From Occupied Palestine

Iraq: Fabricated pretexts and a war for conquest
An interview with Michel Chossudovsky
JON ELMER
Guerrilla Radio, 31 March 2003

Audio: listen

Jon Elmer, Guerrilla Radio: Professor Chossudovsky, could you share your perceptions on the first two weeks of ‘official’ war in Iraq?

Canada's role in the war on Iraq
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, TML Daily, 20 March 2003

Since the "official" war in Iraq will surely begin before this issue is off the newsstands, outlining the terror and mayhem of "shock and awe" bombing raids in a city the size of Paris is perhaps an unhelpful conjecture: it will be massive, it will be brutal and it will be deadly - "liberation" as defined by the American Empire always is.

For months now, as the diplomatic wrangling at the United Nations Security Council consumed our attention, Canada's stance on supporting the American Empire's adventurism in Iraq relied on Security Council approval. Chretien said as much when he came to Halifax in late February for a $400-a-plate Liberal Party fundraiser.

Lies, wars and empire: Marching to massacre in Iraq
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 13 February 2003

We are being lied to again.

In 1990 it was the infamous Incubator Story: more than 300 babies torn from their incubators in Kuwait City by pillaging Iraqi troops - Bush I used this fact to beat the war drums in half-dozen important speeches leading up to the Gulf massacre. The babies were left "on the cold floor to die", a tearful 15 year old Kuwaiti girl told Congress. But, alas, hyperbole doomed the propaganda department's yarn when it was pointed out that in all of Los Angeles County (pop. 15 million, to Kuwait's 3 million) there were only 53 newborn-babies in incubators. Oh ya, and the Kuwaiti girl who testified? Daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington.

Psychological destruction and the Hiroshima effect
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 6 February 2003

Shudder to think of living in Baghdad on the night the United States and "a coalition of the willing" launch Operation Shock and Awe, raining down 800,000 pounds of cruise missiles in 48-hours onto the densely populated metropolis of four million people.

The burden of justication for pre-emptive version
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 24 October 2002

For the sake of argument, let's do as Bush's audacious, illegitimate, and morally bankrupt regime demands: let's suspend our disbelief of the threat that Saddam Hussein poses to the world with his "potential access to weapons of mass destruction capabilities" and conjured "nuclear mujahedeen".

Let's ignore recent history and disavow the realpolitik of the infamous atrocities committed by Saddam-our-ally during the 1980s. Let's pretend that the US was neutral during the Iran/Iraq war, necessarily skipping unsavory details like the US downing of Iranair Flight 655 in Iranian airspace in July of '88 (killing 290 civilians), and the forgiven "accidental" sinking of the USS Stark by an Iraqi fighter-bomber in May '87 (killing 37 sailors).

Addressing the United Nations
The speech George W. Bush could have delivered to the UN on September 11, 2002.
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, 19 September 2002

[ed. note: This speech was intended to be believable, in tone and content. It does not reflect the views of the author, and was only one part of a much larger article on US unilateralism - including a partial list of US vetoes in the UN.]

Complicity to genocide
Kissinger, Indonesia and the island of East Timor
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 28 March 2002

After three decades of terror, destruction, murder, and mayhem, the tiny island of East Timor will officially gain independence from colonial pillage in early May 2002 - the fruits of a struggle that left more than 200,000 Timorese dead.

Barely the size of Prince Edward Island, East Timor is a willfully ignored island in the "Indonesian archipelago". When the Portuguese "handed over" the island in 1975, visions of native independence and self-rule for the Timorese were swiftly darkened by Indonesian president General Suharto.

The role of active scholarship
Intellectual responsibility and its consequences
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 14 March 2002

"A university should not be a democracy.... The more democratic a university is, the lousier it is," then-President of Boston University, John Silber, told CBS' 60 Minutes in 1971.

Silber was responding to questions regarding his policy of "straightening out" Boston University after a series of high-profile demonstrations against the killing of some four million Southeast Asians in order to protect the rest from the scourge of socialism. Students were brutally beaten and arrested for protesting a Marine Corps recruiting operation at BU, including high-profile professor Howard Zinn.

A cocktail party for predatory capitalists
The 2002 World Economic Forum in Manhattan
JON ELMER
Dalhousie Gazette, 4 February 2002

"Run, don't walk, to the nearest revolution. Wear out your shoes, get used to being exhausted, eat only what you need and stay healthy if possible." - ABBIE HOFFMAN, 1968

New York - It truly is a remarkable event when 3,000 police officers are deployed 'round-the-clock, day after day for six straight days, with one mission: guard each and every last Starbucks coffee shop, McDonald's restaurant, and GAP clothing outlet on the entire island of Manhattan. When you add to that the 4,000 officers on the emptied and blockaded streets outside the posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel, you have what a New York Daily News headline called an "Armed Camp", complete with Mack-10 submachine guns to provide cover for the Annual General Meeting of turbo-capitalism, more formally known as the World Economic Forum.