Whenever I pay taxes, I think of the fact that GE and Exxon paid no taxes in 2009, that Goldman Sachs pays under 2% taxes, and that billionaire hedge fund managers pay a tax rate of 15%. As… Read More

If you really want to know what's been happening in Egypt, you have to know what folks there have been feeling for decades, and all the new feelings they're feeling now.Take a basic emotion:… Read More

There is a specter haunting the planet. It is the specter of the failure of Western capitalism.All that is solid -- jobs, homes, retirement savings -- melts into air. Our cock-a-hoop capital… Read More

So that right-wing creep Andrew Breitbart, who specializes in feeding tapes to Faux News that have been edited to fit in with his wacko narrative that progressives are more crooked or nuts o… Read More

Today there are three forms of terrorism threatening the world: political, financial and environmental terrorism. These three forms of terrorism are responsible for the destruction of human… Read More

Before I tell you how I'm a coward, and how Dick Cheney is a coward, and how President Obama is a coward, and how everyone in America is a coward, I want to suck you into my story by startin… Read More

The last time I posted was August 1, 2007. Now I'm back. Much has happened. More later Read More

Bergman is one of my all-time heroes, along with Nelson Mandela, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, J.M. Coetzee, Anselm Kiefer, Bertolucci, and not many others. I have spent the past two days reading… Read More

A fact of American democracy that is never discussed is how undemocratic our business lives are.Many of us spend most of our waking hours on earth working under circumstances that are totall… Read More

What will Washington be like when the Barbarians leave town next year? Will this hapless burg -- home of flagrant hypocrites and BS ejaculators, stuffed from snout to stern with an indigesti… Read More

The Imperialist World SystemPaul Baran’s "Political Economy of Growth" After Fifty Years by John Bellamy Foster/Monthly Review The concept of the imperialist world system in today&rsq&hell…Read More

1. Big Ideas The Venice Biennaleby Peter Schjeldahl/The New Yorker“Tranquila ,” a Spanish observer was heard to judge, with a warmth just short of enthusiasm, on the opening day… Read More

1. The Road Home New York Times Editorial It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit. Like many… Read More

NATO Didn’t Lose Afghanistan By SARAH CHAYES /NY TimesKandahar, Afghanistan WHEN things go wrong — touchdown passes are missed, products come out defective, wars are lost —… Read More

Take the Revolutionary Road The US has been the world’s principal anti-revolutionary force for almost a century. As Thomas Jefferson would have said, it’s time to rebel. by Micha… Read More

Michael Moore's Sicko by CHRISTOPHER HAYES /The Nation About forty minutes into Sicko , Michael Moore's excellent, frustrating new documentary about the American healthcare industry, Ronald… Read More

A Seductive Spectacle The languid bazaar of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet still beckons 50 years later By Charles Trueheart/ THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR Speak the name Lawrence Durrel… Read More

In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby FacesBy Conn Iggulden/LA TimesWhen I was 10, I founded an international organization known as the Black Cat Club. My friend Richard was the only other m… Read More

Tina Brown's Diana Tina Brown: THE DIANA CHRONICLES 496pp. By Selina Hastings/Times Literary SupplementLike scraping barnacles off an old hulk, Tina Brown has taken the story of Princess Dia… Read More

Research on Human Nature Is Cause For Optimism by Gary Olson/ The Morning Call "We have a pending fortuitous marriage of science and morality of the most profound sort." The non-profit Edge… Read More

Here's the series of articles in the Washington Post last week that has got Washington in an uproar, because it lays out loud and clear how Dick Cheney runs our country -- and how he has fuc… Read More

Not Buying It By STEVEN KURUTZ/NY TimesON a Friday evening last month, the day after New York University ’s class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of Third… Read More

Iraq by the Numbers: Surging Past the Gates of Hell By Tom Engelhardt/TomDispatch.com Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that makes us what we are. Numbers… Read More

Totally Boom/Doom Solartopian Green by 2030 by Harvey Wasserman We are all now desperate runners in the epic race between doom and boom. It’s a global- warmed dead heat between apocaly… Read More

And to Its Fabled Economy Goodbye to the City on the Hill By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS/Counterpunch.org"We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us." --John Winthrop Ameri… Read More