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March
18, 2002
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
March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
When
Business Men
Make Boo-Boos
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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
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March 18, 2002
Georgia Is Only the Beginning
The American Presence
in the Transcaucasus will Quickly Expand
By Armen Khanbabyan
The unprecedented pace of the expansion of the
US and NATO in the post- Soviet space is so worrying to the Russian
political elite that it is obstructing their ability to objectively
evaluate the real meaning of what is happening. Naturally, in
Russia people are inclined to see things solely "from their
own bell tower." In reality, however, the vector of this
expansion is not so much "towards the north," as "to
the south." Put more simply, the Americans now are not after
Russia. They have more important and more urgent tasks.
The fundamental goal of Washington and
the West as a whole is to establish firm and long- term control
over the energy resources of Central and Upper Asia. This explains
the appearance of their bases along the notorious "arc of
instability," from Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan to Georgia.
Thus they are setting up a ring around Iraq and Iran-- countries
that are obstructing these plans. But if punitive action against
Baghdad can be considered a decisive action, then things with
Iran are not quite so simple. President Carter once even organized
a raid by his paratroopers on Tehran, and his special forces
were effortlessly taken captive by the guards of the Islamic
Revolution. Generally speaking, it is not so easy to cope with
a country with a territory three times that of France, a population
of seventy million, and a sufficiently entrenched political and
economic system. What is more, in distinction from Iraq, Tehran
has no powerful neighbors who are interested in destabilizing
the country and changing the existing regime.
Therefore, not only Central Asia, but
also the Transcaucasus should become a zone of complete Western
influence. For the resolution of the task, Georgia alone is not
sufficient. Very soon Americans and Turks will appear in Azerbaijan,
and in quantities much greater than in Georgia, as Washington
has already signed an agreement with Baku on the modernization
of the local armed forces. It is also important that Azerbaijan
and Iran have a number of mutual grievances, and in particular
the issues of the northern Iranian territories, which are populated
by Turkic peoples, and the division of the Caspian.
But the transformation of Azerbaijan
into a secure staging area for the realization of the military-political
goals of the US is impossible as long as there exist the Karabakh
conflict and the mutually advantageous cooperation between Iran
and Armenia.
Recall that the relations between Yerevan
and Tehran represent an enviable example of good-neighborliness
between a Christian and an Islamic state. This, incidentally,
is confirmation of the thesis of the absence of a confessional
basis to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Nevertheless, the
pragmatic friendship between the two neighboring countries has
always annoyed Washington. Until recently, however, Yerevan was
able to explain that the danger of Islamic fundamentalism does
not threaten Armenia by definition, and the contacts with Iran
serve to strengthen regional stability.
Today the quickening withdrawal of Russia
from the region and the efforts of the American and Turkish factors
have become a catalyst for a future Armenian-Iranian drawing
together. In the beginning of March, during the visit of the
Iranian Minister of Defense, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, to Yerevan,
the two countries signed a memorandum on cooperation in the sphere
of defense and security, which proposes a wide range of interaction,
including the creation of joint enterprises. This is promising,
if one considers that in the Soviet period 92 percent of Armenian
industry was in the defense sector.
Washington reacted very promptly and
brusquely. Literally a week after the visit of Shamkhani to Yerevan
the US State Department "discovered" a new "international
channel" of drug trafficking: Iran--Nagorno-Karabakh-Armenia-Russia--Europe.
The press secretary for the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Dzyunik Agadzhanyan, observed that the conclusions of the American
foreign policy agency were constructed exclusively on information
from the Azerbaijani side, and fully contradict the evaluations
of a number of authoritative international organizations. This
indicates Baku's striving to "make the Karabakh question
the object of discussion in all conceivable instances."
But the important thing here is not the striving of Baku, but
rather the plans of Washington. It is curious that in one of
the Moscow newspapers an article appeared in which the Karabakh
movement is called "sadly notorious" (that same paper
had earlier called it a democratic and national-liberation movement)
for its alleged links with the illegal arms trade, the mafia,
and terrorism.
Taken together, all of this is an element
in the unfolding ideological preparation for future punitive
action. It would seem that they realize this in Yerevan. In any
case, the Armenian Minister of Defense, Serzh Sarkisyan (the
second most politically significant person in the Republic),
will visit Washington. Most likely he will again try to convince
his American colleagues that the shift in Armenian-Iranian cooperation
to the area of defense was dictated strictly by the demands of
national security and does not present a threat for the US. But
it is very doubtful that now these traditional arguments will
satisfy the Americans. In its external appearance, Karabakh diverges
too clearly from the paradigm of their conceptions of the future
alignment of forces in the region. Therefore for the Armenian
side, apparently, there will be a difficult and meager choice
between the bad and the very bad variants of the future development
of events.
Armen Khanbabyan
writes for Nezavisimaya Gazeta. (Trans. by Timothy K. Blauvelt)
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