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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Cockburn on the Roadmap: It's a Big Hoax in a Long Line of Hoaxes; St. Clair on The Rat in the Grain: Daniel Amstutz and the Looting of the Farms of Iraq; All About David Horowitz: the Dazed and Confused Dirigible of the Right; Handicapping the Democrats: Will It be Graham vs. Dean?; Kucinich Wows Madison: But Seems to Have Forgotten the Horrors of Clintontime; Blumenthal v. Hitchens: Inside the Conspiracy; Merle Haggard Stays the Course: Country Legend Defends Dixie Chicks, Bashes Bush. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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From Common Courage Press

Recent Stories

June 16, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Children of Death

 

June 14 / 15, 2003

Edward Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's Mad Quest for the Federal Bench

David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium

Jennifer Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice

Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich

Ben Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance

William S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence

Joanne Mariner
Rebellious Judges

Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance

Mickey Z.
Where We Are

Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder

Noah Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?

Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa

Dr. Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals

Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature

Adam Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake

Poets' Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer

Website of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates Poverty

 

June 13, 2003

David Vest
Bush Roadmap to What?

Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?

John Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There

Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence

Michael Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media

Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America

Saul Landau
Shiite Happens

Hammond Guthrie
Then and Now

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/13

 

June 12, 2003

Gary Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology

Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day War

Wayne Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign

Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security

Tarif Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba

Ray McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of a Former CIA Analyst

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/12

 

June 11, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the Generals Hate the A-10

Elaine Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's Top Gremlin

David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay

Tom Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004

Alfredo Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place on Earth for Trade Unionists

Nnimo Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to Eat!

Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV

CounterPunch Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!

Eric Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still Wider

Steve Perry
DHS: As Big a Planning Snafu as Iraq?

 

June 10, 2003

Benjamin Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement

Chris Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi Germany

Wayne Madsen
Weaponsgate

Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow

Richard Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World Domination

Ray Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About WMD Matter

Hammond Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/10

 

June 9, 2003

Alex Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!

Lee Sustar
Is Iran Next?

Agustin Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many Poor

Gila Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others

Dr. Gerry Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America

Michael S. Ladah
A True Liberation

Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder

Steve Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1

 

June 7 / 8, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The Terrible Truth

Jeffrey St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species

Joanne Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers

Steven Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything

Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s

M. Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery

Amelia Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost

Shelton Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation

Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea

Ben Tripp
A Fish Story

Sen. Robert Byrd
Where is the Outrage?

Robin Philpot
Congo Distortions

Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix

Laura Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende

David Lindorff
The Last Byline

Adam Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod

 

June 6, 2003

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable

David Krieger
The Big Lie

Ramzy Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers

Anthony Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"

Sam Hamod
His Own Little Country

Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?

David Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus

Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set

Steve Perry
Greens and Moore in 04? No

 

June 5, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina

Imraan Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth

Michael Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done

Robert Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy

Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over

Paul Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush

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When Spooks Speak Out

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Evidence in Black and White?

 

 

 

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June 16, 2003

The One State Solution

Roadmap or Roadkill?

By TARIF ABBOUSHI

Barely a week after President Bush attempted to kick-start the latest Middle East peace process with the Red Sea Summit in Jordan, the bloodletting in the Holy Land has resumed with its usual vengeance. Keeping a tally of how many Israelis and Palestinians kill each other requires daily vigilance because it's a daily occurrence. The road map might more aptly have been named road kill.

President Bush is to be commended for taking the Middle East bull by its horns and committing to ride herd. Time will show that the map of the ranch will have to be redrawn if the bucking broncos are ever to be tamed.

One of the roadmap's failings is that, like the Oslo peace process that preceded it to such disastrous effect, it avoids discussion of the most contentious (read intractable) issues--borders, settlements, Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees--until the end-stage 'final status' negotiations, so they can cause the process to unravel later rather than sooner. Another failing is in the unequal demands the roadmap places on the two warring parties, an example being the onus on the Palestinians to draft and adopt a constitution, while Israel is allowed to remain without one.

A more logical approach is to address all the issues--the tough ones at the head of the list--up front, and to frame everything strictly in the context of American values of governance. There is only one solution that is consistent with American-style democracy, and it resolves all the issues to the satisfaction of all but those on both sides who preach exclusionist segregation. It involves defeating those on the Palestinian side whose avowed aim is to create an Islamic nation in all of historic Palestine, an unacceptable recipe because it means the destruction of Israel and the disenfranchisement of the Holy Land's Jews and Christians. It also involves defeating those on the Israeli side who espouse Jewish domination of the land, because that leaves the Muslims and Christians with not just the short straw, but no straw at all.

The two-state solution in the Holy Land is objectionable for the same reason the international community rejected it in South Africa, where it would have meant a state for blacks alongside a white state still built on--and practicing--Apartheid principles. Two infrastructures must be dismantled for peace in the Holy Land: The infrastructure of terror--the targeting of innocent civilians by whichever group or government--and the infrastructure of racism--the state-sanctioned laws that assign rights, privileges and obligations to people based solely on their religion.

Jews have a right to live in peace and security anywhere in the world, including in the Middle East, and nowhere more so than in the Holy Land. Equally so Christians and Muslims. This is disputed only by those who give precedence to religion over human rights, those who, in America, we regard as religious fanatics.

There's only one solution, with the emphasis on 'one', and it is the American way. One state. One set of borders. One constitution. One set of laws that treat all citizens--regardless of race, color, religion or sex, as one. No need to dismantle a single Jewish settlement. The Palestinian refugees can all return to their ancestral homeland or be adequately compensated if they choose not to. Ditto for the Jews who left other countries--including Arab ones--to go to Israel. Jerusalem the eternal capital of the Holy Land, home to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Idealistic? Of course. But not more so than the values America's founding fathers espoused when they charted the future of our nation, and drafted the document that has so stalwartly endured as the cornerstone of our democracy. We don't need to draft a new constitution for Iraq. We've already got one as hale as any has ever been hailed to be. We just change a few names and addresses and we're done. And it's the same one we should impose on all the other autocracies and dictatorships in the Middle East as we promote the democratization of that region.

More than any other territory in the world, the Holy Land deserves nothing less. The only rejectionists who must be allowed to flourish are those who reject terrorism, violence, segregation, and racism. All others are obstacles to peace. America should use its power, and wielding its Constitution, its moral authority, to defeat them.

Tarif Abboushi lives in Houston, Texas. He can be reached at: tabboushi@aol.com


Yesterday's Features

David Vest
Bush Roadmap to What?

Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?

John Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There

Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence

Michael Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media

Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America

Saul Landau
Shiite Happens

Hammond Guthrie
Then and Now

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/13

 

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