40 people or so marched through downtown Portland streets on a very snowy Saturday night in solidarity with the insurrection in Greece and against state repression everywhere.
Chants of "from Portland to Greece, these are our streets!" and "rain or snow the police must go!" were met with cheers by many of the people who were downtown during the blizzard, some even joined the march with their own chants of "Fuck the Police!"
The march encountered only one cop who was laughed off when he asked "who is the leader?". a window broke at a large department store (nordstrom rack?), and circle A's appeared on on doors and buildings in the wake of the march.

(top)

Riots Push Greece to the Edge

By Malcolm Brabant BBC News, Athens

Pulsating punk rock was stoking up the black-clad army of students outside the University of Athens, as, yet again, they prepared to march on parliament.

The Stranglers were singing: "Whatever happened to all the heroes? All the Shakespearoes? They watched their Rome burn."

The setting was appropriate: the Propylea, as the university's main building is known, resembles a temple from Greece's own glorious classical era. All along Panepistimiou, or University Boulevard, security men in upscale jewellers, boutiques and the Attica department store, hastily lowered the electronic shutters. The guards at the Bank of Greece retreated behind supposedly impregnable bronze doors, and steeled themselves for yet another assault on the symbols of wealth, prosperity and unbridled capitalism. Since a policeman shot dead 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos on 6 December, daily riots are estimated to have cost the entrepreneurs in the capital more than $1bn.

Economic crisis

In among the hooded tops and Arab scarves was a man with owlish glasses and an immaculate mane of silvery, white hair. Panos Garganas is a career protestor who has taken part in every annual 17 November march on the US embassy. That march commemorates the day in 1973 when tanks of the US-backed military dictatorship smashed through the gates of the Polytechnic university and crushed a student uprising.

Whether it is a demonstration to support asylum seekers or to complain about the intrusion of privacy threatened by CCTV before the 2004 Olympic Games, Mr Garganas will be there. He is a member of the hard left Socialist Workers' Party and is the total antithesis of the stereotypical rabid Trotskyite: unfailingly polite, articulate, and persuasively reasonable in his arguments.

I asked him to apply some historical context to the most serious civil disturbances in Greece since the fall of the colonels' military dictatorship 44 years' ago. "I think we should see today's developments in terms of 1989," he replied. "Back then, it was the Eastern bloc that collapsed under the pressure of economic crisis, and popular movements in the streets. Now we are seeing the same in the West."

"The economic crisis is huge and Greece is showing, I think, the future for what will happen in other countries. We could say that 2009, 20 years on, will see the collapse of Western capitalism." I asked him if he was not simply looking at the recent unrest through the rose-tinted glasses of an old left-wing romantic.

"Well, yes, of course. I am all of those things you just said," he replied. "But this democracy is failing people and the present revolt is much deeper, it will last much longer, it will affect society much more profoundly."

"It does mean misery... in terms of people losing their jobs, their homes and their pensions. There's going to be a lot of suffering. But at the same time people are reacting, not in a resigned way, but with anger and with action and that's always hopeful." The unrest across Greece is no longer an outpouring of youthful anger over the "martyrdom" of a schoolboy in the Athens district of Exarchia. As Mr Garganas explained, for many protesters it is now a vigorous attempt both to topple the conservative government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, and to create waves across Europe. 

European fears

Further confirmation came from the mouth of Petros Constantinou, a bearded firebrand wearing wire-rimmed spectacles that might have fitted Leon Trotsky. I asked him to justify the burning and looting of shops belonging to people not remotely connected to the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos.

"When we have revolutions, we don't drink tea in our saloons, we have fights in the streets," Mr Constantinou shouted. So should Greece's European Union partners dismiss this talk of revolution as being little more than extremist rhetoric, or is there something more substantial to fear? The riots have clearly unsettled France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy. He has postponed plans to reform the curriculum of secondary school pupils in case they ignite copycat protests.

"In the name of symbols, they can overthrow the country. They are regicidal," Mr Sarkozy told the French parliament. "Just look what's going on in Greece." Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is also deeply concerned and has advised governments to spend more money in an effort to ease the global economic crisis.

In a BBC interview, Mr Strauss-Kahn spoke of 2009 as "really being a bad year".

"I'm especially concerned by the fact that our forecast, already very dark... will be even darker if not enough fiscal stimulus is implemented," he said.

"The question of having social unrest has been highlighted by journalists and I can understand that, but its only part of the problem," he added. "The problem is that the whole society is going to suffer." At present, the demonstrations across Greece are mainly attracting students, high-school pupils, veteran leftist campaigners and members of the so called 700-euro generation disenchanted graduates who are unable to break through the ceiling of this nation's minimum wage.

The working and middle classes are staying away, perhaps because of the petrol bombs and tear gas. There is neither a co-coordinated plan of action, nor a charismatic revolutionary leader. But Greek trades unions and university students are now trying to mobilise sympathisers who are watching the troubles on television rather than participating.

Sleeping giant stirring

Pay attention to the old-fashioned, Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Greece (KKE). Remember them? Despite the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet bloc, the Greek hammer and sickle has never conceded the demise of its ideology and has maintained a consistent level of support across the country of about 6 or 7%.

Since 1989, the KKE has appeared something of an anachronism, but the sleeping giant is stirring. The communists have been among the more responsible politicians over the past fortnight, condemning the violence and exerting tight discipline over their protest rallies. Intelligently, they are doing their utmost not to alienate the masses, whereas Syriza, the coalition of the left, supported by younger voters in the last general election, has been accused of stoking the flames.

Foreign income

Pay attention also to Greece's key sources of foreign income next year. If they fail, then Mr Constantinou's revolution could attract more foot soldiers. Tourism and shipping each contribute around 20% towards Greece's national earnings. The sight of smoke obscuring the Acropolis is likely to deter American tourists doing a grand Mediterranean tour. The collapse of sterling against the euro means that British tourists, who help sustain Crete, Corfu, Halkidiki and other package holiday destinations, may choose to get their annual sun fix in Croatia or Turkey. The desperation of Greek hoteliers will be used by British travel companies as an excuse to drive even harder bargains.

This year, during a break in Corfu, the owner of a quaint clifftop apartment complex told me that his colleagues were struggling to break even, as they were only getting five euros per bed, per night. The crash earlier in 2008 of British travel firm XL has left scores of Greek hoteliers close to bankruptcy. Some had been waiting a year for XL to pay their 2007 invoices. The demise of XL will mean that some island entrepreneurs will lose two years' income.

If you fly into Athens International Airport, take a look out of the window as you cross the Straits of Salamis between the port of Piraeus and the island of Salamina. This is the location of one of what was arguably the most important sea battle of all time. In 480 BC, the Athenian navy destroyed the armada of King Xerxes of Persia and thus ensured that Western civilisation evolved under Greek, rather than Asian, influence. Today the straits are filling up with dozens of cargo vessels, rocking at anchor and going nowhere. Their owners can no longer afford to run them.

According to George Gratsos, president of the Hellenic Chamber of Shipping, in May of this year, when cargo rates were at their peak, you could get $235,000 a day for transporting iron ore. "Now you can barely get $3,000," he told me.

That amounts to less than a vessel's daily running costs.

Greek ship owners, who are amongst this country's richest and most powerful people, can afford to sit on their enormous financial cushions and ride out the economic crisis. But what about the 100,000 Greeks who depend on the shipping industry for their livelihoods? Most middle class Greeks have been working 16-hour days to provide the bare necessities of life. Many are now facing ruin through no fault of their own. So how can Europeans stop Greece's social uprising escalating? Well, for a start, they could help by taking a holiday in Greece. Whatever the dire threats of the would-be revolutionaries, the riots are not going to reach the thousands of idyllic beaches and inspiring archaeological sites.

But if you are coming to Athens in 2009, pack a gas mask with your bikini, just in case.

Story from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7798056.stm

(top)

Interview by Consuela

Band Members: Taylor, Josh, Joel, Nick. (Interview done with josh)

AH, OK SO WHERE DOES THE BAND NAME COME FROM?

uh, elitist?

YEAH

Uh its just being kind of smart ass towards the whole Portland scene in a sense. And just how elitism runs pretty fucking rampant and how there is no community whatsoever in Portland in my opinion. I mean there’s, there’s starting to be but I feel like it’s the youth like the younger bands coming up that have the community and what not. But its awesome because everyone is doing rad shit.. Book of Belial and Transient and just all these bands even Helghast and other newer bands are fucking amazing. But ya know, it’s just sort of a “FUCK YOU” to all of the Portland scene. At the same time it’s not a solid “FUCK YOU” but more of a “COME ON! GET WITH THE PROGRAM!” there is no reason why we can’t all play shows together all of the time. Like lets say one band all of the sudden has more people at their shows than most, and it’s like “oh we can’t play with you anymore because we’re big…” It’s like FUCK! Have some fucking loyalty to your friends.

AS IF YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH BECAUSE YOU’RE FROM A DIFFERENT CROWD?

Yes! It just irritates me to no end -he takes a drink and passes my giant cup of beer back - ha ha yeah, long story short: that’s our name.

HOW DID YOU GUYS FIND EACH OTHER?

It started out with Taylor, Brint, and Charlie the original members. They were in a band called Songs From The Rodeo and I was singing in El Cerdo and their original singer was from Boise, Idaho and they were just sick and tired of never being able to play and he wasn’t into what they wanted to do anyway., They wanted to do something darker and more grindy and sludgy.. El Cerdo slowed down to where they weren’t playing shows hardly at all anymore. I was like I wanna start a really dark, crusty, grindy, sludge band that’s just disgusting and louder than fuck. Ya know? To put that lightly ya know? <laughs> yes to say something intelligent about it. But anyway that was it and Taylor was like that’s exactly what I want to do. Something just wildly abrasive and super dark at the same time. So Songs From The Rodeo broke up and El Cerdo was doing nothing and we’d all been friends for years so it just sort of fell together. That’s just how it all started. But it’s funny because no we only have half the members from the original band. Nick from El Cerdo came and joined us and Joel from his band is playing with us now too. So it’s a new line up and it’s even more so what we had hoped for. It’s the way it should have been from the beginning.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE LYRICS AND WHAT’S BEHIND THEM?

Uh… I don’t know… um.. Let me think… fuck…

MAYBE OFF OF A NEWER ALBUM?

We have a new song and some of the lyrics go “panning for liquid gold in a sea of arteries” It’s just talking about experimenting with drugs and what not and when you’re experimenting with drugs or whatever and looking for a form of utopia of sorts. Really, you know you don’t need to find this type of escape in drugs but it had that whole hopeless romantic feel. Like obviously doing heroine is a terrible thing but it just had that whole hopeless romantic vibe to it.

IS IT THE ALLURE OF COMPLETELY ALTERING YOUR CURRENT STATE OF MIND IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING TO DISTRACT FROM RESTLESS UNSATISFACTION WITH LIFE?

Yeah, just being helpless, and feeling like there is something missing, a huge void in your life and knowing that you probably really are never going to be able to fill just because… I don’t know.. just because. <laughs> I don’t know I have a loss for words for it right now. I am just very angry because I have a huge chip on my shoulder because of where I grew up and who I grew up around. I am constantly trying to detach myself from my where I grew up just because I am so disgusted with the people I grew up with and what not. You can take that however you want, like oh, he’s just a fucking asshole. But I take it like I am constantly trying to do as much as I can in a fucked up world. In a nutshell. <laughs>

QUITE A NUTSHELL INDEED. UH… WHAT SHOULD I ASK?… UH?

I dunno .. Uh you want to ask us about our influences? <he hints>

YEAH, SURE… INFLUENCES… GOOD Uh ok., this is actually the question that the guys were like “ oh dude when you do the interview you should talk about this…” and I was like ok…

WERE THEY EXCITED ABOUT THE INTERVIEW?

yeah! <enthusiastically> actually they were, they just had to go drop off all of the gear in fuck degree weather… yeah that’s my least favorite thing to do, unload gear.. I always get lost in the van.. And we have a ton, like A TON of gear.. Its always like fuck yeah lets be the loudest bad ever, but then we have to lug it all home in like fifty cabs… but anyway for me my biggest vocal influences are probably At the Gates… Depeche Mode… fuck I don’t know… Amebix… Probably just like gothy weird shit. I mean Depeche Mode more than anything, the mood of Depeche Mode and like Converge, early 80’s goth stuff even too. Joel is way into like Jesus Lizard and that sort. Nick is the weirdest. Ok im just going to say this. WEEN. WEEN is his biggest influence and lets just leave it at that. WEEN with a fuckin… yeah…caps… WEEN. Caps Lock WEEN. Enough said.

<<AT THIS POINT SOME OF THE HOUSE KIDS WHO HAD JOINED IN A CIRCLE AROUND US TO LISTEN OFFERED US SOME GOLDSCHLAGER LIQUEUR>>

Hell yes I’ll have some! I just ate a bunch of liquorish! <he laughs> “like you ate an entire pack of big red!” the house kid exclaims… DUDE! YES! Done and done! Just like big red! “I love big red!” the house kid slurs… I hate big red….

THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES ON ABOUT GUM FOR A MINUTE, ENTHUSIASTICALLY. I CANT COMPREHEND DRUNK KID AT THIS POINT… I THINK HE IS SINGING THE TUNE FROM NINTENDO. .. JOSH TRIES TO WRAP IT UP, THE HOUSE KIDS INVITE US BACK TO SEE THE WALL OF FORTIES IN THE BEDROOM… THIS GOES ON FOR A WHILE.

***intermission***

UM I DON’T KNOW, OTHER THAN MUSICAL INFLUENCES WHAT CAN YOU SAY INSPIRES YOUR MUSIC?

Aw man.. Maldoror. He’s like an early 1900’s French writer. It’s all fatalist writing and what not, he just talks about… he just tries to identify…

HE WROTE THE BOOK…

Yeah there is a book just called Maldoror and it’s a compilation of… its not even poetry.. Its just his writing and self perspective on life.. He has this line that I actually reinterpreted into a song, it says in the book he “views the world like a cabin boy being beaten…” or NO. it says he “views the ocean like a cabin boy being beaten, like the ocean is a bruise on the back of the world.” I think that’s fucking beautiful. This writer wrote a book called Apocalypse Culture , way inspiring lyrically… and im drawing a blank on the other one that I really like by Maldoror. Probably because I just got hit in the face with a base and smashed into a wall during the show… <laughs> Literally I get brutally hurt every show I've played a show in my entire life.

SO WHATS THE CRAZIEST STORY FROM ONE OF YOUR SHOWS?

um… the craziest Elitist show might have been when we played in Idaho. We played this show in this basement that looked like the basement from the Evil Dead. It was literally like 8” long by 12” wide and I just got punched in the face a lot. AND literally there was a trapped door that we could fall down, and every time we moved , the equipment would fall and fuck shit up. The most haggard show was when we played the Pink House and we flooded the basement because I ripped the water main out… and.. that’s.. a legendary story…in Portland.. <he squeaks.. jokingly>… NOT PROUD OF IT BY THE WAY! DIDN’T MEAN TO! DIDN’T MEAN TO AND IM SORRY GOD DAMNIT!! IM SORRY!!! But um, I don’t know the whole point of Elitist is just to be the darkest, heaviest, loudest, band in Portland. We want our influences to be heard but we don’t want to be defined by them. We just want to be something a little different, and I don’t know if we succeeded but I like to think we are on our way…

EVERYTHING IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

Truly and we have grown a lot as a band. I mean when we first started we were like a straight grind core band, some crust and hardcore over or undertones however you want to say it. But its progressed to where its gotten darker and heavier and more upset.

SO WHEN YOU GUYS PRACTICE, WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST DISTRACTIONS?

DRUGS AND ALCOHOL. Doing copious amounts of drugs, and drinking heavily. I don’t want to say that we are a party band but we sort of admit that when we play. But our music is not at all about that, not in the slightest. We definitely experiment and party hard but its more personal shit really. We are all really fucked up dudes. We’ve all seen a whole bunch and we’ve all been through a whole bunch and that’s what makes us upset. All the chips on our shoulders . That’s why we do what we do.

WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT EVEN THOUGH THE WEATHER IS TERRIBLE YOU HAD SUCH A GOOD TURN OUT FOR YOUR SHOW TONIGHT?

Yeah! Actually, I was. Well, yes and no. Owen Hart. Amazing band. I’ve been friends with the singer forever. All the bands he’s ever been a part of has been amazing. Book of Belial. Amazing, amazing band, truly. One of the best bands in Portland hands down. Yeah its just fun to be able to play with bands like this. Even though its fucked outside people still come out to have a good time. One of the most intimate shows I’ve played in a long time. A lot of people that had never even heard any of the bands came out because they wanted to have a blast and support some local sound. This house is getting pretty legendary. I’ve been to a few shows here at the Lombard House and every time its been chaotic and awesome. Fucking a blast! Enjoying extreme shit ya know?

SO WHAT DO YOU LIKE AND DISLIKE ABOUT THE PORTLAND SCENE?

Oh man. Getting deep on me… shit… uh.. I don’t like the separation of the groups, like if you listen to hardcore , grind core, doom or whatever how you only go certain shows for certain bands. I just feel like it should all be one thing ya know? Portland’s a small fuckin city and it is one of the most amazing cities for music. So much diversity, but when it comes down to it it's underground, and sweaty and rockin and people are all into it. Fuckin just go out and enjoy these bands! Most likely if you like Jesus Lizard, you’ll like Black Elk. If you like doom bands, you’ll like Trees. GO TO THEIR SHOWS!! FUCKING SERIOUSLY! We are all in to heavy weird shit, lets just go out to all the shows. I don’t get it. It fucking bums me out ya know? My beef is the lack of people wanting to progress in a sense. It disgusts me. It pisses me off. I don’t get it and it upsets me a great deal. That’s my beef.

< Random guy listening asks: What’s your opinion of the punk scene today?>>>

On the punk scene today? Uh .. Its kind of an ambiguous question. There’s so many levels of what “punk” is. Oh the punk scene?!! Its like what do you mean?! If some guy says to me that a band like Trap Them isn’t punk well its like I feel like those guys are punk as fuck. Owen Hart… those guys aren’t punk.. But once again those guys are super punk!! They don’t give a shit about anything. At all. Oh, is Rancid punk? That’s the thing…

IS PUNK A PERSONALITY

yeah I cant decide. I feel like defining what punk is or what modern punk is is so ambiguous. That’s the beauty of it. Punk is, or to people that are moderately intelligent and can make up their own minds as to what they want to listen to and don’t fucking sell out or listen to the bullshit that’s going around you is that punk is honestly whatever you want it to be. Punk is an ambiguous thing in this day and age. Literally if it makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck and its different and its whatever then that’s punk to me. People that don’t care about anything else, they don’t care about what’s popular. That’s punk. It doesn’t matter about what you’re wearing, its there. Its being there. Punk is whatever you want it to be. Like style. Style is out the fuckin window. This ties in with our name, with the basis of our name and what we are talking about. I mean we all dress differently, I dress totally outrageous sometimes. I wear a leather jacket, and im vegan. Which makes it even funnier,.. I mean its all vintage leather and what not but ill wear that with all this weird shit and someone could be like oh you’re a crazy hipster looking fucker! Well SO WHAT MAN!? I like what I like. Who fucking cares! And that’s the fucked up part about the punk scene these days. Its like you have to have shock hair and an Amebix patch on the back of your jacket and you’re instantly punk. Oh you’re not only punk, but you’re fuckin punk as shit! Its like NO! its about being different! Ask me what punk is? I don’t know what the fuck punk is. I don’t know what the FUCK punk is. No one does, and if anyone sits down in and interview and says oh I know what punk is, well they’re a fucking dipshit. Not only are they a dipshit but they are ignorant. Modern punk? Punk? What does that mean? I don’t know., to define it would almost be like destroying it. Do a whole bunch of drugs, be homeless and stinky. There you go. that’s punk. HATE EVERYONE. I said it! Wear a lot of black and hate everyone.. that’s what I do. <laughing>

<Local Bands? Cower? * at this point im letting the random kids ask questions* there are a lot of folks that will say, come see cower and just leave.. Thoughts?..>>>

I mean… I don’t give a fuck if I sound like an ass hole. Ok?! PUT THIS IN THE INTERVIEW! Because I don’t give a fuck! There is that tough guy hardcore scene that I can not fucking stand. Those people that walk around like they are somehow valid for throwing shows like five years ago. And its like fuck you! Sorry you didn’t grow. Its not about being hip, fucking be passionate and expand yourself. I mean what defines passion? Randomly beating the fuck out of people, racism and supporting rape culture? Fuck no! I love Portland because we don’t allow that shit to exist. As unattached as people are about going to shows, we still share commonalities that I love. We are not going to let violent ignorance run rampant in our city.

<regaining control of the interview and brining it to a close I ask, last words?>>> Um… watch two and a half men. And play the wii. Watch two and a half men because Charlie sheen is back on top and its rad.. Oh and gossip girl! Yes, watch two and a half men and gossip girl because if you wanna escape life ya might as well watch a bunch of rich people with problems.

(top)

The Rains of Death in Gaza

Laila El-Haddad writing from North Carolina, the US, Live from Palestine, 27 December 2008

We woke up this morning to the news in Gaza. It seems we always wake up to news there -- so it has become a matter of perspective how bad the news is each time; how remote it seems each time; how real or not; how severe and whether the severity warrants an "international outcry" or whether the animals can continue to suffer in their cages for a while longer.

We received a call from my in-laws in Lebanon at an early hour, checking in on my family in Gaza, since they cannot call them directly. We call my parents. My father does not answer. We call his mobile, we reach him. He has just returned from al-Shifa hospital -- we hold our breaths.

"We are OK. We went to donate blood and to see if they needed any help" says my father, a retired surgeon.

"We were in the market when the strikes began. I saw the missiles falling and prayed; the earth shook; the smoke rose; the ambulances screamed," he said, the sirens audible in the background. He was on Talatini street at the time of the attacks, just a few streets down from one of the attack sites.

My mother was in the Red Crescent Society clinic near the universities at the time of the initial wave of attacks, where she works part-time as a pediatrician. Behind the clinic was one of the police centers that was leveled. She said she broke down at first, the sheer proximity of the attacks having shaken her from the inside out. After she got a hold of herself, they took to treating injured victims of the attack, before they transferred them to al-Shifa hospital. There, she said, medical necessities were in short supply: face masks, surgical gloves, gowns, etc.

My parents live in the the Gaza City center, and the Israeli war planes attacked people and locations all around them. More than 50 "targets" by 60 warplanes, read the headline from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. And more than 220 killed in broad daylight, in the after-school rush. Like a movie or a game. If you say it enough times, it does not sound real anymore. Fifty targets, 60 warplanes, 200 people, one day. All very sanitary. Very sleek. Neatly packaged: war in a gift-box.

"There is a funeral passing every minute. The bodies are piling up."

Gaza's air is saturated with the acrid smell of burning human flesh. There is panic, as one would imagine dogs would panic in an overcrowded cell when several of their own are violently, abruptly killed. But dead dogs in a cage, however, would create an outcry.

The rains of death continue to fall on Gaza. And silently, we watch. And silently, governments plotted: how shall we make the thunder and clouds rain death onto Gaza? Egypt, the United States, Israel ...

And it will all seem, in the end of the day, that they are somehow a response to something. As though the situation were not only acceptable, but normal, stable, in the period prior to whatever this is a response to. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralyzed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.

But it is the prisoners' burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. They deviated. But nevertheless, there are concerns for the "humanitarian situation": as long as they do not starve, everything is OK. Replenish the wheat stocks immediately.

The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relatively, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only eight; or 10; and dream of the days of four.

THE AMOUNT OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IS INCONCEIVABLE

Safa Joudeh writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 27 December 2008

It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window and barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion. For a few moments I didn't understand but then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzpi Livni's statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all.

What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I'm in the middle of it and a few hours have passed already passed.

Six locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza City. The images are probably not broadcasted on US news channels. There were piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you looked at them you could see that a few of the young men were still alive, someone lifts a hand, and another raises his head. They probably died within moments because their bodies were burned, most had lost limbs, some of their guts were hanging out and they were all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home which is close to the two largest universities in Gaza, a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students. They'd been warned not to stand in groups as it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. Seven were killed, four students and three of our neighbors' kids, young men who were from the Rayes family and were best friends. As I'm writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside; I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the three Rayes boys. They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now they are sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14-year-old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn't spoken a word since.

What did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mean when he stated that we the people of Gaza weren't the enemy, that it was Hamas and Islamic Jihad which were being targeted? Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out our state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured, Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike, three schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls' bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.

In all the locations, people are going through the dead, terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren't working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the ground, weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanish after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.

And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It's truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor, side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren't life-threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window and she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home; too many others needed more urgent medical attention. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia.

More than 200 people dead in today's air raids. That means more than 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow, probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they -- actually all of us -- would gladly have had Hamas forever sign off every last basic right we've been calling for the last few months if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.

The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is OK, but two of my uncles' homes were damaged,

We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fates have already been sealed.

FROM MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: FREE THE ATENCO 13!

[col.writ. 10/23/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

AS USUAL, THE NYT IGNORES IRAQI OPINION; ANECDOTES TRUMP POLLS ON WITHDRAWAL

The New York Times failed spectacularly in its coverage of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, helping lead the country into war and only much later  publishing a half-hearted mea culpa. As the near-apology acknowledged, the paper’s failure resulted in large part from its lack of skepticism regarding its sources, most notably exiled Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi.

Despite the mea culpa, though, the Times continues to mislead on Iraq, particularly on the issue of whether or not Iraqis want the U.S. military to exit their country. Once again, that journalistic failure seems to be rooted in the same fundamental problem of overconfidence in the paper’s sources and ignoring the obvious contradictory evidence.

An article by Times reporter Stephen Farrell headlined, “Should U.S. Forces Withdraw From Iraq? The Iraqis Have a Few Opinions” (9/9/08) serves as a recent example. The piece, which also kicked off a special series on “the debate among ordinary Iraqis over the presence of American troops” that ran in the Times’ online blog section, purported to bring readers insight into Iraqi opinion on withdrawal. “As Iraqi and American diplomats negotiate a deal for American troops to stay in Iraq, or not, Iraqis are also debating the issue,” —as though there is a great deal of debate among Iraqis about whether they prefer that their country continue to be occupied.

The Times reporter split Iraqis into “three categories” of opinion, with only one actually supporting the withdrawal of occupation forces. Besides a group that “simply [wants] the Americans to leave, period,” Farrell described one pro-occupation group of Iraqis that “worries that the brief period of improving security which Iraq has witnessed this year will be vulnerable if the Americans abruptly withdrew.” Those in this group, according to Farrell, “say the United States has a moral obligation to remain, and that continued presence of the occupiers is preferable to a return to rule by gangs and militias.”

Farrell described the other pro-occupation group as sharing “a common worry, that without a referee, Iraq’s dominant powers—Kurds in the far north and Shias in the center and south—will brutally dominate other groups.”

Farrell gave no indication of the relative sizes of each group, but the Iraqi quotes featured below the piece seemed to suggest that the pro-withdrawal group was quite small: Only two of the ten people who expressed a personal opinion about the troops spoke in favor of immediate withdrawal.

Survey says

Notably, Farrell opted not to include polling data in his article. Perhaps that’s because had he done so, it would have undermined the thesis of his piece.

A poll from March 2008 conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) for the British Channel 4 (2/24–3/5/08) found 70 percent of Iraqis wanting occupation forces to leave. Within this group, 65 percent wanted them to leave “immediately or as soon as possible”—meaning fully 46 percent of Iraqis would fall under Farrell’s “leave immediately” group. Another 19 percent wanted them out within a year or less, while 12 percent wanted to wait until “whenever the security situation allows it.” (Interestingly, in Baghdad—where Times journalists are based—the number of those who wanted troops out immediately was only 42 percent, while 20 percent wanted to wait until the security situation improves; still, a majority wanted troops out within a year.)

Another March 2008 poll conducted by D3/KA for ABC News and other media outlets (2/12–20/08) similarly found that 73 percent of Iraqis either “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed the ongoing foreign troop presence in their country, with 38 percent in favor of immediate withdrawal. Only 7 percent of Iraqis—primarily Kurds—“strongly” supported the presence of occupation forces.

The D3/KA survey, which did not offer a timetable for withdrawal as a choice, found 35 percent of Iraqis wanting troops to stay until security is restored and another 24 percent wanting them to stay until the government is either “stronger” or can “operate independently.” But with respect to the “improving security” that Farrell pointed to as a reason many Iraqis want troops to stay—a result, according to media conventional wisdom, of the successful troop “surge” (Extra!, 9–10/08)—61 percent of Iraqis said the U.S. troop presence was making security worse, compared to only 27 percent who said better. The same survey found that 70 percent of Iraqis believe the U.S. and other “coalition” forces had done “quite a bad job” or “a very bad job” in carrying out their responsibilities in Iraq.

To illustrate the U.S.’s “dilemma,” Farrell made references to two previous occupations of Iraq: the failed British occupation during the 1920s and the Empire of the Caliphate under the Ummayad provincial governor al-Hajjaj in 694 AD. The examples presented Iraqis as irrepressibly “fractious” and “troublesome” going back to ancient times; as Farrell concluded loftily, “Names and governments change, but there is nothing new under the Mesopotamian sun.”

According to such logic, chaos, violence and majority Iraqi opposition to the occupation would seem to have less to do with the occupation itself—which has left an estimated one million dead and nearly 5 million displaced UNHCR—and more to do with an inherent incapacity to accept the “civilization” or “democracy” that a brutal occupation brings.

Unchanging trends

Bylines and dates change, but there is nothing new under the Manhattan sun. A look back at New York Times coverage of Iraqi opinion over the years shows a long trend of ignoring polling data despite their ready availability and their remarkable consistency.

A Gallup poll from April 2004 (USA Today, 4/28/04) revealed that “a solid majority [of Iraqis] support an immediate military pullout.” Fifty-seven percent said the coalition should “leave immediately.” The same poll found that 75 percent of the residents of Baghdad favored an immediate withdrawal. At the same time, a poll from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (4/28/04), which was partly funded by the State Department and had coordinated its work with the Coalition Provisional Authority, found that more than half of all Iraqis wanted an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces, an increase of 17 percent over the previous October.

In writing about Iraqi opinion, though, the Times’ Ian Fisher  ignored this data, asserting, “There are still far more people . . . who are skeptical of, and maybe even hate, the Americans but see them as the only way to save themselves.” As evidence, Fisher cited not scientific surveys—as those would have contradicted his claim—but rather a tally conducted by Sadim Samir, a 23-year-old political science student at the University of Baghdad, who “canvassed five neighborhoods” of Baghdad for a “class paper.”

Two years later, Times journalist Michael Gordon, who co-wrote some of the Times’ most misleading WMD reports with Judith Miller and still periodically files stories from Iraq, criticized Democrats calling for a withdrawal from Iraq because, Gordon argued (CNN)

there are a significant number of players in Baghdad today who don’t mind if the Americans withdraw. These are the militia leaders. They would be happy if the United States withdrew, because, then, they can go and carry out their ethnic cleansing campaign against the Sunnis.

But a poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (9/1–3/06) found that then, as today, 7 in 10 Iraqis favored troop withdrawal within a year—not just a small band of “militia leaders” bent on ethnic cleansing.

More recently, 18 Iraqis were interviewed for the Times article “In Iraq, Mixed Feelings About Obama and His Troop Proposal,” by Sabrina Tavernise and Richard Oppel. Again, the Times preferred to rely on the opinions of less than two dozen Iraqis rather than refer to available polling data that would have undercut the theme of the story: that Iraqis faced “a deep internal quandary” about Obama’s support for withdrawal.

The first Iraqi quoted was a general who, when asked about Barack Obama’s plans to draw down troops in Iraq, shook his head and said: “Very difficult. . . . Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: For now, we don’t have that ability.” When the piece mentioned one Iraqi who favored immediate withdrawal, his quote (“I want them [U.S. soldiers] to go to hell”) was framed in rhetoric couching the situation as “complex.” The piece concluded by quoting an Iraqi government official who, having traveled to Germany and seen the U.S. bases there, said: “I have no problem to have a camp here. . . . I find it in Germany and that’s a strong country. Why not in Iraq?”

Writing history by anecdote

One of the New York Times’ chief perpetrators of skewing Iraqi opinion is John Burns. The paper sent Burns to Baghdad during the lead-up to the invasion of 2003, and he served as bureau chief there until the summer of 2007; his perspective on the occupation no doubt heavily influenced the Times’ reporting from Iraq.

Burns, the son of a NATO general, has publicly voiced his remarkably uncritical view of U.S. foreign policy, telling Rolling Stone magazine:

The United States has been overwhelmingly a force of good in the world. This is very unfashionable talk, but I think this ought to be remembered here. I grew up in a world where the survival of democracy depended on the military and economic power of the United States. If that power became less credible here, I think the world would be a lot less safe. The stakes are extraordinarily high. I think this is a tipping point in the fate of the American empire.

Many journalists with the Times used to regularly report from the streets of Iraq in the early days of the war, before the security deteriorated to the point where most decided against venturing out; Burns, however, was not generally one of them. Those of us reporting from Iraq rarely saw Burns, the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, leave the heavily guarded New York Times compound unless he was going on an embed or taking an armored convoy over to the Green Zone to report on the military press conferences that we referred to as the “five o’clock follies.”

When journalists report this way in Baghdad, they put themselves in a position of total reliance upon the Iraqis they hire to send out into the streets with questions; they then have to sift through the answers those Iraqi reporters bring back to find anecdotes to fit their stories. In this way, history is written by anecdote, and this is exactly what the Times does by quoting individual Iraqis or referring to “Iraqi opinion” without citing available polls.

Despite his limited perspective on Iraqi opinion, Burns has repeatedly presented that perspective to the public without caveats, both in the Times and in other outlets—most frequently the Charlie Rose show on PBS—and it’s a perspective that runs counter to the survey data.

“In my experience, the great majority of Iraqis are . . . very loathe to see those American troops leave now,” Burns told Rose on June 14, 2006, shortly before the State Department’s own polls showed nearly half of Iraqis wanting immediate withdrawal and seven in ten wanting troops out within a year (Washington Post, 9/27/06). Burns told Rose a year later (PBS, 7/17/07):

I think, quite simply that the United States armed forces here—and I find this to be very widely agreed amongst Iraqis that I know, of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds—the United States armed forces are a very important inhibitor against violence. I know it’s argued by some people that they provoke the violence. I simply don’t believe that to be in the main true.

Meanwhile, Iraqis were telling pollsters the opposite: 69 percent believed U.S. troop presence was making the security situation worse (D3, 2/25–3/5/07), and they believed security would get better rather than worse in the immediate weeks following a coalition troop withdrawal by two to one (ORB, 2/10–22/07).

As Baghdad bureau chief, Burns’ influence reached beyond Times reporting. When the National Journal (12/9/05), for example, wanted to give readers the “assessment” of the Iraqi people, they cited Burns: “I think you would get overwhelming assent from Iraqis that should American troops be precipitously withdrawn from the war, civil war and escalation of the sectarian conflict already under way would become virtually inevitable.”

Mismeasures and misjudgments

Burns’ piece on the fifth anniversary of the war gave some insight into the paper’s attitude toward both polls and the situation in Iraq. The lead photo of the piece showed U.S. bombs exploding over Baghdad during the initial invasion, with the title “The Air Show.” The caption read: “The war began with a mesmerizing display of American might. But the United States made a basic misjudgment about the Iraqis’ readiness to share power.”

Burns downplayed the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the war—“tens of thousands”—in another instance of the Times’ refusal to accept surveys when they have to do with Iraq. Burns’ number, the number preferred by the Times, comes from Iraq Body Count, which only counts violent civilian deaths actually recorded in cross-checked media outlets, and supplemented when possible by morgue, hospital, NGO and government data. Estimates based on scientific polling methods, which are widely accepted by the Times and other outlets when reporting on, say, Darfur, placed Iraqi deaths due to violence at over 600,000 in 2006 (Lancet,) and at over a million by mid-2007 (ORB). Those numbers do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but even if one only counted women, children and the elderly as “civilians,” more than 100,000 had died violently in Iraq as of two years before Burns’ article was written (Lancet, 10/11/06).

Burns also blamed journalists for failing “to uncover other facets of Iraq’s culture and history that would have a determining impact on the American project to build a Western-style democracy, or at least the basics of a civil society”—facets such as “how deep was the poison of fear and distrust” and the “harsh reality that Iraqis . . . had little zest for democracy.” Again, Burns chose to fault “traumatized Iraqis” for the chaos and bloodshed in Iraq, rather than the illegal, brutal invasion and occupation of their country.

And despite his moment of self-critique, Burns continued to do precisely what he faulted journalists for doing in the past—failing to uncover Iraqis’ perspectives. He laid out very explicitly his view of polls:

Opinion polls, including those commissioned by the American command, have long suggested that a majority of Iraqis would like American troops withdrawn, but another lesson to be drawn from Saddam Hussein’s years is that any attempt to measure opinion in Iraq is fatally skewed by intimidation. More often than not, people tell pollsters and reporters what they think is safe, not necessarily what they believe. My own experience, invariably, was that Iraqis I met who felt secure enough to speak with candor had an overwhelming desire to see American troops remain long enough to restore stability.

In other words, because they don’t reflect his “own experience,” Burns simply dismissed the validity of all polls (and most reporting!) on Iraqi opinion, and declared his own conversations with a minuscule slice of the Iraqi public a more reliable measure of the opinions of the entire country.

A problematic practice

“It’s a tradition for journalists to see themselves as the researcher to go out and get the story, so that’s their default position,” said Dr. Steven Kull, director of World Public Opinion (WPO), when asked why he thought some media outlets tend to ignore polling data.

    Some journalists are not well-trained to interpret polls, so they might be uncomfortable with them. And they might see them as a source of competition to the traditional approach of interviewing people and getting their anecdotes. But a few anecdotes here and there don’t really give you the picture.

Kull also directs the Program on International Policy Attitudes that plays a central role in the BBC World Service poll of global opinion and the polls of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; he gives briefings on world opinion on various issues to Congress, the State Department, NATO, the United Nations and the European Commission.

“The problem is that when these [anecdotes] are at odds with polling data, these are incorrect stories,” Kull added. “The universe of people who may be willing to talk to a reporter may not be indicative of the attitudes of the general population.”

Certainly the Iraqis John Burns “know[s] best” are not representative of the population as a whole; those Iraqis, he told Charlie Rose in 2006 (PBS, 10/20/06), were “almost all on their way to the passport office” to get out of the country—an option he acknowledged was “only available to the middle class, primarily to those who are being paid in dollars.”

Kull explained that when reporters interview some Sunnis in Baghdad who express fears of a U.S. withdrawal,

then a reporter can reason, ‘They are a minority, and the Shia are ascendant, and this makes sense that the Sunni feel as they do.’ But the polling data suggest the Sunnis are eager for a U.S. withdrawal. I think it’s problematic when there is an anecdote reported and there is polling data available to the contrary.

Kull admits that polling in places like Iraq has its challenges, and is imperfect, but hastened to add that when it comes to capturing overall national opinion on topics, there is no substitute for scientific polling: “It is far superior than the method of a reporter going out on the street and talking to people. There’s no question.”