All men are beasts

At least, if you listen to fairy tales, it seems that way. How many beauty and the beasts can there be?

The story of the young woman who comes to appreciate a big, hairy man-beast and whose love tames his raging heart is a staple in the world of art, fiction and fable.

But the story shows up everywhere, from adult fiction to comic books to painting to fairy tales to poetry to movies.

King Kong, after all, is just Beauty and the Beast writ large. Last year's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr., was a modern, sophisticated version of the tale.

And let's not forget Shrek.   more »

Bush was out there again on Wednesday trying to link Iraq to al-Qaeda and maintaining that the US was mainly fighting it in that country.

In fact, No Mahdi Army Shiites are al-Qaeda. Almost all Sunni Arab guerrilla cells are Baathist or Salafi rather than al-Qaeda.

Probably of 100,000 guerrillas fighting in Iraq, perhaps 2% could be categorized in some vague way as "al-Qaeda" if you take that term as referring to a franchise.

They are mainly foreign fighters and if the US left Iraq, the local Sunni Arabs would slit their throats.   more »

There is understandable resistance among Palestinians in Gaza, who are the poorest, most vulnerable people on earth.

They are fighting an enduring, illegal occupation imposed by the world's fourth largest military power, whose weapons of mass destruction range from cluster bombs to thermonuclear devices, bank rolled by the superpower.

In the past six years alone, wrote the historian Ilan Pappé, "Israeli forces have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, half of them children".

The Israelis' aim is to undermine the elected Palestinian government and ignite a civil war. They have not quite succeeded. In response, the Palestinians forged a government of national unity, of both Hamas and Fatah. The latest attacks are aimed at destroying this.   more »

How fitting and how vulgar that as Amerika celebrates the wars and war heroes of its past, the U.$. military is pursuing two open wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We should take this day of remembrance to renew our solidarity with the international proletariat, and to strengthen our resolve in opposition to the ongoing imperialist war against the oppressed nations.

Organizing from within imperialist borders, it is our responsibility to expose the undeclared wars that make Amerikan imperialism the number one threat to the survival of this planet and its people.

Because we work in the countries whose citizens live as parasites off the labor of the neo-colonies, we must also take care to expose the culture of militarism within the oppressor nations.   more »

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr made a dramatic return to frontline Iraqi politics on Friday, calling for unity and the withdrawal of US troops five months after claims he had fled the country.

The young Shiite cleric, head of one of Iraq's most powerful armed movements, arrived at his mosque in the central town of Kufa to the cheers of more than 1,000 supporters who showered him with sweets.

"No, no to the unjust! No, no to America! No, no to colonialism! No, no to Israel! No, no to Satan," he declared in his address.

"I want to renew our demand for the departure of the occupation," he said, warning the Baghdad government that his supporters have enough votes in parliament to block any renewal of the American military mandate.   more »