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International Relations, GeoStrategy and Middle East Affairs Journal

By George Monbiot, August 16, 2007

By signing up to Bush’s missile defence programme, the British government shows it doesn’t give a damn about either peace or democracy

In one short statement to parliament last week, the defence secretary, Des Browne, broke the promises of two prime ministers, potentially misled the House, helped bury an international treaty and dragged Britain into a new cold war. Pretty good going for three stodgy paragraphs.

You probably missed it, but it’s not your fault. In the 48 hours before parliament broke up for the summer, the government made 76 policy announcements(1). It’s a long-standing British tradition: as the MPs and lobby correspondents are packing their bags for their long summer break (they don’t return until October), the government rattles out a series of important decisions which cannot be debated. Gordon Brown’s promise to respect parliamentary democracy didn’t last very long.

By Ahmed Amr, August 16, 2007

George Bush just gave another vulgar performance in the remodeled James S. Brady Press Room. As usual, he stayed on message - like a vacuum cleaner salesman who touts his machines as the only weapons capable of winning the 'eternal war on dust.'

With a straight face, Bush blamed General Tommy Franks for the disastrous post-invasion plan. Apparently, Franks was awarded the Medal of Freedom for giving us bum advice on troop requirements for stabilizing Iraq. Without missing a beat, Bush went on to declare that he would resist making decisions based on public opinion polls or even the advice of GOP senators. Rather, he would leave future decisions to his new general - David Petraeus.

I can't remember the last time the president bothered to visit Iraq. And yet he speaks with such authority about what our Mesopotamian oil colony looks like four years after his unilateral war of aggression.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, August 16, 2007

The illegal destruction of federally protected 2004 election materials by 56 of 88 Ohio counties has become a fraudulent "dog ate my homework" farce of absurd justifications and criminal coverups.  

The mass elimination of the critical evidence that could definitively prove or disprove the presumption that the 2004 election was stolen has all the markings of a Rovian crime perpetrated to hide another one.  Indeed, under Ohio law, that's precisely what must be presumed here. 

But what makes the situation downright pathetic is that Ohio's new Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has publicly stated she sees "no evidence" of intentional destruction in the disappearance in more than 60% of the state's counties of the ballots from the 2004 presidential election.

So once again, as did Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, the Democrats seem poised to cave to the on-going GOP coup that has redefined America, and that now involves the criminal destruction of contested evidence in one of the most controversial vote counts in US history.

By Uri Avnery, August 16, 2007

ON THESE hot, sticky days of the Israeli summer, it is pleasant to feel the coolness of Oslo, even if the visit is only virtual.

Fourteen years after the signing of the Oslo agreement, it is again the subject of debate: was it a historical mistake?

In the past, only the Right said so. They talked about "Oslo criminals", as the Nazis used to rail against "November criminals" (those who signed the November 1918 armistice between the defeated Germany and the victorious Allies.)

Now, the debate is also agitating the Left. With the wisdom of hindsight, some leftists argue that the Oslo agreement is to blame for the dismal political situation of the Palestinians, the near collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the split between Gaza and the West Bank. The slogan "Oslo is dead" can be heard on all sides.

What truth is there in this?

By Ramzy Baroud, August 16, 2007

For 62 years since the foundation of the United Nations' Security Council, the Palestinians did not manage to have any kind of sway that would allow them to block or amend a proposed resolution in any meaningful way.

But miracles do indeed happen, as, for the first time, and after days of intense lobbying, a Palestinian delegation recently killed a draft resolution. Not only this, it also managed to block a presidential statement which is usually made when a resolution is buried, by way of explaining the circumstances behind its rejection. 

But this 'miracle' has a bizarre twist. The resolution, drafted by Qatar and seconded by Indonesia, was merely expressing concern over the humanitarian disaster intensifying in the Gaza Strip and the deteriorating plight of one and a half million Palestinians dwelling, or more accurately, imprisoned there, lacking all imaginable necessities — electricity, fuel, clean water, food and medicine.

Ahmed Amr
October 9, 2006

Time was when every Arab not confined to a mental asylum was aware of the nature of Britain's imperial project in the Middle East. Even illiterate peasants understood London's rationale for tormenting the people of the region. It was common knowledge that obnoxious cockney lads were garrisoned among the native people to guarantee access to cheap raw materials, exclusive markets for British manufactured goods and certain strategic advantages like controlling the Suez Canal. Back then, Zionist agitators focused their lobbying efforts on British lords with the power to sign away Palestine with a single paragraph edict like the Balfour Declaration.

It was a simpler world where apologists for the brazen repression of the darker people of the planet claimed to be on a 'civilizing mission' and colonies were actually called colonies. It wasn't only the natives who considered the foreign troops imperialists. England had no problem tattooing a sign on Victoria's forehead identifying her job function as the mistress of an imperial land mass where the sun never set and exotic locals knew their place.

With the exception of Iraq and Israeli occupied territories, today's Middle East is a very different place - populated by two generations that have never felt obliged to cross the street to avoid a nasty encounter with drunk Tommies out for a night on the town. The odious task of tormenting the indigenous population has since been turned over to authoritarian tribal elders who posture as custodians of the holy places or locally produced dictators who retain power by force of arms.

Even in Iraq, cloistered space age Yankee invaders rarely venture outside their imperial garrisons. The really dirty work is subcontracted to native death squads recruited from American trained police and army units. Most of the occupation soldiers are quartered in the comfort of air-conditioned forts. Unless they are ordered on a mission to kill some Iraqis or get supplies, they are confined to base and oblivious to events outside the camp walls. None dare imagine a casual evening sipping mint tea in a Mesopotamian café - much less a carefree night at a local bar. While Iraq might be Arabic for Vietnam, Baghdad is not Saigon. The occupation grunts rarely mingle with the natives.

The sectarian civil war raging outside Baghdad's plush Green Zone continues to claim a hundred lives a day. Under international law, an occupation army automatically assumes the responsibility for the safety of their colonial subjects. Even the neo-con wizards in Washington understand that. But because Americans are such an innovative bunch, they found a rather novel way to avoid assuming the obligation of an imperial master to provide security for their colonial subjects. They simply deny they are on an imperial mission motivated by crude economic interests. With the blessings of the United Nations, the Bush administration has managed to camouflage America's colonial army as 'guests' of a sovereign Iraqi government.

Alec Russell
October 9, 2006

Anyone who wants to understand why Israel has such unwavering support from the United States should speak to one man.

Fiery television evangelist Pastor John Hagee has emerged as the rallying voice for thousands of American Christians who believe Israel is doing God’s work in a “war of good versus evil”.

When he strode on to a stage in Washington last month, he was cheered to the rafters by 3,500 prominent evangelicals - as well as by Israel’s ambassador to America, a former Israeli chief of staff and a host of US congressmen of both parties.

“After 25 years of hammering away at the truth on national television, millions of people have come to see the truth of the word of God,” Mr Hagee told The Daily Telegraph. “There is literally a groundswell of support for Israel in the USA among evangelicals.”

Twenty-five years ago, Mr Hagee was denounced as a heretic when he urged his fellow preachers to speak out in support of Israel. He also met with huge suspicion from Jews who thought that anti-Semitism was the standard evangelical belief.

When he persevered and hosted a “night to honour Israel” in his hometown, San Antonio, there was a bomb threat and panicked Christian followers ran for the door.

But today most of America’s 60 million Christian evangelicals, who make up about a quarter of the US electorate and the essence of the President’s “base”, are behind Mr Bush’s pro-Israeli position and are pushing for a showdown with Iran. As many as half of those are Christian Zionists.

Tom Barry
October 9, 2006

John Bolton has proved to be the right man for the job. As UN ambassador, Bolton has clearly and consistently projected the White House's Middle East policies, especially the administration's unwavering support for Israel.

As international criticism of Israel mounts, President Bush has asked Congress to approve his renomination of Bolton—a longtime State Department diplomat who has over three decades sought to debilitate the United Nations and who has earned a reputation as a defender of an aggressive Israel. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) calls Bolton “one of Israel's truest friends in the world.”

Last summer the Senate rejected the nomination of Bolton, a right-wing ideologue fiercely opposed to all international laws and institutions that constrain U.S. power. Overriding congressional concerns that Bolton would be an ineffective UN ambassador because of his long history of criticizing the United Nations, Bush appointed Bolton to the post during the August 2005 congressional recess.

A year into his term, which expires in January 2007, Bolton has energized his supporters, won over some critics, and pleased the president with his own brand of cowboy diplomacy. With congressional support running high for Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, the White House has resubmitted Bolton's nomination.

Bolton received strong support from major Jewish organizations during last year's confirmation hearings, and these same organizations are gearing up to mount a strong pro-Bolton lobbying campaign this time around. Among the Jewish groups that supported Bolton during the first hearings were the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), B'nai B'rith International, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
June 6, 2006

At Last!!!!

The story of the stolen election of 2004 has FINALLY busted into the mainstream media, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Rolling Stone Magazine.

We all owe them great thanks.

Now we'll see if there's any further media follow-up. And if the Democratic Party actually DOES SOMETHING about the fact that America is about to be hijacked again in 2006, and then for the third straight presidential race in 2008.

The massive article in this week's RS focuses on the impossible contrast between exit polls showing a clear and overwhelming Kerry victory versus bogus "official" vote counts giving George W. Bush four more catastrophic years in the White House. It also details some of the horrific intimidation, manipulation and outright theft used by Ohio's GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to deny hundreds of thousands of mostly Democratic voters their right to a ballot. And it discusses in some depth the fact that Diebold and other electronic voting machine and software producers make it possible for any inside operator to use a laptop and a few keystrokes to flip an entire election in a matter of seconds.

Greg Palast
June 6, 2006

Abracadabra:  Three million votes vanish
This is a fact:  On November 2, 2004, in the State of Ohio, 239,127 votes for President of the United States were dumped, rejected, blocked, lost and left to rot uncounted.
 
And not just anyone's vote.  Dive into the electoral dumpster and these "spoiled" votes have a very dark color indeed. 
 
In another life, I taught statistics.  And these statistics stank:  the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter. 
 
Any guesses as to whom those African-Americans chose for president on those junked ballots?  Check Ohio's racial demographics, do the numbers, and there it is:  Kerry won Ohio.  And that, too, is a fact.  A fact that could not get reported in the USA.

Dahr Jamail
June 6, 2006

The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on U.S. Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.

Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces and U.S.-backed Iraqi "security" forces had not stopped either.

Ahmed Amr
June 6, 2006

Just a week ago, the Bush administration was bracing itself for the worst. After six months of covering up the Haditha massacre, the time had come to face another public audit of the conduct of American occupation forces in Iraq. Once again, as in Abu Ghraib, the real culprit was a camera.

American eyes are not supposed to see this sort of thing lest it disturb their inner harmony.  The folks back home live under the comfortable illusion that their armed forces are busy fighting the ‘bad guys’, promoting democracy, setting up school playgrounds and passing out candy to street urchins.

Don’t expect the average American to dwell – let alone show empathy - for the traumatized Iraqi survivors in Haditha. Just because the majority of Americans are now against the invasion doesn’t mean they’re paying attention to the details. In this most sanitized of wars, they rarely get a look at their own dead and wounded. For most, the whole sordid Iraqi affair is no more than background noise. Half of them still can’t place Iraq on the map and there is a significant minority that still believes Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Imagine the reaction if the same gang of cold-blooded marines had executed women holding suckling babes right outside the gates of Camp Pendalton. Would their officers cover up for them?  Would the local reporters take six months to dig up the details? Would the mayor do a Bush imitation and pretend that he heard about it from the papers?

Jason Miller
June 6, 2006

Of Faustian Bargains and Disposable Human Beings
(I am dedicating this essay to the memory of the millions of victims of the Capitalist Imperial wars of conquest waged by the United States under the patently false pretexts of spreading freedom and liberty).

Rolling through virtually any reasonably populous city or town in America, one encounters a surreal landscape blighted by grotesque temples to America’s twin gods of Capitalism and Consumerism. As an increasing number of individual proprietors are driven to extinction, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and hundreds more leviathan corporations continue their rapid construction of more houses of worship to serve their zealous congregation. Once inside, many Americans gleefully sacrifice an abundance of their greenbacks at altars attended by Consumerism’s unwitting acolytes.

Ahmed Amr
June 6, 2006

Half way along the Alexandria desert highway - one encounters a massive block of buildings surrounded by barbed wire. It is the penitentiary that currently serves as the new home of Ayman Nour - a prosperous lawyer who had the bright idea of challenging Mubarak in "free and fair" elections. For the supreme crime of winning 7% of the presidential ballots - he now rots away in an Egyptian mini gulag with plenty of time to repent for the political miscalculation that last year was a good year to challenge Mubarak's grip on power.

Over the last few weeks, more than a thousand members of the Egyptian opposition have been rounded up by state security and unceremoniously dispatched to keep Ayman Nour company. Most of these 'criminal elements' were caught red-handed protesting the trial of two judges who had the audacity to claim that the recent National Assembly elections were plagued with fraud and vote rigging.

Uri Avnery
June 6, 2006

Uri Avnery
May 27, 2006

PRISON SERVES an important function in the annals of every revolutionary movement. It serves as a college for activists, center for the crystallization of ideas, rallying point for leaders, platform for dialogue between the various factions.

For the Palestinian liberation movement, prison plays all these roles and many more. During the 39 years of occupation, hundreds of thousands of young Palestinians have passed through Israeli prisons. At any given time, an average of 10 thousand Palestinians are held in prison. This, the liveliest and most active section of the Palestinian people, is in continuous ferment. People from every class, every town and village, every political and military faction are to be found there.

Norman Solomon
May 27, 2006

The extended controversy over a paper by two professors, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is prying the lid off a debate that has been bottled up for decades.

Routinely, the American news media have ignored or pilloried any strong criticism of Washington's massive support for Israel. But the paper and an article based on it by respected academics John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, first published March 23 in the London Review of Books, are catalysts for some healthy public discussion of key issues.

Amin Howeidi
May 24, 2006

Mr Ehud Olmert, leader of Kadima and prime minister designate of Israel,

Fate had it that you should be prime minister, while Sharon is lying in intensive care at Hadassah Hospital, incapacitated beyond hope of recovery. Many, including myself, believe that the world will be a better place without him.

For starters, I believe that you are in a difficult position. You need to take decisions that are crucial for the future of Israel and the region. You need to do that in fast-changing times. You need to stay ahead of the game. And you cannot simply follow in Sharon's bloody footsteps. Great leaders are not those who depend on their muscles, but those who know how to adapt to change, those who know that politics is an act of give and take, and those who know that concessions must be made.

Ahmed Amr
May 24, 2006

You know something is wrong when the soft-spoken Jimmy Carter begins an article with the following line "innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime." The former president concludes the same piece by judiciously pointing out that "depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace."

You know something is wrong because no Arab leader can be bothered to utter similar words - certainly not with the same passion. The big difference is that Jimmy Carter cares enough to state the obvious: "It is unconscionable for Israel, the United States and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine."

Remi Kanazi
May 27, 2006

May 15 marked the 58 year anniversary of Al Nakba (The Catastrophe). Every year, Palestinians recount the tragedy of 1948. I recall my grandmother’s anguish: she was seven months pregnant with my mother when she was forced to flee to Lebanon by boat. She waited in Lebanon. The weeks turned into months. The months turned into years…58 years later my grandmother has yet to return to her house in Jaffa.

When the Zionists forces (the Haganagh, Irgun, and Stern Gang) tore Palestine limb from limb, depopulating villages, uprooting cemeteries, and pillaging arable fields—Israel had not even been created. Today we see a fight for Israel’s “right to exist.” But what right does Israel have to exist in its current form?

Rick Kelly
May 27, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met US President George Bush in the White House on May 24. Olmert also spoke with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Stephen Handley during his four-day tour of Washington. The Bush administration again confirmed its support for Israel’s land grab in the West Bank and backed the ongoing Israeli siege of the Occupied Territories.

After speaking with Bush for more than five hours, Olmert told Israeli journalists that he was “very, very satisfied” with the discussion. Israeli official Dov Weissglas stated that the meetings had “met all our expectations.”

Washington gave the Israelis every reason to be satisfied. Bush declared that Israel’s plan to remove some isolated settlements in the West Bank while permanently annexing the larger settlements and east Jerusalem was a “bold idea” that “could lead to a two-state solution if a pathway to progress on the road map is not open in the period ahead.”

Uri Avnery
May 24, 2006

THOSE WHO listened to the radio news last Saturday heard a stunning report: that Muhammad Abu-Ter and Uri Avnery had barricaded themselves together in a private home in a-Ram.

The very fact that these two - the No. 2 man of Hamas and the notorious Israeli leftist - were together was already shocking enough. But the fact that they had invaded the home of an innocent Palestinian family and barricaded themselves there, like criminals fleeing from the police, was even more staggering.

This false news item would, perhaps, deserve no special mention, if it  were not typical of the whole media coverage, not only of this specific demonstration, but of all joint demonstrations of Israeli peace activists and Palestinians. More than that, it throws light on the close connection between the Israeli media and the occupation regime. Without this connection, it is doubtful if the occupation could have lasted for the 39 years it has so far.

Therefore it is worthwhile to analyse the events in detail.

Ran HaCohen
May 24, 2006

Polls show that a majority of the Israelis support negotiations with Hamas, but official Israel refuses to talk to it, at any level. Israel instead launches a worldwide campaign to persuade all countries to boycott Hamas and to join its military and financial blockade on the newly formed Hamas government. If starving the Palestinian people is the outcome, so be it: the Arabs should learn the price of democracy.

Why can't Israel talk to Hamas? Several arguments are given; are they valid – or just excuses?

Staughton Lynd
May 24, 2006

I attended a private high school in New York City during World War II.  I was one of a very few students who were not Jewish.  One of my closest friends was Daniel Lourie, son of Arthur Lourie, who prior to the creation of the State of Israel represented the "Jewish entity" in the United States.

One weekend Danny took me to a farm in Cream Ridge, New Jersey, where a group of young people were preparing to make "aliyah" by settling on khibbutzes in Palestine.  Sunday morning found me hoeing in the garden with another man.  He had a weather-beaten face:  probably about 30, he seemed to me (I was 14 or 15) very old.  In my youthful idealism I said to him, "What's with this Zionism?  What happened to socialist internationalism?"  My companion put down his hoe and turned to me.  He said, "We've done enough dying on other people's barricades."

Ramzy Baroud
May 24, 2006

It may be convenient to perceive the Middle East as a politically charged, fractious region, rife with conflicts and disputes, void of many prospects, save those leading to even further uncertainty and turmoil.

While history is indeed rich with instances that would effortlessly validate such a notion, only disinterested minds would fail to appreciate the immense role played by great European and now American powers in painting such a grim portrait of a region that once served as the cradle of great civilizations.

The seemingly innocent classification of the Middle East as this cohesive, yet inherently violent entity is consistent with utterly militaristic and chauvinistic views constructed by numerous Western scholars, diplomats and military men, whose attempt to reduce a vast, diverse and intricate region has been compelled primarily by their countries’ imperialist drive and hunger for territorial and political control.

This imperialist view of the world is understandably simplistic. Appreciating the depth and beauty of a potentially exploitable region can lead to costly hesitation, a loss that empires by definition in need of growth and expansion cannot afford. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the historic Israeli view of Palestinians either the total denial of their existence altogether, or at best the recognition of a far more inferior breed of human was more or less shaped around the same theme applied in a variety of global historic contexts: Native Americans as ‘uncivilized’, Central American natives as ‘heathens’, Australian Aboriginals as ‘wild dogs’, and so forth. Perhaps Palestinians, Native Americans, Mayans and Aboriginals did not have a great deal in common, but their conquerors certainly did: infinite interest in the land and utter disinterest in its indigenous inhabitants. 

Jeff Halper
May 27, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s address to both houses of Congress was perhaps the most skilled use of Newspeak since George Orwell invented the term in his novel 1984. (He had help: author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel reportedly drafted large sections of the speech.) Just as Orwell’s totalitarian propagandists proclaimed WAR IS PEACE and Israeli government signs placed at the Wall (sorry, fence) at the entrance to Bethlehem greet Palestinians with the blessing PEACE BE UNTO YOU, so Olmert declared in Washington: UNILATERAL REALIGNMENT IS PEACE.

Because of Olmert’s use of Orwellian language (can anyone, including President Bush or members of Congress, explain to us what “convergence” and “realignment” mean?), we must listen carefully to what is said, what is not said and what is meant.

What was said sounds fine if taken at face value. Olmert, extending “my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas, the elected president of the Palestinian Authority,” declared Israel’s willingness to negotiate with him on condition that the Palestinians “renounce terrorism, dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, accept previous agreements and commitments, and recognize the right of Israel to exist.” If they do so, Olmert held out Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution.

What wasn’t said? While reference to a Palestinian state sounds forthcoming, two key elements set down in the Road Map defining that state were missing: an end to the Israeli Occupation and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. “A settlement,” says the text of the Road Map to which Olmert and Bush constantly declare their allegiance, “will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. The settlement will…end the occupation that began in 1967.”

Uri Avnery
May 24, 2006

SHALL WE start with the good news or the bad news? As confirmed optimists, let's start with the good news.

To paraphrase an old Hebrew saying: Don't look at the vessel but at what's not in it. Avigdor Liberman is not in the Israeli government.

He made a huge effort to board the ship. He put on an almost liberal mask, ate juicy herring with Yossi Beilin, who called him a nice person. After the elections, Amir Peretz made no mention of Labor's pledge not to sit with him in the cabinet. It seemed that the brutal racist would succeed in achieving legitimacy for his fascist views.

Chalmers Johnson
May 24, 2006

There is something absurd and inherently false about one country trying to impose its system of government or its economic institutions on another. Such an enterprise amounts to a dictionary definition of imperialism. When what's at issue is "democracy," you have the fallacy of using the end to justify the means (making war on those to be democratized), and in the process the leaders of the missionary country are invariably infected with the sins of hubris, racism, and arrogance.

We Americans have long been guilty of these crimes. On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as "the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes." If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another thirty to forty years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American, and Japanese imperialists.

James Cogan
May 24, 2006

The “five point alternative plan” for Iraq put forward last week by Joseph R. Biden, the ranking Democrat member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, can best be described as a proposal for a sectarian bloodbath. He has joined others in the US political establishment whose solution to the catastrophe in Iraq is to tear the country apart along ethno-religious lines and—providing they collaborate with Washington—put anti-democratic regimes in power over the population.

Biden is a thoroughly pro-war figure. In 2002, he voted in the Congress to give Bush the authority to carry out the illegal invasion of Iraq. He has vehemently defended the White House’s criminal policy of preemptive wars. The Democrats as a whole have provided crucial support for the militarist agenda of the Bush administration. Biden’s main criticism of the Iraq war is that the White House did not send enough troops.

Ahmed Amr
May 24, 2007

"Goss is a political conservative and a reformer. He is pro-Bush Doctrine and pro-shaking-up-the-CIA. We hope the president will select a new CIA director who is willing--eager, even--to challenge CIA careerists and who will continue the reforms of that dysfunctional bureaucracy that started under Goss. We hope the new director will be an independent thinker, someone who is not cowed by criticism from a vocal (and highly partisan) crew of recently retired intelligence officials." The Weekly Standard

"CIA employees were sitting at their computers Friday afternoon when they saw a message advising them to toggle to the agency's in-house television channel. On their screens they saw CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly announcing his resignation. In at least one office at the agency, and I suspect many more, there were quiet cheers." David Ignatius, Washington Post, May 7, 2006

There is a lot of speculation as to why Porter Goss was outed from the CIA. Some suggest it had something to do with losing a turf battle with John Negroponte - his immediate boss. Other reports make a convincing case that his resignation is related to his staff's passion for hookers, poker and bribes - a fallout from the scandals surrounding Congressman Duke Cunningham.

George Monbiot
May 24, 2006

One man uses gas and oil money to help the poor. The other uses it to buy guns. Guess who gets vilified.

Civilisation has a new enemy. He is a former coca grower called Evo Morales, who is currently the president of Bolivia. Yesterday he stood before the European parliament to explain why he had sent troops to regain control of his country’s gas and oil fields. Bolivia’s resources, he says, have been “looted by foreign companies”(1), and he is reclaiming them for the benefit of his people. Last week he told the summit of Latin American and European leaders in Vienna that the corporations which have been extracting the country’s fossil fuels would not be compensated for these seizures.

Jason Miller
May 27, 2006

We of the privileged Caucasian* race have been dancing without paying for centuries. And the piper is seriously pissed.

Rudyard Kipling encouraged America's fledgling empire when he wrote The White Man’s Burden. However, by that time the Unites States had already committed genocide against the Native Americans, engulfed half of Mexico and turned Hawaii over to a handful of wealthy White plantation owners. White Americans were already "bearing the burden" of ruling those who were "half-devil and half-child".

In the early 20th Century, confidence in their moral superiority and Manifest Destiny spurred Americans to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Philippines, prevent a sovereign nation from emerging in Cuba, and negate Puerto Rico the autonomy it had negotiated with Spain.

As one of the most brutal European imperialists, Spain played a significant role in the ongoing oppression of the Filipinos, Cubans and Puerto Ricans. When the United States defeated them in the Spanish-American War, they essentially sold the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico to their new masters in Washington.

William Blum
May 24, 2006

"Come Out of the White House with Your Hands Up!"
"I used to be called brother, John, Daddy, uncle, friend," John Allen Muhammad said at his trial in Maryland earlier this month. "Now I'm called evil."
      Muhammad, formerly known as "the DC Sniper", was on trial for six slayings in Maryland in 2002. Already sentenced to die in Virginia for several other murders, he insisted that he was innocent despite the evidence against him -- including DNA, fingerprints, and ballistics analysis of a rifle found in his car.[1]
      Bereft of any real political power, I'm reduced to day-dreaming ... a courtroom in some liberated part of the world, in the not-too-distant future, a tribunal ... a defendant testifying ...
      "I used to be called brother, George, son, Daddy, uncle, friend, Dubya, governor, president. Now I'm called war criminal," he says sadly, insisting on his innocence despite the overwhelming evidence presented against him.
     Can the man ever take to heart or mind the realization that America's immune system is trying to get rid of him? Probably not.   No more than his accomplice can.

Jason Miller
May 24, 2006

Slaves to the "Free Market" Unite

Relentlessly delivering the triphammer blows of a youthful Mike Tyson, America’s imperialist ruling class of wealthy and corporate elites has been pummeling the poor, minorities, and the working class with impunity for years.

As some of my readers have aptly pointed out, America and its White Christian patriarchy do not have a historical monopoly on abuse of power or exploitation of “lesser people”. It is also true that Anglos have been victimized at various points in history. Yet the United States exists and thrives almost solely because it obscenely exploited Africans to attain economic power and committed genocide against North America’s indigenous people to obtain and expand its territory.

While other nations and races have committed similar atrocities throughout history, Anglos have suffered persecution, and slavery and the Native American genocide are in the past, the actions of the United States and its White patriarchal society were still morally reprehensible. Furthermore, many of the beneficiaries and descendents of the perpetrators remain unrepentant. Recent polls and events also indicate that about a third of Americans still support an entrenched American power structure which flourishes by practicing exploitation and conquest.

Greg Palast
May 24, 2006

The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again

I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
April 24, 2006

Right-wing church movements have been a staple of American politics since well before the 1692 witch trials at Salem. But only in the past few decades has the extremist church served as the grassroots base for a new breed of corporate totalitarianism. That unholy union has been nowhere more powerful than here in Ohio, and it has finally provoked a response from the state’s mainstream churches.

With huge torrents of cash from Richard Mellon Scaife, the Ahmanson family and other super-rich ultra-rightists, the fundamentalist church has formed the popular network that has spawned the Bush catastrophe. The totalitarian alliance between pulpit, corporation and military is unique in U.S. history.

With contempt for the Constitution, and unholy opposition to separation of church and state, ultra-rich ultra-right preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, self-proclaimed messiahs like Rev. Moon, and sanctimonious errand boys like Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, have turned America into a “Christo-fascist” empire whose twice-unelected executive claims Divine right to rule. When it comes to their views on violence, empire, greed and intolerance, these are the most un-Christian men in America. It’s no accident that George W. Bush’s first words about the war to follow 9/11 had to do with a “Christian Crusade” against Islam. And, instead of consulting his father, a former President, W. chose to consult “a higher father.”

Ramzy Baroud
April 3, 2006

There is little disagreement on the indispensable role of the media in influencing political debate and narrative, thus shaping public discourse.

Among progressives, liberals and most political minorities in the United States and Europe, there is an equal consensus regarding the troubling alliance that is bringing warmongering politicians, ideologues, religious zealots and media moguls together. They alone possess the capabilities to sway the public in any way they wish, or so it seems; they stack a nation’s priorities in the way they find most fit; they concoct wars and justify them when they go awry. In short, they manipulate democracy by manipulating the public, using whatever means necessary: fear, misinformation and all the familiar rest.

No other issue has been the victim of such treachery like the Middle East discourse in the West, and particularly that concerning Palestine and Israel. This is a subject that is as old as the conflict itself. Even before the establishment of the state of Israel upon the hundreds of conquered and mostly destroyed Palestinian towns and villages in 1947-48, the founders of Israel seemed utterly aware of the destructive impact of their action on Western public opinion. Israeli historian Benny Morris’s commanding book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem is dotted with instances where – in their secretive dealings – Zionist politicians bickered over the massacring of Palestinians or their overt ethnic cleansing particularly because of how such blatant actions could damage Israel’s image in the West, not because of the moral dilemma of the acts themselves.

Tom Engelhardt 
April 3, 2006

Just last week, a jury began to deliberate on the fate of Zacarias Moussaoui, who may or may not have been the missing 20th hijacker in the September 11th attacks. At the same time, newly released recordings of 911 operators responding to calls from those about to die that day in the two towers were splashed across front pages nationwide. ("All I can tell you to do is sit tight. All right? Because I got almost every fireman in the city coming…")

Over four and a half years later, September 11, 2001 won't go away. And little wonder. It remains the defining moment in our recent lives, the moment that turned us from a country into a "homeland." With Iraq in a state of ever-devolving deconstruction, the President's and Vice President's polling figures in tatters, Karl Rove (Bush's "brain") again threatened with indictment, the Republican Party in disarray, and New Orleans as well as the Mississippi coast still largely unreconstructed ruins, perhaps it's worth revisiting just what exactly was defined in that moment.

Ahmed Amr
April 3, 2006

Condi Rice spent the better part of her recent visit to the Middle East trying to persuade Egyptians and Gulf Arabs to join the American-Israeli efforts to isolate Hamas and impose economic sanctions on the Palestinians. To put it mildly, she was told to take a hike.

After democratic elections in the occupied territories resulted in a massive shift to the Palestinian right, Washington joined Tel Aviv in formulating a policy geared to starving the Palestinians as collective punishment for their bad voting habits. In trying to market her obscene scheme to an unreceptive audience in Cairo and Saudi Arabia, Condi once again demonstrated her total allegiance to the Israeli agenda.

Under the guidance of Secretary Rice and her predecessor, America has successfully transformed itself from the indispensable nation to an irrelevant actor on the Middle Eastern stage. In Iraq, it has lost control of events. For all practical matters, the Anglo-American occupation forces are now merely hostages to the whims of the clerical regime in Tehran and its Iraqi allies. In the event of an all out civil war, the invasion of Iraq will go down in history as the mother of all strategic blunders.

Across the region - even among staunch cold war allies - the Bush administration is held in utter contempt. The fear of American conspiracies has been replaced with disdain for the Bush administration's crude ineptitude. Even in Turkey, the most secular of Islamic nations, crowds are turning out in droves to see a movie that paints Americans as war criminals and brutes. It has already grossed more than any Turkish movie in history. Not to be outdone, a recent Egyptian blockbuster lampoons Rice as a striptease dancer and a slut. It's a riot. The Egyptian actress who performs the provocative dance was a virtual replica of the American Secretary of State - down to the gap in her teeth.

Jason Miller
April 3, 2006

Remember, Big Brother is watching, listening and reading. In light of the illegal surveillance they are conducting at the behest of their incompetent, rogue, and murderous Commander-in-Chief, I am dedicating this essay to the NSA.

To George Bush, Dick Cheney, Daniel Pipes, and their soulless war-mongering compadres, I proudly admit that I support the Palestinians (and their democratically elected Hamas leaders) in their struggle against their brutal Israeli oppressors. In fact, consider me a member of the so-called Fifth Column identified by Pipes. I abhor virtually all of the foreign and domestic policies the Machiavellian disciples of Strauss have implemented through wielding their ill-gotten power and influence. However, the United States is as much my country as it is theirs. I fully intend to remain here and work persistently against them by continuing to tenaciously pursue human rights and social justice for humanity, not simply for a select few in the United States and Israel.

Uri Avnery
April 3, 2006

THE MOST dramatic and the most boring election campaign in our history has mercifully come to an end. Israel looks in the mirror and asks itself: What the hell has happened?

On the way to the ballot box, in the center of Tel-Aviv, I could not detect the slightest sign that this was election day. Generally, elections in Israel are a passionate affair. Posters everywhere, thousands of slogan-covered cars rushing around ferrying voters to the ballot stations, a lot of noise.

This time - nothing. An eerie silence. Less than two thirds of the registered citizens did actually take the trouble to vote. Politicians of all stripes are detested, democracy despised among the young, whole sectors estranged. Those who decided not to vote, but at the last moment relented, voted for the Pensioners' List, which jumped from nothing to an astonishing seven seats.

Ramzy Baroud
November 8-15, 2005

The Syria verdict is out. In fact, it has been out for years, long before German investigator-judge Detlev Mehlis inundated us with the findings of his ground shaking report regarding who planned, funded and carried out the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri on February 14.

There is little that Syria can say or do to keep the hordes at bay, save offerings of stern political concessions, mainly to Israel and the United States, a response that somehow seems irreconcilable with the crisis at hand.

Attempts to reduce the dispute invited by the killing of Hariri to that of a foreign power’s resolve on vulgarly micromanaging the inner politics of its weaker neighbor to serve its own interests are unrelenting. Yet, few are willing or even interested in pondering the general atmosphere surrounding the political row invited by Hariri’s death.

Predictably, the particulars of Syrian-Lebanese relations are too complex to be rashly addressed with a few assertions. However, it is important to note that the intricacies of that relationship extend beyond recent events: being Hariri’s murder and its aftermath.

For decades, Lebanon has been the stage for a regional and international power play, in which various Arab countries, Israel and the US have been engrossed. These power brokers manipulated the countries’ political alliances, poured in money, supplied weapons, helped validate some players within the unfolding Lebanese drama, and marginalized others. While Syria had its own inventory of alliances, Israel had and still maintains some proxies, as well as Washington with its right wing Lebanese Christians, Iran its militias, and even Iraq, during the Baath party reign, had its share of meddling.

George Monbiot
November 8-15, 2005

The press has been minimising the death toll in Iraq

We were told that the Iraqis don’t count. Before the invasion began the head of US central command, General Thomas Franks, boasted “we don’t do bodycounts.”(1) His claim was repeated by Donald Rumsfeld in November 2003 (“we don’t do body counts on other people”(2)) and by the Pentagon in January this year (“the only thing we keep track of is casualties for U.S. troops and civilians.”(3))

But it’s not true. Almost every week the Pentagon claims to have killed 50 or 70 or 100 insurgents in its latest assault on the latest stronghold of the ubiquitous monster Zarqawi. In May the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said that his soldiers had killed 250 of Zarqawi’s “closest lieutenants”(4) (or so 500 of his best friends had told him). But last week, the Pentagon did something new. Buried in its latest security report to Congress is a bar chart labelled “average daily casualties – Iraqi and coalition. 1 Jan 04 – 16 Sep 05”(5). The claim that it kept no track of Iraqi deaths was false.

Doug Thompson
November 8-15, 2005

A growing number of Republican leaders, party strategists and political professional now privately tell President George W. Bush that his presidency "is effectively over" unless he fires embattled White House advisor Karl Rove, apologizes to the American people for misleading the country into war and revamps his administration from top to bottom.

"The only show of unity we have now in the Republican Party is the belief that the President has failed the party, the American people and the presidency," says a longtime, and angry, GOP strategist.

With the public face of support for Bush eroding daily from even diehard Republicans, the President faces mounting anger from within his party over the path that may well lead to loss of control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections and the White House in 2008.

"This presidency is in trouble," says a senior White House aide. "Even worse, I don't know if there is a way out of the trouble."

Congressional leaders journeyed to the White House before Bush left on his South American tour this week to tell the President that his legislative agenda on the Hill is dead, his latest Supreme Court nominee faces a tough confirmation fight in the Senate and he is facing open revolt within party ranks.

"The Speaker is having an increasingly difficult time holding his troops in line," says a source within the office of House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert. "Anger at the President grows exponentially with each passing day."

At a recent White House strategy session, internal party pollsters told the President that his approval rating with Americans continues to slide and may be irreversible, citing his failed Iraq war, the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers and his failure to deal decisively on a number of fronts, including Hurricane Katrina, the economy and the Valerie Plame scandal.

Jason Miller
November 8-15, 2005

Sweet Dreams for America's Ruling Elite and their Sycophantic Loyalists

Billy Joel was on to something when he sang "Only the Good Die Young." Here in America, our government does not jail its dissidents; it launches programs like COINTELPRO to pursue them (with reckless disregard for the law), and to covertly engineer their assassinations. Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, the Kennedy brothers, and Malcolm X are but a few of "the Good" who dared to challenge the wealthy US ruling elite’s malevolent domination over the poor, minorities and working class. In the "land of the free", your right to dissent (and to live) ends when you begin posing a serious threat to those who truly wield the power.

As fate would have it, John Hinckley’s bullet missed its mark, enabling a malignant scourge of humanity to continue his reign of sadism. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Central American civilians would still be alive were it not for Ronald Reagan. America’s steady march back to the "good old days" of Social Darwinism would have been severely retarded. Disciples of Leo Strauss’s Machiavellian philosophies would not infect our government as they do today. Yet Reagan survived, social injustice is once again the predominating force in domestic politics, and millions around the world suffer and die as the US government pursues global domination.

John Andrews
November 8-15, 2005

President Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat as an associate justice meets the demands of the corporate elite for another vote on the Supreme Court to slash government regulation of business operations. Alito has, at the same time, expressed sufficiently reactionary views on “hot button” issues such as abortion to placate the religious extremists who torpedoed last month’s nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers.

The White House also calculates that Alito’s low-key demeanor will provide the administration’s nominal opponents in the Democratic Party with political cover for acceding to this extreme right-wing nomination during the confirmation process.

Already, key members of the “gang of 14”—a group of “moderate” Republican and Democratic senators—are signaling that Alito will be confirmed without a Democratic filibuster. After the Republican faction indicated that Alioto was acceptable, Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, announced that the gang of 14 was “not going to blow up” over the nominee, and Ben Nelson, Democrat from Nebraska, said, after speaking with Alito, “I am more comfortable than I was before.”

Uri Avnery
November 8-15, 2005

The Gaza Strip has turned into a big prison, the occupation there continues by other means (isolation from the West Bank and the entire world), living conditions there have become even worse (who thought that this was possible?) The result: the bloodshed goes on, and will probably get more terrible.

We see and read every day how the Labor Party enables Sharon to carry out his design - to annex to Israel 58% of the West Bank, turning the rest into enclaves cut off from each other, and the building of the Separation Wall, which was a brainchild of the Labor Party to start with, and which annexes great swathes of the West Bank to Israel. The roadblocks. The enlargement of the settlements at a frantic pace. The dismantling of the "outposts" is not even up for discussion. The assassinations and arrests continue even after the Palestinians have declared a cease-fire, which Sharon refused to join. There is no peace negotiation, and the Minister of Defense has asserted that peace must wait "for the next generation". Without any political achievements at all, the position of Mahmoud Abbas is undermined, creating again the desired situation where "there is nobody to talk with".

On the social level, the government, with the support of the Labor Party, is widening the income gap and deepening poverty. Regarding this Thatcherite policy, there is no real difference between Sharon, Netanyahu and Peres, empty slogans notwithstanding.

Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
November 1-8, 2005

You can’t proclaim a mass movement into existence - but if you can bring together hundreds of thousands of people to hear the proclamation, you may be part of the way there.

Haitian-American singer Wycliff Jean regaled the throng on Washington’s Capitol Mall with a hook deployed by speaker after speaker last Saturday: "This is not a march, we are building a movement, the Millions More Movement." After an early morning to dinnertime marathon of repetition, many in the vast crowd seemed convinced the proclamation was in effect. If a mighty movement could have been willed into being, the Millions More Movement participants, drawn from the broadest political spectrum of African American thought and activism, would have finished the task by noon under a clear blue sky. But of course, it’s not that simple.

What the organizers did achieve was a mass reaffirmation of the existence of an African American polity, a form of Black nationhood that yearns for unity and autonomy in the struggle against white supremacy, and for its own sake. In this sense, the gender and (slightly) ethnically integrated Millions More Movement succeeded in making much the same statement as the significantly larger Million Man March, ten years before, although the current incarnation aims much higher.

Tom Engelhardt 
November 1-8, 2005

Those in the anti-fascist struggle of the 1930s who went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War were later termed "premature antifascists." Perhaps, in the same spirit, I might be considered a premature Bush-administration implodist.

On February 1, 2004, reviewing the week just passed, I imagined us trapped in "some new reality show in which we were all to be locked in with an odd group of [administration] jokesters," and then wrote:

"When we finally emerge will there be a prize for the survivors? Will we discover, for instance, that our President and his administration have headed down a path of slow-motion implosion…?"

On February 18, 2004, my optimism briefly surging, I imagined the future as a movie trailer (inviting readers back for the main attraction that spring or summer) and offered this synopsis of the future film -- the wild fowl references being to Dick Cheney's hunting habits, then in the news -- with:

"a wall-to-wall cast of characters. Far too many to absorb in a split second including our President, Vice President, CIA officials, a supreme court justice, spooks and unnamed sources galore, FBI agents, prosecutors, military men, congressional representatives and their committees, grand juries, fuming columnists, an ex-ambassador, journalists and bloggers, sundry politicians, rafts of neocons…, oil tycoons, and of course assorted wild fowl (this being the Bush administration). If the director were Oliver Stone, it might immediately be titled: The Bush Follies… And the first scene would open -- like that old Jean Luc Goddard movie Weekend -- with a giant traffic jam. It would be epic. All of political Washington in potential scandal gridlock. And (as with Weekend) horns would be blaring, drivers and passengers arguing. It would be obvious that the norms of civilization were falling fast and people were threatening to cannibalize each other."

Norman Solomon
November 1-8, 2005

While indictment fever gripped the Washington press corps this month, the president's spin doctor was incapacitated. An ailing Karl Rove could not help the Republican search for a media cure. With temperature rising, the political physician was in no position to cure himself or anyone else.

Now, a media siege is underway at the White House. A dramatic convergence of legal proceedings and presidential politics has forced the Bush administration into a fundamentally defensive crouch.

Fifty weeks ago, when President Bush hailed him as the political strategist who made a second term possible, Rove was the toast of Washington. Now – even though he hasn't been indicted – it seems he's toast.

In Washington, where nothing succeeds like political success, an election victory is widely seen as proof of justification. Strip away the razzle-dazzle, and you're left with a rather simple precept: Whatever works.

And, for almost five years, the Rove media operation worked. From maximal exploitation of 9/11 for political gain to the "Swift Boating" of John Kerry, the presidential spin machinery wrapped George W. Bush in the flag and threw plenty of mud at opponents.

Bob Fitrakis
November 1-8, 2005

Future historians will remember the George W. Bush administration for allowing two colossal catastrophes on U.S. soil: the 9/11 terrorist attack and the Katrina hurricane invasion. In both cases, Bush the Younger ignored mounds of evidence pointing to each impending disaster.

In December 2002, Bush announced that his administration planned to study the issue of climate change for five more years rather than be forced into any action regulating fossil fuel emissions. The question of global warming was put on the back burner.

Even if Bush refused on principle to read those boring policy papers he might have accidentally stumbled on the fact that New Orleans was in peril from leafing through the pages of Rolling Stone, glancing at the pictures and reading a paragraph or two.

The February 20, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone had a graphic of the U.S. Capitol under water, and citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said “New Orleans, which has an average elevation of eight feet below sea level could become the next Atlantis.”

Midway into Bush’s first term, the Panel, a United Nations sponsored panel consisting of hundreds of scientists, had come to the conclusion in October 2002 that pollution created by humans has “contributed substantially” to global warming.

Also in 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a prophetic five-part series exploring its imperiled hometown in the wake of a hurricane. The paper specifically outlined scenarios involving the flooding of the city, massive drownings and the toxic stew that would be left to swallow up the destroyed buildings.

David Stipp’s seminal Fortune magazine article “Climate Collapse” noted in January 2004 that “most of us spend as little time worrying about it [global warming] as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11.” Pentagon strategic planners were warning the Bush administration about the possibility of “abrupt climate change,” Stipp revealed.

Uri Avnery
November 1-8, 2005

A twenty-minute drive is all that separates the Israeli Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem from that of the Palestinian President in Ramallah. But for all practical purposes, the Muqata'ah in Ramallah might as well be on the moon.

The day before yesterday, Ariel Sharon declared for the who-knows-how-many-th time, that he had cancelled his planned meeting with Mahmoud Abbas. The reason: Abbas "is not doing anything against terrorism". A routine pretext, but it seems that this time the act itself is not mere routine.

The long campaign for the elimination of Mahmoud Abbas is entering its final phase.

Much to the regret of Sharon & Co., Abbas cannot be "eliminated" the usual way, as were Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and many other Palestinian leaders. In the case of Abbas, it is not even allowed to use the word "elimination" - an official term of the Israeli army, taken straight from the Mafia lexicon.

The ascent of Abbas after the elimination of Yassir Arafat - still shrouded in mystery - turned on a red light in Sharon's office. After all, his plans are all based on the slogan "There is Nobody to Talk With". Abbas, on the other hand, looks to the world, and even to a significant part of the Israeli public - like a Palestinian leader eminently fit to talk with. Worse, he looks that way to President Bush too.

Ramzy Baroud
November 1-8, 2005

Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza has undoubtedly raised the level of mistrust among Palestinians toward what is now seen as the Sharon government’s irrevocable designs on the whole of the Occupied Territories.

Periodic and unabashed statements made by various Israeli officials further indicate that the disengagement is a tactical move aimed at fortifying what Israel has alone resolved as the final solution to its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority’s official stance continues to recognize Israel’s prejudiced policies as positive first steps and is actively involved in their facilitation. The PA’s behavior can only be the outcome of political despair, where making the best out of bad situations has become the mantra.

Ongoing talks in the post-disengagement period have thus far been centered on the issue of control over border crossings, the airport and the seaport. Both Egypt and Jordan have been actively involved in facilitating those talks. While Palestinians wish to break away from Israel’s control over their economy, as has been the case for decades, Israel is adamant in maintaining this skewed relationship.

Ahmed Amr
October 25-31, 2005

The minute Keller's 'internal memo' became public, most astute observers understood that Sulzberger had decided to throw Judith Miller to the sharks. Within a few short weeks, the Tokyo Rose of Times Square had fallen from being adulated as the reincarnation of Edward R Murrow to being unceremoniously dumped from the pay roll. The new story line is that Miller had deceived both Keller and Sulzberger.

Keller's memo was addressed to his colleagues from a hiding place in East Asia - where he was seeking shelter from the aftermath of Hurricane Judy. As for Sulzberger - he simply vanished from the public's radar screen.

By his own admission, Keller took a whole year to get around do "dealing with the WMD controversy." He claims he was too busy cleaning up after Jayson Blair. This led him to fear that "the WMD issue could become a crippling distraction." Let me suggest that Keller consider a visit to Walter Reed Hospital. There, he can take a long hard look at exactly how crippling the WMD hoax has been to thousands of Iraq veterans who went to war on the strength of manipulated intelligence.

Remi Kanazi
October 25-31, 2005

Does anyone remember that quirky little document called "the roadmap," the proposed path to peace initiated by the Quartet—the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia—involving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians?

If you remember it and its contents, you can recall that Israelis and Palestinians should be in phase two (of three) of the plan by now: the creation of a quasi-Palestinian state with "provisional borders" and the markings of sovereignty. Sadly, the prospects for peace look as grim as the day the roadmap was first outlined in June 2002.

I still remember US President George W. Bush's words, "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop." Furthermore, Bush proclaimed, "The Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338." In the nearly three and a half years since those promising words were spoken in the Rose Garden, Israeli settlement activity has expanded at an inordinate rate, and the peace process has been curtailed to say the least—nearly 2100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
October 18-25, 2005

If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.

Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.

As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen, and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.

That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the Republican and Democratic Parties run joint tickets against progressive candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.

And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party, there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now and forever.

Ramzy Baroud
October 18-25, 2005

In the weeks and months preceding the Iraq war in March 2003, various US officials informed the already baffled public that the war would be marred with tactical misinformation for the sole purpose of derailing Iraq’s war stratagems and ultimately protecting the lives of American soldiers.

This ushered in the return of infamous embedded journalism, which unsurprisingly derailed whatever little integrity both the government and the corporate media still possessed.

Upon their arrival and subsequent takeover of the Baghdad airport, shortly after the onset of military operations, US forces set up a radio station targeting the greater Baghdad era, with the sole purpose of disseminating half-truths, even outright lies to contribute to the psychological warfare already underway in various parts of the country.

Meanwhile, the regions dominated with a Kurdish majority in northern Iraq as well as parts of Iran were also hubs for propaganda, spreading the party line of myriad groups, each with its own ideological references, affiliations and self-seeking financiers.

While many are familiar with the deadly 'incidents' that led to the death and wounding of scores of journalists in Iraq, few are aware of the take-over and meticulous restructuring of Iraqi television by US experts with the help of friendly Arab media. In a very short time, Iraqi television ceased exalting ousted Saddam Hussein, and commenced exalting the US occupation and their faithful partners.

William Blum
October 18-25, 2005

All the kindness, all the concern and generosity, the utmost empathy, taking strangers into their homes, donating so much money and goods and time, helping them find a roof over their heads, find a job, locate their loved ones ... But it must be asked: Why is it that so many of these same people can show so little concern for the many, many victims of US foreign policy -- the bombed and the tortured, the maimed and the impoverished, the widows and the orphans, the overthrown and the suppressed?    How can these kind and generous Americans take delight and pride in the “shock and awe” of the Pentagon military machine?  How can they exult in the machine’s unstoppable power to smash through brick and flesh?  Unquestionably, many of them display more regard for their dog than for any Iraqi or Afghan.

Nick Beams, wsws.org
October 11-18, 2005

Considerable media coverage has been devoted to the heartfelt remarks of 20-year-old student Joe Frost to a memorial meeting for the victims of the Bali terror bombings of October 1. Addressing a crowd of more than 1,000 in his hometown of Newcastle last Thursday, Frost summed up the mood of many: “This kind of thing always happens to someone else. I’ve heard many people say that over the last few days and I’ve said it myself. But the reality is that bomb hit us that night, and it’s hit our whole community, and so tonight we come here and as we said in the homily, we come with questions. Now one question on my mind is: why did this happen?”

Norman Solomon
October 11-18, 2005

Several decades ago, “controversial” subjects in news media included many issues that are now well beyond controversy. During the first half of the 1960s, fierce arguments raged in print and on the airwaves about questions like: Does a black person (a “Negro,” in the language of the day) have the right to sit at a lunch counter, or stay at a hotel, the same way that a white person does? Should the federal government insist on upholding such rights all over the country?

Some agonizing disputes, in the media and on the ground, came to a climax with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Suddenly, after many decades of struggles against Jim Crow, federal law explicitly barred racial discrimination in public accommodations and employment. After President Lyndon Johnson signed the measure, saying “Let us close the springs of racial poison,” controversy faded about access to restaurants and hotels.

Jason Miller
October 11-18, 2005

America's apologists can deny the reality to their dying breath, but the truth is that the United States of America as a democracy, a republic, or a free society is a fraud. While our nation was founded on high principles, even our founders fell far short of the standards they set for themselves. Many owned slaves, despite the fact that they may have had misgivings about it. Some, like Alexander Hamilton, desired an overt aristocracy because they did not trust the "people" to govern themselves. Virtually all of our founders were wealthy, white land-owners. Throughout its history, this nation has failed to deliver on the promises of its Constitution. Even Lincoln, one of the finer men to serve in the Oval Office, did not end slavery out of moral considerations. The Civil War and political pressures led him to pursue the abolition of that abhorrent institution.

Uri Avnery
October 11-18, 2005

He is a familiar hero in literature: the compulsive gambler who hits a lucky streak. With every turn of the roulette wheel, the heap of jetons in front of him grows bigger. He could leave the table, exchange the jetons for money and live on it happily ever after.

But he cannot stop. He must continue. Slowly his luck changes. The heap in front of him is getting steadily smaller. He can still leave and avoid disaster. But he is a compulsive gambler. He must go on, until the last jeton is swept up by the croupier, together with all his earthly possessions.

In the novel, the man gets up and totters out. In the casino garden he draws a pistol and blows his brains out.

I used this metaphor in an article years ago, when describing the danger inherent in the settlement policy. I remembered it again just lately, when reading a right-wing commentator, one of those that opposed the Gaza withdrawal. He prophesied that, after this one, more withdrawals will take place. We shall withdraw and withdraw, he warned, and when we reach the Green Line we shall not be able to stop anymore. The very existence of the state will be in danger.

George Monbiot
October 11-18, 2005

New research suggests that the Christian virtues are best represented in godless societies

Are religious societies better than secular ones? It should be an easy question for athiests to answer. Most of those now seeking to blow people up – whether with tanks and missiles or rucksacks and passenger planes – do so in the name of God. In India, we see men whose religion forbids them to harm insects setting light to human beings. A 14th-century Pope with a 21st-century communications network sustains his church’s mission of persecuting gays and denying women ownership of their bodies. Bishops and rabbis in Britain have just united in the cause of prolonging human suffering, by opposing the legalisation of assisted suicide. We know that the most dangerous human trait is an absence of self-doubt, and that self-doubt is more likely to be absent from the mind of the believer than the infidel.

Ahmed Amr
October 4-11, 2005

Every day, without fail, containers arrive at American ports bearing the fruits of the world. Among other things, they deliver Japanese electronics, European cars, Chinese and Indian textiles and Arab and Venezuelan oil. Over land, manufactured products and raw materials flood across the border from Mexico and Canada -- including four million barrels of crude. By the end of each and every day, five billion dollars of goods and services will have landed on American soil. The value of these imported products is further enhanced by the fact that much of it is produced by the blood, sweat and tears of third world workers who earn no more than a few dollars a day.

In consideration of this mountain of imported treasures, the United States sends back containers loaded with weapons, civilian aircraft, high tech and agricultural products and overpriced pharmaceuticals. In terms of their dollar value, America’s daily exports amount to three billion dollars of goods and services. When you import more than you export, you end up with a trade deficit. So far this year, we are running a trade deficit that averages two billion dollars a day.

Contrary to popular myth, the United States is one of the least competitive producers in the world. Since 1976, Americans have run consecutive and exponentially rising trade deficits. By its very definition, a trade deficit measures the inability of a country to manufacture products that can compete in global market.  So, for going on three decades, our manufactured goods have been judged by our trading partners to be either too expensive or of low quality or both. Keep in mind that if we excluded American exports of arms and ammunition -- an industry in which we excel -- our annual trade deficits would balloon by an additional 180 billion dollars. 

Ahmed Amr
October 4-11, 2005

Last month Pat Robertson drew public scorn for his suggestion that the US government assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. On Monday, Bill O'Reilly, one of Rupert Murdoch's errand boys at FOX put a hit on President Bashar El Assad of Syria. He repeatedly called for killing Assad during an interview with General Wesley Clark - a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

After the call to assassinate Chavez, all hell broke out and the White House issued an apology - calling the remarks inappropriate. FOX anchors and pundits - who rarely fail to follow the guidance of the Bush administration - joined other networks in mocking Robertson as a crank for his remarks about Chavez.

The White House and the Pentagon have taken to blaming the Syrians for their troubles in Iraq. A lot of this is just standard propaganda for domestic consumption. Every body knows that over 90% of the insurgents in Iraq are Iraqi citizens. The reason they know is that that the Pentagon checks the identity of insurgent casualties and the thousands of prisoners incarcerated at Abu Ghraib and other internment camps. One day the Bush boys and the FOX pundits claim that Iran is fueling the insurgency - the next day they point fingers at Damascus. Chalk it up to wild mood swings.

Jason Miller
October 4-11, 2005

Remember in September of 2001, when the US President (appointed by Katherine Harris) dissembled to the American public about why the Middle Eastern "terrorists" hate America?

In case you forgot, here is what he told us:

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

How ironic that the man who utilized his brother's governorship, Katherine Harris's lust for power, and a corrupt decision rendered by the Supreme Court to steal the 2000 presidential election would pontificate to Americans about democratic elections in the US and self-appointed leaders in the Middle East. Since it is a given that such a virtuous "born again" Christian could not have been lying, it is obvious that temporary amnesia prevented him from recalling voter disenfranchisement, his regime’s plans to strip its citizens' freedoms with the Patriot Act, and his nearly absolute intolerance for dissent.

Uri Avnery
October 4-11, 2005

The contest between Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon in the Likud Central Committee resembled a duel between two gladiators in the Roman arena. The more so since many of the Committee members behaved like the Roman rabble who screamed, rioted and demanded blood.

In this fight, Netanyahu resembled the Retiarius, a gladiator who had nothing on but a short tunic and who sought to entangle his opponent with a cast-net held in his right hand and, if successful, to dispatch him with the trident that he carried in his left. Sharon was like the Secutor, who wore armor and carried a sword. The former had the advantage of mobility and agility, the other moved clumsily but was well protected.

Many heaved a sigh of relief when Netanyahu was defeated at the last minute, contrary to expectations and polls. Since Netanyahu had positioned himself on the extreme right, supporting the settlers and opposing any withdrawal, he made Sharon look like the Man of Peace. But that is, of course, an illusion. The difference between the two, if there is one at all, is negligible. If Netanyahu were Prime Minister, he would behave exactly like Sharon, and in opposition Sharon would behave exactly like Netanyahu.

Sharon is now making both peace-loving and war-like declarations - depending on the audience he is addressing. Before the UN General Assembly and the Americans he sings hymns to peace, but he vows to the Likud that he will not give up another inch. All these declarations are not worth a garlic peeling, to use a Hebrew expression. One should not believe a word he says, only his actions count. In the meantime he builds the Separation Fence, enlarges the settlements, initiates provocations, bombs and arrests.

Ramzy Baroud
October 4-11, 2005

Deep down, U.S. President George W. Bush should grasp the seriousness of his debacle. If true, then he must also appreciate the time element in averting the worse-case scenario, which he, along with an increasingly alienated number of ideologues are imposing on their country.

Iraq is a multifaceted disaster, and its calamitous effects are hurting America on many levels. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq is creeping up to the 2,000 mark. The figure of those wounded and maimed -- some permanently disabled -- is several folds higher.

This war is too costly. Hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted from the U.S. budget everyday to feed the war machine; good news for the Pentagon and the military establishment maybe, but not so good for the majority of Americans, especially the poorest among them.

The U.S. Army is stretched too thin, bogged down in a war gone awry. Many National Guard units, whose sole mission is to tend to the nation's needs in times of crisis, were deployed to Iraq. The consequences of such indiscretions were exhibited in the Katrina disaster to a humiliating degree.

Public opinion has been illustrative of Bush's heedless foreign-policy conduct. A recent CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll found that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq. The majority of Americans, according to the poll, want to see serious cuts in military spending and a diversion of resources to help in the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts.

Ahmed Amr
October 4-11, 2005

After Judith Miller finally decided to testify before a Grand Jury investigating the Plame scandal, her paper narrated the story in a report that can easily induce a coma.

"The agreement that led to Miller's release followed intense negotiations among her; her lawyer, Robert Bennett; Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate; and Fitzgerald. The talks began with a telephone call from Bennett to Tate in late August. Miller spoke with Libby by telephone this month as their lawyers listened. It was then that Libby told Miller that she had his personal and voluntary waiver. The discussions were at times strained, with Libby and Tate's asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to another lawyer for Miller, Floyd Abrams, more than year ago. Other people involved in the case have said Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from Libby directly. On Thursday, Abrams wrote to Tate disputing parts of Tate's account. His letter said although Tate had said the waiver was voluntary; Tate had also said any waiver sought as a condition of employment was inherently coercive. Tate said in an interview on Thursday, "Her lawyers were provided with a waiver that we said was voluntary more than a year ago." Abrams would not discuss the question in a brief telephone conversation on Thursday." (Douglas Jehl, NYT, 9/30/2005)

If you're still awake, here is a brief translation: Miller believed Libby was coerced into giving her a waiver to testify about his role in the Plame case. That's why she spent 12 weeks rotting in jail until she was certain that he meant it from the bottom of his heart. A whole bunch of lawyers were engaged to determine Libby's sincerity.

Michael T. Klare
September 27 - October 4, 2005

Ramzy Baroud
September 27 - October 4, 2005

“Katrina Rekindles Adversarial Media,” read a title of one USA Today article, in reference to the deadly hurricane, which struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, and the media’s purportedly gutsy coverage of the government failures.

There is no denying that some TV and newspaper reporters, especially those reporting from the field have indeed exhibited both courage and decided professionalism in the way they covered the disaster’s aftermath, in raising critical questions and in conveying with honesty the overwhelming feelings of anger and betrayal felt by the stricken victims.

This historic media role was almost completely sidelined during the US war on Iraq, and it continues to be muffled as the administration’s military blunders are carried on elsewhere. However, getting into a self-congratulatory mode and convincing oneself that the media has indeed reclaimed its rightful designation as the voice of the voiceless, a seeker of truth and an honest interpreter of reality would be misleading, to say the least.

Norman Solomon
September 27 - October 4, 2005

Dan Rather caused some ripples the other day when he lamented the state of U.S. news media. The former CBS anchor said "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career," according to the Hollywood Reporter. Speaking at a law school in New York on Sept. 19, he warned that politicians have been putting effective pressure on the corporate owners of major broadcast outlets.

When a network TV correspondent makes noises that indicate a possible break with the corporate media establishment, I think of something that Mark Twain said: "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times."

As a matter of routine, television anchors and their colleagues at the networks avidly go along with the White House and the Pentagon. When there's a war, with rare exceptions they provide the kind of coverage that Washington officials appreciate. Long afterward, when the mania subsides, a few TV journalists may express some misgivings. But when the next war comes along, it's back to propaganda business as usual.

Uri Avnery
September 27 - October 4, 2005

In "The Second Coming", the Irish poet W. B. Yeats described chaos thus: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity."

The defining phrase, as I read it, is "the center cannot hold". It is a military metaphor: On the classical battlefield, the main force was located in the middle, with the flanks secured by lighter forces. The enemy's aim was to break the center, often by turning the flanks. But even if the flanks collapsed, as long as the center held, the battle was not lost.

That also holds for a political struggle. Everything hinges on the public in the center. If one wants to make a revolution, the stability of the center must be undermined.

That was the aim of the settlers, when they started their nationwide campaign against the Gaza withdrawal. It ended in utter collapse, a defeat of historic proportions. In spite of the dramatic spectacle of the uprooting of the settlements, where everything was planned down to the minutest detail by the rabbis and the army, there was no real public crisis, no national trauma. In Yeats' language: "The center held".  

To understand Israel, one has to comprehend the nature of this center. What convictions hold it together?

Tom Engelhardt
September 19-25, 2005

The Can-do Bush Administration Does...and the Presidency Shines (for twenty-six minutes)

Don't say they can't. They can -- and they did. Despite every calumny, it turns out that the Bush administration can put together an effective, well-coordinated rescue team and get crucial supplies to militarily occupied, devastated New Orleans on demand, in time, and just where they are most needed. Last Thursday, in a spectacular rescue operation, the administration team delivered just such supplies without a hitch to one of the city's neediest visitors, who had been trapped in hell-hole surroundings for almost three weeks by Hurricane Katrina. I'm speaking, of course, of George W. Bush.

Jason Miller
September 19-25, 2005

If George Bush had encountered the same fate as Jim Carrey’s character in the movie Liar Liar, and had been rendered incapable of lying, America would not have been subjected to thirty minutes of manipulative propaganda on 9/15. Compelled to tell the truth, Bush’s oration would have captured the reality of the situation in New Orleans, and of life for the poor and working class in an America dominated by a wealthy aristocracy:

Ramzy Baroud
September 19-25, 2005

There should be no doubt regarding the centrality and intensity of the relationship between the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the internal and external politics of Arab and Muslim nations, regardless of their geographic immediacy and level of involvement. By ignoring this intrinsic connection, one also forfeits a chief component in fathoming, thus remedying the entrenched sentiment of anti-Americanism (as a political, rather than a cultural sentiment), reverberating throughout the Muslim world.

For Arabs, ‘freedom for Palestine’ was the height of nationalistic expression, an idiom that transpired over the confining particularities of the nation’s locale, into the collective imagination. To truly be an Arab meant to join the struggle for Palestine; for without the latter, Arabism was somehow devoid of its authenticity.

It ought to be recalled that concepts such as Arab unity and the Arab front were largely mustered due to the conflict in Palestine. Unity would not have had much urgency without a threat; a frontier would not have meant very much without a hostile entity on the other side. The merit and declared mission of the League of Arab States, since its establishment in 1945, was to some extent a collective Arab response to what was understood as Zionist territorial designs that would later feed upon the entirety of historic Palestine and encroach on the sovereignty of other Arab states.

Uri Avnery
September 19-25, 2005

One day Joha, the hero of popular Arab humor, sold his home. The price he demanded was ridiculously low and he had only one condition: "on one of the walls there is a nail that I am much attached to. I don't want to sell it." The buyer readily agreed. Who cares about a nail?

After some days, Joha came to the house and hung his coat on the nail. After that he brought his bed and started to sleep there. "The nail is so dear to me, that I can't bear sleeping away from it," he explained. Another time he brought his family to visit the nail and had a party there. In the end, the new owner couldn't bear it anymore and bought the nail for a price many times higher than he had paid for the home itself.

Maybe the leaders of Israel do not know the story, but their behavior certainly resembles it.

It started with the peace agreement with Egypt. Israel agreed to clear out of all of Sinai. Between Menahem Begin and Anwar Sadat warm feelings started to develop. And then the nail appeared: Israel refused to give up Taba, a tiny piece of land bordering the Gulf of Aqaba. Relations soured, a round of bitter quarrels ensued and in the end it took international arbitration to decide what was clear from the beginning: Taba belongs to Egypt and was finally returned to it. Nowadays masses of Israeli gamblers go there to rid themselves of their money.

Ahmed Amr
September 12-18, 2005

It's anybody's guess what happens next in Iraq. After thirty months of experimentation with the pet theories of the neo-con political fantasy labs, even diehard supporters of the invasion can't escape the reality that the outcomes thus far are light years away from the rosy predictions of a 'cakewalk.' At every juncture, the administration and neo-con think tanks have bamboozled the public with best case scenarios of how events might unfold. The fact that the policy makers in Washington have been so 'wildly off the mark' has not deterred Bush from issuing new rationales for his imperial misadventures along with optimistic forecasts of how the conflict might yet evolve.

Despite the monotonous public pronouncements of 'progress' in Iraq, even George Bush must have his doubts. As the draft of the Iraqi Charter was being finalized, the president phoned Abdul Aziz Hakim, the Shia cleric who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The purpose of the call was to convince Hakim to lighten up a bit and accommodate some Sunni demands for a few changes to the draft. By all accounts, the SCIRI chief refused to give the president an inch.

A little background on SCIRI is in order. The group was founded in Iran two decades ago with the blessings of Ayatollah Khomeini. Until recently, it continued to receive logistical and financial support from the clerical regime in Tehran. As an organization, SCIRI was never just another Iraqi dissident group. For one thing, it has its own well-armed militia, the Badr Brigade. During the years in exile, the mullahs in Tehran were kind enough to provide the military wing of SCIRI with enough arms and training to field infantry, armored, artillery, anti aircraft and commando units.

SCIRI is the kind of political party that has its own intelligence services and its own death squads. After the first Gulf war, it was the secret cells of the Badr brigades that led the popular Shia uprising of March 1991. The uprising failed when Bush senior stepped aside and allowed Saddam to crush the rebellion. The ex-president walked away from the anti-Saddam rebels precisely because of his familiarity with SCIRI's theocratic ideology and their intimate relations with Iran.

Since the invasion of Iraq, SCIRI brigade members and their theocratic allies in the DAWA party have taken the liberty of enforcing Islamic law in areas under their control - especially in the British controlled sector. Bayan Baqer Soulagh, a member of SCIRI is now the Iraqi interior minister. He landed his strategically sensitive position when his party came out ahead in last January's elections. Under his management, the leadership cadres in the Iraqi police force are now being recruited directly from Shia militias. Officers and soldiers who moonlight as SCIRI and DAWA party members have also infiltrated the ranks of the new Iraqi army.

It is entirely fair to assume that George Bush was well briefed on the background of Hakim and SCIRI before he placed his phone call. In fact, any background brief must have included allegations that SCIRI's Badr brigades have repeatedly been accused of unleashing death squads against their political rivals.

Hakim is no ordinary Iraqi cleric. He is the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Muhsin Al Hakim who was the spiritual leader of the Shia community until 1970. For quarter of a century, the Grand Ayatollah was considered the highest authority among the worldwide Shia community - including the ones in Iran. Over the years of struggle and resistance against Saddam Hussein's regime - many members of the Hakim clan were assassinated, imprisoned and exiled. For Hakim, the struggle in Iraq over the specifics of the constitution is not just a matter of ideology - it is a very personal affair.

When George Bush put down the phone after his pep talk with SCIRI leader, he must have finally realized the extent of America's diminishing influence over political outcomes in Iraq. There is a good chance that the president shared his frustrations with Senator John Warner. The exasperated Virginia Republican had this response: "Our nation has given so much to the Iraqi people, and what are they giving us in return?"

Norman Solomon
September 12-18, 2005

Traveling from New York City in late September 2001, on a pre-scheduled book tour, author Joan Didion spoke with audiences in several cities on the West Coast. In the wake of 9/11, she later wrote, "these people to whom I was listening -- in San Francisco and Los Angeles and Portland and Seattle -- were making connections I had not yet in my numbed condition thought to make: connections between [the American] political process and what had happened on September 11, connections between our political life and the shape our reaction would take and was in fact already taking. These people recognized that even then, within days after the planes hit, there was a good deal of opportunistic ground being seized under cover of the clearly urgent need for increased security. These people recognized even then, with flames still visible in lower Manhattan, that the words 'bipartisanship' and 'national unity' had come to mean acquiescence to the administration's preexisting agenda..."

A lot of media coverage was glorifying people who died and/or showed courage on September 11, 2001. "In fact," Didion contended, "it was in the reflexive repetition of the word 'hero' that we began to hear what would become in the year that followed an entrenched preference for ignoring the meaning of the event in favor of an impenetrably flattening celebration of its victims, and a troublingly belligerent idealization of historical ignorance."

Harvey Wasserman
September 12-18, 2005

Today marks four years that George W. Bush has been a complete flop as a “War President,” the worst Commander in Chief in US History.

On September 11, 2001, Bush’s incompetence -- at very least -- allowed Osama bin Laden’s attacks on America to happen. Imagine the howl from the bloviating right wing if those disasters had happened on Bill Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry’s watch.

Since then, Bush’s four-year mismanagement of military operations has been every bit as incompetent, dishonorable and gratuitously destructive as his performance in New Orleans. One can only shudder at what comes next.

At a speech just before Katrina, Bush had the astonishing gall to compare his war leadership to that of Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, if Bush had been in office instead of Roosevelt in 1941, we’d all be speaking German and Japanese.

Uri Avnery
September 12-18, 2005

The day before yesterday the Haaretz headline screamed: "Doctors: Arafat died of Aids or poisoning". Aids appeared in first place.

For dozens of years, the Israeli media has conducted, with government inspiration, a concentrated campaign against the Palestinian leader (with the sole exception of Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine I edited). Millions of words of hatred and demonization were poured on him, more than on any other person of his generation. If somebody thought that this would end after his death, he was mistaken. This article, signed by Avi Isasharof and Amos Harel, is a direct continuation of this smear campaign.

The key word is, of course, "Aids". Throughout the long article there is no trace of proof for this allegation. The reporters quote "sources in the Israeli security establishment". They also quote Israeli doctors "who heard from French doctors" - an original method for medical diagnosis. A respected Israeli professor even found conclusive proof: it was not published that Arafat had undergone an Aids test. True, a Tunisian medical team did test him in Ramallah and the result was negative, but who would believe Arabs?

Haaretz knows, of course, how to protect itself. Somewhere in the article, far away from the sensational headline, there appear the nine words: "The possibility that Arafat had Aids is not high". So Haaretz is alright. In army parlance, its ass is covered. By comparison, the New York Times, which published a similar story on the same day, treated the Aids allegation with contempt.

There is a very simple proof for the spuriousness of the allegation: if it had even the most tenuous basis in fact, the huge propaganda apparatus of the Israeli government and the Jewish establishment throughout the world would have trumpeted it from the rooftops, instead of waiting for 10 months. But, as matter of fact, there is no evidence whatsoever. More than that, the writers themselves are compelled to admit that Arafat's symptoms are completely incompatible with the picture of Aids.

Sajjad Khan

September 5-12, 2005

It has often been said about the Palestinians since 1948 that they have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Though this statement has merit especially when one evaluates the PLO’s lamentable strategy, its corrupt governance and the fact that currently Palestinians remain confined to humiliating servitude, it remains conventional wisdom amongst political commentators, that in any future settlement, it will be the Palestinians as the weaker negotiating partner who will have to make the necessary strategic concessions. However as a result of new political trends, counter intuitively it is the Israeli state that is now having to look over the edge of a strategic precipice.

This is not to say that Israel faces immediate strategic existential danger, in many ways she is tactically much stronger as a result of recent events. The election of Mahmoud Abbas, an avowed moderate, the presence of US troops and bases in the region and the occupation of Iraq have significantly strengthened Israel’s security situation in the last few years. This coupled with a weak neighbouring regimes means that for the first time since 1948 Israel faces no viable military threat from either flank.

William Blum

September 5-12, 2005

Norman Solomon
September 5-12, 2005

The man in the Oval Office is fond of condemning "killers." But his administration continues to kill with impunity.

"They can go into Iraq and do this and do that," Martha Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said Thursday, "but they can't drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It's just mind-boggling."

The policies are matters of priorities. And the priorities of the Bush White House are clear. For killing in Iraq, they spare no expense. For protecting and sustaining life, the cupboards go bare.

The problem is not incompetence. It's inhumanity, cruelty and greed.

Uri Avnery
September 5-12, 2005

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: / A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; / A time to break down and a time to build up…" The book of Ecclesiastes has no truer follower than Ariel Sharon.

Witness, Sharon himself set up the settlements in the Gaza Strip, and now he has destroyed them with his own hands. He created the Likud, and now - hopefully - he is burying it. 

For those who need a reminder: the creation of the Likud was the exclusive achievement of Ariel Sharon.

Remi Kanazi
September 5-12, 2005

I guess the people at Yahoo didn’t have their racism detectors on earlier this week. On August 29^th an image appeared on Yahoo of a white woman and man trudging through chest deep water after “finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.” Huh. They just “found” bread and soda? Like little Goldie Locks “found” porridge after skipping through the forest? The next day Yahoo gives us an image of a black boy after just “looting a grocery store.” I hate to break it to the heads of Yahoo but even if you didn’t mean to do it, it is still racism.

Ramzy Baroud
August 29 - September 2005

Cindy Sheehan, a grieving mother of 24-year-old son Casey, killed only days after joining his army unit in Iraq, is an ordinary woman with extraordinary bearings. Two months after the untimely death of her son, she met United States President George W Bush in June 2004, hoping to find closure and answers to many daunting questions. After a disappointing meeting, she insisted on meeting him again to pose her simple, yet poignant and utterly consequential question: "Why did my son die?"

Expectedly, this question has been asked by thousands of grieving American families and, in fact, millions of Americans, many of whom have finally realised the dishonesty and absurdity of Bush's aimless war. According to a nationwide CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll carried out on 7 August 2005, 54 per cent of the American public feel the US administration has "made a mistake" in sending troops to Iraq.

Ahmed Amr
August 29 - September 5, 2005

Thirty years from now, we will get a full account of the White House strategy for dealing with Cindy Sheehan. In the meantime, we are obliged to depend on available fragments of information and our past experience with Karl Rove's smear machine. So far, we know that the president has altered his vacation plans to cope with a sudden and unexpected outbreak of anti-war fever. As he interrupts his five-week summer siesta to resell the Iraq war, a full-scale smear campaign has been set in motion to discredit the lady from Vacaville. The Rove squads are out in force to change the subject and cast doubt on whether Cindy has the qualifications to argue with the president on the merits of this war of choice.

Uri Avnery
August 29 - September 5, 2005

"Dear" in the most literal sense.

At long last it must be spelled out, without hypocritical pity, without "if" and "but".

We have paid billions of shekels in order to settle you in the Gaza Strip. We have paid billions to keep you there, and most of you have lived there at our expense. We paid billions to defend you, and dozens of soldiers, male and female, lost their lives doing this. Now we are paying billions (Eight? Ten? Twelve?) to get you out of there and pay you generous compensation.

But all this is not enough. Again you are shouting. Again you are being robbed. Again we owe you much, much more. Whole stretches of the country, preferably on the sea-shore, to be especially reserved for you, so that you can resettle "as whole communities". So that you can live separately. So that you can have your own separate schools. So that you can draw government salaries as employees of the local council, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defense.

I don't know whether the Guinness Book of Records awards a title for champions of impertinence, cheek, impudence - in short, good old Jewish chutzpah. If so, you should win it hands down. In the past we only owed each of you a luxury villa for next to nothing, as well as a source of livelihood, land and water, now it seems we owe you everything. It is your right to help yourselves from the money needed for the sick, the elderly, the handicapped, the children, the unemployed. Because you are the best of the best. Because you are holding on to the beard of the Messiah. Because you were personally chosen by God.

Rick Kelly, WSWS
August 29 - September 5, 2005

Dahr Jamail
August 29 - September 5, 2005

As the US-backed Iraqi puppet government flails about arguing over the so-called constitution, Iraq remains in a state of complete anarchy. There is no government control whatsoever, even inside the infamous “Green Zone” where the puppets seem to have tangled their strings.

Why the harsh tone for the conflagrations of the so-called Iraqi government?

Because the price paid for this unimaginably huge misadventure of the neo-conservative driven Bush junta is being paid by real human beings who shed real blood and cry real tears. Because well over 100,000 Iraqis and over 1,800 US soldiers would be alive today if it wasn’t for the puppeteers of Mr. Bush.

The coward sits behind his guards in Crawford, Texas, too afraid to deal with the reality of the grief he and his masters have caused to thousands of military families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. Meanwhile, fires are raging out of control not only in Iraq, but right here in the US.

Ahmed Amr
August 22-28, 2005

Deep in the heart of Texas, an epic confrontation is taking place between Citizen Sheehan and President Bush. It all started when Cindy Sheehan decided to show up in Crawford to petition her president for credible answers about a war policy that resulted in the death of her eldest son.

As recent polls clearly demonstrate, the majority of Americans are very concerned about the debacle in Iraq. They too want to know about the secret agenda that compelled Bush to spill so much blood and waste so much treasure in Iraq. That helps explain the incredible response to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier who decided she wasn't buying the administration's shifting rationale for the Mess on Potamia.

Uri Avnery

August 22-28, 2005

Jamie Chapman
August 22-28, 2005

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently issued a scathing indictment of the Bush administration’s record on science. Its report, entitled “Science Under Siege,” was issued on June 21. It documents the White House’s distortion, abuse and quashing of legitimate scientific inquiry in order to promote its political agenda.

The ACLU commissioned the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to draft the report. The UCS issued its own report in February 2004, entitled “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.” This earlier statement has since been signed by over 6,000 American scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new ACLU/UCS report shows that in the intervening 16 months the Bush administration, far from responding to pressure generated by the earlier UCS recommendations, has deepened its attack on science.

Such political hot topics as government backing for creationism over evolution or state intervention in scientifically supported legal rulings on the case of Terri Schiavo are not addressed. By focusing on four main areas that are less in the public eye, the authors establish how negatively the Bush administration has impacted the practice of science in the United States.

Ahmed Amr

August 22-28, 2005

This war can best be told by narrating the stories of two women. One woman played an instrumental role in launching the invasion of Iraq and the other is determined to end the occupation and bring the troops home. One woman wants to shed light on the lies that led to war and the other is willing to hide in jail to avoid telling the truth about her role in this catastrophe.

One lady is the mother of a fallen soldier who only demands a few rational answers as to why her son died. The second is a war mongering tramp and WMD huckster who refuses to divulge her role in outing Valerie Plame. One woman is an outsider demanding a single hour of the President's attention. The other is a power broker from Sulzberger's New York Times with ready access to Bush administration insiders like Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. One woman is invigorating the entire peace movement and the other is a bona fide neo-con operative of a War Party in retreat.

Stewart Nusbaumer
August 22-28, 2005

To slander opponents so their political positions are discredited -- Karl Rove's doctrine has been immensely effective in defeating Bush's challengers; will it now be effective in defeating grieving mother Cindy Sheehan? 

Dirty fighting is in their political blood. It’s their modus operandi. It’s their crème de menthe. By slandering and lying and thrashing they decimate enemies and capture political office -- they win, which means everything to them. Now they are eyeing Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier tragically killed in Iraq, a grieving mother protesting the war from a ditch near George Bush’s ranch. They want to slaughter the mother lamb to destroy her resonating antiwar message. They want to win again.

David Adelaide, WSWS
August 22-28, 2005

Elizabeth de la Vega and Tom Engelhardt
August 15-21, 2005

Rumors and leaks continue to swirl around the case of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and the various journalists and Bush "senior administration officials" believed to be involved in some fashion in her outing. Whole forests have undoubtedly been pulped for the endless flood of summer stories about the Plame case and yet something has been missing. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law against outing a CIA operative under which Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was, in essence, called into existence, is rarely discussed in any serious way -- and then at best only in a passing paragraph or two deep in any story. And yet a media/punditry consensus has formed that it is a law so specifically, even quirkily, written as to be almost impossible to use in a prosecution (hopeless, in fact, against a figure like Karl Rove or Vice President Cheney's right-hand man I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby); and that Special Counsel Fitzgerald has already turned away from the law, moving on to more conceivable avenues of prosecution -- like obstruction of justice.

Ahmed Amr
August 15-21, 2005

A few weeks ago, David Frum - the neo-con author of the 'axis of evil' doctrine - had the audacity to call Cindy Sheehan an 'anti-war crazy.' The neo-cons are good at that sort of thing. When they come up against compelling arguments for which they have no canned retort, they never hesitate to go for the jugulars. As Ambassador Joseph Wilson or Hans Blix can attest, they have a nasty habit of viciously Plaming dissenters to teach them the proper etiquette for addressing impertinent questions to our White House governors.

Uri Avnery
August 15-21, 2005

A picture engraved in memory: Ariel Sharon in the Knesset. Around him the storm is raging. The Members rush about, shouts ring out from all sides. The Member on the podium waves his arms, denounces and curses him. Sharon sitting at the government table. Alone. Immovable. Massive and passive. No muscle in his face is moving. Not even the nervous tic of his nose, that was once his trade-mark (and that many people considered a kind of lie-detector). A rock in the raging sea.

Mark Weisbrot
August 15-21, 2005

The Bush Administration has ploughed through so many scandals that it is easy to cynically dismiss the current controversy over White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove as just another inside-the-beltway, partisan tussle that will soon be as forgotten as all those Bush Administration officials with ties to Enron. Or the Harken Energy Corporation and Halliburton scandals (to which the President and Vice President were personally linked). The 9/11 intelligence failures, the missing weapons of mass destruction, Abu Ghraib - nothing sticks to these guys. So why should this scandal be any different?

Sam Hamod
August 15-21, 2005

By now it must be clear to the dumbest of the dumb that Bush and his policy in Iraq has failed, and will continue to fail at an even faster rate.

Whatever he hoped to accomplish in Iraq is now lost; he will get no oil, he will get no allies, he will not recover the funds spent, he will never again command the respect of honest military men in the world, he will not be respected by any other leaders in the world except for the most corrupt, and God will not allow him into Heaven. Of course, Dick Cheney's old company, which he holds stock in, in a blind trust, Halliburton, and some of his other associates, have made a financial killing in Iraq while American bodies were being maimed and killed, not to mention the over 100,000 Iraqis killed by American troops and their mercenaries (this according to Lancet, the British science magazine, based on their research and calculations).

Ramzy Baroud
August 15-21, 2005

The deadly terror attacks in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheik Red Sea resort in July and the earlier October 2004 bombings at two other Red Sea resorts seem to have disrupted the consistency of the rationale that links the current terrorism upsurge in the Middle East to the US war effort in Iraq.

The Christian Science Monitor newspaper attempted to neatly package the ongoing debate in the West on the root causes of political and ideological terrorism within two primary schools of thought ("Why Jihadists Target the West", July 25). One school links terror directly to the war on Iraq, another believes that terror groups are ideologically, rather than politically motivated, thus reinforcing the "clash of civilizations" argument.

William Blum

August 15-21, 2005

"It is important to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations." 
This is now the official and frequent response of White House, Pentagon, and State Department spokespersons when confronted with charges of American "abuse" (read: torture) of prisoners, and is being repeated by many supporters of the war scattered around the Internet.

It can thus be noted that White House, Pentagon, and State Department training manuals emphasize the tactic of saying "It is important to note that al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations," when confronted with charges of American torture of prisoners for which the spokespersons have no other defense.

Harvey Wasserman

August 15-21, 2005

Like Nagasaki, August 9 is an orphan of history.
And in that history, new, definitive evidence has finally surfaced that the atomic bombing there was completely unjustified.
More than 80,000 human beings perished in Nagasaki three days after at least that many died in Hiroshima.

Cynthia L. Cooper
August 15-21, 2005

Animated insects crawl across the webpage of the Timothy Plan, a group of conservative Christian investment funds that screen investments using Bible-based standards of political correctness. The bugs top the “hall of shame” -- a list of "cultural polluters" that The Plan deems the worst firms, the ones omitted from its mutual funds to protect investors from these "pesky nuisances."

Wyeth is boycotted for manufacturing birth control pills, Merck & Company for fetal tissue research, Procter & Gamble for donating to Planned Parenthood, Amazon.com for officially recognizing gay and lesbian groups. Walt Disney and Earthlink fail to make the Christian cut.