by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship / June 30th, 2008
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn’t a war about oil. That’s cynical and simplistic, they said. It’s about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire, and ashes. And now the bottom turns out to be . . . the bottom line. It is about oil.
Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, “Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” He …
by Robert Weissman / June 30th, 2008
Whether or not Big Oil is improperly restricting refinery capacity, whether or not Wall Street traders are driving up the traded price of oil to heights completely disconnected from supply-and-demand fundamentals, a few things are clear about gas prices — and so is the most appropriate, immediate policy response.
Current pricing arrangements are generating profit gushers for the large, integrated oil companies — ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and the like. While the price of oil is going up, these companies’ drilling expenses are not. Oil can trade at $40 a barrel, $90 a barrel, or $130 a barrel. It still costs ExxonMobil and …
by Ron Jacobs / June 30th, 2008
There have been several histories of the US war in Vietnam by US writers. Very few of them have stood the test of time. Marilyn Young’s Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 and Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy stand out in my mind as two that have, even though their approach and focus differ greatly. Other texts on the subject have their highs and lows and certainly deserve to be read by those who have the time. In addition, there are books that cover specific elements of that historical period. Some cover the antiwar movement and others cover the military aspects …
by John Walsh / June 30th, 2008
It began shortly after David Axelrod and other Obama campaign advisers viewed a closed showing of the old Woody Allen movie, Zelig. They were seen emerging from the showing and a strategy session that followed with smiles of deep satisfaction on their faces. The next day, in passing, Obama remarked that his daughters were Black because his wife is. That struck some as odd, and equally odd was the fact that he appeared before klieg lights that were almost blindingly bright.
At the same time, Obama took another swipe at Black men for being the source of problems of Black youth. …
by Reza Fiyouzat / June 28th, 2008
Caveat: In the memory of George Carlin, RIP, and conceived in his eternal spirit of exposing bullshit wherever he found any, and who, in 1999, commenting on the trend among white business men to smoke big fat cigars, opened with, “Haven’t we had enough of this cigar smoking shit in this country?” and closed with: “Sigmund Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Oh, yeah? Well, sometimes it’s a big brown dick … with a fat arrogant white collar business criminal asshole sucking on the wet end of it.”
There are many problems, of the conceptual and …
by Chandi Sinnathurai / June 28th, 2008
Faithful observation and un-biased analysis would say: ‘The distinction between politics and religion was not discovered but invented.’ The whole project’s evil genius is, when you divorce the moral, ethical and spiritual dimension from statecraft then Religion is expected to play a passive and respectable role, aiding and abetting if you will — just there to bless and sprinkle Holy Water on the actions of the State. As long as the religious teaching doesn’t challenge the actions of the state, then all will be happy. But the moment questions are raised, religious bodies become alive and vocal, as has happened …
by David Sugar / June 28th, 2008
The Oglala Lakotah chose last December to unilaterally withdraw from treaty with the United States government. Since that time, the Makaq have withdrawn from treaty from Canada, and groups of Haudenosaunee have come together this past April along with representatives of several dozen recognized indigenous national groups across Canada to declare their own joint sovereignty. This letter was delivered to Hugo Chavez at the office of the presidency at Miraflores, and to the chancellor of the Venezuelan National Assembly, in support of Lakotah Sovereignty, along with a Lakotah petition seeking full diplomatic recognition.
To help correct these injustices …
by Kevin Zeese / June 28th, 2008
Ralph Nader criticized Senator Obama for failing to “take on the white establishment.” Obama’s reaction was Nader is “delusional.” Nader’s reaction was Obama is “illusional.”
Obama and his supporters should listen to this criticism and get on course or the seeds of election failure will have been planted in his refusal to challenge the corporate elite that dominate the government.
They should– is Nader right? If they are honest they will see it is difficult to point to any issue on which Senator Obama is challenging the establishment — meaning the corporate interests that …
by Matt Reichel / June 28th, 2008
Every four years it’s the same game on the American left: arguments on anti-war listservs about whether or not to vote Democrat in the upcoming election.
Every four years it seems like an awful idea no matter where you live, whether it be a “swing state” or not.
Every four years the usual imbeciles line up behind the Dems: from Eric Alterman to Todd Gitlin, and the majority of those congregating around fluff sites like Moveon.org.
…
by Alan Maass / June 28th, 2008
Back in January, at one of the Democratic presidential candidates’ debates, Barack Obama took one of his few open shots at Hillary Clinton’s past as a shill for shady corporations. “While I was working [as a community organizer in Chicago]… watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas,” Obama said, “you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.”
It was a point that deserved to be made more often. Clinton’s remade campaign image as a populist fighting for the “little guy” was in stark contrast to her long history as a fixture of the Democratic Party establishment …
by Susie Day / June 28th, 2008
Many capitalist roaders say the Left is out of touch with popular culture. Well, I say NYET to that! Here, for instance, is an episode of Sex and the City that I translated for my Marxist-Leninist study group, so that we may better throw off our Tiffany chains.
[SCENE I: Chic, Upper West Side restaurant]
SAMANTHA: [Striding in elegantly and sitting at table where the girls are waiting] Greetings, comrades! How glad I am that I — sexy, 50-year-old blonde girl, being fabulous and having much sex with men — meet you in favorite haute bourgeois bistro for …
by Gary Leupp / June 28th, 2008
On October 11, 2002, the Senate passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. It did so influenced by what anyone paying attention now knows was a campaign of fear-mongering lies organized by the neocons surrounding Vice President Cheney.
The Congress is about to repeat that disgraceful performance. House Resolution 362, which Rep. Ron Paul properly calls “just more war propaganda” will likely come to the floor and pass after the July 4 recess. It positively encourages George W. Bush, whom you might suppose is the most discredited U.S. president in the country’s history and the …
by Ernest Partridge / June 28th, 2008
My friend Roy is a world-class computer wizard. Throughout the more than twenty years that we’ve known him, he has managed to solve numerous computer glitches that have had us totally baffled. In our business dealings with him he has been unfailingly dependable and honest.
But his politics are abominable! As often as not, when we visit his shop, Rush, or Hannity, or Savage are blaring on the AM radio. In 2000, and again in 2004, a “Bush/Cheney” sign was posted atop his shop.
Just once, I discussed politics with Roy. He let loose with the familiar …
by Justin Podur / June 27th, 2008
Tarek Fatah personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (CM). It has been reviewed very favorably indeed in the Canadian media, especially the Asper-family owned newspapers. The right-wing National Post published long excerpts from the book in serial form, and frequently runs op-eds by Tarek. His basic thesis is that religion and politics should be separated in Islam. Although it has major flaws, it also has many attributes of interest and will be thought-provoking on the relationship between religion and politics, and between Islam and the West.
A flawed book …
by Remi Kanazi / June 27th, 2008
love Adam Sandler. From Billy Madison to Happy Gilmore to the Chanukah Song, the predecessor of the Superbad generation has effortlessly conquered the domain of slapstick comedy and inappropriate jokes. But damn you Scuba Steve! If you’re going to propagate misinformation about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, do it quietly—or at least in your non-comedic life.
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Sandler’s new flick, takes Hollywood chicanery and stereotypes that denigrate Arabs to an unprecedented level—surpassing hit flicks like The Kingdom, The Siege, and every Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris movie that came before it. I group Zohan with …
by Jonathan Cook / June 27th, 2008
The following is taken from a talk delivered at the Conference for the Right of Return and the Secular Democratic State, held in Haifa on June 21.
In 1895 Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favour sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to “try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country … Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
He was proposing a programme of Palestinian emigration enforced through …
by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad / June 27th, 2008
“The public has to be more alert”, warned one “international terrorism expert” in the Daily Mail late last year, because Scotland “is set to become another Israel within five years”. “[A]nti-terror measures will soon become a common feature of life”, he assured the audience, and called for “routine arming of police officers” and increasing children’s “awareness of the dangers of terrorism” and for them to be “encouraged” to report anything “out of the ordinary”.
The oracle of doom was one Amnon Maor, identified as the head instructor of counter-terrorism for the IDF and Israeli border police.Might he be the same …
by Agustín Velloso / June 27th, 2008
Teodoro Obiang, the President with a clear and constant policy
While members of the opposition to President Teodoro Obiang’s regime are detained and tortured in prison merely for being in opposition, international human rights organizations are denied entry to Equatorial Guinea. While some are set free with neither charges nor trial or else pardoned after a lapse of time, subsequently they are fined and their movement restricted to their hometowns. While the supposed leader of a coup d’état, Severo Moto, is tried in absentia, a handful of associates are left to rely exclusively on the mercy of the court, their …
by Bill Fletcher Jr. / June 27th, 2008
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict often inspires a sense of powerlessness. What can average Americans do to bring an end to this decades-old conflict when our leaders have failed so miserably?
And what good is speaking out about Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land as the primary obstacle to peace when even former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu are condemned for their criticism of Israeli policies?
This month in San Jose, average Americans will have the opportunity to take a stand for peace and justice in the Middle East. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s General Assembly began Saturday and runs through Sunday …
by Robert Weitzel / June 27th, 2008
My number one priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.
– Former House Speaker Richard Armey
Rocky was a boyhood friend. He was as big and as strong as his name. In his wild days, Rocky hung out with a runt whose obnoxious mouth regularly got my friend into serious bar fights. One night Rocky was beaten senseless when he stepped between the runt and someone with dangerous friends. I never understood his irrational defense of a guy with obvious “needs.”
But then—K Street realpolitik notwithstanding—I have difficulty understanding America’s irrational defense of Israel, a country whose “needs” are as …
