Today's
Stories
April 27, 2006
Jose Pertierra
Honor and Injustice:the Case of
the Cuban Five
April 26,2006
Robin Philpot
The Rich Life of Jane Jacobs
Sherry Wolf
Democrats, Their Apologists and Abortion:
the Jig is Up
Pratyush Chandra
Nepal: a Saga of Compromise and Struggle
Joshua Frank
Zig-Zagging Through the War With John
Kerry
Gary
Leupp
The Neo-Cons and Iran: No Negotiations
Bill
Quigley
Katrina: Eight Months Later
April
25, 2006
Paul
Craig Roberts
The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium
Linda
S. Heard
Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?: the Prophecy of Oded Yinon
Ralph
Nader
Political Science: Gingrich, "Futurism" and the Abolition
of the OTA
Mike
Whitney
Preparing for the Economic Typhoon
Michael
Donnelly
Lutherans Betray Michigan's Loon Lake Wetlands for Pieces of Silver
Sharon
Smith
Breathing New Life Into May Day
Website
of the Day
SDS Ver. 2
April
24, 2006
Tim
Wise
What Kind of Card is Race?
John
Stanton
Strike Iran, Watch Pakistan and Turkey Fall
Dave
Lindorff
Dangerous Times Ahead
Steve
Shore
Berlusconi Defeated: The Long Wait is Over ... Or Is It?
Amadou
Deme
Hotel Rwanda: Setting the Record Straight
Mickey
Z.
15 Minutes of Radical Fame: America Meets Bill Blum and Ward Churchill
Ralph Nader
Lee
Raymond's Unconscionable Platinum Parachute
Alexander
Cockburn
Obama's Game
Website
of the Day
Too Stupid to Be President?
April
22/23, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The General, GM and the Stryker
Jeff
Halper
SUMUD vs. Apartheid: the Elections in Palestine and Israel
Jeff
Klein
How to Manufacture a War Criminal: Saddam and Me, a True Story
Thomas
P. Healy
Out Now: an Interview with Anthony Arnove
David
Underhill
Stuck in Mobile with the Rev. Graham Blues Again
Lee
Sustar
"We are Going to Keep Marching": an Interview with Immigrant
Rights Organizer Martín Unzueta
Deb
Reich
The Little Mermaid on Highway Six: Rooting for Ordinary Israelis
to Wake Up
John
Chuckman
America's Gulag: Purge at the CIA
Fred
Gardner
More Suppression of Marijuana Research
Julian
Edney
Can Our Economy Run Without Fear?
Seth
Sandronsky
The GOP and California's Levees
Brynne
Keith-Jennings
The Meddlesome Ambassador Trivelli: Undermining Democracy in Nicaragua
Dave
Lindorff
Where are the Frogs?
Catherine
Ann Cullen and Harry Browne
Springsteen Polishes His Roots: First Impressions of "We Shall
Overcome"
Bill
Pahnelas
Bush Passes the Buck on Soaring Gas Prices
Jim
French
Time to Overhaul US Farm Policy
Ron
Jacobs
"I Know I'm Not Dreaming, Because I Can't Sleep Any More"
David
Krieger
The Courage of Sophie Scholl: Resisting Hitler
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Engel and Ford
Website
of the Weekend
Eye of the Storm
April
21, 2006
Jonathan
Cook
The Sinister Meaning of Olmert's "Hitkansut":
Deporting Hamas MPs
Lawrence
R. Velvel
Physical Courage, Moral Courage and American
Generals
Evelyn
Pringle
How to Out a CIA Agent
Christopher
Brauchli
The Rich are Different
Pratyush
Chandra
Pure-and-Simple Revolutions in Nepal and Venezuela
Michael
George Smith
This is What a Movement Looks Like
Missy
Comley Beattie
Serving at the Decider's Pleasure
Sarah
Hines
The Bracero Program: 1942-1964
Website
of the Day
Hunger Strike at U. of Miami
April 20, 2006
Chris
Kutalik
As Crisis Deepens, Is Labor Finally
Showing Signs of a Comeback?
Gary Leupp
Cheney, the Neocons and China
Joshua
Frank
Stop the War! Dump the Democrats!
Diane Christian
The Authority to Kill
William
S. Lind
Sweeping Up: the Real Problem Wasn't
the Execution of the War, But the Enterprise Itself
Ramzy
Baroud
A Case for the Palestinan Government
Justin
E.H. Smith
Doctors and Lethal Injection
April 19, 2006
P. Sainath
More Kids? Pay More for Your Water
Norman
Solomon
When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch
on Iran
Anthony Papa
When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards
for the Rich and Poor in New York
Mike
Ferner
Movement Blues
Stanley Heller
The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later:
Still No Justice
Rifundazione
"We Defeated Berlusconi"
Christopher
Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
Alexander
Cockburn
The Pulitzer Farce
Website of
the Day
Bunker
Busters: the Movie
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
27, 2006
May 1st and America's New Race
War
Immigration Endgame
By JUAN
SANTOS
We
can no longer use the term loosely --America’s war against
migrants is real, and the nation’s rulers mean to sweep the
nation’s barrios the way Katrina swept the Black wards of
New Orleans. And like the military operations visited upon the Black
population of that city in the wake of the winds and floods, the
war against migrants is a race war --one directed from the highest
levels of power.
The recent strikes by ICE against migrant workplaces in dozens of
cities across 26 states served as a crystal clear declaration: no
matter what immigration bill passes in Washington, “enforcement”
is the order of the day.
Whoever the government “legalizes,” it means to round
up the rest in massive raids, ship them en masse to detention camps,
then deport them, creating an atmosphere of mass repression and
terror among brown people nationwide. Everyone with brown skin will
be targeted. The only question still on the table is who will be
directly subject to deportation.
The amnesty provisions of the bills being debated can only be summed
up as part of a divide and conquer strategy. The government is laying
its bet --that those who are offered a “path to legalization”
will be too frightened of losing their “legal” status
to resist the mass deportation of those still deemed “illegal.”
Such divisions are being foreshadowed today in the struggle over
the May 1st Huelga General (general strike and boycott). The current
division is based in denial --denial that the main aspect of government
policy is a massive crackdown and ethnic cleansing --and that “inclusion”
has little to do with it.
The recent mass raids are part of a Homeland Security / ICE plan
called ENDGAME. The plan bluntly states the aim of the Bush administration:
to deport all deportable migrants by the year 2012.
It’s in this context that the government wants pro-migrant
groups to accede to a “compromise.” The simple truth
is that those who are willing to take the bait -like the National
Council of La Raza --are accepting terms of surrender in the war
against migrants. In a Devil’s bargain they are willing to
sacrifice as many as 7 million people in order to save some 5 million
from the most direct impacts of mass raids, detention camps and
deportations.
On May 1st these maneuvers will reach a dramatic climax. Those who
oppose the General Strike - like the “We Are America”
coalition in Los Angeles --are sending a message that resistance
is futile; that we should fear an imaginary “backlash”
more than the concrete plans of the government to attack our communities,
and that the best we can hope for is the “mercy” of
the racist Republican Right. They say they don’t want us to
“provoke” mass repression or legislative defeat.
Fearful and trapped between the power of those on high and the power
of those below, one section of the movement’s middle class
leadership has changed its tune. No longer is their slogan a proud,
defiant and joyful “!Si, Se Puede!” but a resigned and
cautious “No se puede.” They want to slip the needle
into the vein and put the newly awakened brown giant back to sleep.
But let’s make it plain, as Brother Malcolm used to say: Krystallnacht
--the night of shattered glass that marked the onset of the persecution,
mass deportation and ultimately the mass death of the targets of
German fascism --was not a “backlash.” It was, rather,
the implementation of an ongoing racist intent to persecute, exclude
and permanently remove unwanted ethnic groups, and to do so by any
means necessary.
The Gypsies, Slavs and Jews of Europe did nothing to “provoke”
the Nazis; Native America did nothing to “provoke” Europe;
African Americans did nothing to “provoke” lynching;
the migrants of Australia did nothing to “provoke” the
white population to carry out the recent anti-migrant race riots
there.
Such persecutions operate on their own, internally reinforced racist
logic. The only thing those who were targeted had to do was exist
--and be vulnerable. And no one is more vulnerable than someone
whose very existence is deemed “illegal.”
The race and vulnerability of most migrants to the US made persecution
a foregone conclusion; the writing on the wall was clear from the
moment a powerful group of racist lawmakers and their media allies
made an electric spectacular out of a tiny cult of ultra rightists,
vigilantes and “white nationalists” who took up arms
and went migrant hunting on the border.
The agenda was always straightforward racist persecution enforced
with guns --whether it’s ICE or the Minutemen makes no difference,
just as there is no essential difference between the anti-Mexican
Zoot Suit Riots of the 40s, the recent anti-immigrant pogroms in
Australia, official mass roundups like Operation Wetback or the
mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW2.
The powers that be didn’t wait to be “provoked”
by impolite behavior or economic boycotts before launching the recent
mass raids.
In other words, nothing has changed except this: Since the mass
pro-amnesty marches in Chicago and Los Angeles our potential for
mass resistance against mass repression is now on the table as an
absolute factor in the equation.
And that’s what the May 1st Huelga General is all about. It’s
about our power and their vulnerability, instead of the other way
around. Many of those calling for the general strike understand
the power of resistance, and exactly how much is at stake.
Over a hundred actions in more than 60 cities are planned. Some
--even in the mainstream Spanish language press, are calling on
us to take as our banner not only the Black resistance of the 1960s,
but to follow the example of the recent student strikes and immigrant
rebellions in France, as well.
The future of millions lies in the balance on May 1st --and it is
the future not only of brown people, but of Blacks, whites, and
of everyone who has an investment in stopping the rapidly escalating
trend toward fascism in the US. If we fail on that date, there will
be no chance to reunite a divided movement. If we fail on that date,
a new message will be written on the wall: there was ultimately
no mass resistance to the racial scapegoating essential to the development
of full blown fascism in the US.
The middle ground has fallen away.
On May 1st we will send one of two messages: “We Resist”
or “We Surrender.”
It’s up to us to shape the future, to shape our own endgame.
Everything depends on what we choose.
Juan Santos is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles.
He can be reached at JuanSantos@Mexica.net
|
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