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Today's
Stories
November
4, 2003
Tariq
Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie
Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November
1 / 2, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne
Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick
Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest
Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip
Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert
Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander
Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October
29, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence
Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine
Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October
28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane
Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert
Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris
White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27, 2003
William
A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David
Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine
Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert
Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
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November
4, 2003
Resistance and Iraqi
Independence
The
Initial Stages of a Guerrilla War
By TARIQ ALI
Some weeks ago, Pentagon inmates were invited
to a special in-house showing of an old movie. It was the Battle
of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's anti-colonial classic, initially
banned in France. One assumes the purpose of the screening was
purely educative. The French won that battle, but lost the war.
At least the Pentagon understands that
the resistance in Iraq is following a familiar anti-colonial
pattern. In the movie, they would have seen acts carried out
by the Algerian maquis almost half a century ago, which could
have been filmed in Fallujah or Baghdad last week. Then, as now,
the occupying power described all such activities as "terrorist".
Then, as now, prisoners were taken and tortured, houses that
harboured them or their relatives were destroyed, and repression
was multiplied. In the end, the French had to withdraw.
As American "postwar" casualties
now exceed those sustained during the invasion (which cost the
Iraqis at least 15,000 lives), a debate of sorts has begun in
the US. Few can deny that Iraq under US occupation is in a much
worse state than it was under Saddam Hussein. There is no reconstruction.
There is mass unemployment. Daily life is a misery, and the occupiers
and their puppets cannot provide even the basic amenities of
life. The US doesn't even trust the Iraqis to clean their barracks, and so south Asian
and Filipino migrants are being used. This is colonialism in
the epoch of neo-liberal capitalism, and so US and "friendly"
companies are given precedence. Even under the best circumstances,
an occupied Iraq would become an oligarchy of crony capitalism,
the new cosmopolitanism of Bechtel and Halliburton.
It is the combination of all this that
fuels the resistance and encourages many young men to fight.
Few are prepared to betray those who are fighting. This is crucially
important, because without the tacit support of the population,
a sustained resistance is virtually impossible.
The Iraqi maquis have weakened George
Bush's position in the US and enabled Democrat politicians to
criticise the White House, with Howard Dean daring to suggest
a total US withdrawal within two years. Even the bien pensants
who opposed the war but support the occupation and denounce the
resistance know that without it they would have been confronted
with a triumphalist chorus from the warmongers. Most important,
the disaster in Iraq has indefinitely delayed further adventures
in Iran and Syria.
One of the more comical sights in recent
months was Paul Wolfowitz on one of his many visits informing
a press conference in Baghdad that the "main problem was
that there were too many foreigners in Iraq". Most Iraqis
see the occupation armies as the real "foreign terrorists".
Why? Because once you occupy a country, you have to behave in
colonial fashion. This happens even where there is no resistance,
as in the protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo. Where there is
resistance, as in Iraq, the only model on offer is a mixture
of Gaza and Guantanamo.
Nor does it behove western commentators
whose countries are occupying Iraq to lay down conditions for
those opposing it. It is an ugly occupation, and this determines
the response. According to Iraqi opposition sources, there are
more than 40 different resistance organisations. They consist
of Ba'athists, dissident communists, disgusted by the treachery
of the Iraqi Communist party in backing the occupation, nationalists,
groups of Iraqi soldiers and officers disbanded by the occupation,
and Sunni and Shia religious groups.
The great poets of Iraq--Saadi Youssef
and Mudhaffar al-Nawab--once brutally persecuted by Saddam, but
still in exile, are the consciences of their nation. Their angry
poems denouncing the occupation and heaping scorn on the jackals--or
quislings--help to sustain the spirit of resistance and renewal.
Youssef writes:
I'll spit in the jackals' faces
I'll spit on their lists
I'll declare that we are the people of Iraq
We are the ancestral trees of this land.
And Nawwab:
And never trust a freedom fighter
Who turns up with no arms
Believe me, I got burnt in that crematorium
Truth is, you're only as big as your cannons
While those who wave knives and forks
Simply have eyes for their stomachs.
In other words, the resistance is predominantly
Iraqi--though I would not be surprised if other Arabs are crossing
the borders to help. If there are Poles and Ukrainians in Baghdad
and Najaf, why should Arabs not help each other? The key fact
of the resistance is that it is decentralised--the classic first
stage of guerrilla warfare against an occupying army. Yesterday's
downing of a US Chinook helicopter follows that same pattern.
Whether these groups will move to the second stage and establish
an Iraqi National Liberation Front remains to be seen.
As for the UN acting as an "honest
broker", forget it--especially in Iraq, where it is part
of the problem. Leaving aside its previous record (as the administrator
of the killer sanctions, and the backer of weekly Anglo-American
bombing raids for 12 years), on October 16 the security council
disgraced itself again by welcoming "the positive response
of the international community... to the broadly representative
governing council... [and] supports the governing council's efforts
to mobilise the people of Iraq..." Meanwhile a beaming fraudster,
Ahmed Chalabi, was given the Iraqi seat at the UN. One can't
help recalling how the US and Britain insisted on Pol Pot retaining
his seat for over a decade after being toppled by the Vietnamese.
The only norm recognised by the security council is brute force,
and today there is only one power with the capacity to deploy
it. That is why, for many in the southern hemisphere and elsewhere,
the UN is the US.
The Arab east is today the venue of a
dual occupation: the US-Israeli occupation of Palestine and Iraq.
If initially the Palestinians were demoralised by the fall of
Baghdad, the emergence of a resistance movement has encouraged
them. After Baghdad fell, the Israeli war leader, Ariel Sharon,
told the Palestinians to "come to your senses now that your
protector has gone". As if the Palestinian struggle was
dependent on Saddam or any other individual. This old colonial
notion that the Arabs are lost without a headman is being contested
in Gaza and Baghdad. And were Saddam to drop dead tomorrow, the
resistance would increase rather than die down.
Sooner or later, all foreign troops will
have to leave Iraq. If they do not do so voluntarily, they will
be driven out. Their continuing presence is a spur to violence.
When Iraq's people regain control of their own destiny they will
decide the internal structures and the external policies of their
country. One can hope that this will combine democracy and social
justice, a formula that has set Latin America alight but is greatly
resented by the Empire. Meanwhile, Iraqis have one thing of which
they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should
be envious: an opposition.
Tariq Ali's
new book, Bush
in Babylon: the re-colonisation of Iraq, is published this
week by Verso
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
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