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Today's
Stories
January 12, 2004
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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January
12, 2004
Coalition of the Wilting
No
Stan for the Kurds
By BEN TRIPP
Man, am I glad I'm not black. Being born black
in this country is like waking up smothered in A-1 Sauce in a
pit full of starving lions, and then being told to stop acting
like a victim. But I'd rather be black than Kurdish. Those
Mesopotamian cats are always getting it in the sensitive parts.
They're the niggers of the Near East. And it's not going to
change anytime soon. The Kurds tracked down Saddam Hussein and
discreetly pointed him out to the US military, prior to which
they fought bravely (as usual) as auxiliary forces to the Coalition
of the Wilting; in short, they behaved like brave and worthy
allies. And they're not one microgringle closer to getting their
homeland reinstated. It can never happen, no matter how useful
the Kurds make themselves. They haven't had their own turf,
after all, since the 16th century. And even before then their
territory was an imbroglio of Turks, Persians, and Medes feudalizing
each other senseless, in reverse order.
The unified Kurdistan first took it in
the shorts when a certain Sheik Idris-I Bitlisi, who was an agent
of the Ottomans, created division within the Kurds during the
16th century (you may remember the 16th century from the previous
paragraph) and turned the country into the battleground of the
sultans. One might call this an early example of ottosuggestion.
But subsequent recumbent Ottoman rulers let things go to the
point that the Kurds actually had a whiff of autonomy. In those
days, apparently, the Ottoman and the recliner were one and the
same (a little risivitism for the Upholsterer's and Furniture
Manufacturer's Union there). But by the 18th century, with increasing
pressure from European colonialist powers (who favored the wing
chair and tufted hassock) the Ottomans started leaning on the
Kurds. If you've ever been leaned on by an Ottoman you know
this situation is intolerable, and in the 19th century-which
is the century after the 18th century and two centuries before
the 21st century, which it now is, or possibly the 2nd century
BC, it's hard to be sure just from glancing at the newspapers-the
Kurds first earned the appellation 'revolting'. They uprose,
it didn't work out, and the Ottomans squashed the Kurds flat
until WWI, when the Europeans squashed the Turks flat.
This was a fun time. What with one World
War and another, Kurdistan was chopped up into bits, the chuck
roasts and rib-eye for Turkey, the short loin, sirloin, and round
roast for Iran (nee Persia), and all the skirt and flank steaks
for Iraq. Syria got the brisket. The Kurds got the shaft.
As a people, the Kurds enjoyed almost total oppression from almost
everybody, except possibly Samoa. The 20th century was a dead
loss. But things almost looked up for a brief period in 1991,
when the Kurds rose up against a defeated Iraqi regime. As usual,
they were swiftly oppressed. Rather than create a Kurdish state,
which might create some balance in the region and thus make all
the other countries less malleable by Western powers, the US
and Britain (the 51st state of the Union, in case you didn't
know) created a no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel, so-called
because in those days slant parking was illegal, especially in
airplanes carrying bombs. What this created was essentially
a hunting preserve with Kurds instead of antelope.
But then comes the latest foray into
the region by the minions of governor Bush from Texas. Once
again, the Kurds sprang into action, apparently not having learned
a thing from the last half-millennium of getting screwed. They
assisted the American, British, and Mauritanian forces in overthrowing
Saddam Hussein's forces, a task akin to knocking a condemned
building down from the inside: it's not particularly difficult,
but somebody is going to get killed. (I was once killed knocking
down a condemned building, so I should know.) Be that as it
may, the Kurds earned some payback. Oughtn't they get their
old place back? After all, there's even a parallel sitting around
that somebody could announce is the new border of the Kurdish
Republic, and we'd hardly even have to redraw the maps. But
of course, it isn't going to happen that way. The Kurdish leaders
came forward recently and announced that it's time they got their
own joint. Paul Bremer III, the Pontius Pilate of our time (Ariel
Sharon is disqualified because he's a Jew), told the Kurds to
put it in their hats.
Washington (the city, not the dead president)
isn't going to have Iraq breaking up along ethnic lines, because-get
this-the USA doesn't want to threaten the future unity of Iraq.
Iraq doesn't have any unity! It's an imaginary country concocted
out of globs of other, extinct countries by Europeans less than
ninety years ago. One of those countries, Kurdistan, isn't actually
extinct, ethnically speaking, and the locals would like the Iraq-based
fragment of their homeland back. Sad, deluded fools. Iraq is
a strategic necessity, not a country. And the Kurds are unfortunate
in occupying the part of Iraq that separates pretty much everybody
the West wants seperated. So Bremer, bless his buttons, not
only didn't listen to the Kurdish demands, he actually told them
they would have less autonomy than they did while Saddam was
in charge. I bet they regret turning the guy in at this point.
But the story doesn't end on this sad
note. After a second meeting with said Kurdish leaders, Bremer,
probably at the tip of a scimitar, agreed that the Kurds ought
to have some sort of state of their own. Washington won't allow
for any nonsense such as the Kurds having their own army (the
pesh merga, which sounds like peach Melba but is in fact a very
different thing) or for them getting any tax revenues from local
oil production. But Bremer, who is an idiot but has to stay
in Iraq, unlike the rest of the American government, has become
realistic about this matter. If the Kurds really get pissed
off, there's going to be unrest in the north of Iraq, and if
that happens, it may not be Westerners redrawing the map. So
sayeth Bremer.
Instead, the story ends on this sad note:
Washington says hell no. So it looks like the Kurds are going
to have to spend another century oppressed. The good news is,
as long as you're not black, it's better to be oppressed by the
United States than it is to be oppressed by the Ottomans or Britain
or Saddam Hussein. Just as soon as things settle down, we'll
start exporting American jobs to Iraq, and the Kurds can start
buying real estate. Before you know it, there will once again
be a Kurdish homeland. It won't be a state, but you can live
pretty well in a gated community.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
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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