All Views Articles for 2008-archive-2008
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Pierre Tristam Compelling Journalism Persists Despite Media's Business Struggle Contrary to popular assumptions, or desires, American journalism isn't dead. It isn't even unwell. It's as good, and sometimes as great, as it's ever been. Read more |
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Eric Margolis America Needs a Period of Pain Recessions Vital Part of Capitalist System Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder Health Care By and For the People The Obama transition team is asking you to help create a new health care policy. Really. Host a meeting , invite friends and associates, look at the Obama team's proposal , and let the transition... Read more |
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John Brown Thoughts on the So-Called 'War of Ideas' "No matter how powerful our military is, we will not be powerful if we lose the war of ideas." - Senator Joe Biden, soon after 9/11; cited in Ira Teinowitz, "Congress will support the war of ideas" (... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Formerly Wealthy Meet the Newly Unemployed Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves. — John Kenneth Galbraith, The... Read more |
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Michael Winship Corruption Destroys Afghanistan Just when you've finally gotten your mind around the enormous $700 billion financial bailout -- even if none of us are really sure where all that money's going -- there comes an even greater,... Read more |
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Dianne Farsetta America Scams You: Allison Barber's Many "No-No's" There's a telling email exchange quoted in the Defense Department Inspector General's report on America Supports You (ASY), a Pentagon program launched in 2004, ostensibly to boost troop morale. Read more |
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Donna Smith Would We Sell Our Children's Future to a Health Insurance Company? WASHINGTON, DC -- If I asked any of you to whom you would sell your child's future, you'd quickly deny that you'd sell your child's future to anyone, I suspect. Yet, as the nation prepares to embrace... Read more |
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Robert Weissman Auto Bailout: Ecological Sustainability Before Economic Viability Thank you, George Bush. The federal government is finally acting to protect the auto industry from failure. The $17.4 billion in loans for GM and Chrysler is not going to be enough to rescue the... Read more |
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Coleen Rowley, Ray McGovern Deterring Torture Through the Law "First, let's kill all the lawyers" may have made sense in that Shakespearian scene, but there is a far simpler solution to the legal ambiguities regarding what to do now about the torture approved... Read more |
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Bob Herbert Hope Amid the Gloom Is the end of the war in sight? I don't mean Iraq. I'm talking about the war against working people in the U.S. that has taken such a vicious economic toll over the past three decades. Even as... Read more |
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Derrick Z. Jackson 8 Years on the Dark Side VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney said this week that he directly approved waterboarding to torture terror suspects. "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Greenwald If Criminal Penalties Are Removed, What Will Deter Lawbreaking by Political Officials? The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus today perfectly expresses the consensus view of establishment Washington regarding the exemption which political elites should and do enjoy from the rule of law, and... Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt The Axe, the Book, and the Ad On Reading in an Age of Depression Read more |
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A.C. Thomas Katrina's Hidden Race War The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat... Read more |
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Jonathan Freedland Deep Throat's Big Impact In the United States , the film of the festive season is It's a Wonderful Life - the Frank Capra classic in which a beleaguered James Stewart, contemplating suicide, is visited by an angel who shows... Read more |
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Beth Schwartzapfel Lullabies Behind Bars It's midday on a recent Tuesday, and Rachael Irwin, 27, scurries across the floor on her hands and knees, playing peekaboo with her 10-month-old daughter, Gabriella. The baby's big blue eyes dance... Read more |
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Josh Silver Mr. Obama, Make Media Reform a Priority On Thursday, an alliance of more than 100 groups, unions, musicians, bloggers and media and technology leaders sent a letter to President-elect Barack Obama calling on his administration to appoint... Read more |
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Van Jones New Labor Secretary is Brown and Green President-elect Barack Obama got it right when he announced Representative Hilda Solis as his pick for the next secretary of labor. Headlines are heralding her as the first Latino to hold the post... Read more |
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Richard Falk My Expulsion from Israel On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. I was leading a mission that had intended to visit... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Demands for War Crimes Prosecutions Are Now Growing in The Mainstream For obvious reasons, the most blindly loyal Bush followers of the last eight years are desperate to claim that nobody cares any longer about what happened during the Bush administration, that... Read more |
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Conn Hallinan Guns, Butter, and Obama Over the next several months there will be a battle for hearts and minds, but not in Iraq or Afghanistan. The war will be here at home, waged mostly in the halls of Congress, where grim lobbyists for... Read more |
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Robert Parry Obama v. Washington Mythmaking Over the years, Washington has evolved into a city of deceptions where semantics cloud reality and where a hazy mix of lies, half-truths and mythology can combine to unleash the devastating military... Read more |
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Pat LaMarche US Voting Access A Work in Progress Last week the Pew Center on the States sponsored a summit called "Voting in America - The Road Ahead," which detailed our ballot booth access inconsistencies. And it wasn't just about Florida's... Read more |
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John Young America - The Whole Package Colin Powell had better watch out or he'll become the conscience of a nation. That's a title he doesn't seek. It's already claimed anyway, by Rush Limbaugh. Powell recently said that his party, the... Read more |
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Richard Thieme The Betrayal of The Commons The cornerstone of capitalism, it has been said, is a handshake. The legal embellishments that constitute the law books lining the shelves of any lawyer, those laws are footnotes to the many ways... Read more |
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Danny Schechter License to Steal: $50 Billion Con Rocks Wall Street No One Escapes The Greeders: Tears for The Rich, Contempt for the Poor Read more |
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Marjorie Cohn Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the... Read more |
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Dave Lindorff Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture: No One Can Be Above the Law A month before he takes office, it has become the conventional wisdom in our conventional media that Barack "No Drama" Obama will not seek or even allow any prosecution of Bush administration... Read more |
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Gary Olson Capitalism Short Circuits Our Moral Hard-Wiring In a recent New Yorker piece, Naomi Klein astutely observes that "The crash on Wall Street should be for Friedmanism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for authoritarian Communism, an indictment of... Read more |
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Thom Hartmann Three Cups of Tea for Rick Warren Rick Warren is providing the invocation for the presidential inauguration. As a pastor whose books have been read by tens of millions of Americans and whose voice is respected by an equal or larger... Read more |
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A New York Times Editorial The Torture Report Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush's most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of... Read more |
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John Nichols The Trouble With Appointing Caroline Kennedy Anyone who purports to be seriously concerned that an untested Caroline Kennedy might "inherit" the U.S. Senate seat from New York has not been paying attention. Read more |
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Michelle Goldberg Rick Warren: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing If nothing else, Rick Warren is a miracle worker in the realm of public relations. He is a man who compares legal abortion to the Holocaust and gay marriage to incest and pedophilia . He believes... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Workers Laid Off, Execs Paid Off The global financial crisis deepens, with more than 10 million in the U.S. out of work, according to the Department of Labor. Unemployment hit 6.7 percent in November. Add the 7.3 million "... Read more |
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Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith Will War Crimes Be Outed? As the officials of the Bush administration pack up in Washington and move into their posh suburban homes around the country, will they be able to rest easy, or will they be haunted by the fear that... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Committing War Crimes for The "Right Reasons" The Atlantic's Ross Douthat has a post today -- "Thinking About Torture" -- which, he acknowledges quite remarkably, is the first time he has "written anything substantial, ever, about America's... Read more |
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Larry Beinhart Why We Need To Study God "Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century." -- Tony Blair Mumbai. 9/11. Chechnya. Sectarian violence in Iraq. Somalia... Read more |
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Kirk Anderson The Correct Way to Sell a Senate Seat Blago didn't do anything so very unusual. He just went about it the wrong way. Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler The Pacifist Tree "Dad, did you know the governor of Illinois was arrested?" Well, no. This was last week. I was in Denmark, visiting my daughter, and this was my first news from Crazy Land in a while. It's dangerous... Read more |
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Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2008 Now in their seventeenth year, the P.U.-litzer Prizes recognize some of the nation's stinkiest media performances. As the judges for these annual awards, we do our best to identify the most deserving... Read more |
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Courage to Resist Taking a Stand With Our Fellow War-Resisters An Open Letter of Solidarity for Resisting Israeli Shministim from US War Resisters Read more |
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Robert Redford Stand Up Against Bush's Giveaway of America's Redrock Wilderness You can't put a price on silence or solitude. You can't quantify the beauty of wilderness. And yet that's not going to stop the Bush administration from trying to sell off what should be the... Read more |
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Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) Media's Failing Grade on Education 'Debate' President-elect Barack Obama chose Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan as his nominee for Education secretary after an almost entirely one-sided media discussion that portrayed the most... Read more |
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Alyssa Roy Federal Law Turns Nation’s Public Schools into 'No-Think Zones' DILLINGHAM-In January 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law by President George W. Bush. This federal mandate enforces standards-based education reform centered on high... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Prostitution v. War Crimes: The Real Moral Offense In October, the extremely pro-war, neoconservative New York Sun ceased operations , and its journalists are now finding a warm and welcoming home, appropriately and revealingly enough, at The New... Read more |
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Matthew Duss Cheney: The Failed Architect More than any other person, the US vice-president is responsible for the Bush administration's torture policy Read more |
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Sami Ramadani The Shoes We Longed For The young journalist who took on Bush has become a unifying Iraqi symbol, a national hero Read more |
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Mark Morford 12 Things to Throw at Bush A shoe? Not bad. But surely we can do better Read more |
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Roberto Rodriguez Obama Should Tear Down The Walls After President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in, one of his first orders of business should be to order the cessation of the construction of the walls along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. One of... Read more |
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Mohammed Mesbahi and Adam Parsons America: The Choice Ahead The presidential election of Barack Obama is a milestone in American history, deeply significant for two reasons; firstly, he not only represents the non-white population of the US, but also the poor... Read more |
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John R. MacArthur A Hypocrite as Our Diplomat in Chief WHEN IT COMES to foreign affairs, Barack Obama seems like a serious person with an authentic liberal's concern about the health of the world beyond our borders. After all, he campaigned for president... Read more |
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Scott Ritter Dick Cheney's Fantasy World Despite the facts, the vice-president still insists that Saddam Hussein could have produced weapons of mass destruction Read more |
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Deepak Chopra George W. Bush Has Been Throwing Shoes at Us Most commentators took the shoe-throwing incident that happened over the weekend as a bit of grotesque political slapstick. The Iraqi television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush... Read more |
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Tom Gallagher If Obama Wants Them To Keep Their Shoes On While everyone else is trying to figure out how Muntadar al-Zeidi got that second shoe off so fast or whether it was just that Iraqi security didn't bother to tackle him until he ran out of shoes,... Read more |
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Ira Chernus Israeli Youth Resist Palestinian Occupation If I were a Palestinian, watching Jews in Israel and around the world preparing to celebrate Hanukkah, I might be a bit confused. The holiday recalls a time, way back in the second century BCE, when... Read more |
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Thom Hartmann Alexander Hamilton's Advice To The Obama Administration Alexander Hamilton, in 1791, proposed to the United States our first true industrial policy. We adopted it over the next few years, Abraham Lincoln reaffirmed it fourscore years later, and it was... Read more |
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John Nichols Obama's Farm and Food Appointment The most telling Cabinet pick that Barack Obama will make -- and from a long-term standpoint perhaps the most meaningful one -- is not his selection for secretary of State, secretary of Defense,... Read more |
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Greg Palast Obama Slam-Duncans Education Hey, you Liberal Democrats. You may have won the election, but you're getting CREAMED in the transition. Today, President-elect Barack Obama stuck it to you. He's chosen Arne Duncan as Secretary of... Read more |
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Karyn Strickler Reverse Climate Change: Reduce Greenhouse Gases 80% below 1990 Levels by 2025 If your doctor told you in 1990 that someone you love had breast cancer and that 80% of her breast would have to be removed immediately in order to save her life - you would not wait until 2025 and... Read more |
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Robert Kuttner Bailouts: The Ultimate Double Standard Imagine if the automakers had been offered the same kind of government assistance as the banks. Detroit's Big Three would each get new government capital totaling many tens of billions to replace... Read more |
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Laura Carlsen Coping with Crisis, Latin America Bucks the System As the U.S. economy tumbles into greater depths of disaster and ignominy--dragging the rest of the world with it--some countries in Latin America have decided it's time to strike out on their own. Read more |
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Derrick Z. Jackson Keep Guns Out of The Parks Ending a 25-year-old ban, the Department of the Interior announced on Dec. 5 that people who have a concealed weapons permit in their state can bring a loaded weapon into national parks, forests, and... Read more |
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Neil Watkins and Sarah Anderson Ecuador's Debt Default: Exposing a Gap in the Global Financial Architecture When the government of Ecuador failed to make a scheduled interest payment on private bonds today, it was hardly the first time a country had defaulted in the middle of a financial crisis. In fact,... Read more |
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William Borden and Carol Vecchio Give Till It Makes You Feel Good Recent article titles from Philanthropy Today sound like real downers: "National Cathedral faces deep cuts"; "Arts institutions face financial distress"; "International Red Cross braces for cutbacks... Read more |
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Bill McKibben The Most Important Number on Earth Sooner or later, you have to draw a line. We've spent the last 20 years in the opening scenes of what historians will one day call the Global Warming Era-the preamble to the biggest drama that humans... Read more |
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Patrick Cockburn Keep Out... A Message for Foreign Leaders The sight of the Iraqi reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi hurling his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Baghdad will gladden the heart of any journalist forced to attend these tedious, useless... Read more |
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Nick Turse A Recipe For Corporate Success in Tough Times? SaladShooters, Adult Diapers, and Tactical Ammo Read more |
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Dahr Jamail As Usual, NYT Ignores Iraqi Opinion Anecdotes trump polls on withdrawal Read more |
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Fran Quigley Nigerians Get Their Day in Court On Human Rights Claims Against Oil Companies If IkpoBari Senewo had not been conducting an exam for his secondary school students in the Niger Delta village of Bane one afternoon in May of 1994, he believes he would have been killed. As it was... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Senate Report Links Bush to Detainee Homicides; Media Yawns The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for... Read more |
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David Michael Green Still Lying, Still Allowed To Lie I'm sorry, but there are moments when I just feel like a total alien who stumbled onto some planet full of bizarre life forms. They call this place America, and it sure is weird. And, lemme tell ya,... Read more |
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Khaled Diab Shock and Awe on A Shoestring Muntadar al-Zaidi will go down in the annals of popular protest as the man who kissed the Bush presidency goodbye by hurling his shoes at the outgoing president. Read more |
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Chris Hedges Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’ Israel's siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem's refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious... Read more |
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Harold Meyerson A Global New Deal The next New Deal won't work if it's only American. Fixing our economy will require fixing international systems. Read more |
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Joseph Stiglitz The Seven Deadly Deficits When president George W. Bush assumed office, most of those disgruntled about the stolen election contented themselves with this thought: Given our system of checks and balances, given the gridlock... Read more |
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James Carroll The Window and Door Factory 'We're here and we're not going anywhere," said the protest leader last week, "until we get what's fair and what's ours." With that, 200 laid-off workers began the occupation of the Republic Windows... Read more |
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Dave Lindorff Muntadar al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long Ago When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should... Read more |
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Oliver Fein There Is A Cure The report last week that the U.S. economy lost nearly 2 million jobs this year, and 533,000 jobs in November alone, sent shudders through our nation's households. That's the biggest one-month plunge... Read more |
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Scott Horton The Torture Presidency President George W. Bush has launched "Operation Legacy," which he placed in the hands of his ultimate advisor, indeed his "brain," Karl Rove. Remember Rove? He's the man who refused to testify under... Read more |
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Pierre Tristam Answer to Martyrdom Bids: Oblivion in An Idaho Cell The Pentagon's claim that five of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay want to put an end to their legal proceedings and confess to their alleged roles in the 9/11 attacks made me think of a few lines in... Read more |
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Timothy Egan Final Days Fire Sale Imagine if President Bush, on his last day in office, invited his friends to lift the Lincoln portrait from the White House Dining Room, take the 18th- century furniture from the Map Room and - for... Read more |
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Ellen Brown A Radical Plan for Funding the New Deal "This isn't about big government or small government. It's about building a smarter government that focuses on what works." - Barack Obama, November 26, 2008 Read more |
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Alfie Kohn Beware School 'Reformers' If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet. --Linda Darling-Hammond Read more |
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Eyad El-Sarraj Catastrophe for Gaza An Israeli blockade curtails food, fuel, medicine and travel. Read more |
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Frank Rich Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich Rod Blagojevich is the perfect holiday treat for a country fighting off depression. He gift-wraps the ugliness of corruption in the mirthful garb of farce. From a safe distance outside Illinois, it's... Read more |
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Juan Cole Does Obama Understand His Biggest Foreign-Policy Challenge? The president-elect wants to work with the Pakistani government to "stamp out" terror. It's not nearly that simple. Read more |
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Eve Ensler and Stephen Lewis The Never Ending War There is a modest rush to bring humanitarian aid to the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After weeks of escalating conflict, during which hundreds of thousands have been displaced,... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Observations On Concision My appearance on Bill Moyers' Journal, broadcast last night (and re-broadcast throughout this weekend on PBS), can be viewed here , and a transcript is here . The show's format, as well as Moyers'... Read more |
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Michael Winship Bush's Farewell Hallelujah Chorus With all the interviews President Bush has been giving out lately, you’d think he has a new movie coming out for Christmas. ABC, NBC, National Review, Middle East Broadcasting, the Real Clear... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Birth-Places and Mothers What mighty contests rise from trivial things! - Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock The Internet is rapidly proving itself the best friend of those who seek to be truly informed-not limited by the... Read more |
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Arundhati Roy 9 Is Not 11: (And November Isn't September) We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11." And like actors... Read more |
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Ramzy Baroud Cluster Bomb Treaty and The World's Unfinished Business The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster... Read more |
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Christopher R. Martin Detroit's Problem: It's Health Care, not the Union The Senate's failure to pass the bailout of the U.S. auto industry strikes a big blow at one of labor's last stands in manufacturing in the U.S. What's at stake? According to the bill: 355,000... Read more |
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Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith How the American Healthcare System Got That Way As Americans respond to President-elect Obama call for town hall meetings on reform the American health care system, an understanding of how that system came to be the way it is can be crucial for... Read more |
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Michael Moore Senate to Middle Class: Drop Dead Friends, They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers start building only cars and mass transit that reduce our dependency on oil. They could have given the loan on the... Read more |
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Robert Weissman The Nasty Class and Anti-Union Bias of Auto Bailout Opposition Nancy Pelosi says the Congressional Republicans are playing Russian Roulette with the economy by refusing to agree to an auto industry bailout. But for that metaphor to work, you have to add that... Read more |
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David Sirota We Told You Please, forgive me for saying it. I know it's a tad annoying, but it has to be said to America's ruling class in this humble column space. Because if it's not said here you can bet it won't be said... Read more |
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Liv Ullman Making Life Safer for Refugee Women Aa the global financial and economic crisis continues to throw countless numbers of people out of work, millions of refugee women and girls in developing countries continue to toil at a task that is... Read more |
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Fred Edwords Riding the Atheist Bus It's a simple question: "Why not try Jesus?" Equally simple is an opposite: "Why believe in a god?" Yet in the United States the first question is widely viewed as positive, or at least ordinary,... Read more |