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Today's
Stories
February 12, 2004
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
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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February
12, 2004
Misrepresented and
Misunderstood
On
a Street in America
By ANNIE HIGGINS
"It makes me so sad. It just makes
me so sad."
He had heard the shopkeeper speaking
Arabic with me, and had asked him, "Excuse me, but may I
ask you where you are from? The friendly young man behind the
counter was reticent to utter a controversial place name like
Palestine, and thus replied, "I am from Jerusalem."
The questioner came alive. Even his blond
hair glowed a shade lighter. "I grew up in Saudi Arabia!
I moved there when I was five. When we would go into a shop,
even if we didn't buy anything--when we would go in, they would
always give us a cup of tea!"
His face lit up even more at this remembrance.
In his mind's eye he was there, just as I have been there. In
another country than he. In different shops. But there, in that
Arab embrace. And here, meeting in the same country, in the same
city, close to both our present homes, we were in the same shop
with a friendly Arab <shopkeeper.The> Saudi-raised American
continued his reminiscence: "They made us feel..."
As he spoke the words, I could feel it
too. I could feel the calm, along with the liveliness of just
being alive, of possessing personal value for merely being a
human in the company of another human. He had created the atmosphere
for me, the one I have tried so many times to create in pleading
the case for my maligned Arab friends, for my maligned host society,
to even out the imbalance that is so unfair. I could hear his
words before he said them, just as I have always ended that sentence:
"They make you feel so welcome."
Now he was uttering the end of the sentence
and I heard, instead, that "they make you feel...like family."
That's it. He came nearer to the mark
than I have. There is something closer than a welcome, than words
of greeting or a cup of tea. There is the feeling of being at
home, loved, protected and accepted. The best sense of family,
not the arguments and dysfunction and feuds that can occur, but
the wholeness, the soft landing no matter what your circumstance,
the sure refuge, the natural return. Family.
"I love listening to Arabic. It's
like listening to my mother speaking." I smiled at this.
This young American student was even talking like an Arab, with
that unabashed and uncomplaining devotion to his mother. Mother,
the epitome of home. I concur: just the sounds of the language
give me the feeling that all is well, even if I can't hear the
conversation, or especially so at times. In the doughnut shop
I don't really want to know what the taxi drivers are discussing,
but it makes me feel right to hear sounds of the preferred language
emanating from their direction. In my new friend's case, he doesn't
know much of the language, of its meaning anyway. But he knows
that it evokes the landscape of the culture: what I call "welcome;"
what he calls "family."
"It makes me so sad," he reiterated
again.
Yes, more than one reiteration. The sentence
is so short and it only speaks to someone who knows. It is a
small wedge in the unexpressable. It is the little drop of water
on a saucer that reflects an entire ballroom in explicit detail
on its tiny curved surface. It is the constancy of guilty verdicts
for the beloved family member whom you know is innocent, and
who has been proven innocent of the crime, only to be remanded
to the death chamber by a deaf and imperious judge, and hauled
away by the stern-faced, steel-muscled bailiff. Such a contrast
to the tender hand that has proffered so many cups of tea. And
not just tea. A smile. And not just a smile, but an unspoken
atmosphere, like the fragrance that emanates from peeling a tangerine.
What do you call it when you can feel the fragrance approaching
and intensifying and then becoming your very atmosphere? Redolence.
That redolence of welcome. That redolence of family.
"It makes me so sad."
Nothing you say can save your friend,
your beloved society and culture, from this repeating judgment
and brute action to wipe out the redolence, to suffocate the
glow, to slam a silencer on the warm rhythms of the language.
"Like hearing my mother speak." The guilty verdict
slapping a gag on your mother.
"It makes me so sad. It just makes
me so sad."
We talk a little, so glad to meet one
another, relieved more than happy. We share a secret that is
jealously guarded in the way you don't want it to be. You want
to spread abroad the good news of the beauty of this culture,
these people whom you know first hand. And you cannot speak this,
because the stern-faced judges and steel-muscled bailiffs and
respected writers and smiling neighbors keep this a secret. They
find ways to muzzle you, to keep your voice out of the living
room, out of the classroom, out of the letters to the editor,
out of the range of radio airwaves. You might think that their
very existence is threatened by a true representation of a culture
they refuse to know. They know only to ignore, to criticize,
to condemn, and thus to protect our society from any positive
and realistic evidence about this other culture.
"It makes me so sad."
Our upright thinkers keep the true picture
a secret. They won't let us speak. We find solace in one another,
meeting by chance in a shop, in a restaurant, at a public lecture,
or on the street. This is the secret that we are bursting to
share with our fellow citizens and friends we love, friends who
are so caring in other situations, friends who do community service
and help minorities to be appreciated and to have opportunities,
friends who attend church regularly and thank their God sincerely,
friends who believe the arts can save us from tyranny, friends
who silence us when we begin to say anything affirmative about
Arabs. They know what we do not. They know what the real character
of Arabs is. They know what the real character of Muslims is
because, unlike us, they have not been tainted by actual acquaintance
with people of these categories. They can keep an objective distance,
surround themselves with an easy myth complete with loaded compilations
of labyrinthine statistics. They have the higher wisdom to safeguard
our culture by seeing-no, and hearing-no, and speaking-no good
about these others. We see our Arab and Muslim friends and the
millions of their fellows misrepresented, misunderstood, maligned
and--yes:
It makes us so sad.
Saddest of all because we want our fair-haired
friends here to share in the richness we have experienced. We
want to say "welcome" to them, as we have been welcomed.
We know how it feels, and it is the kind of feeling you are compelled
to share, not to hoard. So you open your mouth with one little
sentence which you hope will open a portal of reception to this
perception, and...and then what? And then our living flesh and
blood friends and neighbors become cold, unrelenting, deaf statues
when we invite them to a true picture. That is what is so sad,
to see your loving friends lose their human edge, on cue, just
when you bring up the subject of Arab culture, or even more,
Arab individuals.
"It makes me so sad."
When I told my new blond friend of volunteering
in Palestine and sojourning among refugees in camps, he honored
me and thanked me for doing this, and then posed one last question:
"But aren't you afraid...?"
I expected to hear the usual question,
about danger to my bodily safety. People there live the danger
every day. They can. We can. But that was not his concern, so
the twist in his final question surprised me, just as his first
remark about family had.
"But aren't you afraid of what this
will do to you, seeing all this tragedy?"
His concern was the danger to my psyche.
I said the positive part of living in
the midst of constant tragedy, is to be with people who maintain
an amazing strength of character, and continue to strive toward
a constructive future. They are able to bear this suffering and
still keep strong family ties. I said the difficult part is having
intelligent people in my own country turn deaf ears to this deserving
sector of humanity. Deserving sector--what do these Arabs and
Muslims deserve? They deserve to be considered fully human.
Aren't we afraid of what this will do
to us, ignoring all this humanity?
On a street in America
Annie Higgins
"It makes me so sad. It just makes
me so sad."
He had heard the shopkeeper speaking
Arabic with me, and had asked him, "Excuse me, but may I
ask you where you are from? The friendly young man behind the
counter was reticent to utter a controversial place name like
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
/>Palestine, and thus replied, "I am from Jerusalem."
The questioner came alive. Even his blond
hair glowed a shade lighter. "I grew up in Saudi Arabia!
I moved there when I was five. When we would go into a shop,
even if we didn't buy anything--when we would go in, they would
always give us a cup of tea!"
His face lit up even more at this remembrance.
In his mind's eye he was there, just as I have been there. In
another country than he. In different shops. But there, in that
Arab embrace. And here, meeting in the same country, in the same
city, close to both our present homes, we were in the same shop
with a friendly Arab <shopkeeper.The> Saudi-raised American
continued his reminiscence: "They made us feel..."
As he spoke the words, I could feel it
too. I could feel the calm, along with the liveliness of just
being alive, of possessing personal value for merely being a
human in the company of another human. He had created the atmosphere
for me, the one I have tried so many times to create in pleading
the case for my maligned Arab friends, for my maligned host society,
to even out the imbalance that is so unfair. I could hear his
words before he said them, just as I have always ended that sentence:
"They make you feel so welcome."
Now he was uttering the end of the sentence
and I heard, instead, that "they make you feel...like family."
That's it. He came nearer to the mark
than I have. There is something closer than a welcome, than words
of greeting or a cup of tea. There is the feeling of being at
home, loved, protected and accepted. The best sense of family,
not the arguments and dysfunction and feuds that can occur, but
the wholeness, the soft landing no matter what your circumstance,
the sure refuge, the natural return. Family.
"I love listening to Arabic. It's
like listening to my mother speaking." I smiled at this.
This young American student was even talking like an Arab, with
that unabashed and uncomplaining devotion to his mother. Mother,
the epitome of home. I concur: just the sounds of the language
give me the feeling that all is well, even if I can't hear the
conversation, or especially so at times. In the doughnut shop
I don't really want to know what the taxi drivers are discussing,
but it makes me feel right to hear sounds of the preferred language
emanating from their direction. In my new friend's case, he doesn't
know much of the language, of its meaning anyway. But he knows
that it evokes the landscape of the culture: what I call "welcome;"
what he calls "family."
"It makes me so sad," he reiterated
again.
Yes, more than one reiteration. The sentence
is so short and it only speaks to someone who knows. It is a
small wedge in the unexpressable. It is the little drop of water
on a saucer that reflects an entire ballroom in explicit detail
on its tiny curved surface. It is the constancy of guilty verdicts
for the beloved family member whom you know is innocent, and
who has been proven innocent of the crime, only to be remanded
to the death chamber by a deaf and imperious judge, and hauled
away by the stern-faced, steel-muscled bailiff. Such a contrast
to the tender hand that has proffered so many cups of tea. And
not just tea. A smile. And not just a smile, but an unspoken
atmosphere, like the fragrance that emanates from peeling a tangerine.
What do you call it when you can feel the fragrance approaching
and intensifying and then becoming your very atmosphere? Redolence.
That redolence of welcome. That redolence of family.
"It makes me so sad."
Nothing you say can save your friend,
your beloved society and culture, from this repeating judgment
and brute action to wipe out the redolence, to suffocate the
glow, to slam a silencer on the warm rhythms of the language.
"Like hearing my mother speak." The guilty verdict
slapping a gag on your mother.
"It makes me so sad. It just makes
me so sad."
We talk a little, so glad to meet one
another, relieved more than happy. We share a secret that is
jealously guarded in the way you don't want it to be. You want
to spread abroad the good news of the beauty of this culture,
these people whom you know first hand. And you cannot speak this,
because the stern-faced judges and steel-muscled bailiffs and
respected writers and smiling neighbors keep this a secret. They
find ways to muzzle you, to keep your voice out of the living
room, out of the classroom, out of the letters to the editor,
out of the range of radio airwaves. You might think that their
very existence is threatened by a true representation of a culture
they refuse to know. They know only to ignore, to criticize,
to condemn, and thus to protect our society from any positive
and realistic evidence about this other culture.
"It makes me so sad."
Our upright thinkers keep the true picture
a secret. They won't let us speak. We find solace in one another,
meeting by chance in a shop, in a restaurant, at a public lecture,
or on the street. This is the secret that we are bursting to
share with our fellow citizens and friends we love, friends who
are so caring in other situations, friends who do community service
and help minorities to be appreciated and to have opportunities,
friends who attend church regularly and thank their God sincerely,
friends who believe the arts can save us from tyranny, friends
who silence us when we begin to say anything affirmative about
Arabs.
They know what we do not. They know what
the real character of Arabs is. They know what the real character
of Muslims is because, unlike us, they have not been tainted
by actual acquaintance with people of these categories. They
can keep an objective distance, surround themselves with an easy
myth complete with loaded compilations of labyrinthine statistics.
They have the higher wisdom to safeguard our culture by seeing-no,
and hearing-no, and speaking-no good about these others. We see
our Arab and Muslim friends and the millions of their fellows
misrepresented, misunderstood, maligned and--yes:
It makes us so sad.
Saddest of all because we want our fair-haired
friends here to share in the richness we have experienced. We
want to say "welcome" to them, as we have been welcomed.
We know how it feels, and it is the kind of feeling you are compelled
to share, not to hoard. So you open your mouth with one little
sentence which you hope will open a portal of reception to this
perception, and...and then what? And then our living flesh and
blood friends and neighbors become cold, unrelenting, deaf statues
when we invite them to a true picture. That is what is so sad,
to see your loving friends lose their human edge, on cue, just
when you bring up the subject of Arab culture, or even more,
Arab individuals.
"It makes me so sad."
When I told my new blond friend of volunteering
in Palestine and sojourning among refugees in camps, he honored
me and thanked me for doing this, and then posed one last question:
"But aren't you afraid...?"
I expected to hear the usual question,
about danger to my bodily safety. People there live the danger
every day. They can. We can. But that was not his concern, so
the twist in his final question surprised me, just as his first
remark about family had.
"But aren't you afraid of what this
will do to you, seeing all this tragedy?"
His concern was the danger to my psyche.
I said the positive part of living in
the midst of constant tragedy, is to be with people who maintain
an amazing strength of character, and continue to strive toward
a constructive future. They are able to bear this suffering and
still keep strong family ties. I said the difficult part is having
intelligent people in my own country turn deaf ears to this deserving
sector of humanity. Deserving sector--what do these Arabs and
Muslims deserve? They deserve to be considered fully human.
Aren't we afraid of what this will do
to us, ignoring all this humanity?
Annie C. Higgins
specializes in Arabic and Islamic studies, and is currently doing
research in Jenin, Occupied Palestine.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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