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The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad "The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater." Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But 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! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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October 29 / 30, 2005 Peter Linebaugh October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
October 19, 2005 Christopher Reed Stephen Soldz Chet Richards Patrick Cockburn Scott Richard
Lyons Ralph Nader Website of
the Day
October 18, 2005 Chet Flippo Ron Jacobs Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor Dave Lindorff Virginia Rodino Thomas Healy Ralph Nader Stephen Lendman Patrick Cockburn
October 17, 2005 Peter Linebaugh Norman Solomon Cockburn /
Sengupta Mike Whitney Uri Avnery Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
October 15 / 16, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Neve Gordon Moshe Adler Christopher Brauchli Diane Farsetta Sam Husseini Monica Benderman Mickey Z. Douglas C.
Smyth Lee Sustar Fred Gardner Elizabeth Schulte Joshua Frank David Vest Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 14, 2005 Farrah Hassen Ron Jacobs Sasha Kramer Katrina Yeaw Nicole Colson Raúl Zibechi Nikolas Kozloff Website of the Day
Jeremy Scahill Jeff Birkenstein Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher Stan Cox Anis Memon Gary Leupp Dave Zirin Matthew Koehler Werther Website of
the Day
Omar Waraich William Cook Phil Gasper Dave Lindorff Matt Vidal John Gautreaux Diana Johnstone Mark Weisbrot Brian J. Foley Website of
the Day
October 11, 2005 Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt Lila Rajiva Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Mitchel Cohen Tariq Ali Website of
the Day
October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig
Corrie Joshua Frank Gideon Levy Alan Wallis Mickey Z. CounterPunch News Service Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Jennifer Van Bergen Saul Landau Jeff Halper Lenni Brenner Nikolas Kozloff Brian Cloughley Alice Slater John Gautreaux Fred Gardner Niranjan Ramakrishnan M.G. Piety Tom Gorman Mike Whitney Aseem Shrivastava Ben Tripp Poets' Basement
October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson Will Youmans Dave Lindorff Judith Scherr Russell D. Hoffman Jared Bernstein Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of
the Day
P. Sainath Scott Parkin Paul Craig
Roberts Andréa Schmidt Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank M. Junaid Alam Matthew Koehler Robert Pollin
October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Col. Dan Smith Dave Zirin Paul Craig Roberts Alan Maass
October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Mike Roselle Joshua Frank John Chuckman Alan Farago Mickey Z. Christine & Ethan Rose Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Seth Sandronsky Jeffrey St. Clair
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Weekend Edition How Orhan Pamuk Got into TroubleInsult Your CountryBy MICHAEL DICKINSON Imagine it. You live in a democratic country that has ratified both the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which value freedom of expression as central. Surely you think-- and dare to speak your thought freely if you are the member a state that upholds those principles. But imagine if that same country should have a Penal Code that includes a clause that contradicts the very same principles it claims to uphold. Imagine just for the sake of it that the country in question were America. This then would be the offending clause:
In addition: "where insulting being an American is committed by an American citizen in a foreign country, the penalty to be imposed shall be increased by one third." If you were an American, of course you wouldn't dream of such a curtailment of your right to free speech, and couldn't imagine such a situation to exist. But it does. Just change the name of the country and nationality to Turkey, and Turkish, and we're talking Article 30/1 of the Turkish Legal Code, and we're talking a possible three year jail sentence facing Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, for his explicit insults, made during an interview with the Tages Anzeiger newspaper in Switzerland earlier this year. The trial is due to take place in Istanbul in December. Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey's most well known authors. His works have been published world wide in over 20 languages. He was nominated for this year's Nobel Literary Prize. His most recent book, Istanbul, is a fond personal history of his native city. He loves his country. What could he have said which so explicitly insulted being a Turk? Basically it boils down to a nasty word--genocide. Did he say it or didn't he? What he is quoted as saying was: "a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it"-- a reference to the killings by Ottoman Empire forces of thousands of Armenians in 1915-1917. Turkey does not contest the deaths, but denies that it could be called "genocide", saying that the death toll is inflated and that Armenians were killed in civil unrest as the Ottoman empire collapsed. The word genocide, is defined in most dictionaries as "the systematic, planned annihilation of an ethnic, racial or political group." That seems a fairly accurate description of the accounts of systematic forced expropriation, deportation, and disappearance of up to a million Armenians during that time. Pamuk also got into trouble for referring to the "30,000" Kurds killed since 1984 in the conflict between Turkish forces and Kurdish separatists. Recently the author (understandably not wanting to spend three years inside) has been trying to explain his remarks. Of the Armenian Massacre he said: "I did not say, we Turks killed this many Armenians. I did not use the word 'genocide'." And on Turkey's 20-year conflict with Kurdish guerrillas seeking autonomy, branded a terrorist group by the US and EU. He said: "There are martyred Turkish soldiers among those 30,000 to 35,000 killed people. Let's express our respect to them." Pamuk complains that he had become a victim of a "defamation campaign" resulting in vilification by some Turkish papers, death threats and book burnings, but he has also received massive international support for his right to say what he believes. As for the Armenian genocide-- was it or wasn't it? There are records, there are eye-witness reports, there is fog and there is eye and whitewash. Somewhere in there is the truth which always remains. And truth will out. Foul crimes and atrocities have been committed by one group of people against another since written history. We shouldn't cover up the fact that some of our grandparents were ignorant sadistic racists, but face the facts, apologize and forgive as best we can, and move on, improving as we go to a better world for those who come after us. And as to the truth or not of the Armenian genocide, Hitler certainly believed he had learned a lesson from that idea when talking of the need for massive resettlements. He said:
Michael Dickinson is an English teacher working in Istanbul
Turkey. He can be contacted at http://yabanji.tripod.com/
or mdickinson@kablonet.com.tr
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair                      |
