Today's Stories

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 22, 2009

Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Obama's Afghan Plan

By VIJAY PRASHAD

President Barack Obama inherited two seemingly intractable wars, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, alongside a financial crisis that continues to escalate. Obama positioned himself against the unpopular Iraq war, but he did not place himself in the anti-war camp. It had become strategically important for his electoral success to make the claim that President George W. Bush’s adventure in Iraq had reduced the pressure on Al Qaeda and that it therefore increased the insecurity of the United States.

From the very first, then, the Afghanistan war was to be the good war, while Iraq was the bad war. The anti-war movement’s Left flank went along with the Obama tidal wave because it enabled part of its goal to be met: it brought the criticism of the Iraq war to the mainstream and it rejected the view that U.S. security could only be purchased from the barrel of a gun. The anti-war movement’s liberal section was never against war itself but only against the Iraq war. It is this unstable union of those who opposed the Iraq war only and those who opposed U.S. war-mongering in general that has now come apart.

On February 27, Obama made a cautious statement about drawdown from Iraq, promising to remove 142,000 troops and to end all combat operations by August 31, 2010. This appeased the liberal anti-Iraq war wing, who were broadly pleased with the “responsible” and “thoughtful” exit strategy, even as some of them wanted the timetable to be shortened.

The Left anti-war bloc was disappointed by the vagueness of the statement, which did not touch on the question of a permanent military presence (through bases). “The good news is that he has a plan,” said Leslie Cagan of United for Peace & Justice (a Left anti-war coalition), “and that obviously his election in no small measure was the result of the massive anti-war sentiment in the country, and he understands that.” The bad news is that U.S. militarism continues, and “our work as an anti-war movement is far from over,” said Leslie Cagan.

In early April, Obama earned the approval of two-thirds of the U.S. population, much higher than that of Bush and Bill Clinton at this point in their presidencies. Two wars, a complex financial crisis, and a major national debate on his stimulus spending have not dented his enormous popularity. The typical mood is to give Obama time to try out his policies. Republican grumbles sound like bitterness. In fact, the Republican Party has now dissolved into irrelevance, being caught up in an internecine debate over its future (much the same happened to the Conservatives when Tony Blair first took office in 1997). The Democrats are loath to criticise Obama, and Democrat-leaning groups are equally wary.

The 77-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in the U.S. House of Representatives has been very quiet, offering suggestions that are couched in reverence. Representative Jose Serrano of the Bronx, New York, was an outspoken critic of the Bush wars. After Obama’s speech in which he spoke about the plan to withdraw by 2010, Serrano offered his support and then carefully tried to say more: “Do I wish [the withdrawal date] was nine months [from now]? Absolutely. Do I wish [the U.S. would leave] zero troops? Absolutely.” The tone of both Serrano and Leslie Cagan’s comments is also indicative of how far one can go with criticism; the good news comes first, and then, gently, the bad.

Obama’s February 27 statement seems to have removed Iraq from the table. Over the past four months, the U.S. economy has shed an average of 684,000 jobs. Attention within the U.S. is now on the precariousness of one’s livelihood. Over the past five years, the U.S. military had a hard time filling its ranks. Now things have changed. The military says that the upsurge in recruitment has to do with the good news coming out of Iraq, but the surveys they have conducted show that the spur is the poor civilian job market (and a reduction in the military’s standards for who it recruits). Military spokesperson Eileen Lainez told the CNN: “Recruiting is always a challenge, but a tighter job market provides many opportunities to make our case to young men and women.”

The regular news of bomb blasts have now been moved to the centre pages of the newspapers, and they have all but disappeared from the television news. Such disturbances are no longer news, having become what the U.S. population assumes is the normal condition of life in Iraq. Only 42 U.S. troops died in the first three months of this year compared with 108 in the first three months of 2008 and 245 in 2007 during the same period.

A new book by The Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, claims that the great victory in Iraq is not far and that the credit for it should go to the Surge that began in 2007. This sort of account provides comfort that Obama’s gradual withdrawal will now end what should never have begun in the first place.

The real war, Obama suggests, is the Afghan one: Bush should have prosecuted that conflict with all the resources of the U.S. government rather than shifting talent and firepower to Iraq. The imputed success of the Surge led to a section of the Obama administration making the case for more military force and greater concentration of power to clamp down on the insurgency, to repeat, in other words, the Iraq game plan. The army, it said, should not concentrate on the interdiction of the enemy, but on the protection of the population. That is the basis of the Surge. But another camp in the administration called for an alternative strategy.

Writing in The Guardian (March 30), Representative Mike Honda of California captured the tenor of this second approach: “This administration recognises the benefits of a more comprehensive security strategy and that we must help the tribal Pashtun-Pathans feel secure by making sure they have a crop that won’t be sprayed, a school that functions, a hospital that is stocked with basic supplies, and a job that pays more than $3 a week. That is a definition of security that is likely to provide more long-term security, given what we know about increased income, employment and educational enrolment correlating directly with decreased risks of violent conflict.”

The Obama plan on Afghanistan draws from both sections of his administration, with a commitment to troop increase to try out the Surge and an increased commitment to social spending to bolster the well-being of Afghans. The plan makes no mention of an exit strategy, and neither does it promote the start of a genuine political arena within Afghanistan. For instance, the creation of political parties to harness the opinions in the country into a democratic process.

The split in the Obama position (many more guns, some more butter) disabled unity within both the CPC and the anti-war movement in general. The two co-chairs of the CPC disagreed, with Representative Lynn Woolsey of California taking a strong anti-war position and Representative Ray Grijalva of Arizona adopting the Obama strategy. Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, like Lynn Woolsey, came out against the Obama plan, saying, “I simply cannot endorse a budget or a plan that sends more of our brave men and women to Afghanistan, a conflict which has the potential to become this generation’s Vietnam.”

The Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus is also split on Afghanistan, here between Lynn Woolsey and Representative Barbara Lee of California. Barbara Lee is the only one in the U. S. Congress who voted against the authorisation of the war against Afghanistan in 2001, but she is as yet silent. (Her office says that she will offer only a joint statement with Lynn Woolsey, and that they are working on this.) The CPC held a vibrant forum on March 25 on “Afghanistan: A Road Map for Progress”, and has planned to hold five more such forums. The CPC is using these forums as a way to study the issues and to derive a policy based on their own discussions. It is not clear when it will be ready to have a single policy framework to offer as an alternative to the Obama plan.

Fractured movement

The anti-war movement that is outside the Congress is much more fractured. Sections of the liberal wing that opposed the Iraq war are now closely aligned with the Obama administration. The Centre for American Progress, MoveOn, the Service Employees International Union, and Win Without War were the core elements of the Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI). This group spent millions of dollars to stop the Bush agenda and, later, to elect Obama to the presidency.

The Centre for American Progress became the main conduit for those who entered Obama’s administration (its head, John Podesta, ran the Obama transition team). During the debate within the administration, the Centre set up the Sustainable Security in Afghanistan team, whose report, authored by Lawrence Korb and others, was released in March 2009. The report warned the administration not to mimic the Iraq Surge, but yet it did not offer any plan for de-escalation or withdrawal. It called for more military commitment, as well as more economic commitment, the same tonic that would eventually find its way into the Obama plan.

The AAEI was run by three men, all of whom are now in the Obama administration: Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes are political aides to Obama, while Brad Woodhouse is Obama’s Director of Communications and Research. MoveOn, meanwhile, has abandoned its anti-war activism for a new grassroots campaign on clean energy and health care. The liberals, in other words, have abandoned the anti-war terrain. A demonstration held in Washington, D.C., on March 21 failed to draw the kind of crowds that came to anti-war protests before the past election. A few thousand people gathered, as Jerry Young of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars asked, “How can we ensure that our next demonstration is larger than this one?”

Groups such as Code Pink, World to Win, PeaceAction, American Friends Service Committee, the United for Peace & Justice coalition, and ANSWER have begun to test the waters, to see whether they can galvanise people into action against the build-up in Afghanistan and the continuation of warfare in Iraq. A recent poll shows that 42 per cent of the U.S. population opposes the Afghan escalation. The anti-war movement will try to speak for this sizable number, as will the CPC. But first it will have to figure out how to move the population around Obama.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu 

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