Antiwar.com Blog

Living just an hour and a half from the Canadian border, stories about border incidents are always of keen interest to me. To be sure, we get stories about the mistreatment of Muslim citizens at the northern border on a regular basis, so much so that it’s really old news at this point.

It’s troubling to me how uncontroversial this policy has become, and doubly so because I’m finding myself less and less surprised by stories of multi-hour detentions, long interrogation sessions, and shocking hostility towards American citizens attempting to re-enter the country at a border which I recall during my college days as being essentially open.

But these hassles apparently do not begin and end with people of Muslim faith or Middle Eastern ethnicities. I was listening to the Toronto Vegetarian Podcast while working this afternoon, and was surprised when the conversation, normally centered around cuisine, books, and dining locations, turned to border crossings.

The idea that they’re detaining (however briefly) vegetarians at the border is to me quite a surprise, and the questions they were asked are simply scandalous. What business is it of the US border patrol what reason a random Canadian citizen has chosen for not eating meat? What possible consideration should that be given in entering America and, perhaps most importantly, is there some “wrong answer” that would cause them to be denied entry?

In an interview with The American Prospect, liberal interventionist darling and Ahmed Chalabi lackey Kanan Makiya lets slip just how much he knows about present-day Iraq:

“Of course I still support the war,” he says with a pained expression on his face. “How can I not? I don’t know an Iraqi who doesn’t.”

The whole swig of ipecac is here, behind the Prospect‘s registration firewall (an endearing feature Antiwar.com will have to consider if we don’t reach our quarterly fundraising goal). At least it ends on a hopeful – wildly, excessively hopeful – note:

Makiya has the courage of his convictions. Yet not all Iraqis, liberals, or European intellectuals share his view. In Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, Zbigniew Brzezinski said the Iraq War’s “only saving grace is that it made Iraq the cemetery of neocon dreams.” It raises the question of whether or not this also the final resting place for the dream of liberal-interventionism.

about the idea of allowing the American people to see real dissenters on the Televised debates, the tremendous response he received from the first debate, Edwards, Hillary and Obama’s promise that “all options are on the table” for dealing with Iran, his plan to make it a felony for Bush to continue the war, to have the power of petition on the national level, AIPAC’s role in the war and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

MP3 here. (38:51)

Senator Gravel enlisted in the U.S. Army (1951-54) and served as special adjutant in the Communication Intelligence Services and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He received a B.S. in Economics from Columbia University, New York City, and holds four honorary degrees in law and public affairs.

Mike Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963-66, and as Speaker from 1965-66. He then represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969-81. He served on the Finance, Interior, and Environmental and Public Works committees, chairing the Energy, Water Resources, Buildings and Grounds, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.

In 1971, he waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States. He is most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. After the New York Times published portions of the leaked study, the Nixon administration moved to block any further publication of information and to punish any newspaper publisher who revealed the contents.

From the floor of the senate, Gravel (a junior senator at the time) insisted that his constituents had a right to know the truth behind the war and proceeded to read 4,100 pages of the 7,000 page document into the senate record. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Senator Gravel did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

He then published The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication resulted in litigation, Gravel v. U.S., resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision (No. 71-1017-1026) relative to the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1, Section 6) of the United States Constitution.

He has worked as a cab driver in New York City, a clerk on Wall Street and as a brakeman on the Alaska Railroad. He founded and served as president of The Democracy Foundation, Philadelphia II, and Direct Democracy, nonprofit corporations dedicated to the establishment of direct democracy in the United States through the enactment of the National Initiative for Democracy by American voters.

Books authored by Senator Gravel are Jobs and More Jobs, and Citizen Power. He lectures and writes about governance, foreign affairs, economics, Social Security, tax reform, energy, environmental issues and democracy.

Former British MP Tony Benn discusses the departure of Tony Blair, what a liar he is, the antiwar movement and whether it’s a good idea to prosecute leaders or follow the peace and reconciliation commissions model of getting justice for war criminals and Blair’s likely successor.

MP3 here.

He was a Cabinet minister in the Wilson and Callaghan governments from 1964 – 79, as Minister of Technology, Secretary of State for both Industry and Energy and President of the Council of European Energy ministers in 1977.

An elected member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour party from 1959 – 1994, he was Chairman of the Party in 1971/2.

He is a member of the Transport and General Workers Union and the National Union of Journalists, and an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Will Grigg, editor of The Right Source and author of the blog Pro-Libertate, discusses the claims of the president’s pet Straussians that it is perfectly constitutional for the President to do anything he likes including take over the world and turn America into a nightmarish police state.

MP3 here.

William Norman Grigg writes the Pro Libertate blog and is the founder and editor of The Right Source.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi explains why he signed the joint letter with other former CIA officers demanding that former DCI Tenet give his book money to wounded soldiers and give up him medal of freedom, that lying a country into war is a war crime, Condoleeza Rice’s trip to Australia in the summer of 2006 and what it reveals about her abject ignorance of the world, whether Iraq’s WMDs were secreted away to Syria before the invasion, Dick Cheney’s trip to the Middle East to disrupt any chance of negotiation between Saudi Arabia and Iran and Israel and Syria, and whether there’s any chance the War Party will ever be held accountable.

MP3 here. (17:22)

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA agent, a partner in Cannistraro Associates, contributing editor to the American Conservative magazine and columnist for Antiwar.com.