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Today's Stories

December 12, 2003

David Vest
Bush Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton

December 11, 2003

Siegfried Sassoon
A Soldier's Declaration Against War

Douglas Valentine
Preemptive Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program

John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra

Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride

James M. Carter
The Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq


December 10, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
The War According to Newt Gingrich

Pat Youngblood / Robert Jensen
Workers Rights are Human Rights

Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children

CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart Case

Dave Lindorff
Gore's Judas Kiss


December 9, 2003

Michael Donnelly
A Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder

Chris White
A Glitch in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?

Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style

Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus

Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now

Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens

Ron Jacobs
Remembering John Lennon

 

December 8, 2003

Newton Garver
Bolivia at a Crossroads

John Borowski
The Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville

William Blum
Anti-Empire Report: Revised Inspirations for War

Tess Harper
When Christians Kill

Thom Rutledge
My Next Step

Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear Terror and Psychic Numbing

Michael Neumann
Ignatieff: Apostle of He-manitariansim

Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak

 

December 6 / 7, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great

CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of Anti-Semitism"

Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist

Saul Landau
"Reality Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq

Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win

Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer

Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?

Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire

Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami

Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia

Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia and Dominican Republic

Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank

Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race

Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN

Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise

Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation

Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley

Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday

Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean"

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston

Mickey Z.
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December 5, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
Bremer of the Tigris

Jeremy Brecher
Amistad Revisited at Guantanamo?

Norman Solomon
Dean and the Corp Media Machine

Norman Madarasz
France Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination

Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan: the Road Back


December 4, 2003

M. Junaid Alam
Image and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein

Adam Engel
Republican

Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI

Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia

Gary Leupp
The Fall of Shevardnadze

Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr

December 3, 2003

Stan Goff
Feeling More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money

Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates

George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?

Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart

John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario

Harry Browne
Shannon Warport: "No More Business as Usual"

 

December 2, 2003

Matt Vidal
Denial and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom

Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas

Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?

Norman Solomon
That Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test

Josh Frank
Trade War Fears

Andrew Cockburn
Tired, Terrified, Trigger-Happy


December 1, 2003

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam

Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland

Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media

Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?

Gilad Atzmon
About "World Peace"

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes


November 29 / 30, 2003

Peter Linebaugh
On the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone

Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos

Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math

Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative

Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview with John Pilger

Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam

Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream

Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia

Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser

Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali

Standard Schaefer
Unions are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes

Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay Bridge

Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again

Adam Engel
The System Really Works

Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool

Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans

Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace

Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith

 

 

November 28, 2003

William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes

David Vest
Turkey Potemkin

Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks

Wayne Madsen
Wag the Turkey

Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited

Gabriel Kolko
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South Asia Tribune
The Story of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words

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November 27, 2003

Mitchel Cohen
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Jack Wilson
An Account of One Soldier's War

Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas

Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD

Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer

Neve Gordon
Gays Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa

 


November 26, 2003

Paul de Rooij
Amnesty International: the Case of a Rape Foretold

Bruce Jackson
Media and War: Bringing It All Back Home

Stew Albert
Perle's Confession: That's Entertainment

Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities

David Orr
Miami Heat

Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists on the Beach

Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami

Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates

Kathy Kelly
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November 25, 2003

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Diane Christian
Hocus Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators

Mark Engler
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David Lindorff
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November 24, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
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Elaine Cassel
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Ron Jacobs
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Alexander Cockburn
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December 12, 2003

Two States or One?

An Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva Accords

By JEAN-PAUL BARROIS

Translated from the French for CounterPunch by Norman Madarasz (nmphdiol2@yahoo.ca)

Question: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I am a Christian of Palestinian origin and a Swiss citizen. I have lived in Switzerland since 1970. I earned my Bachelor's degree (1974) and my Ph.D. in law at the University of Fribourg (1979). I also have a degree in political science from the Geneva Institute of International Studies (1976). Since 1980, I have been working for a Swiss institute as head of Arab and Muslim Law.

I have written several books and articles dealing mainly with the ties between law, religion and politics. My doctoral dissertation was a study of non-Muslims in Egypt. My latest book is on Muslims in the West. You can find a bibliographical list of my publications and a few articles on my website: www.go.to/samipage.

Question: Tell us about your involvement in the Palestinian Question?

Before coming to Switzerland, I had worked as a local employee of the International Red Cross in the Jenin region for two years. My job was to accompany Red Cross delegates and their interpreters. I would greet and visit the families of Palestinian prisoners. I could see the misery of my compatriots. When I came to Switzerland on a student's scholarship, I told myself I would not go into politics. My goal was to finish my studies and return home to better serve the people there. But in seeing Swiss Zionist Jews indiscriminately defending Israel I told myself I could not remain silent.

One day these Zionists distributed a tract in Switzerland requesting money to "make the desert bloom". I was then reminded of the village of Emmaus, the famous Biblical village that Israel had completely razed to the ground in 1967 after expelling its inhabitants. At the place where the village once stood, Israel has planted a forest for picnickers called Canada Park, thanks to the "generosity" of Canadian Jews. Israel has erased the traces of this village with a forest! I then started to wonder about how many other Palestinian villages suffered the same fate under the effect of Israeli lies to "make the desert bloom". I later encountered Israel Shahak's list, which I publicized in various letters to the editor I sent to Swiss newspapers. The Zionists accused me of lying. I then offered to submit the list to the Hebrew University to see whether the list was true or not. They rejected my offer. I then discovered they were speaking in bad faith. Meanwhile I was able to get three pictures of Emmaus from Father Pierre Medebielle of Jerusalem taken before and after Israel's destruction of the village. I had them published in Switzerland. The Zionists once again accused me of lying. Yet the photos are there to see! I knew this village well since I had visited it before and after its destruction.

In March 1987 I decided to found an association with my Swiss friends to rebuild Emmaus. Our goal was to make the history of the village and its inhabitants' demands known. One of our members, Christophe Uehlinger, took care of checking the list of Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel based on Israel Shahak's list, as well as Israeli maps specifically mentioning the names of villages with a Hebrew overprint "harouss", which means "destroyed". This list was published in two editions by the Association for Reconstruction of Emmaus. I also put the list of villages classified according to their district on the Internet, without the other details featured in Christophe Uehlinger's brochure, so they could be available to anyone (see the list in: http://w1.858.telia.com/).

Swiss-Italian television went to Palestine to shoot an investigative report on the village of Emmaus. At the time, the crew met an Israeli soldier from Kibbutz Nachshon who had participated in the 1967 Six-Day War and had taken pictures of the destruction of Emmaus, and the expulsion of its inhabitants by Israel. We were able to buy the pictures in order to have a documented record of the village's destruction. These photos are now available on the Internet (http://www.lpj.org/Nonviolence/Sami/Album.html). The documentary was broadcast by Swiss-Italian television on May 29, 1987. The inhabitants of Emmaus keep demanding the right to return to their homes, but the Israeli authorities have refused to grant them that right.

Question: Tell us about the Association for One Democratic State in Palestine/Israel.

Emmaus is one among 385 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel. Its inhabitants are one example among many of Palestinians who were expelled from their lands and homes. With the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap for Peace, which gave refugees a lot of hope, I told myself we also had to take care of the other Palestinian refugees. The main goal of these two accords, and for that matter the Geneva Accord, was to create two States. As such, the Israelis sought to strip the refugees of the right to return home. They told them: "You have a Palestinian State now for yourselves. You no longer have a right to come and live in the Jewish State. Get yourself a place to live in your own State." This will never be accepted by the refugees, who are the eternal losers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They have proved themselves able to bring down any accord that has not taken their right to return into account. After all, if Sharon the Russian and Peres the Pole have the right to come and live in Palestine, it's incomprehensible why these refugees would not be authorized to return home. I want to emphasize here that such a right poses no major problems since most of the villages destroyed by Israel are uninhabited. Most of the time, Israel has simply covered them over with forests so as to wipe out their traces.

Apart from the refugee problem, it had to be made clear that the creation of two states means that the Palestinian State will have a Muslim majority discriminating against non-Muslims and women, and that the majority in the Israeli State will be Jewish and discriminate against non-Jews and women.

Finally, the territory on which the two states would be established is as large as a handkerchief. Both Jews and non-Jews who live there feel tied to the totality of the territory, and they share common economic interests. Cutting the territory in two would only create other injustices. And in neither of these cases would the Palestinian refugees allow Israel to live in peace. In the event of an attack, Israel will reoccupy the Palestinian State and everything will start over again at square one.

Therefore we have got to bow before the evidence that the only viable solution is to found a single state with equal rights for everyone. This state would have to reject all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion and sex. Moreover, throughout its history Palestine has been divided for only about twenty years, i.e. between 1949 and 1967. The country's geography doesn't allow division. To be sure, one can say that the hatred between Jews and non-Jews in that region is preventing the creation of a single state for the moment. But this hate is due to injustice. If injustice is repaired, hate will disappear. The territory's division into two states will only exacerbate this hatred. If you have contempt for your brother, it isn't acceptable to cut your mother in two.

The idea to create a single state has often been asserted by Israelis and Palestinians alike. The PLO once adopted it as its main credo. The late Edward Said used to plead for such a state. But nobody went into the details regarding the legal framework by which such a state would be governed. It appeared to me then that we had to create an association to take care of this idea and develop it. This is how the Association for One Democratic Sate in Palestine/Israel was born on April 15, 2003. For the very first time its bylaws have set the legal framework for the state we seek. They can be found in different languages on our site: www.one-democratic-state.org.

These bylaws are based on the principle that: "The fruit of justice will be peace." (Isaiah 32:17). Today, December 6, 2003, the Association has 296 members: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others, who live inside and out of Palestine/Israel. Several new members join almost daily. We have tried to gather different articles on our website arguing in favor of such a solution.

Question: What is your position on the Geneva Accord?

Our Association has rejected the Geneva Accord, judging it to be immoral. The Accord knowingly neglects the Palestinian refugee's right to return. In addition, it divides the country into two states, which will necessarily be two discriminatory regimes. We have always condemned the role played by Switzerland in settling the Accord, which violates the Geneva Convention and International Law.
We have informed the Swiss government and parliament about this, as well as the national and international press. We have also requested that Switzerland, in the name of democratic and pluralistic debate, finance another conference that would take account of the Palestinian refugees' right to return as well as plead for the creation of one democratic state in Palestine/Israel. We are still awaiting a reply.

Palestinian negotiators were set up by their Israeli interlocutors. The Zionists have always tried to get the Palestinians to give up on their right to return. But this is the first time that they have managed to get such a renunciation. Those who participated in the negotiations can never turn back. Even worse, these negotiators did not have a mandate to discuss the right to return and did not consult the Palestinian refugees.

Now that the Palestinian negotiators have returned to their country, they are discovering that the refugees are angry with them. They have threatened to take them to court, even to kill them. It has risked provoking a civil war among Palestinians. What can be done in this case? Our Association believes that it is Switzerland's duty to come to the negotiators' assistance and grant them political asylum--before they are killed. This is what we have requested from the Swiss authorities.

Question: How does your association intend to reach its objectives?

Our Association has an educational goal. It wants to promote the idea of peace based on justice and respect for international law. It believes that there will never be peace in the Near-East without the return of the Palestinian refugees. It is convinced that the conflicting parties will end up adopting this point of view--which is increasingly contemplated by Israeli and Palestinian authors. We therefore want to spark a debate about this solution on Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and international levels. We cannot force anyone to adopt our point of view, but we are telling them that the only alternative to this solution is a descent into hell for all of us. And this is being confirmed on the field on a daily basis.

Further to promoting the idea of one democratic state, we do not discount the possibly of one day, if our numbers keep increasing, proclaiming a government in exile, just as De Gaulle did with a view to liberating France. We may also form a political party that will consist of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others to help us carry out our objective.

For information on our association or on joining it, please fill in the questions below, returning them to the following address: aldeeb@bluewin.ch

I accept the bylaws and would like to be a member.
Name:
Address:
Religion:
Nationality:
E-mail:
Personal indications in brief (CV and current position):

Weekend Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003

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