Today's Stories

September 23, 2008

Anasuya Dubey
My Holiday with McCain

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

September 13 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Panic!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Dirk Kempthorne's Closet

Wajahat Ali
Playing with the Constitution

Robert Fantina
Cheney Scales New Heights of Hypocrisy

Marcus Rediker
Notes on a Visit to the Favelas of Medellín, Colombia

Richard Neville
The Baby Killers

Ed Gaffney
Breaking the Siege of Gaza

Carla Blank
Neglecting a Grand Old Lady

P. Sainath
The Almighty and the U.S. Elections

Lee Sustar
Working Harder; Falling Further Behind

Joshua Frank
Liberalism and Its Bounds

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Guantanamoized Age

Dennis Loo
Shock and Awe Comes Home to Roost

Zach Zill
Squeezed Out in New York City

Omar Barghouti
So You Think You Can Dance? Israeli Profiling of African-American Dancers

Bill Quigley
Social Justice Quiz, 2008

Andy Worthington
Bush's Bitter Legacy

Stephen Dunifer
Free Radio: Liberating the Commons

Seth Sandronsky
Bailing Out Big Auto

David Yearsley
Portabella's Bach: Grim, Trite and Incredibly Boring

Patrick B. Barr
Obama's Punchless Campaign

Rannie Amiri
Tasting Ramadan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Flight Not Taken

Richard Rhames
What, Me Reason?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Large Hadron Collider Powers Up

Poets' Basement
Deer Cloud and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Wasilla Valley PTA?

September 12, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Next Cuban Missile Crisis?

Michael Hudson
More Dangerous Than the A-Bomb? The Chicago School's Record of Infamy

Lloyd Miller
Palin and Alaskan Native and Tribal Rights: a Dismal Record

Steve Breyman
Georgia in NATO?

Maria Rivera
Cuba After Gustav and Ike: an Eyewitness Account

Jonathan Cook
Israel and the Dark Arts

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
U.S. Designs on Pakistan

M. Shahid Alam
The Mendacity of Missed Opportunities

Robert Weissman
Executive Pay and the "Market Economy"

Tanya Golash-Boza / David Brunsma
Immigration Raids Must Be Stopped

Website of the Day
Know Your Rights

September 11, 2008

Noam Chomsky
Towards a Second Cold War?

Sharon Smith
Afghanistan: You Call This a Good War?

Ron Jacobs
Palinomics: She Ain't No Working Class Hero

Marjorie Cohn
God, Guns and Oil: A Palin Theocracy?

Mike Whitney
Cheney in the Caucasus

Jeffery R. Webber
Bolivia: a Coup in the Making?

Paul Cantor
The Other 9/11

Peter Morici
The Surging Trade Deficit

Ray McGovern
Iran's Road Less Traveled to Nukes

Linn Washington, Jr.
Screening Mumia: The Suppression of Dissent in America

Website of the Day
Palin (Michael) for President!

September 10, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Temporary Respite from Permanent Decline

Conn Hallinan
The Return of U.S. Death Squads

Ralph Nader
Who Needs Regulations When You've Got a Golden Parachute?

Peter Morici
Can the Bailout Work?

Joanne Mariner
The Horrendous Case of Aafia Siddiqui

Laura Tate Kagel /
Jen Marlowe
The Pending Execution of Troy Davis: a Case for Clemency

Chuck Spinney
Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King George

Dave Lindorff
Lazy Thinking and Prejudice

Scott Campbell
Where Now for Oaxaca's Social Movement?

Paul Farmer
Haiti and the Hurricanes

Anne Kilkenny
Letters from Wasilla: the Sarah Palin I Know

Website of the Day
Democrats and Zombies

September 9, 2008

Michael Colby
The Obama Poll Drop

Chellis Glendinning
Retorno a 1968: From Berkeley to Mexico City

Vijay Prashad
Losing Game

Jeffery R. Webber/
George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela From Below

David Michael Green
Country Last

Brian J. Foley
The New Face of Republican Power

John Ross
Mexican Flag Wrap

Pierre M. Sprey /
Winslow T. Wheeler
Joint Strike Fighter: Another Defense Acquisition Disaster

Nicole Colson
Sami Al-Arian's Long Road to Freedom

Marc Gardner
California's Anti-Homosexual Laws are Alive and Unwell

William S. Lind
The Baltic States and Russia: Toy Armies or Accomodation?

Website of the Day
All Hope Rests with Piper Palin

September 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
An Interview with Michael Hudson on the Worsening Debt Crisis

Tariq Ali
The Godfather as President

Pam Martens
The Man Who Vetted Palin

Bill Quigley
The Weary Road Home: Displaced Poor Continue to Return to New Orleans

Malini Johar Schueller /
Ed White
Not About Me: Obamamania, Racial Porn-fest and Palinama

Robert Jensen
Pop Music and 9/11

Uri Avnery
Lonely Rider

Win McCormack
Palin Family Values

Howard Lisnoff
How Far From a Police State?

Maria C. Khoury
Taybeh Oktoberfest in Palestine

Website of the Day
Scaring Students from Voting in Virginia

September 6 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Sarah Palin and the Good Book

Jeffrey St. Clair
That Dam Senator: A River Ran Through Him

Linn Washington, Jr.
The GOP Excluded Black-Owned Businesses from Contracts at St. Paul Convention

Patrick Cockburn
Did Bush Spies Monitor Iraqi Allies?

Gary Leupp
The September 3 Attack on Pakistan: a Precursor to More War Crimes?

Nancy Kurshan
CHI-town Lowdown: Memories of 1968

William Blum
Has Obama Already Lost?

Michael Winship
The St. Paul Police vs. the Independent Media

Fred Gardner
Joe Biden, Drug Warrior

Nikolas Kozloff
Sarah Palin and the Wal-Mart Moms: the Cultural Packaging of VP Candidates

Wajahat Ali
The Cryptkeeper and His Pitbull: the Past and Future of the GOP

Robert Fantina
Change Agents?

Karyn Strickler
Palin by Comparison: Sarah and the Hillary Voters

David Yearsley
What Their Fanfares Told Us About the Candidates

Richard Rhames
Bad Campaign Moon Rising

James L. Secor
Bandwagon Politics

Missy Beattie
Missy for Vice POTUS

Eric Patton
Baseless in Obamaland

Ben Terrall
Haiti and the Washington Consensus

Thom Rutledge
Mr. Magoo and the Kind Stranger: a Serious Political Problem

Dan Bacher
Arnold and the Manufactured Drought

David Macaray
Is Union Democracy at Risk?

Jane Stillwater
The Admiral's Child: a Psychological Reason for McCain's Flip Flops

Grady Harper
Should Hunting Really be High on Our Priority List?

Poets' Basement
Wolff, Payne and Holt

Website of the Weekend
We'll See Your Sarah Palin and Raise You With Maria McKee

September 5, 2008

Elizabeth Walters
Old Fears, New Worries in Louisiana

Bill Quigley
Gustav's Path of Destruction

Alan Farago
Nothing Means Anything: The Fantasy of John and Sarah

Dave Lindorff
The Things They Left Behind (Including McCain's First Wife)

Ira Glunts
A Lesson Before Lying: How Republicans Solved Sarah Palin's Jewish Problem

Peter Morici
The Big Slump

Deepak Tripathi
Politics, Morality and the GOP: John McCain as John Major?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Energy of a Hurricane

Michael Donnelly
Change. God. POW.: a Summary of McCain's Big Speech

Martha Rosenberg
Free to Good Home, SUVs

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Air War: On Wolves and Bears

September 4, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Real McCain

Paul Craig Roberts
Who is Wrecking America?

Ron Jacobs
The Perishing Republicans, the RNC 9 and the Twin Cities Cops

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Soft Surge

Andy Worthington
Rendered to Egypt for Torture

Osama Dawoud
How I Lost My Fulbright Scholarship

Stephen Lendman
Katrina Redux: the Militarization of New Orleans

Fidel Castro
Hurricane as Nuclear Strike

Website of the Day
Is McCain Palin's Bitch?

September 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
The Fake U.S. Victory in Iraq

Sen. Mike Gravel
Good Luck, Sarah!

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Left and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin, Hunting and the American Psyche

Ralph Nader
Repeal Taft-Hartley

Howard Lisnoff
Forty Years in the Streets (And They're Still Beating Up Journalists)

Steve Early / Cal Winslow
Can SEIU Members Exorcize the Purple Shades of Jackie Presser?

Shepherd Bliss
A Field Report From Slow Food Nation

Bill Quigley
Living in the Car After Gustav

Website of the Day
Growing Up Okie: an Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

September 2, 2008

Marjorie Cohn
Raiding Democracy in St. Paul

Jonathan Cook
Palestinian Village Faces Army Reign of Terror

Robert Weitzel
Biden and Israel

Corey D. B. Walker
Where Do We Go From Here?

John Ross
The Kidnapping Boom in Mexico

Eric Walberg
Wag the Dog in Georgia

Judith Scherr
No Day in Court for Ronald Dauphin

Richard Morse
Haiti, 2008

B. R. Gowani
What If the Israel Lobby was the African-American Lobby?

Michael Greenberg
Loofah Day in Cleveland

Website of the Day
Thanks for the Memories!

September 1, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Making a Killing in Iraq: McCain and the Telecoms

C. G. Estabrook
The War Will Go On

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Will a Russo-American Nuclear War Happen (Soon)?

David Macaray
An Elegy for Labor Day

B. R. Gowani
The Lobby as Juggernaut

Saul Landau
Real Gold Winners

Charles Orloski
Going Down to Hell's Cul-de-Sac

Gloria La Riva
Profit and Disaster in New Orleans

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Factory

August 30 / 31, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Speech; McCain's Palinomy

Bill Quigley
Gustav is Coming

Jeffrey St. Clair
Valley Boy: The Rise and Fall of Richard Pombo

Andy Worthington
Shining a Light on the Dark Prison

Deepak Tripathi
The Race for the White House: Notes From a European Observer

Stanley Howard
A Prisoner's Tale of Abuse

Dave Lindorff
Troopergate in Alaska

Wajahat Ali
Palin on the Prowl: a Cougar for the PUMAs?

Robert Fantina
McCain and Palin

Josh Schlossberg
A Bias for Life: the Role of the Environmentalist

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Voting

Missy Beattie
Stars, Stripes, War and Shame

Howard Lisnoff
Better Cuba Than Florida?

Suzan Mazur
Rethinking Evolution with Stuart Newman

Rev. Jim Rigby
What Would Jesus Ride to the Conventions?

David Yearsely
Katy Perry Meets Mozart

Serge Quadruppani
Italy's Years of Lead

B.R. Gowani
What If the Israeli Lobby Was the Islamic Lobby?

Richard Rhames
Empty Political Calories

Poets' Basement
Holt, Davies, Corsale and Landau

Website of the Day
Return of the Druids

August 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
How the Chicago Boys Wrecked the Economy

Brian Cloughley
Resurgent Russia

David Ker Thomson
Jacko and Me: Dispatches From Fifty

Joanne Mariner
A UK Window on CIA Abuses

Neve Gordon
The Ordeal of Sahar Vardi, Refusenik

Chris Genovali
Of Whales and Off-Shore Drilling

Ron Jacobs
What's a Godfearing Country to Do?

Michael Donnelly
Honest Abe in Denver?

August 28, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
The Battle of Chicago

Paul Cantor
Who Killed Victor Jara?

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassen
Axis of Evil Defeats Neocons

Andy Worthington
Clearing Out Guantánamo

Ben Terrall
Return to Port-au-Prince

Leonard Peltier
Message to Obama: Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Miasma of Bi-Partisanship

Donna J. Volatile
The Obama Construct

Website of the Day
Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker and Maya Angelou on the Meaning of Obama

August 27, 2008

Anthony DiMaggio
The Myths of Joe Biden

Jordan Flaherty
Three Years After Katrina

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Avoidance

Melissa Checker
Carbon Offsets, More Harm Than Good?

Bob Sommer
Blaming the Sixties

Cynthia McKinney
How the Democrats Helped Bush Hijack the Country

Ali Khan
Pakistan's Flawed Presidency

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim

Dave Lindorff
Strip-Search Nation

David Macaray
Labor's Hard Lessons

Website of the Day
Stagnant Income in an Eroding Economy

August 26, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
The Big Questions About Iraq

Michael D. Yates
Obama and the Working Class

Paul Craig Roberts
Is War With Russia on the Agenda?

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicide Report

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
Obama's Promised Land?

Huwaida Arraf
Sailing into Gaza

Joseph Grosso
Back to the Future: New York's Housing Crisis

Sheldon Richman
What About the Ossetians?

Binoy Kampmark
Impasse at Singur

Website of the Day
Taser Bait in Denver

August 25, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
US Out of Iraq by "2011"

Bill Quigley
Katrina, the Pain Index

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State

James McEnteer
Death by Paranoia

Uri Avnery
The Devil's Hoof

Will Potter
The State Deparment's Green Scare Wing

Robert Jensen
Technological Fundamentalism

Stephen Lendman
Reinventing the Evil Empire

Wajahat Ali
Biden His Time

Carl Finamore
The Future of Trade Unions in China

Website of the Day
Don't Blow Up the Mountain, Boys

August 23 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
"Change," "Hope"...Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Salmon with Paul O'Neill: Power, Profits and the Future of the Columbia River

Patty O'Grady
John McCain in a New Context: Why the Senator is No War Hero

Nicole Colson
Obama and Big Corn

Steve Conn
Obama and the Mining Cartel

Deepak Trapathi
Pakistan in Uncertain Times

Robert Fantina
Once Upon a Time in America: a McCain Administration

Jonathan M. Feldman
Obamanomics: Does the Left Have Anything to Say?

Joshua Frank
Targeting Pelosi (and the War Machine): an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Osama Qashoo
Sailing to Gaza

Howard Lisnoff
The Long Silence: American Jews and the Palestinians

David Michael Green
Sen. McShame and the Wreckage: John McCain Discovers America

Dave Lindorff
Why Not Let the Republicans Deal With This Mess?

Christopher Brauchli
A Banner Month for Passports

Alan Farago
Who Crippled the Government?

Michael Winship
Cash Register Conventions

Richard Rhames
Vlad the Derailer: Can Putin Save America From Itself?

David Rosen
The Culture Wars Are Over: But Culture Warriors Are Still Terrorizing America

Patrick B. Barr
Don't Try to Tame the Lightning Bolt

Jamie Newlin
Western Turf Wars: the Politics of Public Lands Ranching

Poets' Basement
Glendinning, McEnteer and Bonner

Website of the Weekend
Cafe Reconcile, New Orleans

August 22, 2008

Boris Kagarlitsky
Fallout from the Georgian War

Laura Carlsen
Obama and Latin America: Change or Continuity?

Bob Barr
No War for Georgia

Marwan Bishara
From Russia with Love: Putin Hits Georgia, Bloodies Bush

Peter Morici
Is the Fed Still a Central Bank?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Big Heat

Charles Mostoller
The Battle for the Amazon

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Obama is Not a Muslim: But Would It Be So Terrible If He Were?

Keith Rosenthal
Standing Up to Union-Bashing

John F. Miglio
The Devolution of the Baby Boom Generation

Website of the Day
Fire Sale in the Markets!

August 21, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
Is Georgia 2008 a Repeat of Hungary 1956?

Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It

Ralph Nader
The Problem with Problem Banks

Joanne Mariner
The Military Commissions, So Far

Wajahat Ali
Descent Into Chaos: an Interview with Ahmed Rashid on Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban

Ron Jacobs
Georgia and Historical Farce

Rostam Purzal
The Left and Iran

Anthony Papa
Unlocking the Power of Art to Counter Injustice

Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain Way

August 20, 2008

Michael Neumann
Russia and Georgia: Proportion and Distortion

Ray McGovern
Musharraf Out Like Nixon

Eric Walberg
Georgia's Ossetian Debacle

Fidaa Abed
Blocking a Gazan's Path to San Diego

Daniel Haack
The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit

Mike Whitney
Greenback Surges, Euro Shrivels

Website of the Day
Hands Off South Africa's Centre for Civil Society

August 19, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

Deepak Tripathi
A New Age of Torture

Marwan Bishara
The Politics of Evil in the US Elections

Saul Landau
Baseball Diplomacy or Just Baseball?

William S. Lind
Leave Georgia Alone, George

Martha Rosenberg
Whole Foods and Other Food Offenders

James Brittain
The Road to Tyranny in Colombia

Pratyush Chandra
Krugman's Great Illusion

David Macaray
AFSCME's Strike Against the University of California

Website of the Day
McCain Plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn

September 23, 2008

Can the Party of God Deliver Them From Exile?

Hezbollah and the Palestinians

By FRANKLIN LAMB

“The response to the massacre at Sabra-Shatila was for the resistance to become active in Lebanon. If the Lebanese people had given up on the resistance, they too would have been complicit in the massacres of Qana and Sabra and Shatila.”

– Hasan Nassallah June 4, 2002

“We renew our pledge to Jerusalem, to the Palestinians, and to the cause and Imam of Jerusalem; their city will forever remain in our souls, and will continue to be our cause, our battle, and our ultimate objective.”

– Hasan Nassallah October 28, 2005

The fundamental consequences of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila and the founding of Hezbollah are two seismic events from the same time and place which some argue are locked in an embrace that will return Palestine to the Palestinians

In fewer than 45 minutes following the explosion in Islamabad at the 315-room Marriott Hotel during the Ramadan Iftar mealtime, Saturday, Hezbollah security units nearly invisibly secured the area of the 162-room Beirut Marriott Hotel.  One of the embassies they secured was that of Palestine, which opened last year.

The security precautions were less out of love for the Bush administration, which the movement considers a rogue terrorist regime, or love for the Zionist-owned hotel chain, than the fact that the Marriott is within one of Hezbollah’s densely populated base areas.  Dahiyeh, which includes several southern Beirut neighborhoods, often erroneously referred to as “suburbs”, is less than a mile from the Palestinian refugee area known as Sabra-Shatila.

Hezbollah works regularly to intercept elements openly boasting of or secretly planning on attacking its neighborhoods. Some being watched and infiltrated are Al Qaida inspired Sunni Salafist cells, who consider Shia Hezbollah more their enemy than they do the US or Israeli governments. Contrary to Robert Fisk’s recent reports, these groups are indeed growing in Lebanon and inside the Palestinian Camps, particularly Ain el Helwe, Bedawi.   They are trying to launch in the so far peaceful camps near Tyre. This observer would agree with Fisk that it will not be easy for Al Qaida to find enough supporters and adherents of the Salafi-Jihadi ideology to challenge the strength of Hezbollah’s well-organized partisans. Yet, no fewer than 11 Al Qaida-inspired groups, eager to destabilize Lebanon, and sometimes related to US-Israel projects, have been organizing according to Palestinian Popular Committee Representatives inside the Camps.  Some of their goals are being telegraphed by the rising campaign of threats coming from their sometime-sponsors in Tel Aviv and Washington.

The Angry Bear Returns to the Levant

When the rest of the story is able to be told concerning what really was happening during the late April and early May events in West Beirut, the facts will support a very different conclusion than the narrative offered by the Welch Club. Researchers expect to elucidate contents of ten and one half hours of taped conversations between Washington and its Lebanese surrogates. Conversations are referred to during a meeting between Hezbollah’s number two, Sheifk Naim Qassim, and a former US Ambassador with his American delegation during a July 2008 dialogue in Dahiyeh. A full report of the May events will also document details of what is known by many here, that every incoming and outgoing communication at the US Embassy is carefully monitored, analyzed and contemplated. The same with Israeli Sunday Cabinet meetings.

This week the Israeli Army’s Information Security Chief, Colonel Ram Dor, complained in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot (Latest News) that Russia is relaying intelligence information to Hezbollah. Dor said Russian Navy spy ships and Russian personnel serving at monitoring stations on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights carry out intercept and hacking missions and relay Israeli secrets to Hezbollah.

“My evaluation is that such facilities can cover most of Israel’s territory,” Dor said.

The US intelligence unit in the American Embassy in Beirut also blames the hacking and sharing of its ‘most secured communications’ on the Russians while others claim its tit-for-tat for what the Mossad and CIA did early last year in Georgia.

US Embassy Internet security experts are unclear to what extent the Russian military is directly responsible for “communication compromises,” but they claim that the traffic patterns and servers used in the operation are definitely coming out of Russia and result from increased Russian activity in the Middle East.

Some in Beirut speculate that this explains why the meticulously planned US/Israeli “May Surprise” turned out to be a ”May Surprise” for its sponsors and their local teammates, who were dropped like a bad habit when the project imploded.

To counter this problem, the US Defense Intelligence Agency’s newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is authorized for the first time to carry out “strategic offensive counterintelligence operations” in Lebanon and against any group anywhere which the Bush administration considers “terrorist,” according to Mike Pick of the DEA, who will direct the program.

Covert offensive operations will be carried out in Lebanon and abroad against people known or suspected to be connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities, according to Toby Sullivan, Director of Counterintelligence for James R. Clapper, Jr., the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

According to Walter Pincus, who covers counterintelligence for the Washington Post, these sensitive, clandestine operations are “tightly controlled departmental activities run by a small group of specially selected people” within the Defense Department. The new unit is designed to thwart what groups like Hezbollah might be trying to do to us and to learn more about what they’re trying to get from us,” Sullivan said. In the case of “terrorists,” the object would be to identify people who might be “trying to do harm, collect information about us, and keep them from doing that. So far we don’t know if Hezbollah is trying to do anything to us but we will watch them,” he stated.

“You stop, we stop,” is the Putin offer to the next US administration, according to Congressional staff sources on the US Senate Intelligence Committee. Many in power in Moscow also consider the Bush administration a “terrorist cabal” and are awaiting the November election results, hoping Obama wins.

The Student Laptops and the KKK Kid

Hours before the Marriott was attacked in Pakistan, Fairouz Husseini sat with her girlfriends in the courtyard outside Haifa Middle School across the road from Shatila Refugee Camp, which is administered by UNWRA in Bir Hassan. Fairouz and her friends were giddy two days after receiving laptops at the 26th Anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre Memorial.

“I love it! I can’t believe it’s mine to keep!”, Fairouz exclaimed as she protectively dusted off the pale green cover of her new XO laptop, and recorded an interview with the screen sized video and built-in camera.  The XO laptop is part of an advanced teaching tool developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that some believe can revolutionize education in developing countries. 

“That American man told us that if we used it properly it would open the doors to the Great Library of Alexandria for us and we can learn as much as any student at the best schools anywhere in the World!” she added.

Amal, a very loquacious 13 year old friend of Fairouz chimed in, “We are making a laptop club at our school.  We call it: Learn for our Return! Is that a good name? What do you think? Our friend Ahmad says it’s a silly idea. Anyway, Ahmad does not behave properly and is sort of wild. He is what we call a KKK kid - Kalashnikov, Kassem and Katyusha.  Anyhow, most students in the camps are peaceful and we want to rebuild our country when we go back and we need lots of knowledge to do it!”

Fairouz and her Ramadan-fasting pals were already out of school for the day even though it was not yet noon. Lebanon’s camp Palestinians are severely challenged by a shortened school day due to overcrowding.  On average around there are 35, but sometimes there are as many as 50 students per class, and because UNWRA must run two shifts daily.  Student and teacher absenteeism is high, standards are low, text books insufficient, infrastructure poor, and dropout rates increasing.

Of the 59 Palestinian camps in the Levant (Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon) only the camp schools in Gaza are as bad, indeed worse, as those in Lebanon.

Gaza Director of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) John Ging reports that up to 60 percent of Gazan children at UNRWA schools had failed their math exams last year, while 40 percent failed their Arabic exams at the beginning of the year.

UNRWA provides schooling for Palestinian refugee children from grade 1 through 9, but offers limited secondary education and, as in Lebanon, these schools are forced to operate double shifts due to overcrowding.   ”Many children come to school hungry and unable to concentrate,” according to Ging.

Haifa Fahmi al-Agha, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Education Ministry’s Director General in the Gaza Strip, has documented that failure rates at schools in Gaza were deliberately lowered the past few years to cope with overcrowded classrooms, too few schools and limited educational funds. The same “lowering of the bar” trend is creeping into Palestinian schools in Lebanon.

Shatila Camp, as well as its sister, Burj al Baraneh, is located in Ghouberi Municipality, whose Council is now controlled by Hezbollah, whose party members won all 21 Council seats in both the 1998 and 2004 elections. Hezbollah security protects the whole area around Shatila Camp, and Haifa and other Palestinian Schools with their Shia, Sunni and Christian students. The Sabra-Shatila area is an increasingly close-knit area bringing together the Sunni Palestinians and the Shia Hezbollah.

More than 90% of Lebanon’s Palestinian students interviewed recently, in an admittedly unscientific poll, appear to believe that Hezbollah holds out their best hope to return to Palestine, and insist their parents would vote for Hezbollah in next year’s critical election if Palestinians were allowed to vote in Lebanon.

Before leaving for home, Fairouz introduced this observer to her lovely mother, Nour.  Nour is a community organizer who had come to collect her daughter.  She elaborated on why the Sunni and partially secular Palestinian community of Bir Hasan (where the first killers assembled 26 years ago before being sent into the Camp) have come to support the Shia Party of God despite a sometimes troubled past relationship.

The Non-ID Issue and Palestinian Gratitude

Besides shared values regarding education, Hezbollah supports the project that is now finally happening to give Palestinians identification cards for the first time.

“This is so important to our people in Lebanon. Actually Hezbollah worked quietly with Prime Minister Siniora’s people to achieve this much needed progress,” the community organizer explained.  “They do a lot for us but they don’t announce it to the public so much.”

Many Palestinians credit pressure and dialogue from Hezbollah with the announcement last month that the government of Lebanon will finally issue temporary identification cards to perhaps as many as 5000 Palestinian families (around 20,000 individuals) who have no documents and who habitually hide from the authorities or risk imprisonment. PM Fouad Siniora, in bed with the Bush Administration, wins kudos for his work on this issue. Siniora appears to reject the Bush/Cheney and Israeli intense antipathy toward Resistance supporting Palestinians.

The Lebanese authorities have thus agreed after 40 years to give temporary ID cards to “non-ID” Palestinian refugees. Palestinians without any ID documents are subject to more capricious treatment by authorities than those holding UNWRA ID or Ration Cards or NR (”Non Registered”) cards.

Most non-ID Palestinians are either former “Fedayeen” or descendants of the Palestinian fighters who came to Lebanon in the 1970s after being driven from Jordan during the “Black September” conflict with the Jordanian monarchy.

To qualify for the new IDs these individuals need to get a residence notice from a Mukhtar and submit it to the Lebanese General Security. The Non-ID card will help settle the legal status of thousands of Palestinians living in Lebanon and is about the only good news for the Palestinians here since their PLO protectors left Beirut in 1982, when the camp’s steep descent into misery accelerated. Lebanon’s new PLO “Embassy,” which was allowed to open in May of 2006, has already received 2,600 names of applicants.

Like all Palestinians, the new ID-holders will still not be allowed to work in professional vocations or to own property, but at least their marriages will be legally registered and, theoretically, they can no longer be rounded up by the authorities at whim.

Sidon Mukhtar Mohammad Baasiri explained that dozens of Palestinians were flocking into his office on a daily basis seeking IDs. “I have hundreds of applications from Palestinians who want to get a residence notice as a starting point toward getting an ID,” Mukhtar Bassiri noted.

Over the past two years, more than 350 non-ID refugees had been arrested in Sidon alone and more than 200 students were denied the right to access its schools and universities. To its everlasting credit, UNRWA often allows non-ID children to “sneak” into its schools - but they cannot pass their examinations at age 18 and gain qualifications because that requires legal papers. As reported by Daily Star’s  Fayez Najjar, an unregistered Palestinian father of 14 children from Ein el Helwe Camp explained that his sons had been arrested for lack of ID several times as they stepped outside the autonomous security system of Palestinian-controlled camps. Hezbollah is credited with helping advance this project.

Fatima Khalife’s Quadruplets and Hasan Nasrallah

This is another example of Hezbollah “good neighborliness” mentioned by Hajjah Nour, which this observer had actually learned about earlier while conducting research in Mar Elias Camp in Beirut.

Many foreigners may not be familiar with the 6000-resident Mar Elias Palestinian Refugee Camp located just to the Northwest of Sabra and Shatila. It is small, one of the original camps set up in 1948.  It is heavily made up by Christians from Nazarath and surrounded by Gulf-funded high rise construction projects.  Salivating investors eye its boundaries and prime location near the sandy beach of Ramlet al Baida and Hamra.

Last month, this observer, en route to an appointment inside the Camp, was negotiating the sharp turns of alleys so narrow and dark that they have likely never been warmed by direct sunlight, barely enough space to advance along on a motorcycle.

Suddenly I noticed a gaggle of squealing pre-teens lining up for motorcycle rides and practicing their English with “hello!”, ‘how are you?”, “welcome!” The kids apparently recognized me and the trusty steed “Silver” from an earlier visit.  But this time it was necessary to apologize and explain in very weak Arabic what “next time” meant because I was rushing to an appointment with a camp social worker, who told me yet another “Hezbollah story” which affords insight into the Party’s relationship with Palestinians in Lebanon:

On August 9, 2005, a Palestinian mother named Fatima Khalife gave birth to Quadruplets in Shatila Camp. One of the four babies, Omar, was very ill and not expected to live. He needed life-saving surgery and his family inquired at the nearby Safah Hospital. Being Palestinian, Lebanese law forbids any assistance from the National Social Security Fund, meager as it is. UNRWA contributed around $2000 and some local NGOs another $1,500. Still about $37,000 shy, the family was very happy when an article about the boy’s plight was published in the local daily, As Safir.  Two wealthy humanitarian Lebanese women came forward and offered to help the infant by paying for his surgery.

The Palestinian community was ecstatic and prayed for success with the delicate operation. Shortly before the scheduled surgery, a call was received at the hospital business office that caused its cancellation.  When it was learned that Omar is a Palestinian, the well-to-do Lebanese ladies, perhaps with memories of the civil war and lost loved ones, withdrew their offer of medical assistance.

Word of what happened circulated in the crestfallen community. A local TV station, New TV, ran a story about the Khalife family’s desperate plight as Omar’s brain infection took a virulent turn. Within minutes of the program being aired, the office of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called Omar’s father. Hezbollah said it would like to pay for the boy’s surgery and all subsequent expenses until the boy was well. And it did. Nasrallah had watched the program and was deeply moved. Today, Omar is healthy, sweet, rambunctious, beautiful, three years old who just learned how to press the ignition button and start a foreigner’s motorcycle.

Hezbollah cannot solve all the Palestinian’s problems in Lebanon pending their return to Palestine, but with no one to rely on but themselves, Palestinians appreciate enormously such gestures as saving Omar.

At the risk of over-simplification, one concludes that these kinds of “Robin Hood” stories have created a broad admiration for the Hezbollah-led Resistance in Lebanon’s Palestinian community - as do Hezbollah’s straight-dealing with the Shatila and Burj al Burajneh Camps in the Ghoberi Municipality, where it helps with infrastructural, sewer and water projects (probably against “the law” and wishes of many in Lebanon).

This is not to say that there are no lingering personal grudges within Lebanon’s Shia/Palestinian community from individuals who suffered at the hands of the other over the past four decades during the civil war and Zionist occupation. Yet, one Palestinian friend, Samer, a Mar Elias Camp social worker, reported that both communities want to let bygones be bygones. He points out that marriages between Shia and Sunni and Christian Palestinians are increasing (his wife is Shia). He also pointed out and that he personally has more Hezbollah friends than Palestinian, as he introduced me to his best friend, Ali, a Shia and Hezbollah party member.

Franklin Lamb can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com. The SabraShatila website is www.sabrashatila.org. He is finishing a book on Hezbollah.

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