Saturday, February 09, 2008

We Need Woody

 

 

 

 

 

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?

 

What You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
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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.
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Today's Stories

January 13, 2006

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Command Responsibility: Torture and Legal Accountability

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Lenni Brenner
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January 7 / 8, 2006

Lawrence Velvel
The NYT's Unconscionable Decision to Sit on the NSA Story for a Year

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AIPAC on Trial: Them or US

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Racism and Injustice in Alabama's Courts

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The Dying of Ariel Sharon

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Two Moms Go to Capitol Hill

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The Rape of Palestine

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The Sub Motorcycle Diaries: On the Road with the Zapatistas

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Inherit the Wind: the Global Spread of GMO Crops

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Would Ethan Allen Pay to Protest?

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Business as Usual in San Diego

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Idaho Timber Industry Leader Advocates Violence Against Green's Mom

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Abramoff Family Values: the Lobbyist Who Screwed Us All

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January 6, 2006

José Pertierra
Posada Carriles May Soon Hit the Streets

Joe Allen
Gary Freeman's Struggle: a Black Radical from the 1960s Fights Extradition to the US

Winslow T. Wheeler
Huge Defense Budget, Lousy Equipment

John Bomar
A Former NSA Officer on Snoopgate: the Squawkers Should be Congratulated

Jason Leopold
Snoop and Shred

Norman Solomon
Axis of Fanatics: Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad

Robert Pollin
Remembering Harry Magdoff: the Man Who Explained the Empire

 

January 5, 2006

Scott Boehm
Big Profits, Buried Lives: Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans

Zoltan Grossman
New Challenges for the Antiwar Movement

Heather Gray
Whistling Dixie Yet Again

Haninah Levine
Simple is Dangerous: the Pentagon's Plan for a Manhattan Project on IEDs

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The Sham of Homeland Security: a West Virginia Parable

Remi Kanazi
Stroke of Luck?: Political Hemorrhage in Israel

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon Meets His Maker

Kathleen and Bill Christison
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January 4, 2006

Ron Jacobs
Pity the Miner: A-Diggin' My Bones

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Terror Hits Bangalore

Huibin Amee Chew
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How the West Turned: Biting the Hands That Steal

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The House That George and Jack Built: Ownership Society Meets the Entrepreneurial Style

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The Fantasy of "Even-Handedness": Blair's Cynical Policy on Palestine

James Petras
Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

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Rat Out a Lobbyist for Jesus

 

January 3, 2006

James Ridgeway
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Laith al-Saud
Iraqi Intellectuals and the Occupation: an Interview with Dr. Saad Jawad

Dick J. Reavis
Border Walls: the View from Mexico

Joshua Frank
Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran

Rochelle Gause
Inside Rafah: Collective Punishment as Normalcy

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How My Mother Went from a Republican to a Screaming Progressive

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A Glossary of Dispossession

 

January 2, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
A Gestapo Administration

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A Trip to the Far Side of Madness

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A Tour of Europe: Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes

Alexander Cockburn
A NYT Editorial Contemplates Iraq

 

Dec. 31 / Jan. 1, 2005/6

Patrick Cockburn
The Year in Iraq

Alexander Cockburn
Who Are We to Complain?: a Diary of 2005

Ralph Nader
Rumsfeld vs. the Military: a Pentagon of Loyalists and Enforcers

James Petras
The Politics of Language: "Escalation" or "Retaliation" in Israeli Attacks on Palestinians

Peter Montague
A Darker Bioweapons Future

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Black Forever: Race, Class and Activism in the South

Vijay Prashad
My California Vacation: Conversations with Indian Americans

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Farm Suicides in Vidharbha

James Brooks
The Spoils of War: Israel's Corruption was Inevitable

Eileen E. Schell
The Farmer Wants a Wife: Hayseeds and Hickxploitation in the Land of Reality TV

Christopher Brauchli
Birds of a Feather: George and Vlad

Jo Guldi
Politics, Gay Marriage and Christianity

Fred Gardner
America's Only Legal Grower

Ben Tripp
A Hapless New Year

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Engel, Albert, LaMorticella, Buknatski, Davies, Ford and Bear Dog

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Commit Bloggamy with Dr. Suzy

 

December 30,2005

Evo Morales
I Believe Only in the Power of the People

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The Toxic Air in Black America

Dave Lindorff
Bush's NSA Spying Jeopardizes National Security

Gary Leupp
Targeting Iran and Syria: Goss Builds Case for Turkey-Based Attacks

Ron Jacobs
A Dead New Year's Eve

Brian Concannon
Down in Haiti, the Chickens are Coming Home to Roost

Sandra Lucas
Inside TeenScreen: the Making of Mental Patients

T.W. Croft
The Wind Has Changed: Gulf Storms, Fables of Reconstruction and Hard Times for the Big Easy

Website of the Day
Images of Mass Consumption

 

December 29, 2005

Norman Solomon
Journalists Should Expose Secrets, Not Keep Them

Missy Comley Beattie
Christmas Without Chase

Dave Zirin
Over the Edge: the Year in Sports

Kevin Zeese
Top 10 Antiwar Stories of 2005

Derrick O'Keefe
Bolivia and Venezuela Offer an Alternative to Neo-Liberalism

Sam Bahour
Turning the Page in Palestine, Again

Macdonald Stainsby
What's Behind Paul Martin's Broadside Against Bush?

Bill & Kathleen Christison
Let's Stop a US/Israel War on Iran

Website of the Day
Deconstructing the Democrats

 

December 28, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Lila Rajiva
Operation Romeo: Lessons on Terror Laws from India

Amira Hass
The Humanitarian Lie

Joshua Frank
Let the Drilling Begin: Iraq's IMF Loan

David Swanson
Leaking Top Secret Lies

Richard Thieme
High Time for Torture

Paul Craig Roberts
Three Books to Wake You Up

Website of the Day
Conyers Report: "Constitution in Crisis"

 

December 27, 2005

Evan Jones
Whither the National Guard?

Uri Avnery
The Peretz Shuffle

Mike Whitney
Pop Goes the Bubble!

Gideon Levy
Dusty Trail to Death

David Swanson
Kurt Vonnegut: a Man Without a Country

Norman Solomon
NSA Spied on UN Diplomats During Push for Invasion of Iraq

 

December 26, 2005

Lawrence R. Velvel
The Usurpers of Our Freedoms

Lance Olsen
The Toughest Challenge for Intelligent Design

Ben Terrall
No Holiday Compassion for Haiti's Political Prisoners

Scott Boehm
Santa Drove a Bulldozer

Charlie Ehlen
A Vietnam Vet's Appraisal of Bush

Tom Kerr
The Atheist Dad at Christmas

 

December 24/25, 2005

Aleander Cockburn
The Year of Vanished Credibility

James Petras
Iran in the Crosshairs: Israel's Deadline

Ralph Nader
Talkin' About the "I"-Word

Lila Rajiva
Horowitz's New Project: Begging for Brownshirts

Fred Gardner
Dialogue with the DEA

Ron Jacobs
When Impeachment was Taken Seriously

Dave Lindorff
Xmas Games for a Gitmo World

Gary Leupp
Happy Birthday Mithras!: the True Meaning of December 25th

Saul Landau
Bush's Year in Review: a Report Card from Santa

John Chuckman
A Christmas Tale for Bushtime

Dr. Susan Block
Merry XXX-mas!

St. Clair / Vest / Pollack / Donnelly
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Holt, Jones, Landau, Ross and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Merry Xmas, From the Beatles

 

December 23, 2005

John Ross
The Corrido of Death Row: Mexico Ends the Death Penalty

Chris Floyd
Gospel Truth: Bush Hypocrisy, Radical Holiness and Woody Guthrie

Lawrence Mishel / Ross Eisenbrey
The Economy in a Nutshell

Joanne Mariner
Bringing Torture into Court: the Loopholes in McCain's Bill

Eric Johnson-Debaufre
The Trew Law of Free Democracies?

Ray McGovern
Cheney the Bully; Rockefeller the Coward

J. L. Chestnut, Jr.
What White America Doesn't Hear

Website of the Day
BB King: What I've Learned This Year

 

December 22, 2005

Ingmar Lee
The Citizen's Metamorphosis: I Awoke an Object of Suspicion

Elisa Salasin
Classrooms in Cages

Christopher Brauchli
Absolut Bush: "I Swear to Upturn and Rear End the Constitution of the United States"

Robin Blackburn
Rudolf Meidner, a Visionary Pragmatist

Evelyn Pringle
Dan Olmstead, Autism & the Dangers of Thimerosal

Amira Hass
A 14-Year Old's Prison Journey: "I Refused and He Hit Me"

Francis A. Boyle
Iraq and the Laws of War: US as "Belligerent Occupant"

Stew Albert
The Spies Who Thought We Were Messy

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How to Reach a Human Voice

 

December 21, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
One Nation, Under Prosecutors: Presumed Guilty

Lila Rajiva
A Short History of Radio Free Iraq

Joshua Frank
Nancy Pelosi's Truth

Dave Zirin
The Bray of Pigs: Bush Nixes Beisbol Cubano

Ramzy Baroud
US Image Problem Rooted in History, Not Media

Sonia Nettnin
Connect the Dots: Decoding Bush's Mumbo Jumbo

Ben Saul
Torture as Calculated Policy

Jonathan Cronin
Anniversary of a Handshake: Cherry-picking History in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Election Spells Total Defeat for US

Website of the Day
Nixon on Presidential Power

 

December 20, 2005

Jackie Corr
Natural Gas: a Montana Tragedy

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Nothing New About NSA Spying on Americans

Michael Donnelly
"Eco Terrorism": Cui Bono?

Gian Paulo Accardo
Empire of Shame: a Conversation with Jean Ziegler

Pierre Tristam
Trifler, Fibber, Sophist, Spy: How Bush Flouted the Constitution

Norman Solomon
The Foulest Media Performances of the Year

Sen. Robert Byrd
No President is Above the Law

Dave Lindorff
Missing Black Boxes in WTC Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI

Website of the Day
FBI's Spy Files: Got Yours Yet?

 

December 19, 2005

Mike Marqusee
The Global War on Civil Liberties

Gary Leupp
Feds Ask Student: "Why are You Reading that Little Red Book?"

Ron Jacobs
The Antiwar Movement, the Democrats and the Delusions of Bushworld

John Blair
Stealing the Golden Shovel: Lessons on Civil Disobedience

Gideon Levy
Sadism at the Qalandiyah Checkpoint

Kevin Zeese
The Global War on Civil Liberties

Missy Comley Beattie
Warnings from a Military Man and Dad

Don Santina
Ride 'Em Brush Cutter: Cowboy Imagery and the American Presidency

Website of the Day
A Call for Justice in Palestine

 

December 17 / 18, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Time-Delayed Journalism: the NYT and the NSA's Illegal Spying Operation

Gabriel Kolko
The Decline of the American Empire

Susan Alcorn
Texas: Three Days and Two Nights

Werther
The Democrats are an Impotent and Tolerated Opposition Party

Ralph Nader
The Senator Without Guile: Proxmire of Wisconsin

Patrick Cockburn
Counting Ballots and Bodies in Baghdad

Fred Gardner
When Prosecutors Deceive: Did the Feds Frame Bryan Epis?

Dave Lindorff
Spy Scandal Far Larger Than Just NSA

Ned Sublette
Essence is Gasoline

Lee Sustar
The Class War Economy

Jason Leopold
Did Karl Rove Destroy Evidence in Plame Case?

Laura Carlsen
Report from Hong Kong: Deciphering the Language of Globalization

Jeff White
Teacher Fired for Talking About Peace?

Ray McGovern
Torture Between the Lines

Chris Floyd
Pale Fire: the White Death of Fallujah

William Loren Katz
Remembering the First Quagmire at Xmastime: Zachary Taylor vs. the Seminoles

Rose Miriam Elizalde
Mashenka and the Bear: a Tale for Our Time

Greg Moses
Pinter's Provocation: Self Love in America

Heather Gray
Privatizing the Social Contract

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience: the Sequel

St Clair / Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Landau, Engel and Albert

Website of the Day
At Least Homeland Security Believes that Mao Still Matters

 

December 16, 2005

Tom Kerr
CNN's Goddess of Vengeance: What's Not to Love About Nancy Grace?

Mark Engler
The WTO in Hong Kong: Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty?

John Bomar
When Ollie North Came to Hot Springs

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Votes; Now What?

Pierre Tristam
Iraq, Ourselves

William S. Lind
The Fine Art of Withdrawal

Cyril Neville
Why I'm Not Going Back to New Orleans

Robert Jensen
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Reason, Evolution and Intelligent Design

Saul Landau
Bolivian Democracy and the US: a History Lesson

Website
CounterPunch & Dr. Price Vanquish Anthropologist Spies

 

December 15, 2005

Oren Ben-Dor
The Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Palestine

Stan Cox
"Agroterrorists" Needn't Bother

Joshua Frank
Organic Inconsistencies: Federal Food Politics

Ben Terrall
Waivers for State Terror: Bush and the Indonesian Generals

Patrick Cockburn
Silence Descends on Baghdad

Monica Benderman
What Peace Needs

Walter A. Davis
Fear and Loathing in San Quentin

Vijay Prashad
Our Torture Problem

Website of the Day
Hourly Wages After Four Years of "Recovery"


December 14, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Iran Poised to Win Iraqi Elections

Paul Craig Roberts
Lethal Developments

Lawrence R. Velvel
A Bore Called Bob: On Trying to Read Woodward

Wayne Garcia
The Summer of Sami

John Sugg
Preach Peace, Sami; Get Truthful Prosecutors

Gary Leupp
Bush and the Constitution: "Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper"

Ray McGovern
Torture: a Defining Moment

Alan Maass
They Murdered a Peacemaker

April Hurley, MD
NPR Swallows Bush's Guestimate on Iraqi Dead

Kevin Alexander Gray
Richard Pryor's Mirror on America

 

December 13, 2005

Stephen T. Banko, III
Heroes

Patrick Cockburn
America's War So Far: 1000 Days of Getting It Wrong

Laura Carlsen
What's at Play at the WTO

Karl Grossman
Nuclear Routlette in the Troposhere: Another NASA Plutonium Launch

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Original Sin

Kevin Zeese
Report from the International Peace Conference in London

Norman Solomon
At the Gates of San Quentin

Michael G. Smith
Ending the Death Penalty

Stew Albert
California Killers

Bob Dylan
Song for Tookie: George Jackson

Phil Gasper
California Murders Tookie Williams: a Report from San Quentin

Website of the Day
Boot Hill

 

December 12, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Defenders of Torture

Lawrence R. Velvel
George the Disconnected

Jessica Stewart
My Husband is at the Gates of Gitmo

George Bisharat
Busharon: a Fusion of Like Minds

Nate Mezmer
Killing Tookie Williams: If a Black Man Dies in America, Does It Make a Sound?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Richard Pryor Wasn't Crazy

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience

Seth Sandronsky
Thank You, Richard Pryor

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: the Beginning of the End

Website of the Day
Wrestling for Peace


December 10 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
All the News That's Fit to Buy

Landau / Hassen
The Condemned of Nablus

Ralph Nader
The Widening Wasteland of American Media

Linn Washington, Jr
The Philly Media and Mumia: When They Don't Bash, They Ignore

Bill Christison
Apathy, US Culpability and Human Rights Day

Mike Ferner
The Courage of Jim Loney

Elizabeth Schulte
Abortion and the Bush Court

Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner
Murder in Jerusalem

Linda S. Heard
Saddam's Trial: Grandstanding in the Theater of the Absurd

Ingmar Lee
A Kayak Journey to Vancouver Island's Wildest Forest

Ray McGovern
Lies, Torture and the Six Blind Mice

John Chuckman
Torture and White Phosphorous: the Moral Hell of Condi Rice

John Ryan
An Honorary Degree in Child Sacrifice?: Madeleine Albright and US Foreign Policy

Dick J. Reavis
From Waco to Baghdad

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Hired Pens

Behzad Yaghmaian
Trapped at the Gates of the European Union

Aseem Shrivastava
The Winter in Delhi, 1984

John Ross
Bushlandia in Black and White

Ben Tripp
War, What is It Good For?

St. Clair / Pollack / Vest / Despair
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Bear Dog, Ford, Mickey Z, Albert & Engel

Website of the Week
Burn a Brick for Bush

 

December 9, 2005

Linn Washington, Jr.
Roots of Gitmo Torture Lie Close to Home

Dave Zirin / Mike Stark
On Seeing Wesley Baker Die

Patrick Cockburn
Blair Tries to Cover Up $1.3 Billion Iraqi Theft

Alexander Cockburn
Murtha Returns to Attack; Flays Bush

Lila Rajiva
Shooting the Mentally Ill

Gary Leupp
White House Liars on the Defensive

Jason Leopold
Rove Running Out of Answers, Time

Bruce K. Gagnon
So These Are the Democrats?

Andrew Cockburn
Meet Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrats' New Gatekeeper

Website of the Day
"X-mas Time for Visa"

 

December 8, 2005

Kathy Kelly
Blessed are the Merciful in Baghdad

James Petras
The Venezuelan Election: Chavez Wins, Bush Loses (Again)

William S. Lind
Questionable Assumptions: Dissecting the Stategy for Victory

Laura Carlsen
The Strange Mission of Vicente Fox: Free Trade and Mexico

Justin Akers
Bush's Border War

Thomas Graham, Jr
A Nuclear Pearl Harbor in Outer Space?

Norman Solomon
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam

Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn
The Lost John Lennon Interview

Website of the Day
Pigs at the Trough of War

 

December 7, 2005

John Ryan
Dershowitz vs. Chomsky: a Review of the Harvard Debate

Gary Leupp
Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq

Fran Quigley
How the ACLU Didn't Steal Christmas

Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith
Bush War Crimes: the Posse Gathers

Joshua Frank
Bird Dogging Hillary

William W. Morgan
Rendition, Torture and Democracy

Dave Lindorff
A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu Jamal

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam: "Come Visit My Cage"

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Website of the Day
Witnesses to Torture

 

December 6, 2005

Ron Jacobs
No One is Illegal; No One is an Infidel

Patrick Cockburn
Inside Saddam's Trial: Tales of the Human Meat Grinder

Yifat Susskind
Death, Politics and the Condom: African Women Confront Bush's AIDS Policy

Mike Whitney
How Greenspan Skewered America

Pat Williams
Public Land Should Stay Public

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi to Europe: Trust Us

Website of the Day
Debunking Woodward

 

December 5, 2005

John Walsh
The Lies of John Edwards: What Did the Democrats Know and When Did They Know It?

Brian Cloughley
The Poor Dead: the Relative Value of Human Lives

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Corporate Crime Quiz

Robert Jensen
How Big Money Eviscerates the First Amendment

Norman Solomon
Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Ignores Iraq Air War Plan

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to the Justice Department: Pfizer May Have Violated Federal Laws When They Fired Me

Lila Rajiva
The Torture-Go-Round: CIA's Rendition Flights to Secret Prisons

Website of the Day
National Day of Counter-Recruitment


December 3 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Revolt of the Generals

Lawrence R. Velvel
Iraq, Brains and Lies

Rev. William Alberts
The Forgotten Christmas Story: Saying No to King Herod

Saul Landau
Latino Troops Have Parents

Ralph Nader
Consumerama

Paul Craig Roberts
Don't Confuse the Jobs Hype with the Facts

Mike Whitney
Blood Feast: Celebrating Executions in America

Allan Lichtman
The DeLay Scheme: Blatantly Buying Our Government

Dave Lindorff
A Sudden Rush for the Exits?

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections

Fred Gardner
Oregon NORML Honors Growers

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
On Freeing the CPT

Carol Wolman
Remembering the 60s

St. Clair / Vest / Walker / Pollack
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Free the CPT

 

December 2, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad

Mike Ferner
Beware Iraqization: Melvin Laird, Vietnam and Christmas Bombings Over Baghdad?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Constitutional Kamikazes: Padilla's No-Win Dilemma

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Questions for the President

Manuel Talens
The Chávez Theorem

Peter Phillips
Death By Torture: Media Ignores the Hard Evidence

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Alabama's Taliban: Judge Roy Moore, Preachers and Dixie Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Support the Hampton University Peace Activists!

 

December 1, 2005

John Walsh, MD
The God Gaps

Ron Jacobs
Hard Rain: Toward a Greater Air War in Iraq?

Jenna Orkin
EPA's Latest Betrayal at Ground Zero

Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's Blunt Message: Forget Palestine

Tiffany Ten Eyck
Rank and File Resistance to Delphi

Missy Comley Beattie
Home on the Range: Where the Fear and the Animus Play

Eli Stephens
The Reed and Kerry Show

Elaine Cassel
A Government Game of "Gotcha" with Jose Padilla

Website of the Day
Rare Erotica

 

 

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January 13, 2006

A CounterPunch Exclusive Investigation

How the FBI Spied on Edward Said

By 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. One 1973 "Secret" report is now "exempt from General Declassification Schedule of Executive Order 11652, Exemption Category 2," and is "automatically declassified on indefinite". Such administrative stonewalling diminishes our ability to understand the past and further complicates our ability to document the FBI's role in undermining domestic democratic movements.

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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