Today's Stories

August 18, 2008

Tariq Ali
Pakistan After Musharraf

August 16 / 17, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Don't Know Much About History...

Jeffrey St. Clair
Last Stand in the Big Woods: Resistance and Ignominy at Cove/Mallard

Deepak Tripathi
A Pawn in Their Game: From Georgia to the Brink of a New Cold War

Conn Hallinan
Georgia on My Mind

Mike Whitney
Revisiting the "Battle of Tskhinvali"

Robert Fantina
Russia, Georgia and Bush

Ray McGovern
Out Damn Blot: a Letter to Colin Powell

Nicole Colson
Bled Dry by the Oil Giants

Fatima Bhutto
The Impeachment of Musharraf

Jean-Luis Rocca
The Middle Kingdom's Middle Way

David Michael Green
My Army Went to Iraq and All I Got was This Lousy Air Lift

Ramzi Kysia
Standing Up for Justice in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Forging the Case for War

Lisa Martinovic
What's So Funny 'Bout Bush, Lies and Torture Memos?

Richard Rhames
Single-Payer, a Dream Denied

Don Santina
Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Rannie Amiri
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim vs. the Ugly Dictator

Ramzy Baroud
Family Politics and the New Gaza Crisis

John Stanton
The Army's Human Terrain Systems: From Super Concept to Super Farce

Howard Lisnoff
The Deportation of Jeremy Hinzman

Ron Jacobs
Sweat and Sacrifice Make History

Seth Sandronsky
Arianna Huffington's Blind Spot

Poets' Basement
Landau, Darwish and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Summer Screening: CounterPunch's Favorite Films

August 15, 2008

Steve Niva
The Surge in Iraqi Female Suicide Bombers

David Remington
Sharpening Occam's Razor on the Forged Intelligence Documents

Michael Winship
The Imperial Presidency

Paul Craig Roberts
The Neocons Do Georgia

Farzana Versey
Taming the Islamic Shrew

Harvey Wasserman
McCain Goes Nuclear

Felice Pace
The Politics of Smoke

Julian Critchley
All Experts Agree: Legalize Drugs

Website of the Day
The Farting Preacher

August 14, 2008

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
The Shape of Cuba's Reforms

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Surge in Afghanistan

Mike Whitney
Georgia and U.S. Strategy

Reza Fiyouzat
U.S. and Iranian Relations: What Does Normalization Entail?

Ralph Nader
Single-Payer Health Care in an Age of Two-Party Politics

Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China

Jack Bradigan Spula
Plowing Through the Farm Bill

Patrick Irelan
After the Flood

John Walsh
Buyers Remorse Over Obama

Dan Bacher
Schwarznegger Pimps the Water Bond

Website of the Day
Zevon: Renegade

August 13, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?"

David Remington
Forgery, Fakery and Fatigue (Scandal, That Is)

Brian Cloughley
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press

Glen Ford
Are Black Politics Headed Toward the Graveyard?

Brendan Cooney
A Shattered Myth in Georgia

Dave Lindorff
This War Has Been Approved By Your Government

Tom Lewis
Morales After the Bolivian Referendum

Stan Cox
Let's Handcuff the Property Cops

Alan Farago
Crimes Against the State: Bushism and the Florida Mortgage Crisis

Martha Rosenberg
Fear and Loathing Behind the Plexiglass Curtain

Website of the Day
Here Today, Here Tomorrow: Young Workers and Social Security

August 12, 2008

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Middle East

Anthony DiMaggio
Master of Ambiguity: Obama's Non-Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

Bill Christison
No NATO Membership for Georgia

Eric Walberg
War a la Carte: How the US Invited a War in S. Ossetia

Kate Connolly
Old Cold Warriors Never Die: Brzezinski Compares Putin to Hitler

Diane Farsetta
Cracking the Pentagon Pundit Code

Peter Morici
The Trade Deficit and Job Losses

Thom Rutledge
Equal Opportunity Judgment: Reason, Morality and the Edwards Scandal

Lee Patton
How to Swiftboat McCain

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Technological Titans, Moral Midgets

Website of the Day
Mr. Hot Buttered Soul

August 11, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Politics of the Race Card: McCain Gurgles in the Slime

Paul Craig Roberts
The Moronic Party: From Off-Shore Drilling to the Georgian War

Gary Leupp
The Neo-Cons' Dream Forgery: the Habbush Letter Revisited

Douglas Kammen
Rice and Circus in East Timor

William Willers
New Paths Toward the Loss of Our Public Lands: Subsidies, Volunteerism and Outsourcing

Greg Moses
The Smell of Propaganda in the Morning: Press Calls for War in the Caucasus

Jeff Leys
Showdown at Fort McCoy

Cynthia McKinney
We Are Not Hopeless

Alan Farago
The Olympic Spectacle and the New China

Website of the Day
Mahmoud Darwish, RIP

August 9 / 10, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
You Want More Still Proofs the Crony, Old-Line Press is Dead?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pools of Fire: the Looming Nuclear Nightmare in the Backwoods of N. Carolina

Bruce Jackson
Hamdan's Secret

Kevin Young
Targeting Civilians: the Path to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Chris Floyd
The Serpent's Egg: Solzhenitsyn and the Origins of the American Gulag

Joshua Frank
Inside Obama's Fundraising Operation

Robert Fantina
Of Campaigns and Timelines

Brendan Cooney
The Eagle is Wounded

Mark Almond
Plucky Little Georgia?

Lois Gibbs
The Lost Lessons of Love Canal

Rev. William Alberts
Blind Patriotism? McCain's Counting On It

Kathy Kelly
The Big Voice

John Ross
The Cutthroat Games: the Decline of the Olympics from Mexico City to Beijing

David Michael Green
The Fire This Time: the GOP and the Economy

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
A Novel Approach to Politics

Ron Jacobs
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy (Or Why John McCain Wants Cindy to Show Her Tits)

Richard Rhames
The Greatest Degeneration

David Yearsley
Once More Unto the Albert Hall, Dear Friends

Lee Sustar
Justice for the Freightliner Five: a Struggle for the Soul of the UAW

Brenda Norrell
Turning Sewage into Snow on the Sacred San Francisco Peaks

Ben Terrall
Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Jenkins, Ibn Salma and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tuli Kupferberg's Fig Leaf Olympics

August 8, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Nationalist Surge

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Voting: a Ritual of Justifying Biases

M. Shahid Alam
The Zionist Stratagem

Andy Worthington
Salim Hamdan's Sentence

Lawrence J. Korb
Bad Advice from Generals

David Model
Instant Genocide

Alan Farago
When Miami Goes Bust: the Politics of the Housing Crisis

Diop Olugbala
What About the Black Community, Obama?

Firmin DeBrabander
When the Olympics Went Green--with Algae

Website of the Day
Summer Reading: CounterPunch's Favorite Novels

August 7, 2008

Dr. Trudy Bond
Fixing Hell and Curing Obesity

William Blum
Breaking Young Hearts: Obama and the Empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Do You Feel Safe Now?

Ralph Nader
Gouged in the Skies: Gotcha Capitalism in the Airline Industry

Robert Weitzel
Obama and the Two Walls

Jacob G. Hornberger
Why Wasn't Ivins Declared an Enemy Combatant?

Binoy Kampmark
Driving Bin Laden

David Macaray
What Does a Radical Labor Union Look Like?

Howard Lisnoff
Echoes of the Sixties: Refusing to Recite the Pledge

Website of the Day
Bono's Retirement Fund

August 6, 2008

Marc Herold
Obama and Afghanistan

Greg Moses
The Unnecessary Execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin

Sheldon Rampton
The Anthrax Cover-Up

Kevin Young
The Atomic Bombing of Japan: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Re-Examines the Japanese Surrender

Michael Estrada
What I Re-Discovered in Mexico

Robert Weissman
The Commercial Games

Dr. Susan Block
The Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church Killings: Did Rightwing Talk Shows Drive Him to Kill?

Cindy Sheehan
This is Horseshit

Ace Hoffman
The Unholy Trinity

Website of the Day
Over to You, Paris

August 5, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Anthrax Attacks and the Assault on Civil Liberties

Jeff Halper
An Israeli Jew in Gaza

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Better? With Three Wars Going On?

Nancy Welch
"What Did My Father Do to Deserve Such Treatment?" An Interview with Laila al-Arian

Peter Morici
Rear View Mirror Economics

Sousan Hammad
The Antisemitism Incitement Craze

Eamon Martin
The Audacity of Despair

Shepherd Bliss
Slow Food Nation Gains Momentum

Tim Matson
Keeping Cool and Saving BTUs

Website of the Day
Top Heavy Greens?

August 4, 2008

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Exit

Saul Landau
Reflections on the Cuban Revolution

David W. Remington
The Face of the Modern War Criminal

Rev. Jesse Jackson
The Question Conscience Asks

Dave Lindorff
The Cheney Doctrine: Shoot Your Friends First

Peter Morici
The Lingering Economic Malaise

Joanne Mariner
Debating Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism in Britain

Ramzy Baroud
Through the Israeli Looking Glass: Obama Joins the Club

Christian Wright
Why We're Protesting at the Democratic Convention

Website of the Day
The US and Karadzic

August 2 / 3, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Really Running Iraq?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is the King of Pork Dead?

James Abourezk
Lies the Oil Companies Peddle

Andy Worthington
The CIA's Secret Prison on Diego Garcia

Brian Cloughley
Baleful Imperial Power

Robert Fantina
Redefining Progress in Iraq

Benjamin Dangl
Total Recall in Bolivia

Marlene Martin
Living in Hell for Life

David Yearsley
The Sound and Fury of Wet Balloons Rubbed with a Big Sponge: Yes, Bill O'Reilly, This Your Kind of Music!

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Qualifies "Them" for the Death Sentence?

David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis

Harvey Wasserman
Meet the Real Terrorists of the 1960s

Jason Hribal
Moja Has Mojo: How a Few Elephants Turned the Zoo Industry Upside Down

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Geary Street: an Interview with Rock Photographer Dominque Tarle

Laray Polk
Tongues of Fire, Plains of Grace: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ron Jacobs
Jerry Garcia Meets Barack Obama

David Macaray
Labor, Management and the Adversarial Relationship

David Rosen
Teen Prostitution in America

Dan Bacher
Schwarzengger's Water Empire

Joe Allen
Batman's War of Terror

Poets' Basement
Graham, Stevens, Cory and Fleming

Website of the Weekend
Get Your War On: the Watch List

August 1, 2008

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain's Mad Dog Advisor Max Boot

Rannie Amiri
Islamobamaphobia: a New Word Enters the Lexicon

Peter Morici
U.S. Economy Loses Another 51,000 Jobs

Christopher Brauchli
South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Coup in the Great Caspian Play

Patrick Cockburn
Turkish Court Says Ruling Islamic Party Can't be Shut Down

James J. Brittain
The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

Dan Bacher
Warren Buffett, Salmon Killer

Website of the Day
Shark Genocide: 100 Million Deaths a Year

July 31, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Next Big Bail Out: State, Local and Private Pensions

Carl Finamore
Protest Politics and the Democrats: A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan

Joshua Frank
Obama's Green Coal: Another Myth from the Change Agent

Andy Worthington
The Peculiar Case of Jarallah al-Marri

Ralph Nader
The Living Legacy of Rosa Parks

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Wave of Capitol Crimes

Robert Weissman
The Collapse of the WTO Talks

Dave Lindorff
Bush Judge Does the Right Thing on Executive Immunity

Website of the Day
Perils of the New Pesticides

July 30, 2008

Brian M. Downing
Assessing the Surge

Chuck Spinney
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan? A Thought Experiment

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

David Ker Thomson
Against Bike Lanes

Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

Mike Whitney
Apocalypse Down Under

Martha Rosenberg
Heifer Palooza

James Murren
Where Your Life is Worth One Bullet

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Hearing

Ron Jacobs
A Conspiracy to Kill Iraqis?

Website of the Day
Mapping Job Loss to China

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

August 18, 2008

Direct Aid for Iraqis

We Can Do Better

By NOAH BAKER MERRILL

One night last February, I was in Amman, Jordan interviewing Iraqis who had fled the catastrophic violence of 2006 and 2007. My partner in this work was my friend and colleague "Ali"(not his real name), who is himself an Iraqi refugee. While we walked through the city's dark streets, quietly considering together the dozens of stories of horror, brutality, and loss we'd heard in the last few hours alone, I was seized by a spasm of rage and sadness. Ali took my arm and shook me.

"Stop it," Ali said. "I understand why you're feeling this way, and thank you. But Iraqis don't need this now. What we need is for you to be smart, to work hard, and to stay with us, because the whole world has forgotten us."

These words have formed a bedrock of inspiration for me in the development of Direct Aid Iraq (www.directaidiraq.org), a humanitarian aid and peacebuilding effort I co-founded with Iraqi and American colleagues early last year. From its beginnings, Direct Aid Iraq (DAI) has been a partnership of Iraqis and Americans working to model a different kind of American-Iraqi relationship. The premise is that Americans have a responsibility for ongoing reparations to Iraqis, and that living up to this obligation effectively is a powerful investment in building peace – both between Iraqis and Americans, and for the future of Iraq.

On the ground in the Middle East, DAI is run entirely by a team of talented, dedicated Iraqis, and at present, its primary humanitarian work is the provision of urgent medical care. Iraqis not only identify the neediest members of their community, coordinate services, and ensure necessary follow-up care, but it is through their initiative that DAI’s work has moved in new directions: for example, the formation of a mobile health clinic for people in underserved and unserved communities, away from large cities. The role of American team members thus becomes a question of how best to support and amplify the capacity of Iraqis to help themselves and each other.

This summer, I spent several weeks in the Middle East with DAI's Iraqi team members, accompanying them in their work, learning about the ongoing challenges they and those they serve face, and planning for the future of our shared work.

Over the past sixteen months, DAI has provided urgently-needed medical care to dozens of Iraq's most vulnerable refugees and displaced people. And through dedicated advocacy, DAI has secured support from humanitarian organizations for the needs of more than 200 refugees who have fallen through the cracks of the support system set up by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the international aid community.

In addition to this provision of direct care, DAI team members have worked with the staff of humanitarian groups and the UN to improve strategies for aid delivery, and to shine a light on emerging issues for Iraqis in exile based on feedback from Iraqi refugee communities (members of which compose half of DAI's coordination team, and the whole full-time team in the Middle East). We've coordinated visits from journalists, aid workers, and activists seeking to more fully understand the Iraqi displacement crisis and its implications.

But we know we can do better.

This month, through the support of Americans who are fulfilling their responsibility for direct reparations to Iraqis, we're providing a range of ongoing care, including physiotherapy for Mustafa, who was thrown from the roof of his house by a US missile; the next in a series of reconstructive surgeries for Haifa'a, who was shot in the face by an Iraqi militia using ammunition supplied by US tax dollars; and medication for Amani, a child whose chronic thalassemia was ignored by the aid community because no organization had a mandate to treat it. We're working, as we have in the past, with victims of torture, including torture by US forces.

But we can do more to facilitate support for the eight people who wait as I write this for crucial treatment, including a four-year-old child whose leg was crushed by the wheels of a US Humvee, and a young doctor who, without help, is likely in the last weeks of his life, his strength sapped by an abdominal tumor the size of a basketball.

We can do a better job at building a base of support in the United States so that we're not always working hand-to-mouth, hoping that resources will come through in time to respond to the urgent needs we encounter daily. We continue to explore ways to expand our relationships with existing Iraqi medical and civil society networks, to further improve our access to information on emerging needs and issues, and to make getting aid to people - or people to aid - smoother. 

But more than anything, we know that those of us who are Americans and peace activists can all do better at supporting Iraqis in building a future of peace for their country, right now and in the days and years to come.

DAI is based on a few simple premises. They're so basic that we act on them more often than we talk about them. We think, though, that talking about them and the actions to which they might lead us as a movement for peace for Iraq is vital, and so we're bringing them forward as a contribution to the ongoing discourse on Iraq at this time:

1) Iraqis are the hope and future of Iraq

This might seems obvious, but it's not at all the message Americans hear in the mainstream media, where the image of Iraqis is one of factionalism, corruption, violence, and irrationality.

Americans rarely hear the stories of Iraqis coming together to support one another as they struggle to survive as refugees, or to build networks among effective and trusted civil society organizations within Iraq. We don't hear about the doctors passionately working in Iraq's clinics without basic medical supplies to save the lives of the acutely sick, chronically ill, and wounded, or the human rights defenders who, while their role is not protected legally in Iraq, risk (and sometimes lose) their lives daily to promote their vision of a future where the rights of all will be respected by those in power.

Members of the DAI team have their own stories: kidnapping in Iraq, dozens of family members killed by violence or disease, interrogation by intelligence services, loss of homes, separation from loved ones, torture, persecution. And still they work tirelessly on behalf of their communities, regardless of religion, sect, ethnicity, gender, or political affiliation.

Iraqis aren't just the hope of Iraq's future, they're also the best asset Iraq has now. The physicians, engineers, and professors who make up Iraq's professional class are scattered beyond Iraq's borders. They are part of the estimated 4.5 million people now living away from their homes as a result of the catastrophe that Iraq has experienced. Without them, Iraq won't have the human resources it needs to rebuild. And that's part of the reason that efforts supporting Iraqis now – individually, as families, and organizationally – are an investment of peace in Iraq's future.

2. We are not alone

We don't have to figure this out by ourselves – Iraqi allies can and will help us, if we can develop trust and credibility over time by "being there," again and again. Their voices are the ones that deserve to occupy the central position of our debates on how to withdraw US troops, mercenaries, bases, and economic and political control from Iraq; how to promote inclusive regional political solutions; and how to support Iraqis in constructing a stable, secure, and peaceful country from the ruins of war and chaos.

3. We must work together here in the US

As I've traveled across the US in the last months and years, I've encountered numerous small community groups with great ideas about providing support to Iraqis in need, and who have followed through faithfully by sending money and other support to Iraqis through school partnerships, art exchanges, support for the living expenses of families with whom previous relationships have been developed, and assistance with small numbers of medical cases.

As I’ve traveled in the Middle East, I've also seen how small and often poorly coordinated American "antiwar movement" efforts can alienate and disappoint the very people they are intended to support, perhaps because they arise more from earnest concern, passion, and outrage than from strategy and patient discernment on the most effective ways to proceed, in dialogue with Iraqi partners. I've seen the damage that is done when we put a heartfelt desire to "do something" ahead of the importance of commitment to the people with whom we're working.

I've seen fruitless squabbling between "projects" for name recognition and media visibility that has trumped clear-eyed assessments of who was being helped, what could be learned, what partners were available, and what was already being done.

The Iraqi community leaders we are trying to support don't want us competing for already scarce resources and confusing those in our communities who would support our efforts. They need us to take ourselves seriously enough to communicate, coordinate, and improve our work based on ongoing feedback and dialogue with each other, and with Iraqi partners and aid recipients who are, after all, the reason we're doing this work in the first place.

They need us, as “Ali” said, to be smart, determined, and faithful. They need us to keep our promises, and to grow more and more effective at meeting our commitments. They need results. They need to see that, unlike our government, there are Americans who can not only recognize a responsibility, but can live up to it.

If we become too focused on "our" projects, and not on the needs of those on whose behalf we claim to be working, we will end up failing to sustain our efforts, or worse, we'll sustain our efforts and fail to respond to the needs of Iraqis: we'll support ourselves, but not our Iraqi partners' needs and visions for the future.

The Americans involved in Direct Aid Iraq face this reality everyday, and we don't exclude ourselves from these criticisms. But we earnestly struggle to rise to the challenge laid out above, and we hope that others with a concern for direct aid and solidarity will further consider this challenge, too.

4. We can do better

Americans who are opposed to this war are narrowly focused on the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, but we can do better. The US peace movement – itself narrowly focused on the withdrawal of troops – has a crucial role to play in expanding this vision. We must make it clear that Americans have a responsibility to be part of building a movement for a future of peace in Iraq, a movement that acts in partnership with Iraqis, and with Iraqis in the lead.

As we lift up this crucial concern, we can also do better at actually modeling it through our committed, sustained action. This can't be, as it too often is, about sound bytes and media opportunities. We have to do better about building partnerships with the wisest, most trusted, and most effective leaders in Iraq's civil society networks – and DAI and other groups are making some promising starts. When we are asked for support, as DAI often is, we need to be able to follow through by mobilizing our communities to raise consistent funds to support not only our own joint Iraqi-American efforts but also the efforts of growing networks of Iraqi groups inside Iraq whose financial and political support continues to dwindle.

Imagine an effort arising from within the antiwar movement in the United States that merges effective aid delivery, focused peacebuilding efforts, and advocacy for policy change rooted in direct experience of each of the areas mentioned above. Imagine your local group or faith community being a part of it. Imagine what we could do with a nationwide network of communities pooling expertise and resources to identify, fund, advocate for, and sustain credible and effective Iraqi-led initiatives in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

An effort like this is being developed, but it will take all of us. And we'd welcome your involvement.

We need your help to keep being smart, to keep working hard, and to stay with our Iraqi partners and friends. For each new person who gets involved, there's one more voice saying to Iraqis that they haven't been forgotten.

It's our responsibility. Together, we can do better.

Noah Baker Merrill is an American co-coordinator of Direct Aid Iraq, an Iraqi-American humanitarian aid and peacebuilding effort. DAI's core team includes ten people, six of whom are Iraqi. He can be reached at: noah@directaidiraq.org

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