Today's Stories

August 28-30, 2009

Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

August 27, 2009

Doug and Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five

Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers

Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel

Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap

Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option

Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent

Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers

David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)

Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries

August 26, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout

Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke

Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women

Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First

Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane

Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans

Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque

Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy

Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools

Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line

August 25, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed

Martine Bulard
China's Wild West

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity

Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

Weekend Edition
August 28-30, 2009

Sex Wars and Nation Building in Iraq

The Silent Slaughter

By DAVID ROSEN

The Iraqi political leadership is moving to the right and those identified as unacceptable are paying the harshest price. As U.S. occupation forces attempt to vacate Iraq’s bloody battlefield, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is positioning himself as a stalwart nationalist for the upcoming elections scheduled for January 2010. His efforts are most evident in his use of one of the oldest con-games in the authoritarian leader’s playbook, condoning vicious right-wing attacks on the weakest, most powerless in society.

Faced with a recent escalation in sectarian violence and mounting political disaffection within his strained coalition, al-Maliki and his supporters have sought to push through restrictive policies that appease the most reactionary elements within his faltering coalition.

The Iraqi government is attempting to impose restrictions on Internet service providers and, like the Chinese government, ban sites it claims incite violence or offer pornography. Similarly, efforts to promote women’s rights have come to a near halt as represented most graphically by Nawal al-Samarraie, Iraq's minister for women's affairs, decision to resign.

The al-Maliki government’s condoning of the recent up-tick in honor killings of “adulterous” females and “gay” males reveals a far more dangerous, bloody side of the right-wing drift of the Iraqi government.

Saddam Hussein’s regime was brutally oppressive to its perceived enemies, yet surprisingly tolerant when it came to women’s rights (even involving adultery) and to gay people. Hussein oversaw a secular dictatorship, not an Islamist fundamentalist regime.

During the initial phase of the U.S. occupation, Bush promoted a right-wing ideology of “democratic” nation building that required the Iraqi puppet regime to at least give lip service to broadly shared Western “human rights” values. As the U.S. seeks to depart the Iraqi stage, human rights, especially sexual freedoms, are one of the first casualties of Iraq’s new national building efforts.

* * *

An increase in “honor” killings currently haunts the Iraqi political landscape but is receiving little U.S. media attention. Such killings are rooted in ancient patriarchal culture and represent the most severe expression of a rebellion against modernity, the secularism of the global market. They bespeak Iraq’s mounting social crisis.

In Iraq, and other parts of the developing (and religiously fundamentalist) world, an allegation of a wife’s “adultery” or a man’s “homosexuality” can lead to government-sanctioned violent moral justice, including killings. A family or clan believing its reputation defamed by the allegedly unacceptable conduct of one of its members can lead to the killing of the loved-one in order to restore its honor.

Based on a rationality drawn from another historical value system, the “crime” committed is not a civil or legal offense, but rather a moral or tradition transgression: the woman or man who is punished (along with anyone who tries to defend her/him) is considered the guilty party because s/he has defamed the family or clan’s honor. In less tradition-bound societies in the West and other parts of the world, the perpetrator of such an “honor” killing will likely be punished. In Iraq, and other fundamentalist-religious countries, the dishonored party is seen as the victim and exonerated from criminal prosecution.

A recently report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), “They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” analyzes the rise in the killings of alleged gay men since January 2009. If estimates that 90 men have been murdered during this period; however, Ali Hili, a spokesperson for Iraqi LGBT, a UK-based gay rights group, argues that "we have information on over 700 killings including honour killings." [HRW, August 2009]

Amnesty International recounts, in “Trapped by Violence: Women in Iraq,” the story of 17-year-old Rand ‘Abd al-Qader who was killed in Basra in March 2008. Her father murdered her apparently with the assistance of two of her brothers because she had developed a friendship with a British soldier based in the city. Making this killing more perverse, Rand ‘Abd al-Qader’s mother, Leila Hussein, denounced her husband’s crime, left him and was murdered in May 2008. [AI, March 2009]

Hundreds of ostensibly gay men have been targeted and killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion and occupation. These killings spiked following the U.S. invasion, but declined along with other social violence in the wake of the 2008 “Anbar Awakening” and the subsequent U.S. military “surge.” However, as HRW and others have reported, a new round of gay killings is underway in Iraq. It says that the killings are centered in Baghdad, but have spread to Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra.

Clerics warn that under the occupation, a growing trend of what they consider the "feminization" of Iraqi men is occurring and harsh responses are needed to redress this trend. Many attacks are attributed to a resurgent Mehdi Army, Moqtada al-Sadr’s private Shia militia; it has also been accused of burning down a coffee house in Sadr City that was reputed to be frequented by gay men. More worrisome, the attacks have occurred with the complicity of the Iraqi police; ironically, while homosexuality is condemned as immoral, it is not a crime among consenting adults.

The HRW report is most disturbing recounting the horrendous rage inflicted on the men killed for apparently being gay. Vigilantes often break into homes and forcibly remove the alleged gay men and even seize men on the street. Those seized are subject to vicious interrogations before being murdered, their often mutilated bodies abandoned in garbage dumps.

The report recounts doctors’ testimonials noting that some of the men had their anuses glued and force-fed laxatives to induce excruciating deaths. Others have had their bodies disfigured with terms like "pervert," “son of a bitch” or "puppy," a slur to dehumanize the alleged gay man, inscribed on their chests.

It should be noted that U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, acknowledged the HRW report and voiced concern over attacks against members of the Iraqi LGBT community.

According to the Amnesty report, there has been a marked increase in violence against women perceived to have shamed their families. Such charges can be brought against any woman caught speaking to a man in public who is not her husband or a relative. These women are often considered to be prostitutes and violently punished, often killed; women working as prostitutes are often singled out for violent attacks.

Since the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi government has failed to enact legislation to suppress “honor” violence against women and girls. In fact, current laws condone, even facilitate, such violence. The country’s penal code permits perpetrators of “honor” killings to plead mitigating moral factors and get off with a six months sentence.

The Observer reports that Basra witnessed a 70 percent increase in women victims of “honor” killings during 2008, rising to 81 from 47 women in ’07. It reports that “only five people have been convicted.” It reports that women were being burned in acid attacks walking through the city’s market after speaking to a male friend. A local lawyer insists that the police were protecting perpetrators and that a woman could be killed by a hired hit-man for $100 (£65). [The Observer, November 30, 2008]

Turning to Kurdistan, Patrick Cockburn, writing in the Independent in May 2008, noted that in 2007 at least 350 women (double the number for 2006) were targeted for “honor” attacks. Surprising, many of these women and girls were targeted after “evidence” of an “illicit act” were captured on cell phone pictures. More disturbing, some 600 women and girls in Kurdistan committed suicide by burning, drowning or shooting themselves.

* * *

In anticipation of Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, the neo-con concept of the “clash of civilizations” was promoted as a critical component to the ideological rationale for the imperialist misadventure. Today, the “clash” concept has disappeared from public discourse.

The notion of a clash was originally promulgated by Bernard Lewis and gained wider acceptance through the writings of Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama. At its core, the neo-cons argued that in a post-Cold War world, new forces emerged to shape global conflicts.

For Huntington et. al., the battle between nation states has been superseded by the battle between cultures or what the neo-cons call civilizations. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, economic competition, class warfare, anti-colonial battles and spheres-of-influence struggles determined global conflict. However, in the post-Cold War millennium, proponents of the “clash” theory argue that a people’s culture, their values, beliefs and religion, has become the determining cause of conflict.

Sexuality, and the attendant issue of “honor” killings, provides a unique window into the alleged clash of civilizations. It is that sphere of human existence in which the twin dimensions of being human are forged. In sex, the truely human (i.e., consciousness) and the truely animal (i.e., physicality) are unified into a singluar experience. This unity is lived out as both species reproduction and erotic pleasure.

Sexuality is also one aspect of socio-personal life that is very much sharpened by “civilization,” by cultural values and religious beliefs as well as by the marketplace and battles between geopolitical empires. Peoples, nations and civilizations have struggled for millennia over the meaning of sexuality, whether for men, women or young people and whether defined as hetrosexual or homosexual.

Explicit and aggressive sexuality is a powerful force dividing the West from, for example, the Arab and Islamic world. It is one of the most threatening dimensions of Western capitalism’s cultural system that is pushing ever-deeper into the intimate, private lives of people throughout the world.

For many, the experience of globalization resonates less in the plunder of a nation’s natural resources or the exploitation of its collective labor power than in the flood of erotic sensibilities challenging established power relations. This apparent assault often provokes the greatest resistance.

Historically, changing sexual relations, whether in the West or Middle East, have upended traditional patriarchial family and social relations. Nothing has proved more socially destablizing then the changing status of women, whether working for a wage outside the home, securing the vote, being freed from restrictive clothing or controlling their reproductive lives. Similiarly, erotic attractions between people of the same sex threaten traditional notions of partriarchy, especially masculity.

As evident from the experience of the West over the last half-century, how can the conventional masculine role be maintained if female identity is remade, along with structrural changes in the marketplace requiring a two-income family. How this process will play out in the Islamic Middle East remains an open question. Unlike the numerous reports and studies of sex practice in the West, little scholarly research about the Middle East is devoted to the study of sex. The Arab and Muslim worlds await its Kinsey.

Life in Iraq, like much of the developing world, is being upended by capitalist globalization. In all likelyhood, this transition would have taken a very different form had the U.S. not invaded Iraq. While severe political violence could have been expected, social or religious violence may well have been contained. However, the “honor” killings of women and (alleged) gay men is but one consequence of the social destabaliztion wrought by the U.S. invasion. The current rise in such violence might well indicate the deeper crisis that awaits Iraq as America’s occupying forces seek to exit the failed military battlefield.

David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” (Key, 2009); he can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.

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