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Today's
Stories
December 24, 2003
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
Gary Leupp
The
Neocon's Dream Memo
December 18, 2003
Ann Harrison
A
Landmark Victory for Medical Pot
John L. Hess
Catfish
Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town
Karyn Strickler
Ebola
is Good for You!
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana
Dies
Harry Browne
Hail
Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation
of Iraq
Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement
December 17, 2003
Robert Fisk
Saddam's
Cold Comforts
Gideon Levy
"Don't
Even Think About the Children"
Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous
Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
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December
24, 2003
Saddam's People and
Ours
The
Semantics of Empire
By M. SHAHID ALAM
"Saddam Hussein is a man who
is willing to gas his own people "
George Bush, March 22, 2002
"As he (George Bush) said, any
person that would gas his own people is a threat to the world."
Scott McClellan, White House spokesperson, March 31, 2002
"Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who
has tortured and killed his own people"
Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
"He poison-gassed his own people."
Al Gore, December 16, 1998
We might glean a few insights about the semantics
of the global order--and the reality it tries to mask--from the
way in which the United States has framed the moral case against
Saddam.
Saddam's unspeakable crime is that he
has "tortured his own people." He has "killed
his own people." He has "gassed his own
people." He has "poison-gassed his own people."
In all the accusations, Saddam stands inseparable from his own
people.
Rarely do his accusers charge that Saddam
"tortured people," "gassed people," "gassed
Iraqis," or "killed Iraqis." A google search for
"gassed his own people" and "Saddam"
produced 5980 hits. Another search for "gassed people"
and Saddam produced only 276 hits.
It would appear that the indictment of
Saddam gathers power, conviction, irrefutability, by adding the
possessive, proprietary, emphatic 'own' to the people tortured,
gassed or killed. What does the grammar of accusations say about
the metrics of American values?
It is revealing. For a country that claims
to speak in the name of man, abstract man, universal man, the
charge is not that Saddam has killed people, that he has committed
murders, mass murders. Instead, the prosecution indicts him for
killing a people who stand in a specific relation to the killer:
they are his own people.
This betrays tribalism. It springs from
a perception that fractures the indivisibility of mankind. It
divides men into tribes. It divides people into "us"
and "them:" "ours" and "theirs."
It elevates "us" above "them:" "our"
kind above "their" kind. It reveals a sensibility that
can feel horror only over the killing of one's own kind.
Life is sacred at the Core. In the United
States, we have an inalienable right to life. It is protected
by law; it cannot be taken away without due process. Americans
are proud, sedate, in the illusion that their President
never kills his own people; their history is proof of
this. An American President would never think of killing his
own people.
Saddam's crimes are most foul because
he has tortured his own people; he has killed his own
people; he has gassed his own people. He has violated
the edict of nature. His actions are un-American.
Saddam's unnatural crimes trouble us,
however, not because we feel empathy for his victims. His crimes
predict trouble for us. If he can kill his own
kind how much more willingly would he kill us? In Scot
McClellan's version: "any person that would gas his own
people is a threat to the world (read the United States)."
Of course, Saddam might plead innocence
to this charge. "You've got it all wrong about the people
I kill. The Kurds I killed are not my own people. They
are not even Arabs, and, worse, they wanted to break up Iraq
and create their own independent Kurdistan. What would you do
to your Blacks, Amerindians, Hispanics or Asians, if they took
up arms to carve out independent states of their own? Were not
the Southern whites your own people? But you killed a half million
of them when they took up arms against you in the 1860s. More
recently, you killed your own kind at Waco."
Now, as the United States prepares to
try Saddam for torturing, gassing and killing his own
people, does this absolve us of killing the same people
because they are not our own? Is the killing of
Iraqis a crime only when the perpetrators are local thugs--once
in our pay--and not when we take up the killing, and execute
it more efficiently, on our account?
In the colonial era, racism inoculated
people against feeling empathy towards those other people
in the Periphery. Those other people were children, barbarians,
savages, if not worse. We had to kill them if they could not
be useful to us, or if they stood in the way of our progress.
There wasn't much squeamishness about this. It was good policy.
In the era of the Cold War, we went easy
on the language of racism, though not always on its substance.
When we sent our men and women to kill hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese and Koreans, we justified this by claiming that
we were doing it to protect our freedoms. Of course, it
was all right to kill for our freedoms.
However, in the new era, the US learned
to contract the killing to thugs in the Periphery. This was a
win-win for us. We kept our hands free from bloodstains, so we
could smell like roses. At the same time, we could point to colored
killers (in our pay), and say, "Look, they are still incapable
of civilization." What is more, we could use their savagery
as justification for killing colored peoples on our own account.
More recently, the US has gone back to
killing on its own account. Starting in the 1980s, taking advantage
of their indebtedness--which we helped create--we began a general
economic warfare against the Periphery, stripping down their
economies for takeover by Core capital. In this new war, the
colonial governors and viceroys have been replaced by two banks--the
World Bank and the IMF--and a trade enforcer, the WTO. Like the
famines in British India, this war has produced tens of millions
of hidden victims, dead from hunger and disease.
In 1990, the US introduced a new, deadlier
form of economic warfare: it placed Iraq under a total siege.
This instrument was chosen because we knew that Iraq was vulnerable:
it imported much of its food, medicines, medical equipment, machinery
and spare parts, nearly all paid for by oil exports. Imposed
to end Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the siege ended some thirteen
years later only after the US had occupied Iraq. Only after the
siege had killed more than a million and a half Iraqis, half
of them children.
Once again, the US is the world's nerve
center of reactionary ideologies. The post-War restraints on
the use of deadly force now gone, the United States revels in
the use of deadly force. Not that alone, it wants to be seen
using deadly force. It wants to be feared, even loathed for its
magnificent power, raining death from the skies as never before,
like no other power before. At manufacturing death, we brook
no competition.
Imperialism, militarism and wars create
their own rationale. In time, Islamist enemies were elevated
and magnified, with help from the Zionists. Rogue states stepped
out of the shadows. The swamps began to spawn terrorists. Weapons
of mass destruction proliferated. Sagely Orientalists suddenly
awoke to an Arab "democracy deficit." Islam, they declared,
is misogynist, anti-modernist and anti-democratic. The civilizing
mission was Arabized. The musty odors of jingoism, militarism,
racism and religious bigotry infested the air. Like a godsend,
the attacks of September 11, 2001, galvanized America. Imperialism
and racism rode into town, cheek by jowl, hand in hand.
The new colonization project has now
snagged its chief prize. An Arab Ozymandias brought low. The
man who tortured, killed and gassed his own people is
in American hands. Our civilizing mission displays its trophy.
We are repeatedly invited to peep into the oral orifice of this
bedraggled Saddam. "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him."
The images of Saddam the captive, haggard,
resigned, defanged, are images of our raw power. Our power to
appoint, anoint, finance and arm surrogates in the Periphery:
and when they go wrong, our power to wage war against their people;
destroy their civilian infrastructure, poison their air, water
and soil with uranium; lay siege to their economy; and, finally
to invade and occupy their country. We will go to any lengths
to save the people of the Periphery from our tyrants.
Come, then, wretched denizens of the
Periphery, there is cause to rejoice. Lift your Cokes and offer
a toast to the Boy Emperor even as he launches plans to establish
a thousand years of Pax Americana. He will bring down all outmoded
tyrannies, and root out rogue states, dictatorships and monarchies.
He will extirpate all fundamentalists, hunt down all terrorists,
track down all drug lords, and scrap all unfriendly WMDs. This
will be the great cleansing of all self-created challenges to
the Empire. In the end nothing will stand between the Empire
and the Periphery, between Capital and Labor, between Thesis
and Anti-Thesis.
Rejoice, the Empire is advancing its
day of reckoning with history.
M. Shahid Alam
is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published
by Palgrave in 2000. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's
hot new book: The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
© M. Shahid Alam
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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