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/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
14, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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May
14, 2004
India Shines
Bye, Bye, Mr.
American Vajpayee
By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
For political aficionados, the Indian
parliamentary election is the superbowl of superbowls. The largest
electorate in the world moves, and in that movement, scoffs at
elites and cynics all around the world who say democracy is not
for the poor, the illiterate or the backward. As its hand hovers
over the ballot box (or in this election, the touchscreen), it
makes and breaks the rich and the powerful in distant Delhi.
Twice in the last thirty years,
a profoundly anti-democratic dispensation in India has been overthrown
by the ballot. On both occasions, the coup de grace came not
from the urban literates mouthing the shibboleth of the day ('law
and order' in 1977, 'economic reforms' in 2004), but by the masses
who saw things for what they were. As the results gushed in on
May 13, 2004 (electronic voting making the counting of 400,000,000
votes a mere matter of hours, plus the advantage of India not
having a state called Florida), it became clear that the people
had defied TV-anchor and editorial page wisdom and showed the
ruling coalition the door.
This election was also the
first to be conducted entirely in electronic format. That it
went flawlessly is a tribute to the world's largest democracy,
and testimony to the country's increasing facility with the computer.
The new
government
I wish one could say that the
inheritors were clean knights in shining armor. The Congress
Party,which will form the next government, imposed a fascist
rule on the country between 1975-77. It was responsible for the
mass murder of sikhs following the assassination of Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi in 1984. It was also the originator of economic
liberalization (though it was never so axiomatic about it as
the current government) when it reassumed power in 1991. And
as soon as it seemed to have acquired enough support to form
a government, its first statement was the obligatory one -- "economic
reforms will continue". Through the five years of the ruling
National Democratic Alliance (NDA)'s cultural assault, the Congress
often did little to resist. But there will be time enough to
deride the Congress during the rest of its term. Today is a day
for cheering.
Reasons
for the upset
The opinion and exit polls
-- almost uniformly -- predicted either a majority for the ruling
alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or at the very
least an assured position as the largest bloc in Parliament.
The Congress Party, led by Italian-born but India-settled Sonia
Gandhi (whose foreignness is strangely troubling to expatriate
Indians settled in far corners of the world), was at first billed
to do worse than the last time, and though slowly upgraded, never
expected to emerge as the largest single party (its position
for the first 30 years of independent India).
How did this upset take place?
Who knows? As the Urdu couplet goes, "Ya subah ka ehsaan
ho, ya meri kashish ho, Dooba hua khursheed sarebaam to aaya..."
(Whether it was the kindness of the morning, or my irresistible
attraction, the sunken sun did come up after all).
But we can recount some possible
reasons.
Mom, can
I be the 51st State?
The NDA, and its leading constituent,
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP, became the standard
bearers of globalization, zealous in their pursuit of 'economic
reforms', ardent water carriers for America. To its shame, official
India remained mute when Iraq was attacked. Mr. Vajpayee's administration
was threw its weight behind the Strategic Defense Initiative,
and was mightily proud of a projected US-Israel-India alignment
in a new world order.
The globalization policy, while
delighting a rudderless urban middle class drooling over the
prospect of luxury at any price, devastated much of the urban
poor and village India. The aftermath of joining the WTO has
wreaked havoc among the farmers, of whom it is reported that
more than 25000 have committed suicide in recent years -- a development
not deemed worthy of serious front page coverage in Indian newspapers,
many of whom have far more important stories to carry, such as
Oscar Night and Emmy Nominations.
The identification with America
came at a time when America's stock was on the downswing the
world over. Even the BJP's Hindu vote base, though possessed
of no great love for Muslims, could see that Indian silence in
the face of the invasion of Iraq, and the frenetic energy with
which Mr. Vajpayee's government tried to preempt Pakistan and
get in bed with the Bush Administration in the latter's post-9-11
muscle-flexing, were hardly in keeping with India's tradition
of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. And if America could
launch a pre-emptive attack on a country merely suspected to
be developing nuclear weapons, it did not take much imagination
to see that a country with actual nuclear weapons could be considered
just as much of a target.
India on
Sale, POTA
On the domestic front, the
government proceeded to systematically carry out a controversial
privatization initiative involving the selling off of billions
of dollars of public assets. India's Supreme Court ruled in favor
of the government, declaring that workers had no inherent right
to strike. State high-handedness was rampant, and to seal the
deal, Mr. Vajpayee's government pushed through a law called POTA
(Prevention of Terrorism Act), which basically did away with
large sections of India's constitutional protections regarding
arbitrary arrest, detention and due process.
Gujarat
Burns
To compound this general attitude
of callousness, the BJP, as its allies looked on mutely, oversaw
the worst communal pogrom in post-partition India. Thousands
of muslims were killed throughout Gujarat state, in response
to the killing of Hindus in Godhra, a town in the same state.
The response of the central government was the rough equivalent
of 'Stuff happens'. The Gujarat state government, also led by
a BJP chief minister, saw in all this nothing more than the manifestation
of the universal law of action and reaction. Even now, many BJP
supporters view this as just a tit for tat. They would also tell
you (quite factually) that thousands of Hindus have had to leave
the state of Jammu and Kashmir owing to fear of militants. They
miss a vital difference: in Gujarat, the killings, rapes and
lootings took place with the deliberate inaction (and in some
places, the active connivance) of the state government (see,
"Riding the Tiger in
India,).
The Cultural
Taliban
Another aspect of BJP rule
(again as its allies, including the anti-fascist stalwart of
1975, George Fernandes, stood shamelessly by) was the attempted
cultural transformation of the country in the name of 'Hindutva'.
This term, originally coined by VD Savarkar, the spiritual father
of the BJP -- and incidentally an accused in the murder of Mahatma
Gandhi -- means 'Hinduness'. In the dispensation of the last
five years, the BJP and its cohorts got to decide who was Hindu
enough. Led by a bumbling Hindutva enthusiast called Murli Manohar
Joshi (who lost his seat in the elections), the BJP pushed through
the rewriting of Indian history according to the Hindutava interpretation,
and created revised textbooks now used by millions of schoolchildren
throughout India. A friend of mine, who worked at the Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT) -- one of the most prestigious
technical institutions in the world -- told me how Joshi was
forcing IIT meetings to begin with a Hindu prayer (the Muttawain
would be proud), something spineless officials, swayed by the
atmosphere, readily acceded to. My friend died of cancer earlier
this year -- how I wish he had been alive to see this clown trounced!
Aside from such backdoor efforts
to leave its imprint on Indian history and culture, the NDA also
countenanced with little demur the burning of libraries, art
exhibits, the threatening of artists and others because they
were deemed not to conform to the Hindutva view of things. For
all its cravenness towards things American, the BJP had no time
for the spirit of the First Amendment. When the world-famous
Bhandarkar Library in Pune, India, (a repository of ancient Hindu
manuscripts, among other things), was ransacked and trashed in
January because an American author of a book critical of an Indian
folk hero had thanked it for its help, no political leader said
a word, and both the state and central governments stood by watching.
No wonder the looting of the Baghdad Museum did not strike the
NDA Government as calling for an outcry.
India Shining
All this may yet not have been
enough to ensure the NDA's ouster. But in the last few months,
it spent public money like water to blanket the airwaves and
roadsides with ads and billboards of "India Shining",
showing off the great progress India had made (neither the message
nor its context was lost on anyone during the election season).
I was in Chennai (Madras) early this year, and the city (run
by a recent NDA ally) was without drinking water, with the worst
dry season still to come. People were buying and storing water
by the truckfull, and even scheduling that was getting difficult.
In the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh, the chief minister,
another NDA ally, who prided himself as the chief globalist of
India and habitually went about with a laptop computer, forgot
that his state was in the throes of a drought and that rural
indebtedness had driven many to despair. Three days before the
parliamentary election results, his party was thrashed in the
state assembly polls, presaging the rout of his partners on the
national scene. "India Shining", was a slap in the
face of the average Indian, something only a tone-deaf administration
with its ear cocked solely toward praise from the west would
have missed. Instead of pulling the plug, they continued the
campaign for months before being ordered to stop by the Election
Commission for being violative of election campaign laws. Deputy
Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani made much of what he called,
"the Feel Good Factor" under the BJP. It turned out
to be Feel Good Riddance Factor.
Bye, bye,
Mr. Vajpayee
All in all, Mr. Atal Behari
Vajpayee, veteran of Indian politics and regarded (wrongly, in
my view, for what politicians do matters more than what they
say) as a moderate, came across as out of touch, and some of
his colleagues as epitomes of downright chest-thumping zealots.
Like the myth of George W. Bush being strong on terrorism, there
is one about Vajpayee being the master of foreign policy. If
India is regarded with greater respect in the world today, it
has little to do with Vajpayee, and a lot to do with the purchasing
power of its economy, a product of liberal education and technological
strength for which one must thank Jawaharlal Nehru.
One is tempted to make an analogy
of Mr. Vajpayee's defeat with that of Winston Churchill in 1945.
Would that it were true... Churchill left behind the legacy of
a nation united in wartime and prepared to sacrifice. Mr. Vajpayee
leaves behind a culture of callous divisiveness and selfish consumerism.
If Churchill challenged the British people asking for blood,
sweat and tears, Mr. Vajpayee scarcely said anything inspiring,
projecting only a smug, don't worry, be happy attitude. Churchill's
words can ring with power even today. The only place where Vajpayee's
clever wordplay evokes appreciation any more is amidst inebriated
Indian audiences in foreign countries. I speak as one who has
attended many of his public meetings and enjoyed his oratory
(See 'Wanted,
An Orator' .
Conventional wisdom in India
is that Mr Vajpayee brought about, after several attempts, a
kind of a rapprochement between India and Pakistan. One may say
his heart was in the right place, of his surefootedness one is
less certain (see 'Neither
Pragmatism nor Principle -- The Vajpayee record on Pakistan').
His visit to China was considered a success in building bridges
between the two Asian giants. This too is an imperative of the
times, and Vajpayee's abandonment of India's traditional sympathy
for the Tibetans has came in for criticism. The one achievement
for which he deserves credit is the holding of free elections
in Jammu and Kashmir.
In the end, Atal Behari Vajpayee's
tenure as prime minister of India will be remembered, like that
of Bill Clinton's as a squandered opportunity, mistaking galloping
consumption for real upliftment, spiritual or material, leaving
little lasting positive imprint on the country's ethos.
Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast.
His writings can be found on http://www.indogram.com.
He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for May 8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
|