ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks go to Denis Moynihan, without whom this book would never have been written, for his commitment to ensuring that the voices of the unheard, undocumented, unrecorded, unquoted get published in newspapers and websites around the world.
I am ever inspired by the braintrust that breaks the sound barrier everyday by producing Democracy Now! our daily grassroots, global news hour: my colleagues Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Mike Burke, Juan Gonzalez, Anjali Kamat, Steve Martinez, Hany Massoud, Aaron Mat, Nicole Salazar, and Robbie Karran.
My undying gratitude to Democracy Now! powerhouses Karen Ranucci, who orchestrated the building of our new, green LEED-certified broadcast tv/radio/internet studio, perhaps the first in the country, while we were consumed with our daily investigations, and Julie Crosby, who calmly and wisely guides and manages Democracy Now!
Thanks also to the staff, interns and volunteers at Democracy Now!, who daily stand up to the madness, including Samantha Chamblee, Nick Gilla, Michael Hoerger, Peter Kurys, Andres Conteris, Clara Ibarra, Angie Karran, Michael Kimber, Nicole Martin, Brenda Murad, Jaisal Noor, Edith Penty, Isis Phillips, Chuck Scurich, Neil Shibata, Becca Staley, Tasia VanderVegt, Hugh Gran, Angie Kiefer, John Randolph, Rah Campenni, Laura Chipley, Travis Collins, Kieran Krug-Meadows, Michael DiFilippo, Joy Hornung, Maria Eva Blotta, Marcela Schenck, Mercedes Camps, Jeremy Scahill, Rick Rowley, Jacquie Soohen, Rabia Alghani, Katherine Martinez, and Jim Carlson.
I also want to thank Glenn Mott at King Features who believed the weekly column could happen, and Chris Richcreek for bearing with me each deadline until the columns are put to bed.
At Haymarket Books, thanks to the innovative and talented Anthony Arnove, as well as Eric Ruder, Dao X. Tran, Caroline Luft, Chris Dodge, Rachel Cohen, Julie Fain, Brian Jones, and Sarah Macaraeg.
Thanks also to Patrick Lannan, Andy Tuch, Laurie Betlach, Randall Wallace, Brenda Coughlin, Diana Cohn, Sarah Jones, Israel and Edith Taub, Irma Weiss, Mark Friedburg, Kim Jennings, Anastasia White, Dennis Darcy, Joe Dunson, Kevin Allen, Jon Alpert, and Keiko Tsuno. And thanks to Caren Spruch, Elisabeth Benjamin, Dan Coughlin, Michael Ratner, and Maria Carrion. Thanks as always to my family, my mother Dorrie Goodman, and brothers Dan, David, and Steven, who serve as constant sources of support, inspiration, insight, and spirited debate. And in memory of my late dad, George Goodman, and my grandparents, who modeled it all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMY GOODMAN is an internationally acclaimed journalist, and host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a daily grass-roots global news hour that broadcasts on more than 750 radio and television stations and on democracynow.org, and a syndicated columnist with King Features. Amy has received numerous awards for her work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the George Polk Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for excellence in broadcast journalism, and the Radio/Television News Directors Award, as well as awards from the Associated Press and United Press International. She is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as The Alternative Nobel Prize, and was co-winner of the first annual Izzy Award from the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, named after legendary journalist I. F. Stone. She is co-author with her brother, David Goodman, of three New York Times best-sellers: The Exception to the Rulers, Static, and Standing Up to the Madness. She lives in New York City.
ABOUT DEMOCRACY NOW!
Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the United States, Democracy Now! is broadcast on Pacifica, NPR, community, and college radio stations; on public access, PBS, satellite television (DISH network: Free Speech TV channel 9415 and Link TV channel 9410; DIRECTV: Link TV channel 375); and on the Internet. DN!s podcast is one of the most popular on the web.
Democracy Now!s War and Peace Report provides our audience with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grass-roots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics, and independent analysts.
ABOUT HAYMARKET BOOKS
Haymarket Books is a nonprofit, progressive book distributor and publisher, a project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change. We believe that activists need to take ideas, history, and politics into the many struggles for social justice today. Learning the lessons of past victories, as well as defeats, can arm a new generation of fighters for a better world. As Karl Marx said, The philosophers have merely interpreted the world; the point however is to change it.
We take inspiration and courage from our namesakes, the Haymarket Martyrs, who gave their lives fighting for a better world. Their 1886 struggle for the eight-hour day reminds workers around the world that ordinary people can organize and struggle for their own liberation.
For more information and to shop our complete catalog of titles, visit us online at www.haymarketbooks.org.
ALSO FROM HAYMARKET BOOKS
Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S.
War on Terror Tivka Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad
Diary of Bergen-Belsen Hanna Lvy-Hass, foreword by Amira Hass
The Democrats: A Critical History Lance Selfa
Essays Wallace Shawn
Field Notes on Democracy Arundhati Roy
Hopes and Prospects Noam Chomsky
In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire Mike Davis
The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with Edward Said
David Barsamian
War Without End: The Iraq War in Context Michael Schwartz
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of
the Occupations Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz
NOVEMBER 30, 2006
THE ART OF WAR AND DECEPTION
Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture; blobs of paint become paintings which inspire.
No, this is not Pablo Picasso speaking, but Major General William B. Caldwell IV, spokesman for the Multinational Force-Iraq, comparing the carnage in Iraq to a work of art in another audacious attempt to paint Iraq as anything other than a catastrophe.
The generals remarks do bring the great artist to mind. Picassos epic painting Guernica, named after the city in Spain, captured the brutality of the bombing of that city during another civil war, the Spanish Civil War.
The painting, almost 30 feet wide, is a globally recognized depiction and artistic condemnation of war. Picasso shows the terror on the faces of people, the frightened animals. He shows the dead, the dying, the dismembered. A tapestry reproduction of it adorns the lobby outside of the United Nations Security Council.
In February 2003, before then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his major push for war at the United Nationsa speech he would later call a blot on his recorda blue curtain was drawn across the tapestry so that the image would not be the backdrop for press statements on the coming war. Immediately, posters and banners of Picassos
