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Today's Stories

August 12 / 13, 2006

Jean Bricmont
The De-Zionization of the American Mind


August 11, 2006

Col. Dan Smith
Crimes Against Peace: Beyond Nuremberg

John Ross
Class War in Mexico City's Gridlock

Michael Donnelly
Sore Loserman, Redux

William S. Lind
Collapse of the Flanks

Linda Milazzo
Chertoff's New Math: Hair Gel Plot Might Have "Killed 100s of Thousands"

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Something is Happening Around the World

Azmi Bishara
When the Skies Rain Death

Henri Picciotto
Jewish Dissidents Must Challenge Israel

CounterPunch News Wire
The Warrior Lawyer: Tom Crumpacker, 1934-2006

Dave Lindorff
War Crimes in Lebanon

Jonathan Cook
From High Wycombe to Nazrareth: How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists

 


August 10, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Buck Stops Where?

Dave Marsh
Who Are Mr and Mrs Lamont?

Gabriel Kolko
Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Arthur Versluis
How Neocons' Nazi Hero Schmitt Spawned Bush's Totalitarian Lunge

Jennifer Loewenstein
Awakening the Resistance


August 9, 2006

Linda Schade
Incumbents Beware: Peace Voters Mean Business

Jackie Mason
Defends Mel Gibson; Ridicules Abe Foxman

Jonathan Cook
Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah

Gilad Atzmon
Operation Security Roof

Charles Hirschkind
Doing the Lebanese a Favor

Tom Barry
Right-wingers Ramp Up War on Migrants

Cockburn & St. Clair
The Sweetness of Lieberman's Defeat

 

August 8, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Requiem for Baghdad

Paul Larudee
The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions

Joan Roelofs
The Malleable US Constitution: a Deterrent to Democracy?

Dimi Reider
An Interview with IDF Refusenik Sgt. Zohar Milchgrub

John A. Murphy
The Democrats: a Party on the Run ... from Its Own Members!

Eliot Katz
The View from the Big Woods: In Which a NYC Antiwar Poet Takes a Summer Vacation in Canada's Boreal Forest

Tim Llewellyn
Into the Valley of Death

Website of the Day
Galloway Speaks!

 

August 7, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Junkies of War

Karim Makdisi
The Draft UN Resolutions: the View from Beirut

Nadia Hijab
What Israel and the US Wanted May Not Be At All What They Get

Sharon Smith
Birth Pangs and Dead Babies

Magan Wiles
Encounter at an Israeli Checkpoint

George Beres
A New Kind of Bigotry: Lebanon War Exposes Strange Religious Bedfellows

Rachard Itani
Nice Try, Mr. Bolton

Norman Solomon
Some Nukes Are A-Okay with the US Media

Stan Cox
Presidential Doping Scandal Erupts!

Mickey Z.
Go Ahead, Please Stare at Her Chest

Jonathan Cook
The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN

Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Newt Gingrich on Lebanon

 

August 5 / 6, 2006

Virginia Tilley
Boycott Now!: the Case for Boycotting Israel

Uri Avnery
The Black Flag

Patrick Cockburn
Yes, It is a Crusade!: Blair's Mad Speech on Iraq

Sgt. Martin Smith
Military Training and Atrocities: Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree

Gary Leupp
America's Heroes on Trial

Neve Gordon
The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom After 9/11

Ralph Nader
Hey Joe!: the Ghosts of Lieberman's Past

Peter Bouckaert
For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game

Peter Montague
Nukes Rising: Bush Oversees a Global Nuclear Expansion

David Krieger
Global Hiroshima: the Stakes Have Been Raised

Michael Donnelly
"Sir! No Sir!": the Story of the GI Anti-War Movement

Fred Gardner
Dr. Denney Sues the DEA

Catherine Norris
Seeking Justice Abroad: Spanish Courts Issue Arrest Warrants for the Butchers of Guatemala

Imraan Siddiqi
The Smokescreens of War: Moral Superiority, 9/11 and Islamic-Fascism

Missy Comley Beattie
One Year After the Death of Chase Comley

Ira Kay
Where is Geography? Getting Beyond the Place Name Game

Dave Lindorff
Let's Build a Wall

Pratyush Chandra
Nuclear Fascism in India

Ron Jacobs
Keeping It Radical

St. Clair / Donnelly
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Katz and Davies

Website of the Day
Defend Bear Butte

Video of the Weekend
Rainbows Bust Pig Blockade

 

August 4, 2006

Ralph Nader
Joe Lieberman and the Secret Chamber

Brian Cloughley
Osama Has Won

Eliza Ernshire
No Lights in Gaza: "We Have a Death Warrant for Your Home"

Roger Assaf
Letter from Lebanon: Adjusting the Heroic Commando Raid Story

George Bisharat
When I Last Saw Lebanon

Remi Kanazi
Out to Lunch: The US Media's "Special Relationship"

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Critical Moment: The Boardrooms vs. the Street

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Fig (Leaflet) of Warning

Derrick O'Keefe
Ripe Fruit and Rotten Imperial Ambitions: US Reaction to Castro's Illness

Mickey Z.
Some Context on Castro and Cuba

Col. Dan Smith
The New Gonzales Standard for Torture: No Standards, No Accountability

Website of the Day
Israel's TV War


August 3, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Civilian Casualties and the War of Media Deception

Uri Avnery
Knife in the Dark

Saree Makdisi
Time to Call It Quits: Israel's Raid on Baalbeck's Hospital

Robert Fisk
The Family That Stays Together Dies Together

Farrah Hassen
Bush's Nutty Syria Policy: a Report from Damascus

Nicola Nasser
The De-Arabization of the Arab League

Ron Jacobs
The Hollow Body: When Exactly Did the UN Lose Its Street Cred?

Mitchel Cohen
Mexico Rising

Seth Sandronsky
Migrant Labor and Uncle Sam

Bruce K. Gagnon
Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah's Top Ally in Israel


August 2, 2006

John Ross
Mexican Civil Resistance in Five Acts

Chip Mitchell
Kudos to Hitchens!

Saul Landau
Want Peace in the Middle East? End the Occupation

Naseer Aruri
The UN at the Dustbin of History: Does It Have the Capacity to Intervene?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress and the Pentagon: Co-Abusers of the War Budget

Matthias Gebauer
News on a Platter: the Middle East PR War

Joshua Frank
How the Kyoto Protocol Was (Al) Gored

Bill Quigley
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and North Dakota

Manuel Yang
A View of Gaza and Lebanon from the Interior

Shamai Leibowitz
Whitewashing Atrocities: the Tortured Language of War

David Himmelstein
Pulling the Plug on Israel

Lara Marlowe
The Total Destruction of Srifa

Website of the Day
As a Nuke Plant Falls

 

August 1, 2006

Michael Neumann
What is to be Said?: War on the Blathersphere

Robert Fisk
Into the Meat Grinder: NATO and Lebanon

Omar Barghouti
The Massacre at Qana: Were Racism and Fundamentalism Factors?

Marc Levy
Whatever You Did in the War will Always be With You

Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups

Claud Cockburn
Scenes from the Spanish Civil War

Ross Eisenbrey
When is a Raise Not a Raise? House Bill Actually Cuts Wages for Some Workers by $5.50 an Hour!

Dave Lindorff
Making the World Safe ... for Dictatorship

John Chuckman
Canada's Harper Blames the UN Dead

Francis Boyle
Prosecuting Israel: a War Crimes Tribunal May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War

Phil Doe
Bleak House Revisited: My Vacation in Water Court

Stephen Soldz
Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture

Website of the Day
An Unfair War

 

July 31, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Birth Pangs or Death Throes?

Uri Avnery
Syria in the Gunsight

Robert Fisk
Atrocity in Qana: Israel Kills 34 Kids

Amina Mire
The Struggle for Somalia: Warlords, Islamists, US Global Militarism and Women

Marjorie Cohn
Bush's Enemy Du Jour

Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver
All That's Given Up in the Name of Security

John Ross
Report from a Red Alert: Zapatistas at Critical Crossroads

Stanley Rogouski
Why Howard Dean Denounced Our Puppet in Iraq

Gideon Levy
Days of Darkness: the Cruel, Collective Punishment of Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
No One Is Illegal

James Ridgeway / Alicia Ng
Witch Hunting Russell Tice: 3 Films

Brian Tokar
The Visionary Life of Murray Bookchin

Alexander Cockburn
The Triumph of Crackpot Realism

July 29 / 30, 2006
Weekend Edition

Michael Neuman
Humanitarian Intervention: The White Man's Burden

Vijay Prashad
Cry Havoc: Anyone Who Opposes Israel is Labeled a Terrorist

Ramzi Kysia
Lebanon's Children: Voices from an Invasion

Werther
The Manchurian Clergyman: Rev. John Hagee's War

Robert Fisk
Bush and Blair: "Keep It Up!"

Patrick Cockburn
Repeating the 1982 Fiasco

Ralph Nader
Big Oil's Biggest Score: Who Says Crime Doesn't Pay?

Rachard Itani
Professor of Propaganda: the Lies of Alan Dershowitz

Eduardo Galeano
One Country Bombed Two Countries

Gary Leupp
Cowboys Still in the Saddle: Neocon Plans in the MIddle East

Eve Poretsky
The Biggest Stick in the Middle East

John Chuckman
Delusional Expectations: How Israel Could Destroy Itself

Fred Gardner
San Diego v. Prop 215

Juan Santos
Apocalypse No!: an Indigenist Perspective

Punyapriya Dasgupta
Israel's Foes as Beasts and Insects

Liaquat Ali Khan
The War Crime Machine: Defeating the IDF

Israel Shamir
Friends, True and False

William A. Cook
The Power of Evil

Stanley Heller
Bill Clinton Comes to Lieberman's Rescue

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War Crimes Dodge

Moshe Adler
Kelo, a Year Later: Property Sezied By Eminent Domain Must Remain Public

Susie Day
Comrade Bush: Back in the USSA

Pat Williams
The Right's Pre-Election Sleight of Hand

Anthony Papa
Collateral Damage from the War on Drugs

John V. Whitbeck
Imperial Overreach: Suez 1956 to Lebanon 2006

Jackie Corr
Last Rites for Evel Knievel

Myles Palmer
Old Soul: James Hunter's "People Gonna Talk"

Tom D'Antoni
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Louise, Davies, Engel and Meyers

Website of the Weekend
Electronic Lebanon

 

July 28, 2006

Jonathan Cook
The Lies Israel Tells Itself

Uri Avnery
Who is Winning? Questions and Answers About the War in Lebanon:

Renee Bowyer
When Condi Came to Ramallah

Robert Fisk
Smoke Signals from Bint Jbeil

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad's Death Squads, Official and Otherwise

Ramzy Baroud
The War in Lebanon: More Than Meets the Eye

Don Fitz
Half-Hour Hurricanes: Where Were the Warnings About St. Louis's Ultra Storm?

Elaine Cassel
The Second Andrea Yates Verdict: Why the Jury Did the Right Thing

David Price
Much Ado About Landis: What Kind of Tour de France Was It?

Mike Whitney
Bull's Eye: Israel's Targeted Assassination of UN Peacekeepers

Mickey Z.
Power (Outage) to the People: Why Queens Went Dark

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Power of Arrogance in a World Without Deterrence

Charles Glass
Operation "Save Israel's High Command"

Website of the Day
Military Intelligence and You!

 

July 27, 2006

Tanya Reinhart
Israel's New Middle East

Saul Landau
Castro at 80: History Absolved Him, Now What?

Ramzi Kysia
Watching Lebanon Burn: Notes From a Free Fire Zone

Tom Barry
John Bolton: Israel's Man at the UN

Joseph Grosso
Israel and Iraq: Hillary's White House Ticket

Sharon Smith
Lebanon and the Future of the Antiwar Movement

Gale Courey Toensing
9/11 Nablus: First, Destroy the Archives

Christopher Reed
Hirohito's Ghost: Japan's New Militarists

Werther
Hoosier Hooey: Is Terre Haute the Peshawar of the Midwest?

Yusuf Mansur
Can the Crime Justify the Act?

Richard Harth
Squeezing the Last Drops from Palestine

Website of the Day
Who's Arming Israel?


July 26, 2006

Norman Solomon
Applauding While Lebanon Burns: Richard Cohen's Blood Lust

Barbara Olshanksy
Gitmo: Justice Denied is Murder, and a War Crime

David Nally
The Detention of Ghazi Walid Falah: Israel Arrests Geography Professor from University of Akron

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

Michael Dickinson
Arrested in Istanbul: "Sorry, We Thought You Were Israeli!"

Robert Fisk
Beirut as Munich

Uri Avnery
Is Beirut Burning?

Website of the Day
Free Ghazi Walid Falah

 

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

 

 

 

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August 12 / 13, 2006

How Lebanon Looks from Malta

Forget the 50 Civilians

By ADRIAN GRIMA

Malta.

On Monday, July 17, 2006, journalist Herman Grech of The Times of Malta interviewed the outgoing Israeli Ambassador to Malta Ehud Gol at the end of his five-year term ("Don't pass judgement on us"). The interview was published five days after Israel began its attack on Lebanon, "ostensibly" to free two of its soldiers who were "captured by Hizbullah in a stunningly sophisticated military operation," as the independent Palestinian analyst Omar Barghouti put it, (1) at the Lebanese-Israeli border. Right from the start of its bombing spree in Lebanon, many saw the Israeli military's "deliberate, gradual massacre of innocent Lebanese civilians as a tactic to erode Hizbullah's public support." (2)

But when he was interviewed, Ambassador Ehud Gol claimed that Israel's military response was "less than proportionate." His Maltese interviewer confronted him with some figures: "Is it justified," he asked "to respond to kidnaps by launching air strikes against Beirut airport, imposing a naval blockade, and reprisals that have killed over 50 civilians, including 10 children?" Ambassador Gol played cynical: "Forget the 50 civilians. Who told you 50 civilians have been killed?" The international media is reporting these figures, retorted the journalist. "So what? You're a journalist. Do you think that everything reported is the truth?" Mr. Gol wasn't happy with this line of questioning.

Like every journalist worth their salt, Mr. Grech pushed on: "So do you actually think that no civilians have been killed in the Israeli attacks?" The Israeli military, replied Mr. Gol, was "targeting terrorists who take advantage of our moral values and hide among civilians." Then he gave an example. "Yesterday on TV I heard one report saying a family of 10 was killed, the other saying eight, and another 12. Maybe it was only one person. Maybe it was a family of six Hizbollah people. But ultimately the terrorists will use civilians to their advantage. They will launch rockets from heavily populated areas and we limit ourselves by not reacting immediately. We deal with vicious people that don't act to your codes. You're part of the Western world and you will never understand their codes."

His comments can at best be described as unfortunate. "Dawn air strikes on south Lebanon on 13 July 2006 claimed the lives of at least 44 civilians, including over 15 children, and wounded over 100. Israel bombed bridges linking the north and south of the country and all three runways of Beirut's commercial airport. The Israeli army's Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, promised that "nothing is safe in [Lebanon], as simple as that." Many peace and justice activists, but also many journalists would argue that "Operation Just Reward" is a campaign of collective punishment and excessive use of force similar to what the Palestinian territories have suffered for decades.

The Maltese activist and University lecturer Vince Caruana was one of those who wrote to The Times of Malta ("False proportionality," July 20, 2006) to challenge Mr. Gol's assertions and cynicism with regard to civilian casualties. Caruana spoke of how Israel's ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip, an unacceptable form of collective punishment, is producing a dire shortage of water, food, medicine, and electricity; of how Israel is deliberately destroying the civilian infrastructure in Gaza; of how children are being psychologically harmed by the systematic, round-the-clock use of sonic booms - resulting in panic attacks, sleep disturbances, bedwetting and other detrimental effects.

Reuven Abarjel, co-founder of the Israeli Black Panthers, and Smadar Lavie, Professor of Anthropology and Mizrahi Feminist Activist, trace the tragic events that are unfolding in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel today back to the landslide victory of Hamas in the democratic Palestinian legislative elections on January 25, 2006. Immediately after that victory, Israel's general attorney, Menny Mazouz, started exploring the legal procedures to jail the movement's leadership. Soon the Israeli military started executing the Gazan leadership of the movement by air strikes, killing scores of Palestinian civilians in the process. Then, on June 24, the Israelis entered the Gaza strip and kidnapped two Hamas men. The day after, Hamas responded by capturing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, which in turn led to the "Operation Summer Rains" military campaign which aimed to inflict "large-scale destruction and to press for Shalit's release." On 12 July, Hizbollah captured two more Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, in the Lebanese border zone. From then on, write Reuven Abarjel and Smadar Lavie, Israel's "Operation Adequate Pay" "has been inflicting heinous carnage and destruction all over Lebanon." (3)

Halim Wannous, a Lebanese Maronite Christian who has been living in Malta for the past 30 years, told the Malta Today that the West should be ashamed of itself for abandoning Lebanon and allowing Israel to get away with murder. He disagreed with the abduction of Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah. After freeing Lebanon of the Israeli occupation, the Lebanese expected Hizbollah to give up their arms." But Halim also disagreed with those who brand the movement as a terrorist one. "The majority of the Lebanese do not consider them as terrorists. At least within Lebanon they have never behaved as terrorists. They have always acted as a resistance group who freed southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. If Hizbollah are terrorists then what are the Israelis?" (4)

"Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face," wrote Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz; it is "sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything." Levy sees an intensification of "the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years," and in the meantime, "the left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or 'admitting mistakes.'" (5) Levy believes that "Israel went into the campaign on justified grounds" but "with foul means. It claims it has declared war on Hizbollah but, in practice, it is destroying Lebanon. [...] The air force could continue to sow destruction in the residential neighborhoods and empty offices and could also continue dropping dozens of tons of bombs on real or imagined bunkers and kill innocent Lebanese, but nothing good will come of it. (6)

One of the results of this tragic, absurd war on Lebanon is that some people in high places within the State of Israel may realize that nothing in the Middle East will ever be solved if Israel relies solely on it's overwhelming military might. Israel will never achieve peace and security without a just settlement through political means. This is definitely not to underestimate the threats that the State of Israel faces, but these threats only increase when Israel abuses of its military might as it is doing, quite consciously, in Lebanon and Gaza. There can be no longterm military solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, and this must have been clear for a very long time to everyone, both to the Israelis and to the Palestinians and other Arabs. The problems of the Middle East, as Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire has states, can only be solved through "dialogue and negotiations."

Writing a couple of days after the interview with Ambassador Gol, Benjamin Barthe argued in Le Monde that the Israeli military was facing an unhappy dilemma: continuing the air campaign of destroying Lebanon's infrastracture and bombing civilian targets would inevitably erode the support it was enjoying from Western governments; and launching a ground offensive against Hizbullah would expose the Israeli army to a repeat of the "catastrophic scenario at the end of the 1990s, faced by an enemy whose ardour had increased tenfold because of its renewed aura as 'liberator.'" (7) In both cases, wrote Benjamin Barthe, the Israeli army risks failing to reach the two targets set by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for this military operation: freeing the two captured soldiers and pushing Hizbullah onto the other side of the Litani river, 20km north of the Lebanese frontier with Israel. Events seem to have proved Barthe right, because as the Israeli military continues to pound its neighbour, and southern Lebanon in particular, Hizbollah continues to launch its rockets on military and civilian targets, that is on innocent people in their homes, schools, hospitals, strengthing the aura of invincibility it has gained over the years and rekindling the illusion among a permanently besieged and humiliated Palestinian population that firing rockets is the only way out of the hell of Occupation.

Call for Immediate Israeli Ceasefire

The Northern Irish 1976 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire issued a statement on 21st July with a call for an immediate Israeli ceasefire and for Israel to enter peace talks with President Abbas and Palestinian political representatives. Coming from someone who knows something about armed conflict and the permanent scars that it leaves on aggressors and victims, her statement is categorical and refuses to walk the convenient, ineffective middle path:

"I join my voice," she said from Belfast, "with millions of people around the world, calling on Israel to cease immediately its military assault on the people of Lebanon, and to enter talks with Palestinian representatives on an equitable and just resolution to the conflict with Palestine. The Israeli occupation, and reoccupation of Gaza, the building of an apartheid wall, the continuing administrative detention of hundreds of Palestinian citizens, the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and the Israeli longtime refusal to enter into serious dialogue with Palestinian Reps. to find a peaceful solution, is at the root of the ongoing violence against the people of Israel. Where hope of a peaceful solution is not offered by the Israeli Government, despair and violence increases."

Mairead Corrigan Maguire called on the International Community to "insist that Israel abide by International Law and enter serious negotiations with all parties to the conflict." But she also noted that Israeli State violence will not be solved by more violence, and she therefore called on "Hizbollah and Hamas, or whoever holds them, to release at once the captured Israeli soldiers, held in violation of international law, and to cease immediately their violence and rocket attacks on the people of Israel, and use nonviolence resistance in their rightful demand for justice for the Palestinian people."

It has been argued that although some, or perhaps many Palestinians see Hizbullah's
audacious military operation on 12th July as an act that has "taken the heat off Gaza for a while," as a friend in Occupied Palestine told me recently, many in the Arab world would argue that Hizbullah also had other reasons to provoke Israel that go beyond the sixty-year tragedy of the Palestinian people. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad of The Guardian interviewed Hizbullah fighters south of Tyre. they see the latest conflict as a war of survival not only for Hizbullah but for the whole Shia community. "If Israel comes out victorious from this conflict," they told the journalist, "this will be a victory for the Sunnis and they will take the Shia community back in history dozens of years to the time when we were only allowed to work as garbage collectors in this country. The Shia will all die before letting this happen again." (8)

Although he is aware of the movement's own interests, Uri Avnery believes that Hizbullah "would not have started this vicious circle of violence, if the Palestinians had not called for help. Either from cool calculation, or from true moral outrage, or from both - Nasrallah rushed to the rescue of beleaguered Palestine." But what is also clear to Avnery is that "No real solution will be achieved, because there is no treatment of the root of the matter: the Palestinian problem."

Breaking the Palestinians by devastating brutal force

It is always, inevitably, back to the Occupation of Palestine and the rights of the Palestinians refugees. Israel will deal with every new threat, be it the PLO, Arafat, Hamas, Hizbullah, but it sees its own unlawful acts as defensive acts and continues to refuse to face up to the fact that the Occupation of Palestine is illegal and unjust, as the United Nations established many years ago, and that it has to to respect the rights of Palestinian refugees. Tanya Reinhart, a lecturer in linguistics, media and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University and the University of Utrecht, expresses this tragic situation eloquently: "Since ending the occupation is the one thing Israel is not willing to consider, the option promoted by the army is breaking the Palestinians by devastating brutal force. They should be starved, bombarded, terrorized with sonic booms for months, until they understand that rebelling is futile, and accepting prison life is their only hope for staying alive. Their elected political system, institutions and police should be destroyed. In Israel's vision, Gaza should be ruled by gangs collaborating with the prison wards. (9)

Former Palestinian negotiator and member of St Antony's College, Oxford, Ahmad Samih Khalidi estimates that 650,000 acts of imprisonment have taken place since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, and that 9,000 Palestinians are currently in
Israel's jails. (10) Against the harsh background of a brutal Occupation, however Israel's latest adventure ends, Ahmad Samih Khalidi predicts that "it will not produce greater
sympathy and understanding between west and east, or a downturn in extremism. Indeed the most likely outcome is that a new wave of virulent and possibly unconventional anti-western terrorism may well crash against this and other shores. We will all - Israelis, Arabs and westerners - suffer as a result. (11)

Peace and quiet in the Middle East require three things according to Rami G. Khouri, and military action is not one of them: "Arabs and Israelis must be treated equally; both domestically and internationally the rule of law must define the actions of governments and all members of society; and the core conflict between Palestine and Israel must be resolved in a fair, legal and sustainable manner." (12)

A Non-Violent boycott to End a Violent Occupation

On another Monday, two weeks after the interview with Ambassador Gol appeared in Malta, veteran European NGO workers write to us at 1.52 in the morning from Gaza. It's the last of a tragic string of emails. "Israel continues its mad, systematic destruction of Gaza. Today, within two hours, helicopters bombed two more houses, one in Saftawi, the other in Beit Hanoun in the North. The second attack was preceded by a telephone call with a recorded message warning the family to move out of their home within two hours." This is their latest game. "Nine houses have been destroyed in four days using this system. After less than half an hour, the Israeli Occupation Forces bombed the police station of Al-Sara'ya. We don't yet know whether there were any victims."

And yet, many Israelis cannot understand why a boycott of Israel, and more precisely a boycott of institutions that support the Occupation, is the only way a just and hopefully lasting peace can be achieved. Perhaps it is because they don't see the Occupation as the root cause of the woes in the Middle East of today; their main concern is Israel's daily struggle for survival in a region they perceive as ruled by fanatics and fundamentalists. What, perhaps, they do not see is that there can never be peace without justice ­ and the Occupation and plight of the Palestinian refugees is grossly unjust.

An international boycott will vindicate and strengthen those who are working for a just and peaceful end to the Occupation. It will certainly alienate many Israelis who will feel doubly wronged, by "terrorism" and a "boycott," but perhaps it will also force them to question what they have been told by the powers-that-be and prompt them to at least consider the reasons why the international community, including many well-known figures of undisputed good will and judgement, is subjecting them to a boycott. Perhaps the boycott will also prompt the State of Israel to reconsider the rights, or lack of rights, of the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

In the meantime, Staff Sergeant Itzik Shabbat, a 28-year-old TV producer became the first Israeli conscientious objector of the Lebanon 2006 war. "I know people will attack me and ask how could I not take part in this war when Qassams are falling on my hometown and Katyushas on the towns in the north," he told Ha'aretz. "In my opinion, only this type of opposition that I've chosen will put an end to the madness that is going on now and will shatter the false feeling that the entire home front supports this unnecessary war that is based on deceptive considerations." Ha'aretz also reported that Shabbat, considered an outstanding commander, also refused to serve in the territories and sat in prison for 28 days. He was one of the signatories to the petition of the refusal movement, Courage to Refuse. "However he says that his present decision is not connected with the need to relieve a unit in the territories but rather with his opposition to the war in Lebanon. The larger Yesh Gvul movement started by opposing the 1982 Lebanon war and only later the territories, too." (13)

The Palestinian boycott campaigner Omar Barghouti argues that "Arab civil society ought to struggle to further spread the reach and depth of the growing, progressive movement advocating a boycott of Israel, similar to that applied to apartheid South Africa. Ultimately, only such a morally sound, non-violent form of resistance can produce sustainable and practical pressures that can hold Israel to account and therefore give just peace a chance." (14)

Three weeks after Barghouti published his article, a Tel Aviv University poll showed 93 per cent of Israelis believed the campaign in Lebanon was justified, and 91 per cent backed the air strikes even if they destroyed Lebanese infrastructure and inflicted suffering on civilians. (15) That was more than 1000 deaths and one million refugees after the start of the bombing campaign and invasion of Lebanon.

This is not a foiled attempt to wreak havoc. This is havoc being wreaked before our eyes. While we speak and write.

Adrian Grima lectures in Maltese Literature at the University of Malta. He can be reached at: adrian@maltaforum.org

Notes.

1. Omar Barghouti, "A New Middle East is Born: But not exactly the one Shimon Peres had in mind," Electronic Lebanon, 19 July 2006, accessed on 20 July 2006,

2. Barghouti, "A New Middle East is Born."

3. Reuven Abarjel and Smadar Lavie, "Another Act in the Mizrahi-Palestinian Tragedy," The Electronic Intifada, 24 July 2006.

4. James Debono, "'You are destroying my country,' Halim's desperate words," MaltaToday, 23 July 2006. Accessed on 31 July 2006.

5. "Days of darkness,"

6. Gideon Levy, "Stop now, immediately," Ha'aretz.

7. Benjamin Barthe, "La résistance du Hezbollah provoque un débat en Israël," Le Monde Article paru dans l'édition du 20.07.06. 19.07.06 on the electronic edition. "S'il opte pour une opération terrestre dans l'espoir de provoquer la déroute du Hezbollah, il s'expose à revivre le scénario catastrophe de la fin des années 1990, face à un ennemi dont l'ardeur sera décuplée par son aura renouvelée de 'libérateur.'"

8. "As the shells fall around them, Hizbullah men await the Israelis," Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Saturday July 29, 2006 The Guardian. .

9. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4995.shtml.

10. Ahmad Samih Khalidi, "If Israel has the right to use force in self defence, so do its neighbours," The Guardian, July 18, 2006.

11. Ahmad Samih Khalidi.

12. Rami G. Khouri, "Back to Beirut, ready to defy Israel," The Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon, July 19, 2006.

13. Lily Galili, "Fighting in Lebanon produces its first conscientious objector," Ha'aretz (19/07/2006)

14. Barghouti, "A New Middle East is Born."

15. Reuters, "Israel expands war," The Times (Malta), Thursday, August 10, 2006.



 

 

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