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April 17, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Ruins and Body Parts inJenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
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:
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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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
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 17, 2002
With the Wounded and
the Homeless in Nablus
By Kristen Schurr
I've been sitting with a 15 year old girl, a volunteer
for the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, under
a grapefruit tree here in Nablus. Earlier today about 25 internationals
and 6 Palestinian UPMRC workers, including 3 medics, a doctor,
the girl sitting with me, and her 16 year old friend, were attacked
by Israeli soldiers.
After a sleepless night due to heavy
tank shelling and the unceasing mosquito buzz of Apaches and
their missile fire into nearby Askar Refugee camp, we attempted
to deliver food aid by foot to the camp on the east side of
Nablus that has been held under curfew by the Israeli military
for 14 days. Communication with some inside the camp reveals
an absence of food, clean water, medical treatment, and electricity.
Although we have been told that press
is reporting a quietting in Nablus, and although we have heard
Sharon say that Nablus is no longer a closed military zone,
we were unable to pass the Israeli tank and APC that confronted
us 2 km from the camp. The Israeli soldier atop the tank shouted,
"this is a closed military zone." He said if we did
not retreat he would be forced to shoot us. A few of the five
soldiers shot warning shots and a hidden sniper hit metal pieces
next to us. Although our only fear is of the Israeli military,
the soldier atop the tank told us it was very dangerous to be
here. He kept shouting he would have no choice but to shoot
us.
We turned back, passing Balata refugee
camp, where earlier we delivered a bit of food aid to the camp
brimming with garbage and open sewage. Many of the 22,000 residents
of Balata fear epidemic disease because of the lack of garbage
removal due to the curfew. One bulldozed home inside the camp
was pointed out as belonging to a man who is being held by Israeli
soldiers inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Some
news reports indicate that Sharon will not stop terrorizing
Bethlehem any time soon, and I have heard from friends inside
the town that Israeli soldiers have taken the Bethlehem Star
Hotel. The 5th floor is windowed on 3 sides and it's the highest
point in the town, giving it a view of Beit Jala, Beit Sahour,
Gilo Settlement, the areas near the refugee camps, and Manger
Square where Church of the Nativity is.
As we passed Balata Refugee camp on our
way back to the UPMRC center here in Nablus after our Askar
camp attempt, we were shot at by Israeli snipers near Jacobs
Well, a space where, I am told, the prophet Jacob dove into
the well.
The 15 year old girl is still sitting
with me, sometimes resting her head on my shoulder. She was
among the 6 Palestinian medical relief workers and 25 internationals
who were then confronted by an APC, several soldiers, and a
tank. We were detained, not allowed to return to the UPMRC a
5 minute walk away, for 3 hours. In total 7 tanks, 4 APCs,
about 30 soliders, and 2 Israeli police jeeps surrounded us.
As I attempted to neogotiate between an Israeli lawyer via
cel phone and an Israeli soldier at the bequest of one of the
Palestinian medics, the soldiers attacked us. They tried to
force the
internationals to separate from the Palestinians.
We refused and were beaten and thrown to the ground. A French
man was stomped in the face by an Israeli boot. A British boy
was kicked in the head and another drug throught the strreet
and beaten by 3 soliders. I was attacked for being on the cel
phone telling the lawyer what was happening. Soliders screamed
at me and charged, grabbing at the 2 phones in my hands, knocking
me against a wall and twisting my fingers around and back. The
soliders smashed our cameras on the ground and exposed our film.
They do not want anyone to know what
is happening here. (A few days ago in Taiba a group of activists
was denied entry via an Israeli checkpoint because, the soliders
said, "you might be a group of journalists.") Many
other internationals were brutalized with rifle butts, boots,
and fists.
But this does not compare to the brutality
suffered by the Palestinians. The doctor and paramedics were
kicked in the face and all over the body, were punched in the
head, stomach and legs, and were drug across the dusty and gravelly
street. They were hand cuffed with plastic cuffs and thrown
face down in the dirt. They were kicked and bloodied further
and then forced to face a metal wall while sitting on their
knees, hands behind their backs in the tight plastic cuffs,
with Israeli guns pointed at their heads, execution style. We
were sitting in piles on the two Palestinian girls in order
to keep them safe from the soldiers who had stopped beating
the internationals by then. The girl sitting beside me now was
crying, rightfully fearing for her life.
The soliders could not kill all of the
internationals without repercusion, and we assume they knew
we would tell what had happened, so allowed us to negotiate
the release of the Palestinians.
Although the soldiers continued to try
to separate us, we refused. They ordered us to get our bags
and leave Nablus. The Israeli soldiers said they did not want
us to mingle with the Palestinians and that we were unwelcome
in Nablus, a Palestinian city where 8 ambulance drivers and
medics have recently been killed by the soldiers who target
them. The Israeli soldiers currently terrorizing Nablus are,
I am told, a specially trained group called dovdenum, usually
used to carry out asassinations in Hebron.
A group of French complied with the evacuation
order and were escorted out of town at gunpoint. The rest of
the us, about 11 internationals, stood in solidarity with the
Palestinians. A solider told me that if we were with the Palestinians,
then we were under curfew, another form of humilation and terror
for Palestinians that leads to starvation, illness, and death,
and
were not to leave the UPMRC. Often in
Palestine the Israelis will lift the curfew in certain parts
of a town for a couple hours, but will shoot people anyway when
they leave their houses. I spoke with a reporter for Reuters
living here in Nablus via cel phone. He confirmed news reports
that his colleague, a Palestinian photographer also working
for Reuters, has been arrested and his press credentials torn
up. He is not allowed, as a Palestinian journalist, to be in
the streets and tell the story either.
When the brutalized Palestinian medics,
doctors, volunteers, and the internationals returned to the
UPMRC, we cut off their plastic handcuffs and they treated their
wounds as well as ours. One, the doctor, was energized by the
day, dishing out rice and yogurt for dinner as if we were at
a party. He said, "We showed them. They know now. We are
in solidarity."
Kristen Schurr
is from New York City.
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