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Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!
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Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY
Today's Stories May 23, 2005 Esther Sassaman / Thomas Nagy May 21 / 22, 2005 David H. Price Gabriel García Márquez Oren
Ben-Dor Gary Leupp Laith
al-Saud Elaine Cassel Greg Moses Fred Gardner Dave
Lindorff Alan Maass William
Blum Tom Crumpacker Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Doug Giebel Evelyn J.
Pringle Carolyn Baker Chris
Floyd Frederick B. Hudson Ben Tripp Poets' Basement
May 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Paul de Rooij Christopher
Brauchli Mark
Engler Joshua
Frank Robert Jensen Jeffery R.
Webber
May 19, 2005 Bill Forman Stan Goff Neve
Gordon Michael Dickinson Karyn
Strickler Andrew Freedman Paul Craig Roberts
May 18, 2005 Jean Bricmont Laura Carlsen Mike Whitney Joshua
Frank George Galloway Manuel
Garcia, Jr. Dwight D. Eisenhower Dave Lindorff
May 17, 2005 Mickey Z. Petuuche Gilbert Paul Craig Roberts Ramzy Baroud Robert
Jensen / Pat Youngblood Stan Cox Dave Zirin Diana Barahona Website of
the Day
May 16, 2005 Michael Gillespie Jason Leopold Jesse Muldoon Norman
Solomon Robert
Cray Patrick Cockburn Website of
the Day
May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Saul
Landau Gary Leupp JoAnn
Wypijewski Ben Tripp Brian J.
Foley Tom Barry Mitchell
Verter Mike Ferner Dan Smith Mark Scaramella Don Fitz Diane Farsetta Michael
Dickinson Ron Jacobs Fred
Gardner Farrah Hassen Douglas
Valentine Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
May 13, 2005 Tom
Stephens Patrick Cockburn Mike
Whitney Chris Floyd Jenna
Orkin Dave
Lindorff Joshua Frank Website of
the Day
May 12, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Greg Moses Carolyn
Baker Pat Williams William S.
Lind Jack Random Gary Leupp
May 11, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Christopher
Brauchli Zalman Amit Robert Shull Mike Whitney Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst Norman Solomon
May 10, 2005 Richard Drayton Dave Zirin Jackie Corr Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Reza Fiyouzat Scott Parkin Stephen
Babcock Alan
Farago Michael Neumann Website of
the Day
May 9, 2005 Louis Proyect Robert
Fisk Kevin Zeese Joshua Frank Sasha Kramer Andrew
Wimmer Jeffrey Webber Jeffrey St. Clair
May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gary Leupp Saul
Landau Joe DeRaymond Daniela
Ponce Heather Williams Gregory
Elich Anis Memon John
Chuckman Mike Whitney Ron Jacobs Colin Kalmbacher Lance
Selfa Fred Gardner Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Richard
Joseph Dr. Susan Block Poets'
Basement
May 6, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Erin Yoshioka Sam Husseini Dave
Lindorff Kevin Zeese Joshua
Frank Dan Bacher P. Sainath
May 5, 2005 Carles Mutaner Carl G.
Estabrook Farrah Hassen Kevin
Zeese Michael Leonardi Bennett
Ramberg Ray McGovern Norman
Solomon Nicole Colson Brian
Concannon, Jr.
May 4, 2005 Colin Kalmbacher John Walsh Greg Moses Ali Khan Chris Floyd Linda S.
Heard Dave Zirin William S.
Lind Gary Leupp Website of
the Day
May 3, 2005 Dave Lindorff Brian Cloughley Ira
Kurzban Seth Sandronsky Gilad
Atzmon Michael Donnelly Alex
Sanchez Peter Linebaugh
May 2, 2005 Ron Jacobs Stan Goff Karyn Strickler Joshua
Frank Kevin Zeese Vicente Navarro
April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gabriel Kolko Jennifer Loewenstein Lee Sustar Saul Landau T.W. Croft Nikolas Kozloff William
Blum Dave Lindorff Joshua
Frank Doug Giebel Steven
Erlanger Fred Gardner Mike
Whitney Kurt Nimmo Joe
DeRaymond Michael Dickinson Mickey Z. Justin Taylor Poets
Basement Website of the Weekend
Hot Stories Alexander
Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman
Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve J.B. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber Wendell Berry CounterPunch Wire Cindy Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
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May 23, 2005 Fallout from a Forged WarBattling Windmills While Iraq BurnsBy RAMZY BAROUD Cast aside the nonsensical rhetoric about U.S. President George W. Bush's ostensibly successful efforts to bolster democratic tendencies "sweeping" the Middle East, and you'll discover that the facts are not so rosy, with Iraq remaining the most horrific reminder. Bush seems to reside over an entirely different world reality when he adamantly presents himself as a visionary whose uppermost concerns are freedom and democracy worldwide, with due emphasis on the Middle East. Neither genuine freedom nor truly representative democracies are on Bush's foreign-policy agenda, no matter how much prominence these topics receive in the president's ever-predictable speeches. We know for a fact that most tyrannical, repressive regimes have historically been the traditional friends and allies of successive U.S. administrations, in the Middle East and elsewhere. Despite politically motivated frictions between the Bush government and some of those natural allies, the overall U.S. foreign-policy antidemocratic approach hangs on imperviously. While Bush and other members of his hawkish administration are brashly taking credit for the halfhearted Palestinian elections in Occupied Territory, they have, with equal brazenness, turned a blind eye to Israel's domineering rule over the hapless Palestinian voters. Bush has increasingly warmed to the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon as if the Lebanese people (who fully comprehend the U.S. government's key role in their historically tragic plight) moved on a signal from Washington and its neoconservative clique. But why overstate and embellish the supposed democratic triumphs in the Mideast in the first place? The answer lies in Iraq. With the disastrous dismissal as a forgery of every excuse for war against Iraq -- from the pretense of illicit weapons to the linking of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda militants -- U.S. administration experts began devising what they must have perceived as an impenetrable war pretext: the case for democracy. The aim was not only to justify the ruinous war retrospectively but also to stretch the Bush administration's political and subsequent military mandate to other countries and regions without the halting limitations experienced in Iraq. One hardly needs to sell a case for democracy to the American public, which, although genuinely supportive of democratic initiatives anywhere, is easily deceived through political indoctrination into consenting to, or simply overlooking, their government's bloody wars to "restore democracy" in the world. But there is more to the "democratic tsunami" hitting the Middle East and the fantasies of the Bush administration in stirring it. The news coming from Iraq is too gory to detail, too frightening to recount, and the administration is doing all it can to balance the Iraq debacle by focusing on heartening democratic potentials, even if they are new forgeries. On May 12 alone, four car bombs reportedly detonated in Baghdad; a suicide bomber blew up a whole line of potential Iraqi army recruits in a small town north of the capital; a large bomb exploded in a fertilizer factory in the southern town of Basra; another one was set off in a crowded market in Tikrit. Most of these attacks either targeted U.S. army convoys or Iraqi army and police. Meanwhile, a very bloody battle began last week involving U.S. forces and Iraqi fighters in the remote western frontier of the country near the Syrian border. Scores are said to have been killed, although U.S. troops have recounted to the Los Angeles Times that they are combating an "invisible enemy." The need to entangle the Iraq calamity with rhetoric about democracy elsewhere takes on another level of urgency when one follows the extremely cynical undertone of American foreign-policy experts. "Everything we thought we knew about the insurgency obviously is flawed," says Judith Kipper of the Council on Foreign Relations. "It was quiet for a little while, and here it is back full force all over the country." Leading U.S. Iraq expert Phebe Marr was quoted in Newsday as advising the American public "to get its expectations down to something reasonable." Meanwhile, Pat Lang, a former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon said of Iraqi government fighters: "The longer they keep on going, the better they will get (since) the best school of war is war." Lang went on to say that "there is no evidence whatsoever that they cannot win." Clearly, there has been a considerable departure from the prewar discourse, which was full of self-assured assertions about the relative ease of the U.S. Army mission. Talks no longer center on reconstruction, meaningful democracy or long-term geopolitical designs, but on persistence -- sheer political and military survival. And while the only responsible action that ought to be taken to prevent a further decline in America's political reputation and credibility is to bring home the 140,000 U.S. soldiers held down by the escalating armed revolt, the opposite view seems to prevail. At the helm of its second term in office, the Bush administration has given every suggestion one needs to conclude that the drive for war and unilateral action is far from over. The insistence on developing new "bunker buster" nuclear weapons and the nomination of John Bolton, an anti-United Nations political activist, to the post of U.S. ambassador to the U.N., are only two recent examples of this thinking. Bush's wars in the name of democracy should be taken as seriously as Don Quixote's battles against windmills; both are fictional and silly. While there is indeed a growing desire for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, this popular yearning is independent of the U.S. government's political agenda and military designs. In fact, Bush's increasing identification with pro-democracy movements in the region strips democracy advocates of badly needed credibility and classifies them as simply "pro-American," a euphemism for disloyalty. It would be more advantageous for Bush and his administration to contemplate, confront and reconcile their adversity in Iraq, for the real calamity began there and only there can it be brought to an end. Ramzy Baroud, a veteran Arab-American journalist, is the editor in chief of PalestineChronicle.com and
author of the upcoming volume entitled, "A Force to Be Reckoned With:
Writings on Al-Aqsa Intifada." This article was first published in the
Japan Times, May 20, 2005.
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