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Recent Stories

July 25, 2003

Francis A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush

David Krieger
15 Questions

Harvey Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah

Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!

Dan Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River

Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog

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Stop the Wall!

 

July 24, 2003

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again

Robert Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The US Torture Camp in Iraq

David Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in Puerto Rico

David Vest
Dylan in Bend

Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops

Douglas Valentine
A Nation of Assassins

Stew Albert
Contract Killing

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog

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July 23, 2003

Uri Avnery
Caesar's Favor

David Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft Rebuked

Mano Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists

Steve Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies

John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?

Patrick Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission

Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman

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When the WTO Comes to Montreal

Robert Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance Will Grow

William Witherup
Georgie Porgie

Website of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last

July 22, 2003

Diane Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces; Peace Frees

Jeremy Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran

Steve Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization

Sam Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle

James Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera

Lucretia Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life: January 18, 2003

Website of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties

 

July 21, 2003

Edward Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping of Arabs

Ron Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot

Allan J. Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?

Elaine Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment Camps

Bruce Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica

Website of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim by Claim

 

July 19 / 20, 2003

Arthur Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable Than the Dot.com Bubble?

Julian Bond
We Shall be Heard

Cynthia McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad

Mel Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?

Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz

Mickey Z.
History Forgave Churchill

Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message

Jon Brown
Whipping the Post

Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps

Steven Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC

Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters

Khaldoun Khelil
Capturing Friedman

Jeffrey St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed

Lenni Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus

Vanessa Jones
Three Dog Night

Adam Engel
Video Judas Video

Poets' Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Illegal Art

 

July 18, 2003

David Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo

Rahul Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep

John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World

Harold A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave

Alvaro Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists

David Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island

Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal

Website of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair

 

July 17, 2003

Ron Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the United States Has to Stand Naked

Lisa Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance

Martin Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation Watchdogs

Heidi Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced Drugging and the Supreme Court

Norman Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance Conference

Pankaj Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement

Marjorie Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the Boy Who Cried Wolf

Hammond Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited

Website of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism

July 16, 2003

Jason Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims

William Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down

Elaine Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom Must Not Be Obeyed

Jason Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?

Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?

Raymond Barrett
From Detroit to Basra

Jeffrey St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala: The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt

 

July 15, 2003

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers: the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack

Chris Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries

Jason Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries

Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please

John Troyer
The Niger Syndrome

Becky Gillette
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The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb

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Cost of Iraq War

 

July 14, 2003

Lisa Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah

Walter Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain

SOA Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US

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Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued

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Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties


July 12 / 13, 2003

Arthur Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future

Standard Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson

John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang

Ron Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran

Elaine Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights

Tom Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11

David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"

Jason Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11

Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?

Mickey Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa

Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group

Ramzy Baroud
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Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Adam Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist

Robert Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream

Poets' Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie

 

July 11, 2003

Conn Hallinan
The Coin of Empire

Tim Wise
God Responds to Bush

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa

Edward S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor

David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?

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An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary

Website of the Day
Dead Malls

 

July 10, 2003

Ron Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody Profits of General Dynamics

Sean Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia

Yemi Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?

Robert Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ali Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated

Joanne Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions

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Electronic Iraq

 

July 9, 2003

David Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on Bush?

David Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons

Mickey Z.
Why Speak Out?

Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud

John Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie

Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq

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Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years

 

July 8, 2003

Elaine Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological Dissents of Scalia

Alan Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor

Chris Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag

Linda S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice

Brian Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders

Charles Sullivan
Bush the Christian?

Saul Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age

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Occupation Watch

 

July 7, 2003

William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head

Ramzy Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons

Simon Jones
What Progressives Should Think About Iran

Lesley McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh

Uri Avnery
The Draw

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3

 

July 4 / 6, 2003

Patrick Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July

Frederick Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?

Martha Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation and Neglect

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture

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Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004

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Jefferson is for Today

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Fucking Furious on the Fourth

Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?

Wayne Madsen
A Sad Independence Day

John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War

Jim Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment

John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke

Lisa Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim

David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite

Adam Engel
Queer as Grass

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The Lipstick Librarian

 

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July 26, 2003

Marching Season in Northern Ireland

The Other Faltering Peace Process

By HARRY BROWNE

Dublin.

The 'peace process' in Northern Ireland, held up repeatedly in the last decade as an example for other conflict zones to follow, has less and less to show for it--unless you quite legitimately count a bomb, bullet and body count that remains negligible as a major achievement. Otherwise, the political institutions that have been set up so gingerly and, some would say, with such willful disregard for their fragility are visibly collapsing, and the threat of serious renewed violence cannot be ignored.

The 'marching season' is drearily upon us again. This year it brings the news that the senior cop who has 'handled' the annual face-off over a parade route at Drumcree is being reassigned to more promising work in Basra. The yearly disputes in and around the Glorious Twelfth of July, and over where and how the events of 313 years ago should be commemorated by unionists, are just an Orangey distraction from the sorry state of 'democracy' in the North. Local 'devolved' government for the region has collapsed, and this corner of Ireland is now once again under British direct rule.

The news is not entirely bad if you're a supporter of Sinn Fein. The party that shares a 'movement' and numerous personnel with the Provisional IRA may not have got the chance to show its strength when the scheduled May assembly elections were postponed by Tony Blair, but there's little doubt that it has achieved an authority bordering on dominance in nationalist areas in the nine years since its first ceasefire. (It had already dominated the poorest Catholic districts of the North at election time, but its role has expanded and reached into more of the community's institutions in the last decade.)

Some non-Sinn Fein republicans and nationalists grumble that Sinn Fein hegemony is worse than the one it replaces, that of the combined forces of the Catholic Church and John Hume's SDLP. Sinn Fein, they say, is less tolerant of dissent, and the presence in the party of undoubtedly genuine socialist and would-be-revolutionary activists means that members may genuinely fail to see the need for other people in those categories to oppose SF strategy. The phrase 'poacher turned gamekeeper' has sprung to mind.

The difficulty apparently extends to Irish America. Two columnists, Patrick Farrelly and Eamon Lynch, recently resigned from the Irish Echo newspaper, alleging that Sinn Fein had pressured the paper's publisher over material in their columns. Lynch had raised questions about the West Belfast newspaper, the Andersonstown News, and its adherence to the SF line; Farrelly had, among other things, cited issues raised by an excellent book, A Secret History of the IRA, by Ed Moloney, a hugely experienced journalist and particular bete noir of the party.

Two SF ministers had shared a cabinet table in the Northern Ireland Executive before it collapsed with the other power-sharing institutions last year, essentially over unionist discontent about the pace and significance of IRA decommissioning. Notwithstanding the party's strategic participation in such a partition-based government--something that was anathema to the republican movement in the past--it is hosting public meetings this summer that breezily point the way forward from such 'transitional' arrangements to a united Ireland in time for the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, in 2016.

While Sinn Fein tries to keep its grassroots green with such an optimistic assessment of the situation, the largest unionist party, the Ulster Unionists, is in disarray. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement on power-sharing, largely supported by nationalists, was only ever marginally favoured by unionists. While Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists opposed the agreement, the support of David Trimble's UUP was essential to start and sustain devolved institutions; Trimble picked up the post of 'First Minister' to set beside his Nobel Peace Prize. However, a series of challenges to Trimble have revealed that he can count on the support of about 55 per cent of his party even when he is offering only the most lukewarm backing to the agreement. Three MPs who have consistently opposed him have now been suspended from the party, and are taking court challenges against the suspension. Taking both big parties and their factions into account, it is clear that unionism clearly opposes the continuation of power-sharing in current circumstances, by substantial margins.

Also on the unionist side, the small, left-talking parties with links to loyalist paramilitaries have seen their public support wither, and with that has come a series of feud-related killings and a sense that armed groups see little to lose in a return to violence.

With Sinn Fein standing tall, the IRA has much more to lose by violence. (See my recent article about Stakeknife, the alleged informer in its midst.) Despite some arms finds and bomb interceptions, the immediate threat posed by dissidents in the Real IRA and Continuity IRA seems small--the alleged leader of the former group is currently on trial in the Republic. But the Provisionals' leadership wants to avoid any suggestion of surrender, and has been very slow so far to accept any disarmament terms that seem to be set by unionists as a precondition for re-entering government.

Like previous stand-offs, it is quite possible that some interim solution will be found to (in Gerry Adams' favourite phrase) "move the process forward". However, there is no sign of a solution that begins to break the logic of sectarian politics; indeed, sectarianism is built into the structures of government set up by the Good Friday Agreement, relying as they do on 'power-sharing' between groups defined by religion or, if you prefer, national affiliation. Expect to see the North portrayed in future as, at best, a containable security problem, rather than as an example of post-conflict democracy in action.

Harry Browne writes for The Irish Times and is a lecturer in the school of media at Dublin Institute of Technology. He can be contacted at harrybrowne@eircom.net


Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003

Arthur Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable Than the Dot.com Bubble?

Julian Bond
We Shall be Heard

Cynthia McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad

Mel Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?

Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz

Mickey Z.
History Forgave Churchill

Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message

Jon Brown
Whipping the Post

Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps

Steven Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC

Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters

Khaldoun Khelil
Capturing Friedman

Jeffrey St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed

Lenni Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus

Vanessa Jones
Three Dog Night

Adam Engel
Video Judas Video

Poets' Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Illegal Art

 

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