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Why Hillary Clinton Has Always Been a Republican In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.
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Today's Stories July 16, 2007 Ellen
Cantarow July 14 / 15. 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Andy
Worthington Ralph
Nader Robert
Fantina Ron
Jacobs Joshua
Frank Conn
Hallinan Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD John
Ross Fred
Gardner Rannie
Amiri Charles
Modiano Anthony
DiMaggio China
Hand Missy
Comley Beattie Dr.
James J. Murtagh, Jr. Kenneth
Rexroth Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 13, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Winslow
T. Wheeler Imran
Khan Todd
Chretien Sam
Husseini Dr.
Herman Mindshaftgap Anthony
Papa D.
K. Wilson David
Michael Green Website
of the Day
July 12, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Robert Jensen Dr. Susan Block Joshua Frank John Chuckman Corporate Crime
Reporter Mike Whitney Nicola Nasser Richard Rhames William S.
Lind Website of the Day
July 11, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Richard
Neville Debra
McNutt John
V. Walsh Scott
Liebertz George
C. Wilson James
McEnteer Philip
Rizk Johnny
Hazard Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
July 10, 2007 James
Ridgeway Tariq
Ali Javed
Hussein William
Blum Ralph
Nader Jay
Arena Anthony
DiMaggio Eva
Liddell Jerry
Kroth Alice
Woodward Nikolas
Kozloff Paul
Shannon Website
of the Day
July 9, 2007 Fidel
Castro Diana
Johnstone John
Walsh Uri
Avnery Ramzy
Baroud John
Ripton Stephen
Lendman Bruce
Jackson Michael
Donnelly Doug
Giebel Website
of the Day
Saul
Landau Ismael
Hossein-zadeh Fawzia
Afzal-Khan John
Ross Pat
Williams Rannie
Amiri Farzana
Versey Bart
Gruzalski Paul
Rockwell Reza
Fiyouzat Monica
Benderman Kenneth
Couesbouc Dave
Lindorff Charles
Modiano Missy
Beattie Dal
LaMagna Jean
Gerard Anne
Dachel Ron
Jacobs Poets'
Basement Website
of the Day
Daniel
Ellsberg Gary
Leupp Harvey
Wasserman Omer
Subhani Marjorie
Cohn Christopher
Brauchli David
Michael Green China
Hand Renee
Saucedo Corporate
Crime Reporter Website
of the Day
July 5, 2007 Andy
Worthington Mike
Stark Norman
Solomon Michael
Schwartz Susie
Day Jacob
Hornberger Bill
Hatch Don
Fitz John
Wright Website
of the Day
July 4, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Vijay
Prashad Carl
G. Estabrook Ron
Jacobs David
R. Dow Claudia
Johnson William
S. Lind Gregory
Afghani Paul
Edwards D.
K. Wilson Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Thomas
Jefferson Cindy
Sheehan Website
of the Day
Bill
Quigley Gary
Leupp Lynda
Brayer Richard
Thieme Helen
Redmond David
Swanson Jacob
Hornberger Ayesha
Ijaz Khan Franklin
Lamb Ray
McGovern Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
Andy
Worthington Nina
Serrano Jack
Hirschman Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Williams Anthony
Papa Sonja
Karkar Louay
Safi Anthony
Gregory Monica
Benderman Website
of the Day
June 30 / July 1, 2007 John
Ross Alan
Farago Peter
Quinn Christopher
Brauchli Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Judith
Siers-Poisson Saul
Landau Abbas
Zaidi Ron
Jacobs Ralph
Nader Donald
Worster Mike
Whitney Jacob
Hill Kenneth
Couesbouc Missy
Beattie Mohammad
Kamaali Ramzy
Baroud Leonard
Peltier Phyllis
Pollack Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 29, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Brian
Cloughley Patrick
Cockburn Gilad
Atzmon Dave
Lindorff Jennifer
Matsui / Kevin
Zeese Daniel
Klimek David
Michael Green John
Chuckman Website
of the Day
June 28, 2007 Bill
Quigley Vijay
Prashad Margaret
Kimberley Winslow
T. Wheeler Philip
Rizk D.
K. Wilson Bill
Williams Mahmoud
El-Yousseph Richard
Rhames Paul
Krassner Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD Alan
Farago Carla
Blank Matthew
Abraham Sunsara
Taylor Russell
D. Hoffman Robert
Weissman Sen.
Russ Feingold Paul
Buchheit Website
of the Day
June 26, 2007 Jonathan
Cook Ralph
Nader Corporate
Crime Reporter Ron
Jacobs Martha
Rosenberg John
Chuckman Denny
Haldeman Anthony
DiMaggio Stephen
Fleischman William
S. Lind Website
of the Day
Paul
Craig Roberts Jennifer
Loewenstein Bob
Anderson Robert
Pollin Patrick
Cockburn Eva
Liddell Dan
Bacher Larry
Atkins Mark
Brenner James
Rothenberg Website
of the Day June 23 / 24, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Jeff
Taylor Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Robert
Fisk David
Rosen Russell
Mokhiber Alison
Weir Robert
Fantina D.
K. Wilson Nicole
Colson Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson Dave
Lindorff Benjamin
Dangl Michael
Dickinson Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 22, 2007 Andy
Worthington Sherwood
Ross Eliana
Monteforte Robert
Weissman Richard
Rhames Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy
Baroud Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon David
Michael Green Kathryn
Webber Website
of the Day
June 21, 2007 Peter
Linebaugh Natsu
Saito Ron
Jacobs Saree
Makdisi John
Stauber Scott
Liebertz Tom
Clifford Robert
Jensen Michael
J. Smith Jeb
Sprague Website
of the Day
Omar
Barghouti Andy
Worthington Margaret
Kimberley Robert
Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Rannie
Amiri Stephen
Lendman Dave
Lindorff David
Swanson Anne
Dachel Website
of the Day
June 19, 2007 Ralph
Nader Dr.
Shepherd Bliss Bill
and Kathleen Christison Jeff
Leys Dave
Zirin Chris
Floyd Ben
Terrall Anthony
Papa VIPS Linda Flores Website
of the Day
John
Ross Paul
Craig Roberts Martha
Rosenberg Norman
Solomon Don
Santina Isabella
Kenfield James
Brooks Eva
Liddell Sam
Husseini Akiva
Eldar Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn John
Halle Robert
Fisk Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Fred
Gardner Saul
Landau P.
Sainath Missy
Comley Beattie Alan
Gregory Walter
Brasch Website
of the Weekend
June 15, 2007 Alan
Farago Andy
Worthington Michael
Simmons Franklin
Lamb Gary
Leupp John
Ross Website
of the Day
June 14, 2007 Michael
Donnelly
Faisal
Kutty Harry
Browne Charles
Jonkel Steven
Higgs Bruce
Dixon Bruce
K. Gagnon
Website
of the Day June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Marjorie Cohn Bill Christison Charles Jonkel Silvia Cattori Richard Gott Firmin DeBrabander William S. Lind Keith Rosenthal Website of the Day June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair Paul Craig
Roberts P. Sainath Ralph Nader Omar Waraich Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Malini Johar
Schueller Ramzy Baroud Website of
the Day
June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Norman Solomon Eva Liddell Rannie Amiri Rachel Voss Christopher
Brauchli D. K. Wilson Website of
the Day
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July 16, 2007 Seeds of Hope?The Untold Story of Iraqi WomenBy ELLEN CANTAROW
Recently I summoned up "Electronic Iraq" on my computer to discover the following stories:
At least some of this (not the taxi-driver and university body-guard items, but the others) begs comparison with the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, who ordered the expulsions of Shi'i during the Iran-Iraq War--a measure so horribly effective that the period was given a name -- zamn al-tasfirat (the time of deportations.) After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, a 1921 census gave Iraqis the choice between declaring either Ottoman or Persian origin. Those who had chosen "Persian" found themselves expelled by a dictator who feared fifth columnists in Iraq's midst. Mass weddings also took place during the latter part of Saddam's rule--though not to avoid car bombings: at that time there was nothing like the chaos now dubbed, for want of a more descriptive term, "sectarianism." Mass weddings under Saddam took place to promote a brand-new policy towards women and family: the war he'd so blithely engaged with Iran, thinking he'd win a quick victory, had turned into--this, too, begs comparison--a quagmire. So Saddam turned away from the earlier state-socialism program characterizing the first decade-plus of Ba'ath rule, during which women had been seen as (these are his own words from 1981) "one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated." [131] Starting in 1968 the Ba'ath regime promoted maternity leave and daycare, expanded access for women to university education and the professions, and initiated a literacy drive that targeted poor and rural women. (Of the book's few photographs one of most moving shows women of all ages, with rapt, earnest faces, in a 1978 literacy class--most wear scarves and long sleeves, some the traditional long black coat or abaya.) In her chapter on the Ba'ath in Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, interviewees now living in the US and UK "said that they had found it much easier working while having children during the 1970s to the mid-1980s inside Iraq than coping with the conditions that working women living in Western societies face." [134]) As the economy spiraled downward during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam did a hundred-eighty degree turn, urging women to produce more babies for the country (each was supposed to have five.) Early marriages were encouraged; the state forbade pharmacies to sell contraceptives; many women became widows. As for state propaganda, "[I]mages of women and men working side by side to develop a modern progressive nation [gave way to] images of men protecting the land assaulted by the enemy. And the land was invariably represented as a female whose honour might be taken away." [153] Nadje Sadig Al-Ali is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, an activist, and a feminist (a participant in London's Women in Black, in 2002 she co-founded Act Together: Women's Action for Iraq.) Her new book, Iraqi Women, should be required reading for anyone who wants to get beyond the usual litanies of depression about the war and the stereotypes about Middle East women held even by "progressives." It is a truism that ignorance of the past is a sure guarantee that its worst features will reappear. A premise of the book is that the multifaceted stories collected here will "relate directly to different attitudes towards the present and visions about the future of the new Iraq." [4] Excerpts from a hundred interviews of Iraqi women stud the author's narrative to yield a detailed, rich and contradictory "alternative history or histories" that begins with late-1940s post-colonial Iraq. The book encompasses the communist-driven 1958 revolution against the British-supported monarchy and proceeds through Iraq's short-lived republic; the first and second Ba'th coups in 1963 and '68; the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and Saddam's atrocities against Shi'i and Kurds; twelve years of US-imposed sanctions from 1991; and the US 2003 invasion and occupation. Some of Al-Ali's interviewees are secular; others are religious. All come from urban backgrounds that "encouraged education and a degree of freedom [in] social lifetheir fathers were lawyers, doctors, or government employees." [61] The limitation of her interviews to educated women is one she announces from the start; restricting herself to them seems smart in a book that juggles as much historical and social complexity as this one. In her introduction Al-Ali takes care to define her own feminism--a word she says is sure to be misunderstood--as engaging "the struggle against all inequalities, whether they are rooted in sexism, racism, class or Islamophobia, and the attempt to find non-hierarchical and non-violent ways of resisting."[9] (This kind of cover-all-bases academic prose, which left this veteran of 1970s women's studies and feminist activism at least bemused, leaves off in the body of the book, written clearly and, for the most part, with little academic lingo.) Iraqi Women has few "themes" as such,
but one is the absence of religious and ethnic conflict through
most of the time covered here: "More than being Sunni, Shi'i,
Kurd, Christian, Mandean or Yazidi, and until the 1950s Jewish,
it was social class that would be the main marker of differences
and commonalities." [65] Another reality invoked by author
and interviewees alike is Iraqi women's strength in their country's
most troubled times. Given the country's nightmarish present a chapter I found at once poignant and fascinating was "Living with the Revolution," dense with details of the country's vibrant intellectual, literary and artistic ferment in the 1950s and 60s. Iraqi women's participation in the country's powerful Communist Party as well as in the Ba'ath, and their vital women's movements, are explored here. (We learn about the Iraqi Women's League: communist-inspired, it was the country's most significant such organization until the Ba'th take-over. A poignant photograph shows young Iraqi League women marching with banners, bare legs, and what in the US used to be called "shirtwaist dresses" and knee-length "peasant skirts." Another shows women in traditional and modern or "Western" dress alike marching in 1948 during the "Wathba" or "Leap" -- a series of anti-monarchy protests in which students, workers, intellectuals, professionals and the poor took part.) We also learn about the progress of women's education from the late 20s; differing family perspectives on dress, social life and marriage; women's participation in the arts and professions (medicine, dentistry, architecture, and university teaching among others.) The 50s and 60s period was the heyday of Al-Ali's father's youth, a time for which she feels "romanticism and nostalgia for a past that I never lived myself but that seemed to hold so many possibilities, so much positive energy and so much hope." [56] The author makes no explicit comparisons between the past sixteen years of US intervention and the years under Saddam. Nonetheless it becomes clear that however repressive and barbarous the Saddam years were, they were better than life after 1991--the start of US-imposed sanctions. Al-Ali is particularly bitter about that period during which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (among them 500,000 children) died of malnutrition and want of medicine. (She doesn't engage in long fulminations against the US and the West here, which may disappoint some readers, but the judgment is implicit.) The country's infrastructure, including its formerly excellent medical system, fell into decay. Al-Ali's beloved Aunt Salima, one of two women to whom she dedicates the book (the other is Cynthia Nelson, who taught Al-Ali at the American University of Cairo), died of breast cancer during the sanctions period because she couldn't get medicine or chemotherapy treatment. (The disease was also possibly caused, says Al-Ali, by the depleted uranium the US sowed during the Gulf War.) Before the sanctions, looting and crime in wartime didn't take place; the country's social fabric remained intact. Of the fate of her new art gallery in the Iran-Iraq War a 60-year-old art dealer in Amman says: "Just a month after I started my own gallery, a missile destroyed itbut no one stole anything, nobody touched anything. It was totally different from the last war in 2003. We just put pieces of wood to cover the window for the whole year, because I could not afford to replace the windows with new glass. People were depressed, but everyone rebuilt their own homesPeople were so helpful at the time and we were hopeful that things would get better once the war stopped." [151] As for the sectarianism that now rends the country, it, too, seems to have been only sporadic during the sixty years traversed by the book. State efforts to instigate sectarian hatred seem to have failed:
And while the Iraqi state expelled most of its Jews after 1948, there is no sense here that the general population approved. "When I grew up in the late 1930s and 1940s," says Siham, a Jewish woman who now lives in London, "I lived in a multi-cultural society. We had equal opportunities in school and with jobs. I never thought that being Jewish meant being differentWe were proud of being Iraqi and JewishEven in '48 when Israel was established, most Iraqi Jews refused to go." [25] "We were all friends," recalls Zenab B., anti-communist, a Shi'i sympathizer now living in Dearborn, Michigan. "We celebrated holidays together. When we had the celebration in commemoration of Imam Husayn, they came with us. Even Jews and Christians joined usIn schools, we had Jewish, Christian, Sunni and Kurdish classmates. There were no bad feelings towards anyone. I myself came from a very conservative family. We wore abaya and long dresses. But when I look at some family pictures, some of my cousins had sleeveless shirts and short skirts." [25] Cast against such a past, the present seems all the more horrible. A final chapter on the US invasion and occupation makes clear that Iraqi daily life has shut down. Women fear going into labor at night: they are terrified they and their husbands will be killed on the way to hospital. Everyone fears going outside on the commonest of errands -- so much that when people leave the house they say a final farewell: each time may well be the last. Women in particular fear venturing away from home because of frequent assaults by criminal and reactionary Islamic gangs, and by "militias." Professionals--doctors, university professors--have been killed. Kidnapping for ransom is pandemic. At the close of a book that has shown us how rich and varied the country's past has been, how accomplished its women, and how great their capacity for survival, the following quote is painfully elegiac:
The author's Aunt Salima was blinded at age eight in 1948, year of the Wathba. No one in her family can say exactly why the little girl lost her sight. According to Al-Ali's grandmother, a woman jealous of the little girl's gorgeous black hair and eyes put a curse on her. Al-Ali's father said Salima had been playing with children who were tossing lime at one another from a nearby building site: some if it struck her eyes. The author's eldest uncle, Salem, a retired judge, recalled that an eye disease had blinded many children in the 40s. [3] Al-Ali rejects the evil-eye interpretation but won't settle decisively on any other. The story hallmarks the book's general premise "that all histories and memories are constructed;" no single account can be said to be "true." Al-Ali does say she doesn't want to fall "into the postmodern trap of nihilistic relativism," but still she makes few value judgments in the book. The absence of any clear political stand apart from the author's feminism often gives Iraqi Women a frustrating "on-the-one-and-on-the-other-hand" quality. For instance when Al-Ali evokes her nostalgia for the palmy time of her father's activist youth, she counters with a caveat: "But even then, in 'the good old days' there was repression people's experiences differed radically, depending on their social classplace of residencefamily background andpolitical orientation." [56] This is the character of the book: no one story is "privileged" over any other. There are certainly virtues in this, but in the constant to-and-fro with its feel of obligatory coverage of all bases, I sometimes longed for a simple story line. And while it's admirable that the book attempts to cover so much historical terrain, negotiate so many arenas (political, social, cultural) and represent its interviewees' many allegiances, it is inevitable that it can read like a text book. The interviews aren't consistently vivid; neither is its connective tissue. The historical narrative sometimes soldiers on dutifully and without animation. (Al-Ali's own personal reminiscences, on the other hand, are always warm and vivid: at some point she would do well to write a memoir.) Still, this is an invaluable introduction to the country and its women, the only one of its kind available to American and British readers, who sorely need it. I found myself returning repeatedly to various sections for fresh reflection about the book's manifold details and the questions they raise. For instance the long section on the rout of Iraq's Jews in the initial "diaspora" chapter implies that the general population didn't approve. But it does beg further exploration of what the general population felt. It will also prompt those who, like me, have read accounts describing the extent to which Zionist "dirty tricks" provoked the Iraqi state's reaction, to search for other writing about this critical period. Another question implicitly raised is how much the flight of Iraq's educated elite, which includes this book's author and her sources, will slow the country's recovery from its devastation. Al-Ali's concluding comment, "I do feel that Iraqi women continue to carry and embody the seed of hope for a more secure, peaceful and dignified time," is appealing, but not altogether convincing. It will be left to future writers to explore the rooms whose doors this hallmark new book has opened for us. Ellen Cantarow is a Boston-based musician and writer.
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CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy  Click Here to Buy! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn   Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont            |
