The Day of Bahr Moussa
April 30th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
UK’s retreat from Basra is ‘A historic day for Iraq – but not in the way the British want to believe,’ writes Robert Fisk.
One hundred and seventy-nine dead soldiers. For what? 179,000 dead Iraqis? Or is the real figure closer to a million? We don’t know. And we don’t care. We never cared about the Iraqis. That’s why we don’t know the figure. That’s why we left Basra yesterday.
I remember going to the famous Basra air base to ask how a poor Iraqi boy, a hotel receptionist called Bahr Moussa, had died. He was kicked to death in British military custody. His father was an Iraqi policeman. I talked to him in the company of a young Muslim woman. The British public relations man at the airport was laughing. “I don’t believe this,” my Muslim companion said. “He doesn’t care.” She did. So did I. I had reported from Northern Ireland. I had heard this laughter before. Which is why yesterday’s departure should have been called the Day of Bahr Moussa. Yesterday, his country was set free from his murderer. At last.
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built
April 30th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
David Horowitz
During a 1952 speech before a Wisconsin audience, Joseph McCarthy proudly boasted: “McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeved rolled.” Dana Cloud’s new article in the Monthly Review examines some recent cases involving American academics being subjected to David Horowitz’s McCarthyistic smear campaigns, herself being one of them.
Ironically, McCarthy’s militant form of censorship in the name of American patriotism is also being imposed upon those who are critical of Israel, even though significant evidence shows that American and Israeli interests are not always mutual. For more on the case of William Robinson, a tenured professor who is being targeted by the Israel lobby, check here.
Eric Margolis on Pakistan and Afghanistan
April 29th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Eric Margolis is one of the world’s leading experts on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is particularly insightful in this interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio.
Eric Margolis, author of American Raj: Liberation or Domination, discusses the causes of instability in Pakistan, the unrealistic expectations the U.S. places on its puppet governments, the Taliban’s inability to fill the Pakistan power vacuum and why the U.S. can’t resist the lure of imperialism.
MP3 here. (23:59)
Eric Margolis is a regular columnist with the Quebecor Media Company and a contributor to The Huffington Post. He is the author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet.
Sheikhs, lives and videotape
April 29th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
‘A member of the UAE royal family is accused of torture – but is there any chance of justice when the country’s rulers are the law?’ asks Brian Whitaker.
The atrocities of Abu Ghraib caused much rightful indignation – and nowhere more so than in Arab countries where the sadistic torture of prisoners at the hands of their American jailers was viewed as symbolising the rape of Iraq by a foreign power.
I remember discussing this at the time with Hisham Kassem, a newspaper editor in Cairo who – contrary to the prevailing Arab view – described the coverage of Abu Ghraib by the Egyptian press as “shameless”.
“They talk about American monstrosities as if their own governments have never practised anything similar,” he said. “It’s nothing in comparison to what’s happening in Arab prisons.”
Suheir Hammad Stifles Silence
April 29th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Suheir Hammad
I had the pleasure of attending a poetry reading by Suheir Hammad and two other fabulous writers (Ruth Forman and Uchechi Kalu) this weekend. The event was hosted by Hedgebrook in Seattle, Washington.
Suheir is a Palestinian born New York based writer. Her way with words is heavily influenced by narratives of Palestinian displacement and tones of the hip hop that she was exposed to while she was growing up in Brooklyn.
I also had the opportunity to sit down with Suheir and friends following the reading. To call her a strong, passionate, intelligent woman is simply an understatement. Her messages provide her audience with emotional entries into what it means to be a Palestinian refugee in America and her voice continues to stand out regardless of how often people try to suppress it.
Dr. Mads Gilbert: A Physician in Gaza
April 29th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Dr. Mads Gilbert has worked and practiced medicine in Gaza for more than thirty years. One of the few western observers on the ground during Israel’s January bombardment, Gilbert’s testimony during the offensive was a critical source of information. On January 3, after an Israeli strike on a Gaza vegetable market, Gilbert sent a text message to his Norwegian and International contacts:
‘From doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza: Thanks for your support. They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza city two hours ago. 80 injured, 20 killed. All came here to Shifa. Hades! We wade in death, blood and amputees. Many children. Pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything this horrible. Now we hear tanks. Tell it, pass it on, shout it. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We’re living in the history books now, all of us!’
Laura Flanders spoke with Gilbert recently as he embarked on a speaking tour in the United States.
Farewell, the American Century
April 28th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Andrew J. Bacevich Rewriting the Past by Adding In What’s Been Left Out. (via TomDispatch)
In a recent column, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen wrote, “What Henry Luce called ‘the American Century’ is over.” Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce’s pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing.
When the Time-Life publisher coined his famous phrase, his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action. Appearing in the February 7, 1941 issue of Life, his essay, “The American Century,” hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis. A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry. A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East. Aggressors were on the march.
We are all torturers in America
April 28th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Naomi Wolf is an American author and political consultant.
Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot details America’s steady drift towards fascism following the events of September 11th, 2001. This important book is only 168 pages but it is packed full with the same brilliant insight and gutsy commentary that has become characteristic of Wolf’s work in general. It was also made into a documentary which garnered some favorable reactions. Catch a review of the film here.
The End of America includes analysis of America’s practices of torture on occupied Guantánamo Bay, as well as the ongoing issue of rendition. Wolf’s latest piece in the Guardian gives us an interesting perspective about the deeply ingrained hypocrisy surrounding the recent move to call for the prosecution of the CIA operatives who carried out waterboarding.
As a sidenote, countries like the UK and Canada are certainly not exempt from the responsibility surrounding these crimes against humanity. Even though a federal judge recently ruled that Canada must request that America send back Omar Khadr, who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since he was 15 years old (he is now 21), the Conservative government has so far remained immobile, aside from claims that they may try to actually appeal the ruling! « Read the rest of this entry »
Financial Barbarians at the Gate
April 28th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The Financial Barbarians at the Gate is a Guns and Butter interview with economist / historian Michael Hudson. In it he discusses the historical takeover of the economy by the finance sector.
Financial Barbarians at the Gate (59:53): MP3
One point of note is that the illegal war of aggression in Iraq is not a war related to economics but to the strategic interests of Israel. Hudson, explaining American Imperialism, states that “unlike England the United States didn’t have to invade countries, at least before the oil grab in Iraq” and instead drained countries through the US monetary system. It’s revealing that he suggests Iraq as a change in economic policy, it was not about economics, the oil lobby in Washington didn’t want a war, they wanted an end to brutal sanctions to gain conventional access to the oil.
