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July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
July 6, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Loose
Lips:
Liberty, Democracy & Bush
Michael Neumann
What's
So Bad About Israel?
Steve Baughman
Ashcroft's
Vendetta:
Lynching John Lindh
July 5, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Bush Freezes Peace Process
Todd May
Independence
and Terrorism
Rahul Mahajan
Why I
Won't Celebrate the Fourth of July This Year
July 4, 2002
S. Brian Willson
What
the Flag Means to Me
Philip Farruggio
Independence Day and
the Working Poor
Tom Gorman
The Uncommon
Pledge
of Allegiance
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
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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 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
|
July
8, 2002
an Interview
with Tariq Ali
How the Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World
[This interview with
Tariq Ali was conducted by Fábio Fernandes of Mão
Única, the Brazilian Magazine.]
Question: After the September 11th attack and its consequences
in US and in the Middle East, do you believe the world is facing
a state of war right now? Why (or why not)?
Tariq Ali: I think a war is going on in Afghanistan. Every
week there are reports of casualties. Almost 2000 Afghan civilians
have alreeady been killed, usually by 'accident'. Who mourns
for them? Who builds memorials in their honour? Who cares about
their families?
Simultaneously there is Sharon's war
against the Palestinian nation, backed by the Bush administration.
The American media is more biased than the Israeli press. It
treats Israel as the victim. It ignores the fact that Israel
provoked the suicie attacks by a systematic policy of assassinating
Palestinian leaders. 'Operation Defensive Shield' is designed
to crush the Palestinian resistance and
destroy all hopes of a sovereign and independent Palestinian
republic.. Leaving aside the moral abomination that this is and
the double standards of the West, let's ask ourselves whether
such actions will lead to a decrease or increase in acts of terrorism?
Anyone capable of thinking independently knows the answer to
this one.
Question: Along with Noam Chomsky, you are one of the
English-language writers that criticizes most fiercely the U.S.
government policies, particularly on the subject of security.
In your opinion, how does the opposition (by which we mean the
Left, not especially in the US but in the First World) view the
Bush Administration?
Tariq Ali: I think that the Left, using the word in its
broadest sense, is divided. Many intellectuals were panicked
into supporting the 'war on terrorism'. Though a strong minority
exists in the United States that opposes the new imperialism.
In Europe there is a majority in Germany, Britain and Italy that
is opposed to any new war on Iraq and many are now beginning
to see that the US utilised 9/11 to re-map the world. So there
is an opposition in the First World. In Britain at the moment
170 Members of Parliament (mainly Labour) have signed a public
declaration against a war on Iraq.
Of course many of those who shifted allegiances
to back Bush's war in Afghanistan -- the belligeratii -- are
also in favour of a war against Iraq. Their favourite guru is
the former Trotskyist Kanaan Makiya -- the Anglo-Iraqi writer
touted by sycophants as the 'Alexander Solzhenitsyn of Iraq'
-- wants his chums in the US State Department to take over Iraq
and rule it.
Question: A few months ago, you went to the Bienal do
Livro de Sao Paulo, to talk about the Brazilian edition of your
latest book, The
Clash of Fundamentalisms. Are you acquainted with how
people in Latin American countries is reacting to this not-so-new
World Order - especially Brazil, which current government is
considered one of the most faithful followers of the neoliberalism?
Tariq Ali: My impression is that most of Latin America
is deeply hostile to the New Order. South America has always
been treated by the US as a 'co-prosperity sphere', ie, shamelessly
exploited and under a permanent semi-occupation. So opposition
to Washington in this region hardly comes as a surprise. Look
at Argentina. A tragic outcome of neo-liberal economics. This
country was the laboratary of market fundamentalism. The IMF
mullahs followed its every turn. The US Treasury authorised its
policies. The result? A total disaster.
This is what the PT in Brazil should
be explaining to the people. Cardoso's policies could lead to
a similar disaster in Brazil. I know perfectly well that Lula's
options are restricted, but if he does nothing, the result will
be a tragedy. The combination of an economic collapse and mass
depoliticisation is the worst possible scenario. So the PT has
to implement some radical reforms, especially in relation to
health, education and the landless peasants.
Question: In some of the interviews you gave right after
September 11th, you said that you didn't fear the U.S. government,
but you feared the fundamentalists. Everyone knows, however,
that this current "enemy of the free world" have already
worked for the CIA and the Pentagon, and had its religious traits
enhanced to attack and destroy. May the fundamentalism be used
in both sides of this war, and until which point?
Tariq Ali: I think you must have misread some interview.
I have always argued and this is the thesis of my book that the
US Empire and its economic-military policies are the mother of
all fundamentalisms. They have spawned the groups which they
now fight.
Question: What can we expect of the conflicts between
Jews and Palestinians in the near future? Are you pessimistic
on this subject? That's why you put in your book that excellent
interview with Isaac Deutscher, by the way?
Tariq Ali: I am not optimistic. How can one be when the
war-criminal Sharon talks to US Senators about a hundred year
war against the Arabs and an urgent need to transplant a million
more Jews in Israel. This sonofabitch won't be around for much
longer (even Zionists cannot overcome the laws of biology) but
he wants to bequeath a legacy to the coming generations: war,
war and more war. But the Palestinians will not give up their
struggle for nationhood. Since 1948, all attempts to crush them,
to obliterate their memory have failed.
The Oslo Accords created bantustans.
The Palestinians rejected them. They will not accept a Palestinian
which is an Israeli protectorate. So till the United States forces
Israel to accept a two-state solution nothing much will change.
Question: In their book Empire,
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt didn't consider exactly the US
as THE Empire itself, but merely a representation of it. Were
they right?
Tariq Ali: EMPIRE is a very stimulating account of globalisation,
but it is hopelessly wrong on two central issues. The state has
not withered away. Strong states still exist---USA, China, Germany,
etc----- but the difference with the past is that there is now
only one Empire and this is not the nebulos entity imagined by
Cultural Studies, but a real, living organism and it has a name;
the United States of America..
Question: Assuming they weren't right on this point: can
we live without the American Empire? Will we live without it
someday?
Tariq Ali: Whether we will live without it is unlikely,
but I hope our children and their children will. All Empires
suffer from an invincibility complex, but when the end comes
we see that it was unpredictable and it surprises everyone. In
the case of the US it will probably be a combbination of internal
and external factors, economic and military.
Today's
Features
Lori Allen
Life Under
Curfew in Occupied Ramallah
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