All Views Articles for 2008-archive-2008
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John R. MacArthur Americans Unwilling to Face Reality It's not as though no one saw it coming. Here's the economist Michael Hudson, writing in the May 2006 issue of Harper's Magazine: "The reality is that, although home ownership may be a wise choice... Read more |
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Paul Rogat Loeb Volunteer Energy and Political Tipping Points On election day four years ago, I was canvassing in home state of Washington, alternately knocking on doors for gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire and breaking to call Ohio and Florida. After... Read more |
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Robert Scheer The Hoover-Palin Ticket And the winner is ... Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remember him-the great Democratic president who saved capitalism from the capitalists by reining in their exorbitant greed? Forget the Reagan... Read more |
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Stephen Kinzer The Reality of War in Afghanistan Despite their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan. Both are wrong. History cries out to them... Read more |
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Isabel Macdonald, Steve Rendall Islamofascism Awareness Week: Anti-Muslim Smearcasting On Campus "Islamofascism Awareness Week" is back on college campuses across the nation this week. Read more |
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Laura Flanders Defending ACORN and the Right to Vote Barack Obama's poll numbers are up - and the McCain campaign's gloves are off. This time the GOP's target isn't merely the Democratic candidate -- it's a poor people's group - and if we're not... Read more |
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Tim Karr AT&T Promises Not to Spy on You... Sort Of You would think that AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner execs had turned a page and formed a new front in defense of your online rights. Late last month, they lined up before the Senate to mouth... Read more |
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Alan Cumming Why Is America So Content With Mediocrity? I had intended to write this entire piece and then go back and remove the 'g' from every word that ended in one. But then I thought that would make me a churlish, smart-arsed, lefty stereotype and... Read more |
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George Monbiot This Stock Collapse Is Petty When Compared to the Nature Crunch The financial crisis at least affords us an opportunity to now rethink our catastrophic ecological trajectory Read more |
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Derrick Z. Jackson McCain Plays the Race Card Having failed to convince voters that they represent a break from the tragic Bush presidency, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin are... Read more |
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Sean Gonsalves We're Not in Kansas Anymore The dominant news narrative of the past few weeks has been "it's the economy, stupid," where the only things trickling down are retirement savings, stocks and gas prices – not the rising-tide-that-... Read more |
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Rosa Maria Pegueros Sins of Omission Rhode Island has a long reputation of being a solidly Democratic state. Republicans in positions of power are so scarce that the fact that we have a Republican governor, Gov. Donald Carcieri, must be... Read more |
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Guy Reel A Pit Bull Doesn't Lie One of the complaints we hear from "ordinary" red-staters is that the Democrats mock them, condescend to them and look down upon them. Hmm. Have they for even a fleeting instant considered which is... Read more |
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Rory O'Connor Seeds of Hatred "What a man sow shall he reap - And you know that talk is cheap..." - Bob Marley John McCain was right in August when he called John Lewis one of the " wisest people " he knew. Read more |
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Cynthia Boaz Why 'Change' Has Already Won Guess what? Change has already won in Election 2008. Although the presidential election result itself has yet to be decided, it has become clear over the past weeks that John McCain is now attempting... Read more |
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Robert Naiman Pentagon Challenge: Ask Iraqis How Many Have Died The U.S. military is planning a large polling operation in Iraq over the next three years to help "build robust and positive relations with the people of Iraq and to assist the Iraqi people in... Read more |
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Jeanmarie Bishop, Jeanmarie Simpson Jeannette Rankin, the Anti-Palin America's 21st Century political landscape is nearly devoid of voices the likes of first US Congresswoman and lifelong pacifist, Jeannette Rankin, whose role in American history has been jaded by... Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt My Depression -- or Ours? Among my somewhat over-the-hill crowd -- I'm 64 -- there's one thing friends have said to me repeatedly since the stock market started to tumble, the global economic system began to melt down, and... Read more |
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Dave Zirin and Daniel Denvir Palin Drops the Puck You cannot make this up. Sarah Palin, the best-known hockey mom in the United States, gets booed Saturday at the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game. And the game is played, of all places, at the... Read more |
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Mark Anthony Rolo On Columbus Day, Correcting Columbus’ Legacy On Monday, Oct. 13, schoolteachers across the nation should find the courage to speak the truth about the man who sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Trying to explain to youngsters how this country came... Read more |
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Gary Younge The Politics of Smear Won't Work in the Middle of a Stockmarket Crash Voters care too much about their homes and their retirement to be swayed by the McCain camp's desperate slurs Read more |
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Chris Hedges America’s Political Cannibalism It is no longer our economy but our democracy that is in peril. It was the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the collapse of the Weimar Republic that vomited up... Read more |
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Brian Moench EPA Ignores the Toxic Threat in Our Drinking Water Care for a glass of rocket fuel?: EPA ignores a toxic threat Melamine contamination of Chinese milk products has sickened more than 50,000 infants. Tens of thousands have been hospitalized, including... Read more |
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James Carroll Preventing the Other Meltdown The word "meltdown" came naturally to the lips last week, referring to the collapse of financial markets. But what about a real meltdown? The word came into popular usage to describe the melting of... Read more |
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Mary Shaw Is John McCain Still Trapped in Vietnam? Senator John McCain has become notorious for playing the POW card in his campaign for the presidency, as if that somehow qualifies him for the job. But, in McCain's case, I think his status as a... Read more |
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Norman Solomon Requiem for the Bailout Storyline It's mid-October, and the Wall Street bailout that was supposed to save the economy from collapse is a flop. Only two weeks ago, the media hype behind the $700 billion bailout was so intense that it... Read more |
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Frank Rich The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about... Read more |
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Václav Havel Water: A Source of Middle East Peace? The global financial crisis may be grabbing all the headlines, but resolving it should not be allowed to crowd out other vital issues. In the Middle East, for instance, Israelis and Palestinians - as... Read more |
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Pierre Tristam 'Kill him!'? Silence as McCain/Palin Response is Deafening Dissonance is the soundtrack of any faltering political campaign. Things get said to jar the ear and maybe shock the conscience. It grabs attention that reasonable coherence alone couldn't deliver... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli I Spy Some of these men had become abstrusely entangled with the spying departments of other nations and would give an amusing jump if you came from behind and tapped them on the shoulder. - Vladimir... Read more |
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Mitchell Rofsky Lies, Damn Lies, and (Conservative) Statistics Is it revealing of how little the Republicans have to offer during these tough economic times that they have to distort economic statistic after economic statistic? It might be useful, during an... Read more |
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Joel McNally GOP Battles the Spread of Democracy One Bush administration cover story for going to war in Iraq to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for Halliburton and other corporate cronies was that it was to spread... Read more |
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Rick Salutin Blowback from Afghanistan In the U.S. "debates," it was the bleakest moment for me so far when Barack Obama said he lamented the war in Iraq because it "weakened our capacity to project power around the world." Not because it... Read more |
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Boston Globe Editorial Subprime Scapegoats AMID A GLOBAL financial crisis that began with unsustainable loans to people with bad credit, it was only a matter of time before apologists for Wall Street excesses would try to pin the blame on the... Read more |
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Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman GOP Attacks on American Voters Turn Desperate, Ugly and Dangerous The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as the economy and John McCain tank in synch. With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans have mounted an all-out attack... Read more |
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Mark Weisbrot Wall Street Bailout Won't Do Much to Help Ailing Economy It is now clear the approval by Congress of President Bush's $700 bailout package on Friday October 3rd has done nothing to ease the current financial crisis. Credit markets have worsened for several... Read more |
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Donna Smith My Heart is Breaking Again Today CHICAGO - You'd think I'd get over it already. After reading so many patient horror stories and knowing how many people are hurting for healthcare, you'd think I'd have thicker skin. But I sat alone... Read more |
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Isabel Macdonald The Anti-Muslim Smear Machine Strikes Again? In the midst of remarkably cynical election-time mud-slinging, the Obsession campaign is truly in a class of its own. Read more |
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David Michael Green This Just In: Greed Is Not Good So, um, prolly you've heard by now that we're having this little problem with the economy, eh? Read more |
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Robert Fisk 'Collateral Damage' or Targeted Killing, the Effect Is Much the Same All kinds of horrors flop on to my Beirut doormat. There's The Independent's mobile phone bill, a slew of blood-soaked local Lebanese newspapers - "Saleh Aridi's blood consolidates [Druze]... Read more |
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Ari Berman McCain and the Meltdown The parallels between the collapse of the savings and loan industry in the late 1980s and the Wall Street meltdown of today are unmistakable. Few pieces explain the roots of the S&L debacle--and... Read more |
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Katrina vanden Heuvel, Katrina vanden Heuvel The Woman Greenspan, Rubin & Summers Silenced "Break the Glass" was the code-name high-level Treasury Department figures gave the $700 billion bailout; it was to be used only as a last- resort measure. Now millions have been sprayed and damaged... Read more |
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Thomas S. Harrington Unequal Charges: When Balanced Is Not Fair Tuesday morning, National Public Radio and The New York Times had stories about how the presidential campaign is starting to get "rough." The information adduced to justify the assertion is... Read more |
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Michael Pollan Farmer in Chief Dear Mr. President-Elect, Read more |
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Bill Kaufmann Nuclear Not the Answer The world's most recognizable anti-nuclear activist has just landed in Calgary and could still barely believe the news. Alberta, with an already well-deserved dismal international environmental... Read more |
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Ken Bode Why McCain's Health Matters Last week a full-page ad appeared in The New York Times with the names of 2,768 doctors who call on Sen. John McCain to issue a full, public release of his medical records. Read more |
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Bruce Fein Palin vs. Palin At the conclusion of the constitutional convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, "Well Doctor, what have we got-a Republic or a Monarchy?" He sagely responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it... Read more |
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Dean Baker It's Time for Paulson to Cut the Crap and Do His Job Just about every economist who supports bailing out the banks thinks that taking an equity stake through a direct infusion of capital is the way to go. While Secretary Paulson had pushed for his... Read more |
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Richard Murphy and John Christensen The Threat Lying Offshore Tax Havens Will Sabotage Attempts to Re-Regulate Global Finance. Democracy Demands We Tackle Them Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Major Shock: Eavesdropping Powers Abused Without Oversight In the most unsurprising revelation imaginable, two former Army Reserve Arab linguists for the National Security Agency have said that they routinely eavesdropped on - "and recorded and transcribed... Read more |
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David Sirota Crony Communist or Businessman? Is Henry Paulson a crony communist or a businessman? The answer could be the difference between economic disaster and recovery. Understanding Paulson's role in stopping-or fueling-the credit crisis... Read more |
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John Walcott Truth Is Not Subjective Editor's note: John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, delivered this speech on Oct. 7, 2008, upon accepting the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from Bob Giles... Read more |
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Noam Chomsky Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam... Read more |
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Jim Goodman McCain and Obama Need to Talk Real Farm Policy John McCain and Barack Obama need to start talking farm policy. With less than a month before the November elections in a year marked by a world wide food crisis, energy shortages, climate change and... Read more |
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Michael Winship Say Anything And so it has begun. The final month of the presidential race, the campaign that feels as if it commenced some time during the Coolidge administration. And as we slide into these last weeks, what we... Read more |
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Robert Dodge The Earth Charter: A Declaration of Interdependence Communities around the world will come together this Saturday to celebrate this year's Earth Charter International Summit. Global climate change is the theme of this year's Earth Charter... Read more |
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Jesse Hagopian So There Is Money that Could Have Helped Schools The secret is out. Like a note confiscated by the teacher and read aloud to the class, there can no longer be any doubt about the message being sent. With the passage of the bailout bill for Wall... Read more |
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Bertha Lewis and Steve Kest The Truth About ACORN's Voter Registration Drive Election Day is less than a month away, and our efforts to make sure that low-income and minority voters have a voice and vote on November 4th are in full swing. Unfortunately, just as we've seen in... Read more |
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Sarah Wildman The Bush Sex Ed Doctrine Even in its final months, the Bush administration is working hard to deny women around the world access to contraception Read more |
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Jeff Biggers The Banality of Clean Coal: Extraction Crimes Three more retired coal miners died of black lung today. Over 105,000 Americans have suffered and died from black lung related diseases; 10,000 miners, according to the National Institute for... Read more |
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Ken Gude Guantánamo's Prisoners of Cowardice The release of 17 Uighurs into the US is a long overdue correction to the Bush administration's mistaken terrorism policy Read more |
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Medea Benjamin Should Henry 'The Fox' Paulson Guard the Henhouse? On Tuesday, October 7, a group of CODEPINK pranksters pranced in front of the New York Stock Exchange. One, wearing an oversized papier maché head of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, grabbed at the... Read more |
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Anand Gopal The Surge That Failed Afghanistan Under the Bombs Read more |
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Christopher Cooper Blowin’ Like a Circle ‘Round My Skull It is altogether a good thing that we have abandoned certain terms formerly used to describe persons who, through accident of birth or subsequent injury, suffer from mental delays or disabilities... Read more |
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Danny Schechter The Edge of the Abyss As Economic War Threatens, It's Time to Fight Back. Let's Start With National Teach-Ins Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Brace Yourself Call it, what, our crapshoot democracy? The looming election - the process itself, not merely the feints and jabs of the candidates - is actually getting some mainstream media attention, as in, ahem... Read more |
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Stephen Zunes Haidar's Struggle Aminatou Haidar, a nonviolent activist from Western Sahara and a key leader in her nation's struggle against the 33-year-old U.S.-backed Moroccan occupation of her country, won this year's Robert F... Read more |
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Tara Mahtafar Sarah Palin and the Confederacy of Dunces For weeks now the liberal media has been waxing incredulous at John McCain's stunt of a running mate. Righteously they decry her unpreparedness for potentially holding the most powerful office on... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Open the Debates The reviews are in, and the latest U.S. presidential debate, the "town hall" from Nashville, Tenn., was a snore. One problem is that in a debate it is important for the debaters to actually disagree... Read more |
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Donna Smith Wall Street Flops Cannot Become Patient 'Swaps' There are a few good things about being broke. Not many, mind you. But at least during this past two weeks, I have no big savings accounts to worry about losing, no large sums in 401Ks or equity in a... Read more |
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Antonia Zerbisias Actually, It's Pro-Family to Advocate Policies That Give Women Choices Dear, dear Reader, May we clear something up? Just because I advocate for regulated child-care spaces, pay equity for women and reproductive freedom, does not mean I am anti-family. Nor does it mean... Read more |
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Mark Morford Planet Obama What would happen if the entire world could vote in our election? One guess Read more |
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Brattleboro Reformer Editorial A Silent Disaster It's been lost in the shuffle with the turmoil of the financial markets, but Hurricane Ike has been a disaster of epic proportions in western Louisiana and Texas. This powerful Category 2 hurricane... Read more |
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Peter Costantini This Sucker Could Go Down Crises seem to awaken the inner poet of the commentariat, and the Crash of 2008 is no exception. In the effort to wrap the mind around a phenomenon as expansive and convoluted as this one, literal... Read more |
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Dave Zirin Sarah Palin's Extreme Sports Ever since Andrew Johnson welcomed the New York Mutuals to the White House in 1867, presidential politics has exploited professional sports. It's a foolproof way for politicians to show voters they... Read more |
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Matthew Rothschild Leahy Concerned About NorthCom’s New Army Unit Senator Patrick Leahy is concerned about the Pentagon's decision to designate an Army unit to Northern Command. On October 1, the Pentagon, for the first time ever, dedicated an Army force... Read more |
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Robert Scheer A Plague Upon the White House I am not a conventionally religious man, or even a very superstitious one, but I do wish George Bush would stop asking God to bless America. Every time he does, we seem to be visited with another... Read more |
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Sam Oliker-Friedland Make Absentee Voting Easier for All I need to confess a shameful secret; a sin of omission from last year that I've regretted ever since. I didn't vote. By most measures, I am a politically engaged college student. I read the news and... Read more |
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Ira Chernus Lefties for Obama If you have decided to vote for a third party candidate for president, or not to vote at all, because you can't stand voting for the "lesser of two evils," this message is for you. Though I'm... Read more |
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Kelly Campbell On Anniversary of Bombing Afghanistan, We Need a Surge in Diplomacy Seven years ago today we held a memorial service for my brother-in-law in his hometown of Anamosa, Iowa, four weeks after he was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11. As I walked out the door from the... Read more |
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Jesse Jackson Wall St. Implodes, but Bad Ideas Survive The largest savings and loan and the largest insurance company go belly up. One trillion dollars lost in the stock market in one day. Two trillion dollars lost in housing values. Congress hands the... Read more |
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David Nassar Wal-Mart Moms Could Vote to Change Wal-Mart "Wal-Mart Moms" or "Wal-Mart Women" are the new "it" demographic this election cycle. That may be good news for Wal-Mart shoppers, but it is not good news for Wal-Mart. Read more |
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Fran Quigley Taking to the Streets for the Poor Last week, I participated in a day-long downtown Indianapolis fast and demonstration asking Senator Bayh to join Senator Lugar in co-sponsoring the Global Poverty Act and Jubilee Act. By committing... Read more |
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Sam Leibowitz and Mazin Qumsiyeh Can 'Shana Tova' and 'Eid Mubarak' Coexist in Israel/Palestine? This year, just as the solemn fasts of Ramadan ended and Islam rejoiced in its renewed connection with God by celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the Jewish people celebrated Rosh Hashana --the Jewish New Year... Read more |
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Harvey Wasserman Casting Paper Ballots Is Our First Victory My daughters and I have cast paper ballots in the opening days of the 2008 presidential election. It was their first time voting in a presidential election. That they have only voted with an African-... Read more |
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Chalmers Johnson Voting the Fate of the Nation Will Economic Meltdown, Race, or Regional Loyalty Be the Trump Card in Election 2008? Read more |
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George Monbiot This Green Subsidy for Car Makers Is Just a Disguised Corporate Bailout Having long sabotaged eco-innovations, the motor industry is now demanding billions to cut its carbon emissions Read more |
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Juan Gonzalez Bailout Dish Has Heaping Side of Pork Here we are, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and the members of the U.S. Senate are busy dispensing pork in a shameless fashion. In their vote on the $700... Read more |
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Linda McQuaig Bulking up Pentagon North With the prospect of a Harper majority hanging menacingly over the country, the mind inevitably turns to the question: Just what is the "secret agenda" lurking behind the friendly sweater? Actually,... Read more |
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Robert Fisk Secrets of Iraq's Death Chamber Prisoners are being summarily executed in the government's high-security detention centre in Baghdad. Read more |
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Stephen Gabow Why America's Problem Is Cultural, Not Political Here are some questions that ask the same thing in different ways. How can McCain/Palin even stand a chance in this election, given the state of the country? Why hasn't "conservative" become a dirty... Read more |
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James Carroll Making Some Sense of $700b How much is 700 billion? The mind registers the number with such imprecision as to make it meaningless. One blogger proposed this way of grasping the figure: As a stack of $100 bills, it would reach... Read more |
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Ann Wright 'My Daughter’s Dream Became a Nightmare': The Murder of Military Women Continues "My daughter's dream became a nightmare," sadly said Gloria Barrios, seven months after her daughter, US Air Force Senior Airman Blanca Luna, was murdered on Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. Read more |
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Norman Solomon Projecting an Obama Victory Projection is a psychological hazard of politics. What's "obvious" to some doesn't occur to others. So, these days, it's hardly reassuring when some progressives roll their eyes at the latest McCain-... Read more |
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Jeffrey Locke Population, Family Planning and Presidential Priorities Over the last week, the American people and financial markets around the world watched as Congress debated an eye-popping $700 billion dollar economic rescue for the American economy. Lost amidst the... Read more |
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Johann Hari McCain Is Deluding Himself Over the 'Surge' There's a hole in the US argument, and blood is rushing through Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt Spying on the Future The US Intelligence Community as Seers Without Sizzle Read more |
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Chris Hedges Dennis Kucinich on the Democrats’ Bailout Betrayal The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New Deal . The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded, coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the... Read more |
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Caroline Arnold A High Price for Looking the Other Way Retired U.S. Ambassador Charles Dunbar, speaking recently at Kent State University about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, observed that "bombing civilians saves (our) soldiers' lives." Just... Read more |
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David Smith-Ferri Building Peace in Iraq: A Careful Reordering of our Priorities and Assumptions Recently I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in the state of Colorado, giving poetry readings and speaking to communities about a unique American-Iraqi partnership called Direct Aid Iraq ( www... Read more |