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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 monthBut 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 12, 2006

Jennifer Loewenstein
Setting the Record Straight on Hamas

June 10 / 11, 2006
Weekend Edition

Robert Fisk
Zarqawi's End is not a Famous Victory

Diane Christian
Zarqawi's Face

Joe Allen
The American Way of Atrocities: Marine Corps' Killer Virtues

Ralph Nader
Let Us All Praise the Dixie Chicks

Fred Gardner
Tylenol Toxicity Terror

Dave Lindorff
Nothing New About Haditha

Dave Zirin / John Cox
Will Racism Spoil the World Cup?

Dennis Perrin
Death is Patriotic: Necro-Porn, Live on CNN

Greg Moses
Militarizing the Border: Why Operation Jump Start Worries Me

John Chuckman
Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot?

Michael J. Smith
Babes in Kosland: Dem Blogfest, Day Two

Roger Burbach
Bachelet in DC: Chilean President Refuses to Back Down to Bush

Ira Moskowitz
Israeli Court Finds Mad-Dog US Prof Libeled CounterPuncher Neve Gordon

Sam Bahour
The Gaza Air Strikes: Begging for a Response

Seth Sandronsky
Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society: Profits Fall, Stores Close

Michael Berg
A Father's Day Message: Both Parties Have Betrayed America

Kirsten Roberts
Desmond Dekker and the Music of the Shantytowns

Ron Jacobs
Who's Fooling Who?

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

Poets' Basement
Jones, Davies, Engel and Louise

Website of the Weekend
Miles and Trane, So What?

 

June 9, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
Make-Up for a Corpse!: In a Month Zarqawi will be Forgotten and the War Will Rage On

Paul Craig Roberts
War Criminal Nation: You'd Better Shut Up!

Gary Leupp
The Iran Deal: Come Down or Set Up?

Eric Ruder
Police Torture in America: the Chicago Files

Evelyn Pringle
The Noe Drama: Was the Ohio Vote Rigged?

Mickey Z.
America: Land of Denial

Michael J. Smith
Our Man in Kos; They're Not in Kansas, Anymore

Patrick Cockburn
The Short, Strange Career of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi

Website of the Day
Georgia ... Bush

 

June 8, 2006

Chris Floyd
Hubub in Hibhib: the Timely Death of al-Zarqawi

Michael Dickinson
Criminal Collage: the Bush Dog Case

Ron Jacobs
You Can't Call Me Zarqawi, Any More

William S. Lind
The Power of Weakness, Again: Haditha, 4GW and the Abu Ghraib Precedent

Joshua Frank
From Bush to Hillary: Holding the War Parties Accountable

Missy Comley Beattie
Ann Coulter and Rev. Fred Phelps: a Romance

Lloyd Williams
Ann Coulter's Blood Lust

Bill Christison
Proviing the Case: What Bush Wants is More War

Website of the Day
Bedtime for Bono?

 

June 7, 2006

Dave Lindorff
The Iraq Money Trail: the Case of the Missing $21 Billion

Sunsara Taylor
CDC to Women: Prepare to Give Birth!

John Walsh
Flunking the Art of War: Master Sun-Tzu, President Hu and Bush

David MacMichael
No More Hadithas

Mickey Z.
Haditha and Rumsfeld's Ratio

Evelyn Pringle
Gagging Public Employees

Myles Palmer
Dark Star Chasm: a Sneak Peak at Roger Waters' Dark Side of the Moon Tour

Laura Ribeiro
The Israeli Boycott of Palestinian Education

Website of the Day
Thank You, Lt. Ehren Watada

 

June 6, 2006

Diane Christian
Negatives: Torture, Massacres and Denial

Paul Craig Roberts
Outsourcing Smarts: the Death of US Engineering

Ralph Nader
The Battle for South Central Farm

Norman Solomon
The Urbanity of Evil: Tariq Aziz and Bush's Enablers

Darmont / Genovali
Wolf Sterilization Scheme Backfires

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrant Bashing for Colonial Control

Subcomandante Marcos
The Other Campaign: a Plan for Action on June 11, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Bloodbath Beyond the Green Zone

Website of the Day
Greatest Music Video?

 

June 5, 2006

Bruce Jackson
Why Haditha Happened

Chris Floyd
Return to Ishaqi: the Pentagon's Shaky Self-Exoneration

Michael Neumann
Jewish Opposition to Zionism

Heather Gray
War in the 20th Century: a Canadian Family's Experience

William Hughes
Bipartisan War Profiteers

David Swanson
Should We Stay or Should We Go Now?

Alexander Cockburn
Palestine: It's All Over

Website of the Day
Klamath Spring

 

June 3 / 4, 2006
Weekend Edition

Robert Fisk
Liberators as Murderers

James Petras
Is Latin America Really Turning Left?

Rosemary Radford Ruether
"We Have No One to Talk To:" Israel's Targeted Assassination Policy

Harry Clark
Truman and Israel: How It All Began

Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth

Ron Ridenour
Return to Cuba

Ron Jacobs
Hand Wringing and Warfare: What Do Owe Iraq

Fred Gardner
Dr. Tashkin Makes the News

Peter Montague
The System in Crisis

John Walsh
MoveOn Rigs Its Own Vote; Betrays Its Membership

Greg Moses
Eyes of Texas: Neocon Border with Mexico Begins Next Week

Sean Donahue
Atlantica: Mainer's Won't Be Fooled Again

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for the Greenback?

Dave Patten
Final Examination

Ali Khan
Story of the Two Kings

Robert Dotson, MD
Couch Time for America

Hammond Guthrie
Revisiting Mondo Hollywood

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

Poets' Basement
Bina, Engel, Ford and Landau

Website of the Day
Send Dr. Suzy Your Love

 

June 2, 2006

Kathy Kelly
Right Livelihood

Alan Maass
"A Mercenary Army": an Interview with Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater in New Orleans

Mickey Z.
Haditha Massacre was Inevitable

Dave Lindorff
Don't Think Twice: Bush and Rumsfeld as Ethics Advisers

Chris Kutalik
Troqueros Flex Muscles at Long Beach

Sunsara Taylor
Countdown to a Betrayal: Making Change Without Democrats

Sam Husseini
Can Pacifica Live Up to Its Promise?

Mike Ferner
More, Lots More

Website of the Day
Free Daniel McGowan!

 

June 1, 2006

Brian Cloughley
Haditha and the Farrago of Lies: War Crimes Start at the Top

David Peterson
Iran: a Manufactured Crisis

Lee Ballinger
Media Myths About the South: What Backlash Against the Dixie Chicks?

Jonathan Cook
Olmbert in DC: Bold Ideas and Ugly Intentions

Mike Whitney
Offers and Ultimatums: Endgaming Iran

Paul Rockwell
Smearing Ron Dellums

Clifton Ross
Millennium Blues

Kevin Zeese
Return of the Petri Dish Warriors: a New Biowar Arms Race Begins in Maryland

Website of the Day
The Monkees and Johnny Cash

 

May 31, 2006

Dave Lindorff
DNC Death Wish 2006: the Do Nothing Party

Joshua Frank
Al Gore, Environmental Titan?: Some Inconvenient Truths About the Ozone Man

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Stop Saying This is a Nation of Immigrants!

P. Sainath
Three Weddings and Funeral: Farmer Suicides in Vidharbha

Ramzy Baroud
On Palestinian Violence

Seth Sandronsky
The War on Nurses: a Joint Attack by US Senate and NLRB

Mickey Z.
Scapegoating Mexicans is an American Tradition

Ralph Nader
Breakaway Bases: Keeping LIttle Leaguers Safe

Jeffrey St. Clair
Dirk's Dirty Money: Gale Norton in Slacks

Website of the Day
Storm Cloud Over New Orleans

 

May 30, 2006

Lee Ballinger
The Real Reason Rock the Vote is Falling Apart

Jonathan Cook
Shin Bet and the Israeli Academy: Partners in Human Rights Abuses?

Gary Leupp
Now Introducing, the Office of Iranian Affairs

John Ross
Disappearing the Disappeared

Robert Jensen
The Four Fundamentalisms

Michael Dickinson
Silencing the Peace Protester of Parliament Square

Michael Carmichael
Zionist Democrats: the DLC and Israel

Tim Wise
Of Immigrants and "Real Amurkans"

Harry Browne
Ken Loach's History Lesson

Website of the Day
Louisiana

 

May 27 / 29, 2006
Weekend Edition

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Within

Kathleen Christison
Surrender vs. the Right to Exist

Kathy Kelly
Fear of Flowers in Iraq: a Report from
Sulaymaniyah

Christopher Reed
The Abominable Dr. Ishii: the Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele

Lawrence R. Velvel
The Moral Rot in Congress: a Constitutional Right to Graft?

Tom Barry
The Politics of Tom Tancredo

Gary Leupp
The Latest Neocon Lies About Iran

Col. Dan Smith
Freezing History: Iran and the Uses of "Preventive" War

Ron Jacobs
Blocking Military Ports: One, Two, Three Many Olympians

Don Fitz
EPA Goes Lead Wild: Acceptable Levels of Poisoning

Fred Gardner
What's the Matter with Oregon?

Peter Montague
Radioactive Troika: Bush, the Nuclear Power Industry and the New York Times

Raymond Garcia
Teens as Political Scapegoats

John Farley
Euston Manifesto: the Latest Gameplan from the Pro-Imperialist Left

Seth Sandronsky
Mexico After NAFTA: the Washington Post's Trouble with Numbers

Tia Steele
A Gold Star Mother's Memorial Day Plea

Lenni Brenner
"Howl", 50 Years Later: Allen Ginsberg's Silly Liberal Politics

Dr. Susan Block
God Has Sex, Makes Big Box Office

Scott Michael Perey
An Open Letter to Bono: Why are You Financing a Video Game Promoting the Invasion of Venezuela?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: Please Help Hilton Ruiz

Poets' Basement
Davies, Smith-Ferri, Mickey Z,, Buknatski, and Engel

Recipe of the Weekend
Impeach-Mint Punch

Website of the Weekend
Trojan Syndrome

 

May 26, 2006

Col. Douglas MacGregor
Fire the Generals!: the Failure of Military Leadership in Iraq

Brian J. Foley
Who Will Stand Up to Bush's Drive to Attack Iran?

Michael Dickinson
Mining Glaciers: Water or Gold?

Missy Comley Beattie
Stuck in a Cake-Walk War

Pierre Tristam
The Few, the Proud, the Murderers

Joe Allen
Put a Disclaimer on the Bible, Not the Da Vinci Code

Kona Lowell
Thank You, Fox News

Roger Burbach
Bush Targets Chavez and Morales

Website of the Day
Women Resisting War from Within

 

May 25, 2006

Les AuCoin
Faith-Based Missile Defense: the Folly of Star Wars

Jeff Halper
Countdown to Apartheid

Dave Lindorff
Bombing Without Regrets

Ron Jacobs
Voting Rights and Multilingual Ballots

Bob Wing
Finding Common Ground in New Orleans: an Interview with Malik Rahim

Elise Gould
College Grads Face Weak Labor Market

Robert Bryce
Iraq's Fuel Crisis

Website of the Day
Oh Lay!

 

May 24, 2006

Michael Donnelly
Operation Backfire: Criminalizing Eco-Dissent

Patrick Cockburn
Why the US May Have to Quit Iraq Sooner Than It Planned

Lucinda Marshall
Involuntary Motherhood: the Cacophony Over RU 486

Dave Lindorff
A Winning Impeachment Argument

Shmuel Rosner
Israeli Advice on Wall-Building: Be Ruthless

Moshe Adler
The Promised Land: Immigration, Israeli Style

Heather Gray
Land Reform and American Agriculture

Pratyush Chandra
Angels and Demons in Nepal

Paul Craig Roberts
In Memoriam: Lloyd Bentsen

Floyd Rudmin
Why Does the NSA Engage in Mass Surveillanc of Americans?

Website of the Day
Presentensing the Future

 

May 23, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
Paranoia as Policy: How Bush Brewed the Iran Crisis

Sharon Smith
Shooting to Kill on the Border

Sunsara Taylor
Meet the New Christian Conquistadors: Ron Luce's Holy Warriors

Joel Whitney
The Most Tenacious Man on Capitol Hill?: an Interview with John Conyers

Alice Cherbonnier
Total Information Awareness for Whom? FOIA, the Press and the Spooks

Ron Jacobs
Optimism of the Will

Kristen Ess
The Crisis for Palestinian Political Prisoners

Patrick Cockburn
Which is the Real Iraq?

Website of the Day
Pearl Jam: Life Wasted

 

 

Subscribe Online

June 12, 2006

The Case of the Toronto 17

Has Racism Invaded Canada?

By ROBERT FISK

This has been a good week to be in Canada--or an awful week, depending on your point of view--to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on "terrorism" charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country's more than 700,000 Muslims. In fact, if I were a Canadian Muslim right now, I'd already be checking the airline timetables for a flight out of town. Or is that the purpose of this press campaign?

First, the charges. Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked of a plot to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and chop off the head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Without challenging the "facts" or casting any doubt on their sources--primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada's leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) -- reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to blow up Parliament, CSIS's headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages. "Home-grown terrorists" has become theme of the month--even though the "terrorists" have yet to stand trial.

They were in receipt of "fertilizers", we were told, which could be turned into explosives. When it emerged that Canadian police officers had already switched the "fertilizers" for a less harmful substance, nobody followed up the implications of this apparent "sting". A Buffalo radio station down in the US even announced that the accused had actually received "explosives". Bingo: Guilty before trial.

Of course, the Muslim-bashers have laced this nonsense with the usual pious concern for the rights of the accused. "Before I go on, one disclaimer," purred the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente. "Nothing has been proved and nobody should rush to judgment." Which, needless to say, Wente then went on to do in the same paragraph. "The exposure of our very own home-grown terrorists, if that's what the men aspired to be, was both predictably shocking and shockingly predictable." And just in case we missed the point of this hypocrisy, Wente ended her column by announcing that "Canada is not exempt from home-grown terrorism". Angry young men are the tinderbox and Islamism is the match.

The country will probably have better luck than most at "putting out the fire", she adds. But who, I wonder, is really lighting the match? For a very unpleasant--albeit initially innocuous--phrase has now found its way into the papers. The accused 17--and, indeed their families and sometimes the country's entire Muslim community--are now referred to as "Canadian-born". Well, yes, they are Canadian-born. But there's a subtle difference between this and being described as a "Canadian"--as other citizens of this vast country are in every other context. And the implications are obvious; there are now two types of Canadian citizen: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest).

If this seems finicky, try the following sentence from the Globe and Mail's front page on Tuesday, supposedly an eyewitness account of the police arrest operation: "Parked directly outside his ... office was a large, gray, cube-shaped truck and, on the ground nearby, he recognized one of the two brown-skinned young men who had taken possession of the next door rented unit..." Come again? Brown-skinned? What in God's name is this outrageous piece of racism doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily? What is "brown-skinned" supposed to mean--if it is not just a revolting attempt to isolate Muslims as the "other" in Canada's highly multicultural society? I notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to Toronto's police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as "white-skinned" (which he most assuredly is). Amid this swamp, Canada's journalists are managing to soften the realities of their country's new military involvement in Afghanistan.

More than 2,000 troops are deployed around Kandahar in active military operations against Taleban insurgents. They are taking the place of US troops, who will be transferred to fight even more Muslims insurgents in Iraq.

Canada is thus now involved in the Afghan war--those who doubt this should note the country has already shelled out $1.8bn in "defense spending" in Afghanistan and only $500m in "additional expenditures", including humanitarian assistance and democratic renewal (sic)--and, by extension, in Iraq. In other words, Canada has gone to war in the Middle East.

None of this, according to the Canadian foreign minister, could be the cause of Muslim anger at home, although Jack Hooper--the CSIS chief who has a lot to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much--said a few days ago that "we had a high threat profile (in Canada) before Afghanistan. In any event, the presence of Canadians and Canadian forces there has elevated that threat somewhat." I read all this on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa this week, sitting just a row behind Tim Goddard, his wife Sally and daughter Victoria, who were chatting gently and smiling bravely to the crew and fellow passengers. In the cargo hold of our aircraft lay the coffin of Goddard's other daughter, Nichola, the first Canadian woman soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.

The next day, he scattered sand on Nichola's coffin at Canada's national military cemetery. A heartrending photograph of him appeared in the Post--but buried away on Page 6. And on the front page? A picture of British policemen standing outside the Bradford home of a Muslim "who may have links to Canada".

Allegedly, of course.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the Middle East.



 

 


 

 

 

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