Today's Stories

March 20-22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

John V. Whitbeck
Happy Birthday, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

Weekend Edition
March 20-22, 2009

The Art of Peace

Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

By GREG MOSES

Austin, Texas.

In the stone-walled sanctuary of Central Presbyterian Church, three hundred faithful settle into pews as the dean of Austin peace activism, Fran Hanlon, previews how the rest of the weekend schedule has been planned for this Winter Soldier event.

Fran's partner at the podium, Doug Zachary, is looking pleased already.  The house is full.  The program is printed.  The act is together.  A banner hanging large to stage left says "Winter Soldier" and Zachary with his whitening beard, angle-bent hat, and Palestinian scarf, is looking like a perfected instance of the eternal type.

Zachary has been a Winter Soldier for 37 years.  In 1970 he won an honorable discharge after convincing the Marine Corps that he took the words of Jesus seriously.  In 1971, as Zachary was seeking alternative paths through Texas, the Winter Soldier Movement was born in Detroit where 109 veterans of the War on Viet Nam turned out the truth of what they'd done as war criminals in a criminal war.  Not many years later, of course, that war was ended.

After three more decades of aggressions upon foreign soils, brigades of Veterans for Peace (VFP) and Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW) have been joined by Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW).  Testimonies today from this new generation of “boots on the ground veterans” will carry echoes blown in from Vietnam and Detroit '71.

A Winter Soldier, says Zachary, is "loyal, steadfast, faithful, resolute, conscientious, scrupulous, and unafraid of painstaking work."  On this last day of February, 2009, with north winds howling out back along San Jacinto Boulevard, Zachary is here to declare that the movement-- in these "times that try men's souls"--shall not quit resisting the ongoing "imperialist, racist, and anti-democratic" wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Zachary yields the podium to the chaplain of the Austin IVAW, Hart Viges, who will be moderating the first panel of speakers.  Viges looks like a lanky pastor with his trimmed hair, spectacles, dark blazer, white shirt, and blue jeans, not to mention the mighty large cross hanging on the wall behind him.

"I'd like to give a quote from Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus)” says Viges.  “He said, 'Blessed are the ones who have undergone ordeals, for they have entered into life'."  After this refreshing translation of a beatitude the IVAW chaplain reminds us that even the things we will hear today can be transcended.

They Built Hanging Gardens Without Strange Fruit

First to speak today is Dr. Dahlia S. Wasfi, M.D. whose grandparents include a Sunni Muslim, a Shia Muslim, and two Holocaust Jews.  She therefore begins her story with a memory of the Abraham who once upon a time walked with Allah in Iraq.  Dr. Wasfi's cousins will sometimes boast that they walk the same ground as Abraham, but it has been hard ground lately.  There was an 8-year war with Iran, a 42-day bombing of the First Gulf War, and of course the Shock and Awe campaign of 2003.  In such a land it would be miraculous not to be living out some disorder of post-traumatic stress.

A film clip pulls us into the streets of Fallujah where two children carry small bags to a cemetery.  A tiny grave marks the burial of a child’s arm.  A grown man weeps.  Another declares that “our enemy” is anyone who had any part in these killings.  Clicking between slides, Dr. Wasfi shows us two more children from Iraq and Philadelphia joined together through an extended family that spans half the world and several religions.  Shouldn’t we be working to build a world where these children can enjoy a common future of peace and prosperity? 
Consider the example of Babylon.  Dr. Wasfi presents a slide of what the Hanging Gardens must have looked like when they counted among the Seven Wonders.   Do we seriously think that such a people from such a land actually need our outside assistance to figure out how to be great or to do great things?  Well there is one thing the Iraqi people could use that we could give them, says Dr. Wasfi, and that is immediate and unconditional withdrawal. 

HUMINT Unit

Winter Soldier testimony begins with Ronn Cantu, who steps to the podium with trim dark hair, a bare shadow of beard and mustache, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt that identifies him as an Iraq Veteran Against the War.  In 2003, he believed so strongly in “the war on terrorism” that he re-joined the Army after two years out.  The Army sent him to Iraq once, then twice.  So 2007 found him back in Iraq.

“During my second tour I served as a human intelligence collector,” says Cantu, looking over his notes.  “A lot of people know that as an interrogator, but interrogation is only half of what a HUMINT DIR does.  The other half is source operations where we look for Iraqi citizens to give us information willingly and thereby become sources.”
Cantu explains the method of “dual source reporting” which requires two written statements before a suspect can be detained.  The database assigns each report a number, but the number does not reveal whether a second report comes from a second source.  Two reports from a single source could therefore qualify as “dual source reporting.”  Database numbers could also be entered without any real sources behind them.

One of his first assignments was to help round up four members of an IED cell.  It seemed like a “success” but Cantu wondered: “Does a flock disperse when you detain the shepherd?”  As a HUMINT operator, Cantu was working for the “new body count,” and under these circumstances his unit could do what’s ethical or please the masters.  “We did the latter.”

From questionable database practices that could barely count to two, the operation soon degraded into detain first, dual source later.  From one suspected “al Qaeda” mosque Cantu’s unit detained every male and then looked for reasons to keep them.  Thirteen qualified.
“Then the worst thing happened,” said Cantu.  “We accidentally caught somebody big.”  Congratulations came sliding down the command chain.  What was there to do but to repeat the whole method next week.  By this time the people in the neighborhood were convinced that the Army had declared war against Islam.  To show how that wasn’t true, the Army got the Iraqi police to handle the next mosque roundup.  Since the neighborhood was Sunni and the police were Shia, the operation worked perfectly to divide and conquer.

When detainees were sent to confinement with boot-shaped bruises, missing teeth, or broken arms, military handlers got nervous and started rejecting them.  Once again, Iraqi police could help with backup detention facilities.  But when Cantu attempted to report questionable detention practices on the basis of seeing a man with an eye swollen shut he was asked: “Did you see him being tortured?”  What he heard was: “if you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.”  When a Warrant Officer assured Cantu that he did not have to carry out duties he considered to be illegal and discomforting, he began to pull away.

Gitmo Grand Opening

Brandon Neely was born into a military family in Georgia and he turned to the military when he reached working age in Texas.  He still keeps a military haircut that he wears today with his IVAW t-shirt.  Like Cantu’s before him, Neely’s confessions have been made in previous venues.  He opens by explaining how military guards sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison were never trained in the Geneva Conventions because they were taught that Gitmo was an exceptional place where the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply.

We’ve seen pictures of Gitmo prisoners arriving at Camp X-Ray, dressed in bright orange jumpsuits, knit orange caps, surgical masks, goggles, earmuffs, and gloves; hands strapped together.  What we didn’t see was the first guy who hopped off the bus on one leg as he was screamed at to move it.  Nor did we see how after he had hopped so many yards someone bothered to toss from the bus his prosthetic leg.

We’ve seen the cruel pictures from Iraq of naked prisoners piled on top of each other, but we haven’t seen the pileup that Neely describes when a bunch of Gitmo guards jumped on top of a prisoner who called one of them a bitch.

And we’ve heard the hype about the Gitmo prisoners being certified homicidal maniacs, but we haven’t heard how the first prisoner that Neely took charge of was trembling with all his might under a fear of everything he expected to experience when ordered to kneel.   He was slow to get into that position because he believed it would be his last.  What Neely reflexively took to be killer resistance was only one mortal’s attempt to steal an extra breath from this life, sucking it down from behind a surgical mask that he was convinced he would never be able to remove.  From their separate places across the globe, two distraught men were ordered to collide at Gitmo, each brainwashed into thinking that he was meeting a killer of instant resort.

Wake Up Call

“He knew how to sleep as only the innocent and the dead could dig,” says Rooster Romriell, opening his testimony with a poem made from fragments of razor-edged memories.  Long hair covering his right ear is mismatched by a buzz cut on the left side, as if to say once you get that military cut, it can never be outgrown.  His black t-shirt declares an imperative: “Support GI Resistance.”

Rooster transports the sanctuary to a home in Sadr City where an American squad has just discovered an AK-47, which is a legal weapon to keep at home.  We watch horrified as “an old woman with an infant in her arms” falls to the ground “weeping inconsolably” as two shots ring out.  The bullets crash through an innocent man’s face.  With a quivering chin, Rooster tells us that the woman still screams in his head at night when he’s trying to sleep.

Then comes the dump truck.  American troops fire upon it and watch it burn.  A man comes “waving a white cloth and yelling ‘baby, baby,’ trying to tell us that we were destroying nothing more than children and garbage.”  Rooster’s flesh quivers again with the pain of a conscience that dares him not to cry on the spot.  He exhales into the sanctuary and we barely breathe.  He has more stories to tell.
“Obama claims that he wants to withdraw the troops from Iraq—at least he did prior to gaining the presidency—all the while saying that Iran is a constant threat, allowing troops to be increased in Afghanistan, turning his sights on Russia, claiming they were delivering nukes to the terrorists, and now he’s confronting China for currency manipulation and monetary policy.  He’s calling for a civilian security force and mandatory service.  We cannot allow a blind eye to be turned on these things.  Obama is no friend to the veteran.”  As Rooster withdraws from the podium, Cantu offers a handshake. 

‘Bring the Troops Home Now’

“I’m a little overwhelmed by some of the testimony that’s been shared with us today, as I imagine many of you are,” says the next speaker.  Greg Foster is president of the Austin IVAW.  He is a panelist during this part of the program.  Later he will serve as moderator.  His black t-shirt bears a familiar script: “We the People.”  Picking up the general theme of the day, Foster declares that Winter Soldiers are responsible citizens.

“We know the reality of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Foster.  The testimonies may be difficult to speak and difficult to hear, but the truth is important and it should be shared.  The US owes compensation and reparations for damage done on foreign soil, but the country also needs to provide full benefits and adequate health care to “soldiers and Marines.”

Foster, like Rooster, spent time in Sadr City.  He recalls fighting street by street to secure a zone of operation, then watching burned-out awnings replaced with fresh cloth.  “I saw Sadr City slowly start to rebuild itself.”  After his unit was transferred out, the new unit had to start all over again with another street-by-street battle to reassert the “hegemony” of American power.   Says Foster: “When I say bring the troops home now, it’s not a slogan.”

The FOBulous Life

After a crowded and chattering intermission in the basement Fellowship Hall, the afternoon program resumes with two videos by Casey J. Porter.  As far as Porter was concerned, one tour of duty in Iraq would have been enough.   After returning from his first year in Iraq he joined the IVAW in 2007.  Yet that same year he was “stop-lossed”-- instead of getting out on schedule he was ordered back to Iraq.  This time around, Porter posts short anti-war videos to his YouTube channel.

The first Porter film today is “The Deployment Game: Livin’ FOBulous,” a satirical presentation of Camp Taji, a forward operating base (FOB) north of Baghdad that boasts 29,000 square feet (count ‘em) of retail space, complete with comfort foods from back home (listed in order of appearance): Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Cinnabon, and Taco Bell.

Cut to a car salesman seated behind a laptop, discussing the price of a Mustang GT fully loaded with leathers, then to a segment about KBR--the corporation that announced 2007 revenues of $8.7 billion, down a hundred million dollars from 2006 because of “lower Iraq-related activities in the Government and Infrastructure business unit.”  From a faucet in Iraq we watch a dingy yellow liquid fall into a sink and down a drain.  If it’s not a picture of the clean water KBR is supposed to be providing, then it’s a perfect image of something.

“It’s going to take a lot of stuff to kind of fix this bruise that we put on the whole earth,” says a fully jacketed combat soldier in the Porter film “Deconstructed.”   A hand-held camera follows soldiers through a home raid, lingers over a twig that a soldier uses to poke through human remains, records passing scenes of Iraqi life as viewed from a moving patrol vehicle, and occasionally shows a tender moment between an American GI and an Iraqi child.  “Going out into these neighborhoods and really helping to reconstruct, we’re not you know,” says the GI.  “I don’t see that happening.  I don’t see a true reason for us being here.”   The video has racked up 46,000 confirmed views. 

A Woman in the War System

After “Deconstructed” comes an awkward pause, as if the fog of war leaked into the sanctuary upon images of IED dust.  Greg Foster gets things back on track by introducing the first speaker of the second panel, Navy veteran Marie Combs.  Although Combs has been featured at Winter Soldier events before, this is her first appearance since leaving the Navy two weeks ago.  As a military translator, her experience begins at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where she learns how women in the military are treated to health care.  At every visit to the doctor every woman is asked to take a pregnancy test.  Apparently when it comes to women, pregnancy is the only “medical condition” that the system is prepared to see.

At a deployment base near Iraq, there is one woman physician, but she is frequently sent away on the medevac transport with women in labor.  And wherever they are taken, stories come back that women are made to walk on days when they should qualify for transport, such as when they’ve just had a c-section or when they are visiting the hospital to nurse their infants.  If war is something only real men do, then women soldiers also have war done to them, even though they wear the war’s uniform.  Combs herself suffered from depression after the birth of her daughter, nor was it easy to find help for that.

“The more wars we start, the more countries we invade, it’s breaking all of us down,” warns Combs.  She recalls a newscast where the war in Iraq was dubbed a “detour” that would soon be finished on our way back to a fresh start in Afghanistan.  But how can we start this kind of thing again?  “It’s hard to speak,” says Combs, “when nobody is listening.  No one’s paying attention to war.” Now that Combs puts it that way, a kind of coherence emerges.  Wherever terms of power are deployed by real men, the voice of peace counts precisely as the voice of a woman.

The Art of Peace

“I’d really like to speak about the strategies that I feel would really bring an end to this war quicker,” says Austin IVAW Chaplain Hart Viges, who has changed roles from moderator to panelist.  “So I look to peace and try to find my definition of peace, and the best thing I can come up with (and I think there is influence from other sources) is that peace is conflict without violence.  In this life that we live we cannot escape from conflict or the rubbing of parts or ideas.  This is our life and it is the struggle.  Buddha says that life is suffering, then so be it.  So I go to war,” says Chaplain Viges, holding up a book.  “Sun Tzu, The Art of War--this is a very important book that every peace activist should read and soak in.  It may sound confusing, but really the same strategies that we apply to war can be applied to peace.”

Viges takes special interest in Sun Tzu’s advice that victory in war depends upon seizing something that the enemy holds dear.  And so what do the makers of war need?  They need people and money.  But “if there’s no one to pull a trigger and if they don’t have any money to spend on a trigger they cannot make war.” 

Strategy number one for the art of peace: deprive the warmakers of people.  To do his part, Viges hangs out where young soldiers can be talked to.  He also helps to staff a local GI Rights Hotline.  Viges declares that there is no better satisfaction than taking calls from people with stress in their voices.  They have been told they cannot say no to military service.  When they are advised how to remove themselves from that matrix, Viges can hear their voices change from stress to relief.  In hearing that change in voice, Viges gets the best feeling. 

Viges also works with the local counter-recruitment group, Nonmilitary Options for Youth, where he takes credit for deterring ten young people from signing up for military service.  “That’s a body count I can live with,” he smiles.  Already, the local group has won a public complaint in the form of a newspaper quote from military recruiters.  If local recruiters can feel the impact of a half-dozen organizers working on a shoestring, what would happen with a steady budget and expanded staff?

Strategy number two: take away the warmakers’ money.   According to the current pie chart at WarResisters.Org more than half of our federal tax payments in 2008 will help to fund wars past and present.  “And since I’ve been downrange,” says Viges, “I know what those dollars turn into.  They turn into real bullets and real bombs that kill real people.”   The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act would allow citizens to opt out of war spending as a matter of conscience.  During the last session of Congress, legendary peacemaker John Lewis (D-GA) was able to gather more than 40 co-sponsors for the bill.  Watch for the bill to come up again this session, then “saturate them with communication.”

Keep Yourself Right

It takes Oklahoma farmer John Scripsick about seven seconds to draw cheering applause:  “After listening to you talk about recruiting, I think it should be a law that a recruiter cannot go into a high school.”  Dressed in plain clothing and ball cap, Scripsick tells the story of his son Bryan who joined the Marines right out of high school and served for three years and three weeks before being killed in Iraq. 
“I often wonder if my son had lived if he would have joined your cause,” says Scripsick.  “I was told that in a training exercise in California a higher up gave Bryan an order and Bryan just stood there.  The higher up gets in Bryan’s face and asks him if he is going to obey his orders and Bryan just stood there and said, ‘No sir!’  The guy got louder and asked Bryan, you know, ‘Why aren’t you going to do that?’  And Bryan said, ‘Because.  That’s.  Stupid.  Sir!’”

The week before Bryan left for Iraq, Scripsick told his son that although he was going to some dangerous places, if he kept himself right with the man upstairs, he would have nothing to be afraid of.  “You who see wrong and speak out,” says Scripsick nodding to the Winter Soldiers, “you’re speaking the truth, and you don’t have anything to be afraid of.”  As the audience rises for a standing ovation, Scripsick collects his notes from the podium.

We are not Dollar Signs

As Scripsick walks slowly away from the podium, past the first chair at the panel table, Bobby Whittenberg rises to give the Gold Star Father a big hug and a hearty slap on the back.  Whittenberg is introduced as a new member of the IVAW with an impressive passion for the cause of peace.  “Hey thanks a lot for being here everybody,” says Whittenberg leaning forward into the mic.  Over his black t-shirt, Whittenberg wears a camouflage shirt filled with counter-insignia, sleeves rolled up past elbows.  His cap, too, is decked with pins, and he looks out with intensity from behind a trim brown beard as he checks his watch for the starting time.

It was the way his John Wayne commander wanted his men to come swaggering into that Iraqi town that is to blame for Whittenberg getting shot with an AK-47 in some foreign war.  “But what happened after that blew my mind even more,” he says.  “I became a pariah.”  Whittenberg found himself fighting for medical attention then fighting to get out.  By the time he won his freedom, he was virtually bed sick and the Veteran’s Administration was explaining to him why he couldn’t get the latest drug to address his medical condition.  As soon as he switched to a civilian doctor, his health improved within weeks.

“And the reason is this:” explains Whittenberg, “when you live in a hierarchical capitalist system, the little guy on the bottom, everyone, every one of you, is assessed not by your value as a human being, but by your market value.  My market value was not very much at the Department of Defense and was not very much at the V.A.  But we’re not dollar signs,” says Whittenberg pointing upward with his left hand.  “We’re not weapons.  We are not a means of spreading capitalism and greed around the world.  We are human beings,” he declares.  As Whittenberg says “human” he raises his right forearm to flash the tattoo that says “HUMAN” in bold, all-cap font, written from elbow to wrist.

Soon enough the sound system is quavering and popping as Whittenberg raises one arm and another in passionate declarations that, “Each one of us is born into this world in the same way.  We live the same way.  Breathe the same air.  They can try to commodify food, they can try to commodify water, they can try to commodify health care, but they will never commodify our lives!”  Whittenberg shouts into a commotion that drowns his voice, so he pauses.  “Your power is not at the ballot box.  Your power is in your voice.  We need no representation.  We can speak for ourselves.  We are all equal.”  As Whittenberg brings the hall to a crescendo, a man stands fist-up to echo his final refrain: “All power to the people!” 

Gazing Upon the Future

“That’s Bobby,” deadpans Greg Foster, raising a swell of laughter as he prepares to introduce the last speaker on the program, Mike Corwin.  “When I was talking to some local IVAW members about the program and they saw Mike’s name on the program they said, ‘Is that that one guy who’s smiling and always friendly?’  I said, yeah, that’s Mike, so here he is.”

Corwin has been a socialist a little too long to get qualified as a Winter Soldier, but if we think about the qualities that Doug Zachary says a Winter Soldier should have, then Corwin clearly counts as a steadfast activist against imperialist aggressions.  A civilian for peace was the first panelist of the day; another civilian for peace will be the last.

“Why is it that we are spending trillions of dollars already on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and being told at the same time that the money is not there to bring badly needed relief to people here at home,” asks Corwin.  He wants to frame an answer in the context of Obama America.  On the one hand, Obama’s election seemed to signal a “total rejection of ideas popular for a generation.”  On the other hand, as far as the interests of the “American corporate class” are concerned, the new administration offers “a great deal of continuity.” 

In fact, says Corwin, “Obama’s goal is to salvage and rehabilitate U.S. military power for the ruling class.”  Tactical decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan are still being governed by an overall strategic priority to prop up a permanent global reach for US empire, which means the withdrawal from Iraq is getting slower, the buildup in Afghanistan bigger, and the legacy of the endless war on terrorism clings to its spending priorities.

But there are “chimes of freedom flashing,” says Corwin with Dylan on his mind.  Chicago workers occupied their workplace to win severance pay.  Students at New School University occupied their cafeteria to gain influence in university leadership.  And on college campuses across the country, students protested Israel’s attack on Gaza.  At the University of Rochester, a student occupation drew concessions regarding institutional spending in the Middle East.

Corwin wins a passionate burst of applause as he takes his seat.  After a round of Q&A, folks head outdoors into the wind for a spirited march through downtown Austin, chanting, “They’re our brothers, they’re our sisters!  We support war resisters!”  As marchers round the corner in front of the homeless shelter at 7th and Neches, they chant, “Money for Jobs, Not for War!”  At Sixth Street the “Not for War” chant draws a heckler: “Ain’t gonna stop the war, get used to it!”  But nobody misses a step. 

At the sundown rally on West Cesar Chavez St., three generations of war resisters hold up an American flag, an IVAW banner, and the day’s Winter Soldier banner that Heidi Turpin made.  Casey Porter’s mother greets the group with smiling support and appreciation from Casey’s extended family.  And Arizona Winter Soldier Adam Kokesh punctuates the day with his ex-Marine conclusion that there is no such thing as a good war.

Tonight there will be fellowship in famous Austin fashion, and tomorrow up the road there will be a grand opening of the “Under the Hood” coffee shop for soldiers near Ft. Hood.  But right now as the sun glows into the evening wind, pretty much what you hear are the birds gathering in the Live Oak trees, chattering insistently about their Saturday.  Yes of course it is--no it must be--a conference of the birds preparing themselves to see in the Colorado water below everything they’re looking for when nothing but the ultimate answer will suffice.  Perhaps there are no more than thirty left at the rally after all, but why should any more be needed to set the universe right side up?

Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He is a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press. He can be reached at: gmosesx@gmail.com

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