Today's Stories

January 8, 2009

Jean Bricmont /
Diana Johnstone
Gaza Seen From Paris

January 7, 2009

Saree Makdisi
What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel?

Franklin Lamb
Bend Over Professor Dershowitz, It's Time for Your Check Up

William Blum
America's Other Glorious War

Belén Fernández
The Trauma Vortex: Israel's Monopoly on Psychological Suffering

Lawrence Davidson
What is New About Gaza?

Allan Nairn
Adm. Dennis Blair and the Church Killings in East Timor

Jonathan Cook
What is Israel's Objective?

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Watching the War on BBC

Deepak Tripathi
Bush, as He Leaves

Cal Winslow
Now is the Hour to Defend Democracy in the Labor Movement!

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Students Planning Careers: Be Mindful

Dr. Hannah Safran
No More Recycled Military Solutions

Website of the Day
CNN: Israel Broke the Ceasefire First

January 6, 2009

Pam Martens
It's All One Big Lie

Victoria Buch
Real Estate War in Gaza: the History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing

Neve Gordon
Israel's New War Ethic

Tami Sarfatti /
Yonatan Mendel
What Silence Says: Gaza is Still Waiting on Obama

Mike Whitney
The Gaza Bloodbath

Alan Farago
After the Fall

Gary Leupp
A Hamas Coup d'Etat in 2007?

Larry Everest
Silent Partner: the US-Backed War on Gaza

Ron Jacobs
The New Iraqi Sovereignty

David Macaray
Union-Busting is Alive and Well

Stephanie Basile
Where's Anna's Money?

Stacey Warde
An Uncle's Unrest

Website of the Day
Israeli Refusenik on Gaza

January 5, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Will There be a Recovery?

Sousan Hammad
Phoning Home to Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Flying While Brown

Mats Svensson
Longing in Gaza

Jen Marlowe
Abeer's Baby

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Gaza Phone Tag

Brian Cloughley
Israel is Immune From Criticism

Faheem Hussain
Gaza and India: a View From Pakistan

William Cook
Consider the Realities of Gaza

Dr. Trudy Bond
The Madness Among Us

Christopher Ketcham
The Revenge of the Blogger at the National Press Club: a Rotten Washington Interlude

Steve Early
Who Rules SEIU?

Dave Lindorff
When It Comes to Terrorism and POW Cases, Equal Justice Under Law is a Joke

Website of the Day
The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River Basin

January 2 - 4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Diary of 2008: an Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

Uri Avnery
Molten Lead in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Omar Barghouti
UN Complicity in Israel's Massacre in Gaza

Graham Usher
Where Pakistan's Generals and the ISI Draw Their Lines

P. Sainath
The Economy is Worse Than It Appears

Belén Fernández
Pardon Our Dust: Israel's PR Campaign for Gaza

Deb Reich
Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008

Gary Leupp
Defacing Mr. Jefferson's Wall: Preachers and the Inauguration

Michael Yates
Top Chef or Top Wage Thief? Tom Colicchio and the Economics of Restaurants

Joanne Mariner
How to Close Guantánamo

Seth Sandronsky
Funding the Israeli Military: the US Pipeline

Cynthia McKinney
We Lived to Tell the Story

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Dogs of War

Deepak Tripathi
Gaza in Perspective

Robert Fantina
Obama, Afghanistan and Israel

John Ross
The Year No One Can Remember

Norm Kent
The Heat on Duval Street: Why Head Shop Raids are Unfair and Unjust

Larry Portis
Syria and the Arab Barbie Doll--Before the Deluge

Richard Rhames
Is Conscience Dead?

Dee C. Lubell
We Come From the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright

David Yearsley
A Gay German at the Courts of the Medici and Hanover, and of Course the BBC

Lorenzo Wolff
Joe Ely, the Fighting Rooster of Rock

Marc Catone
Looting Lennon's Legacy

Poets' Basement
Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Website of the Weekend
Earth in High Rez

January 1, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
If Hamas Did Not Exist

Oren Ben-Dor
The Self-Defense of Suicide

Wajahat Ali
The U.S. Response to the Gaza Crisis: Unfair and Unbalanced

Saul Landau
In Cuba No One Man Could Steal $50 Billion From Other People

David Michael Green
What to Expect While We're Expecting

Website of the Day
Morbid Anatomy

December 31, 2008

Pam Martens
Wall Street's Collapse and the Ownership Society

Neve Gordon /
Jeff Halper
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Ted Honderich
The First Casualty of Israel's War

Brian Cloughley
Five Little Girls on a Sofa: Gaza's One-Sided Images

Ron Jacobs
What is Hamas, Really?

Vijay Prashad
Hot Rod and His Sikh Warrior: Blago's Indian Connections

Franklin Lamb
Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

Mike Whitney
My Brilliant Career

David Macaray
What Really Killed the Auto Bailout

Richard Thieme
The Betrayal of the Commons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Who Wins What in Gaza?

Stephen Lendman
The Troubling Case of the Fort Dix Five

Worthy Group of the Day
Western Shoshone Defense Project

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

Tariq Ali
The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

Robert Bryce
The $775,000-a-Year GI

Jonathan Cook
Electioneering with Bombs

Gary Leupp
The Fishbarrel War

Dave Lindorff
Tough Guys Don't Walk: Will Cheney Seek a Pardon?

Brian McKenna
Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

John Walsh
The End of the Green Party

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the World

Bob Sommer
The Education of David Frost

Worthy Activist of the Day
Support Marie Mason

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

January 8, 2009

A Third Intifada?

Riding on Fire

By EWA JASIEWICZ

Beit Hanoun, Gaza.

I’ve been working with the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance services in Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya for the past 5 days and nights.

For the past five days the Red Cross and the Red Crescent emergency services have been blocked from evacuating the injured and the dead from key areas surrounding Jabaliya and Gaza City. Special Forces have occupied houses in the areas of Zeitoun, Atarturah, Zoumo and Salahedeen.

Paramedic Ali Khalil’s team was shot at on Monday afternoon. He told me, 'We had been told we had the go-ahead from the Israeli army through co-ordination with the Red Cross but when we arrived at the area we were shot at. We had to turn back'. Yesterday afternoon, a medical volunteer, Hassan, was shot in the leg as he and his colleague had to drop the stretcher they were carrying after coming under Israeli sniper fire. There are reports of scores of dead bodies lying in the streets un-claimed. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society estimates there are 230 injured which they haven’t been able to pick up.

There are reports of 18 corpses in one home alone and the injured dying from treatable wounds because of a lack of access to medical treatment.

Last night, at around 9pm, Marwan, an experienced paramedic, bearing the scars of years of Israeli invasions, sustained another yet another. He was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper in Eastern Jabaliya. Gnarled by his work, picking up the pieces after Israeli attacks, he had said only the day before yesterday, ‘This is no life, its better to die, it would be better to be dead than this shit’.

The blockade on any rescuing is reminiscent of the battle of Jenin in April 2002. Israel forbade ambulances from entering the camp, blowing up one with a tank shell and killing Dr Khalil Sulleiman, the Head of the Palestinian Red Crescent. The army cut water and electricity and bulldozed an entire neighbourhood, complete with residents still in their homes, over the course of 11 days. The death count in the 11-day Jenin massacre was 58, but estimated to be much higher. Here in Jabaliya, this is the equivalent to around 4 days in the past week or almost the whole of yesterday. Between December 27th and January 5th, in Jabaliya alone, 119 people had been killed and 662 injured. An average of 15 people are dying, violently, every day. On January 6th, with the Fakhoura school massacre, 50 people were killed in just one day. Hospital authorities mark the day as the single worst day they have ever seen in Jabaliya.

Sporadic battles are taking place between Palestinian resistance fighters, armed with basic machine guns, the odd grenade, and warm clothes. They’re up against the fourth most powerful army in the world, armed with state-of-the-art war planes, Merkava tanks, regional governmental co-ordination and intelligence, a green light to kill with impunity in the name of self defence, body armor, night vision, and holidays in Goa when it all gets too much.

The paramedics, drivers and volunteers at the emergency services risk their lives every time they leave their base and even working within their bases.

Medics evacuated their original base near Salahadeen street due to heavy shelling from Israeli forces early last week. They then moved to the Al Awda Hospital in Beit Lahiya because again, it was too close to the battle front, and again to a community centre in Moaskar Jabaliya to be ‘safer’.

However, against a backdrop of deafening crashes and bangs of bombs falling close by, on Monday at 12.45pm, an Israeli surveillance plane fired two missiles into the Al Awda Hospital compound. The first slammed into a police car, the second, impacted two minutes later into the ground just meters in front of the Hospital’s clinic. Two rescue workers were injured in the head and face, but we were all lucky to escape without any serious damage.

Right now we’re back at the Jabaliya base, still close to the sound of pounding tank shells, apache strikes, and light gunfire met with staggering rapid fire 50 caliber tank-gun fire, the odd grenade and the ever menacing and maddening sneer of surveillance drones.

Yesterday around 1am we were called out to a strike in the Moaskar Jabaliya area. The area was pitch black, our feeble torches lighting up broken pipes streaming water, glass, chunks of concrete and twisted metal. ‘They’re down there, down there, take care’, people said. The smell of fresh severed flesh, a smell that can only come from the shedding of pints of blood and open insides, was in the air. I got called back by a medic who screamed at me to stay by his side. It turned out Id been following the Civil Defence, the front line responders who check to see if buildings are safe and put out fires, rather than the medics.

The deep ink dark makes it almost impossible to see clearly, shadows and faces lit up by swiveling red ambulance lights and arms pointing hurriedly are our guides for finding the injured. ‘Lets get out of here, lets get out’ say the guys, and we’re leaving to go, empty handed, but straining to seeing what’s ahead when a missile hits the ground in front of us. We see a lit up fountain of what could be nail darts explode in front of us. They fall in a spray like a thousand hissing critters, we cover our heads and run back to the ambulance. One of the volunteers inside, Mohammad, is shocked, ‘Did you see? Did you see? How close it was?’

At approximately 4am, we hit the streets in response to an F16 war plane attack on the house of Abdullah Sayeed Mrad in the Block Two area of Jabaliya Camp in the Northern Gaza Strip.

Mrad is said to be a high ranking Hamas official according to local sources. The attack leveled the house. Every house strike is like walking into a smoking grave, broken doll-like bodies of children to be found beneath layers and layers of white rubble and burning shrapnel.

We took Adam Mamoun Al Kurdi, aged 3 to Al Awda. He died of multiple shrapnel injuries to his skull and lower thighs.

We sped back 5 minutes later – four teams in four Red Crescent ambulances, to fetch more casualties. Thankfully there were none.

Whilst waiting in the ambulance we suddenly heard a deafening bang and saw an orange flash before our ambulance was showered with shrapnel, glass and brick. The target of the attack was another house belonging to Sayeed Mrad. Medics say the strike was from an F16. The depth of damage caused was consistent with the force of an F16-fired bomb.

The house, reduced to rubble, was just two meters from our ambulance. Ambulance driver Majdi Shehadda, 48, sustained deep lacerations to his face and right ear and went into shock in the ambulance. He was treated with oxygen. Four rescue workers sustained minor injuries and had to be treated for smoke and dust inhalation. One, Saaber Mohammad Awad, 34, was preparing to exit his ambulance when the bomb hit. ‘The door smashed against me and the windows smashed in because of the pressure. I expected to die. If we had been outside just a second later, we would have been killed. The ambulance saved our lives’.

The four ambulances, one with all of its' windows blown in and damage to medical stocks inside, the others with cracked windows, were trapped by rubble blocking our exit route.

We had to carry Majdi on a stretcher over the debris of the bombed house in total darkness whilst Israeli drones menaced the skies above us. I tripped up over twisted steel foundation poles at one point and dropped the oxygen tank, the pipe detaching and hissing oxygen out over the rubble. We all evacuated the area after 15 minutes, along with a family, carrying their blankets, mattresses and belongings, as another property belonging to Sayeed Mrad also in the area was at risk of being bombed.

The ambulances would have been clearly visible to Israeli drones and special forces with their rooftop indentification markings, bright flashing lights and solo movement in the deserted, pitch black strees of Jabaliya.

An aerial curfew

Everyone is terrified by surveillance plane strikes here. ‘Zenane’ they call them, because of the zzzzz sound they make. They have been firing explosive missiles into people – people walking, in cars, sitting in doorways drinking tea, standing on rooftops, praying together, sitting at home and watching television together.

In Naim Street Beit Hanoun, at 9.30pm on Sunday, Samieh Kaferna , 40, was hit by flying shrapnel to his head. Neighbours called him to come to their home. Fearing his home would be struck, he and a group of relatives began to move from one home to another, to be safer.
The second missile struck them down directly. When we arrived one man, eyes gigantic, was being dragged into the pavement, half of his lower body shredded, his intestines slopping out. He was alive, his relatives were screaming, we managed to take four, whilst six others, charred and dismembered, were brought in on the back of an open cattle truck. Beit Hanoun Hospital was chaos, with screaming relatives and burning bodies. Three men died in the attack, 10 were injured, six from the same Abu Harbid family. Three had to have leg amputations, and one a double amputation.

Burning shrapnel in eyes is a common injury, shrapnel slices deep into to any soft fleshy parts of the body. We brought a boy from Beit Hanoun with a distorted heavily bandaged head wrapped in bandages, to Al Nasser hospital with its specialist eye unit and mental health clinic. When we get there, its pitch black, doctors are sitting around candles, the place is freezing and full of shadows. Both the doctors and their have been patients blinded with Israeli-controlled power cuts that intensify the confusion, fear, and psychological darkness caving in on people here.

Burning shrapnel in eyes – like those of three year old Shedar Athman Khader Abid from Beit Hanoun, ‘injured in the left eye, explosive injury, full thickness corneal wound, iris prologue and vitreous loss’ according to her medical report. Her father approaches my friend, quietly, to ask if its possible for me to help her, to get her out to have eye surgery, ’This girl, she was like a moon, haram, three years old and her beauty is robbed from her’.

Extremely hot, shrapnel lodges in chests, legs, faces, hands, stomachs, and skullls. I’ve been taught, don’t focus on stopping bleeding with shrapnel injuries, there is very little blood, the foreign bodies burn inside. Many casualties we’ve brought in that seem ok, literally, on ‘the surface’, only to die a few days later. People talk about the missiles being poison tipped, and there have been reports of white phosphorous being used.

Dead for buying bread

Last night four members of a family were traveling back from the bakers in Beit Lahiya. Squeezed into a white skoda, their bag of bread still warm, they were struck by a surveillance plane missile at 6pm. Khaled Ismaeel Kahlood, 44, and his three sons Mohammad 15, Habib, 12, and Towfiq, 10, were cut into pieces by the attack which blew their car in two. Taxi driver Hassan Khalil, 20, was also martyred in the attack. The bodies brought into Kamal Odwan hospital were virtually unrecognizable.

A Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees ambulance was fired upon at approximately 8.30am on Sunday morning killing Paramedic and father of five, Arafa El Deyem, 35. He and another rescue worker had been evacuating casualties which had come under fire from an Israeli tank East of Jabaliya in the North of the Gaza Strip. Witnesses report that as the door of the ambulance was being closed a tank shell hit El Deyem. El Deyem died from a massive loss of blood following a major trauma to his chest. Paramedics I ride with cherish his memory, carrying his photo - a kind and strong looking, bearded man - on their mobile phones.

The following day, at the family's grieving tent, five of El Deyem's relatives were killed when a missile smashed into the tent in the Beit Hanoun Area. Arafat Mohammed Abdel Deinm, 10, Mohammad Jamal Abdel Dein, 25, Maher Younis Abdel Dein, 30, and Said Jamal Said, 27, all died from head and internal explosive injuries. Witnesses claim the missile was fired by an Israeli surveillance drone.

The Ministry of Health confirmed that Doctor Anis Naeem, a nephew of the Hamas Minister of Health, Bassem Naeem, and a colleague were killed in the Zeitoun area on Sunday afternoon when a missile strike from an Israeli surveillance plane impacted on the home they had entered in order to retrieve casualties.

Rescue workers Ihab el-Madhoun 35, and Mohammad Abu Hasira, 24, were struck by Israeli missiles when trying to collect casualties in the Jabal Al Rais area of Jabbaliya last Tuesday. Witnesses said Ihab went to assist his colleague following a strike on the rescue workers. He too was then struck.

Abu Hasira was brought to the Kamal Ahdwan governmental hospital in Jabaliya and died at 7.30am according to hospital records. The cause of death was multiple trauma injuries. Ihab died from massive internal injuries following an operation on his chest and abdominal area five hours later.

Khalil Abu Shammalah, Director of Al Dhumeer Association based in Gaza City said: ‘It is a breach of the fourth Geneva Convention to target emergency medical services under conditions of war and occupation. Battlefield casualties are also protected under the Geneva Conventions and cannot be targeted once injured. Israel is in breach of international law'.

The Israeli news agency Y-Net recently reported that Yuval Duskin, Director of the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet, told the Israeli cabinet that large numbers Hamas operatives are hiding in hospitals and dressing as medical workers. Palestinian medical officials have dismissed the claims as 'nonsense'. Rescue workers are terrified that hospitals will join the list of civilian targets including homes, schools, universities, mosques, and shops hit in Israel's offensive so far.

Homes crushed

People and their homes are being pulverized by Israeli tank shells, F16s and bulldozers. I traveled to the buffer zone area of Sikka Street close to the Erez checkpoint, to see the damage. 27 houses had been crushed by either bulldozers or tank shells, one had been destroyed by an F16 bomb. 10 water wells and 200 dunums of land – orange groves and strawberry fields, have been bulldozed, and approximately 250 people have been made homeless.

Six members of the Kiferna family were crushed to death when their home was fired upon by Tanks on Sunday night.

People were coming back to their homes for the first time. The Hamdan Family had three homes in a row destroyed. I asked one woman sitting amongst the ruins of her home where she would go now? She replied, ‘Beit Hanoun UNRWA school’.

’But do you think that will be safe?’ I asked her. ‘No, but I have nowhere else to go’ she replied.

The Al Naim Mosque was also completely destroyed, holy books still smouldering from the attacks. Approximately one in 10 of the some 100 mosques in the Jabaliya area have been destroyed in Israel’s assault. ‘We see them as personal centers for us, theyre not Hamas, and we paid for them out of our own money, they belong to us, not anyone else’, explained one Imam based in Jabaliya.

The demolition of Mosques means many people are praying in the streets, at the Kamal Odwan hospital, people pray in the garden area opposite, and at the funeral for the 42 people, mostly children, massacred at the Fakhoura School , hundreds prayed on the ground that was turned into an early graveyard.

Forced out

On Sunday night, all Sikka Street residents were given five minutes to leave their homes, ordered out through loudhailers, unable to take any belongings with them, rounded up by Israeli occupation forces and taken to the Al Naim Mosque. Women, children and the elderly were put inside and men aged between 16-40 were kept in a field outside in the cold and interrogated. Six were taken to Erez, three were released a day later and were told by soldiers, according to a witness, that it was safe for them to make their own way home along Salahadeen Street. It was there that special forces allegedly shot 33 year-old Shaadi Hissam Yousef Hamad 33, in the head.

Torn schoolbooks lie amidst rubble, and Iman Mayer Hammad picks through the debris of her life, a hejab, shoes, pictures, she cries out, ‘Its all gone, everything, they’ve taken everything, my children can’t finish their exams, how will they finish their exams?’

Hundreds of children won’t be finishing their exams in Gaza because they’re dead.

Whether people stay in their homes or leave, they are being bombed. Majid Hamdan Wadeeya, 40, was hit in the leg and spine with shrapnel while he and his family were preparing to leave their home in Jaffa Street, Jabaliya. We arrived at his home on Tuesday afternoon to find the family’s decrepit red car still running and the family minivan stuffed with mattresses, towels, blankets, and belongings, blasted open. They had been hit by a missile from either a drone of apache. ‘We were going from the bombing, from the bombing’, screamed his children, all terrified. We managed to take half of the family, the rest got in their red car and followed.

We were interviewing residents at the UNRWA elementary school in Jabaliya, close to the Fakhoora school, at exactly the same time of the massacre.The Sahaar family, which had walked from their home in Salahdeen Street to seek refuge in the school on the first day of invasion, were asking us, ‘But do you think we are safe here? We feel that any time a missile could come down us? Are we safe here?’ The 500 people, some 50 families living in classrooms, share just 14 toilets and rely on rations to survive. The nights are cold as the windows have been smashed out by Israeli bomb attacks. Noone can sleep at night because of the sounds of homes, mosques and people being bombed to the ground.

The fabric of life

Everyone here knows someone who has been killed in Israel ’s massacres. I can’t keep up with the stories of missile struck cousins, nephews, brothers, the jailed, the humiliated, the shot, the unreachable, the homeless, the now even more vulnerable than ever, people, not pieces, piling up in morgues all over Gaza, not pieces, people. These people are struggling to live and breathe another day, to avoid the lethal use of F16s, F15s, Apache Helicopters, Cobra Gun Ships, Israeli naval gun ships that are targeting them.

These networks and vision have held strong for 60 years, but another fabric of life is being planned by Israel. Whilst people say they are resisting the worst attack on them since the Nakba, Israel proceeds to cantonise the West Bank, under a project of roads and tunnels ‘for Palestinains’ which reinforce the existing illegal settlement system, apartheid wall, land and water theft and Palestinian bantustanisation. Under the banner of 'development', this network of new facts on the ground, ‘for the Palestinians’ is called, ‘The Fabric of Life’. Israel is blasting holes in one corner of the Palestinian fabric of life through extreme violence, and tearing up another part with the help of international companies and governments and internal authority complicity.

Back at Kamall Odwan hospital, Dr Moayan, explains, ‘It’s not about just riding the streets of civilians, because, they are bombing us even when we have left, when we are inside supposedly safe compounds. I have left my house, and now have nowhere else to go, nowhere else to go.’ He continues to say what hundreds of people are saying, ‘This is the worst we have ever seen, we have never had this level of violence. It has shocked even us. In Lebanon they killed over 1700 people, will it come to this here?’

The global intifada

This killing continues, day and night, and its not just people that are being physically dismembered, their families are being dismembered, their communities are being dismembered, the landscape of Gaza is full of holes. The fabric of these communities, that neighbours no longer neighbours, that families no longer living or alive together is being stretched to breaking point. People are being made refugees again, tents as homes awaiting them again, as no buildings or building materials are available for people to even rebuild their shattered lives, their smashed homes, shops, mosques, governmental buildings, community centres, charities, offices, clinics, youth centers.

How do you break a people that won’t be broken? ‘They will have to kill each and everyone of us’ people tell me. From the first days here people were expecting ‘the shoah’ threatened upon them by Matan Villai , Israel ’s deputy defence minister this February. It is happening. It is happening now. This is the Shoah.

The third Intifada being urged now has to be our intifada too. As Israel steps up its destruction of the Palestinian people, we need to step up our reconstruction of our resistance, our movements, of our communities in our own counties, where so many of us live in alienation and isolation. We need to be the third intifada – people here need more and say repeatedly that they need more than the demonstrations, because they are not stopping the killing here. Demonstrations alone, are not stopping the killing here.

The arms companies making the weapons that are targeting people here, the companies that are selling stolen goods from occupied land pillaging settlements, the companies building the apartheid wall, the prisons, the East Jerusalem Light Railway system. These companies, Carmel Agrexco, Caterpillar, Veolia, Raytheon, EDO, BAE Systems, they are complicit in the crimes against humanity being committed here. If the international community will not uphold international law, then a popular movement should and can – we can use the legal system of international law as one of many means to hold on to our collective humanity.

The European Union decision, undertaken by the Council of Ministers this December, to upgrade relations with Israel, from economic ties to cultural, security, and political relations must be reversed. The EU represents a core strategic market of legitimacy and political economic reinforcement of Israel and as such its capacity to commit crimes against humanity, with impunity.

We can cut this tie, we can halt this decision which if approved this April, will empower Israel further, bring it closer to the ‘community of nations’ of the EU, and give a green light for further terror and crimes against humanity be inflicted upon the Palestinian people. This is a decision which has not yet been ratified. We can influence that which hasn’t happened yet.

There are concrete steps that people can take, learning from the lessons of the first Intifada and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to dismantle the South African Apartheid regime. Strategies of popular resistance, strikes, occupations, direct actions. From the streets into the offices, factories and headquarters is where we need to take this fight, to the heart of decision-makers that are supposedly making decisions on our behalf and the companies making a killing out of the occupation. The third intifada needs to be a global intifada.

Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer, and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement.

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