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/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's Stories
June 28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June 26
/ 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge in
Iraq
Dennis Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney, the
NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism Report:
What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating in
the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June 25,
2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush
Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did
Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diane Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June 19
/ 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on
Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Col. Dan
Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| June
28, 2004
Confronting
Myths and Deadly Power
The Deafening
Noise in the Occupied Territories
By
AMIRA HASS
Israeli journalist
Amira Hass, author of Drinking
the Sea at Gaza, has reported regularly from Gaza and Ramallah,
where she lived among local people. Amira has recieved the fist Anna
Lind Award, in honour of the murdered Swedish foreign minister.
What follows is her acceptance speech given in Stockholm on June 18,
2004.
The
composition of the first sentence of any article or a feature is for
me the most difficult, sometimes even agonizing. It's doubly difficult
now for me to locate the most suitable first words in this ceremony.
After all, this ceremony should have never taken place, the memorial
fund never been established, as the life and career and plans of Anna
Lindh should have continued normally, should have not been cut so cruelly
and abruptly by a murderer.
How
then can I express my words of thanks, for the encouragement and appreciation
your award represents, while each of you wishes it never had to be announced
and given?
So
it's almost needless to explain why I stand here with mixed feelings.
Moreover,
there are three other reasons for the mixed feelings I have, when I
stand here, accepting with gratitude your generous award.
The
irony has not escaped my attention: Here I find myself benefiting from
a bloody conflict, from the reality of an on-going ruthless Israeli
occupation and an apartheid sort of domination that my state, Israel,
excercises over the Palestinians, a domination which robs them of their
chances of free human development, and endangers the normal future of
my people, the Israelis. I benefit from the fact that I report about
and from the midst of a shattered Palestinian society, which became
infamous and marginalized because of the suicide bombers and the cult
of death it has been producing, a society which has so many varieted,
rich and wise voices but fails to make them heard and allows for two
kinds mainly to dominate: that of victimhood and that of religious fanaticism.
I benefit, then, from a miserable situation.
Another
reason for my mixed feelings stems from a bitter awareness that my reports
and articles are noticed, widely read and truely comprehended in the
outside world much more than among the Israelis. A colleague of mine,
whose views are closer to the popular and official Israeli version of
the conflict, is candid and cynical. He told me just recently that the
more does the "outside" readership welcome me, the more marginal
and irrelevant I am considered at home. It's not that I am concerned
with popularity or lack thereof. I am troubled that my words - and the
words of quite a few other Israeli reporters, social and political critics
and activists are not reaching their natural address.
A
third reason is a related sense of frustration that I experience especially
in the last few weeks. Again, it's personal frustration and a collective
one, at the same time. A debate within the Israeli community of Intelligence
has reached the media, esp. thanks to my Haaretz colleage , Akiva Eldar.
It's the debate around the truthfulness or falsehood of the Israeli
explanations on the causes of the present round of bloody conflict,
since September 2000.
The official Israeli version, propagated by the political echelons around
the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak of Labor, and adopted by
a great part of the Israeli Jews, ran as follows: Arafat planned, initiated
and orchastrated the armed conflict from the start; Arafat did not accept
the generous offers of Barak at Camp David, Camp David talks reached
a deadlock because of Palestinian insistence to demand the Right of
Return of all Palestinian refugees; Arafat is anyway aiming at the gradual
destruction of the state of Israel ; from the start of the present Intifada
Palestinians resorted to using arms against the Israeli soldiers; Palestinians
who were killed were killed in armed clashes between the two parties.
Each
such statement, which was actually accepted, if not presented, as a
purely objective fact, has been contradicted and challenged by articles
and reports published by Israeli papers. I well remember an article
which the Israeli political sceintist, Menahem Klein, published in Haaretz.
By the way he is a religious jew who teaches at Bar Ilan university,
and he participated in negotiations over Jerusalem. It was a few weeks
after the outbreak of the Intifada. He offered the solidly logical argument,
that had Arafat really secretly plotted to eventually destroy the State
of Israel, he would have accepted Barak's offers at Camp David, and
proceeded from there, gradually, to his final goal. Arafat, wrote Klein,
could not accept Barak's offer as a final deal, because he genuinly
clinged to the two states solution, along the borders of June the 4th,
1967.
An
exceptionally poignant writer, is Bet Michael - another observant Jew,
who has a weekly column at Yediot Aharonot, which enjoys the largest
circulation in Israel. What he derives from Judaism and Jewish thought
is a deeply moral logic. Sometime during the first year of the current
bloodshed he commented about the military and the intelligence boasting
that their assessments about Arafat and Arafat's plan to escalate the
bloodshed had proven correct. If I am not mistaken, he referred directly
to the present Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon. He wrote the unforgettable
sentence: "He )yaalon( did not foresee the future. He created this
future".
Dani
Rubinshtein, also of Haaretz, who has been reporting about Palestinians
and the occupied territories since the early seventies, added his impression,
analysis and information about the spontaneous character of the uprising,
about Arafat's wish to resume negotiations and lack of control over
the street. Tireless Eldar kept bringing information - from highly positioned
Israeli and diplomatic sources - that refuted the official presentation,
or should I say now myths.
Palestinian
activists were interviewed by several Israeli writers. Marwan Barghuti,
now in prison, was interviewed, among others, by Gideon Levi of Haaretz
and Yigal Sarna of Yediot Aharonot. He - and others - reiterated their
support of the two states solution, he insisted the Intifada started
spontaneously. he reminded the Israelis that during the previous years
Palestinans had warned over and over again that by failing to progress
with withdrawls, by the continueous construction of settlements etc.
Israel was pushing the Palestinians to a new revolt.
Ben
Kaspit, of Maariv - maybe the most loyalist Israeli daily in Hebrew
- published a year after the oubreak of the uprising a huge article,
where he analysed the military conduct. Among other issues, political
and military, he studied the conduct of the army from day one. He referred
to the astronomical number of bullets that the Israeli soldiers used
from the start, in no proportion to the quantity and quality of arms
that the Palestinian did. In other words - one could conclude that the
escalation was triggered by an excessive Israeli use of power.
This
list is long. I was part of it. I reported from the field: from the
first demonstrations in Ramalla and Gaza, where hundreds or thousands
of people marched to Israeli military positions: some tens of yougnsters
threw stones, the many stood near by - chanting slogans, chatting, discussing
the corruption and uneffecitveness of the Palestinian authority. And
from distant positions, the Israeli soldiers were shooting live bullets,
wounding and killing. The soldiers obeyed their officers' orders, who
in their turn acted upon the clear political directive and assurance
from above - at the time of the Labour rule.
From
the third day, Palestinian and Israeli human rights and health organziations
commented that the number of injuries in the upper parts of the body
was a proof that the order was to kill. They also claimed that the army
is targeting children. I published their commentary in one of my early
reports. An interview I held with an Israeli sharpshooter confirmed
these claims. Amnesty International had a very good and urgent study
about the events: it commented that the clashes started when Palestinian
civilians marched in protest towards "symbolic sites" of the
Israeli occupation - military positions, mostly near the Israeli colonies.
I published a summary of their report, which concluded that the army
inflamed the atmosphere by using excessive use of deadly power.
It
would take days to cite the reports from the field - by me and others
- that refuted the Israeli official military presentation of events.
If you check the archives, you'll find them. True, all the papers, including
Haaretz, and more so the radio and t.v. channels, didn't give such reports
the prmoninece that the official versions received. But whoever wanted
to get a broad picture and more facts - could have done so.
Yet people comment today to the debate and its content as if they were
exposed now to totally new facts. My frustration could sound vane: so
early on did I offer facts that now, three and two and almost four years
after are taken as common knowledge, proven by important officials and
commentators. Well, I AM vane. I don't shy at saying that I published
those facts very early .
But my frustration is about the wasted lives, the blood that might have
not be shed, the destruction that followed. If only people concluded
early enough that their army and politicians added tons of fuel to the
flames, that they treated a tiny match-fire as fire in a forest.
So you understand my mixed feelings.
My frustration did not start in Sept. 2000. Long before then I used
my advantage, as living among Palestinians, and offered facts which
contradicted the common assumption that a peace process was going on
and that every one was and should be happy. I referred to Israel's policies
on the ground, which were at stark contrast with concept of peace: such
as settlements, such as the developing policy of closure, which is the
israeli version of the apartheid pass system. I had interviews with
Palestinians intellectuals who warned that the situation was volatile,
at the brinks of an explosion. I made sure to publish it. I could not
guarantee that it would be read. Even less could I guarantee for the
logical conclusions to be drawn. For example, that Israel was not working
in order to make peace, but in order to win the Peace: that is, to use
the negotiations period as an opportunity to expand the settlements
and guarantee an enfeebled, unviable Palestinian State.
My experience and frustration allowed me to consolidate my concepts
about Journalism. Journalism's main task is to monitor Power, to locate
Domination and to follow its characteristics and effects on the people,
to observe the relations developing between Power and the Subjugated.
Even between these two ends there is always a dialogue, an exchange
of behaviours, opinions, emotions, habits, influences. Power is never
a one-track, one direction action. In schools teachers and the education
system as a whole are the centre of Power, but aren't students playing
with them a game of shifting places? Still, men hold the positions of
Power in our societies, but aren't they required to permanently alter
their forms of domination because of women's conscious demand or implicit
aspiration for equality and permanent sense of disastisfaction? In class
relations between the employed and the employee the permanent conversation
between the two unequal parties is being expressed in a thousand forms:
not just strikes or negotiations, raise of salaries or cuts, but by
flattery to the boss and sabotage, laziness and telling of lies or jokes,
bringing psychologists to spy or offering benefits and weekend excursions.
Monitoring Power is a voluntarily-adopted mission of journalism, I believe,
in a centuries-old development of the media and its social contract
with the society in which journalists operate. It's not the only role
- but it is the most important one. I believe the mission of journalism
is to scrutinize the actions of Power: not to overlook the dialogical
relations, and yet to question the motives of those in power and their
acts : because they'd do anything possible to retain power and deepen
it, because they hold the means to perpetuate the false equation between
the ruler's good and the public's good, or portray their Power as God-sent
and natural. By monitoring Power, the media is contributing to the dialogue
between the sides. They are not equal, not symetrical, and still they
converse. The media reports about this conversation, but it also participates
in it, by the very publication. It mediates information and by doing
so it helps developing the dialogue. And the media should do the impossible:
scrutinize itself as to what extend it silences or not the voice of
the disadvantageous party in the dialogical relations.
Going back to the Israeli-Palestinian angle, Israel is the Holder of
Power. No doubt about that. Which does not imply that the palestinians
have lacked or lack initiative, responsibility, share or influence on
the state of affairs.
Here, the Israeli media is in a tricky double position: It should monitor
Power, that is Israeli occupation. But as an Israeli foundation, it's
part of Power. It's part of and represents the dominating society, which
has an interest to prolong and eternalize its privileges vis a vis the
Palestinians: here are some of these privileges: control over water
supplies, control over land, determining demographic processes, containing
the pace of development of the Other in order to secure Jewish hegemony.
But the Israeli media is indeed free: nobody threatens us - our lives,
our jobs - if we follow the first commandment of journalism at the expense
of our objective position as part of Power. It's not that facts were
not presented to the Israeli public, early enough, by various journalists.
Haaretz esp. and for many years was carefully monitoring and scrutinizing
Israeli power. But facts have melted away, evaporated within the natural
process of socialization. By socialization I mean the immitation of
each other, the adoption of believes and concepts which infilitrate
from up down, but then circle around as the independent fruit of autonomous
and individual contemplation and knowledge. By socialization I refer
to the thin line between the fabrication of a consensus and the consensus
created naturally between people of common ethnic origin, or religious.
We, Israeli journalists who cover the Power relations between Israel
and the Palestinians, are caught then in the interplay between our freedom
of expression and our natural identification with the sociey which keeps
the centre of Power. It's not censorship, it's not direct official intimidation
that marginalizes our facts or silences us, at times. It's the deafening
noise that the process of socialization creates.
By socialization I refer to the need to safeguard ones privileges -
be they as miserable as the privileges of Israelis who live in poor,
under- developed cities and neighbourhoods. The common ethnic and religious
origin and the natural pursuit of comfort explain why 66% of Israeli
Jews say they are not affected by reports on the suffering of Palestinians
whose houses were demolished. A similar rate of Israeli Jews believe
that the Separation fence is inflicting a negligible damage to palestinians.
And they refer to this dreadful set of fortifications which breaks Palestinian
territory and society into disconnected isolated enclaves; so many facts
were published about it.
Also the facts about these scandalous merciless figures were published.
In haaretz.
Also ending is difficult. I thought of several endings for this presentation,
and could not make up my mind about any. After all, it's a thank you
speach. And indeed, I am grateful for your generousity. It, in its turn,
allows me to be generous with some friends in Gaza and Rafah. I owe
them so much of my understanding of the Palestinian society and the
Israeli occupation, the understanding that you defined as "courageous
journalism".
Amira Hass Stockholm 04 06 18
Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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