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Today's Stories

January 11, 2006

Kathleen and Bill Christison
"Eating Palestine for Breakfast": the Real Sharon

January 10, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Post-Sharon Landscape: Three Fingers, No Fist

Saul Landau
Different Americas

Noam Chomsky
Beyond the Ballot: Iraq, Iran and China

Brian J. Foley
Playing with Fire: Congress and Executive Power

Lenni Brenner
The War Within the Antiwar Movement

Ronan Sheehan
Sheehan to Sheehan: Cindy Sheehan's Irish Interview

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Con Jobs

 

January 9, 2006

Behzad Yaghmaian
Who is to Blame for the Deaths of the Sudanese Refugees?

George Bisharat
US Aid to Israel is Out of Hand

Dave Lindorff
How the US Press Squelches Bush Impeachment Drive

Norman Solomon
Smoke a Marlboro, Then an Iraqi: How Media War Images Distort Not Inform

Christopher Brauchli
The Generosity of Credit Card Companies

Aharon Shabtai
A Poet's Letter on the Occupation

Andrew Cockburn
How Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003?

 

January 7 / 8, 2006

Lawrence Velvel
The NYT's Unconscionable Decision to Sit on the NSA Story for a Year

James Petras
AIPAC on Trial: Them or US

J.L. Chestnut
Racism and Injustice in Alabama's Courts

Mike Ely
The Dead Miners in Sago

Andrew Wilson
The Dying of Ariel Sharon

Lila Rajiva
Two Moms Go to Capitol Hill

William Cook
The Rape of Palestine

Ramor Ryan
The Sub Motorcycle Diaries: On the Road with the Zapatistas

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff
An Interview with Michael Scheuer on the CIA's Rendition Program

Peter Montague
Inherit the Wind: the Global Spread of GMO Crops

Ron Jacobs
Would Ethan Allen Pay to Protest?

Neve Gordon
Images of Real Eco-Terrorism in Twaneh

Fred Gardner
Business as Usual in San Diego

Josh Mahon
Idaho Timber Industry Leader Advocates Violence Against Green's Mom

Dr. Susan Block
Abramoff Family Values: the Lobbyist Who Screwed Us All

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Bush Crimes Commission

 

January 6, 2006

José Pertierra
Posada Carriles May Soon Hit the Streets

Joe Allen
Gary Freeman's Struggle: a Black Radical from the 1960s Fights Extradition to the US

Winslow T. Wheeler
Huge Defense Budget, Lousy Equipment

John Bomar
A Former NSA Officer on Snoopgate: the Squawkers Should be Congratulated

Jason Leopold
Snoop and Shred

Norman Solomon
Axis of Fanatics: Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad

Robert Pollin
Remembering Harry Magdoff: the Man Who Explained the Empire

 

January 5, 2006

Scott Boehm
Big Profits, Buried Lives: Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans

Zoltan Grossman
New Challenges for the Antiwar Movement

Heather Gray
Whistling Dixie Yet Again

Haninah Levine
Simple is Dangerous: the Pentagon's Plan for a Manhattan Project on IEDs

Pierre Tristam
The Sham of Homeland Security: a West Virginia Parable

Remi Kanazi
Stroke of Luck?: Political Hemorrhage in Israel

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon Meets His Maker

Kathleen and Bill Christison
What Hillary Clinton Doesn't Know About Palestine

 

January 4, 2006

Ron Jacobs
Pity the Miner: A-Diggin' My Bones

Lila Rajiva
Terror Hits Bangalore

Huibin Amee Chew
Why the War is Sexist

Pat Williams
How the West Turned: Biting the Hands That Steal

Linda Milazzo
The House That George and Jack Built: Ownership Society Meets the Entrepreneurial Style

Nick Dearden
The Fantasy of "Even-Handedness": Blair's Cynical Policy on Palestine

James Petras
Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

Website of the Day
Rat Out a Lobbyist for Jesus

 

January 3, 2006

James Ridgeway
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and 9/11: How Much Did the Bush Administration Know?

Laith al-Saud
Iraqi Intellectuals and the Occupation: an Interview with Dr. Saad Jawad

Dick J. Reavis
Border Walls: the View from Mexico

Joshua Frank
Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran

Rochelle Gause
Inside Rafah: Collective Punishment as Normalcy

Missy Comley Beattie
How My Mother Went from a Republican to a Screaming Progressive

Paul de Rooij
A Glossary of Dispossession

 

January 2, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
A Gestapo Administration

Clancy Sigal
A Trip to the Far Side of Madness

Cindy Sheehan
A Tour of Europe: Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes

Alexander Cockburn
A NYT Editorial Contemplates Iraq

 

Dec. 31 / Jan. 1, 2005/6

Patrick Cockburn
The Year in Iraq

Alexander Cockburn
Who Are We to Complain?: a Diary of 2005

Ralph Nader
Rumsfeld vs. the Military: a Pentagon of Loyalists and Enforcers

James Petras
The Politics of Language: "Escalation" or "Retaliation" in Israeli Attacks on Palestinians

Peter Montague
A Darker Bioweapons Future

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Black Forever: Race, Class and Activism in the South

Vijay Prashad
My California Vacation: Conversations with Indian Americans

P. Sainath
Farm Suicides in Vidharbha

James Brooks
The Spoils of War: Israel's Corruption was Inevitable

Eileen E. Schell
The Farmer Wants a Wife: Hayseeds and Hickxploitation in the Land of Reality TV

Christopher Brauchli
Birds of a Feather: George and Vlad

Jo Guldi
Politics, Gay Marriage and Christianity

Fred Gardner
America's Only Legal Grower

Ben Tripp
A Hapless New Year

St. Clair / Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening To This Week

Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, LaMorticella, Buknatski, Davies, Ford and Bear Dog

Website of the Weekend
Commit Bloggamy with Dr. Suzy

 

December 30,2005

Evo Morales
I Believe Only in the Power of the People

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The Toxic Air in Black America

Dave Lindorff
Bush's NSA Spying Jeopardizes National Security

Gary Leupp
Targeting Iran and Syria: Goss Builds Case for Turkey-Based Attacks

Ron Jacobs
A Dead New Year's Eve

Brian Concannon
Down in Haiti, the Chickens are Coming Home to Roost

Sandra Lucas
Inside TeenScreen: the Making of Mental Patients

T.W. Croft
The Wind Has Changed: Gulf Storms, Fables of Reconstruction and Hard Times for the Big Easy

Website of the Day
Images of Mass Consumption

 

December 29, 2005

Norman Solomon
Journalists Should Expose Secrets, Not Keep Them

Missy Comley Beattie
Christmas Without Chase

Dave Zirin
Over the Edge: the Year in Sports

Kevin Zeese
Top 10 Antiwar Stories of 2005

Derrick O'Keefe
Bolivia and Venezuela Offer an Alternative to Neo-Liberalism

Sam Bahour
Turning the Page in Palestine, Again

Macdonald Stainsby
What's Behind Paul Martin's Broadside Against Bush?

Bill & Kathleen Christison
Let's Stop a US/Israel War on Iran

Website of the Day
Deconstructing the Democrats

 

December 28, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Lila Rajiva
Operation Romeo: Lessons on Terror Laws from India

Amira Hass
The Humanitarian Lie

Joshua Frank
Let the Drilling Begin: Iraq's IMF Loan

David Swanson
Leaking Top Secret Lies

Richard Thieme
High Time for Torture

Paul Craig Roberts
Three Books to Wake You Up

Website of the Day
Conyers Report: "Constitution in Crisis"

 

December 27, 2005

Evan Jones
Whither the National Guard?

Uri Avnery
The Peretz Shuffle

Mike Whitney
Pop Goes the Bubble!

Gideon Levy
Dusty Trail to Death

David Swanson
Kurt Vonnegut: a Man Without a Country

Norman Solomon
NSA Spied on UN Diplomats During Push for Invasion of Iraq

 

December 26, 2005

Lawrence R. Velvel
The Usurpers of Our Freedoms

Lance Olsen
The Toughest Challenge for Intelligent Design

Ben Terrall
No Holiday Compassion for Haiti's Political Prisoners

Scott Boehm
Santa Drove a Bulldozer

Charlie Ehlen
A Vietnam Vet's Appraisal of Bush

Tom Kerr
The Atheist Dad at Christmas

 

December 24/25, 2005

Aleander Cockburn
The Year of Vanished Credibility

James Petras
Iran in the Crosshairs: Israel's Deadline

Ralph Nader
Talkin' About the "I"-Word

Lila Rajiva
Horowitz's New Project: Begging for Brownshirts

Fred Gardner
Dialogue with the DEA

Ron Jacobs
When Impeachment was Taken Seriously

Dave Lindorff
Xmas Games for a Gitmo World

Gary Leupp
Happy Birthday Mithras!: the True Meaning of December 25th

Saul Landau
Bush's Year in Review: a Report Card from Santa

John Chuckman
A Christmas Tale for Bushtime

Dr. Susan Block
Merry XXX-mas!

St. Clair / Vest / Pollack / Donnelly
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Holt, Jones, Landau, Ross and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Merry Xmas, From the Beatles

 

December 23, 2005

John Ross
The Corrido of Death Row: Mexico Ends the Death Penalty

Chris Floyd
Gospel Truth: Bush Hypocrisy, Radical Holiness and Woody Guthrie

Lawrence Mishel / Ross Eisenbrey
The Economy in a Nutshell

Joanne Mariner
Bringing Torture into Court: the Loopholes in McCain's Bill

Eric Johnson-Debaufre
The Trew Law of Free Democracies?

Ray McGovern
Cheney the Bully; Rockefeller the Coward

J. L. Chestnut, Jr.
What White America Doesn't Hear

Website of the Day
BB King: What I've Learned This Year

 

December 22, 2005

Ingmar Lee
The Citizen's Metamorphosis: I Awoke an Object of Suspicion

Elisa Salasin
Classrooms in Cages

Christopher Brauchli
Absolut Bush: "I Swear to Upturn and Rear End the Constitution of the United States"

Robin Blackburn
Rudolf Meidner, a Visionary Pragmatist

Evelyn Pringle
Dan Olmstead, Autism & the Dangers of Thimerosal

Amira Hass
A 14-Year Old's Prison Journey: "I Refused and He Hit Me"

Francis A. Boyle
Iraq and the Laws of War: US as "Belligerent Occupant"

Stew Albert
The Spies Who Thought We Were Messy

Website of the Day
How to Reach a Human Voice

 

December 21, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
One Nation, Under Prosecutors: Presumed Guilty

Lila Rajiva
A Short History of Radio Free Iraq

Joshua Frank
Nancy Pelosi's Truth

Dave Zirin
The Bray of Pigs: Bush Nixes Beisbol Cubano

Ramzy Baroud
US Image Problem Rooted in History, Not Media

Sonia Nettnin
Connect the Dots: Decoding Bush's Mumbo Jumbo

Ben Saul
Torture as Calculated Policy

Jonathan Cronin
Anniversary of a Handshake: Cherry-picking History in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Election Spells Total Defeat for US

Website of the Day
Nixon on Presidential Power

 

December 20, 2005

Jackie Corr
Natural Gas: a Montana Tragedy

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Nothing New About NSA Spying on Americans

Michael Donnelly
"Eco Terrorism": Cui Bono?

Gian Paulo Accardo
Empire of Shame: a Conversation with Jean Ziegler

Pierre Tristam
Trifler, Fibber, Sophist, Spy: How Bush Flouted the Constitution

Norman Solomon
The Foulest Media Performances of the Year

Sen. Robert Byrd
No President is Above the Law

Dave Lindorff
Missing Black Boxes in WTC Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI

Website of the Day
FBI's Spy Files: Got Yours Yet?

 

December 19, 2005

Mike Marqusee
The Global War on Civil Liberties

Gary Leupp
Feds Ask Student: "Why are You Reading that Little Red Book?"

Ron Jacobs
The Antiwar Movement, the Democrats and the Delusions of Bushworld

John Blair
Stealing the Golden Shovel: Lessons on Civil Disobedience

Gideon Levy
Sadism at the Qalandiyah Checkpoint

Kevin Zeese
The Global War on Civil Liberties

Missy Comley Beattie
Warnings from a Military Man and Dad

Don Santina
Ride 'Em Brush Cutter: Cowboy Imagery and the American Presidency

Website of the Day
A Call for Justice in Palestine

 

December 17 / 18, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Time-Delayed Journalism: the NYT and the NSA's Illegal Spying Operation

Gabriel Kolko
The Decline of the American Empire

Susan Alcorn
Texas: Three Days and Two Nights

Werther
The Democrats are an Impotent and Tolerated Opposition Party

Ralph Nader
The Senator Without Guile: Proxmire of Wisconsin

Patrick Cockburn
Counting Ballots and Bodies in Baghdad

Fred Gardner
When Prosecutors Deceive: Did the Feds Frame Bryan Epis?

Dave Lindorff
Spy Scandal Far Larger Than Just NSA

Ned Sublette
Essence is Gasoline

Lee Sustar
The Class War Economy

Jason Leopold
Did Karl Rove Destroy Evidence in Plame Case?

Laura Carlsen
Report from Hong Kong: Deciphering the Language of Globalization

Jeff White
Teacher Fired for Talking About Peace?

Ray McGovern
Torture Between the Lines

Chris Floyd
Pale Fire: the White Death of Fallujah

William Loren Katz
Remembering the First Quagmire at Xmastime: Zachary Taylor vs. the Seminoles

Rose Miriam Elizalde
Mashenka and the Bear: a Tale for Our Time

Greg Moses
Pinter's Provocation: Self Love in America

Heather Gray
Privatizing the Social Contract

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience: the Sequel

St Clair / Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Landau, Engel and Albert

Website of the Day
At Least Homeland Security Believes that Mao Still Matters

 

December 16, 2005

Tom Kerr
CNN's Goddess of Vengeance: What's Not to Love About Nancy Grace?

Mark Engler
The WTO in Hong Kong: Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty?

John Bomar
When Ollie North Came to Hot Springs

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Votes; Now What?

Pierre Tristam
Iraq, Ourselves

William S. Lind
The Fine Art of Withdrawal

Cyril Neville
Why I'm Not Going Back to New Orleans

Robert Jensen
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Reason, Evolution and Intelligent Design

Saul Landau
Bolivian Democracy and the US: a History Lesson

Website
CounterPunch & Dr. Price Vanquish Anthropologist Spies

 

December 15, 2005

Oren Ben-Dor
The Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Palestine

Stan Cox
"Agroterrorists" Needn't Bother

Joshua Frank
Organic Inconsistencies: Federal Food Politics

Ben Terrall
Waivers for State Terror: Bush and the Indonesian Generals

Patrick Cockburn
Silence Descends on Baghdad

Monica Benderman
What Peace Needs

Walter A. Davis
Fear and Loathing in San Quentin

Vijay Prashad
Our Torture Problem

Website of the Day
Hourly Wages After Four Years of "Recovery"


December 14, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Iran Poised to Win Iraqi Elections

Paul Craig Roberts
Lethal Developments

Lawrence R. Velvel
A Bore Called Bob: On Trying to Read Woodward

Wayne Garcia
The Summer of Sami

John Sugg
Preach Peace, Sami; Get Truthful Prosecutors

Gary Leupp
Bush and the Constitution: "Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper"

Ray McGovern
Torture: a Defining Moment

Alan Maass
They Murdered a Peacemaker

April Hurley, MD
NPR Swallows Bush's Guestimate on Iraqi Dead

Kevin Alexander Gray
Richard Pryor's Mirror on America

 

December 13, 2005

Stephen T. Banko, III
Heroes

Patrick Cockburn
America's War So Far: 1000 Days of Getting It Wrong

Laura Carlsen
What's at Play at the WTO

Karl Grossman
Nuclear Routlette in the Troposhere: Another NASA Plutonium Launch

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Original Sin

Kevin Zeese
Report from the International Peace Conference in London

Norman Solomon
At the Gates of San Quentin

Michael G. Smith
Ending the Death Penalty

Stew Albert
California Killers

Bob Dylan
Song for Tookie: George Jackson

Phil Gasper
California Murders Tookie Williams: a Report from San Quentin

Website of the Day
Boot Hill

 

December 12, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Defenders of Torture

Lawrence R. Velvel
George the Disconnected

Jessica Stewart
My Husband is at the Gates of Gitmo

George Bisharat
Busharon: a Fusion of Like Minds

Nate Mezmer
Killing Tookie Williams: If a Black Man Dies in America, Does It Make a Sound?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Richard Pryor Wasn't Crazy

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience

Seth Sandronsky
Thank You, Richard Pryor

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: the Beginning of the End

Website of the Day
Wrestling for Peace


December 10 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
All the News That's Fit to Buy

Landau / Hassen
The Condemned of Nablus

Ralph Nader
The Widening Wasteland of American Media

Linn Washington, Jr
The Philly Media and Mumia: When They Don't Bash, They Ignore

Bill Christison
Apathy, US Culpability and Human Rights Day

Mike Ferner
The Courage of Jim Loney

Elizabeth Schulte
Abortion and the Bush Court

Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner
Murder in Jerusalem

Linda S. Heard
Saddam's Trial: Grandstanding in the Theater of the Absurd

Ingmar Lee
A Kayak Journey to Vancouver Island's Wildest Forest

Ray McGovern
Lies, Torture and the Six Blind Mice

John Chuckman
Torture and White Phosphorous: the Moral Hell of Condi Rice

John Ryan
An Honorary Degree in Child Sacrifice?: Madeleine Albright and US Foreign Policy

Dick J. Reavis
From Waco to Baghdad

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Hired Pens

Behzad Yaghmaian
Trapped at the Gates of the European Union

Aseem Shrivastava
The Winter in Delhi, 1984

John Ross
Bushlandia in Black and White

Ben Tripp
War, What is It Good For?

St. Clair / Pollack / Vest / Despair
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Bear Dog, Ford, Mickey Z, Albert & Engel

Website of the Week
Burn a Brick for Bush

 

December 9, 2005

Linn Washington, Jr.
Roots of Gitmo Torture Lie Close to Home

Dave Zirin / Mike Stark
On Seeing Wesley Baker Die

Patrick Cockburn
Blair Tries to Cover Up $1.3 Billion Iraqi Theft

Alexander Cockburn
Murtha Returns to Attack; Flays Bush

Lila Rajiva
Shooting the Mentally Ill

Gary Leupp
White House Liars on the Defensive

Jason Leopold
Rove Running Out of Answers, Time

Bruce K. Gagnon
So These Are the Democrats?

Andrew Cockburn
Meet Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrats' New Gatekeeper

Website of the Day
"X-mas Time for Visa"

 

December 8, 2005

Kathy Kelly
Blessed are the Merciful in Baghdad

James Petras
The Venezuelan Election: Chavez Wins, Bush Loses (Again)

William S. Lind
Questionable Assumptions: Dissecting the Stategy for Victory

Laura Carlsen
The Strange Mission of Vicente Fox: Free Trade and Mexico

Justin Akers
Bush's Border War

Thomas Graham, Jr
A Nuclear Pearl Harbor in Outer Space?

Norman Solomon
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam

Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn
The Lost John Lennon Interview

Website of the Day
Pigs at the Trough of War

 

December 7, 2005

John Ryan
Dershowitz vs. Chomsky: a Review of the Harvard Debate

Gary Leupp
Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq

Fran Quigley
How the ACLU Didn't Steal Christmas

Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith
Bush War Crimes: the Posse Gathers

Joshua Frank
Bird Dogging Hillary

William W. Morgan
Rendition, Torture and Democracy

Dave Lindorff
A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu Jamal

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam: "Come Visit My Cage"

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Website of the Day
Witnesses to Torture

 

December 6, 2005

Ron Jacobs
No One is Illegal; No One is an Infidel

Patrick Cockburn
Inside Saddam's Trial: Tales of the Human Meat Grinder

Yifat Susskind
Death, Politics and the Condom: African Women Confront Bush's AIDS Policy

Mike Whitney
How Greenspan Skewered America

Pat Williams
Public Land Should Stay Public

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi to Europe: Trust Us

Website of the Day
Debunking Woodward

 

December 5, 2005

John Walsh
The Lies of John Edwards: What Did the Democrats Know and When Did They Know It?

Brian Cloughley
The Poor Dead: the Relative Value of Human Lives

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Corporate Crime Quiz

Robert Jensen
How Big Money Eviscerates the First Amendment

Norman Solomon
Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Ignores Iraq Air War Plan

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to the Justice Department: Pfizer May Have Violated Federal Laws When They Fired Me

Lila Rajiva
The Torture-Go-Round: CIA's Rendition Flights to Secret Prisons

Website of the Day
National Day of Counter-Recruitment


December 3 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Revolt of the Generals

Lawrence R. Velvel
Iraq, Brains and Lies

Rev. William Alberts
The Forgotten Christmas Story: Saying No to King Herod

Saul Landau
Latino Troops Have Parents

Ralph Nader
Consumerama

Paul Craig Roberts
Don't Confuse the Jobs Hype with the Facts

Mike Whitney
Blood Feast: Celebrating Executions in America

Allan Lichtman
The DeLay Scheme: Blatantly Buying Our Government

Dave Lindorff
A Sudden Rush for the Exits?

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections

Fred Gardner
Oregon NORML Honors Growers

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
On Freeing the CPT

Carol Wolman
Remembering the 60s

St. Clair / Vest / Walker / Pollack
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Free the CPT

 

December 2, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad

Mike Ferner
Beware Iraqization: Melvin Laird, Vietnam and Christmas Bombings Over Baghdad?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Constitutional Kamikazes: Padilla's No-Win Dilemma

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Questions for the President

Manuel Talens
The Chávez Theorem

Peter Phillips
Death By Torture: Media Ignores the Hard Evidence

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Alabama's Taliban: Judge Roy Moore, Preachers and Dixie Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Support the Hampton University Peace Activists!

 

December 1, 2005

John Walsh, MD
The God Gaps

Ron Jacobs
Hard Rain: Toward a Greater Air War in Iraq?

Jenna Orkin
EPA's Latest Betrayal at Ground Zero

Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's Blunt Message: Forget Palestine

Tiffany Ten Eyck
Rank and File Resistance to Delphi

Missy Comley Beattie
Home on the Range: Where the Fear and the Animus Play

Eli Stephens
The Reed and Kerry Show

Elaine Cassel
A Government Game of "Gotcha" with Jose Padilla

Website of the Day
Rare Erotica

 

 

Subscribe Online

January 11, 2006

Killing Tookie, Smearing Mandela

Schwarzenegger's Hit List

By ALAN MAASS and JOE ALLEN

"The dedication of Williams' book 'Life in Prison' casts significant doubt on his personal redemption...Specifically, the book is dedicated to 'Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars.' The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts, and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement."

So reads the statement of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in denying clemency for Stan Tookie Williams. Twelve hours after the statement was issued, Stan was brought into the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison, and the former gang leader-turned-internationally renown peacemaker was put to death.

Schwarzenegger claimed the dedication of Stan's Life in Prison autobiography showed that his record of turning his life around was a fraud.

But the men and women on Stan's list aren't "criminals." They are revolutionaries--African Americans and Native Americans who were subjected to the dehumanizing conditions of U.S. prisons, but who refused to submit, and dedicated their lives to the struggle against racism and oppression.

By singling out this dedication, Schwarzenegger and his aides showed that Stan Tookie Williams died most of all because of the political challenge he represented to the status quo of racism and repression in the U.S. today.

* * *

Williams's supporters continued to hold out hope that Schwarzenegger would grant clemency even as the December 13 execution date approached. During his two years in office, Schwarzenegger had seemed less hard-line on law-and-order issues than his predecessor, Democrat Grey Davis, and the governor claimed to reporters that he was struggling over the decision.

But the statement released by Schwarzenegger to justify denying clemency proved that he never had any intention of stopping the execution. As University of Southern California law professor Jody Armour told a reporter, "There is nothing in the tone of the governor's decision that suggests it was a close call or agonized over."

The statement condemns Stan for refusing to admit to his role in the four murders he was convicted of.

But Stan always proclaimed his innocence in these cases. In demanding that Stan do "the one thing Williams will not do" and confess, Schwarzenegger and his aides ignored the strong evidence that Stan was wrongfully convicted--and the climate of racist hysteria that accompanied his original trial, in which the prosecutor compared Stan in the courtroom to a "Bengel tiger" caged at the zoo.

As for Stan's decade-long campaign to warn young people against gangs, crime and prisons, the statement dismissed them out of hand. "[T]he continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams' message," it smugly concluded--effectively holding Stan responsible for all gang-related crime.

But the most despicable passage in the statement came at the end, when it smeared the revolutionaries to whom Stan dedicated his autobiography.

"[I]t seems to me that we saw a very intentional politicization of this process, namely the equation of what Schwarzenegger would call lawlessness and criminality with radical political activism," said Angela Davis when asked about being singled out in the statement. "It is revealing, it seems to me, that every single name he evoked by quoting the dedication from Tookie's autobiography--every single name is the name of a person of color, a black person or a Native person."

Befitting the California setting, the statement gives special treatment to George Jackson, a former California prisoner who became a leader of the Black liberation struggle while incarcerated in San Quentin, and who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. In a further passage and a footnote, the statement shamelessly repeats the discredited pack of lies--a wild story about an escape attempt and a handgun concealed in Jackson's hair--told by San Quentin officials to justify the assassination.

The venom of this and other parts of the Schwarzenegger statement is worthy of the most right wing of Republican prosecutors, or maybe the head of the politically influential prison guards' union--someone still angry that George Jackson's book Soledad Brother became a best seller.

But that's not who wrote it. According to the Los Angeles Times, "the statement was largely drafted by Andrea Hoch, Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, and her predecessor, Peter Siggins."

Before working for Schwarzenegger, both Hoch and Siggins served in the attorney general's office under Democrat Bill Lockyer--who is considered a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to run against Schwarzenegger. Their role in authoring the governator's political hit job underlines how little difference there is in either wing of the California political establishment over the crimes of the racist injustice system.

But for the thousands of people who took action to stop Stan's execution, we will remember the struggle against racism and oppression that Stan--and the revolutionaries he dedicated his autobiography to--stood for.

* * *

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was the best-known leader of the struggle to overturn South Africa's racist apartheid system--under which a small white minority held power and denied all rights to the Black majority.

Mandela became politically active as a student, joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1942 and co-founding its youth organization in 1944. The ANC's nonviolent campaigns of the 1950s had mass support, but were brutally suppressed. Mandela led the organization in adopting a strategy of armed struggle. He was arrested in 1962, and spent almost three decades behind bars in the notorious Robbin Island prison.

Mandela and the ANC were denounced as "terrorists" not only by the regime, but by the U.S. government and multinational corporations that wanted to do business in South Africa. But an international solidarity campaign exposed the truth about apartheid, and Mandela became a hero around the world.

With the struggle--led increasingly by Black workers--growing ever more powerful, Mandela was released in 1990, and the ban on the ANC was lifted. Following negotiations led by Mandela, the ANC won the country's first democratic elections in 1994, and Mandela became president.

Though the new government's policies frustrated the hopes of most Blacks that the ANC would bring material improvements in their lives, Mandela remains an internationally known symbol of resistance to tyranny.


Angela Davis

Angela Davis grew up in the segregated South, attending Black-only schools until she was accepted into an American Friends Service Committee program that brought her north to attend high school in New York City. Her further studies took her to Brandeis University in Boston, and later to the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Frankfurt in Germany.

Returning to the U.S., Davis immersed herself in the Black liberation and women's liberation struggles. In 1969, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan fired Davis from her job as a lecturer at the University of California-Los Angeles because of her membership in the Communist Party. Following an outburst of opposition, she was later rehired.

The next year, Davis was charged with conspiracy and murder for her supposed participation in a plan to help radical Black prisoner George Jackson escape. After 18 months behind bars, Davis was acquitted of all charges.

Davis has continued a life of activism since, especially as an outspoken opponent of what she calls the "prison-industrial complex." She was active in the campaign to save Stan Tookie Williams and was one of the speakers at the huge rally outside San Quentin Prison on the night of Stan's state-sponsored killing.


Malcolm X

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in 1925. He endured a childhood of racist violence that claimed his father's life and made his mother mentally ill. After moving from Michigan to New York and later Boston, he was arrested and sent to prison for burglary in 1946.

While behind bars, he converted to the Nation of Islam, and began using "X" to stand in for a name that was stolen during slavery. A brilliant speaker and debater, after his release, Malcolm became the Nation's most effective organizer and spokesperson.

With the civil rights movement in motion in the South, Malcolm came to represent the more militant face of Black anger at racism in the U.S. He was harshly critical of movement leaders for insisting on nonviolent civil obedience and limiting the struggle to Southern voting rights. His outspoken support of the right of self-defense against racist attacks won growing support among the new generation of young civil rights activists.

In late 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, tensions within the Nation came to a head, leading Malcolm to break politically. Following a trip to Africa and the Middle East, Malcolm concluded that the Black struggle in the U.S. was bound up with anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles around the world. He formed a new organization independent of the Nation and began building ties with other activists.

On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated during a speech in Harlem in a plot that is thought to have involved the FBI. But his influence was deeply felt in the Black Power movement to come, and continues to be to this day.


Assata Shakur

Assata Shakur was one of many revolutionaries in the U.S. driven into exile in the 1960s and '70s. She has been living in Cuba since 1984 and is also the godmother of the late Tupac Shakur.

During the 1960s, Assata participated in the Black liberation movement, the student movement and the struggle against the Vietnam War. She became a member of the Black Panther Party in New Jersey.

On May 2, 1973, Assata and fellow Panther members were pulled over by the New Jersey state police. An unarmed Assata was shot twice--and then charged with murder of a white police officer. She was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison. She spent six-and-a-half years behind bars before escaping from the Clinton Correctional Facitlity for Women in 1979.

"[F]earing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life," she said.

The federal government continues to pursue Assata. Last May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez authorized a $1 million bounty "for information leading to the return" of Assata Shakur.


Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt

Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt was a decorated Vietnam veteran and prominent member of the Black Panther Party in California in the late 1960s. He would spend 27 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit--one of the highest-profile victims of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation.

After serving in Vietnam, Geronimo relocated from Louisiana to Los Angeles, where his enormous talents as a political organizer were quickly recognized. He became a leader of the Panthers in LA after the FBI-sponsored murder of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins in the fall of 1969.

Soon after, the FBI targeted Geronimo for "neutralization." In 1970, he was charged with the murder of a Santa Monica schoolteacher, Caroline Olsen. From the start, Geronimo maintained his innocence, saying that he was in San Francisco attending a national meeting of the Panthers at the time that Olsen was killed.

The FBI could have proved that Geronimo was in San Francisco at the time of the murder because it was monitoring phone calls at the Panthers' headquarters in Oakland. But this information was suppressed. The chief witness at Geronimo's trial was a paid informant of the FBI, Los Angeles police and the LA District Attorney's office.

Geronimo was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Amnesty International designated him "a prisoner of conscience," and many well-known people, including his lawyer, the late Johnny Cochrane, campaigned for his release. He was turned down for parole 16 times.

Geronimo's conviction was overturned in 1997, and he was finally released from prison.


John Africa

John Africa, born Vincent Leaphart, co-founded the radical, mainly Black organization MOVE in Philadelphia in 1972. The group immediately faced harassment from police and city officials.

In 1978, Philadelphia Mayor Frank "Super-cop" Rizzo ordered a blockade of MOVE's headquarters in a West Philadelphia neighborhood. An attempt to force out those occupying the building preceded a "shootout" in which MOVE members say they didn't fire a shot. One officer was fatally wounded, almost certainly by a police bullet, but 10 members of the MOVE group were convicted of his murder.

Later, John Africa helped establish a new MOVE headquarters on Osage Avenue in Philadelphia. On May 13, 1985, police--allegedly responding to complaints from neighbors--surrounded the new MOVE home.

During the siege, a police helicopter dropped an explosive charge on the roof of the building, causing a fire that leveled the surrounding city block, destroying a total of 62 homes. John Africa was one of the 11 victims--five of them children--of the explosion and resulting fire.


Ramona Africa

Ramona Africa was the only adult in the MOVE building to survive the police bombing in May 1985. Yet she, not the cops, was arrested on riot and conspiracy charges, and sent to jail for seven years.

On her release, her civil lawsuit pinned the blame for the bombing on city officials. Since then, Ramona Africa has continued the struggle to win freedom for MOVE members--and is a leader in the campaign in support of journalist and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was framed and sent to death row after helping to expose the truth about the first siege of the MOVE home in 1978.


Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier is one of America's longest-serving political prisoners. He has spent almost half his life--some 30 years--in prison for a crime he didn't commit: the murder of two of FBI agents on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in June 1975.

Peltier was an active member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the late 1960s and '70s. AIM was subject to vicious government persecution. From 1973 to 1976, during the FBI's "reign of terror" on the Pine Ridge reservation, more 60 AIM members and supporters were killed. Across the country, AIM leaders were murdered or jailed on trumped-up charges.

On February 6, 1976, Peltier was extradited from Canada to the U.S. based on coerced and fraudulent testimony. Federal prosecutors presented similar testimony during his subsequent trial in 1977--while suppressing evidence beneficial to Peltier. Years later, Peltier's supporters learned through the Freedom of Information Act that a critical ballistics test on the rifle Peltier supposedly used was negative. As Lynn Crooks, the lead prosecutor in the Peltier, later admitted: "We can't prove who shot those agents."

In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, Amnesty International called on the president "to free a prisoner whose guilt has long been in question." But as in past such efforts, FBI personnel mobilized a bitter opposition, and Clinton did nothing.


Dhoruba Bin Wahad

Dhoruba al-Mujahid Bin Wahad is the adopted name of Richard Moore. He joined the Black Panther Party in New York in 1968.

Bin Wahad was first arrested in 1969 as part of the Panther 21 conspiracy case, in which leaders of the group were charged in a conspiracy to blow up New York City department stores, subway stations and police stations. This nakedly political trial was an effort to destroy the East Coast leadership of the Black Panther Party.

But on May 13, 1971, after the longest political trial in state history, all 21 Panthers were acquitted of all charges after the jury deliberated for just 45 minutes.

While free on bail before the trial, Bin Wahad had fled to Algeria, but he returned to the U.S. following the acquittal. Shortly afterward, he was charged in the deaths of several police officers in New York. It took three trials to convict him, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life.

In 1988, Bin Wahad appealed his conviction, based on uncovered FBI COINTELPRO documents revealing the prosecutors' suppression of evidence beneficial to the defense. His conviction was overturned in March 1990.


George Jackson

George Jackson was one of the most prominent figures of the radical movement of the 1960s, and his prison writings, published in a book called Soledad Brother, touched the lives of millions when they came out in the early 1970s. But since his assassination in 1971, he has been almost forgotten by the general public.

Jackson was sentenced to prison in 1958 for his part in a $70 gas station robbery. He was given a 1-year-to-life sentence under California's then "indeterminate" sentencing guidelines--which meant that he had no fixed sentence and was at the mercy of prison officials, who could keep extending his jail term if they chose to.

While Jackson was in prison, the civil rights and Black Power movements were sweeping the country. They had a huge impact on him, and he turned his life around. Jackson read voraciously and became an outspoken activist and writer. The Black Panther Party was so impressed by Jackson that it gave him the rank of field marshal.

After Jackson and two other inmates were charged with the murder of a prison guard in 1970, support committees sprang up across the country. Before he could stand trial, Jackson was killed by San Quentin prison guards on August 21, 1971--allegedly because he was trying to escape.

Prison officials spun a fantastical story claiming that Jackson's lawyer, Stephen Bingham, smuggled a gun into San Quentin--past an array of metal detectors--and handed it to Jackson, who then hid it in his Afro before the shooting began. Bingham fled the country following Jackson's assassination. He returned to the U.S. in 1984, and in 1986, he was tried and acquitted of all charges related to the alleged "escape attempt."

There can be little doubt that George Jackson was targeted by the authorities because of his prominence as an articulate Black revolutionary, speaking out from within prison walls.

His assassination has never been seriously investigated, but Jackson's writings remain a powerful indictment of racism in the criminal justice system and U.S. society at large--which is undoubtedly why Schwarzenegger singled him out for special attention.


Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal became probably the best-known death row political prisoner in the U.S.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Mumia joined the Black Panthers as a teenager, becoming Minister for Information of the Philadelphia chapter. During the 1970s, he turned to broadcasting and became one of the top names in local radio. His journalism helped to expose police misconduct and brutality, earning him the lasting hatred of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).

On December 9, 1981, while he was driving a cab, Mumia saw his brother being beaten by police officer Daniel Faulkner, and intervened. Both he and Faulkner were shot in the ensuing confrontation. Despite witnesses who reported a shooter fleeing the scene, Mumia--who nearly died from his wounds--was arrested and charged with Faulkner's murder.

The case against him was full of holes, but prosecutors succeeded in sending Mumia to death row--thanks especially to the misconduct of trial judge Albert Sabo, a life member of the FOP who handed out more death sentences than any other judge in the modern era of the death penalty.

Mumia didn't remain silent on death row--on the contrary, he became the "voice of the voiceless," penning several books and numerous articles from his tiny cell. National Public Radio offered to air his radio commentaries, but censored them at the last minute after a campaign by the FOP.

With Stan Tookie Williams' execution only days away, Mumia won a new federal appeal that could lead to a new trial--and hopefully his freedom.

Alan Maass is the editor of the Socialist Worker. Joe Allen writes for the Socialist Worker and CounterPunch.

They can be reached at: alanmaass@sbcglobal.net



 

 

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