All Views Articles for 2008-archive-2008
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Linda Milazzo US Citizen Diplomats Arrive in Iran, Invited by Ahmadinejad [Editor's note: The first two paragraphs of this piece were updated on Monday, November 24th to reflect new information obtained by the author.] Read more |
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Nicholas Freudenberg Can the Economic Crisis Create New Opportunities to Advance Public Health? With General Motors on the brink of bankruptcy, the stock market on the skids, and consumer spending and employment in free fall, it's clear that the US economy is in for tough times. In the short... Read more |
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Jim Goodman A Glimmer of Hope? I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the early 60's. A white kid, transplanted from a small Wisconsin dairy farm to 6800 south. In my neighborhood, South Shore, I could walk to the Museum of... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Gates and the Urge to Surge It may become a biennial ritual. Every two years, if the commander-in-chief (or the commander-in-chief-elect) says he wants to throw more troops into an unwinnable war for no clear reason other than... Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Afghans to Obama: End the Occupation President Elect Barack Obama wants to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan. But the US/NATO occupation is less popular than ever. Eman, an Afghan woman's rights activist with RAWA tells... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli NOAA(H) and the Whales The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. -- Benjamin Franklin, Letter to British paper poking fun at Brits'... Read more |
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Reede Stockton An Alternative to the Auto Bailout As the Big Three US automakers ramp up their pressure on Congress to cough up $25 billion in bailout money, the absence of a long term vision for economic recovery has never been more clear. Read more |
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Rob Larson In Rude Health: The Rich Take the Crisis in Stride While America holds its breath wondering if the new president will fix the economic crisis, we citizens have to keep the root causes in mind, like our raging wealth and income inequality. As busy as... Read more |
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Jay Greathouse Family Farms Pulled Us Out of the Great Depression It seems to be a widely held myth that World War II was the main agent for moving the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cornell University Professor George F. Warren, an... Read more |
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Tom Hayden Frankenstein in Mesopotamia The pact being negotiated between the US and Baghdad governments includes a direct rebuff to president-elect Barack Obama's promised policy of withdrawing American combat troops in 16-18 months. The... Read more |
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Mike Tidwell Police Spy on Climate Activist While Global Warming Goes Unarrested Police spied on activist Mike Tidwell for months as a 'suspected terrorist'. Read more |
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Paul Krugman The Lame-Duck Economy Everyone’s talking about a new New Deal, for obvious reasons. In 2008, as in 1932, a long era of Republican political dominance came to an end in the face of an economic and financial crisis that, in... Read more |
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Norman Solomon A Media Parable for 'the Center' It's been 16 years since a Democrat moved into the White House. Now, the fog of memory and the spin of media are teaming up to explain that Barack Obama must hew to "the center" if he knows what's... Read more |
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Laura Flanders The Hunger News It's more than newsprint that leaves newspaper junkies feeling filthy these days. It's the news being reported. It's dirty. Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt Stuff Happens The Pentagon's Argument of Last Resort on Iraq Read more |
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Nancy Van Ness The Granny Peace Brigade Campaigns to Close All US Military Bases - in Latin America and Around the World Their hats adorned with artificial flowers identify them at many of the protests in which I participate. The Grannies also show up on New York City's Union Square to sing their signature anti-war... Read more |
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David Sirota Tuning Out the Braindead Megaphone If you're having trouble remembering what the recent election was all about, rest easy: you're probably not going senile - you're likely experiencing the momentary effects of brainwashing. For weeks... Read more |
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Heather Wokusch You're Scaring Me, Obama: Let the Bush Years Die In short, Mr. President-elect, you promised "Change we can believe in," but across the board it's looking a lot more like "Business as usual." Read more |
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Robert Fisk Once More Fear Stalks the Streets of Kandahar There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay,... Read more |
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Devinder Sharma The Parable of the G-20: Blind to the Elephant The leaders of the G-20 Group of countries who met in Washington DC for an emergency meeting to revamp the global financial landscape can be compared to a parable in the Hindu ‘Panchantra'. Like the... Read more |
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Jeremy Scahill This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his... Read more |
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Danny Schechter The Fall of the Wall: Hard Times in Money World Can the Global Financial Sector Be Brought Under Control? Read more |
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Marie Dennis Shut the Doors on a Disgraced Military School Human rights activists, religious leaders, and military veterans will descend on Fort Benning, Ga. this weekend to demand the closing of a notorious military training facility that has tutored some... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Robert Gates: As Bad As Rumsfeld? "As Bad As Rumsfeld?" The title jars, doesn't it. The more so, since Defense Secretary Robert Gates found his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, such an easy act to follow. But the jarring part reflects... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler History Is Screaming Nobody opines sagely anymore that the races will never get along, calmly ladling conventional certainties over the earnest idealism of civil-rights activists. But we live in a world so permeated with... Read more |
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Barry Nolan Would You Kill Jefferson Davis? The bloodiest, most costly, most savage war in America's history was our Civil War. More than 620,000 died, some 2% of the population. With today's population, a war with an equivalent percentage of... Read more |
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Fred Pearce BP and the Myth of a World 'Beyond Petroleum' BP is keen to play up its investment in alternative energy with images of wind turbines and plants. But no amount of clever advertising can hide the fact that its billions of pounds of profit and investment is still all about fossil fuels Read more |
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Amy Goodman Why Bolivia Threw Our Ambassador Out Evo Morales knows about "change you can believe in." He also knows what happens when a powerful elite is forced to make changes it doesn't want. Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia,... Read more |
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Greg Hernandez 'Milk' Relevant to Today's Politics For anyone who's old enough to remember, the current uprising against the passage of California's Proposition 8 mirrors something that happened 30 years ago: In 1978, San Francisco County Supervisor... Read more |
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Suzanne Nossel Closing Gitmo Is Just the Beginning Building US credibility on human rights will be a long-term project - and closing Guantánamo might just be the easy bit Read more |
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Nick Turse A My Lai a Month By the mid-1960s, the Mekong Delta, with its verdant paddies and canal-side hamlets, was the rice bowl of South Vietnam and home to nearly 6 million Vietnamese. It was also one of the most important... Read more |
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Leonard Pitts Jr. Don't Let Fear Trump Hope They'll be back. Don't think for a minute that they won't. These things run in cycles, and death in politics is about as permanent as death in Marvel Comics, which is to say, not very. Yes, Team Red... Read more |
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Joseph L. Galloway Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice Is No Virtue With two months still to go before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his transition team are already getting off on the wrong foot, signaling that they... Read more |
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Ian Williams The Apology Bush Owes Dan Rather CBS pandered to the Republican party by giving its anchorman the boot for revealing the truth about the president's war record Read more |
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Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Oil Shale Frenzy Bush rules a gift to oil companies Read more |
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Joyce Marcel Lizard Brains The blogosphere exploded on Tuesday with the rumor that President-Elect Barack Obama might ask Sen. Hillary Clinton to be our next secretary of state. Immediately, pro- and anti-Hillary comments lit... Read more |
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John R. MacArthur Rahm Emanuel’s Political Pirouettes God help me, but I had to laugh when I heard the news that Barack Obama had named Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. What else could I do? Without even so much as a symbolic gesture in... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Has There Been Too Much Bipartisanship or Too Little? As Senate Democrats this morning prepare to reward Joe Lieberman with the powerful Chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, the most commonly recited claim -- both with regard to the... Read more |
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Miriam Pemberton Keep Secretary Gates? This Simple Test Should Decide As the Bush administration's mass exodus gets underway, President-elect Obama is hearing from a lot of quarters that his cabinet should include one key holdover. According to this thinking, he should... Read more |
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Juan Gonzalez Mr. Bush, Come Tell the Ghosts in Queens Your Financial Plan As our lame-duck President began his televised speech about the financial meltdown Thursday in lower Manhattan, accountant Barbara Beaubrun sat in her house in southeast Queens, shaking her head in... Read more |
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Katrina vanden Heuvel Smart Defense Last month, Congressman Barney Frank called for a 25 percent cut in the defense budget--approximately $150 billion in annual spending--saying, "We don't need all these fancy new weapons. I think... Read more |
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Linda McQuaig Bush's Willing Accomplice Isolated, repudiated by his people and even shunned by his own party, George W. Bush – the lamest of lame ducks – still seems able to count on the support of at least one world leader: Stephen Harper... Read more |
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Peter Erlinder Will President Obama Finally Bury King Leopold’s Ghost? November 2008 was the 100-year anniversary of the Congo's conversion from the personal property of Belgian King Leopold II to a colonial possession of Belgium, itself. The King's brutal rule,... Read more |
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Dean Baker Stopping Foreclosures With the Right to Rent: One More TIme Politicians often prefer complex solutions to simple problems. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the long list of complicated and convoluted proposals to address the country's foreclosure... Read more |
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Davinder Kaur Ending Poverty: Moving Beyond More Aid and Fair Trade As the United Nations seeks increased financial assistance from donor countries to help meet the flagging Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the inadequacy of international aid and fairer trade... Read more |
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Sean Gonsalves Under a Big Mulberry Tree? Was President-elect Barack Obama's meeting with Sen. John McCain a "post-partisan" moment? But hold on a sec. What does "post-partisan" mean? The adjective partisan means "strongly committed to an... Read more |
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Paul Rogat Loeb Keep the White House Drapes: Bring Back the Solar Panels Remember when the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of "already measuring the White House drapes." It was more false populism, suggesting that it was the bi-racial son of a single mother who... Read more |
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Wendy Williams Water: Buying a Message on a Bottle I remember when the name of the game at my gym was pump 'n' swig. Weight lifters and treadmill sloggers routinely carried with their sweat towels expensive water in plastic bottles. Drinking... Read more |
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Veronica Cassidy Busted Bubble The press fell down on the job on housing prices Read more |
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David Korten Beyond the Bailout: Agenda for a New Economy The financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when deregulated. Our economic institutions have failed, not only financially, but also... Read more |
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Johann Hari Sixties Radicals Are Back. But Why? When is it right – morally necessary, even – to break the law? Read more |
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Nicholas Mele Case for Nonviolent Action Is Strong This campaign season, we heard about everything from Alaskan independence to the return of the Cold War. The list includes diplomacy, economics, immigration, taxes, terrorism, values, war, you name... Read more |
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James Carroll Home Truths on the Economy One definition of the word economy is "an orderly, functional arrangement of parts; an organized system." But neither orderly, nor functional, nor organized were terms that came to mind watching... Read more |
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Jeremy Scahill Blackwater Busted? After more than five years of rampant violence and misconduct carried out by the massive army of private corporate contractors in Iraq--actions that have gone totally unpunished under any system of... Read more |
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Tariq Ali Operation Enduring Disaster Breaking with Afghan Policy Read more |
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Harvey Wasserman GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system? First let them remake what they destroyed. GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy... Read more |
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Joan Venocci Enough With Those Bailout Lines WITH EACH passing day, the bad news gets more alarming. Sales are shrinking, revenue is declining, and jobs across the nation could be lost. The industry is in crisis. Time is of the esssence... Read more |
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Pierre Tristam Think US Is Moving Far Left? That Terrain's Not Even Close The infernal machinery of reactionary America -- the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and its animatronics version on Fox News, The Weekly Standard, the nasal intellects of talk radio like... Read more |
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Donald M. Mihaloew The 'Dubya' in All of Us Until now, it has been easy criticizing George "Dubya" Bush, for he, and his people, has made a debacle of their administration. Criticizing him as president has been an attractive alternative to... Read more |
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Robert L. Jamieson, Jr. Same-Sex Marriage Has Change on its Side A SURVEY several years ago found that one out of two Christian marriages implode in divorce. By my math, if Christians spent more time focusing on their own unions -- and less railing against gays... Read more |
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Ellen Bravo A Rescue Package for Working Women Wall Street tycoons behave irresponsibly, bring the country to financial brink, hold out their hands for an 11-figure bailout -- and lobbyists applaud that as a rescue. Women achieve daily miracles... Read more |
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Jennifer Fenton Documenting the Surge: US Soldier's Films Expose the Realities of the Iraq Occupation "We have an entire generation of people in their twenties and thirties who have never gone through a war...the media and government have gotten so good at the creation of messages, people don't know... Read more |
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Matthew Rothschild Bush Sells Free Market as Cure-All, Despite Crash On Thursday, Bush gave a speech in New York about the financial crisis, and it was a laughable ode to the free market. It sure was an odd time for such an ode, since the free market is crashing down... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Mother of All Embassies All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. - John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding I got it partly right. I also got it... Read more |
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Janet Pelz The Triumph of Hope It has been several days now. In the euphoria following Obama's election, I find myself wondering -- what was that pent-up feeling that exploded from me on Election Night, causing me to scream until... Read more |
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Cesar Chelala President Obama's Chance to Change Course on Cuba The new political landscape in Washington and Havana offers a unique opportunity to change a foreign policy decision that has been maintained for almost half a century and caused considerable... Read more |
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Frances Fox Piven Obama Needs a Protest Movement The astonishing election of 2008 is over. Whatever else the future holds, the unchallenged domination of American national government by big business and the political right has been broken. Even... Read more |
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Geoffrey Robertson Now America Can Right Its Wrongs There is no doubt that Team Obama is committed to global justice Read more |
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Michael Brune Day of Action Against Coal In a stirring column in Monday's New York Times , editorial writer Lawrence Downes urged former Obama campaign volunteers to enlist in another tour of duty. The country is not in the best shape to... Read more |
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Barry Nolan Lust for Leverage As America continues to struggle with the single most dangerous economic crisis to occur since the invention of television, television news operations have been unforgivably lame and late in telling... Read more |
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Cynthia McClintock Latin Americanists Urge Obama to Revamp Policies I was pleased to join 12 past presidents and more than 200 members of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in signing a letter to Barack Obama urging him, as president, to respect and... Read more |
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Cleve Jones and Dustin Lance Black Now Is the Time for Equality for All Americans On Nov. 27, 1978, gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco City Hall. Thirty years later, his struggle continues. On Nov. 4, 2008, millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and... Read more |
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John Feffer The North Korean Conundrum Change You Can Believe In or Policy Status Quo? Read more |
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Robin Broad, John Cavanagh Swear Off 'Market Fundamentalism' With the global economy facing severe recession, lame-duck President Bush is hosting the leaders of 19 other major countries in Washington this weekend to try to prepare a coordinated response. A... Read more |
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Leila Nadya Sadat Restoring America's Rights Record: Memo to the President-Elect America's human rights record has been badly tarnished by seven years of abuse by the Bush Administration in its conduct of the war on terror, particularly as regards U.S. policy towards detainees... Read more |
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Sheldon Rampton The Eisenstadt Hoax: A Real-Life Example of a 'Fake Fake' There is a minor controversy bouncing around right now on the internet, and I'd like to do what I can to set the story straight. The controversy involves two incidents: Read more |
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Robert Fisk Obama Has to Pay for Eight Years of Bush's Delusions He will have to get out of Iraq, and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths Read more |
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Randall Amster Hobbes Is Dead (or at least on life support) . . . and I Feel Fine It has been said that the election of Barack Obama as the next President may serve to redress the four-century-old stain of racism in America. While the symbolic poignancy of his ascent no doubt will... Read more |
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Jeff Cohen What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us Independent media outlets that contributed so mightily to the stunning election result are about to be tested as to their “independence.” With Democrats in control, will these outlets be guided by... Read more |
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Naomi Klein In Praise of a Rocky Transition The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal. In a moment of high panic in late September... Read more |
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Nancy Northup A Quick Sigh of Relief, Now Let's Get to Work Rebuilding Reproductive Rights The election of Barack Obama heralds at long last a season of promise and opportunity: the chance to improve the lives of millions of Americans and people throughout the world by ending the Bush... Read more |
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Josh Silver Obama, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News: A Look at Media in 2009 Ask just about any public interest advocate concerned about the dismal state of media and journalism, and they will tell you that Obama's media policy platform is excellent: the beginning of what... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Obama Can Redeem the White House Alice Walker is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But Monday, I called her to talk about a true story. Read more |
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Joyce Marcel In Memory of Bubbling Bob Barack Obama has inspired a generation and a nation. It's a wonderful thing. But please allow me to be the crotchety old lady next door screaming "Get off my lawn!" for just one moment longer. From... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Hope and Vision I hope it’s time, if nothing else, to retire cynical bumper stickers, such as: If elections could change anything, they’d be illegal. Read more |
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Johann Hari Obama's Chance to End the Fantasy That Is Star Wars The US has spent $160bn – only to increase the danger to itself and the rest of us Read more |
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John Nichols Alice Walker's Wise Counsel for Obama Pulitizer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, student of people's historian Howard Zinn and literary instructor to a generation or so with books such as The Color Purple, has some advice for Barack... Read more |
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Matthew Rothschild What Is NorthCom Up To? This week and into next, NorthCom and NORAD are conducting a joint exercise called "Vigilant Shield '09." The focus will be on "homeland defense and civil support," a NorthCom press release states... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 Haven't Gone Anywhere Though it hasn't happened yet, it is appearing increasingly likely that Senate Democrats -- led by Barack Obama (who seems to be playing a much more active role in all of this than his spokesperson... Read more |
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Susan Lenfestey A Warm November; A New American Climate The warm, sunny days leading up to Barack Obama's improbable election were equally improbable for a Minnesota November. Seventy-five degrees, and door-knocking in shirt sleeves? What's going on? Well... Read more |
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Pat LaMarche Recalling Checks and Balances "D'oh!" That's Homer Simpson, who could now be hired as a spokesman by the Republican national leadership. The only problem is that once you've led a country to unjustified war and commingled that... Read more |
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Jack Balkin Obama and the Imperial Presidency The Bush administration has worked hard to increase presidential power. Will Barack Obama give it up? Read more |
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John Nichols Dysfunctional Election Process Needs to Be Repaired Appearing on the HBO talk show "Real Time With Bill Maher" a few weeks before last week's election, actor Tim Robbins urged voters to stand their ground when it came to demanding their right to cast... Read more |
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Timothy Snyder War Is From Mars, Love Is From Venus Is the United States an empire of war or an empire of love? In the early days of the Iraq war, journalists and scholars wrote of our empire of war, comparing the United States to grand historical... Read more |
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Dave Lindorff 'Too Big To Fail' Has an Easy Answer: Anti-Trust or Public Control The one thing we are not hearing from Congress or from incoming president Barack Obama in the current economic crisis facing the country are the words "anti-trust" and "public ownership." Read more |
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Dean Baker The G-20 and Biological Warfare Imagine that the United States was researching biological weapons and it inadvertently allowed a deadly bacteria to get into the atmosphere. The bacteria quickly spread around the world, leading to... Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt Don't Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart: Why Americans Shouldn't Go Home On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party... Read more |
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Margret Hofmann Remember the Roots of Armistice Day Our daughter Barbara was born on Armistice Day 1952. This was the day on which the Western World celebrated the end of World War I. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 1918... Read more |
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Gary Younge Obama's Army of Supporters Must Maintain Their Level of Activism The potent force behind the president-elect's campaign cannot allow the big business lobby to seize back the agenda Read more |
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Donna Smith When the Pain Unfolds for Us All, Dreamers and Pragmatists Just yesterday, the new First Family measured the drapes in the White House just blocks from where I write this piece. It has been but a week since we saw history as my U.S. Senator Barack Obama was... Read more |