Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 16,
2005
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
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February 16, 2005
The State of the World Social Forum After Five Years
The
Last Porto Alegre
By
MARK ENGLER
It's not Paris or Tokyo, Beijing or
New York. Nor is it São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Enthusiastic
residents of Porto Alegre, Brazil will tell you that their modest
city of 1.5 million people in the country's deep South is "the
last bastion of socialism and rock 'n' roll." Indeed, stalls
covered with black Iron Maiden t-shirts stand in the public markets,
and the municipality long served as a stronghold of the Partido
dos Trabalhadores (PT), the Brazilian Workers Party. But
today Porto Alegre is best known around the globe, especially
among those inclined to hold a critical opinion of capitalism,
corporate power, and U.S. military aggression, as the original
home of the World Social Forum.
Five years ago, after the late-1999
Seattle protests but before the terrorist attacks on the Twin
Towers, thousands of activists first converged on the city to
discuss the challenges presented by the likes of Enron and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). With this year's fifth consecutive
summit, the idea of holding a large, participatory people's assembly
to contrast with the World Economic Forum--the exclusive annual
gathering of economic elites in Davos, Switzerland--is no longer
novel. The Social Forum has attracted virtually every personality
from powerful heads of state to the most unencumbered of wandering
counter-culturalists. It is possible that the most naive of the
155,000 who attended this year (according to organizers' counts)
were those journalists who came to gape at the much-debated gathering
as if it had emerged spontaneously and without precedent from
the gaucho lowlands.
If this year's was not the
first World Social Forum, however, there are indications that
it will be Porto Alegre's last, at least for the foreseeable
future. The famous local progressivism that brought the Forum
to Porto Alegre was called into question when an anti-PT mayor,
José Fogaça, won election last fall. Recognizing
the Forum's multitudes as a major economic boon for the city,
Mr. Fogaça toned down his past criticism of the summit
as an "ideological Disneyland." Still, other cities
are clamoring for their turn to host the event. (While four out
of five Forums have been held in Porto Alegre, the 2004 event
took place in Mumbai, India). Moreover, these turns are slated
to grow more scarce. The unified global gathering is becoming
bi-annual; next year organizers will focus on holding forums
at the regional level.
The question of Porto Alegre,
then, and of the Forum's fifth anniversary, is what has become
of the event that was once synonymous with the city's name? And
what is the World Social Forum, alternately regarded as a laboratory
of progressive vision and a rapidly ossifying political Woodstock,
building toward?
* *
* * *
"I am a political militant,"
said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula"
da Silva, clad in a white jacket, as he addressed a stadium full
of people during the first day of workshops. "I belong here."
Downplaying the roaring PT loyalists, the press would overstate
the impact of a small but energetic section of protesters who
chastised Lula for continuing to pay Brazil's foreign debt and
for failing to buck the economic policies prescribed by the IMF.
It is nevertheless true that the President, a former metalworker
and union leader who many viewed as a leftist icon when he took
office two years ago, had the record of his administration critically
scrutinized by a variety of panels throughout the week. As in
the past, Lula also visited Davos this year. He went, he said,
on a mission to confront wealthy leaders with the same demand
of eradicating poverty that he championed in Porto Alegre and
to elaborate a "new geography" of politics in which
Southern countries would not submit to being considered inferior.
It is also true that Lula did
not receive as enthusiastic a reception at the Forum as did Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, who addressed the same packed stadium
on the last day of workshops. Wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt as
bright red as the berets of his watchful security detail, Chavez
was less prone than Lula to speak of "partnership"
with the North and more likely to denounce "imperialism."
In a press conference before the rally, Chavez declared the Social
Forum one of "the most important political events taking
place each year in the world today," he invoked his "Bolivarian
revolution," and he labeled the 2002 coup attempt against
him "Made in the USA." Ms. "Condolencia"
Rice, he quipped, "may say that Hugo Chavez is a negative
force in Latin America. I say the government of the United States
is the most negative force in the world today!"
Even as the two presidents
book-ended the Forum, dozens of other speakers led panels taking
place simultaneously in tents and warehouse spaces spread over
a nearly three mile expanse along the banks of Porto Alegre's
Guaiba River. In past years, the Forum was held at the city's
Catholic University and large morning plenaries brought together
participants to hear featured speakers. This year, all of the
events took the form of "self-organized" workshop sessions.
Although hailed as a victory for democratic planning, this diminished
the sense of common purpose at the summit. It enhanced the feeling
that there were many forums, large and small, going on at once.
"Three years ago everyone
was talking about Plan Colombia; two years ago it was Iraq,"
a friend who has participated in several Porto Alegres said to
me. For this year, she identified the right to clean, public
water as the Forum's emergent issue. But, with a several-hundred
page program listing panels on the challenges of global poverty,
trade, war, and debt, as well as on Open Source software, the
trafficking of women and girls, and the impact of culture on
social change, any attempt to identify a single focus would necessarily
be arbitrary.
The presence of Lula and Chavez
raised its own issue for discussion, and its own suggestion for
what the Forum might build toward: namely, state power. Far from
"Disneyland," one of the most significant changes in
Latin America in past years is the rise of left-leaning governments--not
only in Brazil and Venezuela, but also, to varying extents, in
Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Chile.
The shift presents a challenge
for the globalization movement, which has always had an awkward
relationship to the state. On the one hand, some arguing against
the power of unaccountable financial institutions have uncritically
held up the principle of state sovereignty, contending that elected
governments should be able to decide for themselves what economic
policies to pursue. This stance proves problematic for those
campaigning in countries ruled by right-wing elites. On the other
hand, the anarchist suspicion of any engagement with the state
precludes some real alternatives to neoliberalism--accomplishments
like Venezuela's redistributionist social programs and Argentina's
decision to defy the IMF and freeze most of its debt payments.
Thus far the Forum's charter,
which at least formally prohibits participation of political
parties, has held firm. Those who cheered Chavez's social democratic
reforms cited active participation at the local level as the
most positive part of the government's transformation. And even
those inclined to defend Lula said that pressure is needed to
train state focus on the needs of Brazil's poor majority. During
each presidential address, the dozens of other panels outside
strategized about how to generate this pressure--and how to apply
it to all governments, no matter how friendly.
* *
* * *
"Maybe if I were younger,"
a veteran activist commented to me, "I could deal with the
heat." The late-January summer in Porto Alegre was unrelenting.
Brazilians wandering the sweltering expanse of tented workshop
areas sported bare chests, Bermuda shorts, and skirts, treating
the Forum like a beach. For those less acclimated, a new morning
might bring a fresh willingness to believe that the seeds of
a new society were being planted in the manifold meetings of
the day. But an afternoon of solar radiation had a way of intensifying
one's ambivalence about whether it was all worthwhile.
While Lula provided a place
to start, it was not clear where one should go next in trying
to make sense of the hot, sprawling festival. Some of the names
on the program most familiar to North Americans--Arundhati Roy,
Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, even Kofi Annan--did not materialize
at promised places and times, their presence in Brazil never
having been confirmed. Still, there were headliners. Among the
Brazilian speakers, crowds gathered around dreadlocked pop star
and Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, writer Frei Betto, and
theologian Leonardo Boff.
If state power represented
a first possible conception of the Forum's end goal, some of
these prominent speakers would ultimately provide a second suggestion
for what the event is building toward: a common agenda for political
action.
During an event subtitled "Utopia
and Politics," Nobel Laureate José Saramago and famed
Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano (sitting on a typically all-male
panel) held a contentious exchange about the relevance of Don
Quixote for activists today. With listeners clogging the aisles
of a large auditorium, Galeano celebrated the paradoxes of a
world in which a novel cherished for centuries would began its
life in prison, "because Cervantes was in debt, as are we
in Latin America." He defended the utopian impulse as a
force for social change, citing Che's statement in his last letter
to his parents: "Once again I feel under my heels the ribs
of Rocinante," Quixote's horse.
Saramago would have none of
it. "I consider the concept of utopia worse than useless,"
he argued. "What has transformed the world is not utopia,
but need." Also, "The only time and place where our
work can have impact--where we can see it and evaluate it--is
tomorrow.... Let's not wait for utopia."
The ethos of the Forum would
seem to favor Galeano's view. The event's charter indicates that
it is not a deliberative body; it does not take official positions
on behalf of the assembly. Yet Saramago's defense of short-term
demands received a standing ovation. And at the end of the week,
a group of nineteen high-profile participants, including both
of the writers, released a statement dubbed "The Porto Alegre
Manifesto." Among its planks, the twelve-point platform
called for cancellation of debts, a Tobin tax on international
financial transfers, local control of the food supply, and the
democratization of international financial institutions. "We're
confident that the great majority of the people of the Forum
will agree with this proposal," Ignacio Ramonet, editor
of Le Monde Diplomatique, told reporters.
Critics immediately charged
that the celebrities' document contravened the "horizontal"
character of Forum. Some signers, like Brazilian Forum organizer
Chico Whitaker, took pains to emphasize that the proposal was
merely one of many to emerge. (The Forum's closing press release
cryptically indicated that "352 proposals so far" had
been accepted.) Others like Ramonet, however, made clear that
they considered such a unifying platform essential if the Forum
is to move forward as a political force.
Ramonet is right that his manifesto
would probably prove agreeable to most of the participants; he
is probably right, too, that the lack of a more well-defined
program of action will speed the sense that repeated world summits
are growing stale. At the same time, his Group of 19 pointed
to a real problem. Absent formal mechanisms for representation,
all efforts to exert leadership at the forum must come from self-selected
bodies. When not emanating from the headline speakers, efforts
at agenda setting this year were most likely to originate with
high-profile NGOs. Oxfam and Save the Children, for example,
were among those who used the Forum as occasion to announce a
Global Call to Action Against Poverty, which Lula endorsed and
which received ample media attention.
Some of the major criticisms
of the Forum to emerge in the past few years have targeted both
the cloudy role of the event organizers and the power of well-financed
NGOs. The criticisms have some merit, but they end up highlighting
the fact that the event as a whole is self-selecting. Eighty-five
percent of participants in the Forum over the years have come
from the host country. This year Brazilians again dominated,
with neighborly Uruguayans and Argentineans also sending prominent
delegations. For everyone else the cost of jet fuel was a serious
consideration. It is perhaps unusual that more trade unionists
haven't taken to the forum, but not that large numbers of NGO
campaigners attend. Progressive-minded newspaper editors, professors,
and foundation officers could also be expected to fly in. But
when it comes to participation from community organizers, particularly
those from the wider global South, it is remarkable that their
presence even as small but visible minority has held strong.
Participants who moved closest
to formulating shared agendas without urging from above were
those who stayed together for tracks of workshops in specific
issue areas. Anti-war activists agreed on March 19-20 to hold
coordinated international days of action. (Plans for the massive
protests of February 15, 2003 were similarly birthed at a social
forum). And several observers cited environmentalists' progress
in strategizing around climate change as an important joint effort.
Whether these advances are
sufficient to justify a trip into the Brazilian summer, or whether
a manifesto is needed to save the Forum, is subject to continuing
debate.
* *
* * *
Back when it was held on their
campus, the Catholics significantly slowed the sale of revolutionary
t-shirts at the Forum. With no such repressive influence stemming
commercialism this year, food stands and souvenir vendors lined
the river and snaked through the workshop spaces. The presence
of the Youth Camp in the middle of Forum furthered the fair-like
atmosphere. This expansive tent city-within-a-city housed 35,000
young people. There, passersby could see jugglers and drilling
drum corps, late-night bonfires and the graffiti-covered Casa
de Hip Hop.
The carnival aspect of the
event has been understandably maligned by those looking to dismiss
the Forum. But these open spaces also provided room for participants
to wander, to meet, and to hang out. If presidents and stadium
crowds occupied the "biggest" social forum, and publicity-savvy
NGOs the next largest, these places offered room for the littlest
interactions. And it was the small moments, rather than the Forum's
penchant for grand pretense, that helped to assuage some of my
skepticism about the gathering.
"Walking between sessions
with an Italian senator, talking over ideas for our environmental
campaigns--that's what I got out of the Forum," one friend
told me.
At a reception hosted by Grassroots
Global Justice, a delegation of representatives from community-based
initiatives around the United States, participants told me their
interactions with other activists had been "inspiring,"
even "transformative."
When Linda Sippio, a leader
at the Miami Workers Center, visited a once-idle farm near Porto
Alegre that had been taken over by the Brazilian Landless Workers'
Movement (MST), she saw links to her own people's struggle to
hold ground in their rapidly gentrifying Florida neighborhoods.
"We're meeting Brazilian groups that are organizing like
we are, and we're showing our support," she said. "That
helps us both build power."
Strolling through the Forum
space could produce rewarding surprises. A colleague, Zeynep
Toufe of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told of how, "tired,
hot, severely underslept," she stumbled into an afternoon
panel on land rights and the "untouchable castes" of
India. She was unexpectedly blown away by the testimony of homelessness
and dispossession offered. "It was so uncynical that I didn't
know what to feel," she reported. And when they burst into
songs or chants, she stated, "It was one of the most sincere,
the least contrived instances I have ever encountered of people
shouting slogans.... I tried to explain what a privilege it felt
like to be in their presence."
Stanford Professor and free
software guru Laurence Lessig wrote on his blog of walking through
the Youth Camp with Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil. Gil was
alternately protested by angry young people demanding free radio
(Gil relished the debate) and asked to perform songs from his
pop opus (the whole crowd sang along). "Here's a Minister
of the government, face to face with supporters and opponents,"
Lessig wrote. "There is no 'free speech zone.' No guns,
no men in black uniform, no panic, and plenty of press. Just
imagine."
Elsewhere I watched a group
of high school students pull up chairs amidst the overflow crowd
outside a packed warehouse where several theorists were speaking.
We could not see the panelists, but a sound system carried their
voices out over the stifling heat. It occurred to me that this
was a remarkable scene. To look at those teenagers in the blazing
sun, listening attentively to an impossibly abstract lecture
by the Empire co-author Michael Hardt, is to gain a new
faith in the patience and dedication of the next generation.
* *
* * *
Few progressives would argue
that the World Social Forum is without its faults. Yet few, even
among the critics, would hold that movements would be better
off if ceased to exist. Evaluating the event involves blending
criticisms and potentials, often ending in an unsatisfying shade
of gray.
What, then, can be said definitively
about the state of the Forum?
The original concept of the
event remains sound. There is value in having a place for those
social movements that spring out of hope and need to converge,
a place that invites people who sacrifice their energies to these
movements to devise transnational strategies for confronting
globalized problems. Against the riches of Davos, there is need
for a place that draws legitimacy from its participatory character.
As a positive space, not founded
as a mass protest outside a World Trade Organization or IMF meeting,
the Forum still provides a unique opportunity for setting an
alternative agenda for globalization. Its influence on Davos,
where elites are now photographed pondering problems of poverty
and AIDS, has been undeniable.
The Forum is still growing;
each year has been larger than the last. It has not stagnated
in this respect. It will enhance its relevance by actively recruiting
social movement leaders--making efforts to balance against the
constituents who already attend as self-selected representatives--and
by setting aside more time for dialogue not based on the standard
model of a university lecture panel.
The Forum needs to remain unexpected.
It is wise for it to move to a bi-annual schedule; the annual
event was growing too routine, too familiar. And it was a mistake
to return to Porto Alegre. The Forum gained much in its trip
to Mumbai, and its forward momentum requires that it continue
incorporating greater representation from new parts of the world.
The 2007 Forum, which will be held in Africa, holds much promise
for this reason.
The need to move on is not
an altogether happy truth. On the last evening of the Forum,
I walked along the Guaiba feeling vaguely disappointed by the
lecturing I had seen that day. But then I felt a breeze off the
river and looked around at the crowds meandering in the dusk.
A group in union shirts sat on curb, chatting with vendors selling
grilled meat; a capoeira troop sparred on the street;
anti-Bush satirists leafleted for their web site; a circle of
people outside an indigenous rights tent performed a dance. At
that moment, I felt sad to see it all go. Porto Alegre, no doubt,
will be sad for it too.
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City,
is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org).
He can be reached via the web site http://www.democracyuprising.com.
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