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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
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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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
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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 9, 2002
Thomas
Friedman, Another Wasted Pulitzer
Terrorism: Violence of the Weak
Defense: Violence of the Strong
By Matt Vidal
In many parts of the world today, outside the
West, violent confrontations are intensifying. To interpret these
complex, horrific events, American citizens-whose leaders are
intimately involved in these violent confrontations-have a ready-made
cognitive framework, which easily simplifies and neutralizes
the complex and bitterly contested content. This hegemonic ideological
framework rests essentially on a few simple Orwellian categories
of the standard formula: war is peace.
Acts that are essentially the same are
judged not by their social content-their context and effects-but
by pre-constituted discursive categories. Differentiation and
association are ordered so that the hegemonic (i.e., dominant,
leading) side is always good and just. Consider the soldier,
who joins the military with the explicit mandate of being willing
to kill-and die in the process-at the command of a higher rank
(presumably for the national defense). Now consider someone who
also wants to defend the nation, but has no standing organized
military, and no military resources that allow him or her to
shoot from a distance, or from armored vehicles. This person-willing
to die and kill for perceived national defense-differs from the
soldier only in means. And it is means only-not ends, consequences,
or conditions-that the Orwellian framework needs to make its
differentiations and associations.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas
Friedman, "one of America's leading interpreters of world
affairs" columnist for the New York Times, is a master of
this Orwellian mystification. In his March 31 column, "Suicidal
Lies," Mr. Friedman warns us, with all his probity and prescience,
that "The Devil is . . . dancing our way." He warns
that a new type of warfare is threatening us-America, and the
other "civilized" people-for its political gain. The
isolated, clandestine suicide bomber. How dare he or she, that
individual with no organized army, no F-16s, naval ships or tanks
from Lockheed, Raytheon or GE, make a frontal assault (and for
political gain, no less!)?
It is war, Mr. Friedman says. But if
one cannot match the military might of their enemy and, a
fortiori, if their tactics become effective, the Orwellian
framework so common to American hegemony easily places (subjectifies)
them: terrorists (against civilization); or, as Mr. Friedman
would have it, the Devil (against God). Practical import: terrorists
are the ones who want nuclear and biological weapons; the armies
of the civilized nations are the ones who have them. Indeed,
casual but careful observation suggests a good prima facie case
that there is a high negative correlation between military might
and the likelihood of being labeled terrorist (weakness and/or
non-authorized tactics=terrorist).
Mr. Friedman pretends he can understand
the daily fright, desperation and frustration in the Middle East
(presumably of both sides, though he only acknowledges that the
Israeli's are "terrified," since only Palestinians
commit acts of terror). He assumes he can understand, from his
civilized perch, these constraints and pressures (e.g., living
in a refugee camp with little food or water or education, after
being driven from your home and illegally occupied by a military
force that has received $92 billion in aid from the US in the
last half century) enough to see through the "suicide lie."
I do not condone suicide bombings, but
I don't pretend to have the knowledge to suggest that a particular
combination of desperate conditions will not make suicide (with
some value added in the military sense of more death) seem like
a viable option. He asserts that desperation could not be the
reason, because many other people are desperate and, more importantly,
they could have simply non-violently resisted (e.g., the armored
bulldozers that destroy their homes).
But though many people smoke without
ever getting lung cancer, I doubt Mr. Friedman would claim that
cigarettes don't cause cancer. Yes, suicide bombers choose-under
massive pressure and constraint-their fate. And we will never
know the final straw. But if we want to think carefully about
the relationship between desperation (and the Middle East condition
in general) and suicide bombing, an appropriate counterfactual
is enough. Without a particular set of very desperate conditions
we known as Palestine under Sharon-led, US-backed Israeli occupation,
we don't have such patterns of suicide bombing.
Palestinian society does not generate
suicide bombers in isolation. Something is very wrong over there
and unfortunately for minds like Friedman's who seek easy, cut-and-dried
answers, it is simply not all the Palestinians' fault. Nor is
it all Israel's fault. Both sides have committed atrocities.
But we really need to take a look at some basic facts, abstracted
from rhetoric and our Orwellian blinders which make us think
that "our" side is always the righteous; "our"
cause always just.
Israel has one of the largest and most
sophisticated armies in the world, from armored bulldozers to
F-16's. Palestine hardly has a viable government or standing
army, consisting mostly of unarmed citizens. The Palestinians
(mostly civilians) have died now three for every one Israeli.
Mr. Friedman is correct about one thing: the suicide bombings
are working (which is why, he admits, he is now worried). Before
the recent wave of suicide bombings, since the first Intifada
in December 1987, 168 Israelis had died compared to 1471 Palestinians.
Under these conditions it is ridiculous to assert, as most of
the American establishment does, that Arafat has the ability
to stop the various factions and individuals committing these
acts (indeed, if control of a domestic population is so easy,
then why does the US incarcerate more of its population per capita
than any other nation in the world?).
Mr. Friedman thinks we need to bomb first,
then talk. He offers two other reasons why their suicide bombings
must be thought of as a new tactic aimed at annihilating "civilization"
(better spend more on the star wars missile shield), rather than
a choice made out of desperation: empty assertions that the Clinton
proposal would have worked, and that in any case, non-violent
resistance would have worked 30 years ago (both fallacious forms
of reasoning that masquerades as sound counterfactual)! Yet,
he does admit that the Palestinians are "blinded by their
narcissistic rage."
Whatever adjective you want to append
to blinded rage, it is disingenuous to argue that desperation
does not play a role in children blowing themselves up. It is
dangerous to demand, as Mr. Friedman does, that the Israel "deliver
them a military blow" that will knock some sense into them.
The suicide bombers are all out of sense. It is a simple fact
that occupation, forced dislocation and sustained military assault
are producing suicide bombing and all the misery that surrounds
it.
At this point, it is impossible to decipher
"who struck the first blow," who the aggressor is.
People like Mr. Friedman take the easy way out and assert that
the side with the high-tech, advanced weapons and tactics are
the civil and just, while the poor people without resources are
terrorists-and they must be stopped lest they get any resources
(he fears they would rather have a nuclear bomb to blow him up
than some land and peace).
Unfortunately, one decisive assault and
them some more talks will not bring peace. Israel needs to pull
out of the occupied territories now, and replace Sharon with
someone more interested in peace than war. The United States
needs to join the rest of the world and condemn the illegal Israeli
occupation and, more importantly, cut off Israel from military
support-both in subsidy and in weapons sales. Both sides need
to work hard and reflect, but this cannot happen while Palestinian
territory is under occupation and assault. An Israeli retreat
is the necessary first step to peace.
Matt Vidal
is studying for his doctorate in sociology at the University
of Wisconsin at Madison. He can be reached at: mvidal@ssc.wisc.edu
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