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Today's Stories July 26, 2006 Robert Fisk Beirut as Munich Jonathan Cook Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes Patrick Cockburn Beware Iraqi Leaders Bearing Good News William Blum They Simply Can't Stop Lying, Can They? Joshua Frank Israel's Invasion Pretext Under Fire Gabriel Kolko Bankers Fear World Economic Breakdown Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Dudes Uri Avnery Is Beirut Burning?   July 25, 2006 Harry Browne Acquittal!: Activists Found Not Guilty in Irish Ploughshares Case Marjorie Cohn Willful Blindness: Bush Greenlights War Crimes Robert Bryce Israel and the Irony of UN Resolutions Sharat G. Lin Chronology of the Latest Chrisis in the Middle East George Bisharat Most Lebanese Now Know Who Their Real Tormentor Is CounterPunch News Desk Class War in the Blathersphere Zena El-Khalil "Tell Them That I'm Not Leaving. We Love Lebanon" Larry Lack The Bottled Water Madness Mike Mejia The Secret Behind "State Secrets" Ashraf Isma'il Why Israel Is Losing Website of the Day Peace on Trial   July 24, 2006 Mark Levy The Whys and Wherefores of PTSD Robert Fisk Israelis Bomb Fleeing Villagers Maher Osseiran Beirut, 1982 Paul Craig Roberts Israel's Criminal Accomplice Patrick Cockburn More Than 100 Iraqis Being Killed Each Day Website of the Day sirnosir.com   July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel's Indiscriminate Onslaughts Paul Craig Roberts The Shame of Being an American Gilad Atzmon Israel's New Math Robert Fisk Elegy for Beirut Ralph Nader Here's How to Halt This Horror Fred Gardner The Double Standard on Depression Christopher Reed The Right's Use of Sexpot Schoolgirls Dr. Susan Block Bush's Fecal World Najla Said Do People Know How Much We Hurt? Uri Avnery "Stop that Shit" July 21, 2006 George Galloway John Cornford and the Fight for the Spanish Republic P. Sainath Indian Prime Minister Faces the Dead Farmer Problem Aseem Shrivastava The Iraq War is a Huge Success Alexander Cockburn Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need to Know Website of the Day FromIsraeltoLebanon July 20, 2006 William S. Lind Why Hezbollah is Winning Robert Jensen Florida Puts History on Probation John Ross AMLO Presidente! Tom Hayden I Was Israel's Dupe Paul Craig Roberts The Unfolding Horror Show July 19, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited Trish Schuh Israel Targets, Flattens Beirut TV Station HQ Jonathan Cook Is Israel Using Arab Villages As Human Shields? Vicente Navarro The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco's Genocide July 17 / 18 2006 Mike Whitney Israel's Shameful Attack on Gaza Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land     July 14 / 15, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn How Venice is Dying Tanya Reinhart The IDF is Hungry for War Robert Fisk Beirut Waits: Is Damascus the Key? Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Jazz Winslow Wheeler Pentagon Budget Gimmickry: When a Cut is Actually an Increase Hugh O'Shaughnessy In Amazonia: Slavery and Deforestation M. Shahid Alam Israel, the US and the New Orientalism William S. Lind Two Signposts in Iraq Ramzy Baroud Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault Gilad Atzmon Echoes of the Wehrmacht Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Railroading Your Rights Samar Assad A History of Israeli-Palestinian Prisoner Exchanges Ron Jacobs Japan and Pre-Emptive Strikes: Why Would They Want to Go There? Lee Ballinger A New Kind of Jim Crow? Walter Brasch A World Without Fajitas?: the Rightwing's Language Police Dave Lindorff The Bush Swingers?: They Broke the Law and People Died Clifton Ross Up from Below in Oaxaca Tom Crumpacker Planning for the Re-Colonization of Cuba Ricardo Alarcon The Mad Annexationist William Hughes Rev. Billy Graham: A War-Monger in the Pulpit Susie Day Bugging Hillary Farrah Hassen The Road to Gitmo: Dramatizing the Banality of Evil Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Engel and Davies   July 13, 2006 Rev. William Alberts Rationalizing War Crimes: Saying the Obvious to Conceal the Devious Ramzi Kysia Scenes from the Lebanese Front Rep. John P. Murtha What the Iraq War is Costing Us Radford / Santos Race, Class and the Battle for South Central Farm Stan Cox Marching Plague: the Critical Art Ensemble's Biological Defense Program Saul Landau Lies as Patriotism José Pertierra Is Venezuela the Real Target of Bush's New Cuba Plan? Website of the Day National Security Whistleblowers' Dirty Dozen Campaign   July 12, 2006 John Ross Mexico Splits in Half: the Election Hits the Streets John Stauber The CIA Propagandist and Former Prankster Stewart Brand: John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars Robert Boston Top 10 Powerbrokers of the Religious Right Wayne S. Smith Bush's New Cuba Plan: Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination Plots John Graham Secrecy and the Curtain of Oz Ed Kinane Arrested for Failing to Obey a Lawful Order to Cease Protesting an Unlawful War: My Statement to the US District Court Kevin Prosen Goodbye Mr. Zeidler, You Will Be Missed Jonathan Cook Israel's Latest Bueaucratic Obscenity Website of the Day Addicted to Oil: Starring GW Bush   July 11, 2006 Dave Lindorff Does a State of War Give Bush the Right to Commit War Crimes? Dave Zirin Why I Wear My Zidane Jersey Mokhiber / Weissman Boeing's Criminal Agreement: Odd and Unusual Amira Hass A War on Families Clare Hanrahan The Last Free Fourth of July? Brian Cloughey Stop Blaming Pakistan Felice Pace The US Media and the World Cup Raed Jarrar Iraq: Raped Website of the Day Bad Boy of Gitmo   July 10, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Courting Doom with North Korea Uri Avnery A One-Sided War Roger Burbach Democracy Betrayed: Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico Ron Jacobs The New SDS: Toward a Radical Youth Movement Joshua Frank Sectarian Flames in Iraq Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Stunning Admission to Larry King Alexander Cockburn The War in Iraq: a Dreadful Mistake July 8 / 9, 2006 Weekend Edition Stephen Green When War Criminals Retire Paul Craig Roberts Republic or Empire?: Lessons from Stanford Greg Moses Boots Down on the Rio Grande Ralph Nader The Wail of the Oceans Laura Carlsen Mexico's Election Lacks Credibility Conn Hallinan Dumping Musharraf: Is Pakistan Expendable? John Chuckman Afghanistan is No One's War Fred Gardner Big Pharma's Strange Holy Grail: Cannabis Without Euphoria? Dr. Tod Mikuriya Cannabis as a Frontline Treatment for Childhood Mental Disorders Pierre Tristam Missile Envy: Is N. Korea Bush's Most Reliable Ally? Lucinda Marshall Deep Sexing the News: the Rape of Iraq David Swanson Command Rape: the Ordeal of Suzanne Swift Heather Gray The Spiral of Violence: What the Dead Might Tell Us Dave Zirin / John Cox French Soccer and the Future of Europe: Le Pen's Racists vs. Zindane and Henry Mark Engler Mexico's Fear of Democracy: Elites, Fraud and the Status Quo Michael Lettieri Mexico: Don't Discount a Recount Ron Jacobs 2008 Might Be Too Late: the Case for Impeachment Now Jamal Juma' Globalizing the Occupation Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Engel and Kirbach   July 7, 2006 John Ross Anatomy of a Fraud Foretold: Mexico's Surreal Elections July 6, 2006 Nick Dearden Profiting from the Occupation: the Corporate Interests Behind the War on Palestine John Stanton Nationalize the Defense Industry Ralph Nader The Politics of the Minimum Wage Laray Polk Cambodia Then; Gaza Now Saul Landau Who Mourned the Victims of the US Covert War on Chile? Joshua Frank Sweet Angst, Power Chords and Politics: Farewell Sleater-Kinney William S. Lind To Be or Not to Be a State? Hamas and 4th Generation War Adelman / Lindorff Impeachment Comes to Main Street, USA Jonathan Cook An Experiment in Human Despair Website of the Day Adulterers in Chief? July 5, 2006 Mike Whitney Is Cheney Betting on Economic Collapse?: the Veep's Curious Investment Portfolio Saul Landau False Axioms: Star Democrats and Iraq Massacres Ramzy Baroud And Israel Shall Be Safe Again Missy Comley Beattie An Axis of Nuts: Ready, Aim, Fear Arthur Neslen A Way Out of the Gaza Crisis? Vincent Maruffi Party Politics in Connecticut: Lieberman, Lamont and the Greens Paul Cantor Aberrations: Hell, High Water and the Moral High Ground Paul D. Johnson Mystery Meat: Let's Be Honest About Food's Origin David Price Shouting Down Nazis in Olympia July 4, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Iraq and Independence Day: Lessons from the War of 1812 Chris Floyd American Power in Mahmudiyah Marjorie Cohn Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza James Brooks Israel 9,000 Palestine 1: Destroying the Gaza Strip Medea Benjamin "Dictatress of the World:" Has America Become JQ Adams' Worst Nightmare? Matt Reichel An Independence Day Lesson for the American Left from France Elisa Salasin Why I am Fasting Today Rick Wilhelm Will Lieberman Apologize to Ralph Nader? Paul Craig Roberts Rape, Lies and Murder Website of the Day A Mighty Handsome Family   July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Gaza in the Dark: Poor, Frustrated and Powerless Dr. Bouthaina Shaban "I Hope You're Not Here to Talk About the Palestinians" Julia Olmstead The Biofuel Illusion: Running on Top Soil Dave Lindorff The Real Meaning of the Hamdan Ruling: Bush Adm. Has Committed War Crimes Andres Gomez A Mockery of Justice Alan Singer Another Encounter with Chuck Schumer: Just as Hawkish as Hillary, But Nastier Alexander Cockburn Temple of Mammon, Planet of Doom July 1/2, 2006 Weekend Edition Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Assaults on Freedom: What's to Stop Him? Stephen T. Banko Echoes from Vietnam; Nightmares in Iraq Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Slang: the Bunkum of Bunkum (for Dizzy Gillespie) Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Class Behind the Muslim Jeff Taylor The Sandy Foundation of the White House: a Bible-Believing Christian's View of Bush John Ross Mexico: There's a Riot Going On Greg Moses Psycho-Management Hits Mexico's Maquiladoras Laura Carlsen Mexico's Elections: a Choice for Change Justin E.H. Smith Lethal Injection and Other Fashion Trends Brian Cloughley Different Worlds: When Liberation is Worse Than Oppression Anthony Papa Punishing Addiction: No Walk in the Park for Dwight Gooden Mike Ferner Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt Jerry Tucker Liberalism's Long Goodbye: McGovern Hoists the White Flag Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Remembering the Marshall Islands Phyllis Pollack Roll Over Beethoven: Chuck Berry is Back in Town Poets' Basement Salasin, Swindell, Ferri-Smith and Engel   June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Supreme Rebuke: Bush Loses Gitmo Case Heather Williams Will Mexicans Ignore What Bolivians Learned? Burbach / Cantor Yellowback Democrats: the Party of Cut-and-Run (from Principle) Nick Dearden Crime in the Valley: Life on the Other Side of Palestine Michael J. Smith Under the Broadcast Flag: Intellectual Property as Intellectual Theft Brian Concannon The Return to Haiti: a Homecoming for Aristide? Virginia Tilley Israel's Appalling Act: Starving in the Dark   June 29, 2006 Bill Quigley Gutting New Orleans Ron Jacobs Killing a Nation to Rescue a Soldier Paul Craig Roberts The High Price of American Gullibility June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Mexican-American Soldiers, Iraq and the Politics of Immigrant Bashing Greg Moses Down in Pinal County: Where the Pun's on Us Mark Weisbrot Mexico: Their Brand is Crisis Ramzy Baroud Re-Interpreting Iraq: the Latest Propaganda Campaign Dave Lindorff Redacting the Constitution: Why Signing Statements Matter William S. Lind Neither Shall the Sword: War in a Fouth Generation World Mike Ferner 50 Years Down the Wrong Direction: Taken for a Ride on the Interstate Highway System Zoltan Grossman Military Resistance: a Brief History   June 27, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Playing Politics with Timetables Benjamin / Jarrar Leading Dems Froth Over Amnesty Plan William Hughes Roadmap to Starvation Doug Giebel Showdown in Montana: Burns vs. Testor Uri Avnery The World Cup and Middle East Peace Alexander Cockburn Hitchens Hails the "Glorious War"   June 26, 2006 Don Santina American Rituals: Massacres, Baseball and Apple Pies Ralph Nader Beyond Binary Politics Dave Lindorff CounterPunch v. CounterPunch: Taking Impeachment on the Road Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal on Hispanics and Latin America Evelyn Pringle Big Pharma's Big Graveyard: Drug Profits, Fraud and Death Jonathan Cook Israeli "Retaliation" and Double Standards   June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Divestment, Corporate Engagement and Israel Dave Lindorff Cut and Run: a Winning Strategy Ron Jacobs Dogs of War Barking at the Moon Col. Dan Smith Iraq: Fool Me Twice   June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Friendly Fire Ambush Winslow T. Wheeler Lockheed, the Senator and the F-22 Tanya Reinhart A Week of Israeli Restraint Mike Marqusee The Forest Gate Raid William Blum Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's       Subscribe Online

July 26, 2006 "Sorry, We Thought You Were Israeli!" Arrested in Istanbul By MICHAEL DICKINSON Instanbul. Queuing to pay for my lunch on Monday at the cash register of a diner here in Istanbul where I live, the customer in front turned to me and said|: "You're that Englishman, aren't you? I saw you on the TV last night. You work at Yeditepe university." "That's right," I replied. A few minutes later an old man stopped me in the street and asked if he could shake my hand. I gave it to him and he congratulated me. When I dropped into a grocer's for a bottle of milk the guy behind the counter said: "You're in the newspaper! Amazing story" In fact, that morning I woke up to find that the previous night my amazing' story had featured widely on Turkish TV news channels, and practically every Istanbul daily paper was running it, many with pictures on the front page of me being dragged through the streets by a gang of policemen, with captions such as: "ENGLISHMAN SAVED FROM LYNCH MOB" "THE MISUNDERSTOOD ENGLISH WAR PROTESTOR" and "SORRY, WE THOUGHT YOU WERE ISRAELI!" It is quite an interesting story--a classic case of mistaken judgment and its consequences, so I'll tell you about it as concisely as I can. Last week I noticed some wall posters and a banner strung between streetlamps in the area where I live, announcing a demonstration in support of the Palestinian people and against Israel's increasingly alarming savage aggression. The meeting was called by the Emek party, and was advertised to begin on Sunday at 11 pm at the large square on the seafront between the two ferryboat landings. I decided that I would go along to show support. Sunday morning I made a kind of sandwich board with a couple of my collages blown up to poster size, one showing a gigantic spider with the Zionist symbol on its back, making its web over the United Nations, the dollar symbol in the center. The other picture showed a marching army of Nazi storm troopers bearing aloft the flags of America and Israel, trampling relentlessly over a weeping mother and her murdered child. I rolled them up and made my way to the place where the meeting was to be held. There was a massive police presence when I got there, all lined up in their dark blue uniforms, helmets and truncheons, and the square was fenced off by their protective barriers. A stage was being prepared, microphones tested, but as yet no protestors. I put on my sandwich board and started walking around in front of the pier. "What do you think you're doing?" barked a particularly loathsome-looking cop "Just walking," I replied. "You can walk" he shouted, and started making threatening remarks, so I thought I'd better get out of his vicinity. Hearing the sound of raised chanting voices in the distance, I made my way towards the approaching marchers. They were soon in sight, waving banners and placards as they marched abreast in the road. All traffic had been diverted. I stood on the pavement awaiting their arrival, planning to join in at the end of the procession. Suddenly I found myself grabbed by two policemen who started pulling me away from the roadside, shouting something I didn't understand, dragging me towards a police van. I asked what they were doing. They told me to shut up and come with them. I said no, and called out to the marchers, who were now there in front of us, shouting for them to help, to allow me to take part in the demonstration. A crowd of photographers and cameramen who had been filming the march, hearing the commotion, flocked over to see what was happening. By this time more police had laid hold of me as I struggled and shouted (thinking to myself that the police were Israeli sympathizers who wanted to prevent the demonstration.) They twisted my arms and force-marched me across the road. One of my collages was ripped and destroyed; my flip-flop sandals came off and were left behind, and I nearly lost my glasses. I continued to shout that I had done nothing wrong but want to join the protest, but they didn't listen. Eventually they got me to a waiting police car, dumped me in the back, and whizzed me to the local police station, only a matter of yards away. Once inside, the policeman in charge demanded to know what my intention had been, appearing at the rally. When I told him I'd come to demonstrate against Israel's bombing of Lebanon, he was more than a little surprised. "You mean you aren't a supporter of Israel?" he asked. "Of course not" I replied. "Quite the opposite" "Oops" said he. (Or words to that effect.) It turned out that the police who had seen my collage with the US and Israeli flags had misinterpreted the image as pro-Israel, and also decided the black skull cap, which I always wear, was a Jewish kippe'. That, in fact, I was an Israeli provocateur, come to cause trouble and disrupt the rally. They said they had actually been saving me from furious demonstrators who wanted to attack me for my shameless effrontery. It turned out that the police were sympathetic to the cause of the marchers also, not the Zionist boot boys I had imagined. They gave me a glass of tea and we actually managed to laugh at the misunderstanding. They said they'd take me home after I'd given a statement, advising me not to go back to the meeting for my own safety's sake. But then two gentlemen arrived--organizers of the march--expressing their apologies for what had happened and the misunderstanding. It turned out that several of the demonstrators had indeed imagined me to be a Jew staging a counter protest. We all signed the statement and I was free, but instead of being taken home by the police, I accepted the invitation of the Emek party members to go with them to the meeting, where they presented me on stage, explaining the story of who I really was and the reason that I had come that morning. So I made a brief barefoot appearance with a raised fist of solidarity in front of the cheering surprised crowd. When I came down I was surrounded by reporters, flashing cameras, filming and asking questions. I was presented with a new pair of sandals by the Emek party to replace my old flip-flops, which the police said had been taken from the roadside by a poor beggar. I didn't stay long after the media had had their fill of me, but enough to speak to several members of the crowd who came to offer sympathy and thanks for coming. Some of them were wearing black headbands with Arabic writing on it. One showed me a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini. "Do you like him?" he asked. "No," I replied, but he wasn't offended. The main reason we were there, a public support of the Palestinians and a condemnation of Israeli war crimes united us. He gave me a set of wooden beads as a gift. I quietly slipped away home to ponder the extraordinary series of events I had just lived through, and hopefully to learn from the experience. One thing that the police officer had said was an encouragement. He said that the media would probably have ignored or given little room to this small meeting called by an insignificant political party, but that the extraordinary incident of my arrest would bring them a lot of publicity, and such has proved to be the case, as today again I have been called to give interviews to two leading newspapers and Turkish ATV. If this helps to focus the spotlight on the sheer hell that Israel is inflicting on its neighbours, then the few bruises I received were worth it. But I miss my old black flip-flops! Michael Dickinson is an English teacher who lives and works in Istanbul. He can be reached through his Saatchi gallery.

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