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THE ABSURD TIMES
Most of the news has been about the elections and the primaries. This has made subjects such as the war in Iraq and maybe Iran less prominent. Global warming, the economy, the class war, etc., have all been ignored.
Now of course, the candidates have said a thing or two about these issues. The Bush/Cheney Party has pretty much selected McCain who seems inclined to continue the war up to a hundred years and maybe take on Iran, but many of the Cheney wing are unhappy with this choice as he may reform immigration and take the obscene tax cut away from the upper 1%. He also seems to believe in evolution. Fortunately, they still have Huckabee who seems not only to disbelieve evolution but may even believe in a geocentric solar system. If he can force this into law, perhaps as Vice President, we could stop those micro-organisms from becoming anti-biotic resistant -- they would have to go to Canada to evolve. So would we all, it seems.
The Democrats are busy with a real race for the nomination. Hillary keeps saying that Obama could not stand up to the attacks of the Bush/Cheney party and Obama replies "Try me. I'm from Chicago." And he is, not Park Ridge, but the "South Side." Having lived on the North and then Northwest side, I knew better than to walk alone on the "South Side."
Cheney showed his sense of humor by quoting mayor Daley "Vote often and vote early," but really didn't get Daley's point as Daley had a unique approach to the English language.
Now there is a vote about granting immunity to large phone companies for helping the government to spy on you. Now this kind of spying has been going on for some time as the article below will show, but the Bushites want the fourth Ammendment to be negated. At least previous political figures had the guts to do their illegal actions and face the consequences if they were caught. Nixon was an example.
I'm trying to imagine what Woodie would be singing right now. Or would he be emegrating?
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AFTER IRAQ, BUSHIES PLAN WORLD WAR THREE Japanese "defense force" practices amphibian landings in Southern California. Target: China. Chris Reed reports from Tokyo. The FBI and the Myth of Fingerprints: Cockburn and St Clair trace the final downfall of "100 per cent certainty" on fingerprint matches What's a miner's life worth? Do we hear $230 and seventy six cents? Jeffrey St Clair on Big Coal's lethal auction, courtesy of the Bush administration. ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!
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January 13, 2006 David Price January 12, 2006 Jennifer Van Bergen Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith Lawrence R. Velvel Ralph Nader / Robert Weissman Jackie Corr Jared Bernstein Russell D. Hoffman Aubrey Streit Clancy Sigal Website of the Day
January 11, 2006 Kevin Zeese Ray McGovern Allan Maass / Joe Allen Earl Ofari Hutchinson Annie Murphy Allan Lichtman Ramzy Baroud Joshua Frank Kathleen and Bill Christison Website of the Day
January 10, 2006 Uri Avnery Saul Landau Noam Chomsky Brian J. Foley Lenni Brenner Ronan Sheehan Paul Craig Roberts
January 9, 2006 Behzad Yaghmaian George Bisharat Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Christopher Brauchli Aharon Shabtai Andrew Cockburn
January 7 / 8, 2006 Lawrence Velvel James Petras J.L. Chestnut Mike Ely Andrew Wilson Lila Rajiva William Cook Ramor Ryan Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff Peter Montague Ron Jacobs Neve Gordon Fred Gardner Josh Mahon Dr. Susan Block Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
January 6, 2006 José Pertierra Joe Allen Winslow T. Wheeler John Bomar Jason Leopold Norman Solomon Robert Pollin
January 5, 2006 Scott Boehm Zoltan Grossman Heather Gray Haninah Levine Pierre Tristam Remi Kanazi Gilad Atzmon Kathleen and Bill Christison
January 4, 2006 Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Huibin Amee Chew Pat Williams Linda Milazzo Nick Dearden James Petras Website of the Day
January 3, 2006 James Ridgeway Laith al-Saud Dick J. Reavis Joshua Frank Rochelle Gause Missy Comley Beattie Paul de Rooij
January 2, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Clancy Sigal Cindy Sheehan Alexander Cockburn
Dec. 31 / Jan. 1, 2005/6 Patrick Cockburn Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader James Petras Peter Montague J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Vijay Prashad P. Sainath James Brooks Eileen E. Schell Christopher Brauchli Jo Guldi Fred Gardner Ben Tripp St. Clair / Walker / Pollack Poets Basement Website of the Weekend
December 30,2005 Evo Morales Earl Ofari Hutchinson Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Brian Concannon Sandra Lucas T.W. Croft Website of the Day
December 29, 2005 Norman Solomon Missy Comley Beattie Dave Zirin Kevin Zeese Derrick O'Keefe Sam Bahour Macdonald Stainsby Bill & Kathleen Christison Website of the Day
December 28, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Lila Rajiva Amira Hass Joshua Frank David Swanson Richard Thieme Paul Craig Roberts Website of the Day
December 27, 2005 Evan Jones Uri Avnery Mike Whitney Gideon Levy David Swanson Norman Solomon
December 26, 2005 Lawrence R. Velvel Lance Olsen Ben Terrall Scott Boehm Charlie Ehlen Tom Kerr
December 24/25, 2005 Aleander Cockburn James Petras Ralph Nader Lila Rajiva Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Saul Landau John Chuckman Dr. Susan Block St. Clair / Vest / Pollack / Donnelly Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
December 23, 2005 John Ross Chris Floyd Lawrence Mishel / Ross Eisenbrey Joanne Mariner Eric Johnson-Debaufre Ray McGovern J. L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of the Day
December 22, 2005 Ingmar Lee Elisa Salasin Christopher Brauchli Robin Blackburn Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Francis A. Boyle Stew Albert Website of the Day
December 21, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Lila Rajiva Joshua Frank Dave Zirin Ramzy Baroud Sonia Nettnin Ben Saul Jonathan Cronin Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
December 20, 2005 Jackie Corr Earl Ofari Hutchinson Michael Donnelly Gian Paulo Accardo Pierre Tristam Norman Solomon Sen. Robert Byrd Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
December 19, 2005 Mike Marqusee Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs John Blair Gideon Levy Kevin Zeese Missy Comley Beattie Don Santina Website of the Day
December 17 / 18, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Gabriel Kolko Susan Alcorn Werther Ralph Nader Patrick Cockburn Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Ned Sublette Lee Sustar Jason Leopold Laura Carlsen Jeff White Ray McGovern Chris Floyd William Loren Katz Rose Miriam Elizalde Greg Moses Heather Gray Alison Weir St Clair / Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of the Day
December 16, 2005 Tom Kerr Mark Engler John Bomar Patrick Cockburn Pierre Tristam William S. Lind Cyril Neville Robert Jensen Saul Landau Website
December 15, 2005 Oren Ben-Dor Stan Cox Joshua Frank Ben Terrall Patrick Cockburn Monica Benderman Walter A. Davis Vijay Prashad Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Lawrence R. Velvel Wayne Garcia John Sugg Gary Leupp Ray McGovern Alan Maass April Hurley, MD Kevin Alexander Gray
December 13, 2005 Stephen T. Banko, III Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen Karl Grossman Niranjan Ramakrishnan Kevin Zeese Norman Solomon Michael G. Smith Stew Albert Bob Dylan Phil Gasper Website of the Day
December 12, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Lawrence R. Velvel Jessica Stewart George Bisharat Nate Mezmer Earl Ofari Hutchinson Alison Weir Seth Sandronsky Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Landau / Hassen Ralph Nader Linn Washington, Jr Bill Christison Mike Ferner Elizabeth Schulte Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner Linda S. Heard Ingmar Lee Ray McGovern John Chuckman John Ryan Dick J. Reavis Christopher Brauchli Behzad Yaghmaian Aseem Shrivastava John Ross Ben Tripp St. Clair / Pollack / Vest / Despair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
December 9, 2005 Linn Washington, Jr. Dave Zirin / Mike Stark Patrick Cockburn Alexander Cockburn Lila Rajiva Gary Leupp Jason Leopold Bruce K. Gagnon Andrew Cockburn Website of the Day
December 8, 2005 Kathy Kelly James Petras William S. Lind Laura Carlsen Justin Akers Thomas Graham, Jr Norman Solomon Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn Website of the Day
December 7, 2005 John Ryan Gary Leupp Fran Quigley Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith Joshua Frank William W. Morgan Dave Lindorff Patrick Cockburn Harold Pinter Website of the Day
December 6, 2005 Ron Jacobs Patrick Cockburn Yifat Susskind Mike Whitney Pat Williams Paul Craig Roberts Website of the Day
December 5, 2005 John Walsh Brian Cloughley Mokhiber / Weissman Robert Jensen Norman Solomon Peter Rost, MD Lila Rajiva Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R. Velvel Rev. William Alberts Saul Landau Ralph Nader Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Allan Lichtman Dave Lindorff Brian Concannon, Jr. Fred Gardner Manuel Garcia, Jr. Carol Wolman St. Clair / Vest / Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
December 2, 2005 Stan Goff Mike Ferner Christopher Brauchli Niranjan Ramakrishnan Manuel Talens Peter Phillips J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of the Day
December 1, 2005 John Walsh, MD Ron Jacobs Jenna Orkin Joshua Frank Tiffany Ten Eyck Missy Comley Beattie Eli Stephens Elaine Cassel Website of the Day
Subscribe Online | January 13, 2006 A CounterPunch Exclusive InvestigationHow the FBI Spied on Edward SaidBy DAVID PRICE The FBI has a long, ignoble tradition of monitoring and harassing America's top intellectuals. While people ranging from Albert Einstein, William Carlos Williams to Martin Luther King have been subjected to FBI surveillance, there remains an under-accounting of the ways in which this monitoring at times hampered the reception of their work. In response to my request under the Freedom of Information Act, filed on behalf of CounterPunch, the FBI recently released 147 of Said's 238-page FBI file. There are some unusual gaps in the released records, and it is possible that the FBI still holds far more files on Professor Said than they acknowledge. Some of these gaps may exist because new Patriot Act and National Security exemptions allow the FBI to deny the existence of records; however, the released file provides enough information to examine the FBI's interest in Edward Said who mixed artistic appreciations, social theory, and political activism in powerful and unique ways. Most of Said's file documents FBI surveillance campaigns of his legal, public work with American-based Palestinian political or pro-Arab organizations, while other portions of the file document the FBI's ongoing investigations of Said as it monitored his contacts with other Palestinian-Americans. That the FBI should monitor the legal political activities and intellectual forays of such a man elucidates not only the FBI's role in suppressing democratic solutions to the Israeli and Palestinian problems, it also demonstrates a continuity with the FBI's historical efforts to monitor and harass American peace activists. Edward Said's wife, Mariam, says she is not surprised to learn of the FBI's surveillance of her husband, saying, "We always knew that any political activity concerning the Palestinian issue is monitored and when talking on the phone we would say 'let the tappers hear this'. We believed that our phones were tapped for a long time, but it never bothered us because we knew we were hiding nothing." The FBI's first record of Edward Said appears in a February 1971 domestic security investigation of another unidentified individual. The FBI collected photographs of Said from the State Department's passport division and various news agencies. Said's "International Security" FBI file was established when an informant gave the FBI a program from the October 1971 Boston Convention of the Arab-American University Graduates, where Said chaired a panel on "Culture and the Critical Spirit". Most of Said's FBI records were classified under the administrative heading of "Foreign Counterintelligence," category 105, and most records are designated as relating to "IS Middle East," the Bureau's designation for Israel. Post-Patriot Act alterations of the Freedom of Information Act facilitate the FBI's efforts to keep significant portions of Said's FBI file classified as if concerns with resolving Palestinian sovereignty from twenty or thirty years ago are indelibly linked to Bush's "war on terror". Large sections of Said's file remain redacted, with stamps indicating they remain Classified Secret until 2030, 25 years after their initial FOIA processing. In February 1972, New York FBI agents produced a report listing Said's employment at Columbia University, his home address and phone number, including a notation that his home telephone service was provided by New York Telephone Company information that was later used to request listings of all toll calls charged to Said's home phone number. A July 1972 FBI report indicates Said received a phone call from someone who was the subject of intensive FBI surveillance. The NYC agent wrote that "reasons for phone call, activities of the professor, and his sympathies in relation to [blank in the document] matters have not been ascertained". In the months after the attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics there was a flurry of FBI interest in Said and other Palestinian Americans. In early October 1972, the NY FBI office investigated Said's background and citizenship information as well as voting, banking and credit records. Employees at Princeton and Columbia Universities gave FBI agents biographical and education information on Said, and the Harvard University Alumni Office provided the FBI with detailed information. As Middle East scholar Steve Niva observes, "looking back, this post-Munich period may have marked an historic turning point when statements in support of the Palestinian cause became routinely equated with sympathies for terrorism." The FBI spoke with their "Middle East informants" in Boston, Newark and New York to gather information on Said. One report indicated that "several confidential sources who are familiar with Middle East [blank in the document]in the United States were contacted during 1972 and 1973, but were unable to furnish any information pertaining to Edward William Said." During this investigation, FBI agents located and read a 1970 Boston Globe article headlined "Columbia Professor Blames Racist Attitude for Arab-Israeli Conflict". One FBI report detailed events at the fifth annual convention of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAAUG) held in November 1972 in Berkeley. Said was living in Lebanon at the time and did not attend the conference, but because he was a member of the AAAUG Board of Directors, the FBI included their convention report in his FBI file. There was a significant FBI presence at the conference, and the FBI's released records include the conference program indicating presentations from a selection of Arab-American scholars such as anthropologists Laura Nader and Barbara Aswad. The extent of the FBI's surveillance of the conference is seen in the FBI's list (provided by a "reliable" FBI informer) of all AAAUG convention's attendees staying at the Claremont Hotel. Why the FBI collected information on conference attendees' accommodations is not clear. Was it to break into participants' rooms to plant listening devices, search for documents, or to monitor attendees? The redacted report does not say, but the FBI's well-documented reliance on such "black bag jobs" during this period raises this as a likely possibility. The Bureau's policy for these illegal operations was to maintain separate filing systems for them. The FBI's report contains summaries of several talks, including a detailed account of Andreas Papandreou's keynote address criticizing "the imperialistic forces of the United Stats against the peoples of the Middle East, Greek and Arab peoples alike."In January 1973, the FBI undertook further criminal and biographical background checks on Said, and the New York Special Agent in Charge recommended in February that the case be closed. But an FBI investigation the next month of a "subject [who had] traveled in the United States in 1971" began a new investigation of Said as one of several individuals whose phone numbers had come to the attention of the FBI and were believed to have possible "connections with Arab terrorist activities." Such alleged connections remain unspecified as do Said's connections to such activities, but such vague associations are frequently used to keep investigations active. FBI memos from this period discuss the creation of a LHM (Letterhead Memorandum, meaning a memo identified as coming from the FBI) that "should be suitable for dissemination to foreign intelligence agencies". The agency or country to receive this LHM report is not identified, but Israel's Mossad was a likely candidate. During the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War the FBI collected several of Said's newspaper columns and interviews, and his file includes a New York Times column arguing that Arabs and Jews in the Middle East had historically been pitted against each other rather than against "imperialist powers". In 1974, the FBI received word that Said would speak at the Canadian Arab Federation Conference in Windsor, Ontario, and the Bureau again tracked Said's movements, though an FBI informer indicated that "he did not consider Said to be the type of individual who would be involved in any terrorist activity". The FBI made no entry in Edward Said's file in 1978, the year of the publication of his groundbreaking book, Orientalism. A July 1979 FBI report summarized information on thirty-six individuals (names blacked out in the released documents) preparing to attend the August 1979 Palestine American Congress (PAC) at the Shoreham-Americana Hotel in Washington, D.C. The FBI noted that Said was an ex-officio member of the council. Snippets of paragraphs on other unidentified attendees mention past academic and political conferences attended, and one FBI informant is identified as being linked to the "pro-Iraqi Ba'ath Party". FBI offices receiving this report were advised to check their files for pertinent information on any of the mentioned individuals. The extent of the FBI's conference surveillance is shown in a partially declassified Secret Report Index indicating that attendee records had been consulted from FBI field offices in twenty-five listed cities alphabetically listed from Albany to Washington. This report contains sentence summaries on participants. Said's summary, for example, says, "EDWARD SAID Previously identified as being from Columbia University, New York City, New York, and as being deeply affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine." Other released passages find the FBI preoccupied with tracing various attendees' PFLP sympathies. The PAC was perhaps the most open and democratic deliberative effort by displaced American Palestinians to address the goals of the Palestinian struggle. With great concern the FBI documented how the PAC "created a Preparatory Committee that empowered it to prepare a working paper on a proposed constitution for some mechanism for collaborative action". The FBI noted some internal arguments about the legitimacy of some delegates coming from Arab communities with low Palestinian populations. The FBI reported that one delegate at the Congress "reminded all in attendance that the FBI has no legitimate interest in the activities taking place during the three day convention. There was no reason to be afraid of one's presence at all functions of the PAC." Without irony the FBI then noted with concern that some present used false names to register their hotel rooms. Following opening remarks by Jawad George, another speaker described in the FBI report as a revolutionary black male named Smith, "ensured the PAC that the black Americans would render assistance to Arab revolution." Other speakers discussed in the FBI report included a member of the Organization of Arab Students and Ramallah Mayor Krim Khlif speaking on efforts to establish a Palestinian State on the West Bank. The FBI report discussed problems arising at the conference's conclusion when there was "much discussion on just the preamble to the constitution. Strong disagreement on the wording of a sentence concerning return to its national homeland, to national self-determination, and to its national independence and sovereignty in all of Palestine, by the Arab peoples." Fights over the wording of the constitution's preamble continued, and several disputes "almost broke out into fist fights" between rival factions. Said's FBI file contains a copy of the "Proposed Constitution of the Palestine American Congress" that had been distributed to PAC attendees, which the FBI marked as classified "SECRET." This information provided by an FBI informant from this period has now been reclassified under thePatriot Act measures making the document classified "Secret" until the year 2029. In May 1982, the New York FBI Special Agent in Charge sent a Secret report to FBI Director William Webster saying that Said's name had "come to the attention of the N.Y. [FBI Office] in the context of a terrorist matter." FBI headquarters was then requested "to contact liaison with State Department's Middle East section with regard to their knowledge of Said". A week later, Said's file gained a photograph of him addressing the December 1980 Palestine Human Rights Campaign National Conference. One 1982 newspaper clipping added to the file attempted to connect his wife Mariam Said and the PLO to the funding of a full-page anti-Israel advertisement in the New York Times. During the summer of 1982 an unidentified individual was arrested and deported from the United States, and the "INS obtained photocopies of all documents in his possession". Among this deported individual's papers was Edward Said's name and home phone number. Documents relating to Said and this deportation are still being withheld and are being vetted under National Security Classification review processes. On September 3, 1982, FBI Director Webster instructed FBI librarians at Quantico to use their computerized New York Times index to locate all past references to Said. This generated a thirteen-page report containing abstracts of forty-nine NYT articles featuring Edward Said. These articles range from political columns by Said, features about him, to literary book reviews by Said. The New York Times Information Service was long used by the pre-Google FBI to compile dossiers on persons or organizations of interest. Thus did the FBI collected a filtered analysis of Said's writings and public statements formed by the reports and prejudices of Times reporters and editors. Said's FBI file, in the form in which it reached me, concludes with a few redacted reports (now reclassified until the year 2030) from 1983 and a highly censored Classified Secret memo from August 1991 that ends with the suggestions that the FBI "may desire to contact your Middle East Section for additional information concerning Said". Curiously, Said's FBI file, as released to me, contains no information on the remaining dozen years of his life. Either the FBI stopped monitoring him, or they couldn'tlocate these files, or they won't release this information or even the fact that the information exists in the files. The latter two possibilities seem far more likely than the first . It did not matter how frequently or clearly Edward Said declared that he "totally repudiated terrorism in all its forms". The FBI continued to focus its national security surveillance campaign on him. Had the FBI read the Palestine American Congress's proposed constitution placed in Said's file in 1979, they would have seen the group's commitment to upholding the "basic fundamental human and national rights of all people and affirms its opposition to racism in all of its manifestations including Zionism and anti-Semitism". Instead, they kept searching for connections to terrorism. The FBI's surveillance of Edward Said was similar to their surveillance of other Palestinian-American intellectuals. For example, Ibrahim Abu Lughod's FBI file records similar monitoring though Abu Lughod's file finds the FBI attempting to capitalize on JDL death threats as a means of interviewing Lughod to collect information for his file. Having read hundreds of FBI reports summarizing "subversive" threads in the work of other academics, I am surprised to find that Said's FBI file contains no FBI analysis of his book Orientalism. This is especially surprising given the claims by scholars, like Hoover Institute anthropologist Stanley Kurtz in his 2003 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Select Education, that Said's post-colonial critique had left American Middle East Studies scholars impotent to contribute to Bush's "war on terror". Given what is known of the FBI's monitoring of radical academic developments it seems unlikely that such a work escaped their scrutiny, and it is reasonable to speculate that an FBI analysis of Orientalism remains in unreleased FBI documents. But some known things are obviously missing from the released file. Chief among these are records of death threats against Said and records of the undercover police protection he received at some public events. But there are no reasons to withhold such records, and their absence gives further cause to not believe the FBI's claim this is his entire releasable file. The reasons for the temporal and thematic gaps in Said's file remain unknown. One explanation for such gaps is suggested in Kafka's The Trial, where reference is made to cases of suspects never cleared of vague accusations but who are instead given an "ostensible acquittal" under which the accused's dossier circulates for years, "backwards and forwards with greater or smaller oscillations" on "peregrinations that are incalculable". Perhaps such Kafkaesque forces move within the FBI, empowered by post-9/11 legislation and desires to shield the public's eye from acknowledgments of past persecutions of Edward Said. David Price is author of Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists (Duke, 2004). He can be reached at: dprice@stmartin.edu
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann
Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair
 Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |
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