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Today's Stories

July 20, 2005

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Red Christmas

 

July 19, 2005

Joshua Frank
Laura's Justice?: Meet Edith Brown Clement

Tariq Ali
An Isolated Regime

John Ross
Jihad Meets G-8

Davey D.
More Clear Channel Censorship: "Don't F--K Around with Tha Police"

Greg Weiher
Muzzling Saddam: the Old Bait-and-Switch in Iraqi Jurisprudence

Brian McKinlay
An "Arse Licker" Goes to Washington: John Howard's Grand Tour

Norman Solomon
Nukes for India; Threats for Iran

Dave Lindorff
Get Back to Where We Once Belonged

Bill Christison
Bush's Itinerary: First Stop Syria, Next Stop Iran

 

July 18, 2005

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Ward Churchill

M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Problem: Did Thomas Friedman Flunk History?

Jude Wanniski
Memo to Patrick Fitzgerald

Ron Jacobs
A Weekend to Stop the War

Mike Whitney
The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station

William MacDougall
From "Bring It On" to "London Can Take It"

Seth Sandronsky
Temporary Recovery: New Frontiers in Labor Flexibility

Richard Lichtman
The Consolations of George Lakoff

Paul Craig Roberts
Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars?

Website of the Weekend
Novels of the Neo-Cons

July 15 / 17, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Don't You Dare Call It Treason

Jeffrey St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton

Paul Craig Roberts
Economic Treason

Harry Browne
"What They Do to Us, They Will Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland

Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron
A Warning from Israel

Andrew Rubin
End of the Enlightenment: an Open Letter to Stephen Plaut

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Ghost Battalions

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Changes in Selma: Standing Up to Racism in the South

Fred Gardner
A Professional Bust

Christopher Brauchli
An Olympic Feat: How to "Double" Aid with No New Money

Chris Floyd
The Great Iraq Oil Giveaway

Ben Tripp
The Dark Incontinent

Col. Dan Smith
General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked

Jason Leopold
What Did Rove Say and When Did He Say It?

Jack Random
Miller Time

Norman Solomon
War and Venture Capitalism

George Ochenski
Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All!

Website of the Weekend
Vote for CounterPuncher David Vest

 

July 14, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton

Subcomandante Marcos
This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona

Dave Lindorff
No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State

Joshua Frank
Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA

Jude Wanniski
Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove?

Dave Zirin
Storming the Castle

Kevin Zeese
Exit Strategy: Within Reach?

Robert Jensen
War Myths and the Press

Reza Fiyouzat
A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji

Carol Norris
Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged

Website of the Day
Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher

 

July 13, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq

George Galloway
We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop

Carlos Fierro
A Supreme Waste of Time

Sarah Knopp
Hate on the Border

Norman Solomon
"Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors

Mickey Z.
Water on the Brain

Jim Minick
The Right Tree in the Right Place

Pat Williams
American Indian Education for All

Andrew N. Rubin
Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set"

Website of the Day
"London's Burning": the Mikey Mix

 

July 12, 2005

Laith al-Saud
Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement

Kara N. Tina
"This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield

William A. Cook
The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This?

Jack Bratich
2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma

Amina Mire
The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others

Dick J. Reavis
Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke

Kevin Zeese
Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets

Paul Craig Roberts
No-Think Nation

Website of the Day
Coke Gags Indian Artist

 

 

July 9 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
After the Bombings

Uri Avnery
War of the Colors in Israel

Sheldon Rampton
Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London

Bill Christison
Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement?

Robert Fisk
Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed

Stephen Winspear
Collateral Damage in London?

Saul Landau
Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken

Behrooz Ghamari
Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem

Karl Beitel
False Promises and Real Debt Relief

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires

Fred Gardner
Sentencing Season

John Whitlow
And What Does the Market Say?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us?

Lila Rajiva
Witches and Bastards

Laura Carlsen
CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities

Jackie Corr
Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket

Dave Lindorff
"My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter"

N. D. Jayaprakash
Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference

Seth Sandronsky
Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq

Norman Madarasz
The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party

Ben Tripp
The Inevitability of George W. Bush

Poets' Basement
Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel

Website of the Weekend
The Mother of All Enemies Lists

 

July 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception

Tariq Ali
The London Bombings: Why They Happened

Monica Benderman
One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality

Rick Jahnkow
Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement

Christopher Brauchli
Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra

Kim Peterson
Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror

Joshua Frank
Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments?

Norman Solomon
Messages from the Carnage

Website of the Day
An Interview with Ray McGovern

 

July 7, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr

John Walsh
More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry

Mike Marqusee
Message from London

Gilad Atzmon
London's Burning

Nicole Colson
Showdown at the Supreme Court

Jack Random
Judith Miller, Anti-Hero

Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War

Len Colodny
Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig?

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr

 

 

July 6, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Political Necrophilia in Florida: Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair

Sean Donahue
Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard

Joshua Frank
Will Rove be Indicted?

Ali Khan
The "Gift" of US Democratization

Michael Dickinson
Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers

Norman Solomon
How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility

Dave Zirin
Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad

Gary Leupp
Accusing Ahmadinejad

Website of the Day
Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"

 

 

July 5, 2005

Behrooz Ghamari
What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency

Elaine Cassel
Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor

Ron Jacobs
Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice

Bob Libal
The Right's Assault on Academia

Dr. Peter Rost
Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO

Mark Engler
The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee?

Gideon Levy
They Broke the Public's Heart

Dave Zirin
The Great Olympics Scam

Sameer Dossani
The Trouble with Gleneagles

 

 

July 2 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
"Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi?

Lenni Brenner
Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July

Laura Carlsen
Zapatista's Red Alert

James Petras
The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment

William A. Cook
Kings of Serpents

Brian Cloughley
Quagmire of the Vanities

Saul Landau
The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership

Tom Crumpacker
Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles?

Greg Moses
Dylan's America

Dr. Susan Block
My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service

Fran Shor
Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land

Fred Gardner
Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

Moshe Adler
The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs

David Model
The Downing Street Memo: So What's New?

Seth Sandronsky
California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style

Ramzy Baroud
Managed Democracy in the Middle East

Suzan Mazur
Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton

Ben Tripp
Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap

Justin Taylor
Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint"

Brendan Bailey
Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Louise

Website of the Weekend
Radical Reference

 

 

July 1, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf

Pat Williams
What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver

Gary Leupp
Summer Surprise?

John Stauber
Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie

John Chuckman
The Blessings of Canada

Justicia y Paz
Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least!

Cockburn / St. Clair
It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court

 

June 30, 2005

Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis

John Stauber
Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America

Virginia Rodino
All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement

Jason Leopold
Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy

Dave Lindorff
What Was Bush Thinking?

Greg Moses
Racism at Cape Cod

Norman Solomon
Memo to the Iraq War

Joshua Frank
Israel's Theocrats

Alexander Cockburn
The Political Function of PBS

 

June 29, 2005

Mike Schaefer
How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll

Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor
Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq

Sharon Smith
Democrats Shift into Reverse

Sam Husseini
A Quick Way to End the Insurgency

John Stauber
Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton

Ahmad Faruqui
Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan?

Linda S. Heard
Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo

Stew Albert
Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero

Ray McGovern
Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course

 

 

June 28, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
A Defeat Bred in Deceit

Landau / Hassen
Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics

John A. Murphy
Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania

Mike Whitney
More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents

CounterPunch News Service
JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook?

Dave Zirin
Pining for the Pistons

Dave Lindorff
Showtime in Washington

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Bloody Mess

 

 

June 27, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans

Mike Marqusee
G8: Who are the Hijackers?

Mark Scaramella
When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz

Leigh Saavedra
Press Apologists for Torture

Kathy Kelly
Where is the UN?


June 25 / 26, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals

Jennifer Van Bergen
America's Parallel Legal Systems

George Corsetti
This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo

Kevin Zeese
Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids

P. Sainath
Russian Roulette in Vidharbha

John Stauber
How to Bury a Mad Cow

Scott Handleman
Gay in the Third World

Tom Barry
The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists

John Walsh
Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places

Justin E.H. Smith
The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution

Alan Wallis
The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood

Ben Tripp
Negative Space: an Artful Lesson

Frederick B. Hudson
Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock

Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert

 

 

June 24, 2005

Ray McGovern
The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed"

Jorge Mariscal
"They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq

Desiree Hellegers
Portland vs. the FBI

Zeynep Toufe
What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It?

Joshua Frank
Call Him Senator Con Job

David Lindorff
Which Flag Would Jesus Burn?

Michael Neumann
Victory and Recruitment

Website of the Day
Gagging Dr. Dean

June 23, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge

Clay Conrad
Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform

Standard Schaefer
A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism

P. Sainath
Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks

Mark Engler
CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death

Norman Solomon
Voluntary Amnesia in America

Cockburn / St. Clair
Frank Calzon

Kathy Kelly
Where You Stand Determines What You See

 

June 22, 2005

Kevin Zeese
The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner

William S. Lind
Afghanistan: the Other War

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Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act

Dan Nagengast
Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas

David Krieger
To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making

 

 

June 21, 2005

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President Disconnect

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The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis

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The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man"

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The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment

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June 20, 2005

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July 20, 2005

So Where is the Cease-fire?

"Silence is Filth"

By URI AVNERY

So where is the cease-fire?

Will Hamas and Islamic Jihad torpedo the withdrawal from Gaza?

What is happening to Mahmoud Abbas?

Generally, a cease-fire is declared in one of three cases:

* When one side beats the other into submission,

* When a third party imposes it on the two belligerents,

* When both sides are exhausted.

In our case, neither of the parties has succeeded in overcoming its opponent. The Israeli army has not raised the white flag, and neither have the Palestinians.

The cease-fire was not imposed by a third party. The Americans did exert some feeble pressure, and the Egyptians, too, tried to make their presence felt. But there was no real external pressure.

What happened was that both sides got tired. The fighting had reached a standstill, a kind of stalemate, and this situation could have gone on forever, doing no good to anyone. The Palestinians have suffered grievously, but their suffering has not driven them to capitulate. The Israeli army had no answer to the mortar shells and Qassam missiles that kept the inhabitants of nearby Israeli towns on edge, but were not sufficient for a military victory. Fatigue led to the cease-fire.

But this cease-fire was fragile from the start. First, because it was not mutual, accepted officially by the two parties. It was not even called a "cease-fire", not to mention "armistice" (Hudna in Arabic). It was called "calm" (Tahidiya in Arabic). The Palestinian National Authority arrived at an agreement with the Palestinian armed factions to hold their fire, and Sharon hinted through intermediaries that in return he, too, would abstain from firing.

That is a poor basis for a cease-fire. The tacit agreement did not define precisely what each side was going to cease doing. Since each side reserves the right to "respond" if the other side does something that, in its opinion, contravenes the cease-fire, and there is no referee or mechanism for arbitration, the situation could get out of hand at any moment.

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army did indeed stop the "targeted killings" and the incursions, but it redoubled its aggressive campaign against the Palestinians in the West Bank. The Wall, which spells misery and poverty for tens of thousands of Palestinian families and grabs the land of dozens of villages, is being built with renewed vigor. In Jerusalem, the Wall that cuts into the flesh of the Palestinian population is nearing completion. The security forces open fire on Palestinians (and Israeli peace activists) who demonstrate against the wall, killing some and wounding others, with many arrested.

At the same time, the Israeli army is in action all over the West Bank. Army units carry out incursions by day and by night, conduct searches, arrest or kill "wanted" people.

Is this a violation of the cease-fire? Not at all, assert Sharon's people. According to them, the cease-fire applies to the Gaza Strip only. The Palestinians, on their part, see in this another attempt to separate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, an effort inherent in Sharon's "Disengagement plan". They object to this, of course, with all their strength. And indeed, the Oslo agreement, which was signed and recognized by the international community, states explicitly that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip constitute one integral territorial unit.

So who is violating the cease-fire? Since the "unspoken agreement" is not written down and does not go into details, there can be no definitive answer to this. Each side claims that the other is the violator and that it is only responding.

So what are Hamas and Islamic Jihad up to?

They want, of course, to present Israel's retreat from the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of the settlements as their victory, just as Israel's retreat from Lebanon was the victory of Hizbullah. So the launching of mortar shells and Qassams intensified from the moment Sharon decreed the closure of the settlements this week, turning the coming disengagement into a virtual certainty.

The assertion is not entirely unfounded. A child can understand that Sharon would not withdraw from the Gaza Strip if he could sit there in comfort. One of the reasons for Sharon's decision to leave was that keeping Gaza and defending the settlements was too costly for the Israeli army and treasury.

The arrogant boasts of our politicians and generals about the huge success of the Israeli army in "defeating terrorism" - as if the drastic reduction in Palestinian attacks was not the result of the cease-fire but a big military achievement - provoked the Palestinian organizations into an effort to prove the contrary.

But the main motive for Hamas is domestic. The organization wants to convert its battlefield success into political capital. To this end, it wants to prove that the Authority simply cannot function without it. Apart from that, Hamas, as usual, is being dragged along by the more extreme Islamic Jihad (as the Irgun, in its time, was dragged along by the Stern Group.)

A mortar shell that kills an Israeli is, in reality, aimed at Mahmoud Abbas.

And what is happening to Abbas?

No leadership can function when its policies are obstructed by armed factions. When Mahmoud Abbas is accepting international obligations and the armed factions on the ground are violating them, it is clear that there is no Palestinian leadership that can carry out a coherent Palestinian policy. That is a disaster for the Palestinian people.

It is undoubtedly in the Palestinian interest to keep the peace while the Israeli withdrawal is taking place. In spite of what is happening in the West Bank, and in spite of the inherent faults of the "disengagement plan," it is worthwhile for the Palestinians to enable Sharon to dismantle the settlements and to put down the settlers' counter-attack - if only because the evacuation of Gush Katif establishes an important precedent. It is really Sharon himself who is interested in having the withdrawal accompanied by a lot of mayhem that would show how terribly difficult it is, along, of course, with the settlers themselves.

The actions of Hamas and Jihad at this time play, therefore, into the hands of the settlers. It shows again that there is a kind of involuntary cooperation between the nationalist-religious fundamentalists of the two sides.

Is Abbas strong enough to compel or convince Hamas and Jihad to cease fire?

One person, at least, hopes that the answer is negative: Ariel Sharon.

From the moment Abbas was democratically elected, Sharon has been working with persistence and cunning to eliminate him. This is important, in his view, because George Bush has started to get closer to the new Palestinian leader. The strengthening of Abbas would reinforce the pressure on Sharon to end the occupation of the West Bank. Therefore, for Sharon, "Silence is Filth", in the words of an anthem written some 80 years ago by Vladimir Jabotinsky, who founded the forerunner of the Likud party.

That explains why Sharon is repeatedly humiliating Abbas in public, why he has not allowed him even the slightest political achievement, why his spokesmen are declaring daily that Abbas is "weak", that he is "no leader", that he is "incapable of destroying the terrorist infrastructure".

Sharon once described Abbas as a "featherless chicken". This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When Abbas cannot show his public any political success at all, no alleviation of the misery in which they live, no release of any important prisoner, no stop to the building of the Wall that is strangling them - the credit given him by his people is diminishing by the hour.

I hope that the cease-fire will hold, in spite of everything. I have faith in the common sense of the Palestinians, who will understand their national interest at this time. I believe that after the withdrawal from Gaza there will arise a historic opportunity for a big step towards ending the occupation and achieving a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

But probably, right at this moment, a settler somewhere is praying for a mortar shell to fall on a crowded Israeli kindergarten and put an end to the withdrawal - because for the settlers, too, "Silence is Filth".

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.