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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories

April 17, 2007

Jean Bricmont /
Diana Johnstone
The Elections in France: a Coming Political Tsunami

April 16, 2007

John F. Sugg
Hate and Hypocrisy in the Cox Empire

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Escalating Military Spending: Income Redistribution in Disguise

Carl G. Estabrook
The Politics of the Useful Threat: It Didn't Start with the Neo-Cons

Paul Craig Roberts
The Party of Brownshirts

Uri Avnery
Blood on Our Hands

Ralph Nader
Where Are the Cries of Outrage Over Military Rapes?

Eamon McCann
Shame of the Empire: Simon, Sir Bono and Tinkerbelle

Lee Sustar
Decoding the Democrats

Mike Whitney
Trouble in Squanderville: Bubble People and the Faith-Based Market

Don Fitz
Solar Capitalism?

Stephen Lendman
Ecuador Votes for Revolutionary Change

Website of the Day
Black Mesa Water Coalition

 

April 14 / 15, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Ho Industry Whores

Jorge Mariscal
Gen. Petraeus's Field Manual: a Traveler's Guide to Big Muddy

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Beautiful and the Dammed: How the West Got Flooded

Dave Marsh
The Imus Affair, Hip Hop and Politics

Dr. Trudy Bond
Shrinks, Lies and Torture: How Psychologists Became the Pentagon's Bitches

Joe Bageant
A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard

Fidel Castro
The Terrorist Walks

Alfredo Molano
"More Than Complicated"

Alan Farago
When Miami Crashes

Michael Neumann
Anglophone Fantasies and French Realities

Fred Gardner
Barbara McNair's Unsung Heroism: Bringing Down the Owner of EST

Ron Jacobs
A Conversation with Three Iraq Veterans Against the War

Gail Dines
Racy Sex, Sexy Racism

Linda Ford
Imus and Lady Hoopsters: a Long History of Bias Against Women Athletes

Missy Beattie
What Would Imus Do?: Iraq, Ho, Ho, Ho

Dan La Botz
Farm Labor Organizer Murdered in Mexico

Giuliana Sgrena
The Lies of Mario Lozano

Laura Carlsen
A Moratorium on Free Trade Agreements

Abu Spinoza
Wolfowitz's Real Crimes

Elizabeth Schulte
Grinding It Out with Quentin Tarantino

Poets' Basement
Davies, Harley, Engel and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Vonnegut's Final Interview

 

April 13, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Shattering of Mosul

Stephen Soldz
Aid and Comfort for Torturers: Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective

George Ciccarriello-Maher
The Failed Chávez Coup: Five Years On

Laith al-Saud
Kirkuk, Oil and the Kurds

Dave Zirin
Memo to Imus

John Ross
Drawing a Line in the Heartland

Ramzy Baroud
America as Proxy

Harvey Wasserman
The Novelist Who Hated War: Peace Be With You, Mr. Vonnegut

Lopez, Olivo and Garcia
Columbia University's Two-Tiered Punishments

Dols, Fukumori, Judd and Tillett-Saks
Columbia: On the Wrong Side of Justice

Website of the Day
Democrats: an Iraq Scorecard

 

April 12, 2007

JoAnn Wypijewski
We May be Rid of Imus, But We're Still Stuck with the Culture

Paul Craig Roberts
Big Profits from Big Brother

Marjorie Cohn
U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights

Evelyn Pringle
Bush Family War Profiteering: Will Congress Finally Cut Them Off?

Ron Jacobs
God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

Norman Solomon
The Awful Truth About Hillary, Barack and John

Joe DeRaymond
The Release of Dennis Counterman: The Justice Game, the Alford Plea and Death Row

Nicola Nasser
Squeezing Palestinians into an Impossible Mission

Nikolas Kozloff
Chile, a Country Geographically Located in South America "By Accident"

William S. Lind
Horatio Hornblower's Worst Nightmare

Siegfried L. Sassoon
A Statement Against the Continuation of the War

Website of the Day
Where You Want This Killin' Done?

 


April 11, 2007

R. T. Naylor
Quebec's Lessons for the US: How "Wars on Terror" Should be Fought

Vijay Prashad
The Generation of IEDs and iPods

Patrick Cockburn
The Myth of Tal Afar

Winslow T. Wheeler
When Will the War Money Really Run Out?

Jack Balkwill
Prison for a Peacemaker: A Vietnam Vet Interviews Kathy Kelly

Alan Farago
Florida's Fundamentally Weak Environmental Movement

Russell D. Hoffman
The Carbon Offset Tax is Just Another Nuke Bailout

Peter Rost, MD
The Fine Print on Drug Industry Kickbacks

Mike Whitney
Doomsday for the Greenback?

Dave Lindorff
Torture and Selective Outrage

Susie Day
Peter Pace Porks a Peck of Pinko Perverts

Website of the Day
Save the Internet!

 

April 10, 2007

James G. Abourezk
How Syria Helped the US in the "War on Terror"-and How Bush Said "Thanks"

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Why Imus Should be Fired-And Why He Won't Be

Joshua Frank
Democrats for War

Lee Sustar
How Concessions by UAW Lost Jobs

Joseph Grosso
Tiger Woods in Dubai: Luxury and Exploitation

Nirmal Ghosh
China and the Fate of the Tiger

Robert Jensen
Impeach the System

Ramzy Baroud
Not an Intellectual Squabble

Paul Rockwell
History Will Vindicate Lt. Ehren Watada

Mario Joseph and
Brian Concannon

Solidaridad? Chávez in Haiti

Fred Wilhelms
Why the New Royalty Rates Hurt Artists

Website of the Day
Thaw!

 

April 9, 2007

Saul Landau
Whining Imperialists

Uri Avnery
Shalom, Shin Bet

Nicole Colson
Sami Al-Arian's Nightmare: an Interview with Nahla Al-Arian

Gideon Levy
Israel Does Not Want Peace

Corporate Crime Reporter
Big Coal Invokes Reverse Nuremberg Defense

Evelyn Pringle
The Surge in Casualties

Hill Kemp
Mega Lessons from Iraq War, Year 5

Martha Rosenberg
Monsanto's Desperate Plea: "Regulate Our Competitors!"

Keith Rosenthal
Behind Boston's Recent "Crime Wave"

Jane Stillwater
Green Zone Cabin Fever

Website of the Day
Support Norman Finkelstein


April 7 / 8, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Dogs Don't Bleed: How Giuliani Lost America

Sara Roy
A Jewish Plea

Arno J. Mayer
Back to Cleopatra's Nose: Bush-Bashing and Empire's Onward March

Jeffrey St. Clair
In the Realm of the Grizzly Kings

Vicente Navarro
Why Huntington and Beck Are Wrong

Fidel Castro
Where Have All the Bees Gone? And Other Reflections on the Internationalizaton of Genocide

Fred Gardner
Medical News from the Business Pages

Ralph Nader
The IRS Owes You Money

David N. Rahni
Test Tube Zealots: American Chemical Society Purges Iranian Chemists

Arthur Neslen
When an Anti-Semite is Not an Anti-Semite

Pratyush Chandra
Joseph Stiglitz's "Another World"

Missy Beattie
Enough Already! The Politics of Exasperation

Marc Levy
A Beginner's Guide to Combat

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Holt, Orloski and Louise

Website of the Weekend
Reactor Man

 

April 6, 2007

Franklin Lamb
Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?

Gloria La Riva
On the Case of the Cuban Five and Luis Posada Carriles

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Politics of Coal in West Virginia

Ron Jacobs
Good Friday, Beethoven and Patti Smith

Felice Pace
Simon Says: The Pro-Israel Bias of NPR

Walter Brasch
Treason in the White House?

David Swanson
Heroes, Sung and Unsung

Sylvia Syracuse
Roadside Rampage: Salvadoran Murders in Guatemala


April 5, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
A De Facto Hostage Exchange

Tom Barry
The Fred Thompson Factor

Richard W. Behan
Congressional Complicity

Nicola Nasser
Playing US Politics with Iraqi Blood for Oil

Bernadine Dohrn
The New and Old SDS: Convergence Not Division

Laray Polk
Lucky Dragon: Does the World Really Need a New H-Bomb?

Helen Redmond
Female Chauvinist Pigs?

 

April 4, 2007

Col. Dan Smith
"Have You No Sense of Decency?": the Tillman Affair and the Moral Decay of the Army

Joshua Frank
Democratic Blood Money: Sen. Feinstein's War Profiteering

Margaret Kimberly
Of Confessions and Torture

Sharon Smith
Circuit City's Guinea Pigs: the Latest Trend in Corporate America

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV

Martin Luther King,Jr.
Beyond Vietnam

Bill Quigley
Incident at Fort Huachuca, the Army's Torture Training Center

Dave Zirin
Picking Chicago's Pockets with the Olympics

Evelyn Pringle
Drug Companies Want Women of Childrearing Years

Peter Rost, MD
Pfizer's Puny Fine

Website of the Day
Crash of the Honey Bees

 

April 3, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted hostage Taking

Marjorie Cohn
Coming Up Short on Habeas Corpus for Gitmo Detainees

Brian M. Downing
The Army's Road to Iraq

Corporate Crime Reporter
Coddling Pfizer: Praise the Criminal, Dis the Whistleblower

Carol Norris
A Psychologist on Sexual Assault: Yes, Virginia, There is a Sollution

Ralph Nader
Tailpipe Blues

Dave Lindorff
I Quit: A Movement of One (Or a Maybe a Million)

Scott Bontz
The Great Depletion

Thomas Dolby
Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Racism and the National Anthem

Website of the Day
Cockburn on BookTV


April 2, 2007

Gary Leupp
A Bogus Hostage Crisis

Uri Avnery
Condi in the Middle East: Olmert and the Pussycat

James Petras
Palestine: The Political Economy of a Disaster

Norman Solomon
McCain in Baghdad: Walking in McNamara's Footsteps

Robert Fisk
War of Humiliation

Stanley Heller
A Neocon Looks Two Conquests Ahead: The Ravings of James Woolsey

Sherwood Ross
How the Pentagon Cheats Iraq Vets Out of Medical Care and Disability Pay

Monica Benderman
On Keeping Men Alive: Report from Ft. Stewart

Stephen Fleischman
Winners and Losers in a Dog-Eat-Dog System

Anne McElroy Dachel
Never Mind the Mercury

Website of the Day
Midwestern Common Sense on the War


March 31 / April 1, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
That Was an Antiwar Vote?

Fred Gardner
How Corrupt is Malcolm Gladwell? Shilling for Enron and Breast Cancer

Greg Moses
The Pirates of Homeland Security

Gary Leupp
300 vs. Iran (and Herodotus)

Robert Fisk
Shakespeare and War

Roger Morris
The Politics of the Witch Hunt

Conn Hallinan
The Price of Fire: Oil, Water and Resistance in Bolivia

Kristin J. Anderson
A Protocol for Death

Jason Hribal
California's Most Unhappy Cows

John Ross
Strange Fruit Down South

Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Politics of Falsehoods: If You're Going to Lie, Lie Big

David Underhill
War Breeds Stranger Bedfellows

Elizabeth Schulte
The Pentagon's "Don't Ask" Disaster

Ben Terrall
Time for Lula to Stop Doing Bush's Dirty Work in Haiti

Missy Beattie
Guess Who Isn't Coming to Dinner: The Story of King Abdullah and the O-Word

Sonja Karkar
How Palestine Became Israel's Land

Daniel Wolff
Have You Heard the News?

David Vest
A Romanian Jazz Rebel Drops a Bomb on Paris

Ron Jacobs
Wynton Marsalis Checks In on the Land That Never Has Been Yet

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Wigley and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Kansas City Rocks

 


March 30, 2007

Alan Maass
Oil and the Empire

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Memo on Iran: Brinksmanship in Uncharted Waters

Richard W. Behan
George Bush's Land Mine: If Iraqis Get Revenue Sharing, Exxon Gets Their Oil

Gabriel Kolko
Israel's Last Chance

William S. Lind
Operation Anabasis

Stedjan / Weis
The Cluster Bomb Treaty: Again, It's the US vs. the World

Kevin Zeese
Is Bush Lame or Is Congress?

David Busch
Homeless in LA

Fidel Castro
Biofuels and Global Hunger

CounterPunch News Service
Mistrial in Olympia 15 Case

Website of the Day
Free Shaquanda Cotton


March 29, 2007

Saul Landau
Comparing Padillas

Patrick Cockburn
When Iraqi Cops Go on a Rampage

Dave Lindorff
War and the Futures Market: Oil Traders Fear an Attack on Iran

Arthur Neslen
Normalizing Injustice: Jaffa's Ugly Truth

Michael Dickinson
Incident at Westminster Abbey

Ingmar Lee
Plantskyyd: Planting Trees with Pig's Blood in British Columbia

Aseem Shrivastava
As India Goes Global, the Public Goes Private

Marlene Martin
Sacco and Vanzetti, Revisited

Mahmoud El-Yousseph
Wake Up, You Live in America!

Michael Foley
A Citizen's Peace Lobby

Website of the Day
Impeach Bush Club Parade


March 28, 2007

Nicole Colson
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

Harry Clark
Michigan Peaceworks on Palestine

Larry Everest
Another $100 Billion to Continue the War

Jonathan M. Feldman
Citigroup, Property and Theft

Dave Zirin
Yet Another Book on Muhammad Ali (and Why I Wrote It)

Jane Stillwater
How Runaway Inflation Has Slipped Under the Radar

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Pakistan's Cry for Justice

Jim Wilfong
Who Owns Maine's Water?

Hawra Karama
An Open Letter to Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi Uncle Tom

Website of the Day
Free Fire on Iraqi Civilians



March 27, 2007

Iain Boal /
Standard Schaefer
British Petroleum and the New Greenmail

Patrick Cockburn
The Hostage Game

Monica Benderman
On Ending War: Is America Ready for the Troops When They Come Home?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Political Players and Single Payer

Joshua Frank
Dems in Power: Broken Promises and Bald-Faced Lies

Harvey Wasserman
Will Al Gore Deliver Us to Solartopia?

Sen. Russell Feingold
FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act

Tillman Family
Crimes and Cover Ups are Not "Missteps"

Patrick Bond
Zimbabwe's Descent

David Judd
Arbitrary Discipline at Columbia

Website of the Day
Why Work?


March 26, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Seven Days on Iraq's Cruel Roads

Uri Avnery
Schoolbooks and Borders

Greg Moses
Hothouses for Hapless Masses on the Rio Grande

Bill Hatch
A Plague of Big Shots

John V. Walsh
The Democrats' War Funding Debacle

Diane Christian
God Does Not Love the Aggressor

Dan La Botz
The Immigration Movement at a Crossroads

Frederico Fuentes
Latin America Tells Bush to "Get Out!"

Sunsara Taylor
Democrats' Victory Means More Iraqi Deaths

Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman: Beyond the Hype

Website of the Day
DynCorp's Iraq Training Policy

 


March 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Where are the Laptop Bombardiers Now?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nuclear Saviors?: Kyoto, Gore and the Atomic Lobby

David Rosen
An American Obituary: Anna Nicole Smith and the Exploitation of Nature

Ron Jacobs
The Political History of the Car Bomb

Robert Fantina
Vietnam and Iraq, the Rhetoric Remains the Same

Alan Maass
Why Ralph Nader Took a Stand

Atul Gawande
On Washing Hands: A Surgeon's Notes on How Infections Spread in Hospitals

Marianne McDonald
Staging Anti-Colonial Protest

China Hand
Zealots Scheme to Derail North Korea Accord

Kaz Dziamka
The Iroquois Way of Impeachment

Andrew Wimmer
The Nursemaid's Tale

Don Monkerud
World's Biggest Debtor Nation

Anthony Papa
Bong Hits 4 Jesus Case

Matthew Provonsha
Return of the Black Bloc

Missy Beattie
Calling Youth and Young Adults

Stephen Fleischman
Confrontation, At Last

Poets' Basement
Newberry, Laymon, Harley and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
An Interview with Ron Jacobs

Song of the Weekend
"Who Would Jesus Bomb?"


March 23, 2007

Saul Landau
Return to Syria

Patrick Cockburn
Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Ban

Greg Moses
Protesting Immigrant Prisons in the Rio Grande Valley

Rep. Ron Paul
The War Funding Bill

Franklin Lamb
Will Hezbollah Hand Israel Its 6th Defeat?

Stephen Gowans
Mugabe Gets the Milosevic Treatment

Roger Burbach
Leftist Victory in Ecuador

Dave Lindorff
The Gutless Mini-Politics of the Congressional Democrats

William S. Lind
Candles in the Hurricane

Alan Mammoser
The New Rules of Food

Russell Hoffman
Al Gore's Nose is Glowing

Website of the Day
Global Outsourcing and the US Working Class

 

March 22, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Oil-Rich Kirkuk at the Melting Point

Robin Blackburn
Toxic Waste in the Sub-Prime Market

Michael Donnelly
Mr. Green Goes to Washington: Another Oscar Performance from Al Gore

Uzma Aslam Khan
Down Pakistan's No-Constitution Avenue

Lee Sustar
Bush's Braceros: The Ugly Truth About the Guest Worker Program

Robert D. Skeels
LA's Vicious War on the Homeless

Rev. William Alberts
The Forbidden C-Word

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Search for the Elusive Autism Gene

Mickey Z.
This is Your Brain on Meat

Website of the Day
Raimondo Does Hitchens

 


March 21, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Robbie Conal

James Petras
Meet the Global Ruling Class

Fred Gardner
A U.S. Army Pipe Dream

Corporate Crime Reporter
Cramer Comes Clean: Lies, Market Manipulation and Wall Street

Faisal Kutty
Too Guilty to Fly, Too Innocent to Charge?

Robert Fantina
U.S. Imperialism in Action

Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach
Brazilian Opposition to Bush-Lula Ethanol Accords

Lucinda Marshall
Missing in Action: Why is the Peace Movement Ignoring the Impact of War on Women?

Winslow Wheeler
Dem Budget Tricks: Reform Means What We Say It Means!

Website of the Day
Student Day of Action Against the War

 

 

March 20, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq is a Vast, Blood-Drenched Human Disaster

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Blank Check War

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Cojones: Our Bleached-Blond Thatcher?

Uri Avnery
The New Palestinian Unity Government

Stan Cox
Down-to-a-Trickle Economics

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Hating the Rich

Alan Farago
Why Al Gore Soft-Peddled the Environment in 2000

Richard W. Behan
Impeachment and Patriotism

Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On

David Krieger
The Treaty of Tlatelolco

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to Pfizer's CEO: $11 Million Salary, 36% Raise, 10,000 Fired Employees

Mickey Z.
A Cat-Eat-Cat World: Beyond the Pet Food Recall

Website of the Day
Bringing the War Home

Webclip of the Day
Sunsara Taylor Beats O'Reilly, Again

 

March 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Crime Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Patrick Cockburn
Operation Deepening Nightmare

Stauber / Rampton
Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?

Werther
Plame Wars: Valerie Plame, the Washington Post and the Ghost of Joe McCarthy

Noam Chomsky
In Memory of Tanya Reinhart

Jeff Leys
Tap Dancing on Graves: How Democrats Bought the War

Richard May
And Then There Were None: Europe's Afghan Backlash

Ron Jacobs
Lessons of the Antiwar Movement and the Washington Post's Lessons of the Iraq War

Mike Whitney
Rove in the Dock

Website of the Day
Ringtones That Roar

 

 

March 17 / 18, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Here Comes Another "Crime Wave"

John Scagliotti
A Sissy's Manifesto

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Green Imposter: When Al Gore Was Veep

Paul Craig Roberts
The Confession Backfired

Greg Moses
Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso

Harry Clark
Thrice-Told Tales: Those Israel-Syria Peace Talks

Brian Cloughley
In the Name of Improving People's Lives: Mounting Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq

Mehran Ghassemi
An Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh on the US, Israel and Iran

William Loren Katz
A Disturbing Expulsion: Racism and the Cherokee Nation

John Ross
Being a Zapatista Where You Live

Ralph Nader
Ban the Bomblets!

Walter Brasch
An Intolerant Minority: the Witch Hunt Against Gays in the Military

Samer Assad
The Palestinian Unity Government: Another for US Diplomacy

Dave Zirin
Bowie Kuhn: Death of a Baseball Reactionary

Ron Jacobs
The Darker Nation's: Remembering and Re-examining the Third World

Missy Beattie
No to War and Pace

Don Santina
First, They Came for the Democrats

Sami Adwan
What Hillary Should Know About Palestinian Schoolbooks

Dr. Susan Block
Gods of Spring: the Erotics of the Equinox

Poets' Basement
Reed, Landau, Engel, Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
God Save Helen Mirren

 

March 16, 2007

R. T. Naylor
The Political Economy of Diamonds

Paul Craig Roberts
The Last Days of Constitutional Rule

Joshua Frank
Obama's Israel Problem

Diane Farsetta
How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups

Tom Barry
Tancredo's Putsch: Anti-Immigrant Agenda Veers Hard Right

Stephen Lendman
Plays from a Political Fake Book: Congress's Phony Opposition to War

Al Krebs
Compounding Infamy: Chiquita, Its Workers and Colombia's Death Squads

Jackie Corr
Senator Schumer and the Corruption Culture

Ramzy Baroud
Palestinians Must Redefine Struggle

Reza Fiyouzat
The Chinese Way of Capitalism

Website of the Day
Introducing: the iRak

 

March 15, 2007

Alison Weir
Strip-Searching Children at Israeli Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Under Surge

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memo to Congressional Leaders on Iraq Funding: First Stop the Bleeding

Franklin Spinney
Of Character and Contractors: the Unauthorized Rumsfeld

Standard Schaefer
Biofuels and the Green Resistance

Conn Hallinan
The Right's Stuff in Africa: Neocons, Evangelicals and Sudan

Maureen Webb
Another Patriot Act Abuse

Sonja Karkar
Rachel Corrie and Palestine

Margaret Kimberly
The Profits of Self-Hatred: Malkin and D'Souza, Incorporated

Anthony Papa
The New Capones: It's Time to Rethink Drug Prohibition

Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost

Video of the Day
The Easiest Targets

Website of the Day
Memo to Kucinich: Watch Your Back!

 

March 14, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Peter Linebaugh on the Slave Trade, Magna Carta and the State of the Left

Philip Agee
The Decline of the US, the Rise of Latin America

Bruce Dixon
The Digital Redlining of African-Americans

John Walsh
How One Senator Could End the War

Sunsara Taylor
Red Light, Green Light: the Democrats and Iran

William Johnson
Still Reeling from Katrina: The Spirited Strike at Pascagoula Shipyards

Richard Thieme
Entitlement and Empire

Jeffrey Klein
Right-Wing Academic Values

Nicola Nasser
This Time, Israeli is Missing an Historic Opportunity

Dave Lindorff
Political Hide-and-Seek with the Democrats

Website of the Day
Oil Change

 

March 13, 2007

Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
Scenes from a Cop Riot

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Invastion of Lebanon

Robert Bryce
Beyond Redemption: the Legacy of George the Second

Corporate Crime Reporter
Coal-Powered Democrats

Pierre Rimbert
Libération and the Evolution of French Neoliberalism

Dave Lindorff
What's Good for Halliburton is Good ... for Dubai

Elizabeth Schulte
The Repackaging of John Edwards

Norman Solomon
The Pragmatism of Prolonged War

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats' Fraudulent Iraq Exit Plan

Jeff Conant
Greeting Rumsfeld in Taos

Website of the Day
Tacoma and the Big Heat

 

 

March 12, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Patriot Act Unbound

Col. Dan Smith
Ghost Prisoners, Shadowy Jails and Secret Trials

Paul Craig Roberts
Neocons in Kafkaland

Ingmar Lee
The Sentencing of Betty Krawczyk: a 78-Year-Old Eco-Heroine

Fred Gardner
Cannabis for the Wounded: Another Walter Reed Scandal

Ron Jacobs
Showdown at Port Tacoma: Confronting the War Machine in the Northwest

Ralph Nader
Send the Bush Twins to Iraq!

John Ross
Political Prisoners in Calderon's Mexico

Stephen Fleischman
Bush's Latin American Slip

Eva Carazo Vargas
Why We Reject CAFTA

Website of the Day
Mountain Justice Spring Break

 

March 9 / 11, 2007

Sameer Dossani
Interview with Noam Chomsky: War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st Century

Jeffrey St. Clair
Crude Alliance: The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil

Dave Marsh
Bono's Bullshit: Not One Red Cent

Patrick Cockburn
Shia Pilgrims Die Despite US Offensive

Jennifer Van Bergen
A Gonzo Argument: Alberto Gonzales's Defense of NSA Domestic Spying

James P. Stevenson
Pardon Whom? Libby and the Cheney Unseen

Arthur J. Versluis
Crusade for Commercialism

Corporate Crime Reporter
Not a Dime's Worth of Difference: Congress and Corporate Crime

Missy Beattie
Too Much Info, Newt!: Sex, God and Praying

Michael Simmons
Annie Get Your Gums: Why I Like Ann Coulter

Kevin Zeese
Making Democrats Pay the Price: Voting Against the War is No Longer Enough

David Swanson
Shocking Video: The Dark Side of the Democrats

John A. Murphy
Are the Congressional Democrats Spineless?

Dave Lindorff
Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico: Abetted by Democrats

Nikolas Kozloff
Lights! Camera! Chavez!

Christopher Fons
Bush Goes to Latin America: Is It All About (N)PR?

Mike Roselle
A Thousand Miles of Bad River

Mike Mejia
Justice for Sibel Edmonds

Susie Day
Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran!

Michael Donnelly
LA Story: Rock Stars, Porn Stars and Peace

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know (Parts 4 and 5)

Poets' Basement
Reed, Laymon, Mezmer and Harley

Website of the Weekend
Japanese Dolphin Massacre

 

March 8, 2007

Elaine Cassel
The Tragic Case of Jose Padilla

Yifat Susskind
Iraq's Other War: Violence Against Women Under US Occupation

Corporate Crime Reporter
Politics and the Prosecutors

Col. Dan Smith
The Sins of Walter Reed

William S. Lind
The Washington Dodgers

Mark Engler
Bush's Latin American Spring Break

Roger Burbach
With Negroponte as Tour Director, Bush's Trip Destined to Fail

Dana Cloud
Return of the Campus Witch Hunts: David Horowitz and the Thought Police

Isabella Kenfield
Brazil's Ethanol Pland: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental Degradation

Lucinda Marshall
We Stand with the Women of the World

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction (Part 3)

Website of the Day
Filibuster for Peace


March 7, 2007

Christopher Ketcham
What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?

Christopher Ketcham
The Kuala Lumpur Deceit: a CIA Cover Up

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Ketcham's Story: Coming in From the Cold

Winslow T. Wheeler
Mismeasuring the Defense Budget

Sean Donahue
Free Scooter Libby!

Dave Lindorff
The Fall Guy Has Fallen

Evelyn Pringle
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April 17, 2007

Haitian Refugees Get Shafted

Cuban Exiles Get Hero's Welcome

By BEN TERRALL

On March 28, 101 Haitians landed on a South Florida beach after a grueling 22-day voyage which claimed the life of one of their fellow travelers. But unlike Cuban émigrés who make it to U.S. soil (who are generally allowed to stay in the country and to apply for green cards after a year), these destitute Haitians have been detained by immigration officials for "expedited removal."

This stark contrast in treatment between Haitian and Cuban refugees is one of Washington's more glaring immigration policy double standards. As Florida author Carl Hiaasen recently wrote, "Illogical, unfair and racist in practice, it's also been a boon to people-smugglers with fast boats, and to other profiteers."

The U.S. has mostly viewed Haiti as a problem since the Caribbean nation won its independence and became the first black republic. The defeat that Haitians handed French colonists in 1803 presented an example that slaveowners to the north did not want to see inspire sons and daughters of Africa in the U.S.

U.S. alliances with sweatshop owners and other big businessmen were critical to the February 29, 2004 U.S.-backed coup which ousted the democratically-elected Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That military takeover was the culmination of a destabilization campaign bankrolled by the Bush Administration which involved political attacks on Aristide and his Lavalas Party (by far the largest political formation in Haiti) via Haitian and U.S. media, an aid embargo, and funding for anti-Lavalas groups. In its work to realize a better life for the poorest through increased social spending, doubling of the minimum wage and other progressive programs, the Lavalas government, rooted in the radical traditions of liberation theology, stood at odds to the pro-business agenda of the dominant powers in Washington.

In a March 2004 congressional hearing on aid to Haiti, Rep. Eliot Engel, head of the Western Hemispere subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, said "I cannot think of a country or subject more deserving of Congress' full and sustained attention than our neighbor, Haiti." But as with U.S. "attention" to Iraq, it is hard to see how Haiti would be worse off if it had not been a focus of U.S. foreign policy. As in the buildup to the Iraq campaign, honorable members of congress defended Haiti's sovereignty and opposed the Bush regime's campaign to destabilize the Aristide government. But those progressive representatives, mostly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, were a minority and could not turn the tide.

The early 2004 operation against Haitian popular democracy involved Washington-funded, heavily armed paramilitary thugs crossing the border from the Dominican Republic (after receiving training from U.S. special forces troops sent to help the "contra" effort) and attacking civilians and Haitian police loyal to President Aristide. As during the previous anti-Aristide coup in 1991 (also carried out by U.S.-trained forces), mass killings and brutal torture of Lavalas supporters led to a mass exodus from the country. In the midst of that crisis, a representative of UNHCR, the UN agency on refugees, recommended "a suspension on any forced returns to Haiti, including those who have been rejected for asylum or picked up at sea." But the Bush Administration continued to send all refugees back to the killing fields.

In August 2006, British medical journal The Lancet published a mortality study that concluded 8,000 people were killed in the first 21 months of the coup. In almost half of the deaths studied, the perpetrators were identified as security agents of the coup government, former soldiers or armed anti-Lavalas groups. No murders were attributed to Lavalas members. There was nary a peep of concern from the Bush Administration about this mass slaughter carried out under the illegal "interim" regime.

In spite of having sponsored forces behind the carnage in Haiti, the Bush administration continues with its harsh immigration regime for Haitians.

Conversely, Washington's "open door" immigration policy for Cubans creates a propaganda vehicle for claims that the Cuban government is brutally repressing dissidents. In fact the ideologically driven U.S. trade embargo on Cuba has been the primary reason for an extremely desperate economic situation in which many Cubans see no choice but to come to the U.S.

Not even the most rabid anti-Castro Republican would claim that paramilitary killers are attacking civilians in Havana. Yet in Haiti death squads continue to crush nonviolent activists with impunity. Even though Rene Preval, a progressive associated with Lavalas, was elected President last year with the support of Haiti's poor majority, rightists dominate most government ministries and there are few effective constraints on the brutal, predominately pro-coup Haitian police.

Jan Ting, an assistant commissioner for refugees, asylum and parole at the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the first Bush Administration, recently admitted that U.S. policies single out Haitians for "undeniably harsher treatment."

As the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (www.ijdh.org), points out in a recent action alert, the U.S. Congress now has a chance to undo that wrong. Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings and 16 cosponsors have introduced the Haitian Protection Act of 2007, H.R.522.IH, in the U.S. House of Representatives, which would grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to an estimated 20,000 Haitians facing deportation from the United States.

TPS is granted by the Executive Branch to provide relief to nationals of countries suffering natural disasters or political violence. The status suspends deportations of people who have overstayed their visas or entered illegally, for renewable 12-18 month periods. TPS provides important relief to such visitors, their families and their governments, at very little cost to U.S. taxpayers. It would allow Haitians in desperate straits to keep working to support themselves, and to keep sending money back to their families. It would thus reduce pressure on scarce jobs and government services in Haiti.

As the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti points out, "Haiti is more than qualified for TPS." In addition to the political violence of recent years, the half-island nation is by any measure the poorest country in the Americas, largely because of resource extraction and labor exploitation at the hands of "the international community." Haiti is also extremely vulnerable to more natural disasters: Tropical Storm Jeanne killed over 2,000 people in 2004. Nonetheless, Haitians have never received TPS. By contrast, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, all more prosperous and stable than Haiti, received TPS following natural disasters since 1999. The presidents of all three countries reported that TPS was critical to their recovery by keeping remittances immigrants send back home flowing.

According Haitians such treatment is the least that Washington can do.

Ben Terrall is a freelance writer who has visited Haiti four times since the February 29, 2004 coup which forced out the democratically-elected Aristide government. He can be reached at bterrall@igc.org

 





 

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