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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!

IRAQ: WHAT HAPPENED?

Is the bloodbath over? Is the Occupation settling in? Learn the real story from Patrick Cockburn, the war's most experienced reporter. Also in this exclusive bulletin for CounterPunch subscribers: Jeffrey St Clair on the destruction of America; Alexander Cockburn on how the Left loves to scare itself; Ignacio Ramonet on Africa's No to "free trade". Plus "Waterboarded"--Why the CIA destroyed its videos. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents.

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Today's Stories

January 4, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
A Good Night in Iowa

Jonathan Cook
War Crimes Airbrushed from History

January 3, 2008

Fatima Bhutto
Farewell to Wadi Bua

Pam Martens
The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos

Joanne Mariner
The Presidential Candidates and Torture

Zoltan Grossman
Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web

David Domke
The Echoing Press and Huckabee

Norman Solomon
Edwards Reconsidered

Nikolas Kozloff
Return of the Faux Liberal

Jacob G. Hornberger
The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus

Martha Rosenberg
Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick

Russell Means
This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands

Website of the Day
WolfQuest

 

January 2, 2008

Jeff Taylor
The Left and Ron Paul

M. Shahid Alam
The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy

Gary Leupp
Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminals with Badges

Heather Gray
Georgia's Racist Death Penalty

Fred Gardner
and Shobhit Arora
Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis

David Macaray
Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley

Benjamin Dangl
Fear and Loathing in Bolivia

 

 

January 1, 2008

Iain A. Boal
City of Disappearances

B. R. Gowani
Benazir's Death in Crisistan

Shahid Mahmood
Bhutto and the Press

Linn Washington, Jr.
Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling

Harvey Wasserman
Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton Era

John Ross
2008, Already a Year to Forget

Website of the Day
The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys

 

December 31, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye 2007 and Good Riddance!

Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers

Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?

Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?

Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark Future

Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential Election Campaigns

Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome

Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?

Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship

Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated

 

December 29 / 30, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Options in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby

Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto

Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance

China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss

Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics

Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard

Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?

Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something

Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security

Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas

Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing

Kristin Van Tassel
Seeing in the Dark

Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage

Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More

Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies

Website of the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan

 

December 28, 2007

Farzana Versey
The Complex Electra

Wajahat Ali
A Pakistani Requiem

Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives

Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq

Ray McGovern
Creeping Fascism

Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going

Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted

Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba

John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild

Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"

 

December 27, 2007

Dilip Hiro
A Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?

Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?

Stephen Soldz
Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda

Bill Quigley
Locked Outside the Gates

Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up

Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?

Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?

Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim

Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT

Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman

Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink

Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades

Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth

 


December 26, 2007

Charles Tripp
From One Saddam to Fifty

Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government

Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War

John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men

Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb

Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within

Website of the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas

 

December 25, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Conscience and Empire

December 24, 2007

Andrea Peacock
A Dark Ride on the Border

Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said

Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!

Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot

Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington

Mike Whitney
The Big Fix

Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans

John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders

Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion

Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas

Website of the Day
Back in the USSR


December 22 / 23, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot

Ralph Nader
Politics and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way

Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan

Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan

Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids

Rev. William E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers

Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?

Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq

Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol

Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques

Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law

William Loren Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake Okeechobee

Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita

Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters

David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford

Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa

 

December 21, 2007

John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico

Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq

Dick J. Reavis
A Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss

Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon

The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes

Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms

Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie Kerik)

Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution

Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist

David Macaray
Union Aftermath

Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa

Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA

Website of the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape

 

December 20, 2007

David Rosen
Mitt Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer

Alan Farago
The Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA

Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot

Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates

Website of the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter

 

December 19, 2007

Saul Landau
Is the NIE Bush's Watergate?

Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk

Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck

Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes

Sen. Russell Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation

Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine

Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags

Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions

Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?

Website of the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV

 

December 18, 2007

R. F. Blader
The Politics of Teen Pregnancy

George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho

Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?

Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar

David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem

Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays

Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home

Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters

Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print

Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit

Website of the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America

 

December 17, 2007

Mike Whitney
Staring Into the Abyss

Tom Barry
Planning the War on Immigrants

Uri Avnery
A Gaza Masada?

Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas

Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder

Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers

Stephen Lendman
Police State America

Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way

Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza

Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game

December 15 / 16, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
A People's Penny for the Magna Carta

Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb

Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco

Raymond J. Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas

Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine

Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists

Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up

Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct

Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op

Missy Comley Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins

Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims

James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future

Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten

Website of the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

 

December 14, 2007

JoAnn Wypijewski
The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him

John Ross
Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax

Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?

Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes

Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners

Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest

Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies

Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace

Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"

 

December 13, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out

Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding

Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy

Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze

Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch

Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia

Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?

Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It

Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land

Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol

Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!


December 12, 2007

Allan Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones

Alan Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young

Ray McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts

Evan Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt

James Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers

Joel Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine

Joshua Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention

Sherry Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul

Dan Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard

Website of the Day
Men Eating Bugs

 

December 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
What's Really Happened During the Surge?

Diana Johnstone
The Next Kosovo War

Paul Craig Roberts
It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution

David Macaray
Impasse in Hollywood

Ralph Nader
Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result

Martha Rosenberg
No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers

Steve Champion /
Anthony Ross

Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams

Kim Nicolini
Tangled Up in Dylan

Michael Dickinson
Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent

Website of the Day
A Charming (and Worthy) Pitch


December 10, 2007

Uri Avnery
How They Stole the Bomb From Us

Debbie Nathan
The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn

JoAnn Wypijewski
Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do?

Steve Kelly
Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness

Donna J. Volatile
Welcome to the Revolution

 

December 8 / 9, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Coup Against Bush and Cheney

Brenda Norrell
Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists

Saul Landau
The Ruins of Empire

R. F. Blader
A Rape in Every Drink?

Ray McGovern
Spinning Iran's Centrifuges

Allan Nairn
Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia

Linn Washington, Jr
Spotlight on Death Row

Paul Craig Roberts
When Will Bush Come Clean?

 

December 7, 2007

Sean Penn
Piano Wire Puppeteers

Arthur Versluis
Mining Water in the Desert

M. G. Piety
Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence

Pam Martens
Banksters Gone Wild

Alan Farago
Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis

Allan Nairn
It Takes (Out) a Village

Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday

Alice Slater
The Iran Opening

Robert Weissman
The Story of Stuff

Website of the Day
Something About Mitt

 

December 5, 2007

Mike Whitney
Why the CFR Hates Putin

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats

James Petras
Venezuela in the Aftermath

Ron Jacobs
The Iran Charade

Dave Zirin
Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One? Time to Choose

Peter Zinn
Covered in New Orleans

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Impeach Pelosi Instead

Alan Farago
The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida

Heather Gray
US Meddling in Australian Politics

Website of the Day
A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas

 

December 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lies at the End of the American Dream

Ray McGovern
No-Nuke Iran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small

Allan Nairn
The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food"

Russell Mokhiber
The USA v. Al Arian

Nikolas Kozloff
As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left

John V. Walsh
Peace Movement Paralyzed

Ghada Ageel
Will Peace Cost Me My Home?

Stephen Soldz
The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations

Website of the Day
Hands Off the People of Iran

 

 

December 3, 2007

Tariq Ali
Venezuela After the Referendum

Bill Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers

Eric Walberg
The Bible and Middle East History

Uri Avnery
After Annapolis

Marjorie Cohn
Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed

Dave Lindorff
Vengeance Isn't Sweet

Stephen Fleischman
Homeless in Paradise

Martha Rosenberg
Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile

Website of the Day
So Just Lead!

 

December 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West

Mike Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen

Shemon Salam
A Visit From the FBI

Roger Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia

Benjamin Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia

Brian M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge?

Greg Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story

Sonja Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference

Saul Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston

Margaret Kimberley
Black America Left Behind

John Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?

Reza Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran

Judith Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays

Lance Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots

Robert Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony

Dan Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island

Michael Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency

Website of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices

 

November 30, 2007

Peter Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan

Wajahat Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information

Allan Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers

Alan Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash

John Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution

Corporate Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals

Lucia Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future

James Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle

Website of the Day
Bio-Bling?

 

November 29, 2007

R. F. Blader
The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran

Stephen Soldz
War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire

Sheldon Richman
Iraq 3.0

George Wuerthner
Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws

Felice Pace
Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?

Col. Dan Smith
The Meaning of Annapolis

Harvey Wasserman
Terror Target Nukes

Nikolas Kozloff
Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08

Paul Krassner
Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike!

Dave Lindorff
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?

CP News Service
The One State Declaration

Website of the Day
A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter

November 28, 2007

James Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela

Jeff Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street

Pam Martens
Crashing Citigroup

Peter Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession

Mohammed Khatib
Separate and Unequal in Palestine

Helen Redmond
The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America

William S. Lind
In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm?

Ben Tripp
We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges

Jeff Berg
Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran

Website of the Day
The Lies of Joe Klein

 

November 27, 2007

Joe DeRaymond
On the Road to the Torture School

Paul Craig Roberts
Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy

Marjorie Cohn
Remembering Victor Rabinowitz

Mike Whitney
A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp

Ron Jacobs
The Myths of Military Progress

Col. Dan Smith
The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work

Ralph Nader
Family Learning

Karim Makdisi
Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut

Christopher Ketcham
Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop

Ronan Bennett
Martin Amis Does a Coulter

Website of the Day
Celebrating the Uncensored Media

 

November 26, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Heading for Annapolis

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of All That

David Macaray
Enter Mediator

Sameer Dossani
Pakistan's Wounded Dictator

Roger Burbach
The Final Battle in Bolivia

Mark Scaramella
Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire

Brian McKinlay
Howard's End

Rick Kuhn
The Fall of a Racist Union Buster

Binoy Kampmark
Ruddslide and Dull Alec

Monica Benderman
What Do You Know of War?

Brenda Norrell
Return to Alcatraz

Website of the Day
Ghostworld by DJ Spooky

 

November 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD

Robert Fisk
Darkness Falls on the Middle East

Saul Landau
Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P.

Jeffrey St. Clair
Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism

Rannie Amiri
Beirut's Black Friday

Christopher Brauchli
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace

Daniel Gross
The Gap and Black Friday

Mike Whitney
"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"

Marjorie Cohn
Iran and the 2008 Elections

David Rosen
Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans

David Michael Green
If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom ....

Kenneth Rexroth
When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan

Muhammad Iqbal
Trans. Shahid Alam

Ghazal

Website of the Day
Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill


November 23, 2007

Gary Leupp
Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley

Laura Carlsen
Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP

David Macaray
Keeping Labor Unions Out

Andy Worthington
Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden

Clifton Ross
Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant

Seth Sandronsky
Battling Sodexho

Dan Bacher
Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation

William A. Cook
The Myth of Middle East Peace

Website of the Day
Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film

 

November 22, 2007

Alan Farago
Who Lost America's Everglades?

Greg Moses
A Thanksgiving Basting

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment is Back on the Table

Mike Ely
Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving

Omar Azfar
Gore for President of Pakistan?

 

November 21, 2007

Vijay Prashad
Our Dictator, Their Democracy

Martha Rosenberg
Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Epiphany on the Glacier

John Ross
The Last Days of Mexican Corn

Brian McKenna
Cancer Terrorists Unmasked

Stephen Soldz
Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo

Monica Benderman
Needing Peace

Ben Terrall
Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar

Website of the Day
Mercy for Animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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January 4, 2008

Ek Musharraf, Ek Hasina

To Pindi Station

By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN

Nearly every report of Benazir Bhutto's sad end led by noting her distinction of being the first female head of government in an Islamic country. Figuring far below, if at all, was there any mention of a far more notable legacy -- that it was her administration that orginated the Taliban.

Granting that the cacaphony of You Tube, permanent audio, IM's and suchlike mediations is apt to dull any sensibilities of irony, it is still difficult to ignore the high irony that rings out loud in Bhutto's case. The first female prime minister of the entire Islamic Universe -- chic personified with degrees from Oxford and Harvard to boot -- kicking off a madrasah-muscle-muzzle culture which would result in every woman in Afghanistan being confined to her home as a rule, forced to don the head-to-toe burqa when outside the home, such outings too permissible only under strict rules of chaperone!

So much for Ms. Bhutto's Western impact. On Pakistan's Eastern front a similar effort attended Benazir's first stint as PM. Pakistani surrogates in Kashmir kidnapped the Indian Home Minister's daughter for ransom, demanding the release of their colleagues from Indian jails. The Indian government's subsequent capitulation is widely regarded as the beginning of the current turmoil in Kashmir, a tragedy which has resulted in thousands of deaths, ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley, the unleashing of an iron-fist by the Indian government and a human rights nightmare all around.

Along the way, the jehadis in Kashmir have frequently coerced women to follow 7th century Islamic codes. For instance, they have threatened even women newsreaders with disfigurement if they did not eschew makeup and don the veil. It is worth mentioning that Ms. Bhutto, meanwhile, was hardly inattentive to her own appearance, winning tabloid acclaim as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

It is thus hard to resist a "those who live by the sword..." remark, except that such cynicism is not confined to Pakistan: India, nurturing early visions of big-power status, trained and sustained the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (in a similar twist of irony, the chelas ended up killing the erstwhile patron, Rajiv Gandhi). The memory of America's sponsorship of Afghan mujahideen (a force raised by Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski and later hailed by Ronald Reagan as the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers) and the downing of the twin towers is too fresh to require retelling, especially in the wake of the recent movie, Charlie Wilson's War. For that matter, one may go all the way back to 1917, when the Germans sought to undermine the Tsar by promoting a famous Russian subversive, aka Vladimir Ilich Lenin, a contrivance we can be sure they had ample time to reflect upon all those decades when East Germany was under the Russian thumb.

Ninety years after Lenin's journey via the sealed train, the US, seized with panic following the popularity of the lawyers' revolt against Musharraf, pushed through a hasty deal between the general and the lady (Ek Musharraf Ek Hasina, a paraphrase an old Hindi film title), whereby Musharraf would hold elections, Bhutto would win and rule as prime minister under his newly legitimized presidency. Together they would turn back Islamic resurgence in Pakistan and all would live happily ever after.

This 21st century renactment of Edmund Wilson's To Finland Station was to end eight years of exile for Benazir with all outstanding cases against her withdrawn. Only, in this case it was her fate that was sealed, not a mere train. If the 1917 events were a tragedy brought about by a beleaguered big power of the day to suit its interests, Benazir's flight back to Pakistan in 2007 was viewed by many as a farce, this one organized by another big power, equally beleaguered. That farce would inevitably turn to tragedy was not only not unexpected, it was forseen by several Pakistan observers, including US diplomat Peter Galbraith, Benazir's close friend and college-mate.

In 1917, Lenin soon made good on his deal with the Germans (with Trotsky playing negotiator at Brest-Litovsk) . The unfortunate Benazir died before she could do anything for her benefactors.

It is also emblematic of the transformation of geopolitics in the past 90 years: It is hard to imagine that any Western Democracy of the Victorian Age would, for instance, have thought of arming the Communists or Anarchists as a counterweight to the Tsar or the Kaiser. It was an era when the State was a sacrosanct notion, even if states themselves warred constantly.Yet this is exactly what America and others have done in recent years, with the Zia-ul Haq dictatorship in Pakistan, the Afghan mujahideen, the Taliban, right down to the current day with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Looked at another way, the Afghan mujahideen and the Taliban were early forays into privatizing war, a development we see coming full circle with Blackwater and other private armies.

The larger lesson, that fostering private armies -- even if initially to use against other states -- sooner or later results in some terrible blowback on the patron, has appears to have remained unlearned. One of the most stunning passages in the Mahabharata relates to the persistent idiocy of mankind -- which Yudhishtira says is the most wondrous thing in the world: We see death every day around us, but presume that we ourselves are somehow exempt from it.

Pakistan probably disavows the Mahabharata, as it is wont to do all things pre-Islamic. But some eternal verities, to recall Einstein's quip about astrology, work whether you believe in them or not.

Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. He can be reached at: njn_2003@yahoo.com.



 

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