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Today's
Stories
January 10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
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
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
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for More Stories.
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January
10 / 11, 2004
History Foretold
What
Invaders Have in Common
By RAMZY BAROUD
An ill-advised edict by the Taleban government
early 2001, to obliterate some of the world's oldest Buddhist
masterpieces in the Afghani province of Bamiyan, sent "dark
shivers through the international community", as described
by ABC news. Shortly after the toppling of the Buddha's statues,
the Taleban itself was toppled; their leadership in disarray,
some killed and others on the run.
An unforgettable scene of the destruction
of a particular statue of the Buddha, the largest in the world,
on March 2001, triggered fury, and unequivocal condemnations
from world governments and NGOs. "I told them (the Taleban)
that the international community is baffled at the moment and
it would create international outrage if the edict is carried
out," the UN's special envoy to Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell,
told AFP in Kabul prior to the detonation of the statues. And
an "international outrage" it was. But as some were
genuinely concerned about the world's irreplaceable cultural
heritage, others cultivated the Taleban's foolish decision to
rid themselves of "false idols", politically. That
single event arguably laid the foundation for the propaganda
campaign that preceded the war on Afghanistan by the United States
and a band of local warlords.
Was the Taleban's religious dogma truly
threatened by the presence of a 175a*" foot Buddha statue?
Or was the decision a desperate call for attention, for validation,
perhaps a display of evidently so deficient a strength? Ahmed
Rashid, author of "Taleban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia", remarked in an ABC interview: "The
Taleban has gone completely bananas."
I would'sve settled for this intellectually
atypical analysis if it were not for the fact that hostile regimes
and foreign invaders habitually aim much of their hostilities
toward illustrations of history. In many instances, history is
also a causality of war. Iraq and Palestine are prime examples.
During a visit to Iraq in April 1999, I was dissatisfied by an
explanation given by an employee at the Iraq National Museum
that the building was closed due to constant bombings by American
warplanes. Bombs seemed to target and evidently ravished much
of the museum during the 1991 war and subsequent years. Thus,
unparalleled historic pieces were hauled into an underground
area, adjacent to the main building. My relentless hackling and
pleas finally paid off however, as I was allowed to gaze for
a few moments at segments of history so unequaled with lessons
beyond astute. Large edifices, that date back thousands of years,
stood in a dark basement wrapped in white sheets, dusty and battered.
My body was no longer responding to the
scorching heat of Baghdad, as it gave in to a wave of endless
shivers. I witnessed the making and remaking of history set in
stone. Every giant block seemed to testify to one unmistakable
end: Invaders never prevail. The likeness of history as narrated
by images was startling: Invaders, giant and powerful, local
inhabitants, tormented and enslaved, a rebellion, rivers of blood,
decapitations, screams of agony, joy and victory. Then, a new
cycle of history begins, hidden under another white sheet, dusty
and battered.
Was it the threatening prophecies of
these strident edifices that impelled the wild-west style theft
and desecration of the remaining symbols of ancient Iraq, following
the fall of Baghdad last year? In some peculiar way, by permitting
the robbing of Iraq's cultural and historic treasures, the most
modern invaders unwillingly validated the course of history.
But this was not the first persecution of historic symbols in
the Middle East. More modernly, Israel and its intellectual Zionist
cliques, whose proliferation of one radical and self-servingly
constructed version of history, deny any historic entitlement
of the dwellers of the land to their own land, is a patent example.
Both Palestine's ancient and recent history is being denied,
physically and allegorically. Since 1948 onward, hundreds of
Palestinian villages and towns, some as old as history can recall,
have been wiped off the map.
But history in Palestine is still in
the making. Between December and January 2004, the Israeli army
has actively demolished scores of buildings in Nablus, the largest
city in the West Bank. Nablus's roots are traced back to 72AD,
when the Roman Emperor Titus built a town in honor of his father.
Flavia Neapolis it was named, "the New City". But the
New City is decaying under the chains of Israeli Army tanks and
bulldozer blades. During the recent weeks alone, Nablus and its
refugee camp, Balata, have lost 16 people to the Israeli siege
and raids. Aside from the loss of precious lives, ancient treasures
have also been blown up or bulldozed, in Nablus's Old City, in
Al-Qarun area and throughout.
The Palestinian Authority's "urgent
appeals" to world governments and NGOs to save Nablus and
its historic symbols have fallen on deaf years. Alas, "international
outrage" is yet to be reported.
Nonetheless, history has a way of teaching
lessons, even though it often chooses vulgar, bloody ways of
stressing its points. One massive rock dotted with images of
war and victory in Baghdad makes it painfully clear that giant
invaders would eventually concede, even cower before their war
booty and enslaved subjects. The Buddha statues's destruction
highlighted the futility of undermining the cultural and spiritual
mix of Afghanistan. Accordingly, an acceptance of such a realization
is the first step toward true peace and harmony in the warring
nation. Bulldozing history in Nablus with such dreadful thoughtlessness
shall not discontinue the mere existence of the Palestinian people
or their moral and legal entitlement to their own land. What
hostile regimes and cruel invaders fail to realize is that the
lessons of history don'st weaken when its symbols are turned
into heaps of rubble. It is the spirit that is carried on by
successive generations that ultimately matters. Those who admire
the Buddha's teachings have not grown less faithful even with
the destruction of his colossal statues; Iraqis are embarking
on a new chapter of an almost foretold future, just another interval
in the existence of ever-resilient Mesopotamia; Conversely, the
people of Nablus will persevere, despite the unbearable dust,
mounting bodies and malicious bulldozers.
I wish that those who seek to smother
the symbols of history would make an effort to learn from them,
just one more glance before reducing them to debris. There is
an invaluable lesson to be learned, which I realized, years ago,
in a dark, underground museum in Baghdad, so dusty and battered.
Ramzy Baroud is
a Palestinian-American journalist and editor-in-chief of The Palestine Chronicle
online newspaper. He is the editor of the anthology: "Searching
Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion."
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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