Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Linn Washington, Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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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
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Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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Impeach
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Weekend Edition
January 29 / 30, 2005
The Formaldehyde Solution?
Condi
Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
By
KURT NIMMO
So special is Condoleezza Rice, so essential
to Bush's revamped, de-Powell-ized and now neocon-ized State
Department, that she was sworn in twice after her whirlwind Senate
confirmation, according to the Associated Press. "You have
given us our mission and we are ready to serve our great country
and the cause of freedom for which it stands," Rice told
Bush. "Condi's appointment and confirmation as secretary
of state marks a remarkable transition in what is already a career
of outstanding service and accomplishment," Bush remarked.
Profuse accolades aside, Condi
Rice is likely the least qualified Secretary of State in recent
history, especially considering her field of expertise is the
Soviet Union, a political non-entity. However, since Washington
is all about who you know--or suck up to--Rice is an appropriate
selection for the Bushcons, considering she was a tenured professor
of political science at Stanford, stomping grounds for the Hoover
Institution, a neocon "public policy research center,"
on occasion referred to as Bush's "brain trust." Between
1985 and 1986, Condi was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Bush wasted little time dispatching
Rice, who he said will fill Collin Powell's "big shoes,"
to points eastward, most notably the Middle East where she plans
to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as she promised the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee during her confirmation hearings,
an absurd declaration considering her obvious preference for
Ariel Sharon and the Likudites in Israel.
It should be remembered that
Rice, as a Christian Zionist, disclosed a "deep bond to
Israel" back in 2003. "I first visited Israel in 2000,"
Rice told the Jewish Press on May 13, 2003. "I already then
felt that I am returning home despite the fact that this was
a place I never visited. I have a deep affinity with Israel.
I have always admired the history of the State of Israel and
the hardness and determination of the people that founded it,"
apparently as well admiring the "hardness" of the Israeli
settler movement, the crown jewel of all things Likudite. "I
think that we, Israel and the U.S., share common  values. Israel is the only democracy in the region,"
a democracy that has locked 2,896,000 Palestinians (as of 1997)
into the world's largest open-air prison and has strived unhindered
to further turn their shrinking geography into Bantustans.
As for "common values,"
indeed, if Israel and the United States share anything, it is
the determination to kill Arabs, although the United States makes
Israel look like an amateur by way of comparison, directly and
indirectly killing an astounding 100,000 or more Iraqis since
Bush's invasion. Israel, on the other hand, according to B'Tselem,
the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, has killed 3,399 Palestinians since the beginning
of the first Intifada in late 1987 until the end of May, 2003.
"At least 181 of the Palestinians killed were extrajudicially
executed by Israel, 120 of them in assassinations carried out
by the Israel Air Force and 61 of them in assassinations carried
out by ground forces," notes B'Tselem. "In the course
of these assassinations 106 additional Palestinians were killed,
29 of them minors." Obviously, Israel has a long way to
go to match Bush's record in Iraq, but if recent Israeli actions
in Gaza are any indication, they are working overtime on it.
As the Associated Press would
have us believe, Condi's little foray is designed to "measure
the likelihood of generating momentum to drive Israel and the
Palestinians to the peace table," an impossible dream so
long as Israel occupies Palestinian land, assassinates its political
leaders, and continues to emphatically declare any political
process between Israel and the Palestinians is submerged in "formaldehyde,"
as Dov Weissglas, Sharon's senior adviser, told Haaretz last
October. Formaldehyde, of course, is used as embalming fluid.
Embalming fluid notwithstanding, Ahmed Qurie, the Palestinian
prime minister--it remains unexplained how the Palestinians can
have a prime minister without a state, but never mind--has issued
a "law and order" decree banning civilians from carrying
weapons in the Occupied Territories. As well, the Palestinian
"leadership" has indicated it will "appoint a
new interior minister, Nasser Yousef, known for his tough stance
against militants," according to the Scotsman. Yousef has
long wanted to "crack down" on Palestinian nationalists
and may now get his chance with Arafat dead and buried. As well,
the interior minister in waiting has long believed "the
resolution of the conflict will be a one-state solution, with
Jews, Christians and Muslims living together in an Arab state,"
as Larry Yudelson explains, a highly unlikely scenario that must
have Sharon and the Likudites rolling on the floor of the Knesset
in fits of laughter.
In the meantime, the Israeli
government will use Mahmoud Abbas, Ahmed Qurie, Nasser Yousef,
and the refashioned Palestinian Authority to disarm Palestinian
nationalists, although Abbas has said his intention is to disarm
"criminals" only while "militants would be advised
to keep their weapons out of sight." Apparently undeterred,
"militants" in the West Bank and Gaza "often openly
brandish[ed] their automatic weapons, highlighting the lack of
law and order and control by Palestinian security forces,"
as CBS News put it. In other words, after decades of Israeli
duplicity--often exploiting so-called ceasefire arrangements
to assassinate Palestinian nationalists---the "militants"
are having nothing to do with Abbas and the latest round of Israeli
finagling. As exit polls revealed in 10 towns in Gaza, a whole
lot of Palestinians trust Hamas and Islamic Jihad over Abbas'
revamped Fatah.
Condi Rice will do nothing
to remedy this situation, especially considering the intransigence
on the part of many Israelis who are steadfastly opposed to withdrawal
from the Gaza Strip, as supposedly promised by Sharon. "To
destroy the land and give Gaza to terrorists is against the Bible,
Rabbi Dor Lior" told CBS. Lior is the chief rabbi of the
Yesha settler council. "He endorsed a new settler slogan
that death is better than disengagement. The statement underscores
warnings by Israeli officials that some radical settlers could
take up arms to resist the Gaza pullout." It should be remembered
that it was an ultranationalist with a similar ideology who assassinated
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in protest over Rabin's interim
peace accords with the Palestinians in 1995.
Even so, it is said most Israelis
favor "disengagement" (that is, no longer stealing
Palestinian land) in the Gaza Strip. However, other polls indicate
nearly half of all Israelis want to get rid of the Palestinians
altogether. For instance, in 2002, according to a survey conducted
by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, "46 percent
of Israel's Jewish citizens favor transferring [i.e., ethnically
cleansing] Palestinians out of the territories, while 31 percent
favor transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country," as
Haaretz reported at the time. "Israeli-Arabs pose a threat
to Israel's security, according to 61 percent of the Jewish population,
while around 80 percent are opposed to Israeli-Arabs being involved
in important decisions, such as delineating the country's borders,
up from 75 percent last year and 67 percent in 2000." Imagine
if white Americans held this opinion about African-Americans
or, more relevantly, Arab-Americans. Apparently, Condi Rice,
an African-American, did not see the results of this particular
poll, since she believes "Israel is the only democracy in
the region."
Of course, as a neocon acolyte,
Condi Rice is not interested in peace in the Middle East, least
of all between the Palestinians and Israelis, and even less so
then her predecessor, who was often at odds with the Bushcon
"crazies," as he so famously called them. Rice's Hoover
Institution is closely aligned with other neocon foundations,
including the Project for a New American Century and the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs, the latter particularly
rabid in its opposition to any meaningful resolution of the conflict--that
is to say, Israel's theft and occupation of Palestinian land--and
continually cranks out propaganda designed to demonize not only
the Palestinians, but Arabs and Muslims in general.
As should be obvious to all
who pay attention, the Bush administration, in regard to the
Middle East, is a mirror reflection of the Likudites in Israel,
who are fanatically opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian
state and will "adopt immediate stringent measures in the
event of such a declaration," as their political platform
states. As well, the colonization of the West Bank and Gaza "are
the realization of Zionist values" and the theft of Palestinian
land "is a clear expression of the unassailable right of
the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important
asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel.
The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities
[illegal settlements] and will prevent their uprooting."
In other words, Dov Weissglas'
"formaldehyde," asphyxiating the Palestinian people,
is not open for discussion.
Condi will likely insist, at
the behest of the Bushcons, that the Palestinians make more concessions,
that is to say work ever more fervently toward emasculating Palestinian
nationalism, as a refashioned Fatah, with Arafat's demise, is
attempting to do in feeble hope the Israelis will arrive at some
form of accommodation in the distant future. Unfortunately, Fatah's
sellout and the rising frustration of the Palestinian people,
as evidenced by the reaction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, will
continue and intensify the cycle of violence and despair which
is, after all, the goal of the Bushcon-Likudite plan, not simply
in Palestine but throughout all of the Arab and Muslim world.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer
in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred
blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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