Today's Stories

September 17, 2009

Pam Martens
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists

September 16, 2009

Ray McGovern
Torture and Accountability

Stephen Green
America's Strange Health Care Debate

Andy Worthington
Is Bagram Obama's New Secret Prison?

Dean Baker
Short Sellers: the Unsung Heroes of the Financial Crisis

Anthony DiMaggio
Killing the Messenger

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: The Unheard Call

Benjamin Dangl
Justice Follows Direct Action

Robin Willoughby
The World Seed Conference: Good for Farmers?

Eric Walberg
EuroPeace, the Sounds of Silence

James Ridgeway
Bring That "Boy" Down

Website of the Day
Baucus' Bogus Bill

September 15, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall

Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The Story of My Shoe

Marshall Auerback
Government Spending is the Solution--Not the Problem

Afshin Rattansi
The Deal That Led to the Srebrenica Massacre: Former UN Spokeswoman Fingers Holbrooke and the Clinton Administration

Jonathan Cook
How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers

Gareth Porter:
Niger Redux? IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Nuke Docs Were Forged

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs More Catcalls

Winslow T. Wheeler
Obama and Pentagon Pork

Franklin Spinney
Bin Laden's Latest Message and the Nuttiness of the War on Terror

Karen Korenoski /
Michael Yates
Up in Wood Smoke: Boulder's Dirty Little Secret

David Macaray
Government Cheese

Susie Day
President Mao-bama's Little Red Primer

Website of the Day
The Cotton Pickin' Truth: the Persistance of Slavery in Mississippi

September 14, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Health Care Deceit

M. G. Piety
The Danes Do It (Health Care) Better

Shamus Cooke
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier

Bouthaina Shaaban
Three Faces and a Homeland

Alvaro Huerta
In Defense of the Undocumented: Immigrants and Health Care

John Ross
Mexico Loses Its History

Harvey Wasserman
The Supreme Court and Corporate Money

Adam Federman
The Plight of the Bumblebee

Stephen Fleischman
The Federal Twist

Robert Jensen
Can Journalism Schools be Relevant in a World on the Brink?

Website of the Day
The Origin of Sex Offender Registries

September 11-13, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric

JoAnn Wypijewski
Trumka Takes Over AFL-CIO

Carl Ginsburg
The Patient as Profit Center

Leonard Peltier
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now

Franklin Lamb
Ted Kennedy's Changing Take on Israel

Benjamin Dangl
Throwing Bullets at Failed Policies

Mike Whitney
How to Fight Deflation

John Berger
In Search of Antonello

Saul Landau
Watergate and Modern Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Disgraceful Democrats

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Pryor's Judgment

Felice Pace
NPR's Linda Gradstein Has Done It Again on Gaza

Jordan Flaherty
The Battle Over Discriminatory Housing Laws in New Orleans

Ron Jacobs
It's Time to be Impolite About Afghanistan

David Macaray
The Utility of Boycotts

David Correia
Welcome to the Business-Friendly Carpenter's Union

Robert Bryce
Wind Turbines and Bird Kills

Christopher Brauchli
Defenders of the Classroom

Paul Krassner
Aha! A Few Words About the 9/11 Truth Movement

Charles R. Larson
Deracination

Kim Nicolini
"Extract:" An Exercise in Economic Realism

David Yearsley
Tall Buildings: the Sound and the Silence

Lorenzo Wolff
In Defense of the One Hit Wonder

Poets' Basement
McEnteer and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Pizarchik: the Wrong Choice

September 10, 2009

Joshua Frank
Inside Hanford's B Reactor: a Tour of the World's Most Toxic Nuclear Site

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Bad Money

Brian M. Downing
The State of U.S. National Security

Franklin C. Spinney
Portrait of an Afghan Firefight: Up Close and Personal

Andy Worthington
No Escape From Guantánamo

Chase Madar
Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

Farzana Versey
A Tale of Two Slums

Ronnie Cummins
Whole Foods, Fair Trade and Organics

Binoy Kampmark
Health Care, Obama and the System

Timothy Lebrón
The Conservative Case for Health Care Reform

Charles R. Larson
A Solution to the Health Care Dilemma

Website of the Day
The Debtor's Revolt Begins!

September 9, 2009

Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

Melissa Checker
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses

Nadia Hijab
Settling for ... Settlements?

Robert Weissman
The Stakes at the Supreme Court

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Arabs Call for General Strike

Russell Mokhiber
Pollan, Mackey, Whole Foods and Single Payer

James Ridgeway
The Dotty Factor: Will Demented Geezers Wreck the Economy?

Richard W. Behan
Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

James McEnteer
The Photo and the Secretary: How to Appall Robert Gates

Martha Rosenberg
Hatchery Horrors

Website of the Day
Belmondo Verité

September 8, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations

John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd

Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War

Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech

Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?

Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington

Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation

Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?

Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor

September 7, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen

David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card

Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews

Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles

Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday

Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million

Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation

C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech

Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go

September 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry

Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami

Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission

Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran

Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam

Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA

David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia

Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7: What the Police Won't Apologize For

Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections

Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?

Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater

Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost

Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book

David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants

Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig

Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready

Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

August 31, 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the SEC's Revolving Door

Anthony DiMaggio
What Obama Isn't Telling You About Afghanistan

Bouthaina Shaaban
Israeli Bodysnatchers

Ray McGovern
The Press and Torture: Covering for Cheney?

Joseph Shansky
Scenes of Resistance in Honduras

Greg Moses
The Dying Dillos of Austin

Brian McKenna
Pig Sacrifice and Swine Flu Panic

David Macaray
The Tender Trap

Brenda Norrell
Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon

Paul Craig Roberts
The Environment Loses a Champion

Beth Sherouse
Why I'm Going to the Big Gay March in Washington

Website of the Day
The Failure of the Left Antiwar Movement

August 28-30, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Teddy Kennedy the Hollow Champion

Joshua Frank /
Jeffrey St. Clair
From the Ledge to the Edge: How Tre Arrow Became America's Most Wanted Environmental "Terrorist"

Steve Early
Kennedy's Sins Against Labor

Michael Hudson
Learning About Financialization the Hard Way

Carl Ginsburg
Bernanke in Obamatime

Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

Dave Marsh
Trapped Again: Michael Jackson's Crossover Dream

Mike Whitney
Band-Aids for the Recession

Dave Lindorff
Obama's War

José Pertierra
A Decision in the Posada Case

Joe Bageant
Obama's Fake Fight for Reform

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Spies Without Espionage

Lee Sustar
On Strike for Health Care Justice

David Ker Thomson
Life in the 'Shed

David Rosen
The Silent Slaughter: Sex Wars and Nation-Building in Iraq

Alison Weir
Israeli Organ Harvesting

Ron Jacobs
Will There be Free Speech in Pittsburgh?

David Swanson
Bush Tortured

Udi Aloni
An Appeal to Israeli Filmmakers

Charles R. Larson
Children During Wartime

Kim Nicolini
District 9: Science Fiction of the Now

David Yearsley
The Wagner Cult in Seattle

Lorenzo Wolff
Riding the Rails with King Curtis

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Marc Beaudin

Website of the Weekend
The Hidden History of Katrina

August 27, 2009

Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five

Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers

Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel

Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap

Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option

Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent

Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers

David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)

Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries

August 26, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout

Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke

Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women

Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First

Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane

Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans

Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque

Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy

Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools

Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line

August 25, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed

Martine Bulard
China's Wild West

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity

Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

September 17, 2009

27 Years After the Sabra / Shatila Massacre

Palestinian Camps Are Ready to Erupt

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Martyr’s Square, Shatila Camp

Meandering the alleys and ground vapors of the wet fetid stench in Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, 27 years after the 1982 Sabra Shatila Massacre, one witnesses a dystopia.  This shanty ground, is the most squalid of the World’s 59 Palestinian Refugee Camps, including the eight in Gaza.

The Camp is an island society of misery characterized by poverty, oppression, tension, nearly 40 per cent unemployment, depression, rising domestic violence, rising student dropout rates,  deep frustration among youth eager to enroll in  university for fall semester but there is  neither tuition money nor  places for most Palestinians. The camp families are experiencing rising numbers of respiratory disease cases, nonexistent health care for the majority, pollution and the near total abridgement of civil rights. Many see an explosion on the horizon.

Among the many Lebanese laws that straitjacket Palestinians is a 2002 one that forbids people with no recognized state -- Palestinians -- to own property outside the camps.  So with no room for expansion laterally, the Camp residents are forced to build upward with cinder blocks and this also is illegal unless one has enough money to bribe a series of government officials.

According to Salah M. Sabbagh, a Palestinian-Lebanese lawyer in Beirut. ''If Jesus Christ comes here he cannot own property, because he was born in Bethlehem. He would be better off in that stable.”

Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, like Lebanon’s other 11, is a place of widespread sorrow.  As in Kafka’s short story, The Penal Colony, it is as if the inhabitants wear their sentences on their foreheads, having run afoul of local or regional Commandants.

Of course the camps fundamental feature is the injustice of the refugees having been expelled from their homes in occupied Palestine and forced into Lebanon six decades ago where increasingly, here under siege, or there under brutal occupation, there is little tolerance for Palestinians or even much concern for their survival.

Today, the political reality that the 410,000 UNRWA registered refugees are increasingly becoming sub-human pawns in Lebanon’s and the region’s political maneuvers, without political, social or human rights.  About 25 per cent of Lebanon’s Palestinians have already emigrated from Lebanon, which suits the US and Israel since they want Palestinians anywhere but Palestine. And it suits Lebanese parties which want them anywhere but Lebanon. Local sectarian warlords (Zaiim) may eventually accept about 40,000 or rougly 10 per cent to be naturalized (Tawteen) in Lebanon and who after 10 years or longer could theoretically receive citizenship including voting rights. This number would mainly come from those Palestinian women who already have citizenship or those who have at least some civil rights through marriage with Lebanese men. A recent survey showed that 93 per cent of Lebanon’s Palestinians want no part of naturalization in Lebanon but want to return to their own country.  So much for some  local politicians’ nonsense that giving anything to the refugees “runs the risk of making them comfortable so they will try to stay.” 

A Lebanese woman can convey no rights by marrying any foreign national including Palestinians, a defect in Lebanese law that has been the object of an intermittent corrective campaign by progressive civil organizations here for the past 12 years.  They, along with some international NGO’s are seeking to bring Lebanese domestic relations law into line with most of the rest of the world. Legal experts at La Masion des Avocats in Beirut do not foresee significant near-term changes in Lebanon’s law for either woman or Palestinians.

Each year, during mid-September a week of events is held in Lebanon to commemorate the approximately 3,000-3,400 victims of the 1982 Israeli sponsored Sabra-Shatila Massacre. In recent years, more and more people from the international community arrive to participate. This year many have arrived from Italy Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the U.K. whose solidarity with the cause of Palestine spans nearly half a century.  Again, this year, Canadians and Americans and several from Asian countries and south American countries participated including black clergymen from New York City, citizens from Oregon, California, Illinois, Florida, Massachusetts and Washington DC among others.

A Jewish initiative

A group of American Jews arrived from Washington DC  last Sunday and announced a US based Jewish initiative to break the siege of the Palestinians in the camps of Lebanon.  Their initiative was well received on 9/15/09 by the Palestinian and International delegations, NGO’s and camp residents, during a conference at the new PLO Embassy in Beirut. The, group, representing several American Rabbis and Synagogues also participated in laying a wreath on the resting place of some of the victims of the Hula Club massacre of June 6, 1982, when Israeli forces killed 51 women and children inside the eastern part of Burj Shemali Palestinian Refugee camp near Tyre at the start of their 75-day bombing of Lebanon. The Hula Club itself was named for the October 24-29, 1948, machine gunning by Israeli forces of at least 50 civilians at Hula near the border with Palestine.

Hula experienced yet another massacre by Israel in July 2006 when Israeli forces bombed a civilian shelter, killing 29 and destroying approximately 20 per cent of Hula’s housing.

The morning of 9/15/09, members and guests of the Sabra Shatila Foundation,   the Palestinian NGO Beit Aftal Assumoud, other NGO’s  and international visitors met with relatives of those who perished during the 43 hours of slaughter between 9/15- 9/18, 1982.

The gathering took place in an orphanage along some of the barely three foot wide alleys of Shatila Camp, where the sun has not shone since the camp’s construction by the International Red Cross in 1949.

“Today I was silent”

Umm Ali Edelbi  welcomed Stephanie, an Italian woman she met years earlier, as the ‘foreigners’ and the Mothers embraced and  Umm Jamal kissed a Jewish nurse, Ellen, from Washington DC who was a witness to the 1982 massacre while working in Shatila’s Gaza hospital.

The scene was quite emotional for Antonio, from Rome, who is visiting a Palestinian camp for the first time. He paused, and watching the more than a dozen surviving mothers, several carrying framed photos of their loved ones, dried his eyes and said: "I never imagined that there is a place on earth where people are living like this. My shock is not just due to the nature of life inside this camp, it is because seeing parents who lost their children in such a brutal way is very upsetting."

A few moments later, the official meeting started. Abdel Nasser spoke on behalf of the  Shatila families and thanked "the foreigners” who have come to support us" while criticizing the Arabs "of which I never saw anyone offering support.”  Abdel Nasser is gently interrupted by a soft-spoken woman from near the back of the crowded room, who explains “I am an Arab, Moroccan, and Muslim. I came from my country to support you."  He thanked her for the clarification and continued his talk by explaining the parents' demands that the international community “finally prosecute and punish those who committed these awful crimes.”

The next speaker was the glamorous Italian academic Stephanie Lemettie, the Italian delegation's spokesperson. Holding back tears, she told the gathering:  "The toughest moments are those of our meeting with you. Words cannot begin to express how much love and solidarity we have for you. We will never forget and we will never cease our work for your return to Palestine."

She was followed by Ms. Stephanie Karnini, sister of the Italian committee's founder Stephano, a legend in Shatila and the other 11 camps in Lebanon for his nine years of solidarity work with the camps before his tragic untimely death two years ago.  She told the assembly that she hopes "that God gives us the strength to fight the second ongoing massacre, that of the memory that they are trying to erase."

One man, maybe in his seventies and who did not speak, carried a framed photo of his teenage son. He remained behind as the crowd dispersed.  He sat slumped quietly against the pale green wall of the classroom of the orphanage and stared at the toddlers ‘cubbies’ with their cute brightly colored tooth brushes and plastic cups. His shirt was saturated in perspiration, and the gentleman looked unwell and very tired and weak from three weeks of  daily Ramadan fasting, Beirut’s September heat, and his profound grief.

He softly introduced himself to me:  “My name is Kamal Ma'rouf, and this is my son Jamal. We don't know if he's a martyr or just missing.  For twenty seven years, I am waiting and talking about my son. Today I was silent. Maybe it is better that way” and he began to sob.

Who were the victims of the Sabra Shatila Massacre?

27 years after the massacre we know more about many of those who perished but not all. Only 68 per cent of the bodies were ever identified. Israel’s vaunted game theory would have preferred none were identified, but many of the killers panicked and Israeli bulldozer operators got cold feet and  were watched as they left their vehicles and fled, leaving incriminating evidence.

147 families’ lost at least 1 member each while 34 families lost between 2 and eleven members. 51 families had members abducted or who disappeared.

Where are they or their remains? Hauled away from Israel and Lebanese Forces interrogation centers set up in the UNESCO building and Sports Stadium outside the camp and buried somewhere in the East Beirut race track or pine forest as the late American journalist Janet Stevens theorized? In the sewers of surrounding neighborhoods like Bir Hassan where we now know manhole covers were lifted and bodies stuffed in—yet more bones and remains discovered as recently as this summer?

We also now know that 6 unborn babies killed inside their mothers, 18 less than one year, 13 less than 3 years, 58 less than 12 years old. Roughly 12-24 per cent of the refugees emigrated following the massacre.

78 per cent of those killed or abducted have living witnesses from the family.   48 per cent believe the killers were Lebanese Forces (now led by Samir Geagea who continues to deny his militia’s involvement while calling for peace negotiations with “our enemy” Israel).  We now know that within hours of the massacre, Phalange leader Sheik Pierre Gemayel ordered that “under no circumstances should the Lebanese forces admit to any participation.”  He apparently wanted to protect his son Amin who he hoped would soon be appointed President of Lebanon by the Reagan administration following his brother Bashir’s assassination ( indeed he was).

Pierre did later tell friends privately, but always denied publicly, that “a few of our people were in on the massacre”, describing these as ‘Israeli agents’ not under my orders: “Sharon had a good many Judas Iscariots in our ranks”, Pierre would explained.

52 per cent of the survivors indicated they “could not tell” who the abductors they observed taking camp residents were.

There are no headstones to identify those buried, approximately 1000,  in Shatila’s Martyr’s Square but we now know their professions included jockey, doorman, doctor, nurse, tailor, weaver, teachers shoemakers plumbers fish vendors, vegetable venders, electricians, masons, peddlers and home makers.

Yesterday, this observer, along with British surgeon Dr. Swee Ang Chai and Nurse Marion Looi Pok, true global medical heroines during and following the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila had the honor to pass the afternoon with our longtime friend, Dr. Bayan al Hout whose husband Shafiq, one of the most respected and loved founders of the Palestine Liberation Organization passed away quite suddenly on August 2, 2009.

Her now classic volume, "Sabra and Shatila: September 1982" by Bayan Nuwayhed Al-Hout, 2004, available from Pluto Press, London, is highly recommended by the Sabra Shatila Foundation  for those who seek a deeper understanding of the exact  sequence of events  during and surrounding the Massacre.

For more than 15 years Bayan painstakingly interviewed survivors and eye witnesses, sometimes furtively and ignoring threats while trying to avoid the swarms of intelligence agents who moved into West Beirut and the Palestinian camps in late 1982,part of whose work was to create the correct narrative and suppress the truth.   She succeeded in piecing together the precise events during the 43 hours of slaughter and its aftermath, as well as to present the reader with the Massacre’s political context.

Bayan proved that the massacre was a continuous uninterrupted slaughter lasting a full 43 hours, from 6 pm on Thursday September 16 to 1 pm Saturday September, 18 and that it did not end as the Kahan Commission claims at 8 a.m. on Saturday September 18.  As in many instances with its flawed Inquiry, Bayan exposed the Kahan Commissions bias including its failure to challenge Sharon’s comment, delivered with a smirk, to the Kahan Comission on the morning of October 25, 1982:

“I want, in the name and on behalf of the entire  Israeli defense establishment, to say that no-one foresaw-nor could they have seen-the atrocities committed in the neighborhood of ‘Sabra and Shatia”…“If I were to be asked, on oath, who committed the crimes, I should have to reply that I don’t know. The Israeli Army wasn’t there.  There were two entrances to the camp that we didn’t control.  I know who went in and out, but I don’t know exactly who did the killing. It remains a great mystery.”

Bayan’s is the most authoritative book on the Sabra Shatila Massacre. Part of her motivation in researching her book, she explained yesterday, came from frustration with the 1983 Israeli Kahan Commission report, widely considered a whitewash of Israeli responsibility for this Crime against Humanity. The Kahan Report, along with the now completely rejected and disappeared fraudulent  Lebanese Government  Jermanos Report sought to create a misleading narrative about the who, what, and why of the slaughter.  Bayan al Hout questioned, exposed and then demolished the Kahan Report with her detailed investigation and presentation of irrefutable evidence.

The Israeli government has yet to answer the indictment Bayan tabled before the international community or to compensate the hundreds of survivors who lost their loved ones and who today live shattered lives. International humanitarian law, specifically the Geneva Convention (IV) and the Rome Statue, with its universal jurisdiction, and people of good will everywhere, demand that this indescribably horrendous crime, the Massacre at Sabra Shatila, planned and executed 29 years ago this week, is heard in The Hague.

Freezing the Rebuilding of Nahr al Bared

One particularly egregious recent example of Lebanese politicians   continuing to pressure the Palestinian refugee community for personal political gain   occurred this month, when one self-proclaimed  “defender of the rights of our Palestinian Arab brothers”, the Free Patriotic Movement’s Michel Aoun took an initiative to “help Lebanon.”  Political ally of Hezbollah and Syria, Aoun was able to  miraculously  arrange for Lebanon’s Court of Cassation , which is closed tight for the Judicial vacation with empty courtrooms and offices, to issue a special injunction, freezing any  and  all rebuilding of the Nahr al Bared Palestinian Refugee Camp near Tripoli.

Following the  15 week, May-August 2007  Fatah al Islam-Lebanese army battle which destroyed the camp, Nahr al Bared’s  nearly 35,000 residents fled to Bedawi Camp seven miles down the road, and  to other camps including Shatila, causing more overcrowding.  Nahr al Bared, where bus loads of international visitors are visiting today,  has become a symbol for the condition of Palestinians in Lebanon and is closely watched for tell-tale signs of how events are moving.  Nahr al Bared has yet to see any reconstruction despite two years of international meetings and pledges.

Aoun apparently wants to keep it that way and his lawsuit is anchored in the fact that in part of Narh al Bared there appear to be some historical relics and artifacts which the reconstruction would cover again.

Aoun’s action has sent a chill throughout Lebanon’s Palestinian Camps and currently it is unsure if the Nahr al Bared will be rebuilt.  If rebuilt, Palestinian sources indicate the plan is for only 10,000 Palestinians or 25 per cent of the April 2007 population to return to Nahr al Bared and these not until 2020.

This latest use of Lebanon’s Palestinians as fodder in the continuing struggle to form a government is ludicrous on its face. Assuming, that there are some Roman remnants in a small part of the camp, yet unproven but claimed by Aoun in his the lawsuit, this is not grounds for stopping all reconstruction.  Every school child in Lebanon knows there are Phoenician, Egyptians, Greek, Roman, Ottoman, and all sorts of others ruins all over Lebanon and construction anywhere in Lebanon  is routinely allowed after a survey with a permit issued by the Ministry of Culture.  During the Hariri build-a-thon in the early 1990’s, the Hariri family Solidaire Corporation simply used huge US D9 (935 hp), 104 ton Caterpillars (think occupied Palestine) or the Japanese Komatsu D 275A bulldozers to excavate as they pleased and to shove mountains of Lebanon’s antiquities into Beirut Port (the area called Normandy) as a vast landfill for yet more lucrative commercial building projects.

Some political analysts view Aoun’s  bizarre efforts to keep Nahr al Bared’s Palestinians homeless is linked to his struggle with the Sunni Muslims and fellow Maronite Christian and his nemesis, the Lebanon First leader  Saad Hariri.  Aoun is also  moving to gain influence with the Sunni middle class in Tripoli by preventing the return of the very competitive Palestinian Nahr al Bared retail markets which drew customers from across North Lebanon and away from Tripoli merchants. Targeting the Palestinians also works politically in Akkar, across the Damascus highway from the Camp, because most of the nearly 250 soldiers killed fighting Fatah al Islam two summers ago are from nearby villages and their friends and relatives still want revenge against Palestinians whether or not they support Fatah al Islam.

Aoun’s actions also appeal to right wing elements of the Christian community, some of whom continue to be apologists for the Sabra Shatila Massacre, and view favorably any effort targeting Muslim Palestinians
Aoun also wants to undermine the US ally, Maronite Archbishop Nasrallah Sfeir who yesterday Aoun accused of joining Samir Geagea’s fascist Lebanese Forces. It was the Lebanese Forces militia who Ariel Sharon arranged to lead other killing units into Shatila Camp following the Syrian assassination of their leader Bashir on 9/14/82.  Archbishop Sfeir, as political as any in Lebanon despite his claims that the Church should avoid politics, has now come out against Aoun’s nephew being renamed a minister in the new government. Aoun’s Opposition ally Hezbollah, is mute.  Some members shrug off Aoun’s antics and claim that that Hezbollah can’t control Aoun.  Other Hezbollah members see an advantage for the Shia if Sunni Palestinian numbers decrease in order to maintain the Sunni-Shia roughly one third each balance. They know that 90 per cent of Palestinians support Hezbollah due to its resistance to the occupation of Palestine and will overlook the fact that Hezbollah does not pick a fight with the mercurial Aoun.

This picture is further complicated by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt breaking with Washington due to his grave doubts that the US administration will or can deliver on more than three years of  unfulfilled promises to him if he will oppose the Opposition and the Lebanese Resistance.  Jumblatt has now decided to cast the Druze lot with Hezbollah and Syria,  candidly telling colleagues that the Resistance represents Lebanon’s future.

No sooner had Jumblatt dumped the US than the US dumped Phalange leader Amin Gemayal and Lebanon  First leader Saad Hariri  because the State Department needs someone “with bigger balls” according to one staffer. 

Thirteen weeks after heralding the June 7 election results as a great victory for Democracy, the State Department views the election as a disaster. Not only did Hezbollah receive more than 100,000 votes that the US team, it has emerged stronger with its 57 seats than the US team with its 71 seats 10 of whom have now split.

This led US Ambassador Michele Sisson to charm the group who helped conduct the Sabra Shatila  massacre, the Lebanese Forces, and its charismatic and very focused and ambitious leader Samir Geagea who intends to push aside  his Phalange rivals, the Gemayels , and lead Lebanon into battle (with US and Israeli support) against Syria and if necessary Hezbollah.  The US-Israel plan for Lebanon now requires either a civil war in Lebanon or another Israeli invasion to recoup Lebanon from Iranian influence and the growing support for the Hezbollah led Resistance.  The State Department finally appear to realize that the Lebanese public will no longer accept a forgive-and-forget, no compensation for six invasions over the past 40 years, peace deal with Israel and that it has entered the era of Resistance.  Senior Shiite Cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, while Shia,has a large following among Christian and Sunni Muslims.  Last week he warned against attempts to normalize ties with Israel and submit to its “humiliating” conditions. In a statement to a European delegation, Fadlallah accused Arab leaders of “attempting to fool” Muslims and the  Arab world. He said Arab leaders were negotiating the normalization of ties with Israel, “while the Palestinian people are getting exhausted and becoming further subdued.” Days later he issued a Fatwa (religious ruling) forbidding yielding Jerusalem and Palestine to Zionist colonizers.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Sisson has met five times in the past several weeks with Geagea and his supreme spiritual guide, Archbishop Sfeir.  They are  quickly forming the nucleus  of  Welch Club II and  are trying to make sure they can continue to count on Saudi Arabia for the kind of financial largesse that ran up the price of votes in the June 7   2009  election, according to Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, to as high as $5,000 per vote in key areas.

Pressure building in the Camps

Lebanon’s Palestinian leadership is being used by domestic and foreign interests and so far has pretty much kept quiet and out of Lebanese politics.  Some of the Camp leaders have been accused of collaborating with the army’s wanton destruction and continuing siege of Nahr al Bared and sealing off more than half of the Camps on orders from Ramallah so as to retain civil relations with their host country.

But the pressure has been building this hot summer and fall in Lebanon’s refugee camps with warnings coming from Palestinian, that 27 years after the Sabra Shatila massacre, explosive conditions exist in nearly all of Lebanon’s camps.

After Aoun’s reconstruction injunction succeeded earlier this month, Khalil Mekawi of the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee held an urgent meeting with lame duck prime minister Fouad Siniora and warned that this decision to freeze plans to rebuild Narh al Bared is causing outrage among Lebanon’s estimated 250,000 Palestinian camp residents that could, in his words, spill out across the country, leading to major chaos, at any time. While not claiming Palestinian involvement, he implied that more katyusha rockets might be launched into Palestine.

Franklin Lamb is Interim Director of the Washington DC-Beirut Lebanon based Sabra Shatila Foundation.  He can be reached at Sabrashatila.org.

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