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Today's
Stories
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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November
14 / 23, 2003
Challenging the Witch
Doctors of Imperialism
A Review of Tariq Ali's Bush
in Babylon
By RICK GIOMBETTI
Tariq Ali, an editor of the New
Left Review, opens his latest book, Bush
In Babylon: The Recolonization Of Iraq, by pondering why
otherwise intelligent people in Britain and the United States
are surprised that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis don't like
being occupied. Written in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-British
invasion of the oil rich Arab nation, Ali gives a lesson in Arab
history few Americans know anything about. Most Americans probably
hadn't heard of Iraq until after its invasion of Kuwait on August
2, 1990 and the subsequent U.S. led military intervention to
expel its forces from the small British created monarchy. Ali
argues that Iraq today is now at the center of a seminal event
in 21st century history which will provide a compass for the
American Empire and the resistance to it for years to come.
The second chapter is dedicated to Iraqi
poetry and its resistance to occupation and tyranny. Here the
reader is introduced to Iraqi poets in exile Saadi Youssef and
Madhaffar al-Nawal. Youssef fled Iraq after Saddam Hussein became
absolute ruler in 1979 because he did not want "to write
bad poems," as Ali put it, and that it was "impossible
to make peace with the new Inquisition and remain creative."
In other words, Youssef didn't want to have to shine Hussein's
shoes to survive under his coming tyranny.
In a letter to U.S. General Tommy Franks
earlier this year Youssef refers to Saddam as the "imbecile"
who "has denied me the air of my country for more than 30
years." The reader will no doubt find amusement when Ali
describes the Imbecile's past attempts to co-opt his poetic enemies
abroad by inviting them to take part in state sponsored public
readings. Now Youssef and his poetic comrades abroad are being
denied the air of their country by the U.S-British occupation
and their Iraqi collaborators. Ali provides his readers with
Youssef's scathing indictment of the Iraqi collaborators, "The
Jackals' Wedding" in English translation for the first time.
Written on the occasion of the creation of the collaborationist
Iraqi Governing Council, dedicated to his fellow Iraqi poet in
exile Mudhaffar al-Nawal and now a big hit on the Iraqi street.
Ali reviews the history of occupation,
collaboration and resistance in Iraq over the centuries, from
the looting of Baghdad in the 12th century by the Monguls to
the sacking of the city under the watch of the U.S. military
earlier this year. In this narrative the reader meets jackals
from the past, like the post-World War I installed monarch the
Emir Feisal, a.k.a. King Feisal I. The reader is also introduced
to resisters from the past as well, like the young, who set up
an anti-imperialist radio station inside his palace. Ghazi would
officially die under mysterious circumstances in a car crash
in 1939 and British domination of Iraq would eventually be reinstated
under the much hated rule of King Faisal II and his hated uncle
Abdul Ilahi bni Ali.
Today Islamic fundamentalists and their
suicide bombers dominate the headlines of news from the Arab
world in the U.S. media. But at the center of the story of Iraq
in the 20th century was the rise of secular currents, which would
come to dominate the society after World War II. Bush In Bablyon
is above all a history of the resistance to British domination
in the 20th century by these secular currents following the collapse
of Ottoman rule after WW I. This resistance emerged in the Iraqi
Army, as the institution gradually became the center of Iraq
nationalist consciousness. Prior to the 20th century Iraq was
a divided society, where there was an emerging and complex urban
society and rural society dominated by large land owning sheiks.
This division was eventually broken by military conscription
after World War II at the insistence of the urban radicals within
the Army. The culmination of this resistance was expressed in
the creation of a Supreme Committee of the Free Officers consisting
of 12 officers, a brigadier, a major and ten colonels.
The other two major secular currents
in Iraqi society at the time were the Iraqi Community Party (ICP)
and the Ba'ath Socialist Party. The ICP, now an official collaborator
with the current occupation, was the largest Communist parties
in the Arab world. The Ba'ath was created in Syria in 1943 by
Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar in part in reaction to the lack
of support for colonial emancipation by the Soviet and Western
Communist parties. It was these secular currents that formed
the base for the ousting of the British installed post-colonial
puppet government in July 1958, which was Iraq's finest hour
in the post-World War II decolonization period. It was a classic
revolutionary uprising culminating in the dead bodies of Feisal
and his hated uncle being hanged from the lamp posts of Baghdad.
The year 1958 would be the finest hour for Arab nationalism,
as the combination of the creation of United Arab Republic by
Egypt and Syria and the revolution in Iraq appeared to be paving
the road to an independent and hope filled future.
The hope promised by decolonization and
independence were gradually swept away in Iraq, as it was in
the rest of the Arab world, by internal despotism. The ICP was
gradually murdered out of existence by the Ba'athists with U.S.
support starting in 1963, culminating in the 1968 Ba'athist coup.
These events paved the way for Saddam Hussein's rise to absolute
power in 1979. Ali provides his readers with a very personal
account of the Iraqi Ba'athists coup in 1968. Ali describes his
35 year quest to discover the fate of his friend, ICP leader
Ahmed Zaki. Zaki had been influenced by Fidel Castro and Che
Guevara. He organized an armed struggle in the southern marshes
of Iraq and was killed in action in 1968. Over the years Ali
has become sober enough to admit that Iraq would most likely
have been just as undemocratic if his old friend had been in
charge, as it was under Saddam's rule.
Whether or not the Communist movements
of the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Iraq, would have led to
more democratic societies is besides the point. It's important
for Americans to know of the demise of these movements when they
wonder why these countries appear to be overrun with Islamic
fundamentalists. It's not because most of the population is fundamentalist.
It's because there is no viable alternative secular social formation
to the Islamicists resisting the Empire. The leaderships and
much of the memberships of these secular organizations were murdered
out of existence with U.S. and British support. This is something
to keep in mind as the Bush administration insists on de-Ba'athification
in Iraq. If the only viable secular party in the country, the
one that ruled it with an iron fist for 35 years, is dismantled,
then what? When any secular political alternative has died in
a Muslim country after WW II, the Islamicists have stepped in
to fill the void. The support the Islamicists gain among the
people is not because of their devotion to Islam, but their resistance
to the American Empire.
This is where the liberal jokers who
supported the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it will bring
modernity to Iraq are going to be proven to be totally wrong,
Ali argues. History is not a popular subject among the most ardent
exponents of the Empire but its worth remembering that the Iraqi
Ba'aths and their Syrian comrades were, and still are, the most
devoted secularists in the Arab world. These two parties suppressed
the Islamicists with their trademark brutality. Ali figures the
Syrian Ba'aths killed up to 100,000 Islamicists. When Saddam
Hussein's Iraq went to war against Khomeini's Iran in 1980, he
did so as an ally of the West and an ardent exponent of the fight
against Islamic fundamentalism. One of the reasons Iraq invaded
Iran was a failed fundamentalist assassination attempt against
the Christian government minister Tariq Aziz. So destroying Ba'athism
in Iraq, and potentially in Syria in the future, is the last
thing U.S. policy makers want to do if they really are interested
in the continuing modernization of Iraq and the greater Arab
world.
Ali's books are mostly polemical appeals
and not scholarly undertakings. This is perhaps the greatest
weakness of his current book and its predecessor, The
Clash Of Fundamentalisms. The problem with this is that Ali
is dealing with a history that few Americans have even a rudimentary
knowledge of. I mean nothing Ali writes can't be backed up by
the documentary record, but he needs to be more meticulous with
documenting the claims he makes. Ali does make reference to the
work of the late Hanna
Batatu, who he argues wrote the best scholarly accounts of
Iraq and Syria. It is with Batatu that readers will find a much
more detailed scholarly analysis of these two closely related
societies.
Ali is at his best when speaking to the
more radical elements of the global anti-war movement who emerged
to opposed the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq. Ali ends his book
with some advice for the millions of young activists who poured
out onto the streets to oppose the invasion and occupation. Advice
you won't read in a Todd Gitlin book. Ali argues that the global
movement against neo-liberal economics, expressed most strongly
in the emergence of the World Social Forum, needs to merge with
the global anti-war movement. Ali points out that the most ardent
exponents of neoliberalism, like Friedrich von Hayek, were also
supporters of colonial conquest. In looking to the future of
resistance to the Empire Ali closes Bush In Babylon by suggesting
that "The movement that is needed can only be effective
if it is global, and if it understands that the neo-liberal legs
on which the imperial giant walks are not as strong as capitalist
witch-doctors like to suggest."
Ali finishes his book with a brief appendix
reviewing Christopher Hitchens' evolution from lefty columnist
for The Nation into one of the most ardent exponents of the Empire.
Never a committed anti-imperialist, Hitchens was one of the most
eloquent voices against the first bombing campaign against Iraq
in 1990 - 91. On Hitchens I should mention that I myself saw
him debate the topic of the morality of the first Gulf War with
a proponent of the war, Morton Kondrake, at the University of
Wisconsin in the Spring of 1991. Hitchens was a great debater
that day and I think most people would agree he had the better
of the day against Kondrake in that debate.
Ali pulls out some of Hitchens' best
quotes from the first Gulf War period for his appendix and I'll
finish this review by quoting in full a very prescient observation
by Hitchens in October 1990: '"The danger at the moment
is that President Bush, flush with his triumphs on the international
stage, will seek to overthrow Saddam and also to create some
permanent nexus of alliances in the region. It would be fascinating
to know if he has any idea who ought to run Iraq, and it would
also be interesting to know how long he would commit himself
to the task. The Israeli Right seems to take the view that no
Arab state should be allowed to evolve beyond a certain level
of strength and development; thus Carthage needs to be leveled
every decade or so. Is this to be Washington's policy also? (The
Nation, 2 October 1990)."
Rick Giombetti
lives in Seattle and is a regular contributor to the anti-authoritarian
newspaper Eat The State!.
His blog site is located at: http://rickgiombetti.blogspot.com/.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 8 / 9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
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