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Today's Stories

February 28 / 29, 2004

Stephen Green
Serving Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team


Mike Whitney
Dismantle the Military Goliath

 

February 27, 2004

Thomas C. Mountain
A White Jesus During Black History Month?

Laura Carlsen
Americans Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata

John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral Process

Jason Leopold
Spying on Kofi Annan

John Chuckman
Nader, Risk and Hope

Standard Schaefer
An Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia

Ray McGovern
Punished for Honest Intelligence

Saul Landau
The Haiti Redux

Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election

 

February 26, 2004

Brandy Baker
Is Nader on to Something?

Jacques Kinau
AEI to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"

Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying and the Evasions of US Journalism

Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit

Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows in War

Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger

Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption

Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots

Virginia Tilly
The Deeper Meaning of the Wall

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
Haiti's Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries

Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks


February 25, 2004

Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech

Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader

Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and in Our Hearts

Mike Whitney
Bush and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity

Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words

John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?

Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring

Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning with Nader

Website of the Day
VotePact

February 24, 2004

Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running for President

Greg Moses
Rally the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution

Douglas O'Hara
The Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader

Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid Lens on Latin America

David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection

Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges

Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History

Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?

Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College


February 23, 2004

Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial at The Hague

Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"

Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada

Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader

Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance

Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"

Gary Leupp
A Misguided Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels


February 20 / 22, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry: He's Peaking Already!

Derek Seidman
Chasing Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!

Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem

Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops

Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq

John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People

Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary

Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq

Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and Hypocrisy

Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back

Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala

Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle

Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights Act?

David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons

Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget

David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This

Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics

Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert

Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique

 

February 19, 2004

Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw

Ray McGovern
Iraq Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd Get Away With It?

Tariq Ali
How Far Will Bush Go in Iraq?

Ralph Nader
Whither the Nation?

Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?

Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble

Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT

Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"

Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale

Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope

 

February 18, 2004

William Wilgus
Bush: AWOL and Dereliction of Duty

William Blum
Mush-Minded Liberals

Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome

Greg Weiher
Why is Kerry Getting a Pass?

Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber

Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"

 

 

February 17, 2004

Mike Ferner
The Countryside Murders in Iraq

Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation as Psychopath

Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate: a Victory for Free Speech

Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"

Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The Nation

Ximena Ortiz
A Bush Doctrine, of Sorts

Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?

Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"

Steve Perry
Kerry 1, Drudge 0

 


February 16, 2004

James Johnston
Huddling with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World

Sara Eltantawi
To Wear the Hijab or Not

Bruce Anderson
Kevin Cooper and the Midnight Needle

Elaine Cassel
Feds on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas

Rahul Mahajan
Bush, Is the Tide Finally Turning?

Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death

Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean

Larry David
My War

Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing

Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made

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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Weekend Edition
February 28 / 29, 2004

Sharon the Ringmaster

The Dancing Bear

By URI AVNERY

Once upon a time there was a popular kind of street show: a bear would dance for the amusement of passers by, who would throw coins into his box. The bear was big and frightening, but his clumsy movements made people laugh. He was much stronger than his master, who kept him on a chain, but submitted to him completely. A wonder to behold.

The national symbol of the United States is the eagle. The bear, as everybody knows, is the national symbol of Russia. But looking at the Sharon-Bush relationship, it is the old master-and-bear show that inevitably springs to mind.

Ariel Sharon plays games with the American bear. He makes him dance, jump, lie down and get up again, turn around and perform somersaults, much to the amusement of the Israeli public.

Every few months Sharon invents a new act. The bear applauds and does what he is commanded to do, until the performance loses its novelty. Then Sharon comes up with something new.

That happened with the act called the Road Map. To be accurate, this one was not invented by Sharon, but by the bear himself. Bush had a Vision. A real inspiration. "Two States for Two Peoples". Something new and revolutionary. (Never mind that the 1947 UN resolution establishing Israel included this, and that Israeli and Palestinian peace activists had been preaching this idea for decades. The bear's brain works slowly, and, as the saying goes, better late than never.)

This vision brought forth the Road Map. A very complex and convoluted map. If an ordinary driver had to find his way with such a map, he would never see his destination. But the map bore the personal stamp of the President of the United States, as well as the signatures of Europe, Russia and the United Nations. So who could have any doubts about it?

The act started in Aqaba. George Double-U likes to have his picture taken against impressive backgrounds. Indeed, it seems that he spends considerable time and energy choosing the backdrop for his next photo - an aircraft carrier, a full army division on parade, jubilant soldiers in Baghdad... This time, too, he found an impressive background: tropical shore, blue sea, tall palm-trees, exotic landscape. Sharon and Abu-Mazen performing as extras. They received the Road Map in a solemn ceremony, much as Moses received? not far from there? the tablets of the Ten Commandments.

But photos can lie, and this one was misleading, too. It was not Sharon who was the extra in this act, but Bush. It was not the bear who made his master dance, but the other way around.

The act was devoid of content. The Road Map was already dead before it was born, because Sharon never dreamt of following its course. He has a different map, different routes and different destinations.

On the face of it, Sharon's response was "Yes, but..." He added 14 reservations that emptied the document of any content. They stipulated that the Sharon government would implement its part of the deal only after the Palestinians had accomplished a number of impossible tasks. The Palestinians, of course, could not, and the result was that Abu-Mazen disappeared from the scene.

And Sharon? He played the game to the end. Sent emissaries to Washington, conducted talks, received American functionaries, visited the White House and swore at every opportunity that he had no aim more sacred that realizing Bush's Vision. The American President melted and sang the praises of this "Man of Peace".

According to the Road Map, Sharon was obliged to remove all the settlements set up since the beginning of his term in early 2001. But he had the bear dance to the left and to the right, until the poor beast did not know the difference anymore. So, not all the settlements should be removed. Only the "illegal" outposts. (Illegal according to the laws of the occupation authorities, of course.) And not all the illegal outposts, by any means, just one or two. In the end, not a single one was removed. But the American bear danced on happily.

In the meantime, scores of new outposts have sprung up, all of them "illegal". The Israeli government connected them up with water and electricity and built new roads for them. Huge sums were spent on them? money taken from the education, health and welfare budgets. The older settlements, too, were expanded at a frantic pace. The landscape of the West Bank was changing visibly. Everywhere, new roads for the convenience of the settlers came into being. And the bear danced on.

To all of this, the Wall was added. At first, it was presented as a security fence and it was assumed that it would follow, more or less, the 1967 Green Line. But soon it became apparent that it was cutting deep into the West Bank, annexing large tracts of land and turning the declared aim of the Road Map? a viable Palestinian state - into a mockery. The American satellites took pictures, and the bear still danced on. The main thing was, after all, that Sharon continued to praise the Road Map.

And then Sharon got fed up with the act, and perhaps he was afraid that the bear would get tired or nervous. So he invented a new dance: Unilateral Disconnecting. We leave the Gaza Strip, dismantle 14 settlements there, and, for good measure, some settlements on the West Bank, too.

So everything has started again right from the beginning. Emissaries are being sent to America. Emissaries from America are being received in Jerusalem. Sharon's confidant, Dov Weisglas, will go and see Condoleezza. An Israeli general will meet with an American general. Sharon will visit the White House. And in Israel itself the proper backdrop for the performance is being set up in the form of stormy demonstrations of the settlers, fierce denunciations by rabbis, threats of cabinet crises, dozens of articles by learned pundits promising that this time, this very time, the 101st time, he is serious. This time Sha! ron truly means what he says.

Washington is jubilant. Well, maybe it is not exactly the Road Map, but one can pretend that it is. The main thing is that Sharon is again shown to be a Man of Peace, ready for withdrawal and the dismantling of settlements. Who would have believed it?

This week, Bush sent Three Wise Men to Sharon (including Elliot Abrams, a gentleman slightly more Zionist than Sharon himself, if such a thing were possible) in order to ask politely: From where exactly does Sharon intend to withdraw? Exactly which settlements does he plan to give up? When exactly is it going to happen? And, please, could one perhaps have a look at a map?

Sharon laughed in their faces. No map. No timetable. No nothing. It is still an idea. People are working on it. Here in the corner, a Real General is thinking about it all the time.

Certainly. They will think, prepare papers, fly to Washington and back, Dov will meet Condoleezza, Sharon will see Bush. (In the meantime, the Americans are being asked to give some billions for the payment of compensation to the settlers. Since the Americans paid billions for installing the settlers in the first place, it is only right that they should pay a few more billions to move them out again.)

And so it will continue, until Sharon gets tired of this act, too. Then he will invent a new one. After all, the main thing is for the bear to keep on dancing.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.

 

Weekend Edition Features for February 20 / 22, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry: He's Peaking Already!

Derek Seidman
Chasing Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!

Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem

Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops

Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq

John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People

Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary

Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq

Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and Hypocrisy

Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back

Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala

Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle

Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights Act?

David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons

Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget

David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This

Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics

Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert

Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique

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