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Today's
Stories
October
7, 2003
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
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
7, 2003
Atonement and Expansion
Yom
Kippurs Past and Present
By RON JACOBS
I'm not Jewish, but I remember Yom Kippur in 1973
only too well. It was my freshman year in college and I was
attending Fordham University in the Bronx at the time. Things
were going pretty well, although I was getting tired of Rheingold
beer-the favorite beer of most poor college students in New York
at the time. My new friends and I spent a lot of time watching
the Watergate proceedings on the television and listening to
the Allman Brothers and (thanks to the four or five Puerto Ricans
in our dorm) Eddie Palmieri. I had recently attended my first
Attica Brigades meeting because I was pissed about the September
CIA coup in Chile.
Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday that year.
I was watching some forgotten show on the TV, when it was interrupted
by a special news bulletin. These little interruptions had become
quite frequent over the past year because of Watergate and I
truly expected this one to be related to that criminal drama.
The next one regarding that would have to wait until later in
the month, however, when Richard Nixon fired the Watergate special
prosecutor, Archibald Cox, and abolished the office. Cox's departure
was quickly followed by the resignations of the Attorney General
and his deputy.
No, this particular special news bulletin
announced much more disturbing and deadly news. The Egyptians,
Syrians and Israelis were at war. Egyptian and Syrian forces
had attacked the Israelis across the Suez Canal. The Israeli
forces had been taken by surprise and were at the moment overwhelmed.
US and Soviet forces were moving into the region, in support
of the Israelis and Arab countries, respectively. World War
Three seemed a very real likelihood. One of the primary political
reasons given for the attack by Egypt and Syria was the recovery
of lands taken and occupied by the Israelis in the 1967 war between
those countries.
Over the course of the next few days,
Syria took back much of the territory it had lost in 1967. Israel
launched a counterattack that failed and then, reserve General
Ariel Sharon launched another against orders. The United States
began a major airlift of 200 tons per day of arms to Israel (in
addition to the arms it already sent) and the Soviets continued
their shipments to the Arab countries. Israel attacked Syria
from its positions on the Golan Heights. In response, the Soviet
Union declared its intentions that Soviet airborne forces were
on the alert to defend Damascus. Kissinger warned the Kremlin
that if the Soviet forces sent troops to the Middle East, the
United States would as well. In what turned out to be a rare
display of Arab unity, Saudi Arabia began an oil embargo on the
United States in support of Egypt and Syria. After a series of
battles and ceasefire agreements that were ignored by the Israeli
forces under war hero Sharon, a truce was finally established
on October 28, 1973. This happened only because the Soviet Union
threatened to move nuclear weapons into the region unless Kissinger
convinced Israel to accept the UN-brokered ceasefire agreement.
By the war's end, Israel had regained much of the territory
it had occupied in 1967 and then lost in the first days of the
war.
Yom Kippur 2003 has had its own ominous
beginning. After another murderous suicide attack on an Israeli
city, the Israeli military launched its own series of attacks.
No longer is it possible for the casual news observer to remember
which force is responding to which-as if it matters-but Israel's
response to this attack has moved the situation up to a more
dangerous level. For the first time since 1973, the Israeli
military attacked a target deep inside Syria. Taking its cue
from Washington, Sharon 's government has not only expanded its
war against those who oppose the US-Israeli axis, it has increased
the terror level throughout the world. Of course, Tel Aviv insists
that they were only acting in self-defense. In Ariel Sharon's
mind, self-defense is an excuse for any military action, whether
it's bulldozing to death solidarity activists in the Gaza Strip,
shooting missiles at cars in the West Bank, or dropping bombs
on Syria. He has an enabler to this thought process in Washington,
DC. The ongoing verbal attacks on Syria from the U.S. have only
encouraged Israel in its aggressive policies toward Syria and
other noncompliant Middle Eastern governments. Indeed, one can
reasonably fear that the recent military attack by Israel is
merely a prelude to those already in the planning stages at the
Pentagon, despite whatever calls for Israeli restraint are emanating
from the White House. If Israel continues these attacks (like
they have stated they might), Syrian defenses would be suitably
"softened up" for any future US assault on that country-an
assault that Washington has been threatening since the moment
US forces pulled down the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad last
April.
Those governments who are not tied to
the Israeli expansion project can see the situation in Israel
and the Occupied Territories for what it is: an attempt by Israel
to move into lands beyond its internationally granted and recognized
boundaries and to occupy those lands by force. In so doing,
they are denying that lands' inhabitants their self-determination
and, in a very fundamental way, their right to a peaceful and
fulfilling life. This recognition in no way indicates support
for the current campaign of suicide attacks conducted by some
of the forces resisting the Israeli occupation. It does acknowledge,
however, that Israel's campaign of oppression, occupation, economic
strangulation, and murder (under the guise of military self-defense)
will never achieve any type of peace amongst the region's peoples.
Indeed, most of the world is convinced that the Israeli policy
only makes the situation worse by the week.
So what lies ahead? With John Negroponte
serving as the president of the United Nations' Security Council
for October, it is very unlikely that the United Nations will
do anything about the spiraling situation. Negroponte is one
of those in the US government who might as well be a foreign
agent for the Sharon government. In other words, Israel not
only can do no wrong, but the United States should work closer
than it already does in Ariel Sharon's pursuit of a greater Israel.
Of course, even if Negroponte were not the Security Council
president this month, it is unlikely that this body would do
much anyhow. After all, the US could veto any resolution with
language condemning Israel's attack and, even if a weak resolution
passed, history tells us that Israel would just ignore it anyway-an
action that the US would support, by deeds if not in word.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 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
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