Today's Stories

May 22, 2008

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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American Psywar Cadres at Home and Abroad

From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

By BRENDAN McQUADE

"We are change.”

With that simple three-word rallying cry, Barack Obama claims to transcend all the problems of Washington’s entrenched status quo and bridge all the divisions segmenting American society. Obama’s website invites us join the “movement,” not a campaign to get him elected but a movement to change the world.

But what kind of movement is behind Obama? They want us to think that they are a grass roots organization of neighbors, friends and family. But something just isn’t right. They aren’t concerned community members against the disease afflicting our economy, culture and government. They aren't even the PTA trying to fix your kid's school.

Obama’s “activists” and “organizers” are trained (and sometimes even paid) to appear as if they are part of some grassroots initiative when, in fact, they are representatives of some distant institution.  In this case it’s a centrally directed, national, political machine trying to sell an image.

In terms of tactics and management Obama’s “movement” is no different than Clinton and McCain’s campaigns. Just like their rivals, Obama’s cadres coming to a doorstop or intersection near you have been prepped in their talking points.

 Many of his supports genuinely desire real change but the sad truth is that Barack Obama only wants change of very limited scope. In his humbly titled Audacity of Hope, he describes himself as “progressive” working for “social and economic justice.”

But actions speak louder than empty platitudes.

One of his more prominent supporters includes David Brooks, a Republic columnist for the New York Times. Brooks dubbed Obama a “Hamiltonian” and a believer “in limited government” and “free trade.” He went on praise Obama for “a mentality formed by globalization not SDS.”

Brooks honest appraisal of Obama fits the would-be-President’s positions. In the 1990s, as an Illinois State Senator, he argued for universal healthcare. Now he advocates for “market-based” health care reform.

Obama’s mainstream neoliberalism leads him to support the most destructive kinds of free-market fetishism.  He voted against an amendment to a 2005 bankruptcy bill that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Like most American politicians, he was just dancing for his donors. According to Ken Silverstein’s  Harper’s article, “Barack Obama Inc.,” “Finanical firms constitute Obama’s second biggest single bloc of donors.” Silverstein’s article closed with a particularly damning revelation:

“On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a ‘player.’ The lobbyist added: ‘What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?’”

Economic neoliberalism is only one facet of the bipartisan consensus Obama dutifully upholds. He embraces underlining assumptions of the “War on Terror,” and the entrenched structures of militarism that underlie it.

He opposed Senator Russ Feingols move to censure the Bush Administration for illegal wiretaps; he distanced himself from fellow Illinois Senator Dick Durbin when Durbin attacked the torture and indefinite detention taking place Guantanamo Bay; he even lent his support to the Joe Liberman, when Ned Lamont, an anti-war candidate, challenged the saber-rattling Senator in the primaries leading up to 2006 elections.

Obama is itching to have his turn as an Imperial President: he’s already claimed the executive privilege to order a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran and covert operations in Pakistan.

Altogether, Obama is more likely to please those at the Council on Foreign Relations than the World Social Forum.

So where does his support come from? Some his supporters do want his slightly more restrained brand of the bipartisan consensus over the current ultra-right rendering in the White House. But many others sincerely believe that an Obama administration would cure all the country’s ills.  Why? Americans are a literate, intelligence people. Why have so many us fall for lofty rhetoric and empty platitudes?

The answer lies in basic manipulation of language and larger strategy of lies, and deception. Obama is running for President but he’s selling it as if he’s the leader of a great social movement out to save the world. Like the covert warriors he wants to set loose in Pakisan, Obama’s campaign runs psychological warfare at the highest level.

He’s backed by advertisers but not writers, graphic designers but not artists, jingles but not music. Psywar, not culture.

The Obama “movement” pretends to care deeply to your concerns but they only really want our votes, energy and the political control of our minds. They want you join their cult(ure), read their media, and believe in change and greatness of the leader. Join “the movement;” don't forget your donations, we need to your contribution to keep up the momentum.

It’s a scam, a political campaign masquerading like something genuine and human. Real social movements are not centrally controlled; they have a scope wider than getting someone elected. If anything, it’s a personality cult, not a social movement.

Genuine social movements start from free choices. People have ideas, they convince others and, with their collective power, the charisma of leaders and cultural producers, they affect change. They can build institutions and reinvigorate old ones to continue and maintain their work.

It’s the reverse process that doesn't work. Institutions take on their own life and at certain point become monsters of self-aggrandizement. They try to draw people in and sap their energy to reinvigorate the rotted edifices of corrupt sites of power.  Here Obama becomes a marketable piece of charisma, perhaps attractive enough to garner the Democratic Party the support necessary to win the White House.

Carefully selected soundbites, a noble stare, and a thronging personality cult may mask Obama's vacuous opportunism, corporate sponsors and decidedly neoliberal policies but they will do little to fundamentally change the generalized crisis gripping the United States and the rest of the planet. Obama may will win the Presidency but he won’t change anything of substance

Many in “the movement” will be disappointed.

Many Afghans and Iraqis already know the failures of the American psywar model of “social movements.” In Afghanistan and Iraq, the cadres going door to door don't have clipboards and bumper stickers. They have machine guns and surveillance equipment. They’re the “organizers” and “activists” charged with the U.S. psywar mission to build a client state in Iraq and Afganistan.

These psywar cadres are called Provincial Reconstruction Teams, 50-100 member teams of civilian and military specialists. They are the alleged panacea for security, good governance and economic development. The program in started in Afghanistan in 2002, where 12 US-led teams 14-NATO teams now operate. In Iraq, the program began in 2005, and there are now 13 US-led teams.

American teams are comprised of a military police unit, a psychological operations unit, an explosive ordinance/demining unit, an intelligence team, medics, a force protection unit, and administrative and support personnel. The entire logic of counterinsurgency—the unity of civil and military roles, economic development, and above all psywar—encapsulated into one mobile force.

Military and intelligence specialists to track down and kill the bad guys, and the civilian officials re-build the up the schools, roads and hospitals and give micro-grants to jump start small businesses. The psywar unit hands talk to “the people” and convince them in the genius of the American system.

It sounds like pleasantly and downright civil thing to do. The very least really an occupying power could do an independent country they invaded and “liberated” in the name of democracy.

PRT’s psywar project is not just directed at the Iraqi population however. On  March 13, 2008, President Bush Participated in  a video teleconference with PRT team leaders serving in Afghanistan.

A psywar coup against the American public, the media spectacle made President Bush appear as if he was a true theorist in the pseudo-science of counterinsurgency, while managing to hold on to his folksy Texan charm.

“Effective counterinsurgency strategy will require more than just military action. It requires a military-civilian interface,” the President explained, “and so if you look on the screen you see brave and courageous Americans in uniform and not in uniform, because they're a part of this strategy…the folks are attempting to fight corruption at the local level so that the local citizens are able to have a positive outlook about their government. We're also working to educate people, build roads, provide good health care. And our fellow citizens are there on the ground in some difficult circumstances, all aiming to help this young democracy survive and thrive. And there are difficulties, but we're also making progress.”

At a similar teleconference earlier, in January 8, 2008, President Bush credited the PRTs with producing a safe Iraq, “Life is returning to normal in communities across Iraq,” he proclaimed, “with children back in school and shops reopening and markets bustling with commerce…. The PRT leaders have gotten to know the Iraqi people. They understand the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in freedom and peace; that's what they know. You know why? Because the citizens tell them just that. They're helping give ordinary Iraqis confidence by rejecting the extremists and reconciling with one another so they can claim their place in a free Iraq and build a better life for their families.”

In practice, it hasn’t worked out as advertised. Both the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) and the House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee condemned the PRTs as failures. The SIGIR report from October of 2007 concluded the PRT have “shown little economic development, rule of law and political reconciliation.”

In April of 2008, the House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee issued found the program lacks “Strategic guidance and oversight” and “clearly defined PRT objectives and milestones for achieving lagers operational and strategic goals.”

Outside of the sterile policyspeak of Washington’s officialdom, it’s clear the program is failing. Mohammed Mahri’i an Iraqi journalist, was direct on the subject: the “reconstruction teams are invisible and I wish they could show me one inch above ground that they built.”

Maki al-Nazzal, another Iraqi journalist, sees through the psywar. “Bush and his heroes, Bremer, Rumsfeld and now Petraeus always lied to their people and the world about Iraq. U.S. soldiers are getting killed on a daily basis and so are Iraqi army and police officers. The infrastructure is destroyed. In a country that used to feed much of Arab world, starvation is the norm.”

Like Obama’s “movement” the PRTs are frauds. Psywarriors act for dead and dying institutions, the Frankenstein monster that is the Democratic Party or the stillborn Iraqi government.

Real social movements are made of dynamic assemblages of social forces that one person, group or institution can control. They compete, conflict and cooperate. Real change emerges from the chaos of many overlapping visions.

The American psywarriors at home and abroad hope that we will mistake the spirit for the forms. They offer only a media mirage of democracy development, and a good life. But empty words are no replacement for genuine commitments. Mirages vanish and leave us dead in the desert (for Iraqis and Afghans this is not a metaphor; its reality).

The spirit of real movements never die. Guard against the psywarriors and keeping building.

Brendan McQuade is a graduate of Hampshire College. He is about to start work toward a PhD in sociology at SUNY-Binghamton. He can be reached at: bim04@hampshire.edu

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