Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 24,
2005
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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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January 24, 2005
The Coronation Viewed from Israel
King
George
By
URI AVNERY
When King George V died, we got a day
off from school as a sign of mourning. Palestine was then a part
of the British Empire, which ruled the country under a League
of Nations mandate. To this very day, a central street in Tel-Aviv,
not far from my home, bears the name of King George.
George V was followed (after a brief interlude) by George VI,
who was until recently the last George in our life. Now we have
a new King George, not British but American.
The relationship between the
United States and Israel is difficult to define. The USA has
no official mandate over our country. It is not a normal alliance
between two nations. Neither is it a relationship between a satellite
and the master country.
Some people say, only half
in jest, that the USA is an Israeli colony. And indeed, in many
respects it looks like that. President Bush dances to Ariel Sharon's
tune. Both Houses of Congress are totally subservient to the
Israeli right-wing much more so than the Knesset. It has
been said that if the pro-Israeli lobby were to sponsor a resolution
on Capitol Hill calling for the abolition of the Ten Commandments,
both Houses of Congress would adopt it overwhelmingly. Every
year Congress confirms the payment of a massive tribute to Israel.
But others assert the reverse:
that Israel is an American colony. And indeed, that is also true
in many respects. It is unthinkable for the Israeli government
to refuse a clear-cut request by the President of the United
States. America forbids Israel to sell an expensive intelligence-gathering
plane to China? Israel cancels the sale. America forbids a large-scale
military action, as happened last week in Gaza? No action. America
wants the Israeli economy to be managed according to American
precepts? No problem: an American (circumcised, to be sure) has
just been appointed as Governor of the Central Bank of Israel.
As a matter of fact, both versions
are right: The USA is an Israeli colony and Israel is an American
colony. The relationship between the two countries is a symbiosis,
a term defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "an association
of two organisms living attached to each other or one within
the other" (from the Greek words for "living"
and "together".)
Much has already been said about the origins of this symbiosis.
American Christian Zionism preceded the founding of the Jewish
Zionist organization. The American myth is almost identical with
the Zionist Israeli myth, both in content and symbolism. (The
settlers fleeing from persecution in their homelands, an empty
country, pioneers conquering the wilderness, the savage natives,
etc.) Both are countries of immigration, with all that this implies
for good or ill. Both governments believe that their interests
coincide. On Independence Day in Israel, many American flags
are to be seen next to the Israeli ones a phenomenon that
is without parallel in the world.
The inauguration of George Bush last week therefore had a special
significance for Israel. The state-controlled TV channel broadcast
it live. In many respects, the President of the United States
is also the King of Israel.
George Bush is a very simple,
very violent person with very extreme views, as well as being
very much an ignoramus. This is a very dangerous combination.
Such people have caused many disasters in human history. Maximilian
Robespierre, the French revolutionary who invented the reign
of terror, has been called "the Great Simplifier" because
of the terrible simplicity of his views, which he tried to impose
with the guillotine.
The ideologues who govern the
thoughts and deeds of Bush are called "neo-conservatives",
but that is a misleading appellation. Actually they are a revolutionary
group. Their aim is not to conserve but to overturn. Mostly Jewish,
they are the pupils of Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish professor
with a Trotskyite past who ended up developing semi-fascist theories
and propagating them at the University of Chicago. He illustrated
his attitude towards democracy by citing the story of Gulliver:
when a fire broke out in the city of the dwarfs, he put the fire
out by urinating on them. This is the way, in his view, the small
elite group of leaders must treat the ignorant and innocent public,
which does not know what is good for them.
In his coronation speech, Bush
promised to bring freedom and democracy to every corner of the
world. No less, no more. He cited the two countries in which
he has already achieved this aim: Iraq and Afghanistan. Both
have been devastated by American planes that dropped the message
from their bomb doors. Recently, the American soldiers wiped
a large city from the face of the earth in order to convince
the opponents of "American values". Now Falluja looks
as if it had been struck by a tsunami.
It is no secret that the Neo-Cons intend to "bring democracy"
to Iran and Syria, thereby eliminating two more traditional enemies
of the USA and Israel. Dick Cheney, the Vice-President (certainly
no Virtue-President), has already prophesied that Israel may
attack Iran, as if threatening to unleash a Rottweiler.
It could have been hoped that after the total debacle in Iraq
and the less obvious but equally serious failure in Afghanistan,
Bush would shrink from more such actions. But as almost always
happens with rulers of this type, he cannot admit defeat and
stop. On the contrary, failure drives him on to more extremes,
vowing, rather like the captain of the Titanic, "to stay
the course."
There is no way to guess what
Bush may perpetrate, now that he has been re-elected by his people.
His ego has been blown up to giant proportions, reaffirming what
the Greek fabulist Aesop said some 27 centuries ago: "The
smaller the mind the greater the conceit."
He has kicked out the hapless,
feeble Colin Powell (as David Ben-Gurion eliminated Moshe Sharett
in preparation for his 1956 onslaught on Egypt) and appointed
Condoleezza Rice, his personal servant (as Ben-Gurion replaced
Sharett with Golda Meir.)
Now the order is "clear
the deck for action". On this deck, Bush is a loose cannon,
a danger to everyone around. The results of these elections may
be viewed by history as a worldwide catastrophe.
In domestic affairs, he may cause similar disasters. In the
name of "American values", he is about to destroy one
of the foremost American values: the separation of Church and
State. His is the religion of a "born again" convert,
a primitive religion without morality and compassion. Imposing
this religion on all fields of life from the prohibition
of abortions and same-sex marriages to the revision of schoolbooks
may push society centuries back and void the constitution.
After four more years of this, America may be a very different
country from the one we loved and admired in our youth.
A friend of mine asserts that there are two souls residing in
the American nation, a good and a bad one. That may be true for
every nation, including even Israel and Palestine, but in America
it is much more extreme. There is the America of Thomas Jefferson
(even if he liberated his slaves only on his death), Abraham
Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight
Eisenhower, the America of ideals, the Marshall Plan, science
and the arts. And there is the America of the genocide perpetrated
against the Native Americans, the country of slave traders and
the Wild West myth, the America of Hiroshima, of Joe McCarthy,
of segregation and of Vietnam, the violent and repressive America.
During Bush's second term, this second America may reach new
depths of ugliness and brutality. It may offer the whole world
a model of oppression. I would not want my country, Israel, to
be identified with such an America. Any advantage we can derive
from it may well turn out to be short-term, the damage long-lasting,
and perhaps irreversible.
One of the advantages of the
US constitution is that Bush cannot be re-elected for a third
term. As the popular Israeli song goes: "We survived Pharaoh,
we shall survive this, too." Perhaps this could become an
anthem for the whole world.
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.
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