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Recent
Stories
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Juniad Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
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Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
May
10 / 11, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key
Med Marijuana Case
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Labor in the Dawn of Empire
Annie
C. Higgins
The Last Time I Saw Mus'ab
Ron Jacobs
The Devil in New England
William
Mandel
One on One with Sen. Joe McCarthy
Jason Leopold
Halliburton Still Flouts the Law as It Profits from Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Quagmire
Larry Magnuson
William Bennett: Next Viceroy
of Iraq?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The Good Terrorists?
Anthony
Gancarski
Chalabi: Drowning in Ba'ath-water?
Steven
Sherman
A Letter to My European Friends
Khaled
El-Bizri
Mr. Bush Comes to Santa Clara
Bruce
Jackson
How Fear Curdles the Soul
Adam Engel
Flag in the Rain
Poets
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/10
Website
of the Weekend
Killing Again
May
9, 2003
Rahul
Mahajan
Don't Lift the Sanctions Yet
Wayne
Madsen
When Lying Pays Off: Neo-Con Fabricators
Chris
Floyd
The Karamazov Question
Don Monkerud
The Great Christian Schism: War or Peace?
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Drunk on Power: Bush, Power and the
Pathology of the Dry Drunk
Hammond
Guthrie
Bombastic Promise Keeping
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/09
May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
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Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
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Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
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Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
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The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
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Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
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Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
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Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
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John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
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Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
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Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kienthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
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Uri
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Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
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Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
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Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
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May
14, 2003
The New Fakers
State
Department Undercuts the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg
By KENNETH RAPOZA
The US Department of State's Counterterrorism
Office released its annual report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism",
on April 30th and said that, "The Triborder area (TBA) --
where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay converge -- has long been
characterized as a regional hub for Hizballah and Hamas fundraising
activities, but it is also used for arms and drug trafficking,
contraband smuggling, document and currency fraud, money laundering,
and the manufacture and movement of pirated goods. Although there
were numerous media reports in 2002 of an al-Qaida presence in
the TBA, these reports remained uncorroborated by intelligence
and law-enforcement officials."
The triborder area, also known as the
Triple Frontier, has been vilified as an "ungovernable zone"
loaded with Arab radicals waiting to pounce.
Reuters covered the release of this report
in a short brief for their Latin America subscribers. The story
was translated into Portuguese and Spanish, but did not run in
English, so it makes sense to review it here because fever over
the idea that Islamic terrorists were plotting revenge from a
remote area in the South American tropics originated here in
the US.
It started quietly in Paraguay in late
October 2000, 11 months before the terrorist attacks of September
11th, when a Lebanese businessman named Ali Khalil Mehri was
arraigned for selling pirated CDs and not-so-pirated CDs that
had messages espousing Hizballah's ideals. The State Dept ran
their "Patterns" report for that year on April 30th,
2001, where the arrest was cited along with the incarceration
of a Palestinian man named Salah Abdul Karim Yassine who "allegedly
threatened to bomb the US and Israeli Embassies in Asuncion."
(I don't know where the man is now or if the allegation even
turned out to be factual.) It was the only mention of Arabs in
Latin America. It took up exactly three paragraphs.
After that, this tiny region of the world,
a blackmarket Wal-Mart where one can buy pirated Microsoft products
and domestic electronics on the cheap, became a potential second-base
to Osama bin Laden (according to an Agence France Presse report
on Sept 19, 2001), a scary hideout for Islamic extremists (according
to UPI on Oct 11, 2001 and El Pais International, S.A. on Nov
9, 2001) and a report by the BBC on Sept 10, 2002 by Andrea Machain
said that US officials "strongly suspected" Al Qaeda
to be operating in the region.
In the Jan 2002 issue of the Middle East
Intelligence Bulletin, run by US-Israeli front group, the U.S.
Committee for a Free Lebanon (ideological home to the ususal
suspects like Elliot Abrams, Eleana Benador, Douglas Feith and
Richard Perle and now trumpeting the 'fact' that Syria has weapons
of mass destruction aimed at Israel) and the Middle East Forum
(run by Daniel Pipes, a man who sees anti-Semites on every college
campus), there was a long report on Hizballah's activities in
the region. This entire story relies on the arrests of the aforementioned
and their financial ties to the organization.
But the triborder region became truly
infamous after Jeffrey Goldberg, a New Yorker magazine reporter,
wrote his series called "In the Party of God", published
last October. After that, it almost became official. Yup...Hizballah
and Osama's mafia are drinking mate and caipirinhas somewhere
outside Foz do Iguacu, Parana, a large, red-earthed state south
of Sao Paulo.
Goldberg wrote in the New Yorker that
"intelligence officials in the region and in Washington
said the place is crawling with terrorists, many of them associated
with Hizballah, some with Hamas, and some with Al Qaeda."
Apparently, those same officials are
now saying that they are wrong, at least in part. There are no
Al Qaeda cells operating in the region.
In March, Reed Lindsay, an American reporter
in Buenos Aires, spoke with a Security Secretary at the Justice
Ministry in Argentina. The Argentinian official wished to be
kept anonymous. He told Lindsay that Argentina had no knowledge
of terrorist groups operating in the Triborder area or that money
from illegal activities such as CD piracy and drug trafficking
was going directly to fund terrorist activities.
"Terrorist cells do not exist in
the Triple Frontier," the Security Secretary said. "When
people start talking about terrorist hot spots that don't exist,
it does tremendous damage to our countries. There might have
been activities of financing terrorist organizations, just like
any other community. Just as Argentines in North America send
money to Argentina, I imagine that the Muslim community must
help people in places like Lebanon, and part of that money might
be sent to terrorists."
Goldberg had already invested heavily
in Al Qaeda "links" with an immense New Yorker piece
in the spring of 2002, purporting to establish an Al Quaeda-Saddam
link. The article was extremely influential. It was also rubbish,
convincingly demolished by a less credulous journalist Goldberg
described the region as, "a community, or perhaps less disingenuous
journalist from the London Observer. Goldberg's excursion to
the Three Frontiers region was a reprise. Unknown officials supposedly
told Goldberg that Hizbollah runs weekend training camps out
in the rain forest near Foz do Iguacu, where young soldiers and
even children are "indoctrinated into Hizballah ideology
-- a mixture of anti-American and anti-Jewish views inspired
by Ayatollah Khomeini." None of these officials were ever
quoted in the mainstream press in Brazil and if they were ever
quoted in Argentina, at least one key government official knows
nothing about it.
The "threat" of terrorism in
what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has defined as "ungovernable
areas" in Latin America has led to a diplomatic disaster
just waiting to unfold. Stories of terrorist cells in these nations
are seen as a pre-text to greater US military involvement in
national affairs.
Nations are in disagreement over the
US definition of terrorism. And there is almost zero agreement
on how to fight it, especially given the fiasco that led up to
the US invasion of Iraq on the pretext that Hussein was backing
terrorists and had weapons of mass destruction. Both notions
hang like a loose tooth at best.
The Organization of American States was
to hold a hemispheric security meeting in Mexico City this month,
but it was cancelled by heads of state in Latin America. It is
likely that it was cancelled because no one wants to play by
Rumsfeld's rules, that US defined "ungovernable areas"
are a hotbed for illegal activity that can lead to terrorism
that strengthens US security.
Brazilian Defense Minister Jose Viegas
Filho recently described the first-ever meeting of South American
Defense Ministers on April 23 in terms that will not please the
Rumsfeld team. Filho said that South American states should strengthen
their military and work together in an affirmative action to
protect their own sovereignty and create civilian-military projects
that foster economic development and security. Such a move, if
ever implemented, would be an obstacle to the much more punitive
US plans to turn the region into a terrorist and druglord hunting
ground for the Pentagon's new Roman Legion Army.
Kenneth Rapoza,
an American reporter, divides his time between the US and Brazil.
He can be reached at rapoza@counterpunch.org
Today's
Features
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Juniad Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
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