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May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
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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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
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May
27, 2002
The Coming Firestorm
Bush's Rhetoric Sounds Like
the Crazed Videotapes
of Osama bin Laden
by Robert Fisk
The Independent
So now Osama bin Laden is Hitler. And Saddam Hussein
is Hitler. And George Bush is fighting the Nazis. Not since
Menachem Begin fantasized to President Reagan that he felt
he was attacking Hitler in Berlin - his Israeli army was actually
besieging Beirut, killing thousands of civilians, "Hitler"
being the pathetic Arafat - have we had to listen to claptrap
like this. But the fact that we Europeans had to do so in the
Bundestag on Thursday - and, for the most part, in respectful
silence - was extraordinary.
I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist
who, tired of the wearying invocation of the Second World War
to justify yet more Israeli brutality, began an article with
the words: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is dead." Must
we, forever, live under the shadow of a war that was fought
and won before most of us were born? Do we have to live forever
with living, diminutive politicians playing Churchill (Thatcher
and, of course, Blair) or Roosevelt? "He's a dictator who
gassed his own people," Mr Bush reminded us for the two
thousandth time, omitting as always to mention that the Kurds
whom Saddam viciously gassed were fighting for Iran and that
the United States, at the time, was on Saddam's side.
But there is a much more serious side
to this. Mr Bush is hoping to corner the Russian President,
Vladimir Putin, into a new policy of threatening Iran. He wants
the Russians to lean on the northern bit of the "axis of
evil", the infantile phrase which he still trots out to
the masses. More and more, indeed, Mr Bush's rhetoric sounds
like the crazed videotapes of Mr bin Laden. And still he tries
to lie about the motives for the crimes against humanity of
11 September. Yet again, in the Bundestag, he insisted that
the West's enemies hated "justice and democracy",
even though most of America's Muslim enemies wouldn't know what
democracy was.
In the United States, the Bush administration
is busy terrorizing Americans. There will be nuclear attacks,
bombs in high-rise apartment blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge,
men with exploding belts - note how carefully the ruthless
Palestinian war against Israeli colonization of the West Bank
is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war on terror"
- and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words of
President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous
national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, over the past three
days, you'll find they've issued more threats against Americans
than Mr bin Laden.
But let's get back to the point. The
growing evidence that Israel's policies are America's policies
in the Middle East - or, more accurately, vice versa - is now
being played out for real in statements from Congress and on
American television. First, we have the chairman of the US Senate
Foreign Relations Committee announcing that Hizbollah - the
Lebanese guerrilla force that drove Israel's demoralized army
out of Lebanon in the year 2000 - is planning attacks in the
US. After that, we had an American television network "revealing"
that Hizbollah, Hamas and al- Qa'ida - Mr bin Laden's organization-
have held a secret meeting in Lebanon to plot attacks on the
US.
American journalists insist on quoting
"sources" but there was, of course, no sourcing for
this balderdash, which is now repeated ad nauseam in the American
media. Then take the "Syrian Accountability Act" that
was introduced into the US Senate by Israel's friends on 18
April. This includes the falsity uttered earlier by Israel's
Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, that Iranian Revolutionary Guards
"operate freely" on the southern Lebanese border.
Now there haven't been Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon
- let alone the south of the country - for 18 years. So why
is this lie repeated yet again?
Iran is under threat. Lebanon is under
threat. Syria is under threat - its "terrorism" status
has been heightened by the State Department - and so is Iraq.
But Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister held personally
responsible by Israel's own inquiry for the Sabra and Shatila
massacre of 1,700 Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, is - according
to Mr Bush - "a man of peace". How much further can
this go? A long way, I fear.
The anti-American feeling throughout
the Middle East is palpable. Arab newspaper editorials don't
come near to expressing public opinion. In Damascus, Majida
Tabbaa has become famous as the lady who threw the US Consul
Roberto Powers out of her husband's downtown restaurant on 7
April . "I went over to him," she said, "and
told him, 'Mr Roberto, tell your George Bush that all of you
are not welcome - please get out'." Across the Arab world,
boycotts of American goods have begun in earnest.
How much longer can this go on? America
praises Pakistani President Musharraf for his support in the
"war on terror", but remains silent when he arranges
a dictatorial "referendum" to keep him in power. America's
enemies, remember, hate the US for its "democracy".
So is General Musharraf going to feel the heat? Forget it. My
guess is that Pakistan's importance in the famous "war
on terror" - or "war for civilization" as, we
should remember, it was originally called - is far more important.
If Pakistan and India go to war, I'll wager a lot that Washington
will come down for undemocratic Pakistan against democratic
India.
Across the former Soviet southern Muslim
republics, America is building air bases, helping to pursue
the "war on terror" against any violent Muslim Islamist
groups that dare to challenge the local dictators. Please do
not believe that this is about oil. Do not for a moment think
that these oil and gas-rich lands have any economic importance
for the oil-fueled Bush administration. Nor the pipelines that
could run from northern Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast if
only that pesky Afghan loya jirga could elect a government that
would give concessions to Unocal, the oddly named concession
whose former boss just happens to be a chief Bush "adviser"
to Afghanistan.
Now here's pause for thought. Abdelrahman
al-Rashed writes in the international Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat
that if anyone had said prior to 11 September that Arabs were
plotting a vast scheme to murder thousands of Americans in
the US, no one would have believed them. "We would have
charged that this was an attempt to incite the American people
against Arabs and Muslims," he wrote. And rightly so.
But Arabs did commit the crimes against
humanity of 11 September. And many Arabs greatly fear that we
have yet to see the encore from the same organization In the
meantime, Mr Bush goes on to do exactly what his enemies want;
to provoke Muslims and Arabs, to praise their enemies and demonize
their countries, to bomb and starve Iraq and give uncritical
support to Israel and maintain his support for the dictators
of the Middle East.
Each morning now, I awake beside the
Mediterranean in Beirut with a feeling of great foreboding.
There is a firestorm coming. And we are blissfully ignoring
its arrival; indeed, we are provoking it.
(C) 2002 lndependent Digital (UK) Ltd
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