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February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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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
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February 16,
2002
Arab Nations Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
A few days ago, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia called upon the "conscience" of the American
people to help the Palestinians. The Emir of Qatar went one step
further in self-abasement. The Arabs, he said - and he apologised
for using the word - had to "beg" the United States
to use its influence on the Israelis. Truly, when such
words are uttered, it is the very pit of Arab desperation.
Beg? Conscience? Washington may still
turn down Ariel Sharon's request to break all relations with
Yasser Arafat, but President Bush has long ago forgotten his
"vision" of a Palestinian state - produced when he
needed Arab acquiescence in the bombardment of Afghanistan but
swiftly buried once it had served its purpose - and Arafat's
role now is to remember his job: to protect Israel from his own
people.
From his office in Ramallah, surrounded
by Israeli tanks, Arafat fantasises about his derring-do
during Israel's 1982 siege of West Beirut, but it is difficult
to underestimate the degree of shame with which many Palestinians
now regard him. Last Christmas, Arafat insisted that
he would march to Bethlehem to attend church services. But when
the Israelis refused him permission, he merely appeared on
Palestinian television and preposterously claimed that
Israel's refusal was a "crime" and an act of "terrorism".
Why, the Arabic daily Al Quds al-Arabi
asked, was there no explanation for this "bizarre and incomprehensible"
performance by Arafat? Why did he not march out of Ramallah
with the Christian clerics who had come to give their support
until physically stopped by Israeli troops in front of the
television cameras? The more he talks about Israel's "terrorism",
the less we examine his own record of corruption, cronyism
and brutality.
In the meantime, Israel's own mythmaking
goes on apace. In New York, Shimon Peres announces the presence
of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and the arrival
of 8,000 long-range missiles for Hizbollah; now there hasn't
been an Iranian militiaman in Lebanon for 15 years, and the
"new" missiles don't exist - but this nonsense is reported
in the US media without the slightest attempt to check the facts.
The latest whopper came from Sharon.
He regretted, he said, that he had not "liquidated"
Arafat during the 1982 siege of Beirut, but there had been an
agreement not to do so. This is rubbish; during the siege, Israeli
jets five times bombed the buildings in which Sharon, then
Israel's defence minister, believed Arafat to be hiding,
on two occasions destroying whole apartment blocks - along,
of course, with all the civilians living in them - only minutes
after Arafat had left. Again, Sharon's untrue version of history
was reported in the American press as fact.
Indeed, all the participants in
the Middle East conflict are now engaged in a game of self-deception,
a massive and fraudulent attempt to avoid any examination
of the critical issues that lie behind the tragedy. The Saudis
want to appeal to America's "conscience", not because
they are upset at Arafat's predicament but because 15 of the
11 September hijackers were themselves Saudis. Sharon's attempt
to join in the "war against terror" - the manufacturing
of non-existent Iranian enemies in Lebanon, for example,
along with some very real enemies in the West Bank and Gaza
- is a blatant attempt to ensure American support for his crushing
of the Palestinian intifada and for the continuation of Israel's
colonisation of Palestinian land.
Similarly, Mr Bush's messianic claim
that he is fighting "evil" - "evil" now
apparently being a fully-fledged nation-state - and that America's
al-Qa'ida enemies hate America because they are "against
democracy" is poppycock. Most of America's Muslim enemies
don't know what democracy is - they have certainly never enjoyed
it - and their deeds, which are indeed wicked, have motives.
Mr Bush knows, and certainly his
secretary of state, Colin Powell, does, that there is an
intimate link between the crimes against humanity of 11
September and the Middle East. After all, the killers were all
Arabs, they wrote and spoke Arabic, they came from Saudi
Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon. This much we are allowed to reflect
upon.
But the moment anyone takes the next
logical step and looks at the Arab world itself, we step on forbidden
territory. For any analysis of the current Middle East will
encounter injustice and violence and death, often the result
- directly or indirectly - of the policies of the United States
and its regional allies (Arab as well as Israeli).
At this point, all discussion must
cease. Because if America's own involvement in the region -
its unconditional support for Israel, its acquiescence in the
Jewish colonisation of Arab land, the sanctions against Iraq
that have killed so many tens of thousands of children - and
the very lack of that democracy that Mr Bush thinks is
under attack suggest that America's own actions might have
something to do with the rage and fury that generated
the mass murders of 11 September, then we are on very dangerous
territory indeed.
When a crime has been committed - even
the most banal domestic killing - the first thing the cops do
is look for a motive. But with this most terrible of all crimes,
normal procedures are not permitted. Motive is the last thing
we can search for. To do so, to discuss the environment from
which the murderers came, then becomes "anti-American"
or "anti-Semitic" - and thus, of course, a taboo
subject. Which it is meant to be.
And oddly, the Arab regimes go along
with all this. The Arab people do not - they know full well
what lies behind the dreadful deeds of 11 September - but the
leadership has to pretend ignorance. It supports the "war
on terrorism" and then asks - begs - America to recognise
a difference between "terrorism" and "national
resistance". The Saudis wilfully ignore the implications
of their own citizens' involvement, howling instead about
a "Jewish conspiracy" against Saudi Arabia. Arafat
says he supports the "war on terrorism" and then
- let us not kid ourselves - permits his acolytes to try a gun-running
operation on the Karine A.
And Sharon, hopelessly unable to
protect his people from the cruel Palestinian suicide bombers,
concentrates on presenting the intifada as "world terror"
rather than the nationalist uprising that it represents.
After all, if it's about nationalism, it's also about Israeli
occupation and, like American policy in the region, that is
not to be discussed.
At the end of next month, the Arab presidents
and princes are to hold a summit in Beirut. They will issue
ringing declarations of support for the Palestinians and
almost equally earnest support for a war against "terrorism".
They cannot criticise US policy, however outrageous they
believe it to be, because they are almost all beholden to it.
So they will appeal again to America's conscience. And they
will do what the Emir of Qatar did a few days ago. They will
beg. And they will get nothing.
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