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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
Destroying History
in Iraq
A
Fondness of Memory
By DANIEL ESTULIN
History is not to be absent but to become
absent; to be someone and then go away, leaving traces. A relic,
any relic, is a will, we are present at its coronation. The will
is where the dead are most alive; a functional autobiography,
immortality secured in the greed of others.
Some deaths are mere slips or illusions.
Do I need conclusive evidence that history existed? Do I need
conclusive evidence that art is what it is? I don't doubt my
own sense of history´s existence, but I clearly feel that
I need to prove it to others. The evidence for this past's reality
is the fondness and specificity of the art itself: conclusive.
But the near-death of Iraq´s art, its rescue at the hands
of memory and patience, are alarming brushes with the brutal
violence of history, reminders of the appalling variety of ways
in which real treasures can be lost.
I start with these mementoes because
I am about to talk about what was to become a short while later,
a fictional and a metaphorical death, and I want to give physical
death its due-a mark of piety towards what is actually irreplaceable,
untransferable in those artifactual lives now gone. In art as
in science there is no delight without the detail.
There is another possibility: that the
real life of prehistoric figures, as of anyone who has succumbed
to what I call the "strange habit of human death",
is just the "life" we shall never see again, the life
that was once secret and is now lost. I wonder if the "individual"
is wholly subordinate to the larger pattern of history. History
in this sense is not a quest for truth but a refusal of death.
The refusal is vain in the literal sense, since nothing will
bring these antiques back. Beyond all easy spiritualism, antiques
do speak, they counsel us through memory, through our late but
often luminous understanding of what they would have said.
In the scheme of things, concerns about
artifacts and shrines may seem marginal. But religion and history
are intricately woven into military action in the Middle East.
Amid the plumes and uniforms and the calm paraphernalia of a
tyrant-states going to hell in a bucket, there is a widening
sense of history lost.
According to reports, Iraqi prized treasures
have been looted in the most despicable, negligent and obfuscated
fashion. Some of the world´s most important ancient finds
chronicling the achievements of the Uruk, Sumerian, Babylonian,
Assyrian, Persian and early Islamic civilizations were there.
Included were mankind´s earliest written documents, ancient
mathematical texts, ancient sculptures and other works of art.
Also the riches from the royal death pits at Ur from the late
third millennium BC and tablets of the Gilgamesh Epic describing
a great flood with many elements similar to those of Noah´s
Flood. At Nuzi, about 3,500 tablets were found dating from 1600
to 1400 BC. Many of the tablets deal with laws and customs and
provide some of the best available evidence for the common social,
economic and legal practices in the ancient world. Such things
as a childless couple adopting a slave to be their heir, having
children by proxy, deathbed blessings and the importance of household
gods are illuminated in the texts. The absence of objects reveals
the fact that art and culture is in the firing line and that
the country´s truly unique and internationally precious
cultural treasures have suffered and have been enslaved.
Although amongst the cultured there is
a sense of great love-veneration might be a better word for the
astonishingly rich and ancient culture of Iraq, a widespread
general hostility towards Iraq reflects a misunderstanding in
the west which fails to make the connection between a modern
country and ancient Mesopotamia, the "Cradle of Civilization."
Most things that the west regards as
fundamental to the progress of man have their origins in Mesapotamia-the
ancient land that forms the heart of modern Iraq. One must not
forget that all of our information about the early part of the
Bible is in this part of the world. This heritage disaster also
highlights the role of the west as a myopic consumer of heritage,
rather than cherishing it as a vanishing irreplaceable shared
resource. History, unfortunately, is a force that does not discriminate.
History in Iraq is very much in the firing
line and an inevitable victim of violence, opportunism and greed.
There were not long ago tens of thousands of archaeological sites
in this celebrated land. The United Nations sanctions against
Iraq have finally destroyed Sennacheribs Palace, finishing the
work begun by the ancient Medes and Babylonians who sacked Nineveh
in 612 BC. To be sure, market and political forces are also at
work here, but the fact remains that without the sanctions, this
destruction would not have happened.
This forgetfulness is strange, since
museum in Europe and the United States are packed with cultural
booty brought back from Mesopotamia in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The most striking examples are from Assyrian Empire-the power
that came after the Sumerians and that reached its zenith around
850 BC and from the Babylonian Empire of King Nebuchadnezzar
II. When these great finds were made at ancient and long forgotten
cities-a lost civilization was found. It became necessary for
man to rewrite his own history. For example, when clay tablets
carrying the tale of Gilgamesh were found and desiphered in the
1860s and 1870s they shocked the West. Here was an epic-not only
1,500 years earlier than Homer but clearly earlier than the Bible
that included the story of the great flood, just like the story
of Noah. In the same way that Darwin´s theories of evolution
were challenging the literal truth of the Bibl´s account
of creation, so the translation of Gilgamesh questioned orthodox
Christian beliefs. It suggested very forcefully that the Bible
was not the world´s first book and not the result of Divine
revelation but a composite work including stories from earlier
theologies.
The time...it passes and although we
measure its passage on clocks, it indolently writes itself into
the ageing body and never looks back. History´s quest is
not for a unit of time but rather for a universal perception
of the sense of time-the lining of time and its essence.
Memory is one´s absence revisited.
The pretence of forgetting governs and distorts everything we
choose openly to remember. There can be no loss without a memory,
no design without the design maker. Nature is beautiful but not
meaningful. Only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and
the world seem to be justified. Only aesthetic implies not art
for art's sake but a pointed contrast to the moral and specifically
religious interpretation of existence and the world. The future
doesn't come after the present, in a straight line from the past,
and the present isn't much of a straight line anyway. The future,
as Nabokov said, is always imaginary and could always be cancelled.
You may feel that there is an implication
that loss may actually be sought, although not perversely, not
for its own sake. A loss is a reality displaced; reality is a
rehearsal for dream. Regret is a fulfilment rather than an accident.
After all, there is a delicate but considerable
difference between accepting loss when we have to and judging
loss to be acceptable. It is the point of reference. The same
goes even more emphatically for the nature of beauty.
Human difference, the incomplete human
project, will be asserted against the indifference of the realm
where all echoes are the same. What matters is not the consequence
of its absence, but the need for consequence; it is that need
that makes us yearn for what we have lost. Loss is irredeemable,
it goes on and on, an endlessly discomposed face in the mirror.
Tiptoeing around culture is not easy
in Iraq. However, once out of sight and out of mind it is far
easier for history to be ignored on any war.
Daniel Estulin
is a political commentator living in Madrid, author of four books
on communication skills. He can be reached at: d.estulin@ctconsultoria.com
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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