Links: Propaganda, Media, Manufacturing Consent

• Robert Parry, Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter', ConsortiumNews.com, 30 June 2008.
  "As historians ponder George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency, they may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs."
  
  Includes link for a draft chapter omitted from an Iran-Contra report (Google Books link) detailing the Reagan administration's domestic propaganda efforts.


• Tanner Mirrlees, Media Capitalism, the State and 21st Century Media Democracy Struggles: Tanner Mirrlees interviews Robert McChesney, Cyrano's Journal Online, 07 August 2009.


• digby, Missing The Point, Big Time, Hullabaloo, 13 August 2009.
  
  Some observe that it is Chuck Todd's incompetence that qualifies him for his job; that quality makes for a compliant and submissive journalism.


• * batocchio, Silent Questions, Hullabaloo, 13 August 2009.


• Chris Hedges, Book Review: Chris Hedges on Alex S. Jones’ ‘Losing the News’, TruthDig, truthdig.com, 13 August 2009.


• * Glenn Greenwald, Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they're right, Salon.com, 20 August 2009.
  
  Glenn Greenwald, Bush critics: still evil, crazy extremists, Salon.com, 23 August 2009.

Links: Sociology, Culture, etc.

• Paul Pettitt, Odd man out: Neanderthals and modern humans, British Archaeology, no. 51, February 2000.
  "New research shows that Neanderthals were far more sophisticated than was thought ten years ago. Still, modern humans wiped them out in the end."


• Michael R. Dove, Dreams from His Mother, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 10 August 2009.
  
  On the life and work of Ann Dunham.
  
  Ann Dunham. Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. Duke University Press, December 2009.
  (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)


• * batocchio, Silent Questions, Hullabaloo, 13 August 2009.


• Clive Thompson, Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?, The New York Times Magazine, NYTimes.com, 12 August 2009.
  
  On the work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (Wikipedia; NYU; Hoover Institution).


• Bruce E. Levine, Fundamentalist Consumerism and an Insane Society, Z Magazine, February 2009.


• Folwell Dunbar, Soft Measures: You don't always need a standardized test to know a school is in trouble. Just look in the boys' john., Miller-McCune Online Magazine, 21 August 2009.

Links: Science & Science Policy

• Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, Annals of Mathematics: Manifold Destiny: A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it, The New Yorker, 28 August 2006.
  
  On the proof of the Poincaré conjecture by Grigori Perelman.


• Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 11 August 2009.
  
  On Biological classification, a particular domain of Taxonomy.


• Charles Duhigg, Debating Just How Much Atrazine Is Safe in Your Water Glass, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 22 August 2009.
  
  Atrazine, Wikipedia.

Links: Geopolitics

• Nikolas Kozloff, Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution: As Hostilities Loom, Propaganda War with Venezuela Heats Up, CounterPunch, counterpunch.org, 14 August 2009.


• The Af-Pak Channel: A Project of Foreign Policy and the New America Foundation, Foreign Policy, website established in 2009.


• Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, Jihadistan: A primer on the epicenter of global terrorism, Foreign Policy, July or August 2009.
  
  On the Afghanistan - Pakistan border region.


• * Rory Stewart, The Irresistible Illusion, London Review of Books, 9 July 2009.
  
  On US & UK policy towards Afghanistan.

Links: U.S. Politics & Government

• Jerome Karabel, The Reasons Why, The New York Review of Books, Volume 26, Number 1, 08 February 1979.
  
  A review of Werner Sombart's Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?


• Howard Zinn, Sacco and Vanzetti, ZNet Classics, 14 April 2007.


• * Chalmers Johnson, Chalmers Johnson on Our ‘Managed Democracy’, TruthDig, truthdig.com15 May 2008.
  
  review of:
  Sheldon S. Wolin. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton University Press, 2008.
  (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)


• * Gabriel Kolko, Searching For Enemies: The Contours of Recent American Foreign Policy, CounterPunch, counterpunch.org, 31 July 2009.
  
  Excerpt from Gabriel Kolko's most recent book:
  World in Crisis: the End of the American Century. Pluto Press, 2009.
  (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)


• William Blum, Blum’s Anti-Empire Report: No change under Obama, Cyrano’s Journal Online, 05 August 2009.
  
  Originally published at:
  William Blum, The Anti-Empire Report, Number 72, KillingHope.org, 04 August 2009.


• Sara Robinson, Fascist America: Are We There Yet?, Campaign for America's Future, OurFuture.org, 06 August 2009.
  
  Sara Robinson, Fascist America II: The Last Turnoff, Campaign for America's Future, OurFuture.org, 11 August 2009.
  
  These essays were also published at AlterNet; Orcinus; FireDogLake.
  
  Al Schumann, Oh, no! Fascism!, Stop Me Before I Vote Again, 11 August 2009.


• Mark Thoma, The Reconstruction of Authority, Economist's View, 11 August 2009.


• Jennifer Levitz, Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps, WSJ.com, 11 August 2009.


• Jon Perr, The Iron Law of Birtherism, Crooks and Liars, 11 August 2009.
  
  Observations on a region (the U.S. South / Bible Belt) of social dysfunction across many issues.


• David Michael Green, My 1933 Nightmare, The Smirking Chimp, 11 August 2009.


• William Pfaff, There’s a Solution in Afghanistan — but Not the Way We’re Headed, TruthDig, 11 August 2009.


• Scott Shane, Interrogation Inc.: 2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11’s Wake, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 12 August 2009.
  
  David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti, Interrogation Inc.: A Window Into C.I.A.’s Embrace of Secret Jails, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 13 August 2009.


• * Robert Parry, Palin's 'Death Panel' and GOP Lying, The Smirking Chimp, 12 August 2009.


• Rick Perlstein, In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition: Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage, The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, 16 August 2009.


• Alexander Cockburn, Health Plans and Death Plans, CounterPunch, counterpunch.org, 14 August 2009.


• Bruce Wilson, MSNBC's Maddow Show Propels Growing Scandal Over Washington's "Christian Mafia", AlterNet, alternet.org, 18 August 2009.


• Johann Hari, Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason: How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality?, The Independent, independent.co.uk, 19 August 2009.


• Paul Craig Roberts, Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs, Antiwar.com, 20 August 2009.


• * Glenn Greenwald, Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they're right, Salon.com, 20 August 2009.
  
  Glenn Greenwald, Bush critics: still evil, crazy extremists, Salon.com, 23 August 2009.


• William Pfaff, Reality Is Its Own Caricature for U.S. in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Truthdig, truthdig.com, 20 August 2009.


• * George Lakoff, The Policy-Speak Disaster for Health Care, t r u t h o u t, 20 August 2009.


• * Chris Hedges, This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery, Truthdig, truthdig.com, 23 August 2009.

Links: Political Economy

• William Greider, Dismantling the Temple, The Nation, 15 July 2009 [03 August 2009 printed edition].


• * Karl Denninger, Economic Bottom Calls: Willful Ignorance, The Market Ticker, 08 August 2009.
  
  Again: this recession is different (worse than any previous post-WWII recession); and the reasons why it's worse require attention.


• Tyler Durden, Open Market Operations and Statistics, zero hedge, 08 August 2009.
  
  Very good analysis illustrating how the Fed throws money at the banks.


• Eva Joly, Iceland is being blackmailed, The Iceland Weather Report, 06 August 2009.
  
  Michael Lewis, Wall Street on the Tundra, Vanity Fair, April 2009.
  
  Toby Sanger, Iceland's Economic Meltdown Is a Big Flashing Warning Sign, AlterNet, 21 October 2008.
  "Iceland followed the prescriptions of a right-wing ideologue, and its economy paid a severe price."


• * Mark Weisbrot, US economic myths bite the dust: America is not the internationally competitive land of small businesses that politicians love to tout, guardian.co.uk, 13 August 2009.
  
  via: t r u t h o u t.


• Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998 [PDF], Quarterly Journal of Economics, volume 118, number 1, 2003, pages 1-39.
  
  Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-2002 [PDF], November 2004. [Published in: A.B. Atkinson and T. Piketty, editors. Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast between European and English-Speaking Countries. Oxford University Press, 2007.]
  
  Emmanuel Saez, Tables & Figures updated to 2007 [XLS].
  
  Emmanuel Saez, [Summary for the broader public] Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Update with 2007 estimates) [PDF], 05 August 2009.
  
  via: Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: Study, The Huffington Post, 14 August 2009.
  
  Emmanuel Saez, Income and Wealth Concentration in a Historical and International Perspective, 21 February 2004. [Published in: A. Auerbach, D. Card, and J. Quigley, editors. Public Policy and the Income Distribution. Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2006.]


• Karl Denninger, Why "Normal" WILL NOT Return, The Market Ticker, 16 August 2009.


• Tyler Durden, A Detailed Look At The Stratified U.S. Consumer, zero hedge, 15 August 2009.


• Jesse, Why the Austrian, Keynesian, Marxist, Monetarist, and Neo-Liberal Economists Are All Wrong, Jesse's Café Américain, 20 August 2009.


• Stephen Amidon, Why I love Britain's socialized healthcare system, Salon, salon.com, 22 August 2009.


• Andy Xie, Boom and burst: Don’t be fooled by false signs of economic recovery. It’s just the lull before the storm, The Big Picture, 24 August 2009.
  
  Forecast for 2009 - 2011.


• Barry Ritholtz, Existing Home Sales Far Worse Than Advertised, The Big Picture, 24 August 2009.

Links: Militarism, War

• Nick Thorpe, Origins of war: Mesolithic conflict in Europe, British Archaeology, no. 52, April 2000.
  "The Mesolithic era is often characterised as a kind of golden age of harmony with nature and peaceful co-existence between people. Not so, writes Nick Thorpe."
  
  Note: The Mesolithic era in Europe refers to the period from around 11,700 BC (end of the last glacial period) until as recent as 5000 BC.


• Chalmers Johnson, The Military-Industrial Complex: It's Much Later Than You Think [Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Warning: Mercenaries at Work], TomDispatch.com, 27 July 2008.


• Justin Raimondo, The New Neocons: The left wing of the War Party raises its ugly head, AntiWar.com, 13 May 2009.
  
  Discusses the politics of the Center for a New American Security.


• James Dao, Older Recruits Challenge Army and Vice Versa, The New York Times, 17 June 2009.


• Chris Floyd, Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War?, CounterPunch.org, 22 June 2009.


• David Price, Obama's Classroom Spies: Son of PRISP, CounterPunch.org, 23 June 2009.
  
  Also published at AlterNet.org, 24 June 2009.


• Jake Lynch, How America is constantly at war, The Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au, 24 June 2009.
  
  via: Watching America.


• Robert C. Koehler, The Iron Triangle: 10,000 years of organized warfare - and no end in sight, The Smirking Chimp, 26 June 2009.


• David Bromwich, America's Wars: How Serial War Became the American Way of Life [Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: David Bromwich, America's Serial Warriors], TomDispatch, TomDispatch.com, 21 July 2009.


• UAVs: The Future of Warfare in America, Truthdig, truthdig.com, 23 July 2009.


• William Pfaff, U.S. Foreign Wars Not Going According to Plan, Truthdig, truthdig.com, 23 July 2009.


• Jeremy Scahill, Feingold: White House is Whistling Past Afghan Graveyard, The Nation, 24 July 2009.


• Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston, Bush Weighed Using Military in U.S. Arrests, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 24 July 2009.
  
  Glenn Greenwald, The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil, Salon.com, 25 July 2009.


• * Chalmers Johnson, Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire: And Ten Steps to Take to Do So [Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire], TomDispatch, tomdispatch.com, 30 July 2009.


• * Gabriel Kolko, Searching For Enemies: The Contours of Recent American Foreign Policy, CounterPunch, counterpunch.org, 31 July 2009.
  
  Excerpt from Gabriel Kolko's most recent book:
  World in Crisis: the End of the American Century. Pluto Press, 2009.
  (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)


• Dahr Jamail and Jason Coppola, Militarizing the Homeland, t r u t h o u t, 06 August 2009.


• John Feffer, Our Suicide Bombers: Thoughts on Western Jihad [Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: John Feffer, Their Martyrs and Our Heroes], TomDispatch.com, 06 August 2009.


• Jeff Huber, Perpetual War for Perpetual War, The American Conservative, 06 August 2009.


• Paul Craig Roberts, Do You Feel Safe Now? Proud?, AntiWar.com, 07 August 2008.


• Walter Pincus, Military Analysts Expect Long-Term, Costly U.S. Effort in Afghanistan, The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, 09 August 2009.


• Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare, Echo Platoon: Warehousing Soldiers in the Homeland [Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: Jamail and Lazare, Lost in Military Limbo], TomDispatch, tomdispatch.com, 09 August 2009.


• Chris Floyd, Addicted to War: America's Brutal Pipe Dream in Afghanistan, Empire Burlesque, chris-floyd.com, 11 August 2009.


• William Pfaff, There’s a Solution in Afghanistan — but Not the Way We’re Headed, TruthDig, 11 August 2009.


• Christopher Drew, A Soldier’s Eye in the Sky, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 11 August 2009.


• Lizette Alvarez, Women at Arms: G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 15 August 2009.
  
  Steven Lee Myers, Women at Arms: Living and Fighting Alongside Men, and Fitting In, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 16 August 2009.

Links: Propaganda, Media, Manufacturing Consent, Social Control

• Chris Hedges, The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free, TruthDig, TruthDig.com, 29 June 2009.
  
  Books mentioned in Hedges' TruthDig essay include:
  • Stuart Ewen. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. Basic Books, 1976, 2001.
    (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  
  • Stuart Ewen. PR! A Social History of Spin. Basic Books, 1996.
    (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  
  • Gustave Le Bon. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1896.
    (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library; Google Books.)
  
  
  • Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan, 1922; Free Press Paperbacks, 1997.
    (Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  Hedges' essay also discusses the works of: Jacob Riis; Lewis Hine; Walker Evans; Upton Sinclair; James Agee.
  
  Hedges' most recent book is:
  Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Nation Books, July 2009.
  (Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)


• Mike Allen and Michael Calderone, Washington Post cancels lobbyist event amid uproar, Politico.com, 02 July 2009.
  
  David Carr, A Publisher Stumbles Publicly at the Post, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 03 July 2009.
  
  Andrew Alexander, A Sponsorship Scandal at The Post, The Washington Post, 12 July 2009.
  
  Alexander's essay clearly indicates that the Post's senior management doesn't understand their business. This appears to be a common feature of many of the U.S.'s large corporations: a focus on finance and ignorance of the organization's operations.
  
  Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, 'The Select Few' Are Cashing in: Shocking Corruption at the Washington Post, AlterNet, 12 July 2009.


• Laura Miller, History is bunk after all, Salon.com, 09 July 2009.
  
  review of:
  Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (Canadian and UK title; American edition title: Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History).


• Glenn Greenwald, Chuck Todd's arguments against investigations, Salon.com, 15 July 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe, Salon.com, 01 August 2009.
  
  Glenn Greenwald, The scope -- and dangers -- of GE's control of NBC and MSNBC, Salon.com, 03 August 2009.


• Dean Starkman, Don’t Dismiss Taibbi: What the mainstream press can learn from a Goldman takedown, The Audit, Columbia Journalism Review, 06 August 2009.


• * Robert Parry, Palin's 'Death Panel' and GOP Lying, The Smirking Chimp, 12 August 2009.

Links: Sociology, Culture, etc.

• The 100 People Who Are Changing America, The RS 100: Agents of Change, Rolling Stone, 18 March 2009.


• Matt Taibbi, Fareed Zakaria's Manifesto: Capitalism Doesn't Rip Off People, People Rip Off People!, The Smirking Chimp, 25 June 2009.
  
  Fareed Zakaria, The Capitalist Manifesto: Greed Is Good (To a point), Newsweek.com, 13 June 2009.


• Juan Cole, Michael Jackson, Islam and the Middle East, Informed Comment, 26 June 2009.


• Kelefa Sanneh, Out of the Office: Fast bikes, slow food, and the workplace wars, The New Yorker, 22 June 2009.


• Jeffrey Brown, Media Take Second Look at Coverage of Jackson's Death, PBS Newshour, 10 July 2009.
  
  Commentary on how news of Michael Jackson recently crowded out other news in the major media.
  But this sort of thing has been going on for (a long time / forever); for example, see Project Censored, which documents the kind of stories routinely crowded out of or omitted from news coverage, and thus ignored, generally for political/economic reasons. Some contend that it is actually the very nature and purpose of the U.S. major media to keep public scrutiny away from subjects and interpretations that threaten the powerful and their financial interests.
  
  Shannon Rupp, Science Discovers Celebrities Are Useful for Something, The Tyee, TheTyee.ca, 03 July 2009.
  
  James Howard Kunstler, The Man in the Mirror, Clusterfuck Nation, Kunstler.com, 29 June 2009.
  
  David Yearsley, Tara, America's Dream House, CounterPunch.org, 10 July 2009.
  
  Chris Hedges, The Man in the Mirror, Truthdig , 13 July 2009.


• Tamar Lewin, University of California Makes Cuts After Reduction in State Financing, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 10 July 2009.
  
  A society that regards Education as a business has a serious problem.
  
  Before the fall: California's universities in trouble, The Economist, 06 August 2009.
  "California’s financial crisis jeopardises one of the world’s finest universities."


• Frank Rich, She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 12 July 2009.


• John Kay, Managers doomed to repeat the mistakes of history, The Financial Times, FT.com, 14 July 2009.


• The Invisible Library.


• * Chris Hedges, Resist or Become Serfs, TruthDig.com, 06 April 2009.


• T. A. Frank, Golden Erring, Washington Monthly, July/August 2009.
  "Once the embodiment of America’s possibilities, California has become the embodiment of the country’s delusions."
  
  review of the book:
  Kevin Star. Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963. Oxford University Press, 2009.
  (publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  Note that this is just one volume in Starr's series: Americans and the California Dream.


• * David Seaton, Today's America is a class act, David Seaton's Blog, 22 July 2009.


• Nikolas Kozloff, The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras, CounterPunch.org, 22 July 2009.


• Jack Hitt, Radovan Karadzic’s New-Age Adventure, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 22 July 2009.


• Helene Cooper, Meet the New Elite, Not Like the Old - Affirmative Action and America’s Leaders, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 25 July 2009.


• Greg Palast, The Day the President Turned Black (But has he turned back?), GregPalast.com, 29 July 2009 [also published at The Huffington Post].


• Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammed, The Destruction of the Black Middle Class, The Huffington Post, 04 August 2009.


• Michael Pollan, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 02 August 2009.


• * Daniel Ellsberg, Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years, Truthdig, 05 August 2009.


• Chris Hedges, So Much for the Promised Land, Truthdig, 03 August 2009.


• Mark Ames, Revenge Of The Nerd: What The Media Won’t Tell You About The Rampage Killer Who Attacked A Pittsburgh Aerobics Class, The eXiled, 05 August 2009.


• Michael Massing, The News About the Internet, The New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 13, 13 August 2009.


• Barbara Ehrenreich, Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 08 August 2009.

Links: Science & Science Policy

• Keith Badsher, A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice, The New York Times, 17 April 2008.
  
  This article is one in a noteworthy series: The Food Chain.


• Tara Parker-Pope, How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains, The New York Times, 22 June 2009.


• John Noble Wilford, Stone Age Flutes Found in Germany Offer Clues to Early Music, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 24 June 2009.


• Nicholas D. Kristof, It’s Time to Learn From Frogs, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 27 June 2009.
  
  On Endocrine Disruptors: TEDX — The Endocrine Disruption Exchange; Wikipedia article on Endocrine disruptors.
  
  Evanthia Diamanti-Kandarakis et al., Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement, Endocrine Reviews, 30 (4): 293-342, 2009.


• Paul Krugman, Betraying the Planet, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 28 June 2009.
  
  On U.S. climate change policy.


• Anil Ananthaswamy, Sea level rise: It's worse than we thought, New Scientist, issue 2715, 01 July 2009.


• Alex Morales, Dengue-Carrying Mosquitoes Spread to 28 U.S. States, Group Says, Bloomberg.com, 08 July 2009.
  
  Deborah Zabarenko, Climate change could boost US dengue fever cases, Reuters.com, 08 July 2009.
  
  Dengue fever expanding its foothold in Texas, Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy, University of Minnesota, 09 August 2007.
  
  Dengue fever a risk in south Texas, CDC says, Reuters.com, 09 August 2007.
  
  Dengue Fever & Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF), Infectious Disease Control Unit, Texas Department of State Health Services.


• James Hansen, G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change, The Huffington Post, 09 July 2009.
  
  Joseph Romm, NASA's James Hansen Recycles Myths in His Pointless Attack on U.S. Climate Action, The Huffington Post, 10 July 2009.
  
  Leslie Kaufman, Disillusioned Environmentalists Turn on Obama as Compromiser, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 10 July 2009.


• Charles Siebert, Watching Whales Watching Us, The New York Times Magazine, NYTimes.com, 12 June 2009.


• Joel Achenbach, Space Station Is Near Completion, Maybe the End: Plan to 'De-Orbit' in 2016 Is Criticized, The Washington Post, 13 July 2009.


• Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Why America is flunking science, Salon, Salon.com, 13 July 2009.


• Paul Krugman, Why markets can’t cure healthcare, Paul Krugman Blog, NYTimes.com, 25 July 2009.

Links: Geopolitics

• Juan Cole, The Scam of Energy Independence, Informed Comment, 07 August 2008.


• Paul Craig Roberts, Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?": Is This the Culmination of Two Years of Destabilization, CounterPunch.org, 19 June 2009.


• Juan Cole, Chatham House Study Definitively Shows Massive Ballot Fraud in Iran's Reported Results, Informed Comment, 22 June 2009.


• Andrew Cockburn, How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One: The Obama Adminstration is Helping to Upgrade Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons, CounterPunch.org, 24 June 2009.


• Guy Lawson, The Making of a Narco State, Rolling Stone, 04 March 2008.
  
  "As Mexico descends into brutality and lawlessness, the government itself has become a tool of the drug lords."


• Eric Lichtblau, Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 23 June 2009.
  
  "... evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family ...."


• Mark Scheffler, China v. US: My empire is bigger than yours: Video: Historian Niall Ferguson ruminates on the world's most important rivalry, GlobalPost, 24 June 2009.


• Paul Farmer, Who removed Aristide?, London Revuew of Books, 15 April 2004.


• James G. Neuger, Debt Burden Quickens Power Shift as G-8 Loses Clout, Bloomberg.com, 07 July 2009.


• Ben Holland, Obama Push for Caspian Energy Routes Imperiled by Refugee Clash, Bloomberg.com, 08 July 2009.


• Dahr Jamail, The Dirty War, t r u t h o u t, TruthOut.org, 09 July 2009.
  
  Shane Bauer, Iraq's New Death Squad, The Nation, 03 June 2009.


• F. William Engdahl, Media Disinformation: "Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran": Contrary to Times accounts, relations between Ahmedinejad and Saudi King Abdullah seem to be cordial, Global Research, 09 July 2009.


• Norman Solomon, Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan, t r u t h o u t, 09 July 2009.


• John Richard Cookson, Major Eurasian Pipeline Deal to Help Diversify Gas Supplies, PBS Online NewsHour, 13 July 2009.
  
  Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, EU-Ukraine-Russian Gas Crisis in Retrospective: It's Just the Beginning, The Cutting Edge, 06 February 2009.


• Greg Palast, Oil and Indians Don't Mix, GregPalast.com, 12 July 2009.


• Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Torture, Rendition, Terror & Oil: A Primer on "Deep Politics", The Cutting Edge, 09 February 2009.


• Conn Hallinan, Blood and Oil in Central Asia, Foreign Policy In Focus, 15 July 2009.


• Pepe Escobar has also written frequently on the geopolitics of oil & gas pipelines in the Middle East and Central Asia. Many of his articles are published at Asia Times. See also his books:
  • Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War. Nimble Books, 2007.
    (Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  
  • Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge. Nimble Books, 2007.
    (Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  
  • Obama Does Globalistan. Nimble Books, 2009.
    (Google Books; Amazon.com.)
  
  
• Pervez Hoodbhoy, Whither Pakistan?, CounterPunch.org, 17 July 2009.


• Harry Hurt III, China’s Wide Reach Across Africa, Off the Shelf, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 19 July 2009.
  
  Review of:
  Serge Michel and Michel Beuret. China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa. Nation Books, 2009.
  (publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)


• Andrew J. Bacevich, Best Intentions: An Appreciation of Graham Greene, World Affairs Journal, Summer 2009.


• Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez, Pakistan Objects to U.S. Expansion in Afghan War, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 21 July 2009.


• Muriel Kane, Whistleblower: Bin Laden was US proxy until 9/11, Raw Story, 31 July 2009.


• Ben Simpfendorfer. The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China. Palgrave Macmillan, May 2009.
  (publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.)

Links: U.S. Politics & Government

• Heather, Saxby Chambliss Thinks The Iranian People Don't Remember the 1953 CIA Coup, Video Cafe, Crooks & Liars, 19 June 2009.


• Gary Kamiya, Night of the living neocons, Salon.com, 18 June 2009.
  
  "The shameless fools whose Iraq folly empowered Iran's hard-liners are back, smearing Obama as an appeaser."


• Rajiv Chandrasekaran, U.S. Pursues a New Way To Rebuild in Afghanistan, The Washington Post, 19 June 2009.


• John R. MacArthur, Obama a Very Smooth Liar, CommonDreams.org, 17 June 2009.


• Justin Raimondo, The New Neocons: The left wing of the War Party raises its ugly head, AntiWar.com, 13 May 2009.


• Chris Floyd, A Brand New Day -- Yea, Verily, Morning in America!, Empire Burlesque, 23 June 2009.


• Arthur Silber, Obama's Obscene Speech in Cairo: Lies in the Service of Death, Once Upon a Time..., 08 June 2009.


• Chris Floyd, Speech Therapy: Pretty Words in Cairo Hide Brutal Realities of Power, Empire Burlesque, 04 June 2009.


• Chris Floyd, Death of the Republic, Part CLXVIII, Empire Burlesque, 01 June 2009.


• Sean Wilentz, How Bush Destroyed the Republican Party, Rolling Stone, 04 Sept 2008.


• Matt Taibbi, It's a Class War, Stupid, Rolling Stone, 15 July 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, Noted Obama admirer lambasts him on civil liberties, secrecy, Salon.com, 23 June 2009.


• Megan Slack (ProPublica), White House Drafts Executive Order To Allow Indefinite Detention Of Terror Suspects, The Huffington Post, 26 June 2009.
  
  Ari Melber, Obama Courts Disaster With New Detention Plan, The Huffington Post, 26 June 2009.
  
  Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn, White House Weighs Order on Detention: Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely, The Washington Post, 27 June 2009.
  
  * Glenn Greenwald, Obama contemplates Executive Order for detention without charges, Salon.com, 27 June 2009.


• Michael O'Brien, Obama issues signing statement on $106B war bill, The Hill, 26 June 2009.
  
  Lila Shapiro, Obama Issues Signing Statement On War Spending Bill, The Huffington Post, 27 June 2009.


• Todd S. Purdum, It Came from Wasilla, Vanity Fair, vanityfair.com, August 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture, Salon.com, 30 June 2009.


• Mark Leibovich, Who Can Possibly Govern California?, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 05 July 2009.


• Jason Leopold, Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion, t r u t h o u t, truthout.org, 03 July 2009.


• Michael Lind, All sides blame McNamara for Vietnam, Salon.com, 07 July 2009.


• Theresa Amato, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, AlterNet, AlterNet.org, 07 June 2009.
  
  An excerpt from the book:
  Theresa Amato. Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny. New York: The New Press, 2009.
  (publisher; Amazon.com.)


• Turning The Camera Around: Health Care Stakeholders, NPR, NPR.org, 09 July 2009.
  
  Peter Overby and Andrea Seabrook, Need For Campaign Cash Opens Door For Lobbyists, NPR, NPR.org, 09 July 2009.


• Joe Conason, The losers who gave us Sarah Palin, Salon, Salon.com, 10 July 2009.
  
  Peggy Noonan, A Farewell to Harms, The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com, 10 July 2009.


• Will Bunch, Robert McNamara and America's Tragic Memory Loss, The Huffington Post, 06 July 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, The new Report on illegal spying is not a real investigation, Salon.com, 11 July 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, Our political class in a nutshell, Salon.com, 11 July 2009.


• Frank Rich, She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 12 July 2009.


• Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Obama: Regime Rotation, The Cutting Edge, 26 January 2009.


• Frank Rich, They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 19 July 2009.


• Sam Tanenhaus, Conservatism Is Dead: An intellectual autopsy of the movement, The New Republic, 18 February 2009.


• Michael Bronner, Hussam Mohammed Amin: Former Iraqi Weapons Monitor Describes U.S. Abuse For First Time, The Huffington Post, 23 July 2009.
  
  The illegal mistreatment (i.e., torture) of prisoners in Iraq was standard U.S. policy of Bush/Cheney. And the Obama administrtion is looking the other way.
  
  William Rivers Pitt, Worst Case Scenario, t r u t h o u t, 21 July 2009.


• Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston, Bush Weighed Using Military in U.S. Arrests, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 24 July 2009.
  
  Glenn Greenwald, The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil, Salon.com, 25 July 2009.


• Bernard Chazelle, How to Argue Against Torture, The Smirking Chimp, 24 July 2009.


• Jeremy Scahill, Feingold: White House is Whistling Past Afghan Graveyard, The Nation, 24 July 2009.


• UAVs: The Future of Warfare in America, Truthdig, truthdig.com, 23 July 2009.


• digby, We're Just Different, Hullabaloo, 30 July 2009.
  
  "There has to be a reason that the US, of all the industrialized nations, the richest country in the world, is so hostile to social welfare programs. There are a lot of contributing factors, not the least of which is our vaunted individualism. But one of the fundamental reasons America is so resistant to programs that provide for the common good is that there is a long tradition of rejecting any proposal that taxes white people to pay for programs that benefit non-whites." - digby
  
  Joan Walsh, Is GOP using race to block Obama agenda? Ya think?, Salon.com, 30 July 2009.
  
  digby, Southern Strategery, Hullabaloo, 26 November 2003.
  
  Christopher Caldwell, The Southern Captivity of the GOP, The Atlantic, June 1998.


• David Bromwich, The Character of Barack Obama, The Huffington Post, 04 August 2009.


• Thomas B. Edsall, For The Modern GOP, It's A Return To The "White Voter Strategy", The Huffington Post, 04 August 2009.


• Francis Schaeffer, Right-Wing Turncoat Gives the Inside Scoop on Why Conservatives Are Rampaging Town Halls, AlterNet, AlterNet.org, 07 August 2009.


• Sara Robinson, Fascist America: Are We There Yet?, Orcinus , 07 August 2009.
  
  Also published at AlterNet: Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?, 07 August 2009.
  
  Amanda Marcotte, Let’s hope Sara’s completely wrong about this, pandagon.net, 07 August 2009.

Links: Political Economy

• Gretchen Morgenson, Too Big to Fail, or Too Big to Handle?, The New York Times, 20 June 2009.
  
  Dean Starkman, The Most Important Financial Journalist of Her Generation (i.e., Gretchen Morgenson), The Nation, 17 June 2009.


• Devin Leonard, Treasury’s Got Bill Gross on Speed Dial, The New York Times, 20 June 2009.


• Olivier Blanchard, What is needed for a lasting recovery, The Financial Times, FT.com, 18 June 2009.
  
  via: naked capitalism.
  Note that Olivier Blanchard is chief economist of the IMF.


• Dean Baker, Health Care Protectionists Cannot Even Envision Trade, Beat the Press / The American Prospect, 20 June 2009.


• Michael Hudson, Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street: How the Financial Reform Plan Protects the Status Quo, CounterPunch.org, 22 June 2009.


• * Chris Hedges, The American Empire Is Bankrupt, TruthDig.com, 14 June 2009.
  
  Hedges refers to two articles, one by Michael Hudson and the other by John Lanchester. They are:
  
  Michael Hudson, Washington is unable to call all the shots, Financial Times, 15 June 2009.
  (Hedges calls Hudson's article "The Yekaterinburg Turning Point: De-Dollarization and the Ending of America’s Financial-Military Hegemony.")
  
  John Lanchester, It’s Finished, London Review of Books, 28 May 2009.


• Paul Krugman, Health Care Showdown, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 22 June 2009.


• Andrew E. Kramer, Russia Facing Long Recession, World Bank Says, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 24 June 2009.


• Vineet Nayar, The Employability Crisis is a Global Crisis, Bloomberg.com, 24 June 2009.
  
  A good example of globalist thinking; illustrates the challenges American workers face, especially wage variation due to international factors. Also, note the author's explicitly stated functions of the "education system."
  
  Rob Preston, Top Indian CEO: Most American Grads Are ‘Unemployable’, Global CIO Blog, InformationWeek, informationweek.com, 03 June 2009.


• William Pesek, Soros Goes Long as World Bank Shorts Recovery, Bloomberg.com, 26 June 2009.


• Louis Uchitelle, Despite Recession, Demand for Skilled Labor Is High, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 23 June 2009.


• Scott Thill, Will the 'Dollar Wars' Kill What's Left of the American Dream?, AlterNet.org, 26 June 2009.


• James Kwak, The McAllen Problem, The Baseline Scenario, 21 June 2009.


• Jeff Gerth and Brady Dennis, How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue: Industrial Giant Becomes Top Recipient in Debt-Guarantee Program, The Washington Post, 29 June 2009.
  
  via: Jesse, Government Bails Out General Electric , Jesse's Café Américain, 29 June 2009.


• Richard Teitelbaum and Hugh Son, Unwinding at AIG Prompts Pasciucco to Ponder Systemic Failure, Bloomberg.com, 01 July 2009.


• David Rosenberg (and Hale "Bondad" Stewart), Just "Shoot" Me, [Invictus (?) 29 June 2009], The Bonddad Blog, 02 July 2009.
  
  Hale "Bonddad" Stewart, Don't Expect a Consumer-Led Recovery, The Huffington Post, 16 June 2009.


• Matt Taibbi, The Great American Bubble Machine, Rolling Stone, 02 July 2009.
  "Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression."
  
  Matt Taibbi, On giving Goldman a chance, Taibblog, True / Slant, TrueSlant.com, 30 June 2009.
  
  Barry Ritholtz, Gasparino vs Taibbi, The Big Picture, 06 August 2009.
  
  Simon Johnson, How To Blow A Bubble, The Baseline Scenario, 07 August 2009.


• David Brooks, Chinese Fireworks Display, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 02 July 2009.
  
  On Niall Ferguson's description of the China-US relationship, "Chimerica," and James Fallows more moderate view, at the Aspen Ideas Festival [video link].


• Guy Dinmore, Pope condemns capitalism’s ‘failures’, The Financial Times, FT.com, 07 July 2009.


• Paul Solman, For Ex-Cons and Laid-off Execs Alike, Dim Job Hopes, PBS Newshour, 08 July 2009.
  
  Some of the more bizzare and sad things I have ever seen: unemployed middle-aged ex-middle-managers talking in business jargon; ex-convicts being coached in job seeking.


• Michael Lewis, The Man Who Crashed the World, Vanity Fair, vanityfair.com, August 2009.
  
  On Joseph Cassano, former head of A.I.G.’s Financial Products unit.


• Bob Herbert, The Human Equation, The New York Times, NYTimes.com, 10 July 2009.


• Joe Weisenthal, Shanghai Redefines Subprime Construction: Building Just Falls Over, Clusterstock, 29 June 2009.


• * Robert H. Frank, The Invisible Hand, Trumped by Darwin?, The New York Times, 11 July 2009.
  
  via: Mark Thoma, Trumped by Darwin?, Economist's View, 11 July 2009.


• * Paul Krugman, What Economists Can Learn from Evolutionary Theorists, A talk given to the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, [date unknown by me].
  
  via: Mark Thoma, What Economists Can Learn from Evolutionary Theorists, Economist's View, 29 November 2006.


• Barry Ritholtz, Holding Securitizers Liable for Dubious Loans, The Big Picture, 12 July 2009.


• Unemployment and GDP, Calculated Risk, 11 July 2009.


• Second Stimulus Debate: Geithner vs. Krugman and Delong, Calculated Risk, 12 July 2009.


• Jesse, The China Bubble and the Convergence of Oligarchies, Jesse's Café Américain, 10 July 2009.


• Glenn Greenwald, The events preceding Goldman Sachs' new "blowout profits", Salon.com, 13 July 2009.


• * Conn Hallinan, Blood and Oil in Central Asia, Foreign Policy In Focus, 15 July 2009.


• Binyamin Appelbaum, Bailout Overseer Says Banks Misused TARP Funds, The Washington Post, 20 July 2009.


• * Simon Johnson and John Talbott, Who caused the economic crisis?, Salon.com, 22 July 2009.
  
  Simon Johnson and John Talbott, "I would shut down the hedge fund industry", Salon.com, 23 July 2009.
  
  Simon Johnson and John Talbott, Fix the economy? Curb corporate America, Salon.com, 24 July 2009.


• * Robert L. Borosage, The Debtor's Dance: the U.S.-China Exchange, The Huffington Post, 29 July 2009.


• * Michael Lind, Can Obama be deprogrammed?: The president is a prisoner of the cult of neoliberalism, Salon.com, 04 August 2009.


• * Jesse, US Consumer Demand Off a Cliff as the Crisis Deepens, Jesse's Café Américain, 06 August 2009.
  
  Includes charts that illustrate & justify the assertion that the current recession is different. In light of this, the following seems particularly notable:
  
  Tim Iacono, Consumer credit contracts sharply, The Mess That Greenspan Made, 07 August 2009.


• Bianco Research, The Credit Crisis: The Largest Outlay In American History, The Big Picture, 07 August 2009.