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April 9, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
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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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 9, 2002
The Visible and The Invisible:
US-Sponsored
State Terror
By Fran Shor
The whole world is watching as the Israeli military
continues to smash its way through occupied Palestine. Attempting
to prevent journalists from reporting first-hand on the slaughter
and destruction, Israeli military authorities harass, threaten,
and fire on any journalists foolish or courageous enough to violate
the Israeli imposed restrictions on what can be broadcast.
However, it is impossible to hide the
devastation being wrought on Palestinian civilians when hundreds
of thousands of them are in a total lockdown, unable to venture
out of their surrounded homes to seek food or medical relief.
Reports stream in from Palestinian hospitals and doctors about
their inability to treat the dead and wounded because of assaults
and barriers imposed by the Israeli military operation. Moreover,
doctors and ambulance drivers who are trying to assist the wounded
find themselves in harm's way, leading the International Committee
of the Red Cross to protest the cruel and anti-humanitarian actions
by the invading Israeli forces.
In the midst of what are clearly war
crimes, the Bush Administration is maneuvering to placate the
inflamed Arab world while giving the Sharon government cover
to continue its murderous onslaught. Instead of pressuring Israel
with the loss of billions of dollars annually in military aid,
this Administration, as previous ones, continues to extend its
largesse for the strategic role Israel offers to US hegemony
in the region. Every tank rolling into Palestinian cities and
every helicopter and plane launching missiles into Palestinian
refugee camps is US-made and eagerly delivered to a military
ally which is now ratcheting up the level of state terror. Such
state terror far outweighs the wholesale terror of suicide bombers
even though the victims of both forms of terror can find little
solace in the important and necessary distinctions between them.
US-sponsored state terror is often not
as blatantly evident as it is now in Palestine. Of course, given
the US media bias and lack of self-reflection, one will hardly
see a full examination of the connections between Israeli state
terrorism and US sponsorship. How is it that US tax money continues
to flow into the coffers of the Israeli war machine without even
a minimal effort of accountability being attached? How do organizations
and individuals in the US continue with impunity to donate to
the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank without the
kind of scrutiny given to organizations donating money to Arab-American
causes in light of 9/11?
On the other hand, it is amazing that
so much attention is paid by the US media to what goes on in
Israel/Palestine. It is not because of any alleged and illusory
role of Jewish control of the media although the Israeli lobbyists
in Washington and their mouthpieces like William Safire in the
press do share much responsibility for putting Israel in the
spotlight. Perhaps the continuing Western religious obsessions
with the "Holy Land" play a role. Certainly, the politics
of oil in the region is a significant factor in keeping the focus
on the middle east; but, why focus so exclusively on Israel's
policies?
At this point, as Edward Said has passionately
argued, the eyes of the world should be on the plight of the
Palestinians. Thirty-five years of occupation is now entering
apparently its most lethal phase and people everywhere should
do everything possible to stop further depredations against the
Palestinian people. Nonetheless, to ignore the US role in perpetuating
Israeli occupation and underwriting Israeli state terror is to
turn a blind eye to that power which has aided and abetted the
violation of international agreements and accord that would bring
justice finally to the Palestinians and, perhaps, peace to the
region.
But peace is not as important to US interests
as control. So visible efforts to bring about peace actually
hide the invisible instrumentalities of war-making that persist.
What remains invisible to the US media and the American people
is often the machinations of Washington in arming its client
states. What Chalmers Johnson has recently labeled "stealth
imperialism" in his indispensable book, Blowback, is a perpetuation
of the cold war mentality in its new incarnation - the war against
terrorism. Yet, the war against terrorism is nothing less than
a war to extend US military force to prop up pliable states and
create new clients for weapons and other US goods and services.
By reviewing this US double standard
over the last 30 years through Democratic and Republican Administrations
one can better understand why the Pentagon would rather keep
its business with state terror under wraps. That the US media
would ignore the role of Washington policy-makers in this heinous
business is not surprising. Consider even sensitive articles
such as Jeffrey Goldberg's recent New Yorker piece on Saddam
Hussein's chemical attack on the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war
of the 1980's. While there is a small section on US support of
Saddam Hussein during this period, nowhere in the article is
there any analysis of all of the military hardware and chemical
weapons sent to Saddam Hussein through the Pentagon. And is it
any coincidence that such a long article would appear now when
there was next to nothing in the mainstream media during the
actual attack on the Kurds in the late 1980's?
If one was really interested in the well-being
of Kurds throughout the middle east, where were the media stories
about Turkey's destruction of thousands, yes thousands, of Kurdish
villages in southeastern Turkey during the 1990's? Is it any
coincidence that Turkey receives almost as much military aid
from the US as Israel? Of course, one might find the occasional
notice of Turkish violation of Kurdish human rights, even from
the US State Department. On the other hand, an advisor to the
Turkish prime minister certainly put his finger on the issue
of US hypocrisy on this matter: "If you want to stop human
rights abuses do two things - stop IMF credits and cut off aid
from the Pentagon. But don't sell the weapons and give aid and
then complain about the Kurdish issue. Don't tell us about human
rights while you're selling these weapons."
In fact, as suggested in a recent story
in the Washington Post, the Pentagon is now seeking to transfer
monies directly to client states in the so-called war against
terrorism. What this means, in effect, is that brutal authoritarian
governments like Uzbekistan can get the direct aid they need
to put down any indigenous rebellions that might threaten the
developing US control over oil and gas rich Central Asian countries.
Of course, all of this will be conveniently hidden and invisible
to most of the citizens of the United States until some wayward
Uzbek "terrorist" attacks a US target somewhere.
What has remained invisible in the past
30 years of US sponsored state terror is now part of a tragic
and bitter record of human rights abuses world-wide. From US
support of Indonesia in its massive invasion and killing in East
Timor in the 1970's to the genocidal campaign against Mayan Indians
in Guatemala by US backed military dictatorships and the US induced
contra attacks against Nicaragua in the 1980's, US foreign policy
has undermined the rule of international law and violated fundamental
human rights.
Just as the Israeli military continues
to abrogate all humanitarian standards in Palestine, the Bush
Administration continues on its unilateral course to negate any
international efforts to reign in the role of US lethal force
whether in the establishment and extension of an International
Criminal Court or the recent efforts by Mary Robinson of the
United Nations Human Rights Agency to intervene in Palestine.
Until there is a halt to the Pentagon mega war-machine, there
will be continuing humanitarian tragedies, both visible and invisible.
Fran Shor
teaches at Wayne State University and is a member of the Michigan
Coalition for Human Rights. He can be reached at: f.shor@wayne.edu
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