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April 11, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
From the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Juniad Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
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Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 10, 2002
America's Phoniest
Liberal?
Thomas Friedman's Fabrications
By John Chuckman
Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times,
is my favorite phony American liberal. Why phony? Over the years
Mr. Friedman has written a number of remarkably parochial, jingoistic
columns. Topics have included his protectionist views on competition
with Japan, his militant views on Cuba, and his rambling, imperialist-stained
notion of globalization.
But recently, on the matter of suicide-bombings
in Israel, Mr. Friedman has set a new standard for American liberalism
by offering views that cannot be distinguished from those of
violent, right-wing extremists.
Mr. Friedman, on March 31, told readers,
"Israel needs to deliver a blow that clearly shows that
terror will not pay."
"Pay?" Just what does Mr. Friedman
mean by that? Would this payment mean the end of Israel's occupation
of the Palestinian people? That assassinations would end? Improper
arrests? Torture? Well, if any of these were the goals of the
suicide-bombers, they hardly deserve to be called terrorists
as Mr. Friedman does. In that light, they might well be regarded
as some of Mr. Reagan's freedom-fighters or as members of World
War II's resistance.
Mr. Friedman begs an important question
by assuming suicide-bombers have any goal other than expressing
hopelessness. Coming, as he does, from a country where children
regularly bring loaded guns to school and shoot their classmates,
you might think he'd be aware of the possibility. In that case,
what Mr. Friedman advocates reduces to running tanks over the
family homes of the disturbed boys responsible for the Columbine
High School Massacre.
Of course, that word "disturbed"
raises yet another possibility. The suicide-bombers may be sick
or mentally unbalanced. In which case, Mr. Friedman's proposal
amounts to running tanks over the homes of Ted Kaczynski's brother
and parents.
But what I think Mr. Friedman clearly
means is that Israel will exact four or five eyes for every one.
He is talking about vengeance, plain and simple.
Whatever it is that Mr. Friedman means,
his proposal is a very old one, one Israel has practiced for
decades, and, to date, there is not a lot of evidence that it
works. And Mr. Friedman seems unaware that it has been Mr. Sharon's
ruthless, bloody response to an Intifada beginning with stone-throwing
that, like the sowing of dragon's teeth, has produced a terrible
crop of young people sacrificing their lives.
Mr. Friedman glibly says that desperation
is not a reason for suicide-bombing, that "a lot of people
in the world are desperate, yet they have not gone around strapping
dynamite to themselves." Then what is the reason? You cannot
order people, you cannot pay people, much less young people who
normally are filled with God's gift of a desire for life, to
go and blow themselves up.
But Mr. Friedman brushes off all moral
issues and other complexities by asserting that the suicide-bombing
is "a strategic choice." Cold, clinical, calculating
- these are the connotations of his expression. And, of course,
therefore deserving of ruthless reprisal.
Mr. Friedman parrots American defenders
of Israel's worst excesses, people who, stunned and desperate
themselves to explain horrific events, advocate a theory of child
zombie-killers, the idea that the Palestinians have somehow perfected
a process of brainwashing that eluded the CIA and KGB through
the Cold War, to produce an army of murderous human automatons.
If you believe this, you believe in the Manchurian Candidate.
Mr. Friedman sweeps on in magisterial,
armchair outrage to demand that his government should not permit
any Arab leader who even call suicide-bombers "martyrs"
enter the United States. These are frightening words. They surpass
the soul-deadening depths of Mr. Ashcroft.
First, Mr. Friedman here attempts to
bind the United States more intimately to Israel in the dispute,
knowing full well the Palestinians need to retain some shred
of hope in the United States as an intermediary that at least
sometimes acts fairly.
Tell Arab leaders what words they must
use? I do think we find here the measure of how carefully Mr.
Friedman has thought about what he says. This suggestion is about
as astute as building a fire in a dry-tinder forest.
Mr. Friedman appears influenced by the
recent arrogant tendency of the United States to set laws that
effectively govern the actions of people in other nations. This
is contrary to all accepted principles of international law,
and recent efforts along these lines with the Helms-Burton Act
or the Trading with the Enemy Act with regard to Cuba have earned
the United States serious, entirely-avoidable resentment in Europe,
Canada, and other places.
Well, Mr. Friedman would undoubtedly
say that the survival of Israel justifies almost anything. And
there might be some argument here were Israel's survival at risk.
But it is not. How on earth do a limited number of suicide-bombings,
shocking as they may be, endanger the existence of Israel? London
withstood The Blitz; Vietnam withstood some of the most horrific
bombing in all of human history, yet London and Vietnam are very
much with us.
And this brings us back to the actual
cause of the bombings, desperation, for they cannot under any
imaginable circumstances achieve what Israeli extremists insist
is their aim, the destruction of Israel. If it isn't desperation
to be doing something that cannot possibly succeed, I don't know
what is. So, even assuming the extremists' own definition of
the bombers' purpose, we come to the only question that means
much here: When will Israel begin working to solve desperation
instead of trying to crush it?
John Chuckman
is a columnist for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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