The North Star

back after a hiatus

2005-10-12T14:29:00.000-07:00

Apologies for neglecting The North Star; I've had my handsful with work-related demands these last few weeks, but here's one that should make everyone feel a bit better:

The Battle for America

back soon...

2005-09-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

Steve Bell

Katrina Update

2005-09-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Paul William Roberts: The Flagging Empire (Globe and Mail)
Godfrey Hodgson: After Katrina, a Government Adrift (opendemocracy)
Christian Parenti: The Big Easy Dies Hard (Nation)
Anne Rice: Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? (NYT)
George Friedman: New Orleans, A Geopolitical Prize (STRATFOR)
Jordan Flaherty: Notes from Inside New Orleans (Left Turn)
Richard Rodriguez: The Third World (PBS)
Thulani Davis: Unbearable Crime on the Mississippi (Black Commentator)
William A. Cook: From New Orleans to Palestine (CP)

2005-09-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

1 Sept 05

The North Star is Back for the Autumn

2005-09-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Paul Craig Roberts: How New Orleans Was Lost (CP)
Norman Solomon: Bring the Guard Home (TO)
Robert Jensen: A Nation of Mercenaries (Hindustan Times)
Frank Rich: The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation (NYT)
Tom Engelhardt: Vietnam on Crack (ZNET)
Tom Hayden: An Exit Strategy for Iraq (LA Times)
Stan Goff Critique of Hayden's Plan (CP)
Gen Wesley Clark: Before It's Too Late (Wash Post)
Digby on General Clark
Diane Christian: The Politics of Death: Assassination (Buffalo Report)
Live Blog from Camp Casey (TO)
ATFP Cautions Against Planned Expansion of Wall Around Jerusalem

2005-07-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

18 July Update

2005-07-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

Chatham House Report: Security, Terrorism, and the UK
John Berger: The Bloody Outcome of Two World Wars (Observer)
Carl Conetta: 400 Days and Out: A Strategy for Resolving the Iraq Impasse (PDA)
Counting the Collateral Damage in Iraq (WPH)
Norman Solomon: War and Venture Capitalism (ZNET)
Robert Jensen: It's the Empire, Stupid
Paul Krugman: Karl Rove's America (NYT)
Anti-Immigration Movement Spreads (Austin Statesman)
The Postage Stamp Wars (El Uiversal)
Subcomandante MARCOS: This is What We Will Do (CP)
Website: afterdowningstreet.org

2005-07-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

London Transit

10 July update: Does London Change Anything?

2005-07-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

London:

Tariq Ali: The Price of Occupation
Robert Fisk: The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing
John Pilger: Blair's Bombs (TO)
Faisal Bodi: Blair Put Is in the Firing Line (Guardian)
Mike Marqusee: Message From London (CP)
George Galloway: London Has Reaped Blair's Involvement in Iraq (democracy now)
David Clark: The Terror Will Continue (Guardian)
Sheldon Rampton: Rhetoric and Reality in London (commondreams)
Juan Cole: The Time of Revenge (HNN)
Interview with Juan Cole on the London Bombings (beliefnet)

Regular Posts:

2005-07-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

Think about the meaning of the 4th. Think hard.

4 July Update

2005-07-04T01:21:00.000-07:00

Normon Solomon: Mourn on the Fourth of July (TO)
Paul Loeb on Dying for One's Country (workingforchange)
DZ Jackson: Deja Vu in Iraq (Boston Globe)
Covering Up Napalm in Iraq (ZNET)
Burying Evidence to Bush's Torture Campaign (InfoClearinghouse)
USA Today Call for Troop Withdrawal (Editor & Publisher)
Tony Judt: The New World Order (NYRB)
O PoorCanada! -- the Ambassadorial Nominee (Buffalo Report)

2005-06-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

James Weinstein, 1926-2005

update from the road, 21 June

2005-06-21T04:22:00.000-07:00

James Weinstein (Chronicle) NYT
Tribune Wienstien obit
Intervew with John Conyers (via Buzz Flash)
Robert Fisk: We Are All Complicit (Independent via TO)
The War Debate Reopens (Nation)
Geov Parish: Recruitment Blues
Iraqi Labor and the Occupation (CP)
AL Kennedy: Flattering the Popinjays (Guardian)
George Monbiot: Debt Relief?
Adam Shatz: The Principle of Hope: Samir Kassir
Uri Avnery: Red Herring (Gush Shalom)

2005-06-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

13 June update

2005-06-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

Shadid and Fainaru: US and Iraqi Forces Deeply Divided (Wash Post)

Mark Dannner: The Secret Way to War (NYRB)

Alan Ryan: Waiting on Gordon Brown (NYRB)

Naomi Klein: Torture's Part of the Territory (LA Times)

Sidney Blumenthal: Nixon's Empire Strikes Back (Guardian)

Frank Rich: Don't Follow the Money (NYT)

John Nields: The Contradictions of Deep Throat (Wash Post)

Sen George McGovern: We Need a Deep Throat Today

Seymour Hersh: Watergate Days (New Yorker)

The Philosopher and the Ayatollah: Foucault in Iran (Boston Globe)

Norman Solomon: Tehran in Washington's Crosshairs (Truthout)

13 June update

2005-06-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

Shadid and Fainaru: US and Iraqi Forces Deeply Divided (Wash Post)

Mark Dannner: The Secret Way to War (NYRB)

Alan Ryan: Waiting on Gordon Brown (NYRB)

Naomi Klein: Torture's Part of the Territory (LA Times)

Sidney Blumenthal: Nixon's Empire Strikes Back (Guardian)

Frank Rich: Don't Follow the Money (NYT)

John Nields: The Contradictions of Deep Throat (Wash Post)

Sen George McGovern: We Need a Deep Throat Today

Seymour Hersh: Watergate Days (New Yorker)

The Philosopher and the Ayatollah: Foucault in Iran (Boston Globe)

Norman Solomon: Tehran in Washington's Crosshairs (truthout)

13 June update

2005-06-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

Shadid and Fainaru: US and Iraqi Forces Deeply Divided (Wash Post)

Mark Dannner: The Secret Way to War (NYRB)

Alan Ryan: Waiting on Gordon Brown (NYRB)

Naomi Klein: Torture's Part of the Territory (LA Times)

Sidney Blumenthal: Nixon's Empire Strikes Back (Guardian)

Frank Rich: Don't Follow the Money (NYT)

John Nields: The Contradictions of Deep Throat (Wash Post)

Sen George McGovern: We Need a Deep Throat Today

Seymour Hersh: Watergate Days (New Yorker)

James Ridgeway: Mark Felt's Goonsquad Past (Voice)

The Philosopher and the Ayatollah: Foucault on Iran (Boston Globe)

Norman Solomon: Tehran in Washington's Crosshairs (truthout)

Indigenous Uprising: The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia (democracy now)

Bolivia on the Brink (Green Left Weekly)

2005-05-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Steve Bell on target again

28 May Update

2005-05-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Howard Zinn: Against Discouragement (workingforchange)
Bob Herbert: Torturing Prisoners and Our Safety (NYT)
Seymour Hersh: Abu Ghraib's Lesson Unlearned (Guardian)
Robert Jensen & Pat Youngblood: The Media Ate My Homework
Molly Ivins: Don't Blame Newsweek (AlterNet)
Historical Uses of Casualty Photos (LA Times)
George Galloway Before US Senate (BBC) transcript
Galloway Paxman slugfest (BBC)
Scott Ritter on George Galloway (Guardian)

Now We Know Where They Stand: The House Votes on Withdrawing Troops From Iraq
The vote: roll call listing

2005-05-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

17 May update

2005-05-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

11 May update

2005-05-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

You must listen to this: Brighteyes, "When the President Talks to God"

Naomi Klein: How to End the War (ITT)
Harvey Wasserman: Four Bloody Lies of War (Free Press)
Will the Real John Bolton Please Standup? (Foreign Policy)
Stephen Grey: The US Trade in Torture (Le Monde Dip)
Bob Herbert: Stranger Than Fiction (NYT)
Mike Davis: Vigilantes (Tom Dispatch via truthout)
Baptist Church Excommunicates Democrats (Daily Kos) video
Saree Makdis: NeoCons Target Universities (LA Times)
David Horowitz Takes on the Academy (Chronicle)
Uri Avnery: Aren't You Ashamed? (Gush Shalom)

British Elections:

Andrew Rawnsley: Blair's Bittersweet Victory (Observer)
Realignment in the UK? (Socialist Worker)
Susan Watkins: New Labour’s Role in the Neoliberal Order (NLR)

2005-05-03T04:38:00.000-07:00

30 years later & what have we learned?

3 May update

2005-05-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

William Rivers Pitt: The Crawling Kingsnake Returns (truthout)
Thomas Frank: What's the Matter with Liberals? (NYRB)
Gabriel Kolko: Lesson from a Total Defeat, Vietnam 30 Years Later (CP)
Jeffrey Goldberg: Iraq in Hindsight (New Yorker)
Tom Hayden: Open Letter to Howard Dean (Nation)
Kim Scipes: Labor Imperialism Redux? (Monthly Review)
John Pilger: Blair's Forgotten Victims (info clearinghouse)
Bob Herbert: From 'Gook' to 'Raghead' (NYT)
Paul Krugman: Gut Punch to the Middle (NYT)
Juan Cole: McCarthyism at Columbia (truthout)
Jesse Lemisch: Fear & Loathing and Columbia University (HNN)
Bruce Jackson: Bush and Cuba (Buffalo Report) state dept report here

2005-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side. - Bob Dylan, 'With God on Our Side'

Pontifical update, 20 April

2005-04-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

William Rivers Pitt: Theocrats (truthout)
Ratzinger's Right Wing Politics (AFP)
Pope Bendict's Challenges (salon)
Monty Python: Memo to Pope Rat (CP)

2005-04-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

Berlusconi Contuso

6 April update

2005-04-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

John PIlger: "They Are Afraid of You" (Green Left Weekly)
Scott Ritter: Sleepwalking to Disaster in Iran (Aljazeera)
John R MacArthur: Media on Iraq and Vietnam Wars (common dreams)
Paul Krugman: An Academic Question (NYT)
George Monbiot: I'm With Wolfowitz (Guardian)
John Bolton in his own words here
Stirling Newberry: American Thermidor (truthout)
Brownshirts Anyone?
Tariq Ali: British Elections -- Punish the Warmongers (CP)
Italian Elections: Repudiation of Berlusconi (Il Manifesto) English coverage
Jim Quilty: Lebanon Through a Gonzo Lens (Daily Star)

2005-03-22T18:53:00.000-08:00

Bolton...

22 March Update

2005-03-22T18:35:00.000-08:00

Rahul Mahajan: Terry Schiavo and the Culture of Life (Empire Notes) audio
Molly Ivins: Pull the Plug on Pandering (workingforchange)
Abu Spinoza: Wolfowitz at the World Bank (ZNET)
Marguerite Feitlowitz: The Torturer General (salon)
Ian Williams: Bolton vs. United Nations (ITT)
William Blum: Democracy or the Military on the March (CP)
Canada and Haiti (ZNET)
Bill Moyers: Welcome to Doomsday (NYRB)
Liza Featherstone: Wal Mart and Race (Black Commentator)

2005-03-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

Fixin' To Die Rag

5 March Update

2005-03-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

US Combat Deaths Break 1,500 Mark (CommonDreams)
Martin van Creveld: The Blemish of Conquest (Boston Review)
Rob Nixon: Hidden War Casualties (Chronicle of HE)
Letter from a British Soldier (ITT)
Staughton Lynd: Soldiers as CO's (HNN)
Lou Plummer: Iraq Veterans Against the War (Dissident Voice)
Karen Houppert: Peace Activists Summit (Nation)
Nancy Unger: More to Fight For (Fighting Bob)
Paul Krugman: America's Economic Future (NYRB)
David Bacon: Remaking the AFL-CIO (ZNET)
Lloyd Axworthy: Open Letter to Condoleeza Rice (Winnipeg FP)
Jonathan Schell: A Less Super Superpower (TO)
Gary Leupp: What's Happening in Lebanon (CP)
Gideon Levy: The Israeli Left Awakens (Ha'aretz)

2005-02-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

"I think Thompson has remained a writer of significance because, essentially a satirist, he displayed utter contempt for power - political power, financial power, even showbiz juice," Paul Theroux

He Will Be Missed

2005-02-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

Ralph Steadman: Hunter S. Thompson RIP: 'I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time'

Hunter said these words to me many years ago: "I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time." I knew he meant it. It wasn't a case of if, but when. He didn't reckon he would make it beyond 30 anyway, so he lived it all in the fast lane. There was no first, second, third and top gear in the car - just overdrive.

He was in a hurry. "Drive your stake into a darkened heart in a red Mercedes-Benz. The blackness hides a speeding tramp. The savage breast pretends. But never mind the nights, my love, because they never really happened anyway."

So we wrote in a Beverly Hills house one drunken night. I wrote the stanzas, he wrote the chorus. "Don't write, Ralph," he said, "you'll bring shame on your family." "Those Weird and Twisted Nights." That was the song.

On Sunday morning, I had just finished signing the 1,200 title pages for a limited-edition Taschen version of The Curse of LONO, which Hunter had signed so uncharacteristically - obedient and mechanical - over the month of December. I thought that was very strange. He has to be cajoled like a child to do anything like that, so I drew his portrait across the last sheet, glaring out, his two eyes in the two Os of LONO, put the cigarette holder with long Dunhill prodding upwards in his grimacing mouth, signed it with an extra flourish and closed the last of the four boxes. The old bastard! He waited to make sure I had finished the task. Then he signed himself off.

I knew it was too good to be true. Now I will be expected to build the monstrous cannon in Woody Creek, a 100ft-high column of steel tubes, with the big red fist on its top and his ashes placed in a fire bomb in its palm.

"Two thumbs, Ralph! Don't forget the two thumbs!!" It was the Gonzo fist and he really believes I can do it! Such were his demands as he tipped at his windmills. People were fucking with his beloved Constitution and he was born to banish the geeks who were doing it. In that way he was a real live American. A pioneer, frontiersman, last of the cowboys, even a conservative redneck with a huge and raging mind, taking the easy way out and mythologising himself at the same time.

He spent a lot of his early years of rejection writing; verbatim excerpts from Hemingway, Faulkner and Conrad, trying to imagine what it was like to write some classic text. He could be very persuasive.

As a boy he was hired by the milkman to collect bills outstanding from the citizens of Louisville, Kentucky, but he was shunned by his neighbours and especially the literary establishment in the town, so he had a score to settle. I had only just arrived in America in late April of 1970, and was staying with a friend in the Hamptons to decompress. I got a call from JC Suares, art editor of Scanlan's Magazine in New York. He said: "How'd ya like to go to the Kentucky Derby with an ex-Hell's Angel who just shaved his head, and cover the race? His name is Hunter S Thompson and he wants an artist to nail the decadent, depraved faces of the local establishment who meet there. He doesn't want a photographer. He wants something weird and we've seen your work."

The editor, Don Goddard, had been the New York Times' foreign editor and he thought I was naïve enough to take this on. I was looking for work - so I went. Finding Hunter - or indeed anyone covering the prestigious Kentucky Derby who is not a bona fide registered journalist - was no easy matter, and trying to explain my reasons for being there was even worse, especially as I was under the impression that this was an official trip and I was an accredited press man.
Why shouldn't I think that? I assumed that Scanlan's was an established magazine. I had been watching someone chalk racing results on a blackboard while I sipped a beer and I was about to turn and get myself another when a voice like no other I had ever heard cut into my thoughts and sank its teeth into my brain. It was a cross between a slurred karate chop and gritty molasses.

"Um-er, you-er wouldn't be from England, er, would you-er? An artist maybe-er -what the ...!"
I had turned around and two fierce eyes, firmly socketed inside a bullet-shaped head, were staring at a strange growth I was nurturing on the end of my chin. "Holy shit!" he exclaimed. "They said I was looking for a matted-haired geek with string warts and I guess I've found him."
We took a beer together and sat in the press box. Somehow, he had got our accreditation and we were in. He asked me if I gambled and I said only once, in 1952. I put two shillings on Early Mist to win in the 1953 Grand National. And it did. I picked a horse but didn't bet and it won so then I picked another, backed it with a dollar, and lost. "That's why I don't gamble," I said.

"I thought you had been picked up," he replied. "Picked up?" I didn't quite understand. "Er, yes, the police here are pretty keen. They tend to take an interest in something different. The, er-um, the beard. Not many of them around these parts. Not these days anyway."

I was beginning to take in the whole of the man's appearance, and his was a little different too. Certainly not what I was expecting. No time-worn leather, shining with old sump oil. No manic tattoo across a bare upper arm and, strangely, no hint of menace. This man had an impressive head chiselled from one piece of bone and the top part was covered down to his eyes by a floppy brimmed sun-hat. His top half was draped in a loose-fitting hunting jacket of multicoloured patchwork. He wore seersucker blue pants and the whole torso was pivoted on a pair of huge white plimsolls with a fine red trim around the bulkheads. Damn near six foot six inches of solid bone and meat holding a beaten-up leather bag across his knee and a loaded cigarette holder between the arthritic fingers of his other hand.

Arthritis was to plague him all his life, as was the football knee-injury which left him with one leg shorter than the other, but it never truly encumbered his physical rage or his action-packed approach to a deep respect and love of writing - and righteousness.

We found the decadent, depraved faces of Louisville by the end of the first week we spent together. They were staring at us from a mirror in the gents' toilet on the in-field, where the rest of the riff-raff, who are not eligible to stand in the privileged boxes of the chosen few, spent their time at the races, just like us.

We spent many assignments together, bucking the trend, against the cheats and liars, the bagmen and the cronies; me an alien from the old country and him raging against the coming of the light. "Fuck them, Ralph," he would say, "we are not like the others."

Well, he wasn't anyway, but I was easily led. Before Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas we tried to cover the America's Cup yacht race in Rhode Island for Scanlan's (who were just about to go bust and get on to Richard Nixon's blacklist) from a three-masted schooner. There was a rock band on board for distraction; booze and, for Hunter, whatever he was gobbling at the time. I was seasick and Hunter was fine. I asked him what he was taking and he gave me one. It was psilocybin [magic mushroom], a psychedelic hallucinogen, my first and only drug trip apart from Librium. I was the artist from England so I had a job to do. He handed me two spray-paint canisters. "What do I do with these?"

"You're the artist, Ralph. Do what you want, but you must do it on the side of one of those multimillion-dollar yachts, moored hardly 50 yards away from where we are."

"How about fuck the Pope?" I said, now seeing in my mind red snarling dogs attacking a musician singing at a piano dressed as a nun at a shore-bound bar. "Are you a Catholic, Ralph?"
"No," I replied, "it's just the first thing that came to mind."

So that was the plan and we made it to the boats and I stood up in the little dinghy with the spray cans and shook them as one does. They made a clicking sound and alerted a guard. "We must flee, Ralph! There'll be pigs everywhere. We have failed." He pulled fiercely on the oars and fell backwards with legs in the air. He righted himself and started rowing again. We made it back to our boat and while I was gabbling insanely, he was writing down all the gibberish that I uttered. I was now a basket case and we had to get back to shore and flee. Hunter shot off two distress flares into the harbour and we hailed a boat just coming in. The flares set fire to one of the boats, causing an emergency fire rescue as we got to dry land. There's more and I won't go on, but I guess that was the genesis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Such a wild game was possible, but it needed all the genius and application of Hunter S Thompson to make it live.
He has done that and he has proved that a redneck Southern gentleman who has the fire in his belly and the indignation in his soul can make it happen. I had the good fortune to meet one of the great originals of American literature. Maybe he is the Mark Twain of the late 20th century. Time will sort the bastard out. I have always known that one day I would know this journey, but yesterday, I did not know that it would be today.

I leave it to others more qualified than me to assess and appraise his monumental literary legacy.

16 February update

2005-02-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

Edward S. Herman: Demonstration Election (ZNET)
Naomi Klein: Getting the Purple Finger (Nation)
Slavoj Zizek: The Not-So-Quiet American (ITT)
Marjorie Cohn: First They Came for Lynne Stewart... (TO)
Howard Zinn: Changing Minds, One at a Time (Progressive)
Tim Dickinson: The Return of the Draf t (Rolling Stone)
Letter to Senators Re: Democratic Agenda
RIP Ossie Davs, 1917-2005 (Democracy Now)
Robert Jensen: Ward Churchill Has Rights, and He's Right (ZNET)
Ward Churchill's 8 February Speech (video)

2005-02-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

if only...

10 February update

2005-02-10T09:06:00.000-08:00

Rick Salutin: False Wins, Prematurely Declared (Rabble)
Frank Smyth: After Iraq's Wartime Election (Foreign Policy in Focus)
George Monbiot: Noses in the Trough (Guardian)
Jane Mayer: Outsourcing Torture (New Yorker)
Iraq's New Patent law: A Declaration of War against Farmers (Grain)
Krugman: Spearing the Beast (NYT)
Doug Giebbel: The People, The President, and Ward Churchill (CP)
Alexander Cockburn: Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs (CP)
Carolyn Baker: The New McCarthyism on Campus (CP)
From the Right: Scott McConnell -- Hunger for Dictatorship (American Conservative)
Website: Critical Media Literacy in Times of War

2005-02-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

Steve Bell on the Iraqi Elections (Guardian)

4 February update

2005-02-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

David Corn: The State of George W. Bush (Nation)
Molly Ivins: Noble Ideas, Nasty Actions (workingforchange)
Carl Conetta: The Iraqi Election "Bait and Switch"
Chomsky on Iraq After the Elections
Marten & Cooley: Permanent Military Bases Won't Work (IHT)
Geov Parrish on Troops' Refusal
Sharon Smith: Resisting Soldiers Need Our Support (CP)
Nick Turse on the Homeland Security State (Part I)
William Rivers Pitt: The Story of the Ghost (TO)
Marjorie Cohn: Another World Is Possible (TO)
Bill Moyers: There Is No Tomorrow (Star-Trib)
Amy Goodman Interviews Sy Hersh (Democracy Now)
Tony Judt: Europe vs. America (NYRB)

2005-01-25T05:01:00.000-08:00

Counter Inaugural Coffins

More photos here
and here as well

25 January Update

2005-01-25T04:45:00.000-08:00

Robin Cook: Inaugural Blues (Guardian)
Geov Parish: Hersh Under Fire (workingforchange)
DoD Response to Hersh
Jonathan Steele: Global Gulag -- Outsourcing Jails (Guardian)
A Nuremberg Lesson on Torture (LA Times)
Frank Rich: On TV, Torture Takes a Holiday (NYT)
More on Death Squads (ITT)
A Tale of Abduction (Guardian)
Sen. Edward Kennedy: Bush's Vietnam (CBS)
Robert Fisk: Back to Baghdad (ZNET)
Robert Fisk: Hotel Journalism (CP)
Steve Weissman: Target Iran: War Without End (truthout)
Interview with Tom Frank (ITT)
Hasan Abu Nimah & Ali Abunimah, Mass Hypnosis in the Middle East (Electronic Intifada)

2005-01-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

1929-1968

MLK Day

2005-01-17T05:53:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Geov Parrish: The King We Have Lost (workingforchange)
Cornel West: Prisoners of Hope

13 January update

2005-01-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Raban: The Truth About Terrorism (NYRB)
Robert Scheer: Is Al Quaeda Merely a Construction? (LA Times via truthout)
Henry Giroux: What Might Education Mean After Abu Ghraib (CSSAAME)
Giving Up on the Hunt for WMD (Globe and Mail)
The El Salvador Option -- Death Squads in Iraq (MSNBC) more| still more
Chmiel and Wimmer: Hearts and Minds Revisited (CP)
Beyond Elections -- Martin Luther King on Strategy and Tactics (commondreams)
Tim Pelzer: Canada in Haiti (ZNET)
Germain Greer on "Disaster Aid" (Telegraph)
Website: Iraqi Federation of Workers Trade Unions

New Years update

2005-01-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

Back on line after a long break. Lets hope that 2005 sees some movement in a positive and progressive direction. This update includes just a very few of the perceptive pieces that appeared over the holidays -- the Mertes article gets my nod as editor's pick. Keep the suggestions flowing in.

Tom Mertes: A Republican Proletariat (New Left Review)
Rahul Mahajan: Iraqi Resistance and the Anti-War Left (Empire Notes)
Patrick Cockburn: When You Have an Occupation, You Have Resistance (GLW)
Éric Denécé : Anatomy of Iraq's Guerilla Movement (Le Figaro) translation
War Crimes (Wash Post)
Richard Cohen: Ugly Truths About Guantanamo (Wash Post)
FBI Torture Memos (ACLU)
Robert Scheer: Gonzales and Torture (Nation)
No Holiday fore Vote Theives (Black Commentator)
Chris Moore: Neocons and the Cult of State (antiwar.com)
From the Right: Patrick J. Buchanan: Staying the Course Won't Do
Uri Avnery: A Wreath for Blair (Gush Shalom)
Counter Inaugural 2005

2005-01-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

Josh Brown on target

15 December update

2004-12-15T14:56:00.000-08:00

a brief update today...Waxman's report is worth more than a skim. Thanks Henry. Moyers is a must read -- when did he start careening leftwards?

Robert Jensen: The War is Lost (CP) original
Bill Moyers: The Dangers Ideologues Pose (alternet)
Rep Henry Waxman: Secrecy in the Bush Administration
David DeBatto: Whitewashing Torture (salon)
Chris Hedges: On War (NYRB)
EJ Dionne: Rumsfeld's Flip Response (workingforchange)
Jesse Jackson: In Cleveland as in Kiev (Guardian)
Michael Hirsh: Bernard Lewis Revisited (Wash Monthly)

Hinzman asylum hearing

2004-12-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

Jeremy Hinzman, a former Marine Staff Sgt., is a deserter seeking refugee status in Canada. His website

Former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was honorably discharged from the Corps in December 2003 after 12 years of active duty. He is one of a small number but growing number of Iraq vets who are speaking out against the war. This week, Massey was in Canada testifying in a refugee hearing for Jeremy Hinzman. link

Globe and Mail's coverage of Massey's testimony, and summary piece
(Thursday editorial against Hinzman, "A Deserter, Not a Refugee")

Alternet posting on Hizman's hearing and Massey's testimony

8 December update

2004-12-08T04:33:00.000-08:00

Compare the CIA Analysts prognosis (NYT posting) with William Kristol's optimistic forecast about the situation in Iraq, hmmmm. Two pieces here on the media's coverage of the war -- see Maria Tomchick's piece from an interesting on line journal, Eat the State, in particular. Editor's picks also include the provocative article by Bob White on the way race did (and does) figure into US politics and Naomi Klein's letter to the acting US ambassador to Britain, David Johnson.

Meanwhile, here in Canada, Jeremy Hinzman, a deserter from the US Army, is seeking asylum. His hearings began yesterday and included testimony from a staff sargeant about the killing of civilians. More on this case and the growing anti-war movement north the border in future updates.

CIA: No Light at the End of the Tunnel

Ahmed Hashim: Why the Insurgency Won't Go Away (Boston Review)

Helen Thomas: Declare Victory and Leave

The Air War in Iraq: Why Is It Off the Media's Radar Screen? (HNN)

Maria Tomchick: The Disappearing War (Eat the State)

Nation Forum on the Election & Road Ahead

Bob Wing: The White Elephant in the Room, Race and the Election (alternet)

Michael Massing: Iraq, the Press and the Election (NYRB)

Naomi Klein to Ambassador David Johnson (Guardian) | original Klein article

Robert Manne: Israel and the Nightmare of Occupation (Age)

Khalid Amayreh: Palestinian Expectations and Realities (electronic itifada)

From the Right: Francis Fukuyama Reviews Timothy Garton Ash (Commentary)

From the Right: LeftWing Takeover of Aacdemia (frontpage)

From the Right: William Kristol Sees Light at the End of the Tunnel

Website: Uncensored: Falujah in Pictures | article (sfgate)

Website: Liberal Oasis

3 December update

2004-12-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

Noam Chomsky: The 2004 Elections (ZNET)
Carl Davidson & Marilyn Katz: The Road Ahead (portside)
Mark Dudzic: After the Election What? (Labor Notes)
Peter Linebaugh: Torture and Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq (CP)
Red Cross on Torture at Guantanamo (Democracy Now)
Historians Against the War: Articles on Torture
Molly Ivins: America in Denial Over Torture (workingforchange)
Nan Levinson: Dissent Inside the Military (ITT)
Nat Hentoff on Alberto Gonzales (Voice)
Interview with Thomas Frank -- Can the Dems Get Their Groove Back? (alernet)
Iraq Uncensored
Paul Rogers: After Fallujah -- No Direction Home (OpenDemocracy)
Tom Lasseter: The Battle of Fallujah (Knight-Ridder)
MEDACT: Health in Iraq 2004 (pdf format)
Defense Science Board: They Hate Our Policies Not Our Freedom (CSM) report (pdf format)
Marjorie Cohn: Setting the Conditions for War Crimes (truthout)
Brian Gifford: The Costs of Staying the Course (WashPost)
Rep Jim Leach: The Case for Restraint With Iran (antiwar.com)
Website: A Stolen Election
Blog: Baghdad Burning

27 November update

2004-11-27T18:15:00.000-08:00

Three weeks after the election some more substantive analyses are appearing: the pieces by Peter Drier and Jack Kurzweil, amongst other in this posting, are worth reading. I also recommend the letter from Bolivia for a dose of needed optimism.

Thanks to all of you who have sent in links. Many of you have requested the return of the index of blogs and alternative sites that was part of PM. I'll work on this.

Valentina Campos: Message from Bolivia
Andrew Arato: The Two Americas (Dissent)
Peter Dreier: Why Bush Won and What to Do Next (Dissent)
David Moberg: Election Reflection (ITT)
Jack Kurzweil: Elephants, the Perfect Storm, and the New Covenant (portside)
Michael Zweig: Democrats and Moral Values (Baltimore Sun)
George Lakoff: Our Moral Values (Nation)
Mark Knickelbine: Stop Blaming Kerry (FightingBob)
Blanche Wiesen Cook: Time to Regroup (Buffalo Report)
An African View of the Election: The Republicanization of America (Black Commentator)
John Dean: Does Bush Have Political Capital to Spend? (FindLaw)
Chalmers Johnson: How to Create a Worthless Intelligence Agency (truthout)
Sidney Blumenthal: Counterinaugural at the Clinton Library (salon)
David Moon & Rob Richie: Crying Reform, Not Wolf: The Real Conspiracy to Rig Our Elections
Noam Chomsky: Reshaping History (Al-Ahram Weekly)
Andrew Gilligan: The Case for Not Attacking Iran (Spectator)
Tom Hayden: How to End the War in Iraq (AlterNet)
From the Right: Robert Higgs on the Cost of the War in Iraq (HNN)

21 November update

2004-11-21T18:08:00.000-08:00

This update contains a long unpublished piece, "The Proconsul of Babylonia,: sent in by the author, Ted Roszak. It's different and well worth reading. I've continued to post pieces on election irregularities, and have moved these to a separate page. Many thanks to my colleague, Megan Boler, for providing most of these links.

John Plilger: Iraq -- The Unthinkable as Normalcy (CP)
Falujah 101 (ITT)
William Polk: Three Options for the War in Iraq
Theodore Roszak: The Proconsul of Babylonia
Robert Kagan: The Crisis of Legitimacy -- America, Europe, and the World (Centre for Independent Studies)
Fisk on the Murder of Margaret Hassan
Paul Rockwell: The Role of Boycotts in the Fight for Peace (commondreams)
Todd May: Religion, the Election, and the Politics of Fear (CP)
Sean Wilentz: The Urban Rural Divide (LA Times via HNN)
Sharon Smith: A Right Wing Republic? (CP)
Canada's Role on the World Stage (Walrus)
Phil Klinkner: Money Matters (TNR)
Martin Jacques: The Only Show in Town (Guardian)
Robert Fisk: After Arafat (Independent via commondreams)
Henry Siegman: Sharon and the Future of Palestine (NYRB)

17 November update

2004-11-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

Valentina Campos: Message from Bolivia
Andrew Arato: The Two Americas (Dissent)
Peter Dreier: Why Bush Won and What to Do Next (Dissent)
David Moberg: Election Reflection (ITT)
Jack Kurzweil: Elephants, the Perfect Storm, and the New Covenant (portside)
Michael Zweig: Democrats and Moral Values (Baltimore Sun)
George Lakoff: Our Moral Values (Nation)
Mark Knickelbine: Stop Blaming Kerry (FightingBob)
Blanche Wiesen Cook: Time to Regroup (Buffalo Report)
An African View of the Election: The Republicanization of America (Black Commentator)
John Dean: Does Bush Have Political Capital to Spend? (FindLaw)
Chalmers Johnson: How to Create a Worthless Intelligence Agency (truthout)
Sidney Blumenthal: Counterinaugural at the Clinton Library (salon)
David Moon & Rob Richie: Crying Reform, Not Wolf: The Real Conspiracy to Rig Our Elections
Noam Chomsky: Reshaping History (Al-Ahram Weekly)
Andrew Gilligan: The Case for Not Attacking Iran (Spectator)
Tom Hayden: How to End the War in Iraq (AlterNet)
From the Right: Robert Higgs on the Cost of the War in Iraq (HNN)

Pessimism of the Mind is Back...as the Norh Star

2004-11-05T18:10:00.000-08:00

You will have noticed that PM has been dormant since midsummer -- largely due to my travels and work commitments. In fact, I had planned on putting PM to rest following Dubya's defeat...Well, the times won't allow that. So, we are back and revamped. I am taking the name "North Star" from Frederick Douglass' abolitionist newspaper; I'm also quite conscious in choosing this title about my location here in Canada, where free thinking and social democracy is, thankfully, alive and well.

"Stand and Fight" Katrina vanden Heuvel urges in her piece posted in this update. And that's what the times demand. I'd be especially grateful if the North Star becomes more of a collective effort than PM -- so please send suggestions for links to articles, blogs, interesting sites, etc.

Venceremos,

Ten Articles on Election Irregularities
Arundhati Roy on Support for Iraqi Resistance (Aljazeera.net)
Scott Ritter: Squeezing Jello in Iraq
Paul Rogers: Fallujah Fallout (Open Democracy)
Samir Amin: Imperialism, Capitalism, and the Middle East (Monthly Review)
Barbara Ehrenreich: The Faith Factor (ZNET)
Arianna Huffington: Architeccts of Defeat (workingforchange)
Alan Maas: A Parable for Our Times, Lessons from the Fall of Newt (CP)
Eric Leaver: Deepening Quagmire (Foreign Policy in Focus)
Timothy Garton Ash: What Europe Can Do to Counter Bush (Guardian)
Andrew Gumbel: Sensible People In Charge -- The New GOP Reality (Independent)
Turmoil at the CIA (Wash Post)
Marjorie Cohn: The Quaint Mr. Gonzales (truthout)
Some Questions for Alberto Gonzales (APAF)
Seymour Hersh and Jonathan Cell on the Press and Politics (DART Center)
Patrick Timmons: Violence at the Ballot Box -- The War on Gay Rights (CP)
New Blog: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark
David Corn: A Stolen Election? (Nation)
Rule By Theft (Black Commentator)
Greg Palast: Just Count the Ballots on the Back of the Bus
SamParry:'Incredible' Vote Tallies (consortium.news)
Jessica Azulay: Supression and the Larger Fraud (New Standard) more
Brook Gladstone: The Media, Election Irregularities, and What We Are Not Reading (NPR)
Black Box Voting
BK Loren: Swooshing the Presidency (Orion)
More Voting Maps
It's Possibly Worse Than You Think
Robert Jensen: "Your Rich Men Are All Full of Violence" (CP)
Garry Wills: The Day the Enlightenment Went Out (NYT)
Thomas Frank: Why They Won (NYT)
David Blight: Divided America (NPR)
Simon Schama: Onward Christian Soldiers (Guardian)
Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson: No Mandate (TNR)
The Black Commentator: Concede Nothing
George Monbiot: Puritanism of the Rich (Guardian)
Howard Zinn: Optimism (ZNet)
From the Right: Bill Bennett Sees a New Mandate (National Review)
From the Right: Mike Thompson Calls for a Reconfiguring (Human Events)
Sidney Blumenthal: Bush Unbound (Salon via truthout)
Matthew Rothchild: A Devastating Defeat (Progressive) on the concession speech
Arianna Huffington: Anatomy of a Crushing Defeat
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair: End Time for the Dems (CP)
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Stand and Fight (Nation)
James Ridgeway: Big Tent Falling Down (Voice)
Danny Postel: NeonCon Schism (opendemocracy)
Tom Engelhardt: The Election Hangover of a Life Time (TomDispatch)
Interview with Gore Vidal on Imperial Amnesia (ITT)
New Blog: Press Think

link to archives, 2001-04

2004-10-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

Pessimism of the Mind archives