home / subscribe / about us / books / tower / events / archives / search / links /

Today's Stories August 8, 2007 Andy Worthington Backing Up Lt. Col. Abraham on Gitmo Abuse Jeff Halper The Catch in Israel's "Generous Offers" at Jericho August 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Why the Surge Has Failed Andy Worthington Why Do We Need the Democrats?: They Have Failed to Restrain Bush on Gitmo, Iraq and Domestic Spying Kathy Kelly The Little Girl of Hiroshima Stan Cox The Antiwar Majority: Look Quickly, You Might Miss It Sonja Karkar Israel's Settlement Project Sen. Russ Feingold A License to Wiretap--Anyone Alan Farago Dancing in the Light of Florida Norman Solomon Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman Binoy Kampmark Giving Good Face: What Jeremy Bentham and Facebook Have in Common Dave Lindorff The Gelding Congress John Stauber Coffee with the Troops at Yearly Kos Website of the Day George Carlin on Education August 6, 2007 Bill Quigley Fighting for the Right to Learn in New Orleans Kathy Rentenbach Guatemalan Gold, Guatemalan Bones Uri Avnery White Elephants: Bush's Middle East Arms Deals Col. Dan Smith Of Time and Iraq Ralph Nader Cruise Ship Blues James Neshewat War? What War?: a Report from the New SDS Confab in Detroit D.K. Wilson Barry, Bud and 755 Greg Moses Safe Passage for Willie Nelson Fidel Castro Hard and Obvious Realities Mike Whitney Judgment Week on Wall Street   August 4 / 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Rupert Murdoch and the Luck of the Bancrofts Peter Linebaugh Speaking in Irish Tongues Saul Landau Faith-Based War Alan Farago The Candidates and the Collapsing Economy Dave Zirin When Domes Attack: Even in Minnesota Barucha Calamity Peller Oaxaca is Not Over Anthony DiMaggio Double Standards in U.S. Aid to the Middle East Dave Lindorff Spy Power: Bush Demands, Democrats Deliver--Again and Again and Again Fred Gardner Write Off Your Congressman Nicola Nasser The Iranian Option Benjamin Dangl Privatizing Repression in Paraguay Rannie Amiri Bribe, Divide and Conquer Daniel Gross CSR on Trial: Starbucks Behind the Brand Sherwood Ross Obama Renounces Use of Nuclear Weapons Manuel Garcia, Jr A Bridge Truth Movement?: From 9/11 to Minneapolis Missy Beattie The First Mannequin and the "Crime Scene" Ron Jacobs The Outlaw Trip to Mexico: Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad Website of the Weekend Photos: Texas Immigrant Prison   August 3, 2007 Gabriel Matthew Schivone An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Responsibility, War Guilt and Intellectuals Jonathan Cook Israel's Jewish Problem in Tehran Patrick Cockburn Sunnis Walk Out of Iraq Government Little Steven Van Zandt Die, Greedy Swine! Die! Die!: How the Record Companies are Killing Rock Music Christopher Brauchli Bush Makes Putin Look Like James Madison D. K. Wilson Two Sides and a Middle: Michael Vick Ain't the One to Ask Linda Ford and Ira Glunts Maxwell's Silver Hammer: Syracuse University Enlists in the Global War on Terror Kelly Overton The Casualties of Green Scare: the Feds' War on the Animal Rights Mvt. Monica Benderman In Freedom's Name Manuel Garcia, Jr. Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Was Cheney at the Scene? Website of the Day A Cinematic Look at the Police State in Action   August 2, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Return of the Robber Barons Stanley Heller Report from the Land of Apartheid Eric Ruder Fighting PTSD; Fighting the Army Robert Fantina Still Getting It Wrong: the NYT and Iraq Alan Farago The Toxic Mortgage Waste Crisis Chris Floyd Chertoff, Chiquita and Death Squads Franklin Lamb Lebanon's Crucial Special Elections Sen. Russ Feingold Closing the Book on the Abramoff Era Anthony Papa Drug Treatment isn't a Silver Bullet Norman Solomon The Big Guns of August Website of the Day Louie, Louie Video Contest   August 1, 2007 Debbie Nathan More Secret Payments by Former NYT Reporter to Web Porn Star Surface in Nashville Courtroom Fred Gardner Ciao, Michelangelo Gary Leupp Why Iraq's Best-Loved Athlete Can't Go Home David Rosen America's Top 10 Political Sex Scandals Winston Warfield Is the Tillman Case Still a Coverup? Daniel McBride Lessons from Bomber Harris: If the US Strikes Pakistan Glen Ford The Corporate Plan to Crush Black Resistance Thomas P. Healy The Toxic Career of Indiana's Environmental Commissioner John V. Whitbeck The Five Percent Solution David Krieger Nuclear Weapons and the University of California Website of the Day The Tragic Story of Hisham Mohammed   July 31, 2007 Kathy Kelly Dancing in the Darkness: the Story of Abu Mahmoud Clancy Sigal The Ghosts of Passchendaele Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Baby Doll to Cheney Joe DeRaymond Return to the Republic of Death? Diane Christian "Winning": What Bush Could Learn from the Shade of Achilles Chris Floyd Good News is No News: Why the Bush Adm. Buries Accounts of Extremist Recantations Ramzy Baroud Bush's Real Agenda in Palestine Alan Farago Battle for the Soul of Florida Fidel Castro In Spite of Everything: Reflections on the Pan American Games Dan Bacher The Fish Terminator: Schwarzenegger's Campaign to Build the Delta Canal and More Dams   July 30, 2007 Marjorie Cohn: Independent Counsel Time Patrick Cockburn Four Million Iraqis on the Run Peter Quinn Irish in America Uri Avnery A Warning to Tony Blair John Ross Zapatista Intergalatica Lands on Earth Ron Jacobs Free the San Francisco 8 David Vest Farewell, Old Friend: Another Legend of the Blues is Gone Jeffrey St. Clair T99 Nelson: Seduced by a Legend of the Blues Website of the Day Collateral Repair Project   July 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Now the NYT is Selling "Bloodbath" as a Rationale to Stay in Iraq Ralph Nader Rotten Justice Robert Fantina American Lies and Iraqi Nationalism Fred Gardner Prohibitionists Attack, Reformers Fundraise   Yves Engler Handwashing and the Bottomline   July 27, 2007 John Ross Bombing Pemex--or Not? Arthur Neslen Gaza was a Gas for Blair Dave Lindorff Declaring the US a Battlefield: Martial Law is Now a Real Threat Julene Blair The Environmentalist Within Christopher Brauchli Bush Uses Children as Shock Troops in His War on Socialized Medicine Jesse Hagopian Fund the Wounded, Not the War Charles Modiano Manufacturing a Villain: Sports Illustrated's Vilification of Barry Bonds Bill Day The Hollow Environmentalism of Leonardo DiCaprio Walter Brasch Leaders Afraid to Lead M.D. Mitchell Farm Based Camps Website of the Day Fighting Sarcoma   July 26, 2007 Kathleen Christison The Siren Song of Elliot Abrams Andy Worthington Why the Pentagon's Gitmo Study is a Joke Clancy Chassay How the Bush White House Seeks to Destroy Lebanon Marjorie Cohn Showdown Over Executive Privilege Susie Day Apartheid Americana David Price Tour de Witch Hunt: Drugs, Diaries and Purges Marie Trigona Argentina's "Dirty War" Crimes Trial: The Torturer Priest Norman Solomon Media Spin on Iraq: We're Leaving (Sort Of) William S. Lind How to Win in Iraq Natsu Saito Ward Churchill and the Regents at the University of Colorado John Stauber Netroots and the Iraq War: Does Ending It Matter to Them Anymore? Website of the Day Sticking It to the Man   July 25, 2007 Andy Worthington Gains and Losses at Gitmo Gary Leupp Bush Speechwriter, Michael Gerson, Calls for Attack on Syria Ray McGovern The Sad Decline of John Conyers Dr. Susan Block Bonobo Bashing in the New Yorker Joshua Frank Hillary's Neocon: the Imperial Vision of Richard Holbrooke Tina Richards What Harry Reid Doesn't Know About His Own Bill Ben Terrall Indonesia's Bloody Brand of CounterTerrorism Farzana Versey God Acquitted!: Lessons from the Case of Darwood Ibrahim Mohammad Ali Salih A Bomb in My Briefcase? Laura Carlsen A Strange Homecoming: Reflections on the First US Social Forum Ron Jacobs Come to Kennebunkport! Sunsara Taylor Knocked Up is F**ked Up Website of the Day Wal-Mart's Flip Flops: Feet Killers July 24, 2007 Saul Landau How to Walk in Bushtime Kathy Kelly The Plight of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan Russell Mokhiber The Michael Vick / George Bush Thing M. Shahid Alam Islam Now, China Then Patrick Cockburn and Anne Penketh Meeting in Baghdad Dave Lindorff Overcoming John Conyers Binoy Kampmark You Tube You Can't: Failure of a Medium Richard Neville Murdoch's Transplant: a Warning to the Wall Street Journal Cindy Sheehan We Must Move Beyond Politics as Usual Evelyn Pringle Anti-Depressants and Birth Defects: Why is the CDC Downplaying the Risks? Norman Solomon Media Corrections We'd Like to See CP Newswire Reading Harry Potter Not Sinful Website of the Day Sea Islands Black Heritage Festival   July 23, 2007 Andy Worthington Narcolepsy on Gitmo Detainees Uri Avnery A Trap for Fools Patrick Cockburn Turkish Prime Minister Threatens to Invade Northern Iraq Sousan Hammad The Children Without a Title John Walsh Todd Gitlin's Nader Fixation Harvey Wasserman Spinning Kashiwazaki: PR Flacks Rush to Aid of Crippled Nuke Martha Rosenberg The Life and Times of a Hog-Hanging Farmer Collin Baber Here Come the MRAPs: Resurrecting Apartheid Armor for Iraq Reza Fiyouzat Iran's Forgotten Anti-Nuke Movement Stephen Lendman Saving a President: Scare-Mongering and Executive Orders Website of the Day The Port Huron Project   July 21 / 22, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Giuliani and the Dogs of War Werther How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate Ralph Nader Atomic Blowback David Keen Buy Hard: How to Sell an Endless War Fred Gardner Karl Rove, Pothead: When Good Drugs Happen to Bad People Gary Leupp Edelman's Edict: Is Hillary "Reinforcing Enemy Propaganda?" Robert Fantina Fear in Iraq Saker The Future of Palestine: an Interview with Jonathan Cook Rannie Amiri Nasrallah in the Crosshairs: How will the Third Lebanon War Start? Mike Whitney The Crisis in Hedgistan Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness: Linking Alienation and Dissociation Monica Benderman Facing the Truth Dan Bacher Deltagate: the Politics of Fish Kills Michael Baney Fujimori's Long Race From Justice Missy Beattie Here, There and Everywhere Ron Jacobs Tremble, Tyrants Adam Engel Radical Language: an Introduction Thomas Naylor California Split: an Open Letter to Schwarzenegger Poets' Basement Landau, Ford and Engel Website of the Weekend Surge in Action   July 20, 2007 Eliza Szabo Fatal Neglect: Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Pam Martens Doctoring the News: CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Laura Bush and Merck Alan Farago Winners and Losers in the Housing Market Crash Harvey Wasserman Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed "No Nukes!" Marjorie Cohn Iraqis will be the Deciders Dave Zirin White Noise and the Black Athlete Anthony DiMaggio American Public Opinion and Israel Scott Liebertz Oaxaca on Edge Linn Washington, Jr. British Cops Assault Rape Allegations Bill Piper / Anthony Papa Flying High?: The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar Ramzy Baroud Bush's War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing Website of the Day The Prankster Art of Mark Jenkins   July 19, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Next Invasion of Iraq Remi Kanazi Is This Ben Gurion or Hell?: a Palestinian Adventure Through Israel's Largest Airport Winslow T. Wheeler The Surging Costs of the Iraq War Sharon Smith Democrats and Health Care: Behind the Rhetoric Dave Lindorff Killing Cabbies in Iraq Conn Hallinan Have Gun, Will Travel: Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan D. K. Wilson The Michael Vick Case Pulls Back the Veil on Who We Really Are Joshua Frank Democrats as Leviathan: Another Step Toward War with Iran Norman Solomon The Ghost of Wayne Morse Russell Hoffman Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks at the World's Largest Nuke Ray McGovern Bush's Wooden Headedness Kills Website of the Day Protesting Power July 18, 2007 Brenda Norrell Spy Towers on the US Border Col. Dan Smith How the US Could "Lose" Saudi Arabia Martha Rosenberg Lord of Crookharbour: the Trial of Conrad Black Conn Hallinan Bombing and Spraying Afghanistan Binoy Kampmark The SIM Card Terror Case Patrick Bond / Rehana Dada Who Killed Sajida Khan? Tom Johnson The Long Road ... to Nowhere Paul Craig Roberts A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth? Bob Quellos Pushing the Poor Out of House and Home Felice Pace Falling for Lieberman's Iran Resolution Robert Weissman National Health Insurance: More Humane and More Efficient CP Newswire Shocking Report Showing Involvement of US Psychologists in Torture Website of the Day Gilad Atzmon Live!   July 17, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 Fathers, Mothers and Children Killed Marjorie Cohn Out of Control: Executive Power Plays Evelyn Pringle Inside Bush's FDA David Rosen Moral Hypocrisy on the Hill: the Christian Right, Sexual Scandal and the Pleasures of the Courtesan Susan Miller Width Matters: Displacement and Israel's Wall Franklin Lamb Did the UN Cave to Israel on Lebanon's Shabaa Farms? Don Monkerud Considering Victory in Iraq Harvey Wasserman Nuclear Surge Russell Hoffman Japan Dodges a Radioactive Bullet Dave Lindorff Feingold Turns to Dross Dave Zirin Reclaiming Sports as True Fiction Website of the Day Che at the UN: 1964   July 16, 2007 Gary Leupp Cheney Urges Bush to Strike Iran Ellen Cantarow The Untold Story of Iraqi Women Paul Craig Roberts Impeach Now Allan J. Lichtman The D.C. Madam's Public Service Dan Bacher Cheney and the Klamath: Was the Veep Behind the Nation's Worst Salmon Kill? Patrick Cockburn The Killing of Khalid W. Hassan Manuel Garcia, Jr. Property is Racism James Brooks AIPAC and Mahmoud Abbas: the Undemocratic Road to Defeat Liaquat Ali Khan The Judicial Crisis in Pakistan Julie Flint Suleiman Jamous in Limbo Website of the Day Free Suleiman Jamous!   July 14 / 15. 2007 Alexander Cockburn Support Their Troops? Andy Worthington Gitmo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majhid Khan, Dubious US Convictions and a Dying Man Ralph Nader Lawlessness, Waste and Incompetence Robert Fantina The Illegalities of the Iraq War Ron Jacobs Architecture as Military Strategy Joshua Frank Eat, Fight, Screw, Pray: An Interview with Joe Bageant Conn Hallinan Guns, Foundations and Free Trade: How the Right Targets Africa Dr. Susan Rosenthal, MD War and Dissociation John Ross No En Nuestro Nombre!: a Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement Fred Gardner Who's Afraid of Cannabidiol? Rannie Amiri A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak Charles Modiano ESPN's Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man Anthony DiMaggio America's Parochial Press China Hand Executive Orders and Coercive Diplomacy Missy Comley Beattie Reprobate Rhetoricians Dr. James J. Murtagh, Jr. Harry Potter Battles Big Brother Kenneth Rexroth On Thomas More's "Utopia" Poets' Basement Engel, Davies and Orloski Website of the Weekend GOP Sex Hypocrites: a Slideshow

August 8, 2007 Blowback from Draconian Anti-Terror Laws British Prisons as Islamic Universities By SUKANT CHANDAN In the last month alone Britain has seen 16 Muslims convicted of terror related crimes. Politicians and the media have used these convictions and the attacks in London and Glasgow to heighten Islamophobia and scaremongering amongst the British public. British premier Gordon Brown and the head of the Police Officers Association have taken this opportunity to raise the prospect of internment, detention without trial most notoriously and ineffectually used by the British state against the Irish Republican Movement. There are already one hundred Muslim terror suspects in British jails waiting trial, and internment, compounded with the probable increase in conflicts in the Middle East, will lead to hundreds more being detained in prisons. Filling Britain’s already critically overpopulated jails with Muslims will bolster the ranks of alienated and radical Islamist youth both inside and outside of the prisons. This like so many of Britain’s foolish policies, will rebound against their security and foreign policy interests. Not a day goes by without headline news of another individual or group of Muslims being convicted of terrorist-related offences. Although there are many other secular and left-wing movements on the list of proscribed foreign terrorist organisations, the message is that Muslims are the main enemy, and the main subject of the Islamophobic racist offensive by the West. This strategy is successful in criminalising Muslims and Islam in the minds of the majority of British people, and also in humiliating and incensing Muslims and progressive minded people. These convictions are significant for two main reasons: they set precedents for convictions, not for having been involved or in the planning of terrorist acts, but for distributing material on the internet or being in possession of terrorist-related reading material, and they create a favourable political climate for pushing through further draconian emergency legislation, with internment being the most important and controversial. The convictions of three people who were in total given 24 years between them were the first ever in Britain against those involved in incitement to commit terrorist acts through the internet. Referring to convicted 23-year old Moroccan Younis Tsouli, Judge Openshaw said "He came no closer to a bomb or a firearm than a computer keyboard" and recommended that Tsouli should be deported back to Morocco after serving his 10-year sentence. 28-year old Yassin Nassari was given three and half years for possession of terrorist-related material given to him on an external hard dive by a friend in Syria while he was there studying Arabic. The jury failed to convict him on the greater charge of involvement in terrorism, a charge made on the sole basis of an email from his wife while in he was in Syria. Again, as in the case of Tsouli, Nassari was not found to have been involved in any planning or act of terrorism, and if being in possession of these files were so dangerous, why has the British right-wing Telegraph website re-printed the blueprints of how to make al-Qassem rockets that were found on Nassari? In the case of Nassari it seems what is important about his conviction is not the prevention of possible terrorist attacks, as there is no evidence that he was connected to any, but setting a precedent to convict other people for being in possession of the ambiguous ‘terrorist-related’ materials. The jury's verdict meant that anyone who downloaded such material, whatever their intentions, was at real risk of being convicted under Britain's terrorism laws, and the judge at Nassari's trial said "the sooner that is understood, the better." When it comes to the Muslims and the conflicts in the Middle East, the official media and British state discourse remains Blairite. The softer, more ‘reasoned’ tone of Brown attempts to win back those voters the Labour Party has alienated. It seems that on an executive level, all that has changed is a slight re-arranging of the deck chairs, as a string of security swoops is taking place against non-Islamic groups in Britain which remains unreported, while terror-related convictions of Muslims are the context in which Brown is seeking ‘cross-party’ consensus on further emergency legislation. Scotland Yard, Britain’s police headquarters has supported the head of the Association of Police Officers proposal of internment with no definite time limit to replace the upper time limit of 28 days that exists at present, a period which Brown has already said he wants to extend. In all likelihood the government will succeed in getting internment through in the absence of any serious and effective opposition to it inside or outside parliament. Recent history in the British military occupation of Northern Ireland has already shown the counter-productiveness of internment which contributed to turning British prisons in Ireland into hotbeds of radical Irish Republicanism, so much so that Britain’s most notorious maximum security prison in Northern Ireland Long Kesh or ‘The Maze’, was dubbed the ‘Republican University’ by the Republican Movement. There are already warning signs as to what internment would mean for British security. Mukhtar Said Ibrahim, who was the ringleader of the 21/7 attempted London bombing, spent time in Feltham and Aylesbury Young Offenders Institutes, and is alleged to have been radicalized by Imams there, as it is alleged was the ‘shoe-bomber’ Richard Reid during his time at Feltham. More recently the Islamist prisoners being held in Belmarsh, many of them awaiting trial for many months, are already creating headaches for the prison authorities. Tariq al-Daour, one of the first convicted in Britain to be imprisoned for inciting terrorism over the internet, was caught allegedly making a website which encouraged armed struggle. A prison riot ensued between prison officers and Muslim prisoners when al-Daour refused to hand over his laptop. If this is the situation with a handful of Islamist prisoners in Belmarsh, one can predict the crisis that will occur when Britain has to deal with hundreds of radical Islamist prisoners organising from and recruiting inside British jails. The Vice Chair of the Prison Officers Association Steve Gough has warned that in five years terrorist and suspected terrorist prisoners will increase by a thousand and these highly politicised and often charismatic prisoners could influence produce a new wave of radicals among other inmates. Throughout much of the prison populations in the West, as well as outside of them, Islam holds a special attraction. Most famously, it was Malcolm X / Malik el-Hajj Shabazz that undertook the transformation from street-hustler through a path of redemption to Islam and soon became US’s greatest radical Black leader. From being known as ‘Satan’ by his fellows, he turned to Islam after befriending a fellow prisoner who was a member of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X’s auto-biography continues to be the most requested book by prisoners in the West. In British jails Islam is the fastest growing religion amongst inmates. Wandsworth prison in London, Europe’s largest, sees more Muslims attending prayers than all the other faiths combined across London’s prison system. Gough himself states that the majority of the prison population is comprised of angry young men, disenfranchised from society, “It doesn't matter if they're English, Afro-Caribbean or whatever. These types of people are ripe for radicalisation.” Few British people from the inner cities do not know of fellow students at college or university who turned away from a life of drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity and disrespect towards the opposite sex, towards Islam as a route out towards a life of moral uprightness and knowledge. After 9/11 many of these youths were incensed by the oppression of their co-religionists in Somalia, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq. These young people who try to make sense out of the tragedies and challenges that are befalling the Ummah are further disturbed by what they see as the decadence of the West which takes place alongside war and occupation. Those who are imprisoned for terror-related crimes and who are awaiting trial are not, unlike the Irish Republican prisoners until the late 1990s, part of a mass radical social and armed struggle in Britain. They are prisoners who are mostly isolated from the Muslim community in Britain, and as such constitute convenient targets for the British government to justify the introduction of further draconian measures. Ironically, it may well be the introduction of these measures that will swell the ranks of radical Islamist prisoners in British jails, which will in turn in the near future increase the recruitment of radical Islamist youth both inside British prisons and in the communities. The British state security response to this might be to introduce even further measures such as isolation cells and sensory-deprivation techniques that are used in other parts of Europe. It must be borne in mind however that these measures will not stop plenty of other Islamist prisoners amongst the prison populations, whose charisma, message of rejection of Western decadent society and hypocritical concepts of democracy and human rights will find receptive ears and recruits from some of the most alienated and disenfranchised youth in British society who maybe looking for retribution for their perceived injustices that they and their co-religionists have faced. Sukant Chandan is a freelance journalist and poltical analyst. He runs two blogs http://ouraim.blogspot.com/ and http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.com/ and be contacted at sukant.chandan@gmail.com

New FromCounterPunch Books HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy   Now Available! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained! Buy End Times Now! Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann 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