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April 17, 2002
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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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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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
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April 16, 2002
Chemical Coup
The
US Wants to Depose the Diplomat Who Could Take Away Its Pretext
for War With Iraq
by George Monbiot
On Sunday, the US government will launch an international
coup. It has been planned for a month. It will be executed quietly,
and most of us won't know what is happening until it's too late.
It is seeking to overthrow 60 years of multilateralism in favor
of a global regime built on force.
The coup begins with its attempt, in
five days' time, to unseat the man in charge of ridding the world
of chemical weapons. If it succeeds, this will be the first time
that the head of a multilateral agency will have been deposed
in this manner. Every other international body will then become
vulnerable to attack. The coup will also shut down the peaceful
options for dealing with the chemical weapons Iraq may possess,
helping to ensure that war then becomes the only means of destroying
them.
The Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) enforces the chemical weapons convention.
It inspects labs and factories and arsenals and oversees the
destruction of the weapons they contain. Its director-general
is a workaholic Brazilian diplomat called Jose Bustani. He has,
arguably, done more in the past five years to promote world peace
than anyone else on earth. His inspectors have overseen the destruction
of 2 million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world's chemical
weapon facilities. He has so successfully cajoled reluctant nations
that the number of signatories to the convention has risen from
87 to 145 in the past five years: the fastest growth rate of
any multilateral body in recent times.
In May 2000, as a tribute to his extraordinary
record, Bustani was re-elected unanimously by the member states
for a second five-year term, even though he had yet to complete
his first one. Last year Colin Powell wrote to him to thank him
for his "very impressive" work. But now everything
has changed. The man celebrated for his achievements has been
denounced as an enemy of the people.
In January, with no prior warning or
explanation, the US state department asked the Brazilian government
to recall him, on the grounds that it did not like his "management
style". This request directly contravenes the chemical weapons
convention, which states "the director-general ... shall
not seek or receive instructions from any government". Brazil
refused. In March the US government accused Bustani of "financial
mismanagement", "demoralization" of his staff,
"bias" and "ill-considered initiatives".
It warned that if he wanted to avoid damage to his reputation,
he must resign.
Again, the US was trampling the convention,
which insists that member states shall "not seek to influence"
the staff. He refused to go. On March 19 the US proposed a vote
of no confidence in Bustani. It lost. So it then did something
unprecedented in the history of multi lateral diplomacy. It called
a "special session" of the member states to oust him.
The session begins on Sunday. And this time the US is likely
to get what it wants.
Since losing the vote last month, the
United States, which is supposed to be the organization's biggest
donor, has been twisting the arms of weaker nations, refusing
to pay its dues unless they support it, with the result that
the OPCW could go under. Last week Bustani told me, "the
Europeans are so afraid that the US will abandon the convention
that they are prepared to sacrifice my post to keep it on board".
His last hope is that the United Kingdom, whose record of support
for the organization has so far been exemplary, will make a stand.
The meeting on Sunday will present Tony Blair's government with
one of the clearest choices it has yet faced between multilateralism
and the "special relationship".
The US has not sought to substantiate
the charges it has made against Bustani. The OPCW is certainly
suffering from a financial crisis, but that is largely because
the US unilaterally capped its budget and then failed to pay
what it owed. The organization's accounts have just been audited
and found to be perfectly sound. Staff morale is higher than
any organization as underfunded as the OPCW could reasonably
expect. Bustani's real crimes are contained in the last two charges,
of "bias" and "ill-considered initiatives".
The charge of bias arises precisely because
the OPCW is not biased. It has sought to examine facilities in
the United States with the same rigor with which it examines
facilities anywhere else. But, just like Iraq, the US has refused
to accept weapons inspectors from countries it regards as hostile
to its interests, and has told those who have been allowed in
which parts of a site they may and may not inspect. It has also
passed special legislation permitting the president to block
unannounced inspections, and banning inspectors from removing
samples of its chemicals.
"Ill-considered initiatives"
is code for the attempts Bustani has made, in line with his mandate,
to persuade Saddam Hussein to sign the chemical weapons convention.
If Iraq agrees, it will then be subject to the same inspections
- both routine and unannounced - as any other member state (with
the exception, of course, of the United States). Bustani has
so far been unsuccessful, but only because, he believes, he has
not yet received the backing of the UN security council, with
the result that Saddam knows he would have little to gain from
signing.
Bustani has suggested that if the security
council were to support the OPCW's bid to persuade Iraq to sign,
this would provide the US with an alternative to war. It is hard
to see why Saddam Hussein would accept weapons inspectors from
Unmovic - the organization backed by the security council - after
its predecessor, UNSCOM, was found to be stuffed with spies planted
by the US government. It is much easier to see why he might accept
inspectors from an organization which has remained scrupulously
even-handed. Indeed, when UNSCOM was thrown out of Iraq in 1998,
the OPCW was allowed in to complete the destruction of the weapons
it had found. Bustani has to go because he has proposed the solution
to a problem the US does not want solved.
"What the Americans are doing,"
Bustani says, "is a coup d'etat. They are using brute force
to amend the convention and unseat the director-general."
As the chemical weapons convention has no provisions permitting
these measures, the US is simply ripping up the rules. If it
wins, then the OPCW, like UNSCOM, will be fatally compromised.
Success for the United States on Sunday would threaten the independence
of every multilateral body.
This is, then, one of those rare occasions
on which our government could make a massive difference to the
way the world is run. It could choose to support its closest
ally, wrecking multilateralism and shutting down the alternatives
to war. Or it could defy the United States in defense of world
peace and international law. It will take that principled stand
only if we, the people from whom it draws its power, make so
much noise that it must listen. We have five days in which to
stop the US from bullying its way to war.
George Monbiot writes
for the The Guardian of London. Please visit his website: http://www.monbiot.com
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