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Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today   May 19, 2004 Elizabeth W. Corrie Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing, Now Bill and Kathleen Christison The US Can't Win Vijay Prashad For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004 Ray Hanania Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.? Greg Moses Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC Michael Gillespie Who is Kenneth deGraffenried? Josh Frank Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry? Gary Corseri Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave Kevin Alexander Gray If Malcolm Were Alive   May 18, 2004 Neve Gordon The Gaza Debacle Doug Stokes Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib Shouldn't Surprise Us Bob Wing The Color of Abu Ghraib Vanessa Jones Man on a Leash Thomas P. Healy Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden Zeynep Toufe Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations Kenneth Roth Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush Elaine Cassel Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later Website of the Day Truth Against Truth   May 17, 2004 Kurt Nimmo The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain Laura Santina Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib Mickey Z. With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness Frederick B. Hudson Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice Shakirah Esmail-Hudani Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera Boris Leonardo Caro The Revelations of Mr. W. Alex Dawoody Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation Victor Kattan On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg Ron Jacobs Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game   May 15 / 16, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Green Lights for Torture Douglas Valentine ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited John Stanton Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel Ben Tripp Torture: a Fond Reminiscence Brian Cloughley Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act Justin E. H. Smith Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey Brandy Baker Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism John Chuckman Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: Goon Squad John Holt Fencing the Sky Ron Jacobs The Power of Patti Smith Brian J. Foley Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib? Robin Philpot Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide Eric Leser The Carlyle Empire Ray Hanania From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good War Crime Jeff Halper Dozers of Mass Destruction Joe Surkiewicz Inside the Baltimore Detention Center John Whitlow Iraq Goddamn Michael Leon Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video Poets' Basement Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert     May 14, 2004 Dr. Susan Block Bush's POW Porn Ron Jacobs Secret History of the War on Drugs William Blum God, Country and Torture Michael Donnelly The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast Niranjan Ramakrishnan India Shines Stephen Gowans Building Democracy in Iraq and Other Absurdities     May 13, 2004 Dave Lindorff Where is Kerry? Colm O'Laithian Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style? Saul Landau and Farrah Hassan Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting Practices Ralph Nader An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners Willliam James Martin Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled Marc Salomon Reality TV Bites Forrest Hylton Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet on the Southern Front? May 12, 2004 Blanton / Kornbluh Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in 1992 Virginia Tilley So, Who's to Blame? Bruce Jackson James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator of Them All Thomas P. Healy No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks Linda S. Heard Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq Norman Solomon Spinning Torturegate Lisa Viscidi The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala Jack Heyman View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March on DC Niranjan Ramakrishnan Rummy's Reprieve CounterPunch Wire Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence Christopher Brauchli Detention Camp, USA William S. Lind Bush's Waterloo? May 11, 2004 Mark Engler On the "Necessity" of Torture Ray McGovern More Troops? A March of Folly Kurt Nimmo Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment Mickey Z. Less Than Hero Christopher Reed Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse Dennis Hans When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar Bruce Jackson Pete Seeger at 85 Mike Whitney Killing al Sadr Simon Helweg-Larsen Shrinking the Guatemalan Military William A. Cook The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation, Nakedly Displayed   May 10, 2004 Robert Fisk From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism and Torture as Entertainment Wayne Madsen The Israeli Torture Template: Rape, Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks Col. Dan Smith The Shame of Abu Ghraib Joe Bageant John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife! Ron Jacobs Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave Ben Tripp Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage Ray Hanania Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse Reza Fiyouzat "Mishandled" Invasions Diane Christian Images & Abstractions & Genitals Website of the Day Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport? May 8 / 9, 2004 Cockburn / St. Clair Torture: as American as Apple Pie Adam Jones America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated and Shot at Kunduz? Douglas Valentine Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press Kurt Nimmo Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib Brian Cloughley Humpty Dumpty is Falling Lucia Dailey Forbidden Games Joanne Mariner * * * *: Redacting Moussaoui Mickey Z. Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders) John Chuckman The Thing with No Brain Doug Giebel Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs Norm Dixon How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11 Sam Bahour A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah Susan Davis Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art Dave Marsh In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing Laura Flanders Life with Dick and Lynne Dave Zirin Fans Push Spiderman Off Base Carolyn Baker Why I Won't Vote in 2004 Prince "Ain't No Sense in Voting" Dr. Susan Block Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation Poets' Basement Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska   May 7, 2004 Human Rights Watch 10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention Facilities in Iraq Ron Jacobs UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So Robert Fisk An Illegal and Immoral War Ahmad Faruqui The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu Alexander Zaitchik From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell? Mike Whitney The Price of Victory Norman Solomon This War, Racism and Media Denial M. Shahid Alam A Comic Apology   May 6, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with Shit; Kicked to Death Kathy Kelly May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor for the War Machine Werther The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas Casino Game Lawrence Ferlinghetti Totalitarian Democracy Robert Fisk "Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded Men Being Shot by US Helicopter John Janney Torturing the Way to Freedom? Christopher Ketcham Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now! Alan Farago Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish Sam Hamod Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning James Brooks Sullen Spring William S. Lind On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq     May 5, 2004 Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba Complete US Army Report on Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Kathleen and Bill Christison Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives? Will Youmans Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian Zionist and the End of the World Patrick B. Barr Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label Lawrence Magnuson Nightline's All-American Morgue Greg Moses Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals Niranjan Ramakrishnan Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing Truth Lee Ballinger Cinco de Mayo and Unity Gilbert Achcar Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire Website of the Day Operation Phoenix & Iraq             Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

May 21, 2004 Shooting Anything That Moves in Rafah Darkness at Noon By AMIRA HASS Rafah. Some say they heard it at 10 A.M. - others said they heard it at 11 A.M. on Wednesday: Loudspeakers calling the men of Tel Sultan to leave their homes and proceed to the Omariya School. The refugee neighborhood of 25,000 souls has been under complete military occupation and curfew since dawn Tuesday. Communication with residents, and between them, has been solely by telephone. Their sense of time has become vague since they cannot see the street with their own eyes. They hardly dare an occasional peep to look at what is happening right beneath their windows. There are reports that snipers have situated themselves in the taller buildings to shoot at "anything that moves." The call to the men to come down is heard mainly in the Badr neighborhood, in the western part of Camp Canada, which is part of Tel Sultan. However, it was heard in adjoining streets as well. S., who lives one street east of Camp Canada, heard the loudspeakers at a distance. He concluded that the sound was coming from one of the many armored vehicles in the neighborhood. "I didn't quite understand what they were saying. It was too far. But later on, I compared what I heard with what friends told me on the telephone. The soldiers called to the armed men to come out with white flags, with their hands on their heads, and their weapons above their heads, and to go to the police station in Tel Sultan. The second announcement said that men between the ages of 16 and 60 should come out with nothing but their identity cards - nothing else, not a cell phone - and go to the Omariya School. They didn't exactly say if it meant [Camp] Canada residents or everyone." Some say that they heard that men from 16 to 40 should come out, and that the Palestinian police should also appear with their weapons. People who were questioned said that they did not see armed men or police coming down from their homes to relinquish their weapons. Only unarmed citizens came down. Telephone conversations with Christian residents of Tel Sultan revealed a certain degree of confusion: Was everyone expected to come down with their identity cards and assemble at the school, or only "Canada" residents? How safe was it to come down? And what would happen to someone who came down to a street where the soldiers had not issued the call? In some cases, according to one phone caller, women and children, assuming that soldiers would not shoot at them, decided to join their husbands and fathers to create a sort of human shield. Those who came down discovered that the asphalt streets were dug up and destroyed. However, they did not find a single soldier, nor did they see any tanks. Someone said that they saw a tank at the end of their street. "People started walking in the empty streets, just to walk around for a few minutes. Suddenly, the soldiers started to shoot. Soldiers the residents could not see, firing. I heard the shots as well," S. said. Frightened and confused, people froze in their places. S. carefully looked through his window and saw people standing next to the Beirut Pharmacy in the central Shara al-Nus street. "People didn't know if they should continue, keep walking, go back or stand still. They didn't know what to do, because there weren't any soldiers to tell them. They just started shooting at them." People waited like that for half an hour. Then, since they did not see any soldiers, they returned home. According to M., people started screaming in panic after the gunfire, screaming, "Allahu akhbar [God is great]." They ran to a nearby mosque, and then went home. They did not know what the army intended to do. They did not know if anyone in the outside world, two kilometers away, knew what was happening. They did not know what was rumor and what was truth. Ambulances started to circle the neighborhood. That led the residents to conclude that there were wounded who had been shot by the Israel Defense Forces. Confusion and panic grew steadily. Shock waves Names and numbers surfaced throughout the afternoon: Saber Abu Libda, 31, Shadi al-Maghari, 42, Osama Abu Nasser, 42, Halil Abu Sa'ader, 73. There were some injured, among them brothers of Abu Libda. The IDF Spokesman's Office reported: "During IDF activity in the greater Tel Sultan neighborhood, IDF forces called on armed persons to leave home and to turn themselves in. While the armed men were turning themselves in to the IDF, Palestinians opened fire at them. IDF forces shot at the sources of the firing, and identified that two of the shooters had been hit." This news had not yet created shock waves in Rafah, and three of the four bodies had yet to reach a hospital when the city was inundated with reports of shells and missiles used to disperse a demonstration. The loudspeakers were heard once again in Tel Sultan, according to S. The men were to assemble in Omariya School. This time, S. said, people in the street adjoining Canada also came down from their homes. "Now soldiers started giving them instructions. In tanks [armored vehicles of all types; the Palestinians call them all tanks - A.H.]." S. said the soldiers screamed the announcement, "Whoever wants to save their own life will come down and proceed to the school. Those who don't, can die at home." Afraid that they would be shot at again, people began to march through the ruined streets in the direction of a block of schools, with Omariya in the middle. There they would discover that the army had destroyed the walls between the schools, perhaps in an effort to widen the area in which the men were supposed to assemble. According to S., the people were not rounded up in Omariya, but in an adjoining school, whose name he does not remember. It appeared to him that more than 1,000 people filled the schoolyard. Some of them returned home after a short time. Others left at around 5 or 5:30 P.M. "People continued arriving at the concentration site, and the soldiers told them that they didn't have to come - that they should go home," a friend of S. said. According to the friend, a university lecturer, soldiers randomly rounded up about 50 men. They counted a few heads and every fifth, or 10th, or "something like that," was taken to the bus that was waiting outside. The same process was followed with a second bus. About 100 men were driven to Tel Zuarob, a sandy mount to the west of the neighborhood, where "they were asked whatever they were asked, they were checked however they were checked, three were arrested, and the rest were sent home." Fragments of information from Tel Sultan slowly collect to fill the puzzle of the last few days. They create a picture which is imperfect and incomplete. Under conditions of curfew and separation from the rest of the city, no one is willing to commit to the 100 percent truth of anything, unless it happened to them or to their family right next to them. Thousands of phone calls from the residents of the neighborhood to their relatives - who are so near, yet so far - make up the picture. Instant curfew The telephone is also the only mode of communication between the neighborhood residents and the world. Almost immediately before the neighborhood was taken over, at 1 A.M. on Monday morning, electricity was cut off to 70 percent of Rafah's population. Thus, Tel Sultan residents, all at once, have been put under curfew and lack any way to learn what is going on. There is no television. The radios have no batteries. The takeover astounded the neighborhood. Everyone had expected that it would to happen in the neighborhood adjacent to the border. They believed that the tanks would pass through their streets on their way to Yibneh, or Block O, or to the Brazil neighborhood, as they always had in the past. There are no tunnels in Tel Sultan. It is very far from the border. Armed forces don't amass there because "it doesn't suit guerrillas," as someone explained. The narrowest street is fully eight meters wide. People didn't stockpile food, pita or emergency supplies. The soldiers immediately announced the curfew when they entered. The armored vehicles entered the neighborhood accompanied by bulldozers. "The children peeked out the window, counted and announced to the family, `One tank, one armored transit with soldiers, one Merkava [tank], one bulldozer and so on,'" S. said. The bulldozer cracked every square of asphalt street, turned it over and crushed it. Some of the ambulances who hurried to Tel Sultan to evacuate patients on Wednesday could not do so because the road was destroyed, or because sand or a tank blocked their path. Now the water is running out. All the wells in Rafah are in the area that the IDF has controlled. With the electricity cut off, the pumps must be operated by hand. Municipal workers have not been able to get to the wells. Judging by the diminished flow of water that began dripping out of faucets by Wednesday evening, neighborhood residents concluded that municipal workers have not yet been able to activate the wells. Like all Gaza residents, the neighborhood people depend on purified water for drinking and cooking. A truck playing "Fur Elise" normally sells gallons of bottled water. In a curfew, with asphalt streets crushed by IDF bulldozers, the truck has no chance of getting through. S.'s family has a grocery store next to his father's apartment on the bottom floor. Some of the neighbors daringly made their way to the store to buy something, keeping close to the walls of buildings. The neighbors on the other side are afraid to cross the street. Soldiers go up the tall buildings, enter the top floor and use the position to observe and shoot. The neighbors across the street shouted to S.'s family to throw them some supplies: pita, cigarettes, sacks of rice. Trapped in their homes, the stunned residents counted five large explosions that shook the window panes and raised a cloud of smoke. Four homes were destroyed. They belonged to the murderer of the Hatuel family; high-ranking members of Fatah and Jihad organizations, who were killed; and a man who is said to be a smuggler, who directs things in the tunnels. The fifth explosion was a car. Someone passed the rumor that Palestinian fighters had blown up a tank. It was apparently wishful thinking, that S. was quick to correct. The soldiers had blown up a Subaru belonging to someone in World Vision, a relief organization. It is hard to know how many positions the IDF has taken up in the camp. It appears that every few hours the IDF leaves one position and replaces it with another. The settling-in process is always the same: They go up through a house. A tank is on the street. Residents of the higher floors are ordered to go down to the bottom floor. Then the soldiers take up their positions in the place with the narrowest windows, like the shower. That is where "they put in their snipers." The assumption is: "Anything that moves on the ground, this is the end of it." Because the snipers shoot. Amira Hass, author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza, writes for Ha'aretz, where this story originally appeared. Weekend Edition Features for May 15 / 16, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Green Lights for Torture Douglas Valentine ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited John Stanton Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel Ben Tripp Torture: a Fond Reminiscence Brian Cloughley Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act Justin E. H. Smith Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey Brandy Baker Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism John Chuckman Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: Goon Squad John Holt Fencing the Sky Ron Jacobs The Power of Patti Smith Brian J. Foley Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib? Robin Philpot Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide Eric Leser The Carlyle Empire Ray Hanania From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good War Crime Jeff Halper Dozers of Mass Destruction Joe Surkiewicz Inside the Baltimore Detention Center John Whitlow Iraq Goddamn Michael Leon Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video Poets' Basement Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /