Antiwar.com Blog

Wait, again? The Traffic Blockers aren’t really thinking of using this tired old tactic again, are they? You know, the idiots who made Americans in cars and buses side with George Bush during the run-up to the attack on Iraq by sitting in the middle of or otherwise blocking roads? John Goes says that in Portland, they just might be considering crawling out of their dreadlocked hippie holes to do the same if the US bombs Iran. We couldn’t ask for better unwitting saboteurs.

Peace activists are always hearing how our military is fighting overseas in order to preserve our right to dissent at home, but look what happened to Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University, when he tried to board a plane (via War and Piece):

On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving.”

When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years.

I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said.

I’m almost afraid to ask how widespread this is, but I suspect it isn’t limited to American Airlines. So now we have to answer for our political opinions to every Epsilon-Minus semi-moron who checks baggage at the airline counter. Rose Wilder Lane must be spinning in her grave.

Reason magazine continues to discredit both itself, and libertarianism, by featuring its Middle East “expert”-in-residence Michael Young, a minor chord in the neocon echo chamber. Reason, Young, and the racist swamp of “Little Green Footballs” — what a ménage à trois!

The Independent Institute‘s Ivan Eland explains the constitutional limitations of the President‘s foreign policy powers, Speaker Pelosi‘s trip to Syria, the future of the occupation of Iraq and relations between various states in the Middle East.

MP3 here. (29:14)

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. Having received his Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University, Dr. Eland has served as Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge for the U.S. General Accounting Office (national security and intelligence), and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has testified on NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee.

Dr. Eland is the author of Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post-Cold War World and forty-five studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology, Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. His popular writings have been published in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Washington Post, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, and Chicago Sun-Times. He has appeared on ABC’s “World News Tonight,” CNN’s “Crossfire,” Fox News, CNBC, CNN-fn, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, CBC, BBC, and other national and international TV and radio programs.

His column appears Tuesdays on Antiwar.com.

Anthony Gregory, research analyst the Independent Institute and writer for the Future of Freedom Foundation, LewRockwell.com, Liberty magazine, Strike-the-Root, etc., reviews Depression, War and Cold War by Robert Higgs: the myth of war prosperity, how the government caused the Great Depression, how the New Deal made it worse, how World War II did not “save” America from the Depression anymore than the New Deal did, how this fallacy persists to this day, justifying to many Americans our permanent state of war and the Military-Industrial-Complex that sucks our treasury dry in doing so.

MP3 here. (39:23)

Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician who lives in Berkeley, California. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history at UC Berkeley, where he was president of the Cal Libertarians. He is an intern at the Independent Institute and has written for Rational Review, Strike the Root, the Libertarian Enterprise, and Antiwar.com. See his webpage for more articles and personal information.

Iranian-American Hamid Dabashi, author of Iran: A People Interrupted, and professor at Columbia University explains all about Iran, the ’79 hostage crisis, the captured British sailors and Marines, whether Iranians are inherent hostage takers, the aberration that is the Mullahs’ regime in that country, the severe economic problems they suffer due to the burdens of socialism, the IMF and the World Bank, how Ahmadinejad won, and the possibility of war between our nations.

MP3 here.

Hamid Dabashi received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. He has also taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab and Iranian universities. He lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi.

Professor Dabashi has written 12 critically acclaimed books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, Shi’ism, Medieval and Modern Islamic Intellectual History, Comparative Literature, World Cinema, Trans-aesthetics, Trans-national Art, Philosophy, Mysticism, Theology, Post-colonial Theory and Cultural Studies.

An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.

Among his best-known books are his Authority in Islam, Theology of Discontent, Truth and Narrative, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future, Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema. His newest is Iran: A People Interrupted.