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May 13, 2002
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
May 10, 2002
Lisa Taraki
In Defense
of Sanctions
Against Israel
Jack McCarthy
Snitch Envy: Hitchens, Brock and
Whitaker Chambers
John Jonik
Tobacco
and Teens: Criminalizing the Victiims
Vijay Prashad
Fettered Histories:
Tariq Ali and Ahmed Rashid
on Islam
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Analyst Details
The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United State
Omar Barghouti
Israel's Best Interest
May 9, 2002
Alex Lynch
American
Mainstream Media:
Institutionalized Subjectivity
Alexander Cockburn
The Armey Plan:
Palestine to Ft. Worth?
May 8, 2002
James
Masterson
Hysteria
and Panic
About France
Robert Fisk
The Solution to this Filthy War: Foreign
Occupation
Edward
Hammond
and Jan van Aken
Pentagon
Pushed for Offensive BioWeapons Development
David Vest
From Ground Zero to the Bronx
May 7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Bone
Apart:
The Graveyard of Napoleon's Defeated Army
Philip
Farruggio
Muffler
Shop Medicine
Norman
Madarasz
French
Elections:
Pandora's Ballot
Tom Turnipseed
A Travesty of Justice
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
Days That
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By Alexander
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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:
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by Cockburn
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May 14,
2002
Leaving the Truth
Out?
Alternative
Online Publication Reiterates the Big Lie About Palestine
by Jacob Levich
Truthout, an online newsletter and website boasting 250,000
subscribers, wants to outflank the distortions of mainstream
media by disseminating news of interest to left-liberals. But
its commitment to truth-telling seemingly stops short when it
comes to Palestine.
On May 7, the Truthout newsletter linked
to an Associated Press story about the Rishon Letzion suicide
bombing. The AP report correctly refrained from identifying a
perpetrator. (The party responsible is still unknown, although
Hamas looks like the most likely culprit and the PA has since
arrested 15 Hamas members in response.)
But Truthout flagged the story with a
headline spun out of thin air: "Palestinian Authority Strikes
Killing 15 Israelis."
Worse was soon to come.
Truthout (http://www.truthout.org)
is, or at any rate purports to be, one of the hip new breed of
independent news sources providing alternatives to the biases
of corporate media. (Of these, the Indymedia operation is probably
the most celebrated; the libertarian Antiwar.com is possibly
the most useful.)
Truthout's editor, Marc Ash, claims the
publication has no organizational affiliations and is entirely
reader-supported -- though five staffers, and the server power
necessary to support a quarter-million users, don't come cheap.
Given its incessant showcasing of Beltway Democrats -- even career
hacks like Daschle and Gephardt get flattering headlines whenever
they say anything remotely progressive -- I've sometimes wondered
whether it's actually a James Carville-style undercover operation,
aimed at cajoling Naderites back into the Democratic fold.
(Suggestively, of all the questions I
asked Ash about Truthout's history, purpose, and funding, the
only one he was willing to answer was whether the publication
is connected in some way with the Democratic Party. It is not,
he said, and I'll take him at his word -- though I suspect a
list of contributors might make interesting reading.)
At any rate, Truthout has frequently
attacked the Bush administration for lying about its aggressive
global agenda, and has criticized mainstream media for reporting
those lies uncritically. Typically, however, an exception is
made where Palestine is concerned.
After reading the May 7 number, I was
one of many readers who emailed Ash asking for a correction.
None was forthcoming. Instead, on the following day all 250,000
readers received an apologia via mass email -- one containing
a lie so easily detectable that not even the wildest pro-Sharon
propagandists would touch it.
"Yes, Hamas has claimed direct responsibility
for this latest act of insanity," Ash wrote. "But do
any of you honestly believe this could have happened while the
IDF had Arafat under detention? It could not. Did you not notice
that while Arafat was 'besieged' and exile was on the table the
bombings stopped? Now he is once again a free man and the bombings
have resumed."
This, of course, is a very serious charge
-- if true, it would lend considerable moral weight to Sharon's
claim that the IDF's recent invasion of the West Bank was a defensive
operation. But it's wholly false. In fact, at least six suicide
bombings took place between March 29, when Israel confined Arafat
to his Ramallah compound, and May 1, when he was granted partial
liberty.
The truth was easy to check -- it took
me about 45 seconds on Yahoo. And it's pretty hard to believe
that the editor of a daily newsletter covering international
affairs could have been ignorant of the bombings, all of which
received banner headlines in the newspapers.
What we have here, in other words, is
a prime specimen of The Big Lie. Does it matter? Hell, yes. A
lie that remains unchallenged quickly acquires the status of
a "fact" which can be cited in service of further slaughter.
Moreover, this kind of open contempt for journalistic standards
and ethics plays neatly into the hands of traditional media types,
who are always looking for reasons to dismiss alternative news
sources as rumormongers and conspiracy theorists.
To date, despite repeated requests, Truthout
has declined to run a clarification, explanation, or retraction.
Says Ash: "I spoke the truth and I am glad."
After all, quoth jesting Pilate, what
is truth?
Jacob Levich
is an online editor living in Queens, NY. He can be reached at:
jlevich@earthlink.net
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