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Today's
Stories
December
3, 2007
Bill
Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor,
Tax Credits for Developers
Uri
Avnery
After Annapolis
December
1 / 2, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift
in a Sea of Booze
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and
the Future of the Rocky Mountain West
Mike
Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir
Rosen
Shemon
Salam
A Visit From the FBI
Roger
Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia
Benjamin
Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia
Brian
M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to
the Surge?
Greg
Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story
Sonja
Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference
Saul
Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston
Margaret
Kimberley
Black America Left Behind
John
Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?
Reza
Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran
Judith
Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays
Lance
Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy
Christopher
Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots
Robert
Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony
Dan
Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island
Michael
Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency
Website
of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices
November
30, 2007
Peter
Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan
Wajahat
Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's
Former Minister of Information
Allan
Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers
Alan
Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash
John
Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution
Corporate
Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals
Lucia
Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future
James
Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle
Website
of the Day
Bio-Bling?
November
29, 2007
R.
F. Blader
The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe
Ismael
Hossein-Zadeh
Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran
Stephen
Soldz
War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire
Sheldon
Richman
Iraq 3.0
George
Wuerthner
Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws
Felice
Pace
Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?
Col.
Dan Smith
The Meaning of Annapolis
Harvey
Wasserman
Terror Target Nukes
Nikolas
Kozloff
Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08
Paul
Krassner
Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike!
Dave
Lindorff
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?
CP
News Service
The One State Declaration
Website
of the Day
A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
November
28, 2007
James
Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces
on Venezuela
Jeff
Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One
Way Street
Pam
Martens
Crashing Citigroup
Peter
Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession
Mohammed
Khatib
Separate and Unequal in Palestine
Helen
Redmond
The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America
William
S. Lind
In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm?
Ben
Tripp
We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons
Liaquat
Ali Khan
Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges
Jeff
Berg
Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran
Website
of the Day
The Lies of Joe Klein
November
27, 2007
Joe
DeRaymond
On the Road to the Torture School
Paul
Craig Roberts
Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary
and Rudy
Marjorie
Cohn
Remembering Victor Rabinowitz
Mike
Whitney
A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp
Ron
Jacobs
The Myths of Military Progress
Col.
Dan Smith
The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work
Ralph
Nader
Family Learning
Karim
Makdisi
Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut
Christopher
Ketcham
Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop
Ronan
Bennett
Martin Amis Does a Coulter
Website
of the Day
Celebrating the Uncensored Media
November
26, 2007
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Heading for Annapolis
Paul
Craig Roberts
The End of All That
David
Macaray
Enter Mediator
Sameer
Dossani
Pakistan's Wounded Dictator
Roger
Burbach
The Final Battle in Bolivia
Mark
Scaramella
Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire
Brian
McKinlay
Howard's End
Rick
Kuhn
The Fall of a Racist Union Buster
Binoy
Kampmark
Ruddslide and Dull Alec
Monica
Benderman
What Do You Know of War?
Brenda
Norrell
Return to Alcatraz
Website
of the Day
Ghostworld by DJ Spooky
November
24 / 25, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson,
MD
Robert
Fisk
Darkness Falls on the Middle East
Saul
Landau
Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P.
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal
Environmentalism
Rannie
Amiri
Beirut's Black Friday
Christopher
Brauchli
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace
Daniel
Gross
The Gap and Black Friday
Mike
Whitney
"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"
Marjorie
Cohn
Iran and the 2008 Elections
David
Rosen
Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans
David
Michael Green
If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom ....
Kenneth
Rexroth
When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in
Afghanistan
Muhammad
Iqbal
Trans. Shahid Alam
Ghazal
Website
of the Day
Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill
November 23, 2007
Gary
Leupp
Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat
Valley
Laura
Carlsen
Coming to Terms with Diversity in
Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP
David
Macaray
Keeping Labor Unions Out
Andy
Worthington
Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden
Clifton
Ross
Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant
Seth
Sandronsky
Battling Sodexho
Dan
Bacher
Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation
William
A. Cook
The Myth of Middle East Peace
Website
of the Day
Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short
Film
November
22, 2007
Alan
Farago
Who Lost America's Everglades?
Greg
Moses
A Thanksgiving Basting
Dave
Lindorff
Impeachment is Back on the Table
Mike
Ely
Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving
Omar
Azfar
Gore for President of Pakistan?
November
21, 2007
Vijay
Prashad
Our Dictator, Their Democracy
Martha
Rosenberg
Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
Epiphany on the Glacier
John
Ross
The Last Days of Mexican Corn
Brian
McKenna
Cancer Terrorists Unmasked
Stephen
Soldz
Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo
Monica
Benderman
Needing Peace
Ben
Terrall
Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar
Website
of the Day
Mercy for Animals
November
20, 2007
Oren
Ben-Dor
Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist"
as a Jewish State
Wajahat
Ali
An Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Alan
Farago
The Dark Arts and the Bush Dynasty
Marjorie
Cohn
Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool
Ralph
Nader
Green is Gold?
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo Whistleblower Launches a New Attack on Rigged
Tribunals
Sara
Olson
When Going AWOL is the Only Escape
Dave
Lindorff
Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence
Paul
Krassner
The First Amendment, a Dialogue
Website
of the Day
Joanne Mariner on Torture
November
19, 2007
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Why Congress Won't Reform
China
Hand
The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan
Allan
Nairn
Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia
Uri
Avnery
How to Get Out?
David
Macaray
The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements
Dave
Lindorff
Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008!
Bill
Quigley
Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal
Trials
Ron
Jacobs
Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie
Sunsara
Taylor
Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs?
Binoy
Kampmark
Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead!
Heather
Gray
Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois
Website
of the Day
The Meat Market
November
17 / 18, 2007
P.
Sainath
Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000
Farm Suicides in India
David
Rosen
The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans,
Christians and the Politics of Adultery
Mike
Whitney
Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?
George
Wuerthner
Saving the Big Wild
Brenda
Norrell
The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until
Proven Innocent
George
Ciccariello-Maher
Of Submarines and Loose Screws
Karim
Makdisi
Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread
Marie
Trigona
Wal-Mart in Argentina
Valerio
Volpi
The Catholic Church, Incorporated
Fred
Gardner
The Straight-Ahead Runner
Robert
Fantina
The White House Press Office
Mike
Ferner
Thank God for the Senate Republicans!
Missy
Comley Beattie
The Radical Majority
Kenneth
Couesbouc
Circles of Power
Patrick
O'Hayer
A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Buknatski and Ford
November
16, 2007
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy,
Intransigence and War
Dave
Zirin
The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System
Gary
D. Barnett
A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent
Alan
Farago
Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption
Dave
Lindorff
Two Brothers and Two Scandals
Russell
Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?"
Robert
Ovetz
Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite
of the Sea
Brenda
Norrell
"Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous
People on the Border
David
Swanson
Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate
Peter
Letheby
Outside the Box on the Great Plains
Website
of the Day
Why Activism Fails
November
15, 2007
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hillary Clinton in Arkansas
Adolfo
Gilly
The Spirit of Revolt
Peter
Bohmer
10 Days That Shook Olympia
Andy
Worthington
The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier
Gray
/ Derks
Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay
Groups
Liaquat
Ali Khan
Liberating Pakistan
Dave
Lindorff
Where's the Party?
Christopher
Brauchli
Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip
Anthony
Papa
Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences
Martha
Rosenberg
Merck's Big Write Off
Ben
Terrall
Thank You, Ehren Watada
Website
of the Day
On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies
November 14, 2007
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
The Making of Hillary Clinton
James
Petras
Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets
Al
Giordano
Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Lobby
Andy
Worthington
Innocents and Foot Soldiers
Stephen
Lendman
Torturing Palestinian Detainees
Fatima
Bhutto
Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy
Martin
Smith
Norman Mailer and the "Good War"
Jeff
Leys
Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding
Website
of the Day
Why the Writers are Striking
November
13, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill
Can Fix It
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter
Robert
Bryce
The Pakistan Fuel Connection
David
Macaray
The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike
Mike
Whitney
Bulletins from the Titanic
Ralph
Nader
Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers
Nikolas
Kozloff
Chavez Blasts the Spanish King
Jordan
Flaherty
Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana
B.
R. Gowani
Dear Mrs. Bhutto
Website
of the Day
Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"
November
12, 2007
Vicente
Navarro
Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really
Failed
Ben
Brown
Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father
Omar
K.
A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency
Sadia
Abbas
The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and
a Kleptocratic Military
Farzana
Versey
Mailer's Miasma
Richard
W. Behan
The Political Crimes of Complicity
Paul
Krassner
Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert!
Cindy
Sheehan
Faith and War
Peter
Stone Brown
The Return of Levon Helm
Dave
Lindorff
Dennis, You are Not Alone
Website
of the Day
Police Attack in Olympia
November
10 / 11, 2007
Alain
Gresh
Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn
a Region into a Graveyard
Mike
Whitney
For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street
Ron
Jacobs
A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story
Alan
Farago
Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism
Binoy
Kampmark
When Language Drowns: Torture in America
Robert
Fantina
Legitimizing Torture
Fred
Gardner
Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values
Ayesha
Ijaz Khan
The General in His Labyrinth
Nicola
Nasser
NATO's Southward Drift
Philip
Rizk
The Blame Game in Gaza
Michael
Dickinson
Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins
Joel
S. Hirschhorn
The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties
Paul
Krassner
Flunking Out of the Electoral College
Wadner
Pierre /
Joe Emersberger
The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti
November
9, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
In the Kandil Mountains with the
PKK
Mohammed
Hanif
Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle
John
Ross
Blackwater Goes to Mexico
Mike
Whitney
Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate
Tom
Barry
In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy
Corporate
Crime Reporter
Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care?
Badruddin
Khan
Pakistan and the Israel Lobby
David
Macaray
The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back
Martha
Rosenberg
The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents
Website
of the Day
Stryker Blockade!
November
8, 2007
Kathleen
& Bill Christison
Meeting the Other in Israel and
Palestine
William
Loren Katz
Waterboarding in American History
Mike
Whitney
The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes
Sheldon
Richman
Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life
Liaquat
Ali Khan
Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers
Marc
Gardner
The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights
(or Homes)
Jackie
Corr
The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the
Investment Banker?
Brenda
Norrell
Between Bombs and Border Walls
Dave
Lindorff
Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times
China
Hand
Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity
Sen.
Russ Feingold
FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes
of the Patriot Act
Website
of the Day
The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez
November
7, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
Dollar's Fall Collapses the American
Empire
Russell
Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing
the Funding Bill to the Floor?
Vijay
Prashad
The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf
Alan
Farago
To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse
David
Macaray
The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker?
Nikolas
Kozloff
The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey
Charlotte
Laws
What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign
Daniel
White
Zahid's Story
William
Cook
The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby
Website
of the Day
Safe Lawns
November
6, 2007
Mike
Whitney
Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan
Revolution
Ralph
Nader
Who Determines the Price of Oil?
Andy
Worthington
The Torture of Ali al-Marri
Pam
Martens
Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup
Liaquat
Ali Khan
Pakistan's Dark Future
William
Schroder
The Return of Water Torture
Stephen
Lendman
Punishing Gaza
William
Blum
Cuba and Original Sin
Former
US Intelligence Officers
A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey
November
5, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire
Russell
Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer
David
Macaray
How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer)
Gary
Leupp
General Musharaff's "State of Emergency"
Dave
Lindorff
Those Minot Nukes
Ludwig
Watzal
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine
Patrick
Cockburn
Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan
Peter
Stone Brown
John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past
Michael
Simmons
Yo! What Happened to Peace?
Website
of the Day
Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students
November
3 / 4, 2007
Tariq
Ali
Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night
David
Price
Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency
Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Splitsville
Alan
Farago
The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American
Middle Class
Paul
Krassner
He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards
Rannie
Amiri
Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals
P.
Sainath
Indexing Humanity, Indian Style
Ayesha
Ijaza Khan
Pakistan in a Daze
Robert
Fantina
Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran?
Seth
Sandronsky
The Politics of Health Care in California
Ron
Jacobs
The Bebop of Baraka
Ramzy
Baroud
A Case for Arab Dignity
Heather
Gray
When Capitalists Get a Free Ride
November
2, 2007
Dr.
Mary Pipher
Acting on Conscience: Psychologists
and Abusive Interrogations
Saul
Landau
How Pete Stark Became a Pariah
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo as House Arrest
Sharon
Smith
A Tale of Two Stadiums
Gary
Leupp
Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood
Gregory
Harms
The Chorus of Slander on Palestine
Christopher
Brauchli
Racism in High Places
Peter
Morici
The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit
Dave
Lindorff
The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran
David
Penner
Zombie Nation
Website
of the Day
Fall in Yosemite
November
1, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Wages of Hegemony
Patrick
Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Dam in the World
Dave
Lindorff
The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight
Jonathan
Feldman
The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South
Mike
Ferner
They Met the Resistance in Iraq
William
S. Lind
A Question for Would-Be Presidents
Diana
Johnstone
"Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business"
Jacob
Hornberger
The War on Telephone Privacy
A..K.
Gupta
The Apocalypse will be Televised
Lyuba
Zarsky /
Kevin Gallagher
The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley
Felice
Pace
Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?
Website
of the Day
This One's for You, Ed Abbey
October
31, 2007
Bill
Quigley
New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice
System
Rev.
William E. Alberts
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News
Ray
McGovern
Attacking Iran for Israel
Eric
Walberg
Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War
V.
G. Smith
The Second Death of Guy Môquet
Luis
J. Rodriguez
"Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA
Sheldon
Richman
Bush has Time to Run the World
Walter
Brasch
A Real Halloween Scare
Website
of the Day
Boogie Rocks!
October 30, 2007
David
Price
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen.
Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual
M.
Shahid Alam
The Pakistan Question
Andy
Worthington
The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against
Gitmo
Patrick
Cockburn
The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba
Anthony
Papa
The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws
Floyd
Rudmin
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means
Sherwood
Ross
Giuliani and Torture
Website
of the Day
The Worst Lobby? You Decide
October
29, 2007
Lisa
Hajjar
Inside Israel's Military Courts
Joe
DeRaymond
The Politics of Lethal Injections
Patrick
Cockburn
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan
Isabella
Kenfield /
Roger Burbach
Corporate Murder in Brazil
Fred
Gardner
The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner
Farzana
Versey
Caricaturing Islam
Stephen
Fleischman
The Greening of the Oligarchy
Marcelle
Cendrars
The Congressional Rip Cord
Eamonn
McCann
Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables
Martha
Rosenberg
For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter!
Website
of the Day
Campaign 2008
October
27 / 28, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Dam That Isn't There
James
Bovard
Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture
Ralph
Nader
Beyond the Rule of Law
M.
Reza Pirbhai
The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming!
Robert
Sandels
Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations
Jacob
G. Hornberger
Ruling By Decree
Missy
Beattie
The Arsonists in the West Wing
John
Ross
U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca
Robert
Fantina
Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader
Ron
Jacobs
Labor at the Crossroads
Ali
Moayedian
In Search of Logic About Iran
David
Michael Green
What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism?
Poets
Basement
Block, Davies and Ford
Website
of the Day
Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video
October
26, 2007
Brian
Cloughley
Revenging Bloodshed
Saul
Landau
Portrait of Rudy
Ahmad
Al-Akras
Getting Justice in the HLF Case
Franklin
Lamb
Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're
Sorry?
Mike
Whitney
Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest
Dave
Lindorff
Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians
Alan
Farago
A Castro Behind Every Bush
Yifat
Susskind
Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror
Website
of the Day
Dead Life in a Political Prison
October 25, 2007
Jeffrey
St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Iraq's Environmental Crisis
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
Homes of the Crash Test Dummies
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Fraudulent War on Terror
Col.
Dan Smith
The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment
Alan
Farago
The Way to Paradise?
Chris
Kutalik
The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels
Brian
McKinlay
John Howard and the Curse of Bush
Cindy
Sheehan
Pete, Nancy, George and WW III
Website
of the Day
Support the America's Program!
|
December
3, 2007
Colonizing a Metaphor
The
Bible and Middle East History
By ERIC WALBERG
For more than a century, archaeologists
and historians have attempted to confirm beliefs of both Christians
and Jews about their common past using the Old Testament (OT)
and New Testaments (NT) as starting points. Christians, while
embracing the OT as a harmless precursor of the NT, insist that
the combined texts prove the truth of Judaic monotheism, with
its covenant with God, a covenant that was renewed with the resurrection
of Jesus as the Christ. Jews, of course, stick with the basic
OT texts, insisting they alone prove their role as God's Chosen
People and their right to create a Jewish state, Israel, in the
Holy Land. This Jewish state was first grudgingly accepted by
the Christian West, and now is enthusiastically embraced by some
Christians based on their own misreading of the Bible. The Bible
supposedly predicts that the Jews will return to their supposed
promised land, and the messiah will (re)appear, signalling either
the end of the Earth or the reign of God.
So what are the "facts"? What do modern archaeology
and other sciences have to say about the Bible? Does it help
us resolve the question of the validity of Jesus as a legitimate
messiah, one who would end Judaism and found a truly universal
religion for all mankind? Does it allow Judaism a new lease on
life, providing proof of the existence of a Greater Israel from
the Nile to the Euphrates, with a spectacular and ancient history?
And are we fated to die in a fiery apocalypse as predicted in
Revelations?
While archaeologists cannot help us answer the latter question,
it can tell us something about the past. Biblical archaeology
has expanded rapidly in the past half-century as a new academic
field in search of both justification and funding. Unlike Muslims,
for whom the Biblical legends are accepted as the legacy of all
mankind and require no shards or inscriptions to prove this,
both Christians and Zionists have tapped them to fuel their respective
politico-religious agendas and have produced mountains of studies.
But it is now clear to the most respected Christian, Jewish,
Muslim and/or secular archaeologists that this supposedly scholarly,
rigorous and objective discipline, with its methodology of taking
biblical passages and digging and poking away in likely places,
looking for proof of what they say, has been a big failure, if
not a hoax. While the financial benefits of tying the Bible to
archaeology have increased, historical and intellectual benefits
have just as rapidly diminished.
Two egregious flaws lie behind this. Firstly, it is somehow overlooked
that both the Old and New Testaments were first written down
only in the fourth c BC (mostly from the third c BC) to the first
c AD by Hellenised Jews, i.e., over a relatively short historical
period of approximately four centuries, the culmination of Hellenism
as it flourished in the Middle East up to and including its manifestation
under the Roman empire. The references to "old Israel"
of the distant past are directed at the enlightenment of people
living at that time, and have much more to do with events at
that time than some distant, mythical history which was never
recorded in stone, so to speak, but was rather passed down from
generation to generation much like other peoples have passed
down the legends of their origins -- orally, embellished by talented
composers and poets. Furthermore, the OT and NT are closely integrated
in structure, themes, and underlying philosophy, and to reject
one part as heretical (as the Jews do the NT) or another part
as a mere harmless introduction to the real text (as do the Christians
concerning the OT) is not only unprofessional, but foolish and
even subversive.
Secondly, the worldview of those recording the Biblical legends,
stories, poems, philosophical essays, etc differs radically from
ours. It was a product of Hellenism, where true reality is a
Platonic ideal, recognising the ineffable quality of life, our
overwhelming ignorance, and the fractured, shadowy nature of
daily life as experienced by our senses. Our Aristotelian, materialist
outlook, sees reality in hard, cold facts which we directly perceive
and duly record, where the only truths are what can be physically
demonstrated and/or refuted. This is quite alien to the mindset
of the Biblical composers, writers and scribes. Taking the Bible
literally, as a materialist recounting of "history"
is a classic example of misplaced concreteness. To its credit,
there is no word for history in ancient Hebrew, reflecting its
origins in the pre- Aristotelian worldview.
To go a step further and assume that this bogus history is the
"real" history of mankind, with the history
of the thousands of other peoples taking a back seat, is just
not on. The reality of the Bible is transcendent, universal,
traditional, intuitive and emotional. To profit from it, we must
rediscover this worldview, where myth is the "reality"
and very essence of our lives, and the dunya is a lame,
pale version of the sacred myths guiding us. Karen Armstrong,
who has written widely on the monotheisms and the loss of myth
as a vital part of our worldview, argues in The Bible: a biography
(2007) that fundamentalist religion, be it Islamic, Christian
or Jewish, is a response to and product of modern materialist
culture, which undermines the role of myth as a vital element
in the social matrix. Myth is reduced to its literal meaning,
i.e., Jerusalem is a physical location at a fixed point in time,
not a metaphor for the City of God, transcending the limitations
of the physical world.
***
This concurs with the conclusions
of the so-called minimalist school of Middle East archaeology,
especially the works of Thomas Thompson, Israel Finkelstein and
Neil Asher Silberman, who argue that the OT and NT say much more
about the politics of the third c BC to the first c AD than about
any distant, ahistorical past. Think of the 19th c Parisian Jewish
composer Jacques Offenbach penning his operetta La Belle Helene,
which refashions the Iliad to poke fun at the 19th c authoritarian
regime of Louis-Napoleon Boneparte. The political battles of
the time during which Alexandrian Jewish scribes penned the OT/NT
similarly inspired the versions of the Biblical legends we inherit
today. References in the Bible to the destruction of "the
temple" and stories about past tyrants really refer to ongoing
struggles and current tyrants. This is in sharp contrast to the
general view of the Bible, which sees the process of composition
culminating in the sixth c BC, with many legends recalling real
events dating from possibly as far back as the 10th c BC.
Whatever the true origin of the Jews, the Bible talks of an "old
Israel" -- a United Monarchy which supposedly flourished
from 1000-600 BC in present-day Palestine, with Saul, David and
Solomon as great kings of a magnificent empire, and a spectacular
temple, built by Solomon, as the centre of worship of the Jewish
god Yahweh. What do archaeologists tell us? A century of sifting,
scrubbing, sorting and debate has produced no evidence of Jerusalem
as a large city, let alone the centre of an empire. It was at
most a minor trading and olive growing town. No doubt a small
state existed in the ninth c BC, one of several -- Moab, Edom,
Ammon, even one we could call Israel, with Samaria as a likely
"capital", and with the revival of Phoenician shipping,
Palestine indeed began to flourish for the first time, but on
a modest scale, as an inter-empire outpost, the home of many
Semitic and non-Semitic tribes.
Not surprisingly, all of these tribes had similar religions.
Adopting ancestral gods was an Assyrian imperial policy intended
to create religious ties between societies around regional and
local deities. They combined this policy with legends about the
return of the old forgotten gods, which assisted the imperial
policy of forced mass population transfers and unwittingly contributed
to the development of monotheism, as all these gods were understood
to be merely expressions of a single concept representing the
divine. From the Bronze Age on, El became the father of gods
and creator of heaven and earth, with his consort Asherah or
Astarte, the queen of Heaven. Ba'al was his chief executive accompanied
by the same generic Asherah (theoretically his mother), mother
of all living things and goddess of fertility and mourning. Hints
of these gods can be found in Genesis.
The flourishing of Palestine supposedly ended with God's punishment
of Israel and the destruction of Samaria. The goodness of the
Judean kings, Hezekiah and Josiah, delayed Yahweh's anger and
Jerusalem's destruction. But the day of wrath, so it goes, brought
the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem, marking the end of
old Israel in the sixth c BC. What do archaeologists tell us?
Again, there is no historical evidence for this lovely story
-- Palestine was all the time just a backwater, subject to division
between Assyria, Mesopotamia and Egypt as their empires ebbed
and flowed.
Yes, Assyria annexed Jezreel valley and Samaria. But in the Bible,
this waxing of the Assyrian empire was dressed up as the destruction
of the false (old) Israel by an angry, vengeful god. This however
is a theological, not a historical statement -- even given likely
population transfers, not everyone would have been deported,
and Samaria continued to exist. Assyria slowly expanded its empire
southward, yes, eventually taking Jerusalem, which it appears
was a willing client city rather than a heroic, defiant remnant
of some old Israel. Jerusalem actually began to grow and prosper
as an economic and political centre under the Assyrians. It certainly
was not destroyed. Eventually the Babylonian Nebuhadnezzar invades
and (Assyrian) Jerusalem surrenders in 597 BC. But again, Jerusalem
was not destroyed, as the prophet Jeremiah "states".
Never was there an ethnically coherent Israel, and according
to Thomson, neither Jerusalem nor Judah ever shared an identity
with Israel before the rule of the Hasmoneans in the Hellenistic
period of the 3rd-1st cc BC, coincidentally, when the legends
were first written down. Ironically, the Samaritans, scorned
by Ezra's (and today's) Jews, are the most likely Semitic ancestors
of the historical Israel.
Palestine and Syria were first formed into a province under Alexander
the Great in fourth c BC with Samaria as capital, and began to
develop true cities for the first time. Alexander founded Alexandria
as his intellectual and political centre of east Mediterranean
territories. Continuing imperial policies of deportation, he
transported a portion of Samaria's population to form the nucleus
of what later came to be known as an important Jewish centre
of learning, whose scribes would soon begin their work of fashioning
their legends into a politically motivated saga of exile and
return.
After Alexander died, Palestine reverted to its old role of land-
bridge between Egypt and Asia, disputed territory between the
Egyptian Ptolemies and the Asian Seleucids. The Romans defeated
the Seleucids in 190 BC, prompting the Maccabees to revolt against
the harsh Seleucids to assert the political independence of Jerusalem
(supported by the Ptolemies and Romans). This revolt came to
be identified as the rebirth of Israel (celebrated today as Hanukah),
though, again, there was no nation or Maccabean control of Palestine
even then, since the Jews were dependent on Rome's patronage,
though this revolt against the Seleucids became the inspiration
behind the legends being recorded.
Prior to this Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids in 167 BC,
religious tolerance was widespread. The Jews were never persecuted
because of their religion -- rather because of their political
aspirations, or because they were in the path of conflicting
empires. Their periods of exile are typical of the experience
of countless other populations, the fallout of imperial policies.
Their traditions, even their monotheism, are derived from the
great mix of cultures in the Middle East at the time, and are
close to Egyptian, later Hellenised, traditions. Interestingly,
the Jewish practices of circumcision and Sabbath derive from
Egypt, and even Freud argues that Moses was Egyptian, giving
added ammunition to the hypothesis that the Jews are actually
the Hyksos.
This turbulent period of the 3rd-1st cc BC is the historical
environment in which II Kings portrays Jeroboam and Ahab as evil
kings, an allegory of the Seleucids' rejection of the true successors
of Alexander -- Egypt's Ptolemies (not surprisingly, since the
texts are recorded by Jewish scribes in Alexandria). Antiochus
IV of Syria is the model for Ahab, bringing false gods to Israel,
redeemed by the rededication of Jerusalem's temple in 164 BC.
This is the turning point of Chronicles' story of renewal via
the ancient Persian king Cyrus. These national epics of Samuel,
Kings and Chronicles were clearly inspired by the events swirling
around the second c BC OT Jewish authors, dressed up in the literary
tradition of national, ancient epos.
The Jews of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch and Babylon were thoroughly
Hellenised and were among the leaders of the intellectual life
there. The Bible itself is recorded definitively in this Hellenised
environment in Greek and Hebrew, systematically structured along
the classical imperial form of a universal chronology, ordering
tradition in the form of universal history from the beginning
of time to the present, with systems of commentaries and discussion,
achieving a moral and philosophical quality akin to Homer and
Plato. The Jewish culture that had developed was an Asiatic form
of Hellenism, a culture which ranged from Babylon to Rome and
which had developed from the imperial world-views of the Babylonian
and Persian periods.
***
It is impossible in the confines
of an article to trace the transformation of post-Christian Talmudic
Judaism, which is very different than pre-Christian variant.
Though Jews continued to live in Palestine, Diaspora became its
defining feature along with the ritual prayer to "return",
though post-Christian Jews have no more right to immigrate and
live there than anyone else. Christians also continued to live
there happily until the Catholic pope decided they must be liberated
in the 10th-12th cc and raised a European army to invade Palestine
not once but four times. But after that fiasco, Christians learned
their lesson and have left Palestine in relative peace, satisfying
their spiritual urges by living quietly as monks in desolate
caves, making pilgrimages, and collecting souvenir bones and
bits of wood which they cherished as holy relics -- again guilty
of misplaced concreteness, but usually harmlessly so. This blessed
peaceful period in Palestine only changed with the ascendancy
of the Jews in the 19th c, who all this time had been nurturing
their tribal Yahweh and their dream of concretising the metaphorical
promises he supposedly made millennia ago, a misplaced concreteness
far from harmless, as they set about invading and colonising
a metaphor.
With the eclipse of the Socratic worldview and of myth as central
to society, and the ascendancy of Judaism after the reformation,
the myth of "returning to the promised land" took on
a new concrete meaning. The actual prospect by a wealthy cosmopolitican
Jewish elite of engineering a physical takeover of Palestine
and populating it with Jews became an Aristotelian reality. Today,
with Rome (the Catholic Church) now in disarray, a rebuilt Third
Temple could become the chief shrine, not only for Jews but for
Christians too, the icing on the Zionist victory cake, confirming
irrevocably the cultural shift in the Western world as a whole
from Hellenism to Hebraism, as argued by SGF Brandon in The
Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (1951). Pope John
Paul II reconciled the Church with Judaism and Israel, and Christian
Zionists welcome the Jewish colonisation of Palestine .
The Zionists reconvened the ancient Jewish supreme court, the
Sanhedrin (which condemned Jesus), in 2005 for the first time
since 425 AD, and have been plotting virtually since the creation
of Israel to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild a replica
of Solomon's temple there. Just recently, Israeli archaeologists
"found" remains of a temple under the mosque, yet another
astounding victory for this bogus science. Reconstruction plans
are in place for the mythical and no doubt magnificent temple
of Solomon, a temple that never existed except in the imaginations
of dreamy-eyed Jewish scribes in third c BC Alexandria. Truly
a breathtaking prospect, however mad. But nonetheless the logical
culmination of the Zionist project, eagerly fuelled by the official
Israeli archaeological establishment.
Then there's the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
which sets out just such a programme in albeit an overtly grotesque
form and is solemnly disowned by Zionists as a forgery, though
a forgery of what is never made clear.
What is behind the Bible is not simply a record of historical
facts or of even doctrines, but ultimately, the presence of God.
There is much self-reference of symbols within the Bible for
which the only "proof" that, say, the gospel story
is true is that it fulfils the prophecies of the OT, and the
only "proof" that the prophecies of the OT are true
is that they are fulfilled by the gospel. This has absolutely
nothing to do with digging up shards to establish some self-referential
"event" in one of the Bible's many tales. There
is no temple out there (or under there, where "there"
happens to be the very real Al-Aqsa Mosque). The real
temple exists in one's heart, though it is very unlikely that
one can find it in the scheming Zionist's inflamed and secular
heart. And by murdering and tormenting peaceful natives in order
to scrounge some bits of a previous building and call it God's
temple is unspeakable in its evil. The Naturei Karta heart
has the temple in it, but for such a Jew, physical Israel itself
is an abomination, and should be dismantled forthwith, or to
borrow a particularly colourful metaphor of recent vintage, wiped
off the map.
It is not possible here to delve into the fascinating Biblical
myths and metaphors themselves -- the many rival siblings (Cain
vs Abel, Isaac vs Ishmael, Jacob vs Esau), the tower of Babel
(door of God), the trials of Job, the many miraculous births
culminating in Jesus, which continue to inspire, even in our
age of disbelief. The God of Job, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, Saul,
the flood, etc is unknowable -- he decrees both salvation and
destruction for Israel, not for justice's sake, but for his
own good, for his own unknowable reasons, consistent with
the philosophy of scepticism as propounded by Diogenes, popular
at the time: we must recognise that our beliefs about reality
are not necessarily valid to achieve peace of mind. The great
epic of Job is inspired by Hellenistic stoicism: we achieve happiness
by attuning our lives and character to the Logos or universal
reason which orders all things. Freedom is to live in conformity
with God's will. Ironically, the minimalists end up maximising
the power of these legends by liberating them from the here and
now.
The overriding metaphor of the Bible is the contrast of the old
Israel of angry rejection (i.e., the past) vs the new Israel
of hope and renewal (i.e., the present and future), ahistorical
concepts, relating to the ever-shifting present of the epic writer's
point of view. They are universally valid, whether sung or recited
5,000 or 2,000 years ago or today. We all must leave behind
the mistakes of the past and greet tomorrow with hope. There
is absolutely no need or justification for taking "old"
and "new" literally to refer to some purportedly historical
event. Every day is the first day of your life.
And if there is any doubt left at this point that the Bible is
the "gospel truth", to be taken literally, consider
one of many such "instructions" from Yahweh to his
"chosen people":
When the Lord your God brings
you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out
before you many nations and when the Lord your God has delivered
them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy
them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their
sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn
your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the
Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you
as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
Completely destroy them. (Deuteronomy 7 and 20).
Is this the God of mercy and
compassion that Bishop Tutu referred to in his appeal in Boston?
Or is this the template of an ideological monster dreamed up
by a scribe sitting in the Alexandrian Library, and eagerly adopted
by bigoted fanatics applying it verbatim to the land of
Palestine today?
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram
Weekly in Cairo. You can contact him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002
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