NOTE:
You've come to an old part of SW Online. We're still moving this and other older stories into our new format. In the meanwhile, click here to go to the current home page.

SW Online's ongoing coverage and analysis
Washington's war at home






 

VOICES AGAINST THE WAR

Lynne Stewart: They want the fear level at a high pitch

Michael Ratner: They want to intimidate people from dissenting

Jeff Englehart: Questioning our role in a crusade for oil profits

Camilo Mejía: I pledge my allegiance to the poor and oppressed

Chris Harrison: Their wars are for conquest

Pablo Paredes: I want to be a voice for truth

Barry Romo: Trained to kill for a political purpose

Michael Hoffman: A former Marine speaks out

Stacey Paeth and Bill Davis: Bring them home now

Rosemarie Dietz Slavenas: He was worth more than oil

Stan Goff: They weren't liberating anything

Mazen Haddad: They ruined my brother's life

Sami Al-Arian: This is like fighting ghosts

Noam Chomsky: September 11 will be exploited by the right

SUBJECTS BELOW:
The witch-hunt of Arabs
Nightmare in Guantánamo
Shredding our civil liberties
Bring the troops home
The anthrax mail attacks
A history of repression in the U.S.

LATEST NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Al-Arian begins a new hunger strike
Political prisoner Sami Al-Arian is putting his life on the line again in a protest against the renewal of a government witch-hunt against him.

White House claims the right to torture
The debate about the torture of "war on terror" detainees was reopened when a White House spokesman asserted that waterboarding is legal.


THE WITCH-HUNT OF ARABS

A racist war comes home
A terrible hate crime against an Iranian American woman in New York has thrown a spotlight on the tide of racism toward Arabs and Muslims that has accompanied U.S. wars overseas.

NYPD's new excuse for racial profiling
The NYPD has produced a new report saying in essence that any Muslim-American who becomes more religious or smokes a hookah pipe could constitute a terrorist threat.

Sami Al-Arian's nightmare
The federal government lost its case against Sami Al-Arian, but they're keeping him in prison anyway. His wife speaks to Socialist Worker about his ordeal.

Family fears killing was a hate crime
Muslim's murder shakes Fremont
The city of Fremont, Calif., was shocked by the October 19 murder of Alia Ansari, a Muslim woman, as she was walking to pick up her children from school.

Labour ministers echo anti-Muslim racism of far right
European leaders stoke Islamophobia
European politicians from London to Moscow are bashing Islam and immigrants, legitimizing politics previously limited to the anti-immigrant extreme right.

Family endured years in a legal limbo
Long overdue victory for the Hamouis
The long ordeal of a Syrian-American family, caught up in the government's witch-hunt of Arabs and Muslims, is finally over.

Politicians responsible for climate of racism
Stoking hate toward Arabs and Muslims
Although George W. Bush once denied that the world's Muslims were enemies of the U.S., he has seemed less concerned with this matter as U.S. war aims backfire.

Politicians demonize Arabs and Muslims to justify their war
Making anti-Arab racism respectable
The demonization of Arabs and Muslims by politicians and the media is on the rise--with all too predictable results.

Politicians and the press bash Islam over anti-cartoon protests
The racist crusade against Muslims
The controversy over racist cartoons in a Danish newspaper has highlighted the scale of the Western assault on Islam as a justification for anti-immigrant scapegoating and imperialist war.

After the bombings in London:
Bush and Blair give a green light to racism
George Bush and Tony Blair are trying to use the tragic July 7 suicide bombings in London to turn back the growing tide of criticism of their occupation of Iraq.

Why are two 16-year-old Muslim girls in a federal jail?
The U.S. government stooped to a new low in its witch-hunt of Muslims when federal agents detained two 16-year-old Muslim high school students from New York City.

Immigrant detainees face a nightmare
The disappeared
"Why am I imprisoned?...What are they accusing me of? Nobody knows." That was the desperate message written by one of America's disappeared--the men and women rounded up in John Ashcroft's September 11 investigation.


NIGHTMARE IN GUANTANAMO

The torture of Jose Padilla
The White House claims that Jose Padilla received a fair trial and just verdict. But from beginning to end, there was nothing fair or just about the railroading of Padilla.

Confined to a dungeon above the ground
More detainees at Guantánamo Bay are so desperate to end their suffering that they are going on hunger strike--willing to risk death if it means an end to their imprisonment.

Abuse of prisoners in U.S. "war on terror"
License to torture
Solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, denial of human contact. Most people would call this "torture." The Bush administration calls it standard operating procedure.

Guantánamo's shameful anniversary
In the past five years, more than 750 men and boys (some as young as 13) have been brought to Guantánamo. None has been tried for any crime. Only 10 have even been charged.

Transferring detainees from secret CIA jails to...
Bush's torture camp at Guantanamo Bay
In a photo op calculated to exploit tragedy and manipulate fear, George Bush announced that 14 al-Qaeda members would be transferred from CIA prisons to Guantánamo Bay.

New revelations of abuse at the U.S. government's prison camp
Victims of Guantánamo
Not only are most of the 500 prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay not hardened al-Qaeda fighters, but many aren't even accused of an act of aggression against the U.S.

Jeffrey St. Clair exposes Bush's covert policy of "renditions"
Torture Air, Inc.
A sleek Gulfstream V jet with the tail number N379P has traveled the world, carrying terrorism suspects that the CIA wants tortured by U.S. allies where this isn't against the law.

How detainees were "disappeared into...
The CIA's secret prisons
A Washington Post expose reveals that the CIA itself has been operating a network of secret prisons that includes at least one former Soviet-era compound.


SHREDDING OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES

Will Bush get Congress' okay for spy law?
The U.S. Senate looks set to rubberstamp a Bush administration demand that its new spying powers be made permanent.

New threat to dissent unopposed in Congress
A bill that would criminalize dissent in frightening ways is working its way through Congress with virtually no opposition.

Congress caves on Bush spy legislation
Even mainstream newspapers condemned legislation passed by in late July that vastly expands the Bush administration's power to spy on Americans.

Decision to deny tenure spurs anger at DePaul
Officials at DePaul University caved to pressure from pro-Israel ideologues and denied tenure for two professors, but students are taking action in opposition to the rulings.

The lawyer who prosecutors wanted to lock up for life
Standing up to the Feds' witch-hunt
Conviction-hungry federal prosecutors have failed in their attempt to get radical defense attorney Lynne Stewart thrown behind bars for the rest of her life.

David Horowitz:
Portrait of a witch-hunter
After dabbling in one right-wing cause after another for two decades, David Horowitz has published a book targeting "dangerous academics.

The Horowitz 101 speak out:
"What is really dangerous in this country?"
SW talked to some of the professors on David Horowitz's witch-hunt list about their reaction--and how the left should respond.
Bush exploits September 11 to go after more of our rights
Scare of the Union
Just trust us, and we'll keep you safe. That's been the Bush administration's trump card since September 11--and George Bush played it again in his State of the Union address.

Big Brother is watching you
As each new scandal about secret spying and government targeting of immigrants comes to light, it's clearer than ever that the Bush administration is shredding our rights.

Modern-day witch-hunt
The voices they want to silence
Since the September 11 attacks, the right wing has organized a concerted campaign to silence the voices of left-wing academics and activists.

What's in Washington's Big Brother Bill?
The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement at every level extraordinary new powers for domestic spying, searches, detainment and deportation.


BRING THE TROOPS HOME

How Eugene Cherry took a stand--and won
A soldier, suffering the consequences of deployment in Washington's occupation of Iraq, takes on the U.S. military establishment. Socialist Worker explains how he won.

From foot soldier of empire to rebel for peace
Camilo Mejía, the first soldier to refuse deployment to Iraq, has joined the ranks of military veterans who have written classics that inspired antiwar movements.

Resister Agustín Aguayo faces court-martial
"They're taking a stand for all of us"
SW talks to the wife of a soldier who faces a court-martial and years in military prison for refusing to participate in a war he believes is illegal and immoral.

Ehren Watada's stand against a criminal war
With nearly 1,000 supporters gathered at the gates of Fort Lewis, Lt. Ehren Watada went on trial before a military judge.

An antiwar vet talks about the growing...
Dissent in the ranks
Chanan Suarez Díaz talks to SW about how his experiences in Iraq transformed his views--about himself and the role of the U.S. in the world.

Sergeant charged with desertion for...
Refusing to fight in Bush's war
Kevin Benderman said no. After what he saw during his first tour of Iraq in 2003, he told his Army superiors that he's not going back.

Sent to kill for oil and empire...Shot by police in California...
Another casualty of Bush's war
Andy Raya's death won't appear on the list of soldiers killed in Iraq, but he was a casualty of that war.

Tragic suicide of an Iraq war veteran
A casualty of Bush's war
Jeffrey Lucey is not a name that will not soon be forgotten by those who attended a memorial service for him at Holyoke Community College.

Antiwar protesters gather in a military town
Return to Fayetteville
Lou Plummer, an organizer of the antiwar protest in Fayetteville, N.C.--home of the U.S. military's Fort Bragg--gives this report on the demonstration..

Marching with the military families
"We have to speak out"
Veterans and family members of soldiers now in Iraq mobilized in large numbers for the October 25 demonstration in Washington, D.C. Socialist Worker spent the day talking to them.

Pentagon preys on undocumented immigrants as...
Cannon fodder in Bush's war
Juan Escalante was good enough to fight for the U.S. government in Iraq. But he's not good enough to be a U.S. citizen--as far as the Bush administration is concerned.


THE ANTHRAX MAIL ATTACKS

What's behind the anthrax panic?
The hysteria seemed to build each day after envelopes containing anthrax showed up at media outlets in Florida, New York City and Washington, D.C.


A HISTORY OF REPRESSION IN THE U.S.

The lessons of McCarthyism
It isn't hard to draw the link from the terrible days of the McCarthyite witch-hunts of radicals to the political climate in the U.S.today.

COINTELPRO: A dirty history of repression
The Bush gang is trying to return to the days of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. SW looks at the dirty history of COINTELPRO--and how the government's goons were ultimately pushed back.

Home page | Back to the top