Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 24,
2005
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
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Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
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Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
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February 24, 2005
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry
Learning
All the Wrong Lessons
By
SHARON SMITH
It is unfortunately a little-known fact
that thousands of high school and college students across the
country organized walkouts against the war on January 20, marching
as organized contingents to counter-inaugural demonstrations
in Boulder, Colo.; Los Angeles; Chicago; San Francisco; Austin,
Texas; and other cities.
At Seattle Central Community
College (SCCC), students took a few minutes on their way out
of the building to confront military recruiters--forcing them
to flee under the protection of campus security officers. One
of the recruiters, claiming student protesters flung newspapers
and water bottles in his direction, told the Seattle Post
Intelligencer, "They were all going by, making offhand
comments and saying 'no war.' We just waved at them. Five minutes
later, there was just a mob of 500 people surrounding the table."
There is a student rebellion
in the making, coalescing around opposition to the war and its
military recruiters--with students by the hundreds defying threats
of disciplinary action.
Despite their potential to
transform the political landscape, however, the significance
of these militant student actions has so far escaped the leaders
of the nation's established antiwar organizations.
Indeed, after fostering the
illusion that supporting pro-war, neoliberal John Kerry represented
the only "realistic" strategy for those who oppose
the war, these antiwar leaders now seem to have learned all the
wrong lessons from Kerry's defeat in November.
Rather than seizing the opportunity
in the months before the election to strengthen the antiwar movement
as a clear alternative for the millions opposed to Bush, virtually
the entire movement came to a standstill to support the Democratic
Party's chosen candidate--leaving those against the war with
no organized expression to the left of Kerry's "hunt down
and kill the terrorists" mantra. Even as the torture scandal
at Abu Ghraib surfaced, and the U.S. invaded Falluja and Najaf,
finally flattening Falluja in November, the U.S. antiwar movement
maintained its silence.
* *
*
SINCE THE election, the antiwar movement is showing signs of
revival, but the same leadership responsible for the movement's
hiatus during the presidential campaign is once again seizing
the reins of control over the movement.
These antiwar leaders have
yet to acknowledge their own role in the Kerry debacle, much
less the antiwar movement's decline. Most accept the view that
Bush's re-election provides indisputable evidence that "Christian
values" and conservative politics dominate among the U.S.
population--requiring those on the left to adapt yet further
rightward in the aftermath of Kerry's defeat.
United for Peace and Justice
(UFPJ) co-chair Bob Wing lamented recently, "Our original
hope was that the movement would grow...But things have not worked
out that way, and it is dangerous and unstable for a coalition
to have a broader and deeper political unity than most of its
member groups."
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of
the women's peace group Code Pink, told the San Francisco
Chronicle on January 23: "It was easier to mobilize
people before the war. Now, many people have fallen into thinking
that we can't just cut and run."
This pessimistic conclusion
is somewhat premature--and disingenuous, since the antiwar movement
itself has thus far failed to attempt to build an opposition
that is clear on this question. On this basis, however, some
antiwar leaders now propose continuing a self-defeating strategy
for the foreseeable future.
As the headline of a January
16 San Francisco Chronicle story put it, "Bush Protesters
Rethink Tactics: Critics hope to move beyond self-satisfaction
of antiwar protests, gain wider voting base." The article
stressed antiwar leaders' desire to retreat from organizing mass
demonstrations in order to begin "preaching beyond the choir
box."
"We've got to start reaching
out to people who don't agree with us," Leslie Cagan, United
for Peace and Justice's national coordinator, told the Chronicle.
The paper's report added, "In its recent short-term
plan, the 850-organization umbrella behind many of the nation's
larger protests over the past few years conceded that 'the antiwar
movement must reshape its work.'"
In a follow-up interview, Cagan
put forward some suggestions for reshaping the movement's strategy,
including greater emphasis on winning allies in Congress: "'For
instance, when Bush goes to Congress (later this year) with a
request for another $100 billion for the war, we will do what
we can to get a "no" vote.' She adds, 'It's a long
shot, but we're going to try.'"
This certainly is a "long
shot," considering that Democrats have squandered the opportunity
to define themselves as an opposition party. The main Democratic
Party proposal on Iraq, in fact, is the introduction of yet more
U.S. troops.
The speed and aggression with
which U.S. imperialism has pursued its global aims since September
11 has been possible only because this is a bipartisan project,
in which Democrats as well as Republicans have enabled all
of Bush's policies to pass, often enthusiastically.
The Institute for Policy Studies'
Phyllis Bennis drew out further implications of a Congressional
strategy in widely circulated notes to the UFPJ steering committee,
elaborating on the need to move beyond forging links with Democrats--to
right-wing Republicans voicing doubts about Bush's losing occupation
strategy. "We need to figure out how to strengthen this
popular [antiwar] opposition, perhaps linking it with growing
elite and particularly right-wing opposition," she argued.
While these antiwar leaders
are looking upward (to Congress) and to their right (to conservatives)
for allies, they are missing the radicalization gathering momentum
below, among those rejecting their intended role as cannon fodder
for the war who are already organizing protests outside the auspices
of the established movement.
* *
*
IN REALITY, U.S. society today
is characterized by sharp polarization on virtually every social
and class question, including the war--dividing workers, students
and military families. This polarization was very much in evidence
during the 2004 election, and has only grown in its aftermath.
The right wing only appears
so dominant because of the absence of a genuine left opposition.
Yet so many who led the U.S. left on its disastrous course have
taken no responsibility for the results--a barely discernable
political left in the face of a confident, coherent and growing
right.
To influence Congress, our
most effective tool is not compromise, but a confident, coherent
and growing opposition to the Iraq occupation. We should exploit
every division at the top, even between Republicans, but this
can only be done effectively by wielding a clear ideological
counterweight, backed up by mass forces.
Students organizing walkouts
and sit-ins against the war are far in advance of the established
antiwar movement in building this kind of opposition. It is worth
noting that the vast majority of student walkouts have taken
place not on elite campuses, but at working-class commuter colleges
and high schools--the main targets for military recruiters seeking
to prey upon working-class students facing the increasingly unattainable
goal of a college education.
The No Child Left Behind Act
requires high schools to turn over student contact lists to military
recruiters. But some schools are affected more than others. For
example, the exclusive (and private) Chicago Latin School, while
receiving $40,000 in federal money last year, has not been asked
by recruiters to turn over its student list for the last six
years. "It's a little embarrassing," spokeswoman Evelyne
Girardet admitted to the Chicago Tribune.
Students at working-class high
schools, in contrast, receive regular calls from recruiters.
"We do not want the military in our schools asking our friends
and family to fight for a war that is wrong," SCCC student
Nicole Thomas argued, defending the student walkout. "We
want recruiters out of our schools."
These students--joining vets
and active duty military resisters--are part of a growing rejection
of the war among those expected to fight it, pointing the way
forward for the antiwar movement as a whole.
An effective strategy must
mobilize real forces around clear goals. And leadership is earned
not by title or even words, but by action and results.
Sharon Smith writes for the Socialist
Worker. She can be reached at: sharon@internationalsocialist.org
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