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Today's
Stories
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
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
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?
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
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Weekend
Edition
October 11 / 13, 2003
What
Would Buddha Do?
Why Won't the Dalai
Lama Pick a Fight?
By ADRIAN ZUPP
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and temporal
leader in exile and the man believed by Buddhists to be the 14th
incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, does not see himself
as a miracle worker. "I'm a skeptic," he said at his
recent sold-out appearance at Boston's FleetCenter. "If
someone truly has healing power, I'd like to call about my knees."
It was a good quip ... and the Dalai
Lama has a few. But while he may not possess preternatural powers,
there can be no argument that he has considerable international
clout--at least potentially. Consider the following.
Before coming to Boston (primarily for
a conference at MIT on Buddhism and science) as part of a 20-day,
five-city US tour, the Dalai Lama met with President Bush, Secretary
of State Colin Powell, and other US leaders--an audience not
always accorded to heads of state. His visit here, as usual,
was closely covered by the national press. His various books
sell very well: The Art of Happiness, a collection of conversations
with author Howard C. Cutler, sold more than 1.2 million copies
and was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two
years. People are prepared to pay considerable money to see him
in person: tickets for his talk at the FleetCenter, titled "The
Global Community and the Need for Universal Responsibility,"
ranged up to $100, with the scalpers outside doing a brisk trade;
in New York City, his final stop, tickets for his teaching sessions
were priced at $400 each ($1200 and $3000 for VIPs and big donors)
and sold out well in advance. And then there's the fact that
His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
As a man of peace, the Dalai Lama speaks
often and long about the importance of compassion, about "reducing
destructive emotions," about tolerance, about "internal
disarmament," about restraint, and about the role of intelligence
in facilitating these things. But there seems to be a gulf between
his expertise in these general precepts and his ability to condense
and apply them in certain areas.
In The Art of Peace, a collection of
topical papers by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, he says, "Non-violence
and peace do not mean that we remain indifferent, passive."
But at the FleetCenter, when asked about the US invasion of Iraq,
he said simply: "It is too early to say what will happen.
Wait a few years. That is my opinion." And in a March 11
official statement on the same issue, he said, "All we can
do is pray for the gradual end to the tradition of wars,"
adding, "I don't know whether our prayers will be of any
practical help." Some might call this passivity.
By contrast, in statements made just
prior to the invasion, he said explicitly that war is an organized
and legalized form of violence that creates more problems than
it solves. He also said, "I prefer [that] violence or war
should not take place." His Holiness took a similar line
in a letter to President Bush in 2001, just after the attacks
on the World Trade Center, saying, "Violence will only increase
the cycle of violence." But in the letter he offered no
specific admonitions and closed mildly with: "I am sure
you will make the right decision."
It would seem, then, that for all the
indisputable good the Dalai Lama does in terms of spiritual guidance,
he is reluctant to tread on any political toes. This raises the
question: As an influential humanitarian, is it not incumbent
upon him at least to ask the tough questions of world leaders
and, at most, to bring all conceivable pressure to bear on them
as his conscience dictates?
This question is being asked more than
one might think. For, while the Dalai Lama is universally loved
as a man of peace and wisdom, he has his critics. The younger
generation of Tibetans is becoming frustrated with the lack of
change in their homeland. And some scholars and political commentators
wonder why he doesn't weigh in on other issues of great political
import, such as the current situation in Iraq.
"The world is overflowing with preachers
and sages who can radiate their often-sincere spirituality,"
says noted progressive media columnist Norman Solomon, co-author
of Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. "Yet
what we need most is engagement with struggles to halt the actualities
of violence and suffering--we need willingness to risk offending
the powerful."
Solomon goes on to say that the war in
Iraq and the current aspects of its occupation are not abstractions,
but are often treated as such by "those who stick to platitudes
and evasions."
"Direct questions deserve direct
answers," he notes. "Talk--even, and at times especially,
spiritual talk--is cheap and easy, especially when the alternative
would be forthright condemnation of those who, for instance,
ordered 2000-pound bombs and cruise missiles to be fired on heavily
populated areas of Iraq last spring."
Another commentator, Chris Colin, wrote
a piece for Salon a few years back, titled "The Bodhisattva
of PR," in which he suggested that the Dalai Lama is "Gandhi
meets P.T. Barnum, minus the elephants." More recently,
Patrick French, author of Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of
a Lost Land, wrote an article for the New York Times called "Dalai
Lama Lite," in which he said that His Holiness's US tour
"confirmed his status as the world's No. 1 feel-good guru."
Renowned leftist historian Howard Zinn,
author of the best-selling A People's History of the United States,
is a little more charitable but no less forthright.
"I've always admired the Dalai Lama
for his advocacy of nonviolence and his support of the rights
of Tibet against Chinese domination," he said recently.
"But I must say I was disappointed to read his comment on
the war in Iraq [i.e., "Wait a few years"], because
this is such an obvious, clear-cut moral issue in which massive
violence has been used against Iraqis with many thousands of
dead." Zinn added pointedly: "I wonder if the Dalai
Lama knows enough about the history of US foreign policy. If
he did, he would understand the real motives of our invasion
of Iraq and would not be ambivalent about the present war and
occupation."
Certainly it is not a case of a lack
of intelligence on the part of the Dalai Lama. Indeed, as he
spoke at his Cambridge press conference on September 12, talking
authoritatively about the interconnectedness of cosmology, neurobiology,
psychology, and physics, it was clear he is streets ahead of
most of us in his intellectual powers.
So, given his intelligence and enormous
sense of compassion, why doesn't the Dalai Lama question the
leader of the free world about the downside of globalization?
About "Star Wars II" and the Bush administration's
flagrant disregard of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? About
the unlawful attack on Iraq? Civilian body counts? Why doesn't
he even pose such questions rhetorically in the media? Could
it really be that this esteemed 68-year-old monk is so focused
on inner change (and the external environment as it pertains
to scientific phenomena) that he hasn't done his homework on
the big political issues? When it comes to geopolitical and global
economic matters, is the Dalai Lama living in peaceful ignorance
in the suburbs of reality?
Undoubtedly, for many people, even to
suggest such a thing is akin to booing Santa Claus. After all,
the Dalai Lama is a very likeable human being. He is gentle,
caring, witty, and almost cuddly. He is calm and wise. He is
venerable. In short, he makes people feel good. The adoration
at the FleetCenter was virtually palpable. But as distinguished
linguist and radical political commentator Noam Chomsky has often
said, to personalize an issue is to lose sight of the facts.
And the fact is, the Dalai Lama won't
pick a fight. The good fight. For some reason, he won't respectfully
ask the president of the United States how he can invade a nation
without the official consent of the United Nations. Nor will
he publicly speculate about the motivations for this action,
which has yielded neither stashed weapons of mass destruction
nor links to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Furthermore,
whenever he broaches the topic at all, it is within the framework
of the "US response." The notion of US culpability
has never been an issue that the Dalai Lama has seen fit to touch
on directly--whether the topic is Iraq, Grenada, Nicaragua, East
Timor, or Third World sweatshops. In the idiom of our time, he
would seem to be guilty of not "thinking outside the box."
And, as Norman Solomon suggests, not
speaking out in fact amounts to taking a political position.
He adds: "Let the great spiritual teachers basking in acclaim
today learn how to emulate Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1967
explicitly condemned 'racism,' 'militarism,' and 'economic exploitation'
while also having the moral fortitude to denounce the Vietnam
War."
The Dalai Lama had time to answer only
six questions from the sizable audience at his Cambridge press
conference, though many more people had questions to ask. And
the official line was that he would give no private interviews
during his tour--though, it turned out, this was not strictly
the case. Repeated attempts to get a response to this article
from His Holiness through his New York media representative were
met with a "too busy" response. Yet the New York Times
reported that the Tibetan leader somehow found time for a photo
op with pop star Ricky Martin. Makes you wonder.
Adrian Zupp
is a freelance writer. This article originally appeared in the
Boston Phoenix. He can be reached at adrianz59@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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