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July 16, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
July 12, 2002
Sean Donahue
The Other
Harken Energy Scandal: Oil, Death Squads
and Colombia
Walt Brasch
Sin Tax
Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each."
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
July 11, 2002
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
July 10, 2002
CounterPunch Wire
Third Party
Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status
Nassar Ibriham &
Majed Nassar
Bush's
Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing
Robert Fisk
Ain't That
America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom
Dave Marsh
The Return
of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting
Bernard Weiner
Hope and
Despair in
the Body Politic
Gary Leupp
European
Worries and
Bush's Terror War
July 9, 2002
St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic
Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.
Jack McCarthy
Florida:
a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?
Robert Fisk
How a Saudi
Billionaire
Does Beirut
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How Bush
Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
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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Published March 15, 2002
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 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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Reviews of Gore:
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July
16, 2002
When
is Terrorism not Defined as Terrorism?
by Salam al-Marayati
As we await the conclusion of the FBI's investigation
into the July 4 shooting at Los Angeles International Airport,
we are witnessing a sudden attack on law enforcement's definition
of terrorism.
If the investigators conclude that the
shooting incident involved terrorism, let's all accept it and
move on. If they maintain that it was an isolated incident,
expect a widening of the debate on the methodology on classification
of violent acts. A deeper problem, however, is how violence
and subsequent pain has been politicized and exploited.
When Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense
League was charged last fall with attempting to bomb our office,
the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City and the office of Rep. Darryl
Issa, federal authorities avoided the invocation of terrorism.
It was a bomb plot and the charges centered on the possession
of explosives.
The president did not issue any statement
to the nation, as he did for the LAX shooting. In fact, the
JDL is still not listed as a terrorist organization. Where were
the brave voices speaking out against political correctness?
In another landmark case, a federal judge dismissed charges
against seven members of the Mujahedeen El Khalq, a pro-Marxist
terrorist organization established to overthrow the current
Iranian regime.
The group was charged with aiding terrorist
groups by soliciting donations at airports. The judge asserted
that MEK's civil rights were violated when they could not defend
themselves against the State Department's assertion that they
were a terrorist group in the agency's listing.
Members of Congress even passed a resolution
in solidarity with the MEK after the Clinton administration
placed the Marxist group on the terrorist list. Congress was
never accused of aiding and abetting terrorists. Should the
same standard apply for the three American Muslim charities
shut down as a result of the government's freeze of their assets?
Of course, the MEK story did not stir up any debate, because
these terrorists are working for the West against a Muslim
country.
Selective justice is injustice -- it
does not help us in the war on terror and continues to project
the image that the U.S. is anti-Islam. Other cases involving
violence against ethnic groups could have been used as political
footballs. An Egyptian store owner was killed within weeks after
the Sept. 11 attacks, but it has not been labeled a hate crime
or a terrorist attack. Terrorism was never acknowledged when
black churches were torched throughout the South. There was
also a case involving militants storing arms in an Armenian
church here in Los Angeles. Their purpose in smuggling arms
was to kill their opponents, the Azeris. If a group of Muslims
was caught storing arms to ship to the Kashmiris, for example,
I'm sure there would be a national uproar about it as another
chapter in the war on terror. American Jews celebrate the fact
that their children defer going to college in order to serve
in the Israeli army, but American Muslims are chastised as terrorist
sympathizers for giving money to the refugees of war-torn countries.
The LAX shooting underscores the troubling development of bringing
Middle East violence onto our streets.
Whether violence is committed by groups
or individuals, our job as leaders in the Muslim and Jewish
communities is to diminish, not exacerbate, hatred, rather than
jumping on opportunities to score more political points against
one another at the expense of human relations.
I can understand the hysteria surrounding
the Middle East conflict. Public policy-making is not the place
for allowing that hysteria to influence serious decisions.
A violent crime that takes the life of
innocent people is bad enough. But to be so adamant about and
outraged over the labeling of the crime does not serve anyone's
interest.
To the valiant spokespeople who want
to promote the war on terrorism in their selective application
of terrorism: Be careful for what you wish, because you might
get it, and then you will have to recoil to your corners when
the double-edged sword of the terrorism debate swings the other
way.
Salam Al-Marayati is executive director of the Muslim Public
Affairs Council in Los Angeles.
Today's Features
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti-Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
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