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Today's
Stories
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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October
18 / 19, 2003
Total War in the Middle East?
Shock
Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
By
KURT NIMMO
"Israel has been urging America
to invade Syria, but America seems to be reluctant. So, in order
to force the hands of America, Israel is going to invade Syria,"
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told the official Bernama
news agency recently. "When that happens, the Americans
will have to support Israel due to domestic political reasons
that make Jewish votes a major factor in its presidential election."
It's hardly a secret that pro-Zionist
financial contributions exact disproportionate influence on American
politics and foreign policy. Israel "has become a veritable
state of the United States," Mitchell Kaidy wrote in the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs back in 1997. "Indeed,
with media cooperation and assistance, Israel has ascended to
the ranks of an affluent, belligerent yet untouchable super-state."
It is precisely this inviolable status that allows Ariel Sharon
and the Likudites to do almost anything they please.
"No one in authority will admit
a calamitous reality that is skillfully shielded from the American
people but clearly recognized by most of the world: America suffered
11 September and its aftermath and may soon be at war with Iraq,
mainly because US policy in the Middle East is made in Israel,
not in Washington," wrote Paul Findley, a former congressional
representative. "Israel is a scofflaw nation and should
be treated as such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian
misery, our president should suspend all aid until Israel ends
its occupation of Arab land Israel seized in 1967."
Not likely. Bush and his fanatical core
of pro-Zionist neocons will continue to work alongside Sharon
and the racist Likudites. Greater Israel is their unalterable
mission. It's their raison d'etre.
Pat Buchanan was spot on when he said
the Bush neocons "harbor a passionate attachment to a nation
not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of
their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow,
what's good for Israel is good for America."
Israel wants "total war" in
the Middle East, as do the Bush neocons.
So entangled are the connections between
the Likudites in Israel, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board,
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Center
for Security Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, Project
for the New American Century, so-called defense contractors,
Christian Zionists with money to spend, and a handful of Zionists
in and out of the Bush administration that it is nearly impossible
to find the precise source of the toxin infecting United States
foreign policy in the Middle East.
Its most activist and wild-eyed proponents
are tucked away in Beltway think tanks, the Bush White House,
and burrowed deep within the Pentagon. From there they plot the
sort of pandemonium and misery currently underway in Iraq.
The next few items on the neocon "creative
destruction" agenda: take out Syria and Iran, even tiny
and insignificant Libya.
If Gordon Thomas of the American Free
Press is correct, Sharon called Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon
and gave him the low-down on the Syrian attack. "We, and
you, are fighting a war against terrorism," Rumsfeld reportedly
told the Butcher of Sabra and Chatila (and Qibya and Qalqilya).
No doubt such tidings warmed the cockles of Arik's cold-blooded
heart.
In other words, what Sharon was about
to do -- brazenly attack a sovereign nation in direct violation
of international law -- was akin to what the US did in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Karl Rove apparently chimed in, admitting that Bush
approved. "He saw it as a clear warning to terrorists that
they can be reached anywhere," Rove briskly told reporters.
"See it as necessary shock therapy."
"Israel's Ariel Sharon is intent
on exploiting the opportunity provided by US plans for war in
the Middle East to press forward his aim of creating a Greater
Israel," Jean Shaoul wrote last year. "For months he
has sought to stoke up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and scupper
any possibility for even the type of truncated Palestinian state
promised under the Oslo Accords. Now he has significantly upped
the ante, accusing Syria of supplying Hezbollah militants in
south Lebanon with thousands of surface to air rockets capable
of striking northern Israeli towns and cities and demanding Syria
rein in the Islamic fundamentalist group."
On the same day Mahathir Mohamad made
his prediction about an Israeli invasion of Syria, the German
weekly Der Spiegel reported that "Mossad has marked six
Iranian nuclear facilities as targets for an Israeli Air Force
preemptive strike." Sharon presumably told "Mossad
chief Meir Dagani to devote 'utmost efforts' to gather information
about Iran's growing nuclear capabilities... The Mossad's plan
is now ready and has been delivered to the Israeli Air Force,
which will carry out the strike, Der Spiegel said. The simultaneous
air strike on six Iranian nuclear facilities would be carried
out by IAF F-16 fighter jets."
Israel is reluctant to bomb Iran, but
not for political reasons -- bombing sorties would be dicey business
since the nuclear sites in question are spread across vast expanses
and Iran's eastern border and are 1,300 kilometers from Israeli
air bases.
However, according to Yossi Melman, the
military commentator for Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper, Sharon's
threats against Iran are part of an effort to fix international
public opinion against the Iranian nuclear project and to prevent
Iran from producing enriched uranium. It's said Mossad leaked
the story to the press.
It also said Mossad leaked a story to
the Los Angeles Times detailing Israel's decision to arm US-made
Harpoon missiles with nukes. Once again demonstrating the propaganda
clumsiness of the foolhardy Likudites and their neocon bedfellows
in Washington, people who know about such things wasted no time
debunking the Harpoon story. Israeli and foreign defense experts
quickly noted that such a modification was technically impossible.
Jane's Naval Weapon Systems in London said it was nonsense.
No such hit-or-miss flourishes are required
in regard to Syria, though.
Syria is far weaker militarily and less
of a threat to Israel -- and that's why the Ain Saheb camp was
bombed. It also helps that it is exactly the sort of lethal behavior
the Bush neocons encourage and support.
"Without American support, or at
least the expectation of such support, this attack would not
have taken place," Eyal Zisser, a senior lecturer at Tel
Aviv University, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
It was, after all, Richard Perle (and
other neocons) who declared in a report specifically authored
for Benjamin Netanyahu and other radical Israeli Zionists ("Study
Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000") that "Israel
can shape its strategic environment... by weakening, containing
and even rolling back Syria... Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese
soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can
sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative
along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and
Iran."
In other words, Sharon's script was authored
in collaboration with American neocons more interested in Greater
Israel than the threat such actions -- unwarranted attacks on
sovereign Arab nations -- will pose to Americans at home and
especially abroad in the eventual form of blowback and terrorism.
The Arab world, if not the American public,
understand US complicity in Israeli war crimes and murderous
provocation. Zionists anticipate this reaction and will cynically
use it to their advantage -- just as they now use Palestinian
suicide bombings as a pretense to invade the West Bank and Gaza
(the most recent "operation" took place in the Rafah
refugee camp in Gaza where eight Palestinians, including two
children, were killed and 100 buildings destroyed, leaving hundreds
of families homeless).
"What [the neocons] couldn't sell
to Netanyahu, they pushed on Bush, who bought it hook, line and
sinker," writes Mark Ames. "Under Sharon, parts of
the plan have been implemented; the big jobs -- the conquests
of Iraq and Syria -- have been left to America... The Israel
Scenario is already here for Americans. As anyone who has traveled
to Israel and witnessed its dark slide into increasing isolation
and siege will recognize, America's descent has just begun. It
can get a hell of a lot worse. And it will. Which isn't so bad,
so long as you're part of the American Right."
"Is the bombing [of the Ain Saheb
camp] an Israeli message or an American one?" asks Ramzy
Baroud of the Palestine Chronicle.
It is, in fact, a message communicated
between the lines of policy white papers issued by the Project
for the New American Century and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs -- there is essentially no difference between
what Israeli and American Zionists want: Greater Israel victorious
through "total war" (as one particularly virulent neocon,
Michael Ledeen, would have it) ultimately resulting in a militarily
defeated, politically splintered, and economically impoverished
Arab Middle East.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, will be published
this fall by Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
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