home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
|
|
How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... 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! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
|
Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories April 30 / May 1, 2005 Gabriel
Kolko
April 29, 2005 W.
John Green Luke
Brothers Norman
Solomon M.
Junaid Alam Jackie
Corr Hunter
Greer Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 28, 2005 Omar
Waraich Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Greg
Moses Toni
Solo Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Werther
April 27, 2005 John
Ross Joshua
Frank Ray
McGovern Mark
Donham Dan
Smith
April 26, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Alevtina
Rea Greg
Moses Joshua
Frank Diana
Johnstone
April 25, 2005 Uri
Avnery Alison
Weir Lee
Sustar Leonardo
Boff Gary
Leupp
April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp James
Petras Harry
Browne Fred
Gardner Ron
Jacobs Elizabeth
Schulte Chris
Floyd
April 22, 2005 Saul
Landau Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Mike
Whitney Michael
Flynn Lee
Sustar Website
of the Day
April 21, 2005 Bill
Quigley Dave
Lindorff Jason
Leopold Kathleen
Christison
April 20, 2005 John Ross Kevin Zeese Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard Dave Lindorff Neve Gordon Brian Concannon, Jr Murray Hudson Frank B. Ford Monty Python Michael Dickinson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese John Ross Brian McKenna Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Dave Zirin Eli Stephens Harry Browne Website of
the Day
April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Mark Dow Omar Waraich Robert Buzzanco Sherry Wolf Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Mark Weisbrot John Pardon Yoshie Furuhashi Mike Roselle Ralph Nader Ramzy Baroud Jackson Thoreau Michael Dickinson Richard Neville Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Bill Glahn Mickey Z. Stephanie McMillan Josh Mahan David Russitano Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales Tom Reeves
April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Pat Williams Jessica Pupovac Joshua Frank Jerzy Mankowski Talli Naumann Antony Loewenstein Virginia Rodino Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen Website of the Day
April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Mike Whitney Terry Jones Dave Lindorff Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Kurt Nimmo Don Fitz Tom Crumpacker JG Jack McCarthy Kevin Zeese Jeffrey St.
Clair
April 12, 2005 John Wheat
Gibson Kevin Zeese Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Nelson P. Valdes Dave Zirin Website of the Day
April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Saul Landau Monique Dols Phil Gasper Mike Whitney Edwin Krales Paul de Rooij Website of the Day
April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair William A. Cook Gary Leupp Alan Maass Laura Carlsen Joe DeRaymond Nikolas Kozloff Dave Lindorff Greg Moses Fred Gardner Justin Smith Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Alam Ira Kay Elizabeth Schulte Jackie Corr Christopher
Brauchli Leslie A. Fiedler Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 8, 2005 Rob Eshelman Hom Raj Acharya
/ Sally Acharya Felice Pace Neve Gordon Mike Whitney Don Monkerud Adam Engel Vicente Navarro Website of the Day
April 7, 2005 Joshua Frank Yitzhak Laor Alan Maass Steven Sherman Dave Lindorff Gerry Adams John Chuckman Michael Dickinson John Ross Website of the Day
April 6, 2005 Peter Camejo Kevin Wehr Matt Vidal Robert Creeley
/ Bruce Jackson Nikolas Kozloff Sea Shepherd Crew Brenda Child Terry Eagleton David Swanson Cindy Ellen
Hill Website of
the Day
April 5, 2005 Jim Connolly Paul Craig
Roberts Gary Leupp Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Dan Smith Mark Engler Richard Oxman Greg Moses Website of the Day
April 4, 2005 Kevin Zeese Paul Craig Roberts Larry Birns
/ Sarah Schaffer Karyn Strickler Joshua Frank Michael Dickinson Surendra R.
Devkota Derrick O'Keefe Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 2 / 3, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Stan Goff John Ross Saul Landau Robert Creeley Mike Roselle Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Greg Moses Fran Quigley Kurt Nimmo Nicole Colson Chris Genovali Alan Farago Lawrence Reichard Ben Tripp Avantika Regmi Lee Sustar Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 1, 2005 Tom Barry Rahul Mahajan Charlie Cray
/ Jim Vallette Dave Lindorff Zeynep Toufe Suzan Mazur Michael Dickinson Stan Cox Ra Ravishankar Daniel Wolff
March 31, 2005 Sharon Smith Ron Jacobs Tariq Ali Michael Dickinson Kanak Mani
Dixit Mitchell Zimmerman Xuan-Trang
Ho Dave Zirin Joe Bageant Jeff Halper Website of
the Day
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
Subscribe Online
|
Weekend Edition Don't Blame the MessengerA Response to Kathleen ChristisonBy STEVEN ERLANGER Jerusalem. First, I want to thank you all for caring enough to write, and I want to apologize for this collective letter, which may not respond to all of your varying points. Many of you wrote individually, but since I also was faced with an organized letter campaign, this seems a reasonable way to try to respond. But in particular I want to thank Kathy Christison, Michael Brown and Jimmy Johnson for their thoughtful responses. In general, I would urge readers not to confuse analysis with support. My effort is to describe what is happening on the ground and what it means demographically, as well as geographically, for the various populations, and what the impact might be even before final-status talks begin. My effort is to lay out what Israel plans as best as I can divine them, in the context of a news story with a large graphic and limited space. For many of you, the article should serve as a wake-up call. Don't confuse the messenger with the message. Nor should you expect a full history lesson in every article, which has limits on length and is subject to trimming at the last minute. My data are not a matter for major dispute, and were not taken exclusively by any means from the work of David Makovsky at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I used material from the census bureaus of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, from Peace Now, from Ir Amim, from the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. There is no great disagreement on where the barrier is going or on the numbers of people on either side of it. I tried to be careful to deal with East Jerusalem separately, given the Israeli annexation, which of course is in dispute. And I made that clear. I then quote the Israeli Ministry of Defense as saying that 85,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem with Israeli identity cards on the Israeli side of the barrier. That is in the story to emphasize it, not to diminish it. But it is not true that all Palestinians living inside what is generally called Jerusalem, never mind the municipal boundaries, will live inside the barrier or wall. These, for example, are Ministry of Defense figures: Out of the 230,000 Palestinians (Ministry of Interior records) bearing blue I.D, registered as living in Jerusalem, 90,000 live outside the Jerusalem municipality and 55,000 live inside the municipal area but outside the barrier; 85,000 Palestinians with blue ID live in Jerusalem on the Israeli side of the barrier. And I have written in the past, as others at The Times have done many times, of the disputes over land, seizures of land, uprooting of olive trees, gates across fields, difficulty of travel, multiple checkpoints and so on that are faced by ordinary Palestinians - from Jayyous and Nablus to East Jerusalem and Khan Yunis. These are hardly unknown issues to the readers of my newspaper. Michael Brown and some others feel I did not fully represent the international view that Israeli settlement building across the green line is illegal, and that I simply said: "Palestinians argue in any case that all Israeli settlements beyond the green line are illegal. They reject the annexation of east Jerusalem and say that even the 8 percent of the West Bank inside the barrier is among the best land for housing and agriculture. Unilateralism, they say, is no substitute for negotiations.'' Elsewhere in the piece, I note that the Palestinians regard the Israelis living in East Jerusalem as illegal settlers. I think Mr. Brown has a point. There are U.N. resolutions calling the Israeli settlements illegal, and many different countries, some of them European, have taken the same view. The United States view has migrated from the Carter days to whatever we can deduce from the ambiguities of the road map, which I also felt I had to take some room to explain. But most "international law'' is ambiguous or advisory, whether we like it or not. The applicability of the 4th Geneva convention, for example, and what parts of it, are a subject for intense legal debate in Israel and various court rulings, with questions at issue about the sovereignty of Jerusalem and the West Bank before 1967. You may disparage such debates, but they are real. Even the key U.N. resolution about land for peace was negotiated to say that Israel must withdraw "from territories'' -- not from "all territories." I'm not an international lawyer, I'm glad to say, but I should have broadened the point beyond the Palestinian view, to emphasize that this view is widely shared by a number of countries. We have, of course, written that in the past. Similarly, Mr. Brown and others believe I should have cited the advisory opinion last summer of the International Court of Justice on the route of the barrier, which is, according to the court, illegal wherever it is built over the green line. I also think this is a fair point, and in fact, a reference to that decision was cut. There were other quotes cut that I was sorry to lose, that I felt helped broaden the perspective of the article. But I take responsibility for the piece. And I would ask you to read it with these notes in mind. Others said I should have emphasized how much of the rest of the West Bank is desert, or concentrated on the Jordan Valley, or a number of other matters. And some wrote to me insisting that I never noted certain facts, which in fact I did note in the piece. Someone said I wrote that Israel is only building on 8 percent of the West Bank, which I did not write - in fact I described how West Bank settlement is continuing beyond the route of the barrier in contravention of Israeli promises. Some said I never noted that the 8 percent includes much of the best agricultural land or various other comments that indicated less than attentive reading. Others urged me to talk to various sources, including some, like Jeff Halper, for example, whom I know and have spent time with, including a tour of Maale Adumim and the barrier. But I welcome all such suggestions. And I also got this response, among a small group of similar expressions:
Yours sincerely, Steven Erlanger
|
