John Shelton Ivany Top 21

Freddie and Fannie Hit Snooze on American Dream
by Pat LaMarche - Issue #327

Do you hop right out of bed in the morning or do you need an alarm clock? Are you one of those people with an inner time piece? Or does a siren have to go off next to your head?

Perhaps you hit the snooze button three or four times before you register that the time for dreaming has ended.

I'm the first type, the type with the brain clock. I can usually pop out of bed at just the right time. But occasionally, I get lost in a dream and I can't wake up.

Cluster Bombs: A Shameful Stance
by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Issue #326

In May, much of the world signed a treaty outlawing cluster bombs, the Nazi-created munitions that injure, maim and kill indiscriminately long after their initial use. Now comes the U.S. government to announce it will improve its cluster bombs. Eventually.

The world bans an inhumane weapon. We want to perfect it. Embarrassing.

According to The Associated Press, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed a policy change that would require technical improvements so that, after 2018, more than 99 percent of the bomblets in a cluster bomb must detonate. That would limit - not eliminate - the danger of children and other civilians later being hurt by the detonation of unexploded bomblets.

Obama Tilts Towards Center, Irking Some Activists
by Susan Davis - Issue #325

Barack Obama's support of an overhaul of domestic-spying laws last week was the latest in a string of statements suggesting the Democratic presidential candidate is tacking toward the center to compete with John McCain.

On foreign policy, national security, tax issues and even local politics, Sen. Obama has made some decisions lately that believe his ranking by the nonpartisan National Journal as the U.S.'s "most liberal" senator.

During the primaries, he ran to the left of Sen. Hillary Clinton, securing the nomination in part by shoring up a base that included self-identified liberals and Internet activists who helped fill his campaign war chest.

This Land Is Their Land
by Barbara Ehrenreich - Issue #324

I took a little vacation recently - nine hours in Sun Valley, Idaho, before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multistar restaurant and "opera house." What luck - the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale! Nature and commerce were conspiring to make this the perfect micro-vacation.

But as I approached the stores things started to get a little sinister - maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton's closet? - because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn't find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn't have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.

The West's Weapon of Self-Delusion: There are gun battles in Beirut -- and America thinks things are going fine
by Robert Fisk - Issue #323

So they are it again, the great and the good of American democracy, grovelling and fawning to the Israeli lobbyists of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), repeatedly allying themselves to the cause of another country and one that is continuing to steal Arab land.

Will this ever end? Even Barack Obama - or "Mr Baracka" as an Irish friend of mine innocently and wonderfully described him - found time to tell his Jewish audience that Jerusalem is the one undivided capital of Israel, which is not the view of the rest of the world which continues to regard the annexation of Arab East Jerusalem as illegal. The security of Israel. Say it again a thousand times: the security of Israel - and threaten Iran, for good measure.

For His Treatment of Children in the 'War on Terror,' Bush Is a War Criminal
by Dave Lindorff - Issue #322

Surely nothing that President Bush has done in his two wretched terms of office - not the invasion and destruction of Iraq, not the overturning of the five-centuries-old tradition of habeas corpus, not his authorization and encouragement of torture, not his campaign of domestic spying - nothing, can compare in its ugliness as his approval, as commander in chief, of the imprisoning of over 2500 children.

According to the US government's own figures, that is how many kids 17 years and younger have been held since 2001 as "enemy combatants" - often for over a year, and sometimes for over five years. At least eight of those children, some reportedly as young as 10, were held at Guantanamo. They even had a special camp for them there: Camp Iguana. One of those kids committed suicide at the age of 21, after spending five years in confinement at Guantanamo. (Ironically and tragically, that particular victim of the president's criminal policy, had been determined by the Pentagon to have been innocent only two weeks before he took his own life, but nobody bothered to tell him he was slated for release and a return home to Afghanistan.)

Is Who Becomes The Next President All That Matters
by Danny Schechter - Issue #321

I know. I know. How this is the most important election in history, and why the next occupant of the White House will not only be answering the red phone at 3 AM but possibly be saving these not always United States from the decline that even TIME Magazine has announced the country is facing.

Yet, as I travel outside the country, I can't help but feel, or is it fear, that this logic leaves out some rather important considerations.

Like the fact that the US cannot unilaterally impose its will on the world anymore as our dollar falls and our credibility falls with it. Even a strategy of negotiation as opposed to confrontation is not a recipe for success because in a multi-polar world, other countries and power blocs like the Russians, the Chinese, the EU, The Persian Gulf and OPEC have their own interests. They will listen to our proposals but may reject them if they are at variance with their own needs.

Developing the New "Capitalists' Man
by Dean Baker - Issue #320

In the wake of revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba, and elsewhere, there was talk of creating a new type of person with a socialist mindset. The idea was that people in the prerevolutionary capitalist societies had been educated to be individualistic and greedy. The post-revolutionary societies would instead educate people to be socially minded and to consider the collective good in their actions.

I'll leave it to others to debate the merits of these efforts. The reason that they are suddenly relevant is that our political leaders now seem concerned that people have not been adequately educated for their vision of a capitalist society.

This came to light recently when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson insisted that people who are underwater in their mortgages still had an obligation to pay off their loans. Mr. Paulson is concerned that, because of the collapse of the housing bubble, many people now find themselves owing more than the value of their house and are simply walking away from their debts.

The Pentagon's Corrupt Sock Puppet 'Military Analaysts' Exposed
by Gareth Porter - Issue #319

In Sunday's New York Times, investigative reporter David Barstow exposes television's "military analysts" on the Iraq War as sock puppets of the Pentagon who consciously peddle the Bush administration's talking points on Iraq while hiding their own vested economic interest in selling the public on the Bush administration's happy talk about the war.

This very long and very well-documented story lays bare the most blatantly obnoxious feature of the "Military-Industrial-Media Complex" which ensures that the airwaves convey the administration's major messages on the war day in a day out. The story should mobilize the blogosphere and news media figures who still have some integrity to demand immediate reform of a massively corrupt network system of covering military affairs.

How Things Work: FTC Chair to Join Procter & Gamble
by Robert Weissman - Issue #318

The chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Deborah Platt Majoras, is leaving her job. She's going to become vice president and general counsel for Procter & Gamble (P&G).

Should it raise eyebrows for the head of the leading U.S. consumer protection agency to leave and take a job with the largest consumer products company?

Not in Washington, D.C.

Asked about the propriety of the move, FTC spokesperson Nancy Judy explains that Majoras will need to abide by a year-long "cooling off" period. She'll never be able to represent P&G before the Commission on matters on which she worked while at the FTC. And once she announced that she would be taking a job with P&G, she removed herself from any matters that might affect the company.

Who's the War Boss?
by Sean Gonsalves - Issue #317

"Conservative or liberal, we are all constitutionalists" - Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

It's like a perfect storm. A "unitary executive" jet stream swirls over the nation's capitol. There's hailstorm 24/7 news coverage of presidential politics. Add to the mix the 5th anniversary of the fog of war in Iraq and we're talking near-zero visibility.

For us fair-weather fans, we can take some solace in the irony that the present fog happens to coincide with Sunshine Week - a time the Fourth Estate devotes to shining a light on the Constitution.

Let there be light - even if it's just a sliver of sunshine to chase away the shadows cast over the Constitution - the explicit source of authority to "declare war, ...raise and support Armies," as well as the implicit power of overseeing military matters.

Capitalism In an Apocalyptic Mood
by Walden Bello - Issue #316

Skyrocketing oil prices, a falling dollar, and collapsing financial markets are the key ingredients in an economic brew that could end up in more than just an ordinary recession. The falling dollar and rising oil prices have been rattling the global economy for sometime. But it is the dramatic implosion of financial markets that is driving the financial elite to panic.

And panic there is. Even as it characterized Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's deep cuts amounting to a 1.25 points off the prime rate in late January as a sign of panic, the Economist admitted that "there is no doubt that this is a frightening moment." The losses stemming from bad securities tied up with defaulted mortgage loans by "subprime" borrowers are now estimated to be in the range of about $400 billion. But as the Financial Times warned, "the big question is what else is out there" at a time that the global financial system "is wide open to a catastrophic failure." In the last few weeks, for instance, several Swiss, Japanese, and Korean banks have owned up to billions of dollars in subprime-related losses. The globalization of finance was, from the beginning, the cutting edge of the globalization process, and it was always an illusion to think that the subprime crisis could be confined to U.S. financial institutions, as some analysts had thought.

The War Against Women: A Dispatch from the West African Front
by Ann Jones - Issue #315

Kailahun, Sierra Leone - Greetings from a war zone that's not Iraq. And not Afghanistan either.

I'm checking in from West Africa, where I've been working with women in three neighboring countries, all recently torn apart by civil wars: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and C™te d'Ivoire. The Iraq debacle has monopolized attention and obscured these "lesser" wars - now officially "over" - but millions of West African women are struggling to recover. For them, the war isn't really over at all, not by a long shot. This is the war story that's never truly told. Let me explain.

Surely you remember these conflicts. Liberia's war came in three successive waves lasting 14 years altogether, from 1989 to 2003. Sierra Leone's war started in 1991 when guerillas of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone, trained in Liberia, invaded their own country. The war drew many players and lasted until January 2002, a decade in all. In C™te d'Ivoire, a civil war started in 2002 when northern rebels attempted a coup to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, but by that time the international community had decided to act to prevent any further destabilization of the region. French, African, and later UN peacekeepers stepped in and a treaty was signed in 2003.

CBS Falsifies Iraq War History
by Robert Parry from Common Dreams - Issue #314

ThereÕs a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. CBSÕs Ò60 MinutesÓ demonstrated how that process works on Jan. 27 in airing Scott PelleyÕs interview with the FBI agent who de-briefed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a world of objective reality, a reporter might say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even after Iraq had repeatedly - and accurately - announced that its WMD had been destroyed in the 1990s.

On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. In fall 2002, HusseinÕs government also allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.

How Oil Finds Its Way Into Your Starbucks Latte, and Other Good News
by Carla Wise from Common Dreams - Issue #313

Oil prices recently hit 100 dollars a barrel, and the days of cheap oil appear to be over. Meanwhile, Starbucks is struggling with plummeting stock prices and falling profits. These facts are intimately connected, illustrating the dangers and opportunities ahead. Our food system, which provides us with massive amounts of low cost, unhealthy food, relies heavily on oil. As fuel prices rise, the food that depends on large energy inputs to grow, process, and deliver quickly gets very expensive. Rising food and fuel costs are already hurting Starbucks in interesting ways. More importantly, following the web that links fossil fuel prices to the falling fortunes of Starbucks illustrates how the end of cheap oil gives us an opportunity to transform our economy, our health, and the very sustainability of our farmers and farm lands.

Problem number one: sales are down at Starbucks. Ever-increasing petroleum costs are driving up the prices of food, fuel, and other goods. Americans feel pinched, and some realize that a daily vente latte is actually a luxury, not a necessity. Starbucks is also battling competition from lower-priced coffee houses.

Whither The Working Class Hero?
by Sean Gonsalves from Common Dreams - Issue #312

"A working class hero is something to be" - John Lennon Dear John, What do you think about a "Working Class Hero" remix? Maybe change the chorus a bit. "A working class hero was something to be..." In the years before your death, compassionate politics focused on the poor and the working class. The politics of today, at least the "compassionate conservative" variety, has cut-and-run from the "War on Poverty," proclaiming the half-hearted effort a failure. In the new millennium, the "War on the Middle Class" is all the rage.

When a 'Rescue' Is Not: Bank of America Buys Countrywide When Will 'Rescue Me' Become A New National Anthem?
by Danny Schechter from Common Dreams - Issue #311

Who doesn't love the idea of a dramatic rescue-like saving a child who fell in a well, bringing miners out of danger from a hazardous hellhole, or the courage of that hero who jumped on the subway tracks to safeguard a passenger in the way of a speeding train?

We appreciate rescue helicopters, rescue squads in fire departments-New York has a big fully equipped van called "Rescue One,"- or the daily bravery of the Coast Guard plucking unskilled seafarers from turbulent waters. The more risky the rescue, the more we like it.

But now even a self-interested maneuver by America's biggest consumer bank (net work $175 Billion) is being cast in a heroic light as in the "rescue" of America's biggest mortgage company, Countrywide Financial, by the Bank of America. (NY Times headline: "Bank is Seen as Rescuing Giant Lender.")

When the four billion dollar deal was leaked to the media, the markets were ecstatic and the share price went up. The acquisition crazed BOA which, thanks to new bank-friendly laws and deregulation, went from being a Western institution to a national one, was said to be acting to prevent the collapse of a company vital to saving the national economy.

"My hero?"

Tasers DonÕt Reduce Shootings, Despite Police and PoliticiansÕ Claims
by The Canadian Press - Issue #310

Despite claims by politicians and some police officers that Tasers would save lives by preventing shootings, the devices that are being used by a growing number of police forces were never meant as an alternative to guns, experts say.

Statistics obtained by the Canadian Press bear out that idea, showing that in some of the cities that have recently adopted Tasers, the number of police shootings has remained fairly consistent and low, while Tasers are being used exponentially more often.

In Winnipeg, for example, police shootings of suspects are rare. There was one in 2003, and none in 2004. In 2006, the Winnipeg Police Service fired guns on suspects twice. They also started using Tasers in September of that year, firing them at individuals 37 times before the year was out.

ÒTasers are not meant to replace firearms,Ó Cst. Adam Cheadle, the serviceÕs use of force co-ordinator, said in a recent interview.

ÒThe Taser is on the same playing field as a baton or [pepper] spray.Ó

Can Anyone (Any Viable Candidate, That Is) Say 'Single-Payer'?
by Brad Warthen - Issue #309

Can anyone among those with a chance of becoming president say "single-payer?" If not, forget about serious reform of the way we pay for health care.

It doesn't even necessarily have to be "single-payer." Any other words will do, as long as the plan they describe is equally bold, practical, understandable, and goes as far in uprooting our current impractical, wasteful and insanely complex "system."

And the operative word is "bold." Why? Because unless we start the conversation there, all we might hope for is that a few more of the one out of seven Americans who don't have insurance will be in the "system" with the rest of us - if that, after the inevitable watering-down by Congress. And that's not "reform." Actual reform would rescue all of us from a "system" that neither American workers nor American employers can afford to keep propping up.

But the operative word to describe the health care plans put forward by the major, viable candidates is "timid."

Kucinich for 'Realists'
by Tom Gallagher - Issue #308

The conventional "realist" line on Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign goes something like: Great on the issues; terrible in the polls; can't win; need to find another candidate. This logic may be okay - unless you're actually seriously concerned with things like ending the war in Iraq or achieving universal health insurance.

In November, you vote for the presidential candidate you have to vote for. And if one of the Democrats currently leading the field in fundraising does ultimately secure the nomination, no doubt most Iraq war opponents and universal health insurance advocates will quite readily back him or her over whatever the Republicans throw up. After all, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama are all against the war - more or less, and they all want to do something about health care. But the primaries are when you can vote for what you believe in - that is, if you're fortunate enough to find a candidate who agrees with you. And by that measure, you might say that serious antiwar and pro-health care voters who don't back Dennis Kucinich are, well, throwing their votes away.

US Media Bias and Student Violence in Venezuela
by JoJo Farrell - Issue #307

Why is it that the U.S. media condemns Venezuelan President Hugo Ch‡vez for limiting freedom of press while in the same breath self-censoring their Venezuelan news coverage to such an extent that it completely distorts the story? This has been the case ever since Ch‡vez came to office, but last week, after the incidents at the Central Venezuelan University, the asymmetries once again were violently thrust to the surface.

Next month's controversial constitutional reform has again sent Venezuelans into the streets and into headlines around the world. President Hugo Ch‡vez has likened the current political climate to the spring of 2002, which culminated in a short-lived coup d'Žtat ousting Ch‡vez for 2 days. Pro- and anti-government sides have each launched vicious attacks on one another. The polarized Venezuelan media coverage has created a confused and divided environment in which it is common to see stories written with substantial pieces left out. The international media is never far from the sidelines. Last week, in standard fashion, nearly every major US newspaper momentarily forgot their commitment to an independent press, and omitted crucial facts, martyring the Venezuelan opposition student movement, and acting as a de facto mouthpiece for the opposition.

Say Yes to National Healthcare
by Michael Hochman and David Himmelstein - Issue #306

Michael Moore's film Sicko gave a big boost to the movement for single-payer national health insurance this year. But even those turned off by Mr. Moore's less-than-subtle style will find many reasons to support a single-payer system. As the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans continues to rise and medical costs spiral out of control, these reasons are increasingly compelling.

As doctors at an urban hospital, we see uninsured patients in the emergency room with serious illnesses that easily could have been prevented with appropriate preventive care. We waste countless hours filling out unnecessary insurance forms. And we listen to patients complain about the complexities and hassles of navigating the health care system.

Madness as Method
by Maureen Dowd - Issue #305

Dick Cheney's craziness used to influence foreign policy.

Now it is foreign policy.

He may have lost his buddy in belligerence, Rummy. He may have tapped out the military in Iraq. He may not be able to persuade Congress so easily anymore - except for Hillary - to issue warlike resolutions. He can't cow Condi into supporting his bullying as he once did, and Bob Gates is doing his best to instill some common sense.

Besides, Cheney is running out of time to wreak global havoc; he's working for a president who is spending his waning days on the job trying to prevent children from getting health insurance.

Even Though The Nightly News Still StinksÉ Olbermann Rules!
by Marvin Kitman - Issue #304

The launch of Katie Couric a year ago as the anchor of the CBS Evening News was hailed by CBS as the biggest thing in news since, well, the invention of denture fixative commercials. It was also the biggest flop. The CBS Evening News Without Dan Rather or Bob Schieffer had its lowest ratings since Nielsen began tracking evening news shows in 1987. This turn of events stunned CBS executives-who had given her the famous "Kiss Me Kate" contract, which paid Couric $15 million a year-and the news consultants who thought she was the answer to CBS being mired in third place in the network news race for the past ten years. The news doctors who have been paid millions trying to fix the show for the past year have only made it worse. It didn't matter how many times the consultants got it wrong. Remember what they did to poor Dan Rather? Smile, don't smile. Wear a sweater, don't wear a sweater. Stand up to deliver the news, sit down. It is a law of the news consultancy/network relationship: If we are paying so much money, it must be right. Otherwise, why are we paying so much money?

A Little Nordic Sanity: Actually Doing What You Say
by Rick Salutin - Issue #303

I squandered a chunk of my life this week watching U.S. congressional hearings on ÒprogressÓ in Iraq, and media follow-ups. In case you didnÕt waste your own time, let me share some of my loss.

There are supposedly two sides, for and against the war. Yet they sound the same. California Democrat Tom Lantos, whoÕs against the war, started the hearings by saying ÒourÓ strategy is building national institutions and seeking Òa political settlement.Ó

Why Is This Man Smiling?
by Robert Scheer - Issue #302

OK, throw another $50 billion down the rat hole that is the Iraq occupation. ItÕs only money, if you ignore the lives being destroyed. ThatÕs what the White House is asking for, in addition to the $147 billion in supplementary funds already requested, and Congress will grant it after Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker follow President BushÕs photo op in IraqÕs Anbar province with a dog and pony show of their own. Meanwhile, the Democrats are totally cynical about this continuing waste of taxpayer dollars and of American and Iraqi lives, and, wanting Bush to hang himself with his own rope, they will deny him nothing.

From Sniper To War Resister: My Journey
by Army National Guard Spc. Eleonai "Eli" Israel - Issue #301

Two months ago, I took a stand that changed my life forever. As a Soldier, a JVB Protective Service Agent, and a Sniper with the Army who had been in Iraq for a year (running over 250 combat missions), I refused to continue to be a part of the occupation. I regret nothing. This is my story. Currently, as I write this I am sitting in Kuwait, on "stand-by" to return to the States sometime hopefully this week. After getting out of the brig last week, I'm now scheduled to be discharged from the Army within the month. I'm looking forward to joining forces with anti-Iraq-War movements, such as Courage to Resist and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

What led me to this place in my life?

Joining up, the first time

I joined the U.S. Marine Corps in the spring of 1999, the month of my 18th birthday.

I grew up in the custody of the state of Kentucky with little contact with my biological parents since I was 13. I had no family support system and ended up on the streets, doing what street kids do.

War Going Horribly---for Iraqis
by Amitabh Pal - Issue #300

ThereÕs something of a whiff of racism in claiming that the Iraq War is not going too badly because American casualties have been marginally lower last month.

On purpose or otherwise, this analysis misses the larger purpose of why U.S. troops are meant to be in Iraq: to make life better for the Iraqis.

As the numbers show, U.S. troops are spectacularly failing in this regard. July was a month that saw a whopping 23 percent increase in Iraqi violent deaths over June, with at least 2,024 Iraqis killed. And yet, the same AP story that pointed this out led with the U.S. troop statistic, starkly exposing the priorities of the media.

Tax Haven Racket
by Ralph Nader - Issue #299

Lucy Komisar of the Tax Justice Network-USA (taxjustice-usa.org) spoke at the Conference on Taming the Giant Corporation last week about "Closing Down the Tax Haven Racket." Her words were so compelling that the rest of this column is devoted to excerpts from her presentation:

"The tax haven racket is the biggest scam in the world. It's run by the international banks with the cooperation of the world's financial powers for the benefit of corporations and the mega-rich.... [M]ost Americans, including progressive activist Americans, don't know what I'm going to tell you. And that's part of the problem.

"Tax havens, also known as offshore financial centers, are places that operate secret bank accounts and shell companies that hide the names of real owners from tax authorities and law enforcement. They use nominees, front men. Sometimes offshore incorporation companies set up the shells. Sometimes the banks do it. Often someone will use a shell company in one jurisdiction that owns a shell in another jurisdiction that owns a bank account in a third. That's called layering. No one can follow the paper trial.

On Cindy Sheehan
by Joyce Marcel - Issue #298

So Gold Star peace mom Cindy Sheehan is quitting the American antiwar movement. ThatÕs bad news.

Sheehan lost her son, Casey, on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City, Baghdad. In August of 2005 she set up a makeshift camp outside of George W. BushÕs summer compound, asking for a reason for her sonÕs death. His arrogance in ignoring her and her anti-war stance quickly caught the mediaÕs attention. A peace movement coalesced around her.

Now, disgusted with Republicans, Democrats, left wingers, right wingers and especially middle-wingers - in fact, with almost all of America - Sheehan has announced that she is leaving the public stage.

Take Action: Support a Better Farm Bill
by Willie Nelson - Issue #297

I believe nothing is as central to our well-being as food - who grows it and how. When produced with the interests of the eater in mind, food makes our bodies strong. When produced with the dream of passing the land on to the next generation, food strengthens local communities. And when produced with a long view of the planet's health, food keeps our environment intact, even thriving.

The Struggle Over Iraqi Oil: Eyes Eternally on the Prize
by Michael Schwartz - Issue #296

The struggle over Iraqi oil has been going on for a long, long time. One could date it back to 1980 when President Jimmy Carter Ñ before his Habitat for Humanity days Ñ declared that Persian Gulf oil was ÒvitalÓ to American national interests. So vital was it, he announced, that the U.S. would use Òany means necessary, including military forceÓ to sustain access to it. Soon afterwards, he announced the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a new military command structure that would eventually develop into United States Central Command (Centcom) and give future presidents the ability to intervene relatively quickly and massively in the region.

"Peace Be With You, Kurt Vonnegut"
by Harvey Wasserman - Issue #295

As the media fills with whimsical good-byes to one of America's greatest writers, lets not forget one of the great engines driving this wonderful man-he HATED war. Including this one in Iraq. And he had utter contempt for the men who brought it about.Kurt Vonnegut was a divine spark of liberating genius for an entire generation. His brilliant, beautiful, loving and utterly unfettered novels helped us redefine ourselves in leaving the corporate America in the 1950s and the Vietnam war that followed.

Having seen the worst of World War II from a meatlocker in fire-bombed Dresden, Kurt's Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, cut us the intellectual and spiritual slack to seek out a new reality. It took a breathtaking psychic freedom to merge the interstellar worlds he created from whole cloth with the social imperatives of a changing age. It was that combination of talent, heart and liberation that gave Vonnegut a cutting edge he never lost.

"Beyond Vietnam"
by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Issue #294

Editor's Note: The press tells us that Dr. King was a civil rights leader, that he was, but we must also know that this remarkable man was, during his later years, very involved in the anti-imperialist movement as well as the struggle for worker's rights'.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course itÕs always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

A Predator Becomes More Dangerous When Wounded
by Noam Chomsky - Issue #293

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq
by Juan Gonzalez - Issue #292

Throughout nearly four years of the daily mayhem and carnage in Iraq, President Bush and his aides in the White House have scoffed at even the slightest suggestion that the U.S. military occupation has anything to do with oil.

The President presumably would have us all believe that if Iraq had the world's second-largest supply of bananas instead of petroleum, American troops would still be there.

Dump 'Free World' in Sea of Dated Words
by Walter S. Minot - Issue #291

Along with our great literary writers, journalists should be the guardians of our language, especially our political language. But are journalists really performing their duty when they either refer to President Bush as "the leader of the Free World" or allow White House representatives to do so with impunity?

Bush Slashes Aid to Poor to Boost Iraq War Chest
- Bill for Iraq conflict will soon overtake Vietnam
- $78bn squeeze on medical care for elderly and poor
by Ewen MacAskill - Issue #290

President George Bush is proposing to slash medical care for the poor and elderly to meet the soaring cost of the Iraq war.

Mr Bush's $2.9 trillion (£1.5 trillion) budget, sent to Congress yesterday, includes $100bn extra for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for this year, on top of $70bn already allocated by Congress and $141.7bn next year. He is planning an 11.3% increase for the Pentagon. Spending on the Iraq war is destined to top the total cost of the 13-year war in Vietnam.

Note to Nancy Pelosi: Challenge Market Fundamentalism
by Ruth Rosen - Issue #289

Allison Stevens, a contributor to WomenÕs enews, a news service which too few good men bother to read, has just reported that the hugely expanded bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues now has the power to put womenÕs issues on the national agenda. The caucus, which Stevens says may end up outnumbering the so-called ÒBlue Dog Coalition, a caucus of 44 fiscally conservative Democrats, and the New Democrat Coalition, a group of 63 pro-business Democrats,Ó also has access to, and probably the support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was a member of the caucus, which was founded in 1977.

Among the issues on their Òwish listÓ according to WomenÕs enews, are womenÕs health, educational equity and sex trafficking, women in prison, and international domestic violence.

South America: Toward an Alternative Future
by Noam Chomsky - Issue #288

Last month a coincidence of birth and death signaled a transition for South America and indeed for the world.

The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died even as leaders of South American nations concluded a two-day summit meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, hosted by President Evo Morales, at which the participants and the agenda represented the antithesis of Pinochet and his era.

In the Cochabamba Declaration, the presidents and envoys of 12 countries agreed to study the idea of forming a continent-wide community similar to the European Union.

America's Holy Warriors
by Chris Hedges - Issue #287

EditorÕs note: The former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief warns that the radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal of co-opting the countryÕs military and law enforcement.

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement.Ê This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle AmericaÕs open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.

Iraq is Vietnam-and You'd Better Believe It
by John Graham - Issue #286

I was a civilian advisor/trainer in Vietnam, arriving just as US troops were going home. I wasn't there to fight, but I hadn't been in country a week when I learned that the word "noncombatant" didn't mean much where I was posted, fifty miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that then divided South Vietnam from North. I got the message when a sniper's bullet whistled past my ear on the main highway twenty miles south of Hue. Joe Jackson, the burly major who was driving, yelled at me to hold on and duck as he gunned the jeep out of range, zigzagging to spoil the sniper's aim.

Snipers or not, in 1971 it was the U.S. Government's policy not to issue weapons to civilian advisors in Vietnam, even to those of us in distant and dangerous outposts. The reason was not principle, but PR-and here begin the lessons for Iraq.

Routine and Systematic Torture Is at the Heart of America's War on Terror
(In the fight against cruelty, barbarism and extremism, America has embraced the very evils it claims to confront)
by George Monbiot - Issue #285

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

Last week, defence lawyers acting for Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant", released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk - taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture". The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for more than three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

Mourning the Hidden Tragedy in Iraq by Beverly Beckham - Issue #284

Adam is my prism. I look at life through his eyes. He is 20 months old, and everything is new to him. And so far, everything is good. He's loved. He's healthy. He sees the world as a safe place. I know the world isn't safe. And it scares me sometimes, the difference between what he sees and what I know.

Life is fragile. It's why we swaddle infants, and put bumper pads in cribs and seat belts in cars and inoculate against disease. It's why parents don't sleep some nights, many nights, worrying about all that can go wrong.

Adam is my youngest daughter's child, a happy little boy. In 16 years, I wonder, will he be a soldier fighting a war in some far-off place most of us can't find on a map? Will he be ducking bullets and bombs in a town we can't pronounce? Will he lose the legs he runs on, the hands that build Lego towers, the arms he wraps around his mother's neck? I rock him to sleep some nights and tell him happy stories. Am I lying to him by weaving tales?

Bush Loses Election in Ecuador by Matthew Rothschild - Issue #283

The Bush Administration has lost another election, this time in Ecuador.

Correa's victory is the latest setback not just for Bush but also for the model of corporate globalization that Washington has been imposing on Latin America for fifteen years now.

Populist Rafael Correa triumphed over the richest man in the country, Alvaro Noboa, a banana tycoon.

During the campaign, Correa thumbed his nose at Bush, calling him "dimwitted." And Correa vowed to reject a free trade deal with the United States, to close a U.S. military base there, and to discard some of the foreign debts his country has accumulated, which he calls "illegitimate."

Correa's victory is the latest setback not just for Bush but for the model of corporate globalization that Washington has been imposing on Latin America for fifteen years now.

One country after another has spat out the toxic medicine: from Argentina and Bolivia to Uruguay and Venezuela.

My Stomach is Touching My Back
Copyright 2006 San Francisco Chronicle by Paul Ash - Issue #282

The federal government has decided to drop the word "hunger" from its vocabulary, according to a new report released by the USDA. The reason? USDA sociologist Mark Nord, the author of the report, claims that the term "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey. We don't have a measure of that condition."

The USDA will now use the term "very low food security" to describe people who used to be considered "food insecure with hunger." Statistically speaking, hunger will no longer exist in America.

The release of the report, however, follows five straight years of increases in the number of Americans unable to afford the food they need. Nord and the USDA may feel comfortable saying there is no hunger in America, simply because they can't find a precise scientific measure to describe it. It is not so difficult. In fact, it's so easy a child could do it. A young boy at a San Francisco food pantry knows exactly how to describe hunger. He says, "My stomach is touching my back."

Vermont Elects America's First Socialist Senator
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 by Julian Borger - Issue #281

Amid the furious debate over Iraq and the speculation that George Bush is now a lame duck after Tuesday's mid-term elections, an extraordinary political milestone has approached: after winning eight consecutive elections to the House of Representatives, a cantankerous 65-year-old called Bernie has become the first socialist senator in US history.

His success flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom about American politics.He is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it. Even his admirers admit that he lacks social skills, and he tends to speak in tirades. Yet that has not stopped him winning eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives.

Active-Duty Troops Voice Their Dissent from US Policy in Iraq by Drew Brown - Issue #280

WASHINGTON - Liam Madden opposed the war in Iraq even before he deployed with his Marine unit in late 2004. But he came home convinced more than ever that the war was wrong.

"The more informed I got, the more I opposed the war," said Madden, 22, a Marine Corps sergeant in Quantico, Va. "The more people who died there, the longer we stayed there, the more I opposed the war. The more I know, the easier it is to support withdrawal."

Mexican Progressives Target Wal-Mart After Its Involvement in the Presidential Election by Ruben Garcia and Andrea Buffa - Issue #279

As we enter the final weeks leading up to the US mid-term elections, interested parties are pulling out all the stops to make sure their candidates win. One such interested party is the corporation Wal-Mart, which newspapers just revealed plans to hand out election materials about certain candidates to its more than one million US employees.

FarmworkersÕ Plight: No Fruits for Their Labor by David Bacon - Issue #278

Julia Preston, a New York Times reporter writing from Washington, D.C., describes pears rotting on trees in Lake County, Calif., owing to a lack of farmworkers to pick them. Growers tell her 70,000 of the state's 450,000 farmworkers are missing. America's newspaper of record is being spun by agribusiness, which wants a new bracero program, and complains of a labor shortage to get it.

Senator Hillary Clinton: All Show and No Substance by Sibel Edmonds & William Weaver - Issue #277

Recent surveys measuring public opinion and confidence in congress all arrived at the same conclusion: over seventy percent of Americans have lost faith and confidence in the United States Congress. The public no longer trusts this body of politicians who were elected to represent the people and the peoples' interests. Instead, they now view these "representatives" as servants of special interest groups, corporations and high-powered lobbyists. Americans are tired of watching and listening to elected officials who refrain from taking a strong stand on crucial issues, and who almost never state their positions with conviction and sincerity. In the eyes of the nation these senators and representatives are nothing more than programmed publicity puppets, competing for face time in the media.

Let the Truth-Telling Begin by Molly Ivins - Issue #276

Royal Masset, a Texas Republican political consultant who has been accused of being less than brilliant, recently had this to say about Karl Rove: "I think we actually like Karl a lot more now than we did when he was more active locally." He told the San Antonio Express-News he believed that Rove in Washington is remaining loyal to Bush while "fighting the good fight. He's fighting budgets. He's fighting wars. He's doing conservative kinds of things."

Bush's Fondness For Fundamentalism Is Courting Disaster At Home and Abroad: Affinity with the Christian right has led to banning stem cell research and turning a blind eye to civilian deaths in Lebanon. by Karen Armstrong - Issue #275

From the very beginning, the conflict between religion and modern science was couched in extreme, even apocalyptic rhetoric. Thomas H. Huxley, who popularized the Origin of Species, insisted that people had to choose between faith and science; there could be no compromise: "One or the other would have to succumb after a struggle of unknown duration." In response, conservative Christians launched a crusade against Darwinism.

Helplessly Hoping: Day 21, Troops Home Fast by Cindy Sheehan - Issue #274

I have been in such a blue funk of depression and worry since Israel's over-reaction---or "over action" in Lebanon in what seems to be insanity escalating out of control. What our media and some world leaders seem to expediently forget is that Israel massacred an entire family on a beach in Lebanon with a rocket and kidnapped two Palestinian citizens before Hezbollah and Hamas kidnapped some Israeli soldiers.

Calling Out Casualties' Names Is One Way to Keep War In Mind by Victoria Mares-Hershey - Issue #273

It was one of those first real summer twilights in Portland, just after quick summer showers darken red brick sidewalks and historic buildings, turn swaths of grass a shinier green and make everything smell fresh for a moment.

Che Guevara's Address to The United Nations in 1967 - Issue #272

Cuba comes here to state its position on the most important points of controversy and will do so with the full sense of responsibility that the use of this rostrum implies, while at the same time fulfilling the unavoidable duty of speaking clearly and frankly. We would like to see this assembly shake itself out of complacency and move forward. We would like to see the committees begin their work and not stop at the first confrontation.

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