Month: June 2014

It’s funny how so many people in the peace and justice movement, in which I’ve been an active participant for the past decade, have been sucked into various distractions in recent years.  This didn’t happen very often during the Bush presidency.

The most recent distraction is the Bowe Bergdahl fiasco, which is pure politics.  If a Republican were in the White House, it would be the Democrats causing a stink – this is simply a matter of the party that’s not in power using an issue to gain political points.

If there were nothing else to read about, think about, discuss and take action on, maybe getting sucked into this political theater would be understandable.

But there are plenty of things today that need the immediate attention of people in the antiwar community – issues on which the establishment doesn’t want people to focus.  Things like:

• National Security Advisor Susan Rice announcing on June 6 that the US is now sending lethal weapons to the “opposition” in Syria, which means that we are arming al-Qaeda.
• Digging into the situation in Iraq, where on Wednesday an al-Qaeda splinter group took control of Tikrit, and on Tuesday took over the country’s second largest city, Mosul.  500,000 people have fled in the past days.  The al-Qaeda group responsible for the takeovers in Iraq is the same group the US is arming in Syria.  All the while, the US continues to funnel tons of weapons to Iraq’s government – including sniper rifles, tank rounds and missiles – so, is the US arming both sides in a country that it has already ruined?
• How the US is creating chaos in Ukraine by siding with neo-Nazis and a government that is bombing its own citizens.
• Exposing how the US is supporting a neo-fascist who took office in Egypt last week.
• Unveiling how a US citizen is leading a violent coup in Libya, and how the rest of Africa is rapidly being populated by the US military in what may be turning into the new Middle East.

So, the US is arming al-Qaeda in Syria, is continuing to devastate Iraq, is crushing democracy in Egypt, is teaming up with neo-Nazis in Ukraine and is re-colonizing Africa.

Continue reading “Sucked Into Distractions”

Palestinians are yet to achieve national unity despite the elation over the ‘national unity government’ now in operation in Ramallah.

One has to be clear in the distinction between a Hamas-Fatah political arrangement necessitated by regional and international circumstances, and Palestinian unity. What has been agreed upon in the Shati’ (Beach) refugee camp in April, which lead to the formation of a transitional government in the West Bank in June, has little to do with Palestinian unity. The latter is a much more comprehensive and indispensable notion. Without it, the Palestinian people risk losing more than a unified political platform, but their ability to identify with a common set of national aspirations wherever they are in the world.

Thus, a hurried agreement in Gaza that left many points of contention to be discussed and settled by various subcommittees with uncertain chances of succeeding is hardly the prerequisite to true and lasting national unity.

Most media pundits are mixing up between Palestinian national unity and the ‘unity’ government of 14 ministers which were sworn-in in Ramallah. Most of the supposed technocrats are recognized for their overt or subtle loyalty to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. The transitional government is tasked with administering areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The PA is allowed to operate in the West Bank under the watchful eye of the Israeli army. In return for allowing the PA a space of operation, PA forces are involved in ‘security coordination’ aimed at securing illegal Jewish settlements, reigning in Palestinian resistance and offering a line of defense for the Israeli army, which in reality is the one and only ruler of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It is unclear as of yet how the security coordination will affect the way Israel controls Gaza, which thus far has been secured through a hermetic siege intensified since the Hamas election victory in 2006 and the brief Hamas-Fatah civil war in 2007.

Continue reading “What Palestinian Unity Is All About – The Real Task Ahead”

Liberty.me publisher Jeffrey Tucker interviewed me today about the history of Antiwar.com, our mission and why we do what we do.

The New York Times has a good story today headlined, “War Gear Flows to Police Departments.”  Unfortunately, the Pentagon’s leftovers have been corrupting domestic law enforcement since the 1990s.  Following is a piece I wrote for Playboy in 2000 on  the militarization of SWAT teams.  The article includes a discussion of Waco and the 1999 high school shootings in Littleton, Colorado.

Playboy March, 2000

FLASH. BANG. YOU’RE DEAD : SWAT teams make dramatic TV but horrible justice; the increase in the number of SWAT teams has led to violent, and sometimes misguided, justice

By James Bovard

When University of Texas student Charles Whitman climbed the Texas Tower in 1966 and began shooting people, the Austin police were caught underarmed. Officials called in off-duty cops and asked for citizens to bring their deer rifles. TV footage showed puffs of concrete as cops’ return fire chipped away at the sniper’s position. Eventually, officers climbed the stairs to the observatory deck and patrolman Ramiro Martinez emptied his handgun into the suspect. Then, seizing a shotgun from a fellow officer, he finished the job.

The well-publicized shootings provided the pretext for many police departments to gear up for war and changed both the weaponry and tactics of law enforcement.

Police chief Daryl Gates launched the nation’s first Special Weapons and Tactics team in Los Angeles in 1971. Gates’ unit became famous for demolishing homes with tanks that were equipped with battering rams. Law enforcement went on steroids and became larger than life.

Continue reading “Militarizing Law Enforcement: Collateral Damage from War on Terror”

Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo spoke today with Fox Radio’s Alan Colmes about the Bowe Bergdahl case.

Justin was at his best, check it out:

Justin Raimondo on Alan Colmes

This is the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. It is a great blessing that western Europe is now at peace – regardless of how much political leaders squabble at the commemoration ceremony. D-Day back in the news reminds me of my first visit to World War Two venues.

In 1977, after dropping out of college, I hustled up the money to take off for a two-month hitchhiking tour of Europe. After landing and spending five days in Paris, I headed to the city’s western suburbs to catch a ride to Normandy.

Like most American kids in the 1960s, I loved TV series on World War Two – from Combat to Rat Patrol to Hogan’s Heroes. I was also transfixed by movies like “The Longest Day” (1962) and “Is Paris Burning?” (1966). I hoped to visit the landing sites, especially Omaha Beach – where the fiercest fighting took place on June 6.

But the hitching went badly. Perhaps French drivers were appalled by my use of a loaf of French bread to try to flag down a ride – like a giant thumb. (I avoided that flourish later in the summer when hitching in south France.) After several hours of strikeouts, I caught a ride with a trucker going to Le Havre, a port city fairly distant from the famous landing beaches. I had long since exhausted my meager French vocabulary, so I caught a boat to Southampton.

Continue reading “D-Day: My First Encounter with Hitler’s Sea Wall, 1977”