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Today's Stories November 20, 2007 Wajahat Ali An Interview with Norman Finkelstein November 19, 2007 Winslow T. Wheeler Why Congress Won't Reform China Hand The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan Allan Nairn Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia Uri Avnery How to Get Out? David Macaray The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements Dave Lindorff Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008! Bill Quigley Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials Ron Jacobs Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie Sunsara Taylor Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs? Binoy Kampmark Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead! Heather Gray Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois Website of the Day The Meat Market     November 17 / 18, 2007 P. Sainath Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India David Rosen The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery Mike Whitney Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War? George Wuerthner Saving the Big Wild Brenda Norrell The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent George Ciccariello-Maher Of Submarines and Loose Screws Karim Makdisi Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread Marie Trigona Wal-Mart in Argentina Valerio Volpi The Catholic Church, Incorporated Fred Gardner The Straight-Ahead Runner Robert Fantina The White House Press Office Mike Ferner Thank God for the Senate Republicans! Missy Comley Beattie The Radical Majority Kenneth Couesbouc Circles of Power Patrick O'Hayer A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet Poets' Basement Davies, Buknatski and Ford   November 16, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War Dave Zirin The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System Gary D. Barnett A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent Alan Farago Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption Dave Lindorff Two Brothers and Two Scandals Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?" Robert Ovetz Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea Brenda Norrell "Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border David Swanson Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate Peter Letheby Outside the Box on the Great Plains Website of the Day Why Activism Fails   November 15, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair Hillary Clinton in Arkansas Adolfo Gilly The Spirit of Revolt Peter Bohmer 10 Days That Shook Olympia Andy Worthington The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier Gray / Derks Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups Liaquat Ali Khan Liberating Pakistan Dave Lindorff Where's the Party? Christopher Brauchli Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip Anthony Papa Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences Martha Rosenberg Merck's Big Write Off Ben Terrall Thank You, Ehren Watada Website of the Day On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies November 14, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Making of Hillary Clinton James Petras Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets Al Giordano Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50 Paul Craig Roberts The Lobby Andy Worthington Innocents and Foot Soldiers Stephen Lendman Torturing Palestinian Detainees Fatima Bhutto Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy Martin Smith Norman Mailer and the "Good War" Jeff Leys Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding Website of the Day Why the Writers are Striking November 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It Jeffrey St. Clair Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter Robert Bryce The Pakistan Fuel Connection David Macaray The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike Mike Whitney Bulletins from the Titanic Ralph Nader Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers Nikolas Kozloff Chavez Blasts the Spanish King Jordan Flaherty Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana B. R. Gowani Dear Mrs. Bhutto Website of the Day Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"   November 12, 2007 Vicente Navarro Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed Ben Brown Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father Omar K. A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency Sadia Abbas The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military Farzana Versey Mailer's Miasma Richard W. Behan The Political Crimes of Complicity Paul Krassner Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert! Cindy Sheehan Faith and War Peter Stone Brown The Return of Levon Helm Dave Lindorff Dennis, You are Not Alone Website of the Day Police Attack in Olympia   November 10 / 11, 2007 Alain Gresh Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard Mike Whitney For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street Ron Jacobs A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq Jeffrey St. Clair The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story Alan Farago Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism Binoy Kampmark When Language Drowns: Torture in America Robert Fantina Legitimizing Torture Fred Gardner Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values Ayesha Ijaz Khan The General in His Labyrinth Nicola Nasser NATO's Southward Drift Philip Rizk The Blame Game in Gaza Michael Dickinson Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins Joel S. Hirschhorn The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties Paul Krassner Flunking Out of the Electoral College Wadner Pierre / Joe Emersberger The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti   November 9, 2007 Patrick Cockburn In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK Mohammed Hanif Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle John Ross Blackwater Goes to Mexico Mike Whitney Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate Tom Barry In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy Corporate Crime Reporter Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care? Badruddin Khan Pakistan and the Israel Lobby David Macaray The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back Martha Rosenberg The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents Website of the Day Stryker Blockade!   November 8, 2007 Kathleen & Bill Christison Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine William Loren Katz Waterboarding in American History Mike Whitney The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes Sheldon Richman Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life Liaquat Ali Khan Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers Marc Gardner The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights (or Homes) Jackie Corr The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the Investment Banker? Brenda Norrell Between Bombs and Border Walls Dave Lindorff Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times China Hand Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity Sen. Russ Feingold FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act Website of the Day The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez   November 7, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor? Vijay Prashad The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal Niranjan Ramakrishnan Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf Alan Farago To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse David Macaray The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker? Nikolas Kozloff The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey Charlotte Laws What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign Daniel White Zahid's Story William Cook The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby Website of the Day Safe Lawns   November 6, 2007 Mike Whitney Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution Ralph Nader Who Determines the Price of Oil? Andy Worthington The Torture of Ali al-Marri Pam Martens Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan's Dark Future William Schroder The Return of Water Torture Stephen Lendman Punishing Gaza William Blum Cuba and Original Sin Former US Intelligence Officers A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey   November 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer David Macaray How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer) Gary Leupp General Musharaff's "State of Emergency" Dave Lindorff Those Minot Nukes Ludwig Watzal Israel's Dilemma in Palestine Patrick Cockburn Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan Peter Stone Brown John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past Michael Simmons Yo! What Happened to Peace? Website of the Day Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students   November 3 / 4, 2007 Tariq Ali Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship Jeffrey St. Clair Splitsville Alan Farago The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class Paul Krassner He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards Rannie Amiri Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals P. Sainath Indexing Humanity, Indian Style Ayesha Ijaza Khan Pakistan in a Daze Robert Fantina Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? Seth Sandronsky The Politics of Health Care in California Ron Jacobs The Bebop of Baraka Ramzy Baroud A Case for Arab Dignity Heather Gray When Capitalists Get a Free Ride   November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

November 20, 2007 An Interview with Norman Finkelstein On Islamo-Fascism and Other Vacuous Epithets By WAJAHAT ALI Wajahat Ali speaks to American political scientist and writer Dr. Norman Finkelstein about the denial of his tenure at DePaul University, anti-Semitism, and challenging the academic status quo on the Palestine-Israel conflict. WAJAHAT ALI: In the recent DePaul University tenure controversy, you and a vocal community of supporters suggested "external pressures" forced the University to deny you tenure despite your overwhelming popularity and respect amongst your peers and students. What is your response to this denial? NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I do not want to be a tenure martyr. It was for sure a disgusting ordeal. But my main concern now is to move on and put it behind me. Reasonable people do not doubt why I was denied tenure. The facts are straightforward. I easily met all the criteria of tenure at DePaul. I was denied tenure due to my vocal opposition to Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Regarding your scholarship, you question and challenge what some consider long-held assumptions regarding the Israeli-Palestine conflict, specifically the actual intentions and motivations of several parties, such as the Israeli government, the United States, and the Arab world. Currently, what do you believe are the most crucial and major obstacles that if removed, could establish some sustainable semblance of peace in that region? The basic terms for settling the conflict are not a mystery. They are embodied every year in the same General Assembly resolution titled "Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question." The resolution calls for full Israeli withdrawal to the June 1967 borders. The entire world apart from the U.S., Israel and this or that South Pacific atoll (Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, Micronesia, Marshall Islands) supports this settlement. Once the U.S. and Israel accept the G.A. resolution, the basis will be in place to resolve the conflict. In your book Beyond Chutzpah, you present evidence against Dr. Alan Desrhowitz's book, Case for Israel, and conclude that his work is a mixture of plagiarism, shoddy research, and poor scholarship. If Dr. Dershowitz's book is filled with so much error, how do such works become authoritative pieces on the subject? To win acclaim in mainstream media on certain subjects you merely have to echo the party line; it has precious little to do with actual scholarship. The Nazi holocaust and the Israel-Palestine conflict are two such subjects. Terrorism is another one. I just read this ridiculous book by a so-called leading American intellectual named Paul Berman entitled Terror and Liberalism. The book is fact-free. Indeed, it might be called insane in a rational culture. It starts from the premise that no country in the world has done more for Muslims than the United States. That's the central premise. You can imagine where it goes from there. Of course it's a huge bestseller in the United States. It's hard to imagine how debased U.S. intellectual culture is. Although, in all fairness, I doubt it has yet sunk to the level of France where Bernard Henri-Levy is called a philosopher. In your controversial book, The Holocaust Industry, you make two arguments. One is that the promotion of the uniqueness of "Jewish suffering" experienced during the Holocaust is used to shield and deflect legitimate criticism of Israel. The second builds upon this and says that this promotion allows a powerful industry to label any such critic, no matter how legitimate, an Anti-Semite. How has this "labeling" played out in recent years in regard to critics of Israeli domestic and internal policies? Whenever Israel comes under international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict diplomatically or on account of its human rights violations, it revives the extravaganza called The New Anti-Semitism. In 1974 the Anti-Defamation League, an Israel lobby group in the U.S., put out a book called The New Anti-Semitism and in 1981 it put out another book called The Real Anti-Semitism. Right after the new intifada began, the Israel lobby again started with The New Anti-Semitism. The purposes of this agitprop are pretty obvious: to delegitimize all criticism of Israel as motivated by anti-Semitism and to turn the perpetrators into the victims. It seems to have less effect in recent years due to overuse: once you start calling Jimmy Carter an anti-Semite, people really begin to wonder. Anyone who knows this "info-tainment industry" well knows that "scholarship" and polemical histrionics make loyal bedfellows, thus explaining the phenomenon of shock jocks, right wing radio hosts, and the rise of polemical pundits. What is the role of the professional and ethical academic and historian, specifically one whose concentration deals with the Middle East, in today's hysterical society? Does your experience with DePaul University signal a warning call to those who tread what some consider your controversial path? I don't think my personal experience has much wider meaning. I was targeted because I am politically active. I don't limit myself to a professional audience of other academics. I have a public reputation, and it was this reputation that the Israel lobby was trying to discredit, successfully, as it turns out. But most academics speak to other academics. The "Muslim World" has gained a considerable spotlight after 9-11 with pundits commenting on the "clash of civilizations," "the roots of Muslim rage," and the newest label suggesting an emergence of "Islamo-fascism". You have had considerable experience with Muslims and Muslim Americans.Do you believe that a conflict exists between the so-called West and Islam? If so, how can we, as an American society, regain Muslim trust, confidence, and understanding specifically in light of the Iraq War, the Palestine-Israel conflict, and the aggressive rhetoric against Iran, which some Muslims claim is ample proof of a war on Islam rather than realpolitik? "Islamo-fascism" is a meaningless term. If I am not mistaken, it was coined by the commentator Christopher Hitchens. The term is a throwback to when juvenile leftists, myself among them, labeled everyone we disagreed with a "fascist pig." So this is a kosher-halal version of that epithet. Fascism used to refer to a fairly precise historical phenomenon, although it's even doubtful that the term accurately encompasses regimes as different as Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. But when you start using the term to characterize terrorist bands who want to turn the clock back several centuries and resurrect the Caliphate, it is simply a vacuous epithet like "Evil Empire," "Axis of Evil" and the rest. Your parents survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. Your published works and scholarship, although labeled Anti-Semitic by your critics, are generally dedicated by yourself to honoring and preserving the integrity of those victims, such as your parents from those you claim exploit their suFfering for political ends. Like others in your field, you could have easily avoided controversy by agreeing with the mainstream. With all the issues you have faced as a result of your scholarship, what has motivated you to continue down this road? Whenever I wonder why I do what I do - and I do have those moments of self-doubt - I put in my mind's eye the suffering of my late parents, I think of my friends in the occupied territories, and the doubts vanish. I press on, knowing that soon I will pass from the scene, hopefully having done some good, and not too much evil. Wajahat Ali is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and J.D. whose work, "The Domestic Crusaders," (www.domesticcrusaders.com) is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America. He can be reached at wajahatmali@gmail.com The New Print Edition of CounterPunch Contains the Explosive Investigation That Rocked the Pentagon! Stolen Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual Anthropologist DAVID PRICE exposes how the fabled Counterinsurgency Manual contains a chapter filled with "borrowed" quotations. Price reveals the crucial role in the debacle played by anthropologist Montgomery McFate. The University of Chicago Press is badly compromised. And much more. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Your Ad Here

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