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Editor's
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Glossary of the Iraqi Occupation
June 2004
December 2003
Iraqi Civilian Deaths
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A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for Peace and Social
Justice
Latest Articles: June 17-19,
2004
In the 60s best-seller, The Games People Play, popular psychologist Eric Berne, creator of transactional analysis, described four types of transactions or exchanges between people, depending on whether their ego states felt positive or negative. I'm OK You're Not OK people are prone to anger and hostility and feel smug and superior. They tend to be high achievers with the self-confidence and ruthlessness to get what they want.. While they can at best be do-gooders patronizingly rescuing others, they usually belittle those Not OK others as incompetent and untrustworthy. Often competitive, power-hungry, and paranoid, at worst they’re killers and warmongers. A pattern has emerged in commentary on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal....(full diagnosis)
If torture were made
legal under American and international law, would an avowed God fearing
Christian consider it moral? After all, abortion is legal but George
considers it immoral. So, one has to assume that even Dumbya can make the
distinction between morality and legality. How would Jesus treat Abu
Ghraib inmates or Afghan “illegal combatants”? Are American values
consistent with torturing inmates to death? Did George Abu Ghraib Bush
abandon his values when he approved twenty-eight “kinder gentler” forms of
torture? (full article)
128,000 Reasons to Defeat Bush
Buried inside the pages of a recent edition
(6/10) of the newspaper of record, The New York Times, a
headline at the bottom of the page catches the eye: "Study Ranks Bush Plan
to Cut Air Pollution as Weakest of 3." It seems, as we shall soon see,
that death comes from our friends the capitalists in many forms. The
Bushites, it turns out, have been exposed by a report on air pollution
from a commission they themselves authorized to study the effects of their
anti-pollution proposals....(full article)
The Cheney Connection: Tracing the
Halliburton Money Trail to Nigeria Was Halliburton, the oil conglomerate once headed by Dick Cheney, involved in a massive $180 million bribery scheme in Nigeria on Cheney’s watch? Hopes that the veil may finally be lifted on yet another odoriferous Halliburton scandal were raised last Friday, when it was announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission has finally opened a formal investigation into the alleged bribery — which French authorities have been probing for a year. In Paris, official documents revealing that Cheney might be among those indicted on corruption charges as a result of the French investigation made front-page news there last Christmas — but not here....(full article)
Pattrice Jones on what progressives can learn from the animal rights movement, and the case of the Shac 7 -- activists facing domestic "terrorism" charges under the PATRIOT ACT, and how you can support them....(full article)
Kim Petersen examines contrasting US reactions to ethnic cleansing in Sudan and the Palestinian territories....(full article)
In Part 1 of this Media Alert we described some of the horrific reality of the Reagan years for the people of Central America. The United States did not impose this vast terror out of a sadistic love of torturing people but out of a pragmatic determination to protect “good investment climates.” It is a simple matter for readers to compare the version of events we have presented not just the terror, but the logic of the terror (see below) with media retrospectives of the Reagan presidency. How many times have we been told about Saddam Hussein’s alleged responsibility for the deliberate gassing of 5,000 civilians at Halabja? The name Halabja, like the footage of gassed bodies in dusty streets, is seared into our memories. And how many times have we been told of Ronald Reagan’s training, arming and funding of the mass murderers and torturers of hundreds of thousands of people in Central America in the 1980s? (full article)
According to imperial United States doctrine, rational and progressive “America” is engaged in a life and death struggle with nihilism. The U.S. “war on terrorism” is infused with great and powerful meaning: the advancement of freedom, democracy, and civilization. The mysterious, vaguely Muslim enemy represents regression and dumb, medieval nothingness. “We” are light, and “they” are dark. “We” are modern enlightened purpose. “They” are primitive, sub-human meaninglessness. Among many stories that unintentionally challenge this sickly narcissistic national narrative (the horrors of American behavior and policy at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay for example), one appeared on the front page of Monday's New York Times (June 14, 2004) under the title “Recruiters Try New Tactics to Sell Wartime Army.” This article tells the not-so inspiring tales of James Nelson (19) and Katherine Jordan (18), both from Kansas. Nelson is seeking admission to the U.S. Army on the advice of a curious mentor – his probation officer....(full article)
Given its strutting brownshirt quality, here is a slogan that might well have been coined by America's most articulate political thug, Pat Buchanan. But the slogan, with little waving-flag pictures, is being used for bumper stickers selling John Kerry. Good marketers know that you want an offering for every niche, so here's Kerry for the belly-over-the-belt, beer-belching, walrus-mustache set. Niche marketing also explains goofy pieces about Kerry's military service versus that of Republican chicken hawks (for those unfamiliar, "chicken hawks" is an informal American political term for men who never fought yet advocate sending others off to war, a group largely, but not exclusively, consisting of Republicans). Never mind the moral obtuseness of opposing an armchair-psychopath like Bush with arguments in favor of a man who did his own killing, there's a weird market niche out there to be reached. They sell everything in America....(full article)
The Democrats have chosen their presidential candidate. We are confronted again with a three way race between a frightening Republican, a Democrat with not much of an agenda beyond not being the frightening Republican, and a progressive candidate viewed by many as a “spoiler.” Like many, I believe that the Nader candidacy is not a good thing. However, my main worry is not that a Nader will take votes from the Democrats. Rather, I am concerned that marginal progressive third-party efforts in general elections, and similar campaigns in Democratic Party primaries, take money and organizing resources away from long-term grassroots work for a more peaceful, fair, and ecologically sustainable world, without expanding the capacity of progressive movements in the long term. I am not arguing that either a determined effort to take back the Democratic party or a third-party campaign is intrinsically bad (and which of the two offers more promise for significant social transformation is a different debate). My contention is that national electoral campaigns of either sort are premature. Under current conditions, such campaigns take far more away from efforts to develop alternative institutions that would constitute the foundation for any genuinely progressive political alternative on the national level than they put back....(full article)
More than 60 American scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of suppressing or manipulating scientific evidence in order to promote their right-wing political agenda. The statement was issued in February along with a full report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and it can be viewed at their web site. The UCS substantiated their claims with internal government documents and interviews with current and former government officials. They found a "well established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies." . . . The UCS concluded: "There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented." All this may be unprecedented in American history, but it is not without precedent in world history....(full article)
Last week, I dreamed I was buying drugs from Nancy Reagan in my Maidenform Bra. Well, all right – I wasn’t wearing a bra. But it was Nancy Reagan, and I was buying drugs from her. All kinds of pills, poppers and unlawful paraphernalia, which she kept in a Galanos handbag and doled out to me, one by one, as we sat downtown drinking shots of whiskey on New Year’s Eve, in a kind of reverse, anti-“First Night,” where only drinking and drugging were allowed. Dream-wise, you had to be blotto to be part of this scene, but you had to be that anyway in order to get through the Reagan obsequies last week without throwing yourself under a car....(full article)
So it's wrenching being back in Canada confronting the prospect of Stephen Harper as our next prime minister. This is a man who so longed to join George W. Bush's coalition of the willing that he called former defense minister John McCallum an "idiot" in the House of Commons, declaring we should be in Iraq with the United States, "doing everything necessary to win." This is a man who was so eager to "support the war effort" that he went on Fox and claimed that "the silent majority of Canadians is strongly supportive" of the invasion, defying the findings of every credible opinion poll. If the Conservatives are given the chance to turn Canada into more of a card-carrying combatant in Mr. Bush's disastrous war on terrorism than we are already, the little bit of grace I encountered in Iraq will quickly disappear. When I go back, showing my passport to the ad hoc inspectors could well have a very different effect....(full article)
Iraq’s new interim government has no time to lose. Though it was welcome news when the new Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, announced that the militias of nine major political parties would disband and join the government’s security forces by January 2005, this is only one of the monumental tasks and formidable obstacles that the new government faces. As I discovered in a recent visit to Baghdad, Iraq is in dire need of reconstruction -- not only from the miseries of Saddam Hussein’s long dictatorship, but also from the failed policies of the one-year occupation by America’s Coalition administration, which has left demoralization, humiliation, and a weak security and economic infrastructure in its wake....(full article)
Now that Move America Forward has changed
hands, it is time to look at the new owner. WHOIS reports the new
registrant and administrator as Howard Kaloogian. June 14
The U.S. Army has employed as many as 27 contractors to run its interrogation operations, according to media reports. But while CACI and Titan are getting all the mainstream media play, it appears that far more than 27 contract employees were involved in recruiting and placing interrogators in various locations. Some of the firms involved in the Bush administration’s “TortureGate” include an odd assortment of telecommunications companies and executive placement firms that have jumped into the lucrative torture business in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and at secret locations throughout Central Asia and North Africa....(full article)
Editor's Note: DV considers Thomas Frank one of the finest and wittiest writers on politics and culture today. He is a founding editor of The Baffler magazine, and author of the must-read books One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy and The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. His latest book is What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books, 2004). By far the best and most insightful book I've read in a couple of years. Frank uses Kansas as a metaphor for the rest of the country in order to examine why so many working and middle-class Americans consistently act against their own self-interests. The following is an interview with Thomas Frank....(full interview)
What will be done to prevent a swell of domestic violence when tens of thousands of soldiers return home from Iraq and Afghanistan? (full article)
Jerusalem: The bulldozers have been working around the clock building the separation barrier, and it is now clear that the end is at hand. The residents’ expulsion is imminent; they will soon be forced to move from their homes and ancestral land. This, at least, is the impression I had after leaving the small village Nu’eman....(full article)
So desperate are Bush Republicans to kill Michael Moore's latest film, Fahrenheit 9/11, they have hired a public relations firm to set up a web site attacking Moore. The site, MoveAmericaForward.com, claims to be "non-partisan," but a glance at the "About" page of the site reveals the director and staff of Move America Forward are all diehard Republicans, anti-tax activists, and former legislative staffers. The PR firm is Russo Marsh & Rogers....(full article)
Last year, during the 1st session of the
108th Congress, the Republican leadership slipped a provision into the
Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004 (which mainly appropriates the
funds to the intelligence organizations.) This was done behind closed
doors. Who on the House Judiciary Committee would vote against this
nonpartisan bill? This bill was needed to pass as it has every year. What
wasn’t needed was a provision taken from the leaked draft of Ashcroft’s
Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA.) This provision expanded the
already far-reaching USA PATRIOT Act by easing the FBI’s ability to
acquire "financial" records with nothing more than an easily drafted
National Security Letter (NSL.) It also broadened the definition of
"financial institution" to include insurance companies, real estate
agencies, stockbrokers, car dealerships, pawnbrokers and more. This had
the effect of further eroding what was left of our civil liberties after
the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. So there it was -- Ashcroft’s dream –
a portion of the ill-fated DSEA brought to fruition. Now, it is happening
again....(full article)
Stepford America
Next month, Americans will flock to theaters
nationwide to be amused by the performances of Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler
and Matthew Broderick in a remake of “The Stepford Wives.” I hope to see
it myself. While I hasten to add that in these times, humor is essential
to our survival, and that I do not wish to suggest that we all need to
wear “American Gothic” faces, I find curious the timing of this Hollywood
redux....(full article)
24/7 and Your Dreams: An Interview with
Barbara Mor
A wide
ranging interview with Barbara Mor.
Mor, born and
surreally programmed in Southern California, has since lived in the desert
Southwest and Pacific Northwest. She was involved in feminism when the
first Women’s Studies program in the U.S. began at San Diego State
University (1969), and is the author of
The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth.
Despite its dumb title (which makes her cringe; her manuscript’s working
title was The First God), the book has remained in print 17 years,
thanks solely to smart readers. Topics covered include religion, marriage,
What's Left?, war, and imagining the Cosmos as a gigantic Clitoris...(full
interview)
"This is Imperial Arrogance"
The most psychologically difficult thing for anyone to admit is that they’ve been living a lie. As hard as it is to acknowledge that reality in the personal realm, it’s much worse to accept that our beloved country has been fundamentally wrong, even objectively evil. Folks will resort to amazing mental gymnastics to try to avoid that very painful conclusion. But ultimately most of them relent. It simply becomes impossible to deny mounting horrors, as the eventual mass radicalization of the Vietnam era plainly demonstrated. Once again, in connection with Iraq, we’re at a similar juncture....(full article)
During an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes," Richard Clarke, the top adviser on counter-terrorism to President Bush, said that immediately after the attacks of 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq. Even after he was told that Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld still insisted that bombing Iraq was a better idea: "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq," he told Clarke. Rumsfeld's response was obviously irrational, and if the subject weren't so serious, even comical. Clarke said this would have been akin to Franklin Roosevelt wanting to attack Mexico after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But giving Rumsfeld the benefit of the doubt, he was probably still in shock from the enormity of this unprecedented terrorist attack. But what compels seemingly intelligent men to react this irresponsibly? (full article)
Russian President
Vladimir Putin has a point. Democrats have "no moral right" to
criticize Bush for invading Iraq. Why? Because they were gung-ho about
invading Yugoslavia. Putin made the comment at the G8 neolib feast on Sea
Island, Georgia.
Ray Charles, the superb African American
musician who died on June 10, got over in more ways than one. He appealed
to Americans of all ages and backgrounds. For five decades, they enjoyed
Charles’ music. He expressed his people’s efforts to transcend the racial
lines of America, a struggle recognized around the world....
The National Rifle Association announced today that it would open up a field office in downtown Baghdad, one of four Iraq offices it hopes to establish before years end. Other offices are slated for Fallujah, Najaf, Basra and Tikrit (Saddam's former hometown and stronghold)....(full article)
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GOOD RIDDANCE: Ronald
Reagan (1911-2004)
The intensity of the patriotic focus surrounding D-Day, and also the death of Ronald Reagan, suggests a state-corporate system desperately trying to reassert its credibility after a catastrophic failure of propaganda over Iraq....(full article)
Two quintessential American political leaders of the so-called “greatest generation” -- polar opposites in almost every way -- died in the past few weeks: Ronald Reagan, fortieth president of the United States and Dave Dellinger, an anti-war activist who went to jail for his pacifist beliefs. Both suffered from Alzheimer’s disease at the time of their death....(full article)
Ronald Reagan was a paradigm shifter. He was what Charles Derber in his new book, Regime Change Begins at Home, calls a "regime-changer," moving decisively to end the flagging New Deal era and launching the modern period of corporate rule....(full article)
Things couldn’t get much worse for the late President: first Alzheimer's, then dying, then, the worst ignominy: getting kicked out of hell....(full report)
When I heard Ronnie Raygun had finally kicked off, I said aloud: "One less war criminal in the world." When President (sic) Bush heard the same news, he declared Friday, June 11, a "day of national mourning" for the dead prez. I see Dubya and raise him this: I declare Friday, June 11 a national day of mourning for Raygun's victims....(full article)
I never voted for Ronald Reagan. Not the first
time he ran for governor in 1966, nor for his re-election in 1970. I didn’t
vote for him for president in 1980 or 1984. But, it was Mr. Reagan who was
responsible for me becoming involved in my first political race....(full
article)
Hijacking
History: Grover Norquist's
Reagan Legacy Project Will his face replace Alexander Hamilton, America's first treasury secretary, on the $10 bill? Or will it share half the dimes in circulation with President Franklin D. Roosevelt? Will his birthday become a national holiday? Will his likeness appear on Mt. Rushmore, alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt? Will every county in every state rename some public facility after him? If Grover Norquist has his way, within the next decade the image of President Ronald Wilson Reagan will be permanently stamped upon America's landscape....(full article)
I write this, a state funeral is being held for Ronald Reagan. Which is fine by me. They can bury that man any way they want to. It’s their body and no one should speak ill of the dead during burial ceremonies. But there are some Reagan partisans who want to go a little further and print his image on my ten-dollar bill. They propose replacing Alexander Hamilton, the father of our financial system, with the apostle of voodoo economics. That’s where I draw the line and start protesting. Please, keep that man off my money....(full article)
It seems big media's
"long journey has finally taken it to a distant place where we can no longer
reach it." At the time Reagan was president, I was too young (around ten, I
think) and too naive (hell, it was the Eighties) to completely understand
the true extent of the damage this man's work had wrought upon the world.
Okay, so that's my excuse. But what explains the grating and unctuous paeans
spewing forth from our heads of state and the "free" press that dutifully
and shamelessly reports on them? Paeans to a man who -- if there were any
justice in this world -- would have been tried for crimes against humanity
several times over? What's the excuse? Ten-year-olds growing up in the
Eighties?
If journalism is history’s first draft, the death of Ronald Reagan has caused a step-up in the mass production of falsified history. It’s mourning in America....(full article)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A recently released AFL-CIO report on the Bush administration’s record titled "Bush Watch" shows the White House occupant to be a dismal failure as well as decidedly anti-working-class. Not a big surprise, right? Let’s look at the record....(full article)
If you’ve listened to Conservative Radio or
Fox News lately then you already know the good news. There are jobs
aplenty! In fact, according to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and President
Bush, we are in the midst of a huge boom! According to the spin, more than
650,000 American workers found employment in the last two months. Mighty
spectacular, wouldn’t you say? The problem with the numbers, however, is
what’s wrong with nearly every pronouncement from this administration.
It’s clothed in a semblance of truth, but it disguises the real facts....
When it comes to the U.S. war on Iraq, the
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has very little disagreement
with the Bush administration -- except that they messed up. As he told
Rolling Stone magazine last year, "When I voted for the war, I voted for
what I thought was best for the country...Did I expect George Bush to fuck
it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." The same goes for
Bush’s "war on terrorism." "I do not fault George Bush for doing too much
in the war on terror," Kerry likes to say. "I believe he's done too
little." Despite all this, many people who oppose the war and occupation
of Iraq will vote for Kerry because they believe that, even if he isn’t an
"antiwar" candidate, at least he’s better than Bush. They hope that a
Democrat -- coming from a party with a supposed tradition of standing for
peace -- will be better, even if ever so slightly, than a Republican, from
a party committed to war. But this is to misunderstand something crucial
about the U.S. political system....(full
article)
Japan’s Organized Labor Mobilizes against
War
The Japanese government is fully determined to expand its role in the regional wars conducted by the US. The rewards for such support may yet prove to be more lucrative opportunities for the expansion of Japan’s own realm. We should not underestimate the will of the Japanese right wing establishment....(full article)
Remember when the Bush Ministry of
Disinformation made such a big deal out of Qaddafi's reported deal to stop
working on nuclear weapons? Mu'ammar's so-called "renunciation" had
neocons and Bush warmongers strutting around declaring the invasion of
Iraq -- and the murder of 11,000 innocent Iraqis -- was a good and
righteous thing because it scared the heck out of Arab dictators and will
force them to the table to negotiate their emasculation. Of course, since
al-Qaddafi will always be an Arab -- and neocons instinctively loathe
Arabs and want to destroy them (neocons love Israel more than anything,
even their own country) -- it stands to reason Mu'ammar will backslide on
his agreement, so far as the neocons are concerned. "So long as Qaddafi
alone determines what are Libya's policies, we can never be certain
whether he will stick with his renunciation of WMD or change his mind
tomorrow. In other words, the key threat to the Libya WMD agreement is
that Qaddafi will renounce it," warns
Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, a neocon operation where the Islamophove Daniel Pipes is an
adjunct scholar. The neocons really don't want Mu'ammar's cooperation.
Instead, they want to bomb Libya like the now dead Reagan did in 1986,
killing the adopted daughter of Qaddafi and 37 civilians....
Roughly 100,000 misguided souls lined up to catch a glimpse of Ronnie Raygun's coffin. I wish I could've stood just past his corpse and shown all those mourners these photos: http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/ This is the other side of Raygun's American morning, his optimism...the end result of U.S. foreign policy as practiced by our two-party (sic) system....(full article)
Almost three years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the United States is still falling short in its ability to deal with weak, failing or failed states, which increasingly threaten U.S. national security, says a major report released here Tuesday by a bipartisan commission. . . . It appeared designed to re-frame the debate over how best to carry out the "war on terrorism" in ways that encourage policy makers to stress the importance of economic development as opposed to the almost exclusively military and security approach taken by the administration of President George W. Bush....(full article)
The resignation of both the director and an important deputy director of any large organization is noteworthy, but when that organization is the CIA we have an event of global interest. Several official, and likely-embarrassing, reports concerning CIA activities - including one dealing with the Agency's generous estimates of Iraq's non-existent weapons - are expected to appear soon. The timing of the resignations may well reflect these coming reports. You might think the men who resigned, Director George Tenet and Deputy Director for Operations James Parvitt, should have been fired long ago. Never mind the nonexistent weapons in Iraq or phony invoices for uranium, the Agency's failure around the events leading to 9/11 was stunning, but the intelligence business is one of the few where job performance is almost unconnected with keeping your job....(full article)
In January, a paratrooper from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Jeremy Hinzman, loaded his wife, son and a few possessions into their small car and drove from Ft. Bragg to Toronto, Canada. In a journey reminiscent of one taken by another generation of soldiers, Jeremy committed a felony punishable by death to avoid serving in a controversial war....(full article)
The resignation of CIA Director George Tenet comes on the eve of a Senate committee’s release of a very critical report on intelligence gathering surrounding Iraq’s pre-war “weapons of mass destruction.” Tenet was a very political CIA director, who was eager to skew intelligence to the policy predilections of both Democratic and Republican administrations, and deserves to go. But Tenet’s failures, although great, pale in comparison to those at the high levels of the Pentagon....(full article)
After 26 days of fasting, the two remaining
activists in the Fast 4 Education, Cesar Cruz and Israel
Haros-Lopez, ended their
fast on June 4 after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that would
help poor school districts that have taken out major loans....(full
article)
The Liberal Warriors And Airbrushers The D-Day anniversary and the election campaign have been a rich time for the kind of propaganda that marks the limits of mainstream liberal debate in Britain....(full article)
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