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By Michael Dirda
$11.16
$23
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AP photo / Stephan Savoia
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On June 9, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberties and the Constitution itself.
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By Amy Goodman — Thousands of people gathered in Minneapolis for the fourth National Conference for Media Reform. They came from all walks of life and all ages to address a central crisis in our society: our broken media system.
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Chris Hedges gave this keynote address on Wednesday, May 28, in Furman University’s Younts Conference Center. The address was part of protests by faculty and students over the South Carolina college’s decision to invite George W. Bush to give the May 31 commencement address.
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Eric Hobsbawm, one of our most celebrated historians, looks at what makes the American Colossus uniquely dangerous in its imperial overreach at the dawn of the third millennium.
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By Amy Goodman — “Utah” Phillips died this week at the age of 73. He was a musician, labor organizer, peace activist and co-founder of his local homeless shelter.
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HBO
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Leading election integrity journalist Brad Friedman reviews HBO’s portrayal of the 2000 Florida recount and wonders whether we’re not headed for another stolen election.
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By Eugene Robinson — Other than providing Fidel Castro with a convenient antagonist to help him whip up nationalist fervor—and thus prolong his rule—the U.S. trade embargo and other sanctions have accomplished precisely nothing.
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By David Sirota — This movement could be more critical than even presidential elections. One example: ExxonMobil stock owners could generate major steps in the area of renewable and alternative energy.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Hillary Clinton is talking as if the battle over seating disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic National Convention is the greatest crisis for democracy since the 2000 Florida recount.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Imagine what it would be like not to be able to marry the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. Then imagine how tens of thousands of gays and lesbians in California must have felt last week when the California Supreme Court declared that homosexuals have a right to marriage under the state’s constitution.
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press.princeton.edu
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Sheldon Wolin’s new book offers a controversial but ultimately convincing diagnosis of how America’s democracy has succumbed to an unacknowledged totalitarian temptation.
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In this first-ever biography of the religious leader many predict will take over Iraq after the Americans leave, Patrick Cockburn, one of the most respected correspondents in the Middle East, provides a dramatic look at a man Paul Bremer denounced as a “Bolshevik Islamist.”
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By Amy Goodman — Sami al-Haj is a free man today, after having been imprisoned by the U.S. military for more than six years. His crime: journalism.
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By Eugene Robinson — That might be going too far for a show that still averages 28.7 million viewers, but ratings are down. In part, the cause is the presence of an even more exciting reality show on television, and it’s not even really a show.
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By Marie Cocco — Republicans have had great success in convincing Americans that “voter fraud” is a grave and growing threat to the republic, but the exact crime that they speak of is almost nonexistent.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — This is supposed to be a big election, but it has given every sign in recent weeks of becoming a small one. As a result, the public and the media are showing signs of exhaustion with what had once been an exhilarating contest.
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All eyes will be on Pennsylvania Tuesday, but citizen journalist Brad Friedman wonders if all votes will be counted, especially considering that the vast majority of Pennsylvanians will be casting electronic ballots. Election integrity is one of those issues that get a lot of lip service but no real action, which is probably why we’re still talking about it in 2008.
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By Eugene Robinson — Once the meaningless inquisition about loose semantics and questionable acquaintances was done, Wednesday night’s debate between Obama and Clinton got interesting.
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What will history say about the implacable anti-imperialist and unrepentant revolutionary who has held power in Cuba for nearly 50 years? The publication of Fidel Castro’s and Ignacio Ramonet’s “My Life: A Spoken Autobiography” helps us understand the man and his myth.
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By Amy Goodman — It has been 40 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel.
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By Marie Cocco — Some days, there’s just no forgetting that Dick Cheney is still the vice president. We’ve had a few of these recently, with Cheney traveling to Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East on what might be called a goodwill mission, if the person making the trip were not Dick Cheney.
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By Amy Goodman — We just passed the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. military members killed in Iraq since the invasion five years ago. Still, the death toll climbs.
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By Amy Goodman — While the Iraq war is off the front pages, and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama embark on what may well be a scorched-earth primary battle against each other, let’s keep our eye on where the real scorched earth lies: who profits and who dies.
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AP photo / Ahmad al-Rubaye, pool
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By Robert Scheer — President Bush has made his antagonism for Iran and its president well known, but in Iraq he has created a great ally for his enemy, as was clear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic visit.
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AP photo / RIA Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, pool
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It wasn’t a surprise victory by any stretch when Vladimir Putin’s political heir apparent, Dmitry Medvedev, soundly trounced the competition Sunday to become Russia’s next president. However, at least one election-vetting organization, as well as dozens of activists arrested by police as they gathered in Moscow to protest, questioned whether democracy truly won the day.
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wcsh6.com
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Ralph Nader has announced that he will run for the presidency for a third time. In the past months on Truthdig, the case has been made both for and against such a campaign. Here Chris Hedges says why he should run, while Robert Scheer tells Nader himself it would be better if he didn’t.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If you want to talk about candidates borrowing from each other, consider how much Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are taking on loan from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, the affable populist killed in a plane crash shortly before the 2002 election.
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By Amy Goodman — Yuri Kochiyama’s remarkable life took her from a Japanese internment camp in Arkansas to the Audubon Ballroom, where she witnessed the assassination of her friend Malcom X, and on to Oakland, where she continues to struggle for social justice.
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Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, a 23-year-old Afghan student, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy because of an article he downloaded from the Internet. The verdict has aroused outrage around the world, and top U.S. and European officials have spoken with the Afghan government. However, some worry that international pressure could back Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the nation’s religious fundamentalists into a corner and therefore ensure that the execution is carried out.
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By Eugene Robinson — The campaign for the White House is great fun, but it can also be a distraction. While the leading contenders to replace Bush continue to duke it out, the president and his lieutenants are still trying to justify torture in the name of protecting this once great democracy.
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By Amy Goodman — With all the talk of record voter participation, we should take a moment to think of the Americans, many of them African-American and Latino, who have been disenfranchised because they once committed a felony.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report follows the Middle Eastern media as they report on the U.S. presidential campaign with rapt attention. After all, this is the future head of the world’s only superpower (one that has taken a keen interest in the neighborhood) we’re talking about here.
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By Elliot D. Cohen — It’s not enough for George W. Bush’s government to eavesdrop on phone calls, monitor financial transactions and sneak a peek at other people’s e-mails. Now the administration says it needs to monitor all Internet activity in the United States. That means you and everything you do online.
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By Chalmers Johnson — A powerful new book by a young South Korean-born economist at Cambridge University provides a compelling critique of the contradictions and hypocrisies of globalization and neoliberalism. The perfect antidote to the nostrums of Thomas Friedman.
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AP photo / Mizzima News
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By Sarah Stillman — Remember when the world turned its attention to Burma and promised to no longer ignore the suffering of the people there? Truthdig contributor Sarah Stillman sat down with Burmese democracy organizer Maung Maung to check in on the Saffron Revolution and the brave men and women who continue to resist oppression, whether anyone is watching or not.
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By Amy Goodman — One pundit called the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas “a lovefest.” It may well have been, but only because the corporate sponsor of the debate, General Electric-owned NBC News and its cable news channel MSNBC, rescinded its invitation to candidate Dennis Kucinich.
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Jon Stewart just might be onto something with his analysis of how oil-pricing fluctuations happen—just watch as President Bush (doing his best impression of a certain notoriously neurotic New Yorker), perhaps aware of his diminishing bargaining power in the twilight months of his presidency, bravely speaks on behalf of American oil consumers during his recent Mideast sojourn.
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By David Sirota — It is state legislators—not those celebrities of Capitol Hill—who are the innovators in seeking remedies to problems such as the health care mess.
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By Doug Henwood — Just how sick is the U.S. economy? Just how deep is the divide between the super-rich and the rest of us? Just how bad would a meltdown of our political economy be? And what, if anything, can be done about it?
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An unfortunate coincidence has emerged from the New Hampshire primary results that is at least worth noting, if only for the sake of trivia (or democracy): Hillary Clinton performed better, and Barack Obama worse, in counties where votes were counted using Diebold machines. Whether you call it sour grapes or citizen journalism, the Brad Blog has the details.
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AP photo / Sherin Zada
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We’ve heard and read what many Western news sources have had to say about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the ensuing turmoil in Pakistan. Now, here’s an eminent voice from within the country, veteran journalist Ayaz Amir, offering his take on his nation at a crucial crossroads.
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By Amy Goodman — Hillary Clinton’s surprise victory in New Hampshire guarantees a longer, more competitive Democratic primary season. It’s like money in the bank for those who control the airwaves.
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By Marie Cocco — The most revealing indicator of the state of our democracy is not to be found in the snowdrifts of New Hampshire but in the marbled chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court. Soon enough, we will discover whether the court under Chief Justice John Roberts will become a partisan tool in the national Republican drive to place constraints on voting that are targeted at those who tend to support Democrats.
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AP photo / Jim Cole
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By Chris Hedges — Why isn’t Dennis Kucinich treated as a viable candidate? Because, Hedges argues, it’s all too easy for the comfortable to dismiss him.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Chris Hedges — Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges sits down with Dennis Kucinich to get his thoughts on the campaign, corporate America, the state of our democracy and more.
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By Amy Goodman — Benazir Bhutto and her supporters who died with her during the suicide attack Dec. 27 are the latest victims of decades of dangerous U.S. support for Pakistan’s military regime.
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By David Sirota — Now, a handful of states have disproportionate power to determine our national path in presidential elections. But a remedy is available.
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By Amy Goodman — On Dec. 18, the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission met in Washington, D.C., and, by a 3 to 2 vote, passed new regulations that would allow more media consolidation. This, despite the U.S. public’s increasing concern over the nation’s media being controlled by a few giant corporations.
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AP photo / Steve Mitchell
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By Chris Hedges — Mike Huckabee represents a new and potent force in American politics, and the neocons and corporate elite, who once viewed the yahoos of the Christian right as the useful idiots, are now confronted with the fact that they themselves are the ones who have been taken for a ride.
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Does Anything Change in Los Angeles With Election of New Mayor?
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