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November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 23, 2001
Phyllis
Pollack
Long
Live The Clash
Cockburn/St. Clair
The Press
and
the Patriot Act
November 22, 2001
Oscar
Gonzalez
A
Homeland Thanksgiving
November 21, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Rep. Chambliss
Calls for Arrest of Every Muslim That Enters Georgia
Tom Turnipseed
Broadcasting
and Bombing
David Price
Academia Under
Attack
Molly
Secours
Modern
Day Witch Trials
Tariq Ali
Killing
Mr. Biswas
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Kalpana
Sharma
Flower
Power:
A Blow for Peace
Tony Mauro
The Quirin
Ruling:
FDR's Horrible Precedent for Bush's Terror Courts
C.G. Estabrook
American
Crusades
November 17, 2001
Zoltan Grossman
It Ain't
Over Til It's Over
November 16, 2001
Rick Giombetti
Rep.
McDermott and
the Decay of Liberalism
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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November 24,
2001
Harry Potter and Terror's Networks
By Alexander Cockburn
It won't be long, most likely, before Osama's
body is on display and an end written to his chapter in the unfinished
saga of Empire v. Terror. How appropriate that this last week
millions of children here in the US, (the most implacable critics
of all), were watching Harry Potter's battle with Quirrell and
the arch villain Voldemort, the traductive or etymological roots
of whose name, "flight of death" or alternately "death
wish" have appropriately bin-Ladian echoes. Voldemort murdered
Harry's parents and how sharp a reverberation Harry's battle
with Voldemort must have with those children in the New York
area who lost a mother or a father on September 11; how uncomforting
headmaster Dumbledore's subsequent remark to Harry that "to
the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
One of the big scenes in "Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is the chess battle
with the forces of darkness, where, as a knight, Ron sacrifices
himself to the white queen, in a scene crisply described by J.K.
Rowling: "She struck Ron hard across the head with hr stone
arm, and he crashed to the floor" Ron's sacrifice allows
Harry and Hermione to cross the board safely.
Chess comes out of Islam, originally
invented in India somewhere in the seventh century. Early Muslim
writers often contrasted chess, a game symbolising the exercise
of free will and rationality, with backgammon, emblem of the
caprices of the dice and of fate. In the bluff, lottery-loving
West chess is iconically regarded as the province of brainy villains.
In this style bin Laden was billed as Terror's grand master,
with the world as his chess board.
In the death games played by adults children
are always the pawns.
"We play poker, they play chess"
used to be a favored phrase of President Kennedy, the notion
being that the Communist enemy in all his Oriental cunning, had
a strategy thoroughly conceived and inherently rational: move
would be countered by move, with uncertainty and chance eliminated.
We, on the other hand, play poker. We gamble and bluff.
"Living chess" has always fascinated
people, the notion of absolute power in the disposition of men
and women; also the idea that a wrong move can cause death. During
the Spanish Inquisition a Dominican Inquisitor called Pedro Arbues
ordered unfortunate victims of persecution to stand in as figures
in a game of living chess played by two blind monks. Each time
they captured a piece they condemned someone to death. Chess
is mostly used in films to indicate thought, problems, villainy
or Nemesis.
The Ayatollah Khomeini banned chess in
Iran on the grounds that it excessively fatigues the brain. In
the Pali Dialogues of the Buddha, from the fifth century before
Christ, (as edited by Rhys Davies in Sacred Books of the Buddha,
1899) the Buddha enumerates the trifles that occupy the thoughts
of the unconverted man.
"1. Games on boards with eight or
ten rows or squares.
2.The same games played by imagining such boards in the air.
3. Keeping going over diagrams drawn
on the ground, so that one steps only where one ought to go.
4. Either removing the pieces of men
from a heap with one's nail, or putting them in a heap, in each
case without shaking it. He who shakes the heap loses.
5.Throwing a dice.
6. Hitting a short stick with a long
one.
7. Dipping the hand with the long finger
stretched out in lac or dye or flour water and striking the wet
hand on the ground or on a wall, calling out 'What shall it be?'
and showing the form required, elephants, horses etc.
8 Games with balls.
9. Blowing thin toy pipes made with leaves.
10. Playing with toy plows.
11. Turning summersaults.
12. Playing with toy windmills made with
leaves.
13. Playing with toy measures.
14 Playing with toy carts
15. Playing with toy bows.
16. Guessing at letters traced in the
air or on a fellow's back.
17. Guessing a playfellow's thoughts.
18. Mimicking of deformities.
Guatama the recluse holds aloof from
such games and recreations."
Contrary to the Buddha's views, kids
played those games 2,500 years ago and many of them today. There
will always be the studious kid with a chess board and the gambler
and the group laughing at the little boy with the gimp leg. In
Harry Potter's season and this weekend our thoughts here at CounterPunch
are with all those children around New York, around Kabul, the
world over, who know all too well terror and Voldemort's chill
breath. CP
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