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May 2004 Articles
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DV Articles
November 2003
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If today the U.S. government were to put
itself on trial, on the same basis it employed to try the Nazis at
Nuremberg, for actions taken in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, it
might have to convict itself—if only for the sake of consistency. Justice
is no respecter of person. Can anyone sincerely maintain that what was a
crime for Hermann Goering and Alfred Jodl is not equally a crime for
Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney? (full
article)
D(isinformation) Day: 60 Years is Enough June 6, 2004 marks 60 years since the fabled Allied invasion known as "D-Day." Lost amid the self-congratulatory orgy is the minor detail that by the time of the D-Day invasion, the Soviets were engaging 80 percent of the German Army on the Eastern Front. Oops...Alexander Cockburn has called D-Day a "sideshow," explaining that WWII had already been won "by the Russians at Stalingrad and then, a year before D-Day, at the Kursk Salient, where 100 German divisions were mangled. Compared with those epic struggles, D-Day was a skirmish...Hitler's generals knew the war was lost, and the task was to keep the meeting point between the invading Russians and Western armies as far east as possible." Of course, this doesn't fit the "good war" myth (more than just a good war, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw has deemed WWII "the greatest war the world has seen."), so it's down the memory hole. To borrow from the World Bank protestors, I say 60 years is enough...(full article)
Our uncertainties are
increasing. The war against Iraq is not abating, and the intensification
of this bloodfest is destabilizing the region and the global economy. For
those who started this war, the cost is not counted in the numbers of the
dead but rather in dollars. We are swamped with mixed economic reports,
uncertain growth prognostications, ebbing consumer spending and oil prices
that keep floating at a narrow price level marked “high,” despite pledges
from OPEC and its Saudi Arabian fixer that it can light a thousand
Aladdin’s lamps for 1001 nights.
Norman Solomon on the myth of a liberal NPR and the NY Times' mea culpa (sort of) for its coverage of the buildup to the Iraq War....(full article)
It is a bit of historical data rarely quoted by Fox News or CNN as they clank out soundbite-sized backgrounders on terrorism: Many of America's Islamic enemies were custom-made to order by the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate) in Afghanistan. Abu Hamza al-Masri is no exception....(full article)
Ted Glick remembers the great activist Dave Dellinger, who passed away yesterday at the age of 88....(full article)
The concept of "no war!" is no longer just a pretty picture. It is serious politics. When faced with the "realism," of Abu Ghraib and its result, the peace movement can no longer be dismissed as "unrealistic." We need a fundamental rethinking of US foreign and domestic policies, and those most qualified to present it are those who opposed this war and the warfare state's policies from the beginning. It is important to seek accountability from the political and military leaders who presided over the war crimes committed in Iraq, as most clearly shown in the notorious photos. But that's only part of a more important opportunity: to change the permissible boundaries of debate....(full article)
On June 4, 2004, lawyers for Voices in the Wilderness (VitW) will argue, in federal court, that a judge should allow further “discovery” to help establish why VitW travelers believed they had a duty to challenge economic sanctions against Iraq. The US Government charges us with the “crime” of delivering donated medicines to Iraq, without authorization. The US Treasury Department is attempting to collect $20,000 from VitW for violation of US sanctions against Iraq, sanctions which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq and effectively destroyed the civilian infrastructure. VitW is countersuing for reparations for the catastrophic effect of US led economic sanctions....(full article)
In a recent interview with Political Affairs magazine, novelist and social critic Walter Mosley described the Bush administration preference for neo-imperialism, war and the lies that propelled us toward war, as "the last gasp of white male domination of America." To this Mosley might have accurately added its extra-electoral power grabs, right-wing judicial appointments, anti-women stances, theocratic posturing, anti-union policies, so on. Indeed, Mosley might have added that this permanent war indicates a last gasp of a dying system. Is Mosley right? If so, what does this mean for those of us who claim politics that require us to actively transform society? Are my addenda to Mosley’s analysis jumping the gun? What is "the white male domination of America"? An easy question with an obvious answer, right? Some of us have substituted race for class as the central organizing feature of social relations in the US because of special conditions that at moments seem to cultivate unity by race across class lines. In the past, white working-class people often collaborated with bosses to promote segregation, job discrimination and violence because of racial explanations of inferiority. But the fact that it sometimes still happens may not make the answer to these questions less difficult to untangle....(full article)
I fondly remember when my mother took me to see Bill Cosby perform in the early 1970s. I was a teen and enjoyed myself immensely. Mr. Cosby’s recent rant was also memorable. I did not enjoy it. During an event to commemorate the 1954 anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, Mr. Cosby blamed some African Americans for failing to get a formal education. In his view, their failure is a personal problem....(full article)
Suggestion: Why not have a day, set aside once a year, for Americans to roast the repulsive Warmongers who have instigated this mess in Iraq? Isn’t it time to mock some of these villains? Don’t they deserve to be pilloried with a national day of their own? (full article)
A family doctor friend of ours was irate. For the past two years, he's been pushing a simple message -- a healthy diet combined with regular exercise helps prevent disease. But he is up against a corporate army that undercuts this simple message almost every day -- from drug reps pushing unnecessary or harmful drugs, to junk food companies pushing a high-sugar high-fat diet, to the entire entertainment industry that induces the population at large to sink into its collective barco lounger....(full article)
On Saturday, May 22, the San Francisco Chronicle announced on its front page that there would be changes in the standards for organic foods that would permit the use of antibiotics and hormones. And that's just for starters. To say that the modifications in the National Organic Program which were made in April are a weakening of our standards, "weakening consumer confidence in the organic label" (as Nancy Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm vice president, has asserted), is a severe understatement. It's the beginning of the end....(full article) May 27
To listen to George Bush, you would think that he was elected Pope or Chief Rabbi or something. With Mr. Bush, it’s him and God all the time. "I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world," he averred at his recent press conference. "Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world." Freedom is not the Judeo-Christian divinity’s gift to anybody. None of the political and social ideals upon which the nation was begun come from either of these two religions. Remember St. Paul’s injunction that slaves should obey their masters....(full article)
Another “gas out” came and went May 19 without slowing the soaring cost of petrol in the United States, much less denting the escalation of our oil addiction. U.S. oil consumption is now over 20 million barrels per day—a quarter of the 80 million barrels going down the global gullet daily. Our habit will grow by 420,000 barrels this year, a rise of an additional 1150 barrels of oil every day, the Energy Information Administration projects. And we are outraged that the average price of gasoline has passed $2.00 with no end in sight. Furious truckers have blocked freeways in Los Angeles and container terminals in Northern California. Ordinary commuters are impotent, but angry enough to be heard. Even the most progressive politicians genuinely committed to fuel efficiency and renewable energy can bring up these issues only under deep cover while pledging “action on gas prices.”....(full article)
Imagine if the wish-you-were-here photos and video footage of the prisoner abuse in Iraq documented Americans murdering Iraqi detainees. Say there was film of two military intelligence soldiers sliding a sleeping bag over the head of an Iraqi and rolling him back and forth, sitting on his chest, and placing a hand over his mouth until he was asphyxiated. Might that generate front-page headlines and bipartisan denunciations on Capitol Hill? (full article)
No matter how hard President George W. Bush and his senior aides try, they won’t be able to restore the last bit of the fig leaf with which they had been covering their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Having earlier lost most of the fig leaf – Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and its links with Al Qaida -- they now stand stark naked before the world audience, a reversal of the physical role their vicious prison guards had hitherto imposed on the hapless Iraqi detainees in the privacy of their jails....(full article)
When right-wing pundit Thomas Friedman
starts clamoring for "regime change here at home," as he did on May 14,
you know that conservatives are deserting the Bush administration’s
sinking ship. Growing factions of the military and political establishment
are now scrambling to find an "exit strategy" from Iraq, while their
entire project to reshape the Middle East is in peril. This is the moment
we on the left have been waiting for. Where, then, is the sense of
euphoria? The crisis at the top of society has not been matched by a surge
in confidence from the antiwar movement below....
Plenty has also come to light demonstrating the Bush regime's corporate welfare for businesses like Bechtel, Halliburton and Carlyle in Iraq. The wholesale murder of civilians and widespread torture of detainees there result directly from efforts to quell resistance to control by foreign corporations of the country's resources. It goes without saying these companies are determined to outsource onto domestic taxpayers in the US and the UK the cost of the military muscle necessary to achieve that control. The same is true in the developing war in the Andes where the war in Colombia seems to be spreading inexorably into Ecuador and Venezuela. There, as in Iraq, Britain and Spain have faithfully supported the US. But while in Iraq the war was originally justified as part of the "war on terrorism", the Andean war is also dressed up as part of the "war on drugs". It is worth noting the Andean war's relationship with big business and dubious international finance....(full article)
republican politicians took potshots at House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi last week after she called President Bush “incompetent” and criticized his judgment and leadership. Her conclusion -- “the emperor has no clothes” -- understandably made Republicans angry, because it is so obviously accurate....(full article)
Sometimes it is worth writing someone's
obituary ahead of schedule. In the case of politicians, the purpose of an
obituary is to serve as a warning against the political zombies – those
politicians who are politically spent or have lost their souls. There are
many of them around today, e.g., Jose Ma Aznar, Tony Blair,
Jack Straw, Kofi Annan, Javier Solana… and Colin Powell, the US Secretary
of State....(full article)
Let Them Eat Gruel The track record thus far of Gerard Latortue's puppet regime in Haiti indicates that Randall Robinson was being too generous when he referred to the U.S.-supported Prime Minster as a "buffoon." Latortue has praised the murderous coup leaders as "freedom fighters" and accused his opponents of being preoccupied with "black power" (something he obviously doesn't have much use for). Energy and sanitation conditions are on a downward spiral while the cost of living is skyrocketing. The cost of rice has doubled. Latortue's callous and arrogant solution is for Haitians to "change their dietary habits by henceforth consuming more corn gruel, cassava root and other foods seen to be less expensive and of lesser quality"....(full article)
On Thursday, May 20, President Bush high-tailed it over to Capitol Hill to give his sagging troops a pep talk on Iraq. Four days later, the president went to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., and tried the same elixir in a prime-time address to the American public -- the first of six speeches on the handover of so-called sovereignty to the Iraqi people to be delivered before June 30. The Washington Post called Bush's new campaign "a tightly orchestrated public relations effort." The president's Pennsylvania mission consisted of laying out a five-point transition plan aimed at convincing the American public and Iraqis that this blueprint for the future of Iraq is sound. The reality behind "full sovereignty," however, is that the U.S. will control the major military and economic decisions relating to the post-handover government....(full article)
Zionism is in intensive care dependent on the oxygen of support from the Jewish Diaspora and drip fed funds by the United States. Given the human and financial toll, it is legitimate to query whether the apparent purpose of Zionism today - to satisfy the Jewish sense of belonging and the wackier elements of the Christian Right - is worth the price. Are the pain and suffering and the political blowback of doing the bidding of these two groups and a handful of settlers worth the decimation of the indigenous Palestinian population, as well as the loss of Jewish lives? (full article)
To: Marc Racicot,
Chairman, Bush-Cheney ’04
I don't know if they
are trying to find a way into the city," black Chicago West Side pastor
Joseph Kyles told the Chicago Tribune three weeks ago, "or if they are
genuinely wanting to take the lead in dealing with the city's social
ills." I hope Reverend Kyles was joking. The "they" to which he referred
was the rapacious low-wage and anti-union mega-retailer Wal-Mart, which
has recently made black
The easiest way to become a celebrity in America is to be a dark-skinned conservative. Black conservatives probably have more famous people per capita than any other group in the country (Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Alan Keyes, et al). On the whole, there doesn't appear to be very many of them. In fact, a thorough analysis by the Black Commentator indicates that what is "conservative" by black standards is actually more "centrist" by white standards. If you pay attention to television and radio, however, you might get the impression that Jesse Jackson is about the only black liberal in the entire country. Why is this the case? The controversial comments recently made by Bill Cosby shed some light on the matter....(full article)
There is a group in North America -- I am not joking -- whose motto is "Back to the Pleistocene". Its followers would like human society to revert not just to a pre-industrial past, but to a pre-agricultural one. Humans would subsist on the untended fruits of nature, hunting the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the air, gathering roots and berries from the derelict cityscapes reclaimed by the wild. It all sounds rather splendid, if you are young, fit, perfectly sighted, and don't mind dying before you reach 40. But there's another small problem: that without farming, the earth could support not the 6 billion people who are alive today, but just a few hundred thousand. The vision of the members of North American EarthFirst (the folk who put the mental into environmentalism) is achievable only with the annihilation of almost all of mankind. One might have expected them, therefore, to volunteer themselves as the first ecological suicide corps. But, like all such people, they picture themselves as the survivors, not the victims, of humanity's great extinction....(full article)
A brief review of The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy by David Barsamian....(full article)
The psychological literature refers to the inaction of people to assist when others are present as the Bystander Effect. The Bystander Effect is generally attributed to a diffusion of responsibility or maintaining one’s dignity -- a lurid explanation since by any moral standard inaction should reflect conversely on a person’s dignity. Yet many of us are pained to intervene. It is too easy to walk by a bearded, bedraggled man lying motionless on a sidewalk and to alleviate the dissonance caused with some excuse, such as he was probably a drunk sleeping off a hangover, in ignorance of the serious gash on his forehead. It is likewise too easy to escape the truth of the atrocities occurring now in Iraq and Palestine. The corporate media has served well the adage: out of sight, out of mind. And so the world stands by. The greatest military power in history is wreaking its awe-uninspiring might on poor nations that refuse to genuflect before it. The US has the potential do such great works that it could truly be a beacon to the people of the world. But the US government has historically squandered any claim to such moral greatness....(full article)
Somewhere in hell tonight, the Devil’s wife
is setting out an extra dinner plate for America, where presumably we will
be toasted by history’s other war criminals. Let’s face it. When we backed
a maniac killer like Saddam Hussein, funded the Taliban, and slept with
the treacherous Saudi Princes as the price of our national narcotic -- oil
-- we’d pretty much bought a place at the dinner table. But when we
embraced that murderous old sack of guts, Ariel Sharon, as international
brother and accomplice in all things Middle Eastern, we were not merely
displaying sick taste in friends; we acceded to becoming war criminals.
The entire world sees that, and has seen it for years....
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp. The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C. When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved....(full article)
It's unlikely the US will ever fully recover from its latest self-inflicted gun shot wound. The photos of US military personnel torturing Iraqi detainees in the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison are proving to be the equivalent of a silver bullet for the Bush regime. Despite all the face saving talk of how they have highlighted America's democratic traditions of judicial transparency by owning up to them, (well, sort of) the administration really had little choice in the matter. The most damning of these atrocity exhibits would have eventually been leaked to the public, anyway, with consequences even more dire for the Bush presidency and the already failed war effort in Iraq. For the US, it has ultimately come down to a choice between a splatteringly swift gun blast to the tonsil regions, or the even less palatable prospect of swallowing cyanide in a neat little pellet....(full article)
The weapons-of-mass-destruction shoe has been waiting to fall for a long time. The March 20th invasion of Iraq was propelled by fear. It was launched on the fear created by George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney et al constantly warning about the dire and imminent threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. In the intervening 14 months nary a sign of said WMDs -- until Monday, May 17th. On this day American commanders in Iraq state that they have "discovered an Iraqi artillery shell last week containing sarin." According to the New York Times, the shell was made into a homemade bomb and found by an American convoy in Baghdad. It was discovered on Saturday, May 15th....(full article)
Over the past year there have been an unusually high number of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of soldiers experiencing psychological problems have been evacuated from the country. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's recent announcement authorizing the extension -- by at least three months -- of the tours of duty of some 20,000 soldiers set to return home, and the possibility of intensified urban warfare, may add to the stress suffered by soldiers serving in Iraq....(full article)
It sure is curious how documents entering the Bush Machine exit with blank pages. It happened with Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons and now it has happened again with the report on prison abuse produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba....(full article)
Historically, penology has been intertwined with modernity. It was central to the ideological debates started by the European Enlightenment. It was -- and remains -- on the battle lines of separation between discriminatory ideologies and egalitarian principles. It bears on the important issues of social control, social reform, political repression, and the use of discretionary power. The systematic and excessive maltreatment of mostly innocent people by the American occupiers in Iraq must be situated in such a broad socio-historical context....(full article)
Many conservatives are troubled by Abu Ghraib prison abuses. But it isn’t dreadful illegalities and the obscene violation of basic decency they’re most upset about. They’re angry that mistreatment meted out by our troops is being equated with “true” torture, such as the videotaped beheading of Nicolas Berg, or atrocities experienced under Saddam. They worry that world opinion will see Washington as the chief perpetrator of global wrongdoing, rather than evildoers demonized by U.S. propaganda. Well, the horses are long out of the barn on that one, since most of humanity has judged George Bush our species’ worst bane for going on three years now....(full article)
Of all the criticisms of the possibility, now moot, of Sonia Gandhi becoming the PM of India, the venom expended on her foreign origin was surely the most ironic. . . . Abroad, it is right and proper for Indians to claim all the benefits of secularism and multiculturalism and run for office, but in India god forbid that we should look past a person’s skin color and examine her candidature in an atmosphere that is not racially and ethnically poisonous....(full article)
My family began to arrive in the U.S. from Eastern Europe and Russia just over a century ago. Then as now, the capitalist system was changing people’s lives. That change disrupted my ancestors’ daily rituals and rhythms. They were part of a wave of U.S. immigrants with distinct ethnic identities who did not initially see themselves as members of a white race. Eventually, my family whitened, as did other immigrant groups. One was the Irish who had lost their land to British invaders. For a time, Irish immigrants were seen and treated as a separate race after arriving in the U.S. Noel Ignatiev details that change in How the Irish Became White....(full article)
Paul de Rooij reviews Tell me lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, edited by David Miller....(full article)
SCHEDULE
6:00 PM Opening Prayer, led by the Reverend
Jerry Falwell
Many
words are taboo when used to describe Israel's actions against Palestinians.
One word in specific, genocide, sparks emotions that echo across Israel,
Europe and America. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines genocide as "the
deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural
group." What is happening in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza
Strip today is dangerously encroaching on genocide, close enough so that the
pictures of Palestinians in Rafah loading their meager belongings on carts
and evacuating their homes are too reminiscent of another time, another
place and another people. These very same images should be setting off
alarms in the hearts and minds of Israelis. Unfortunately, at stake is not
the lexicon of conflict but rather, our children, and we refuse to sit still
to watch a deaf, dumb and blind world steal their future from them....
Even if he turns out to be the second worst president in US history, John F. Kerry will still be better than our sitting president. At least many liberal and progressive Americans are stating as much in order to justify their support for the leading Democrat. However, such rationale does not dilute the fact that most people in the world will not be able to sense any tangible variation between either Bush or Kerry. Just ask the Palestinians....(full article)
Back in November of 2003, retired Special Forces master sergeant Stan Goff played the role of prophet in an open letter he wrote to American soldiers engaged in the occupation of Iraq. In his letter, Goff wrote: "Bushfeld and their cronies are parasites, and they are the sole beneficiaries of the chaos you are learning to live in. They get the money. You get the prosthetic devices, the nightmares, and the mysterious illnesses. So if your rage needs a target, there they are, responsible for your being there, and responsible for keeping you there. I can't tell you to disobey...But it is perfectly legal for you to refuse illegal orders, and orders to abuse or attack civilians are illegal. Ordering you to keep silent about these crimes is also illegal." Orders to abuse or attack civilians are illegal. Orders to keep soldiers silent about these crimes are also illegal. Six months after Goff wrote those words, we find ourselves drowning in the exact catastrophe he warned of. Seven U.S. service people are accused of visiting torture and abominations upon the bodies and souls of Iraqi prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Prisoners were beaten, sodomized with chemical lights and bananas, raped, molested, attacked by dogs, and their dead bodies were mocked and defiled....(full article)
Although it will take weeks, if not months, to sort out precisely who was responsible for what increasingly appears to have been the systemic abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi detainees, it should be no surprise if Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith is found to have played an important role....(full article)
It's all about images, hype and our salesman's culture. A week before the pictures of Abu Ghraib exploded, killing American credibility with the sudden wonder of a suicide bomb, I picked up a few gems in a talk by Howard Zinn: "Sometimes you know something vaguely, but it's brought home to you powerfully." And, "When you make a war against a tyrant, you kill the victims of the tyrant." And, "If you have the right to overthrow or abolish the government, as our Declaration of Independence asserts you do, then you have the right to disobey it." And, finally, something like this: Our form of government can overcome any kind of opposition, except embarrassment....(full article)
Media Lens examines why Daily Mirror editor
Piers Morgan, who published fake photos depicting British troops abusing
Iraqi prisoners, has been the target of much outrage, yet the lies Bush
and Blair told to justify war on Iraq have elicited no calls for them to
quit.... (full article)
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Israelis are proud to announce that their country is the only democracy in the Middle East. What they fail to mention is that you have to be Jewish to enjoy it. For the Bedouin, who are also full citizens of Israel and who vote and pay taxes, democracy is an illusion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Unrecognized Villages of the Negev....(full article)
Voices in the Wilderness co-founder Kathy Kelly, currently serving a four month prison sentence for civil disobedience activities at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia and the ELF base in Wisconsin, talks about her encounter in prison with FBI agents seeking to get info about her contacts in Iraq....(full article)
The
right-wing coalition that ruled India for the past six years suffered a
humiliating defeat in last week’s elections for the country’s parliament.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), lost more than 100 seats in a stunning upset. Leading officials in the
BJP-led government, like Human Resources Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and
Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, were voted out of parliament altogether.
The next government will be led by the centrist Congress Party, with support
from left-wing parties--most prominently, India’s two Communist Parties....(full
article) May 18
Not long ago I pulled my car up alongside a
tiny wooden church in the woods, a stark white frame box my family built
in 1840. And as always, an honest-to-god chill went through me, for the
ancestral ghosts presumably hovering over the graves there. From the wide
open front door the Pentecostal preacher's message echoed from within the
plain wooden walls: "Thank you Gawd for giving us strawng leaders like
President Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you Lord and guide him in
this battle with Satan's Muslim armies." If I had chosen to go back down
the road a mile or so to the sprawling new Bible Baptist church --
complete with school facilities, professional sound system and in-house
television production -- I could have heard approximately the same
exhortation. Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters
of members in the congregation serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of
the thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our republic. After
a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to accept that, blood-wise,
if not politically or spiritually, these are my people. And as a leftist
it is very clear to me these days why urban liberals not only fail to
understand these people, but do not even know they exist, other than as
some general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called "the religious
right," or the "Christian Right," or "neocon Christians." But until
progressives come to understand what these people read, hear, are told and
deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be
effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural
isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to
imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let
alone understand why we should all care....(full
article)
The Shame
Professor Norman Finkelstein identifies a
gullibility and naivety among a significant sector of the American public
that, if true, has disturbing ramifications -- not just for Americans but
also for the rest of the world. The consequences are manifest in Iraq.
Obviously the invasion of Iraq was never about liberation -- except the
liberation of oil from Iraqis....(full
article)
“We’re Committing Genocide”:
The Wrong Direction In this brief article, Kim Petersen takes apart a recent NY Times editorial that rallies readers to "support the troops" in Iraq, with nary a concern for the plight of Iraqis...(full article)
The streets of Rafah were filled yesterday
evening with horse-drawn carts, trucks and pick-ups, all laden to the brim
with any and every item that the town's residents could remove from their
homes - mattresses, water tanks taken down from roofs, clothes, blankets,
doors and windows removed from their hinges, dismantled beds and closets,
school books, tin and asbestos sheeting, baby carriages, refrigerators,
gas canisters and more. Everyone living up to 300 meters from the border
with Egypt and the Israel Defense Forces positions and machine guns;
everyone who saw IDF bulldozers raze the homes of his neighbors; everyone
who could and had not yet cleared his home of its contents; everyone
living close to the site where an IDF armored personnel carrier was blown
up last Wednesday - all hastily packed up their belongings. And when the
loading was completed, the women sat at the entrances to the homes, on
concrete blocks or plastic chairs, and watched the vehicles roll north, to
neighborhoods far from the bulldozers....
As Israeli forces rampage through the Gaza
Strip and the town of Rafah, Neve Gordon looks at the real motivations
behind Ariel Sharon's plan to dismantle settlements and "withdraw" from
Gaza....(full article)
Civil Disobedience in New York City and
the Last year in March, shortly after the United States declared war on Iraq for the second time, sixteen people staged a die-in across Fifth Avenue in protest of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the US occupation of Iraq. They lay still, chanting their message against war and injustice, while an angry crowd hurled insults and hot coffee at them. To the individuals who participated, their message was important enough that it merited disrupting the lives of busy New Yorkers. For this disruption, those sixteen individuals now face up to a year in prison. I am one of those sixteen....(full article)
“We have a media system that has failed us
absolutely,” says Mark Crispin Miller, a hero of mine whose forthcoming
book,
Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, should be on
everyone’s summer reading list. “The media cartel is on its knees for
Bush,” Miller writes, “delivering him an endless blow job far more
scandalous and dangerous than anything that ever happened between Bill and
Monica. … Daily life has taken on the quality of nightmare. We look on at
horror after horror; protest en masse, and watch the world protest, to no
avail; see utter mediocrity exalted, moral idiocy flaunted, fraud and
thievery rewarded; hear black called white and white called black. No one
in power says anything that makes a lick of sense. And then you flip on
CNN, where everybody's acting like it's normal. Well, it isn't normal. And
I think the majority of people in this country know it.”....
Rami El-Amine takes an in-depth look at Shia politics in Iraq, in the aftermath of the Fallujah rebellion against US occupation forces last April....(full article)
Taking a step back, we have to realize that there is an element of stage management involved in the release of the few photos seen so far, out of what are reported to be thousands of pictures (not unlike the staging of the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch). Why were these particular pictures chosen to be shown in public? Are they truly representative of what happened, or just a small piece of the puzzle? Given that women make up less that fifteen percent of those currently on active military duty (and a much smaller percentage of those in command), it is probable that the women receiving notoriety are far less significant than they have been portrayed....(full article)
Looks like Seymour Hersh has done it again. Team Bush was still reeling from Hersh's May 1 New Yorker expose of torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison when he bitch-slapped them again on May 9 with a second, more powerful investigation into the painfully inept handling of the disaster by everyone in the chain from Baghdad's Central Command Headquarters to Washington D.C.'s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Hersh was back on Saturday, May 15, with an even more incriminating piece on Donald Rumsfeld's secret torture program for Abu Ghraib, apparently approved across the board by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and perhaps even her boss, President George W. Bush. According to Hersh, the gruesome and merciless treatment inflicted on Abu Ghraib "detainees" neither starts nor ends there, but is carried out "at secret CIA detention centers scattered around the world." If Hersh has done nothing else, he's forced them to huddle and look at their game plan. This didn't take long, since there are only three rules in the Team Bush "Cover-Your-Ass" game...(full article)
John Kerry wants John McCain to be his running mate. But wait a minute. John McCain is a Republican and John Kerry is a Democrat. No problem. It would be a "unity government."...(full article)
A couple hundred years from now, long after the American Empire has crumbled, historians will attempt to provide their contemporaries with a detailed understanding of how a society that on occasion showed signs of promise ultimately failed to break free from its self-destructive addiction to spectacular violence at home and abroad. One of the texts that could help these new age historians decipher the thought patterns of the failed empire's leaders and its inhabitants, as they blindly traveled down the path to ruin, is Kurt Nimmo's Another Day in the Empire. With Nimmo's trademark clarity and wit, Another Day chronicles a seven-month period of the reign of George W. Bush. The book addresses, through a series of essays in chronological order, such all-American topics as militarism and government secrecy and deception....(full article)
Perhaps it was a mistake for 20th Century Fox to invite a group of scientists to the preview of its new disaster movie. Before it began, the climatologist Mike Hulme asked the audience to consider whether good science and good film making could go together. A few minutes later, it became pretty obvious that the answer was no. The Day After Tomorrow (1) is a great movie and lousy science....(full review)
2004
is a big year in many ways, what with the Presidential election, the war
in Iraq and other pressing issues. It is also a big year for the Green
Party of the United States. The Green Party (GPUS,
www.gp.org) is in the
midst of what I would call an identity crisis, precipitated by Ralph
Nader's decision to run as an Independent rather than going for the GPUS'
Presidential nomination, a nomination he likely would have easily won if
he had campaigned for it as he did in 2000. As the GPUS approaches its
national convention in Milwaukee June 24-27, there are three, primary
contending positions as to what the Greens should do about the
Presidential race.... May 16
From far and wide across the amber waves of grain, in books and cyberspace, in private dreams and public declarations comes the great bleating rally cry: “Take Back America!” This whole notion of “taking back” America is in fact tangled up in the root of our problem, American exceptionalism. Rather than holding on to the illusion that America is something that can be reclaimed, I argue, better to let go of the myth of national unity, to accept and work for the inevitable decentering process. But first let’s listen to some of the voices....(full article)
Cassey Auguste was a
twenty-year-old American citizen. His mother had moved back to her home
country of Haiti after working for paltry wages for over twenty years in
the United States. Her dream was to run a successful family business in
the country that she loves. That dream came to a crashing halt on the
morning of March 3rd when her son, who had come to Haiti to help her, was
gunned down in cold blood and had his mutilated body dumped over a ravine
by men who were members of U.S.-supported death squads. Will the White
House vow to bring Auguste's killers to justice, just as it has vowed to
bring those who beheaded Nick Berg in Iraq to justice?
In the heat of Iraq the
neoconservatives are seeing their visions of Pax Americana turn into
nightmares and headaches. But they are not alone. Liberal hawks like Ivo
Daalder, Robert Kerrey, and Will Marshall also find themselves discredited
as the quagmire in Iraq swallows up all their arguments supporting the
invasion and occupation. Without the support of the liberals, President
George W. Bush’s plan to invade and occupy Iraq may have foundered in
Congress. The support of our closest allies and the United Nations wasn’t
as important as was the buy-in by Democratic Party leaders. In the lead-up
to the war, President Bush also received critical support from well-known
writers and analysts who hailed from the center-left....
In 1968, the legendary U.S. labor organizer Cesar Chavez went on a 25-day hunger strike. While depriving himself of food, he condemned abusive conditions suffered by farm workers. The slogan of his historic union drive was "Si se puede!" Yes, we can. Last week, U.S. President George W. Bush went on a four-day bus ride. While stopping for multiple pancake breakfasts, he praised tax cuts and condemned everyone who says American workers need protection in the global economy. His battle cry for laissez-faire economics? "Yes, America can." The echo was probably intentional. Mr. Bush is so desperate for the Hispanic vote that he has taken to shouting, "Vamos a ganar! We're going to win!" during stump speeches in Ohio. The main purpose of the "Yes, America can" bus tour, of course, was to shift the attention of U.S. voters away from the Iraq prison scandal toward safer ground: the recovering job market....(full article)
We've heard of the brutality of war before. How US GI's in Vietnam called the enemy gooks, dinks, and slopes. How the marines threw terrified prisoners out of helicopters cruising at 1500 feet and machine-gunned down innocent women and children. We know US soldiers are trained to hate the enemy through a careful indoctrination in racism. How else could they be persuaded to go against the bedrock moral of "Thou shall not kill"? How else could they be convinced it's okay to embark on a steady diet of murder, decapitating humans with air strikes, smashing brains, severing limbs, burning babies? We know US society as a whole, whenever a war is in the offing, is indoctrinated with the same racism. How else could good, honest, decent Americans be persuaded to send their innocent sons off to kill and be killed? (full article)
A little over two
weeks after photos depicting torture in Abu Ghraib prison became public,
the right-wing media machine is telling America to get over it already.
According to the conservatives, the inhumane treatment of detainees is
turning into a scandal because the liberal media is prolonging the
attention, allowing lefty "Bush-haters" to politicize and capitalize on
the affair. And all this hand-wringing will only hurt the troops in
Iraq....(full article)
Sex, Lies and Videotape Among the hoard of pictures from Iraq viewed by members of America's Senate in a top-secret, eavesdrop-proof room -- a rather grandiose version of one of those smelly little, stained booths for which patrons of Times Square shops used to pay to watch "hot stuff" -- were pictures of a young female soldier, already recognized worldwide for her smiling-Nazi poses with abused prisoners, having sex with a gang of fellow soldiers. One of the exalted Senator spectators, with all the dignity he could summon, was quoted, "She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual. Almost everyone was naked all the time." Well, I am relieved to learn that it was all consensual, having feared that gang sex without consent was what had attracted the secret gathering of scores of America's highest officials to spend hours gawking at pornographic videotapes. Equally reassuring was the Senator's observation that everyone was naked. The level of depravity would be hard to imagine were soldiers having group sex with their clothes on. I suppose rumors of such a remarkable occurrence might have boosted attendance at the sessions....(full article)
The Iraq War is creating an ugly, mean-spirited America! Witness the escapades of Paul Wolfowitz, Sean Hannity, and a union-bashing American security company operating in Iraq....(full article)
Little Johnny marches
off to war...to become a man. With his one stripe, his gun and his flag
and his pocket sized New Testament that his mother gave him. Now Johnny
was a high school football player. He loved wearing the uniform, the
school colors, it made him feel important, respected. He loved the
violence of crashing headlong into other boys, it made him feel strong, it
gave him an outlet. But now Johnny has a new uniform and the town is just
as proud. The words “hero” and “patriot” and “good Christian” float up and
down the streets of small town USA. So Johnny marches off to save the
world from evil as it gathers for the apocalyptic showdown, might makes
right and he knows this and like the pastor said, God is on our side. So
with his passions inflamed and his body heavily armed he hits the desert
running, he is highly trained and he carries out his duties with a cold
precision. His unit is the new sheriff in town, they are the law in a
lawless land. His ego becomes engorged as he learns new things...how to
survive, how to kill, how to torture and humiliate. Johnny learns what it
means to be a conquering army, to rape and pillage in the grand military
tradition, to have total dominion over a powerless people, to step on
those who are down just for kicks. All of these things Johnny learns...and
then Johnny comes home....
A broad coalition of recreational fishing, commercial fishing, scientific and environmental groups condemned the Bush administration for a new and yet unreleased policy that would remove badly-needed protections from many of the 27 listed West Coast salmon stocks. The administration plans to count hatchery-raised salmon and steelhead when deciding whether to continue listing stocks as “threatened” or “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act, even though the scientific community has urged them not to do so....(full article)
If a surprising number of Left luminaries think it's wise to vote for John Kerry, well, that's their opinion. I disagree and have explained why in several other articles so, don't worry, I'm not going to offer more damning evidence about the two Yale grads. Instead, I'd like to address another unfortunate Campaign 2004 phenomenon: The Comrades for Kerry camp has employed two rather corporate media-like methods to disparage those radicals who have thus far resisted the siren call of the Lesser Evil. Both methods, I feel, build grade-school debate level straw men and should not be allowed to pass without challenge....(full article)
Thursday, May 6, over 300 striking graduate students and their supporters rallied at Columbia University, marching through campus with resounding chants and makeshift drums thumping away. The atmosphere was all the more festive with the show of solidarity by other unions, including a diverse contingent, forty strong, of TWU local 241, Columbia’s Facilities Management. Chants and slogans such as “Union Now”, “UAW on strike for recognition”, and “The unions united will never be defeated” were complimented by creative pickets, such as “Philosophy Hall on strike—Derridians make the différence”. Students marched through some of the same areas and building where, only about 35 years ago, the most historic student occupations of the Sixties had taken place. As of now, the Columbia graduate workers are still on strike. Why are they striking? Their story is similar to the thousands of other grad students who have fought for union recognition in recent years....(full article)
A review of Frederick J. Gareau's book, State Terrorism and the United States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism....(full article)
(Fiction) The second installment of Adam Engel's novel in progress, "The Man in the Black Suit"....(full article)
Dante wrote his Divine Comedy more than 500 years ago. In the Inferno, part one of the three part allegorical poem, Dante described how while walking through the woods he became lost. Confronted by two wild beasts, Dante began to run. He ran deeper into the swamp and became hopeless and confused. In the depth of despair, the shade of the deceased Roman poet Virgil appears and leads him out of the swamp by taking Dante on a journey through Hell. Dante created an underworld with different levels of punishment. He populated the descending rings of the Inferno with people from Dante's own society: the villains and wrongdoers of early Fourteenth Century Italy. Dante placed them in their appropriate circles of Hell, each subject to the personalized punishment suited to their vices. At the center of Hades, Dante put the most evil people eternally devoured and re-devoured by Satan. Were Dante alive in the Twenty-First Century, might this be the Inferno he would have written? (full blaze)
On 29-30 April, 1991 one of history’s premier storms hit Bangladesh -- 138,000 people were killed. One local woman spoke of a "wall of water" rushing towards her home: "The ground shook and the skies split with a roar so loud that I thought I had gone mad," she remembered later. She had just managed to wrap a rope around her three children when the wave broke over their heads. The next eight hours were spent clinging to the roof, before the house was washed away and the family plunged into the floating debris. The woman and her children survived, but her husband was lost without trace." In a warming world, such "extreme" events are likely to occur more frequently and become yet more extreme. Tom Knutson, a climate modeler at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, reports: "If these predictions of future warming, with increased hurricane intensities and sea level rise are true, we haven't seen anything yet - especially with the increase in population and development in hurricane-prone regions."....(full article)
Unquestionably the beheading
of Nick Berg was a heinous act. However, it is not enough to focus only on
the gruesomeness of Berg’s execution and those who carried out the heinous
act. There is namely the question of what Berg was doing in Iraq? As the
Guardian notes, this story has yet to “fully emerge.”...(full
article)
United Kingdom, United States and Israel:
Kings of Pain A little publicized piece by Ali Abunimah in Lebanon’s Daily Star titled "Israeli link possible in US torture techniques: In exchange for interrogation training, did Washington award security contracts?" should be getting a lot more attention. While it is doubtful that the Pentagon and its defense contractors would need to barter with Israel to get their interrogation techniques (they’ve had them for decades), the Abunimah article provides a gold-mine worth of resources establishing, yet again, the inseparable and often damaging linkage between US and Israeli interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. Reading through some of the resource material cited by Abunimah, it is difficult to figure out where US foreign and defense policy ends and Israel’s begins...(full article)
"The reported widespread abuse of prisoners by your Administration adds another condition that reflects on your failure of leadership. Anticipation and prevention of such tragedies should have been routine by the top officials whom you command. How can you imagine winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people? You are expanding what the intelligence agencies call “blowbacks” - expanding the networking of stateless terrorists against the United States. In addition, your Administration’s actions put US soldiers and civilians in Iraq at increased risk from the backlash to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, most of whom the press reports were charged with no wrongdoing when imprisoned."....(full letter)
While it has been over a week since the scandal concerning abuses of Iraqi prisoners erupted, our country is only beginning to reckon with the issue of torture. By now, most Americans have seen at least some of the horrific photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. We know that more are yet to come. In his testimony before Congress, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that the government holds pictures and video of a "sadistic, cruel and inhuman" nature. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has seen this material, warns that "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience--we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges." This is sad news. But perhaps it is for the best that such evidence is coming to light. Based on our domestic news coverage, many Americans have been persuaded that the present scandal is "just" a matter of sexual humiliation....(full article)
Support for the U.S. occupation of Iraq is in free fall. . . George Bush’s loss has not been John Kerry’s gain. Opinion polls show the two neck-in-neck in a two-way race--and still neck-in-neck with Ralph Nader in the running... Instead of castigating Nader as a "spoiler," the left should lay the blame for Kerry’s poor showing where it belongs--with Kerry himself....(full article)
Looking at visual images from U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, news watchers now find themselves in the midst of a jolting experience that roughly resembles a process described by Donald Rumsfeld: “It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don’t do it. ... You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged.” Yet, unlike most of us, the defense secretary has a vested interest in claiming that the grotesque real-life images have nothing to do with U.S. policies. In Iraq, Rumsfeld has reaffirmed, “I am convinced that we are doing exactly what ought to be done.” Under the circumstances, it would be astonishing if he said anything different. But hopefully most Americans are more willing to consider implications of the fact that the U.S. government has been operating chambers of horrors that run directly counter to America’s self-image as a righteous military force....(full article)
"People in Iraq must understand...that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know." So said George W. Bush in interviews on Arab television last week, in response to the pictures of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. But America has a long history of torture, violence and bloodshed--committed at home and around the world in the name of U.S. empire. Nicole Colson looks behind the rhetoric about "freedom and democracy"--and uncovers the long record of U.S. military atrocities....(full article)
When we awoke, the Statue of Liberty had
gone. She left in the night, ashamed for the country she had come to
represent. . . If you peered deeply into America's soul, you will find
that many do not care what happens in Iraq or to Iraqis. Speaking,
probably, for many in America, Republican Senator James Inhofe from
Oklahoma has as much said that those the Americans tortured in Iraq were
'bad people' who really do not merit our concern....
Last month the Bush administration announced plans to deepen U.S. involvement in Colombia by doubling the number of U.S. troops and private military contractors stationed there. The move came in the midst of an energetic public-relations campaign by the U.S. State Department and the Colombian government. Both administrations attempted to paint U.S. policy in Colombia as an assured success. However, statistics show a stable presence of cocaine on the U.S. market, and evidence points to continued ties between the Colombian military and brutal right-wing paramilitary groups....(full article)
Low intensity conflict against Cuba and Venezuela, i | ||
