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May 3, 2002
Yigal Bronner
A Journey to Beit Jalla
CounterPunch
Wire
Otto
Reich Named to Board of School of the Americas
John Troyer
Hatemongers Try to Cleanse History:
Gays and 9/11
John Stauber
Big
Food/Tobacco/Booze
Attacks "Mad Cow" Authors
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
May 2, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Rep.
Dick Armey Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians
Rami Kaplan
Israeli Soldiers Resisting
the Occupation:
Why We Refuse to Fight
Carol
Norris
Subterranean
Mini-Nuke Blues
Bernard Weiner
A Peek Inside Colin Powell's Personal
Diary
May 1, 2002
Badiou,
Michel, Lazarus
French
Elections:
What is to be Done?
Baruch Kimmerling
The Battle of Jenin as
an Inter-Ethnic War
Edward
Hammond
Hiding
History:
NAS Suppresses Chem/Bio War Documents
Kristen Schurr
Inside Gaza
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
April 29, 2002
Larry Hales
At the Church of the Nativity
Michael
Colby
The
Times Does Brockovich:
Ralph Nader with Cleavage?
CounterPunch Wire
Bank Robs Publisher,
Vows to Repeat
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
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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
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A Pocket Guide to
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May
3, 2002
American Journal
Priests and Palestinians:
Extreme Solutions
by Alexander Cockburn
Extreme Solution
1: Priests
The old movies used to feature a priest walking
alongside the condemned man towards the scaffold, offering last
seconds of comfort, plea-bargaining strategies with St Peter,
a bolstering hand under the elbow. Some time in the next decade
the tableau may be reversed, with a lay counselor assisting the
condemned priest as he totters towards that final rendez-vous
with the executioner.
The death penalty is being vigorously
touted as the best way to deal with child molesters. And as the
world knows, the Roman Catholic Church has sheltered many a child
molester. On the cutting edge here are three states noted for
the moral refinement of their legislators: to wit, Montana, Louisiana
and Alabama. The first two states have already put Death for
Molesters into their statute books and when the legislators of
Alabama convene again next year they will press forward into
legislation from an overwhelming vote last year in favor molester
executions from its House of Representatives.
The Montana law allows a person previously
convicted of "sexual intercourse without consent" with
a person younger than 16 in any state to be sentenced to death
if convicted of that crime in Montana. The law was passed in
1997 but no one has yet been charged under that provision. Louisiana
has had a law on the books since 1995 that allows people convicted
of raping a child under the age of 12 to be sentenced to death.
A handful of people in the state have been charged under the
law this year alone, but no one has yet been convicted and sentenced
to death
Alabama's bill, would authorize the death
penalty for people convicted a second time of having sex with
a child younger than 12. No other states have the death penalty
for a sex crime. ABC News quoted Marcel Black, the chairman
of the Alabama House Judiciary Committee as saying "The
very serious meaning of this is to send a message to child molesters
that it is a bad thing to do".
Molesters can take comfort in the fact
that these laws would probably not survive challenges from higher
courts. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that the death penalty
is excessive punishment for rape. But who knows, in the current
atmosphere anything is possible. Maybe that's why Pope John Paul
II, a far-seeing man, shifted the Church towards opposition to
the death penalty.
Extreme Solution
2: Palestinians
Two years ago less than eight per cent
of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis
said they were in favor of what is politely called "transfer"
- that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians
across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per
cent. This week the US Congress sent an explicit message: Make
our day.
Professor Martin van Creveld is Israel's
best known military historian. On April 28 Britain's conservative
newspaper The Telegraph, published an article outlining what
Van Creveld believes Sharon's near-term goal: "transfer",
otherwise known as expulsion of the Palestinians.
According to Van Creveld, Sharon's plan
is to drive two million Palestinians across the Jordan using
the pretext of a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike in
Israel. This could trigger a vast mobilization to clear the
occupied territories of their two million Arabs. Van Creveld
notes that In September 1970, Van Creveld recalls, King Hussein
of Jordan attacked the Palestinians in his kingdom, killing
perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. Sharon, serving as Commanding Officer,
Southern Front, argued that Israel's assistance to the king was
a mistake; instead it should have tried to topple the Hashemite
regime. Sharon has often said since that Jordan, which, according
to him, has a Palestinian majority even now, is the Palestinian
state, and thus a suitable destination for Palestinians to be
kicvked out of his Greater Israel.
Van Creveld writes that Sharon has always
nourished the idea of driving all Palestinians out.A US attack
on Iraq sometime this summer would over appropriate cover. Sharon
himself told Secretary of State Colin Powell that nothing happening
in Israel should delay a US attack on Iraq. Other pretexts could
include an uprising in Jordan, followed by the collapse of King
Abdullah's regime or a major terrorist outrage inside Israel.
Should such circumstances arise, according
to Van Creveld, then Israel would mobilize within hours. "First,
the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing
positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout
imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined
to a hotel as guests of the Government. A force of 12 divisions,
11 of them armored, plus various territorial units suitable for
occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three
against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three
to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every
Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any
funny ideas."
In Van Creveld's view (he does say flatly
that he is utterly opposed to any form of "transfer"),
"The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a
few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses
but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused
to Jenin would look like a pinprick in comparison. He discounts
any effective response from Egypt, Syrpia, Lebanon or Iraq. "Saddam
Hussein may launch some of the 30 to 40 missiles he probably
has. The damage they can do, however, is limited. Should Saddam
be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then
Israel's response would be so 'awesome and terrible' (as Yitzhak
Shamir, the former prime minister, once said) as to defy the
imagination."
But what about international reaction?
Van Creveld thinks it would not be an effective deterrent. "If
Mr Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop
him is the United States. The US, however, regards itself as
being at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported
Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that
world being taught a lesson - particularly if it could be as
swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly
if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long."
Israeli military experts estimate that
such a war could be over in just eight days," Van Creveld
writes."Ifthe Arab states do not intervene, it will end
with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they
do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab
armies destroyed. Israel would, of course, take some casualties,
especially in the north, where its population would come under
fire from Hizbollah. However, their number would be limited
and Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967
and 1973."
And just as Sharon prepares this mostrous
act of ethnic cleansing, the US Congress votes unqualified support
for anything Israel might do. Here are the lonely dissenters.
Only 2 No votes in the
US Senate:
Hollings
Byrd
21 No Votes in the House:
Abercrombie
Hilliard
Obey
Bonior
Inslee
Paul
Boucher
Jackson (IL)
Petri
Condit (We guess the outgoing congressman from Modesto now feels
free to disclose his true feelings about the Levy family.)
Kleczka
Rahall
Conyers
Lee
Rohrabacher
DeFazio
McKinney
Smith (MI)
Dingell
Miller, George
Stark.
29 Wimpy "Present"
Votes, meaning that persons of conscience
like Dennis Kucinich (recently consecrated by Studs Terkel) or
Marci Kaptur, also from Ohio, could not quite muster the moral
fortitude to do the right thing. We guess there's no place for
Palestinians in Kucinich's latest prayer.
Baldwin
Kaptur
Peterson (MN)
Barr
Kilpatrick
Rivers
Becerra
Kind (WI)
Sabo
Bishop
Kucinich
Sanders
Brown (OH)
McDermott
Solis
Capuano
Mink
Thompson (CA)
Clayton
Mollohan
Thurman
Farr
Moran (VA)
Watt (NC)
Hostettler
Oberstar
Woolsey
Jones (OH)
Payne.
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