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Today's Stories

November 3 / 4, 2007

David Price
Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship

November 2, 2007

Dr. Mary Pipher
Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations

Saul Landau
How Pete Stark Became a Pariah

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as House Arrest

Sharon Smith
A Tale of Two Stadiums

Gary Leupp
Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood

Gregory Harms
The Chorus of Slander on Palestine

Christopher Brauchli
Racism in High Places

Peter Morici
The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit

Dave Lindorff
The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran

David Penner
Zombie Nation

Website of the Day
Fall in Yosemite

 

November 1, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
The Wages of Hegemony

Patrick Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Dam in the World

Dave Lindorff
The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight

Jonathan Feldman
The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South

Mike Ferner
They Met the Resistance in Iraq

William S. Lind
A Question for Would-Be Presidents

Diana Johnstone
"Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business"

Jacob Hornberger
The War on Telephone Privacy

A..K. Gupta
The Apocalypse will be Televised

Lyuba Zarsky /
Kevin Gallagher

The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley

Felice Pace
Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?

Website of the Day
This One's for You, Ed Abbey

 

October 31, 2007

Bill Quigley
New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System

Rev. William E. Alberts
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News

Ray McGovern
Attacking Iran for Israel

Eric Walberg
Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War

V. G. Smith
The Second Death of Guy Môquet

Luis J. Rodriguez
"Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA

Sheldon Richman
Bush has Time to Run the World

Walter Brasch
A Real Halloween Scare

Website of the Day
Boogie Rocks!


October 30, 2007

David Price
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual

M. Shahid Alam
The Pakistan Question

Andy Worthington
The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo

Patrick Cockburn
The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba

Anthony Papa
The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws

Floyd Rudmin
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means

Sherwood Ross
Giuliani and Torture

Website of the Day
The Worst Lobby? You Decide

 

October 29, 2007

Lisa Hajjar
Inside Israel's Military Courts

Joe DeRaymond
The Politics of Lethal Injections

Patrick Cockburn
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan

Isabella Kenfield /
Roger Burbach

Corporate Murder in Brazil

Fred Gardner
The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner

Farzana Versey
Caricaturing Islam

Stephen Fleischman
The Greening of the Oligarchy

Marcelle Cendrars
The Congressional Rip Cord

Eamonn McCann
Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables

Martha Rosenberg
For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter!

Website of the Day
Campaign 2008

 

October 27 / 28, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Dam That Isn't There

James Bovard
Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture

Ralph Nader
Beyond the Rule of Law

M. Reza Pirbhai
The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming!

Robert Sandels
Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations

Jacob G. Hornberger
Ruling By Decree

Missy Beattie
The Arsonists in the West Wing

John Ross
U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca

Robert Fantina
Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader

Ron Jacobs
Labor at the Crossroads

Ali Moayedian
In Search of Logic About Iran

David Michael Green
What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism?

Poets Basement
Block, Davies and Ford

Website of the Day
Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video

 

October 26, 2007

Brian Cloughley
Revenging Bloodshed

Saul Landau
Portrait of Rudy

Ahmad Al-Akras
Getting Justice in the HLF Case

Franklin Lamb
Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

Mike Whitney
Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest

Dave Lindorff
Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians

Alan Farago
A Castro Behind Every Bush

Yifat Susskind
Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror

Website of the Day
Dead Life in a Political Prison


October 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Iraq's Environmental Crisis

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homes of the Crash Test Dummies

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fraudulent War on Terror

Col. Dan Smith
The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment

Alan Farago
The Way to Paradise?

Chris Kutalik
The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels

Brian McKinlay
John Howard and the Curse of Bush

Cindy Sheehan
Pete, Nancy, George and WW III

Website of the Day
Support the America's Program!

 

October 24, 2007

Natalie Washington-Weik
White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicides

Michael Birmingham
What Happened in Nahr Al Bared?

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Nuclear Democrats

Tariq Ali
Bush's Cuba Detour

Farzana Versey
Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf

Dave Zirin
White Noise

James Murren
What "Support Our Troops" Means

Todd Chretien
Looking Reality in the Face

Martha Rosenberg
What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage?

Website of the Day
Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power

 

October 23, 2007

Ralph Nader
Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric

Lawrence R. Velvel
Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept.

Vijay Prashad
The Nuke Deal is Dead

Bonnie Bricker /
Adil E. Shamoo

The True Cost of War for Oil

Dave Lindorff
Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment

Mike Whitney
The Big Squeeze

Farzana Versey
Race with the Devil

Stanley Heller /
Ben George

Something New from the Antiwar Movement

Marcelle Cendrars
You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive

Regan Boychuk
Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response

Website of the Day
King Corn

 

October 22, 2007

Ishmael Reed
Should Blacks Go Green?

Marjorie Cohn
Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie

Rannie Amiri
Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness?

Diane Farsetta
Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams

Todd Alan Price
Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education

Robert Jensen
The Quagmire of Masculinity

Stephen Lendman
The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers

Jemima Khan
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf

Sunsara Taylor
David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth

Binoy Kampmark
No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections

Website of the Day
Support the Center for International Policy

 

 

October 20 / 21, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld

Tariq Ali
A Massacre Foretold

Jeffrey St. Clair
Greetings from Echo Park

Andy Worthington
The Shame of Diego Garcia

Mike Whitney
Housing Flameout

Daniel Wolff
Play It As It Lays

David Rosen
Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution

Saul Landau
David and Goliath in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
COINTELPRO and the Panthers

Robert Fantina
The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones

David Heleniak
Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm

Joe Allen
Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS

Prairie Miller
Lions for Lambs

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Crash!

 

October 19, 2007

John Ross
Che's Mexican Legacy

Sheldon Rampton
Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda

Rahul Mahajan
A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha

Devra Davis
Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer

Christopher Brauchli
Blasphemous Science

Wadner Pierre
Haiti After the Deluge

Bill Quigley
Jailed for Justice

Website of the Day
Textbook Sticker Shock

 

October 18, 2007

Saree Makdisi
Academic Freedom is at Risk

Meg Dwyer
What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead?

Alevtina Rea
Sketches of Russian Life

Norman Solomon
The United States of Violence

Kristoffer Larsson
Something is Rotten in Sweden

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes are Back and So are We

Website of the Day
Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"

 

October 17, 2007

Steve Niva
Counter-Insurgency, American-Style

Andy Worthington
The Case of Mohamed Jawad

Alan Farago
The Credit Shock

Russell Mokhiber
The New Billionaire-Criminal Class

Sharon Smith
Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered

Mike Whitney
Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman

Robert Fantina
Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual

Chris Irwin
Where Have All the Rednecks Gone?

Website of the Day
Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University

October 16, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize

Paul Findley
Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby

Robert Bryce
Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts

Uri Avnery
The Mother of All Pretexts

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraqi Genocide

Ray McGovern
What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It?

Norman Solomon
The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal

Martha Rosenberg
The Curse of Cymbalta

William S. Lind
Out of the Frying Pan

Joel S. Hirschborn
Time to Boycott Voting

Website of the Day
Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play

 

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition
November 3 / 4, 2007

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Pakistan in a Daze

By AYESHA IJAZ KHAN

More than ever before, Pakistan's security situation is cause for enormous concern. Innocent lives are lost everyday in bomb explosions and suicide attacks. The most recent explosion, on a bus in Sargodha, situated in the relatively calm plains of the Punjab, killed several Pakistan Air Force personnel.

The "war on terror," an unpopular war in Pakistan because it was viewed as "America's War," which pitted Pakistani against Pakistani and Muslim against Muslim, has now come home to roost. It is no longer contained in the tribal areas of Waziristan but spreading like wild fire to Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Sargodha, thus confusing urban and rural inhabitants who previously took solace in the fact that they were geographically distanced from the tribal belt.

In bustling Mingora city and idyllic Swat, often compared to Switzerland in the beauty of its terrain, the tourism industry has come to a standstill and schools are closed. Many families are secretly fleeing for safety to Peshawar. Pakistanis are fearful, disturbed and shocked not only at the ferocity and alacrity with which the bombings are continuing, but also at the growing numbers, force and influence of the militants.

Unlike in Britain or America, where terrorism, at least in the immediate aftermath, propels a display of unity and rallying behind the government, in Pakistan it is not so. Instead, there are feelings of resentment and anger. Because the government has done so little for its people in terms of health care, education and infrastructure over the years, the lapse in security is also squarely placed on the government's shoulders. To some extent, it's an easy target. Not to mention, a target against which one can speak freely in Pakistan. Perhaps it is not so easy to condemn the militants who have instilled fear in the hearts and minds. Nevertheless, questions as to how the militants were able to stockpile arms in large quantities and organize themselves and penetrate into urban centres are valid concerns that must be addressed.

The government, for its part, is toying with the idea of imposing emergency measures. Not because of the ugly security situation, although it must undoubtedly be alarmed by it and will certainly use it as a rationale, but because of the judiciary's aggressive posturing towards the executive. The Supreme Court is currently considering "the dual office case," which is to examine whether President Musharraf, as a serving chief of the army, was qualified to contest the presidential election. The Constitution provides powerful ammunition to the petitioners challenging his dual office.

Arguments offered by government's counsel in support of the dual offices reportedly hinted at the so-called "doctrine of necessity," which has previously justified the imposition of martial law in Pakistan. Yet, the Supreme Court bench, although off to a slow start (ruling on the case was initially postponed until after the election took place and has now been sub-judice for nearly a month), is making increasingly bold remarks about disregarding the looming threat of martial law in reaching its decision on the matter.

It is rumoured that the government is exploring interim solutions, not full-blown martial law. Just enough of an emergency to hold the Constitution in abeyance and circumvent a potentially unfavourable Supreme Court ruling until elections are held. It is with this understanding perhaps that Ms. Bhutto suddenly departed for Dubai only two weeks after landing in Pakistan after a lengthy exile.

Ms. Bhutto, who had earlier cancelled her visit to Dubai, in a surprise development, decided to go ahead with the trip. It is believed that she is aware of the government's plans of imposing emergency measures and has decided to temporarily leave the country to save herself and her party the embarrassment of her cognizance and de facto complicity.

In stark contrast, Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, newly-elected President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and counsel for the petitioner in the dual office case, has issued a clear warning stating that if a Provisional Constitutional Order is instituted the legal community will strongly oppose it. Mr. Ahsan played a key role in the movement for the reinstatement of the Chief Justice whom Mr. Musharaf had clumsily sacked earlier this year and has become a formidable foe of the government. Although he is a member of Ms. Bhutto's party, it has appeared recently that they rarely see eye-to-eye.

By taking the case of the Chief Justice to bar associations across the country, Mr. Ahsan and his team of lawyers politicized the movement, which led to a peaceful reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry as well as a new-found faith in the independence of the judiciary. For once, the hopes and aspirations of the common people were not crushed and the movement they supported achieved its objective.

As a result, the judiciary and the legal community are the most potent force Mr. Musharraf has to reckon with. The ruling government is more fearful of them than they are of the politicians, many of whom have historically been up for grabs to the highest bidder. In a refreshing show of unity and modesty, out-going President Munir Malik praised Mr. Ahsan's victory at the Supreme Court Bar Association and expressed profound faith in his ability to lead the body.

As the country is dazed by the clutch of terror, the government desperately tries to extend its time in power unconcerned with legalities or the effectiveness of its governance, and opposition politicians remain fixated on petty point-scoring instead of coming together to fight either terrorism or military rule or both, the only group that has outperformed all expectations and provides continued hope and inspiration is the judiciary and legal community of Pakistan, who have demonstrated a remarkable commitment to Mohammed Ali Jinnah's creed of "unity, faith and discipline!"

Ayesha Ijaz Khan is a London-based lawyer and writer and can be contacted
via her website, www.ayeshaijazkhan.com





 

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