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May 2, 2002
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
May 1, 2002
Badiou,
Michel, Lazarus
French
Elections:
What is to be Done?
Baruch Kimmerling
The Battle of Jenin as
an Inter-Ethnic War
Edward
Hammond
Hiding
History:
NAS Suppresses Chem/Bio War Documents
Kristen Schurr
Inside Gaza
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
April 29, 2002
Larry Hales
At the Church of the Nativity
Michael
Colby
The
Times Does Brockovich:
Ralph Nader with Cleavage?
CounterPunch Wire
Bank Robs Publisher,
Vows to Repeat
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
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Cockburn
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The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
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The New Intifada:
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May
2, 2002
A Peek Inside Colin Powell's
Personal Diary
By Bernard Weiner
If I jump now, with Karen Hughes just having left
and with Democratic darts starting to hit the Administration's
weak spots, it'll look bad. Like I'm deserting a ship that's
started leaking badly.
Plus, people will think I'm doing it
out of ambition, not wanting to be too tarnished by all the Bush
administration's scandals, those already out there and others
yet to be revealed. (I'm mostly kept out of the loop, but I suspect
many of those transgressions are on the other side of the moral,
and probably legal, fence.)
Sure I want to be President -- even Bush
and Cheney know that, which helps explain why all the behind-the-scenes
dissing of me and the State Department -- but I also enjoy feeling
that I'm helpful in the world, often just by throwing cold water
on some of the Wolfpack's most outrageous proposals. That Wolfowitz
is like a dog on a bone in his determination that the U.S. dominate
the globe; I think he should be checked out for rabies.
I'm tolerated. I speak my mind about
drugs and sex and poverty, and sometimes even about war policy
-- though I have to move real carefully here -- and they don't
get rid of me. I'm their token, in a great many ways. See, we
have an all-inclusive, diverse Cabinet -- look there's Colin
Powell. See him? He's black. And he's even liberal. Ergo, the
Administration can't be all bad. (I'm sure no liberal; I just
look that way when measured against rightwing zealots like Ashcroft
and Wolfowitz and DeLay. And I resemble a flaming intellectual
when measured against our fearless leader, who knows how to mouth
the right phrases and read speeches.)
I'm here partially because of my ties
to Poppy and my contacts around the world -- I'm regarded as
trustworthy by many international leaders -- but mainly I'm here
for window-dressing and moral cover. And to keep me on the inside,
busy and somewhat muzzled, so I can't become head of a GOP opposition
movement. I know all that, and they know I know. It's just the
complex po litical dance you have to dance, in order to be in
a position to do some good -- or, in the case of this administration,
to help stop some of the bad. But I have to choose my fights
judiciously, or I won't have any clout.
But it's getting harder and harder to
swallow a good share of the Administration's line. These guys
-- who, of course, found convenient ways to escape serving in
the military, from Bush to Cheney to DeLay and so on -- are preparing
for "permanent war." It's insane. They figure with
no other country to challenge the U.S. superpower, they might
as well go take it all. Sure, we could take it, but then what
do we have? A return to the Roman Empire, with our armies having
to control everything thousands of miles from home, in a world
that would resent and hate and attack us all the more, and nonstep
dissent at home. (The most depressing thing about all this is
that the Democrats in Congress haven't even called for a debate
on attacking Iraq is a good idea, and what the ramifications
might be. They're so scared of looking "unpatriotic"
that they've become unpatriotic by remaining silent.)
Too many of our top officials have no
military, or political, understanding of the complexities involved,
just a desire to grab $ome while the getting is good. I believe
in greed, too, as a positive motivating force -- but within some
reasonable limits. These guys, and their corporate backers, can't
see beyond their bank accounts. I keep trying to tell them that
they can have a good share, and help others get a good share
too -- thus bringing more consumers on line to buy stuff the
corporations make -- but they just smile at me, like I'm a weak-brained
kook or something.
The topper for me was my feeling of being
hung-out-to-dry during my most recent Middle East mission. My
God, I had to pretend that we weren't giving carte blanche to
Sharon's -- I almost said Sherman's -- military campaign to wipe
out the Palestinian Authority's infrastructure and political
network. Come on! They had me galivanting all over the globe
for nearly a week before finally permitting me to make my way
to the Holy Land. Meanwhile, Bush is "ordering" Sharon
to withdraw his troops immediately -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
know what I mean? I coulda been killed hanging out there like
that, twisting in the wind.
The Arab leaders are even more scared
of Sharon than we pretend to be. None are going to risk irritating
the guy, for fear he'll attack them and destroy them, probably
in two days, without even having to use their nukes. But the
Arabs sure made it clear that unless the U.S. acts forcefully
to solve the Israel/Palestine puzzle, we're putting our credibility
and political capital on the line in their area of the world.
And nobody is going to even think about helping us attack Iraq
-- as much as they want Saddam to be eliminated -- until the
Palestinian issue is taken care of, once and for all.
I must say that I understand a little
bit what George Mitchell must have gone through in Northern Ireland.
But those two sides had battled each other "only" for
800 years; we're talking, in a sense, thousands of years here.
And it ain't gonna be easy. Sharon and Arafat, by this time,
are like two crazed animals, pawing the earth, seeing nothing
but the other guy about to strike and, at this point, wanting
nothing but victory, total domination. Sharon thinks he can bludgeon
his way into a Greater Israel, Arafat thinks he can suicide-bomb
his way into a Greater Palestine. They're both starkers.
If we ever get to genuine peace talks
-- and it may not happen in my lifetime, another reason to consider
getting out, before I'm slapped with the image of a big-time
loser -- we'll probably spend months talking about the correct
shape of the negotiating table. The best possible scenario would
be -- God, I hope nobody ever finds this diary! -- for both of
them to die in their sleep, with more reasonable leaders emerging
to finish the job of devising a treaty and modus vivendi.
Well, got to end this now. More meetings,
more troubleshooting in the Mideast -- the Saudi plan is moving
again: Arafat may want to sign something while he buys time to
rebuild his political and military structure, Sharon wants to
find new ways to move away from a possible Palestinian state.
I'm going to find myself buried in this Administration, which
has its eyes only on attacking Iraq and global control. I gotta
get out of here, soon.
Bernard Weiner,
a playwright and poet, was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater
critic for nearly 20 years. A Ph.D. in government and international
relations, he has taught at various universities, and has published
in The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive and widely on the
internet.
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