Today's Stories

March 3, 2009

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 3, 2009

Cry of the Beloved Country

The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

By FAWZI AFZAL-KHAN

Written on the eve of Women's History Month.

"I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid of going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.

Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taleban's edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict.

On my way from school to home I heard a man saying 'I will kill you'. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone."

These are the words expressing the thoughts going through the mind of a 7th grade schoolgirl in Swat, as reported by the BBC online news on January 3rd, 2009.

Bill Roggio, reporting in The Long War Journal on February 18, 2009, tell us that since winning the election last spring, the Zardari-Gilani government has entered a series of peace agreements with the Taliban throughout the tribal areas and the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province, which includes Swat. “Between March and July of 2008, the government negotiated seven agreements with the Taliban in North Waziristan, Swat, Dir, Bajaur, Malakand, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, and Hangu. Negotiations were also underway in South Waziristan, Kohat, and Mardan before fighting in Swat and Bajaur broke out, effectively ending the talks.” Thus, this latest round, which cedes control of Swat, a part of Pakistan proper (NOT the remoter badlands of the Tribal Frontier) is not without precedent. Except, that it bodes far worse than previous “agreements”—because Swat was never a tribal hinterland, it was quite well-developed, a tourist haven, with schools for girls and over 3,500 women teachers employed to teach them—all now without jobs, as the girls are without schools—a projected 110,000 girls will in the coming years be deprived of a basic education. Indeed, as Roggio goes on to describe:

The current Malakand Accord has granted the Taliban control over a region that encompasses more than 1/3 of the Northwest Front Province, effectively cementing the Taliban's control over most of the province and the tribal areas.

This means that

The Taliban's recruiting base has almost doubled, as has its taxation base. The Malakand Division, which is made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral, has a population of more that 4.3 million, according to the 1998 census. The Taliban effectively control the tribal areas (population estimated at 6.5 million in 1998) and many of the bordering districts with millions more. The Taliban also have a strong presence or influence in nearly all of the other districts in the province.

The day I saw the NYT front page picture of the Malakand Accord being agreed to I cried. Senior cabinet members of the Pakistan government—all men—were seated side by side with bearded mullahs wearing the ubiquitous turbans-signifiers of extremists who burn girls schools, behead their opponents, and leave mutilated bodies of women they consider “un-Islamic” lying in town squares—like that of Shabana, a traditional dancing girl,  reported killed on 12th January 2009, after defying the Taliban’s ban on dancing. Shabana’s bullet-ridden body was found slumped on the ground in the centre of Mingora’s Green Square, strewn with money, CD recordings of her performances and photographs from her albums, and local Taliban claimed responsibility stating over their illegal radio station (which broadcasts Maulana Fazlullah’s, the ruling cleric’s edicts regularly) that the same or worse fate would befall any other such woman daring to perform “un-Islamic” activities.

How, I asked myself, could the government of Pakistan, cede control of Pakistan’s “Switzerland”—that peaceful valley of fruit orchards and beautiful streams and lakes surrounded by majestic mountains, a favorite spot for local and western tourists alike—to men bent on turning heaven on earth into living hell? If these Pakistani Taliban—here led by the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, Sufi Mohammad, responsible for proudly leading hundreds of young men to their deaths in adjoining Afghanistan on jehadi missions–could claim a swath of territory as large as Delaware and as near to Islamabad as a mere 100 miles—what did that mean for the rest of Pakistan’s future? What especially would it mean for Pakistani women---most of whom—like women anywhere else in the world-- like to dance, sing, talk, work in offices, in the fields, wear colorful clothes, smile, laugh, show off dozens of colorful glass bangles on their slender arms, nose-rings on their wheat-complexioned faces, sometimes hide behind the burqa, at others flaunt their beauty in public places or private, study, go to school, to college if they are lucky, have dreams of becoming somebody the world can respect, help deliver babies, tend to the sick and dying, fly in the sky, no shame for the sun.....become lovers, wives, mothers, teachers, artists, doctors, lawyers, activists, performers, politicians...the list goes on. What will become of them if....I shudder. The thought is too terrible to name.

But my reaction is perhaps precisely the ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-sand mentality that has gotten Pakistan and Pakistanis into the ditch they’re in now, without much hope of being able to clamber out of it...indeed, if Swat is any indication, the ditch is about to get bigger. Instead of facing the Taliban threat head-on, acknowledging it for what it is, too many of my Pakistani brethren, of the secular, progressive, liberal middle-class intelligentsia kind—have ducked the Talibanization of Pakistan question for decades. Theirs—and especially the even more-westernized upper classes’ response—has been that of the proverbial blind man: see no evil. “Pakistan is a moderate country, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are foreign imports---they command no base of real support amongst our sensible citizens. You, dear Fawzia, are a victim of American propaganda---what is this Taliban-are-coming-scare you keep ranting about?” Then, changing tracks, the same group of self-appointed intellectuals would proclaim: “If there is any problem here, its because of the d-d Americans—their drone bombs and their continuous interference in the affairs of our country is what has led to this situation...people are angry at them, that is why they—some of them—are turning to the Taliban. If the Americans would stop escalating their war in neighboring Afghanistan and dropping bombs on our people in the Northern areas—well, this craziness would stop.”

My friends on the left here in the US paradoxically enough, spout the same rhetoric as these bourgeois Black-label drinking liberals of Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. Everything is America’s fault. I myself seem to shuttle between views...at times extraordinarily angry at US interference and its continuing Imperialist Great Game for oil, gas and access to the Arabian Sea in that region, and at others, enraged and horrified and immensely sad all at once at the blindness, the folly, the refusal to think straight and clear and take responsibility for one’s own shortcomings and growing intolerance coupled with complete bankruptcy of any morals or principles worth fighting for within the Pakistani polity. What to do? Keep raising my voice with other peace activists here to Stop All Wars, Stop Troop Escalations, Stop Drone Bombings---or urge for more weapons to be provided to Pakistani troops and to Pakistani citizens to fight against what is inevitably coming if the Pakistani government keeps capitulating---a confrontation with the local Taliban? Does anyone seriously think dialogue and reconciliation talks with these diehard fundos is going to help restore peace and equilibrium to such a severely damaged, unequal society as Pakistan’s?

Shuja Nawaz , in a report written for the CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC) in  January 2009, stipulates
Although the major responsibility for action rests with Pakistan, it is imperative that the new US administration understands the gravity of the situation and the importance of helping Pakistan and Afghanistan to win back and empower the people of FATA and the bordering Afghan provinces. This can be possible only with a concerted and concentrated effort to improve their lives and help them resist successfully the inroads of militancy, religious extremism and global terrorism that have made a home in that area and are spreading into the settled areas of the North\West Frontier Provinces.

How does one set about “improve[ing] the lives” of these people so they don’t fall into Taliban hands? While Shuja Nawaz definitely claims the importance of a political solution—one rooted in creating a better educational infrastructure, a better and more responsive judicial system, and above all, employment opportunities for disenfranchised youth both within FATA and in NWFP and adjoining areas—he does not rule out the need for continuing military action against the extremists.

This is where the rub is—for me, as well as many like me who do not see military solutions as solutions at all. And yet—if secular-minded people do not fight against those who have arms and show no compunction in using them to challenge the writ of the law and state, and to enforce Shariah law over all of Pakistan—and beyond—as Sufi Mohammad, the Swati leader of the Tehrik-i-Nafiz-i-Shariateh-Mohammedi (TNSM) has stated in countless interviews---then what other short-term alternative is there to the Taliban challenge? How else, except through an armed counter-counter-insurgency can one support the majority of the citizens of NWFP who voted overwhelmingly in the 2008 elections for the secular ANP and PPP parties against the Islamist MMA? In other words—if the insurgents are the Taliban and al Qaeda in these northern regions of Pakistan, and the counter-insurgents are the inept Pakistani army troops (helped along by US commandos and drone strikes)—then the counter-counter-insurgents are the real people, the local residents of these areas, the majority of whom want what we all want—a life of peace and a modicum of prosperity for themselves and their progeny.

It is to these poor people that our help and our solutions should be directed, to help us win a battle of minds, not mines. Many of them, disheartened by the lawlessness and poverty of their daily lives, are turning in desperation and often in fear to the Taliban militia who both threaten them and also provide them with food and social services and some form of rough and ready justice. It seems more and more impossible to envision getting to a place of peace and justice for all, without a fight to the bitter end. I can see the heads rolling in my nightmares, in the beloved country of my youth, so far away....and yet, so near.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a Professor in the Department of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She can be reached at: khanf@mail.montclair.edu

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