Murder in Zawatta — a US-financed death squad
By Anne Gwynne, Arab News, January 29, 2003
Back at Shaffi Shamran with these two murdered corpses — the soldiers laughing and jeering and dancing around with their rifles over their heads — Ahmed asked, "why shoot a woman?" The deluded soldier said that she was carrying an M16 machine-gun, a hand-gun, a bomb under her coat and a bomb in a black plastic bag. When Ahmed asked, "where are they?", the soldier said that the ambulance crew had hidden them! --  Today (Jan. 24) was an even worse day than its predecessors. Everyone asks, "Is ‘worse’ possible?" Mrs. Sou’ad Godola, aged 54 and Aiman Hanlawi, aged 22, became two more murder victims of the Israeli terrorist army, in this terrible war of attrition which it is waging against an unarmed civilian population with ever-increasing ferocity. We do not yet have the name of the third seriously injured and unconscious man. At 10.00 a.m, in response to an emergency call, our ambulance left the center for the village of Zawatta where it was reported that a car had been attacked by a helicopter gunship — two persons had been killed and another seriously injured. On board were Jarere and Ahmed Kanadiloe (driver and volunteer paramedic) and Abed Shahin, a UPMRC volunteer.

A Pyrrhic victory
By Yoel Marcus, Ha'aretz, January 29, 2003
A little bit of advice to Sharon's most loyal friends, advisers and supporters: Don't brag, don't dance on the rooftops, don't drink too much champagne. The election exercise could yet turn out to be Sharon's Pyrrhic victory. For those who don't know, the Greek King Epirus, beat the Romans but lost his army, and in the third century BCE, coined the phrase "another victory like this and we're lost." Sharon beat Labor, which anyway was on the ropes, significantly increased the Likud's representation in the Knesset, but first and foremost, screwed himself. With the public turning right and the collapse of the peace process, he now faces the nightmare of a narrow, extremist government. He lost the respectability Labor gave him as a fig leaf for his policies of force.

We Can Stop This War: A National Rifle Association of Peace?
By Rich Procter, CounterPunch, January 25, 2003
So what can we do? Let's pretend, just for a moment, that we're the "National Rifle Association of Peace." Let's pretend we believe we've got power -- that when we say JUMP, politicians say "How High?" on the way up. -- George Bush wants to invade Iraq so his petro-pals can get that glorious sweet crude, his p.r. machine can have a new "product" to promote to get people's minds off the death-rattle economy, and his "base" can have gleeful "war-gasms" watching all that delicious smart-bomb "eye candy" on CNN and Faux. Rummy and Wolfie and Condi and Cheney want to invade Iraq to prove how tough they are. Nothing establishes your street cred like sending out other people to get shot, bombed and gassed. Big media wants to invade Iraq, because Great Big Stories mean Great Big Audiences which means Great Big Ad Dollars. And if it's like Gulf War One -- great visuals, great heroes, exciting wham-bam-thank you Sam plotline -- it'll yield years of "America Kicks Ass!" special reports. And like GW 1, nobody will care that a couple of hundred thousand dune goons got turned into crispy critters. Fortunes of war, ya know. About the only people who aren't with the program are the American people. You know -- you, me, your neighbors. More than 70% of Americans think we should let the UN Arms Inspectors try to find these weapons of mass destruction that Bush keeps yelling about. Even if we find them, a vast majority of the American people think we shouldn't go into Iraq without a broad coalition of allies. Dubya thinks different, of course.

Birzeit Blues
By Diaa Hadid, The Electronic Intifada, January 27, 2003
I'm writing a report right now, and the current chapter focuses on attacks on health, including curfew. A lot of the time, my impatience to write this dammed report makes me so impatient I forget what I'm reading. I didn't forget though, last week. I went to visit a girlfriend who studies at Birzeit University. I reached there by taking a shared cab sneaking on settler roads, which put the fear of God into me. Ramallah was closed, so I couldn't take the usual route to Birzeit. I took the "by-pass" route from Calandia, the new central bus station for the central West Bank. Everybody else was used to it, the woman beside me knew the driver on a first name basis. Two young men in kufiyyehs sat behind me, and I really had to laugh at how bad this looked. They were probably engineering students, carrying something very long, probably rolled up cardboard and sketches. For an Israeli soldier peering suspiciously from the door, it would look like a rocket launcher or an over-the-shoulder weapon hurler. Who knows? I smothered the laughter though. You won't be laughing when you're dead, I'll tell myself.

The Empire Strikes First
By Maureen Dowd, New York Times, January 29, 2003
There was no smoking gun last night. There was merely a smoky allusion. President Bush tried to sell skittish Americans on a war with Iraq by alluding to the possibility of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Outlaw regimes seeking bad weapons, Mr. Bush said, "could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation." The axis of evil has shrunk to Saddam, evil incarnate. Iran and North Korea were put aside with the dismissive comment: "Different threats require different strategies." The state of the union is skeptical. At a moment when Americans were hungry for reassurance that the monomaniacal focus on Iraq makes sense when the economy is sputtering, Mr. Bush offered a rousing closing argument for war, but no convincing bill of particulars. Republican senators tried to back up the president. While admitting that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction yet,  John Warner told reporters that an attack was justified "if you put together all the bits and pieces that are out there right now." Americans will never understand the Bush rationale for war if they simply look at the bits and pieces of physical evidence. They will understand the Bush rationale for war only if they look at the metaphysical evidence, the perfect storm of imperial schemes and ideological stratagems driving the desire to topple Saddam.

American presidents all mixed up
By Richard Adams, The Guardian, January 29, 2003
In a bizarre twist, global bankers love Lula and despair of Bush  -- It's surprising that no one has noticed this, but it looks as if there has been a terrible mix-up involving American presidents. For some time there have been suggestions that US president George Bush doesn't know what's he is doing. The answer is simple: he's supposed to be the president of Brazil. Meanwhile, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - or Lula, as the new president of Brazil is known - should be president of the United States. The mix-up is obvious, when you consider the facts. Wealthy oligarchs, who reach high office through nepotism, promoting friends of their family into government while presiding over corporate sleaze, and running up vast debts by making tax giveaways to their rich, rightwing supporters - that's the sort of behaviour that South American presidents are renowned for. Meanwhile, policies of stern fiscal prudence, applauded by the international financial markets, coupled with tough welfare reform, is what is expected from leaders of the United States. But in a bizarre geo-political twist, these stereotypes have been turned on their heads. While the president of South America's most important country couldn't be more different as a person than the president of North America's most important country, it's hard not to think the world would be a better place if the two men swapped jobs.

The Nation, the President, the War
Editorial, New York Times, January 29, 2003
But the president has never been as effective in making the case for immediate intervention or for going to war absent broad international support. While there is a natural fear that Iraq might give arms or biological weapons to terrorists, the administration has not been able to connect those dots, or even to demonstrate that Iraq has a history of aiding terrorism as clear as that of some American allies in the region. We welcome the president's decision to bring the question of Iraq's conduct back to the United Nations next Wednesday and to provide new intelligence that will bolster the administration's case. More troubling was his threat to attack Iraq even without Security Council support. Mr. Bush's language and his intensity left little doubt that his path was set, no matter what the rest of the international community decides. -- President Bush sought to revive a sense of national resolve last night with a State of the Union address that readied the country for a showdown with Iraq and demanded another huge tax cut for wealthier Americans. No one watching the somber Mr. Bush's delivery could doubt his determination. But the combination created far too mixed a message. It was hard to reconcile the president who vowed not to "pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations" with the one whose fiscal policies have helped create gigantic deficits for taxpayers of the future.

Writing on the wall
Editorial, Arab News, January 29, 2003
If things go the way the UN, the EU and the new Turkish government want, the 28-year-old division of Cyprus could be over in a matter of weeks. That may seem incredible after so many failed attempts in the past, but deadlines are fast approaching: the two sides have until Feb. 28 to accept the UN’s peace plan; a referendum endorsing it has to be held throughout the island on March 30; and on April 16 an agreement will be signed paving the way for all of Cyprus to join the EU. If Turkish northern Cyprus fails to accept the UN deal, only the southern Republic of Cyprus will join. It is the prospect of joining the EU that has given the UN deal its momentum. The realization that membership is there for the taking has clarified Turkish Cypriot minds to a remarkable degree. Either they can be part of an EU state and enjoy growth and prosperity or they can remain in isolation and poverty — which they will if they stay separate. The choice is theirs. Many have already made that choice. The pro-unification demonstration a fortnight ago attracted a quarter of the Turkish Cypriot population; the anti-unification demonstration in response last week was pathetic in comparison.

Stronger than ever
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, January 28, 2003
Far from fizzling out, the global justice movement is growing in numbers and maturity -- Mr Bush and Mr Blair might have a tougher fight than they anticipated. Not from Saddam Hussein perhaps - although it is still not obvious that they can capture and hold Iraq's cities without major losses - but from an anti-war movement that is beginning to look like nothing the world has seen before. It's not just that people have begun to gather in great numbers even before a shot has been fired. It's not just that they are doing so without the inducement of conscription or any other direct threat to their welfare. It's not just that there have already been meetings or demonstrations in almost every nation on Earth. It's also that the campaign is being coordinated globally with an unprecedented precision. And the people partly responsible for this are the members of a movement which, even within the past few weeks, the mainstream media has pronounced extinct. Last year, 40,000 members of the global justice movement gathered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This year, more than 100,000, from 150 nations, have come - for a meeting! The world has seldom seen such political assemblies since Daniel O'Connell's "monster meetings" in the 1840s.

Blair Is A Coward
By John Pilger, Daily Mirror, January 29, 2003
William Russell, the great correspondent who reported the carnage of imperial wars, may have first used the expression "blood on his hands" to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance, order the mass killing of ordinary people. In my experience "on his hands" applies especially to those modern political leaders who have had no personal experience of war, like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony Blair. There is about them the essential cowardice of the man who causes death and suffering not by his own hand but through a chain of command that affirms his "authority". In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity. The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the "highest authority". Blair is about to commit both these crimes, for which he is being denied even the flimsiest United Nations cover now that the weapons inspectors have found, as one put it, "zilch".

War's Bottom Line: Death
Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, January 28, 2003
On the streets yesterday, when greeting each other, people did it with no expression. Certainly, the cold had much to do with that, but this is a time when people do not smile anywhere. You study the faces on television. I would not hire the press guy for the president, Ari Fleischer, for a job in a funeral parlor because he is too somber. I single him out because he is on TV a lot at this time. Death. But when you study faces anywhere, you can't find a smile. The faces tell you the time in which you're living. The government is talking about a war with Iraq as if discussing a commuter train home. When we have the war, when we get the 101st Airborne in place, when the carrier group arrives, when the war starts at the end of February. The 8:42 to Long Beach. The government talks about a war in terms of personal insults, deliberately keeping us waiting, by Saddam Hussein, of whom we're all sick and tired. No one so far has talked about the number of people who will be killed in Iraq. We will lose great young people. Oh, there has to be tens of thousands of Iraq civilians killed. How can they bomb and invade without killing tens of thousands? Particularly those school children whose mothers dress them for the day and send them off to be blown apart by a smart bomb that turns dumb on the way down and hits a schoolhouse. Saddam Hussein and his sons and generals don't seem to care how many of their people get killed. Their record seems to show that. The blood of children, however, is not on his hands. It is on ours. The questions will be asked at the end of life and the answers - "I didn't do it. Bush did it and the guys flying the planes did it" - are not going to do much good for you.

U.S. unilateralism a threat to world peace
By Ash Pulcifer, Yellow Times, January 29, 2003,
(YellowTimes.org) – We are approaching the climax of the Bush administration's policy of unilateralism. Soon the Bush administration will make the decision of whether to go to war with Iraq. The future of the world as we currently know it may depend on this decision. While to many Americans an invasion of Iraq may seem like a largely insignificant event, the actual ramifications are quite serious. If the Bush administration chooses to attack Iraq, the United States will be invading a sovereign nation accompanied by almost no global support. Nearly every single government on the planet has spoken out against a war in Iraq, including the major countries of the European continent, Germany and France. In the first Gulf War, the United States achieved a broad coalition for their invasion of Iraq, using its advanced military to achieve the goals of the coalition. The invasion of Afghanistan also received popular support across the globe, as governments around the world recognized the U.S. wish to eliminate al Qaeda training camps. Unlike these past campaigns, the United States' present threat to attack Iraq is opposed by nearly every government in the world, making any attack by the United States a show of defiance by the world's only superpower. It will mean that the United States has completely disregarded its respect for other sovereign nations by preemptively striking Iraq in direct opposition to major players on the world stage.