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Today's
Stories
January 17 / 18, 2003
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 17 / 18, 2004
Suicide Bombers
The
Clash of Absurdities
By JOE QUANDT
She hesitates at the doorway of the cafe, suddenly
conscious of the thing's weight. Trained to appear casual, she
sits down at a table in the center of the room. The waiter takes
her order; she is hardly aware of speaking to him. She tries
not to look at the people seated around her in the cafe.
She believes that what she is about to
do has a purpose, that it will give her existence meaning.
How many of us, if we believed irrefutably
that we could make a lasting contribution to society, would not
do so? To be an inspiration to those left behind, even as we
take our own final leave? To avenge the innocent dead?
As if the dead cared about revenge.
There are several soldiers, a few families,
some men in suits. A baby is crying. The blood pounding in her
ears creates a high-pitched ringing, erasing all the familiar
sounds of a cafe at lunchtime: silverware tinkling, laughter,
music. Her mind alternates between a blinding, kaleidoscopic
rush of thoughts and...
...the single, inescapable fact that
in a few moments her life will be over.
The outrage that the victims, their families,
and the public share often stems from the misperception that
the bomber has gotten away with something. A thief may get away
with something. A suicide bomber gets away with literally nothing.
She thinks of her family...what the room
will soon look like...how she will be remembered. The picture
of her that the family will carry through the streets before
installing it in a place of honor...the money that she may earn
for them by this act... the sound of her own name on weeping
lips...her best friend. She starts to pray, her finger on the
trigger, as a single bead of sweat rolls down her temple.
Our fascination with the individuals
who execute these tragedies is long withered. Years ago, they
had names, faces. But the carnal saga of the suicide bomber has
dulled any flicker of empathy most Americans might have ever
felt for their causes. Newspaper accounts of their deeds omit
anything of the personal. They no longer have names.
In Palestine, where the historical enactment
of this scene has now played through its second generation, the
shuhada have become a cult. Many Middle Eastern nations grant
stipends to the families of these "martyrs" (so called
because the Quran expressly forbids suicide). Framed pictures
of the deceased are paraded through the streets before taking
their place in homes and in bizarre public galleries. Bombers
attain a legendary status, proportionate, of course, to the havoc
they wreak. An attitude of pride in their "accomplishments"
is promoted among children. These rituals are well on their way
to becoming as institutionalized as betrothals and harvest seasons.
The shuhada are generally motivated by
a desire for vengeance--which explains the emergence of their
equivalent in Iraq.
Conservative estimates place the number
of Iraqi deaths caused by the twelve-year U.N. economic embargo
at one million, half of them under the age of five. Theoretically,
everyone in that country might, thus, have a rationale for vendetta.
It is common knowledge in Iraq that it was the U.S. and Britain
who consistently resisted efforts by other Security Council members
to soften the most brutal aspects of the sanctions regime.
And the fact that most Americans are
not even aware of this colossal tragedy does not in itself make
it forgivable.
The shuhada come from all walks of life:
professionals, blue collars, unemployed. Yet many Americans cling
to the notion that they must be deranged or entranced mental
defectives. The idea that they do not place as great a primacy
on their lives as we do is the same convenient delusion that
General William Westmoreland was promoting during the Viet Nam
conflict, avowing a "difference in the oriental mind".
But seeking refuge in the diagnosis is insufficient to curing
the plague.
I have never seen the case put as succinctly
as Charles Bowden did in Blues For Cannibals: "People who
realize that they have no future can be convinced to endure their
suffering; people who realize they have no present will kill."
Gulya Hairullina, reporting for Moscow's
Novaya Gazeta (World Press Review, 12/03), interviewed young
Chechen women training to inflict carnage on hapless Russians.
One in particular named Malika told Hairullina that if babies
died because of her actions, "then it means it was predestined."
The journalist then tried to examine her beliefs from the perspective
of her religious convictions, but she was startled by Malika's
matter-of-fact answer: "I have to punish them." Punish
whom? "All of you."
Yes, she had made up her mind to kill
innocent people. For her, there were no innocents. Malika's home
was broken into and she was taken away by soldiers, who then
raped her. Now she is one of the dreaded Black Widows, as the
Russians call them. She would wholeheartedly revenge herself
on the world for the theft of her own innocence.
The American mass media has largely failed
to contextualize the issues that engender this desperate alternative.
The resulting ignorance of those issues among Americans makes
it appear that they condone the foreign policies that inspire
acts of international terror.
How can Americans not understand, they
wonder. How can they not care?
The Palestinian perception is that the
calamity of occupation is relentlessly crushing their civilization.
Since 1980, Iraqis have undergone three wars, an embargo that
destroyed the most advanced culture in the Muslim world, and
now their own occupation. Chechens look to no other nation for
surcease from the military repression that has been their lot
for ten years.
Among Palestinians, there appears to
be no shortage of volunteers for "paradise on the other
side of the trigger". People who realize they have no present
will kill.
* * *
The French novelist/existentialist Albert
Camus held that the only philosophical question worth debating
was whether, in an absurd world, one should commit suicide.
For Camus, absurdity lay everywhere.
We may long and strive for truth, beauty, fairness--the universe
is indifferent to our cries. We act as though we will live forever,
but death waits at the end of all our plans and momentous concerns.
We want meaning in our lives, and unconsciously fear that there
may never be any. And this desire for meaning has occasionally
motivated, at various points in history, actions that most of
us would deem madness.
Abstractions? Consider this: an American
soldier in Iraq, in the belief that she is fighting for the liberation
of that country, is terribly injured. The administration in Washington,
floating any number of unsubstantiated reports about her brave
conduct under fire, attempts to create a heroine out of Private
Lynch, who remained unconscious throughout the time her "captors"
were caring for her. When she is somewhat recovered from her
wounds, she rejects unconditionally this blatant myth making.
She finds it absurd.
Within almost the same time frame, American
Rachel Corrie is intentionally run over by an Israeli bulldozer
while attempting to save the house of a Palestinian dentist who
moved to the West Bank out of a sense of duty to his people.
The story of her heroism disappears from media attention, seemingly
within moments, without the slightest protest from the American
government over the murder of one of it unarmed citizens.
A comparison between the two women in
terms of their heroism is never made; it would be the quintessential
absurdity to do so.
* * *
Camus eventually came to the conclusion
that there were only two options beside suicide that could grant
meaning in an absurd world: an end to reflection and a total
absorption in one's life...or revolt.
Joe Quandt
is a member of Voices
in the Wilderness. He can be reached at: ytonthemoon@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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