Today's Stories

October 21, 2009

Pam Martens
The Next Financial Crisis Hits Wall Street: Judges Start Nixing Foreclosures

October 20, 2009

Sharon Smith
Et Tu, Codepink?

Tariq Ali
Farce in Kabul, Tragedy in Pakistan

Mark Brenner
Pensions: the Next Casualty of Wall Street

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Adoption of the Goldstone Report: What Does It Mean?

Michael D. Yates
Down in the Valley With Cesar: Power, Paranoia and Purges in the UFW

Dean Baker
Does Citibank Need China?

Dave Lindorff
Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan are No Joke

John Ross
Chronicle of a Tormenta Electrica, II

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: a Very Important Liar

Kevin Zeese
Can the Democrats Avoid a Populist Health Care Rebellion?

Gilad Atzmon
Autumn in Shanghai

Website of the Day
A Message From the Gyre

October 19, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Dollar Will Not Crash

Greg Moses
The Cash Cops of Tenaha

John Ross
Chronicle of a Tormenta Electrica

Michael Donnelly
Outside Agitator

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Dick's Fringe Army: Tea Baggers and Birchers?

Eric Walberg
The Battle in Canada

Russell Mokhiber
Pennsylvania, First in the Nation for Single Payer?

Barbara Rose Johnston
War, Peace and the Obamajority

John V. Whitbeck
Zionism: an Anti-Semite's Dream?

Christopher Ketcham
Swine Fools

Website of the Day
Greenspan: Break Up the Big Banks?

October 16-18, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
White House v. Fox News: a War Obama Can Win

Saul Landau
Autumn of the Patriarch

Paul Craig Roberts
The Rich Have Stolen the Economy

Carl Ginsburg
Where $18 an Hour is Too Much

Ralph Nader
Barney Frank the Bankers' Consort

Nikolas Kozloff
Rainforest Beef, Factory Farms and Anthony Bourdain's War on Vegetarians

Carlo Galli
Berlusconi: Still Doing Nothing, Still There

Dave Lindorff
Agent Orange in Vietnam: Ignoring the Crimes Before Our Eyes

Catherine Rottenberg / Neve Gordon
Educating Children in War Zones

Marshall Auerback
Dollar Spasms

Nicola Nasser
The Realistic Way Out of Iraq

Windy Cooler
The Ghost of John Brown

James L. Secor
Why I Miss China

Ron Jacobs
Escalation Unopposed

Wes Jackson
A Way of Knowing

Jesse Lerner-Kinglake
Global Food Fight

David Ker Thomson Against Leaders

Missy Beattie
Dinner With the President

Emily Ratner
Taping Our Mouths Shut to Scream Out Our Dissent

Stephen Martin
The Scorched Earth Mindset of the International Banker

Michael Snedeker
"A Place of Greater Safety"

Charles R. Larson
Cheeta: the Last of the Hollywood High-Rollers

David Yearsley
Judith Leyster's Sensuous Passions

Peter Stone Brown
It's a Bob Christmas for Halloween

Poets' Basement
Keeler, Beatty and Anderson

Website of the Weekend
Elements of Nature

October 15, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
Our Cheap Politicians

Brian M. Downing
Rethinking the Afghan Insurgency

Ramzy Baroud
Abbas and the Goldstone Report: Our Shame is Complete

Danny Weil
A Neo-Liberal Arts Education: Diploma Mills and Debt Peonage

M. Idrees Ahmad
Return to Peshawar: a Journey Home

Margaret Kimberley
Michelle's Family Tree

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: Which Side Are You On?

Harvey Wasserman
Nuking the Climate Bill

Nirmal Ghosh
A Tale of Two Protocols: How Montreal Could Save Us From the Mire of Kyoto

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin Bears It All

Website of the Day
Tortured Law

October 14, 2009

Michael Neumann
Fearsome Words? a Suppressed Talk on the Israel/Palestine Conflict

M. Reza Pirbhai
Fighting the Taliban: What, Exactly, is Being Fought in Afghanistan?

Gareth Porter
Hawks Play Up the Taliban's Ties to Al Qaeda

Paul Craig Roberts
War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law

John Strausbaugh Fortress Moon

Ralph Nader
The CBO's Flawed Report on Medical Malpractice

Dean Baker
Won't You Please Come to Chicago to Greet the Bankers?

Charles Modiano
White Silence: Where Does Brett Favre Stand on Rush Limbaugh?

Nadia Hijab
Abandoning "Women and Children"

Walter Brasch
An Extension of Her Motherhood: Sherry Carpenter, Journalist and Animal Care Provider

Website of the Day
Nader: Obama Has a "Concessionary Personality"

October 13, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Putting the Spine Back in the Commonwealth

Shamus Cooke
What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers

John Ross
War on Mexican Women

Brendan Cooney
Ask Awal Khan About Obama's Prize

Frida Berrigan
Operation Enduring Detentions: Losing the Moral High Ground

Yves Engler
Is Canada More Pro-Israel Than the US?

David Macaray
Why the Government Fears Unions

Dave Lindorff
Democrats: Selling Out, But Still Getting Screwed

Mark Weisbrot
Occupying Afghanistan is Making Things Worse

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
History Repeats Itself

Binoy Kampmark
That Dirty Colonial War

Website of the Day
The Health Insurance Industry's Latest Doublecross

October 12, 2009

Pam Martens
Secret Deal Between Wall Street and Washington Shines a Harsh Light on Federal Housing Agency

Mike Whitney
A Dollar Rout or More Bernanke Trickery?

Martha Rosenberg
Yale Lab Tech Causes Two Problems for Animal Researchers

Jessica Arents
The Price of Peace: Our Arrest at the White House

Eamonn McCann
Massacre in Ireland, Massacre in Iraq

Bill Hatch
Dairy Industry Goes Down the Tubes

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time for a Timetable in Afghanistan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Siren Song of World Praise

Gideon Levy
Obama's Betrayed Mission in the Middle East

Iyad Burnat
Why Does Obama Get a Prize and Bush Got Shoes?

Alan Cabal
Why Obama Deserves the Nobel

Dan Bacher
The Astroturf Method

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help

October 9-11, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
War and Peace

James Bovard
Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

Kathleen and Bill Christison
New Crisis Developing in Palestine

Andy Worthington
Congressional Depravity on Gitmo

Marc Levy
Talking Dirty to the Kids

Tariq Ali
Ahmed Rashid's War

Mike Whitney
The Securitization Boondoggle

Paul Craig Roberts
Warmonger Wins Peace Prize

Alan Nasser
Cockeyed Economics

Jack Z. Bratich
The Twitterest Pill: Policing Dissent in the Information Age

Steve Breyman
Time for a War Tax

David Michael Green
A Hapless Presidency

Dave Lindorff
The WTF Prize

Paul Buchheit
Fear of the Rich

Jim Goodman
Feedlots and E. Coli

Missy Beattie
Theater of the Absurd

Michael Leonardi
Ships of Poison

Nadia Hijab
The Plight of the Right of Return

Mel Packer
The Crackdown on Pittsburgh

David Macaray
The Raiding Game

James T. Phillips
Getting Burned

Charles R. Larson
One Man's Walk Through Hell

Michael Donnelly
Behind the Capitalist Curtain

David Yearsley
The Biggest Blot on Mel Gibson's Rap Sheet

Lorenzo Wolff
Rap That Threatens ... and Endures

Poets' Basement
Heyen, Ames and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Jobs Conference

October 8, 2009

Saul Landau
A Late September Morning With Fidel

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Dark Omens for the US in Afghanistan

Linn Washington, Jr.
Pot and Perversion: Judicial Antics Expose Drug War Insanity

Marshall Auerback
Neo-Classical Economics Misses What Matters

Dave Lindorff
A Nation of Snoops

David Rosen
Bankrupt Morality: the Staying Power of Republican Sinners

Chris Darimont / Misty MacDuffee
The Bear Essentials: New Thinking Needed to Save BC's Salmon and Grizzlies

John V. Walsh
Remembering Hinton's Fanshen

Stewart Lawrence
The Edwards / Hunter Affair Reconsidered

Charles R. Larson
Conservatives in the Sandbox

Website of the Day
Et Tu, Code Pink?

October 7, 2009

Brendan Cooney
Are Republicans Breaking US Law in Honduras?

Paul Craig Roberts
Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Recovery: Unemployment Up, Wages Down (But the Banks Have Been Saved ... Sort Of)

Jonathan Cook
A Third Intifada?

John Stanton
HTS: Congress Rewards Failure, Puts Personnel in Harms Way

Joanne Mariner
Tortured Language

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cherry Blossoms

Stephen Lendman
The Gaza War's Effect on Women

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time to Draw Down in Afghanistan

Mary Lynn Cramer
Doublespeak on Health Care

Website of the Day
How to Bag a Wolf by Aerial Assault

October 6, 2009

Mike Whitney
Dollar Hysteria: Is the Sky Really Falling?

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Rift in the IAEA: Leaked Paper Based on Disputed Intel

Jonathan Cook
How Israel Buried the UN's War Crime Probe

Boris Kagarlitsky
My Hour as Talking Head in Moscow

Iain Boal
The New Crisis at Pacifica

Ron Jacobs
Why Are We in Afghanistan?

John Ross
Wave of Anarchist Bombings Strikes Mexico

Michael Dickinson
Panic in Istanbul: Smoke, Mayhem and the World Bank

Stephen Fleischman
Beware the Predator

Ira Glunts
The Audacity of Nope

Missy Beattie
Outside Looking In

Website of the Day
Round Up the Usual Suspects

October 5, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering with a Federal Agency

Mike Whitney
Dead Man Walking: Welcome to the US Economy

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent

Harry Browne
Ireland Says, "Yes, Please"

Sara Mann
My Little Town: Nothin' But the Dead and Dyin'

Omar Barghouti
Dissolve the Palestinian Authority

Shamus Cooke
A Jobless Recovery?

Brenda Norrell
A Dirty New Low for Peabody Coal

Fred Gardner
Situation NORML: Reconciling Medical Pot Use and Legalization

Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap

Website of the Day
In Goldman Sachs We Trust?

October 2-4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Geezer Renditions

Saul Landau
News From Raul Castro

Diana Johnstone
After the German Elections: Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe?

Greg Moses
Cramming for the Downside

William Blum
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Another Cold War Myth

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Nuclear Program: Where's the Proof?

Russell Mokhiber
Welcome Back, Michael Moore

John Ross
Chomsky in Mexico

Ellen Brown
IMF Catapults From Shunned Agency to Global Central Bank

David Ker Thomson
Cop Shocks

David Macaray
The Audacity of Toyota

Gary Engler
Unions in a Rut

Robert Fantina
Meet the New Boss (Same as the Old Boss)

Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer
Pittsburgh: Still a (Coal) Company Town

Anthony Papa
Here is Your Chance to Help End the Failed War on Drugs

Joe Allen
The Good Wife: Bad View of a Corrupt System

Harry Browne
Tarantino Scalps His Audience

Ron Jacobs
Collective Fiction

Charles R. Larson
Cultural Warriors: Austrialian Aboriginal Art Triennial

David Yearsley
Hanns Eisler's Great National Anthem for East Germany is Available: Make It America's

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Gardner and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Wrongful Convictions of Youth

October 21, 2009

Can International Law Forestall a Golanian Intifada?

Syria's Golan Heights

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Qunaitra

Nationals from nearly one-third of the 192 member states of the United Nations met in Damascus last week to discuss the Return/Liberation of the Golan Heights.   An estimated 5000 researchers, lawyers, politicians, activists, victims of Israel’s 42 years of occupation, students and members of the public, attended the opening event in Qunaitra, the Golan capital city, which in a frenzy of frustration at being forced to return the city it had occupied since 1967 (Comment: think Gaza 2005), the Israeli ordered bulldozed, shelled, and booby trapped by its retreating forces as Qunaitra was surrendered to Syria.

The Conference heard the likes of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark argue that the International community and rules of International law could not be clearer in requiring the full return of the 1,860 sq. meters of the Syrian territory, despite Israeli claims  over the years of ‘border irregularities’.

As the International Court of Justice declared in the Burkina Faso and Mali cases, two former French colonies, the frontier existing at the moment of independence, which Syria achieved in April 1946, is frozen like a snapshot taken at the exact moment of Independence.

Some attendees at the large Damascus conclave, often huddling on the sidelines, discussed, analyzed and even advocated a Golan Intifada. They argued that the whole international community, except Israel, and the full corpus of international law, supported the immediate and complete return of the Syrian Golan Height’s to the nearly 350,000 displaced Golan inhabitants, being those who make up 90 per cent of the Golan’s pre-1967 population from the 130 villages and 112 agricultural areas Israel destroyed as it occupied the Golan. These delegates explained to observers that resistance in all its forms may be the most realistic path for the return of the Golan.  They point to the success of the Hezbollah led National Lebanese Resistance in regaining most of Lebanon’s Zionist occupied territory.

 One Golani who studies in Damascus told this observer, “We don’t expect help from Hezbollah.  They have made clear to us they do not “do branches” in other countries despite requests for help around the region, but we have learned much from their experience and we  will apply their logic and tactics.”

“Syria is rising” another joined in, “we are strong psychologically, militarily and as a result of more democracy the past several years our people are united and we are motivated to seek the immediate return of our land, whatever it takes.”

They argued that what Hezbollah did in Lebanon, and what Hamas is doing in Gaza, Syrian patriots can do in the Golan. They believe they would be joined by thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese that might well lead to an unprecedented violent eruption of the Middle East.
 One Conference student volunteer interpreter from Damascus University wearing a hijab, quoted Lebanon’s Senior Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who heads social services agencies here in Syria as he does in Lebanon.  Ayatollah Fadlallah frequently argues from the grand Mosque in Dahiyeh that all Arab Muslim and non-Muslims must join to fight against Israel, “because when the enemy launched a war against Palestine and the Arab world, including the Golan Heights, it was legal and obligatory to declare war in response to regain stolen land.”

There appears to be building pressure on the Bashar Assad government to act or allow a popular Intifada, despite analysts here arguing that it is unlikely that his government would agree near term.  Many here are encouraged by Bishop Desmond Tutu’s fact finding report of September 2008 to the Human Rights Council on the Israeli shelling of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip in 2006, which led to the death of nineteen civilians as well as the   growing international reaction to last month’s Goldstone Report on Gaza.

International law and the Golan Heights
The law on the subject and the demolition of Israel’s arguments for retaining the Golan could barely be more complete.  In addition to  many UN resolutions condemning Israel’s Golan takeover as violations of customary international law and Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter which outlaws the acquisition of territory by force and requiring  the immediate withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from  the Golan Heights virtually all legal analysts agree on the imperative of full return.

One of the Israel lobby’s repeatedly amplified myths has been that Syria indiscriminately rained artillery shells on peaceful Jewish settlements on the plain of Galilee without provocation thus allowing Israeli to invade as part of its right of self-defense.

Among the scores who have exposed this canard are Israeli authors such as Professor Avi Shlaim, in his volume “The Myth of the Golan Heights” in which he writes: “They (the Israelis) began by staking an illegal claim to the sovereignty over the (demilitarized) zone and then proceeded, as opportunity offered, to encroach on all the specific provisions against introducing armed forces and fortification.  They repeatedly obstructed the operations of the UN observers , on one occasion even threatening to kill them…They expelled, or otherwise forced out, Arab inhabitants and razed their villages to the ground.”
Moreover, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Minister of Defense at the time, explained to an Israeli journalist in 1976:
“I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there (on the Golan front) started.  In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent.  It went this way: we would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot.  If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.  And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was…” (The Golan: Ending Occupation, Establishing Peace, London, 2007).

Dayan later added, “There was really no pressing reason to go to war with Syria…..the kibbutz residents who pressed the government to take the Golan Heights did it less for security than for the farmland.”

Syrians cite the human rights situation in the Golan as no longer tolerable, as noted in various UN reports as “persistent” and “significant deterioration”.  A 2002 UN Special Committee report described the repression of the Syrian inhabitants under Israel occupation as “extensive, affecting, all aspect of life and families, villages and communities”, adding that “there are also widespread economic consequences of the occupation.”

All Syrians interviewed during and following the October 11-12th Conference appear bitter over the separation of families who live on either side of the valley constituting the demarcation line.  Syrian students return to their families in the occupied Golan face, several hours of questioning and even the presents they bring are confiscated.  Others are held in arbitrary detention for many days, facing torture and humiliation.

A 1998 Human Rights Watch report of the Golan Heights concludes that “Israel seriously misrepresents the degree of its fulfillment of its treaty obligations” under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights it signed in January 1992.

For the international community, including the United Nations and American and European policy makers the coming choice appears to be implement International law or witness another explosion in this volatile region.

Franklin Lamb is Director of the Washington-DC, Beirut Lebanon Sabra-Shatila Foundation and can be reached at fplamb@sabrashatila.org

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time
by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

Click here to Buy!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

"Powerful and shocking ..
see this film"
-- Joseph Stiglitz on American Casino

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont