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Today's
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November 7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
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
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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November
8, 2003
An Interview with
George Foreman
"I
Was Hungry Most of the Time"
By DAVE ZIRIN
Prince
George's Post
George Foreman was born Jan. 10, 1949 in Marshall,
Texas. He was the heavyweight boxing gold medallist at the 1968
Mexico City Olympics--the Olympics made famous by Tommie Smith
and John Carlos' Black Power salute on the medal stand. A former
world heavyweight champion, Foreman lost his title to Muhammad
Ali (KO-8th) in '74 and recaptured it twenty years later at age
45 with a 10-round KO of WBA/IBF champ Michael Moorer, becoming
the oldest man to win heavyweight crown. In part II of our series
on Sports and Struggle in the 1960s, we talk to George Foreman
about his impressions of those turbulent times of change.
Dave Zirin: You once wrote in your autobiography about growing
up in Houston, "On some nights, I stood in the dark on neighbors'
porches, looking into their kitchens, amazed that families had
leftovers at each meal... I always hoped they would find me and
ask me in." How did your upbringing shape your view of the
world?
George Foreman:
To say it honestly I was hungry most of the time. The only question
I would ask myself about the world was "How do I get something
to eat?" I was trying to supply for my needs. Growing up
poor, I didn't even have a lunch to take to school. Lunch was
26 cents and we didn't even know what 26 cents looked like. I
didn't love school because I wanted to disguise that I was poorer
than everybody else. So when I was a teen I reached out in a
wrong way. I started to be a mugger, to rob people in the streets,
just to supply for my needs.
DZ: You were born in 1949 in the South.
What were your thoughts on the civil rights movement growing
up?
GF:I didn't know anything about anything
except being hungry until I went in the Job Corps in 1965. Once
I went in the JobCorps, I was awakened to what was gong on with
the civil right's struggles. I was awakened by a young Anglo-Saxon
boy from Takoma, Washington named Richard Kibble. He was a young
man like myself but he was 20 going on 21 and I was 16. He would
have these old records, these old Bob Dylan records. And he would
always play me Bob Dylan. I would hear those lyrics, "Well,
they'll stone ya when you're walkin' 'long the street. They'll
stone ya when you're tryin' to keep your seat. They'll stone
ya when you're walkin' on the floor. They'll stone ya when you're
walkin' to the door." I hope I didn't get that wrong. He
had a lot of knowledge. He explained to me about things I had
never thought about before, about civil rights. I had a thing
about those Bob Dylan songs, boy. "How must many roads must
a man walk down before you can call him a man?" He was always
talking about that stuff.
DZ: In 1965 one of the most prominent
and controversial leaders was Malcolm X. What did you know about
him at the time?
GF: In 1965 I didn't know Malcolm X.
I didn't even know there was another world. I was so ignorant
I thought Lyndon Johnson was President of Texas because every
time I saw him he was wearing a cowboy hat! I think it was end
of 1966 or the beginning 1967 where I first learned about Malcolm
X. I knew nothing about his life until I was given his book,
The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was the most amazing thing
to me. I was excited about his first life. He was trying to be
a pimp and a hustler and he found peace. I was trying to lift
myself at the time out of a life of mugging and robbing, and
I loved that he could turn around his life. It was the first
time I ever read a book about a person from the front to the
back. It was amazing.
DZ: What about another political lightning
rod of that time, Muhammad Ali? What did you think about him
as a young man in 1966?
GF: I knew about Ali way before 1966.
I knew him earlier than most. It was 1962 on the radio before
his first fight with Sonny Liston. My brother and his friend
and I would run all around looking for a radio to hear him speak,
just to hear him talk. Every one was talking about this boy from
the Olympics [Ali won the gold medal in the 1960 Olympics-dz]
and here's Ali shocking the world every time he opened his
mouth.
DZ: What about when he changed his
name soon after the Liston fight from Cassius Clay to Muhammad
Ali. What were your thoughts?
GF: When I first heard about it, all
I ever heard anyone saying in the fifth ward was, "How could
that boy change his name? What is that boy doing?" Then
we heard he was a Black Muslim. My community was afraid of that
word.
DZ: The word Muslim?
GF: No the word black! The word frightened
everybody. No one had heard the word black in Texas to describe
a so-called "Negro" at that time. Everyone was saying
he was crazy. Then there were some people who said, 'I would
like to meet him, to talk to him, to hear what he had to say.'
I just had admiration for him at the time. You would hear about
him being on the radio and you would just tear home no matter
what was going on. We all liked him because he said he was pretty.
None of us thought we were pretty. Then here is this man saying,
"I'm pretty! I'm pretty!" And we thought we're good
looking too.
DZ: What about seeing Ali as someone
who was standing up to racism?
GF:I didn't think about it like politics.
Standup to something? We didn't even know there was something
to stand up to. Politics didn't even exist. I lived in a world
where I was striving to get a scrap of food, striving to get
a job. And the newspapers didn't report on Ali as much as you
would think. Even the black newspaper wouldn't talk about him.
So we didn't know everything that was going on around him.
DZ: In 1968, you won the gold medal
at the Mexico Olympics, and then famously waved a small American
flag and bowed a few short days after Tommie Smith and John Carlos
made their black power salute on the medal stand. Tell us about
the 1968 Olympics.
GF: I'm living in the Olympic Village
at the time with all the other athletes. And I was loving it.
And Smith and Carlos and [Bob] Beamon loved it too. The track
and field guys back then were the celebrities, the rock and roll
stars, the beautiful guys at the village. Everywhere they walked
people said, there's Smith and Carlos! They loved it too. We
were like a family. And we were all focused on trying to win
our own gold medals so we didn't feel the outrage, the controversy
after they raised their fists. So when they were immediately
send home and sent packing we were all like, "How can they
do that?" And they were just dismissed. I thought about
going home myself. We all did. I'll never forget seeing John
Carlos walk past the dormitory when he was sent packing with
all these cameras following him around and I saw the most sad
look on his face. This was a proud man who always walked with
his head high, and he looked shook. That hurt me and it made
us all mad. Forget about the flag. This was our teammate....
We loved each other and it made us mad. It made us shook.
DZ: When you waved the flag and bowed
it was seen as a reaction, a rebuke of Smith and Carlos. Were
you asked to do that?
GF: No way. It was spontaneous and had
nothing to do with them. I always carried a small American flag
red white and blue with me so people would know I was from America.
Also it was tradition to bow to each judge after a fight so the
next time you get points. And I wanted the world to know where
I was from. I wanted to say to the world, "We gotcha."
America gotcha.
DZ: What was the reaction back home?
GF: Most people thought it was great,
but then something happened that caused me more pain than I ever
felt as an individual. I was a happy 19 year-old boy, and some
people came up to me in the 5th ward and said, "How can
you do that when the brothers [Smith and Carlos] are trying to
do their thing?" They thought I betrayed them. That people
would think that caused great pain.
DZ: If you had to do it all over would
you still wave the flag?
GF: If I had to do it all over I'd wave
three flags! I feel that I had been rescued from the gutter by
America. One day I was under the gutter, chased by police, thinking
dogs were going to get me. I laid there listening to the dogs
and the gutter. The next day there I am standing on the Olympic
platform and you hear the anthem. I was proud. Thanks to the
Job Corps, I had a chance. I had three meals a day and a chance.
LBJ started this war on poverty from 1964 and that's why I would
wave three flags. I know there are a lot of guys who had to do
their thing to make a political stand. But some of us [on the
1968 US Olympic team] felt very separated from that. In 1968
there were people organizing to get us to boycott the Olympics.
Did you know [the boycott organizers] only approached the college
guys? The guys who competed in college? Not one of us high school
dropouts were ever asked to be part of what they were doing.
They never asked the poor people to join. And I didn't like being
called or set apart as a "Black athlete." I was an
American athlete.... I got a chance from this country and when
I go to Africa or Germany, or anywhere else in the world, people
don't see me as black, but as an American. (laughs) Not that
that is always a good thing.
DZ: You have spoken about your positive
experiences in the Job Corps. Right now many of these kinds of
government programs are being cut from state budgets. What do
you think about that?
GF: That Job Corps, what a great thing.
I think it was great because so many of us were victims of the
times. No one was teaching us in schools. I remember in school
once the teacher gave us speech about anyone can make it if they
try and then she looked at me and said. "I don't know what
you are going to do, Georgie." When you were in Junior High
school. You heard that. Today is different. You have Head Start,
tutoring programs, you don't need a job corps because there is
opportunity.
DZ: But that is what is being cut
right now.
GF: There shouldn't be budget problems.
There is so much money that goes untapped. If every athlete gave
5% of what they earned, there wouldn't be any budget problems.
DZ: What do you think about athletes
using their position to talk about politics like a Felix Trinidad
speaking on Vieques?
GF: I think once you are established,
then you should talk. I try to sell George Foreman, and we all
try to sell ourselves. Our time as athletes is so short--like
an NFL player or a boxer, you only have so much time. You need
to make all you can and then you can speak all you want. Our
problem as a people is that we celebrate before we emancipate.
DZ: Before we stop, I have to ask
you about the Rumble in the Jungle. Why do you think the people
there responded to Ali so strongly?
GF: He wanted them to love him. When
you go somewhere and want people to love you, they will love
you. Ali made them love him. That's why I couldn't beat him.
He heard them chanting his name and said, "I'm not going
to lose." That's where the stamina and taking my punches
came from: they loved him, and I love him too. He's the greatest
man I've ever known. Not greatest boxer that's too small for
him. He had a gift. He's not 'pretty' he's beautiful. Everything
America should be, Muhammad Ali is.
DZ: Does boxing need a union?
GF: I think we need unity but I don't
think we need a union. The unions saved this country back when
but we've already been saved. Yes, boxers should unite, but I
don't know about unions. We should understand that we make sure
our money goes into a trust, that we watch out for our health.
It's crazy that we have a cup downstairs but not on our heads
to protect our brains! don't head gear; Let's put the cup from
down below to up top. Do we need a union to get this? I don't
know. Do we say union or do we just need to unite?
DZ: Do you think there needs to be
a new civil rights movement in this country?
GF: I think there needs to be a new awareness
of what rights we have. We have so many freedoms and people have
no idea. These are rights that people died for and somehow we
need to make the new generations aware. More rights? Let's use
the rights we have. Defend, appreciate and use them.
Dave Zirin
is the News Editor of the Prince George's Post, Prince George's
County's only black-owned paper. He can be reached at editor@pgpost.com.
He also is launching www.edgeofsports.com
For more information on George Foreman
visit his web-site at http://www.biggeorge.com.
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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