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Today's
Stories
January 14
/ 15, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
What
the FBI Repairman Wore When He Tried to Bug Edward Said
JoAnn Wypijewski
What
is an Antiwar Movement?
James Petras
The State of the Empire, 2006
Ron Jacobs
Fifteen Years of War: Who's Better Off?
Brian Cloughley
Fly Boys and Lie Boys: Smart-Bombing Iraqi Families While They
Sleep
Marianne McDonald
The Madness of Ajax: a Play for Our Time
Bruce Tyler Wick
Bush on Torture Echoes Charles I on Arbitrary Imprisonment
Fred Gardner
A Last, Desperate Plea to Stay in Canada
Flavia Alaya
Victory at Passaic County Jail
Gary Leupp
A Neocon Plan to Plant WMDs?
Dr. Susan Block
Peeping Tom in the Bush: Nonconsenual Voyeurism and the NSA
Nicole Colson
The House Jack Built: The Abramoff Giude to Buying Friends and
Influencing Politics
Jeffrey Kolakowski
Senator as Illusionist: the Hypocrisies of John McCain
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Stepford Hearings of Samuel Alito: The Senator, the Weepy
Wife and a Secret Annoiting
Charles Thomson
Is Serota Dead in the Water?: the Ofili Scandal at the Tate
Website of the Weekend
Historians Against the War
January 13,
2006
Ralph Nader
The
Two Questions the Senate Should Have Asked Alito
Leonard Weinglass
The
Singular Story of the Cuban Five
Amira Hass
Prisoners in Their Own Land: 800,000 Palestinians Sealed Off
by IDF in West Bank
Chris Kutalik
/ Jennifer Biddle
Airline Workers Fight Back
Lawrence R. Velvel
Alito and the Democrats
Dave Lindorff
Eight Who Dared: a (Short) Congressional Honor Roll
Mike Whitney
Countdown to War with Iran?
David Price
How
the FBI Spied on Edward Said
January 12,
2006
Jennifer Van
Bergen
The
Unitary Executive: Why the Bush Doctrine Violates the Constitution
Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith
Command Responsibility: Torture and Legal Accountability
Lawrence R.
Velvel
Alito
Refuses to Answer Fundamental Questions
Ralph Nader / Robert Weissman
Corporations, Originalism and the Bill of Rights: an Open Letter
to Justice Scalia
Jackie Corr
Killing the Big Sky's Golden Goose: Marc Racicot and the Deregulation
of Montana Power
Jared Bernstein
The Wage Doldrums
Russell D.
Hoffman
New Horizons in Space, New Lows in Government
Aubrey Streit
I Was Born in a Small Town: the Fate of Rural America
Clancy Sigal
Hugh
Thompson and My Lai: He Broke Ranks; He Did the Right Thing
Website of the Day
Nukes in Space
January 11,
2006
Kevin Zeese
NSA
Spied on Baltimore Peace Group (And They've Got the Documents
That Prove It)
Ray McGovern
The
Big Wiretap
Allan Maass
/ Joe Allen
Schwarzenegger's
Hit List: Smearing Mandela, Killing Tookie
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
Snatching at King's Legacy: Mythmaking, Profiteering & Outright
Distortions
Annie Murphy
Evo Morales' Sweater
Allan Lichtman
Abramoff's
Kind of Big Government
Ramzy Baroud
Politics of Chaos: Gaza's Turmoil in Context
Joshua Frank
MoveOn Surrenders to Hillary
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
"Eating
Palestine for Breakfast": the Real Sharon
Website of
the Day
Memoirs of Rummy's Geisha
January 10,
2006
Uri Avnery
The
Post-Sharon Landscape: Three Fingers, No Fist
Saul Landau
Different
Americas
Noam Chomsky
Beyond the Ballot: Iraq, Iran and China
Brian J. Foley
Playing with Fire: Congress and Executive Power
Lenni Brenner
The War Within the Antiwar Movement
Ronan Sheehan
Sheehan to Sheehan: Cindy Sheehan's Irish Interview
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Con Jobs
January 9,
2006
Behzad Yaghmaian
Who
is to Blame for the Deaths of the Sudanese Refugees?
George Bisharat
US
Aid to Israel is Out of Hand
Dave Lindorff
How the US Press Squelches Bush Impeachment Drive
Norman Solomon
Smoke a Marlboro, Then an Iraqi: How Media War Images Distort
Not Inform
Christopher Brauchli
The Generosity of Credit Card Companies
Aharon Shabtai
A Poet's Letter on the Occupation
Andrew Cockburn
How
Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003?
January 7 /
8, 2006
Lawrence Velvel
The
NYT's Unconscionable Decision to Sit on the NSA Story for a Year
James Petras
AIPAC on Trial: Them or US
J.L. Chestnut
Racism and Injustice in Alabama's Courts
Mike Ely
The Dead Miners in Sago
Andrew Wilson
The Dying of Ariel Sharon
Lila Rajiva
Two Moms Go to Capitol Hill
William Cook
The Rape of Palestine
Ramor Ryan
The Sub Motorcycle Diaries: On the Road with the Zapatistas
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff
An Interview with Michael Scheuer on the CIA's Rendition Program
Peter Montague
Inherit the Wind: the Global Spread of GMO Crops
Ron Jacobs
Would Ethan Allen Pay to Protest?
Neve Gordon
Images of Real Eco-Terrorism in Twaneh
Fred Gardner
Business as Usual in San Diego
Josh Mahon
Idaho Timber Industry Leader Advocates Violence Against Green's
Mom
Dr. Susan Block
Abramoff Family Values: the Lobbyist Who Screwed Us All
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel
Website of the Weekend
Bush Crimes Commission
January 6,
2006
José
Pertierra
Posada
Carriles May Soon Hit the Streets
Joe Allen
Gary Freeman's Struggle: a Black Radical from the 1960s Fights
Extradition to the US
Winslow T. Wheeler
Huge Defense Budget, Lousy Equipment
John Bomar
A Former NSA Officer on Snoopgate: the Squawkers Should be Congratulated
Jason Leopold
Snoop and Shred
Norman Solomon
Axis of Fanatics: Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad
Robert Pollin
Remembering
Harry Magdoff: the Man Who Explained the Empire
January 5,
2006
Scott Boehm
Big
Profits, Buried Lives: Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans
Zoltan Grossman
New
Challenges for the Antiwar Movement
Heather Gray
Whistling
Dixie Yet Again
Haninah Levine
Simple
is Dangerous: the Pentagon's Plan for a Manhattan Project on
IEDs
Pierre Tristam
The Sham of Homeland Security: a West Virginia Parable
Remi Kanazi
Stroke of Luck?: Political Hemorrhage in Israel
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon
Meets His Maker
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
What Hillary Clinton Doesn't Know About Palestine
January 4,
2006
Ron Jacobs
Pity
the Miner: A-Diggin' My Bones
Lila Rajiva
Terror
Hits Bangalore
Huibin Amee
Chew
Why
the War is Sexist
Pat Williams
How the West Turned: Biting the Hands That Steal
Linda Milazzo
The House That George and Jack Built: Ownership Society Meets
the Entrepreneurial Style
Nick Dearden
The Fantasy of "Even-Handedness": Blair's Cynical Policy
on Palestine
James Petras
Evo
Morales: All Growl, No Claws?
Website of
the Day
Rat Out a Lobbyist for Jesus
January 3,
2006
James Ridgeway
Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia and 9/11: How Much Did the Bush Administration Know?
Laith al-Saud
Iraqi
Intellectuals and the Occupation: an Interview with Dr. Saad
Jawad
Dick J. Reavis
Border
Walls: the View from Mexico
Joshua Frank
Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran
Rochelle Gause
Inside Rafah: Collective Punishment as Normalcy
Missy Comley
Beattie
How My Mother Went from a Republican to a Screaming Progressive
Paul de Rooij
A Glossary of Dispossession
January 2,
2006
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Gestapo Administration
Clancy Sigal
A Trip to the Far Side of Madness
Cindy Sheehan
A Tour of Europe: Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes
Alexander Cockburn
A
NYT Editorial Contemplates Iraq
Dec. 31 / Jan.
1, 2005/6
Patrick Cockburn
The
Year in Iraq
Alexander Cockburn
Who Are We to Complain?: a Diary of 2005
Ralph Nader
Rumsfeld vs. the Military: a Pentagon of Loyalists and Enforcers
James Petras
The Politics of Language: "Escalation" or "Retaliation"
in Israeli Attacks on Palestinians
Peter Montague
A Darker Bioweapons Future
J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Black Forever: Race, Class and Activism in the South
Vijay Prashad
My California Vacation: Conversations with Indian Americans
P. Sainath
Farm Suicides in Vidharbha
James Brooks
The Spoils of War: Israel's Corruption was Inevitable
Eileen E. Schell
The Farmer Wants a Wife: Hayseeds and Hickxploitation in the
Land of Reality TV
Christopher
Brauchli
Birds of a Feather: George and Vlad
Jo Guldi
Politics, Gay Marriage and Christianity
Fred Gardner
America's Only Legal Grower
Ben Tripp
A Hapless New Year
St. Clair /
Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening To This Week
Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, LaMorticella, Buknatski, Davies, Ford and Bear
Dog
Website of
the Weekend
Commit Bloggamy with Dr. Suzy
December 30,2005
Evo Morales
I
Believe Only in the Power of the People
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
The
Toxic Air in Black America
Dave Lindorff
Bush's NSA Spying Jeopardizes National Security
Gary Leupp
Targeting Iran and Syria: Goss Builds Case for Turkey-Based Attacks
Ron Jacobs
A
Dead New Year's Eve
Brian Concannon
Down
in Haiti, the Chickens are Coming Home to Roost
Sandra Lucas
Inside TeenScreen: the Making of Mental Patients
T.W. Croft
The
Wind Has Changed: Gulf Storms, Fables of Reconstruction and Hard
Times for the Big Easy
Website of
the Day
Images
of Mass Consumption
December 29,
2005
Norman Solomon
Journalists
Should Expose Secrets, Not Keep Them
Missy Comley
Beattie
Christmas
Without Chase
Dave Zirin
Over the Edge: the Year in Sports
Kevin Zeese
Top
10 Antiwar Stories of 2005
Derrick O'Keefe
Bolivia and Venezuela Offer an Alternative to Neo-Liberalism
Sam Bahour
Turning the Page in Palestine, Again
Macdonald Stainsby
What's Behind Paul Martin's Broadside Against Bush?
Bill &
Kathleen Christison
Let's Stop a US/Israel War on Iran
Website of the Day
Deconstructing the Democrats
December 28,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The
Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?
Lila Rajiva
Operation Romeo: Lessons on Terror Laws from India
Amira Hass
The Humanitarian Lie
Joshua Frank
Let the Drilling Begin: Iraq's IMF Loan
David Swanson
Leaking Top Secret Lies
Richard Thieme
High Time for Torture
Paul Craig
Roberts
Three
Books to Wake You Up
Website of the Day
Conyers Report: "Constitution in Crisis"
December 27,
2005
Evan Jones
Whither
the National Guard?
Uri Avnery
The Peretz Shuffle
Mike Whitney
Pop Goes the Bubble!
Gideon Levy
Dusty Trail to Death
David Swanson
Kurt Vonnegut: a Man Without a Country
Norman Solomon
NSA Spied on UN Diplomats During Push for Invasion of Iraq
December 26,
2005
Lawrence R.
Velvel
The
Usurpers of Our Freedoms
Lance Olsen
The Toughest Challenge for Intelligent Design
Ben Terrall
No Holiday Compassion for Haiti's Political Prisoners
Scott Boehm
Santa Drove a Bulldozer
Charlie Ehlen
A Vietnam Vet's Appraisal of Bush
Tom Kerr
The Atheist Dad at Christmas
December 24/25,
2005
Aleander Cockburn
The
Year of Vanished Credibility
James Petras
Iran in the Crosshairs: Israel's Deadline
Ralph Nader
Talkin'
About the "I"-Word
Lila Rajiva
Horowitz's New Project: Begging for Brownshirts
Fred Gardner
Dialogue with the DEA
Ron Jacobs
When Impeachment was Taken Seriously
Dave Lindorff
Xmas Games for a Gitmo World
Gary Leupp
Happy Birthday Mithras!: the True Meaning of December 25th
Saul Landau
Bush's Year in Review: a Report Card from Santa
John Chuckman
A Christmas Tale for Bushtime
Dr. Susan Block
Merry XXX-mas!
St. Clair / Vest / Pollack
/ Donnelly
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Holt, Jones, Landau, Ross and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Merry Xmas, From the Beatles
December 23,
2005
John Ross
The
Corrido of Death Row: Mexico Ends the Death Penalty
Chris Floyd
Gospel
Truth: Bush Hypocrisy, Radical Holiness and Woody Guthrie
Lawrence Mishel
/ Ross Eisenbrey
The
Economy in a Nutshell
Joanne Mariner
Bringing
Torture into Court: the Loopholes in McCain's Bill
Eric Johnson-Debaufre
The Trew Law of Free Democracies?
Ray McGovern
Cheney the Bully; Rockefeller the Coward
J. L. Chestnut,
Jr.
What
White America Doesn't Hear
Website of
the Day
BB King: What I've Learned This Year
December 22,
2005
Ingmar Lee
The
Citizen's Metamorphosis: I Awoke an Object of Suspicion
Elisa Salasin
Classrooms
in Cages
Christopher
Brauchli
Absolut Bush: "I Swear to Upturn and Rear End the Constitution
of the United States"
Robin Blackburn
Rudolf Meidner, a Visionary Pragmatist
Evelyn Pringle
Dan Olmstead, Autism & the Dangers of Thimerosal
Amira Hass
A 14-Year Old's Prison Journey: "I Refused and He Hit Me"
Francis A.
Boyle
Iraq and the Laws of War: US as "Belligerent Occupant"
Stew Albert
The
Spies Who Thought We Were Messy
Website of
the Day
How to Reach a Human Voice
December 21,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
One
Nation, Under Prosecutors: Presumed Guilty
Lila Rajiva
A Short History of Radio Free Iraq
Joshua Frank
Nancy Pelosi's Truth
Dave Zirin
The Bray of Pigs: Bush Nixes Beisbol Cubano
Ramzy Baroud
US Image Problem Rooted in History, Not Media
Sonia Nettnin
Connect the Dots: Decoding Bush's Mumbo Jumbo
Ben Saul
Torture as Calculated Policy
Jonathan Cronin
Anniversary of a Handshake: Cherry-picking History in Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq
Election Spells Total Defeat for US
Website of
the Day
Nixon on Presidential Power
December 20,
2005
Jackie Corr
Natural
Gas: a Montana Tragedy
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
Nothing
New About NSA Spying on Americans
Michael Donnelly
"Eco Terrorism": Cui Bono?
Gian Paulo
Accardo
Empire of Shame: a Conversation with Jean Ziegler
Pierre Tristam
Trifler, Fibber, Sophist, Spy: How Bush Flouted the Constitution
Norman Solomon
The Foulest Media Performances of the Year
Sen. Robert Byrd
No President is Above the Law
Dave Lindorff
Missing
Black Boxes in WTC Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by
NTSB, Concealed by FBI
Website of the Day
FBI's Spy Files: Got Yours Yet?
December 19,
2005
Mike Marqusee
The
Global War on Civil Liberties
Gary Leupp
Feds Ask Student: "Why are You Reading that Little Red Book?"
Ron Jacobs
The Antiwar Movement, the Democrats and the Delusions of Bushworld
John Blair
Stealing the Golden Shovel: Lessons on Civil Disobedience
Gideon Levy
Sadism at the Qalandiyah Checkpoint
Kevin Zeese
The
Global War on Civil Liberties
Missy Comley Beattie
Warnings from a Military Man and Dad
Don Santina
Ride 'Em Brush Cutter: Cowboy Imagery and the American Presidency
Website of the Day
A Call for Justice in Palestine
December 17
/ 18, 2005
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Time-Delayed
Journalism: the NYT and the NSA's Illegal Spying Operation
Gabriel Kolko
The
Decline of the American Empire
Susan Alcorn
Texas: Three Days and Two Nights
Werther
The Democrats are an Impotent and Tolerated Opposition Party
Ralph Nader
The Senator Without Guile: Proxmire of Wisconsin
Patrick Cockburn
Counting Ballots and Bodies in Baghdad
Fred Gardner
When Prosecutors Deceive: Did the Feds Frame Bryan Epis?
Dave Lindorff
Spy Scandal Far Larger Than Just NSA
Ned Sublette
Essence is Gasoline
Lee Sustar
The Class War Economy
Jason Leopold
Did Karl Rove Destroy Evidence in Plame Case?
Laura Carlsen
Report from Hong Kong: Deciphering the Language of Globalization
Jeff White
Teacher Fired for Talking About Peace?
Ray McGovern
Torture Between the Lines
Chris Floyd
Pale Fire: the White Death of Fallujah
William Loren Katz
Remembering the First Quagmire at Xmastime: Zachary Taylor vs.
the Seminoles
Rose Miriam
Elizalde
Mashenka and the Bear: a Tale for Our Time
Greg Moses
Pinter's Provocation: Self Love in America
Heather Gray
Privatizing the Social Contract
Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience: the Sequel
St Clair /
Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Landau, Engel and Albert
Website of
the Day
At Least Homeland Security Believes that Mao Still Matters
December 16,
2005
Tom Kerr
CNN's
Goddess of Vengeance: What's Not to Love About Nancy Grace?
Mark Engler
The
WTO in Hong Kong: Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty?
John Bomar
When Ollie North Came to Hot Springs
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Votes; Now What?
Pierre Tristam
Iraq, Ourselves
William S. Lind
The Fine Art of Withdrawal
Cyril Neville
Why I'm Not Going Back to New Orleans
Robert Jensen
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Reason, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Saul Landau
Bolivian
Democracy and the US: a History Lesson
Website
CounterPunch & Dr. Price Vanquish Anthropologist Spies
December 15,
2005
Oren Ben-Dor
The
Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Palestine
Stan Cox
"Agroterrorists"
Needn't Bother
Joshua Frank
Organic Inconsistencies: Federal Food Politics
Ben Terrall
Waivers for State Terror: Bush and the Indonesian Generals
Patrick Cockburn
Silence Descends on Baghdad
Monica Benderman
What Peace Needs
Walter A. Davis
Fear and Loathing in San Quentin
Vijay Prashad
Our
Torture Problem
Website of
the Day
Hourly Wages After Four Years of "Recovery"
December 14, 2005
Patrick Cockburn
Iran
Poised to Win Iraqi Elections
Paul Craig
Roberts
Lethal
Developments
Lawrence R. Velvel
A Bore Called Bob: On Trying to Read Woodward
Wayne Garcia
The Summer of Sami
John Sugg
Preach Peace, Sami; Get Truthful Prosecutors
Gary Leupp
Bush and the Constitution: "Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper"
Ray McGovern
Torture: a Defining Moment
Alan Maass
They Murdered a Peacemaker
April Hurley, MD
NPR Swallows Bush's Guestimate on Iraqi Dead
Kevin Alexander
Gray
Richard Pryor's Mirror on America
December 13,
2005
Stephen T.
Banko, III
Heroes
Patrick Cockburn
America's
War So Far: 1000 Days of Getting It Wrong
Laura Carlsen
What's at Play at the WTO
Karl Grossman
Nuclear Routlette in the Troposhere: Another NASA Plutonium Launch
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Original Sin
Kevin Zeese
Report from the International Peace Conference in London
Norman Solomon
At the Gates of San Quentin
Michael G.
Smith
Ending the Death Penalty
Stew Albert
California Killers
Bob Dylan
Song for Tookie: George Jackson
Phil Gasper
California Murders Tookie Williams: a Report from San Quentin
Website of
the Day
Boot Hill
December 12,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Defenders of Torture
Lawrence R.
Velvel
George the Disconnected
Jessica Stewart
My Husband is at the Gates of Gitmo
George Bisharat
Busharon: a Fusion of Like Minds
Nate Mezmer
Killing Tookie Williams: If a Black Man Dies in America, Does
It Make a Sound?
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
Richard Pryor Wasn't Crazy
Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience
Seth Sandronsky
Thank You, Richard Pryor
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq:
the Beginning of the End
Website of
the Day
Wrestling for Peace
December 10 / 11, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
All
the News That's Fit to Buy
Landau / Hassen
The Condemned of Nablus
Ralph Nader
The
Widening Wasteland of American Media
Linn Washington, Jr
The Philly Media and Mumia: When They Don't Bash, They Ignore
Bill Christison
Apathy, US Culpability and Human Rights Day
Mike Ferner
The Courage of Jim Loney
Elizabeth Schulte
Abortion and the Bush Court
Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner
Murder in Jerusalem
Linda S. Heard
Saddam's Trial: Grandstanding in the Theater of the Absurd
Ingmar Lee
A Kayak Journey to Vancouver Island's Wildest Forest
Ray McGovern
Lies, Torture and the Six Blind Mice
John Chuckman
Torture and White Phosphorous: the Moral Hell of Condi Rice
John Ryan
An Honorary Degree in Child Sacrifice?: Madeleine Albright and
US Foreign Policy
Dick J. Reavis
From Waco to Baghdad
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Hired Pens
Behzad Yaghmaian
Trapped at the Gates of the European Union
Aseem Shrivastava
The Winter in Delhi, 1984
John Ross
Bushlandia in Black and White
Ben Tripp
War, What is It Good For?
St. Clair / Pollack / Vest
/ Despair
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Hassen, Bear Dog, Ford, Mickey Z, Albert & Engel
Website of the Week
Burn a Brick for Bush
December 9,
2005
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Roots
of Gitmo Torture Lie Close to Home
Dave Zirin
/ Mike Stark
On
Seeing Wesley Baker Die
Patrick Cockburn
Blair
Tries to Cover Up $1.3 Billion Iraqi Theft
Alexander Cockburn
Murtha Returns to Attack; Flays Bush
Lila Rajiva
Shooting the Mentally Ill
Gary Leupp
White House Liars on the Defensive
Jason Leopold
Rove Running Out of Answers, Time
Bruce K. Gagnon
So These Are the Democrats?
Andrew Cockburn
Meet
Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrats' New Gatekeeper
Website of the Day
"X-mas Time for Visa"
December 8,
2005
Kathy Kelly
Blessed
are the Merciful in Baghdad
James Petras
The Venezuelan Election: Chavez Wins, Bush Loses (Again)
William S.
Lind
Questionable Assumptions: Dissecting the Stategy for Victory
Laura Carlsen
The Strange Mission of Vicente Fox: Free Trade and Mexico
Justin Akers
Bush's Border War
Thomas Graham, Jr
A Nuclear Pearl Harbor in Outer Space?
Norman Solomon
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam
Tariq Ali /
Robin Blackburn
The
Lost John Lennon Interview
Website of
the Day
Pigs at the Trough of War
December 7,
2005
John Ryan
Dershowitz vs. Chomsky: a Review of the Harvard Debate
Gary Leupp
Suicide
Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq
Fran Quigley
How the ACLU Didn't Steal Christmas
Jeremy Brecher
/ Brendan Smith
Bush
War Crimes: the Posse Gathers
Joshua Frank
Bird Dogging Hillary
William W.
Morgan
Rendition, Torture and Democracy
Dave Lindorff
A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu Jamal
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam: "Come Visit My Cage"
Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture
Website of
the Day
Witnesses to Torture
December 6,
2005
Ron Jacobs
No
One is Illegal; No One is an Infidel
Patrick Cockburn
Inside
Saddam's Trial: Tales of the Human Meat Grinder
Yifat Susskind
Death, Politics and the Condom: African Women Confront Bush's
AIDS Policy
Mike Whitney
How Greenspan Skewered America
Pat Williams
Public Land Should Stay Public
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
to Europe: Trust Us
Website of
the Day
Debunking Woodward
December 5,
2005
John Walsh
The
Lies of John Edwards: What Did the Democrats Know and When Did
They Know It?
Brian Cloughley
The Poor Dead: the Relative
Value of Human Lives
Mokhiber /
Weissman
The Corporate Crime Quiz
Robert Jensen
How Big Money Eviscerates the First Amendment
Norman Solomon
Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Ignores Iraq Air War Plan
Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to the Justice Department: Pfizer May Have Violated
Federal Laws When They Fired Me
Lila Rajiva
The
Torture-Go-Round: CIA's Rendition Flights to Secret Prisons
Website of the Day
National Day of Counter-Recruitment
December 3 / 4, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
The
Revolt of the Generals
Lawrence R.
Velvel
Iraq,
Brains and Lies
Rev. William Alberts
The Forgotten Christmas Story: Saying No to King Herod
Saul Landau
Latino
Troops Have Parents
Ralph Nader
Consumerama
Paul Craig
Roberts
Don't Confuse the Jobs Hype with the Facts
Mike Whitney
Blood Feast: Celebrating Executions in America
Allan Lichtman
The DeLay Scheme: Blatantly Buying Our Government
Dave Lindorff
A Sudden Rush for the Exits?
Brian Concannon,
Jr.
Haiti's Elections
Fred Gardner
Oregon NORML Honors Growers
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
On Freeing the CPT
Carol Wolman
Remembering the 60s
St. Clair /
Vest / Walker / Pollack
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Free the CPT
December 2,
2005
Stan Goff
An
Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad
Mike Ferner
Beware Iraqization: Melvin Laird, Vietnam and Christmas Bombings
Over Baghdad?
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Constitutional Kamikazes: Padilla's No-Win Dilemma
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Questions
for the President
Manuel Talens
The Chávez Theorem
Peter Phillips
Death By Torture: Media Ignores the Hard Evidence
J.L. Chestnut,
Jr.
Alabama's
Taliban: Judge Roy Moore, Preachers and Dixie Hypocrisy
Website of
the Day
Support the Hampton University Peace Activists!
December 1,
2005
John Walsh,
MD
The
God Gaps
Ron Jacobs
Hard Rain: Toward a Greater Air War in Iraq?
Jenna Orkin
EPA's
Latest Betrayal at Ground Zero
Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's Blunt Message: Forget Palestine
Tiffany Ten
Eyck
Rank and File Resistance to Delphi
Missy Comley Beattie
Home on the Range: Where the Fear and the Animus Play
Eli Stephens
The Reed and Kerry Show
Elaine Cassel
A Government Game of "Gotcha" with Jose Padilla
Website of
the Day
Rare Erotica
|
Weekend
Edition
January 14 / 15, 2006
CounterPunch Diary
What the FBI Repairman
Wore When He Tried to Bug Edward Said
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The FBI was probably tapping Edward
Said's phone right up to the day he died in September of 2003.
A year earlier, when he was already a very sick man, Said was
scheduled to speak at an event at the Kopkind Colony summer session
near Guilford, Vermont. The morning of Friday, August 2, the
day he was scheduled to arrive, John Scagliotti picked up the
phone at the Colony's old farmhouse and found it was dead. He
went to a neighbor to report the fault.
"Within half an hour,"
Scagliotti remembers, "there was a knock at the front door,
and there was a man who said 'I hear you have phone problems'.
Now I am a gay man. I know what a phone service repair man is
meant to look like. In the Village the phone man is a gay icon.
Tool belt, jeans, work shirt, work boots. This man has a madras
shirt, Dockers slacks, brown loafer shoes. [J. Edgar Hoover's
gay icon, from an earlier era. A.C.] He goes to an outside junction
box, and a few minutes later the phone is working. Off he goes."
A month later, in the course
of a complaint to the phone company about an unusually high bill,
Scagliotti suggests that the trouble may have stemmed from something
the repairman did. After further checking the phone company tells
him they'd never sent a repair man that day.
As it happened, shortly thereafter
Said's assistant called in to say Said was too sick to make the
5-hour drive from New York. But had he done so, we can opine
with near certainty that the Bureau would have been ready to
monitor whatever calls he may have placed from rural Vermont.
The reason for the near-certainty is that we now know that the
FBI had begun began spying on Said over 30 years earlier.
David Price is professor of
anthropology at St Martins University in Washington state. As
anyone glancing through his excellent book Threatening
Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist
Anthropologists will know, David is expert at getting secret
government documents, by use of the Freedom of Information Act.
Last year, on behalf of CounterPunch, he requested the FBI's
file on Said.
As those who read Price's
piece here yesterday will have learned, the FBI released
to Price 147 pages of Said's 238 page FBI file. Large sections
of the file remain blacked out, with stamps indicating they remain
Classified Secret until 2030, 25 years after their initial FOIA
processing. Most of the file, Dr Price tells us, documents FBI
surveillance of his legal, public work with American-based Palestinian
political or pro-Arab organizations, while other portions of
the file document the FBI's ongoing investigations of Said as
it monitored his contacts with other Palestinian-Americans.
The FBI's first record of Edward
Said appears in a February 1971 domestic security investigation
of another (unidentified) individual. The FBI collected photographs
of Said from the State Department's passport division and various
news agencies. Said's "International Security" FBI
file was established when an informant gave the FBI a program
from the October 1971, Boston Convention of the Arab-American
University Graduates, where Said chaired a panel on "Culture
and the Critical Spirit".
Employees at Princeton and
Columbia Universities, swiftly and shamefully, gave FBI agents
biographical and education information on Said, and the Harvard
University Alumni Office provided the FBI with detailed information.
Some will say that since he
was a Palestinian, a political one and also a member (before
he broke with Arafat) of the Palestinian National Council, Said
was a legitimate object of concern for the FBI and the Bureau
would have been remiss not to have kept an eye on him.
But labeling Said as a friend
of Arafat misses the point that the FBI's surveillance of this
US citizen found absolutely no evidence that he broke any laws--not
even jaywalking or tape recording songs off the radio. As Price
says, "FBI action needs to be based on demonstrable wrongdoing,
not thought crimes or having unpopular friends. The American
right perhaps understands this better than the left, and given
the anti-Bush flutter I'm hearing on talk radio, they seem to
understand the threat to democracy represented in unfettered
surveillance expeditions."
Another way of viewing the FBI's surveillance of Said is in the
context of their surveillance and harassment of other prominent
activists, people like Martin Luther King, who advocated democratic
lawful solutions to problems of social justice. Price: "Had
the federal government chosen to support rather than harass and
monitor activists willing to work within extant systems like
Said and King, they could have precluded the coming of more radical
and violent efforts. In effect, the FBI's surveillance and harassment
of Said creates the conditions for the development of more violent
efforts to resolve the Palestinian problem. If you spy on and
block those advocating reason, you are aiding and abetting those
who will follow with violence.
Because the FBI has yet to release the whole Said file, Price
says, " we don't know what they are withholding but I wonder
if it doesn't show the sort of illegal wiretapping and surveillance
that we now know that President Bush has illegally charged the
NSA to conduct on an unknown number of Americans. The FBI's unusual
step in re-classifying these files for another quarter century
raises the very real possibility that they did this to hide just
what steps they were taking to spy on Said, I'll challenge this
in an in-house review and my lawyer is gearing up for a suit
in federal court to get a judge to look and see if the FBI was
illegally spying on an American who was breaking no laws."
How To Live Past 90:
"It's A Great Life if You Don't Weaken."
Sanora Babb died on December
31, aged 98. Harry Magdoff died on New Years Day, at 92. Frank
Wilkinson died a day later, at 91.
My line has always been that
to get really old it pays to have been a Commie or at least a
fellow traveler. In younger years they tended to walk a lot,
selling the party paper. They talked a lot and above all, they
never stopped thinking. The quickest way to kill someone is to
send them off to quasi-solitary, torn from their comfortable
nest and thrown into a nursing home or into managed care, where
people talk about them at the tops of their voices, referring
to them in the third person. You can see them dying before your
eyes, their brains turned to mush. It takes about a year to kill
them off, unless a "surprise birthday party" wipes
them out even earlier.
Trotskyists tend to be more
feverish and stressed out, hence less likely to turn the bend
into their Nineties. As for Maoists (over here), I don't know.
As Chou En Lai answered, when asked what he thought of the French
Revolution, Too soon to tell. The ex-Maoists I know are mostly
still in their mid-60s.
I don't know whether Sweezy
and Magdoff ever took a day's exercise. When I used to see them
in the editorial offices of the Monthly Review they looked
as though they'd been marinating in tobacco smoke there for decades.
They certainly thought a lot, to great effect. They liked Mao
too.
Frank Wilkinson was a feisty
soul. He led the fight for public housing in Los Angeles in the
late 1930s and 1940s, which earned him the savage enmity of the
Chandlers and thus the Los Angeles Times. If his plans had gone
right, we'd have public housing built by Richard Neutra instead
of Dodger Stadium. He did time for refusing to testify before
Congress, then went on to be a great campaigner for the First
Amendment, just like his friend and fellow Communist, Dick Criley
who died a few years ago up in Carmel Highlands, also in his
high nineties. Dick's sister, Cynthia Williams, is still peppy
after a tremendous ninetieth (NOT a surprise) birthday party
last fall in Carmel Highlands. Her wonderful piece of advice
to the partygoers, "It's a great life if you don't weaken."
Sanora Babb obviously didn't
weaken, though she endured some zingers in her long span, the
worst being the fact that she wrote a novel about migrant workers
in 1939 that was to be published by Random House, until Random
House's other novelist on migrant workers, John Steinbeck, scored
a huge hit with The Grapes of Wrath. Bennett Cerf cancelled
Babb's novel, Whose
Names Are Unknown. It had to wait 65 years until it was
published to great acclaim in 2004. Babb thought she was a better
writer than Steinbeck and some smart people agree with her.
Her obit in the Los Angeles
Times was vivid:
She was born in an Otoe Indian
community in Oklahoma
in 1907, the year the state was admitted to the union. As the
Los Angeles Times obit recounted, "As a child she followed
her itinerant father's restless path across Oklahoma to a broomcorn
farm in Colorado, where her grandfather had homesteaded an arid
tract of land. She and her family lived with him in a one-room
dugout, an underground room dug out of the dirt. She was bitten
by a rat, witnessed the stillbirth of a brother and gave up precious
belongings to help her family survive repeated crop failures.
Her grandfather taught her
to read from a volume about the adventures of legendary frontiersman
Kit Carson and newspaper articles about murders and scandals
that he had plastered on the dugout walls for insulation.
Reading on though the obit,
I came to this passage:
Babb joined the Communist Party
and, like many other left-leaning writers of her generation,
sought foreign adventures, visiting the Soviet Union in 1936
and reporting on the Spanish Civil War for the British journal
This Week.
Now my father Claud's famous
newsletter, which he published from the early 30s on, was called
The Week. He fought in the Spanish Civil War. I asked
myself, Was there another journal, This Week? A day or
two later the LAT ran a correction, noting that "The journal
was called The Week, and she did not report on the war but edited
accounts of it."
So the beautiful Sanora (described
as such in the obit) sat in London, in The Week's dingy
offices on Victoria St, editing my father's dispatches from the
front. Alas, the beautiful Jean Ross, to whom my father was married
at the time, is no longer around to ask for her memories, though
I think she spent some time in Spain with my father. By 1938
Sanora was back in California, working for the Farm Security
Administration, writing copies notes on the tent camps and protests
of the migrant workers. She apparently showed these notes to
Steinbeck, and of course also used them as factual buttress for
her novel.
Jean, the woman whom Isherwood
drew on for the character of Sally Bowles, was also a Communist,
but fell far short of the lefty longevity I'm touting, dying
in her early sixties, just like her daughter Sarah, my half sister,
whose wonderful detective novels (Thus
Was Adonis Murdered, The
Sirens Sang of Murder, The
Sibyl in Her Grave) should be on every shelf. They were certainly
both women who never stopped thinking and in Sarah's case at
least, talking. Sarah smoked a pipe, which is what killed her.
I don't know about Jean. A wonderful person, though her's was
a quieter soul.
I should add that my father's
first wife, Hope Hale Davis, my niece Laura Flanders' grandmother,
has only just died. A Communist in the 1930s, Hope lived to be
100. I saw her in Cambridge, Mass., just after she had reached
three digits and she certainly hadn't stopped thinking, confiding
her vitriolic views on Bush whom she reckoned "must be very
bad in bed."
Sanora Babb was married to
the great cinematographer, James Wong Howe. They got together
in the late 30s, but couldn't get married at the time because
of California's race laws, fervently espoused by the loathsome
Chandlers of that era. She wrote a number of books, and had pieces
in two editions of Best American Short Stories, which
came out in the early Fifties. Around the samer time my father
had a very good one in Best American Detective Stories, called
"Total Recall". I think it kept us in the chips for
months. I had "Heatherdown" in Best American Stories,
around 1984 but I don't think I ever got a dime.
And If You
Want to Grow Really Old
My daughter Daisy calls from
London to tell me she's reading a book, The
Spirit-Wrestlers, about the Dukhobors by Philip Marsden
in which he quotes a Russian book called May You Live to be
200. This book cites the work of a professor at Baku's Institute
for Advanced Training for Physicians. The prof spent years interviewing
people who'd lived to be very, very old. Some common features
he deduced:
A diet of 2,500 3000
calories a day, limited alchohol (whatever that means), great
amounts of tea, no coffee, plenty of pomegranates, not much bread,a
great deal of dairy produce, boiled lean meat, many walnuts.
Work routine important. Work
all your life. Walk at least 5 kms a day.
Attitude: avoid negative thoughts
and excessive emotions. One 155-year old said he'd never envied
anyone and he didn't see people who annoyed him.
Sex: continue regularly. Many
oldsters who'd procreated at advanced age ascribe potency to
honey and walnuts.
Other things in book: Pushkin
knew lots of old people. The oldest person was a woman of 194
who could thread a needle. She died by being swept off a path
by an avalanche. A woman in the 1950s, at age of 154, could recall
meeting Pushkin and Nekrasov.
And Best
Get Along with Your Cat
This from AP, January 2.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Police aren't
sure how else to explain it. But when an officer walked into
an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan
striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor.
The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed
having fallen out of his wheelchair.
Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy,
must have hit the right buttons to call 911.
"I know it sounds kind
of weird," Officer Patrick Daugherty said, unsuccessfully
searching for some other explanation.
Rosheisen said he couldn't
get up because of pain from osteoporosis and ministrokes that
disrupt his balance. He also wasn't wearing his medical-alert
necklace and couldn't reach a cord above his pillow that alerts
paramedics that he needs help.
Daugherty said police received
a 911 call from Rosheisen's apartment, but there was no one on
the phone. Police called back to make sure everything was OK,
and when no one answered, they decided to check things out.
That's when Daugherty found
Tommy next to the phone.
Rosheisen got the cat three
years ago to help lower his blood pressure. He tried to train
him to call 911, unsure if the training ever stuck.
The phone in the living room
is always on the floor, and there are 12 small buttons _ including
a speed dial for 911 right above the button for the speaker phone.
"He's my hero," Rosheisen
said.
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