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April 11, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
From the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Juniad Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 10, 2002
Efficiency
Theory and Military Occupation
Terrorism v. Taylorism
By Nick Ring
Frederick Taylor's 1911 Principles of Scientific
Management came to define the treatment of workers in a system
where efficiency: the most work done in the most time was what
managers cared about. To an author who infamously provided the
decisive answer to "how many times per minute should my
secretary be able to open and close a file drawer?" (25
times--for other tasks, exactly 0.04 minutes per folder and .026
minutes per drawer), we now owe everything from class rank by
grade point average to ring-per-minute tracking on retail workers
to the U.S.'s standing army of management consultants. But it
is doubtful that even Taylor would apply his wide-ranging theories
on maximum efficiency to international diplomacy in the same
way that the Bush and Sharon administrations have implicitly
agreed to do in the case of Israel's "goals" in Palestine.
Following the brutal fighting on both
sides and Sharon's decision to invade by military force the small
portion of the West Bank that is actually under the control of
the Palestinian Authority, Bush and Powell made their formulaic
and insistent pleas for Israel to withdraw from the occupied
territories--pleas that could easily become demands if the United
States threatened to actually end, or even reduce, its constant
financial and military support of Israel's current occupation
of Palestinian territory.
These empty calls for "peace"
would seem no different than any other interaction between the
U.S. and its client state--except for the odd notions of diplomatic
effort that are belied by both what Bush has left unsaid and
what Sharon has said in return: human lives ranking somewhere
south of uncomfortable lengths of time.
Bush, predictably, voiced no real deadlines
in his call for the Israeli army to withdraw, and spoke of no
penalties for Israel's current flagrant neglect of a recent and
groundbreaking Security Council resolution. He also placed the
blame squarely on Arafat for the recent wave of suicide bombings
by Palestinian extremists (although how Arafat was supposed to
create a more perfect Bantustan when his own security forces
bore the brunt of Israeli "reprisals" is uncertain).
But the U.S. administration is clearly distraught over Israel's
rather ill-timed decision to take up the mantle of the "war
on terrorism". Arab solidarity against Iraq, even among
the despots of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, is fast disappearing,
and Bush sorely needs another military target to continue his
most politically successful venture to date. An Israeli offensive
that will rile up the popular elements of Arab society against
their <U.S.-allied> dictators is not a good way to start
a "regional" invasion to remove Iraq's own dictatorship.
So how has Sharon responded? Statements
that he will "expedite" his military operations so
as not to extend his army's diplomatically irritating stay in
the already-devastated cities of Palestine. Get in, ensure that
Palestine has no stable position from which to fight for its
people, and get out before anyone important has time to get truly
angry about it. The administration, if it meant what it said,
should take this as a slap in the face by Israel. A certain amount
of civilians attacked, imprisoned and killed over thirty days
is no more disgusting than the same amount over ten days (and
if anything can be said by either side of the conflict, it is
that more civilian casualties are inevitable if Israel's offense
continues).
But to Bush and Co., the destabilizing
of an already corrupt and unpopular Arafat regime (to make way
for what?), the increasing popularity of Hamas and other fundamentalists
in the face of Israeli state terrorism, an indiscriminate Israeli
offensive and the Palestinians and Israelis that it will destroy,
are all peripheral next to the threat of a thoroughly inefficient
and long-lasting campaign that might ruin the plans of the United
States.
So Sharon's statement is taken as satisfactory
on Capitol Hill--"without delay" is defined as "without
delay" by Condoleeza Rice in an interview, or, alternatively,
as "right now". No one claims that anything adverse
will happen to, say, the U.S.'s massive foreign aid to Israel,
if the army does not withdraw "without delay", as this
would imply that there was actual care for Palestinian lives
weighing on Bush. But all Bush requires is an "efficient"
invasion and withdrawal, one that accomplishes its "goal"
of destroying anyone who threatens to provide an actual negotiating
partner on the Palestinian side.
So how long should it take a client state
to impose ruin and general disillusionment on a devastated populace?
Obviously faster than Sharon's current speed, which is what might
finally lead Bush to support a more compliant replacement. Of
course, it's not as if the Palestinian or Israeli people are
worth much more to the masters of diplomatic efficiency than
a folder or a desk drawer. Taylorism reigns supreme in the judgment
not only of employees but of policy-makers: Sharon will show
his worth to the U.S.'s way of doing things by his ability to
carry out an unpleasant task in a short period of time, no matter
how deadly, sloppy, or destructive that task may be.
So what can Bush, Powell, and the rest
do to prove that substance, not speed, is what they desire from
Sharon? They can use their preoccupation with haste to demand
actual deadlines for Israel's withdrawal from the territory that
it has already begun to demolish, with corresponding reductions
in American military aid if Israel continues to use weapons supposedly
provided to ward off foreign invasion against civilians within
the occupied territories.
If Israel wants surface-to-air missiles
to destroy refugee camps, it will have to buy them from the same
less savory elements that provide Iraq with its arms (another
U.S. client turned rogue). And the administration can refuse
as meaningless Sharon's plea that the invasion and destruction
will occur more "quickly", and begin to focus on the
Israeli army's own complicity, along with that of Arafat and
Hamas, in what is currently occurring in the occupied territories.
Nick Ring
is currently unschooled in Cary, NC and is on the Board of Directors
for Youth Voice Raleigh. Ring can be reached at: nick_ring@hotmail.com
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