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Today's
Stories
January 7, 2004
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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
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for More Stories.
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January
7, 2004
It Isn't "Joy"
Word
of the Year for 2003
By BEN TRIPP
One of the delights of the English language, other
than the fact that our term 'jet plane' is shorter than the German
word 'Düsenflugzeug', is that there is a word for everything.
It's not having a word for everything that has led to the frankly
embarrassing tendency to compound words in German, such as 'Oberammergaueralpenkräuterdelikatessenfrühstückskäse'
which means, as far as my miserable German goes (he really is
miserable, always moping about) 'fancy Alpen herbal breakfast
cheese from Oberammergau'. If you've ever been to Oberarmmergau
to see the passion play, you know the cheese is fair, but not
worth coming up with a clanger like Oberammergaueralpenkräuterdelikatessenfrühstückskäse.
I think they are desperate for attention. An infinite number
of monkeys might eventually write the works of Shakespeare, but
not in German. Speaking of which, one of the monkeys that does
my typesetting just informed me I've drifted off-topic. What
I mean to say is that although the year 2003 was a poor one by
anybody's standards, the English-speaking world is fortunate
to have a word that describes it. The word for the year 2003,
ladies and others, is 'clusterfuck'. I leave it to you to embellish
to taste, appending 'complete and utter' or 'unmitigated', for
example.
It's a succinct, crisp word, a compound
word it is true, but of the short, robust English type, not one
of these bloodless attenuated things the Northern Europeans go
in for. The first half is from the Old Teutonic 'kluttro', meaning
'clump', and the second word's derivation is much contested by
dirty-minded etymologists although I happen to know, due to some
rare 9c. illustrated manuscripts in my collection, that it comes
from the Middle English 'fkye', to fidget restlessly or flirt,
from the Old German 'fyken', to make swift movements back and
forth, rub, or flick (which shows they were thinking about technique,
even then). Linguists will experience a shiver of delight at
my use of the word 'swift', above, which is related to 'swive',
another word for fukka (old Swedish slang for copulation). The
compound word of which I speak is not nearly so old and venerable
as its component parts, having first been identified in common
use in 1969 (make of that what you will). It is a military term
invented especially to describe the first Vietnam war. It means
'a bungled or confused undertaking'. There's been much undertaking
of late. Say it with me people: 2003 was a clusterfuck.
My more conservative readers will both
point out that the economy turned around in 2003, so as years
go it wasn't a dead loss, like the years 1234 or 1721. This
is a spurious argument. The economy, like a freight train from
which the engine has separated on an uphill grade, is accelerating
rapidly for the guys up front, while the rest of us are going
backwards. Not to mention we're all crammed in boxcars. It's
a great economy if you are already worth tens of millions of
dollars. For the vast majority of us who are part of that 120%
spending-to-income ratio, the economy is not so good. There
was a joke in the Clinton years: "this president has created
many new jobs. I know, because I have three of them just to
make ends meet." It wasn't funny then, and its current
variation is even less amusing: "this president has lost
more jobs than anyone since Hoover. I know, because I am a white-collar
worker without employment for sixteen months." Maybe it's
funnier in German. I'm sure they have a great compound word
for 'catastrophic erosion of quality of life'.
But let's not dwell on dollars. Nobody
else is; the dollar lost gobs of its value against the Euro in
2003. Even the zloty is starting to look robust. Instead let's
look at the War on Terrorism, as it is known, although I prefer
the term 'Total War All the Time', or 'TWAT' for short. Terrorism
is threats or violence by unofficial entities used to intimidate
larger societies and governments. Who has perpetrated the most
terrorism in 2003? Golly, I hardly dast say. Al-Qaeda was
fairly quiet. The Israeli government kept it local, as did the
Palestinians. Could it be the Executive Branch of the U.S. government?
They invaded Iraq and continue to occupy it by means of intimidation.
The Iraqi insurgents aren't terrorists, despite their tactics-
we did the same thing during the American Revolution. Our White
House pulverized the United Nations. It pimp-slapped most of
Western Europe. And this same small group of unelected zealots
holds the entire American people in a thrall of fear using color-coded
threats, speculation on the theme of disaster that would make
the most committed paranoid zenophobe shake his head in disbelief,
and for good measure the occasional whisking-away of some troublemaker
or other.
The American saber has been rattled with
such vigor against enemies ranging from Syria to North Korea
that the pommel has come loose. En garde. Terrorism on this
scale is more often called 'belligerent foreign policy', especially
as it's officially sanctioned by the U.S. government, but seeing
as the U.S. government at this point isn't officially sanctioned
by most of the American people, I'm only willing to split hairs
just so far. These screwheads are willing to split hairs all
the way down to the cerebral cortex. Add to this the more commonly
accepted version of terrorist: rag-headed crazies making bombs
out of chewing gum and twine-and you have an unpalatable collation
indeed. Because while the RNC is inventing threats and menaces
to keep us all cowering in the woodshed, real actual genuine
authentic terrorists are gathering in record numbers, spurred
on by the goad of violent American adventurism in their homelands
or adjacent areas. They have plans of their own, and our peri-urban
chemical plants, nuclear power facilities, and Wal-Marts are
so utterly undefended that a motivated boy scout wielding a two-pound
rock could bring the entire American homeland to its knees.
Although this would probably be the position he found it in.
The environment and its threadbare peignoir
of protections have joined the pantheon of lost causes, alongside
the Passenger Pigeon, opera spats, and lard hog futures (O noble
Curly Mangalitza, wither hast thou gone?) National lands are
bent double and spread wide to accommodate the thrusting spam-javelins
of corporate desire. Power giants are on the kind of polluting
spree normally associated with Biblical plagues, and I daresay
we'll be nostalgic for the days when acid rain and smog were
the only drawbacks to cheap industrial energy. Lordy, my bottom
aches just thinking about it. We could talk about human rights
and the Constitution, too, but I don't want to pick at fresh
scabs. Do you want to discuss President George W. Sitzpinkler's
bogus adventure? I don't. We could go on about the usurpation
of the voting system by right-wing activist elements, but then
we'd have to talk about the new year, 2004, and I can't bear
it yet. Give me a week to get over 2003.
It's not all bad news, of course. The
Democrats are finally fighting to the death. Too bad it's with
each other. Maybe that's not good news. Rupert Murdock now
own half of all media. I guess that's good news, if you like
Rupert Murdoch. Ebola killed pretty much all the gorillas.
That's kind of mixed news, but it means at last we can put some
good hotels in the remote mountains of Rwanda. Afghanistan is
back in the hands of the Taliban, so at least they have a government
again. 2003 saw quite a few of our troops come home. Unfortunately
they were either extinct or missing important bits. The ones
who remain intact will be over there until the end of the millennium.
Gosh, none of this stuff sounds all that great now I write it
down. It must be time to end this piece.
There is a second description that applies
to 2003 (I choose not to include the variant 'Mongolian Clusterfuck',
it being a mere extension of the basic theme). It's not a word,
but a statement. Ask me on December 30 of 2004 what the year
2003 was like. I will lay down my cane and oxygen tank, take
a wheezing breath, and snarl, "It was better than this year!"
then pitch forward onto my face, a lifeless scarecrow. If I'm
lucky.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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