Today's Stories

July 30, 2009

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warshus in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 30, 2009

Britain Pondered Raid on Iran Over Hostages

Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

By PATRICK COCKBURN

In the latest act of the grim drama surrounding the fate of the five hostages, officials in London have told the families of two of the guards, Alan McMenemy, from Glasgow, and Alec Maclachlan, from South Wales, that the two men are probably dead. The bodies of two other guards, Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst, were delivered in caskets through an intermediary to a Baghdad police station on June 19. Mr Creswell, 39, of Glasgow, and Mr Swindlehurst, 38, of Skelmersdale, Lancashire, were both found by an inquest in the UK to have "died from gunshot wounds". A source in Iraq claimed the two men had been killed some two-and-a-half months earlier, which would put their deaths some time in early April.

Since Peter Moore, 36, a computer consultant, and his four security guards were seized in the Iraqi finance ministry by 40 men dressed as policemen two years ago, it has never been clear who was holding them and where they were being kept. The kidnappers belong to the Asaib al-Haq militant group which split from the Mehdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shia cleric, which had earlier declared a ceasefire. Their main demand has been the release of the movement's chief, Qais al-Khazali, who had once been Mr Sadr's spokesman, along with his brother Laith and other leaders who were captured in Basra on 20 March 2007. Two months later, the five Britons were seized in a meticulously organized raid.

British security sources believe that at some point the five British hostages were held in Iran, which shares a highly porous, 900-mile long border with Iraq. Consideration was given to launching a raid to free them, but the plan was abandoned as too dangerous and unlikely to succeed. Negotiations with the kidnappers were all the more difficult because Britain did not want to make concessions and was, in any case, in no position to do so, since the Qais al-Khazali and the prisoners Asaib al-Haq wanted released were held by the Americans.

The US military had no wish to let him go because, when the Khazali brothers were captured, they had in their possession a 22-page document, allegedly prepared by the Quds Force, part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, giving details of the US defenses at their camp at Kerbala. This was the target of an expertly planned raid in which five US soldiers were killed, though the attack may have been a botched operation to kidnap them.

In the past, it has been Sunni Arab groups in Iraq who have most often killed their foreign prisoners, often filming their beheading and death agonies. It is not clear why Asaib al-Haq should have killed four of their five captives. A member of the Sadrist movement in Baghdad, with knowledge of actions of the kidnappers, says that at first they wanted the release of 150 members of their movement.

He adds that they were first frustrated by the refusal of the British embassy in Baghdad to negotiate and "believed that British has tortured detainees from this group, and one of them had died during torture". They then killed two of their hostages. "The Iraqi government was on the sidelines and negotiations had been taking place directly between the British embassy and the kidnappers for five months," he said.

Iranian intelligence supported Asaib al-Haq as one of its many assets in Iraq which could be used, when necessary, against the Americans. Iran had always had influence within the Sadrist movement, though its expansion was opposed by Muqtada al-Sadr. "In 2005, the situation changed with the Sadrists," says an anti-Iranian Sadrist militant whose nom de guerre is Hussein Ali. "The Iranians became more involved with the help of important advisers to Muqtada. Iranian policy was to offer aid in the shape of financial support, modern weapons and good communications systems. Once lured into accepting them, the recipient cannot do without them."

At this time, Iranian intelligence was offering $800 to anybody who would attack the Americans or assassinate Iraqi figures, says Hussein Ali. The Mehdi Army militiamen were unpaid, but the Iranians were paying salaries and offering training in Iran. "They give the volunteers $300 to $400 a month, train them to use weapons and fight the Americans." These subsidies have been reduced since it became clear to Iran that US military forces are leaving Iraq.

Mr Moore and the four security men from the Canadian company GardaWorld were the victims of a tit-for-tat covert war waged by US and Iranian intelligence services in Iraq. This reached a peak of intensity in 2007, with Iranian officials and diplomats being abducted in Baghdad and Arbil. British marines and sailors were seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in disputed waters in the Persian Gulf.

This subterranean conflict is now gradually de-escalating as President Barack Obama seeks to reduce points of friction with Iran and US combat forces leave Iraq. Five imprisoned Iranian diplomats were released three weeks ago.

Improved US-Iranian relations seemed to open the door to a prisoner swap because, under the Status of Forces Agreement signed between the US and Iraq last year, all captives of the Americans are to be handed over to the Iraqi government. The government is eager to bring groups such as Asaib al-Haq into constitutional politics, but cannot do so while the movement holds hostages or its leaders are in prison.

Laith al-Khazali was released by the US military in June as part of political reconciliation and, though hostages were not mentioned, Asaib al-Haq was expected to respond. When they did so 10 days later, it was by returning the bodies of two of their captives. Now it is believed that only Mr Moore may be alive of the five originally captured, but the precise circumstances which led to the deaths remains a mystery.

The most important demand of the kidnappers of the British hostages has been the release of Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asaib al-Haq, who has been imprisoned by the Americans since early 2007. I only met him once, but I remember him vividly because he came very close to getting me killed.

It was in April 2004 when al-Khazali was spokesman for the movement of Moqtada al-Sadr, the much-revered Shia nationalist cleric, who was being besieged by US forces in the Shia holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. Al-Khazali had called a press conference and declared there was a two-day truce in honour of the Prophet's birthday and to protect Shia pilgrims flooding into Najaf to celebrate it.

I drove down from Baghdad to go to the press conference. I thought that the dangerous part of the road would be in the militant Sunni towns like Mahmoudiyah, Latafiyah and Iskanadiyah, which we had to pass through. Hoping that people looking at the car from a distance would not immediately see I was a foreigner, I was wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh, an Arab headdress.

This turned out to be a bad idea. We stopped at a checkpoint outside Kufa, near Najaf, which was manned by heavily armed Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to Moqtada, to ask if we were on the right road and had they heard anything about Qais al-Khazali's press conference. One of them grabbed my keffiyeh and started shouting: "American spy! American spy." They dragged me, my translator and guide Haider al-Safi and our driver Bassim Abdul Rahman out of the car and appeared to be working up to shoot us. Bassim said later: "I believe that if Patrick had an American or English passport – instead of an Irish one – they would have killed us all immediately."

We kept saying we were going to Qais al-Khazali's press conference and the militiamen said they had never heard of it. Finally they announced we were hostages and they were going to bring us to their leader in a nearby mosque. He said he had not been told about any ceasefire, but agreed to take us into Najaf. There I met Qais al-Khazali, a tall unsmiling cleric in grey robes, who was standing in the courtyard of a dilapidated building.

I asked him what he thought the Americans would do. "I think [they] understand about Iraq's holy places," he said. "I don't think they are so stupid as to attack us." I protested mildly that his militiamen had almost killed us because he had not told them about his press conference or ceasefire, but he appeared wholly uninterested.

Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."

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