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Here comes everybuddy

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Andy Merrifield - Dec. 15 (News Analysis) - The crucial factor is not working in a factory, or with your hands; not is it necessarily anything to do with being poor. Rather, as Berman writes, it is the need "to sell your labor in order to live" -- "to look at yourself in the mirror and think, 'Now what have I got that I can sell?' " One virtue of this definition of the working class is its inclusiveness, its flexibility. By this reckoning, the working class is practically "here comes everybody."

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Pennies from heaven

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Chris Lehmann - Sep. 15 (News Analysis) - How Mormon economics shape the G.O.P (subscription required)

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The CIA’s Secret Prison in Somalia

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jul. 17 (News Analysis) - The Obama Administration’s recent decision to charge a Somali militant named Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame with crimes in a federal court in Manhattan has focused a good deal of attention on American intelligence operations in the Horn of Africa. Somalia is still viewed as the quintessential failed state, and it has been cited by American analysts as a breeding ground for Islamist militants. The U.S. government has made no secret of the special attention it devotes to the country, but it has been remarkably short on details about what that attention entails. Much of this knowledge gap has now been filled in by a remarkable piece of reporting from The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill. . . .

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The Mosaic Philosophy at Gitmo

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Apr. 30 (News Report) - Several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

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Barack Hoover Obama: The best and the brightest blow it again

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 12:36:47 -0700

Harper's - By Kevin Baker - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - Obama’s failure would be unthinkable. And yet the best indications now are that he will fail, because he will be unable—indeed he will refuse—to seize the radical moment at hand.

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Tea party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - The general unsightliness of the capitol makes it a fitting home for today’s Arizona legislature, which is composed almost entirely of dimwits, racists, and cranks. Collectively they have bankrupted the state through a combination of ideological fanaticism on the Republican right and acquiescence and timidity on the part of G.O.P. moderates and Democrats. Although dozens of states are facing budget crises, the situation in Arizona is arguably the nation’s worst, graver even than in California.

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At Least 117 People Killed in Kyrgyzstan; An Estimated 80,000 Uzbeks Have Fled

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Scott Horton, Amy Goodman - Jun. 14 (News Report) - The interim government has accused former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev of provoking the violence in order to destabilize the country ahead of a planned constitutional referendum later this month. Bakiyev was ousted from power in an uprising this April. On Sunday, he issued a statement from exile in Belarus saying he had played no role in the violence. For more, we're joined in New York by Scott Horton. He's a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine and a founding trustee of the American University in Central Asia in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. He has just returned from a visit to Kyrgyzstan, where he met with several members of the interim government.

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In Kyrgyzstan the Tulips Turn Blood Red—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 10:43:37 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Apr. 07 - The tulips are pushing up, so it must be time for more political tremors in the home of the “Tulip Revolution,” the mountainous Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan. Yesterday demonstrators tried to storm government buildings in the remote administrative center of Talas, and today protest actions swept across the country’s north. Here’s a summary of the latest developments in the Guardian: . . .

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Barack Hoover Obama: The best and the brightest blow it again

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Kevin Baker - Jan. 27 (Opinion) - Three months into his presidency, Barack Obama has proven to be every bit as charismatic and intelligent as his most ardent supporters could have hoped. At home or abroad, he invariably appears to be the only adult in the room, the first American president in at least forty years to convey any gravitas. Even the most liberal of voters are finding it hard to believe they managed to elect this man to be their president. . . .

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The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the -

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:07:02 -0800

Harper's - Jan. 19 - whistle. This is the full text of an exclusive advance feature by Scott Horton that will appear in the March 2010 Harper’s Magazine. The issue will be available on newsstands the week of February 15.

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A Guantanamo Bay sergeant blows the whistle on torture

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:02:19 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jan. 18 - Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper's Magazine that goes against the existing NCIS report and other official accounts of the events at Guantanamo Bay that led to prisoner "suicides". Eye-opening details include a Black Ops site ("Camp No"), the removal of neck organs...

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Twilight of the American newspaper

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Richard Rodriguez - Nov. 11 (Opinion) - A scholar I know, a woman who is ninety-six years old, grew up in a tin shack on the American prairie, near the Canadian border. She learned to read from the pages of the Chicago Tribune in a one-room schoolhouse. Her teacher, who had no more than an eighth-grade education, had once been to Chicago—had been to the opera! Women in Chicago went to the opera with bare shoulders and long gloves, the teacher imparted to her pupils. Because the teacher had once been to Chicago, she subscribed to the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune, which came on the train by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.

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Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Arar

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Nov. 03 (Editorial) - The majority, Calabresi charges, “engaged in extraordinary judicial activism.” Its activism was aimed at extricating political actors from a precarious predicament and keeping the door firmly shut on what may well be the darkest chapter in the entire history of the Justice Department.

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Peering Under the Rock at the C Street “Family”

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jul. 29 (News Analysis) - At C Street, the “totalitarianism of Christ” is advocated, and Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, and Lenin are held out as positive examples of how a politician can achieve his goals.

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Labor's last stand: The corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Jun. 24 (Special Report) - (subscribers only for full article, see link.) THE BUSINESS LOBBY HAS FRAMED ITS OPPOSITION TO EFCA AROUND THE “SECRET BALLOT” AND LABOR “COERCION.” BUT THE CURRENT RULES GIVE EMPLOYERS A CHOKEHOLD OVER UNION ELECTIONS

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Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Jeff Sharlet - May. 05 (Investigative Report) - When Sergeant Jeffery Humphrey and his squad of nine men, part of the 1/26 Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division, were assigned to a Special Forces compound in Samarra, he thought they had drawn a dream duty. “Guarding Special Forces, it was like Christmas,” he says. In fact, it was spring, 2004; and although Humphrey was a combat veteran of Kosovo and Iraq, the men to whom he was detailed, the 10th Special Forces Group, were not interested in grunts like him. They would not say what they were doing, and they used code names. They called themselves “the Faith element.” But they did not talk religion, which was fine with Humphrey. An evenhanded Indianan with a precise turn of mind, Humphrey considered himself a no-nonsense soldier. His first duty that Easter Sunday was to make sure the roof watch was in place: a machine gunner, a man in a mortar pit, a soldier with a SAW (an automatic rifle on a bipod), and another with a submachine gun on loan from Special Forces. Together with two Bradley Fighting Vehicles on the ground and snipers on another roof, the watch covered the perimeter of the compound, a former elementary school overlooking the Tigris River.

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The Enemy Combatant Canard

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Rachel Maddow - Feb. 18 (Interview) - Thomas Jefferson and James Madison shared one definition of the term “tyrant”–a ruler who deprived a person of his freedom without operation of law and without accountability before a court. Which perhaps explains why American historians are consistently ranking George W. Bush at the very bottom of the list of all American presidents; the man, ultimately, is guilty of tyranny.

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Halliburton Settlement Leaves Unsettling Questions

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - ... the Obama Administration are chumps if they sit back and accept the deal the Bush Justice Department concluded for the benefit of Dick Cheney. The whole matter needs to be reopened and examined independently. Let’s hope they consider Patrick Fitzgerald for the job.

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How to Save Capitalism: Fundamental fixes for a collapsing system (Harper's Magazine)

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Michael Hudson - Feb. 13 (Special Report) - If the financial debacles of the past decade—the enormous bubbles, the credit collapse and its trillion-dollar consequences—have taught us anything about the American economy, it is that capitalists have done a remarkably poor job of safeguarding the future of capitalism. Our system became so dominated by finance, insurance, and real estate, and by the complex derivative securities these industries engendered, that the most eminent financiers (and their unsleeping computers) were unable to protect us from economic shocks. For a number of years, farsighted commentators—including in this magazine—warned of the looming credit collapse, and yet the masters of our economy took no action until the crisis was already upon us. Now we must not only repair our tenuous financial system but shore it up to withstand two great, gathering storms: dwindling energy supplies and accelerating climate change. To this end, Harper’s Magazine asked a group of leading economic thinkers to offer sweeping but concrete proposals for the rescue of capitalism, and capitalists, from doom.

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The $4.7 trillion pyramid

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Michael Hudson - Feb. 13 (Special Report) - Social Security, formerly the “third rail” of American politics, has now been trod upon, in rather dramatic fashion, by George W. Bush. Given that the maneuver is both stupid and unnecessary, one must ask why. After all, the program's alleged deficiencies, if there are any, will not manifest themselves until at least 2018. This is not quite the same as worrying about the sun's eventual collapse into a black hole, but for most politicians a problem that lies thirteen years in the future is nearly the same thing. Clearly all is not what it seems. Bush himself offers two reasons for the present boldness. The first—that Social Security is “in crisis”—is easily dismissed. Government actuaries, backed by economists from across the political spectrum, insist there is no funding problem. The Social Security Administration will take in more money than it pays out for the next thirteen years; it has built up a reserve of $1.8 trillion in interest-bearing Treasury bonds for the years after that; and any later shortfall can be covered easily by even a partial rollback of the recent tax cuts for the rich. Bush's second argument sounds more promising. If the American people will simply follow his plan, he says, they too will become rich.

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Yoo for the Defense

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jan. 31 (Opinion) - I’ve followed John Yoo and his writings with some care for a while now, and I think I finally understand what this is about. Namely, a pending probe by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is looking at serious ethical issues surrounding the issuance of Yoo’s legal opinions.

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The Genius of Karl Rove

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - Democratic strategists are praying that Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh remain as the guiding lights of the G.O.P.

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Six Questions for David Hendrickson on the Obama Administration, Banana Republics and Foreign Policy

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Nov. 13 (Interview) - The bailout bill was a colossal mistake and it is based on a false premise: specifically, that we’re facing a liquidity crisis and not an insolvency crisis. Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson originally justified buying all this toxic paper because we were facing a short-term panic.

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The Southern Strategy Comes of Age

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Nov. 04 (Opinion) - At the heart of the Rovian calculus was America’s Southland, which he saw as the ideological and political base of the reshaped Republican Party of the age of Bush. But the very success of this strategy has been the party’s unmaking. It has also marked a complete betrayal of the founding values of the party of Lincoln and Frémont—an act of ultimate political cynicism.

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The wrecking crew: How a gang of right-wing con men destroyed Washington and made a killing

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Thomas Frank - Sep. 22 (Special Report) - Fantastic misgovernment is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, what follows from that: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington.

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