Today's Stories

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

April 4, 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Night I Heard King Had Been Shot

Greg Moses
Missing King

Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine

Alison Weir
Funding Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel

David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War

Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream

Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?

Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte

Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines

Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran

Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn

Website of the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait

April 3, 2008

Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession

Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression

Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained: The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia

Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America

Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy

David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood

Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice

Website of the Day
The True Face of Da Vinci?

April 2, 2008

Diane Farsetta
Indian Point on the Potomac

Harry Browne
Bertie Ahern Laid Low by Secretary

Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer

George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves

Col. Dan Smith
The Militarization of America

Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism

Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland

Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left

Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell

April 1, 2008

Jeff Leys
Fracturing the Peace to End the War

Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg

Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense Budget

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia

Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani

John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader

Michael J. Smith
Woolly Mamet

Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments

Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity

Website of the Day
Support Briana!

March 31, 2008

Mike Whitney
Dead on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street

Mats Svensson
Walls, Tunnels and Daily Humiliations

Paul Rockwell
Hillary's Lies About Outsourcing

Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr Calls for Ceasefire

Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown

Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia

Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short

Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later

Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans

Betsy Roberts / Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup

Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones

Website of the Day
Five Years Too Many

March 29 / 30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
When They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman and Rev. Hagee

William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics

Robert Fantina
Iraq Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton

John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's Oil

Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home

Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context

Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making

Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train

Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers

Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump and Consumers Sour

Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!

Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War

Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American

Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales"

David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un

Website of the Weekend
Hidden Iraq

March 28, 2008

Saul Landau
Growing Dread About Iraq

Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy

Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods

Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from Guantánamo

Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service

Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!

Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception

March 27, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Basra Erupts

Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates

Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"

Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?

William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq

John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?

Robert Weissman
How Things Work

Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen

Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table

David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers

John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction

Website of the Day
Going Out for an English

March 26, 2008

Stan Cox
The Germs Next Door

Sharon Smith
Greed Pays: Welfare on Wall Street

Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans

Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market

William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra

Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel

Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire

Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late

Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues

Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media

Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs

Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs

Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread

March 25, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Crazy Rev. Wright

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright

Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts

Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders

Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast

Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?

Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War

David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?

Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken

Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet

David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet

Website of the Day
Memorializing Iraq

March 24, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Blonde Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012

Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession

Uri Avnery
Two Americas

Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison

Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela

Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal

Christopher Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country

Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama

Stacey Warde
Tax Burden

Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?

Website of the Day
Live from the Longest Walk

March 22 / 23, 2008

Ralph Nader
Bush Blisters the Truth on Iraq

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?

James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives

Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics of Trade

Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit

Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials

Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial

John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul

Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics

David Michael Green
Happy Anniversary, America!

Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran

Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell

Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Raid on Brazil

James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras

Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer

Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History

Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week

Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Merci, McCain!

March 21, 2008

Marleen Martin
Land Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on Crime"

Peter Montague
Run Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not

Saul Landau
Monroe's Deadly Doctrine

Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset

Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?

Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?

Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations

Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing

Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?

Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?

Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions

March 20, 2008

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
The Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks

Mike Whitney
Winding Up Bear

John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?

Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire

Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America

Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech

Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API

Stella Dallas /
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right

Website of the Day
The Angry Monk

March 19, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
A War of Lies

Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno

Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq

Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai

Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?

Christopher Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait

Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright

Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities

Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills

Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble

Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich

Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation

Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due

Website of the Day
Glimpses of Nature

March 18, 2008

David Price
The Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge

Paul Craig Roberts
The Collapse of American Power

Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth

Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought

Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward

James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe

Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem

David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?

Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran

Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans

Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left

Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?

March 17, 2008

Pam Martens
The Fed's Wall Street Dilemma

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment

Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution

Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit

Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court Since 9/11

Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma

Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America

Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf

Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace

P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!

Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn

Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer

Website of the Day
No Cowboys

March 15 / 16, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
How to Destroy a Country in Five Years

Mike Whitney
Bearly Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief

Ralph Nader
Of Laws and Men

Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer

Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed

Tom Wright /
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice

Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began

Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas

Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?

Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China

John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict

Uzma Aslam Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?

Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon

David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal

Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer

David Michael Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven

Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power

David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin

Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet

Website of the Day
Deviant Art

March 14, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching the Dollar Die

Don Santina
Vichy Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons

Tim Rinne
StratCom Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska

Robert Fantina
In Torture We Trust

Saul Landau
Letter to the Presidents-in-Waitings

David Macaray
Common Myths About Labor Unions

Franklin Lamb
Is the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon

Michael Neumann
The One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics

March 13, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Republicans and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America

Mike Whitney
Meltdown Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze

Assaf Kfoury
"One-State or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives

Andy Worthington
Afghan Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story

Adam Federman
From Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road

March 12, 2008

Dave Lindorff
Bringing Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US

R.F. Blader
The Spitzer Backlash

Yonatan Mendel
How to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or "Palestine"

Jonathan Cook
One State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism

Bill and Kathy Christison
Fallon and Gates -- At Least One Cheer

James J. Brittain
Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders

Ron Jacobs
"All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"

March 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
How to End the Subprime Crisis

Ed O'Loughlin
How Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal

Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering Commitment' to Inequality

Kathy Christison
One State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine

China Hand
PRC Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran

John Joslin
Thank You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette

Mike Averko
Serb Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide

Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin Newsom's Kneejerk Plan

Thierry Paquot
High Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block

March 10, 2008

Uri Avnery
"Kill A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza

Col. Dan Smith
Scoring the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond

R.F. Blader
Why "Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its Sheen

Michael Neumann
The One-State Illusion: More is Less

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
Did the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?

James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe Protests in Colombia and the World

Missy Comley Beattie
The Passion of John McCain

March 8-9, 2008 Weekend Edition

JoAnn Wypijewski
The Only Way to Fight the Clintons

Mike Whitney
Sorting Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America

Peter Morici
Fed and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets

Ralph Nader
The Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore

Jonathan Cook
The Meaning of Gaza's Shoah

Steve Niva
Behind the Israeli Escalation in Gaza

Bill and Kathy Christison
Crisis over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax

Hervé Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia: Morales is Checked

Eric Walberg
To Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?

Scott Johnson
City of A Thousand Foreclosures

Mark Scaramella
James Brown's Gate

Bill Clinton
President Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force Chairman

Poet's Basement
St. Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Hillary Blackens Barack

March 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face

Robin Blackburn
Question for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?

Saul Landau
The Stupid Economy

Binoy Kampmark
When Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats

Chris Floyd
Crushing the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire

Andy Worthington
Spanish Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo Britons

Will Potter
Before the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word

March 6, 2008

March 6, 2008

Vincent Navarro
The Next Failure of Health Reform

Forrest Hylton
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An Interview with Morgan Spurlock

Finding Osama Bin Laden

By WAJAHAT ALI

I met with Morgan Spurlock, documentary filmmaker and star of the newly released “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden” and the Oscar nominated “Super Size Me,” at a posh Palo Alto hotel where the small coffee costs four dollars (thankfully including milk and sugar.) Despite becoming famous and notorious after using and abusing himself as a laboratory rat by eating three super sized MacDonald’s meals a day for a month [Super Size Me], Spurlock exudes an amiable, goofy “regular guy” charm. After meeting him, one understands how his humorous, good-natured masochism, as evidenced by the increasingly bizarre and theatrical stunts he pulls on his hit show 30 Days, makes him likeable and appealing to mainstream audiences.

However, categorizing Spurlock as either an MTV Jackass or shameless, sensationalist self-promoter would be premature and incorrect. Spurlock primarily wants to educate America about pressing socio-political topics using entertainment as the sweetener to make the harsh medicine of reality easier to swallow. His “info-tainment” approach finds its most ambitious and controversial hurdle in his latest movie where he traverses the globe, hitting all the “Muslim danger zones” [except Iraq and Iraq] to find the elusive Osama Bin Laden. The impetus for such a bold adventure arises from the birth of his new child and Spurlock’s desire to make this increasingly insane world safer for future generations. While watching the movie, one realizes Spurlock intends to accomplish this task by communicating with Muslims around the world and hearing their side of the story in order to build a bridge of understanding between the two “civilizations.” Here’s an exclusive conversation I had with Morgan Spurlock a week before his new movie’s release.

ALI: First of all, I don’t know whether to punch you in the stomach or hug you for Super Size Me…

SPURLOCK: (Laughs) There was a guy that I met in Texas who came up to me and said, “I just want you to know that I hate you.” I said, “Why do you hate me?” He goes, “Cause every time I go to a fast food restaurant, I gotta buy two big drinks…

ALI: Why don’t you and Eric Schlosser [author of Fast Food Nation] just ignore this? Why can’t ignorance be bliss for you guys…

SPURLOCK: (Laughs) Hey, Eric was first. He came long before I did.

ALI: Some would say what good came from this masochistic enterprise?

SPURLOCK: I think the greatest thing that came out of that film was… for me, people say, “Look at the way it made this company look at the way they do business.” For me, I think the greater thing that came out of that film was the way it affected people. I get stopped by individuals all the time and they talk about how it affected how they eat, how they exercise, how they sit down and had dinner as a family. A mom stopped me on the street and said, “I saw your film and now we eat dinner as a family every night.”

There’s a guy that stopped me in the airport last week and in Chicago who said, “I told myself that if I ever got to meet you in person, I would thank you. I want to show you something.” He reaches in his wallet and pulls out a picture of him 150 pounds heavier. He said, “That was me right when I saw your film. I lost 150 pounds since then.” There are all these things that affected people in a very personal way and it empowered them. This film empowered a lot of people to say, “I’m going to change. I’m going to do something better.” And that’s incredible.

ALI: Here’s a criticism you got for that documentary. They said the test subject that you used – yourself – and the means by which you used it – three big super-sized meals a day – is not indicative of the average American’s consumption. Thus, the results are either exaggerated or hyperbolic and that lays to waste any claim that this could be hazardous.

SPURLOCK: But there were plenty of doctors… I mean, Dr. Gangi, who was one of two of my gastroenterologists in the film, she went on to write a paper for the Journal of American Medicine. She’s seen people for years who had been coming in for long term liver damage that she thought was food related. So she basically says, when she sees this film, that here’s an example of what can happen to you over 5, 10, 15 years of eating a diet that’s filled with this. Maybe you don’t eat McDonald’s three times a day, but I know plenty of people who will have McDonald’s one day, fried chicken the next day, Pizza Hut the next day, and then Wendy’s the next day and they say, “Well, I only eat McDonald’s once a week.” But then they’re filling in the gaps with Applebee’s and TGI Fridays and all of the other things that we think are….
Voice in background: 30 Days. 30 Days, right? That was you that worked all month in McDonald’s. That’s you!

SPURLOCK: I did, yeah.

Voice in the background: Get the fuck outta here!

SPURLOCK: (Laughs)

ALI:  I’m gonna use that. Now I lost my train of thought.
Voice in the background: How was staying in prison for a month, honestly?

SPURLOCK: Not good, I don’t recommend it.

Voice in the background: Man, I’ve been there five times, and I still don’t seem to get it. Anyway, it’s amazing to meet you.

SPURLOCK: (Laughs) Nice to meet you. Thanks a lot.

ALI: He’s got a new movie out.

Voice in the background: What, “Stay Away from Burger King?”

ALI: Well there you go. Case in point. Speaking of masochism, let’s do a Freudian Spurlock-on-Spurlock analysis.

SPURLOCK: (Laughs)

ALI: In Super Size Me, you gained 25 pounds, destroyed your health. You also went to jail (in 30 Days) for 25 days. Anyone who’s gone to jail or knows anyone who has knows that it’s not a good place to go. For “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden,” your new movie, you travel to the most dangerous parts of the world. So what prompts this daredevil journalism.

SPURLOCK: For me, I think Super Size Me really pushed me on a path which led to 30 Days on [US television network] FX. This idea of being able to look at someone else’s life or go somewhere that most people would never get to go, experience things that most people would never get to experience, and kind of tell a story through that. What I’m going through, you’re going through, what I’m feeling, you’re feeling, what I learn, you learn. That excited me a lot.  It started with Super Size Me and then transcended to 30 Days in a much different way, and grew a lot.

What I get out of it, I find to be incredibly gratifying as a filmmaker and as a person, as a human being. Going into a situation and going into these environments makes me have a much better understanding of people who are there. To strip yourself from a lot of the things around you that make you comfortable is a really challenging thing that most of us don’t do or don’t get a chance to do.

ALI: A lot of people don’t know that you actually started off as a playwright and then turned into a documentary filmmaker. So were you officially starving to death on your typewriter?

SPURLOCK: No, I was starving to death years before that. I was working in the film industry too and was writing screenplays at the same time. Where it was the hardest was when I started a company called The Interactive Consortium, which we called The Con. With The Con, we ultimately made Super Size Me. There was a time before 9/11 where we were strapped for cash and I was using credit cards to pay my employees, pay the rent, and pay other credit cards. I got evicted from my apartment. I was sleeping in a hammock in my office. I still had an office, so I thought, “It’s not over yet!” I was going out with Alex at that time, so she loved me and supported me then so I was lucky. Right about that time was when MTV green-lit our show, “I Bet You Will,” and picked up the series. Ultimately it was the money we made from that show that paid for Super Size Me. You can’t predict how things are going to work out.

ALI: I have to ask this question, even though I know the answer. You’re this tall, blonde, blue-eye’d white dude. You say, “I’m going to go to a Muslim country and make a documentary called, “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?”

SPURLOCK: We were talking about that film [after] the first season of 30 Days. It had started to air when we started talking about what movie we were going to do next. We were already producing a film, “What Would Jesus Buy,” that I was producing out of my office in New York City. For me, I wanted to try to find something for my next movie that would deal with something that didn’t just affect Americans or that wasn’t just an American film, but dealt with all of us, that touched all of us in some way. So it was 2005. Bush had just been elected to a second term. Some new Osama tape came out and every TV station, every radio station was talking about it, saying, “Why haven’t we found this guy? Where is he? We want justice. Where in the world is Osama bin Laden.”

And I thought, “That’s a great question. I’d like to learn that too.” So that was the jumping off point. I’m going to go look for this guy. I’m going to find out why we haven’t found him and start to give the whole background into the government’s search for him. We raised a little bit of money to start pre-production. About two months into that process was when we found out that Alex was pregnant. There was a real “Oh, should we be doing this” moment. This isn’t a smart thing to do. This is a mistake.

She and I talked about it and the more we talked about it, the more she saw why I wanted to make the film and why it was important to me. So she agreed. She didn’t like it, she didn’t think it was the smartest thing to do, but she was incredibly supportive and is a saintly human being for putting up with me and encouraging me to do the things I want to do as a filmmaker.

That’s when the movie really shifted for me. It went from being “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden” and what kind of world creates Osama to what kind of world am I bringing a kid into. It took a turn. That became the driving force behind all the questions.

ALI: So about the blue-eyed, white guy chilling in the Middle East… there had to be fear….

SPURLOCK: Oh, of course. I went in with all my preconceived notions that there was going to be a lot of hostility, there was going to be a lot of resentment. And we did encounter some, everywhere we went. We did find people who didn’t like Americans, but the majority of people wanted to talk to us. The majority of people wanted to sit down and have a conversation and tell us how they felt.

The one thing that I did when making this film that my mother would be very proud of was that I actually listened. My mom always used to say, “You’ll be a better kid if you just listen.” So when people would be unhappy or upset, I let them talk and let them vent and then we could have a real conversation. We could really just talk about things. And you hear things that are disheartening as an American, how much people hate your country and what they think of you on the world stage. How they used to idolize your country and look up to it and now they don’t anymore. Like the guy in the film, he says, “we’ve grown to expect a lot more from the United States.” It’s tough to hear.

ALI: If you go there as a Muslim, you get treated like everyone else. But as an American, when I go back there, they hate you as an American.

SPURLOCK: So you get it from both sides? That sucks.

ALI: Yeah. A teacher of mine once made this point. He said the best teachers are 75% theatrical, 25% teaching. I noticed this in the movie, you use a lot of video games, a lot of computer graphics and cell animation. Is this the way to make your points more accessible to the mainstream?

SPURLOCK: Definitely. Absolutely. One of my beliefs as a filmmaker is that if you can make somebody laugh, you can make them listen. With laughter, you can get somebody’s guard down, you can open them up to listening to you. They don’t feel like they’re being preached to or talked down to. I think it helps, it makes really hard to understand information a little more accessible and palatable. And at the end of the day, it makes a movie a little more fun. It doesn’t feel so heavy handed.

ALI:  Wouldn’t some consider that condescending, this leaning towards infotainment?

SPURLOCK: Well, these are the same people who said we were making light of a serious issue, that you can’t make a joke about this. Lily Tomlin said something years ago, and I’m paraphrasing, that you have to find humor in everything, because by finding humor, you find humanity. And I think that’s what comes out of this at the end. There’s a tremendous amount of humanity in the film, and it’s obvious. It really does come from the people that you meet, the situations you’re in, and the humor that develops from it.

From me wearing traditional clothing in places where I am a big, tall white guy… the fixers told me, “No, you should wear traditional clothes. It’ll endear you to them. They’ll want to talk to you, they’ll embrace you.” And it’s true. Everywhere we went, the minute I showed up wearing shalwaar kameez or a thobe with a kafiyyeh, people would say, “Oh you look like a Saudi. Look at you!” All these little things really seem to matter.

ALI: How did you as one guy travel around the world and get access to, as you said, actual Muslim people. Whereas if CNN, Fox News, and multi-million dollar corporations for the past 6 years have not been able to give this very simple, but real, examination of the Muslim people?

SPURLOCK: For me, that was one of the big things. We talked to a lot of politicians and we talked to people you usually see in the media. And when you get back and you start putting this movie together, it really became obvious to me that the story was the people, the people that I don’t get to see on two-minute sound bites on the news. It painted a portrait of what life is like for a lot of these people around the world.

Even in places like Saudi Arabia, there were so many women that were open to talk to us.

ALI: Here’s a criticism you’re going to get. This is typical, progressive, knee-jerk, anti-American propaganda, spawned by Hollywood and Spurlock.

SPURLOCK: For me, I don’t think it’s typical at all. You’d be hard pressed to find my opinion in this movie. What you hear is a lot of other people’s opinions and their outlooks. One of the things I’d like people to really take away at the end of the movie is… how does it affect them? How does it affect you? What do you believe? I don’t tell you what to think. I tell you how things personally affect me, but I’m not telling you what to think. We went into this with the best of intentions and I think those intensions play out over the course of the movie.

ALI: On Rotten Tomatoes, some of the critics are saying, “You know what, nothing’s resolved in this movie. He doesn’t provide answers. He doesn’t tell us anything that we already don’t know. And he didn’t find Osama.” Well intentioned, but nothing revelatory.

SPURLOCK: And if you haven’t heard, fast food is bad for you as well. Super Size Me at the time got a lot of the same criticism. But at the same time, Super Size Me reached an audience that didn’t consume news everyday and didn’t know everything that was happening all over the world. I think we’ve unplugged and become very apathetic to a lot of things that are happening. There’s so much going on and we’re sort of disconnected. Even for the people who are already media savvy, who read the New York Times everyday, there’s still something new in here. There’s a great chance for this to sort of bridge a gap.

I spoke to a woman who went to a screening and took her 14 year old son to the movie. And she is a media hound – reads everything, knows everything, watches the news. Her son plays in a rock band with his friends, plays video games everyday, has no clue what’s going on. Afterwards she said, “I want to thank you because I had the first political discussion about what’s happening in the world with my son after seeing your movie.” That’s a fantastic thing to hear.

ALI: I see that the movie is mainstream entertainment that actually shows Muslims as human beings, not caricatures. And it seemed that the Muslim enemies weren’t devils, didn’t have horns on their heads. They were very opinionated – most of them I didn’t agree with, some of them I did. It seems that the title should be, “Who Cares Where’s Osama.” Am I right?

SPURLOCK: I think that’s what starts to come out toward the end of the movie.
ALI: Why do you think most of the Muslims you interviewed throughout the world just don’t care whether he lives or dies? This could be a heavy discussion in the sense that they say, “Even if he dies, it doesn’t change anything” and “Who cares where he is? It doesn’t matter. That’s not the problem.” And then here we have the video of certain people saying, “Osama, Osama, Zawahiri, Zawahiri,” etc. So what’s the disconnect? Why this feeling?
SPURLOCK: There’s a great line from the guy in the Palestinian Territories who says, “We all hate Osama bin Laden because he gives a bad name to Islam.” One of the things that I think hasn’t happened is that you haven’t heard from this silent majority. And it is the majority of people that we spoke to over the course of this film. They don’t agree with Osama and hate his guts. They think he does not represent their religion. They believe he misinterpreted it and taken it to a level that none of them think should be happening.

The question is why don’t we hear from them more? Why don’t we see them more? Even in the media, there’s this hard line of news that “if it bleeds, it leads.” If somebody is saying, “We’re all the same. I’m just like you,” that’s nice and all, but that doesn’t sell papers.

ALI: The movie focuses, like you said, more on the human side instead of the political…

SPURLOCK: There’s a lot of political discussions. For me, the best moments are ones when people open up their homes to me. We were shooting during Ramadan, and I was fasting to build a bridge…

ALI: How was that like?

SPURLOCK: I didn’t make it.

ALI: It’s the water right?

SPURLOCK: That’s the worst part. Here we are, in the middle of the desert shooting in 100 degrees and you can’t drink all day. It’s rough. I made it about 3 weeks. I did alright. I owed 8 days.

ALI: That’s still impressive though. The movie has its politics. There’s this one scene where you as a filmmaker come out with a political side. You show an amusing animation of the Shah of Iran, Saddam was in there, Pinochet, and you have Uncle Sam. For those of us who know American history, we know what this is about. But how many Americans do you think know about this part of our foreign policy history and do you think, when you do it through animation, will it educate them, push them off, all of the above…

SPURLOCK: Probably all of the above. I think there will be a lot of people who see it who have no idea of the depth of that. I think a lot of us just don’t know. When you show the animation, a lot of people will see it and will be upset (at the content) and others will upset with me that it’s even in there. But just to have a talking head discuss this – it’s very dry, it’s very boring. When you see the Statue of Liberty shaking her groove thing for President Mubarak, it’s a little more amusing.

ALI: So why do Muslims hate America?

SPURLOCK: I don’t think Muslims do hate America. I think that’s what we hear and that’s what we believe. I don’t think that’s true. I think most Muslims are incredibly upset with the state of our foreign policy today and the state of the world. Even pre-9/11 to where we are now, post-9/11, I don’t think its just happened in the last seven years, although what has happened hasn’t helped. But there’s a variety of things that upsets people and when you see the clips in the film, you see what people are angry about.

We did a great interview with Mike Scheurer, who’s the former head of the Bin Laden unit at the CIA , and one of the things that he said that happened is that people realize in the Middle East, rather than attack their own countries, they should attack the protectors of these countries – which is the United States. So that’s when a lot of hatred really began to develop towards the US in the places where we go to – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, you name it. And people look at the regimes that are in power there as being puppet governments that are being supported and backed by the United States. And they look at it as being unfair.

ALI: Let’s say Muslims in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or in these countries with puppet governments. What do they want? What do Muslims want? From life, from the world…

SPURLOCK: I think the one thing we talk about in the film is thatpeople want things to be fair. They want things that we all want. They want to be able to get jobs, they want to be able to provide for their families.

They want to be able to have free speech and say what they want and know they’re not going to end up in jail, like a guy that we interviewed in Egypt named Saad Ibrahim – he’s going to be on the DVD, but he’s not in the film – he was in jail for years for speaking out about Mubarak and the election process and he was tortured and jailed. So, these people, they want fairness. That’s it.

They also realize… they’re not blind to the idea that there are still people out there who will act out in a certain way that will potentially damage their own views, which is what has happened.

ALI: I don’t know if you’re aware of this – there’s this Gallup poll that was released about a month ago, the world’s largest poll on Muslims. And what they realized was when they interviewed Americans, 57% of them, when asked the question, “Do you have anything good to say about Muslims or Islam?” they said either “No” or “I don’t know.” As compared to Muslims who, when asked the converse question overwhelmingly cited the idea of democracy, free speech, the economy.

So why do you think, being an American and travelling to the Muslim world, there’s this huge disconnect as an American when it comes to this view of the world?

SPURLOCK: Well there’s also an interesting thing that happens over the course of the travels when we’re talking to people and they would say, “Look, we don’t hate Americans, but we hate your American government. We hate the American foreign policy.” They make a disconnect between the people and the government. I would explain to them that the people elected the government, they’re people we voted for. And they say, “Yes, but once people get in power, it’s corrupt and we know how government is.” They all know about corruption.

And we only see one side of Muslims and Islam and the majority of what we do get to see is the guy who’s screaming and yelling “Death to America” and burning flags and George Bush in effigy. That’s the lead story. So what’s in the newspaper? Who’s on the front cover? “Muslims caught at this airport, want to kill somebody.”  You don’t hear “Muslim saves little girl from burning building.”

ALI: Muslim bakes cookie.

SPURLOCK: Muslim bakes giant cookie, wins contest. Muslim boy scout helps old lady cross the street. The good news vanishes because of the small minority that makes the most noise.

ALI: You and a few other movies, like the Jimmy Carter movie for example, Man from Plains, you show us what life is like in the Occupied Territories, in the West Bank and Gaza in actual footage. Which is rare. Carter said that he thinks that if universities in America sent select students for three days to Palestine, and they come back and write a report and disseminate it, our entire perception of the area would change.

As a person who actually went there – and it’s shown in the movie – what do you think? Do you think Americans just need to know what’s happening there?

SPURLOCK: Well, I think people need to see on both sides. Seeing how the people in the Palestinian Territories can’t move around – it’s a maze now, with the wall, the road blocks and everything else. It takes you hours to get from one person’s house to your job or to a friend or even to the hospital if someone’s hurt. Then you go into Israel and see in Tel Aviv, where they have 12-18 bomb threats a day, which are real. It completely disrupts their life. Or Sderot where bombs are falling daily from the sky fired by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. You’re there and it’s difficult to see and it’s hard to imagine. I think the more people that go there and see this – and go to both sides – it can only help. I don’t think we’ve had the opportunity to do that.

ALI: In the movie, you show both sides. It seems the majority of individuals understand that the situation is unsustainable for the future. Is that what you got out of…

SPURLOCK: …nearly everyone we spoke to. The question is then, well why can’t it change? We did a great interview in the movie with a journalist in Israel, and he says, “All you need is one thing.” As many people could want peace as you could possibly imagine, and all you need is one guy to blow up a bomb in Tel Aviv or one settler to hurt a Palestinian in the territories. And all the work you’ve done towards peace will be over.

ALI: This is a really interesting moment in the movie, and everyone in the audience was taken aback by it, when you went with good intentions to a really religious sector of Israel. Why did they behave the way they did?

SPURLOCK: A couple of things about that scene that I liked. One is that it’s a very small amount of people, about 5 or 6 that got very loud and confrontational with us, and we were completely taken aback by it. Apart from being a closed group, you know there were Orthodox Jewish group and they are very protective of who they are and they have a strong dislike of the media. But, when you’re there with giant camera I’m sure that doesn’t help them like you.  What I love about that scene is that guy who makes it a point to come up to me and say that “Listen what you see here, the majority of us don’t think like this minority, these few that are being confrontational with you” and you see this in the film. And he was concerned about the perception. And for me there is this fantastic parallel of perception that comes through, and we see it weave through. We see other people in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan and these people who are fighting against this perception.

ALI: One of the most interesting and surreal parts of the movie was this interview with these two children who look so terrified that they can’t even answer a question without getting approval from the principal. Saudi Arabia is such a schizophrenic society…

SPURLOCK: It’s almost like there’s two societies, there’s this incredibly conservative front. But behind the front, there’s complete Westernization. There’s malls everywhere and people love music, movies. I met guys there who’ve seen Super Size Me and they’ve seen the Muslim episode of 30 Days. You can do pretty much anything you want behind closed doors.

ALI: When you walked around, did you notice externally there was a more rigid aspect of austere piety?

SPURLOCK: In Riyadh especially, you see the mutawwa openly telling women to cover their faces, or telling boys to not be around the mall. In Jeddah, it’s completely different, you see some of the women in the grocery store there and they aren’t wearing hijab, and some of them are completely covered. Just between those two cities, it’s very different.

ALI: Were you able to ask anyone in Saudi Arabia, very repressive in its policies towards its citizens, yet one of the biggest allies of the United States… are the Muslims and Arabs that you talked to aware of this hypocritical and fascinating relationship?

SPURLOCK: Oh, yeah. A lot of people that we spoke to said it’s a complete contradiction. They said, “Listen, we want things to change, but we can’t change it overnight.” But how long does it take is the question. They don’t know.

ALI: One of my favorite quotes from the movie, because it’s such an ethnic uncle quote, is when you ask an Afghan guy, “What do you think of Bush?” and he goes, “Fuck him…”

SPURLOCK: And we say, “We’re looking for Osama bin Laden.” And he says, “Who is that?” “That’s the guy who blew up the buildings in America.” And then he goes, “Fuck him and fuck America.”

ALI: That is a microcosm, it seems, of the overwhelming sense of dislike or apathy for both.

SPURLOCK: Especially in Afghanistan where you have a country filled with so many people who had so much hope in 2001 when the United States came there, who were incredibly oppressed by the Taliban. Here came these liberators who came into the country, took Kabul very fast, got rid of the Taliban immediately, and suddenly these people had their lives back. Girls could go to school again. It changed the face of that society. They were like, “We’re going to have electricity and roads and schools.” And now here we are, six or seven years later, and people are like, “We still don’t have those things. Why can’t things work quicker?” And it’s tough to hear that.

We did a great interview with a guy who works in one of the guest lodges there who says so little of the aid money hits the ground here. Who knows what happens to it? Nobody knows.

ALI: Was it devastating to observe these men and women mired in poverty?

SPURLOCK: It’s like a third world country. We were driving along the road to Tora Bora, and there was this little field where there was a group of kids with their teacher, and he was holding a chunk of rock which was their chalkboard and that was their school! It’s hard to see.

ALI: Talk to me about security. How secure are the armed forces in that country?

SPURLOCK: Those guys are targets everyday. On this trip, where I felt the most exposed was when you were embedded with the troops. And those guys went out of their way to protect us and they’re heroes for what they do: they put their lives on the line for us every day, to help us.  One day you’re driving along with them on a convoy and they find an IED, so they divert our convoy back to the base, while explosive guys go detonate the IED. It’s frightening. Any day something terrible could happen.

ALI: In the Middle East and third world countries, they say 9/11 was a tragedy, but that tragedy happens on a daily basis for us – Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan. They say, “Why are you so bent out of shape when you have one terrorist act when we have so many?” Did 9/11 endear the world community toward us or did they feel we deserved it?

SPURLOCK: There was a great interview we did – there were so many, we had 900 hours of footage for an hour and a half movie that we cut down– in Saudi Arabia, I met a guy at a gas station. He says, “Come back to my farm.” We sat on the back of his truck and talked in the middle of the desert. He said, “When 9/11 happened, all of the world, our eyes filled up with tears, we wept for America. What has happened to the world since 9-11, now we weep for America for different reasons.” It’s tough, you know, post 9-11 countless people we spoke to said we squandered our goodwill.  People say, “You took down Sadaam Hussein. So, why don’t you leave?” And that’s hard to hear. They say what’s happening now is only making things worse. Countless people say the greatest recruiting tool for Al Qaeda is everything that is still happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s hard to hear that your good intentions are making things worse and tragic.

ALI: I don’t know if you did this deliberately, but I think you did. You have these Muslims in the Middle East talking against US foreign policy and US exploitation sitting in Starbucks.

SPURLOCK: Isn’t that great? But in the Occupied Territories it was “Stars and Bucks.” It speaks to this Western influence that has gone everywhere. Apparently around the world that’s where people meet. There’s a street where the kids cruise up and down in Riyadh. At one end where they turn around, there’s a Chilli’s and at the other end, it’s a McDonalds.  And they’re listening to hip hop. It’s amazing. There’s an underground culture in Saudi Arabia of music, parties, and premarital sex… everything.

ALI: If Americans knew most of this world digs our culture, our music, our celebrities, that they speak English, would it make a difference?

SPURLOCK: It’s a step. It would help. Who knew the common denominator to bringing peace to the world would be professional wrestling? It’s amazing. It’s what we all love about wrestling: it’s good versus evil, it’s us versus them. In all these countries – Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco – it’s incredible, everybody watches.

ALI: The Economist called Pakistan the most dangerous place on earth. What were your experiences?

SPURLOCK:  Pakistan is beautiful by the way. But places like Peshawar, people are watching you, and asking, “Who is this guy?” At one point, we were being followed by this big, unmarked car, which I’m guessing it had to have been the ISI. We had to actually bribe our way to the country; we got our visas in Kabul and had to bribe the embassy guys to get us in Pakistan.

ALI: The movie ends with a burst, in a sense. After all this devastation, it seems, it ends on a hopeful, optimistic note. And you come back, making it back in time for the birth of your son. Is it going to get worse before it gets better? This world you’re bringing your kid in?

SPURLOCK: I’m optimistic. I’m hopeful. I think what you see in the movie is that there is a vast, silent majority you don’t get to hear from. The more we hear from those people, the more what is happening can happen the other way, where a small amount of people can make so much noise that it silences them. If you turn the tables, you can start to keep those people in check.

ALI: What’s up next?

SPURLOCK: I got approached to be one of the directors for Freakanomics, an adaptation of that with five or six directors. It’s a chance to work with some amazing people. A lot of great filmmakers. I just got approached, so we’re trying to see how it’s going to work out.

ALI: Ok, anything I miss?

SPURLOCK: I think we hit it all. 

Wajahat Ali is Pakistani Muslim American who is neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, "The Domestic Crusaders," (www.domesticcrusaders.com) is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America. His blog is at http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/. He can be reached at wajahatmali@gmail.com