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Today's Stories

September 22, 2006

JoAnn Wypijewski
Conservations at Ground Zero


September 21, 2006

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad
"No Nation Should Have Superiority Over Others:" UN Address

Justin E. H. Smith
Ending the Death Penalty: Outline of an Abolitionist Program

Rick Kuhn
Australian Government Steps Up Attacks on Muslims: "I Certainly Don't Want That Type of People in Australia"

Mike Roselle
Ed Wiley's Long March: the Elementary School vs. the Strip Mine

Amira Hass
In the Name of Security: What Israeli Police Files Reveal About the Occupation of Palestine

Deborah Rich
From the Kitchen of Dr. Frankenstein: the Consumption of Gene-Engineeered Foods

Mickey Z.
10 Reasons Cars Suck

Saul Landau
Terrorism at Sheridan Circle

Website of the Day
Stop the Decapitation of Mountains!


September 20, 2006

Sharon Smith
Elections, Detentions and Deportations

Christopher Reed
Goodbye Koizumi, Hello Abe

John Ross
Mexico: Does AMLO Have a Future?

Joshua Frank
A Wasted Campaign: How Jonathan Tasini Helped Hillary Clinton and Distracted the Antiwar Movement

Arthur Neslen
The Clenched Fist of the Phoenix: What Made Israel Burn Lebanon, Again?

Norman Solomon
The Hollow Promise of Digital Technology

Michael Carmichael
The Vatican's Tyrant

Evelyn Pringle
The Merck Vioxx Litigation: a Scorecard

Hugo Chavez
Rise Up Against the Empire: Address to the United Nations

Website of the Day
Before You Enlist: Watch This Video!


September 19, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Deadly Harvest: Lebanese Fields Sown with Israeli Cluster Bombs

Jeff Leys
Economic Warfare: Iraq and the IMF

Brian M. Downing
War, Taxes and Democracy

Col. Dan Smith
Dispelling Brutality

Liaquat Ali Khan
Presidential Incitements: Did Bush's Speech Violate Geneva Conventions on Genocide?

Ron Jacobs
Just Sign on the Dotted Line: Iraqi Oil and Production Sharing Agreements

Nik Barry-Shaw / Yves Engler
Canada in Haiti: Torture, Murder and Complicity

Lucinda Marshall
Air Paranoia: the Great Toothpaste and Hair Gel Scare

Saul Landau
The Pinochet Syndicate

Photo of the Day
Hold That Bridge!

Website of the Day
Scenarios for an Iranian War


September 18, 2006

Carl Boggs
Crimes of Empire

Uri Avnery
Peace Panic

Mike Stark / Jim Bullington
Ann Richards, the Original Texacutioner

Joshua Frank
Corporate E. Coli

John Murphy
The Price of Free Speech

Ramzy Baroud
Murdoch Almighty

Dave Lindorff
On Constitution Day

Bill Quigley
Showing Conviction at Echo 9

Website of the Day
Tutorial: How to Hack a Diebold Voting Machine

 


September 16 / 17, 2006
Weekend Edition

Tariq Ali
A Bavarian Provocation

Eliza Ernshire
Death and Tears in Nablus

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon (Part 7): To Tilted Park

Mairead Corrigan Maguire
A Nobel Laureate Visits with Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu

Brian Cloughley
"Let Them Drink Coke!": Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

Ben Tripp
November Prognostication: Republicans Sweep!

Laura Carlsen
Bush and Latin America: War on Terrorism or Fight for Social Justice

Ralph Nader
Terror on the Road

Ron Jacobs
Shooting Sgrena

John Chuckman
Imperial Entropy

Robert Fisk
The American Military's Cult of Cruelty

Gary Leupp
The Pope's New Crusade: Defender of the West, Scourge of Islam

Lawrence R. Velvel
The Pretexter in Chief: Learning About Bush from Hewlett-Packard

Missy Comley Beattie
The Insecurity of Immorality

Adrienne Johnstone
Deporting Widows: the Nightmare of a Kenyan Immigrant

Mickey Z.
Why I Hate America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Orloski, Engel, Louise and Davies

Website of the Weekend
Still Life with Killpecker



September 15, 2006

Diana Johnstone
In Defense of Conspiracy: 9/11, in Theory and in Fact

Diane Christian
On Retaliation

William S. Lind
General Puffery: When the Military Brass Deceives

Lee Sustar
Bosses Take Aim at Undocument Workers

Dave Lindorff
Retroactive Immunity for Bush?

Ramzy Baroud
Presidential PR: Lost in the Bush Spin Cycle

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Cesspool

Jeffrey St. Clair
Glow, River, Glow: Radioactive Leaks and Plumbers at Hanford

Website of the Day
F-22: The Most Expensive Piece of Junk Ever Built?


September 14, 2006

Franklin Lamb
Israel's Use of American Cluster Bombs: a Walk Through the Rubble

Tim Wilkinson
Alan Dershowitz's Sinister Scheme

Dick J. Reavis
Mexico's Time of Troubles: Who Benefits?

Sam Husseini
9/11 Five Years Later: a Conspiracy to Silence

Doug Giebel
Democracies of Death: Why John Adams Wouldn't Recognize His Own Country

Bill Berkowitz
The Messaging Strategy of the Iraq War

Diane Farsetta
What Media Democracy Looks Like

Mary Turck
Targeting Refugees and Human Rights Workers in Colombia

Patrick Cockburn
Amnesty Intl Accuses Hizbollah of War Crimes, But Katyusha Damage "Much Less" Than Israel Claimed

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Ah, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?

Website of the Day
The Shocking Truth About Inequality


September 13, 2006

Jack Bratich
Eyes Put a Spell on You: Signs of Surveillance in the Public Secret Sphere

John Ross
Welcome to the Nightmare: Al Qaeda de Mexico?

Christopher Brauchli
"You Had to Have Been There": Teaching Iraq and Iran

Dave Lindorff
Mourning in America: Bush Weeps? Who are They Kidding?

Antony Loewenstein
My Israel Question

Al Krebs
The Gates Foundation and African Agriculture

Leonard Peltier
Crazy Horse in Chains

Jim Bensman
My Adventures with the FBI: How I Was Targeted as a Terrorist

Website of the Day
FreedomWalk: Take a Moment for Leonard Peltier


September 12, 2006

Norman Finkelstein
Kill Arabs, Cry Anti-Semitism

Seth Sandronsky
The War on Nurses

John Walsh
Khatami Comes to Harvard

Alan Maass
"Islamic Fascism": the New Hysteria

David Krieger
Troubling Questions About Missile Defense

Nate Mezmer
September 12th, America

Kathleen Christison
The Coming Collapse of Zionism


September 11, 2006

Uri Avnery
State of Chutzpah

Patrick Cockburn
Palestinians Forced to Scavenge Rubbish Dumps for Food

Col Dan Smith
The Centrality of War in the Presidency of George W. Bush

Dr. Susan Block
Beyond Terror

Anthony Alessandrini
Forgetting 9/11

Dave Lindorff
Bush After 9/11: Five Years of High Crimes and Misdemeanors

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What Happened?

Joshua Frank
Proving Nothing: How the 9/11 "Truth" Movement Helps Bush & Cheney

Jean Bricmont
The End of the "End of History"

Sprague / Emesberger
"You Are a Dog. You Should Die": Death Threats Against Lancet's Haiti Investigator

Website of the Day
Web Piracy

 

September 9/10, 2006
Weekend Edition

Alexander Cockburn
The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts: How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Off the Hook

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon: In the Footsteps of Vladimir Putin (Part Six)

Greg Grandin
Good Christ, Bad Christ: Testament of the Death Squads

Peter Stone Brown
Bob Dylan's Swing Time Waltz in the Face of the Apocalypse

Ralph Nader
X-Raying Greed

Brian Cloughley
Rumsfeld at the American Legion: Dead Babies and Nazi Propaganda

Col. Chet Richards
Crossroads at the Litani

David Model
Tailoring the Case Against Iran: Cut from the Same Old Pattern

Dave Himmelstein
From Bil'in to Birmingham

Ron Jacobs
War and the Power of Words

Fred Gardner
Is Medical Pot Image a Turn-Off to Teens?

Mike Whitney
America's Economic Meltdown

Josh Gryniewicz
In the Belly of the Bentonville Beast: Working for Wal-Mart

Daniel Gross /
Joe Tessone
An IWW Story at Starbucks

Joe Bageant
Inside the Iron Theater

Nicole Colson
The Colbert Factor: Some Truthiness, At Last

Alexander Billet
Thirty Years of "White Riot": Long Live The Clash!

Poets' Basement
Engel, Louise, Buknatski, Davies, & Orloski

 

September 8, 2006

Uri Avnery
"I'm a Leftist, But ...": the Liberals' War on Lebanon

Paul Craig Roberts
Books Are Our Salvation

Bill Quigley
Judge Says: "No Clowning Around Our WMDs!"

Robert Jensen
Parallel Purges: Academic Freedom in Iran and the US

Norman Solomon
Perception Gap: The War on Terror as Others See It

Keith Bolin

 

September 8, 2006

Uri Avnery
"I'm a Leftist, But ...": the Liberals' War on Lebanon

Paul Craig Roberts
Books Are Our Salvation

Bill Quigley
Judge Says: "No Clowning Around Our WMDs!"

Robert Jensen
Parallel Purges: Academic Freedom in Iran and the US

Norman Solomon
Perception Gap: The War on Terror as Others See It

Keith Bolin
The Future of the Family Farm

Kristin S. Schafer
The Global Trade in Deadly Pesticides

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon (Part Five)

Patrick Cockburn
Gaza is Dying

Website of the Day
Help the Bismark 3!


September 7, 206

Marjorie Cohn
Why Bush Really Came Clean About the CIA's Secret Torture Prisons

Sharon Smith
Downward Mobility: No Recovery for Workers

René Drucker Colín
The Fraud in Mexico

Michael Donnelly
Bush Family Values: About Those Nazi Appeasers

John Borowski
Scholastic Peddles a Fictitious Path to 9/11 to Kids

Lucinda Marshall
Bombing Indiana

Charles Sullivan
Katrina and the New Jim Crow: Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon: Part Four

Jonathan Cook
How Human Rights Watch Lost Its Way in Lebanon

Website of the Day
Rasta! Reggae's Joe Hill

 

September 6, 2006

Stephen Soldz
Protecting the Torturers: Bad Faith and Distortions frm the American Psychological Assocation

Dave Zirin
Cops vs. Jocks: the Shooting of Steve Foley

Ramzy Baroud
The Gaza Maze: Who Gained Most from the Fox Reporters' Kidnapping

Noel Ignatiev
Democrats, Pwogs and the Lesser Evil Folly

Dave Lindorff
Bombing Without Regrets: The US and Cluster Bombs

Norman Solomon
Spinning Troop Levels in Iraq

Binoy Kampmark
The Death of Steve Irwin and the Politics of the Zoo

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Premature Burial: the Remaking of Cataract Canyon (Part Three)

John Ross
The Death of Mexican Presidency

Website of the Day
Flaming Arrows

 

September 5, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Will Robert Fisk tell us the whole story? Time For A Champion of Truth to Speak Up

Patrick Cockburn
Better Not Meet at the Casbah

Mike Whitney
The Worst Secretary of Defense in U.S. History? You Be the Judge

Roland Sheppard
The Civil Rights Movement is Dead and So is the Democratic Party

James Petras
As Bush Regime Faces Twilight Slide, How Much Havoc Can Paulson Wreak?

Alexander Cockburn
Will Bush Bomb Teheran?

 

September 4, 2006

Clancy Sigal
The Women Who Gave Us Labor Day

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon: Part 2

Anthony Alessandrini
The Great Debate about Aroma Coffee: Why I Boycott

Dennis Perrin
The Great Debate in Tarrytown: Straight Zion, No Chaser

Daniel Cassidy
'S lom to Slum

Paul Craig Roberts
The War Is Lost

 

September 2 / 3, 2006

Uri Avnery
When Napoleon Won at Waterloo

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Premature Burial: the Remaking of Cataract Canyon

Ralph Nader
The No-Fault White House

Noam Chomsky
Viewing the World from a Bombsight

Allan Lichtman
Arrested Democracy: Letter from the Baltimore County Jail

Stanley Heller
When Criticism of Cluster Bombs is "Anti-Semitic"

Rana el-Khatib
Invasion's Child: the Making of Issa

Peter Montague
Taking on the Pentagon: Chemical Weapons to Burn

Laura Carlsen
Mexico on a Collision Course

Dr. Susan Block
Bush Hate Rising

Joe Bageant
Roy's People: Why Progressives Need to Listen to Orbison, Not Policy Wonks

Scott Stedjan / Matt Schaaf
A New Generation of Landmines?

Gary Leupp
The Emperor Has Been Exposed

Stephen Fleischman
The Great American Oligarchy

Paul Balles
Has Ahmadinejad Already Checkmated Bush?

Ingmar Lee
Canada's $450 Million Gift to Bush: the Softwood Lumber Slush Fund

Jane Stillwater
Burning Man: the Good, the Bad and the Evil Twin

Ron Jacobs
Dylan Faces the Apocalypse, Again

St. Clair / Bossert
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Grima, Engel, Orloski and Davies

Website of the Weekend
To New Orleans: a Photo Journal

 

September 1, 2006

Uri Avnery
Olmert Agonistes

Paul Craig Roberts
Of Wolves and Men (and Impotent Democrats)

Bill Ayers
Exclusionary Signs of the Times

Kevin Zeese
The Best War Ever

Xochitl Bervera
The Forgotten Children of New Orleans

Norman Solomon
Bush vs. Ahmadinejad: a TV Debate We'll Never See

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah Denounces Nasrallah Interview as a Fake

Richard Neville
Rupert Murdoch's Victims

Website of the Day
The Uranium Flood

 

August 31, 2006

David MacMichael
Can the Iran Nuke Crisis be Defused?

John Ross
Diary of the Mexican Earthquake

Edward Said
Mahfouz, 9/11 and the Cruelty of Memory

Amira Hass
The Burden of Collaboration

Missy Comley Beattie
Circle in a Spiral: Families at War

Lee Sustar
The Case of Elvira Arellano: Racism, Divided Families and Deportation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Myths: Deception as a Way of Life

Website of the Day
The Case for Impeachment: CSPAN

 

August 30, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
The Five Morons Revisited

George Salzman
The Revolutionary Surge in Oaxaca

Dave Lindorff
I Am a Curious Yellowcake: the Armitage Confession and the Niger Question

Leigh Davis
Privatizing New Orleans' Schools

Alan Maass
The Crimes Katrina Exposed: an Interview with Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Slonsky

Mike Whitney
Pop Goes the Bubble!: the Great Housing Crash of '07

Eliza Ernshire
Murder on Rucarb Street

Website of the Day
CNN = iPoop2?


August 29, 2006

Saul Landau
Misreading Cuba, for 47 and a Half Years

Jeffrey Buchanan
Human Rights and the Realities of Returning to New Orleans: Lip Service and Profiteering

Dave Lindorff
War? What War?

James Brooks
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah

John F. Burnett
Katrina and the Media: "I Know Y'All Want Our Story, But We Need Help"

Walter A. Davis
J'Accuse: the Media and Jonbenet Ramsey

Rich Gibson
Detroit Teachers Strike Again

Amira Hass
The Accidental Immigrant

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Turns His Terror War on the Homeland

 

August 28, 2006

John Walsh
With Lieberman's Loss, the Lobby Takes a Second Hit

Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver
Hillary Clinton: a Fool's Vessel

Ramzy Kysia
For Israel's Security? A Visit to Houla, Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Nativo Lopez

Gideon Levy
The Reservists' Protest

Missy Beattie
Yes, Virginia, There is a Rumsfeld

Virginia Tilley
Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth


August 26 / 27, 2006
Weekend Edition

Uri Avnery
America's Rottweiler

Alexander Cockburn
Israel on the Slide

Jordan Green
Profiting from Disaster: Greed Has Stallled Gulf Coast Recovery, But Made Some Very, Very Rich

Azmi Bishara
Israel at a Loss

Ray Close
Why Bush Will Choose War Against Iran: Reflections of a Former CIA Analyst

Gary Leupp
The Lebanon Ceasefire and the Coming Assault on Iran

Ralph Nader
AIDS in Black America

Joe Allen
Free Gary Tyler: Thirty Years of Injustice

Fred Gardner
The Miraculous Resurrection of Dr. John Lee

Dave Lindorff
The Crime of Frag Weapons

David Krieger
Why are There Still Nuclear Weapons?

Stephen Fleischman
Jurassic White House: the Reptilian Brain of George W. Bush

Mary Turck
Elections and Lessons from Mexico

Walter Brasch
Sports Afoul: Canned Hunts

Jim Scharplaz
Oil and the American Farmer

Israel Shamir
The Grapes of Wrath

Alexander Cockburn
About That Nasrallah Interview

Charles Henderson
Scientology: a Typically American Religion?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Grima, Ford and Mickey Z.

 

August 25, 2006

Elena Everett
The Women of New Orleans After Katrina

Juan Cole
Iran's Nuclear "Threat"

Chris Moore
Religious Motives Behind Iraq War Deception?: Revelations from the Watada Court Martial

James Marc Leas
How Lebanese Civilians Thwarted Israel's War Plans

Salah Obeid
The Price of Ignoring the Elephant

Claudio Albertani
Mexico Piquetero

Tom Barry
Gangster Diplomacy: Elliot Abrams in Jerusalem

Website of the Day
Congress, the Defense Budget and Pork: a Snout to Tail Charcuterie


August 24, 2006

CounterPunch News Service
Penis Pump or Bomb? Bum Rap at O'Hare

Uri Avnery
Stop the Cancer, End the Occupation

Nermeen al-Mufti
"The Strong Do as They Can": an Interview with Noam Chomsky

Norman Solomon
The Mythical End to the Politics of Fear

Megan Wiles
American Responsibility and Palestine

Laura Santina
Busting Loose of the War Engine: a Female Perspective

Mike Whitney
Restarting the 34 Day War

Seth Sandronsky
Millionaires Make a Killing as Killings Continue

Christopher Brauchli
Consider the Uighurs: Freedom in a Cage

 

August 23, 2006

Dr. Trudy Bond
Calling Dr. Mengele: APA Whitewashes Torture By Shrinks

Ramzy Baroud
The Real Terrorism Plot

Ron Jacobs
The Liberal Warmongers are at It Again

Heather Gray
Palestinian Sense of Place: You Can't Bomb It Away

Amira Hass
The Occupier Defines Justice

Mavis Anderson
Castro's Health and US Meddling

Ingmar Lee
The Great Game Goes On: India's Occupation of Ladakh

Francis Boyle
Statement on Behalf of Lt. Watada

John Ross
Mexico Approaches the Combustion Point


August 22, 2006

Gilad Atzmon
Israel Must Win

Jack Heyman
The Iron Heel Revisited: Cops as Provocateurs on the Docks

Eamon McCann
Bereft Belfast Mother Charges Security Firms with Wanton Murder in Iraq

Sharon Smith
Bush's Failing War on Terror: When in Doubt, Go Racist

Edward S. Herman
Faith-Based Analysis

Ramzi Kysia
My Journey to South Lebanon

Bill Quigley
Trying to Make It Home: New Orleans One Year After Katrina

August 21, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Caught in a Net of Delusion

Paul Craig Roberts
Artificial Recovery; Real Job Losses

Kathy Kelly
Israel's "Proportionate Response": Measured Amid the Wreckage

Mike Roselle
Irony Runs Through It: Making a Ruckus

Lenni Brenner
Mayor Bloomberg: the Flying Faker

Maher Osseiran
Osama's Confession; Osama's Reprieve

 

August 19 / 20, 2006
Weekend Edition

Uri Avnery
The 155th Victim

Eliza Ernshire
Terror and Freedom on the West Bank

Virginia Tilley
Inside 1701: What the UN Ceasefire Resolution Actually Says

Kathy Kelly
Funerals at Qana: a Journey to Southern Lebanon

Marc Levy
You are What You Dream: "Before you talk of heroes you must feel, taste, touch, smell the horror."

Stephen Bradberry /
Jeffrey Buchanan
Hopes and Homes: Subject to Seizure on the Katrina's Anniversary

Barbara Rose Johnston
Banking on Violence: Guatemalan Genocide and US Security

William Blum
Perpetual Fear: Saved Again, Praise the Lord!

Stephen Fleischman
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon

Ralph Nader
The Legacy of John Kenneth Galbraith

Dave Lindorff
Busted, Again: Bush is Two Times a Criminal

Fred Gardner
When Cannabis Failed to Sell

David Krieger
Nuclear Insecurity

Dan La Botz
The Minutemen: Mad at the Wrong Guys

Poets' Basement
Davies / Engel

 

August 18, 2006

Brian M. Downing
American Generals and Iraq: Time to Call for a Rapid Withdrawal

John Blair
Divine Strike in the Bible Belt: Will They Bomb Bedford?

Alan Hart
The Lebanon War, a Post Mortem

Craig Murray
Hitting a Nerve: the Hair Gel Terror Hype

Chris Dols
Confronting Madison's NaziFest

Emily Kirksey
The Cuban Mirage: Self-Deception in Miami and Washington

Joaquín Bustelo
Forging a New Strategy for Immigrant Rights: Report from Chicago

William S. Lind
Beaten: Why the IDF Lost in Lebanon

Podcast of the Day
The F-22 PodCast

Website of the Day
Burn a Brick for Jesus

 

August 17, 2006

CounterPunch News Service
"Goodbye to the Unipolar World": an Interview with Hasan Nasrallah

Barucha Peller
This Pain Has No Ceasefire

Ramzy Baroud
Lebanon: a Critical Battlefield for the New Middle East

Rothem Shtarkman
Gen. Dan Halutz: Inside Trader

Craig Murray
The UK Terror Plot: What's Really Going On?

Samar Assad
Gaza: One Year After Disengagement

Mike Ferner
Lt. Watada's Challenge

Arnold Kohen
A Second Rebirth for East Timor?

Kevin Zeese
Does the Invasion of Lebanon Foretell a Regional War?

Missy Comley Beattie
Open Wounds

Uri Avnery
From Mania to Depression

Video of the Day
Neil Young: After the Garden

Website of the Day
Art for Peace

 

August 16, 2006

Merav Yudilovitch
Apocalypse Near: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on Lebanon

Robert Fisk
Behind the Lies of Bush and Blair: It Falls to Assad to Tell the Truth

Mark Williams
The Missiles of August: The Lebanon War and the Democratization of Missile Technology

John Ross
End Game Engulfs Mexico

Christopher Brauchli
The Poor Are Such a Nuisance

John Walsh
AIPAC Congratulates Itself for Slaughter in Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
Gee, Your Hair Smells Terror-ific!: Shampoo, Fear and Elections

Rachard Itani
It Ain't Over: What Did and Didn't Happen in Lebanon

Felice Pace
Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains: The Real Threat is Not What You Expected

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Lieberman the Enabler

Frank, Sharma and Peterson
Venezuela's Revolution of Hope: "In Two Years, Everything Has Changed!"

Jonathan Cook
Real Photo Fakers; Real War Crimes

Website of the Day
You Too Can Paint Like Jackson Pollock!

 

August 15, 2006

Andrew Ford Lyons
Why Hezbollywood Was Born: Digitally Erasing a Massacre

Binoy Kampmark
Terrorism and the Art of Flying

Robert Fisk
Israel Wasn't Hoping for This

Ralph Nader
Bush to Israel: Take Your Time Destroying Lebanon

Todd Chretien
The US Antiwar Movement: Weak, Passive, Distracted

Chris Floyd
It's Bigger Than the Neo-Cons

Mark Engler
WTO: Best Left for Dead?

George Galloway
"You Don't Give a Damn:" the SkyNews Debate

Laray Polk
What's More Obscene: War or Sex?

Trish Schuh
Operation Change of Location?: Where Were the IDF Soldiers Captured?

Website of the Day
Jesus Never Existed


August 14, 2006

Uri Avnery
What the Hell Happened to the Israeli Army?

Karim Makdisi
The Flaws in the UN Resolution

Kathy Kelly
Approaching a Ceasefire

Robert Fisk
The Truce That Won't Last

Norman Solomon
Who's Afraid of Hillary Clinton? MoveOn, for One

Sunsara Taylor
Ned Lamont and the Antiwar Movement: False Hopes, Bad Terms and Ticking Clocks

Robert Jensen
Outside the Frame: The Limits of George Lakoff's Politics

Mike Whitney
The Litani Gambit: Ceasefire or Trojan Horse?

P. Sainath
An Indian Farmer About to Commit Suicide Writes a Note of Clarification

Goretti Horgan
The Raytheon Nine: Irish Antiwar Protesters Face "Terrorism" Charges

Christopher Reed
London Fog: Doubts Hang Over Terror Plot

 

August 12 / 13, 2006
Weekend Edition

Jean Bricmont
The De-Zionization of the American Mind

Norman Finkelstein
Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?

Robert Fisk
How the London Terror Scare Looks from Beirut

Adrian Grima
Forget the 50 Civilians: Watching Lebanon from Malta

Barucha Peller
Letter from Lebanon: the Proximity of Death

Omar Barghouti
The UN, Lebanon and Palestine

Adam Engel
Tearing Down the Master's House: an Interview with Derrick Jensen

Conn Hallinan
How the Irish Could Save the Middle East

John Stauber
Meet the GOP's Latest Smear Machine: Vets for Freedom

Rev. William Alberts
Bush's Primetime Lies Still Go Unchallenged by the Press

Fred Gardner
Hollywood Does Cannabis: "Weeds," the First Season

Lucinda Marshall
Penis Politics: Does Dick Cheney Want Us All to Fly Nude?

Ron Jacobs
Kill the Precedent: an Interview with Rapper Nate Mezmer

CounterPunch News Service
Kerala Throws Out Coke and Pepsi

Poets' Basement
Katz, Davies and Orloski


August 11, 2006

Col. Dan Smith
Crimes Against Peace: Beyond Nuremberg

John Ross
Class War in Mexico City's Gridlock

Michael Donnelly
Sore Loserman, Redux

William S. Lind
Collapse of the Flanks

Linda Milazzo
Chertoff's New Math: Hair Gel Plot Might Have "Killed 100s of Thousands"

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Something is Happening Around the World

Azmi Bishara
When the Skies Rain Death

Henri Picciotto
Jewish Dissidents Must Challenge Israel

CounterPunch News Wire
The Warrior Lawyer: Tom Crumpacker, 1934-2006

Dave Lindorff
War Crimes in Lebanon

Jonathan Cook
From High Wycombe to Nazrareth: How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists

 


August 10, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Buck Stops Where?

Dave Marsh
Who Are Mr and Mrs Lamont?

Gabriel Kolko
Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Arthur Versluis
How Neocons' Nazi Hero Schmitt Spawned Bush's Totalitarian Lunge

Jennifer Loewenstein
Awakening the Resistance


August 9, 2006

Linda Schade
Incumbents Beware: Peace Voters Mean Business

Jackie Mason
Defends Mel Gibson; Ridicules Abe Foxman

Jonathan Cook
Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah

Gilad Atzmon
Operation Security Roof

Charles Hirschkind
Doing the Lebanese a Favor

Tom Barry
Right-wingers Ramp Up War on Migrants

Cockburn & St. Clair
The Sweetness of Lieberman's Defeat

 

August 8, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Requiem for Baghdad

Paul Larudee
The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions

Joan Roelofs
The Malleable US Constitution: a Deterrent to Democracy?

Dimi Reider
An Interview with IDF Refusenik Sgt. Zohar Milchgrub

John A. Murphy
The Democrats: a Party on the Run ... from Its Own Members!

Eliot Katz
The View from the Big Woods: In Which a NYC Antiwar Poet Takes a Summer Vacation in Canada's Boreal Forest

Tim Llewellyn
Into the Valley of Death

Website of the Day
Galloway Speaks!

 

August 7, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Junkies of War

Karim Makdisi
The Draft UN Resolutions: the View from Beirut

Nadia Hijab
What Israel and the US Wanted May Not Be At All What They Get

Sharon Smith
Birth Pangs and Dead Babies

Magan Wiles
Encounter at an Israeli Checkpoint

George Beres
A New Kind of Bigotry: Lebanon War Exposes Strange Religious Bedfellows

Rachard Itani
Nice Try, Mr. Bolton

Norman Solomon
Some Nukes Are A-Okay with the US Media

Stan Cox
Presidential Doping Scandal Erupts!

Mickey Z.
Go Ahead, Please Stare at Her Chest

Jonathan Cook
The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN

Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Newt Gingrich on Lebanon

 

August 5 / 6, 2006

Virginia Tilley
Boycott Now!: the Case for Boycotting Israel

Uri Avnery
The Black Flag

Patrick Cockburn
Yes, It is a Crusade!: Blair's Mad Speech on Iraq

Sgt. Martin Smith
Military Training and Atrocities: Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree

Gary Leupp
America's Heroes on Trial

Neve Gordon
The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom After 9/11

Ralph Nader
Hey Joe!: the Ghosts of Lieberman's Past

Peter Bouckaert
For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game

Peter Montague
Nukes Rising: Bush Oversees a Global Nuclear Expansion

David Krieger
Global Hiroshima: the Stakes Have Been Raised

Michael Donnelly
"Sir! No Sir!": the Story of the GI Anti-War Movement

Fred Gardner
Dr. Denney Sues the DEA

Catherine Norris
Seeking Justice Abroad: Spanish Courts Issue Arrest Warrants for the Butchers of Guatemala

Imraan Siddiqi
The Smokescreens of War: Moral Superiority, 9/11 and Islamic-Fascism

Missy Comley Beattie
One Year After the Death of Chase Comley

Ira Kay
Where is Geography? Getting Beyond the Place Name Game

Dave Lindorff
Let's Build a Wall

Pratyush Chandra
Nuclear Fascism in India

Ron Jacobs
Keeping It Radical

St. Clair / Donnelly
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Katz and Davies

Website of the Day
Defend Bear Butte

Video of the Weekend
Rainbows Bust Pig Blockade

 

August 4, 2006

Ralph Nader
Joe Lieberman and the Secret Chamber

Brian Cloughley
Osama Has Won

Eliza Ernshire
No Lights in Gaza: "We Have a Death Warrant for Your Home"

Roger Assaf
Letter from Lebanon: Adjusting the Heroic Commando Raid Story

George Bisharat
When I Last Saw Lebanon

Remi Kanazi
Out to Lunch: The US Media's "Special Relationship"

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Critical Moment: The Boardrooms vs. the Street

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Fig (Leaflet) of Warning

Derrick O'Keefe
Ripe Fruit and Rotten Imperial Ambitions: US Reaction to Castro's Illness

Mickey Z.
Some Context on Castro and Cuba

Col. Dan Smith
The New Gonzales Standard for Torture: No Standards, No Accountability

Website of the Day
Israel's TV War


August 3, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Civilian Casualties and the War of Media Deception

Uri Avnery
Knife in the Dark

Saree Makdisi
Time to Call It Quits: Israel's Raid on Baalbeck's Hospital

Robert Fisk
The Family That Stays Together Dies Together

Farrah Hassen
Bush's Nutty Syria Policy: a Report from Damascus

Nicola Nasser
The De-Arabization of the Arab League

Ron Jacobs
The Hollow Body: When Exactly Did the UN Lose Its Street Cred?

Mitchel Cohen
Mexico Rising

Seth Sandronsky
Migrant Labor and Uncle Sam

Bruce K. Gagnon
Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah's Top Ally in Israel


August 2, 2006

John Ross
Mexican Civil Resistance in Five Acts

Chip Mitchell
Kudos to Hitchens!

Saul Landau
Want Peace in the Middle East? End the Occupation

Naseer Aruri
The UN at the Dustbin of History: Does It Have the Capacity to Intervene?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress and the Pentagon: Co-Abusers of the War Budget

Matthias Gebauer
News on a Platter: the Middle East PR War

Joshua Frank
How the Kyoto Protocol Was (Al) Gored

Bill Quigley
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and North Dakota

Manuel Yang
A View of Gaza and Lebanon from the Interior

Shamai Leibowitz
Whitewashing Atrocities: the Tortured Language of War

David Himmelstein
Pulling the Plug on Israel

Lara Marlowe
The Total Destruction of Srifa

Website of the Day
As a Nuke Plant Falls

 

August 1, 2006

Michael Neumann
What is to be Said?: War on the Blathersphere

Robert Fisk
Into the Meat Grinder: NATO and Lebanon

Omar Barghouti
The Massacre at Qana: Were Racism and Fundamentalism Factors?

Marc Levy
Whatever You Did in the War will Always be With You

Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups

Claud Cockburn
Scenes from the Spanish Civil War

Ross Eisenbrey
When is a Raise Not a Raise? House Bill Actually Cuts Wages for Some Workers by $5.50 an Hour!

Dave Lindorff
Making the World Safe ... for Dictatorship

John Chuckman
Canada's Harper Blames the UN Dead

Francis Boyle
Prosecuting Israel: a War Crimes Tribunal May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War

Phil Doe
Bleak House Revisited: My Vacation in Water Court

Stephen Soldz
Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture

Website of the Day
An Unfair War

 

 

 

 

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September 22, 2006

A Response to Jonathan Cook

Hezbollah's Rockets and Civilian Casualties

By SARAH LEAH WHITSON

Jonathan Cook argues ("How Human Rights Watch Lost Its Way in Lebanon," September 7, 2006) that because Hezbollah hit some military targets during its war with Israel, it never deliberately targeted civilians. It may well be that Hezbollah had access to some guided weapons that it successfully aimed at legitimate military targets. But the fact remains that Hezbollah's arsenal was overwhelmingly composed of unguided Katyusha rockets, which cannot be targeted with any degree of precision. While some of those might nonetheless have sometimes hit a military target, even a target near civilians, Hezbollah fired thousands of these unguided rockets directly into civilian areas with no way of guiding the attack toward a military target, knowing that civilian casualties would be the likely result. The massive extent of this barrage made clear that these attacks were a matter of policy. In some cases, we documented the use of metal ball bearings inside the rockets launched on Haifa, designed to maximize the lethal effect. These bombs may have killed "only" 43 civilians, but that says more about the availability of warning systems and bomb shelters throughout most of Northern Israel and the evacuation of more than 350,000 people than it does about Hezbollah's intentions. Coupled with statements of Hezbollah's leadership about targeting Israeli civilians (even if only in "retaliation"), these cases were more than enough to conclude, as we did in our July 18 press release, that such attacks were "at best indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, at worst the deliberate targeting of civilians."

With respect to Israel's attacks on Lebanon, our report concluded that Israel, after warning civilians to evacuate, consistently failed to discriminate between combatants and those civilians who remained, as many did, even though the IDF claimed that it was trying to hit only Hezbollah fighters firing rockets from civilian areas. The principal finding of our report was based on some two dozen cases where civilian vehicles or structures were hit and there appeared to be no legitimate military target nearby but significant loss of civilian life, as well as official declarations that the Israeli government would consider all those remaining in southern Lebanon to be combatants. We also found a small number of cases - five, to be exact -- where the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggested that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians, although we had no evidence, given the small number of cases we documented and the lack of any official endorsement, that this was done as a matter of policy.

No doubt, there is further investigation to be done for a comprehensive assessment of the conduct of the parties in this war. Israel's extensive use of cluster bombs in civilian areas, which Cook cites, as well as the extent to which Hezbollah intentionally launched rockets and stored weapons in civilian areas, are areas on which we are currently focused. But such investigations would not undermine the culpability of Hezbollah for indiscriminately firing into civilian areas or of Israel for attacking civilian vehicles or structures where there was no nearby legitimate military target.

On a separate point, Cook complains that international law effectively disadvantages weaker, poorer armed groups for using inexpensive weapons that cannot accurately target military objects: the law requires them to distinguish between military and civilian objects, but this, he says, can be done only with expensive, unattainable weapons. Interestingly, defenders of Israel have similarly argued that the law disadvantages Israel in its fight against a highly mobile, elusive adversary that fires from civilian homes but quickly moves away; the law requires an attacker to have good reason to believe that a target is a military object at the time of attack, and to refrain from firing at a civilian object that is no longer being used for military purposes - a standard, some Israeli supporters claim, that makes it impossible for Israel to fight lawfully.

It is, of course, correct that, in the name of protecting civilians, international humanitarian law imposes certain constraints on military forces; that is to be expected. But these constraints hardly preclude a military strategy for either side should it decide to pursue one. Hezbollah has a long history of cross-border attacks on Israeli military facilities and soldiers, including the one that launched the most recent round of fighting. Israel had a full array of military choices available to it so long as it avoided its unjustified assumption that there are (or were) no civilians left in southern Lebanon and thus that civilian structures could be attacked without the need to worry about possible civilian occupants. But where legitimate military strategies were not pursued by either side, Human Rights Watch had a duty to condemn the attack.

In a now familiar drama, partisans of each side accuse us of secretly favoring their enemy. In this latest war, we have been called, alternately, "Zionists at heart" and "anti-Semitic liars", each side pulling sentences out of context to "prove" its case. Our response to such attacks is not, as Cook claims, to shade our findings one way or the other. Rather, such accusations redouble our commitment to scrupulously objective and careful fact-finding coupled with the strictly impartial application of international human rights and humanitarian law. We hope that readers will judge our commitment to our principles and methodology based on the analysis and facts presented in our reports, all of which are publicly available on our website, www.hrw.org, not the selective and often deceptive snippets that some of our detractors try to highlight.

Sarah Leah Whitson is Executive Director of the Middle East & North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. She can be reached at: hrwnyc@hrw.org


 

 

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