Story of the Day

SOTD Signs Off, Part Two

2006-03-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

Part One

After briefly restarting SotD to keep myself busy until I could get my own project off the ground, I'm ready to shut it back down for good. I actually (obviously) made this decision about a week ago, but decided I should stick up a formal goodbye message (again) so that the eight or nine of you who continue to check in here each day would know what was up. My new site, which actually wasn't supposed to be up and running until a week from now, is up in a very primitive but presentable form. It's called Violent History, and I'd love to see some of my regular SotD readers head over there from time to time. For those looking for good resources to stay on top of current events, I'll recommend Democracy Now!, which has video and audio news available online at their website every weekday. Thanks to the dozen or so of you who came by this place every day, and the others who were also frequent visitors. Good-bye!

Hockey Fans Face Off Against Global Warming

2006-02-18T23:42:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
Hockey Fans Face Off Against Global Warming
by Abid Aslam (One World)

Global warming watch out: Ice hockey fans are out to get you.

Enthusiasts of the blend of ballet and battle geared up Thursday for protest matches on two continents, in the desert, and in the Arctic to call attention to the threat to winter sports posed by climate change.

The face off, timed to coincide with Thursday's anniversary of a landmark UN treaty to slow global warming, also would serve to highlight discontent with governments' implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, environmental activists said.

''Climate change is the biggest threat to hockey since the NHL labor talks,'' said Mike Hudema, an activist with the group Global Exchange. He referred to contract disputes between players and team owners in the National Hockey League.

''Throughout North America and Europe, we're seeing kids have less ice time and fewer cold days. It's time our governments drop the gloves on climate change before global warming ruins our national sports,'' Hudema said.

Thursday's games, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol's entry into force, were to be held in the Canadian cities of Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, White Horse, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Yellowknife, and Fort Smith and the U.S. cities of Tucson and Columbus, said organizers from several youth and environmental groups... (full story)

The Value of a Number

2006-02-17T22:04:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
The Value of a Number
by Dave Zirin (Edge of Sports)

When Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line in 1947, baseball ceased to be just a game. In the dark years of McCarthyism, as his biographer Arnold Rampersad wrote, "only Jackie Robinson insisted day in and day out on challenging America on questions of race and justice." As Martin Luther King said of Robinson, "He was a sit-inner before sit-ins. A freedom rider before freedom rides." In 1997, on the fiftieth anniversary of Robinson's rookie season, MLB commissioner Bud Selig took the unprecedented step of retiring Robinson's number, 42, from the league.

Now a new push is taking place to honor another legend in a similar way. An appeal has been made by Hispanics Across America (HAA) to retire the number 21of Pittsburgh Pirate Roberto Clemente. A native of Puerto Rico, Clemente was not the game's first Latino but its first breakout star. Clemente was a regular season and World Series MVP with 3,000 career hits, but he is especially revered for his efforts to support Latin American communities in the United States and abroad. Clemente's almost Bolivarian reputation was cemented when he perished in a 1972 plane crash taking medical, food and clothing supplies to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.

But the effort to honor Clemente has met resistance from a surprising source: Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon. In January, she said, "To my understanding, the purpose of retiring my father's number is that what he did changed all of baseball, not only for African-Americans but also for Latinos, so I think that purpose has been met. When you start retiring numbers across the board, for all different groups, you're kind of diluting the original purpose."

The place of blacks and Latinos in baseball is a highly sensitive one... (full story)

Headlines for February 17, 2006 (English - Español)
- U.S. Judge Dismisses Maher Arar Lawsuit
- Kofi Annan Calls for U.S. To Close Guantanamo
- Senate Republicans Block Investigation Into NSA Spying
- Judge Orders Justice Dept To Release NSA Documents
- Scientists: Greenland's Glaciers Melting Twice as Fast as in 1996
- Rice: Iran is the "Central Banker" of Global Terrorism
- FBI Raids Homes of Pro-Independence Activists in Puerto Rico
- Bush Says He Supports Cheney's Handling of Shooting Accident

Modern-Day Antiwar Nurse Investigated for Old-School "Sedition"

2006-02-16T16:27:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Modern-Day Antiwar Nurse Investigated for Old-School "Sedition"
by Natalie Davis (All Facts & Opinions)

Laura Berg has spent the last 15 years working as a clinical nurse specialist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Albuquerque, NM. Outraged over the federal government's slow response after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, she exercised her First Amendment right and wrote a letter to her local weekly newspaper criticizing Dubya Bush. After the letter's publication last September, her bosses -- administrators from the federal VA -- seized her work computer and investigated her for "sedition."

Excuse me, but aren't sedition laws a thing of the past? Wasn't John Adams denied a second presidential term in the election of 1800 in large part because of his efforts to undermine civil liberties?

John Adams In 1798, on the verge of possible war with France, a possibility that did not sit well with the Republican Party (not to be confused with today's GOP), Adams (of the war-hungry Federalists) signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. Among other things, these repressive laws sent people to prison for criticizing government officials and policies. Many see Thomas Jefferson's electoral victory as a direct result of Republican efforts to smear Adams for violating civil liberties - and as much as I admire Adams, my favorite Revolutionary Era figure despite his right-wing leanings and support for a "natural aristocracy," he got what he deserved. Years later, to his credit, he admitted that the Acts had been a colossal mistake.

Thankfully, the Alien and Sedition Acts expired on the final day of Adams' term in 1801. This makes Laura Berg's story all the more curious.

The Progressive summarizes Berg's missive to the Alibi:

"I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government," it began. "The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes!" She mentioned that she was "a VA nurse" working with returning vets. "The public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder," she wrote, and she worried about the hundreds of thousands of additional cases that might result from Katrina and the Iraq War.

"Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence," she wrote. "This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. ... We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit. Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times."

When her employer grabbed her computer, Berg asked for an explanation. A response came from Mel Hooker, chief of the Albuquerque VA's human resources management service: "The Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition," he said. "In your letter ... you declared yourself 'as a VA nurse' and publicly declared the Government which employs you to have 'tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence' and advocated, 'act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit...'" (full story)

Headlines for February 16, 2006 (English - Español)
- Aristide Ally, Rene Preval, Wins Haitian Election
- UN Investigators Call on U.S. to Close Guantanamo
- Iraqis Outraged Over New Abu Ghraib Photos
- U.S. Government Criticizes Release of New Photographs
- U.S. Denies Entry To Iraqi Widows
- Cheney Takes Blame For Shooting, Defends Media Response

Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power

2006-02-15T22:46:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power
by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!)

Today marks the third anniversary of the February 15th global anti-war protest, the day tens of millions of people took to the streets in some 600 cities around the world to protest the Bush Administration’s plans to invade Iraq. Author Phyllis Bennis talks about how the anti-war movement has evolved into a major force for global change.

Hundreds of marches and rallies took place in up to 60 countries. In Rome, over two million people marched. London, Madrid and Barcelona each saw over a million people take to the streets. In New York City, half a million rallied. In San Francisco, a quarter of a million people marched. And hundreds of other protests were held across every continent in the world. Sites included Australia, Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Syria, Tokyo, Bangladesh, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Puerto Rico, Brazil, East Timor, India, and even the South Pole... (video - audio - transcript)

Headlines for February 15, 2006 (English - Español)
- 3 Killed in Pakistan As Muhammad Cartoon Protests Continue
- Hunting Partner Shot by Cheney Suffers Heart Attack
- Report: Cheney Withheld News of Whittington’s Heart Condition
- Haiti Announces Investigation After Burnt Ballots Discovered
- Over 1,000 Protest Video Showing UK Troops Beating Iraqi Youths
- Saddam Hussein Announces Hunger Strike Over Trial Judge
- Australian Network Airs New Photos of Abu Ghraib Abuse
- Gay Bar Attack Victim Files Complaint Over Medical Treatment
- Report: 325,000 Names on US Terror-Suspect List
- 5 “Raging Grannies” Arrested at Anti-War Protest Near DC

After the War

2006-02-15T04:55:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
After the War
by Howard Zinn (The Progressive)

The war against Iraq, the assault on its people, the occupation of its cities, will come to an end, sooner or later. The process has already begun. The first signs of mutiny are appearing in Congress. The first editorials calling for withdrawal from Iraq are beginning to appear in the press. The anti-war movement has been growing, slowly but persistently, all over the country.

...

When you look at the endless series of wars of this century you do not find a public demanding war, but rather resisting it, until citizens are bombarded with exhortations that appeal, not to a killer instinct, but to a desire to do good, to spread democracy or liberty or overthrow a tyrant.

Woodrow Wilson found a citizenry so reluctant to enter the First World War that he had to pummel the nation with propaganda and imprison dissenters in order to get the country to join the butchery going on in Europe.

In the Second World War, there was indeed a strong moral imperative, which still resonates among most people in this country and which maintains the reputation of World War II as “the good war.” There was a need to defeat the monstrosity of fascism. It was that belief that drove me to enlist in the Air Force and fly bombing missions over Europe.

Only after the war did I begin to question the purity of the moral crusade. Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard no screams, seen no children dismembered. But now I had to think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the deaths of 600,000 civilians in Japan, and a similar number in Germany.

I came to a conclusion about the psychology of myself and other warriors: Once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil, once we had made that simple and simplistic calculation, we did not have to think anymore. Then we could commit unspeakable crimes and it was all right... (full story)

Headlines for February 14, 2006 (English - Español)
- At Least 2 Reported Killed by UN Troops in Haiti
- Cheney Cited For Hunting Violation in Shooting Incident
- Report: US, Israel Consider Destabilizing Hamas Government
- Report: US Drawing Up Plans For Iran Attack
- Abramoff Associates Say He Bragged of Ties to Rove
- Decade-Old Measure To Give Energy Companies $7B Windfall
- GAO: Bush Admin. Spent Over $1.6B on PR

SOTD Signs Off

2005-12-21T13:22:00.000-05:00

SOTD is currently on an indefinite hiatus. This experiment grew out of the requests of friends and students for me to put together important information in one place so they didn't have to spend the same obscene amount of time that I do reading news every day (7 newspapers and 29 newsish websites in 3.5 languages on a regular basis-- the 0.5 being the cartoons I read in Arabic that I only half understand). It was successful to an extent, attracting about 100 visitors each day with more than 20 people who came regularly. Still, after about three months of playing around with the project I found myself spending my time quickly scanning many articles to find a good one to post up here instead of reading them closely and developing my own understanding and analysis. As a result I feel relatively uninformed on the news of the past few months in spite of spending a relatively greater amount of time looking at news. Presented with the option of continuing on this course or trying something different, I've decided to explore a new path and see where it takes me.

My plan as of right now is to kick off a project with exclusively original content in the new year that emphasizes my personal interests as an activist and historian. This seems like a good direction because of the extensive positive feedback I received in the few instances where I posted original content on this site, and it will also give me much greater flexibility in my personal life. Right now I expect this new project to focus on violence. My definition of violence is broadly conceived to include domestic violence, sexual violence, economic violence, terrorism, war, exploitation, capital punishment, police brutality, as well as nonviolent movements and the way violence is conceptualized. This is an outgrowth of my current research interest in the experiences and conceptions of violence in the American, French and Haitian Revolutions. As my own interests become more clear and change over time I assume the project will go through the same twists and turns, but the general commitment to questions of violence and nonviolence, war and peace, repression and resistance, hegemony and counterhegemony will remain. I look forward to sharing this with all of you soon.

Peace,
Isaac

Rumsfeld Spies on Quakers and Grannies

2005-12-17T13:47:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
Rumsfeld Spies on Quakers and Grannies
by Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive)

Not to trouble you or anything, but the next time you’re going to a protest, the eyes of the government may be upon you.

And I’m not just talking about local police filming your activity.

I’m not talking about the FBI under cover in your midst.

I’m talking about the Pentagon, too, getting into the act.

According to an MSNBC story on December 13, Rumsfeld’s Pentagon is tracking some of the most innocuous and lawful protests.

For instance, the Pentagon has a file on an anti-war group that was gathering at the Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida, to plan a counter-recruiting effort at local high schools.

That group of Quakers constitutes a “threat,” according to a 400-page Pentagon document that MSNBC got hold of... (full story)

Arnold Finally Gets His Bones

2005-12-13T19:08:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Arnold Finally Gets His Bones
by Stan Goff

Arnold Schwarznegger had never killed anyone, but he played plenty of people who killed. He has been in many respects the masculine epitome of the killer… the killing machine… the facist ideal of the agonal man, the warrior… all on the screen. He was an image, as he has always been an image, even to himself. He sees himself reversed, so long as he preened in front of mirrors. Arnold is an image, an icon, something that only stands for something that has never really been real. During his campaign for governor of California, all he had to do was duck questions and smile into cameras until his face fatigued — no different really than what he’s always done, work his ass off building an image then parading it around in front of an audience more comfortable with appearances than substance.

As another well-known conservative once said, “a hollow man, a stuffed man, heapiece filled with straw…”

But Arnold is not straw any more. Arnold has killed. It was as vicarious as his audience’s participation in his feigned killings of filmdom, except for one thing. This time, a man who was a man’s man once, albeit without Arnold’s white privilege and class privilege, and a man who recanted that violent masculinity… died. Stanley “Tookie” Williams was put to death by lethal injection last night by the State of California, under the signature of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So Arnold got his first kill. Arnold got his bones. But it wasn’t in ‘manly’ combat against a simplified nemisis like his cardboard characters on the big screen. It was done in the most cowardly and bureaucratic and banal way, with the victim taken carefully out of a cage, handled by nameless, faceless people, who strapped Tookie to a gurney and poured poison into his body through an 18-guage intravenous catheter.

The great Austrian ubermensch got his first kill thus, and he got himself a Black man, and it’s Arnold’s to own, because he alone had the power to stop this execution, knowing goddamn well that this man was no threat to society... (full story)

Headlines for December 13, 2005 (English - Español)
- California Executes Stanley Tookie Williams
- Protests Mark Start of WTO in Hong Kong
- Australia Prepares For Third Night of Racial Violence
- Bush: 30,000 Iraqis Dead So Far in War
- Bush Blames Arabic Media For The Deteriorating Image of U.S.
- Poll: More Than 2/3 of Iraqis Oppose U.S. Troops
- Supreme Court to Hear Texas Redistricting Case
- U.S. Activists Hold Vigil Outside Guantanmo

The Defenders of Torture

2005-12-12T11:25:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
The Defenders of Torture
by Paul Craig Roberts (Counter Punch)

The spectacle of an American Secretary of State being sent to Europe to reassure America's allies that the US does not torture prisoners has brought an end to America's moral grandeur. America stands revealed before the world as just another unaccountable police state.

Condi Rice's declaration that the Bush administration is too morally pure to engage in torture was just another transparent Bush administration deception. What is the point of Bush's rendition policy that Rice was sent to Europe to defend if the purpose is not torture? Why else do CIA agents kidnap foreign nationals in foreign countries and fly them to secret prisons in other foreign countries?

The Bush administration defends its policy of "extraordinary rendition." Everyone who has survived the policy has testified to experiencing brutal torture. Just read the account in the December 11 Sunday Observer (UK) of the Ethiopian student that the CIA kidnapped and tortured in Morocco.

The student, who speaks no Arabic, was brutally tortured for 18 months until he was forced to confess to conspiring with top al Qaeda chiefs and plotting with Padilla. While one American hand was forcing the tortured student to incriminate himself in the "Padilla plot," the other American hand was dropping plot charges against Padilla... (full story)

Headlines for December 12, 2005 (English - Español)
- Car Bombing Kills Anti-Syrian Politician in Beirut
- Stanley Tookie Williams Scheduled to be Executed Tonight
- Torture Reported in Second Iraqi-Run Prison
- Red Cross Criticizes U.S. For Hiding Prisoners
- China Accused of Covering Up Killing of 20 Protesters
- 10,000 Gather to Protest in Hong Kong Outside WTO
- Report: Israeli Army Prepares to Attack Iran in March
- 20,000 Soldiers Hospitalized After Anthrax Vaccine
- Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, Dies
- Comedian Richard Pryor, 65, Dies

Related Stories
'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate
Into Harm's Way
Weaselly Rice Tortures Facts
Abuse Cited In 2nd Jail Operated by Iraqi Ministry

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It took a lot for me to accept a piece by Paul Craig Roberts to stick on the SOTD. Roberts, for those who don't know, is an extreme conservative who frequently resorts to race-baiting and other shallow tactics in his writing and who comes down on the opposite side of me on almost every issue. I always wince when Counter Punch runs his columns, remembering such past gems as Reagan Changed the World and America Is for Aliens. Granted, he has gone from publishing such offensively reactionary tracts as The New Color Line to his recent Bush-bashing volume The Tyranny of Good Intentions, but I remain highly skeptical whenever I see his name in print over at CP (whose acronym is no accident). All of that being said, this piece is quite good, and it is reprinted here with the above reservations.

Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

2005-12-10T01:27:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (video)
by Marcus Rediker

In the early afternoon of July 12, 1726, William Fly ascended Boston's gallows to be hanged for piracy. His body was nimble in manner, like a sailor going aloft; his rope-roughened hands carried a nosegay of flowers; his weather-beaten face had "a Smiling Aspsect. He showed no guilt, no shame, and no contrition. Indeed, as attending minister Cotton Mather noted, he "look'd about him unconcerned." But once he stood on the gallows, he became concerned, although not in the way anyone might have expected. His demeanor quickened, and he immediatley took charge of the stage of death. He threw the hanging rope over the beam, made it fast, and carefully inspected the noose that would go around his neck. He soon turned to the hangman in disappointment and reproached him "for not understanding his Trade." But Fly, a sailor who knew the art of tying knots, took mercy on the novice. He offered to teach him how to tie a proper noose. Then Fly, "with his own Hands[,] rectified Matters, to render all things more Convenient and Effectual," retying the knot himself as the multitude who had gathered around the gallows looked on in astonishment. He informed the hangman and the crowd that "he was not afraid to die," that "he had wrong'd no Man." Mather explained that he was determeined to die "a brave fellow."

When the time came for last words on that awful occasion, Mather wanted Fly and his fellow pirates to act as preachers-- that is, he wanted them to provide examples and warnings to those who were assembled to watch the execution. They all complied. Samuel Cole, Henry Greenville, and George Condick, perhaps hoping for a last-minute pardon, stood penitently before the crowd and warned all to obey their parents and superiors and not to curse, drink, whore, or profane the Lord's day. These three pirates acknowledge the justice of the proceedings against them, and they thanked the ministers for their assistance. Fly, however, did not ask for forgiveness, did not praise the authorities, and did not affirm the values of Christianity, as he was supposed to do, but he did issue a warning. Addressing the port-city crowd thick with ship captains and sailors, he proclaimed his final, fondest wish: that "all Masters of Vessels might take Warning by the Fate of the Captain (meaning Captain Green) that he had murder'd, and to pay Sailors their Wages when due, and to treat them better; saying, that their Barbarity to them made so many turn Pyrates." Fly thus used his last breath to protest the conditions of work at sea, what he called "Bad Usage." He would be launched into eternity with the brash threat of mutiny on his lips... (full video)

A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu-Jamal

2005-12-09T03:02:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu-Jamal
by Dave Lindorff (Counter Punch)

In a startling new development, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has agreed to hear arguments on three claims by Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal that his 1982 trial and state appeal were tainted by constitutional violations.

Any one of those three claims, if upheld by the three-judge panel, could lead to a new trial for one of America's most famous and long-standing death row prisoners, a Philadelphia-based journalist and former Black Panther activist who was convicted of the 1981 shooting murder of a white Philadelphia police officer.

The decision came as a surprise because the appellate court was only required to consider an appeal from the defense on a single guilt-phase issue-the claim that the prosecution had illegally removed qualified jurors from the case on the basis of race. That claim, while rejected in 2001 by Federal District Court Judge William Yohn, had been certified by the judge for appeal to the Third Circuit. Appellate courts do not have to even accept arguments from defense attorneys on claims that have not been certified for appeal by a lower court, so the fact that the judges agreed to accept the other two claims is a major victory for the defense... (full story)

Headlines for December 9, 2005 (English - Español)
- Group Claims to Have Killed US Worker in Iraq
- Ex-Gitmo Detainee Calls for Peacemakers’ Release
- Al-Libi Fabricated Iraq Claims to Avoid Torture in Egypt
- US Military to Probe Video of Contractor Shootings
- Iranian President Says Israel Should Be Moved to Europe
- Schwarzenegger Holds Clemency Hearing for "Tookie" Williams
- NYU Bans Coca-Cola on Campus

Related Documents
Letter to Friends and Supporters
Order from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals

Story Tracker
Save Tookie Williams (original story)
Tookie: From Chaos to Consciousness

"You Can't Take Power Without a Struggle" (The Lost John Lennon Interview)

2005-12-08T11:08:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
"You Can't Take Power Without a Struggle" (The Lost John Lennon Interview)
by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn (Counter Punch)

Tariq Ali: Your latest record and your recent public statements, especially the interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, suggest that your views are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this start to happen?

John Lennon: I've always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere.

I mean, it's just a basic working class thing, though it begins to wear off when you get older, get a family and get swallowed up in the system.

In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended to overshadow it in my acid days; that would be around '65 or '66. And that religion was directly the result of all that superstar shit--religion was an outlet for my repression. I thought, 'Well, there's something else to life, isn't there? This isn't it, surely?'

But I was always political in a way, you know. In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around.

I was very conscious of class, they would say with a chip on my shoulder, because I knew what happened to me and I knew about the class repression coming down on us--it was a fucking fact but in the hurricane Beatle world it got left out, I got farther away from reality for a time... (full story)

Headlines for November 8, 2005 (English - Español)
- Captors Extend Deadline on Western Aid Workers
- Suicide Bombing Kills 30 in Iraq
- Air Marshalls Shoot and Kill Passenger in Miami
- Pinter Blasts US, UK in Nobel Acceptance Speech
- Mumia Abu-Jamal Wins Right to Appeal
- Explosion Kills Over 60 Workers in Chinese Mine
- Police Kill Eight in Egyptian Election Clashes
- Global Remembrances on 25th Anniversary of John Lennon Slaying

Related Stories
History Professor Jon Wiener Discusses Lennon's Politics, FBI Files and Why Richard Nixon Sought to Deport Him (audio - video - transcript)

Story Tracker
War Democrats (Original Stories 1 - 2 - 3 - 4)
Bird Dogging Hillary Clinton

The Fight to Save Stan Tookie Williams

2005-12-07T00:45:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
The Fight to Save Stan Tookie Williams
by Dave Zirin (Edge of Sports)

Jim Brown: NFL Hall of Famer, actor, activist. He has mediated truces between the toughest gangs in Los Angeles and fought racism from South Central to Soweto. But today he is involved in a different kind of fight: the race to save Stan Tookie Williams, who now awaits execution on California's death row. Williams is due to be executed December 13, and Brown has linked arms with a motley crew of activists from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg demanding that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spare his life. Schwarzenegger, who has set a clemency hearing for December 8, recently told reporters he is "dreading" the decision he is about to make.

It's not surprising Williams could inspire such a fierce defense. In 1971 he co-founded the infamous street gang the Crips. In 1981 he was convicted of the 1979 murdersof Albert Owens, Thsai-Shai Chen Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee Chen Lin during two separate robberies. Williams, who continues to maintain his innocence, was convicted in a fashion that would make Bull Connor proud. During a questionable trial, which unfolded against a backdrop of anti-gang hysteria, the prosecutor likened him to "a Bengal tiger" and his South Central home a jungle. He was found guilty by an all-white jury after all prospective black jurors were removed from the pool. In the sentencing phase of his trial, Williams appeared in shackles--a practice that the US Supreme Court has since ruled unconstitutional. Williams went global when Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx portrayed him in the made-for-TV movie Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story.

But the unexpected occurred on the way to death row. From the confines of his six-by-ten-foot cell, Williams decided to make a difference... (full story)

Save Tookie Williams

Headlines for December 7, 2005 (English - Español)
- Government Fails to Convict Palestinian Professor on Terror Charges
- German Citizen Files Rendition Lawsuit Against US
- Rice Secures New Military Base in Romania
- Tehran Plane Crash Kills Over 110 People
- US Security Consultant Kidnapped in Iraq
- Hundreds of Families Flee US Offensive in Ramadi

Delays Hurting U.S. Rebuilding in Afghanistan

2005-12-06T14:31:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Delays Hurting U.S. Rebuilding in Afghanistan
by David Rohde and Carlotta Gall (New York Times)
Cartoon by David Rees (Get Your War On)

Four years after American-led forces ousted the Taliban, the United States has spent $1.3 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan, intending to win over Afghans with tangible signs of progress. And indeed, there are some. But to Afghans, the Turmai clinic is emblematic of what they see as a wasteful, slow-moving effort that benefits foreigners far more than themselves. "The aid that comes from other countries for the Afghan people, it's not going to the Afghan people," said Mr. Ahmadiyar. "It's being wasted."

The stakes are enormous. Afghans, famed for briefly tolerating and then viciously turning on occupiers from the British in the 19th century to the Soviets in the 1980's, are increasingly disenchanted with the American-led reconstruction program.

Meanwhile, the United States hopes to withdraw 4,000 soldiers from the country's south next spring; a drop in overall foreign aid is expected; and Taliban attacks are rising. So both Afghan officials and foreign diplomats are assessing what has been achieved during the past four years, and many are disturbed by what they see... (full story)

Headlines for December 6, 2005 (English - Español)
- Rice Denies U.S. Engages In Torture
- U.S. Moves Detainees From Secret European Prison
- Report: U.S. Lied to Italy About Kidnapping of Islamic Cleric
- Female Suicide Bombers Kill 27 in Iraq
- 9/11 Commissioners Warn U.S. Is Unprepared For Attack
- Judge Upholds Money Laundering Charge Against Tom Delay
- Anti-War Democrats to Challenge Sen. Hillary Clinton's Re-Election Bid

What Did the Democrats Know and When Did They Know It?

2005-12-05T20:52:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
What Did the Democrats Know and When Did They Know It?
by John Walsh (Counter Punch)

The apology of John Edwards, former Senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate, for voting for the Iraq war in 2002, has been widely praised. But his apology is based on a lie, one that other Democrats are likely to embrace and one which will serve their ambitions but hide the truth. We should have no illusions about this, for to believe otherwise is to set ourselves up for the continuation of Bush's war by a Democrat.

Edwards declared in an op-ed column in the Washington Post on November 13, 2005: "The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war." Sounds simple enough. "Had I known then what I know now, etc." Poor John Edwards was deceived. But was he? How was it that 21 other Democratic Senators and 2 Republicans were not deceived and voted against the war?

Part of the answer arrived in another op-ed the Washington Post one week later, November 20, 2005, by another former Senator, Bob Graham, entitled: "What I knew Before the Invasion." Like Edwards, Graham was a member, in fact the chair, of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee in the period leading up to the war and on October 11, 2002 when the vote on the war on Iraq was taken. In a nutshell, Graham tells us that everyone on that committee knew that Bush was lying about weapons of mass destruction. Graham begins like a good, loyal Democrat, telling us that his colleagues were deceived, at least "most" of them. But he then tells us that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee knew better. Here are some of Graham's words:

"At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used Senatorial authority, I directed completion of an NIE."

"Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE".

"There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked."

"Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary." (Note by jw: Who do you suppose those "third countries" were that were fanning the flames of war?)

"The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs.' It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq."

"From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth."

"On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not."

John Edwards was a member of that Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and he voted for the war... (full story)

Headlines for December 5, 2005 (English - Español)
- Tens of Thousands in 30 Cities Protest Global Warming
- Kidnappers Threaten to Kill Four Peace Activists In Iraq
- 10 Marines Killed in Fallujah
- Saddam's Lawyers Walk Out Of Trial In Protest
- Report: CIA Drone Assassinates Al Qaeda Leader in Pakistan
- Court Nominee Samuel Alito Justified Police Killing of Teen
- Tens of Thousands Protest in Nepal Against Monarchy
- Connecticut Passes Sweeping Campaign Finance Law

Related News
An Antiwar Challenge to Hillary Clinton

Related News Archive
Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights (SOTD 11/02/2005)
Democrats and War (SOTD 11/10/2005)
Vegetarians Between Meals: This War Cannot Be Stopped By a Loyal Opposition* (SOTD 11/19/2005)
Calling Out the Clintons
Progressive Democrats of America
The Republicans Have Done a Heinous Thing
A Pathetic Congress
Uproar in House As Parties Clash on Iraq Pullout

* [editor's note: This story is particularly useful in understanding today's piece because it quotes Howard Dean discussing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and citing the Clinton administration as his source. As the author of the piece says: "Sounds like Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, was misled by....the Democrats. Dean's candor offers us a rare glimpse into the painful truth of the matter. As unpopular as this is to say, when President Bush accuses the Democrats of "rewriting history" on Iraq, he is right..."]

Why the U.S. Is in Iraq

2005-12-03T20:20:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
Why the U.S. Is in Iraq
by Eric Olson (Deep Blade Journal)

In the wake of US Representative John Murtha's quite reasonable call to stop the killing and maiming in Iraq on a rapid timetable, President Bush has begun a sweeping war propaganda campaign. The White House released a "Victory" strategy outline and the president began a series of rallying speeeches, the first of which was delivered from Annapolis last Wednesday.

Of course, the Bush strategy is laden with fantasy. I'll just refer to Murtha, the only elected establishment figure, respected by the US military itself, who has come out telling it like it really is in Iraq. Here is how Sy Hersh analyzed the truth of Murtha's position in an interview with Amy Goodman on Tuesday's Democracy Now!:

And so, for Murtha to suddenly say it's over, as he did three weeks ago or two weeks ago, as I wrote in this article, it drove the White House crazy. They were beyond mad, as somebody said to me, because they know that the generals are talking to him. So here you have a case where we don't have -- you know, the generals are terrified pretty much, as they always are. That's just the nature of the game. But they don't speak truth to power. They're not telling the American people exactly what's going on, and they're clearly not telling the White House, because the White House doesn't want to hear.

So Murtha's message is a message, really, from a -- you can consider it a message from a lot of generals on active duty today. This is what they think, at least a significant percentage of them, I assure you. This is, I'm not over-dramatizing this. It's a shot across the bow. They don't think it's doable. You can't tell that to this President. He doesn't want to hear it. But you can say it to Murtha, you can say it to Inouye, you can say it to Stevens.

Despite this deep pessimism evidently emanating from the US military itself, President Bush has set forth his "victory" agenda in such a way that the US would never leave Iraq. The way President Bush defines "victory" -- "defeating the multi-headed enemy in Iraq -- and ensuring that it cannot threaten Iraq's democratic gains once we leave" -- in fact ensures permanent US troop presence because the "democratic gains" are all defined in terms of US advantage. Gains for the US in Iraq hardly represent the true will of the Iraqi people, so the fight against the "multi-headed enemy" is really a fight against most of the Iraqi population. It is clear that the bulk of the Iraqi population never will accept US control of their economy and resources -- making the need for direct US enforcement of its "gains" permanent... (full story)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update (1:21 AM Dec 4)

As I mentioned in a comment over at Eric's website, Bush's reference to the "multi-headed enemy" warrants some serious extended attention. I'll try to write something of substance about this on Sunday afternoon. The historical use of this type of language-- what I've taken to calling "the demonology of capitalism" after a few discussions with my advisor Marcus Rediker-- is on the short list of dissertation topics for me right now. Anyway, more to come...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Update (10:29 PM Dec 4)

Unfortunately I don't have as much time to spend on this as I would have liked. As it is I'm barely staying on top of updates in addition to my coursework and other obligations. I do however want to take a moment to underscore the significance of the Hydra reference clearly invoked by Bush in this speech. The Lernaean Hydra is one of many icons that has continually reappeared in the elite vocabulary whenever the ruling class confronts a threat to hegemony. This elite anti-proletarian lexicon draws heavily upon ancient mythology and the history of class struggle, where icons of antiauthoritarian insurrection real and surreal are fused together into a demonology comprising all foes of the established order.

The historical origins of the Hydra reference are specific to imperialism. Hercules is the hero of the strong-- the nearly (he was a demi-god, even the international capitalist class doesn't conceive of itself as truly invincible) omnipotent individual white male. Whatever else he was, in his quest to kill the hydra Hercules was the errand boy of empire. The Hydra, along with the other six beasts he either killed or captured, was not a threat to Hercules but rather a threat to the Crown. Hercules was sent to kill it on orders from his cousin, King Eurystheus, as part of his penance for butchering his family in a hypnotic rage induced by his father's mother.

Himself the victim of intraelite bickering, Hercules nevertheless followed orders no matter how capricious and eventually was deified as a result of his actions. As such Hercules was constructed as a model for the imperial soldier, and the metaphor holds in more or less the same basic form today. Bush certainly would never suggest that he himself would battle this "multi-headed enemy" in Fallujah or any of the other Lernas of our time. In the fairy tales of antiquity's imperialists, Hercules is redeemed for his efforts in support of the ruling class. Our ability to move beyond this outdated world order hinges in part on understanding the history of this elite vocabulary and its historical context.

An Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad

2005-12-02T22:48:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
An Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad
by Stan Goff (Feral Scholar)

If there is one thing we can always count on, it’s politicians who walk over human corpses to show fear only in the face of something as formless and abstract as an opinion poll. The veterans and military families antiwar movement are well-versed on so-called realism – and that deference we are supposed to exercise when we approach elected officials, hat in hand, for a few crumbs of your attention and support.

We understand power very well.

You are fighting each other for your careers, and you are retaining your power over us through distance and guile, and trying to promote that power by pretending you are hearing our “concerns.” But we have more than “concerns” at stake here.

It is because we understand power that we haven’t the slightest intention of allowing ourselves to be used to promote your careers past the 2006 elections. If you fail to demand US withdrawal now, you are supporting the war; and if you support the war, as far as we are concerned, you can go straight to hell in 2006... (full story)

Headlines for December 2, 2005 (English - Español)
- 1,000th Capital Punishment Death Reached in North Carolina
- Justice Dept.: Delay Redistricting Plan Violated Voting Act
- Families Plead for Release of CPT Hostages
- Insurgents Attack Military Base in Ramadi
- Senate Committee to Hold Session on Newspaper Propaganda
- South African Court Approves Gay Marriage
- Events Mark 50th Anniversary of Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Lesbian Caricature

2005-12-01T16:27:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
The Lesbian Caricature
from Biting Beaver

The degradation inherent in so-called "lesbian porn" is oftentimes not obvious to the men watching it. But, when viewed through a radical feminist lens it becomes painfully clear.

Before I start I'd like to clarify that yes, I've seen lesbian porn. I've seen more lesbian porn than I can remember. The images are burned into my brain forever and for Dim, when he was watching porn, it was one of his favorites. We're going to talk a little bit about the dangers and problems in "lesbian porn," this post is a dual effort from both me and Dim.

Lesbian. What a word huh? For a typical man who watches porn it generally includes white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed nymphs. Large-breasted, soft-eyed creatures who playfully romp around, kissing, fondling, then retiring to the bedroom to pull out penetrative toys.

Then there are dykes. Generally non-porn-looking feminist women who are short, fat, hate men, and carry around small knives in case one gets too close. Unshaven, unfeminine, evil incarnate bitches who only want to have sex with other women.

Wait a minute. Don't lesbians only want to have sex with other women too? Why then is "lesbian porn" so hugely popular with men while "dyke" is such a gigantic insult?

The answer is that lesbian porn has nothing at all to do with women and everything to do with men... (full story)

Headlines for December 1, 2005 (English - Español)
- Bush Launches "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq"
- Pelosi Backs Murtha Call for Withdrawal
- CA Supreme Court Rejects Bid to Reopen Tookie Williams Case
- Alito Sought to Undo Roe v. Wade
- Peres Leaves Labour Party to Back Sharon
- Ethiopian Opposition Leaders Launch Hunger Strike
- Dec. 1st Marks 25th Anniversary of World AIDS Day

Understanding the Paris Riots, Part 3 of 3: France After the Riots

2005-11-25T18:51:00.000-05:00

[Editor's Note: SOTD has not been updated this week due in part to the academic break and in part to a particularly busy work schedule. Expect routine daily updates beginning this weekend. Apologies to all, particularly the dozen or so people who come by regularly and expect frequent updates.]

Story of the Day
Understanding the Paris Riots, Part 3 of 3: France After the Riots
by Doug Ireland (Direland)

This past week, the conservative Paris daily Le Figaro ran an opinion piece that was a rather surprisingly acute diagnosis of what caused France's violent rebellion of ghetto youth:

"The urban guerrilla confrontation...is just one more piece of evidence of the total disconnection between French society as it has evolved and the political classes that have never changed. The French State (that is, those who run it) for thirty years has displayed a remarkable autism that equally affects all political parties -- all of which recruit in the same backwater defined by the elite national graduate schools of public administration whose task is to form each new generation of French bureaucrats....The State has no clothes-- but doesn't know it. Hidden away in their 18th century palaces, this unrepresentative political class, more than ever pre-occupied with its internal quarrels, has as its principle objective its own survival. The autism of the State appears incurable. Meanwhile, France -- the real France -- is burning...

"Can one imagine, then, that this political class will admit it has badly mismanaged the State for three decades? That it will recognize the inanity of its archaic republican discourse [against ethnic 'communitarianism'] even though those real communities exist? That it will admit that 'affirmative action' American-style should have been tried long ago, because discrimination is real? In the real world the State is totally inept: two years ago it let 30,000 old people die of dehydration in barracks for retired seniors utterly devoid of air conditioning...This political autism is the true cause of the arson that has touched 274 French cities and towns. Instead of pointing the finger at a handful of incendiary adolescents, we should ask why the State didn't see them coming. Who created the lawless zones where the fires started: the adolescents? or the autistic State?"

The Chirac-Villepin government's response to the root causes of the rebellion was pitiful -- and reflected Guy Sorman's diagnosis that, as he put it, the French political classes "believe that nothing should change because France is perfect as she is and perfect as she was." The centerpiece of the paltry social measures announced with great fanfare by Prime Minister Villepin was lowering the legal age for apprenticeships in manual technical trades -- to only 14 (multiple police reports at the height of the violence suggested the average age of arrested rioters was 16). This age-lowering Jules_ferry twist shredded a century and a half of formal French educational policy, which has always been to maximize the educational experience of children; and it now gives an official imprimatur to permitting kids to end their schooling just when it becomes most crucial. (Left, the 19th century politician Jules Ferry, architect of the modern French "republican" educational system.)

No new measures to improve or desegregate the rotting, impossibly overcrowded ghetto schools were announced by Villepin -- and the government did not explain where it would find employers willing to take on inexperienced, delinquent, non-scholastic, barely post-pubescent kids and train them in plumbing, electrical work, baking, or other not uncomplicated trades. Aside from restoring some of the devastating cuts in subsidies for the locally-run neighborhood associations in the ghettos that work with youth -- budget-slashing which had contributed mightily to causing the rebellion -- Villepin had nothing more than rhetoric and repression to propose. Nor did the government choose to restore the "emploi-jeunes" program of temporary minimum-wage youth jobs, an inadequate invention of the previous Socialist government which Chirac and the conservatives had completely abolished.

And what of France's principal opposition party in the wake of the riots? It's not a pretty picture...(full story)

Understanding the Paris Riots
Part 1 of 3: Why Is France Burning?
Part 2 of 3: Behind the Headlines
Part 3 of 3: France After the Riots

Related News
In France, Artists Have Sounded the Warning Bells for Years

A Day To Give Thanks?

2005-11-24T09:55:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Thanksgiving Day Special Edition - From the Archives
A Day To Give Thanks?*
by Ward Churchill (The Progressive, November 2000)

* Normally this would be a link to the full story and only the introduction would be run here. Since this story is no longer available online, it is included in its entirety below.

Thanksgiving is the day the United States celebrates the fact that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony successfully avoided starvation during the winter of 1620-21.

But from an American Indian perspective, what is it we're supposed to be so thankful for?

Does anyone really expect us to give thanks for the fact that soon after the Pilgrim Fathers regained their strength, they set out to dispossess and exterminate the very Indians who had fed them that first winter?

Are we to express our gratitude for the colonists' 1637 massacre of the Pequots at Mystic, Conn., or their rhetoric justifying the butchery by comparing Indians to "rats and mice and swarms of lice"?

Or should we be joyous about the endless series of similar slaughters that followed: at St. Francis (1759), Horseshoe Bend (1814), Bad Axe (1833), Blue Water (1854), Sand Creek (1864), Marias River (1870), Camp Robinson (1878) and Wounded Knee (1890), to name only the worst?

Should we be thankful for the scalp bounties paid by every English colony -- as well as every U.S. state and territory in the lower 48 -- for proof of the deaths of individual Indians, including women and children?

How might we best show our appreciation of the order issued by Lord Jeffrey Amherst in 1763, requiring smallpox-infested items be given as gifts to the Ottawas so that "we might extirpate this execrable race"?

Is it reasonable to assume that we might be jubilant that our overall population, numbering perhaps 15 million at the outset of the European invasion, was reduced to less than a quarter-million by 1890?

Maybe we should be glad the "peaceful settlers" didn't kill the rest of us outright. But they didn't really need to, did they? By 1900, they already had 98 percent of our land. The remaining Indians were simply dumped in the mostly arid and unwanted locales, where it was confidently predicted that we'd shortly die off altogether, out of sight and mind of the settler society.

We haven't died off yet, but we comprise far and away the most impoverished, malnourished and disease-ridden population on the continent today. Life expectancy on many reservations is about 50 years; that of Euroamericans more than 75.

We've also endured a pattern of cultural genocide during the 20th century. Our children were processed for generations through government boarding schools designed to "kill the Indian" in every child's consciousness and to replace Native traditions with a "more enlightened" Euroamerican set of values and understandings.

Should we feel grateful for the disastrous self-concept thereby fostered within our kids?

Are we to be thankful that their self-esteem is still degraded every day on cable television by a constant bombardment of recycled Hollywood Westerns and television segments presenting Indians as absurd and utterly dehumanized caricatures?

Should we tell our children to find pride in the sorts of insults to which we are subjected to as a matter of course: Tumbleweeds cartoons, for instance, or the presence of Chief Wahoo and the Redskins in professional sports?

Does anybody really believe we should feel honored by such things, or by place names like Squaw Valley and Squaw Peak? "Squaw," after all, is the Onondaga word for female genitalia. The derogatory effect on Native women should be quite clear.

About three-quarters of all adult Indians suffer alcoholism and/or other forms of substance abuse. This is not a "genetic condition." It is a desperate, collective attempt to escape our horrible reality since "America's Triumph."

It's no mystery why Indians don't observe Thanksgiving. The real question is why do you feast rather than fast on what should be a national day of mourning and atonement.

Before digging into your turkey and dressing on Nov. 24, you might wish to glance in a mirror and see if you can come up with an answer.

Ward Churchill is professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. He's the author of A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (City Lights Books, 1998) and Struggle For the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Common Courage Press, 1992).

Understanding the Paris Riots, Part 2 of 3: Behind the Headlines

2005-11-23T13:09:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Understanding the Paris Riots, Part 2 of 3: Behind the Headlines
by Kersplebedeb (Sketchy Thoughts)

The Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), a small group with fairly good politics, has stated that the riots represent "the beginning of the long march to revolution."

This is great news if true, and one does not want to piss on anyone's parade - especially given the recent spectacle of the entire left being caught completely off guard - but this "first step to revolution" seems unlikely, except perhaps in a symbolic sense. (In which case any major offensive of the part of the oppressed can be described as such a "first step.")

At the same time the CP(MLM) claim that the State of Emergency represents a decisive "step towards fascism." Again, certainly an exaggeration - fascism is more than martial law, and the State of Emergency is definitely less than that - but taken together, these predictions mean that they see the riots as polarizing the country.

In this I believe they are definitely correct.

If the right is capitalizing on this situation, it can be assumed that on the radical left the riots will lead some people to deepen their commitment and the level of their struggle. So a degree of polarization is likely, and this could be a good thing, though barring some new surprise it could also be a very bad thing.

Seeing as the left was taken completely by surprise, and has only the most unsatisfactory of relationships to the young people who set off this rebellion, there is some hesitation in maintaining my characteristic pessimism. One cannot deny the possibility of being caught off guard again - though one should also remember that not all surprises are good ones.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the decisive factor will certainly not be found in either the ranks of the left nor on the side of the State, but rather amongst the people who participated in the riots, and those who like them live and struggle in the suburbs... (full story)

Headlines for November 23, 2005 (English - Español)
- Justice Dept. Files Charges Against Jose Padilla
- Federal Jury Convicts Abu Ali on Terror Charges
- British Newspapers Threatened in Al Jazeerah Memo Case
- US Resumes Ties with Indonesian Military
- Thousands Flee as Congo Fighting Leaves over 50 Rebels Dead
- Suicide Bomber Kills 21 in Iraq
- CIA Told Bush of No Iraq-Al Qaeda Links Ten Days After 9/11

Understanding the Paris Riots
Part 1 of 3: Why Is France Burning?
Part 2 of 3: Behind the Headlines
Part 3 of 3: France After the Riots

Understanding the Paris Riots, Part 1 of 3: Why Is France Burning?

2005-11-22T14:11:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Understanding the Paris Riots, Part 1 of 3: Why Is France Burning?
by Doug Ireland (Direland)

Saturday night [editor's note: 11/05/2005] was the 10th day of the spreading youth riots that have much of France in flames -- and it was the worst night ever since the first riot erupted in a suburban Paris ghetto of low-income housing, with 1295 vehicles -- from private cars to public buses -- burned last night, a huge jump from the 897 set afire the previous evening. And, for the first time, the violence born in the suburban ghettos last night invaded the center of Paris -- some 40 vehicles were set alight in Le Marais (the pricey home to the most famous gay ghetto in Paris), around the Place de la Republique nearby, and in the bourgeois 17th arrondissement, within walking distance from the dilapidated ghetto of the Goutte d'Or in the 18th arrondissement.

As someone who lived in France for nearly a decade, and who has visited those suburban ghettos, where the violence started, on reporting trips any number of times, I have not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes -- of both right and left -- to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.

To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state... (full story)

Headlines for November 22, 2005 (English - Español)
- Pentagon Docs: White Phosphorous Is A Chemical Weapon
- Iraqi Leaders Call for Troop Withdrawal Timetable
- Report: Bush Wanted to Bomb Al Jazeera Last Year
- General Motors To Eliminate 30,000 Jobs
- 40 Million Now Infected With HIV; 500,000 Die A Year
- 24 Ethiopian Opposition Leaders Remain In Jail
- Venezuela to Offer Discounted Oil to Mass. Residents
- Council of Europe Investigates CIA Use of Airports
- Texan Man Executed in 1993 Was Likely Innocent

Understanding the Paris Riots
Part 1 of 3: Why Is France Burning?
Part 2 of 3: Behind the Headlines
Part 3 of 3: France After the Riots

Story Tracker
War Democrats (original stories 1 - 2 - 3)
Democratic Hawks: The Avian Flu of the Antiwar Movement
What Do Democrats Stand For?
Bill Clinton's Hypocrisies on Iraq

Cheney Is a Chickenhawk and an Embarrassment

2005-11-21T12:38:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Cheney Is a Chickenhawk and an Embarrassment
by Eric Olson (Deep Blade Journal)

The Daily Show last Thursday provided an utterly devastating satire of Cheney. Trust me, you've never seen anything like it on TV, the hardest punch I've seen Stewart land in the three years I've been a regular watcher.

Though he backed off a bit during today's American Enterprise Institute speech, Vice President Cheney has been on a tear recently against critics of administration policy of endless war. Here was last week's flavor:

Vice President Cheney (Nov. 16): ...the suggestion that’s been made by some U.S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city....We’re going to continue throwing their own words back at them....

American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures –- conducting raids, training Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers –- and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie....

The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone -– but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history...

Then today:

Vice President Cheney (Nov. 21): Recently my friend and former colleague Jack Murtha called for a complete withdrawal of American forces now serving in Iraq, with a drawdown to begin at once. I disagree with Jack and believe his proposal would not serve the best interests of this nation. But he's a good man, a Marine, a patriot -- and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion.

Nor is there any problem with debating whether the United States and our allies should have liberated Iraq in the first place. Here, as well, the differing views are very passionately and forcefully stated. But nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion, or that you cannot reexamine a decision made by the President and the Congress some years ago. To the contrary, I believe it is critical that we continue to remind ourselves why this nation took action, and why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, and why we have a duty to persevere.

What is not legitimate -- and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible -- is the suggestion by some U. S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence.

Cheney is a jackass. And he is a chickenhawk. He does not get anywhere near the truth that the struggle for American pacification of an unwilling Iraq is devastating along with the Iraqi civilian population, towns, cities, and countryside, the US military itself. He suggests in a backhanded way that critics of the war, and of Bush and Cheney themselves, have an "insidious" effect on the war effort. No. It is the policy of fighting an illegal and unethical war that has such an effect on the Iraqi and the American people alike... (full story)

Headlines for November 21, 2005 (English - Español)
- 120 Die in Series of Bombings in Iraq
- U.S. Forces Kill Five Members of Iraqi Family
- Rep. Murtha Repeats Call For Troop Withdrawal
- U.S. Ignored Warnings About Iraqi Informant Curveball
- Israeli PM Ariel Sharon Quits Likud Party
- 19,000 Protest At School of the Americas
- 1,000 Call for Halt to Tookie Williams Execution

Vegetarians Between Meals: This War Cannot Be Stopped By a Loyal Opposition

2005-11-19T13:22:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
Vegetarians Between Meals: This War Cannot Be Stopped By a Loyal Opposition
by Jeremy Scahill (Common Dreams)

The refrain of the Democrats about being misled into supporting the invasion of Iraq has become really tired. And someone other than the White House smearmongers needs to say it: The Democrats cannot be allowed to use faulty intelligence as a crutch to hold up their unforgivable support for the Iraq invasion. What is DNC Chair Howard Dean's excuse? He wasn't in Congress and didn't have any access to Senate intelligence. Still, on March 9, 2003, just days before the invasion began, Dean told Tim Russert, on NBC's Meet The Press, "I don't want Saddam staying in power with control over those weapons of mass destruction. I want him to be disarmed."

During the New Hampshire primary in January 2004, which I covered for Democracy Now!, I confronted Dean about that statement. I asked him on what intelligence he based that allegation. "Talks with people who were knowledgeable," Dean told me. "Including a series of folks that work in the Clinton administration."

A series of folks that work in the Clinton administration.

How does that jibe with the official Democratic line that they were misled by the Bush administration? Sounds like Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, was misled by....the Democrats. Dean's candor offers us a rare glimpse into the painful truth of the matter. As unpopular as this is to say, when President Bush accuses the Democrats of "rewriting history" on Iraq, he is right... (full story)

Related News
The Republicans Have Done a Heinous Thing
A Pathetic Congress
Uproar in House As Parties Clash on Iraq Pullout*

Related News Archive
Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights (SOTD 11/02/2005)
Democrats and War (SOTD 11/10/2005)
Calling Out the Clintons
Progressive Democrats of America

*[editor's note 11/05/2005: this link has been updated to connect to a site that doesn't require membership]

Muslim-American Running Back off the Team at New Mexico State

2005-11-18T14:30:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Muslim-American Running Back off the Team at New Mexico State
by Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive)

This was supposed to be Muammar Ali’s year at New Mexico State. “Muammar Ali, who led the team with 561 yards rushing, will get even more opportunities,” predicted SI.com in its NCAA football preview.

But he has no opportunities now. He’s off the team.

On October 9, he “received a message on his phone answering machine at his home that his jersey was being pulled and that he was released,” says a letter from his attorney, George Bach, of the ACLU of New Mexico, to the university.

That letter, dated October 25, alleges that Head Coach Hal Mumme engaged in religious discrimination.

“Coach Mumme questioned Mr. Ali repeatedly about Islam and specifically, its ties to Al-Qaeda,” the letter states. This made Mr. Ali uncomfortable, it says.

And then, after the team’s first game, “despite being the star tailback for several years, Mr. Ali was relegated to fifth string and not even permitted to travel with the team,” the letter says.

There were only two other Muslim players on the team, and they were also released, it says. The letter adds that the coach “regularly has players recite the Lord’s Prayer after each practice and before each game.”

Ali’s father, Mustafa Ali, says the trouble started at a practice over the summer when the coach told the players to pray... (full story)

Headlines for November 18, 2005 (English - Español)
- Hawkish Democrat Calls For Immediate Troop Withdrawal
- Congressional Democrat Leaders Keep Distance to Troop Pullout
- Iraq Bombings Kill at Least 60
- U.S. and Iraq To Probe Detention Facilities
- Socialist PM Wins Sri Lankan Elections
- Report: CIA Runs Joint Intelligence Centers in Several Countries
- Congress Approves Budget, Tax Measures
- Thousands Rally at APEC Summit in South Korea

Guardian Apologizes to Chomsky

2005-11-17T10:57:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Guardian Apologizes to Chomsky
by Counter Punch News Service (Counter Punch)

The following unusually detailed and categorical apology to Noam Chomsky appears in The Guardian for November 17. The Guardian's "readers' editor", Ian Mayes, issues this virtually unprecedented climb-down--in effect a savage rebuke to its reporter Emma Brockes--after complaints by Chomsky himself and others, and by detailed exposes, first by Alexander Cockburn and then by Diana Johnstone on this site.

The headline and text of The Guardian's retractions follow.

Corrections and clarifications

The Guardian and Noam Chomsky

Thursday November 17, 2005
The Guardian

The readers' editor has considered a number of complaints from Noam Chomsky concerning an interview with him by Emma Brockes published in G2, the second section of the Guardian, on October 31. He has found in favour of Professor Chomsky on three significant complaints.

Principal among these was a statement by Ms Brockes that in referring to atrocities committed at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war he had placed the word "massacre" in quotation marks. This suggested, particularly when taken with other comments by Ms Brockes, that Prof Chomsky considered the word inappropriate or that he had denied that there had been a massacre. Prof Chomsky has been obliged to point out that he has never said or believed any such thing. The Guardian has no evidence whatsoever to the contrary and retracts the statement with an unreserved apology to Prof Chomsky... (full story)

Background
The Greatest Intellectual? (Google cache of retracted article)
Chomsky Answers Guardian
The Origins of the Guardian's Attack on Chomsky

Headlines for November 17, 2005 (English - Español)
- Bush, Cheney Blast War Critics
- Agreement Reached on Bill to Renew Patriot Act
- CIA Flights Spark Concern in Europe, North Africa
- Report: US Facing Intense Fighting in Afghanistan
- US Contractor Charged For Iraq Graft
- Haiti Postpones Elections for Third Time
- New Documents Released on Nixon Bombing of Cambodia

Why Bill O'Reilly Hates San Francisco

2005-11-16T17:40:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Why Bill O'Reilly Hates San Francisco
by Todd Chretien (Counter Punch)

Last week, Fox News' "No Spin Zone" host Bill O'Reilly went on air to say,

"Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." (mp3)

Yesterday I appeared on O'Reilly's show. Predictably, he tried to pass off his comments as "satire." I told him that the people of San Francisco don't think the war in Iraq is a laughing matter, and that's why they voted by 60% to oppose military recruiters in our public schools. San Franciscans want our troops home now and don't want to replace them with more of our young people to kill and be killed in Iraq. Curiously, O'Reilly insisted military recruiters had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. When I asked him where he thought the young people who joined the military went, he started to bluster.

O'Reilly is nervous because calling on Al Qaeda to blow up a monument to fire fighters (Coit Tower) is over the top. No doubt, if a professor at any campus in the country said something like this, O'Reilly would be calling for his or her job.

But O'Reilly has been exposed as a hypocrite before. What's got him frightened this time is that polls show that the majority of people in the country do not agree with him when it comes to Iraq. Instead, most of the country agrees with the people of San Francisco. Even Senator Bill Frist is now calling on President Bush to report to Congress on his plans for getting out of Iraq someday, at least. O'Reilly is in a shrinking minority. And bullies are always uncomfortable when the odds turn against them... (full story)

Headlines for Noveber 16, 2005 (English - Español)
- Pentagon Admits White Phosphorus Use in Iraq
- Hundreds of Tortured Iraqis Discovered in Government Compound
- Republicans Defeat Measure For Withdrawal Timetable
- Gito Lawyers Reject Senate "Compromise" on Habeas Corpus
- Israeli Captain Acquitted for Killing of Palestinian Schoolgirl
- 150,000 Katrina Evacuees To Lose Hotel Subsidies
- Report: Oil Reps Met With Cheney Task Force

In Memorium: Vine Deloria Jr.

2005-11-15T11:57:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
In Memorium: Vine Deloria Jr.
an Editorial (Indian Country Today)

Burn tobacco today for the wonderful spirit of Vine Deloria Jr., who passed into the world of the ancestors Nov. 13. Our sincerest condolences and warmest embrace reach out to his family and dear friends, and a great commiseration is extended to all of Indian country, where Deloria - author, teacher, lawyer, man - is universally respected and where his memory will live on for the generations.

Deloria, the world-renown Hunkpapa author and scholar from the Standing Rock Reservation, made a huge contribution to the Native peoples of North America and the world. His intellectual output, at once free-ranging with creativity and yet tight with academic rigor, pinned down the legal and historical bases desperately needed by the national Indian discourse. He provided a great piece of the intellectual locomotion upon which a moving platform of American Indian/Native studies research, publishing, production and teaching has been constituted.

His writing is legendary, launched by the classic Custer Died For Your Sins, which plugged directly into the common imagination of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. Along with We Talk, You Listen and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties, these early Deloria works informed, during those crucial years, the widest cross-section of activists, students and older community leaders and traditional authorities. For a movement that had disparate and very independent bases in Indian country, where political persuasions ran the full spectrum of left to right and front to back, Deloria's deliberate, well-reasoned tone, backed by acerbic wit and genuine self-effacement, hit the formative chord... (full story)

Headlines for November 15, 2005 (English - Español)
- Alito: "The Constitution Does Not Protect A Right To An Abortion"
- Senators Reach Compromise on Guantanamo Detainees
- FDA Rejected Sale of Morning After Pill Prior to Scientific Review
- Report: CIA Used Spanish Airports for Secret Flights
- Palestinians Given Control Over Gaza Border w/ Egypt
- Chalabi Meets With Cheney and Rumsfeld in DC
- U.S. & Brazilian Governments Sued Over Killings in Haiti
- Leading Native American Writer, Vine Deloria Jr., 72, Dies

Movie Review: A History of Violence

2005-11-14T10:04:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Movie Review: A History of Violence
by Yoshie Furuhashi (MR Zine)

David Cronenberg's latest, A History of Violence, is a fine reworking of the Western and film noir in his "realist" turn. In a feminist twist of film noir, in this film it is a man, not a woman, who has a past. The past that the man (well played by Viggo Mortensen) thought he left behind in the East catches up with him in the West, after he becomes a "local hero" by killing two murderous robbers who threatened his life as well as his customers' and employees' in a diner he runs.

The past in question is a history of violence, his service as a violent foot soldier for a gangster capitalist (who happens to be his brother). To defend his family and home in a small town in Indiana from the long arms of the gangster capitalist, he ends up resurrecting an extremely efficient killing machine that he once was and finds himself at odds with his wife and teenage son, who feel betrayed by his secrecy (he had hidden his past from them by assuming a new name) and appalled by the newly resurrected violent masculinity in him (which begins to bleed into his sex with his wife), though they love one another. The man overcomes the gangster capitalist's underlings in the West (and in the process makes his son an accomplice in violence) and the capitalist himself in the East. Then, he comes back home... (full story)

Headlines for November 14, 2005 (English - Español)
- Democrats Move to Restore Habeas Corpus To Detainees
- Iraqi Woman Confesses on Jordanian TV to Bombing
- Bush: "Irresponsible" to Rewrite History About Iraq War
- Bush's Approval Rating Sinks to 36 Percent
- White House Tries To Alter Transcript of Press Briefings
- Report: CIA Interrogators Covered Up Death of Detainee
- Italy Seeks Extradition of 22 CIA Operatives
- Middle East Envoy Warns Gaza Turning Into "Giant Prison"
- Thousands of Students Say No To Recruiters in Boston

A People's War?

2005-11-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Veterans Day Weekend Special Edition - From the Archives
A People's War?
by Howard Zinn (Digital Text International)

"We the governments of Great Britain and the United States, in the name of India, Burma, Malaya, Australia, British East Africa, British Guiana, Hongkong, Siam, Singapore, Egypt, Palestine, Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, and the Virgin Islands, hereby declare most emphatically, that this is not an imperialist war." Thus went a skit put on in the United States in the year 1939 by the Communist party.

Two years later, Germany invaded Soviet Russia, and the American Communist party, which had repeatedly described the war between the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers as an imperialist war, now called it a "people's war" against Fascism. Indeed almost all Americans were now in agreement -- capitalists, Communists, Democrats, Republicans, poor, rich, and middle class -- that this was indeed a people's war.

Was it?

By certain evidence, it was the most popular war the United States had ever fought. Never had a greater proportion of the country participated in a war: 18 million served in the armed forces, 10 million overseas; 25 million workers gave of their pay envelope regularly for war bonds. But could this be considered a manufactured support, since all the power of the nation -- not only of the government, but the press, the church, and even the chief radical organizations -- was behind the calls for all-out war? Was there an undercurrent of reluctance; were there unpublicized signs of resistance?

It was a war against an enemy of unspeakable evil. Hitler's Germany was extending totalitarianism, racism, militarism, and overt aggressive warfare beyond what an already cynical world had experienced. And yet, did the governments conducting this war -- England, the United States, the Soviet Union -- represent something significantly different, so that victory would be a blow to imperialism, racism, totalitarianism, militarism, in the world?

Would the behavior of the United States during the war -- in military action abroad, in treatment of minorities at home -- be in keeping with a "people's war"? Would the country's wartime policies respect the rights of ordinary people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And would postwar America, in its policies at home and overseas, exemplify the values for which the war was supposed to have been fought?

These questions deserve thought. At the time of World War II, the atmosphere was too dense with war fervor to permit them to be aired... (full story)

Headlines for November 11, 2005 (English - Español)
- Senate Votes To Remove Prisoners’ Right to Challenge Detentions
- Johnson-Sirleaf Claims Victory in Liberia Elections
- Thousands Rally in Amman to Protest Hotel Bombings
- Union Leader Upsets Peres to Win Labour Party Leadership
- Palestinians Mark One-Year Anniversary of Death of Yassir Arafat
- Senate Orders Rumsfeld to Disclose Secret Prisons
- Events Held For 10-Year Anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa Slaying

Story Tracker
War Democrats (original stories 1 - 2)
Calling Out the Clintons
Progressive Democrats of America

Rosa Parks (original story)
Lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Democrats and the War

2005-11-10T16:23:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Democrats and the War
an Editorial (The Nation)

Everything that needs to be known is now known: The reasons the Bush Administration gave for the American war in Iraq were all falsehoods or deceptions, and every day the US occupation continues deepens the very problems it was supposed to solve. Therefore there can no longer be any doubt: The war--an unprovoked, unnecessary and unlawful invasion that has turned into a colonial-style occupation--is a moral and political catastrophe. As such it is a growing stain on the honor of every American who acquiesces, actively or passively, in its conduct and continuation.

...

Americans are well on their way to a full appreciation of the dimensions of this debacle. In an October CBS news poll, 59 percent of citizens surveyed and 73 percent of Democrats now want an end to US military involvement in Iraq. But this growing majority has made its judgment with virtually no help from our nation's leaders. Most shameful has been the Democratic Party's failure to oppose the war. Indeed, support for it has been bipartisan: A Republican President and Congress made the policy, and almost all of the leading Democrats--most of the honorable exceptions are members of the House of Representatives--supported it from the outset and continue to do so.

To their credit, would-be presidential candidate Senator Russell Feingold and former Senator Gary Hart have recently made strong antiwar statements. More recently two other presidential contenders, Senator John Kerry and former Senator John Edwards, have begun to call for a shift in policy, though still in vague and reticent terms. More typical, however, are the other presidential hopefuls, Senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Evan Bayh, who continue to huddle for cover in "the center." They offer little alternative to Bush's refrain "We must stay the course!" Nor do the party's Congressional leaders and its head, Howard Dean, once a leader of antiwar sentiment. Can such politicians, who cannot even follow a majority--in the Democratic Party, a large majority--really be considered leaders? (full story)

Headlines for November 10, 2005 (English - Español)
- Suicide Attacks at Jordan Hotels Kill at Least 67
- Judith Miller Leaves The New York Times
- France Will Deport All Foreigners Convicted in Urban Uprising
- Weah Charges Fraud in Liberia Presidential Race
- British Parliament Rejects Blair Detainee Proposal
- Graham Legislation Would Deny Prisoners Habeas Corpus
- Ali Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

The Roots of Civil Unrest in Europe

2005-11-09T16:44:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
The Roots of Civil Unrest in Europe
by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!)

As the civil unrest in France approaches the end of the second week, we look back at a critical moment in French history that is still being felt today: the country’s colonial rule of the North African nation of Algeria. We speak with British journalist Robert Fisk about the French rule of Algeria and the country’s war of independence and with Iranian-born author and professor Behzad Yaghmaian, who spent two years traveling in the Middle East and Europe following migrants from Muslim countries.

...

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by Robert Fisk in our studio. As the civil unrest in France enters its 14th day, we want to look back at that critical moment in French history that's still being felt today: The country's colonial rule of the North African nation of Algeria. To talk about the French rule of Algeria and the country’s War of Independence, we're joined by British journalist, Robert Fisk. He has been the Middle East correspondent for various papers, most recently over the years the London Independent, for about 30 years. He's based in Beirut, Lebanon, and has written a new book, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, and in it, you spend many, many pages on Algeria

ROBERT FISK: Many bloody pages, Amy, yes. It's impossible to see the crisis in France today, without going back to the War of Independence, which lasted from between 1954 and 1962, which eventually gave Algeria not freedom in the democratic sense, but freedom from imperialism, from colonialism. And you've got to realize that the wounds of that war were never healed. The Algerians who fought for the French, the Harki, were never forgiven by the Algerian government or people, the pieds-noirs, the vast number of French colonial people who lived in Algeria, who regard it as their home, whose parents and grandparents were born there. By the way, you keep calling it a French colony. The French, of course, regard it as “France metropolitaine.” It was part of metropolitan France, but the Algerian “natives,” quote/unquote, didn't have equal rights. The pieds-noirs have never forgiven the Algerians for throwing them out, effectively, of the country.

And one of the things we're not actually talking about now, but which we should be, is that many of the areas where this violence is taking place around Paris and other large French cities are areas where lower middle class French people who were pieds-noirs from Algeria now live. So what we actually have is we have Algerian youths setting fire to cars outside the homes of the people who were expelled from Algeria in 1962. You need to realize that it is, in this sense, there’s a civil conflict going on here, not just a minority objecting to their treatment by the country which is supposed to be their country now, their citizenship.

And what happened, of course, during that war was that the wounds were never healed, since no one wanted to heal them. What we had was a French government that, first of all, said, ‘We will never leave Algeria; it’s part of France,’ then negotiated with those who wanted freedom, and then, having done this negotiation, effectively ratted on their own French citizens and let them leave in penury and squalor on ships back to France, where in many cases they had no family and no friends. So in a sense this is a continuation... (video - audio - transcript)

[an analysis piece on the situation in Paris planned for today is forthcoming later this week]

Headlines for November 9, 2005 (English - Español)
- State of Emergency in Effect in France
- Death Toll in Pakistan Grows to Estimated 87,000
- Lott Suspects Fellow Republicans in Prison Disclosure
- 2nd Lawyer in Hussein Trial Assassinated
- UN Extends US-led Foreign Troop Presence
- Bloomberg Wins Re-Election; Democrats Take Governor Races
- Texans Ban Gay Marriage; CA Rejects Schwarzenegger Measures

Sheryl Swoopes - Out of the Closet and Onto the Court

2005-11-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Sheryl Swoopes - Out of the Closet and Onto the Court
by Dave Zirin (Edge of Sports)

What's the sound of a good story smothered? Ask Sheryl Swoopes. Swoopes is the most prominent women's basketball player of her generation: a five-time all-star, three-time Olympic gold medalist and the WNBA's only three-time MVP. And in a tribute only corporate America could render, Swoopes is the only female player to have her own basketball shoe: Nike's Air Swoopes.

The 34-year-old Houston Comet veteran just delivered what could be the most significant body blow to homophobia ever weathered by the athletic-industrial complex. She has come out of the closet with pride, defiance and a palpable sense of joy.

But Swoopes's announcement has been met in the sports press with what the Associated Press correctly described as "a shrug of indifference." San Jose Mercury News columnist John Ryan wrote, "Let's face it: On the list of shocking headlines, 'WNBA player is gay' falls somewhere between 'Romo took steroids' and 'Steinbrenner is angry.' "

The muted response to Swoopes's revelation flows from the sexist treatment of women's athletics on sports pages, where the WNBA faces regular derision and the accomplishments of even elite female athletes--from Mia Hamm to Serena Williams--are downplayed or ignored...(full story)

Headlines for November 8, 2005 (English - Español)
- France Uses Colonial-Era Law To Impose Curfews
- President Bush: "We Do Not Torture"
- Supreme Court To Rule on Guantanamo Military Tribunals
- Canadian Teen At Guantanamo to Face Military Tribunal
- U.S.-Led Assault on Syrian Border Continues
- Iran: Debris From U.S. Spy Planes Found
- IRS Warns Church For Anti-War Sermon
- Record Spending Seen in Many of Today's Race

Story Tracker
Rosa Parks (original story)
Other Mothers, Other Movements

Argentina Protests (original story)
Chavez Claims Victory Over Bush

Paris Riots (original stories 1 - 2)
Why Is France Burning?
Declaration from the Africa Collective and the Autonomous Immigration Movement
The Rebellion Spreads to Belgium

Urban Unrest Escalates in France

2005-11-07T10:38:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Urban Unrest Escalates in France
by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!)

Urban unrest escalated around France this weekend as youths continued rioting throughout the country for an eleventh straight night. On Sunday, rioters opened fire on police in a working-class suburb of Paris, wounding ten officers. On Saturday night, rioting spread from the Paris suburbs into the more well-off districts. Also on Saturday, the rioting reached inside the French capital for the first time, with youths setting fire to more than 30 cars in central Paris. There were also reports of unrest in the cities of Cannes, Nice, Marseille, Lille and Strasbourg. By Sunday, 3,300 cars had been destroyed throughout the country, along with dozens of public buildings and private businesses. More than 300 people have been detained.

The New York Times reports the unrest is one of the most serious challenges to governmental authority in France in nearly 40 years. Many politicians have warned that the unrest may be coalescing into an organized movement, citing Internet chatter that is urging other poor neighborhoods across France to join in.

The violence started October 27 following the deaths of two teenagers - one of Mauritanian origin and the other of Tunisian origin - in the poor area of Clichy-sous-Bois. The two teens were electrocuted in a power grid while fleeing from police. The suburbs are home to a large West African and North African community, plagued by chronic unemployment and poverty. Unemployment in the neighborhoods is double and sometimes triple the 10 percent national average, while incomes are about 40 percent lower. France is home to the largest immigrant community in Europe, which makes up 10 percent of its 60 million population.

We go to Paris to get a report from the ground... (video - audio - transcript)

Headlines for November 7, 2005 (English - Español)
- 3,500 Troops Launch New Iraq Offensive Near Syria
- Iraqi: "Americans Bombed Everything, Our Houses Are Destroyed"
- DIA Warned in 2002 Iraq Had No Ties to Al Qaeda
- Bush Orders Ethics Courses For White House Aides
- Wash. Post Criticized For Not Identifying Secret Prisons
- Gov't Vastly Expands Gathering of Personal Information
- Public Access TV Stations Plan Protest Tonight

Story Tracker
Rosa Parks: The Real Rosa Parks (original story 10/25/2005)
Argentina Protests: "ALCA, Al ca, ¡al carajo!" (original story 11/06/2005)

Thousands Protest Bush in Argentina

2005-11-05T11:42:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
Thousands Protest Bush in Argentina
by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!)

World leaders are meeting in the coastal resort of Mar del Plata. The meeting is officially assembled to focus on creating jobs and promoting democracy but thousands of protesters are gearing up to demonstrate against President Bush’s visit and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA. Argentina is the first stop on Bush’s first trip to Latin America since he won re-election one year ago. He will to travel to Brazil and Panama before heading back to Washington on Monday.

Protests began in Argentina three days before Bush’s arrival and a massive security clampdown is in place for the talks. More than 7,500 police officers erected a security ring around summit hotels and patrolled the streets and beaches. Coast guard boats watched the shoreline and air space was restricted. Most schools canceled classes. A People’s Summit is being organized to counter the Summit of the Americas and thousands of people are due to stage a protest rally today that will be addressed by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona joined other celebrities late on Thursday aboard a Chavez-sponsored private train headed from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata, to lead the march. Speaking to reporters, Maradona blasted Bush’s visit to the country... (video - audio - transcript)

Related News
Americas Summit March (BBC Photo Gallery)
Mar del Plata Clashes (BBC Photo Gallery)
Protesters Mass to Confront Bush (BBC Video)
Riots Mar Americas Summit Opening (BBC Video)

France: Widening Anti-Police Riots Provoke Government Crisis

2005-11-04T13:04:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
France: Widening Anti-Police Riots Provoke Government Crisis
by Antoine Lerougetel (World Socialist Website)

Nightly riots and clashes in the Paris suburbs, between the police and youth mainly of North African and African descent, are entering their second week. A thousand police officers were deployed Wednesday night in Seine-Saint-Denis, northwest of Paris, and half of the department’s 40 towns were affected by violence. Shots have been fired at police officers, and one official spokesman described events as a descent into civil war.

The conflicts have provoked a severe crisis for the French government. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has cancelled a scheduled visit to Canada, and Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy has pulled out of a visit to Afghanisan and Pakistan. Emergency meetings of the government of de Villepin and President Jacques Chirac have been held to discuss the situation.

The rioting began on the evening of October 27 after two youth were electrocuted when they climbed onto an electrical transformer while fleeing from the police. The deaths of the boys, in the northern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, sparked confrontations between youth and 400 to 500 riot police dispatched by Sarkozy. Violent protests and clashes with armed riot police have continued every night since and have spread to other working class suburbs.

The eruptions are the product of desperate poverty, mass unemployment and a vicious, openly racist law-and-order campaign... (full story)

Headlines for November 4, 2005 (English - Español)
- Libby Pleads Not Guilty at Arraignment
- Red Cross Calls for Access to Detainees in Secret Prisons
- Riots Intensify in Paris Suburbs
- UN Warns of Ethiopia-Eritrea War
- Senate, House Approve Food Stamp, Health Care Cuts
- Alito Advocated Firing HIV-Positive Employees
- Brown Complained, Discussed Wardrobe as Katrina Hit

Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad

2005-11-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad
by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Counter Punch)

...There's been sedate talk in the mainstream press about Alito's legal caution, his sense of fairness, his steady temperament, his understated humor, his respect for the law as the executive instrument of fairness in American society. How anyone can come to this bizarre conclusion passes our understanding. Alito's record, from inside the prosecutor's office, his justice department briefs and in his judicial opinions, displays a rancid right-winger whose views fume with prejudice against the weak and the poor.

Some samples of the "even-handed", "legally cautious" Alito:

In 1986, Alito helped write a opinion that employers could legally fire AIDS victims because of a "fear of contagion, whether reasonable or not." Alito honed a new edge to the notion of strict constructionism by arguing that the employers were justified in so doing because discrimination based on insufficient medical knowledge was not prohibited by federal laws protecting the disabled.

In other words, irrational popular hysteria (that for example you could get AIDS from touching a door knob also touched by an AIDS victim) was in Alito's view an entirely sound basis for breaching legal protections. Years later Alito was still defending this position, saying that the tide of science may have subverted the hysteria but nonetheless it hadn't shaken "our belief in the rightness of our opinion".

Somewhat in the same vein, in 2001 Alito wrote a majority Appeals court opinion striking down a public school policy prohibiting harassment against gay students. Alito bluffly tore down the policy, saying it interfered with the First Amendment rights of other students to engage in "simple acts of teasing and name calling".

Alito's 1991 Appeals Court minority opinion on abortion has been widely publicized, and rightly so. The issue before the Appeals Court was the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania law saying that a woman had to inform her spouse of an impending abortion.

The actual case concerned a woman terrified that her abusive partner would beat her up if she so informed him... (full story)

Headlines for November 3, 2005 (English - Español)
- Funeral Service Held For Rosa Parks in Detroit
- HRW Identifies Possible Locations of Secret CIA Prisons
- Carter Criticizes Bush Administration on Torture, Iraq War
- Republicans Debate Rove's Future at White House
- U.S. Launch Lethal Air Strikes While Attacks Kill Dozens in Iraq
- Ex-Bolivian President Served Legal Summons in Washington
- GOP Proposes Cutting 300,000 Off Food Stamps

Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights

2005-11-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights
by John R. MacArthur (Common Dreams)

New York -- It's been dreadful, these past three years putting up with George Bush's fraudulent rationales for invading Iraq. And there's no respite in sight -- the phony justifications keep coming, no matter how many corpses pile up, no matter how badly the political situation deteriorates in Baghdad, no matter how many lies surface about the pre-war propaganda campaign.

The other night in a restaurant I had to bite my tongue, instead of my bread, when a man at a neighboring table declared his "trust" in Dick Cheney and the president.

But as much as I'm infuriated by the Bush brigade's steadfast support of the Iraq horror, I find myself angrier still when pro-war liberals -- the so-called reluctant hawks -- wring their hands over the bloody mess they've wrought with their neo-conservative allies... (full story)

Headlines for November 2, 2005 (English - Español)
- Senate Democrats Force Closed Session on Pre-War Intelligence
- Report: CIA Conducting Interrogations in Soviet-Era Prison
- Addington Attacked Aide Who Cited Geneva Conventions
- NAACP Concerned Over Alito Nomination
- Bush Announces $7.1 Billion Flu Plan
- World Can't Wait Protests Set for Today
- Rosa Parks To Be Laid to Rest in Detroit

The Masters Make the Rules for the Wise Men and the Fools

2005-11-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
The Masters Make the Rules for the Wise Men and the Fools
by Ron Jacobs (MR Zine)

One law for the rulers and another for the ruled. So decided English Chief Justice Bingham in his 1998 ruling granting the mass murderer (and former dictator of Chile) Augusto Pinochet "The applicant is entitled as a former head of state to immunity from civil and criminal proceedings of the English court." I don't know about you, but my reading of this decision is that Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and a few other murderous former heads of state would walk out of this man's court room, as well. Once again, the law written by the rich and powerful for those of us not so favored has protected its own.

Since the 1998 British decision, Pinochet has received immunity from prosecution at tleast three more times. Juan Guzman, the recently retired Chilean investigative judge who was responsible for two of the later indictments that were thrown out supposedly because of Pinochet's ill health, had this to say about Pinochet's refusal to stand trial. "A person who wants to prove to the world that he is innocent should go through a fair trial. Pinochet doesn't have the courage to do that." Guzman was originally a supporter of the coup that put Pinochet in power and has since brought charges of human rights abuses and corruption against the former dictator.

Let's get it straight... (full story)

Headlines for November 1, 2005 (English - Español)
- Senate Prepares for Battle Over Alito Nomination
- NY Times: Alito Nomination is "Another Lost Opportunity"
- Alito's Mother: "Of Course He's Against Abortion"
- Report: 40 Iraqis Die in U.S. Bombings Near Syria
- October Marks Fourth Deadlines Month for U.S. In Iraq
- Bush's Church Calls for U.S. Troop Withdrawal
- U.S. Army Dumped 64 Million Pounds of WMDs into Ocean

Movie Review: Land of the Dead

2005-10-31T13:07:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Halloween Special Edition - From the Archives
Movie Review: Land of the Dead
by Louis Proyect (Unrepentant Marxist)

As a blend of horror movie escapism and social commentary, George Romero's "Land of the Dead" succeeds wildly. Romero, who has three previous zombie movies to his credit, uses the conflict between the living and the 'undead' as a metaphor for the contradictions of late capitalist America.

The living dwell in a gated and heavily fortified city that is patrolled by centurions who have not earned the right to permanent residence there themselves. The centurions occasionally organize themselves into death squads and make forays into zombie territory where they kill at random and retrieve canned goods and booze for the consumption needs of the urban population. The shops in zombie territory are still staffed by the "stenches" who once worked there but who have only dim memories of their old occupations. An undead gas station attendant might hold up a nozzle but is clueless as to which end of the car it goes into; an undead gardener aimlessly pushes a lawnmower in circles in the middle of the street at midnight, and so on. These are lost souls who no longer fit into the commodity-producing scheme of things. What is worse, they subsist on eating the flesh of the living.

It is no accident that the city featured in the film is none other than Pittsburgh, director George Romero's home town... (full story)

Related News
Reviews of the Dead

Headlines for October 31, 2005 (English - Español)
- Bush Nominates Samuel Alito to Supreme Court
- Libby Resigns After Five Count Indictment in CIA Leak Case
- After "Week From Hell" Bush's Approval Rating Drops
- Rosa Parks Lies in Honor at U.S. Capitol
- U.S. Troop Level in Iraq Reaches 161,000
- Arab League: U.S. Must Leave Iraq
- 62 Die in Bombings in New Delhi

The Wedges of Hephaestus

2005-10-29T10:30:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
The Wedges of Hephaestus
by Peter Linebaugh* (Counter Punch)

Who are the brownshirts in Toledo? A few carloads of the Nazi white supremacists pulled into north Toledo, Ohio, on 10/15, maybe two dozen. Shortly thereafter, a vast, heterogeneous, and youthful crowd assembled and sent them packing. The police liked to take the credit. Credit? Folks naturally wondered who were the police policing, since after the brownshirts were shooed out of town, the police stuck around, the crowd believing that they were protecting the Nazis. The police declared curfew and arrested 114 people from a crowd between six hundred and one thousand. That was the Toledo affray.

Yet, those with ears could hear the wedges chaining Prometheus to the rock begin to rattle, and those with eyes might see him stir.

Prometheus became the patron saint of the proletariat. He was the son of Gaia, the earth goddess. All the arts and crafts the alphabet, numbers, ships, mining, therapy, intelligence, healing came from him. He was also a rebel, because he defied Zeus and the established order. Zeus punished him by chaining him to a rock with wedges forged by Hephaestus, the god of the forge. Finally, Prometheus is destined to rise... (full story)

* Peter Linebaugh is the author of The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. He is also co-author with the University of Pittsburgh's Marcus Rediker of the book that convinced me to become a historian, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. I highly recommend both of Peter's projects, as well as Marcus's latest work, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age.

Bono and Geldof: "We Saved Africa!" (Oh No They Didn't!)

2005-10-28T11:37:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Bono and Geldof: "We Saved Africa!" (Oh No, They Didn't!)
by Stuart Hodkinson (Counter Punch)

Remember Make Poverty History, anyone? It seems a long time ago that some 200,000 people flocked to Edinburgh to rally G8 leaders as part of an unprecedented campaign for global justice. That same day, July 2, Bob Geldof organised free music concerts in nine countries under the Live8 banner.

The demands were straightforward and reasonable: rich countries should boost aid in line with their unmet 35-year-old promises; cancel the debts of the 62 poorest countries; set dates for the abolition of subsidies and other protectionist support to Western farmers, and stop forcing liberalization and privatization on poor countries, whether in trade negotiations or as conditions of aid and debt deals.

Six days later, in the shadow of the July 7 bombs that ripped through central London, the Gleneagles summit ended to rock-star cheers. "This has been the most important summit there ever has been for Africa," Bob Geldof said at the post-summit press conference. "There are no equivocations. Africa and the poor of that continent have got more from the last three days than they have ever got at any previous summit..."

...Bono, his voice cracking with emotion, concurred. "We are talking about $25bn of new money. The world spoke and the politicians listened."

Journalists and campaigners broke into spontaneous applause; the next day's media coverage led with Geldof's "mission accomplished" verdict. But as the millions who signed up to Make Poverty History (MPH) and Live8 rejoiced, inside the upper echelons of MPH all hell was breaking loose. "They've shafted us," a press officer from a British development organization screamed down the phone.

Indeed they had... (full story)

Headlines for October 28, 2005 (English - Español)
- All Eyes on 'Scooter' Libby
- Top Bush Fundraiser Indicted in Ohio
- Iraq: Sunnis Form New Coalition, as al Sadr Reenters Politics
- Attack on Palestine Hotel Aimed at Private Security Firm?
- Cartoonist Writes Names of All 2,000 Soldiers Killed in Iraq
- Almost 70% of Iraq Deaths Under Age of 30
- Padilla Files New Appeal to Supreme Court
- Lynne Stewart Appeal Rejected
- Castro Blasts US Aid Offer

Off to War: From Rural Arkansas to Baghdad

2005-10-27T11:43:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Off to War: From Rural Arkansas to Baghdad (video - audio - transcript)
by Brent and Craig Renaud (Discovery Times, courtesy of Democracy Now!)

ARKANSAS NATIONAL GUARDSMEN (NG): War! Good God, y'all! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that wasn't an acapella group, it was the voices of members of the Arkansas National Guard. They're the subject of a multi-part documentary series airing on Discovery Times called Off to War: From Rural Arkansas to Baghdad. The series was one of the first to deal with the ongoing problem of U.S. troops having inadequate equipment and unarmored vehicles in Iraq. This is an excerpt of Off to War.

NG1: The convoy, we're getting ready to take to Camp Taji, north of Baghdad. It's pretty serious. Some of the equipment is old, so we're trying to make sure it doesn't break down.

NG2: I can't -- I have no idea why, you know, the United States Army would make us deploy with this old crap. And I think they're going to quickly understand that when half of it breaks down on the way to Taji, and it will, that it's not a good idea to deploy a National Guard unit with old Vietnam-era equipment.

NG3: This is what an armored vehicle should look like. The vehicle is totally armored, completely all the way around, even in the front windshield. This is the modern vehicles that the regular army has right now.

NG4: We were promised up armor kits. We didn't get them. So we're going to go ahead and try to fabricate something... (video - audio - transcript)

Headlines for October 27, 2005 (English - Español)
- Miers Withdraws Supreme Court Nomination
- White House Braces for Indictments in CIA Leak Case
- Over 1500 Events Held To Mark 2,000th U.S. Death in Iraq
- Israel Conducts Strikes After Suicide Bombing Kills 5
- Iran President: Israel "Must Be Wiped Off Map"
- Govt. Ordered to Notify Prison Lawyers on Force Feedings
- Inquiry: Over 2,000 Companies Paid Kickbacks to Iraq Regime

Grim Milestones

2005-10-26T11:40:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Grim Milestones
by Simon Jeffery (The Guardian - UK)

In the words of Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials, the US military doesn't "do body counts" of enemy fighters and civilians; the one they do, that of the US service men and women killed in Iraq, reached 2,000 yesterday with the announcement of the death of Staff Sergeant George Alexander, 34, in a Texas hospital from injuries sustained in a roadside bombing.

The 2,000th fatality is, of course, no more tragic than was the 1,999th for the victims and their families, fellow soldiers and friends; it does, however, represent a grim numerical milestone.

...The 2,000th death is a political as well as a human statistic. Depending on your viewpoint, you either draw attention to it to criticise the war or draw attention to those drawing attention to it and criticise them for criticising the war.

...But it is not the only body count. (full story)

Headlines for October 26, 2005 (English - Español)
- National Day of Action Marks 2,000th U.S. Death in Iraq
- Military: 2,000 Figure “Not a Milestone”
- Investigators Focus on Rove in CIA Leak Case
- Bush Official Met With Italians Shortly Before Fake Niger Docs Appeared
- US, France, Britain Submit UN Resolution on Syria
- Bush Admin. Drops Nuclear “Bunker-Buster” Plans
- 3 million Without Electricity in Wilma Aftermath
- Wal Mart Memo Proposes Health, Benefit Cuts
- Former Congressman Edward Roybal dead at 89

Rosa Parks 1913-2005: A Rare 1956 Interview

2005-10-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
Rosa Parks 1913-2005: A Rare 1956 Interview
by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!)

It was 50 years ago this December that Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white man aboard a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and convicted of violating the state’s segregation laws.

Her act of resistance led to a 13-month boycott of the Montgomery bus system that would spark the civil rights movement. And it would inspire freedom struggles abroad including in South Africa. The bus boycott would also help transform a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Junior to national prominence. Rosa Parks’ arrest came just months after the lynching of Emmett Till.

At the time of her arrest, Parks was a 43-year-old seamstress and a seasoned civil rights activist. Since the 1940s she had been active in the NAACP, helped raise money to defend the Scottsboro rape case and attended trainings at the Highlander Folk School of Tennessee.

After the successful bus boycott Parks would continue to take part in the civil rights movement in this country. She marched in Selma, Alabama. She took part in the 1963 March on Washington. After moving to Detroit, she worked for Congressman John Conyers.

We go back to 1956 in the midst of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to one of the earliest preserved interviews with Rosa Parks... (audio - transcript)

Headlines for October 25, 2005 (English - Español)
- Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks 1913-2005
- Report: Cheney Gave CIA Agent's Name to Libby
- Coordinated Attack Strikes Hotel Housing Journalists in Iraq
- Iraq Constitution Approved Despite Sunni Opposition
- U.S. Death Toll Nears 2000
- U.S. Senator Accuses George Galloway of Lying
- Cheney Lobbies for CIA Exemption to Torture Ban
- Israeli Troops Kill Top Islamic Jihad Commander

When Fists are Frozen: The Statue of Tommie Smith and John Carlos

2005-10-24T10:42:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day
When Fists are Frozen: The Statue of Tommie Smith and John Carlos
by Dave Zirin (Edge of Sports)

Trepidation should be our first impulse when we hear that radical heroes are to be immortalized in fixed poses of bloodless nostalgia. There is something very
wrong with seeing the toothy, grinning face of Paul Robeson staring back at us from a stamped envelope. Or the wry expression the US Postal service affixed on
Malcolm X - harmless, wry, inviting, and by extension slanderous.

These fears erupted in earnest when I heard that San Jose State University would be unveiling a statue of two of its alums, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. The 20 foot high structure would be a commemoration of their famed Black Gloved salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. I dreaded the thought that this would be the athletic equivalent to Lenin’s Tomb: when you can’t erase a radical history, you simply embalm it. These fears are not without foundation. Smith and Carlos’s frozen moment in time has been consumed and regurgitated endlessly by the wide world of corporate sports. But this process has taken place largely without any kind of serious discussion about who these men were, the ideas they held, and the price they paid.

With palpable relief, I report that the statue does Smith and Carlos justice, and then some. It is a lyrical work of art, and a fitting tribute to two amazing athletes who rose to their moment in time. Credit should go to the artist, a sculptor who goes by the name Rigo23. Rigo23’s most important decision was to leave Smith and Carlos’s inventively radical and little discussed symbology intact. On the statue, as in 1968, Smith and Carlos wear wraps around their necks to protest lynching and they are not wearing shoes to protest poverty. Rigo23 made sure to remember that Carlos’ Olympic jacket - in a shocking breach of etiquette - was zipped open, done so because as Carlos said to me, “I was representing shift workers, blue-collar people, and the underdogs. That’s why my shirt was open. Those are the people whose contributions to society are so important but don’t get recognized..." (full story)

Headlines for October 24, 2005 (English - Español)
- White House Prepares for Possible Indictments
- NYT Editor: Miller Misled the Paper Over CIA Leak
- Brent Scowcroft Slams Bush Administration
- U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Nears 2,000
- 82% Of Iraqis Oppose Foreign Troops
- Hans Blix: U.S. Misled World Over Iraq WMD's
- Hurricane Wilma Hits Florida With 125 mph Winds
- NYPD Officer Convicted in Killing of African Immigrant
- U.S. Prison Population at 2.3 Million, Largest in World

It's Not up to the Court

2005-10-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

Story of the Day Weekend Edition
It's Not up to the Court
by Howard Zinn (The Progressive)

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. This has caused a certain consternation among people we affectionately term "the left."

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to pieces of Roberts's confirmation hearings was enough to induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans, these are all members of the same exclusive club. Roberts's proper "credentials," his "nice guy" demeanor, his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not an "ideologue" (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an "ideologue"?) were clearly more important than his views on equality, justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times reported, Roberts "summed up his philosophy." He had been asked, "Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?" (Would any candidate admit that he was on the side of "the big guy"? Presumably serious "hearings" bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: "If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution."

...There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and "the rule of law."

...It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by all those Senators--Democrats and Republicans--who solemnly invoke as their highest concern "the rule of law." The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine right of the king... (full story)