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Recent
Stories
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
April
2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Politics of Casualties
David
Lindorff
Making America Safer...for Iraqi
Fighters
William
Blum
Some Observations on the Recent Behavior of the Empire
Gustavio
Sierra
The Morning After the Slaughter at
Nasser
Patrick
Cockburn
Playing Into Saddam's Hands
Robert
Jensen
Peter Arnett: Whipping Boy of the
Pentagon
Jeremy
Brecher
Uniting for Peace Update
N.D.
Jayaprakash
The Siege of Basra
LaDawn
Haglund
You Can Jail the Resisters, But You
Can't Arrest the Resistance
Robert
Fisk
Truth and Subterfuge
Jemima
Khan
I'm Ashamed to be British
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
Stew Albert
Total War
Website
of the Day
Traitor List: Sign Up Now!
April
1, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Rumsfeld: "Get Me Rewrite"
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
Website
of the Day
A Collectible War
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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April 5,
2003
Back
from Baghdad
Where
Next for the Peace Movement?
By MIKE FERNER
As "teachable moments" go, Baghdad and
Basra a month before George Bush ordered those cities bombed
was indeed memorable.
I saw the resilient human spirit alive
and well after two decades of privation, war and repression.
I experienced only warmth and graciousness, when my nationality
might have elicited only hatred. I relearned the simple truth
of universal humanity. Introduced to a budding, radical offshoot
of the peace movement, I had a vision of how this, combined with
the dawning democracy movement, might allow our species to finally
leave behind the mire of war.
People have demanded peace for as long
as their governments have waged warfare. The popular cry for
peace, often stifled and typically left out of history books,
echoes down the generations. For 30 years I've added my own voice
for peace, with little hope we could do more than delay the next
war. But last month in Iraq I saw something new and singularly
hopeful.
While there, I met some 50 people associated
with the Christian Peacemaker Teams and the Iraq Peace Team.
These uncommon global citizens taught me much, including their
attempt to revive a strategy dormant since the untimely death
of Gandhi.
In Colombia they accompany farmers going
to market to help protect them from paramilitary thugs bent on
extortion and murder. In the occupied territories of the West
Bank these retired ministers and nuns, church deacons and young
activists place themselves literally in the path of Israeli bulldozers
preparing to level Arab homes. Indeed, while I was in Iraq, Rachel
Corrie, a U.S. activist from a similar organization, was run
over and killed by an Israeli-driven, American-made bulldozer.
They respond to Arab suicide bombings on Israeli buses not just
with statements, but by riding the buses. In Iraq they live alongside
ordinary citizens and learn about their lives, thereby putting
a human face on Ahmed the shoeshine boy, Mohammed the engineer,
Fatima the clerk and thousands more about to become faceless
statistics.
By way of lending encouragement to this
brave band I reflected aloud that a hundred years on, people
will look back on their efforts and remark, "So that was
how humanity finally learned to abolish war!" I expressed
confidence that this new direction of the peace movement will
be favorably compared with early attempts to abolish slavery
and win women's rights.
But considering the staggering odds they
face, what will prevent their heroic work from becoming just
another noble footnote? Consider these examples:
The safe energy movement of the 1970's,
for all its expertise and actual success at curtailing the nuclear
power industry, was never able to usher in a sensible, sustainable
energy policy, let alone establish citizen authority over the
utility industry. After a century of struggle by the our labor
movement, the U.S. still has some of the weakest unions in the
industrialized world--unions that in the present crisis urge
their members to write Congress instead of laying down their
tools or shutting down munitions transport. Despite the legions
of dedicated activists striving for universal health care, we
are stuck trying to make a disease-care system a little less
bad.
In these and many other cases, dedication,
hard work and being right were not enough to counter the massive
private power that consistently marshals our own government against
us.
Will this promising, qualitatively different
branch of the peace movement fare any better than the above efforts?
When this war against Iraq finally ends, what will the peacemakers
do? Make the occupation of Iraq a little more humane? Watch the
heads of oil companies march the nation to Gulf War III and then
take to the streets again? Or can we graft this new branch of
the peace movement to the sapling democracy movement, thereby
forging the political power we need to create the life we want?
As a Spanish activist told a packed news
conference in Baghdad: "This isn't only about peace, it's
about democracy. Our governments are going to war against the
will of their own people!"
POCLAD and others seek to strike at the
root of why we keep organizing against one chemical, one plant
closing, and one war at a time. It defines the missing thread
running through citizen movements of the last century thusly:
we labored mightily to lessen a corporate harm, achieve fewer
parts per million or shorten a war, but we have not addressed
the fundamental powers and privileges that allow corporate directors
to write policy, define our values or plunge us into another
round of butchery to increase their power and wealth.
We are saying, for one thing, that we
must get corporations out of our Constitution. To the extent
that legal fictions enjoy the rights of persons such as free
speech, due process and equal protection, real flesh-and-blood
persons are denied these rights and cannot have a democracy.
Property rights of the few will always trump human rights of
the many. The vast decency, wisdom and compassion of the American
people will never be able to govern. And we are fated to suffer
the consequences of plutocracy and growing fascism.
But what if...what if the peace movement,
broadened by an influx of citizens outraged at this war and deepened
by nonviolent activists interposing themselves in defense of
endangered civilians, combined with the democracy movement to
strike at the very roots of war? What if together we created
new strategies and tactics not only to stop this war, but also
to strip corporations of the privileges they have usurped from
us; dismantle their power to govern; end forever their ability
to direct our hard-earned wealth into armaments and empire? What
if in so doing we also found the key to building an actual culture
of democracy, a sense of real community to fill the void in our
souls that can never be filled by the Shopping Channel or Blue
Light Specials?
This is truly a dream worth pursuing.
Reaching it is worth rethinking the way we organize. We may yet
set a course that 100 years from now will finally achieve democracy
and abolish war.
Mike Ferner spent
the month of February in Baghdad and Basrah, with the Iraq Peace
Team. He is Communications Coordinator for the Program on Corporations,
Law & Democracy and a member of Veterans for Peace.
Today's
Features
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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