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March 24/31, 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
March
19, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Nuke
Iraq?
Phyllis
Pollack
Roger
Daltrey's LA Surprise
Amir Ahmadi
War-Mongering
Academics:
The New Tartuffe
Ben White
Bomber
Blair
Fran Shor
Child-Murderers
and Madmen
March
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Crazy
is Cool
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
What's Playing At My House
Armen
Khanbabyan
The
Pentagon in the Caucasus:
Georgia Is Only the Beginning
Gabriel
Ash
Abdullah
v. Osama
Bernard
Weiner
Middle
East for Dummies
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
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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Reviews of Gore:
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March 30, 2002
Lies
Leaders Tell When They Want to Go to War
By Robert
Fisk
The Independent
How much longer can Ariel Sharon pretend that
he's fighting in the "war against terror"? How much
longer are we supposed to believe this nonsense? How much longer
can the Americans remain so gutlessly silent in the face of a
vicious conflict which is coming close to obscuring the crimes
against humanity of 11 September? Terror, terror, terror. Like
a punctuation mark, the word infects every Israeli speech, every
American speech, almost every newspaper article. When will someone
admit the truth: that the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged
in a dirty colonial war which will leave both sides shamed and
humiliated?
Just listen to what Sharon has been saying
in the past 24 hours. "Arafat is an enemy. He decided on
a strategy of terror and formed a coalition of terror."
That's pretty much what President Bush said about Osama bin Laden.
But what on earth does it mean? That Arafat is actually sending
off the suicide bombers, choosing the target, the amount of explosives?
If he was, then surely Sharon would have sent his death squads
after the Palestinian leader months ago. After all, his killers
have managed to murder dozens of Palestinian gunmen already,
including occasional women and children who get in the way.
The real problem with Arafat is that
he has a lot in common with Sharon: old, ruthless and cynical;
both men have come to despise each other. Sharon believes that
the Palestinians can be broken by military power. He doesn't
realise what the rest of the world learned during Sharon's own
1982 siege of Beirut: that the Arabs are no longer afraid. Once
a people lose their fear, they cannot be re-inoculated with fear.
Once the suicide bomber is loose, the war cannot be won. And
Arafat knows this.
No, of course he doesn't send the bombers
off on their wicked missions to restaurants and supermarkets.
But he does know that every suicide bombing destroys Sharon's
credibility and proves that the Israeli leader's promises of
security are false. Arafat is well aware that the ferocious bombers
are serving his purpose - however much he may condemn them in
public.
But he - like Sharon - also believes
his enemies can be broken by fire. He thinks that the Israelis
can be frightened into withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza
and East Jerusalem. Ultimately, the Israelis probably will have
to give up their occupation. But the Jews of Israel are not going
to run or submit to an endless war of attrition. Even if Sharon
is voted out of power - a prospect for which many Israelis pray
- the next Israeli prime minister is not going to negotiate out
of fear of the suicide bomber.
Thus the rhetoric becomes ever more cruel,
ever more revolting. Hamas calls its Jewish enemies "the
sons of pigs and monkeys", while Israeli leaders have variously
bestialised their enemies as "serpents", "crocodiles",
"beasts" and "cockroaches". Now we have an
Israeli officer - according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv - advising
his men to study the tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second
World War. "If our job is to seize a densely packed refugee
camp or take over the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given
to an (Israeli) officer to carry out without casualties on both
sides, he must before all else analyse and bring together the
lessons of past battles, even - shocking though this might appear
- to analyse how the German army operated in the Warsaw ghetto."
Pardon? What on earth does this mean?
Does this account for the numbers marked by the Israelis on the
hands and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners earlier this month?
Does this mean that an Israeli soldier is now to regard the Palestinians
as sub-humans - which is exactly how the Nazis regarded the trapped
and desperate Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944?
Yet from Washington comes only silence.
And silence, in law, gives consent. Should we be surprised? After
all, the US is now making the rules as it goes along. Prisoners
can be called "illegal combatants" and brought to Guantanamo
Bay with their mouths taped for semi-secret trials. The Afghan
war is declared a victory - and then suddenly explodes again.
Now we are told there will be other "fronts" in Afghanistan,
a spring offensive by "terrorists". Washington has
also said that its intelligence agencies - the heroes who failed
to discover the 11 September plot - have proof (undisclosed,
of course) that Arafat has "a new alliance" with Iran,
which brings the Palestinians into the "axis of evil."
Is there no one to challenge this stuff?
Just over a week ago, CIA director George Tenet announced that
Iraq had links with al-Qa'ida. "Contacts and linkages",
have been established, he told us. And that's what the headlines
said. But then Tenet continued by saying that the mutual antipathy
of al-Qa'ida and Iraq towards America and Saudi Arabia "suggests
that tactical cooperation between them is possible?" "Suggests?"
"Possible?" is that what Mr Tenet calls proof?
But now everyone is cashing in on the
"war against terror". When Macedonian cops gun down
seven Arabs, they announce that they are participating in the
global "war on terror". When Russians massacre Chechens,
they are now prosecuting the "war on terror". When
Israel fires at Arafat's headquarters, it says it is participating
in the "war on terror". Must we all be hijacked into
America's dangerous self-absorption with the crimes of 11 September?
Must this vile war between Palestinians and Israelis be distorted
in so dishonest a way?
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