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July 9, 2002
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How Bush
Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
July 6, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Loose
Lips:
Liberty, Democracy & Bush
Michael Neumann
What's
So Bad About Israel?
Steve Baughman
Ashcroft's
Vendetta:
Lynching John Lindh
July 5, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Bush Freezes Peace Process
Todd May
Independence
and Terrorism
Rahul Mahajan
Why I
Won't Celebrate the Fourth of July This Year
July 4, 2002
S. Brian Willson
What
the Flag Means to Me
Philip Farruggio
Independence Day and
the Working Poor
Tom Gorman
The Uncommon
Pledge
of Allegiance
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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
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The
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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July
8, 2002
How a Saudi Billionaire Does
Beirut
by Robert Fisk
His yacht rides at anchor off his new $100 million
Beirut hotel-resort complex. He opened it last week--it includes
four swimming pools, eight restaurants, three bars and a massive
shopping arcade--in a blaze of fireworks and laser lights. He
is listed as the 11th richest man in the world, worth an estimated
lbs13bn.
His name is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal,
the 45-year-old nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. And he would,
it seems, like to be prime minister of Lebanon. The proof? Well,
at his hotel bash last week, Prince Alwaleed made some pretty
nasty comments about Lebanon's lbs20bn national debt. "Can
any one of you brothers and sisters present in this gathering
tell me what the expected debt figure will be in the next four
or five years?" he asked. "Will its size continue to
be 170 per cent of the GDP at the end of that period?"
It was a somewhat unprincely way of sniping
at the current Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, who also happens
to hold joint Saudi and Lebanese nationality and who, if somewhat
less wealthy than Prince Alwaleed, still has a few billions to
his name and also holds the leading shareholding in Solidaire,
the company rebuilding the centre of Beirut. Many blame Mr Hariri
for the country's debt.
President Lahoud of Lebanon turned up
to hear Prince Alwaleed's speech. The two men get on well--Messrs
Lahoud and Hariri famously do not--and Prince Alwaleed also has
bonny relations with Syria, an essential for anyone anxious to
run Lebanon. The prince, after all, is paying for the reconstruction
of a village inundated by last month's Syrian dam burst. Mr Hariri
couldn't make it to the hotel opening, and thus missed the economic
advice of his possible nemesis. His response? "We accept
such statements from anyone who wants to build a hotel in Lebanon,"
he remarked in what might be called a classic put-down.
The Lebanese could be forgiven for thinking
that one Saudi billionaire is quite enough to govern their country.
But Alwaleed bin Talal has exemplary forebears: he is the grandson
of a former Lebanese prime minister, Riad Solh. He also speaks
his mind. For this is the same Alwaleed bin Talal who offered
New York $10m towards reconstruction after 11 September--only
to have his cheque thrown back in his face by the then mayor,
Rudolph Giuliani, for daring to suggest that America take a slightly
less pro-Israeli stand in the Middle East.
Prince Alwaleed also provided millions
of pounds to repair Lebanese electricity stations after Israel
attacked them two years ago. He's planning yet another hotel
in central Beirut. "Every investor has the right to feel
secure about his investments," he told Mr Hariri's deputy,
Ihsam Fares, yet another millionaire. "It is the duty of
the state and the government to provide this safety. The investor
is like a citizen, he wants to know where the state economy is
going."
So the prince has definitely moved into
Lebanese politics. Even his yacht--formerly Donald Trump's--speaks
of money, its massive decks and sleek hull a near-permanent reminder
off Pigeon Rocks that even a country with massive debts can attract
massive wealth.
A few days ago, residents of Corniche
Mazraa, a hot canyon of traffic in west Beirut, were astonished
to see thousands of sheets of paper descending on them from a
light aircraft, carpeting the road and pavements and apartment
blocks in a snow of pictures of a green forest.
They were even more surprised to read
the text on the back. Supported by the Lebanese Environment Ministry,
each sheet of paper urged the people "not to throw litter
on the ground".
Today's
Features
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
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