I’ll be lazy and just grab three feature articles from a mainstream “left” site for now. I figure most readers know the outline of the story, but wanted to acknowledge it publicly anyway. The consensus is true enough: the death toll in Haiti’s recent severe earthquake was far higher than it would have been in [...]

Politics, said Bismarck, is the art of the possible. Yet we are living in a time when politics as widely practised is quite the reverse: the art and worship of the Impossible, namely of the impossible dream of fostering infinite greed, infinite accumulation, infinite “growth,” on a finite planet; of fighting infinite war to control [...]

I live on a moderate-sized sailboat. It reduces my carbon footprint to inhabit about 300 square feet instead of the 1100 I enjoyed in my house on land. (Actually, I confess that I also “inhabit” a storage unit — but it isn’t heated — and I do sometimes take a bath — sweet luxury — [...]

By reader request a rant of DeAnander’s from Stan’s Man on Fire review thread has been promoted to a frontpage article. I believe Stan posted this review in headbanging frustration at the liberal idiocy of this recent “fair and balanced” discussion of porn at Alternet. The two “debating opponents” — neither of whom, of course, [...]

It’s common knowledge that the Israeli occupation, and Israel in general, are Third Rails in US public discourse — touch them and die (politically, anyway). Through a peculiar combination of (1) commemoration (some would say exploitation) of the Nazi epoch, (2) down-n-dirty realpolitik in DC, and (3) the strong Biblical literalist strain in American culture [...]

A few closing thoughts for the evening… on immigration. The Republican chiefs — beholden to the same business interests as Democratic chiefs for big chunks of campaign cash — are now being hoisted on their own petard by the demands of capital accumulation. One of those demands is cheap, throwaway labor inside the US to [...]

an essay by Derrick Jensen I’m scared to write this essay, scared to have it published, scared it will be read by police officers or customs agents, scared that the next time I’m stopped for some traffic violation or the next time I try to cross a border, some police officer or customs agent will [...]

More than once, we have remarked here about the emerging “national” consciousness of the nascent Latin@ movemen tin the US; and of its potentially tectonic consequences. Bradblog (a commercially successful whitelib site) has posted some stunning footage of this state-sponsored xenophobic terror, featuring Jonathan Mann’s riskily-acquired footage, the that is a must-see.

Jephraim Gundzik writes for Asia Times on financial matters; and he is one of a handful of investment advisers who seems to maintain some connection with Planet Earth. This is not an optimistic assessment; and some have been saying for some time that the magic carpet of the housing market had faulty aerodynamics. The crisis [...]

Hezbollah’s big challenge By Pepe Escobar BEIRUT – “You are in heaven and those who killed you will go to hell,” reads a poster in a middle-class, predominantly Sunni neighborhood in north Beirut. Those depicted in heaven include Saddam Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri (killed in a car bombing [...]