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CHINA'S GREAT LEAP BACKWARDS Peter Kwong gives us the "New China" without illusions: from the "millionaires' fair" in Shanghai, with $60,000 diamond-studded dog leashes to one of the most savagely repressed working class and peasantry on the planet. How China's leaders swapped Marx and Mao for Milton Friedman. Alexander Cockburn on What's wrong with the U.S. left. They're sitting in darkened rooms weaving conspiracy fantasies about 9/11; they're blogging; they're confusing a medium with a movement; they're not doing enough to stop the war in Iraq. John Ross takes us along the stormy trail of the Mexican election. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories July 6, 2006 Jonathan Cook July 5, 2006 Mike Whitney Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud Missy Comley Beattie Arthur Neslen Vincent Maruffi Paul Cantor Paul D. Johnson David Price
Col. Dan Smith Chris Floyd Marjorie Cohn James Brooks Medea Benjamin Matt Reichel Elisa Salasin Rick Wilhelm Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Dr. Bouthaina Shaban Julia Olmstead Dave Lindorff Andres Gomez Alan Singer Alexander Cockburn
Paul Craig
Roberts Stephen T.
Banko Daniel Cassidy Fawzia Afzal-Khan Jeff Taylor John Ross Greg Moses Laura Carlsen Justin E.H.
Smith Brian Cloughley Anthony Papa Mike Ferner Jerry Tucker Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement
June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Heather Williams Burbach / Cantor Nick Dearden Michael J.
Smith Brian Concannon Virginia Tilley
Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Paul Craig
Roberts June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Greg Moses Mark Weisbrot Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff William S.
Lind Mike Ferner Zoltan Grossman
Marjorie Cohn Benjamin /
Jarrar William Hughes Doug Giebel Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn
June 26, 2006 Don Santina Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz Evelyn Pringle Jonathan Cook
June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Col. Dan Smith
June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Winslow T.
Wheeler Tanya Reinhart Mike Marqusee William Blum
June 21, 2006 Ramzy Baroud Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Greg Moses
June 20, 2006 Fred Gardner Omar Waraich Christopher Reed CP Newswire Jonathan Cook
June 19, 2006 Bill Quigley John Walsh Mike Whitney Alexander Cockburn
June 16 / 18,
2006 Kathy / Bill
Christision Joseph Nevins Farrah Hassen Greg Moses Nicole Colson John Scagliotti Mokhiber / Weissmann
June 15, 2006 Kathy Kelly Norman Solomon Ron Jacobs Sam Bahour Ramzy Baroud CounterPunch Wire Gabriel Kolko Website of the Day
June 14, 2006 Nicole Colson Jonathan Cook Joseph Schechla Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Ward Churchill Rev. William E. Alberts Website of the
Day
June 13, 2006 Medea Benjamin Anthony Alessandrini Paul D'Amato Dave Lindorff John Ross Gabriel Garcia Hilton Obenzinger Yitzhak Laor Juan Antonio
Ocasio Rivera Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of the
Day
June 12, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Mike Marqusee Lee Sustar Robert Fisk Michael J. Smith Felice Pace Jennifer Loewenstein Website of the Day
June 10 / 11,
2006 Robert Fisk Diane Christian Joe Allen Ralph Nader Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin /
John Cox Dennis Perrin Greg Moses John Chuckman Michael J. Smith Roger Burbach Ira Moskowitz Sam Bahour Seth Sandronsky Michael Berg Kirsten Roberts Ron Jacobs Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
June 9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Eric Ruder Evelyn Pringle Mickey Z. Michael J. Smith Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
June 8, 2006 Chris Floyd Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs William S. Lind Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Lloyd Williams Bill Christison Website of the Day
June 7, 2006 Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor John Walsh David MacMichael Mickey Z. Evelyn Pringle Myles Palmer Laura Ribeiro Website of the Day
June 6, 2006 Diane Christian Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Norman Solomon Darmont / Genovali Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Subcomandante Marcos Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
June 5, 2006 Bruce Jackson Chris Floyd Michael Neumann Heather Gray William Hughes David Swanson Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
June 3 / 4, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Rosemary Radford Ruether Harry Clark Jeffrey St. Clair Ron Ridenour Ron Jacobs Fred Gardner Peter Montague John Walsh Greg Moses Sean Donahue Mike Whitney Dave Patten Ali Khan Robert Dotson,
MD Hammond Guthrie St. Clair / D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Day
June 2, 2006 Kathy Kelly Alan Maass Mickey Z. Dave Lindorff Chris Kutalik Sunsara Taylor Sam Husseini Mike Ferner Website of the
Day
June 1, 2006 Brian Cloughley David Peterson Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Paul Rockwell Clifton Ross Kevin Zeese Website of the
Day
May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
Day
May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
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July 5, 2006 The Real Reasons for Israel's Invasion of GazaAn Experiment in Human DespairBy JONATHAN COOK One needed only to watch the interview on British television this week with Israel's ambassador to the UK to realise that the Israeli army's tightening of the siege on Gaza, its invasion of the northern parts of the Strip today, and the looming humanitarian crisis across the territory, have nothing to do with the recent capture of an Israeli soldier -- or even the feeble home-made Qassam rockets fired, usually ineffectually, into Israel by Palestinian militants. Under questioning from presenter Jon Snow of Channel Four news on the reasons behind Israel's bombing of Gaza's only power station -- thereby cutting off electricity to more than half of the Strip's 1.3 million inhabitants for many months ahead, as well as threatening the water supply -- Zvi Ravner denied this action amounted to collective punishment of the civilian population. Rather, he claimed, the electricity station had to be disabled to prevent the soldier's captors from having the light needed to smuggle him out of Gaza at night. It was left to a bemused Jon Snow to point out that smugglers usually prefer to do their work in the dark and that Israel's actions were more likely to assist his captors than disadvantage them. The Alice Through the Looking Glass quality of Israeli disinformation over the combined siege and invasion of Gaza -- and its widespread and credulous repetition by the Western media -- is successfully distracting attention from Israel's real goals in this one-sided war of attrition. The current destruction of Gaza's civilian and administrative infrastructure is reminiscent of the Israeli army's cruel rampages through the streets of West Bank cities in the repeated invasions of 2002 and 2003, and the Jewish settlers' malicious attacks on Palestinian farmers trying to collect their olive harvests. The relative absence of these horror stories today is simply a reflection of the terrible success of the wall Israel has built across Palestinian farmland and around Palestinian population centres in the West Bank. Settlers no longer need to plunder the olive harvest when the fruit is being left to rot on the trees because farmers can no longer reach their groves. In the case of the West Bank
invasions, Israeli tanks rolled easily into Palestinian cities
that had already been isolated and crippled by the Notably, only in the warren of alleys in the overcrowded refugee camps of Jenin and Nablus did the army find the going far tougher and suffer relatively high casualties. Which may explain the military caution that has been exercised by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in regard to the ground invasion of Gaza. The tiny Strip, besieged on its land borders by the Israeli army behind an electronic fence and on the seafront by the Israeli navy, is one giant, overcrowded refugee camp. The past week has seen Gaza "softened up" with airstrikes on its infrastructure and government ministries. Today, land forces began wreaking more death and destruction -- fourteen killed at the time of writing -- in "mopping up" exercises in the pattern established earlier in the West Bank. Three long-standing motives are discernible in Israel's current menacing of Gaza. First, Israel is determined to continue its campaign of impairing the Palestinian Authority's ability to govern. This has nothing to do with the recent election of Hamas to run the Palestinian Authority. Israel's official policy of unilateralism -- ignoring the wishes of the Palestinian people -- began long before, when Yasser Arafat was in charge. It has continued through the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, a leader who is about as close to a quisling as Israel is likely to find. Hamas's electoral success has merely supplied Israel with the pretext it needs for launching its invasion and the grounds for demanding international support as it chokes the life out of Gaza. Israel doubtless hopes that at the end of this process it will be left with Abbas, a figurehead president backed into a corner and ready to put his name to whatever agreement Israel imposes. Second, the attack on Gaza -- as ever -- is partly a distraction from the real battle. It was widely recognised that Ariel Sharon's dogged pursuit of his Gaza disengagement policy last year was designed to free his hand for the annexation of large chunks of a greater prize, the West Bank, and for securing the biggest prize of all, East Jerusalem. Nothing has changed on this front. As Israel keeps all eyes directed towards the suffering in Gaza, it is starting to make significant moves in the West Bank and Jerusalem. It is preparing for the much-delayed evacuation of a handful of illegal West Bank hilltop settlements -- known in Israel as "outposts" -- demanded as the first stage of the implementation of the almost-forgotten US-sponsored peace process called the Road Map. These outposts are tiny, often just a few caravans. It will be much to Israel's advantage if the world fails to examine too closely the miserly act of evacuating these places, which doubtless will later be presented both as Israel having made a huge sacrifice for peace and as having satisfied its side of the Road Map's conditions. The loss of these outposts and a few larger settlements will pave the way for international acceptance of Olmert's convergence plan, his unilaterally imposed expansion of Israel's borders at the expense of a viable Palestinian state. Equally significant are the overlooked manoeuvres Israel is undertaking in East Jerusalem as it beats a warpath towards Gaza. Last week Israel stripped four Hamas MPs of their right to live in East Jerusalem, effectively expelling them to the West Bank. It also showed that it could lock up them and dozens of other democratically elected Palestinian representatives with barely a peep from the international community. In yet another dose of Alice in Wonderland, Israel's policy of making hostages of these MPs was referred to as "arrests" by the Western media. Few bothered to report that the MPs are being deprived of even their most basic rights, such as meeting with their lawyers. As the four Jerusalem MPs' lawyers have argued, it is a nonsense that Israel allowed these Hamas politicians to stand in the recent elections and now, after their victory, it calls their membership of the party "support for terrorism". It is also a disturbing sign of how easily Israel will be able to begin ethnically cleansing East Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants using the flimsiest of excuses. And third, and perhaps most significantly of all, Israel is using the siege and invasion of Gaza as a laboratory for testing policies it also intends to apply to the West Bank after convergence. Gazans are the guinea pigs on which Olmert can try out the "extreme action" he has been boasting of. The destruction of Gaza's power plant and loss of electricity to some 700,000 people; the consequent scarcity of water, build-up of sewage that cannot be disposed of, and inevitable spread of disease; the shortages of fuel and threats to the running of vital services such as hospitals; the sonic booms of Israeli aircraft that terrify Gaza's children and unpredictable air strikes that terrify everyone; the inability of Palestinian officials to run bombed ministries and provide services; the constant threat of invasion by massed Israeli troops on the "border"; and the breakdown of law and order as Fatah and Hamas gunmen are encouraged to turn on each other. All these factors are designed to one end: the slow demand by Palestinians, civilians and militants alike, to clear out of the hell-hole of Gaza. The traffic through the tunnels that once served Gaza's smugglers will change directions: where once cigarettes and arms came into Gaza, the likelihood is that soon it will be people passing through those underground passages to leave Gaza and seek a life outside. If this experiment in human despair works in the small Gaza Strip, its lessons can be applied to much bigger effect in the West Bank ghettoes left behind after convergence. This is how ethnic cleansing looks when it is designed not by butchers in uniforms but by technocrats in suits. Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                    |
