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Today's
Stories
January 3 / 4, 2004
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 3 / 4, 2004
Iraqi Humor Amid the
Carnage
Chicken
Tikka, Anyone?
By ROBERT FISK
Mystification. why would a bomber blow himself
up to destroy a restaurant? There's no doubt that the man who
killed eight diners in Nabil's onWednesday was a suicide attacker.
One of the waiters, a balding, angry
man, showed me what was left of him yesterday. Flesh in the forecourt,
a set of four blackened fingers below a wall. "You want
a chicken tikka?" he asked cruelly. But these are cruel
times.
Next door, every member of the family
in the now broken villa was taken to hospital. I knew them all.
A few months ago, when the hotel across the road was bombed,
I'd lent them my phone to call their relatives in America. "Al-hamdulila
- praise be to God - we are all OK," the mother had shouted
down the line to Detroit. Not any more. Her husband was hurt
in the chest
by the blast. All her daughters were
cut, too. Why them?
In any other land, there would be a forensic science laboratory
and someone would have taken those fingers away for identification.
But the Americans
were only looking for the detonator.
Some hope. The bomber's Oldsmobile was almost atomised. Did he
think someone from the occupation authorities was among the diners
at the New Year's Eve belly-dancing party?
Mystification. I am talking to a young
American soldier from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment. He's
just down from the Syrian border. "We had a problem there,"
he says. "A guy got hostile with our men last night. Pulled
a knife. He was shot dead." A knife? The guy pulled a knife
on a soldier?
No information in the papers, of course.
No mention of the dead Iraqi in the occupation power's usual
press conference.
Mystification. Just two days before Christmas, I am driving the
desert road at night west of Ramadi. This is bandit country,
a death trap for Americans and insurgents alike. Then to the
south, there is a great fire, flickering with explosions, shell
bursts, flares, streaks of tracer. The light burns brightly
on the horizon, pulsates orange and red
for almost 20 minutes, the time it takes my car to reach Fallujah.
But next day, no one reports a fire. Nothing in the papers. Someone
must know. Can't the Americans, watching all this from their
satellites, account for this blazing fire in the night?
Mystification. I am in a traffic jam
in the Muthhana area of Baghdad, a thieves' paradise, next to
a beat-up Toyota with a bearded man at the wheel.
The driver's window is broken, the door
doesn't close properly, the registration plates have fallen off.
"Well, you're safe," I shout
at him. "No one's going to steal your car." The man
grins back at me. "No, they can't steal my car," he
roars, then reaches
to the floor of his vehicle. He comes
up with his false left leg and dangles it out of the window towards
me. "And they can't steal me either." Chicken tikka?
False legs? Where do the Iraqis find their sense of humour?
Robert Fisk is
a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity
the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's
hot new book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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