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Today's
Stories
September
25, 2003
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
26, 2003
A Transcendent Vision
The
Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
By GEORGE NAGGIAR
"I urge everyone to join in and
not leave the field of values, definitions, and cultures uncontested."
From the final essay of Edward
Said
Edward Said's life and work is a story of transcendence
of the cultural and spatial barriers that so often thoughtlessly
divide humanity. Born in Jerusalem, the capital of the three
great monotheistic faiths and a city that he once called "a
seamless amalgam of cultures and religions engaged, like members
of the same family, on the same plot of land in which all has
become entwined with all," he would live most of his late
life and finally leave us in New York City, the capital of the
modern world and where men and women from every corner of the
earth converge to form a modern amalgam of peoples unlike anything
ever known before. There could have been no more fitting places
for the beginning and end of the life's journey of Edward Said.
In between, Said's journey would take
him from Palestine to Egypt to the United States and around the
world. At home nowhere and everywhere, Said described his condition
as one of exile, perpetually without a home, or out of place,
to use the title of his brilliant memoir. Nowhere more, however,
than in his exile, was Said the symbol of his people, whose dispossession
his life reflected and for whom he so eloquently advocated in
works like The Question of Palestine, After the Last Sky, The
Politics of Dispossession and Peace and Its Discontents. Through
these writings and others, Said introduced the Palestinian people
and narrative to an American-and international-audience as Zionism's
all-too-often unrecognized victims. In so doing, he was widely
known as one of the Palestinian people's most passionate advocates
for peace, reconciliation and coexistence with Israeli Jews on
the basis of justice and equality.
From that vision, he would never waver,
even when it was most unpopular to do so. During the Oslo "Peace
Process," he was a tireless and persistent critic, famously
calling the Accords themselves a "surrender" by the
Palestinian leadership and predicting with tragic foresight that
they would delay, not advance, the day of Palestinian-Israeli
reconciliation. Throughout the process, he called for the resignation
of President Arafat and the emergence of a genuine grassroots
domestic and international movement for Palestinian rights, which
he understood would ensure progress towards a meaningful Palestinian-Israeli
peace. Nevertheless, for his honesty and unwillingness to be
blinded to Palestinian economic, political and human realities
by the distorting veneer of the language and images of peace,
he earned the derision of even many in his own community for
supposedly "opposing peace" or "being unrealistic."
But with the predictable conclusion of
the Oslo process in a storm of violence causing mutual Palestinian-Israeli
suffering, which now, at best, will only further postpone the
process of Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, new movements
emerged within Palestine and internationally that were based
on precisely the discourse and strategy that Said had advocated
all along. In Palestine, a Palestinian National Initiative, of
which he was a central part, had been born and posed a new alternative
to the failed strategy of endless negotiations based on unequal
power. It was a truly grassroots effort that respected democracy,
treated the needs of the Palestinian people and spoke in language
of genuine peace and reconciliation with Israel. Throughout the
world, including in the United States, the struggle of the Palestinian
people had become, to use his words, "a byword for emancipation
and enlightenment." In solidarity with them, divestment
campaigns had been launched, boycotts of Israeli goods had been
initiated and people from around the world had gone to Palestine
to stand with the Palestinians in the moments of their greatest
vulnerability.
In a fitting homage to him, at his final
convention of the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee
(ADC), the leading Arab-American organization, he received a
roaring standing ovation for a speech in which he, among other
things, lambasted the Palestinian Authority for its failure to
recognize the basic dignity, not to say moral beauty, of the
very cause that its ostensible mandate was to advance. In the
turn of the course of history, in the inspiring and humane language
and vision of his speech, in his physical position on the podium
and in the applause of the crowd for him, it was clear that Said
had at last become what he had always been-the true symbol and
leader of his people.
But it is a testament to the universality
of his thought and the range of his interests as a scholar and
human being that Said was not limited in his writings and advocacy
to the one struggle with which he was both personally and nationally
affiliated. Indeed, his great influence and reputation was based
in large part on his other work, particularly on his reinterpretation
and re-presentation of histories of formerly colonized peoples
of the world, work which was foundational in the fields of both
Post-Colonial Studies and Critical Race Theory.
In his seminal work, Orientalism, Said
critically explored European-primarily French and British-representations
of "the Orient." In examining these representations,
Said exposed that "Western" "knowledge" of
the Orient was less an accurate description of the peoples and
culture of that place (if such generalities could themselves
be meaningfully understood, which they could not) than both a
preface to and later reinforcement of Western imperial rule over
the Orient.
In Culture and Imperialism, his sequel
to Orientalism, Said would extend his analysis to other formerly
colonized peoples from around the world, to "India, the
subcontinent generally, a lot of Africa, Caribbean, Australia,
parts of the world where there was a major Western investment,
whether through empire or direct colonialism or some combination
of both, as in the case of India." In so doing, he would
dis- (or, more properly, un)-cover the often hidden power that
lied within the culture of European-and any-imperialism, and
celebrate the resistance of formerly colonized peoples to its
rule.
In both works and beyond, Said understood
and taught that despite the dehumanization of and violence against
the "Other" contained in colonialism and other forms
of willful division, human history was an intertwined fabric,
separated not by geographic, ethnic, national or religious barriers,
but by deliberate delusions of the will to power. It was this
will-and the structures of power and fawning intellectuals that
are the predictable result of its employment- that his critical
posture was almost instinctively directed against, as he himself
once put it. In its place, he sought to build a world of what
the great German critic, Theador Adorno, his intellectual hero,
once called non-dominative difference. The critical study of
history, society and culture that would bring that condition
into reality was, for Said, the role of the intellectual.
And that role, he fulfilled. In his various
works, Said unified the disparate experiences of a seemingly
separate and unconnected humanity, both by showing that no encounter
between peoples, even of the most odious form, left the other
side unaffected, and by raising in our minds the universality
of so much of the human experience. It is a tribute to him that,
even as he praised the virtues of the humanism that he so eloquently
defended, his own insights contributed enormously to its depth.
Would that we would have made those insights our own.
But instead, today, we stand at the edge
of a great valley that separates humanity (particularly Americans
and the Arab/Islamic peoples of the world), cruelly dividing
us into ethnic, racial and religious categories whose basis is
neither history nor reason, but which, as Said taught us, obdurately
betrays both. This gulf is not a natural or inevitable one, but
one too often constructed for us by pusillanimous politicians
and a media untrained in the art of critical practice. And its
effects are to promote and thereby allow our consciences to accept
an unacceptable violence of human against human-and the enormous
suffering that is its handmaiden-that no just God or morality
could countenance, much less sanction.
It falls to us, disciples of the humane
vision that Edward Said helped to construct, to deconstruct the
false barriers that prevent its realization, to imagine a world
in their absence and to, in the words of his fittingly final
exhortation to us, enter the contest of values, definitions and
cultures so as to bring that world to fruition. And when we do,
we will have torn down the symbolic- and, yes, in Palestine,
physical-walls that so inhumanely separate us from each other,
elevated the universal rights of all human beings to freedom
and equality and built the greatest possible monument to the
life and labor of Edward Said, whose beautiful mind helped us
dream what, alas, his eyes could not see.
George Naggiar is
President of the
American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the
Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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