Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
23, 2003
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website of the Day
Bands Against Bush
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
Recent
Stories
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
23, 2003
To Kill a Cat
The Unfortunate Incident
at the Baghdad Zoo
By GARY LEUPP
Interesting Associated Press item buried deep
in the Sunday Boston Globe:
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier shot
and killed a tiger at the Baghdad zoo after it bit another soldier
who had reached through the bars of its cage to feed it, a zoo
security guard said Saturday. The soldiers had been drinking
beer when they entered the zoo Thursday night after it closed,
said the guard, Zuhair Abdul-Majeed.
"He was drunk," Abdul-Majeed
said of the bitten soldier. After the man was bit, the other
American shot the tiger three times in the head and killed it,
Abdul-Majeed told the Associated Press. It was impossible to
reach the U.S. military spokesman's office because the telephones
have not worked for three days.
Subsequent reports have added details. This wasn't
just any tiger, but a Bengal tiger, and the most valuable animal
in the zoo. Agence France-Presse tells us that the tiger bit
off the soldier's finger and mauled his arm. AFP also informs
us that Uday Hussein was a "lover of big cats," and
that some of the cats in the zoo had been transferred from Saddam's
palaces. That could be important in the upcoming investigation
(immediately requested by the World Society for the Protection
of Animals); one could creatively spin this to establish a terrorist
connection between the beast and the late son of the Iraqi leader.
The first question to pop into my mind
was, what beer were these fine young men drinking? Many people
in this country incorrectly assume that alcohol is banned in
all Arab countries because the Qur'an prohibits drinking. But
having a wide circle of Muslim friends and acquaintances (Moroccans,
Bosniaks, Pakistanis) who love their beer, and having enjoyed
the fine "Sakara" brew available anywhere in Cairo,
I know this isn't the case. Any student of beer history knows
it was first brewed in ancient Sumeria (Iraq) and Egypt, and
it takes more than a religion to quash so elegant and refined
a cultural tradition. I've read that Iraq under Saddam produced
a lot of beer, which Christians if not Muslims were allowed to
sell (only warm, for some reason) and which anyone could consume
in their own home. I see reports that Israel is now entering
the Iraqi market with its own beers, which seems logical, somehow.
But I digress.
Back to the zoo. I'm not inclined to
be judgmental at all. It's perfectly reasonable for stressed-out
GIs, who shouldn't be in Iraq, who might for all I know be underage
and inexperienced, to binge a bit during off-hours and head to
the zoo. Anyway you have this guy trying to feed a tiger through
the bars of his cage. A noble impulse, probably, although we
don't know what he was feeding it. U.S. troops have often in
past occupations offered chocolate to the local children; I suspect
it encourages a positive self-image, especially if you've accidentally
killed kids in the previous 24 hours. Perhaps this tiger-feeding
was a gesture of repentance that unfortunately went awry when
the feline bit the hand feeding it. Just like the Iraqi people,
who are supposed to be grateful, keep biting at the occupation,
causing similar confusion and violent reactions among the occupiers.
Why did the good soldier's buddy shoot
the Bengal? Sounds like the animal was still behind bars, so
it wasn't a fair fight at all. I know everything's changed since
9-11, because WE WERE ATTACKED, and so logic and compassion
and morality are officially no longer relevant. But I agree with
WSPA that we need an accounting here. Lots of Baghdadi kids,
including aspiring zoologists among the well-educated Iraqi population,
held the 14 year old cat in high regard and regret its assassination
by drunken foreign aggressors. The Bremer people are, I take
it, offering to compensate the families of the eight collaborator
cops the occupiers accidentally, collaterally killed last week.
Are there similar plans to compensate the zoo? (A Bengal tiger
will fetch a much higher price on E-bay than the U.S. military
pays out per head in compensation for accidental killings.) Hopefully
some investigative journalist on site will stay on this story.
People drunk with power and ambition
have placed their hands deep into the tiger cage which was Saddam's
Iraq. Predictably, they've been bitten badly. Such is the view
of a young North African friend of mine who, when I brought this
story to his attention, brought mine to a well-known hadith
(saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammad) that appears in several
collections of such sayings. (See Bukhari 1/495; http://www.islamanswers.net/moreAbout/Mercy.htm
or http://hadith.al-islam.com
or any hadith collection.) These sayings, in Muslim belief,
carry equal weight with the Holy Qur'an. The gist of the passage
is that a woman once held a cat in confinement and mistreating
it, caused its death. "She entered Hell-fire because of
it" Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate, just doesn't
countenance cruelty to animals.
The American hero mentioned above, who
shot the caged cat at the Baghdad Zoo, had already entered the
Hell-fire of occupied Iraq, a hell created not by any deity,
but by leaders who rival the fiercest beasts in their efforts
to expand their empire. It's the god-awfullest situation. Might
even drive a man to drink. This isn't the drunk dudes' fault,
and I sincerely hope that the injured soldier gets his finger
re-attached so that, returning from hell to the bosom of his
family, he can flip it in the face of the power structure that
dispatched him to Iraq in the first place.
Getting bit? The intelligent thing to
do is withdraw your hand. Sober up. Drop the gun. Get out of
there.
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor in the Department of History at
Tufts University and coordinator of the Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
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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