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June 13, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
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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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 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:
a User's Manual
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June 13,
2002
Indefinite
Siege
by Amira Hass
Ha'aretz
The far-reaching significance of Israel's siege
policy and the institutionalization of the pass system for travel
through the West Bank is in direct contradiction to the minimal--if
any--interest shown in Israel about the phenomenon.
The siege policy is perceived as a legitimate
means to prevent attacks on Israelis inside Israel, and on soldiers
and settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since September
2000, the sieges on all the Palestinian cities and villages has
been increasingly tightened and at the same time, motivation
has risen among young Palestinians to kill themselves in suicide
attacks on Israelis. The Palestinians understand that urge as
a reaction to the concrete suffocation that the siege creates,
as well as a metaphor for their utter lack of hope for a chance
for free lives. On the Israeli side, the majority is convinced
that there is no connection between the two and that if not for
the sieges, the number of attacks would greatly increase.
So, there's no point in wasting words
on Israelis on the immorality of effectively locking up 3 million
people in enclaves, between barbed wire and frightening army
checkpoints. What the Palestinians perceive as ruthless collective
punishment, the Israelis perceive as a necessary evil: It may
cause "discomfort" to the innocent, but it is the system
that puts limits on the use of lethal means in the hands of the
army.
For the same reason, explanations by
the coordinator of government activity in the territories, that
the pass system in the West Bank is meant to ease the situation
for the Palestinians, sound logical. And the Israel Defense Forces
has been doing what it can in the past few weeks to make it easier
for the government coordinator to make his position clear. The
closure of every city, town and village is more and more hermetic,
and more and more violent. That's why when people are being sent
to the Civil Administration offices to ask for permission to
do the most basic things in daily life--go to work, to school,
to the doctor, to friends, to family--it appears humane.
Nonetheless, here's a scenario built
into the siege policy. Most people considered the pass system
as a "temporary measure." But, since it now covers
all Palestinian movement inside the territories, it's impossible
to distinguish between it and the settlements' existence. The
internal sieges are meant to protect their security and safety
and the safety of the soldiers protecting the settlements. As
opposed to the illusions of those who support peace, Israel does
not regard the settlements as "temporary" or as a "bargaining
card." The statistics about the growth of the settlements
in the "peace decade" of Madrid and Oslo are proof
of this.
Bureaucratic institutions have a tendency
to perpetuate themselves and their methods. The IDF and the Civil
Administration will do all they can in the coming years to convince
whoever they must that it's still not time to give up the travel
pass system, which means maximum supervision of all Palestinian
movement. Their approach will influence the political negotiations
in the coming years.
Just as the travel pass between Gaza
and the West Bank became a permanent feature, the travel passes
for movement inside the West Bank will become permanent. People
will wait days and weeks for permission to go from one town to
the next, and that permission won't be granted--whether because
of a lack of manpower, or because of efforts to draft recruits
as informants. Every commercial and industrial activity will
require the good graces of an Israeli official who will apply
his own personal translation to the rules handed down by the
Shin Bet and the army, and those rules will change daily.
As the World Bank has warned, sieges
and closures are in direct contradiction to every principle of
development and advancement of the private sector. It will only
take a few months for the division of the West Bank into disconnected
enclaves to reduce most of the Palestinian population into welfare
cases. The higher education system will totally collapse--of
course, the security authorities in Israel always have regarded
the students as a dangerous population that should not be allowed
to travel. It will be impossible to rehabilitate industry because
of the need for credit in other cities, the marketing costs (the
back-to-back trucking system, which requires multiple transfers
of goods from one truck to the next on the outskirts of each
town, forbidding direct transport of merchandise from town to
town), the difficult in finding labor and the lack of land reserves
(most of the open land is outside the areas under siege).
Already the sieges are causing severe
sanitation and health problems. There are signs of malnutrition,
it is difficult to move refuse to areas outside the boundaries
of the siege, and water is in short supply, particularly in those
villages that depend on regular delivery of water containers.
This is in addition to delays in medical supplies and vaccinations
for infants. As unemployment mounts, such problems and many others
will only get worse.
The long-term imprisonment in the enclaves
is paralyzing the senses, the desire and the ability to initiate,
blocking both individual and collective creativity. But it presumably
is pushing more desperate young people to dream about their own
destructive reaction to the Israeli policy, no matter how difficult
it will be to accomplish.
This is only an imaginary scenario for
those who aren't ready to look at what's going on a kilometer
from their homes and those who aren't ready to think about "security"
in terms that are far from long-term.
Amira Hass
writes for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
Today's
Features
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
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