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April 4, 2002
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
Tzaporah
Ryter
Under
Fire: an American Student in Ramallah
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
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
March 23, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
A
Corporate Lawyer
Speaks Out
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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Published March 1, 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
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 3, 2002
American
Journal
Sharon's Wars:
How The News
Gets Through
By Alexander Cockburn
Here we are, twenty years on , and many of the
reports of what's been happening as the Israeli army smashes
its way through Ramallah and Bethlehem and the other Palestinian
towns remind me of what came out of Lebanon in 1982 as Sharon
and his invading army raced north: Israeli troops beating, looting,
destroying; Palestinian families huddling in refugee camps, waiting
for the killers to come.
But there is a difference. A huge one.
Twenty years ago, at least for people living here in the United
States, it was harder, though far from impossible, to get first-hand
accounts of what was going on. You had to run out to find foreign
newspapers, or have them laboriously faxed from London, or Paris.
Reporting in the mainstream corporate press here was horrifying
tilted into putting the best face on Israeli deeds. Mostly, it
still is. But the attempted news blackout by the Sharon government
and the Israeli military simply isn't working.
Here's Aviv Lavie, writing in Ha'aretz:
"A journey through the TV and radio channels and the pages
of the newspapers exposes a huge and embarrassing gap between
what is reported to us and what is seen, heard, and read in the
world On Arab TV stations (though not only them) one could see
Israeli soldiers taking over hospitals, breaking equipment, damaging
medicines, and locking doctors away from their patients. Foreign
television networks all over the world have shown the images
of five Palestinians from the National Security forces, shot
in the heads from close range; one was apparently the manager
of the Palestinian Authority orchestra. Some of the networks
have claimed they were shot in cold blood after they were disarmed.
The entire world has seen wounded people in the streets, heard
reports of how the IDF prevents ambulances from reaching the
wounded for treatment. The entire world has heard testimony by
Palestinian families who have been imprisoned in their homes
for 72 hours, in some places without electricity or water, and
the food is running out."
As always, there are the courageous witnesses.
These days we have the enormously brave young people in the International
Solidarity Movement sending back daily e-mails and phone calls
to the United States that flash their way round the internet
and even translate into important interviews in the mainstream
press, or on tv news shows.
Meet a few of them. Here's Jordan
Flaherty, filing this account from a few days ago: "Last
night the Israeli Military tried to kill me. I'm staying in the
Al Azzeh refugee camp, in Bethlehem, along with about twenty
other international civilians. We're here to act as human shields,
because we've heard an Israeli invasion is imminentOn the hill
above the camp is a Israeli military sniper's post. The main
street that runs down the village is in plain sight of the snipers'
post. To get where we were staying in the village, most of us
had to cross this street. It was a quick, low, dash across the
street. As I ran, the sniper fired. I heard at least six shots
fired in the short distance I ran, exposed. The shots began as
I came into view, and stopped shortly after I made it to the
other side. They were clearly aimed at me. And, by the sound
of them, they were close. All night long, there was the sound
of gun shots, as the military shot into our village. We stayed
clear of the windows. Some of the windows were blocked with sandbags.
The gun and bullets were, no doubt, paid for by my tax dollars.
Which is, of course, why we are here."
Or Tzaporah
Ryter, filing this account for the Electronic Intifada:
" I am an American student from the University of Minnesota.
I currently am in Ramallah. We are under a terrible siege and
people are being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed
militia groups of Israeli settlers. ..On Thursday afternoon,
the Israeli army began sealing off each entrance to Ramallah.
Those traveling in began desperately searching for alternative
ways and traveling in groups, but the Israelis were firing upon
them and everyone was running and screaming. Women carrying their
children were trying desperately to flee from Ramallah, carrying
infants and toddlers, and their young children were running along
in the rain through the fields, slipping and falling on the rocks,
trying to reach safety. Israeli jeeps were speeding across the
terrain pulling up from every direction and shooting at the women
and children, and also at me, as we ran in opposite directions.
They were chasing down people, hunting them like that in the
fields."
Or the extremely articulate and self-possessed
Adam Shapiro, whose testimony ended up in the New York Daily
News and on CNN, where he told Kyra Phillips: "This is not
about politics between Jew and Arab, between Muslim and Jew.
This is a case of human dignity, human freedom and justice that
the Palestinians are struggling for against an occupier, an oppressor.
The violence did not start with Yasser Arafat. The violence started
with the occupation."
PHILLIPS: "I'm just curious, have
you -- did you take the opportunity to say to Yasser Arafat,
why not come and condemn what is going on, come out and make
a statement in Arabic because that is what the President of the
United States is just asking for?"
SHAPIRO: "President Arafat has done
this repeatedly. I understand Arabic. I read the newspapers and
I listen to the TV stations here. President Arafat, after every
terrorist incident, every suicide bombing, after every action,
has condemned this loss of life, of civilian lives on both sides.
The Sharon government, sometimes will apologize after it kills
an innocent civilian, but it does not apologize for raping the
cities and for going in and carrying out terrorist actions, going
to house to house much like the Nazis did in World War II, going
house to house to house tearing holes through the walls, roughing
up people, killing people, assassinating people."
Most of the time you open up a newspaper,
as I did the Los Angeles Times the other day and read a robotic
column by Ronald Brownstein about Palestinian terrorism and the
wretched Arafat's supposed ability to quell the Palestinian uprising
with a few quick words. And then you turn on the Lehrer News
Hour on PBS and there, of all people, is Zbigniev Brzezinski,
stating the obvious, on April 1. "The fact of the matter
is that three times as many Palestinians have been killed, and
a relatively small number of them were really militants. Most
were civilians. Some hundreds were children In the course of
the last year, we have had Palestinian terrorism but we have
also had deliberate, overreactions by Mr. Sharon designed not
to repress terrorism but to destabilize the Palestinian Authority,
to uproot the Oslo Agreement, which he has always denounced,
in a manner which contributed to the climate, that resulted in
the killing of one of the two architects of the Oslo Agreement."
After predictable dissent from Henry
Kissinger, Brzezinski went on, "It's absolute hypocrisy
to be claiming that Arafat can put a stop to the terrorism -
and it's -- let's put it mildly -- poor information on the part
of the President to be maintaining that. This guy is sitting
isolated. Sharon is trying to repress the Palestinians and terrorism
is not stopping. How is Arafat supposed to put a stop to it?
but the fact of the matter is that his ability to control the
situation would be greatly increased if there was serious movement
towards political process, towards a political settlement and
that the United States took the lead."
Between this brisk statement of the obvious
and the eloquent courage Adam Shapiro and his brave fellow internationalists,
the truth is getting out, not fast enough, not loud enough, but
better than twenty years ago.
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