not allow people-driven agenda of development.”

Caste and communal forces are about people and do not spring from the bottom but the top; they have been traditional vote-banks thus far. They remain so, but in a non-conservative fashion by being covered beneath the veil of poverty. It is a real issue. However, the trick here is not to deal with poverty but make it a palpable saleable idea. Water, food, education, healthcare, electricity, roads are necessities that are sold as comforts. There is a reason for it; it is to set the ground for the development agencies to send in their quotations. The people of Bihar are not going to say “let there be light” and have shining bulbs nor will dry taps start running by the mere expedient of thirst; roads won’t be tarred for bare feet. All these require raw material, infrastructure and money. The poor obviously do not have money. Therefore, the rich come into the picture.

The rich in Bihar belong to the feudal class or criminal gangs. Both have tremendous political clout if they are not already in politics. It is pertinent to point out that both these categories are extremely caste conscious. The landlords use labour belonging to the lower castes and consolidate their position based on such bondage. Crime, too, relies on caste equations to settle scores. Therefore, the current development will need to not only factor in such disparities but also rely on them. Since over 80 per cent of the population is Hindu, communal politics can be reined in by sheer force. It ought to surprise no one that Nitish Kumar has been an ally of the right-wing parties.

During this election, he skirted Gujarat’s Narendra Modi’s involvement in electoral matters. This was seen as keeping away from a controversial figure. On the contrary, Bihar has cunningly emulated the Modi formula; the snub to Modi could have been a tactic or an ego trip. Either way, he is the role model here. The difference being that Bihar has been considered a backward region, Gujarat is not. But the economic saviours have worked along similar lines by co-opting those they have scant regard for. In Modi’s Gujarat the Muslims have stood by him despite the horrific establishment-engineered riots and killings of 2002; Nitish’s Bihar has used the abused members of society to the same effect by showing them glittering streets and whitewashed ideas.

The female voter turnout has been much-lauded without seeing the larger picture. This is not about empowerment or a woman’s natural understanding of development. Bihar, for all its progress, still has a large number of migrants to other cities. The question to ask is this: if the growth rate is 2.5 per cent more than the national rate of growth, then why have these sons of the soil not returned?

Iconoclasm has the ability to camouflage all con jobs. It is a rather sad statement that the original patented hero of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, is seen as a beleaguered has-been today. Despite his not-so-clean record and his scams that were out in the open for all to see, he had made Bihar into a brand of sorts. It was not mere rural hubris. If his was a one-man show, then no one really knows of any prominent people in Nitish Kumar’s cabinet. Lalu made no attempt to hide the caste of his candidates; at the national level this is an important element if the reservations policy is to be made use of by adhering to authenticity rather than fakery.

It is also an irony that while Bihar under Lalu Prasad was the only state to prevent the rath yatra of L. K. Advani from passing through in what was to turn out to be the worst communal divide after Partition is now dependent on the BJP. Long before talk about development, Lalu had the courage to appoint backward caste priests and shankaracharyas. These were quite possibly gimmicks, but for a country that still has such an aversion towards Dalits this was a strong statement.

Development must include political vigilance and progressive inclusive thinking. The end of the road is not roads.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based author-columnist. She can be reached at kaaghaz.kalam@gmail.com

 

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