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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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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 "Alice Documents"
Inside
the Mideast Negotiating Room
By Bernard Weiner
Nobody is quite sure how the water bottles inside
the negotiating room got spiked. Several witnesses reported seeing
a young girl in the vicinity, wearing a kind of Victorian dress.
Shortly thereafter, a large brown envelope
arrived at our offices. The return address read simply "Alice."
On the envelope was a childlike drawing of a water bottle, with
a sign on it: "Drink Me!"
The enclosed documents purport to be
a record of what transpired inside the Mideast negotiating room,
presumably after the water bottles had been somewhat depleted.
We can't verify the authenticity of the "Alice" documents,
but they certainly do make one wonder -- and think.
SOS [presumably Colin Powell]: Gentlemen,
thank you for agreeing to meet me. The President sent me here
to...well, hell, I don't know why I'm here, except to try to
calm things down in the Middle East, so that our Saddam campaign
can move forward.
CPA [presumably Yassir Arafat]: You mean
you came with no new ideas, no plans for peace?
SOS: I have plenty of ideas, Mr. Chairman;
it's my boss whose skull, shall we say, would make a nice echo-chamber.
PM [presumably Ariel Sharon]: To hell
with your boss, then! He's always telling me what he thinks I
should do. Let's just do this without him, let him see how it
feels to be manipulated for a change.
CPA: You're here, Mr. Secretary, so let's
do it. I have to have something to show my people when I leave
this room, some reason for them to hope that things will change
and that we won't have to resort to our last desperate weapon,
our bomb-wrapped human bodies, and face the reaction of this
butcher's military machine.
PM: You may call me a butcher, Arafat,
but what are you but a corrupt piece of flesh, regarded as irrelevant
by your own people, since they know you can't lead them anywhere
but to destruction and continued poverty.
CPA: Well, I WAS in danger of becoming
irrelevant, but thanks to you, guess who's back, beloved by the
mulitudes -- and not just Palestinians. You've turned me into
a bloody hero, Sharon!
PM: And we Israelis, facing an Islamic
onslaught to drive us into the sea, having our public places
bombed day and in day out by human packages of TNT and nails
-- we are the ones regarded as the villains. Oy vey!
SOS: Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Chairman:
This kind of exchange will get us nowhere. I've considered your
proposal that we actually talk about something other than a mere
cease-fire, and I'm willing to have a go at it. I figure I can't
lose: If we actually work something out, I come out smelling
like a rose. If I'm fired by Bush for going way outside my mandate,
I still have that rosy smell for making the attempt, and when
I run for President, or Cheney dies and Bush has to name me VP,
I have a readymade aura of someone who goes and gets things done.
And, if it works, you fellas get peace. So, you're right, let's
get to it.
PM: My military intelligence service
keeps telling me, and I've finally come to believe it, that occupying
the territories is not worth the price we pay trying to keep
them in line, that attacking and attacking doesn't get Israel
any closer to peace and security. But it's not only you and Arafat
who have to bring something out of this meeting. My reputation
is that of a hard-edged military man, no compromises. I've got
to bring peace and it's got to look like I reluctantly gave in
to America's arm-twisting.
CPA: Right, no photo ops of me and this
guy shaking hands. It's America's plan. If it works, great; if
not, I was forced into it also.
SOS: Nope. Agreements will only "take"
if you are public about them -- in Arabic and Hebrew, respectively
-- to your people. Otherwise, it's too easy to back out. So,
let's try the first point and see where we are. Israel announces
an end to the occupation of the territories promised to the Palestinians
in West Bank and Gaza.
PM: Done. Once we debilitated the terrorist
network, I was going to do it anyway.
CPA: You do that, Israel pulls back to
its pre-1967 lines, we stop the bombings and shootings in Israel.
My military advisers tell me the same thing: we simply can't
force the Israelis to disappear by bombing them and that our
violence is an ineffective route to peace and security, and damages
our image of victim in the world.
SOS: If Israel ends the Occupation, you
can guarantee 100% control over your extremists, Mr. Chairman?
CPA: Can Sharon guarantee that his Zionist
extremists will never fire on a Palestinian? I will do everything
that I can do. Once it is clear that the movement toward peace
is genuine and will yield positive economic results, support
for the fundamentalist extremists will diminish to next-to-nothing.
However, there always will be a few hotheads and crazies, and
we will imprison them.
SOS: No, you will turn over to the Israelis
those who carry out attacks on Israelis. And Sharon, similary
you will turn over your violent anti-Palestinian extremists to
the Palestinian government. Each side will deal with the other's
terrorists. That should reduce the level of violence pretty quickly.
PM: Clever, that. Done. What's next?
CPA: We establish our Palestinian state
on land that is contiguous, and economically and geographically
viable.
PM: You can have the whole rocky pile,
as far as I'm concerned.
CPA: And you will share the water, and
help us with modern farming methods.
PM: Done, once the violence subsides.
What's next?
SOS: There is the matter of the settlements.
They must go.
PM: Not all of them. Some of them are
important for border defense.
SOS: The two independent states will
be separated by a large moat, as it were, of bare ground, so
each of you will be able to see and sense anybody approaching.
The border and security details can be worked out.
PM: It won't be easy to get the settlers
to leave, we're talking hundreds of thousands of people.
CPA: We're talking several MILLION Palestinian
refugees, who want to return to their old homes and fields. Many
of those who wish to come back can use those abandoned settlements.
PM: You don't know these settlers; they
are crazier than I am. We will have to move some of them by force.
CPA: Good. It will give them a small
taste of what we've been put through.
SOS: Sharon, you will do this.
PM: I didn't hear a question-mark.
SOS: Sharon, you will do this. (pause)
Question-mark.
PM: Done. And we will announce our ambassador
to the new Palestinian state shortly after the official establishment
of your new government, Arafat. But the PLO must formally renounce
in its charter a desire to destroy Israel, and maps and textbooks
must reflect the fact of Israel's existence.
CPA: This will be done.
SOS: I'm not sure how we've managed to
get so far in such a short time -- there must be something in
the water [ sounds of laughter ] -- but let's keep going. The
taping machine is recording all the agreements. What's next?
PM: Security. Above all, security. For
both of our states. We've got to know we won't be attacked by
your government, by your terrorists, and you've got to feel secure
you won't be attacked by anybody from our side, soldiers or crazies.
CPA: International peacekeeping force,
from Scandinavia or somewhere, with no emotional ties to either
side. Shoot-to-kill orders -- any unauthorized Israelis try to
cross or fire across the border or fly gunships headed our way,
or vice versa, the international force, similar say to what's
in Yugoslavia, shoots them. No messing around.
PM: Agreed. But we keep our weapons,
just in case, along with the right of self-defense.
SOS: We'll add an international adjudicating
commission to the mix. Any security or other problems go to the
commission first; they try to solve the problem first by contacting
the two governments and seeing what can be arranged. If there's
still a problem, negotiations take place under their auspices.
Arms reduction will come later.
CPA: Agreed.
PM: Agreed.
SOS: Right. Jerusalem. Shared by the
two governments, overseen by the international adjudicating commission
or some such body.
CPA: I think I can sell it, but it'll
be sticky. We've both made such a point of exclusive sovereignty
over Jerusalem.
PM: Yes, but it can be agreed to.
SOS: Next.
CPA: Reparations. Israel has destroyed
our towns, stolen our property, uprooted our trees, killed so
many civilians and others. It must pay reasonable amounts to
the aggrieved families, and to those who can't return to their
original homes, and so on.
PM: And your government must compensate
for damage done on our side, for our civilians killed, property
damaged and so on.
CPA: Agreed. Our staffs will work out
the details of the compensation protocols. And the U.S. will
help raise funds for this project.
SOS: Agreed. Gentlemen: The world will
long remember what is transpiring here today. You will be celebrated
across the globe and by your own peoples, hungry for peace and
security.
PM: Not all our peoples. Arafat, I know
you will be risking your life by carrying out what we've agreed
to today. Sadat was assassinated for making peace with Israel.
I admire your courage, Yassir.
CPA: And I know that the same right-wing
Israeli extremists who assassinated Rabin might well be after
you. I admire your courage, Ariel, and wish you well.
SOS: But the key point is that the great
majority of both your peoples, longing for peace and security
and progress, will see you as courageous, intelligent leaders.
Should we take a break?
CPA: This is so much like a dream that
I don't want to risk waking up. Let us continue talking.
PM: I agree. As long as we are inside
this room, in our current frame of mind, making this kind of
progress, let us not risk losing the momentum, even for a moment.
SOS: I will call for food, more water
-- and chamber pots. [Sounds of loud laughter.]
*****
The "Alice Documents" break
off there. Again, there is no way at this point of judging the
authenticity of what is alleged to have been agreed to. But,
with the right leadership from Secretary of State Powell, and
with the right attitude of the two combatant leaders, it could
be possible. #
Bernard Weiner,
a playwright and poet, was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater
critic for nearly 20 years. A Ph.D. in government & international
relations, he has taught at various univerities.
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