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America's First Terror War
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Today's Stories May 19 / 20, 2007 Andrew Cockburn May 18, 2007 Adam Jones Sharon Smith Christopher Brauchli Peter Rost,
MD Denise Maloney Pictou David Swanson Ali Khan Susan Rosenthal,
M.D. Samer Assad CP News Service Website of the Day
May 17, 2007 Tariq Ali Yifat Susskind Dave Zirin Brian J. Foley W. John Green Eric Johnson-DeBaufre Badruddin Khan Martha Rosenberg China Hand Dan Vojir Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Ashley Dawson Joshua Frank Corporate Crime
Reporter Ray McGovern Glen Ford Joe Bageant Sonja Karkar Mickey S. Huff John Chuckman Kaz Dziamka Website of
the Day
May 15, 2007 Michael Neumann Patrick Cockburn Ashley Smith Marc Gardner Dave Lindorff Ben Terrall Ron Jacobs Harvey Wasserman Marcus Mabry Dr. Susan Block Website of the Day
May 14, 2007 Jennifer Roesch Jeffrey St.
Clair George Bisharat Diane Wachtell Ramzy Baroud Rosemary and
Walter Brasch Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Roberto Rodriguez Jonathan Culp Website of
the Day
May 12 / 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Diane Farsetta Ralph Nader Jean Bricmont Marcus Breen Joe Bageant Conn Hallinan Fred Gardner Juan Santos
Eve Bachrach Missy Comley
Beattie Ron Jacobs Niranjan Ramakrishnan Susie Day Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend May 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Kathleen Christison Mike Ferner John Holt Laurie Hasbrook Christopher
Brauchli Margaret Kimberley Dave Lindorff Nicole Colson John V. Walsh Website of the Day
May 10, 2007 Tariq Ali Patrick Cockburn Neve Gordon Marjorie Cohn David Rosen Alan Farago John Hellman Kathy Rentenbach BANCO Richard Rhames Website of the Day
Jeff Leys Patrick Cockburn Glen Ford Paula Rothenberg Kathryn Weber John Chuckman Jordan Flaherty Dave Lindorff Stephen Lendman Website of
the Day
May 8, 2007 Dave Lindorff Patrick Cockburn Corporate Crime Reporter Ralph Nader Malini Johar Schueller Juan Santos Dave Zirin Joshua Frank Evelyn Pringle Eamonn McCann Website of the Day
May 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Monica Benderman Greg Moses Rannie Amiri Fitrakis / Wasserman Fred Wilhelms Ramzy Baroud Bruce K. Gagnon T. W. Croft Sonja Karkar Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn William Blum Uri Avnery Franklin Lamb Fred Gardner Lawrence R.
Velvel Missy Beattie Robert Fantina Carla Blank Linn Washington,
Jr. Stephen F. Jackson P. Sainath Anthony Papa James T. Phillips John Ross Stephen Lendman Ben Terrall CounterPunch
Newswire Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
May 4, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Azmi Bishara Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Bob Fitrakis Janet Kauffman Website of
the Day
May 3, 2007 Jeff Halper Christopher
Brauchli Dave Zirin Corporate Crime
Reporter Robert Fisk Mike Ferner Mike Whitney Pham Binh Dave Lindorff Michael A.
Johnson Website of the Day
May 2, 2007 Saul Landau Dr. Susan Block Carla Blank Margaret Kimberly Kevin Zeese Carlos Villareal Michael Dickinson Tim Shorrock Alevtina Rea William S.
Lind Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Fred Gardner Chase Madar Ralph Nader John V. Walsh Joshua Frank Leslie Radford Shaun Harkin Dave Lindorff Peter Rost,
MD Peter Linebaugh Website of
the Day
April 30, 2007 Frank Menetrez Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Diana Johnstone Sherwood Ross Peter Rost, MD Robert Jensen Kevin Zeese Jane Stillwater Website of
the Day
April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Fred Gardner David Orchard
Alan Maass Joe Bageant Robert Fantina Hanan Ashrawi Ron Jacobs Nicole Colson Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Harvey Wasserman Cindy Beringer Mike Roselle RAWA James McEnteer Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Eva Liddell Phyllis Bennis Mike Whitney Michael F.
Brown Jordan Flaherty Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Jacob Mundy Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Roger Morris Henry Siegman Alevtina Rea Paris Nikolas Kozloff Alan Farago Matthew S. Miller Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith David Price Diana Johnstone Brendan Cooney Sonja Karkar Brian Concannon Lee Gaillard Leah Fishbein Dave Lindorff Neal Galloway Website of the Day
April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed Lila Rajiva Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Website of the Day
April 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Robert Fantina Sam Husseini Corporate Crime Reporter Elizabeth Lalasz Harvey Wasserman Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Fred Gardner Kristoffer Larsson Barbara Rose
Johnston Manuel Garcia, Jr. John Scagliotti Marjorie Cohn Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Ron Jacobs Evelyn Pringle BANCO Paul Richards Dan Bacher Ben Terrall Sherwood Ross Remi Kanazi Aseem Shrivastava Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Diane Farsetta Tom Clifford Amira Hass Nicole Colson Sonja Karkar Heather Gray Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Agustin Velloso Matthew Koehler Website of
the Day
April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay
/ Patrick Cockburn Larry C. Johnson Norman Solomon Saul Williams Sunsara Taylor Harvey Wasserman Christopher
Brauchli Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva Landau / Hassen Charles Fisher
/ Diane Christian Kevin Prosen China Hand Peter Rost,
MD Justin Akers Chacón Jerry Kroth Sherwood Ross Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alice Cherbonnier Website of
the Year?
April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont
/ Paul Craig
Roberts Frida Berrigan Alison Weir John Walsh Jason Hribal Evelyn Pringle Ben Terrall Stan Cox Soren Ambrose Website of the Day
April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Carl G. Estabrook Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Eamon McCann Lee Sustar Mike Whitney Don Fitz Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jorge Mariscal Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Marsh Dr. Trudy Bond Joe Bageant Fidel Castro Alfredo Molano Alan Farago Michael Neumann Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Gail Dines Linda Ford Missy Beattie Dan La Botz Giuliana Sgrena Laura Carlsen Abu Spinoza Elizabeth Schulte Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Stephen Soldz George Ciccarriello-Maher Laith al-Saud Dave Zirin John Ross Ramzy Baroud Harvey Wasserman Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Dols, Fukumori,
Judd and Tillett-Saks Website of the Day
April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
the Day
R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
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Weekend
Edition The Joshua Generation of Black PoliticiansWaiting for ObamaBy JEAN DANIELS Rev. Jesse Jackson has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama's Democratic presidential campaign. I must say, I am a little ambivalent about this endorsement. We are a people who have clung to hope. Hope is what sustained us through enslavement and exploitation. Both men speak highly of hope. One, while pursuing the Democratic candidacy for president, inspired others to hope for a better future, a better America. The other is pursuing the seat of the presidency. "This campaign has been about giving hope since Day One," said Obama in an AP report. Referring to Rev. Jackson, Sen. Obama said he was "proud to have the support of his friend." "It is because people like Jesse ran that I have this opportunity to run for president today." It has been one blow after another for those of us trying to survive this nation's death-drive toward Empire. Cruelty and torture of the "terrorists" resonates with black Americans' experience of indifference. The Bush administration does not care about black Americans and the day-to-day experience of black Americans is that the rest of the country does not as well. Sen. Obama must make take a stand with AIPAC. He must declare that the U.S. needs to "preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel." In fact, this was the title of Sen. Obama's speech to the AIPAC Policy Forum, on March 2, 2007, in Chicago. "As the U.S. redeploys from Iraq, we can recapture lost influence in the Middle East," said Sen. Obama. "We can refocus our efforts to critical, yet neglected priorities, such as combating international terrorism and winning the war in Afghanistan. And we can, then, more effectively deal with one of the greatest threats to the United States, Israel and world peace: Iran." Then a few days later, on March 5, celebrating the 42 Annual anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama at Brown A.M.E church, Sen. Obama said his candidacy was directly linked to the legacies of the civil rights movement. "I am the product of your legend," he told blacks in the audience. He especially thanked Rev. Jackson. Sounds like both the civil rights movement and Rev. Jackson are a think of the past. In Selma, Sen. Obama referred to himself as a member of the "Joshua generation." And now if we can get past the clean words, winks, and hand shakes and consider what this means for the majority of black Americans who have been betrayed time after time by the Democratic and Republican politicians alike. Where is the hope offered by this "Joshua generation" candidate? What does it mean to be a member of the "Joshua generation" anyway? I can only speculate. According to the Biblical legend, Joshua became the successor of Moses. While some members of his generation doubted God would allow them to enter the promise land, Joshua held on to his faith, and proclaimed that there will be those of his Joshua generation who will die in the wilderness. In the face of indifference and racist oppression, are we to assume that some in Sen. Obama's generation and others younger will die in the wilderness of indifference and racist oppression? Despite the fact that black Americans have never supported U.S. aggression, in other words, war, Obama's rhetoric has become increasingly hawkish. As a result, it is hard to distinguish him from Sen. Hillary Clinton or the Republican Party in general. After all, the average black American cannot vote because of conviction records, and most are unable to contribute the big money AIPAC is able to funnel into Sen. Obama's campaign. Is this yet another practice of deserting the black community similar to the Republican Party's election strategies to disenfranchise black people by steal our votes throughout this country? Does Sen. Obama feel he does not need the black vote? A Habeas Corpus maneuver for a people no longer entitled to defense. Jackson claims that Sen. Obama agenda includes the war on poverty and voter protection, according to the AP report. According to Peter Dreier's report entitled "The New War on Poverty," however, the numbers of poor Americans has not declined: it has risen since 2001, from 33 million to 37 million people who now live below or at the poverty line. Thirty three percent of black children live in poverty while 10 percent of white children live in poverty. "Inequality," Dreier writes, "has almost never been worse." For a nation claiming to want peace and democracy-equality-we need to look at the inequalities surround this war on terror. Along with Iraqi women and children, black soldiers are dying in Iraq. Soldiers, white and black, are suffering from bureaucratic red tape at Walter Reed Hospital. They are suffering in their homes from depression after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Halliburton and Blackwater have profited from the invasion these last four years. In the meantime, over 1 billion dollars for reconstruction allocated by the Coalition Provisional Authority went missing in Iraq. In 2005, the same two companies flee over the floating dead of New Orleans and Mississippi with guns pointed at the standing victims and, since they have secured contracts there worth billions for reconstruction again. In Iraq and in New Orleans, at least the Ninth Ward where most of the poor and black lived pre-Katrina, the landscape is still devastated. Iraqis living in Baghdad with little water, food, or lights have watched as the largest U.S. Embassy compound in the world rises from the ground of their city. They are watching the rise of 592 million dollars, according to USA Today, while the reconstruction of "health clinics, water-treatment facilities and electrical plants" for Iraqis ha been "scaled back" to pay for rising costs of security outside the Green Zone. How ironic! Our politicians are bickering over the date to pull out of a situation that has worsened for the Iraqi people and U.S. military every day. I see black Americans in the background watching the rise of condos and homes in the white and middle-class communities, and they wonder when the U.S. will pull into to the Ninth Ward. There is the Right to Return Act for Katrina victims displaced around the country. 1.6 million Iraqis have had to leave their country with another 1.5 who are displaced within Iraq. See how all of this points to the U.S. government on the down road to world domination for the corporations. Halliburton and Blackwater are doing well, and in the lingo of the war economy, they seem to be members of the "Joshua" generation, doing the "Lord's work." We have come a long way down from "Bloody Sunday." Bush, stalling as long as possible to divert attention away from the building of air bases and embassy's in the Middle East and Africa, has Democrats like Sen. Obama agreeing to defend all or part of the war economy agenda even while speaking of being a product of the civil rights movement legacy. The eight fired US Attorneys have something in common with black Americans too. Beside the fact that both are fired explicitly at the discretion of the employer, there is the implicit explanation: they adhere to the "wrong" politics. While No Child Left Behind has led some of our children to the prison industrial complex or the military industrial complex, there are blacks who have been executed while innocent. Then there is the case of Gary Tyler, wasting, yes, wasting away in a Louisiana prison for the last 32 years for a crime he did not commit while there is a moment of collective sympathy for Scooter Libby, Former Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney. It is okay to be indifferent to a breach of justice in the case of an innocent black man, however. Recently, in Texas, a 14-year-old high black high school freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, receives seven years in prison for shoving a hall monitor. In another case in Texas, Chicago Tribune senior writer, Howard Witt reports that a 19-year-old white man was convicted last July of "criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her three-year-old grandson with is truck." But guess what? He was sentenced to probation in Paris, Texas and ordered to "send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family." It is not enough to slight the black victims-add cruel mockery to the mix. It is okay, these days to inflict suffering on black Americans. We are focused on defending a generalized image of "all Americans." The core of the historically progressive movement in the U.S., blacks watch as whites Americans hail Sen. Obama as the black who will allow white America to forget how it deserted the civil rights movement after Martin Luther King's death as if racism, too, died. Let us hear no more of it! No one is to remember this most egregious offense of deserting the progressive movement and certainly not up and coming black politicians of the "Joshua" generation. No more of the Jackson of old these days. No more reminding white America and middle-class black America about the poor while pursuing the presidency. The message in these days of the "Joshua generation" will talk about America and defense against "terrorists." Employing the lingo of white supremacy, references to "minorities"-blacks and Latinos, Hmong, Native Americans, and Asians-is a Shakespearian aside: "Americans-and minorities too." One day they will wake up and "discover" a world map and see that the "minority" is the majority of the world. The "minorities" will truly be the numerical majority in this country by 2060, according to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau. It should not be assumed that this soon-to-be majority will drift off to the wilderness to die peacefully without some form of resistance. So when will Sen. Barack Obama of the Joshua generation stand in defense of those in despair, the least among us, as well as those who represent the "all of America"? Who will defend our right to a world without war? Dr. Jean Daniels lives in Madison, Wisconson and writes a column for the City Capital Hues. Email: Darlkofi2002@yahoo.com This essay originally appeared in the Black Commentator.
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