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Today's
Stories
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security
Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and
Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer
Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith
Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony
Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
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.
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Weekend Edition
October 16 / 17, 2004
A Letter to
Abraham Foxman
Criticizing
Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
By
RALPH NADER
Dear Mr. Foxman:
You started your last letter
with the sentence: "We are not engaged in a dialogue about
the issues you raised in your letter." That is precisely
the point, is it not, Mr. Foxman. For many years you have eschewed
engaging in a dialogue with those in Israel and the United States
who disagree with your views. Your mode of operation for years
has been to make charges of racism or insinuation of racism
designed
to slander and evade. Because your pattern of making such charges,
carefully calibrated for the occasion but of the same stigmatizing
intent, has served to deter critical freedom of speech, you have
become sloppy with your characterizations when it comes to
attempts
to hold you accountable. Of course citizen groups make charges
all the time but their critics and corporate adversaries do review
and rebut which keeps both sides more alert to accuracy especially
when they desire press coverage. Few groups get the free ride
that has been the case of the ADL when it ventures beyond its
historic mission into covering the Israeli militaristic regime
and its brutalization and slaughter of far more innocent
Palestinians
it occupies, than the reverse casualties inflicted on innocent
Israelis.
Your insensitivity here is
legion. You fail to understand that your studied refusal to
reflect
the condemnations of Israeli military action and mayhem against
civilians, by the great Israeli human rights organization B't
selem and the major international human rights organizations,
contributes to the stereotypic bigotry against Palestinian Arabs
and the violent Gulag that imprisons them in the West Bank and
Gaza. Yours is more than the "crime of silence" so
deservedly condemned in other periods of modern history when
despots reigned. You go out of your way to silence or chill others
who are raising the same points that B'T selem and Rabbis for
Justice and other U.S. and Israeli peace groups, such as Rabbi
Lerner's Tikkun initiative, do.
You are not above twisting
words of those you take to task in order to be able to deploy
the usual semantic vituperatives. My comments related to the
Israeli government with the fifth most powerful and second most
modern military machine in the world through its prime minister
possessing the role of puppeteer to puppets in the White House
and Congress. You distorted the comment into "Jews controlling
the U.S. government." Shame on you. You know better. If
you do not see the difference between those two designations,
you yourself are treading on racist grounds. Indeed, you are
too willing to justify any violence against innocent Palestinian
children, women and men in the mounting thousands on the grounds
of inadvertence and security when such casualties are either
direct or foreseeable results of planned military operations.
Your refusal to condemn bigoted language, cartoons, articles
and statements in Israel up to the highest government levels,
can be called serious insensitivity to "the other anti-Semitism."
Both Jews and Arabs belong to the ancient Semitic tribes of the
Middle East either genealogically or metaphorically. There is,
as you know so well, anti-Semitism against Jews in many places
in the world. There is, as you always ignore, aggressive
anti-Semitism
against defenseless Arabs in many places in the world and in
Israel whose military might and nuclear weapons could destroy
the entire Middle East in a weekend.
Consider for example, one of
many, many episodes of similar impact excerpted from an essay
in CounterPunch by Jules Rabin, "An
Israeli Refusnik Visits Vermont, The Man Who Didn't Walk By",
August 3, 2004:
The man who "didn't walk
by" is Yonatan Shapira, until recently pilot of a Blackhawk
helicopter and captain in the elite Israeli Air Force. I met
Yonatan not many days ago when he came to speak in my town,
Montpelier,
Vermont, about a major turning point in his life.
Yonatan is a lover of his
country,
a composer, and a handler of extraordinary machines. He was
dismissed
from Israel's air force in 2003 because he refused to take part
in aerial attacks in areas of the Occupied Territories of
Palestine
where there exist large concentrations of civilians liable to
become a "collateral damage." In Yonatan's view, such
attacks are both illegal and immoral because of the
near-inevitability
of their killing innocent civilians. In support of his position,
Yonatan cites the authority of the Israeli army's own code of
ethical behavior, and the fact that, (by a recent reckoning)
of 2,289 Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in
the current Intifada, less than a quarter (550) were bearing
arms or were fighters.
At the same time, Yonatan has
declared himself absolutely ready to fight in the defense of
Israel proper.
* *
*
Yonatan was shocked into his
refusal to obey orders by two occurrences, among others.
One was the action of a fellow
Israeli pilot who fired a 1-ton bomb from his F16 fighter jet,
as ordered, at a house in Al-Deredg, where a suspected
Palestinian
terrorist was staying. Yonatan identifies Al-Deredg as one of
the most crowded districts of Gaza, and indeed of the world.
Besides the targeted Palestinian, 13 local people were killed
in that attack: 2 men, 2 women, and 9 children, one of whom was
2 years old. 160 other people were wounded in the explosion.
A 1-ton bomb, Yonatan calculates, has approximately 100 times
the explosive power of the type of lethal belts worn by
Palestinian
suicide bombers. In proportion to the US population and the
fatalities
of the original 9/11 disaster, now an icon and classic measure
of terrorist devastation, the fatalities of that single attack
on tiny Gaza (population 1,200,000) were greater by 10% than
the fatalities in America's own 9/11.
Nor was the bombing of
Al-Deredg
unique in the scale of its impact on civilian life. Yonatan has
cited the casualties resulting from 7 other targeted
assassinations
conducted in Palestine by the Israel Defense Forces, where,
along
with 7 other targeted individuals, 44 bystanders were killed.
Taking Palestine's overall population at 3,500,000 and that of
the US at 290 million, those 44 bystander deaths would
represent,
in proportion to the US population, another one and a-third
9/11's.
As a volunteer in Selah, a
group that assists victims of Palestinian terror, Yonatan has
first-hand knowledge of the appalling effects of the multiple
9/11-scale attacks that Israel has itself experienced, at the
hands of Palestinian terrorists. He was nevertheless or
consequently
appalled by the action in Al-Deredg of his fellow pilot. He
considered the means used in the attack, a 1-ton bomb, and its
goal, the assassination of one man, to be wildly
disproportionate
to the attack's predictable collateral effects, and a violation
of the rules of engagement concerning which all Israeli soldiers
are instructed. Those rules, as Yonatan has understood them,
include the obligation to refuse to obey orders that are clearly
illegal and immoral.
The other occurrence Yonatan
cited, that pushed him to become a refuser, came out of a
disturbing
exchange he had with the commander of the Israeli Air Force,
General Dan Halutz, concerning his refusal to serve on a mission
in the Occupied Territories. In Yonatan's words:
In the discussion of my
dismissal,
I asked General Halutz if he would allow the firing of missiles
from an Apache helicopter on a car carrying wanted men, if it
were traveling in the streets of Tel Aviv, in the knowledge that
that action would hurt innocent civilians who happened to be
passing at the time. In answer, the general gave me his list
of relative values of people, as he sees it, from the Jewish
person who is superior down to the blood of an Arab which is
inferior. As simple as that.
As simple as that.
Yonatan is convinced that
actions
like those of his fellow-pilot and attitudes like those of his
commanding general are destroying Israel from within, whatever
their effect on Palestine.
*
* *
Superficially, Yonatan
conforms
to a stereotype of a career military officer, air force style.
He's tall and lithe, dresses trimly and wears his hair closely
clipped.
He departs from the military
stereotype in other respects. There's nothing of the eagle in
his bearing. He's unassuming, and in conversation and argument,
he's almost humble in his appeal to his interlocutor's reason
and understanding. He listens and speaks with the innate respect
and the close attention of a scholar pursuing an investigation,
or a navigator studying a chart.
If you do not condemn such
behavior as anti-Semitism against Arabs, by your international
stature, you are not restraining the present Israeli government's
sense that it can conduct such operations with impunity, with
a free pass from moral condemnation by a man so accustomed to
moral condemnations.
Attached is a
copy of my letter to you of August 5, 2004 in which I urged
you once again to address. In addition, would you use the same
words in your previous letter regarding my characterization of
the puppeteer-puppets relationship to the writings of Tom
Friedman,
Rabbi Michael Lerner and many other Americans and Israelis of
the Jewish faith? If not, why not? Is there a thinly veiled bias
working here or would you have to use another one of your semantic
sallies portraying them as "self-hating Jews?"
In conclusion, Abraham Foxman
has a problem. He is in a time warp and cannot adjust to the
new age of total Israeli military domination of the Palestinian
people. A majority of the Israeli and Palestinian people believe
in a two state solution an independent, viable Palestinian state
and a secure Israel. This is the way to settle this conflict
and live in peace for future generations. The ADL should be
working
toward this objective and not trying to suppress realistic
discourse
on the subject with epithets and innuendos. As former Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak stated in Chicago last June, Israel
needs to begin disengaging from the occupied territories and
not wait for the right Palestinian Authority. The overwhelming
preponderance of military force permits this to happen.
If you have not met frequently
with the broad and deep Israeli peace movement, you might wish
to change your routine so that you can play a part in the historic
effort to establish a broad and deep peace between the two Semitic
peoples. The exchanges should be videotaped and widely distributed
to further the cause of peace and to witness Abraham Foxman
dialoguing
without his customary lines that evade the issues.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
/
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