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Today's Stories June 20, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel Engineers Another Cover-Up June 19, 2006 Bill Quigley HUD's Bulldozers and the Poor of New Orleans John Walsh Tears of a Clown: Al Franken's War Mike Whitney The Zoom Lens War: Bush's Baghdad Photo Op Alexander Cockburn The Left and the Blathersphere June 16 / 18, 2006 Weekend Edition Kathy / Bill Christision The Power of the Israel Lobby Joseph Nevins On the Migrant Trail: No More Walls, No More Deaths Farrah Hassen An Interview with Syria's Ambassador to the US, Dr. Imad Moustapha Greg Moses The Real Mission of the Uniformed Ghost at the Border Nicole Colson "There's No Hope at Gitmo" John Scagliotti How MoveOn Wastes Its Donors' Money Mokhiber / Weissmann Corporate Democrats   June 15, 2006 Kathy Kelly Look Them in the Eye: Honest Abe and the Residents of Ramadi Norman Solomon Premature Triangulation: Hillary's Big Problem Ron Jacobs Publicity Stunts as Public Policy Sam Bahour Cover Up on Gaza Beach Ramzy Baroud Palestine on the Brink CounterPunch Wire Death Squads at Colombia's Universities Gabriel Kolko Why a Global Economic Deluge Looms Website of the Day Antje Duvekot: Music You've Been Waiting Years to Hear   June 14, 2006 Nicole Colson "They Want the Fear Level at a High Pitch": An Interview with Lawyer Lynne Stewart Jonathan Cook Israeli Law and Order Joseph Schechla Bulldozing Palestine: an Open Letter to Caterpillar, Inc. Michael Carmichael Bolton at Oxford: Jeered and Taunted Evelyn Pringle Karl and George, the Teflon Partnership Ward Churchill My Trial By Media: Turning Quibbles Over Footnotes into Felonies Rev. William E. Alberts Decoding the Coders of Christ: Jesus the Political Insurgent? Website of the Day Marines Iraq Snuff Film   June 13, 2006 Medea Benjamin Take Back America Suppresses Anti-War Dissenters at HRC Speech Anthony Alessandrini The Evil of Banality: the General, the New York Times and the Gitmo Suicides Paul D'Amato The Meaning of Haditha Dave Lindorff The Strange Death of Zarqawi: Was He Killed So He Wouldn't Talk? John Ross Elections and the World Cup: If Team Mexico Advances, Will Anyone Show Up to Vote for Lopez Obrador? Gabriel Garcia Venezuela and Drug Trafficking: Bush Bashes Chavez Despite Positive Results Hilton Obenzinger DIvestment is a Stand for Equality in Israel Yitzhak Laor The Secret of Authority Juan Antonio Ocasio Rivera Puerto Rico at the UN Jennifer Van Bergen The Story Behind Zarqawi's Death: What's the Legality of the Assassination? Website of the Day Paul Wright: a Real American Freedom Fighter   June 12, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Armageddon Wish: a Final End to History? Patrick Cockburn The US Already Misses Zarqawi Mike Marqusee Rebranding a Team: English Nationalism and the World Cup Lee Sustar "I Never Had the American Dream:" Left with No Future by GM and Delphi Robert Fisk Has Racism Invaded Canada? Michael J. Smith Enter Sandman; Exit Kosland Felice Pace NPR's Warped Covereage of the MIddle East Jennifer Loewenstein Setting the Record Straight on Hamas Website of the Day Our Way Home   June 10 / 11, 2006 Weekend Edition Robert Fisk Zarqawi's End is not a Famous Victory Diane Christian Zarqawi's Face Joe Allen The American Way of Atrocities: Marine Corps' Killer Virtues Ralph Nader Let Us All Praise the Dixie Chicks Fred Gardner Tylenol Toxicity Terror Dave Lindorff Nothing New About Haditha Dave Zirin / John Cox Will Racism Spoil the World Cup? Dennis Perrin Death is Patriotic: Necro-Porn, Live on CNN Greg Moses Militarizing the Border: Why Operation Jump Start Worries Me John Chuckman Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot? Michael J. Smith Babes in Kosland: Dem Blogfest, Day Two Roger Burbach Bachelet in DC: Chilean President Refuses to Back Down to Bush Ira Moskowitz Israeli Court Finds Mad-Dog US Prof Libeled CounterPuncher Neve Gordon Sam Bahour The Gaza Air Strikes: Begging for a Response Seth Sandronsky Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society: Profits Fall, Stores Close Michael Berg A Father's Day Message: Both Parties Have Betrayed America Kirsten Roberts Desmond Dekker and the Music of the Shantytowns Ron Jacobs Who's Fooling Who? Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Jones, Davies, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Miles and Trane, So What?

June 20, 2006 Ode to Joy Watching Blair Sink By OMAR WARAICH London. Survey the newsstands here each morning, absorb hours of television and radio news, solicit the opinions of those fine "passers-by", and one can easily be transported to the conclusion that there is no joy to be derived under the shadow of Tony Blair. His critics, a vast multitude , are not entirely wrong about the prime minister. After all, it's plain from just glancing at the guy that he now embodies the ruin that he has supervised. Cracks have formed on his skin. That seraphic smile no longer cleaves his face. His hair has diminished in direct proportion to his popularity; what remains has grizzled. But there is much to be appreciated, too. Consider the alternative. Under chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown -- the patient successor to be -- it is unlikely that policies will alter course. Brown, we are assured, "will be absolutely New Labour to his fingertips and also, incidentally, a very strong supporter of the transatlantic relationship." As one MP has described the syzygy, "Blair and Brown are two cheeks of the same arse." There is, however, one principal difference: Brown has all the passion and affect of an ashtray. With Blair, you are at least guaranteed the odd moment of mirth. Seldom does a month slip by without Mr. Blair being responsible for some bizarre personal revelation ---- certain to excite hoots of derision. In February 2003, Blair appeared before a BBC Newsnight audience for what was touted as a dressing down ahead of the impending war. After abiding some truth-starved answers on sanctions, weapons inspectors, and American intelligence, Jeremy Paxman, the BBC's truculent inquisitor-in-chief, turned to the question of TB's muscular faith. Did his and George Bush's Christianity help the pair discern "good" and "evil"? Blair denied that it did, readily enough. He was less comfortable with the next question. "You don't," Paxman pressed, "pray together for example?" A moment of silence ensued; Blair blushed. "No we don't pray together Jeremy, no," the pious premier insisted in reply, wearing his embarrassment with a smirk. Jeremy Paxman: Why do you smile? Tony Blair: Because - why do you ask me the question? Jeremy Paxman: Because I'm trying to find out how you feel about it. Tony Blair: Possibly. Religion menaced Blair on subsequent occasions. Vanity Fair's David Margolick popped the question to him aboard the plane that, in tribute to Blair's strident Atlanticism, has come to be known as Blair Force One. Alistair Campbell ---- Blair's thuggish press supremo, and once right hand man for the thieving press baron, Robert Maxwell ---- leapt to intervene. "Is he on God?" Campbell demanded. "We don't do God. I'm sorry, we don't do God." Press aides also effaced the words "God bless you" from the final line of a scripted address to the country on the eve of war. Alistair Campbell resigned in late 2003. With the restraints off, Blair resumed his public effusions of the topic of the Almighty. Recently, in March 2006, he told Michael Parkinson that he had prayed to God while girding for war on Iraq. And then, echoing Tupac Shakur, he declared that judgment on his person had been assigned to God. In the course of the same Parkinson interview, Blair was asked to submit his most embarrassing moment. This could have proven a struggle. Politicians like him rarely ever summon the humility to register embarrassment. But, in the event, he did manage to reach for something. Once at a press conference in Paris, a journalist asked if there were any French policies he would like to pursue. Ever the charmer, Blair rendered his response in French ---- or tried to. What he ended up saying was: "I desire your prime minister in many different positions." On the occasion of World Book Day, Blair was invited to a launch where he expatiated on the pleasures of reading. "I might as well make a confession now," said Blair. "There were people who got me very involved in politics. But then there was also a book. It was a trilogy, a biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher which made a very deep impression on me …" A very deep impression, was it? Given that Blair devoted more of his time at university to failing as a rock star than expressing anything that may be likened to political conviction, the claim seems dubious. But if it is true that TB -- like many of his fellow champions of the Iraq war -- admired the resolve of the Petrograd Soviet in his formative youth, it marks an interesting point of embarkation for his political trajectory. For last week we were delivered fresh reports of Blair's radical socialist past. Writing in the New Statesman, political historian Robert Taylor detailed the contents of a remarkable 22-page hand-written letter that Blair dispatched in 1982. It was a difficult time for Blair. He had just been defeated in his first attempt at the polls, coming third in the Beaconsfield by-election. Prompted by this humiliation, the young barrister set down several thousand words of ingratiating prose to Michael Foot, the then left-wing leader of the Labour Party. According to the letter, Blair had just finished turning the pages of Michael Foot's collection of biographical essays, Debts of Honour. The letter heaps praise on Hazlitt, Paine, Brailsford, Swift -- and even Marx. According to the letter, Blair "came to Socialism through Marxism". Having taken the trouble to read "Marx first hand," he found it "illuminating in so many ways; in particular, my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered." But in the end, Blair ruefully concedes, Marxism was "stifling" because "it sought to embrace in its philosophy every facet of existence." The best bit, however, came later: "The job of reconstruction, particularly against a background that includes new technology and a USA in the grip of the same economic madness Mrs Thatcher visits upon us, is mammoth. Profound problems require profound remedies." This is strong stuff coming from the man who can only bring himself now to speak of Thatcher and the most right-wing American government in recent times with barely restrained warmth. According to the Guardian, New Labor now trails the Conservatives by a clean margin of five points. It is beyond doubt that Blair's days have neared their terminus. Never one to unclench, whatever the circumstances, he'll paddle ferociously for his political life. He'll strain every sinew in a vain effort to burnish his legacy, and continue issuing those bizarre outbursts as he drowns. But, despite his best efforts, when his political obituary comes to be written, this tragicomic figure will largely be remembered for one thing: Iraq. And the obit writers could cull the words straight from Kipling: " And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased / And the epitaph drear: 'A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.'" Omar Waraich lives in London. He can be reached at omar.waraich@gmail.com

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