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Today's Stories

June 4 / 5, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
France's Magnificent Non!

 

June 3, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Welcome to a Has-Been Country

Joseph Massad
Witch Hunt at Columbia

Jeff Halper
The Process of Transfer Continues

Tom Barry
The Immigration Debate: Whose Side Are You On?

Bruce K. Gagnon
Bush Seeks Military Control of Space: "It's Our Destiny"

Joshua Frank
Bombing Iran: Facts Don't Matter

Mickey Z.
Deep Throat as Sideshow

Gary Leupp
"Peddling Lies About How They Were Mistreated"

Website of the Day
Tattoo on My Heart: Warriors of Wounded Knee, 1973

June 2, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Slave Traders of the Gitmo Gulag

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia: the Agony of Stalemate

Mike Whitney
Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment: Warrants without Judges

Brian Cloughley
Anarchy in Afghanistan; Ignorance in America

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A Two-State Solution is No Solution

Russell D. Hoffman
High Tension at San Onofre

Norman Madarasz
"Le Jolie Mois de Mai": the Meaning of the French "Non"

Norman Solomon
War Made Easy: from Vietnam to Iraq

David Price
The Shallowness of Deep Throat

Website of the Day
Fallujah on Film

 

June 1, 2005

James Petras
Beyond Hypocrisy: the Deeper Meaning of Posada

Justin Delacour
Framing Venezuela: US Media Bias Against Chavez

Edward Jay Epstein
Was "Deep Throat" a Fictoid?

Omar Barghouti / Lisa Taraki
The AUT Boycott: Freedom vs. "Academic" Freedom

Dave Lindorff
When War Goes Off the Script

Kevin Zeese
Reality Check: Who to Believe on Iraq War and Gitmo?

Jason Leopold
When Presidents Lie

William S. Lind
Wreck It and Run

 

May 31, 2005

Sen. Mike Gravel
Thank You, Mark Felt: We Need a New Deep Throat

David Krieger
US Nuclear Hypocrisy

Tad Daley
The Nuclear Me-Too Club

Joshua Frank
Pelosi at AIPAC: Israel Comes First

Richard Gott
Chavez Leads the Way

Norman Solomon
Time to Get Serious About Impeachment

Tom Segev
Our Man in the Territories

Walter Brasch
Killing Americans with Secrecy

Diana Johnstone
The French "Non"

 

 

May 28 / 30, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
There's Their Way or the Galloway

Richard Lichtman
We Wuz Framed! the Consolations of George Lakoff

Sharon Smith
The Road to Abu Ghraib

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Whigged Out: the Dems Have Become Merely a Vestigial Opposition Party

Ramzy Baroud
Muslims Were Desecrated, Not Just Their Holy Book

Brian Cloughley
Why Are Nukes OK for You, But Not for Us?

Fred Gardner
Advice from a Lawyer About Medical Pot

Lee Sustar
Chavez Gets Proactive

Joshua Frank
Isikoff Comes Clean: "Nobody in the US Said a Word, Until the Riots"

Justin E.H. Smith
What About the People? a Report from Romania

Jackie Corr
A Montana History Lesson on Assfulness

Michael Kimaid
Bush as Ahab

Toufic Haddad
Lessons from the Reversal of the AUC Boycott

Justin Taylor
The Fear of Paul Virilio

Amir Butler
Searching for a Saladin

Ben Tripp
Insomnia and Sarcasm

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Davies and Louise

May 27, 2005

Gary Leupp
It Really is a Crusade!

Daniel Estulin
Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005

Kevin Zeese
Iraq Withdrawal Vote: If Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones Can See the Light, Why Can't Nancy Pelosi?

Robert Fisk
Mubarak's Goon Squads

Dave Zirin
Why Pat Tillman's Parents Are No Longer Silent

Website of the Day
Stuckists

 

May 26, 2005

Yuki Tanaka
Firebombing and Atom Bombing

Ray McGovern
Bolton, the Monomaniac Who Would Be Ambassador

Arthur Mitzman
Agenda for a Sustainable Europe

Jack Random
Afghanistan: the Forgotten Occupation

Britt Bailey and Brian Tokar
Big Food Strikes Back

Rebecca Rush
The New Banana Wars: Chiquita's Threat to the Caribbean Islands

Jorge Mariscal
Santiago v. Rumsfeld

Paul Craig Roberts
Uncovering a DOJ Cover-up: The Murder of Kenneth Trentadue

Website of the Day
The F Word

 

 

May 25, 2005

Camilo Mejia
Prisoners of Conscience

Dave Lindorff
Brain Dead Democrats

William S. Lind
Of Cabbages, Cessnas and Kings

Chris Floyd
Tattoo Nation: Abu Ghraib as Normalcy

Brian Cloughley
The Stench of "Progress": the Torture and the Lies Continue

Lenni Brenner
The Plot to Stigmatize My Book on Nazi-Zionist Collaboration

Sean Cain
A Review of Naomi Klein's "The Take"

Karl Shepard
Extinction, Kansas and "Intelligent Design"

John Ross
Sweet Revenge at Terminal Island

Website of the Day
SWARM the Minutemen

 

 


May 24, 2005

Dave Zirin
Palestine's Big Visitor: Not Laura, but Ronaldo

Michele Bollinger
Criminalizing Abortion in S. Carolina: Why Did Gabriela Flores Go to Jail?

Winslow Wheeler
The Pork War

Uri Avnery
Wagner at the Holocaust Memorial

Michael Donnelly
Behind the Green(back) Curtain

Joshua Frank
Chavez's Economy: Is It Sustainable?

Stephen Dunifer
The Folly of Media Reform

Paul Craig Roberts
Is Bush a Sith Lord?

 

 

May 23, 2005

Esther Sassaman / Thomas Nagy
An Exclusive Interview with George Galloway

Mike Whitney
Free Jose Padilla: Three Years in Prison, Not a Shred of Evidence

Ramzy Baroud
Fallout from a Forged War: Battling Windmills While Iraq Burns

Michael Dickinson
Pictures at an Exhibition: Censoring the "Carnival of Chaos"

Walter Brasch
In Praise of Bob Barr

Dick J. Reavis
The Newsweek Scandal: an Unmentioned Detail

Maria Tomchick
Galloway and the US Press

Norman Solomon
Let's Play "Media Jeopardy"

Kevin Zeese
Inventing a Pretext for War: an Inte4rview with James Bamford

Website of the Day
Drawings of Darfur: Genocide Through Children's Eyes

 

 

May 21 / 22, 2005

David H. Price
CIA Skullduggery in Academia

Gabriel García Márquez
My Visit to the Clinton White House, Bearing a Message from Fidel on Terrorism

Oren Ben-Dor
To Create Academic Freedom in Israel, a Boycott is Needed

Gary Leupp
Nights in White House Satin with Jeff Gannon

Laith al-Saud
An Anatomy of the Iraqi Resistance

Elaine Cassel
Bush and the Angry God: Twilight of Secular Democracy in America?

Greg Moses
The Saints of Mischief and Halliburton

Fred Gardner
Martyring Dr. Carol Wolman

Dave Lindorff
The GOP's Police State

Alan Maass
Uzbekistan's Karimov: Bush's Favorite Terrorist?

William Blum
The American Myth Industry

Tom Crumpacker
Send Posada Carriles to Venezuela

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Newsweek: a Contest of Hypocrisies

Doug Giebel
The Grand Illusion

Evelyn J. Pringle
No Child Left Unmedicated: TeenScreen, State-drugging and Suicide

Carolyn Baker
Spiritual Abuse by the Religious Right

Chris Floyd
Justice in JebWorld

Frederick B. Hudson
Black and Gay?: a Review of "Brother to Brother"

Ben Tripp
Him Talk Plenty Long Time: Busting the Filibuster

Poets' Basement
Davies, Engel and Louise

 

 

May 20, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Newsweek and White House Hypocrisy

Kevin Zeese
As Insurgency Increases, New US Military Recruits Fall

Paul de Rooij
"Private": a Film in Search of a Cliché

Christopher Brauchli
How Insurance Companies Exploited 9/11

Mark Engler
Triumph Over Debt?

Joshua Frank
Bush to Dine with Porn Star

Robert Jensen
TV Talk, No Evidence Required

Jeffery R. Webber
Bolivia Erupts

 

 

May 19, 2005

Bill Forman
An Interview with Alexander Cockburn

Stan Goff
Hey, Democrats, Listen to Galloway and Learn Something

Neve Gordon
From Ghettos to Frontiers: What Will Happen After Israel Withdraws from Gaza

Michael Dickinson
The Trouble with Menwith: Tagging British Peace Activists

Karyn Strickler
The Texas Nexus: How Racial and Political Gerrymandering United

Andrew Freedman
Nazi Science at NIH

Paul Craig Roberts
The Politics and Economics of Outsourcing

 

 

May 18, 2005

Jean Bricmont
Vive La France?

Laura Carlsen
Bush's Posada Carriles Quandry: an Anti-Cuba Terrorist is Still a Terrorist

Mike Whitney
The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales: 10,000 Swept Up

Joshua Frank
Flushing the Koran: Why Newsweek Got It Right

George Galloway
Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens)

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Writing Tickets for American War Crimes

Dwight D. Eisenhower
How the GOP will Destroy Itself

Dave Lindorff
The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse


May 17, 2005

Mickey Z.
GIs Behaving Badly

Petuuche Gilbert
The People of Acoma Still Fight to be Free

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies That Kill: Why Isn't Bush in the Dock?

Ramzy Baroud
The New Palestinian Uprising

Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood
Pinning the Blame on Newsweek

Stan Cox
Poisoning Patancheru: the Severe Side Effects of India's Drug Industry

Dave Zirin
American Anthem: Ozzie Guillen and Fining for Freedom

Diana Barahona
Reporters Without Borders Unmasked

Website of the Day
Revolutionary Flower Pot Society

May 16, 2005

Michael Gillespie
The Family Released a Statement: Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy

Jason Leopold
BP Stains the Arctic

Jesse Muldoon
How Many Schools Left Behind?

Norman Solomon
Media and the War: "The Bombs in Iraq Explode at Home"

Robert Cray
Twenty

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq is a Bloody No Man's Land

Website of the Day
Bolton's Divorce Papers: She Took It All Away, Including Most of the Furniture

 

May 14 / 15, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Join the 14 Per Cent Club!

Saul Landau
Lessons from Vietnam: Wars Kill Empires as Well as People

Gary Leupp
Whither Yale? Towards the Imperial University

JoAnn Wypijewski
The Glory that is Lockhart, Texas

Ben Tripp
The Wayward Airplane: a Cautionary Tale

Brian J. Foley
Was Jesus Gay?

Tom Barry
Bolton the Eavesdropper

Mitchell Verter
Barbarous Oaxaca: Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the "Law of the Club"

Mike Ferner
War on COs: Army Files Additional Charges Against Kevin Benderman

Dan Smith
Perceiving Darfur

Mark Scaramella
Death with Pitfalls

Don Fitz
Mommy, Is This a Finger in My Rice Puffs?: Splicing Human DNA into the Food Chain

Diane Farsetta
PR Industry Imitates Big Tobacco: the Senate's "Fake News" Hearings

Michael Dickinson
Soldier Crawling: Military Conscription in Turkey

Ron Jacobs
The Jackson State Murders

Fred Gardner
"Hydroponics? Ridiculous!": A Real Farmer Looks at Medical Marijuana

Farrah Hassen
Far From Heaven: a Review of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven"

Douglas Valentine
50 Cent's Plea

Poets' Basement
Louise, Ford, Engel, & Albert

Website of the Weekend
Military Base Closings and the South

May 13, 2005

Tom Stephens
A Chronology of US War Crimes and Torture, 1975-2005

Patrick Cockburn
"They Destroyed Everything"

Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman, Imperial Chronicler

Chris Floyd
Miami Vice: the Sleazy World of Jeb Bush

Jenna Orkin
Ground Zero's Toxic Dust

Dave Lindorff
Googling for Fun

Joshua Frank
Yale Fires an Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar: an Interview with David Graeber

Website of the Day
Botero: Pinta El Horror de Abu Ghraib

 

May 12, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
America is Losing: More Phony Jobs Hype

Uri Avnery
Death of a Myth

Greg Moses
Neo-Con Logic at the Border

Carolyn Baker
The Politics of Dominionism: the New Religious Right in America

Pat Williams
Amateurish High Jinks on Roadless Areas

William S. Lind
Reality Gap: the Myth of US Invincibilty

Jack Random
The Dubious Wisdom of George W. Bush

Gary Leupp
Douglas Feith Bares His Soul to Jeffrey Goldberg

 

 

May 11, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
The Rise, Fall and Rise of Ahmed Chalabi: King of Jordan to Pardon His $300 Million Bank Swindle

Kevin Zeese
The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day

Christopher Brauchli
Coffee, Tea or Torture?: A One Way Ticket to Uzbekistan

Zalman Amit
The Collapse of Academic Freedom in Israel: Tantura, Teddy Katz and Haifa University

Robert Shull
Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops: Senate Gives DHS Power to Waive All Laws

Mike Whitney
God, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Anti-Arabic Week at a Southern High School

Norman Solomon
Political Bluster and the Filibuster

 

May 10, 2005

Richard Drayton
The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check

Dave Zirin
Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP

Jackie Corr
The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall

Dave Lindorff
Silence of the Scams: Economists on China

Michael Donnelly
From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory

Reza Fiyouzat
Nomadic Abstracts

Scott Parkin
Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton

Stephen Babcock
The Burden of Knowing Better

Alan Farago
Florida, Water and Lobbyists

Michael Neumann
Naomi's Courage

Website of the Day
One Nation Under Plagiarism

 

May 9, 2005

Louis Proyect
Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher

Robert Fisk
"Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two

Kevin Zeese
Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman

Joshua Frank
Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage

Sasha Kramer
A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons

Andrew Wimmer
Create and Resist

Jeffrey Webber
Back to the Streets in Bolivia?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Straight to Bechtel

 

May 7 / 8, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Who Beat Hitler?

Gary Leupp
Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism

Saul Landau
Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups

Joe DeRaymond
Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega

Daniela Ponce
Seeing Chile in Nepal

Heather Williams
Hollywood Does Enron

Gregory Elich
Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice

Anis Memon
To Cuba and Back

John Chuckman
The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism"

Mike Whitney
Hard Right Rage Against the Truth

Ron Jacobs
Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On

Colin Kalmbacher
Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont.

Lance Selfa
Uprising in Mexico City

Fred Gardner
"Getting High is a Little Like Cuba"

Ben Tripp
Letters on Wittgenstein

Mickey Z.
The Mother of All Days

Richard Joseph
Those Patriotic Magnets

Dr. Susan Block
Come As You Are: Masturbation 101

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert

 

 

May 6, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood

Erin Yoshioka
Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison?

Sam Husseini
Talking with Syrians

Dave Lindorff
Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters

Kevin Zeese
Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty

Joshua Frank
An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War

Dan Bacher
Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid

P. Sainath
India's Bloody Water Wars

 

 

May 5, 2005

Carles Mutaner
Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?"

Carl G. Estabrook
Is There Any Hope for the Pope?

Farrah Hassen
The US's Syrian Obsession

Kevin Zeese
"Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta

Michael Leonardi
May Day with an American Soldier in Rome

Bennett Ramberg
The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You

Ray McGovern
The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit

Norman Solomon
Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran

Nicole Colson
The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Clearing the Fences in Haiti

 

 

May 4, 2005

Colin Kalmbacher
Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested

John Walsh
Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War

Greg Moses
Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation"

Ali Khan
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart

Chris Floyd
Ring Them Bells

Linda S. Heard
D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics

Dave Zirin
The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle

William S. Lind
Fool's Paradise

Gary Leupp
Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution

Website of the Day
Kent State, May 4, 1970

 

May 3, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice

Brian Cloughley
Halliburton's War Loot

Ira Kurzban
Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers

Seth Sandronsky
Towards Debtors' Prisons?

Gilad Atzmon
The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More

Michael Donnelly
Branding Eco Collapse

Alex Sanchez
Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush?

Peter Linebaugh
Magna Carta and May Day

 

May 2, 2005

Ron Jacobs
Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement

Stan Goff
The Case of Hasan Akbar

Karyn Strickler
Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics

Joshua Frank
Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly

Kevin Zeese
Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam

Vicente Navarro
Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician

 

 

 

April 30 / May 1, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility"

Gabriel Kolko
Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later

Jennifer Loewenstein
The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood

Lee Sustar
City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago

Saul Landau
The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power

T.W. Croft
The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy

Nikolas Kozloff
Fox News v. Hugo Chavez

William Blum
Never-Ending Double Standards

Dave Lindorff
Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly

Joshua Frank
The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls

Doug Giebel
Saving Jane Fonda

Steven Erlanger
A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Fred Gardner
Washington State Doctor Harassed

Mike Whitney
Another Mad Bush Press Conference

Kurt Nimmo
Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine

Joe DeRaymond
A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania

Michael Dickinson
Flags

Mickey Z.
May Day at Yankee Stadium

Justin Taylor
The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy

Poets Basement
Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Save Barbados's Cowpastor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Weekend Edition
June 4 -5, 2005

Syria's Troops Are Gone

Who Killed Samir Kassir, Lebanon's Fearless Journalist?

By ROBERT FISK
The Independent

The bloody hand has reached out to Lebanon once more, striking down one of its most prominent journalists and one of the most vociferous and bravest critics of the Syrian regime.

Samir Kassir was the best known columnist on An Nahar, a valued member of the opposition, newly married and - like so many of us in Beirut - living on the happy assumption that with Syria's troops and intelligence officers withdrawn from Lebanon, he had nothing to fear.

So who murdered Samir Kassir?

"He always left home at 10.30am and I saw him walking across the street," a female neighbour told me yesterday. "He always left home at the same time. He opened the door of his car, sat inside and started the engine. Then the car blew up."

Close inspection of Mr Kassir's Alfa-Romeo, registration number 165670, showed clearly the blast came from beneath the driver's seat. It tore open the roof, blasted out the driver's door, smashed the steering column and hurled Mr Kassir on to the passenger seat. The ignition seems to have detonated the bomb.

This was a shock that no one in Beirut expected - except, of course, the assassins. Germany's top detective, Detlev Mehlis, is already here with his team to investigate the murder of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February. We all thought that Lebanon's assassins were in their rabbit holes, fearful of arrest.

But no, they are still on operational duty, still in killing mode. Nassib Lahoud, the opposition MP and friend of Kassir - he may be the next Lebanese president - was in tears when I spoke to him beside Mr Kassir's wrecked car. He talked about "criminal hands", about the "intelligence apparatus" who he blamed for the assassination. The only word he didn't use was "Syria".

So who murdered Samir Kassir?

Just before he resigned this year, the pro-Syrian head of Lebanon's General Security Service, Jamil Sayed, hysterically offered to arrest himself if he was blamed for Hariri's murder. Mr Kassir had written a brutal article the next day, pointing out that it was good to see those who had threatened journalists and who had censored journalists now showing their own fear of justice. Rustum Ghazaleh, who was head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, screamed abuse at the journalist.

So who murdered Samir Kassir?

In 2001, after a series of articles excoriating the Syrians and pro-Syrian Lebanese intelligence operatives, airport security confiscated his passport on his return from Amman, claiming they wanted to "verify the conditions upon which it was obtained".

Mr Kassir was of Palestinian origin but had travelled on his legally-issued Lebanese passport on 14 recent occasions. In 2001, he complained he was under surveillance and his neighbours claimed they were interrogated by intelligence officers.

So who murdered Samir Kassir?

Nassib Lahoud, who was last night attending a meeting of opposition leaders in Beirut - among them was the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, who was a close friend of Mr Kassir - had no doubts about the reasons for the murder. "Criminal hands did not target Samir because he was a brilliant journalist," he said. "They did not target Samir because he was a brilliant intellectual. They have targeted Samir for being one of the leaders of Lebanon's spring, because he was part and parcel of the opposition. So the battle with the intelligence apparatus is not over. This assassination is meant to tell us that Lebanon's march towards democracy should not be an easy ride."

Mr Kassir, who had two children from a previous marriage, had only recently married Giselle Khoury, a journalist on the Arabiya satellite channel. "Why don't they leave us alone now?" one of their young neighbours asked me yesterday. "Why must they go on using this methodology of murder? We have to stop this. Are they trying to drive all the young people out of Lebanon?"

This week, An Nahar picked up a story that had been running in its rival paper, Mr Hariri's daily Al-Mustaqbal, and named three prominent Syrian intelligence officers who it claimed had - in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 1559 - returned to Lebanon to interfere in elections.

Identifying Syria's spooks is not a healthy thing to do. Their names were given as: Brigadier General Mohamed Khallouf - who was the senior Syrian intelligence officer in Beirut until last April - Nabil Hishmeh and Khalil Zogheib, who used to run Syria's secret services in Tripoli. Syria denied the men were here. Mr Kassir's last column - on Friday last week - was an attack on the Syrian Baath party, headlined "Mistake after mistake".

So who murdered Samir Kassir?

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book, The Conquest of the Middle East, will be released this fall.