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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY Former top CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful it is. Read how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier, exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories June 1, 2006 Jonathan Cook May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
Day
May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 22, 2006 Alan Maass William Blum Elaine C. Hagopian Stan Cox Chris Floyd Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
May 20 / 21, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Kathy Kelly Ralph Nader Hugh O'Shaughnessy Greg Grandin P. Sainath Greg Moses Stephen Philion Landau / Hassen Fred Gardner Missy Comley
Beattie Michael Dickinson Seth Sandronsky Luke Young John Zavesky Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
May 19, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler José Pertierra John Ross Dave Lindorff Jeff Juel Alan Farago Eric Johnson-DeBaufre José Martî Jonathan Cook Website of the
Day
May 18, 2006 Bill Simpich Patrick Cockburn Christopher Brauchli Nora Barrows-Friedman Victoria Buch Eric Ruder George Wuerthner Juan Santos Website of the Day
May 17, 2006 Lenni Brenner Carlos Villarreal Larry Everest CounterPunch News Service Lee Sustar Anthony Papa William S. Lind Bruce K. Gagnon JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
May 16, 2006 Ward Churchill Ted Honderich Paul Craig Roberts Annie Nocenti Charles V. Peña Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Harvey Wasserman Michael George
Smith Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn William Blum Tanya Golash-Boza
and Douglas A. Parker Dave Lindorff Debra Schaffer
Hubert Patrick Cockburn Tom Turnipseed Ken Livingstone Gideon Levy Mickey Z. Jeff Faux Website of the Day
May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad Joan Roelofs Kathy Kelly Michael Neumann Dr. Susan Block Daniel Cassidy Christopher Reed Mike Roselle Saul Landau Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Evelyn Pringle Fred Gardner Stanley Heller Conn Hallinan Valentina Palma Novoa David Krieger Col. Dan Smith Christopher Brauchli Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Dave Lindorff Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner Brian Kwoba Chris Kromm Kai Diekmann David Swanson Virginia Tilley Website of the
Day
May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Jonathan Cook Tariq Ali Wayne S. Smith Mike Whitney Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Mickey Z. Francis Boyle Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson Website of the
Day
May 10, 2006 Werther Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Ramzy Baroud Kevin Zeese Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Sharon Smith Website of the Day
May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern M. Shahid Alam Moshe Adler Walter MIgnolo Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor William S. Lind Todd Chretien Dave Lindorff Ishmael Reed Website of the
Day
May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Ingmar Lee Robert Jensen Ricardo Alarcon Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair Ariel Dorfman Joe Allen Fred Gardner Jeff Taylor Saul Landau Stephen Philion Trish Schuh Ralph Nader Robert Fisk Paul Cantor John Holt James Ryan Lawrence R. Velvel Greg Moses Laray Polk Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad Robert Fisk David Swanson Mearsheimer / Walt Dave Lindorff Sarah Ferguson CounterPunch
News Service Corporate Crime Reporter Website of the
Day
May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Jonathan Cook Roger Burbach Chris Dols Christopher Brauchli Tony Swindell Website of the Day
May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Paul Craig Roberts James Petras Lee Sustar David Bolton Joshua Frank Jeffery R. Webber Website of the
Day
May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Tariq Ali Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Sen. Russell
Feingold Anthony Papa Website of the
Day
May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Christopher Reed Michael Donnelly Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Gilad Atzmon Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh Ralph Nader Robert Bryce Rev. William
Alberts Lee Sustar John Chuckman Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Fred Gardner Don Monkerud Tommy Stevenson Lettrist International Contratiempo St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
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June 1, 2006 The Southern Lights of HopeMillennium BluesBy CLIFTON ROSS From the looks of things, this is going to be a tough millennium for the American empire. Let's face it, things didn't start off that well and they've only gotten worse. Remember the "Millennium scare" when everyone thought the world was going to short circuit because computers weren't going to be able to cope with the change from the 1900s to the 2000s? I don't mean to embarrass my dear sister and her husband, but they stored food big time in preparation for the end of the world. While civilization fell and burned, my sister reasoned (and she being a fabulous cook) and her family would be eating pounds on pounds of dried chili, dried stews and other survival food. Things went off without a hitch with the end of the millennium, as it turned out, and my sister has undoubtedly ingeniously figured numerous ways to use the survival rations in delicious dishes. Nevertheless, the neurotic, phobic anxiety around the turning of the millennium signaled some profound dis-ease in the previously world-renowned optimistic U.S. psyche. What has followed from that millennial shift has been a rapid decline, straight down hill, summed up in that bumper sticker I often saw as I bicycled around Berkeley in the past few years: "Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?" It's hard to imagine a bumper sticker on anyone's car in Reagan's, or Clinton's U.S. with that pessimistic a message. Things went bad fast. First there was the dot.com implosion and North Americans watched their life savings turn into monopoly money in a matter of months. No one quite got what was happening to the economy before their attention was distracted by the election, the stolen election in Florida that occurred with the same seeming inevitability as the declining stock market, while the nation looked on helplessly. Recall that Jesse Jackson was preparing to summon the troops to the scene, grassroots activists from across the country, to prevent the fraud but Al Gore stopped him cold. Instead, Bush's Republican operatives arrived to massively prevent a recount by surrounding the offices where the recount was taking place, pounding on windows and intimidating the workers. In the end it was the Supreme Court who chose the new misleader, George W. Bush. 2001 was definitely a space odyssey. For the first time in U.S. history there was a satire show on an incoming president before he had a chance to make an impression. The new "President" was largely defined by the clueless character in "That's my Bush" which promised to be taken more seriously and more popular than the new man in the real White House. Until September 11. The sense of helplessness, shock and anxiety turned the U.S. neurosis into a nearly psychotic condition. Suddenly there was no more ridicule of the ridiculous: George W. was taken seriously. It was as if he planned it that way. The unanswered questions around the Twin Towers would remain a repressed mystery through the 911 Commission (all hand-picked by Bush) and its inquiry as the U.S. lunged into war, first against Afghanistan's Taliban (who made the mistake of asking for proof against Osama Bin Laden before handing him over to Bush) then against Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 911 attacks. For the past several years North Americans, always a gullible, trusting people, have listened to their president and his cabinet lie to them and they have rewarded him with reelection, once again, though, a closely contested election where fraud was perpetrated, this time in Ohio in 2004, and the Democratic challenger, once again, bowed out of the race and handed the presidency to Bush without a whimper of protest. Now we are in 2006, a little over half way through the first decade of the millennium and there is a heavy, dark spirit hovering over our nation. The lies that the administration used to get us into the war (initially, as usual, overwhelmingly popular) now seem (if we're honest, just as ridiculous they did when first offered) utterly imbecilic. There were no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq is far worse off than it was before the "liberation"; U.S. forces have killed far more people, and allowed far more people to be killed under their watch, than Saddam Hussein killed in his decades-long rule; infrastructure, destroyed by decade-long sanctions, the U.S. bombing and invasion, has never been rebuilt and looks like it may never be repaired; absolutely nothing is better under U.S. occupation than it was under the ruthless dictator we supported, and supplied for many years and then finally removed. Even gas in this nation with 24% of the world's oil, isn't available. At home poverty is increasing, the jobs lost in the first years of the Bush administration in well-paid high tech areas, have been replaced, if at all, with much lower paying jobs in the service industries; wages continue to remain stagnant or drop while prices continue to climb; our heartland is a maze of chain stores and closed local businesses; our civil rights are under constant attack and the thin veneer of a benevolent government has peeled away to reveal the truly horrifying monster many of us long believed it was. In short, Bush has the love and respect of less than one third of the U.S. public, and it's anyone's guess how deep that love and respect goes even among that one third. That is perhaps the good news. People, at last, can see through the lies and manipulation and seem pretty upset by it, especially since the number one reason for the 70% disapproval is for his handling of Iraq. The bad news is that there seems to be no light at the end of our current tunnel. We seem to be in Ernesto Sabato's story, flying ever downwards on a train to hell or trapped in the lower rung of Sartre's existential nightmare. The North American continent seems to be in utter darkness except for the faint glow of lights so far south they're almost no longer on the Northern continent. Those of us so desperate for hope we're willing to risk our livelihoods, even our lives, in search for it, can report that there is something bright and hopeful astir on the continent but, in order to hear it, you may have to learn Spanish. The recent inspiring demonstrations of immigrants in the U.S. that brought back to the historical memory the hallowed first of May as a day for celebration are the manifestation of this new human project in our midst. While many from diverse cultures and nations participated, the vanguard was Latin American, specifically Mexican. It's no surprise that the Mexicans would be the spark in the dead wood of Anglo America given the one bright ray of hope that shone forth in the early nineties from the most backward, impoverished region of the one Latin American country on the mainland of the North American continent. I'm speaking, of course, of the Zapatista uprising which shook Mexico and precipitated the collapse of the seventy year dictatorship of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), this at a time when guerrilla movements, socialist organizations, anti-capitalist resistance seemed as much a part of a mythic human past as knights in armor, princesses in castles and dragon slayers in valiant struggle. A little further South one encounters a continent alive with, and engaged fully in, the project of hope. Ironically, it is in what are called the "favelas" or "ranchos" or "barrios populares," that is, the slums or ghettos of the great cities where the construction of this project is most notable. This is not so strange as one might think since hope seems to be the experience, primarily, essentially, and, almost exclusively, of the desperate, that is, those without hope, just as utopia is the habitual dream of those without a place in this world. If one had a place in this world, why would one put one's faith in the "no place" (u-topia)? If one possessed all one's dreams, for what would one need, or exercise, hope? In Chavez's Bolivarian Venezuela, those dreaming utopia and living in hope are the desperately poor of yesteryear, or yesterday or even of today. Those "piqueteros" who have thrown their lives into full time struggle for a new Argentina live in the utopia that moves mysteriously from highway to road to city street. All over the continent the movements are calling forth moderate progressives into presidential terms only to turn around immediately to challenge them to begin the work of the creation of utopia, built by the will of the hopeless with the magic hands of hope. This is not to "romanticize poverty" as we, who recognize, acknowledge and admire the humanity of the poor are inevitably accused of doing. It is a way privilege has of discrediting us, those who are poor, have been poor, know the poor, that is, those of us who have and who value, our relations with the poor and, most significantly, respect them. Charles Peguy said that there is only one unforgiveable sin, and that is to be poor. This is no less true on an international level. The Bolivians, the Peruvians, the Colombians, the Central Americans, the Mexicans are despised in Anglo America primarily not because of their "mestizaje" and their dark skins but because they are poor. We don't give them a second glance for the same reason we refuse to "see" the homeless on our streets and for the same reason: poverty is the greatest sin and, therefore, the greatest shame. And when those of us who identify with them speak of their sole, invisible possession, utopia, or their single outstanding virtue, hope, we are told we "romanticize" their plight. It is as if we were "romanticizing" the bourgeoisie when we speak of their houses in the suburbs and their fat bank accounts. I have been living with the "poor" of Venezuela for a year now and have come to experience, first hand, the tortured, perverse logic and have been victimized by the provincial and hypocritical morality of those I would describe as "identified by definition." By that I mean that those of means, the non-poor, have the capacity to buy their identity. They purchase their titles at the best universities, distinguish themselves through their unique dress (they can afford, after all, clothes that aren't mass-produced), drive the rare vehicles (the SUVs), live in exclusive neighborhoods and choose their professions based on which will grant them more status. The poor have no access to these forms of identification. They resign themselves to no titles, little education, mass-produced clothing, mass transit and housing in "projects" or large, anonymous buildings. They are defined by their absence of resources for self-definition. Nevertheless, it is precisely in this absence that they find their resourcefulness, their ability to dream, their citizenship in utopia. I recall watching kids on the beach in Santa Catalina, the poor neighborhood miles outside of Montevideo. For the hour I sat in the café looking out the window, the children played with a single hoop, making of it a multi-purpose toy with their ingenuity. They exemplified for me that sunny afternoon, the meaning of the saying, "necessity is the mother of invention." Until we need, we will not invent or, to put it another way, as long as we have, we will not hope. Could it be that this is why we in the "developed" U.S. live in a state of desperate hopelessness? Might it be that the project of utopia built with the sweat, blood and tears of hope, will require that we first lose everything, beginning with our false optimism? Is it true that "whoever seeks to save his life will lose it"? Must we give up everything in order to find happiness and join the desperate in the project of building a humane world founded on peace, justice and love, values in which we, as a people, have ceased long ago to believe? For such a world some of us think everything we have would be a small price to pay. Clifton Ross has written or translated and published
half a dozen books. Last year he was one of two U.S. poets to
participate in the Second World Poetry Festival of Venezuela.
He has been reporting from Venezuela for the past year for americanencounters.org
.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |