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Today's
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September
25, 2003
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
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
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
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CounterPunch Exclusive:
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J.B.
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True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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Corrie
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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
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September
26, 2003
The Lessons of Mulla
Nasruddin
A
Muslim Sage Visits the USA
By M. SHAHID ALAM
Two years after September 11, 2001, when the righteous
indignation of Americans at the attacks on the Twin Towers and
the Pentagon had cooled a bit, five Ivy League colleges decided
to invite a Muslim sage to talk to them about why such horrible
things were done to Americans.
After much deliberation, the five colleges
narrowed their choice to Jelalduddin Rumi and Mulla Nasruddin,
two Muslim sages best known to Americans. (That does not mean
that many Americans have heard about these sages.) In the end,
it was the Mulla who won out, since he was thought to possess
a keener mind on matters mundane.
I had the privilege of attending all
five lectures. The Mulla had called me up and insisted that I
should read his talks. He was afraid that the audience would
be distracted by his Oriental attire and Farsi accent. It was
an honor I could not turn down.
Before returning to his home town in
Bokhara (or, is it Balk, Badakhshan or Bamiyan?) the Mulla asked
if I could make his talks available to a wider American public.
I did not have the heart to tell the Mulla that his talks, which
were stories about his antics, had not gone well (he had not
noticed), and it wasn't very likely that they would be better
appreciated by a wider American public. [1] But perhaps I was
forgetting the blinders that academics wear.
I will report the Mulla's lectures exactly
as I read them, but at the end of each lecture I have dared to
insert a few helpful notes. At least, I think they might be helpful.
First Lecture
Many years ago, the Mulla was traveling
on the Silk Road to China when he met George, a traveler from
the land of the Franks. They soon became friends and decided
to travel together, each pledging to help the other on the long
and difficult journey ahead.
Several days later, after traveling through
a dreary stretch of arid country, they came to a small town.
Since they were both hungry and thirsty, they found their way
to the only inn in town. But they had little money left. So they
decided to share a bowl of milk. It would quench their thirst
and provide some nourishment.
George said to the Mulla, 'You drink
your half first. I have one lump of sugar, and it is only enough
to sweeten my half.' The Mulla insisted that they share the sugar
too. However, when he saw that George was not in a mood to relent,
the Mulla went into the kitchen and returned with a large lump
of salt, and told George that he just remembered that he preferred
to drink his milk with salt.
Before the Mulla could add the lump of
salt to the glass of milk, George had a change of heart. Smiling,
he offered his lump of sugar to the Mulla. One by one, they quenched
their thirst with sweetened milk. In addition, the Mulla savored
the sweet taste of victory.
Notes: The glass of milk is the world:
its land, water, and the fruits of labor. The sugar is the technology,
property rights, etc. And the salt? What is your guess?
Second Lecture
Once, the Mulla woke up in the middle
of the night to find that there was a burglar in his house gathering
up his furnishings, clothes and pots. He did not disturb the
burglar, but watched quietly as he swept the house clean and
loaded his haul into a donkey cart.
When the burglar took off, the Mulla
followed the donkey cart at a distance. He took note of the rich
and commodious house, a few blocks from his own, where the burglar
unloaded his loot, and quietly returned to his modest--and now
emptied--dwelling, and went back to sleep.
Next morning, the Mulla asked his wife
and children to follow him. They were moving into a new house.
He took them to the burglar's house, pushed open the door, and
moved in.
When the burglar woke up later in the
day, the Mulla thanked him profusely for helping him move to
his new house.
Notes: Imagine the poor Latin Americans
moving north across the Rio Grande, or the North Africans heading
for the northern shores of the Mediterranean.
Third Lecture
One day the Mulla walked into a teahouse.
He was audibly muttering to himself, 'I don't like the sun: it
does little good. I love the moon.'
The people in the teahouse asked him
why? The Mulla answered, 'Can't you see? The moon shines at night
when it is dark, spreading its light for travelers, night workers
and lovers. On the other hand, the sun shines during the day,
when it is bright anyway.'
Notes: The mind can play tricks, missing
the obvious connections. Example: We were attacked on 9-11 because
the Arabs hate our freedom and affluence. We have only been kind
to them.
Fourth Lecture
On one occasion, the Mulla borrowed a
large cooking pot from his next-door neighbor. When returning
it, he placed a smaller cooking pot inside the borrowed one.
The neighbor reminded him that the smaller pot did not belong
to him; he had lent the large one. The Mulla replied that in
fact it did belong to him. He explained, 'While your pot was
with me, one night it gave birth to a baby pot.' The neighbor
did not object to that.
A few days later, the Mulla again borrowed
his neighbor's cooking pot, but this time never returned it.
When the neighbor came asking for his pot, the Mulla told him
that he could not have it back. 'Your pot had died soon after
I borrowed it,' he said.
At first, the neighbor thought the Mulla
was joking. But soon he grew irate when he found that the Mulla
was sticking to his narrative. The Mulla tried to calm his neighbor,
'If your pot could give birth to a baby, why couldn't it die?'
Notes: The social sciences have invented
some quite improbable stories to push the agenda of their clients:
privileged classes, "races," and countries. Occasionally,
these narratives are applied only partially. The rich countries
tout free markets for their capital, but rigorously protect their
own labor.
Fifth Lecture
A mighty emperor once sought the Mulla's
help. He told the Mulla: 'the great kings and conquerors of the
past carried great titles, and often their titles celebrated
divine favors. In the past, there were kings that were God-anointed,
God-chosen, God-like, and even God-descended.' The mighty emperor
asked the Mulla to come up with an honorific appropriate to his
great conquests.
The Mulla said that he would have to
think about it, but he would send him one after a month's meditation
upon the subject. A month later, having safely hidden himself,
the Mulla sent his answer to the King, embossed on gold-leaf.
It said: 'God-forbid.'
Notes: This king ruled over the greatest
country in the world--even the greatest in the history of mankind.
[1] The Mulla Nasruddin stories in this
report are taken from two books by Idries Shah: The Pleasantries
of the Mulla and The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasruddin.
M. Shahid Alam
is professor of economics at Northeastern University and a contributor
to The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. His last book, Poverty from
the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000.
He may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
© M. Shahid Alam
© M. Shahid Alam
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
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Lighten
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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
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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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