Today's
Stories
March 31
/ April 1, 2007
Cockburn /
St. Clair
That
Was an Antiwar Vote?
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
Psychosis and Mania: ADHD Drug Warnings Come Too Late for Many
Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction
Website of the Day
Debating Iraq: Gaffney Against the World!
March 6,
2007
Gary Leupp
Meet
Eliot Cohen: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It
Gets"
Uri Avnery
Esterina Tartman: The Big Mouth of Israeli Fascism
Patrick Cockburn
The War on Terror is a Bust: Bush is Now Al Qaeda's Top Recruiter
Saul Landau
World
in Crisis, Candidates in Denial
Corporate Crime Reporter
John Edwards' Big Lie
Ron Jacobs
The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong!
Mike Roselle
Judi Bari: Ten Years Gone
P. Sainath
Neoliberalism and the Ideology of the Cancer Cell
Joshua Frank
Dump the Dems, Unite Against the War
Aniket Alam
Women's Day, Lenin and a Riot in Copenhagen
Dave Zirin
Resurrecting Don Barksdale: Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer
Website of
the Day
Physicians for a National Health Program
March 5,
2007
Greg Moses
Holding
Suzi Hazahza for Profit
Patrick Cockburn
Exodus of Iraq's Ancient Minorities
James Petras
Bush vs. Chavez
Frida Berrigan
US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
Marjorie Cohn
Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial:
the Case of Augustín Aguayo
Douglas Kammen
and S.W. Hayati
The Rice Crisis in East Timor
Sen. Barack Obama
On Israel and AIPAC: "We Must Preserve Our Total Commitment
to Our Unique Defense Relationship with Israel"
Michael Young
Sy Hersh and Iran: the Dark Side of Spun a Lot?
Dave Lindorff
It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al
Sonja Karkar
Raiding Nablus: Israel's Hot Winter Offensive
Website of the Day
How Obama Learned to Love Israel
March 3
/ 4, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
The
Persecution of Sami Al-Arian
Corporate Crime
Reporter
"No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim
Bias
Jeffrey St. Clair
Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite
Patrick Cockburn
War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply
Ralph Nader
Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America
M. Shahid Alam
American Mamlukes
Gilad Atzmon
From Esther to AIPAC
Fred Gardner
It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela
Rock &
Rap Confidential
Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively
for Blacks"
Gillian Russom
The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo
Michael McPhearson
My Small Act of Civil Disobedience
Kevin Zeese
The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom?
Sunsara Taylor
Four Years of an Unjust War
Wendy Thompson
Re-Organizing the UAW
Kenneth Rexroth
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"
Missy Beattie
Regarding Cheney
Don Monkerud
Jesus Turned Away at US Border
Tina Louise
Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams
Poets' Basement
Richards, Landau and Davies
Website of the Weekend
John Prine: Flag Decal
March 2,
2007
Roger Morris
Cheney's
Bagram Ghosts
Phil Gasper
Prisoners of Ideology
Mike Roselle
Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone
Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scam
John V. Walsh
Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the
War
Sherwood Ross
Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget
China Hand
Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb?
David Rosen
To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America
Chris Genovali
Connecting the Dots
Peter Harley
The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela
Website of the Day
Courage to Resist
March 1,
2007
Laura Carlsen
Return
to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men
Ray McGovern
How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows?
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Theater of the Absurd
Najum Mustaq
America's Musharraf Dilemma
Brent Bowden
The War on Terror and the Terror of War
Tina Richards
Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds
Ethan Nadelman
Mexico and the Drug War
Mike Stark
"Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution
Wadner Pierre
/ Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN
Mike Whitney
Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan
Website of
the Day
Dylan Hears a Who
February
28, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
An
Amazing Disgrace
Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Francisco Letelier
China Hand
The Shanghai Crash: Take the Money and Run
Marjorie Cohn
Why the Boumediene Case on Gitmo Detainees and Habeas Corpus
Was Wrongly Decided
Sarah Olson
Is Lt. Watada an Isolated Case of Military Dissent?
Susan Van Haitsma
Mark Wilkerson: Standing for a Soldier's Right to Conscience
Nicole Colson
License to Torture
Harvey Wasserman
The Sham of Nuclear Power
William S. Lind
The Non-Thinking Enemy
Nicola Nasser
US Turnabout?: Engagement and Confrontation in the Middle East
Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld
February
27, 2007
Tariq Ali
The
Khyber Impasse: the Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Tom Barry
America's
Crusaders: Santorum and Lieberman
Uri Avnery
The Next War
Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar
Oil Grab: the Secret Scheme to Split Iraq
Jeff Nygaard
Howard Hunt and the National Memory System
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Grenada: an Invasion Revisited
Mitchell Kaidy
Israel's Cluster Bombs: Made in USA, Ground-Tested in Lebanon
Carl Finamore
Airline Bankruptcies, Mergers and Profits
Anne McElroy
Dachel
The Really Big Lie About Autism
Ramzy Baroud
Who is Really in Control?
Andrew Rouse
The Queen, Her Apothecary and the War on Iraq
Website of the Day
New York City Skyline
February
26, 2007
Franklin Lamb
US
Israel Lobby Targets Lebanon's Jihad al-Bina
Bill Quigley
The
Right to Return to New Orleans
Greg Moses
Suzi Hazahza in Haskell Hell
Col. Dan Smith
Calling All Carriers
Ralph Nader
The Bush Administration is a Threat to Our National Security
Paul Buchheit
The Income Gap
Jeff Leys
How Democrats Are Buying the Iraq War
Dave Zirin
Bojangling for Bigots: an Open Letter to Jason Whitlock
Mike Whitney
Doomsday Dick and the Plague of Frogs
Michael Dickinson
Free Kareem Amer!
Website of the Day
Beware the Chickenhawks!
February
24 / 25, 2007
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Frightening
Tales of Endangered Species
R. T. Naylor
Inside Islamic Charity
Gary Leupp
AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran
Saul Landau
Modern Day Miracle: Rev. Haggard Cured! Thank You, Jesus!
Ron Jacobs
Missile Defense Redux
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Debate on the Israel Lobby
Chris Sands
Afghanistan in Winter: Where Death Comes Cheap
Gary Freeman
The N-Word and Black History Month
Larry Portis
Zionism and the United States: the Cultural Connection
P. Sainath
Two Million People in "Maximum Distress"
Lee Sustar
What Next for the Immigrants' Rights Movement?
Kevin Wehr
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros: the Thrill isn't Gone, It's Just
Moved
Ken Couesbouc
The African Card
Soffiyah Elijah
FBI Hunting Dead Panthers: Can John Bowman Ever Rest in Peace?
Kathlyn Stone
Iraqi Labor vs. Big Oil
Dave Lindorff
Breaking the Dam in Olympia
Jason Kunin
Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry
Kevin Zeese
Can Hillary be Trusted?
Remi Kanazi
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints
Missy Beattie
Five Words That Change Lives
Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt and Rodriguez
Website of the Weekend
Caught on Tape: an Anti-War Movement Finding Its Feet?
February
23, 2007
Franklin Spinney
Top
Gun vs. the Axis of Evil: Is This What We Have Become?
Jonathan Cook
Watching
the Checkpoints
Patrick Cockburn
The True Extent of Britain's Failure in Basra
Kathy Kelly
Do Something Good
Chris Dols
Islamophobia at Urban Outfiters: the Case for Keffiyehs
Evelyn Pringle
The Neurontin Suicides: Risks Kept Hidden for Years
Stephen Pearcy
If Bush is a War Criminal, What About the Troops?
Dan Brook
Making Poverty History
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Police Commit Rapes
Website of
the Day
A Citizens Arrest of Patty Murray
February
22, 2007
Robert Fantina
Repeating
History
Tariq Ali
Prodi's Soap Operatic Fall: Neoliberalism and War in Italy
Michael Shank
An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, the Democrats and
Climate Change
John Ross
Calderon's War on Drugs
Christopher Brauchli
Stockcars on Dope: How NASCAR and the Tour de France are Bring
the World Together
Cindy Litman
Paying for the Damage Done to Iraq
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Mr. Jefferson's Inheritors: Caution, Calculation and Cold Feet
Kevin Zeese
Finally, a Populist Antiwar Candidate for President
Aseem Shrivastava
The New Indian Way?: a Developer's Model of Development
Reza Fiyouzat
A Letter to the Israeli People: We are All Led by Mad Men
Illinois Students Against the
War
Why We Protested at Obama's Speech
Website of
the Day
An Interview with Mike Gravel
February
21, 2007
Maass / St.
Clair
The
Clintons: the Art of Politics Without Conscience
Sharon Smith
Inside
the Imperial Budget
Greg Moses
Showdown Over Texas Immigrant Prisons
Margaret Kimberly
America the Stupid
Ralph Nader
Making Cancer Cool: Tobacco and Hollywood
Nicola Nasser
Evasive Diplomacy: Bush Adm. Shuns Middle East Peace Talks
Mike Whitney
The Second Great Depression
Tao Ruspoli
Revolutionary But Gangsta: a Conversation with Stic.Man of Dead
Prez
Byeong Jeongpil
Beyond the "Protection Facility",
Another Prison
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Why Hillary, Obama and Edwards Oppose Single-Payer Health Care
Josh Mahan
The Lost Art of Shattuck: a Good, Old-Fashioned Drinking Story
Website of
the Day
Time to Free the Puerto Rican Nationalists
February
20, 2007
Sgt. Martin
Smith
Structured
Cruelty: Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine
Werther
How
to be a Washington Expert
Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing SAIC
Carl G. Estabrook
Common Sense About the Recent Past
China Hand
Setting Sun: The Diverging US-Japan Relationship
Joshua Frank
Cleaning Up Exxon's Greenpoint Oil Spill
Megan Boler
The Daily Show and Political Activism
John Feffer
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia
Daryll E. Ray
What's Inside the New Farm Bill
Alan Gregory
Midwest Wolves Fall Prey to Slob Hunters' PR Scam
Website of the Day
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Rampant Cyncism
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|
Weekend
Edition
March 31 / April 1, 2007
The Peter Pace
Principle
The
Pentagon's "Don't Ask" Disaster
By ELIZABETH SCHULTE
The comments by Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chair Peter Pace speak volumes about the bigotry against gays
and lesbians that flourishes in the upper ranks of U.S. military.
Speaking about the military's
"don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays and lesbians,
Pace offered this in an interview with the Chicago Tribune:
"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are
immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not
believe that the Armed Forces of the United States are well served
by saying through our policies, 'It's okay to be immoral in any
way.'"
Pace shot his mouth off just
as some political leaders were moving toward a repeal of "don't
ask, don't tell"--the military policy that allows gays and
lesbians to serve in the armed forces, but only if they aren't
open about their sexuality.
"'Don't ask, don't tell'
is not working," said Sen. Hillary Clinton in an interview
with ABC News reporter Jake Tapper. "We are being deprived
of thousands of patriotic men and women who want to serve their
country."
Even former Joint Chiefs Chair
Gen. John Shalikashvili wrote in an op-ed article in the New
York Times that he had "second thoughts" about
the policy. "I now believe that, if gay men and lesbians
served openly in the United States military," he wrote,
"they would not undermine the efficacy of the Armed Forces."
When "don't ask, don't
tell" went into effect more than a decade ago, the result
was a higher level of soldiers dishonorably discharged because
of their sexual orientation. So when it comes to the motives
of politicians criticizing "don't ask," you can't help
but note the obvious fact that the military is strapped for recruits
to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clinton was upfront about it:
"[O]ne can argue whether it was a good idea when it was
first implemented, but we now have evidence as to the fact that
we are in a time of war--when we really need as many people as
we can to recruit and retain in an all-volunteer army--we are
turning people away or discharging them not because of what they've
done but because of who they are."
Now, Rep. Martin Meehan (D-Mass.)
has announced plans for a bill to repeal "don't ask"
called the "Military Readiness Enhancement Act."
* *
*
A 2005 study by the Government
Accountability Office showed that about 10,000 service personnel
have been discharged since the "don't ask, don't tell"
policy took effect.
And there's no telling how
many former soldiers are like Brian Fricke, an ex-Marine sergeant
who served nine months in Iraq's Anbar province--and who left
because he was tired of pretending he wasn't gay. "You'll
never be able to tabulate" how many gay people left the
military voluntarily because of "don't ask, don't tell,"
Fricke told USA Today.
Harassment of gays and lesbians
is still standard operating procedure. Over a year's time, 80
percent of service members had heard offensive speech, derogatory
names, jokes or remarks about gays, according to a 2000 Defense
Department inspector general survey.
While many cases aren't reported
for fear of further retaliation, 37 percent of service members
reported they had witnessed or experienced direct, targeted forms
of harassment, including verbal and physical assaults and property
damage.
Some service members have lost
their lives under "don't ask." Pfc. Barry Winchell
was brutally beaten to death with a baseball bat in his barracks
at Fort Campbell, Ky., in 1999 after rumors and harassment about
his sexual orientation.
* *
*
The "Don't Ask" policy
went into effect in 1993 as one of the first acts of the newly
elected Clinton administration.
When Clinton ran for election
in 1992, he promised he would repeal the existing policy of excluding
gays and lesbians from the military. He made this promise after
several veterans of the first Gulf War broke their silence and
made public announcements of their sexuality to protest the existing
antigay policy.
Expectations were high that
there might be significant progress made on gay rights. But Clinton
broke his promise almost immediately after winning. Instead,
he introduced "don't ask, don't tell" in 1993.
He tried to explain it away
by arguing that, "Because [the military] is a conservative
institution, it is right for the military to be wary of sudden
changes...it is also right for the military to make changes when
the time for change is at hand."
Clinton's duplicity didn't
stop there. In 1996, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
that barred the federal government from giving any legal recognition
to married gay couples. DOMA denies lesbians and gays some 1,000
federal rights and benefits that married heterosexual couples
have--ones with often life-altering consequences, like being
able to sponsor a spouse who is not a U.S. citizen for permanent
residence.
In the absence of any real
pressure from gay rights activists and comfortable in the calculation
that he would have the support of the liberal gay and lesbian
organizations whose focus is elections, Clinton decided to satisfy
his supporters on the right.
"In retrospect, 'don't
ask, don't tell' was an astonishing act of political cowardice,"
Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone magazine. "Telling
gay men and women that they had to hide who they were in order
to earn the privilege of getting shot at for our idiot military
adventures was almost worse than open bigotry. It essentially
institutionalized the Closet."
Today, the first instinct of
the leading Democratic presidential contenders is to skirt the
issue of gay rights.
Hillary Clinton initially responded
to questions about whether she agreed with Pace that homosexuality
was "immoral" by telling ABC's Jake Tapper, "Well,
I'm going to leave that to others to conclude."
She quickly readjusted, saying
she opposes "don't ask," but used the most conservative
arguments to do so. "This policy doesn't just hurt gays
and lesbians," she told a meeting of the Human Rights Campaign,
"it hurts all our troops, and this to me is a matter of
national security, and we're going to fix it."
Sen. Barack Obama followed
Clinton's dodge when a Newsday reporter asked him whether
he agreed with Pace. "I think traditionally the Joint Chiefs
of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military
matters," he said. "That's probably a good tradition
to follow."
Later, he cleared up his position
(sort of), stating, "I don't think that homosexuals are
immoral any more than I think heterosexuals are immoral"
in an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live.
But the incident is telling
about who leading Democrats see as their audience. Neither Clinton
nor Obama want to anger social conservatives.
John Kerry took the same attitude
in the 2004 election. At the time, he was getting advice from
Bill Clinton, who suggested he support ballot initiatives that
would ban gay marriage from state constitutions in order to get
the conservative vote, according to Newsweek. "Out
in the country, they're wearing us out with guns and gay marriage,"
Clinton told an Arkansas crowd on the stump for Kerry in 2004.
While he didn't go as far as
Clinton recommended, Kerry did publicly oppose gay marriage,
indicating his support for an amendment to the state constitution
that would overturn gay marriage in Massachusetts.
Unfortunately, gay rights organizations
that might have organized pressure on Kerry to support same-sex
marriage--a demand that mobilized thousands in Kerry's home state
of Massachusetts, and won equal marriage rights there--didn't
organize, and instead threw their support behind the Democrats.
* *
*
Whatever Pace thinks about
gays and lesbians, his view isn't shared by an increasing majority
of the population. A Pew Research Center survey last year found
that 60 percent favored gays serving openly in the military,
up from 52 percent in 1994.
Retired Staff Sgt. Eric Fidelis
Alva, who lost his right leg to a land mine in the Iraq war's
opening days, told Time magazine, "It was like carrying
this enormous secret that you want to share with someone. I eventually
formed close bonds with other Marines and did confide in them.
They treated me with the same respect and dignity afterward.
We were still buddies."
About 23 percent of troops
know someone in their unit who is gay or lesbian, according to
a recent Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq
and Afghanistan. And about 55 percent of troops who know a gay
peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit was
well known by others.
The sentiment exists for demanding
an end to "don't ask, don't tell" and the back-of-the-bus
compromises on same-sex marriage.
When it comes to fighting for
gay rights, the Democrats may want to sit on the fence. But there's
no room on that fence for anyone committed to equal rights for
lesbians and gays.
Elizabeth Schulte is a reporter for the Socialist
Worker.
|
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