home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Today's Stories Weekend Edition November 11 / 12, 2006 John Walsh Rahm's Losers Barucha Calamity Peller Oaxaca at Any Cost Al Krebs Be Careful What You Wish For Lawrence R. Velvel Throwing Rumsfeld Under the Bus   November 10, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Lame Duck Marjorie Cohn The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld Jorge Mariscal What Veterans See Gregory Elich The Trial of Saddam: Who Will Pass Judgment on the Judges? Joshua Frank Blue Dog Group: Bye-Bye Coke, Hello Pepsi Megan Boler The Joke is On Us: How "Borat" Lowers the Bar of Political Satire Ramzy Baroud The Treacherous Road to Oslo Begins Here Farzana Versey An Iraqi in India Roberto Rodriguez A Thumpin' or a Whippin'? Cartoon of the Day Splat!   November 9, 2006 Jennifer Loewenstein How Gaza Offends Us All Patrick Cockburn War of the Snipers Paul Craig Roberts Will Democrats Become Part of the Problem? Manuel Garcia, Jr. The Roots of Corruption Mike Whitney Bush's Chernobyl Economy Alan Maass The Repudiation of One-Party Rule Robert Jensen Blood on the Tracks: the Elections and the Coming Train Wreck Nicola Nasser Saddam's Trial in Context John Chuckman As I Lay Dying: Watching the US Elections from Canada Jamal Juma Between Resistance and Deception in Palestine Felice Pace Can the Klamath be Restored? Website of the Day The Robert Gates Files   November 8, 2006 Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair Count Your Blessings: NeoCons and NeoLibs Take Big Hit as Voters Say No to Bush, War and Free Trade Lawrence E. Walsh Robert Gates and Iran/Contra: Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence Bruce K. Gagnon What's Next for the Peace Movement?: Confront the Democrats, Now! Neve Gordon Anti-Semitism? Mr. Dershowitz, You Just Don't Like What I Say Dave Lindorff Election Post-Mortem: What's Next? Arthur Neslen Another Tragic Day in Palestine Joshua Frank An Election Hangover: Thank God It's Over James Goodman The Corporate Food System is Broken Charles Sullivan Voting in the Absence of Choice David Swanson Subpoena Envy: The Dems Have the Power, But Will They Use It? Missy Beattie The Electorate Speaks and Barney Barks! Dr. Susan Block American Voters Say, "Bush Sucks!" Website of the Day Stealing Olive Groves from Palestinians   November 7, 2006 Michael Neumann Cut and Run from Iraq: Sooner Rather Than Later Paul Wolf Saddam Must Die: A Pre-Ordained Verdict Nikolas Kozloff In Nicaragua, a Chavez Wave? Eliza Ernshire The Women of Beit Hanoun William S. Lind The Smile on Saddam's Face: He's Tan, Rested and Ready Mike Ferner Pick a Number: Greater Than 47,615 Felice Pace Pumping the Klamath Dry Chris Genovali The Problem with PBDEs: Why Canada's Proposed Ban Won't Protect People or Wildlife Gilad Atzmon Watching Borat Dick J. Reavis Going to Class War with the Proletariat We Got ... Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Lives (and Votes) Lost: the Ordeal of Larry Peterson Website of the Day Magic Sam: a Sure Cure for the Election Day Blues Question of the Day Is Bush Gay?   November 6, 2006 Alexander Cockburn The Message of Campaign 2006 Norman Solomon Saddam's Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald Rumsfeld Robert Fisk A Guilty Verdict on America, as Well Marjorie Cohn The Banana Election: From Hanging Chads to Hanging Saddam Paul Craig Roberts The Goose and the Gander: Is Bush Next? Nikolas Kozloff Election Eve Jitters: the Chavez Factor Newton Garver The Progress in Bolivia: Morales' Stunning Victory Over Big Oil Mike Whitney Bush's Carnival of Blood Jesse Hagopian From the Black Panthers to the Green Party: an Interview with Aaron Dixon Dr. Peter Rost, MD The Genocide Election: When a Life Saving Industry Cheats, People Die Website of the Day Robert Pollin vs. Rick Wolff: Is Pomo Marxism Marxism?   November 4 / 5, 2006 Dave Zirin Political Players: Where Athletes Give Their Money Patrick Cockburn When Does Incompetence Become a Crime? Sanho Tree War Timing and Opportunism Ralph Nader Failure Across All Fronts Lee Sustar The Obama Myth Dr. Shepherd Bliss Torture Memories Adam Elkus Babies and Banks: Celebrity Colonialism in Africa Seth Sandronsky Is Another Recession Looming? Fred Gardner 10 Years of Medical Pot in California: Dr. Mikuriya's Observations Joshua Sperber How the US Lost Latin America Evelyn Pringle Ohio Redux: Mr. Blackwell and the Henhouse Mitchel Cohen The Left and the Environment: Notes on the Ecological Dimension Missy Beattie The Medium is the Massage Michael Dickinson Watching the Guards: a Prison Diary John Holt The Silk Road to Ruin Dr. Susan Block The Beastly Bombing Poets' Basement LaMorticella, Engel, Orloski and Davies November 3, 2006 Laura Carlsen Day of the Dead in Oaxaca Stephan Said Honoring Bradley Will John Stauber "Victory in Iraq:" The PR Machine Behind Bush's Favorite Slogan Mike Whitney Baghdad is Surrounded Joshua Frank DNC Deja Vu Victoria Furio More Than Timetables Tammara~85,441 They Say He is Coming Home Stuart Croswaithe Beatings and Sugar Plums: New Labor's War on the Kurds Missy Beattie Bush Shock Website of the Day Howlin' Wolf November 2, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler The US Body Count in Iraq: an Analysis of Who is Dying and How Paul Craig Roberts Evil is as Evil Does Dave Lindorff Kerry Out: the Joke's Still on Us Uri Avnery The Lovable Man? Lieberman and the Decline of Israeli Democracy Jeff Birkenstein Smearing Harold Ford in Black Face John Ross Slave Labor in Private Prisons Zoltan Grossman Recharging the Anti-War Movement Eveyln Pringle The SEC's Probe of Halliburton: Is Cheney Being Fitted for a Striped Jumpsuit? Christopher Brauchli Drug Profits and PACs: Why Big Pharma Pushes the GOP   November 1, 2006 Alan Dershowitz v. Bruce Jackson On Torture Brian Tokar Running on Hype: the Real Scoop on Biofuels Fred Leonhardt Democrats, Sex Crimes and the Press: the Goldschmidt Affair Richard W. Behan Triumph of the Petropublicans: Bush's Other Civil War Brenda Norrell Indigenous Opposition to the Border Wall Charles Sullivan Spoils of Corruption: Who Will Stand Up When America Goes Wrong? Ron Jacobs Hell is Rising in Oaxaca: interview with a Oaxacan Rebel Mike Knapp Green Stench in Minnesota: the Commissioner and the Hog Lot Moshe Adler The Temptations of a Union Boss: the Case of Brian McLaughlin Walden Bello Chain Gang Economics Lee Ballinger The Collapse of Hip Capitalism: How Tower Records Committed Suicide Joshua Frank Party in a Cage: Snake Oil and the Midterm Elections Carl Gelderloos Cheerleading the Massacre in Oaxaca: an Open Letter to the Washington Post Peter Rost, MD Panic in Big Pharma Saul Landau Bush's Anti-Terrorism Record: Don't Look Too Close Website of the Day The Meatrix October 31, 2006 William S. Lind The Third and Final Act: Iran Stephen S. Pearcy Dem Candidate's Wife Urges Cindy Sheehan Not to Protest Iraq War Uri Avnery Who's Afraid of an Iranian Bomb? Michael Colby Corporations Win Again!: Bush Opens National Parks to Bio-Prospecting Sunsara Taylor A No-Win Election for Women Ben Beachy Targeting Nicaraguans' Stomachs: 11th Hour Election Meddling by the US Edward Humes Nine Words: America's Disservice to Veterans Roger Burbach The Meaning of Lula's Victory in Brazil Subcomandante Marcos A Communique from the EZLN on Oaxaca Niranjan Ramakrishnan Funny Business in the Booth: Vote for James H. 'Jim' Sharon Smith Those Damned Democrats Website of the Day Parks Not for Sale   October 30, 2006 Robert Fisk Dirty Bombs Over Lebanon: Did Israel Use Uranium Weapons? Bruce Jackson Normalizing Torture Norman Solomon I Was Wrong About Thomas Friedman, the World's Wealthiest Pundit Lance Selfa Liberal Doormats: Tread on Us Ali Khan The Veil and the British Male Elite Lee Sustar European Islamophobia: Fanning the Flames of Hate Robert Jensen The Death of Empathy Akiva Eldar Lieberman: Making Haider Look Good Tim Montague The Natural Step to Eco-Villages Brian M. Downing Evil in the Valley: Civilian Massacres, From Vietnam to Iraq Website of the Day Alien Impeachment October 27 / 29, 2006 Weekend Edition Jeffrey St. Clair Hogwash: Fecal Factories in the Heartland Maher Arar The Horrors of Extraordinary Rendition: a Personal Account David Rosen Perversions of Power: Mark Foley and the Bush Administration Gregory Elich "A Bursting Boiler at Russia's Doorstep:" Why Bush is Seeking Confrontation with N. Korea Tom Barry Fear and Loathing in the North: an Apartheid Fence in America? Jeff Taylor Democrats By Default? Dave Lindorff Why Nancy Pelosi is Wrong Ron Jacobs The General Who Called Out the Devil: the Politics of Hugo Chavez Maurus Chino Hauba Hanu: Oppression Affects All People Christopher Brauchli Veiled Threats: the Global War on Fashion Sherwood Ross The Wages of Whistleblowing: Why Bunny Greenhouse Sits in a Corner Rev. William Alberts In Search of a Real Inter-Religious Dialogue on War and Justice Aseem Shrivastava Pushing India Toward a "Dollar Democracy" Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Bush's Mea Culpa Speech, First Draft Russ Fine / Dee Fine Of Peters and Principles: Learning About Sex and Hypocrisy from the GOP Seth Sandronsky Social Security: the Distortions of Sebastian Mallaby Michael Carmichael Rogue President: Midterm Meltdown Joe Allen The Legacy of Gillo Pontecorvo: a Maker of Revolutionary Films David Vest Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Landau, Engel and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Safely Home   October 26, 2006 Ismael Hossein-zadeh Islamic Fascism?: Inflammatory Ironies Carlos Zorrilla The Police Raid on My House: Trumped Up Charges and Collusion Between a Mining Company and the Government of Ecuador Paul Craig Roberts The Crimes of Greed vs. the Crimes of Government: If Enron's Skilling Gets 24 Years in Prison, How Many Should Bush and Cheney Get? Mike Whitney The Charnel House of Baghdad Lily Hughes A Cruel and Unusual Reality: Inside the Texas Death House Jennifer Matsui Madonna's African Safari: The Great White Baby Hunter Tim Matson How to Save Vermont Stephen Fleischman Like a Soldier: Benchmarks, Timelines and Lies Missy Beattie The Blood of October: Are We Sure Barney Still Supports This War? Patrick Cockburn From "Mission Accomplished" to "Mission Impossible" in Iraq Website of the Day Open Letter to The Nation   October 25, 2006 Michael Donnelly Ethnicity and Baseball John Stanton The Vindication of Sibel Edmonds John Ross Upheaval from the Bottom Conn Hallinan Hunting Hugo: When It's About Oil Nothing is Off the Table--Not Even Assassination Robert Jensen Academic Freedom on the Rocks Johnny Barber Drinking Tea with Hizbullah Bruce K. Gagnon Space Cowboy: Bush's War on Heaven Daniel McGowan Elie Wiesel for Israeli President? James J. Brittain Uribe's Failure to Learn from Colombia's Past Peter Harley Afghanistan in 3-D Jonathan Cook Israel's Minister of Strategic Threats Shepherd Bliss The Bioneers and the New York Times Website of the Day The Price of Staying the Course   October 24, 2006 John Walsh The Book of Rahm: Emanuel's War Plan for Democrats M. Shahid Alam Not All Terrorists Are Muslim: the Latest Falsehood from the Advocates of Civilizational War Dr. Trudy Bond The Silence at Home, as America Eats Her Young Michael Phillips The Story of My Kidnapping in Nablus: "I Never Feared for My Life" Dave Lindorff Truth and Consequences on Iraq: Bush's Latest Cut-and-Paste War Plan David Phinney A US Fortress Rises in Baghdad: Asian Labor Trafficking Used to Build World's Largest Embassy Laura Carlsen Food Insecurity: the World Needs Its Small Farmers Pierre Tristam The American Way of Gore Marguerite Rose Jimenez "About That Trip to Cuba:" When the FBI Came Calling Website of the Day Tampon Terrorists   October 23, 2006 Saree Makdisi Israel's Cluster Bomb War: "What We Did Was Insane and Monstrous" Joshua Frank The Antiwar Movement and Independent Politics: an Interview with Cindy Sheehan Fred Gardner What Have California Doctors Learned About Cannabis? Ralph Nader The End of Habeas Corpus and the Belligerent Despot-in-Chief Ron Jacobs Bush's Clark Clifford: James Baker Wants a Kinder, Gentler War Norman Solomon Punditry Without Consequences: Channeling Thomas Friedman Richard Manning Outside the Market: We Need and Owe Rural People Neil Kitson Canadians in Afghanistan: Bloody, Unbowed, Stoned? William MacDougall The Socialist, the Columnist, His Wife and the Prostitute Gilad Atzmon Surviving the Board of Deputies Werther The Evening of Empire Website of the Day Different Drummer: Internet Coffeehouse Movement   October 20 / 22, 2006 Alexander Cockburn The Myth of Microloans Gary Leupp How the US Declared War on North Korea Brian Cloughley What Are They Dying For? Dave Zirin Pat Tillman's Brother Breaks His Silence William Blum Don't Look Back: Who Said Clinton Didn't Kill Anybody? Christopher Brauchli The Cronies' War Winslow Wheeler The Mad Logic of Pentagon Spending: As Costs Rise, Readiness Declines Michael Donnelly GOP Death Slide: Is the Party Really Over? Fred Gardner Corporate Drugs Useless Against Alzheimer's Susie Day How to Stay Out of Gitmo Lucinda Marshall Behind Closed Doors: the Invisibility of Domestic Violence Fred Wilcox The Second Palestinian Intifada: History of a Struggle for Survival Alan Maass Standing Up Against Racism at Columbia: a Wake Up Call to the Passive Left Lee Sustar A Bipartisan Border Wall: New Phases in the Crackdown on Immigrants Ariadna Theokopoulos Shame on You, Dr. Warf: Hail the Epidemiologist in Chief Missy Beattie Surges: the Dow and the Death Count CP News Wire Bush's Paraguay Land Grab: Hideout or Water Raid? CP News Services Sexually Repressed Republicans: Robert Bork, Riveted Poets' Basement Davies, Engel, Buknatski and Orloski Website of the Weekend Scenes from Oaxaca   October 19, 2006 Elaine Cassel The Bush Administration's Assault on Defense Lawyers Col. Dan Smith Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine: Cracks in the Bush / Blair Axis Manuel Garcia, Jr. North Korea's Nuclear Test: a Q & A Josh Gryniewicz Wal-Mart Tightens the Squeeze on Workers Amira Hass What is 20 Tons of Explosives? Eric Holt-Gimenez Poison and Famine in the Fields: How the Agri-Food Industry's Deadly Cycle Feeds Immigration Jesse Hagopian Arrested Democracy: On Trying to Ignore Aaron Dixon Sam Husseini How Third Parties Can Solve the "Spoiler" Problem and Win Elections John Weisheit A Gathering of Water Buffaloes: Feds Celebrate Death of the Colorado River CP News Service A Plea to U2 From Africa's Children: Stop Bono Before He Kills Again Website of the Day George W. Bush: Hollywood Producer Art Gallery of the Day Botero's Abu Ghraib Paintings in Manhattan   October 18, 2006 Joshua Frank Cindy Sheehan's Lesser Evilism: Democrats or Bust? Dr. Curran Warf, MD Slandering Sound Science: Bush's Attack on the Lancet Iraq War Death Study Saul Landau Bush's Foley: Will the Dems Blow It? Tom Barry The Politics of Fear Bruce Jackson Thundersnow: a Report from Buffalo Dave Lindorff Loveless Among the Ruins: Even Repubs Flee Bush's Failed Middle East Policy Frederico Fuentes When Cochabamba Said "Enough": Bolivia's Blow to Neoliberalism Michael Simmons Greetings from Echo Park: an Open Letter to Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner Daryll E. Ray The Root Problems in American Agriculture Kate Doyle The Dead of Tlatelolco Website of the Day The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee   October 17, 2006 Michael Neumann Hit and Run: Guerrilla Reviewing Manuel Garcia, Jr. Nuclear Test, Political Flare: Interpreting the Physics and Politics of N. Korea's Nuclear Test Stephen S. Pearcy The Interrogation of Julia Wilson: Secret Service Grills 14 Year-Old Artist Sharon Smith Afghanistan Reconsidered: The Taliban Aren't Gone, Women Haven't Been Liberated Al Krebs The Corporate Assault on Zoning David Underhill Politicus Interruptus: Come Back, Jo Bonner Daniel Wolff NY's Iraq Veterans Against the War Needs Your Help ... Now James Brooks Desirable Duds: Israeli / US Cluster Bombs Litter Lebanon Website of the Day Stop Torture Now   October 16, 2006 Gary Leupp North Korea as a Religious State Patrick Cockburn General Mutinies Against Blair David Wilson Where Have All the Doctors Gone?: the Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Robert Fisk Confronting Turkey's Armenian Genocide Robert Jensen Racism and Cheap Thrills at U. of Texas Law School Ingmar Lee / Krista Roessingh An Appeal for S. India's Wild Elephants Mike Whitney America's Other War Party Jake Whitney The Courageous Dr. Rost Sanho Tree Sugar Daddy Politics: Was Foley Blackmailed to Secure His Vote on CAFTA? Website of the Day Best War Ever   October 14/15, 2006 Weekend Edition Uri Avnery Gaza as Laboratory: the Great Experiment John Walsh How Rahm Emmanuel Has Rigged a Pro-War Congress Jean Bricmont A Fable About Palestine Jennifer Van Bergen Bush's Military Commissions Act and the Future of America Ralph Nader Wilted Yankees: the Fruits of Checkbook Baseball Floyd Rudmin The Logic of Proliferation: How Bush's Belligerence Prompted N. Korea to Pursue Nuclear Weapons Mark Weisbrot Correcting the Facts on US/Venezuela Relations Laura Carlsen Building a Future in the Mixteca Hani Shukrallah A Stroll Through the Cairo Mall: Shopping as Cultural Pursuit Dr. Susan Block The Spent Milk of Human Foley John Chuckman North Korea's Bomb: Still 1,126 Nuke Tests Behind the US Lucinda Marshall Is Betty Ugly?: the Profits of Denigration Don Monkerud The Case Against Depleted Uranium Missy Comley Beattie What Bush Means By Tolerable Violence in Iraq Ron Jacobs Shouting "No One is Illegal" in a Crowded Theater Website of the Weekend Ratfink Raunchfest   October 13, 2006 Jorge Mariscal PowerPoint Racism: How Military Recruiters Pitch to Latinos Stephen Philion The Myth of the Spat Upon Vets: an Interview with Jerry Lembcke John Blair Strip Mining Wildlife Preserves: Black Beauty's Filthy Lucre Col. Dan Smith Oil, Atoms and War Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry How Hezbollah Defeated Israel: Part Two, Winning the Ground War Stephen Fleischman Journalism Then and Now Charles Perroud The Death Penalty's Invisible Victims Anne E. Brodsky Return to Afghanistan: Where the Rhetoric Doesn't Match the Reality Website of the Day Underwater Nuke Test   October 12, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel's Plan for a Military Strike on Iran Norman Solomon The Pundit Path to Death in Iraq M. Shahid Alam On Colonialism and Colleagues Paul Craig Roberts Can We Call It Genocide Now? Meredith Schafer / Chris Kutalik Is a General Transportation Strike Looming for 2008? Can Labor Seize the Moment? Carl Gelderloos Images of Occupation: Teaching in Nablus Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry How Hezbollah Defeated Israel: Part One, Winning the Intelligence War Charles Sullivan Assassins of Truth William S. Lind Why Do We Still Fight a Lost War? CP News Service The South Turns Against the War Website of the Day There's a Riot Goin' On   October 11, 2006 John Feffer Pyongyang 1, Bush 0 Dave Lindorff A Killing Occupation Jackson Katz Gunning Down Women: Coverage of "School Shootings" Misses Central Issue April Howard / Ben Dangl The Tin War in Bolivia Michael Carmichael World War W Ken Couesbouc The New Witchcraft: Marvin Harris on the War on Terror Gregory Afghani Sleepless on Skid Row: Guilty of Being Homeless in America Alexander Cockburn 600,000 Dead in Iraq: Chortles in the New Yorker for Slaughter's Cheerleader, C. Hitchens Website of the Day Petition: Defend Columbia Students Who Confronted the Minutemen   October 10, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Lost Wars and a Lost Economy Robert Robideau The Myth Keepers of Columbus Joshua Frank The Democrats and the War on Civil Liberties Dave Lindorff Free the Press Free Linda Greenhouse Dave Zirin Brother of the Fist Heather Gray Where Votes Matter: My Experience in South Africa James Knotwell Big Ag in the Heartland: the Future of Nebraska's Family Farms Missy Beattie The Return of James Baker, III Mike Whitney Bush and North Korea: Bumbling Toward Disaster David Rosen Sex Panic on Capitol Hill: Mark Foley and the Politics of Sex in America Website of the Day Eno / Byrne: Music to Enjoy the Foley Scandal By   October 9. 2006 Robert Fisk The Age of Terror Norman Solomon Welcome to the Nuclear Club Ron Jacobs The Boom Heard Around the World Gideon Levy The Mystery of America Walter Brasch Their Back Pages: Sex, Lies and Family Values Mickey Z. Who Killed Michael Moore? John Holt Grizzlies in Our Midst: Can Humans and Bears Coexist? Lucinda Marshall Not So Pretty in Pink: Profits and Breast Cancer Saul Landau Post-Castro Cuba Website of the Day War, Inc.     October 7 / 8, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn Wargasms and Orgasms Peter Kwong The Chinese Face of Neoliberalism Ralph Nader Revolt of the Generals Mark Donham What Cynthia McKinney Means to Me Dave Lindorff Philly's Police Snoops Peter Bosshard World Bank Shuts Out Dissident Voices: Big Dams, Huge Profits & Political Corruption Ron Jacobs Evil Hour in Colombia Lawrence R. Velvel Governmental Derelicts: Moral Meltdown in America Fred Gardner Arnold Vetoes Hemp Bill David Green The US, Israel and the Invasion of Lebanon Jim B. Activism, Incorporated: Outsourcing Grassroots Politics? Missy Beattie Prayers for Peace at the Edge of the Abyss Michael Donnelly Blame the Page: Grand Old Perverts Go on Offensive Jackson Thoreau Enter Newt Jon Hung Revisiting Korematsu: Denying Civil Rights Based on National Origin CounterPunch News Service Why We Confronted the Minutemen at Columbia Tom D'Antoni Playlist Poets' Basement Orloski, Davies, Tirado, Gaffney and Ford Website of the Weekend Reagan Gone Wild   October 6, 2006 Alison Weir Just Another Mother Murdered Tiffany Ten Eyck / Mark Brenner Made in (DeUnionized) America Corporate Crime Reporter Look Who's Behind "37 Reasons" to Vote for Big Business: Former Clinton PR Flak Mike McCurry Juan Antonio Montecino Cleaving a False Divide in Latin America Walden Bello A Siamese Tragedy Christopher Brauchli Rank Invitations: Dining with Bush Brynne Keith-Jennings Dan Burton in Nicaragua: the Congressman, His Stick and the Elections Jonathan Cook The Struggle for Palestine's Soul Website of the Day Fighting Hog Farms and Clearcuts in the Heartland   October 5, 2006 John Walsh Turn the Page Carol Norris The Radical Right, the Myth of the Gay Child Abuser and You: a Psychotherapist on the Hysteria Over Foley Paul Craig Roberts Will November Bring Hope or Another Stolen Election? Ricardo Alarcón The Truth About the Embargo of Cuba James Abourezk Waterboarding the Constitution: After Torture, What's Next? Nicola Nasser Removing Hamas: Brinksmanship or Coup d'Etat? Kirkpatrick Sale Breaking Away: the First North American Secessionist Conference Uri Avnery Peace with Syria: Lunch in Damascus Website of the Day More Naughty GOP Messages October 4, 2006 Elizabeth Terzakis The Walls That Racism Built: Blood Revenge, the Death Penalty and Kevin Cooper Paul Wolf The Mushy Rebellion: Pakistan Under Musharraf Sean Penn The Arrogant, the Misguided and the Cowards Dave Lindorff Outrage as Misdirection: The Real Scandal isn't Foley Diane Farsetta For Sale: Iraqi Kurdistan Sharon Smith Democrats: Yes to War, No to Pedophilia Felice Pace Revoking 1776 Sara Roy The Economy of Gaza Website of the Day Alexander Cockburn: the Video Interview (Part Two) October 3, 2006 Jennifer Van Bergen Compassionate Conservative Pedophiles Greg Moses The Infallible Empire: Junking Habeas Corpus Stan Cox Real Bad ID: a National Driver's License and the Fading Right of Anonymity Niranjan Ramakrishnan How Empires Die Evelyn Pringle Big Pharma Takes a Hit: Alaska's Supreme Court Outlaws Forced Drugging Fred Wilhelms SoundExchange and Unpaid Music Artists: Help Us Find These Musicians and Get Them Paid Michael Abelman Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food: the Risks of Convenience and Consolidation Gary Leupp The Foley Follies Website of the Day Bush and Blair: Endless Love   October 2, 2006 Eric Hazan Roadmap to Nowhere: an Interview with Tanya Reinhart on Israel/Palestine Since 2003 Mike Whitney Bloodbath on 60 Minutes: Court Stenographer Finally Comes Clean Norman Solomon American Narcissism and Iraq Assaf Kfoury Meeting Nasrallah Missy Beattie The Meaning of "ummmm": Speaker Hasert and the Over-Friendly Congressman Arthur Neslen Lie Less in Gaza Paula J. Caplan How the Supreme Court Mangled My Research Website of the Day Predator Drones Target Bechtel           Subscribe Online

Come On, CounterPunchers Yes, the GOP Has Fallen, But Now We Must Fight the Democrats! Annual Fundraising Appeal We interrupt your regular reading habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch needs your financial support! We're not in the habit of making idle threats and this isn't one. Either we meet our fundraising goal of $60,000 over the next three weeks or we'll be forced to drastically curtail the operation of our website. It's near the end of our year and the wolves are gathering at the door. CounterPunch's website is supported almost entirely by subscribers to the print edition of our newsletter. We don't clutter the site by selling annoying popup ads. We tried getting money out of Google, but they gave us the boot. We aren't on the receiving end of six-figure grants from big foundations. George Soros doesn't have us on retainer. And we don't sell tickets on cruiseliners. The continued existence of CounterPunch depends solely on the support and dedication of our readers. And we know there are a lot of you. We get thousands of emails from you every day. Our website receives nearly 100,000 visits each day-and those numbers grow by the month. Of course, all these readers chew up a lot of bandwidth and that costs money. Through the Iraq war, the daily traumas of the Bush administration, hurricanes, earthquakes and the disappearance of the Democrats, many of you have found a refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We appreciate the support and are prepared for the fierce battles to come as the Bush administration expands its wars abroad and at home. Unlike many other outfits, we don't hit you up for money every month ... or even every quarter. We only ask for your support once a year. But we when ask, we mean it. Please, make a tax-deductible donation to CounterPunch today or purchase a subscription and a gift subscription or a crate of books as holiday presents, including Cockburn and St. Clair's latest book on the decline of the press: End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate. To contribute by phone you can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683 or mail contribution to: CounterPunch PO Box 228 Petrolia, CA 95558 Onward, Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva Weekend Edition November 11 / 12, 2006 "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" Sends Revisionists Yapping at History's Heels Ireland's Freedom Struggle and the Foster School of Falsification By NIALL MEEHAN Ken Loach's 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley', currently enjoying huge success at the Irish box office and the winner of the 2006 Cannes Palm d'Or winner, continues to stir up strong passions. The film depicts the struggle between the IRA and British forces during the Irish War of Independence and the civil war that followed the Anglo Irish Treaty of 1922. In Britain, The Sun called Loach's film "the most pro IRA ever". Ruth Dudley Edwards, an Irish historian, asked in the Daily Mail why the "Marxist" film director Ken Loach "loath[es] his country so much". Many critics of the film cited the work of one historian in particular, Peter Hart. I must declare an interest here. In the Irish Times letters pages in the summer of 2006, Hart claimed that I "misrepresent" his work, accusing him of stating that "ethnic cleansing" directed at Protestants was a feature of IRA actions. In fact I I did not state any such thing, though, had I done so, it would have been an accurate observation since Hart did use precisely that phraseology. The historian misrepresented himself and forgot his own history. Had he consulted his university department web site under "research", before putting pen to paper, he would have seen that he researches "ethnic conflict and cleansing" in Ireland. ( The correspondence is online at indymedia.ie.) Indeed one strand in the criticism of Loach's film is that it does not deal with alleged IRA sectarianism toward Ireland's Protestant community. In writing a largely favourable review in History Ireland (Sept-Oct 2006), TCD historian Brian Hanley commented briefly on the absence of such a treatment in the film. Ireland's leading 'revisionist' historian, Professor Roy Foster of Oxford University, [a Waterford man who achieves the amazing feat in his standard history of Ireland of suggesting that the Great Famine of the mid-1840s somehow didn't really occur, Editors] invoked Peter Hart in his swipes at Loach. The relevant text here is Hart's The IRA and its Enemies (1998). Hart concluded that the IRA was sectarian and that the Irish War of Independence was a battle for 'ethnic supremacy'. Hart argued previously, (though he's now trying to haul his foot out of his mouth), that the headline-provoking phrase "ethnic cleansing" could be used to describe certain actions by republican forces. In disagreeing with cultural critic Luke Gibbons' rejection of the term, Foster agreed with Hart and, by way of example, cited the "murder" of the Protestant Pearson brothers in Offaly in 1921. While giving one source for his view, Alan Stanley's I Met Murder on the Way, Foster omitted an alternative account by Offaly historian Patrick Heaney. Heaney indicated that the Pearson brothers were combatants who shot at and hit IRA members, were themselves sectarian in their Protestant ascendancy outlook, and contacted British authorities in Dublin Castle to inform on IRA activists. After the IRA weighed the evidence, they decided to execute the Pearsons and then did so. Heaney wrote on this subject some years ago, prior to Stanley's account, which itself fails to address Heaney's work. Heaney updated his account with corroborative material from the newly released files from the Bureau of Military History in early 2006. Pat Muldowney wrote on this subject in Church and State magazine (Winter & Spring 2006), and it was released also on the Internet, on Indymedia.ie. Perhaps Professor Foster was unaware of these sources of information, a consistent pattern of evasive behavior within 'revisionist' historiography, as we shall see. From his academic perch Foster dismisses those he deigns to term "local"--albeit unnamed -- historians, who presume to criticize Peter Hart, about whom there is in fact plenty to criticize. The historians Brian Murphy and Meda Ryan have charged him with bias and distortion. How, Ryan asks, can Hart claim to have interviewed an anonymous veteran of the famous November 1920 Kilmichael ambush in Cork six days after the last veteran died. She has not received an answer. Four of six issues of History Ireland in 2005 were devoted to coverage of the views of the antagonists. The BBC has covered the debate (BBC radio, BBC online and BBC history magazine), and the controversy has featured in Ireland's main newspapers. The History Ireland debate is online at historyireland.com and it has been given extensive coverage at indymedia.ie. 1918 Election The debate in relation to what happened in West Cork during the 1916-21 period and the consequent overlapping with critical commentary on The Wind that Shakes the Barley is part of a deeper debate about Ireland's political and social formation. There's been a meandering debate in the Irish press about the validity of the violence, (of which, it has to be emphasized) by the standards of the twentieth century wars of national liberation, there was a tiny amount. British refusal to recognise Sinn Fein's overwhelming electoral victory in 1918 lead to the War of Independence of 1919-21, the Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921, the civil war of 1922-23 and the enduring partition of the island of Ireland. [The problem is that these days Ireland's anti-nationalist social democrats are terribly embarrassed by terms like "national liberation" or "colonial oppression" or--God help us--"class struggle" or "British savagery" of which there was an abundance, and so deprecate the whole Independence struggle and somehow wish it hadn't happened, or if it had happened it should have been fought out over cups of latte with the antagonists whacking each other with damp copies of Irish Times special supplements on education. AC.] During the 1970s the teaching of history in Irish schools and colleges was an early casualty of the paranoia of the elite, as they gazed in horror at increasing violence in Northern Ireland, particularly after the civil rights movement there was shot off the streets by British paratroopers in Derry in 1972. The partition settlement of the early 1920s was in crisis because the six-county British enclave in northern Ireland was dysfunctional at every significant level. Given the obvious fact that Irish history appeared to justify the use of violence against colonial or British sectarian government it seemed safer to kick the very idea of historical narrative into to the dustbin.. of history. This was supposed to de-politicise history. Naturally, it had the opposite effect. But this modern modishness was a cry from a conservative establishment terrified at the prospect of violence in the Six Counties undermining the established and stable structures of 26- county society in the south. At one point in the mid 1970s the Irish government in Dublin was spooked at the thought that Harold Wilson's British Labor government was planning to leave Northern Ireland. A government elite was amenable to destroying the ideological underpinning of its existence (the national struggle), because the ideology of the nation (32 counties) undermined the stability of the state (26 counties), that itself legitimised the sense of nationhood. It was a bind. For War of Independence IRA, read Provisional IRA. For south then, read north, as in Northern Ireland, now. Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, the leading ministerial force behind state censorship of broadcasting and the onslaught on the brittle nature of the 'official' nationalism of the Republic of Ireland, threw his weight behind a re-tread of Irish history. The establishment's door was thrown open, to career-enhancing revisionism in the history departments of Irish universities. As minister in the 1973-77 Irish government, Conor Cruise O'Brien exercised ideological control though censorship and enforced reorganization in Irish broadcasting. Ministerial colleagues in charge of the army and the police ensured a vigorous physical control of the populace. O'Brien was himself fully in sympathy this. On page 355 of his 1998 memoir My Life and Themes he relates his police special branch driver telling him how police allegedly discovered the whereabouts of a group of maverick republicans who had kidnapped Dutch industrialist Tiede Herrema in 1975: "One of the gang had been arrested, and we felt sure he knew where Herrema was. So this man was transferred under Branch escort from a prison in the country to a prison in Dublin, and on the way the car stopped. Then the escort started asking him questions and when at first he refused to answer they beat the shit out of him. Then he told them where Herrema was". O' Brien adds, "I refrained from telling this story to Garret [Fitzgerald] or Justin [Keating - both ministerial colleagues] because I thought it would worry them. It didn't worry me". Some members of the Irish police tried to tip off cabinet ministers to the existence of a group in the Gardai (Irish police) whose task it was to systematically beat confessions out of suspects. Dr Fitzgerald revealed some years later his attempts to bring this subject up at the cabinet table, but also his failure. During this 1973-77 period, the biggest mass murder of the troubles occurred, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974. Allegedly, British security forces were involved in directing unionist paramilitaries in the Ulster Volunteer Force. The British government refused to cooperate with an enquiry, under Mr Justice Barron, set up by the Dublin government many years later. Barron noted this lack of cooperation and also that the Irish police investigation was incompetent and curtailed within a short period of time. Barron also noted that the Dublin government was uninterested in pursuing the matter, either through police enquiry or with the British government. They had other priorities, such as the teaching of history. When Dr O'Brien brandished his tolerance for police torture in 1998, Irish newspapers did not comment on it. The Sunday Times reported it in its "culture" section. Near the end of his relatively brief tenure of office, in 1976, Dr O'Brien revealed to the late Bernard Nossiter of the Washington Post that he intended to imprison the then Editor of the Irish Press, Tim Pat Coogan. Coogan recalls: "Bud Nossiter was the Washington Post's London correspondent and he had come to Ireland to do a piece on some anti-terrorist legislation which was before the Dail Irish Parliament at the time. Because of the situation in Northern Ireland, the law proposed to curb the kind of material newspapers could print. ..... "Bud showed up in my office unexpectedly. He told me I had better watch out. He had asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs for an example of the sort of material which the proposed law would curtail. The Minister, Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, pulled open a drawer filled with clippings from the Letters to the Editor column of the Irish Press. Bud, coming from the paper that broke Watergate, was naturally stunned at the thought of prosecuting people for exercising the elementary democratic right of writing to a newspaper. But it turned out that it was not the letter writers whom it was planned to hit, but me, the editor." Irish Voice, October 27 1992 Coercion helped to stabilize a new consensus among the elite, one that re-defined the relationship between Ireland and Britain. Enter Roy Foster This is where Roy Foster came in. Terry Eagleton commented in his review of Foster's biography of the poet WB Yeats: "Foster is not terribly at home with ideas and abstractions. If Yeats had too many of them, his biographer has too few. He is shrewd, pragmatic, civilized and ironic, averse to big pictures and grand theories. This is one reason he is a favored son of the Anglo-Saxon establishment, which likes to think small. Another reason is that, as a commentator on Irish affairs, he tells the British by and large just what they want to hear about the place ... " In fact, Foster has scrupulously concealed beneath the suavities of his coruscating prose style an enormous chip on his shoulder. Like the members of many an ousted governing caste, from Malaysia to Zimbabwe, he harbors a smoldering resentment of the native anticolonial movement. Republicanism in his view is less a logical extension of Enlightenment democracy than a bigoted ethnic conspiracy to sideline posh Prods like himself. When an argument touches on this sore point, as Irish arguments often do, he finds it hard to keep his scholarly cool. There is, for example, a notable difference in tone between his dispassionate treatment of Yeats's autocratic ideas and ridiculous posturings, and the sneery sardonicism that lurks just beneath the surface when he describes a Gaelic congress or festival. If Gerry Adams had written for himself the kind of breathtakingly arrogant epitaph that Yeats did, one suspects that Foster's response to it would not be quite so kid-gloved. He writes occasionally of "extreme" politics, meaning those who threaten his own interests. Yeats's own far-right views are not granted such an epithet. The Nation December 8, 2003 If I were to take issue with any of the above, it would be to point out that while Foster may write from the vantage point of a sensibility in tune with British condescension toward things Irish, reference to his religion and social standing, "posh Prod", may obscure the extent to which he reflects prejudices that are quintessentially Irish and that gain sustenance and support from within the Irish body politic. The standard feature of such approaches tends to see sectarianism as an internal Irish disease and British responses as an attempt to regulate it in as fair a manner as possible in highly disagreeable circumstances. Notwithstanding the obstacle of a constitutionally Protestant monarch, or perhaps by subsuming WASP superiority into the argument, Britain was seen as administratively plural and diverse, the Irish as singular and perverse in their obsessional hatreds ( said hatred including, inexplicably, things British). We are dealing with anglified Irishness that is overtly 'patriotic' in relation to its class interests, but not demonstrably in relation to the political and historical sequence that gave those class interests an independent state in which to flourish. Montgomery But it is not merely a matter of attitudinising. It is necessary for the proponents of such a view to leave bits out of the story, for fear that it would lead to a conclusion, and conclusions are dangerous things. This could not be more clearly evinced than than in Foster's animus against Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, which he combined with a lamentable assault on Angela's Ashes author, Frank McCourt , in the New York Times: Evelyn Waugh once remarked that to the Irishman there are only two ultimate realities, hell and the United States. The McCourt version postulates that you have to experience the first in order to be redeemed by the second. Thus the McCourt oeuvre, apparently trading in misery, actually sells on synthetic moral uplift. This supercilious condescension could be envy, could be a problem with American culture, Irish-American culture, with Irish culture, or could be all four. In the same piece Gerry Adams is derided for not opening himself up to prosecution by detailing participation in the IRA. This is, says Foster, like "a biography of Field Marshal Montgomery that leaves out the British Army" Perhaps the comment on Bernard Law Montgomery, the son of an Ulster clergyman, and arch irritant of another jumped up colonial, General Dwight D Eisenhower, is misplaced and should have been directed by Foster at his mirror. Brian P Murphy observed in relation to Foster and the Kilmichael Ambush of November 1920, the one that changed the course of the Anglo Irish War of 1919-21: Roy Foster, in his Modern Ireland, despite dealing with Cork in late 1920, does not mention the Kilmichael Ambush. He does quote from "an English Brigade Major" who said, "I think I regarded all civilians as "Shinners", and I never had any dealings with any of them". Foster, however, does not advert to the significant fact that this Brigade Major was Bernard Montgomery, of Second World War renown, who was based in Cork, nor does he cite the previous sentence of Montgomery that "personally my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels and it never bothered me a bit how many houses were burned". Foster, who turns up his nose at "prefabricated ideas", is at home fabricating prejudice. A failure to entertain pertinent but uncomfortable facts is a feature of revisionist historiography. If Hart is guilty in his The IRA and its Enemies, then it could be said that he learned his trade from an apt instructor. So impressed was Professor Foster with Peter Hart's study of the IRA in West Cork in 1998 that he chaired the jury that unanimously awarded Hart the Ewart Biggs prize for his book published that same year ("Awarded in memory of the British Ambassador to Ireland who was assassinated in Dublin in 1976 [by the IRA]. The prize was established in 1977 [by the late Jane Ewart Biggs] and aims to create greater understanding between the peoples of Britain and Ireland, or co-operation between the partners of the European Community. It is awarded to a book, a play or a piece of journalism that best fulfils this aim.") One of the great claims of the revisionist historiography that emerged out of the Irish Kulturkampf of the 1970s was that it is objective and free of bias. It is the alternative to Irish nationalist history. Eagleton again on Foster's tellingly entitled The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland: "Foster, the great demythologiser of Ireland . . . like most demythologisers . . . remains ensnared in a few myths of his own. He cannot, for example, free himself of the old-fashioned liberal prejudice that political commitment is inevitably reductive. Though 'the Irish story' is needlingly partisan, its author tends to believe that partisanship, like halitosis, is what the other fellow has." The Guardian (London) October 27, 2001 The critic and author, Seamus Deane, pointed out: "by refusing to be Irish nationalists, (revisionists) simply become defenders of Ulster or British nationalism, thereby switching sides". Revisionist history enters the realm of the absurd. Instead of the Irish being the victims of sectarian rule, they become responsible. Unionists or loyalists, who operated sectarian politics in the name of an explicitly Protestant British overlordship, become its victims. Persecution Steven King, an advisor to one time Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, wrote on the Loach film under the headline "pure and utter propaganda" in the Irish Examiner. King suggested that in the film, "the Irish capacity for oppressing each other is blithely dismissed". This was not a comment on unionist politics, but part of an assertion that in Cork, where the film is set, "many a Cork Protestant was shot in pure sectarian reprisals". In the Irish Examiner, I wrote a defence of the film and pointed out some home truths with regard to British responsibility for racist and sectarian attitudes--attitudes, which, incidentally, Peter Hart excised from a book he edited on a British intelligence assessment of the conflict, without informing the reader. In response to, and in disagreement with my approach, researcher Robin Bury referred to Hart's work. Bury said that republican persecution forced Protestants to flee their homes, farms and businesses. In developing his argument in the Irish Examiner, Bury acknowledged "the assistance of Dr David Fitzpatrick of TCD" (who supervised Peter Hart's PhD thesis that became his 1998 book) and referred to "the 3,143 files" submitted to the Irish Distress Committee. Bury quoted from "the Presbyterian journal The Witness" and cited WT Cosgrave in the Dail in June 1922 to the effect that "inoffensive Protestants of all classes are being driven from their homes". Does this criticism check out? An examination of Bury's sources is a useful test case for the accusation of republican sectarianism. 'Diabolic' Taking the last point first, the Cosgrave remark cannot be found in the minute book of Dail Eireann (the Irish parliament), though, curiously, Robin Bury's Reform Society previously ascribed the exact same remark to the Church of Ireland Gazette. A movable quotation for every occasion perhaps. Furthermore, The Witness was a private journal published in Belfast, not a Presbyterian Church publication. Bury quoted the editorial: "the plight of the Protestants [is] sad in the extreme. They are marked, they are watched, they are raided; some have been dragged out and shot like beasts". The editorial was in fact based on a report from "the Honourable HM Pollock, DL, MP, the Minister of Finance in the Northern Parliament...". This was not mentioned by Bury. It is stretching credulity to regard as objective a report from a unionist politician, who was in office while the well-documented persecution and oppression of the nationalist population in the North of Ireland was in train. In any case the "truth" of the Sinn Fein claim of non-sectarianism was actually admitted in the editorial, though backhandedly: "their vengeance falls upon all who hinder them without regard to creed or class". However, "Protestants are loyal and law abiding, and feel it as a duty which they owe to God and their own conscience to support the forces of the Crown". The lengthy diatribe mixed political acuity and sectarian paranoia: "Sinn Fein is now a diabolic agency out to destroy the British Isles and the British Empire". This material is merely evidence of propaganda. Mr Biggs There is, however, evidence of persecution of Protestants, and from a very interesting source in the London Times in late 1920: "The only damage to loyalists' premises has been done by the police. In July [1920] they burned the stores of Mr G.W. Biggs, the principal merchant in Bantry, a man highly respected, a Protestant, and a lifelong Unionist, with a damage of over £25,000, and the estate office of the late Mr. Leigh-White, also a Unionist. Subsequently.., the police fired into Mr. Biggs's office, while his residence has since been commandeered for police barracks. He has had to send his family to Dublin and to live himself in a hotel. Only two reasons can be assigned for the outrages on Mr. Biggs, one that he employed Sinn Feiners, the other a... statement of his protesting against Orange allegations of Catholic intolerance." This account was in one of three letters to The Times from J Annan Bryce, aged 77, of West Cork. Annan Byce was a former Scottish Liberal MP, Far East British colonial functionary, and brother of a British Chief Secretary to Ireland. Annan Bryce's second letter mentioned his wife Violet, who in 1916 "opened at Glengarriff the first convalescent home for [British] officers in Ireland": " as reported in the papers today, my wife was arrested at Holyhead [in Wales], deported to Kingstown, lodged in Bridewell there, and released without charge after four hours' detention. Such arrests are of daily occurrence in Ireland, where any and every interference with liberty had been legalized by recent legislation, but I am not aware under what authority they have become lawful in Great Britain. My wife had been invited to address a meeting in Wales about [British] reprisals, a subject on which she is a competent witness. .. She has been able to see the effect of the policy of reprisals, and has suffered from them in her own person. Her garage has been burned she had been repeatedly threatened with the burning down of her house, and on one occasion was in imminent danger of death from the rifle of a policeman" Reprisal burnings, killings and torture became a feature of British prosecution of the War. The burned a city (Cork), towns (Fermoy) and villages (Balbriggan). And they burned creameries. In fact they burned property that in the main was held by Protestants, who owned most of the significant property. It is what happened when soldiers of the Essex Regiment ransacked Bandon, otherwise known as "the Londonderry of the South". The British also burned hundreds of small homesteads owned or occupied by those assumed to be republicans or their supporters. Tom Barry recounted in his great book Guerrilla Days in Ireland (1949) that a counter burning strategy was required. The IRA systematically burned property owned by "Britishers", that is owned by those they saw as actively collaborating with their enemy. It had the desired effect from a republican perspective, as the rateable valuation of the 'Britisher's' property was far in excess of the hovels in the possession of the republicans and their supporters. Howls of outrage aimed at the British authorities came from supporters watching their ample properties going up in flames. It put an end to the British reprisal burnings, much to republican relief as they were fast running out of property owned by 'Britishers'. Writing in 1949 Tom Barry noted British attempts to whip up sectarian fear by publishing the religion of a spy executed by the IRA if he was Protestant, and ignoring it if he was not. John Borgonovo's Spies, Informers, and the "Anti-Sinn Fein Society is published by Irish Academic Press in 2006. It examined IRA actions in the Cork City area. Borgonovo, from San Francisco, stated Overall, my research revealed no IRA campaign against the city's Protestant, unionist and ex-servicemen institutions and leaders. Among Cork's executed "spies", clear evidence linked some of them to the crown forces, while others were shot without any explanation. Today it is impossible to establish guilt in many cases. British records about informants are fragmented, incomplete, and often unreliable. IRA records were destroyed during the conflict for security reasons. However, surviving documentation indicates the Cork city IRA only targeted civilians it believed were passing information to the crown forces. The Cork city Volunteers certainly had the means to identify local citizens working with British forces. Volunteers systematically intercepted mail, tapped phone lines and monitored telegraphs around the city. Republican spies and sympathisers could be found in key workplaces throughout the town. IRA intelligence officers closely watched British bases and personnel. One IRA spy penetrated the British army's Cork command at its highest level, and had access to sensitive information that we must assume included the identities of local civilian informants. Her story can be found in Florence and Josephine O'Donoghue's War of Independence, which I edited. Irish Times July 14 2006 The murderous activities of the infamous British Auxiliaries (staffed by former British Officers, paid £1.00 per day) and Black & Tans (staffed by former ordinary ranks, paid 10 shillings a day) lead to a decision by the IRA to confront these elite British forces. On November 30, 1920, Tom Barry commanded 36 IRA riflemen at the Kilmichael ambush, in which an entire force of Auxiliary officers were killed (one was left for dead and survived, though incapacitated). This successful action helped to change the course and character of the conflict, to the advantage of the Irish side. False Surrender In an argument that gained an enormous of media publicity, Peter Hart questioned the longstanding account of an Auxiliary false surrender at Kilmichael, leading to the deaths of IRA volunteers who stood up from their positions to take this apparent surrender. Hart accused Tom Barry of "lies and evasions" and alleged that Barry had ordered a massacre of unarmed prisoners. This was an important part of the development of Hart's thesis that ethnic hatreds lead to shootings of uninvolved Protestants in West Cork. In History Ireland one can read argument and counter argument. Hart suffered accusations of censorship of evidence and deliberate distortion, as well as questioning by Meda Ryan of Hart's claim to have interviewed an anonymous veteran of the ambush six days after the last veteran, Ned Young, died on November 13, 1989. It is said that history enables the dead to come alive, but they do not usually report post mortem. Brian P Murphy's recently published study, The Origin and Organisation of British Propaganda in Ireland (2006), examined the extent to which Hart had relied on material published by a Propaganda Department in Dublin Castle (the seat of British administration) under Basil Clarke. Clarke's philosophy of news manipulation was sophisticated in that it relied, as he put it, on propaganda by news, not by views, leading to verisimilitude, or "the appearance of truth". David Miller of spinwatch.org, editor of Tell me Lies, on news manipulation of the conflict in Iraq, contributes a foreword to the Murphy study, in which he commented on the significant contribution of the Dublin Castle propaganda team to the British tradition of news manipulation and news management. Murphy also, in an appendix, outlined how Peter Hart systematically misused source material. For instance, Hart left out of his account of the Dunmanway killings of April 1922 a British admission that Protestant loyalists in the area were systematically supplying information. In fact they were also organised in paramilitary style in aid of British forces. Hart's attempt to elide reference to his censorship in his subsequent editorship (2003) of the British intelligence assessment, called The Record of the Rebellion in the 6th Divisional Area, lead an Irish Times reviewer to accuse him of being "disingenuous". Censorship In addition, as Murphy pointed out, Hart committed a new act of censorship in his editorship of The Record. He failed to inform the reader that he left out an entire section of the British intelligence assessment on "The People". It stated, in part: "Practically all commanders and intelligence officers considered that 90 per cent of the people were Sinn Feiners or sympathisers with Sinn Fein, and that all Sinn Feiners were murderers or sympathisers with murder. Judged by English standards, the Irish are a difficult and unsatisfactory people. Their civilisation is different and in many ways lower than that of the English. They are entirely lacking in the Englishman's respect for truth . . . Many were of a degenerate type and their methods of waging war were in the most case barbarous, influenced by hatred and devoid of courage." Aside from the act of omission, here is proof of British racism and, though being aware of IRA shootings of informers, there is no accusation that the IRA harboured sectarian thoughts or feelings, or more importantly, that they gave expression to them in action. Hart referred to the Record of the Rebellion as "the most trustworthy source" available. Quite. Tax evasion However, back to the task at hand. An examination of the British government's Irish Distress Committee is next on the list of sources submitted by Bury. An interim report in November 1922 stated: "of the 1,873 cases approved for emergency relief, about 600 were Protestant and just over 1,000 Catholic". Persecutors of Protestants persecuted more Catholics than Protestants, it would appear. The ending of colonial administration and economic devastation, contributed to in no small measure by the burning of factories towns and cities by British forces, and civil war, lead to the departure of many. This included many Protestants who were part of the edifice of colonial government, or who were fearful as a result of their activities on behalf of the Crown. It also included those who believed British propaganda to the effect that republicans would treat Protestants in the same way as Roman Catholics were treated in the North of Ireland by the new unionist administration there. The unauthorised killings of former loyalist agents near Dunmanway in April 1922 heightened this fear considerably, as the anonymous perpetrators did not announce the reason for the killings publicly. It was as a result of Peter Hart's claims of ethnic cleansing that the linking of the deceased names to a British Auxiliary intelligence diary, left behind after their evacuation of Dunmanway, was published in 2003 in Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter, by Meda Ryan. As an example of the fear generated by the killings, the Protestant founder of the Skibbereen Historical Society, Willy Kingston, who had willingly taken part in illegal Sinn Fein Courts, including inviting arrest by defying the British authorities openly, and who supported the aims, if not the methods, of republican separatists, fled West Cork with a large number of mainly male co-religionists in the aftermath. He returned soon afterwards to practice law in the town, became quite prominent, setting up the historical society, and survived contentedly into old age, eventually dying in 1965. His experience was, I suggest, typical and confirms the outlook of most southern Protestants who developed an allegiance to the newly independent Irish state alongside other citizens of what became the Republic of Ireland. More to the point, the state was capable of winning their allegiance, unlike what happened in the North of Ireland where Roman Catholics or nationali