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Today's Stories September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Wrecking Ball China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran?   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z         Subscribe Online

September 25, 2007 It's Condi vs. Dick Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? By CHINA HAND Those with long memories-that go back, say, three months-will remember the last time the U.S. Treasury Department tried to bend an Axis of Evil member to its will through targeted financial sanctions. Failure was the outcome. Now the United States is trying for a do-over with Iran and, though the techniques-particularly for handling China-may be more sophisticated, I'm afraid the result will be the same. As I have amply reported, Stuart Levey's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence repurposed Patriot Act Section 311 investigations away from their intended goal of perfecting the international anti-money laundering regime to attacks on the quite possibly legitimate assets of geopolitical targets and-something that got surprisingly short shrift from the international press-the assets and businesses of allies and neutrals who did not share the necessary enthusiasm for our strategic goals. The previous intended victim of ad hoc financial sanctions secretly coordinated by the United States outside of the U.N. sanctions regime was supposed to be North Korea. The whole effort imploded messily when sanctions endorsed piecemeal by Japan, Australia, and a few other countries-but not China or Russia-failed to do anything except encourage Pyongyang to accelerate its development of a nuclear deterrent. The flagship enterprise of US financial sanctions-the two-year Patriot Act Section 311 investigation of Banco Delta Asia in Macau-collapsed when the State Department abandoned the BDA allegations, which stood revealed as an embarrassing farrago of cherrypicking, chestthumping, and cynical innuendo. Even so, it took four agonizing months to get a recalcitrant Treasury Department to acquiesce to an unfreezing of the North Korean funds in BDA, even though the investigation could have been terminated and its measures rescinded overnight by a decision from Treasury. At the time I speculated that the only reason for all this melodrama was to preserve Patriot Act Section 311 investigations' aura of unilateral, unstoppable, and irreversible menace for the purpose of maintaining their credibility and intimidating power in the case of Iran. Judging from the recent spate of articles in McClatchy and the Telegraph touting the purported successes of the somewhat secret financial war against Iran, I think I'm right. But this time there's a difference. In 2005/2006 the North Korea effort was hijacked by regime-change hardliners typified by John Bolton, who sought to destroy Kim Jung Il's regime by cutting off the flow of foreign exchange that they believed was vital to Kim to purchase the loyalty of his generals. The only way to achieve a complete financial blockade was to obtain the cooperation of Beijing. The hardline approach to the China issue was predictable, less than subtle, and completely ineffective. The State Department's point man for the anti-Nork effort at that time, David Asher, stated that the purpose of the move against BDA was to intimidate Chinese banks handling North Korean funds with the threat of being cut off from the US financial markets as BDA had been-"to kill the monkey in order to scare the chickens", in Mr. Asher's immortal phrase. The Chinese didn't capitulate...and it turned out that the Bush administration was not interested in playing chicken with the Chinese over the fate of the world financial system, and did not sanction a further attack on Chinese banks. So nothing was achieved except alarming and irritating the Chinese-and, oh yes, the North Koreans detonated a nuclear bomb and the sanctions regime fell apart. However, it appears that U.S. policymakers haven't drawn the lesson that coerced multilateralism is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive and, actually, a bad idea. In fact, the Bush administration, that motherlode of bad ideas, apparently believes there are no bad ideas-only bad execution. So on to Iran. And this time it's personal! No, not Bush vs. Ahmadinejad. Condi vs. Dick! I think that this time Condi Rice has taken on the challenge of showing that she can do extra-UN unilaterally directed financial sanctions smarter, better, and more effectively than John Bolton, Vice President Cheney's bespoke cat's paw-and, in a high risk maneuver, she has staked the success of the diplomatic track in confronting Iran on showing results from the financial embargo. Condi probably believes she has the acumen to enmesh China in our financial sanctions regime and persuade Beijing to abandon its support of Iran in the UN Security Council. People who pay attention to the Iran sanctions regime have noted that pressuring European and Japanese banks to cease transactions with Iranian entities have simply pushed the business into China's and Russia's hands. As Warren Strobel wrote for McClatchy: Yet in some cases, when Western companies and banks move out of Iran, Chinese or other Asian firms simply move in and take the business. And if we were dealing with the same reckless enthusiasts who controlled foreign policy in 2005-06, that self-defeating outcome would probably be the end of it. But I give Condoleezza Rice and Stuart Levey more credit than that. They're smarter, and they also have the experience of the North Korea debacle to instruct them. This time their menace is somewhat silken, in fact inchoate, compared with the full-bore frothing that characterized the anti-North Korea effort. From McClatchy: "The financial war began in earnest a year ago, when Treasury Department teams began briefing foreign governments and banks on intelligence the U.S. government had gathered on Iran. Among the findings was that the Central Bank of Iran was trying to conceal its role in financial transactions in which it was involved, a practice on which banks look askance, said the senior Treasury official. "That's just as suspicious as it sounds," he said." Huh? Compare that to the incendiary accusations against Kim Jung Il used to justify the North Korea financial embargo. The Evil Dwarf of Pyongyang was accused of running a Soprano State, raping our currency with his vile Supernotes, peddling fake Viagra and phony smokes, and ruthlessly trafficking in forbidden rhino horn. Efforts were made to shut down any access by any North Korean entity to any bank anywhere, apparently on pretty flimsy pretexts in some cases. Let's assume that subtlety, stronger dossiers, and a more incremental approach to chipping away at Iran's access to the world's financial system is going on today. Anyway. My speculation is this: The U.S. isn't threatening China directly this time. Instead we are seeking to assemble a coalition of willing and coerced European and Asian partners to present China with a united front. The next step in isolating Iran will be to have the European and Japanese banks go to China and tell Beijing they can't risk doing business with Chinese banks if there is any fear of Iranian taint-because the US government is threatening to land on them like a ton of bricks. So the Chinese had better decide whether they want to continue to do business with fine, enormous banks like UBS, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank (who have already severed Iran ties, probably under U.S. pressure)-not to mention all those US banks required under US law not to handle Iranian business-or do they want to risk it for the sake of creepy little Iran? Better to back off and back the harsher U.N. Security Council sanctions the U.S. is now attempting to orchestrate. I'm sure that Condi Rice is working the diplomatic channels as well, telling the Chinese as well as a Beltway journalist or two that success of her financial sanctions strategy is the only thing that stands between the world and another Dick Cheney-perpetrated military outrage in the Middle East. That, I think, would be a futile and dangerous game for Secretary Rice to play. For the United States, which prior to 9/11 had not witnessed a large scale hostile foreign action on its soil since Pearl Harbor, is used to dishing out violence, not taking it in. War in the homeland is an existential catastrophe and a terrifying journey into an unknown territory of fear, confusion, self-doubt, and danger. Countries like China and Iran, on the other hand, have living memories of numerous battles within their boundaries that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives A brief review of the "Forgotten Gulf War"in the 1980s (Iraqi aggression, 8 years, 500,000+ Iranian casualties, chemical warfare, missile attacks on Teheran) and the Chinese Anti-Japanese War (Japanese aggression, 8 years, 19 million Chinese fatalities, total war against civilians in some areas) might provide some useful perspective for our policymakers. To countries like Iran and China, war is catastrophic and terrible-but sometimes it is unavoidable and often it is survivable. That means that the clocks don't stop and the world doesn't end when the first bomb falls. It means victims and bystanders start thinking about the post-battle challenges-and opportunities-before they occur. Does Beijing want to permanently alienate the Iranians by going along with a US financial embargo and sanctions regime? Or does it want to be the steadfast ally who extends a helping humanitarian, economic, and diplomatic hand to the enraged Iranians as they dig out of the rubble of the attack? I wouldn't bet on the first option, Condi. Hopefully she has another plan to forestall a military attack if the financial sanctions campaign recapitulates its North Korean failure. Like engagement, maybe? But it doesn't look like the debate has been framed that way. McClatchy, again: "More broadly, nations from Cuba to Myanmar have managed to survive under economic assault, manipulating sanctions to blame outside forces and rally support from their people. "Another obstacle is here at home, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faces stiff opposition from hard-liners led by Cheney. The Cheney camp argues that diplomacy and pressure are doomed to fail to stop Iran from going nuclear." So, in response to a potential weaponization of Iranian nuclear assets that will occur, if ever, years after the Bush administration leaves office, we've got a false choice between a sanctions policy that failed against North Korea, and an aggressive military strategy that failed in Iraq. Remind me, what are we paying these people for? As a P.S., I realize I haven't addressed the issue of addressing Russian intransigence on Iran. "Russia is hiding behind China" is the current administration meme, which I don't find a particularly persuasive piece of wishful thinking. It would seem that the U.S. strategy is to peel China away from Iran and hope that Russia has no stomach for standing alone in the Security Council to defend Teheran's nuclear program. Good luck with that. I think that the increasingly assertive Russians are less interested than ever in dancing the diplomatic quadrille with the United States. China Hand edits the very interesting website China Matters. Your Ad Here

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