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Today's Stories

November 4, 2003

Tariq Ali
Resistance and Independence in Iraq


November 3, 2003

Patrick Cockburn
The Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah

Dave Lindorff
Philly's Buggy Election

Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003

Bernie Dwyer
An Interview with Chomsky on Cuba

November 1 / 2, 2003

Saul Landau
Cui Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off

Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality

Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver

Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"

John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines

William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit

Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes

Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred

Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos

Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle

Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action

Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon

Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire

David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him Famous

Adam Engel
America, What It Is

Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn

Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie

 


October 31, 2003

Lee Ballinger
Making a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs

Wayne Madsen
The GOP's Racist Trifecta

Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"

Elaine Cassel
Coming to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)

Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry

 


October 30, 2003

Forrest Hylton
Popular Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia

Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military Families

Dave Lindorff
Big Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"

Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of Israel

Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak

Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?

Alexander Cockburn
Paul Krugman: Part of the Problem

 

October 29, 2003

Chris Floyd
Thieves Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton

Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans

Rick Giombetti
Let Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy

The Intelligence Squad
Dark Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks

Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists

Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement

Gary Leupp
Every Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures

October 28, 2003

Rich Gibson
The Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003

Uri Avnery
Incident in Gaza

Diane Christian
Wishing Death

Robert Fisk
Eyewitness in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"

Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte

Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran

Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten

Chris White
9/11 in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective


October 27, 2003

William A. Cook
Ministers of War: Criminals of the Cloth

David Lindorff
The Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer

Elaine Cassel
Antonin Scalia's Contemptus Mundi

Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia

John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls

Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us

Bill Kauffman
George Bush, the Anti-Family President

 

October 25 / 26, 2003

Robert Pollin
The US Economy: Another Path is Possible

Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China

James Bunn
Plotting Pre-emptive Strikes

Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?

Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany

Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace

Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit

Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror

Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors

Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq

John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula

Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies

Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur

An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia

Karyn Strickler
Down with Big Brother's Spying Eyes

Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization

John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America

Mickey Z.
War of the Words

Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous

Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand

 

 

 

October 24, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's War on Greenpeace

Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews

Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets, Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited

Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty

David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button

Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't

 

October 23, 2003

Diane Christian
Ruthlessness

Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism

David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology

Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement

William Blum
Imperial Indifference

Stew Albert
A Memo

 

October 22, 2003

Wayne Madsen
Religious Insanity Runs Rampant

Ray McGovern
Holding Leaders Accountable for Lies

Christopher Brauchli
There's No Civilizing the Death Penalty

Elaine Cassel
Legislators and Women's Bodies

Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism

Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali


October 21, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Beilin Agreement

Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General

David Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!

William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History

Bridget Gibson
Fatal Vision

Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell

October 20, 2003

Standard Schaefer
Chile's Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Chris Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California

Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky & Nader

John & Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful World

Elaine Cassel
God's General Unmuzzled

 

October 18 / 19, 2003

Robert Pollin
Clintonomics: the Hollow Boom

Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War

Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer

Bruce Anderson
The California Recall

John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"

Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario

Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa

Brian Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War

Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers

Denise Low
The Cancer of Sprawl

Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom

John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?

George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy

Alison Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan

Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir

Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder

 

October 17, 2003

Stan Goff
Piss On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War

Newton Garver
Bolivia in Turmoil

Standard Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack

Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52

Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran

David Lindorff
Michael Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty

 

October 16, 2003

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba

Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq

Norman Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse

Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time

Lenni Brenner
I Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me

Website of the Day
Time Tested Books

 

October 15, 2003

Sunil Sharma / Josh Frank
The General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation

Forrest Hylton
Dispatch from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"

Brian Cloughley
Those Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq

Ahmad Faruqui
Lessons of the October War

Uri Avnery
Three Days as a Living Shield

Website of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor


October 14, 2003

Eric Ridenour
Qibya & Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre

Elaine Cassel
The Disgrace That is Guantanamo

Robert Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People

David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops

VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference

Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews

Peter Linebaugh
"Remember Orr!"

Website of the Day
BRIDGES

 

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

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November 4, 2003

When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?

Smearing Said and Hanan Ashrawi

By ROBERT FISK

Is "Palestinian" now just a dirty word? Or is "Arab" the dirty word? Let's start with the late Edward Said, the brilliant and passionate Palestinian-American academic who wrote--among many other books--Orientalism, the ground-breaking work which first explored our imperial Western fantasies about the Middle East. After he died of leukaemia last month, Zev Chafets sneered at him in the New York Daily News in the following words: "As an Episcopalian, he's ineligible for the customary 72 virgins, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's honoured with a couple of female doctoral graduates."

According to Chafets, who (says the Post) spent 33 years "in politics, government and journalism" in Jerusalem, Orientalism "rests on a simple thesis: Westerners are inherently unable to fairly judge, or even grasp, the Arab world." Said "didn't blow up the Marines in Lebanon in 1983 ... he certainly didn't fly a plane into the World Trade Centre. What he did was to jam America's intellectual radar."

When I read this vicious obituary, I recalled hearing Chafets' name before. So I turned to my files and up he popped in 1982, as former director of the Israeli government press office in Jerusalem. He had just published a book falsely claiming that Western journalists in Beirut--myself among them--had been "terrorised" by bands of Palestinians. He even claimed my old friend Sean Toolan, who was murdered by a jealous husband with whose wife he was having an affair, was killed by Palestinians because they disapproved of a US television programme about the PLO.

So I got the point. You can kick a scholar when he's dead if he's a Palestinian, and kick a journalist when he's dead if you want to claim he was murdered by Palestinians. But now the same sick fantasies are taking hold in Australia, where a determined effort is being made by Israel's supposed friends there to prevent the Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi--of all people--from receiving the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize this week. A Jewish writer in Sydney has bravely defended her--not least because the local Israeli lobby appears to have deliberately misquoted an interview she gave me two years ago, distorting her words to imply that she is in favour of suicide bombings.

Ashrawi is not in favour of these wicked attacks. She has fearlessly spoken out against them. But Sydney University has already withdrawn the use of its Great Hall for the presentation of the peace prize and the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Lucy Turnbull, has dissociated the City of Sydney, sponsor of the prize, from the presentation. And just to show you what lies behind this--apart from the fact that Turnbull's husband Malcolm is trying to get a nomination for a parliamentary seat--take a look through the following exchange between Kathryn Greiner, former chairwoman of the Sydney peace foundation, and Professor Stuart Rees, the foundation's director:

KG: "I have to speak logically. It is either Hanan Ashrawi or the Peace Foundation. That's our choice, Stuart. My distinct impression is that if you persist in having her here, they'll (sic) destroy you. Rob Thomas of City Group is in trouble for supporting us. And you know Danny Gilbert [an Australian lawyer] has already been warned off."

SR: "You must be joking. We've been over this a hundred times. We consulted widely. We agreed the jury's decision, made over a year ago, was not only unanimous but that we would support it, together."

KG: "But you're not listening to the logic. The Commonwealth Bank ... is highly critical. We could not approach them for financial help for the Schools Peace Prize. We'll get no support from them. The business world will close ranks. They are saying we are one-sided, that we've only supported Palestine."

There is more of the same, but Professor Rees is standing firm--for now. So is Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein in Zmag magazine. Ashrawi, he says, "has endured campaigns of hate based on slander and lies for most of her life, from those who are intent on silencing the Palestinian narrative ..." But how much longer must this go on? Ashrawi, I notice, is now being called an "aging (sic) bespoke terror apologist" by Mark Steyn in, of all places, The Irish Times.

And it's getting worse. Said's work is now being denounced in testimony to the US Congress by Dr Stanley Kurz, who claims that the presence of "post-colonial theory" in academic circles has produced professors who refuse to support or instruct students interested in joining the State Department or American intelligence agencies. So now Congress is proposing to set up an "oversight board"--with appointed members from Homeland Security, the Department of Defence and the US National Security Agency--that will link university department funding on Middle East studies to "students training for careers in national security, defence and intelligence agencies ..."

As Professor Michael Bednar of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin says, "the possibility that someone in Homeland Security will instruct college professors ... on the proper, patriotic, 'American-friendly' textbooks that may be used in class scares and outrages me."

So it's to be goodbye to the life-work of Edward Said? And goodbye to peace prizes for Hanan Ashrawi? Goodbye to Palestinians, in fact? Then the radar really will be jammed.

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 Oct. 25 / 26, 2003

Saul Landau
Cui Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off

Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality

Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver

Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"

John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines

William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit

Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes

Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred

Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos

Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle

Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action

Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon

Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire

David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him Famous

Adam Engel
America, What It Is

Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn

Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie

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