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PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS ON HOW THE 'FREE TRADE' CASE FOR OFFSHORING AMERICA'S JOBS HAS COME UNGLUED Roberts on the sensational exposure of the faked "gains" and phantom stats of the free traders. Who was America's most anti-imperialist president? Try Grover Cleveland! JoAnn Wypijewski on the unlikely hero of Hawai'i's restoration movement. Alexander Cockburn reports on evangelical Christians in crisis amid fresh onslaughts by forces of darkness. The Warbler's Parable: Rosa Miriam Elizalde on the black-masked visitors to Cuba defying the US economic blockade.
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Today's Stories June 25, 2007 Jennifer
Loewenstein June 23 / 24, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Jeff
Taylor Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Robert
Fisk David
Rosen Russell
Mokhiber Alison
Weir Robert
Fantina D.
K. Wilson Nicole
Colson Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson Dave
Lindorff Benjamin
Dangl Michael
Dickinson Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 22, 2007 Andy
Worthington Sherwood
Ross Eliana
Monteforte Robert
Weissman Richard
Rhames Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy
Baroud Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon David
Michael Green Kathryn
Webber Website
of the Day
June 21, 2007 Peter
Linebaugh Natsu
Saito Ron
Jacobs Saree
Makdisi John
Stauber Scott
Liebertz Tom
Clifford Robert
Jensen Michael
J. Smith Jeb
Sprague Website
of the Day
Omar
Barghouti Andy
Worthington Margaret
Kimberley Robert
Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Rannie
Amiri Stephen
Lendman Dave
Lindorff David
Swanson Anne
Dachel Website
of the Day
June 19, 2007 Ralph
Nader Dr.
Shepherd Bliss Bill
and Kathleen Christison Jeff
Leys Dave
Zirin Chris
Floyd Ben
Terrall Anthony
Papa VIPS Linda Flores Website
of the Day
John
Ross Paul
Craig Roberts Martha
Rosenberg Norman
Solomon Don
Santina Isabella
Kenfield James
Brooks Eva
Liddell Sam
Husseini Akiva
Eldar Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn John
Halle Robert
Fisk Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Fred
Gardner Saul
Landau P.
Sainath Missy
Comley Beattie Alan
Gregory Walter
Brasch Website
of the Weekend
June 15, 2007 Alan
Farago Andy
Worthington Michael
Simmons Franklin
Lamb Gary
Leupp John
Ross Website
of the Day
June 14, 2007 Michael
Donnelly
Faisal
Kutty Harry
Browne Charles
Jonkel Steven
Higgs Bruce
Dixon Bruce
K. Gagnon
Website
of the Day June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Marjorie Cohn Bill Christison Charles Jonkel Silvia Cattori Richard Gott Firmin DeBrabander William S. Lind Keith Rosenthal Website of the Day June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair Paul Craig
Roberts P. Sainath Ralph Nader Omar Waraich Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Malini Johar
Schueller Ramzy Baroud Website of
the Day
June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Norman Solomon Eva Liddell Rannie Amiri Rachel Voss Christopher
Brauchli D. K. Wilson Website of
the Day
Alexander Cockburn George Ciccariello-Maher Saul Landau Robert Fisk Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Ward Boston Conn Hallinan Leonard Peltier Lawrence Davidson John Ross Kate Allan Fred Gardner Stephen Fleischman Monica Benderman Geoff Bailey Missy Beattie Patrick Dyer Tim Lengerich James Irani
Gary Leupp Michael Tillery Michael Simmons Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
June 8, 2007 Serge Halimi Patrick Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair
Paul Craig Roberts William Blum Joshua Frank Lance Selfa Dave Lindorff Lawrence Ferlinghetti Website of the Day
Marjorie Cohn Soldz, Reisner
and Olson: Soldz, Reisner
Paul Craig Roberts Bill Quigley Silvia Cattori Carl G. Estabrook Ellen Taylor Corporate Crime
Reporter Brenda Norrell D. K. Wilson Kevin Zeese Website of
the Day
Alain Gresh Gary Leupp Steven Sherman Bruce Dixon Corporate Crime Reporter Brian M. Downing Ron Jacobs George Bisharat Nicole Colson Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
June 5, 2007 Michael Neumann Jonathan Cook David Vest Robert Fantina Hoffman, Parsneau and Chowdhury John V. Walsh Richard Cretan Adam Engel William S. Lind Myles Hoenig Jim Minick Website of
the Day
Nizar Latif Diana Johnstone Gregory Wilpert Paul Watson Susan Rosenthal,
MD Richard Ward Eva Liddell Zahi Khouri Evelyn Pringle China Hand Karyn Strickler Website of the Day
June 2 / 3, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Marc Levy Martin Smith Diana Johnstone John Ross Uri Avnery Sunsara Taylor Richard Neville P. Sainath Missy Comley
Beattie Nisrine Abiad Rannie Amiri Margot Pepper Eric Stewart Ralph Nader Dan Bacher Shaun Harkin Richard Rhames Frederick Hudson Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Dave Marsh Saul Landau David Phinney Robert Jensen Stanley Heller Yifat Susskind Robert Weissman Paul Buchheit William S.
Lind Sherwood Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Robert Bryce Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Kathy Kelly Marjorie Cohn Chris Kutalik
Corporate Crime Reporter Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
May 30, 2007 James Ridgeway Franklin Lamb Terrence E. Paupp Uri Avnery Alan Maass Rock and Rap
Confidential Ralph Nader Nirmal Ghosh Jean Daniels Tom Barry Website of the Day
Stephen Soldz Eliza Ernshire Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Mike Whitney David Swanson John Holt Cynthia McKinney Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day
Bill Quigley Col. Dan Smith Cindy Sheehan Dr. Susan Block Jeeni Criscenzo Douglas Valentine Website of the Day 
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June 25, 2007 The Life and Crimes of al-MajidChemical Ali Faces the HangmanBy PATRICK COCKBURN Ali Hassan al-Majid was the Heinrich Himmler of Iraq. After Saddam Hussein appointed him the all-powerful overlord of northern Iraq in March 1987 he oversaw the murder of more than 180,000 Kurds in just over a year. "The armed forces must kill any human being or animal present," he decreed. It was for this crime of genocide against the Kurds that Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali", and two other defendants were yesterday sentenced to death by hanging by a court in Baghdad. A cousin of Saddam Hussein who had been a motorcycle dispatch rider, Majid acted as the zealous henchman of the Iraqi leader in many of his most notorious acts of cruelty and repression. "You gave orders to the troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions," said the judge, Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, as he passed sentence on Majid. "You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery. You led the killing of Iraqi villagers. You restricted them to their areas, burned their orchards, killed their animals. You committed genocide." Sinister heaps of broken stones and bricks dot the Kurdish countryside marking the places where villages and hamlets were destroyed and 1.5 million Kurds killed or deported. Less easy to find are the mass graves all over Iraq filled with the bodies of men, women and children who were lined up and machine-gunned. The slaughter was not as all-embracing as Hitler's onslaught on Jews but it was comparable to mass killings of civilians committed by the Nazis in Poland, Ukraine and Russia or by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. There is no doubt about Majid's responsibility for the massacres before and during the notorious "Operation Anfal" in 1987. Many of his telephone calls and meetings with senior officers were recorded by the participants and the tapes discovered by Kurdish resistance forces when they captured Kirkuk in the uprising of 1991. In one meeting with leading Iraqi officials in 1988, he vows in his distinctive, high-pitched, whiny voice: "I will kill them all [Kurds] with chemical weapons," he says. " Who is going to say anything? Fuck them! The international community, and those who listen them." On 16 March 1988, Iraqi forces
fired poison gas shells into Halabja, a town that had been captured
by Kurdish and Iranian forces. Its unsuspecting In village after village gas was used to kill civilians. In Halabja alone 5,000 people died. But Majid had over-rated the revulsion over these mass killings among leaders of the international community. Britain expressed anxiety and grave concern about allegations over the use of chemical weapons but promptly doubled the export credit facility available to Iraq. The US sought to implicate Iran in the use of poison gas. Kurdish claims that they were the victims of genocide were dismissed as exaggerated or politically inconvenient by Western governments. It was several years before Human Rights Watch was able to confirm that the mass killings were just as extensive as the Kurds said they were. Torture, massacre and deportations
had been used against the Kurds since Saddam came to power and
before, but Ali Hassan al-Majid set up a several-stage system
of genocide. District by district, people were subjected to heavy
artillery fire and poison-gas attacks. When males were rounded
up they were killed either immediately or later. Those who disappeared
were executed. In some cases, the civilian population was promised
a pardon to lure them to their deaths. Survivors were forced
to live in specially built villages and towns where they could
be watched by the secret police. In his defense at his trial, Majid said that tape recordings of him speaking of deporting and exterminating the Kurds was exaggerated language to intimidate them into giving up their resistance. "All the words used by me, such as 'deport them' or 'wipe them out', were only for psychological effect," he claimed. When Kurdish emissaries spoke to him in 1991 of killing 180,000 Kurds he bridled at the allegation and said the real figure was closer to 100,000. His defense, and that of his co-defendants, was that Anfal started during the Iran-Iraq war and the Kurdish resistance was allied to Iran. Along with Majid the former defence minister General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai was also sentenced to death for using of chemical weapons against civilians. The deputy director of operations for the Iraqi army, Hussein Rashid Mohammed, was also sentenced to be hanged. "God bless our martyrs," he said. Long live the brave Iraqi army. Long live Iraq. Long live the Baath party and long live Arab nations." Majid was always the ever-loyal
and obsequious lieutenant of the Iraqi leader whose paternal
cousin he was. Born in Tikrit in 1941, he was a member, like
Saddam, of the Bejat clan of the Albu Nasir tribe whose members
filled the crucial security posts of the Baath regime. He was
wholly dependant on the leader and his evident viciousness made
him useful in jobs in which unrelenting and merciless cruelty
were considered an asset. Majid was effectively the family enforcer for Saddam's inner circle though there were other well-qualified contenders for this position. A diabetic with a menacing-rodent like face and a straggly moustache, he suffered from hypertension and spinal infections. He was reliant on Saddam but was never a rival for the leadership himself. Though a cousin of Saddam, he was out-ranked in the family hierarchy by the half-brothers of the leader up to their fall from grace in 1986. In the 1990s, it was Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay who were next in line to Saddam. After giving up the leadership of the Northern Bureau of the Baath in 1988, Majid was made governor of Kuwait after its conquest by Iraq in August 1990. Though Iraq claimed Kuwait was its long-lost 19th province, the Iraqi forces under Majid behaved as if they were on a Bedouin raid, sending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loot to Baghdad. After Saddam Hussein's catastrophic defeat in Kuwait in 1991 Majid showed his real talents again. As rebellions exploded in Kurdistan and Shia southern Iraq, Saddam turned to him and his nephew Hussein Kamel who was also Saddam's son-in-law. On 5 March he made the 50-year-old Majid his interior minister. A captured video film shows Majid in action against Shia rebels. It appears to have been made to intimidate anybody contemplating resistance to the regime by showing the fate of those who did. Majid is seen upbraiding a helicopter pilot going to attack a bridge saying: "Don't come back until you are able to tell me that you have burnt them; and if you haven't burnt them, don't come back." Joined by a Baathist leader called Mohammed Hamza al-Zubeidi, later prime minister of Iraq, who also had an unsavoury reputation for brutality, they kick and slap prisoners lying on the ground. Majid smokes as he interrogates the prisoners saying of one man: "Don't execute this one. He will be useful to us." Beside him soldiers, from an elite unit, shouted "pimp" and "son of a whore" at another prisoner. Not even members of Majid's family were safe from him. In 1995, his nephews Hussein and Saddam Kamel fled to Jordan. King Hussein granted them political asylum. Suddenly Uday and Ali Hassan al-Majid arrived in Amman to see King Hussein who felt he had no choice but to meet them. Hussein Kamel warned the Jordanians of the murderous proclivities of his relatives, particularly his uncle Ali. He said: "Don't let his majesty shake hands with this man. He might have something in his hand that might kill him." After failing to get King Hussein to agree to extradite the men, Uday and Majid demanded that their wives, both daughters of Saddam, be allowed to return to Baghdad with them. Again they were turned down. When the two exiles unwisely returned to Baghdad the following year, Ali Hassan al-Majid is said to have led the assault on their house and killed them. Hussein Kamel, who had been wounded, staggered out of the house, shouting: "Kill me but not them." He was promptly shot, then Majid stood over the body of his nephew and shot him once in the head, saying: "This is what happens to all who deal with the midget [a reference to the diminutive King Hussein]. In the last years of Saddam's regime, Majid was eclipsed by Qusay until before the US-led invasion of 2003. The British claimed to have killed him in an air strike in Basra but it turned out to be untrue. He was arrested on 21 August 2003. Majid was silent as his sentence was read out, saying only: "Thanks be to God." In Kurdistan people rejoiced. "I would never miss this," said Peshtiwan Kamal. "I always heard from my family what these criminals did to my people so I just wanted to see how they would take the verdict and punishment." Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The
Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist
for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction
book of 2006.
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CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy  Click Here to Buy! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn   Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont               CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed        Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                   |
