In
the beginning is the end
By Samir Amin, Al-Ahram Weekly, August
22 - 28, 2002
Below is the testimony provided by Samir
Amin to the NGO coalition, El Taller,
in the context of its initiative to set
up a popular international court to investigate
Sharon's crimes: Israel is a unique state.
No other state has been created under
similar conditions and no other state
relates to the world system -- all the
rules of which it negates -- in remorselessly
similar fashion. Israel as a state is
a fabrication of the major Western imperialist
powers, of Britain initially and thereafter
the US. It is not the creation of Zionism,
which was only instrumental in the successive
imperialist schemes aimed at controlling
the Middle East for its geopolitical position
-- as the "road to India", as, first,
the southern border of the USSR and, now,
central Asia, the plaque tournante to
control Russia, China, Iran and India
-- and its oil wealth. In this scheme
Palestine occupies an exclusive position,
separating Egypt from Arab Asia and allowing
for control of the Suez Canal.
It
is not a reporter’s job to provide
the evidence for a war crimes trial
By Robert Fisk, Arab News, August 24,
2002
BEIRUT, 24 August — Three Western
war crimes investigators turned up to
see me in Beirut last week. No, they didn’t
come to talk about the Bosnian war. They
wanted to know about torture at Israel’s
notorious Khiam jail in southern Lebanon,
about beatings and imprisonment in cupboard-size
cells and electrodes applied to the toes
and penises of inmates under interrogation.
The
Powell Doctrine: Baghdad/Jenin/My Lai
By Heather Wokusch, Dissident Voice, August
19, 2002
With the US poised to attack Iraq, it's
helpful to recall what pushed us over
the brink last time ... the invisible
steps and the unspoken consequences. In
the fall of 1990, when the US Congress
was debating going to war, Amnesty International
(AI) released an explosive report detailing
how Iraqi soldiers had taken Kuwaiti babies
out of incubators and left them to die
on hospital floors. Many US Senators later
claimed it was the Amnesty "dead baby"
report that finally convinced them to
use vicious force against the Iraqis.
Pro-Israel
Bankroll Claims Another Victim
By Dr. Ahmed Bouzid, Palestine Chronicle,
August 23, 2002
And so we lost another one. Georgia's
Cynthia McKinney went down, just like
Earl Hilliard of Alabama before her, because
the pro-Israel lobby decided that it must
be so. And so it was. Millions of dollars
were mobilized by the "Israel, right or
wrong" crowd.
This
Time the World Has to Act
By Terje Roed-Larsen, Palestine Chronicle,
August 22, 2002
This Tuesday night, Aug. 20, as part of
an official visit, the foreign minister
of Israel, Shimon Peres, attends a dinner
in his honor at Norway's government guest
house. At the same place almost exactly
nine years ago Peres attended a similar
dinner - except that it provided cover
for an event much more dramatic and historic.
