Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 17, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
Recent
Stories
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demonstration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
17, 2003
Targeting Arafat
Pre-emptive
Strike's Predictable Outcome
By NORMAN MADARASZ
For aficionados of CNN and Fox News, where the
dictum of how a question always presupposes its answer rules
supreme, the time has come to face up to a query: How has Bush's
pre-emptive strike doctrine changed the low-end of international
relations?
First of all, the term 'pre-emptive'
should not be allowed to rhyme too strongly with 'preventive'.
For decades the US has impressed the world with its claims on
technological superiority in information gathering. The world
now knows that to be a half-truth. The pre-emptive strike doctrine,
without due legal and diplomatic legitimacy, professes to be
based on the transparency and certainty ensured by such information
acquisition. Yet due to national security constraints, that information
cannot be shared with the general public, a swishy mass of folk
in which enemies easily prosper.
At least that's what Washington and other
capitals would have us believe. They plead their case even as
the information on why pre-9/11 intelligence investigations on
terrorist ploys against the US were botched-despite the handsome
remuneration received by FBI and CIA agents and their counterparts.
Then again, for lack of opening your files to the public, you
can just blame the Canadians.
The list of the Bush administration's
murders of international leaders has grown. It has also fostered
copy cats. Clone among clones, it is hardly surprising that Ariel
Sharon's cabinet no longer sees any need to hide its broader
strategy. With Powell in Baghdad, and at least some of the world
focused on the failing WTO trade summit in Cancun, and with no
Hamas attacks on the horizon, Sharon's team had to stay on TV.
On Thursday, his Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom declared the
cabinet to have decided to "remove" Yasser Arafat.
Recall that General Ariel Sharon, unlike
Arafat, was held indirectly responsible by an Israeli commission
of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Over 800 Palestinian refugees,
living in squalor on the outskirts of Beirut, were found dead,
and over 1200 are still missing. They were slaughtered by Christian
Maronite Phalangist militia, led by the notorious Elie Hobeika
on September 16-18, 1982 under the observing eye of the IDF.
Israel had invaded Lebanon at the time and hard barely stopped
pounding Beirut with daily bombing. Ariel Sharon was Minister
of Defense. He had planned and directed operation "Peace
for Galilee", the result of which was Arafat and the PLO's
forced exile to Tunis.
Faced with mass demonstrations in Israel
and the results of the Kahan Commission, Sharon resigned in 1983.
Internationally, the Kahan Commission was seen as too tepid in
its final conclusions. Richard Falk, professor of international
law at Princeton University, interviewed by the BBC's Panomara
program in June 2001, explained: "Sharon's specific command
responsibility arises from the fact that he was Minister of Defence
in touch with the field commanders, that he actually was present
there in Beirut, that he met with the Phalange leadership and
it was he that gave the directions and orders that resulted in
the Phalange entering the camps in September." Falk concluded:
"I think there is no question in my mind that he is indictable
for the kind of knowledge that he either had or should have had."
Also on the same program, former Chief Prosecutor to the International
War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Judge Richard
Goldstone agreed that: ". . . in the case of Sabra and Shatila,
clearly the Kahan Commission found that very serious crimes had
been committed and I have no doubt any decent person would regret
the fact that not a single criminal prosecution followed."
Could anyone from outside of Israel have
intuited Sharon's return to politics in the guise of Prime Minister?
Only the most doom stricken, for only they could imagine the
horror the world would have to get used to under his rule. As
predicted, Prime Minister Sharon went on to destroy Oslo, invade
the occupied territories, increase and intensify illegal settlements,
and trigger Hamas's ire by assassinating its leaders, to say
nothing of giving Orthodox Jews free sway over transforming the
liberal principles of governance in the Holy Land. Hamas would
of course retaliate savagely by waging a desperate suicide terror
bombing campaign against the Israeli State and civilians. In
the meantime, the IDF kept making martyrs of child stone throwers,
thus ensuring many Intifadas to come.
There has never been any illusion that
Israeli voters, in fear and desperation, had consciously elected
a mass murderer to govern them. Were one to demure by claiming
Sharon had no direct blood on his hands, one could not help but
recall the Nuremberg war crime trials. They exposed the moral
fraudulence behind the oft repeated refrain diligently uttered
by Nazi commissars and leaders according to which they were only
following orders to shed blood, but that they themselves were
innocent from it. The supply chain of state-sponsored terrorism
hides behind a vanished economy of commands and orders.
Too many wars, far too many massacres
have passed to keep repeating that it is nothing but a short-sighted
masquerade to allot individually committed murders with more
guilt than those done under a State's legitimacy. No, an individual
stabber or psychopath is not worth a dime of guilt compared to
a State leader who is given the men, weapons and wherewithal
to shed blood all in the name of ever higher ideals: the Party,
the People, the Nation, the State, God himself. His crime is
even greater in terms of moral outrage, for those in power owe
their respective nations the example shown in the behavior worthy
of statesmen.
What's been more typical recently is
quite the opposite, a descent into hell. Bush's pre-emptive strike
doctrine has made it possible for democratically-elected governments,
like Israel's and his own, to put a price on the head of state
leaders. It is a sickening sight how Sharon's cynicism destroyed
the conciliatory work of Mahmud Abbas by choosing single-handedly
to exterminate the Hamas leadership--all justified with respect
to the twin adjudicators: God and America's War on Terror. How
to defuse Hamas' rampage was a decision to be taken TOGETHER
by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, for the founding of
a Palestinian State is a decision Sharon's colonial regency and
racist policies can only achieve through self-dissolution and
fostered partnership.
What did Bush gain by blowing Saddam's
sons to bits, Apache helicopters evaporating light-mortar fire?
Had American military intelligence finally identified Odai and
Qusai as sitting atop the WMDs? So far only a worsening situation
has arisen, repeatedly denied by all in the American high command
save for Paul Bremer himself. Would it be that the information
supply chain is also run by a command economy? Certainly, the
world lost out on the precious information that Saddam's sons,
were they to have faced trial at the International Criminal Court,
would have told.
It's an entirely other ball game to what
appears to be happening in Afghanistan. Ben Laden's continual
flight has indirectly legitimated pursuing the war on terror--despite
what Britain's former environment minister, Michael Meacher,
cites in Time, ABC and AP as reporting that attempts to capture
the al Quaeda leader were inexplicably thwarted, and seemingly
so at the highest levels. So be it, the war on terror's reach
swept up Saddam's fiefdom. Think of how pleased Khaddafi must
be with the UN lifting sanctions against Libya in the midst of
this Orwellian Realpolitik after all, he had never
even been an American pawn!
The abundance and divergence of alternative
news sources notwithstanding, some information comes from White
House/Pentagon proxy think tanks, proving that the Cheney-Rumsfeld
clan had already planned to strike at Iraq before 9/11. Given
that the majority of the American population still erroneous
believes in a 'hidden' connection between Saddam and Ossama,
any inculpating clarity simply falls outside of the realm of
belief. The X-Files made it clear: the truth may be out there,
but it's only hidden. Then again weren't the evil doers in that
program the FBI and National Security Agency? What a magical
tool television indeed is when the same is automatically permutated
into being different, and Mommy's early lessons always return
as if in an eternal dream: don't believe anything you watch on
TV.
The thing is that among the awful students
who never listened, most of us never realized she meant only
TV, and not the press, not investigative reporting, not analysis
and not commentary. This is where our chance for clearer news
lies.
By yearning for Saddam's murder, as for
Arafat's, no one can claim that fiercely critical feelings expressed
toward America and Americans worldwide is misplaced and a hysterical
exaggeration. International norms and standards deserving of
a republic have been corrupted by democracies throughout history--this
is true. But never have the people had the means to assert themselves
more than today to remind nation-states that past behavior cannot
stand to legitimate continued bloodshed.
This is what is happening internationally:
criticism, calls to responsibility, demands for human--and not
infinite--justice. The Anti-American scent leads only to a distorted
trail to follow. Like the choir in Ancient Greek tragedy, we
commoners ask: What did Saddam Hussein ever do to the US or to
Americans in the first place? This is NO plea for Saddam-the
record largely details his butchery. But murder can never sufficiently
act out our collective denial of the responsibility involved
in establishing his violent regime as an ally in the first place.
Arafat is ever further from the mark.
No one should be deluded by Bush's claims to be opposed to this
decision. His administration had de facto condemned Arafat
long ago by refusing to meet with him as a head of state.
Never an ally of the US, Arafat is more
than a man, despite his human failures and administrative mismanagement.
Think for a second: Is his record any worse than the American
President's? Arafat is the symbol of the persistence of the bravest,
self-sacrificial resistance movement the world has known since
World War II. It can only be compared to some of the most desperate
colonial wars, for lack of means, in recent history, like the
Lakota Sioux, culminating in the 1890 Wounded Knee Creek massacre-a
people who live in their own Gaza on Pine Ridge, right in the
heart of the USA. Comparisons can also be drawn with South Africa's
anti-apartheid resistance movements, to Hungary's still-enchained
serfs battling through the 1848 war of independence from the
Hapsburg Empire, or indeed the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The declared intentions of the Israeli
government must immediately be sanctioned in a specific resolution
by the United Nations Security Council, despite its ineptness
and in spite of its "hypocrisy". For Shalom's call
to murder is merely a symptom of a general pathological strategy
occupying the minds of Sharon's staff: the forced deportation
of all the Palestinians from what remains of their battered lands,
who are already being forced to live behind a caged fence. Theirs
is a war not only fought against by the world's technologically
most sophisticated army, the US's very own--Israel is but a miniature
version of it, and then some. It is an environmental war, on
water; an immigration war, on the refusal to let Palestinians
return to their homeland; an employment war, the 39,000 Palestinians
still working in Israel in the fourth quarter of 2001 were the
lucky ones in the 60% unemployment rate afflicting the Palestinian
economy and preventing residents from even spending at home.
The supply chain of state murder, as
in its economic principles, produces ever new goods to keep up
with changing times. The marketing principles dictating how to
keep ahead of the competition converge into the perverted final
victory of Bush's pre-emptive strike doctrine. The concentration
camp of Guantanamo Bay and the Israeli government's open intention
to murder the leader of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, are its prime
innovations, and for the murderers running the world, its luxury
productions.
Norman Madarasz
teaches and writes on philosophy and international north/south
relations in Rio de Janeiro. He welcomes comments at nmphdiol2@yahoo.ca.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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