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July 2004 Articles
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DV Articles
November 2003
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It is the ambiguity
in our ideas of representation that lies at the heart of the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal and prevents us from seeing how the act of photographing
naked detainees would in itself have been seen as rape by Iraqis, even
aside from the specific use intended for the photographs. Knowing the past
use of photography in interrogation techniques passed on by CIA trainers
to intelligence agencies like the Shah's notorious Savak, it would have
been only too credible to many that the photos were being used to
blackmail and coerce through the threat of public exposure or publication
on porn sites. If that indeed was the case, and there is evidence to
suggest as much, then it is our distinction between physical rape
and “virtual” rape that may be questionable....(full
article)
Thumbs Up
Arriving in America the customs agent stamps my passport. “Have a nice day,” he says and gives me the thumbs up. In a café on Ventura Boulevard the girl behind the counter takes my order and smiles brightly. “Have a nice day,” she says and gives me the thumbs up. Walking out into the blasting heat, a bum holds out his hand. When I give him a buck he smiles widely, “have a nice day,” he says and raises his thumb. It’s as if these three things: the cheeseburger grin, “have a nice day” and the thumbs up sign constitute the sum total of just about every interaction with a stranger in North America. But it is the thumbs up that transcends them all, the ubiquitous sign language everyone understands. Politicians are especially enamored with it. They raise their thumbs to accentuate the positive, to affirm that all is well, and, I’m convinced, to distract your attention from the reality happening just out of your peripheral vision. The raised thumb of optimism, an ancient phallic emblem for masculine virility, is so common it could be called the quintessential American symbol....(full article)
In the first minute of his July 29 Democratic National Convention (DNC) acceptance speech, John Kerry told us that the Democratic party has “one simple purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.” The Republicans have set the standard by which a US President will be judged, and listening to peace and social justice activists is not one of the desired qualities. Regardless of who gets elected, the two parties tell us, the next president will be a “Commander-in-chief”: tough on terrorism, national security and Homeland Security, and easy on corporations, while paying lip-service to jobs, healthcare, and education. According to Democrats quoted in the New York Times (July 25th 2004), this year’s DNC was designed so that you “think you’re looking at a Republican Convention.” Kerry is reaching out to the same base that Bush is, so this election year there is hardly even the pretense of progressive values coming from the Democratic elites on the podium....(full article)
"After decades of experience in national security, I know the reach of our power, and the power of our ideal. We need to be looked up to and not just feared. The future doesn’t belong to fear, it belongs to freedom." So spoke Senator John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention. The erstwhile defender cum anti-war activist now seeks to become the next war president. He boasted of “decades of experience in national security” and yet all this experience was for naught in analyzing intelligence that would determine whether or not a country destroyed by genocidal sanctions was a threat to the US. The experienced senator asserted, “I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.” In other words the self-admitted misled now wants to lead....(full article)
The allegation that
Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shot seven restrained prisoners
(killing six) in a fit of anger—with a number of witnesses present—is
certainly newsworthy. But, remarkably, the U.S. media has chosen not to
cover it, preferring to accept official denials. The foreign press is not
so trusting. The disconcerting result is that we simply aren’t getting the
same picture of Iraq that citizens of every other English-speaking country
see....(full article)
Lying to the “Decent”
Blacks: Church, State, Business I had the misfortune to hear George W. Bush speak to the African-American National Urban League (NUL) at that organization's annual convention last week in Detroit. It was an unsettling experience. If Bush's speech is any indication, he and his team like to pretend that all African-Americans are current or wannabe business owners. "African-American" and "entrepreneur" seemed practically identical in his oration. Again and again, Bush invoked the great American "entrepreneurial spirit" (a spirit that once brought many millions of Africans across the Middle Passage and covered the United States South with tens of thousands of slave plantations) and mentioned various administration schemes to promote "minority business enterprise." The chief promise Bush made to the Urban Leaguers was that they and their constituents can become prosperous capitalists if they join the Republicans in rolling back the alleged over-taxation and over-regulation imposed on America's heroic business class by the supposed anti-capitalist "class warfare" of the Democratic Party....(full article)
"Our economy since last summer has been
growing at the fastest rate in 20 years" said President Bush in a speech
last week. The word went out from on high, and soon it began to spread:
the fastest-growing economy in 20 years! A very important discovery for
this election season, with voters none too pleased about the state of the
economy. During a TV talk show (CNBC's Morning Call) on which I appeared,
this claim was repeated to me. Is it true? (full
article)
Ladies and gentleman, citizens of the United States, former free persons and torches of Liberty! I don’t want to be the one who breaks this news to you, but somebody has to, and it might as well be me. Listen up, because this is terribly important. Not just your own future, but the future of all generations after you will depend upon it. You’re not scared enough. You’re not scared nearly enough. You should be frightened out of your wits and, apparently, you’re not....(full article)
Folks on the Internet are having a field day with Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network finally getting what it so richly deserves in Robert Greenwald's recently released documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." At long last, the sound of a warped and twisted tree falling in the journalism forest was not only heard, but thanks to American Progress and MoveOn.org, was celebrated in thousands of "house parties" all across the country....(full article)
A simple fact of life is that any system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is unsustainable. Despite all the warnings that we are headed for an ecological and environmental perfect storm, many Americans are oblivious to the flashing red light on the earth’s fuel gauge. Many feel the “American way of life” is an entitlement that operates outside the laws of nature. At the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, "The American way of life is not negotiable." That way of life requires a highly disproportionate use of the world's nonrenewable resources. While only containing 4% of the world population, the United States consumes 25% of the world’s oil. The centerpiece of that way of life is suburbia. And massive amounts of nonrenewable fuels are required to maintain the project of suburbia. The suburban lifestyle is considered by many Americans to be an accepted and normal way of life. But this gluttonous, sprawling, and energy-intensive way of life is simply not sustainable. Few people are aware of how their lives are dependent on cheap and abundant energy. Are these Americans in for a rude awakening? In a fascinating new documentary, The End of Suburbia – Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, the central question is this: Does the suburban way of life have a future? The answer is a resounding no....(full article)
Ecological and economic justice is a four-letter word in “Charm City” Baltimore. For more than four years and two mayoral administrations the working class, predominantly minority community of Woodberry has been under a death sentence from Loyola College of Maryland. Mayor Martin O’Malley and his toadies in the City Council are the judges and executioners. What Loyola College plans to do is worse than putting in a toxic waste dump in the middle of a forest. Oh wait. That’s already been done here. See below. They want to build a monument of greed to themselves that will literally look down on the rest of the city. Woodberry happens to be by TV Hill, the highest point in Baltimore....(full article)
No wonder that the disarray in the Palestinian security forces, as manifested by last week clashes between various Palestinian armed groups and gangs in Gaza Strip, evoked great satisfaction within the Israeli official circles. The general context is that since the present right-wing government was established, its only major, though undeclared, goal has been to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, and in fact nullify de facto the Oslo Accords and undermine any mutually agreed-upon arrangement. To this end, Ariel Sharon very effectively exploited the Palestinians' brutal and undiscriminating forms of resistance to the occupation, mainly the suicide bombers, to instigate a chain of mutually escalating responses that would recruit domestic and international public opinion to promote the goal of dismantling the PA and to demonstrate the political impotency of the Palestinian leadership. Under the cover of "fighting terrorism" the intention is to intersperse the West Bank and Gaza Strip with small Jewish enclaves, to be ruled by local strongmen. The ultimate aim is to advance the process of Jewish colonization until exclusive Jewish control over the Territories reaches the point of no return within the fenced area....(full article)
I've tried shouting "Kerry-Edwards" on the
step out to my garden. The cat yawned and the flowers drooped. Democrats
know this in their hearts. Twit them about Kerry's dreariness, reminiscent
of thin cold chowder or Weeping Ed Muskie and one gets the upraised hand
and petulant cry, "I don't want to hear a word against Kerry!" It was as
though the Democratic candidate has been entombed, pending resurrection as
president, with an honor guard of the National Organization of Women, the
AFL-CIO, the League of Conservation Voters, Taxpayers for Justice, the
NAACP. To open the tomb prematurely and admit the oxygen of life and
criticism is to commit an intolerable blasphemy against political
propriety. Amid the defilements of our political system, and the collapse
of all serious political debate among the liberals and most of the left,
the Democratic candidate becomes a kind of Hegelian Anybody, as in Anybody
But...(full article) July 27-29
By now, everyone has heard of the ghost detainees of Abu Ghraib -- the prisoners who were never processed into the system and were kept out of sight of the Red Cross so that they could be whisked from prison to prison unaccounted for. But what about the other ghosts detainees -- the women? Where are the women of Abu Ghraib and why have they been kept out of sight? (full article)
There are two messages—one explicit, the other implicit—in The Corporation, a documentary film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan. The explicit point is that if corporations are people, then they are psychopaths. In the first of the film’s three parts, Achbar & Company adroitly link the World Health Organization’s symptoms of psychopathology to corporate behavior. The film’s tacit suggestion, however, is that the people who work for them and/or buy into corporate philosophy—as producers and/or consumers—are also psychopathic, or at least possess many of the same symptoms (you are what consumes you)....(full article)
Anthony Fenton on the terrible human rights situation in Haiti....(full article)
Within the last few years the strategies
police use to control activist events have changed dramatically. Massive
pens divided and contained protesters at the February 15, 2003 anti-war
rally in New York City. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place at The
Free Trade Area of the Americas protest in Miami in 2003, and at this
year’s G8 Summit on Sea Island, Georgia,
roughly 500 protesters were met by a police and military force of nearly
25,000. Organizers of activist events and marches at the Democratic and
Republican National Conventions are already running into road blocks as
local officials refuse to cooperate in the issuance of permits. These are
just some of the tactics being used to crack down on the right to dissent
and prevent protests before they start. Heidi Boghosian is the
Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild (www.nlg.org),
and is the co-host of the civil liberties radio show "Law and Disorder" on
WBAI in New York. In this interview,
Boghosian discusses how police control
of protests has changed since September 11th, what the “Miami
Model” entails, how the threat of terrorism is being used as an excuse to
clamp down on civil liberties, and what activists can do to prevent and
fight against such pressure....
Speech presented by Lee Hall on 22 July 2004, North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS), Vegetarian SummerFest, University of Pittsburgh - Johnstown, Pennsylvania Campus. Lee Hall is the legal director for Friends of Animals, and a member of the Adjunct Faculty of Law at Rutgers University. Lee researches, writes, and speaks on the topics of global migration, detentions, and nonhuman rights. With Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, Lee is currently working on a pure vegetarian cookbook, Dining with Friends....(full speech)
Although the 9/11 commission’s investigation has won praise in the media for being bipartisan, on balance it has not made us safer. The commission discovered new information to rewrite the history of the Sept. 11 attacks, uncovered government incompetence that should make Americans wonder if those attacks could have been prevented and made some useful recommendations. But the panel avoided the most important question surrounding the attacks—their underlying cause....(full article)
The 9/11 commissioners generally get lost in a sea of details in their report, and often forget the bigger picture—like the terrorists' motivation for the 9/11 attacks. But a careful reading will show that it's much more than our freedoms and democracy that terrorists despise. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern says it's the Middle East policy, stupid....(full article)
The eugenics movement in the U.S. led it to close its doors to immigration -- and was a source of inspiration for the Nazis. In the wake of my review of Samuel P. Huntington's book Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity ("The Crumbling of Apple Pie," Dissident Voice, June 29), several American friends and colleagues, who read it on the Haaretz English Web site, wrote to me to say that there was an important and chilling aspect of American heritage -- and a dismal chapter in United States history -- that I had left out....(full article)
As I watched Lord Butler do his little snow job, I couldn’t help but admire his talent. What a brilliant performance! Ship that man to Los Angeles to run circles around the likes of Johnny Cochran. If the gloves actually fit, Butler would still acquit. In the press conference that followed his report on British “intelligence failures,” he was a one-man stampede stomping on every question fielded by the Fleet Street wizards. Lord Butler basically sold the premise that Blair was taken in by reasonable intelligence that turned out to be wrong. The Prime Minister didn’t lie – he was just clueless about the truth. MI6 was also found to be innocent of charges that they had doctored and sexed up intelligence. The universally admired English spooks had apparently reached the same erroneous conclusions as other foreign intelligence agencies. As it turns out, those damn foreigners across the pond were recycling the same batch of fibs that MI6 had gullibly imbibed from Iraqi exiles. There was just one big hole in Butler’s doughnut. Blair could not possibly have been ignorant of the American Office of Special Plans (OSP) and their well-orchestrated campaign to subvert intelligence on the fabled WMDs....(full article)
Coca-Cola is the second most widely understood word in the world, after “okay.” Yet less well known than this quintessential U.S. symbol are the labor practices of the Coca-Cola Company, which claims that it “exists to benefit and refresh everyone it touches.” The multinational engages in union-busting practices in Colombia and bears responsibility for some of the violence directed against workers over the last 20 years, according to the National Food Industry Workers Union (Sinaltrainal), which organizes Coca-Cola laborers in Colombia....(full article)
Ah, Dennis, we hardly knew you, and now you've been taken from us. Now that the Democratic Convention is under way in Boston, you have formally endorsed Mr. Kerry and encouraged your delegates to vote for him. We still like you, Dennis. You're still an okay guy. Even though you have sold out your platform and your principles, and even though you misled some of your more naive supporters into thinking you really meant to campaign right to the bitter end, we really cannot fault you too much for being, well, just another pragmatic politician. Those who revered you as part saint and part tooth fairy needed to be disabused of their idolatry. Some of us suspected that your job assignment in 2004 was to be a Political Pied Piper who would round up all the errant Green mice and lefty rats who had bolted the Democratic Party over the years and deliver them in November to the Party's anointed candidate. Maybe you succeeded, Dennis, and maybe you didn't. Anyway, it truly was a great party while your campaign lasted, and we learned a lot. Here's what we learned, Dennis....(full article)
A poem by Keren Batiyov on torture, guilt and responsibility....(full poem)
The same
techniques used to get up the Iraq war are now being applied by the
political Right in the United States, including President Bush, to Iran.
These include innuendo, guilt by association, vague fears, and hyped
capabilities. If Bush gets a second term, it seems very likely that his
administration will make war on Iran....(full
article)
"We want our land to be freed of the
enemies; we want our land be free of the Americans." -- Osama bin Laden,
1999
Vice President Dick Cheney is a bad guy. He can toss around the F-word all he wants in response to the criticism directed at him as a result of his close ties to Halliburton, the company he headed from 1995-2000, but he can’t hide from the truth. It was Cheney who urged Congress in 1996 to ease sanctions against Iran, a country that’s part of President Bush’s axis of evil, so Halliburton could legitimately do business there....(full article)
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men
and women merely players.” This line from As You Like It is but one
example of what was William Shakespeare’s creative genius to transform a
few words into profound metaphors of the complex human condition. Ever
since entering on stage without a script, we have overcome the physical
limitations of our species by specializing in a superior brain capable of
improvisation. All that we have constructed has been accomplished by
making do from available materials, our progress being constrained only by
our inability to successfully cope with Uncertainty – an influential
character that cloaks in a shroud of mystery the theme of this exciting
drama that includes us. Not the least exciting is that we know as much
about it when we are asleep as when we are awake....(full
article)
Lousy Work and Larger
Wealth in America
The poster nation for the world system is
setting a standard of sorts. In America, lousy jobs are increasing as top
corporations are awash in cash. “Fully 81 percent of total job growth over
the past year was concentrated in low-end occupations in transportation
and material moving, sales and repair and maintenance services,” wrote
Stephen S. Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley, in the NY Times of
July 22. Such are the new jobs being created for American workers as the
economy recovers from the recession. This trend that is shaping the lives
of workers and their families is in motion as the national economy is
growing. The two points are connected....
Those of you who are praying for the end of war in Iraq, and for the defeat of President G.W. Bush in November, don't stop. Certain Evangelical Christians are praying overtime, and not just for their man in the oval office. Iraqi cities have been “heavily targeted” with prayer, as have U.S. troops and the intelligence gathering capabilities of the CIA. Operation Iraqi Care and The Presidential Prayer Team (not associated with the White House) were both launched as conduits for prayer....(full article)
Afghanistan has not been in the news much in recent months. A good thing for the Bush administration if not for the Afghan people: for the news coming out of Afghanistan has not been good....(full article)
Fellow radicals: recent events have made it clear that the primary task facing good people everywhere is unconditional support for the Democratic Party, the only party capable not only of removing a very, very bad man from office, but also increasing the pay envelope of starving and desperate Nation, Salon, MoveOn, and Sierra Club coffee-coolata-warriors across America. I submit my humble contribution to this effort by offering a list of ten virtues to cultivate in your personal journey towards becoming a better Democrat....(full article)
It is sad indeed, but it was inevitable: Dennis Kucinich, the feisty progressive from Ohio who has been running (dragging lately) for the Democratic nomination for president has decided to roll over and play dead for Senator John Kerry. "Unity is essential to bring change in November," announced Kucinich on July 22. "Unity is essential to repair America. Unity is essential to set America on a new path."....(full article)
Social commentator and novelist Norman Kelley's damning anatomy of contemporary black politics in America....(full article)
Australian social scientist Alex Carey wrote, “The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” The Madison-based newsletter PR Watch is dedicated to exposing that propaganda, and, along with its affiliated website, provides essential ammunition for peace and justice activists and others fighting corporate disinformation. The journal’s editors, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, have also put out a series of muckraking books that, thanks to meticulous research, careful sourcing and finely-tuned B.S. detectors, are among the best examples of modern-day muckraking. Their latest book, Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America Into a One-Party State, follows on the heels of Weapons of Mass Deception, a thorough examination of the lies and disinformation used to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The two complement each other, providing a motherlode of information about the machinations of the Bush Administration and the right wing movement that put W. into office....(full article)
The media portrayed the weeks before John Kerry announced his running mate as a real nail-biter. Rumors circulated about secret midnight meetings with a range of contenders, and Kerry campaign officials painted the process as the most serious of decisions. But in the end, the choice of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was about as "mysterious" and "serious" as a beautiful baby contest. In Edwards, the Democrats found the most obvious possible middle-of-the-road choice for their uninspiring campaign to defeat George W. Bush. Edwards is the perfect expression of the whole phony idea of "what the public wants" in a political candidate--boyish good looks, "down-home" appeal, salt-of-the-earth beginnings, and father of two photogenic young children. But this isn’t where the Edwards "appeal" ends. Kerry has found his twin on any number of policy issues--and like Kerry himself, Edwards is hard to distinguish from Bush....(full article)
The Democrats, a/k/a “War Party Lite,” are preparing to take center stage. They are headed for Boston, Massachusetts, to conduct their 2004 National Convention. Boston is also the final resting place of that inestimable rebel, Sam Adams, one of the original Sons of Liberty. The idea that America would end up serving as a Global Cop would have appalled Adams. Kicking the imperial Brits out of the country was his pride and joy, but exporting “democracy” to Iraq, via a war, as initiated by the Bush-Cheney Gang, would simply be unthinkable. Unfortunately, the Democrat kingpins are coming off as clones of the War Hawks or worse! Adams wouldn’t like them either....(full article)
Mathew Maavak on the upcoming US elections, ramped up terror alerts, and the question: Where is Osama bin Laden? (full article)
When it comes to bombs, our "leaders" in Washington are thinking big. They’ve asked their friends in the war industry to develop a new bunker-buster that will weigh -- get ready for this -- 30 THOUSAND pounds. To grasp the size of this one bomb, imagine SEVEN Ford Explorer XLS SUVs, with gas tanks full. Put the weight of all of these vehicles into one bomb and you have the "Massive Ordnance Penetrator," or MOP....(full article)
Remember how congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle deplored the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as “un-American”? Last Thursday, however, the House quietly passed a renewed appropriation that keeps open the U.S.’s most infamous torture-teaching institution, known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where the illegal physical and psychological abuse of prisoners of the kind the world condemned at Abu Ghraib and worse has been routinely taught for years....(full article)
With two words, the governor of California has managed to highlight the confluence of anti-gay bias and misogyny. Open contempt for “girlie men” would have raised fewer eyebrows in the past. Reactions to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s put-down of Democrats in the state legislature -- “if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men” -- tell us a lot about how far we’ve come. The good news is the media outcry; the bad news is that the outcry hasn’t been stronger....(full article)
Last May, in a speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), George Bush waxed eloquent on the murder of three American citizens by terrorists who “kill without mercy” and “kill without shame.” Two of these Americans, Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, were executed during Bush’s tenure in the White House. The third, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed two decades earlier when Reagan was president. In his AIPAC speech, Bush made it clear that he was familiar with all three victims and the circumstances that led to their murder. He noted that “followers of the terrorist ideology executed an elderly man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, and pushed his body over the side of a ship into the sea.” He made no mention of Rachel Corrie, another American victim of those who “kill without mercy.” Unlike Klinghoffer, Rachel was killed on Bush’s watch, not Reagan’s. An Israeli Army used a Caterpillar Bulldozer to murder the young American peace activist from Olympia, Washington....(full article)
The tragedy of Palestine would be impossible without history’s greatest job of mind management. Lincoln was wrong; you can fool most of the people, most of the time. The physical apartheid wall in Israel is possible only because of a mental apartheid wall in American consciousness....(full article)
The Grid, introduced earlier this week by TNT (Turner Network Television), is the latest anti-terrorism action/adventure fantasy dreamed up by Hollywood movers and shakers eager to profit from the ongoing disaster that passes for American foreign policy in the Middle East and anxious to maintain a steady flow of propaganda and misinformation to naive and gullible audiences....(full article)
The July 18th referendum in Bolivia is likely to be a short lived, temporary setback for radical opponents of the government of President Mesa. Their call for a mass boycott failed. The government was able to promote an effective propaganda campaign and could also rely on legal penalties obliging people to vote. In effect, public dissent against the referendum and for a boycott was criminalized. Many older voters feared losing State pension rights had they refused to vote. Public servants such as teachers, especially in rural areas, might also have faced sanctions affecting their jobs. Such is democracy in Bolivia. But despite the upbeat public relations gloss laid on by government representatives, close up the sums look bad for President Mesa and augur deeper political crisis if he fails to acknowledge what they mean....(full article)
The biggest story of the Iraq war is not
about missing weapons of mass destruction, or about deep-cover CIA
officers getting their covers blown by vengeful White House agents, or
even about 896 dead American soldiers. These have been covered to one
degree or another, and then summarily dismissed, by the American
mainstream news media. The biggest story of the Iraq war has not enjoyed
any coverage in America, though it has been exploding across the
international news media for several weeks now. The biggest story of the
Iraq war is about the torture of Iraqi children....
Lemons. Lemons? Could anyone have imagined it would be that simple? I’m talking about the tiny bit of actual, practical, graspable treatment news that managed to escape the maelstrom of the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand last week – a conference that otherwise was given over almost entirely to criticism of U.S. AIDS policy under George W. Bush. The biannual summit of doctors, scientists, health-care workers, activists, politicians, patients and government officials is the largest of its kind in the world, the Mother of all AIDS gatherings, and this year Mother gave Bush and the boys a good whack with the paddle....(full article)
This is how they like it. An American helicopter fires four missiles at a house in Fallujah. Fourteen people are killed, including women and children. Or so say the hospital authorities. But no Western journalist dares to go to Fallujah. Video footage taken by local civilians shows only a hole in the ground, body parts under a grey blanket and an unnamed man shouting that young children were killed. The US authorities say they know nothing about the air strike; indeed, they tell journalists to talk to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense--whose spokesman admits that he has "no clue what is going on". And by the time, in early afternoon yesterday, that the American-appointed Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, said that he had given permission for the attack--even though US rules of engagement give him no such right--there had been car bombs in Tikrit in which two policemen died, one of Saddam's former generals was captured, and Fallujah became just another statistic, albeit a deeply disturbing one: this is the sixth air strike on the insurgent-held city in less than five weeks. None of the six was independently reported. The dead were "terrorists", according to Mr. Allawi's office. So were the doctors lying? (full article)
Geoscientist and Lawrence Livermore nuclear lab whistleblower Leuren Moret on depleted uranium, DU-related health maladies, international law, and US geostrategic motivations....(full article)
A potentially major news story—that Iran had more connections with al Qaeda than Iraq ever did, according to the 9/11 Commission’s interim report—has been relegated to the back pages of national newspapers and underplayed by the electronic media. The commission found that as many as 10 of the September 11 hijackers were given safe passage by the Iranians during the year before the attacks. Has the U.S. media already become so cynical about the Bush administration’s motives for invading Iraq that this does not even rate a front page news story? (full article)
A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neoconservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the third Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) whose previous two incarnations mobilized public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be "global terrorism." The new group, announced at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, said its "single mission" will be to "advocate policies intended to win the war on global terrorism – terrorism carried out by radical Islamists opposed to freedom and democracy."....(full article)
George Bush eats centrist Democrats for breakfast. Senator John Kerry is a centrist, and as Michael Moore puts it: "We cannot leave the 2004 election to the Democrats to screw it up." Ever since the demise of the once-progressive Johnson administration in 1968, when a lawless war on Vietnam destroyed the hopeful war on poverty, centrist Democrats have blamed the misfortunes of the Democratic Party in national politics on excessive liberalism, on progressive politics that appear too radical for the general population. Centrists claim that only by moving the Party to the right, even to the point of co-opting nationalism and military postures of the Republicans, can Democrats regain the White House. The centrist theory, so often repeated in media commentary, contradicts the historical record -- not only the record of three successive defeats in presidential elections from 1980 to 1988, when the party shifted to the right -- but the overall record of Democratic presidents from Roosevelt to Carter....(full article)
Four years after the Florida debacle, with nearly all of Ralph Nader's longtime progressive allies now tactically supporting Kerry in swing states to retire the Bush regime, the Nader campaign has created none of the grassroots thunder of 2000. Indeed, it's been a hollow enterprise -- attracting a few leftwing sects and polemicists. Given this vacuum, it's no surprise that pro-Bush forces have rushed to Nader's side. What is a surprise is the brazenness of their support. And, how readily Nader has accepted the rightwing help....(full article)
Democrats and liberal defenders of John Kerry, are throwing tantrums over Ralph Nader’s new found affinity for conservatives who are aiding his ballot efforts in swing states....Well, if Nader is so bad, what about the Kerry/Edwards ticket? Where is the Democrat support coming from? As usual, convicted corporate criminals have been pouring tons of cash into both major parties this election season. But since the Democrats seem to be the only party up in arms over Nader’s bid, it is only fair to focus on their blatant follies....(full article)
John Kerry’s decision to select a vice presidential running mate who shares his militaristic foreign policy agenda has once again demonstrated the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s willingness to take the party’s activist core, which overwhelmingly supports human rights and international law, for granted....(full article)
Reporters interviewing US troops in Iraq tend to hear them say the same thing over and over again: "If we could just get things up and running, get something rebuilt, these people wouldn't hate us so much." But the aid money has been very slow in coming. The White House's own Office of Budget and Management admitted recently that the US has spent less than $400 million out of the $18 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds that Congress approved in an emergency spending bill last year. More than half of that money was supposed to have been spent by now. The Bush administration offered no explanation for the delay, other than to reassure us that contractors are busy working on many projects in Iraq, and that they won't be paid until those projects are completed....(full article)
Like Christopher Columbus blinking in shock
at first seeing an American Indian, John Kerry has just discovered
African-American voters....(full article)
When The Hague speaks, the world listens, especially when a threat to international peace is involved. At least this was the case until the International Court of Justice took aim at Israel. At issue was the Israeli government’s building of a separation wall on occupied Palestinian lands in the West Bank, which, in essence, has caged Palestinian communities into ghettos reminiscent of the Jewish ghettos in Europe during World War II. The now infamous separation wall is center stage of an international campaign aimed to end the illegal Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem - all areas occupied by force in 1967 when Israel’s military assumed control, the same way the US entered Iraq and assumed control of everyday life there....(full article)
“Whilst I was there, I lost all my faith in the Israeli army. They put it right in your face: 'Go be the oppressors for your people. Force yourselves upon them'. They told us...'take these bats wrapped up in plastic and...calm things down'...We had skulls on our helmets, dude. We walked around with machetes, all kinds of crazy stuff. Sheriff badges. We'd improvise some very unique solutions.” This is Ehud, speaking 12 years after having served in the occupied Palestinian territories. Like the thousands before him, he was a paratrooper in the Israeli army during the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993). Some of the improvised solutions he came up with while serving in the occupied territories included attaching the plus and minus cables from a two-way radio battery to the ears of a Palestinian to give him an electric shock. "We had lots of 'sophisticated methods'," Ehud related. "Aftershock" is a film about four former soldiers - Ehud, Haim, Omri and Haliva - who served in the occupied territories during the first Palestinian intifada and were interviewed by Yariv Horowitz, who had been given a mission to make a film for the Educational Corps. The army hoped the film would boost moral in Nablus, but after they saw it they decided to censor it, for as soon as Horowitz turned on the camera: "Things were said that would get everyone into trouble."....(full article) July 19-20
As expected, the
attempts by the White House to amend the constitution to include the
phrase “Homo and Lesbo-sapiens shalt not unite in holy hetero-matrimony”
fell flat with a resounding thud on the Senate floor. Those who favored a
constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages were only able to
garner 48 votes, falling embarrassingly and predictably short of the
necessary 60 to move it ahead. For the majority of Republicans, though,
even ones like Senator John McCain, who called the move to desecrate the
constitution by members of his own party, “un-Republican” and
“un-American,” this represented somewhat of a “victory” (in the Orwellian
“doublespeak” sense of the word, that is). For a few moments, at least,
Americans were distracted long enough to forget “all that good news coming
out of Iraq” and temporarily spared the sight of Dick Cheney's daughter
walking down the aisle in a lumberjack shirt and veil. After their
disastrous handling of Iraq, Republicans more than ever need to pour over
their pop-up bibles to answer the burning cross question of which
irrelevant social issue will deflect criticism of their corrupt and
incompetent leadership....(full article)
Can Dr. Frankenstein “Secure” this
November’s Election? If the corporate regime locks up its coup d’etat by calling off this November’s big election show, will the diverse American volken, or boobois class, deprived of our quadrennial spectacle, rise up against those who would rule us? And if we did, what would “we” be rebelling against? Being deprived of the illusion of “democracy,” or the Constitution’s mortal wound? In other words, if the Bushistas succeed in calling off the election, will it be enough to awaken middle and lower working class Wal-Mart shopping Americans to the fact we’ve been brainwashed and enslaved? Wouldn’t it also signal a shift in the public image of American corporate hegemony? How will it affect the value of our logo—or flag? (full article)
The Religious Right,
Multinationals and the Bush/Cheney Administration
America's Pathetic
Liberals: The Sequel The controversy over Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" provides sharp insight into contemporary American liberalism. You might think from all the noise that something radical or revealing or important was happening. But you would be wrong. The noise represents another example of what Robert Hughes called America's "Culture of Complaint," an endless bickering, never deciding anything but enjoyed purely for itself. . . .Why does Moore, and I use him to represent all of liberal America, so want to be rid of Bush that he takes what I regard as the unprincipled position of supporting someone as bad or worse? I do not believe it is because Bush represents a danger to American values, the favorite charge of many fuzzy-thinking American liberals, because in many ways Bush accurately reflects those values. I think they are desperate to be rid of Bush because he is an embarrassment. There is something excruciatingly American about Bush, revealing some painful truths about the society he represents, much the same as was the case with President Nixon's brother and his efforts to create a fast-food empire based on Nixon-burgers or President Carter's whining, beer-swilling brother, Billy. Yes, Bush has done a lot of damage in the world, but Presidents can't act alone....(full article)
Washington is always abuzz with crazy
rumors. The latest? Dick Cheney will step aside as George W. Bush’s
running mate for November’s election. The pretext? Health problems. The
replacement? Senator John McCain from Arizona.
On Friday, July 16,
McCain met up with Cheney in Michigan as he was on a swing to garner funds
for Bush’s re-election campaign. If indeed the rumor is accurate, the
changing of the guard may happen within the next month, just in time for
the Republican National Convention in New York City, which is scheduled
for the end of August. But mark my word. It ain’t gonna happen....(full
article)
By
now everybody knows that Martha Stewart has been sentenced to 5 months in
prison for lying about a phone call. I think it was Jeffrey Toobin who said,
“The government has sent a clear message to all Americans. If you lie,
you’re going to suffer the consequences.” Isn’t that just rich. The
government sent a clear message that if you lie you’re going to suffer the
consequences. I think they should clarify that a little and say, “If you lie
you’re going to suffer the consequences, unless of course you happen to BE
in the government, or you’re insanely greedy and your lies happen to kill
tens of thousands of people or purposely bankrupt the second largest state
in the continental United States with the third largest economy in the
world.”....
Nabil Ayesh, one of the parents holding his baby in his arms, says that because of Israel's Citizenship Law he doesn’t have a family life. He says he feels as if he’s only dating his wife because they are forced to live apart. She can’t come out of the West Bank, he has to go in. On a bright Sunday morning at the Prime Minister’s Office, about 50 people, including family members and children directly affected by the law, gathered to take part in a demonstration against Israel’s Citizenship Law organized by a number of human rights organizations including the Mossawa Center, Physicians for Human Rights, B’tselem, HaMoked, Adalah, and the Arab Human Rights Association....(full article)
Gary Corseri's latest short play, featuring Bush regime heads and their press stenographers as dung beetles....(full article)
An essay adapted from Thomas Frank's must read new book, What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. That our politics have been shifting rightward for more than thirty years is a generally acknowledged fact of American life. That this rightward movement has largely been accomplished by working-class voters whose lives have been materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported is a less comfortable fact, one we have trouble talking about in a straightforward manner....(full article)
Lord Butler told us yesterday that Tony Blair acted in good faith. So that's all right then. At the al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad yesterday morning, there was blood on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on the doctors, blood on the stretchers. In the dangerous oven of Baghdad, 10 more lives had just ended. So what was it Tony Blair said in the Commons yesterday afternoon? "We are not killing civilians in Iraq; terrorists are killing civilians in Iraq." So that's all right then. Question: Are Baghdad and London on the same planet? (full article)
Tom Ridge, the federal official in charge of defending the United States against terrorism, was on message when he told a July 14 news conference: “We don’t do politics at Homeland Security.” Such high-level claims of patriotic purity have been routine since 9/11. But in this election year, they’re more ludicrous than ever. Days earlier, alongside a photo of Ridge, a headline on USA Today’s front page had declared: “Election Terror Threat Intensifies.” There was unintended irony in the headline. While a real threat of terrorism exists in the United States, we should also acknowledge that an intensifying “election terror threat” is coming from the Bush administration. With scarcely 100 days to go until Election Day, the White House is desperate to wring every ounce of advantage from the American Flag, patriotism, apple pie -- and the subject of “terrorism.”....(full article)
It’s quite possible that a terrorist attack designed to disrupt our upcoming election is authentically in the offing. But what if it isn’t? Suppose the neo-con zealots who populate the White House like frenzied ants at a badly chosen picnic spot have decided to fabricate a provocative incident to trigger bedlam, ensuing martial law, and “postponed” balloting. Suggesting such a scenario is hardly groundless absurdity....(full article)
Ok, time for a concession. I, Rachel
Olivieri, of somewhat sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath my franchise
of “one” self-elected vote to one undeserving John Kerry on Nov. 2nd,
2004: with great trepidation and reservation. I do this for that great
American cause: ABB. I urge all others to grant and reserve as well. And,
hold on to your reserve. Having said that, I am “free” to exact the
consequence of my vote; critical analysis....
Time was when Americans were more interested
in the NASDAQ average than presidential polls. Those were the days when
the whole country – from sea to shining sea – was caught up in the frenzy
of a dot.com bubble. With a few strategic clicks of a mouse, a day trader
in his bathrobe could make a few hundred dollars. Back then, who had the
time to pay attention to a couple of party hacks chasing a civil service
job that paid a miserly four hundred grand a year? Every kid with a bright
idea dreamed of an IPO that would give him enough loose change to build
his very own White House and another one for his pet gorilla. Last
election season, only the most entrenched political partisans were paying
attention to the most boring election campaign in the history of the
nation. Future generations will be astounded that 280 million Americans,
most of them functionally literate, could only spare Bush and Gore as
viable candidates for the White House....(full
article)
The Green Deceivers:
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold So now that the American people are finally turning against the occupation of Iraq in huge numbers across both poles of the political landscape, the Green Party, the supposed banner of peace, justice and environmentalism, has settled on a plan of inaction that supports the perpetuation of the war and the corporate contamination of the American political system. That's the real import of the party's decision to support David Cobb, the stealth candidate, and his safe state's presidential strategy. . . . The Greens have rendered themselves irrelevant as anything more than a feel-good subaltern to the Democratic Party, a kind of decompression tank for thumb-sucking progressive malcontents....(full article)
Knee-deep in another presidential election circus, everyone has an opinion. Families are divided, friendships split, and boatloads of good energy is wasted in the futile attempt to differentiate between corporate candidates (this time, it's two warmongering Yale grads). In fact, if one were to judge by campaign television commercials, the two parties have barely even tried to disguise their formulaic approach to control for over five decades....(full article)
Kathryn Hall is the director of Birthing
Project USA, the only national African American, grassroots
community-based maternal and child health program in the U.S. She is based
in Sacramento. Hall talks with Seth Sandronsky about health care in Cuba
under a US embargo, and American activist efforts in solidarity with the
Cuban people....(full interview)
Black Cultural Criticism,
Inc. Norman Kelley, author of The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics (Nation Books, 2004), critiques the Black popular culture criticism industry....(full article)
In editorials and speeches ringing across Israel and America, a thousand apologists are protesting that beleaguered Israel is building a ‘security fence’ -– not a wall -– whose only purpose is to safeguard innocent Israeli civilians against the primordial violence of Palestinians. Yet, as M. Shahid Alam points out, there is a terrible irony for Israel in this latest phase of its anti-Palestinian project....(full article)
The International Court of Justice has determined that Israel “has the right, and indeed the duty, to…protect the life of its citizens” but that “the measures taken are bound nonetheless to remain in conformity with applicable international law.” The Court found the present route of the separation fence or wall to be a serious and egregious violation of international law. In an interview given last weekend, Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon contested the applicability of international law. Such a system was appropriate for the conditions of World War II, he declared, but not for the present war on terror. Apparently, as Ya’alon envisions it, in this war the armed forces are bound only by their own law. Indeed, a battle is being waged in the world today over the status of international law. While the US and Israel are agitating for its nullification, the rest of the world understands that international law, as the framework that governs the conduct of states, is a necessary apparatus for the preservation of society. Even if it does not always function perfectly, without international law there is a danger that large segments of the human race will simply be wiped out, as we Jews learned through our own terrible experience during World War II....(full article)
One of the urban legends that have gained wide currency over the last few years is that the Syrians and Palestinians rebuffed Barak’s “generous” peace overtures. Not according to Bill Clinton’s new book, My Life. His thousand-page diary, a day-by-day account of his two terms in office, sheds new light on how Barak and Netenyahu both deliberately sabotaged the peace process. On the Syrian front, Clinton’s book leaves the reader with no doubt that it was the Israelis who derailed the negotiations in Shepherdstown. The ex-president’s account is scattered all over his book. What follows is Clinton’s own version of how Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak aborted the peace negotiations with the Syrians....(full article)
The Bolivian referendum will go ahead on Sunday July 18th after a relentless government publicity campaign and amid repressive legal and security measures aimed at trying to intimidate people into voting. People refusing to vote or attempting to boycott the vote face penalties which include disqualification from holding public office or even opening a bank account. They can also be fined - simply for refusing to vote in the referendum. The authorities are also empowered to refuse passports and identity cards for the "offence" of not voting or for opposing the vote. The government had tried to push these oppressive measures through the national legislature. But legislators wanted people to be free to vote or not, as they chose. When they defended that basic right successfully, US government protegé President Carlos Meza turned to the Supreme Court to get the verdict he needed so as to be able to impose the referendum on voters - like it or not. The justices duly obliged. Subsequently, Meza's enforcer, Minister of Government Alfonso Ferrufino, announced that protesters against the referendum will be imprisoned....(full article)
Tracy McLellan reviews Mickey Z.'s excellent new book The Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda....(full article)
In a landmark decision greeted with jubilation by representatives of the Hoopa and Yurok tribes, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the release of flows mandated under the Trinity River Record of Decision (ROD) of December 2000....(full article)
What's the largest fast junk food chain in the country? Wrong. It's not McDonald's. It's Subway. Subway overtook McDonald's last year in the United States and now has 15,874 locations in the U.S. compared to 11,533 for McDonald's. Worldwide, Subway has 21,528 restaurants in 75 countries. McDonald's has more than 30,000 restaurants in 119 countries. Subway founder Fred DeLuca says he wants 30,000 outlets worldwide by 2010. Of course, Subway would not want you to think that it is not a fast junk food chain....(full article)
The first installment of Adam Engel's novel Topiary. Dedicated to all who have worked in cubicles, behind counters, or on rooftops for THE MAN and believed there was a better world, and still believe. Even if the only way out is in....(full article)
David went to Canada, Dick received a
college deferment, Charlie was granted conscientious objector status,
George joined the National Guard, Sam was classified 4-F, and Johnny got
his gun....(full article) July 14-16
It's a presidential election year, so it's
time to observe United States lefties engage in their quadrennial ritual
of ripping each other apart over the question of how to best respond in
the good-conscience names of social justice and democracy to the
all-too-narrow "choices" presented by the polyarchic, business-dominated
U.S. electoral system. It's time to watch our connection to common core
peace, democracy, and equality agendas fray as the election obsession
sucks up scarce progressive resources. Meanwhile, it's interesting and
instructive to observe the cool, calculating, and self-interested election
angle of the great monied interests. Structurally generated
super-citizenship has a way of calming its holder's political nerves in
"America, the best democracy that money can buy."....(full
article)
The Bush administration has been let off the hook by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s skewering of U.S. intelligence agencies for providing unfounded or overstated conclusions on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). The key issue, unaddressed by the Senate committee, is whether the Bush administration created pressure for the intelligence agencies to reach such an exaggerated opinion of the Iraqi threat. The Democrats on the committee foolishly bought into an agreement that will likely postpone a committee report on that more important issue until after the election. Yet voters would profit from information about whether the Bush administration pressured the intelligence community or exaggerated, twisted the truth or even lied about the Iraqi threat in its rush to justify war. The very fact that the Republicans wanted a delay in resolving such important questions should indicate where the evidence leads....(full article)
In our
various oral and written presentations
on Iraq, my veteran intelligence officer colleagues and I took no delight
in sharply criticizing what we perceived to be the corruption of
intelligence analysis at CIA. Nothing would have pleased us more than to
have been proven wrong. It turns out we did not know the half of it....(full article)
Amnesty International charged that the Bush administration has “openly eroded human rights” in waging its war on terrorism. And Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Kahn, said, “as a strategy, the war on terror is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle.” White House spokesman Scott McClellan quickly dismissed Kahn's charges by saying that “[T]he war on terrorism has resulted in the liberation of 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the protection of their rights.” He went on to say, “People in those countries did not have the kinds of protections that we're used to in the United States. And now they do.” Apparently McClellan's boss is not the only one at the White House who doesn't watch the news or read newspapers....(full article)
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