home / subscribe / about us / books /events / archives / search / links / faq

Today's Stories July 20, 2006 William S. Lind Why Hezbollah is Winning Robert Jensen Florida Puts History on Probation John Ross AMLO Presidente! Tom Hayden I Was Israel's Dupe Paul Craig Roberts The Unfolding Horror Show July 19, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited Trish Schuh Israel Targets, Flattens Beirut TV Station HQ Jonathan Cook Is Israel Using Arab Villages As Human Shields? Vicente Navarro The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco's Genocide July 17 / 18 2006 Mike Whitney Israel's Shameful Attack on Gaza Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land July 14 / 15, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn How Venice is Dying Tanya Reinhart The IDF is Hungry for War Robert Fisk Beirut Waits: Is Damascus the Key? Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Jazz Winslow Wheeler Pentagon Budget Gimmickry: When a Cut is Actually an Increase Hugh O'Shaughnessy In Amazonia: Slavery and Deforestation M. Shahid Alam Israel, the US and the New Orientalism William S. Lind Two Signposts in Iraq Ramzy Baroud Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault Gilad Atzmon Echoes of the Wehrmacht Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Railroading Your Rights Samar Assad A History of Israeli-Palestinian Prisoner Exchanges Ron Jacobs Japan and Pre-Emptive Strikes: Why Would They Want to Go There? Lee Ballinger A New Kind of Jim Crow? Walter Brasch A World Without Fajitas?: the Rightwing's Language Police Dave Lindorff The Bush Swingers?: They Broke the Law and People Died Clifton Ross Up from Below in Oaxaca Tom Crumpacker Planning for the Re-Colonization of Cuba Ricardo Alarcon The Mad Annexationist William Hughes Rev. Billy Graham: A War-Monger in the Pulpit Susie Day Bugging Hillary Farrah Hassen The Road to Gitmo: Dramatizing the Banality of Evil Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Engel and Davies July 13, 2006 Saul Landau Lies as Patriotism? Youmans / Erakat Divestment, Corporate Engagement and Israel Dave Lindorff Cut and Run: a Winning Strategy Ron Jacobs Dogs of War Barking at the Moon Col. Dan Smith Iraq: Fool Me Twice June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Friendly Fire Ambush Winslow T. Wheeler Lockheed, the Senator and the F-22 Tanya Reinhart A Week of Israeli Restraint Mike Marqusee The Forest Gate Raid William Blum Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's   June 21, 2006 Ramzy Baroud Zarqawi's Death: Myth vs. Reality Patrick Cockburn Embassy Work as Death Sentence Gary Leupp Making the Case for Impeachment Greg Moses Elite Logic at the Border June 20, 2006 Fred Gardner The Long War on Aspirin Omar Waraich Ode to Joy: Watching Blair Sink Christopher Reed Japan Nixes Payments to Its Wartime Slaves CP Newswire Coca Cola Takes a Hit Jonathan Cook Israel Engineers Another Cover-Up   June 19, 2006 Bill Quigley HUD's Bulldozers and the Poor of New Orleans John Walsh Tears of a Clown: Al Franken's War Mike Whitney The Zoom Lens War: Bush's Baghdad Photo Op Alexander Cockburn The Left and the Blathersphere June 16 / 18, 2006 Weekend Edition Kathy / Bill Christision The Power of the Israel Lobby Joseph Nevins On the Migrant Trail: No More Walls, No More Deaths Farrah Hassen An Interview with Syria's Ambassador to the US, Dr. Imad Moustapha Greg Moses The Real Mission of the Uniformed Ghost at the Border Nicole Colson "There's No Hope at Gitmo" John Scagliotti How MoveOn Wastes Its Donors' Money Mokhiber / Weissmann Corporate Democrats   June 15, 2006 Kathy Kelly Look Them in the Eye: Honest Abe and the Residents of Ramadi Norman Solomon Premature Triangulation: Hillary's Big Problem Ron Jacobs Publicity Stunts as Public Policy Sam Bahour Cover Up on Gaza Beach Ramzy Baroud Palestine on the Brink CounterPunch Wire Death Squads at Colombia's Universities Gabriel Kolko Why a Global Economic Deluge Looms Website of the Day Antje Duvekot: Music You've Been Waiting Years to Hear   June 14, 2006 Nicole Colson "They Want the Fear Level at a High Pitch": An Interview with Lawyer Lynne Stewart Jonathan Cook Israeli Law and Order Joseph Schechla Bulldozing Palestine: an Open Letter to Caterpillar, Inc. Michael Carmichael Bolton at Oxford: Jeered and Taunted Evelyn Pringle Karl and George, the Teflon Partnership Ward Churchill My Trial By Media: Turning Quibbles Over Footnotes into Felonies Rev. William E. Alberts Decoding the Coders of Christ: Jesus the Political Insurgent? Website of the Day Marines Iraq Snuff Film   June 13, 2006 Medea Benjamin Take Back America Suppresses Anti-War Dissenters at HRC Speech Anthony Alessandrini The Evil of Banality: the General, the New York Times and the Gitmo Suicides Paul D'Amato The Meaning of Haditha Dave Lindorff The Strange Death of Zarqawi: Was He Killed So He Wouldn't Talk? John Ross Elections and the World Cup: If Team Mexico Advances, Will Anyone Show Up to Vote for Lopez Obrador? Gabriel Garcia Venezuela and Drug Trafficking: Bush Bashes Chavez Despite Positive Results Hilton Obenzinger DIvestment is a Stand for Equality in Israel Yitzhak Laor The Secret of Authority Juan Antonio Ocasio Rivera Puerto Rico at the UN Jennifer Van Bergen The Story Behind Zarqawi's Death: What's the Legality of the Assassination? Website of the Day Paul Wright: a Real American Freedom Fighter   June 12, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Armageddon Wish: a Final End to History? Patrick Cockburn The US Already Misses Zarqawi Mike Marqusee Rebranding a Team: English Nationalism and the World Cup Lee Sustar "I Never Had the American Dream:" Left with No Future by GM and Delphi Robert Fisk Has Racism Invaded Canada? Michael J. Smith Enter Sandman; Exit Kosland Felice Pace NPR's Warped Covereage of the MIddle East Jennifer Loewenstein Setting the Record Straight on Hamas Website of the Day Our Way Home   June 10 / 11, 2006 Weekend Edition Robert Fisk Zarqawi's End is not a Famous Victory Diane Christian Zarqawi's Face Joe Allen The American Way of Atrocities: Marine Corps' Killer Virtues Ralph Nader Let Us All Praise the Dixie Chicks Fred Gardner Tylenol Toxicity Terror Dave Lindorff Nothing New About Haditha Dave Zirin / John Cox Will Racism Spoil the World Cup? Dennis Perrin Death is Patriotic: Necro-Porn, Live on CNN Greg Moses Militarizing the Border: Why Operation Jump Start Worries Me John Chuckman Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot? Michael J. Smith Babes in Kosland: Dem Blogfest, Day Two Roger Burbach Bachelet in DC: Chilean President Refuses to Back Down to Bush Ira Moskowitz Israeli Court Finds Mad-Dog US Prof Libeled CounterPuncher Neve Gordon Sam Bahour The Gaza Air Strikes: Begging for a Response Seth Sandronsky Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society: Profits Fall, Stores Close Michael Berg A Father's Day Message: Both Parties Have Betrayed America Kirsten Roberts Desmond Dekker and the Music of the Shantytowns Ron Jacobs Who's Fooling Who? Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Jones, Davies, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Miles and Trane, So What?

July 20, 2006 The Unfolding Horror Show Will Americans Join Iraqis, Lebanese and Palestinians as Neocon Victims? By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS What explains the indifference of the Bush administration to the slaughter of civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza? As of the morning of July 19, Israeli bombardments of Lebanese civilian residential districts and public infrastructure have murdered 300 Lebanese, wounded 1,000, and displaced 500,000.  The Lebanese prime minister said that Israel’s attack has caused “unimaginable losses” and that his government will seek compensation from Israel. In Gaza Israel has murdered scores of Palestinian civilians in the past few days. In Iraq the civilian daily death toll has risen above 100. These dead are not Hezbollah  militia.  They are not Hamas militia.  They are not al Qaeda or Sunni insurgents.  They are civilians. Frustrated by Hezbollah, Israel is lashing out at hapless civilians, knowing that the US will protect Israel from UN Security Council condemnation. Frustrated by Sunni insurgents, the US has instigated sectarian strife. Bush has stonewalled the UN, our European  allies, and the Lebanese prime minister, all of whom are calling and pleading for Bush to pressure the Israelis to stop their cowardly slaughter from the air of Lebanese civilians. The Guardian (July 19) reports that Bush gave Israel the green light to attack Lebanon and has given Olmert another week to pound Lebanon. US Secretary of State Condi Rice has announced that she will go to the Middle East to resolve “the crisis” when it is appropriate.  Apparently, the appropriate time is not when people are dying and a country, which had only just recovered from the last Israeli invasion, is again being bombed into rubble. How many more war crimes must Israel commit before Bush and Condi Rice put aside their indifference? On July 19 the Israelis turned their air attack on the Christian area of Beirut.  The Lebanese Christians can thank the American evangelical Rev. John. Hagee, who has thrown his 18,000 member Texas church behind Israeli aggression. Bush cannot claim public support for his indifference. As of noon July 19, 800,000 people had participated in CNN’s Quick Vote, with the result that 55% oppose Israel’s attack on Lebanon. This result is despite the fact that US television reporting explains the news from the Israeli perspective. Similarly, in Israel a survey published by Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed 53 per cent of Israelis polled said Israel should hold negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli soldier captured in Gaza, while 43 per cent backed a military operation. A poll taken by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that 28 per cent of Israelis believe Israel should immediately stop bombing Lebanon, compared to 7 per cent who believe that the bombing should continue until the captured soldiers are freed, and 14 per cent who believe bombing should continue until Lebanon agrees to disarm Hezbollah--a task that Israel’s invasion has made more impossible than ever. If these polls are reliable, one can conclude that the US and Israeli populations are more moral, and more concerned with human life, than are the leaders of the two countries. Neither can Bush claim that he is supporting Israel because he is Israel’s friend. If Bush were Israel’s friend, he would not have given a green light to Israel’s aggression, which will create more hatred of Israel. As a number of Israeli writers have pointed out, Israel has shown tooth and claw to its Arab neighbors for decades to no avail. Writing in Haaretz (July 19) Yitzhak Laor notes that Israel’s problems are not the result of insufficient bombing and destruction of Arab populations.  Yet, once again Israeli militants are “enlarging the circle of hostilities, including harming civilians.  What Israel’s ‘strategists’ have to offer is the destruction of yet another country.” Laor says the Americans can do this in Iraq with less consequence for themselves, because “the Americans do not intend to live in this region.”  Israelis cannot afford to show only tooth and claw to its neighbors, because “we do live here.” It sometimes seems Bush goes beyond indifference to contentment with the slaughter of Muslim civilians.  Bush has even come across as gleeful as if he is on a dove hunt in a baited Texas field where joy resides in the killing of countless birds. Many Muslims believe that Bush and Israel see them as animals to be slain. On July 17, neocon John Bolton, Bush’s unconfirmed ambassador to the UN, gave credence to this Muslim belief when he announced that Israelis killed by terrorists were more important than the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel.  Bolton said that there is no “moral equivalence” between Lebanese civilians killed by Israel and Israeli civilians killed by Muslim terrorists: “It’s simply not the same thing to say that it’s the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense.” In Bolton’s sick mind, Lebanese civilians are not experiencing terrorism when Israel deliberately targets them and drops high explosives on their apartment buildings, streets, bridges, power plants, and bombs the Beirut International Airport.  This, says Bolton, is Israel acting in self-defense. If Israel grabs Palestinian or Lebanese land and murders civilians, that is “self-defense,” but if someone responds to Israeli aggression with a rocket, that is “Muslim terrorism.” The world is sick of this double-standard.  Unfortunately, not enough Americans and Israelis are. Consequently, conflict will continue and escalate. Laor writes that “the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Israel/Middle East Office, Eran Lerman, is already recommending going to war against Syria.” And so are the American neoconservatives who control  the Bush administration, Washington think tanks, and media positions once held by true American conservatives. Isolated in their evil, the neoconservatives are frantically and shrilly demanding that Bush join Israel in military attacks on Syria and Iran in order to “build democracy” and to clear the Middle East of any opposition to Israel’s unbridled self-interest. The crazed David Horowitz writes that “Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world.” Neoconservatives believe that the US and Israel can extirpate Islam with fire and sword and that the present opportunity to escalate the current conflict into generalized war in the Middle East must not be missed. Neocon warmongers have stolen the conservative name, the Republican Party, and a portion of the evangelical movement. Are Americans too inattentive and too brainwashed to prevent their moronic president and his neocon government from initiating a dangerous war? Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.  He is coauthor of The  Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Now Available from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Order Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair   CounterPunch Speakers Bureau 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. The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"