Political Economy:

• David Leonhardt, The China Puzzle, The New York Times, 13 May 2009.


• Julian Delasantellis, Oh, impotent Washington, Asia Times, 14 May 2009.
  
  "The saddest part of the ultimately degrading spectacle of the now totally discredited US bank stress tests is how they indicate the impotence of the US government when it comes to addressing national problems which necessitate a sacrifice by well-heeled interest groups."


• * Sahm Adrangi, Will The Dollar Standard Collapse?, Clusterstock at The Business Insider, 18 May 2009.
  
  This is a discussion of the unusually prescient book: Richard Duncan, The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures, revised edition, Wiley, 2005 (publisher, Google Book Search, Amazon.com).


• Tim Rayment, Joseph Cassano: the man with the trillion-dollar price on his head, The Sunday Times, 17 May 2009.
  
  On AIG.


• Leo Kolivakis, Is Inflation Inevitable?, Pension Pulse, 11 May 2009.


• Christian Broda, Piero Ghezzi, Eduardo Levy-Yeyati. The new global balance: Financial de-globalisation, savings drain, and the US dollar, VoxEU.org, 22 May 2009.


• Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, Robin Wells, et al. The Crisis and How to Deal with It, The New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 10, 11 June 2009.


• Barry Eichengreen & Richard Baldwin, editors. Rescuing our jobs and savings: What G7/8 leaders can do to solve the global credit crisis, VoxEU.org, October 2008.


• Edward Harrison, Guest post: More thoughts on the fake recovery, naked capitalism, 23 May 2009.
  
  Edward Harrison, It’s the writedowns, stupid, Credit Writedowns, 19 March 2009.


• ** Chalmers Johnson, Why the U.S. Has Really Gone Broke, Jesse's Café Américain, 28 April 2009.


• Mark Gilbert, Dollar Is Dirt, Treasuries Are Toast, AAA Is Gone, Bloomberg.com, 21 May 2009.


• Javier Blas, Africa almost giving land away, says UN, FT.com, 24 May 2009.
  
  Javier Blas, Food security fuels land grab, says report, FT.com, 24 May 2009.


• Jamil Anderlini, China stuck in ‘dollar trap’, FT.com, 24 May 2009.


• Keith Bradsher, China Grows More Picky About Debt, The New York Times, 20 May 2009.


• Satyajit Das, Fear & Loathing in Financial Products: The Finance-Government Complex & The End of U.S. Economic Dominance, Wilmott.com, 26 May 2009.
  
  Echos the observations of: Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, The Atlantic, May 2009.


• Benjamin M. Friedman, The Failure of the Economy & the Economists, The New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 9, 28 May 2009.


• Andy Kroll, Six Ways the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, TomDispatch, 26 May 2009.
  
  "The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold: How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System"
  
  Also published at AlterNet.org


• * Gretchen Morgenson & Don Van Natta Jr, In Crisis, Banks Dig In for Fight Against Rules, The New York Times, 31 May 2009.


• * Atul Gawande, The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care, The New Yorker, 01 June 2009.
  
  Reviews of this important essay by: James Kwak / The Baseline Scenario; Andrew Leonard / How the World Works / Salon.com.


• Joe Nocera, Poking Holes in a Theory on Markets, The New York Times, 05 June 2009.


• Elizabeth Warren, Unsafe at Any Rate: If it's good enough for microwaves, it's good enough for mortgages. Why we need a Financial Product Safety Commission., Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #5, Summer 2007.
  
  via: Jane Bryant Quinn, Loan-Shark Lenders Have Date With Hangman, Bloomberg.com, 03 June 2009.


• Sandy B. Lewis & William D. Cohan, The Economy Is Still at the Brink, The New York Times, 06 June 2009.
  
  Comments on this article: Yves Smith, The Team Obama Con Game Gets Official Notice, naked capitalism, 07 June 2009.


• ** Joseph E. Stiglitz, Wall Street and the Third World, VanityFair.com, July 2009.
  
  "Every crisis comes to an end—and, bleak as things seem now, the current economic crisis too shall pass. But no crisis, especially one of this severity, recedes without leaving a legacy. And among this one’s legacies will be a worldwide battle over ideas—over what kind of economic system is likely to deliver the greatest benefit to the most people. Nowhere is that battle raging more hotly than in the Third World, among the 80 percent of the world’s population that lives in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, 1.4 billion of whom subsist on less than $1.25 a day. In America, calling someone a socialist may be nothing more than a cheap shot. In much of the world, however, the battle between capitalism and socialism—or at least something that many Americans would label as socialism—still rages. While there may be no winners in the current economic crisis, there are losers, and among the big losers is support for American-style capitalism. This has consequences we’ll be living with for a long time to come."


• Robert Reich, The Great Debt Scare: Why Has It Returned?, Robert Reich's Blog, 10 June 2009.


• Simon Johnson, China Pushes Hard, The Baseline Scenario, 01 June 2009.
  
  Simon Johnson, Mr. Geithner Goes to China, The Baseline Scenario, 30 May 2009.


• James Kwak, Regulatory Capital Arbitrage for Beginners, The Baseline Scenario, 30 May 2009.


• Charles Hugh Smith, Why the Present Depression Will Be Deeper than the Great Crash of 1929, of two minds, 04 June 2009.


• Simon Johnson, Brazen Tunneling and Inflation, The Baseline Scenario, 28 May 2009.

Geopolitics:

• Pepe Escobar, Blue Gold, Turkmen Bashes, and Asian Grids: Pipelineistan in Conflict (Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak), TomDispatch, TomDispatch.com, 12 May 2009.


• John Taylor, Exploding debt threatens America, FT.com, 27 May 2009.


• Mark Danner & Bruce Fein, Democracy and Empire, Bill Moyers' Jorunal, 01 May 2009.
  
  The above is a supplement to:
  
  Mark Danner & Bruce Fein, Bill Moyers' Jorunal, 01 May 2009.


• David Pilling, The truth of the US’ Pakistan clinch, FT.com, 10 June 2009.


• Gary Leupp, The Main Result of the "War on Terror": The Destabilization of Pakistan, CounterPunch.org, 29 May 2009.

The U.S. Police / Security / Surveilance State:

• Naomi Klein, China's All-Seeing Eye, Rolling Stone, 29 May 2008.
  
  "With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export."
  
  Tim Dickinson, Under Surveillance: Q&A With Naomi Klein, Rolling Stone, 29 May 2008.
  
  China's All-Seeing Eye: A Nation Under Surveillance : Photos, Rolling Stone.


• Glenn Greenwald, Defeat of Graham-Lieberman and the ongoing war on transparency, Salon.com, 09 June 2009.


• ** Glenn Greenwald, The Illegal Spying Game, played over and over, Salon.com, 18 June 2009.
  
  James Risen & Eric Lichtblau, E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress, The New York Times, 16 June 2009.

Militarism:

• Robert Draper, And He Shall Be Judged, GQ, men.style.com, June 2009.
  
  On Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's Bible-quoting intelligence reports.


• Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Afghanistan/Pakistan: Where Empires Go to Die, truthout, 15 May 2009.


• * Chris Hedges, The Disease of Permanent War, truthout, 18 May 2009.


• Howard Zinn, Changing Obama's Military Mindset, The Progressive, May 2009.
  
  "Obama once said, 'It's not enough to get out of Iraq; we have to get out of the mindset that led us into Iraq.' What happened to that Obama?"
  
  Also published at AlterNet.org and CommonDreams.org.


• Norman Solomon, The March of Folly, Continued, CommonDreams.org, 21 May 2009.


• Carol E. Lee, Barack Obama pledges to keep U.S. 'dominance', Politico.com, 22 May 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, Hailing the leader as a War President and the powers that go with it, Salon.com, 21 May 2009.
  
  "Does America have any other kind of President besides War Presidents?"


• Jeremy Scahill, Obama Has 250,000 'Contractors' Deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and is Increasing the Use of Mercenaries, AlterNet.org, 01 June 2009.
  
  Jeremy Scahill on Today's War, Bill Moyers' Journal, 05 June 2009.


• Michael M. Phillips, Army Deploys Old Tactic in PR War, WSJ.com, 01 June 2009.

Torture:

• Juan Cole, The hidden hand of Dick Cheney, Salon.com, 13 May 2009.


• Dan Balz, As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince, The Washington Post, 14 May 2009.


• Marcy Wheeler, The 13 people who made torture possible, Salon.com, 18 May 2009.


• Jonathan S. Landay & Warren P. Strobel, Cheney's speech ignored some inconvenient truths, McClatchy Newspapers, 21 May 2009.


• Joe Conason, Another round for democracy, Salon.com, 22 May 2009.


• Ben Armbruster, Liz Cheney Reveals That Fear Of Prosecution Motivates Dad’s Media Blitz Defending Torture, Think Progress, 22 May 2009.


• Robert Parry, New York Times Helps the Bushies, Again, The Smirking Chimp, 22 May 2009.


• Alfred W. McCoy, Confronting the CIA's Mind Maze: America's Political Paralysis Over Torture, TomDispatch.com, 07 June 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, How civilized, law-abiding countries imprison terrorists, Salon.com, 10 June 2009.

Sociology, Culture, etc.:

• * William Astore, Selling Education, Manufacturing Technocrats, Torturing Souls: The Tyranny of Being Practical (Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: William Astore, Educating Ourselves to Oblivion), TomDispatch, 28 May 2009.


• Rick Shenkman, How Ignorant Are We?: The Voters Choose ... but on the Basis of What?, TomDispatch, 01 July 2008.
  
  Shenkman is the author most recently of: Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter, New York: Basic Books, 2008.
  (publisher; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.)


• Patchwork Nation: American communities in a time of change, The Christian Science Monitor.


• Martin Felando, Introduction to The 5 Moments, The 5 Moments, June 2009.
  
  Describes the structure of movie/film screenplays.

Science:

• Jonah Lehrer, Don’t!: The secret of self-control, The New Yorker, 18 May 2009.


• Peter Aldhous, Humans prefer cockiness to expertise, New Scientist, 10 June 2009.

Propaganda:

• Dean Baker, Reporters With Pom-Poms: Cheerleading the Recovery, CounterPunch, 03 June 2009.


• Modern Media Madness: Brooke Gladstone and Jay Rosen on the hype and the headlines, Bill Moyers Journal, 05 June 2009.


• Michael M. Phillips, Army Deploys Old Tactic in PR War, WSJ.com, 01 June 2009.


• NYT's Pentagon Propaganda: Misleading report on Guantánamo and terrorism, FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy in Media, 27 May 2009.


• James Fallows, More on Obama and "educational" rhetoric, James Fallows' blog at TheAtlantic.com, 17 June 2009.


• * Glenn Greenwald, The Washington Post fires its best columnist. Why?, Salon.com, 18 June 2009.
  
  ** Glenn Greenwald, The Washington Post, Dan Froomkin and the establishment media, Salon.com, 19 June 2009.

U.S. Politics & Government:

• James Ridgeway, A Brief History of the Radical, Violent Right: How Racist Hate Groups Joined Up with Abortion Terrorists, AlterNet, 06 June 2009.


• Willem Buiter, The browning of America, FT.com, 30 May 2009.
  
  In this article "browning" means something like "decreasing Green" where "Green" refers to Environmentalism, public policy that controls human impact on the Earth.


• American Dissenters, Bill Moyers Journal, 12 June 2009.
  
  Celebrating Thomas Paine, Bill Moyers Journal, 12 June 2009.
  
  Thomas Paine, Wikipedia.


• Glenn Greenwald, House Democrats prioritize loyalty to the president over their own judgment, Salon.com, 17 June 2009.
  
  "A primary criticism of the GOP Congress was excessive loyalty to the president. Has that changed in the Obama era?"

Astronomy

William Castleman, "Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party."

via: Ethan Siegel, Wide-Angle Lenses and Astronomy, Starts With A Bang!, 29 May 2009.