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Today's Stories

October 13, 2006

Anne E. Brodsky
Return to Afghanistan: Where the Rhetoric Doesn't Match the Reality

October 12, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Plan for a Military Strike on Iran

Norman Solomon
The Pundit Path to Death in Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
On Colonialism and Colleagues

Paul Craig Roberts
Can We Call It Genocide Now?

Meredith Schafer / Chris Kutalik
Is a General Transportation Strike Looming for 2008? Can Labor Seize the Moment?

Carl Gelderloos
Images of Occupation: Teaching in Nablus

Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry
How Hezbollah Defeated Israel: Part One, Winning the Intelligence War

Charles Sullivan
Assassins of Truth

William S. Lind
Why Do We Still Fight a Lost War?

CP News Service
The South Turns Against the War

Website of the Day
There's a Riot Goin' On

 

October 11, 2006

John Feffer
Pyongyang 1, Bush 0

Dave Lindorff
A Killing Occupation

Jackson Katz
Gunning Down Women: Coverage of "School Shootings" Misses Central Issue

April Howard / Ben Dangl
The Tin War in Bolivia

Michael Carmichael
World War W

Ken Couesbouc
The New Witchcraft: Marvin Harris on the War on Terror

Gregory Afghani
Sleepless on Skid Row: Guilty of Being Homeless in America

Alexander Cockburn
600,000 Dead in Iraq: Chortles in the New Yorker for Slaughter's Cheerleader, C. Hitchens

Website of the Day
Petition: Defend Columbia Students Who Confronted the Minutemen

 

October 10, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
Lost Wars and a Lost Economy

Robert Robideau
The Myth Keepers of Columbus

Joshua Frank
The Democrats and the War on Civil Liberties

Dave Lindorff
Free the Press! Free Linda Greenhouse!

Dave Zirin
Brother of the Fist

Heather Gray
Where Votes Matter: My Experience in South Africa

James Knotwell
Big Ag in the Heartland: the Future of Nebraska's Family Farms

Missy Beattie
The Return of James Baker, III

Mike Whitney
Bush and North Korea: Bumbling Toward Disaster

David Rosen
Sex Panic on Capitol Hill: Mark Foley and the Politics of Sex in America

Website of the Day
Eno / Byrne: Music to Enjoy the Foley Scandal By

 


October 9. 2006

Robert Fisk
The Age of Terror

Norman Solomon
Welcome to the Nuclear Club

Ron Jacobs
The Boom Heard Around the World

Gideon Levy
The Mystery of America

Walter Brasch
Their Back Pages: Sex, Lies and Family Values

Mickey Z.
Who Killed Michael Moore?

John Holt
Grizzlies in Our Midst: Can Humans and Bears Coexist?

Lucinda Marshall
Not So Pretty in Pink: Profits and Breast Cancer

Saul Landau
Post-Castro Cuba

Website of the Day
War, Inc.

 

 

October 7 / 8, 2006
Weekend Edition

Alexander Cockburn
Wargasms and Orgasms

Peter Kwong
The Chinese Face of Neoliberalism

Ralph Nader
Revolt of the Generals

Mark Donham
What Cynthia McKinney Means to Me

Dave Lindorff
Philly's Police Snoops

Peter Bosshard
World Bank Shuts Out Dissident Voices: Big Dams, Huge Profits & Political Corruption

Ron Jacobs
Evil Hour in Colombia

Lawrence R. Velvel
Governmental Derelicts: Moral Meltdown in America

Fred Gardner
Arnold Vetoes Hemp Bill

David Green
The US, Israel and the Invasion of Lebanon

Jim B.
Activism, Incorporated: Outsourcing Grassroots Politics?

Missy Beattie
Prayers for Peace at the Edge of the Abyss

Michael Donnelly
Blame the Page: Grand Old Perverts Go on Offensive

Jackson Thoreau
Enter Newt

Jon Hung
Revisiting Korematsu: Denying Civil Rights Based on National Origin

CounterPunch News Service
Why We Confronted the Minutemen at Columbia

Tom D'Antoni
Playlist

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies, Tirado, Gaffney and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Reagan Gone Wild

 


October 6, 2006

Alison Weir
Just Another Mother Murdered

Tiffany Ten Eyck / Mark Brenner
Made in (DeUnionized) America

Corporate Crime Reporter
Look Who's Behind "37 Reasons" to Vote for Big Business: Former Clinton PR Flak Mike McCurry

Juan Antonio Montecino
Cleaving a False Divide in Latin America

Walden Bello
A Siamese Tragedy

Christopher Brauchli
Rank Invitations: Dining with Bush

Brynne Keith-Jennings
Dan Burton in Nicaragua: the Congressman, His Stick and the Elections

Jonathan Cook
The Struggle for Palestine's Soul

Website of the Day
Fighting Hog Farms and Clearcuts in the Heartland

 


October 5, 2006

John Walsh
Turn the Page

Carol Norris
The Radical Right, the Myth of the Gay Child Abuser and You: a Psychotherapist on the Hysteria Over Foley

Paul Craig Roberts
Will November Bring Hope or Another Stolen Election?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Truth About the Embargo of Cuba

James Abourezk
Waterboarding the Constitution: After Torture, What's Next?

Nicola Nasser
Removing Hamas: Brinksmanship or Coup d'Etat?

Kirkpatrick Sale
Breaking Away: the First North American Secessionist Conference

Uri Avnery
Peace with Syria: Lunch in Damascus

Website of the Day
More Naughty GOP Messages


October 4, 2006

Elizabeth Terzakis
The Walls That Racism Built: Blood Revenge, the Death Penalty and Kevin Cooper

Paul Wolf
The Mushy Rebellion: Pakistan Under Musharraf

Sean Penn
The Arrogant, the Misguided and the Cowards

Dave Lindorff
Outrage as Misdirection: The Real Scandal isn't Foley

Diane Farsetta
For Sale: Iraqi Kurdistan

Sharon Smith
Democrats: Yes to War, No to Pedophilia

Felice Pace
Revoking 1776

Sara Roy
The Economy of Gaza

Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn: the Video Interview (Part Two)


October 3, 2006

Jennifer Van Bergen
Compassionate Conservative Pedophiles

Greg Moses
The Infallible Empire: Junking Habeas Corpus

Stan Cox
Real Bad ID: a National Driver's License and the Fading Right of Anonymity

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
How Empires Die

Evelyn Pringle
Big Pharma Takes a Hit: Alaska's Supreme Court Outlaws Forced Drugging

Fred Wilhelms
SoundExchange and Unpaid Music Artists: Help Us Find These Musicians and Get Them Paid!

Michael Abelman
Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food: the Risks of Convenience and Consolidation

Gary Leupp
The Foley Follies

Website of the Day
Bush and Blair: Endless Love

 

October 2, 2006

Eric Hazan
Roadmap to Nowhere: an Interview with Tanya Reinhart on Israel/Palestine Since 2003

Mike Whitney
Bloodbath on 60 Minutes: Court Stenographer Finally Comes Clean

Norman Solomon
American Narcissism and Iraq

Assaf Kfoury
Meeting Nasrallah

Missy Beattie
The Meaning of "ummmm": Speaker Hasert and the Over-Friendly Congressman

Arthur Neslen
Lie Less in Gaza

Paula J. Caplan
How the Supreme Court Mangled My Research

Website of the Day
Predator Drones Target Bechtel

 

Sept. 30 / 0ct. 1, 2006
Weekend Edition

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Face of Class War

Marjorie Cohn
Rounding Up US Citizens: a Consitutional Shredding

Ben Tripp
Deviant Conservative Males: an Analysis

Ron Jacobs
A Dismal and Chaotic Place: Iraq According to Patrick Cockburn

Ralph Nader
Torturer-in-Chief

Mike Whitney
Iraq: The Breaking Point

Christopher Reed
It Pays to Raise a Ruckus

Seth Sandronsky
The Housing Bust: Excess Investment and Its Discontents

Fred Gardner
The Chancellor's Wife

Mokhiber / Weissman
Hewlett Packard and the Erosion of Privacy

Michael Dickinson
My Escape Attempt from Prison Transfer: Extract from a Diary in Turkish Police Custody

Alan Gregory
Fake Green: Top 10 Ways Politicians Pretend to be Environmentalists

Poets' Basement
Gardner, Landau, Lindorff, Davies,& Buknatski

 

 

September 29, 2006

Bruce Jackson
Chavez's Reading, Bush's Reading

Michael J. Smith
The Lobby Debate Does Manhattan

Emira Woods
Oil Trip: Record Profits for Exxon, Deprivation for Africa

William S. Lind
The Sanctuary Illusion: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq as Theme Parks for 4GW

David Swanson
Mommy, What's Waterboarding?

Jonathan Cook
Bad Faith and the Destruction of Palestine

Website of the Day
Jesus: the Recruitment Tapes


September 28, 2006

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Flaws in the Military Commissions Act

Ron Jacobs
The Generals, the Democrats and Iraq: One Policy, Two Parties

Mokhiber / Weissman
Scenes from Laura's Book Festival: Elmo Will Not Save You

Lee Sustar
A Left Challenge to Lula

Robert Jensen
Finding My Way Back to Church--and Getting Kicked Out

John Chuckman
America Has Just Lost Two More Wars

Evelyn Pringle
Inside America's Nursing Homes: a Hidden Tragedy of Neglect and Abuse

Nicola Nasser
Bush and Islam: Words vs. Deeds

Uri Avnery
Political Corruption in Israel

Website of the Day
Art Against the Empire


September 27, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
A Final Explosion Looms in Mosul

Camilo Mejia
Blowback From Iraq: Giving Terrorism a Reason to Exist

Pat Williams
Tax Burdens and Cheaters in the Rockies: Send Those IRS Mercenaries in Search of Montana's Land Barons and Oil Drillers

Ben Terrall
Failing Haiti: Another Bungled UN Mission

Ridgeway / Ng
Paul Weyrich Explaines His Opposition to the Patriot Act: a Short Film

Joe Allen
Where are the Mass Protests?

Andrew Wimmer
Don't Disappear Into a Black Hole

Franklin C. Spinney
Rumsfeld's AutoCarterization: Skullduggery in the Pentagon's Budget

Website of the Day
Model Nukes: the Photo Contest


September 26, 2006

Hani Shukrallah
The American Mind: When Historical Analysis is Reduced to Whim

William Blum
If It's Election Season, It Must Be Time for a Terror Alert

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Torturing the Obvious

Barbara Becnel
Witness to an Execution: a Slow and Very Painful Death

Paul Rockwell
Judicial Complicity in US War Crimes: the Watada Case

Dave Lindorff
Bush and Iran: Going to War to Save His Own Ass?

Rich Gibson
Lessons from the Detroit Teachers' Strike

Anthony Papa
The Danger of Meth Registries: "Have a Cold? Prove It, Then Sign Here"

Nate Mezmer
New Orleans is Back ... Without Blacks: Monday Night Football at the Superdome

Uri Avnery
Mohammed's Sword

Website of the Day
Only YOU Can Stop the Sale of Public Lands to Mining, Timber and Real Estate Corporations


September 25, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Place in the World: a Journey to Iraq's "Taliban Republic"

Jonathan Cook
Human Rights Watch: Still Missing the Point on Lebanon

Joshua Frank
Did Maria Cantwell's Campaign Try to Buy Off Aaron Dixon?

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bush Administration Itching to Nuke Iran?

Robert Jensen
Defending Chavez on FoxNews

Dave Lindorff
Horowitz on Campus: This Mouth for Hire

Norman Solomon
Media Tall Tales for Next War

Dr. Charles Jonkel
Save a Grizzly, Visit a Library: "People like the Croc Hunter are Worse Than the Most Bloodthirsty Slob Hunter

Michael Dickinson
"The King's New Clothes:" a Play Written in a Turkish Jail

Alexander Cockburn
Flying Saucers and the Decline of the Left

Website of the Day
Great Bear Foundation

 

September 23 / 24, 2006
Weekend Edition

Jonathan Cook
How Israel is Engineering the "Clash of Civilizations"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Wars Goes Online ... Crashes

Dr. Anon
A Doctor's Life in Baghdad

Tom Barry
Oil and Political Opportunism

Carl G. Estabrook
The Darfur Smokescreen

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Two Presidents

Todd Chretien
The Axis of Lesser Evilism

Dr. Charles Jonkel
From Grizzly Man to the Croc Hunter: the Global Media and the Death of Bears

Debbie Nathan
I Was Disappeared By Salon

Fred Gardner
Dustin Costa Struggles Against Invisibility

Fred Wilhelms
The Money Belongs to the Artists Who Created the Music

Seth Sandronsky
The Cruel Economics of Health Care in America

Ralph Nader
Mavericks at Work

Rev. William Alberts
"Specks" and "Logs" and 9/11

Jon Van Camp
Who is Hezbollah?

Heather Gray
Conservatives and Technology

David Vest
Jerry Lightfoot, RIP

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listenting to This Week

Poets' Basement
Landau / Davies

Website of the Weekend
Meet Me In The Morning: C. Wonderland & J. Lightfoot

Video of the Weekend
Is It a Bird? A Missile? Or, Just Perhaps, a Friggin' Plane?

 

September 22, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Republic of Fear: Torture in Bush's Iraq, Worse Than Under Saddam

Michael Donnelly
It's the Manipulated Economy, Stupid!

Ramzy Baroud
The Next Palestinian Struggle

Evo Morales
"We Need Partners, Not Bosses": Address to the United Nations

Stanley Howard
Torture and Justice in Chicago

Sarah Leah Whitson
Hezbollah's Rockets and Civilian Casualties: a Reply to Jonathan Cook

JoAnn Wypijewski
Conservations at Ground Zero

Website of the Day
Cockburn in Atlanta: the Video Interview


September 21, 2006

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad
"No Nation Should Have Superiority Over Others:" UN Address

Justin E. H. Smith
Ending the Death Penalty: Outline of an Abolitionist Program

Rick Kuhn
Australian Government Steps Up Attacks on Muslims: "I Certainly Don't Want That Type of People in Australia"

Mike Roselle
Ed Wiley's Long March: the Elementary School vs. the Strip Mine

Amira Hass
In the Name of Security: What Israeli Police Files Reveal About the Occupation of Palestine

Deborah Rich
From the Kitchen of Dr. Frankenstein: the Consumption of Gene-Engineeered Foods

Mickey Z.
10 Reasons Cars Suck

Saul Landau
Terrorism at Sheridan Circle

Website of the Day
Stop the Decapitation of Mountains!


September 20, 2006

Sharon Smith
Elections, Detentions and Deportations

Christopher Reed
Goodbye Koizumi, Hello Abe

John Ross
Mexico: Does AMLO Have a Future?

Joshua Frank
A Wasted Campaign: How Jonathan Tasini Helped Hillary Clinton and Distracted the Antiwar Movement

Arthur Neslen
The Clenched Fist of the Phoenix: What Made Israel Burn Lebanon, Again?

Norman Solomon
The Hollow Promise of Digital Technology

Michael Carmichael
The Vatican's Tyrant

Evelyn Pringle
The Merck Vioxx Litigation: a Scorecard

Hugo Chavez
Rise Up Against the Empire: Address to the United Nations

Website of the Day
Before You Enlist: Watch This Video!


September 19, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Deadly Harvest: Lebanese Fields Sown with Israeli Cluster Bombs

Jeff Leys
Economic Warfare: Iraq and the IMF

Brian M. Downing
War, Taxes and Democracy

Col. Dan Smith
Dispelling Brutality

Liaquat Ali Khan
Presidential Incitements: Did Bush's Speech Violate Geneva Conventions on Genocide?

Ron Jacobs
Just Sign on the Dotted Line: Iraqi Oil and Production Sharing Agreements

Nik Barry-Shaw / Yves Engler
Canada in Haiti: Torture, Murder and Complicity

Lucinda Marshall
Air Paranoia: the Great Toothpaste and Hair Gel Scare

Saul Landau
The Pinochet Syndicate

Photo of the Day
Hold That Bridge!

Website of the Day
Scenarios for an Iranian War


September 18, 2006

Carl Boggs
Crimes of Empire

Uri Avnery
Peace Panic

Mike Stark / Jim Bullington
Ann Richards, the Original Texacutioner

Joshua Frank
Corporate E. Coli

John Murphy
The Price of Free Speech

Ramzy Baroud
Murdoch Almighty

Dave Lindorff
On Constitution Day

Bill Quigley
Showing Conviction at Echo 9

Website of the Day
Tutorial: How to Hack a Diebold Voting Machine

 


September 16 / 17, 2006
Weekend Edition

Tariq Ali
A Bavarian Provocation

Eliza Ernshire
Death and Tears in Nablus

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon (Part 7): To Tilted Park

Mairead Corrigan Maguire
A Nobel Laureate Visits with Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu

Brian Cloughley
"Let Them Drink Coke!": Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

Ben Tripp
November Prognostication: Republicans Sweep!

Laura Carlsen
Bush and Latin America: War on Terrorism or Fight for Social Justice

Ralph Nader
Terror on the Road

Ron Jacobs
Shooting Sgrena

John Chuckman
Imperial Entropy

Robert Fisk
The American Military's Cult of Cruelty

Gary Leupp
The Pope's New Crusade: Defender of the West, Scourge of Islam

Lawrence R. Velvel
The Pretexter in Chief: Learning About Bush from Hewlett-Packard

Missy Comley Beattie
The Insecurity of Immorality

Adrienne Johnstone
Deporting Widows: the Nightmare of a Kenyan Immigrant

Mickey Z.
Why I Hate America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Orloski, Engel, Louise and Davies

Website of the Weekend
Still Life with Killpecker



September 15, 2006

Diana Johnstone
In Defense of Conspiracy: 9/11, in Theory and in Fact

Diane Christian
On Retaliation

William S. Lind
General Puffery: When the Military Brass Deceives

Lee Sustar
Bosses Take Aim at Undocument Workers

Dave Lindorff
Retroactive Immunity for Bush?

Ramzy Baroud
Presidential PR: Lost in the Bush Spin Cycle

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Cesspool

Jeffrey St. Clair
Glow, River, Glow: Radioactive Leaks and Plumbers at Hanford

Website of the Day
F-22: The Most Expensive Piece of Junk Ever Built?


September 14, 2006

Franklin Lamb
Israel's Use of American Cluster Bombs: a Walk Through the Rubble

Tim Wilkinson
Alan Dershowitz's Sinister Scheme

Dick J. Reavis
Mexico's Time of Troubles: Who Benefits?

Sam Husseini
9/11 Five Years Later: a Conspiracy to Silence

Doug Giebel
Democracies of Death: Why John Adams Wouldn't Recognize His Own Country

Bill Berkowitz
The Messaging Strategy of the Iraq War

Diane Farsetta
What Media Democracy Looks Like

Mary Turck
Targeting Refugees and Human Rights Workers in Colombia

Patrick Cockburn
Amnesty Intl Accuses Hizbollah of War Crimes, But Katyusha Damage "Much Less" Than Israel Claimed

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Ah, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?

Website of the Day
The Shocking Truth About Inequality


September 13, 2006

Jack Bratich
Eyes Put a Spell on You: Signs of Surveillance in the Public Secret Sphere

John Ross
Welcome to the Nightmare: Al Qaeda de Mexico?

Christopher Brauchli
"You Had to Have Been There": Teaching Iraq and Iran

Dave Lindorff
Mourning in America: Bush Weeps? Who are They Kidding?

Antony Loewenstein
My Israel Question

Al Krebs
The Gates Foundation and African Agriculture

Leonard Peltier
Crazy Horse in Chains

Jim Bensman
My Adventures with the FBI: How I Was Targeted as a Terrorist

Website of the Day
FreedomWalk: Take a Moment for Leonard Peltier


September 12, 2006

Norman Finkelstein
Kill Arabs, Cry Anti-Semitism

Seth Sandronsky
The War on Nurses

John Walsh
Khatami Comes to Harvard

Alan Maass
"Islamic Fascism": the New Hysteria

David Krieger
Troubling Questions About Missile Defense

Nate Mezmer
September 12th, America

Kathleen Christison
The Coming Collapse of Zionism


September 11, 2006

Uri Avnery
State of Chutzpah

Patrick Cockburn
Palestinians Forced to Scavenge Rubbish Dumps for Food

Col Dan Smith
The Centrality of War in the Presidency of George W. Bush

Dr. Susan Block
Beyond Terror

Anthony Alessandrini
Forgetting 9/11

Dave Lindorff
Bush After 9/11: Five Years of High Crimes and Misdemeanors

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What Happened?

Joshua Frank
Proving Nothing: How the 9/11 "Truth" Movement Helps Bush & Cheney

Jean Bricmont
The End of the "End of History"

Sprague / Emesberger
"You Are a Dog. You Should Die": Death Threats Against Lancet's Haiti Investigator

Website of the Day
Web Piracy

 

September 9/10, 2006
Weekend Edition

Alexander Cockburn
The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts: How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Off the Hook

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon: In the Footsteps of Vladimir Putin (Part Six)

Greg Grandin
Good Christ, Bad Christ: Testament of the Death Squads

Peter Stone Brown
Bob Dylan's Swing Time Waltz in the Face of the Apocalypse

Ralph Nader
X-Raying Greed

Brian Cloughley
Rumsfeld at the American Legion: Dead Babies and Nazi Propaganda

Col. Chet Richards
Crossroads at the Litani

David Model
Tailoring the Case Against Iran: Cut from the Same Old Pattern

Dave Himmelstein
From Bil'in to Birmingham

Ron Jacobs
War and the Power of Words

Fred Gardner
Is Medical Pot Image a Turn-Off to Teens?

Mike Whitney
America's Economic Meltdown

Josh Gryniewicz
In the Belly of the Bentonville Beast: Working for Wal-Mart

Daniel Gross /
Joe Tessone
An IWW Story at Starbucks

Joe Bageant
Inside the Iron Theater

Nicole Colson
The Colbert Factor: Some Truthiness, At Last

Alexander Billet
Thirty Years of "White Riot": Long Live The Clash!

Poets' Basement
Engel, Louise, Buknatski, Davies, & Orloski

 

September 8, 2006

Uri Avnery
"I'm a Leftist, But ...": the Liberals' War on Lebanon

Paul Craig Roberts
Books Are Our Salvation

Bill Quigley
Judge Says: "No Clowning Around Our WMDs!"

Robert Jensen
Parallel Purges: Academic Freedom in Iran and the US

Norman Solomon
Perception Gap: The War on Terror as Others See It

Keith Bolin

 

September 8, 2006

Uri Avnery
"I'm a Leftist, But ...": the Liberals' War on Lebanon

Paul Craig Roberts
Books Are Our Salvation

Bill Quigley
Judge Says: "No Clowning Around Our WMDs!"

Robert Jensen
Parallel Purges: Academic Freedom in Iran and the US

Norman Solomon
Perception Gap: The War on Terror as Others See It

Keith Bolin
The Future of the Family Farm

Kristin S. Schafer
The Global Trade in Deadly Pesticides

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon (Part Five)

Patrick Cockburn
Gaza is Dying

Website of the Day
Help the Bismark 3!


September 7, 206

Marjorie Cohn
Why Bush Really Came Clean About the CIA's Secret Torture Prisons

Sharon Smith
Downward Mobility: No Recovery for Workers

René Drucker Colín
The Fraud in Mexico

Michael Donnelly
Bush Family Values: About Those Nazi Appeasers

John Borowski
Scholastic Peddles a Fictitious Path to 9/11 to Kids

Lucinda Marshall
Bombing Indiana

Charles Sullivan
Katrina and the New Jim Crow: Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon: Part Four

Jonathan Cook
How Human Rights Watch Lost Its Way in Lebanon

Website of the Day
Rasta! Reggae's Joe Hill

 

September 6, 2006

Stephen Soldz
Protecting the Torturers: Bad Faith and Distortions frm the American Psychological Assocation

Dave Zirin
Cops vs. Jocks: the Shooting of Steve Foley

Ramzy Baroud
The Gaza Maze: Who Gained Most from the Fox Reporters' Kidnapping

Noel Ignatiev
Democrats, Pwogs and the Lesser Evil Folly

Dave Lindorff
Bombing Without Regrets: The US and Cluster Bombs

Norman Solomon
Spinning Troop Levels in Iraq

Binoy Kampmark
The Death of Steve Irwin and the Politics of the Zoo

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Premature Burial: the Remaking of Cataract Canyon (Part Three)

John Ross
The Death of Mexican Presidency

Website of the Day
Flaming Arrows

 

September 5, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Will Robert Fisk tell us the whole story? Time For A Champion of Truth to Speak Up

Patrick Cockburn
Better Not Meet at the Casbah

Mike Whitney
The Worst Secretary of Defense in U.S. History? You Be the Judge

Roland Sheppard
The Civil Rights Movement is Dead and So is the Democratic Party

James Petras
As Bush Regime Faces Twilight Slide, How Much Havoc Can Paulson Wreak?

Alexander Cockburn
Will Bush Bomb Teheran?

 

September 4, 2006

Clancy Sigal
The Women Who Gave Us Labor Day

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon: Part 2

Anthony Alessandrini
The Great Debate about Aroma Coffee: Why I Boycott

Dennis Perrin
The Great Debate in Tarrytown: Straight Zion, No Chaser

Daniel Cassidy
'S lom to Slum

Paul Craig Roberts
The War Is Lost

 

September 2 / 3, 2006

Uri Avnery
When Napoleon Won at Waterloo

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Premature Burial: the Remaking of Cataract Canyon

Ralph Nader
The No-Fault White House

Noam Chomsky
Viewing the World from a Bombsight

Allan Lichtman
Arrested Democracy: Letter from the Baltimore County Jail

Stanley Heller
When Criticism of Cluster Bombs is "Anti-Semitic"

Rana el-Khatib
Invasion's Child: the Making of Issa

Peter Montague
Taking on the Pentagon: Chemical Weapons to Burn

Laura Carlsen
Mexico on a Collision Course

Dr. Susan Block
Bush Hate Rising

Joe Bageant
Roy's People: Why Progressives Need to Listen to Orbison, Not Policy Wonks

Scott Stedjan / Matt Schaaf
A New Generation of Landmines?

Gary Leupp
The Emperor Has Been Exposed

Stephen Fleischman
The Great American Oligarchy

Paul Balles
Has Ahmadinejad Already Checkmated Bush?

Ingmar Lee
Canada's $450 Million Gift to Bush: the Softwood Lumber Slush Fund

Jane Stillwater
Burning Man: the Good, the Bad and the Evil Twin

Ron Jacobs
Dylan Faces the Apocalypse, Again

St. Clair / Bossert
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Grima, Engel, Orloski and Davies

Website of the Weekend
To New Orleans: a Photo Journal

 

September 1, 2006

Uri Avnery
Olmert Agonistes

Paul Craig Roberts
Of Wolves and Men (and Impotent Democrats)

Bill Ayers
Exclusionary Signs of the Times

Kevin Zeese
The Best War Ever

Xochitl Bervera
The Forgotten Children of New Orleans

Norman Solomon
Bush vs. Ahmadinejad: a TV Debate We'll Never See

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah Denounces Nasrallah Interview as a Fake

Richard Neville
Rupert Murdoch's Victims

Website of the Day
The Uranium Flood

 

 

 

 

 

 

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October 13, 2006

An Interview with Jerry Lembcke

The Myth of the Spat Upon Vets

By STEPHEN PHILION

Jerry Lembcke is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, He teaches Sociology at Holy Cross College.

Q: In the recent days the British general responsible for British troops in Iraq has make remarkably strong calls for British troops to be removed from Iraq. So it's pretty timely to have a discussion like this, since I'm finding that there are quite a few students who are opposed to the US occupation of Iraq, but are afraid to "go against" the soldiers, many of whom are friends or relatives. First thing, though, is, for the sake of Counterpunchers who haven't read your book The Spitting Image, maybe you could give a quick intro to the key arguments of the book.

Lembcke: In a nutshell, most people remember there was pretty widespread opposition to the US going into Iraq with huge demos in February and March of 2003. And then there were a good number of 'support the troops' rallies that tapped into the popular sentiment that something bad happened to the troops when they returned from Vietnam. The very slogan "support the troops" with the yellow ribbons and all that sort of presumes that someone doesn't support the troops and that presumption is based on that sentiment, belief that when people came home from Vietnam they were treated badly and we don't want to do that again this time.

By having these rallies in 2003, the people who supported the war use support the troops as a way to support the war. A lot of these rallies told stories of Vietnam vets who had been spat on. I got calls from people in Florida, North Carolina, Vermont,news reporters who had been at these rallies and asking me, "What about these stories?". Sometimes they would even have men who said they were vets or family members who claimed they remembered someone being spat on. The myth was used to drum up emotional support for the troops, or better said, to dampen down opposition to the war. Again, the same way it worked during the Persian Gulf War, some were afraid of being outspoken against the war lest they be accused of being 'against the troops'.

I teach at Holy Cross College and just the other day in one of my classes, in the context of talking about the context of the Bush administration's strategy of being very accusatory toward critics of the war policy as being 'cut and run' Democrats, 'soft on terrorism'With no more context than that, one of my students said she was 'undecided about the war, but as long as the troops were fighting it was really important to 'support the troops and we have to support the mission'Now is not the time to be critical of the war, it was, in her mindall mixed together.

That's the way it works on people's emotions. It throws them off-target. The target is the war itself and what we need to be doing is opposing the war itself. Often emotions get kind of confused with this stuff about 'supporting the troops'. It creates just enough space for the administration to push on ahead.

Q: Yes, it seems to be a good strategy to distract from the main issue, namely the policy of making war itself. I never quite understand why it's so important to focus on the supporting the troops as so central an issue. It doesn't really matter, since the troops in fact have little, in fact no say, in war policies to begin with.

Lembcke: Yes, it confuses the means and ends of war, it becomes a form of demagoguery. It makes a non-issue an issue, 'support or not supporting the troops'. At a humanitarian level, none of us wants to put people in harm's way. The people who oppose the wars are most strident in that objective of keeping people out of the war. That's not an issue, but it keeps us from focusing on the war itself and talking about it. And one of the things Lembcke: I got interested in this topic in the runup to the Persian Gulf War in 90-91. There were students who were opposed to the war, but afraid to speak out because of what they had heard about the antiwar movement and veterans during the Vietnam War era. These stories of 'spat upon' vets were beginning to circulate in the news and students on campuses were picking up on these stories. I had never heard these stories before. So I got interested in where they were coming from, how long they had been told, who was telling them and so forth.

One thing led to another and I kept looking back in the historical records, when people were actually coming home from Vietnam and I found out that no, there was no record. Not only was there no record of people spat on, but none of anyone claiming that they were spat on. So then I got interested in the stories as a form of myth and found out that in other times and other places, especially Germany after WW 1, soldiers came home and told stories of feeling rejected by people and particularly stories of being spat on.

Like with the case of the Vietnam stories many of the 'spitters' were young girls and knowing that these things happened at another time and place supposedly, I found out about a Freudian psychologist who wrote about male fantasies and treated these stories as fantasies, expressions of the subconscious, men who felt they'd lost manhood in the war. When I told a psychologist friend of mine in womens studies, she asked me who the spitters wereshe too thought it was likely a myth since the spitters were women, an expression of loss of manhood.

Looking a little further, I found that French soldiers returning from Indochina after defeat at Dien Bien Phu also told stories of being treated badly, rejected by women, attacked by women on the streets, having to take their uniforms off before going in public, being ashamed of their military service. These were very similar to stories circulating in the 1980's in the US. The time gap between the end of the Vietnam War and when the stories began to be told is also a sign that there is something of an element of myth or legend. That's the key part of the book, not whether or not such things, since it's hard to refute what isn't documented, ever happened, as much as the mythical element.

And of course we see how the rise of the myth had an effect on support for the war in Iraq.

I'm concerned about now is a certain strain of the anti-war movement has gotten caught up in this itself. There's a certain group of antiwar types who focus on what happens to the soldiers, how they're damaged psychologically, physically,I've been to a number of anti-war rallies now where all they talk about is PTSD and what happens to 'our boys' when we send them off to war. It's sort of a mirroring of the political right's approach.

They make the 'support the troops' ideology the basis for supporting the war, and some strands in the anti-war movement now mimic that we need to oppose the war by 'supporting the troops' and, I've been to some antiwar protests where very very little is said about the war itself!

We hear instead about getting the troops the help they need and heart rendering stories of parents of sons who have committed suicide after they come home, etc. That stuff from the anti-war left is as beclouding as similar rhetoric from the right, in that it takes us away from a political discourse, which we need in order to focus our energies around stopping the war and its causes.

Q: What's your sense in terms of how this myth is replayed now with vets coming home from Iraq and claims of their being 'abused' by the antiwar movement or sentiment?

Lembcke: I've heard a few of these stories. Again, in the spring of '03, stories circulated about soldiers being spat on. In Vermont a story went around that a woman in the National Guard had been pelted with a box of stones by antiwar teenagers. None of these stories have turned out to be supportable by any sort of evidence. And then, periodically, other stories like one in Seattle of a guy who was back from Iraq marching in a parade, 'spat on', 'booed', 'called baby killer', etc. The same, no serious evidence.

Occasionally then I get reports of these, but I've always suspected if the war goes down as a 'lost war', we'll hear more such stories, but the more important point, I think, is that the image of spat on Vietnam Vets is so engrained and part of the American memory and cultural sub-text, it almost doesn't have to be reaffirmed through stories of Iraq Vets being 'spat on' or 'mistreated'. It's almost as though the Vietnam Spitting myth is a background that everyone 'knows' about and when the President talks of Democrats not supportive of the war or otherwise baits antiwar people, the background that makes that resonant is the belief that something untoward happened to Vietnam Vets.

So it's not necessarily good news for the anti-war movement if we don't hear stories of Iraq Vets being 'spat on'. My fear is the mythical spat on Vietnam Vet is now so internalized as something that "happened', it doesn't have to be spoken anymore as a contemporary phenomenon.

Q: What's the significance of the documentary "Sir! No Sir" , which tells the story of the GI antiwar movement during Vietnam, in terms of what that film can tell students trying to organize antiwar movements on campuses across America today?

Lembcke: Oh, I think it's terribly powerful. Even thought there's no mention of Iraq, Afghanistan, or the War on Terror in the film, it seems that everyone that sees the film can extrapolate from it to the ways it applies to the wars that we're currently involved in. Probably the greatest impact it has is on young people in the military today. I've done quite a bit of public speaking at showings of the film.

First of all, it reminds even those of us involved in the antiwar movement as vets of stuff that they had forgotten about or informed us about things that were going on at that time that we didn't know about. They're kind of surprised to find out quite a few things about the GI antiwar movement that they didn't know.

Q: One of the things I was surprised to learn of was the extent of support shown to Jane Fonda by American soldiers stationed in Asia during the war at the "Free The Army" tour that she, other famous actors such as Donald Southerland, and soldiers/vets organized at US bases. Considering all the media discourse about vets' anger at Fonda , I had no idea that some 60,000 soldiers had attended and enthusiastically received her at those shows, which served as an alternative to Bob Hope's pro-war tours at the time.

Also the extent of African American soldiers in the antiwar movement was something I never fully heard about in histories of the antiwar movement, which the movie makes clear was very deep and militant.

Lembcke: I was in Vietnam in 1969 and got involved in Vietnam Veterans Against the War once I returned and yet there were things in that film that I had not known about at the time. On the one hand there was a lot in the news in the papers about the vets antiwar movement at the time, which I know now just from researching it. I don't think there was a blackout at all, often it was front page news and people knew about it.

One of the things I found interesting was looking at Stars and Stripes, the civilian published but military supported publication that soldiers got in Vietnam and a lot of anti-war news was reported there. It reported the story of Billy Dean Smith, the GI accused of fragging an officer, which is featured in Sir! No Sir!. It had stories about soldiers in Vietnam wearing black armbands in support of the 1969 anti-war Moratorium back home. It turns out Stars and Stripes is a pretty good source for information on the vets' and soldiers antiwar sentiment and movement back then!

So people knew of these things then. The more important story is what's happened to that in people's consciousness and memory. It certainly is gone now, even from people who were active in the vets antiwar movement then. Sir! No Sir! has helped to bring it back into the public memory and showing that a vets antiwar movement can happen now is very helpful for people teaching in college and high school. They can take this knowledge into the classroom and that part of the history can get back into the curriculum. Younger people will now get a different view of what happened then.

I've talked to a few soldiers back from Iraq, one a Holy Cross College student who graduated in Spring 2002, who was an ROTC cadet who is back from Iraq and has spoken after showings of Sir No Sir! and likewise didn't know about the GI antiwar movement during Vietnam. She reports that there is a lot of opposition to the US occupation of Iraq among US soldiers in Iraq but it doesn't express itself because there's no organization, no organized communication between people. Maybe the film will play a catalyst role, if people see this film about organized GI opposition to the Vietnam War, it might inspire and even spark their imagination about the kinds of thing that can be done to oppose the war from within the military.

Q: And the significance of that for today?

Lembcke: Well, the GI antiwar movement became a vitally important part of the antiwar movement during Vietnam. And that is likely to be the case today also. Lots of people are asking what's the difference between today and Vietnam? Why isn't there a movement today? One possible answer is that the movement within the military is not quite congealed yet, but that the potential is there. Hopefully Sir! No Sir! can have an effect on accelerating that development a bit.

Q: One of the things that struck me about the film is that you saw that soldiers were not just protesting the war because of their equipment issues or technical matters about how the war was being conducted, but actually because they were against what was happening to the people of Vietnam because of the war and they were learning, while deployed there, about the actual history of the Vietnamese people's struggles against foreign occupation as opposed to what they were brainwashed to believe in boot camp or high school teachers.

Lembcke: Here's a big difference, namely the nature of the 'enemy' and how it's perceived. In the later years of Vietnam we came back rather sympathetic to the cause of the other side. One of the vets interviewed in the film, David Cline, talks of how he was shot and how he had shot a Viet Cong soldier. He then recalls how he looked at the fellow he had shot dead and realizes that this man was fighting for his country too, for freedom. That was a real consciousness raising moment for him and he dedicated moments like that to doing something to honor the loss of that man's life, namely to end the war and contributing to the other side's fight for freedom. I certainly came back in February 1970 with such sentiments, though I'm not sure exactly how it happened. Surely conversations with other GIs and my own reading at the time helped with that.

But today it is harder to portray the 'enemy' in Iraq or Afghanistan in that kind of sympathetic way, there's a political challenge there for the American antiwar movement to understand what the other side represents.

It needs to get some grasp on what is supportable in what the other side is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, like we did in the Vietnam War. Recall in the early phases of the Vietnam war, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong were called terrorists and there tactics were called tactics of terror. Today we talk about the roadside bomb in Iraq, but during Vietnam there was the satchel charges were one of the main weapons of the Vietnamese War.

Q: For those of us who haven't fought in a war, what is a Satchel Charge?

Lembcke: A briefcase that would be loaded with explosives, dropped off some place and would explode. The point I'm making is that early in the war in Vietnam the Vietnamese and the Vietcong weren't as viewed sympathetically as they were by the early 1970's. What changed was how they were represented in terms of what they were all about. I think we need to go through that rethinking process on Iraq now, though I'm not sure where that goes.

We don't right now have an embraceable 'other' as we did in Vietnam and what the complexity of the other side means, how it's to be sorted out, what's supportablebut we need to find if there is something there to be supportable and that can have a big impact on the military elements against the war, namely that there is an honorableness to the 'enemy' on the other side as was the case for GIs against the war in Vietnam.

Q: I always find it interesting to focus on what happens with US when it does negotiate with the armed opposition in Iraq, what the US's key demands are during such negotiations and how the US can't meet the oppositions' demands because of that oppositions' demands, no matter how low the bar is set, because those demands go against the interests of the US, given its actual goals in Iraq.

Lembcke: Most of us understand the war ended when the Vietnamese people won. And when we recognized that the sooner the other side wins, the war is over. The US is not gonna stop fighting until it stops, when the US is unable or unwilling to win the war. That conclusion is very sobering if it's applied to the war in Iraq. That's a pretty sobering thought, is this war going to go on until the US can't do so anymore and at what point is the US antiwar movement going to see that the war won't end until the other side wins and who is the other side? It's very complex, the other side is very divided, not a monolith. So I don't know how that lesson from Vietnam translates into something we can act on to inform our political work today.

Q: There's plenty of writing out there on the liberal left that we can't leave now because of the nature of the opposition.

Lembcke: Yes, there is that, but you know the pro-war elements during Vietnam used that logic too. They often said we can't leave now, we'll have so many losses or the 'bloodbath' that would happen if we left too soon

Q: I find that when I deal with people on the liberal-left who will argue that calling for leaving Iraq immediately is 'isolationism'. But if you argue back that this is not isolationism we are arguing, but that the US should pay massive reparations to the people of Iraq for the damage the US invasion and occupation has caused the Iraqi people-no reply forthcoming. They have no answer as to why we know that that is not going to happen if the US stays there or if it leaves!

But it opens up the question that people on the liberal-left who support staying there that the pro-war or lukewarm "anti-war" liberal left have no answer for, namely what is the purpose of what the US is doing in Iraq? It's just set in stone for them that if we leave things will be worse, even though the evidence now is so overwhelmingly that the US occupation is the key source of the violence we see in Iraq today. So much so that the argument that once was so common among the liberal left, "well the Iraqis want us to stay" has really collapsed under the weight of Iraqi realities. Now even the Iraqis polled are saying in big majorities in US State Dept. commissioned polls that they want us to leave now and it's ok to shoot US soldiers.

Lembcke: The NYT kind of buried that story on the inside, but the antiwar movement can use that information. We shouldn't have to make that argument, it should be apparent we're not welcome, but sometimes data helps to persuade.

Q: It also throws the light back on Iraqis, which the 'supports the troops' antiwar movement focus doesn't do. The focus is so often only on Americans as though the only impact is on Americans or it's the only one that matters, except for small periods like Abu Ghraib or Haditha

Lembcke: Yes, the war becomes all about us and erases Iraqis, much like we did during Vietnam erasing the agency of Vietnamese people.

Q: Yes, it's interesting that in the process, ironically, it ignores the agency of the soldiers and their potential role in stopping the war and recognizing the actual roots of war itself.

Lembcke: Yes, you know one of the best new sources of information for the antiwar movement is another film called "Why We Fight". I saw it with two classes and they haven't stopped talking about it. If they had heard before about the term 'military industrial compex", now it makes it more real. Now they think about the war beyond the slogans of "the war is for freedom, democracy'which is all most Americans know. The oil thing too has also become a kind of cliché they don't think about much. For my students those bumper stickered explanations are erased and the film puts the war in a much more material and realistic framing. It's a film that might have as important an impact as Sir! No Sir!

Stephen Philion is an assistant professor of sociology at St. Cloud State University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, teaching social theory, sociology of race, and China and Globalization. His writings can be found at his website. He can be reached at: stephen_philion@yahoo.com







 

 

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