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Baltimore & Maryland
06.14 Public Can Make Summer 'Historical' at “Chautauqua 2007: Food for Thought” Health & Environment
06.01 Fixing Our Broken Food System Ref. : Environmental Health News Ref. : What is Global Warming, and what can citizens do about it? Ref. : Global Warming Links Ref. : Health & Nutrition Links Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
US News Media Criticism
07.02 Will the Press Idiocy Ever Stop? 07.02 Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances 06.30 USA Today's 'Sicko' Debate 06.28 Slandering the Dead: The American Massacre at al-Khalis 06.25 The Iraq-gate Cover-up Continues 06.19 Sunday Sun Hits New Low 06.19 Alliance With Atrocity: Bush's Terror War Partners in Ethiopia 06.12 Things Your Media Mama Didn't Tell You 06.12 Incendiary Weapons Are No 'Allegation' 06.11 Powell Belies 'Commander Guy' Bush 06.11 THINKING FLUFF 06.09 Romney's Iraq Gaffe Ignored 06.08 GOP/Media Rewrite Iraq War History 06.05 The New Assault on Al Gore 06.02 Bush's Global Warming Foot-Dragging 06.02 Can Democrats End the Iraq War? 06.01 Treated Like a Democrat 06.01 Journalists' Group Unmasks Sen. Jon Kyl as “Senator Secrecy” OP-EDs & Opinion
07.03 Terrorism As a Virus: Baudrillard's Post-2001 Significance 07.03 "Justice for All": Just a Sop for the Masses 07.03 Pelosi on Impeachment and Defending the Constitution: It's Just Not Worth It 06.28 Congress Needs to Stop Playing in Bush's Court 06.28 Next Generation of 'Family Jewels'? 06.28 Why They Hate Us 06.28 One More Good Reason Why Rupert Murdoch Should Not Get Dow Jones 06.26 Research on Human Nature is Cause for Optimism 06.16 Dare We Call It Tyranny? 06.14 Unintended Uighurs 06.12 War Foretold 06.08 Impeachment on a Roll 06.01 The Hariri Case & Double Standards US Politics & Policy
07.03 The Libby Cover-up Completed 07.03 Beyond Recklessness 06.26 Nancy & Harry: Bringing Down the House (and Senate) 06.26 Thinking About Baggage 06.25 Goodbye to the city upon a hill and to its fabled economy 06.25 Is Obama Getting 'Colin-ized'? 06.22 Sen. Levin's False History & Logic 06.22 Which Candidate Do You Support? 06.21 Slap Doesn't Stick: Corrupted Congress Will Help Bush Escape Court Ruling 06.20 Bush's Mafia Whacks the Republic 06.20 Iraqi Labor Leaders Blame US for the Bloodshed in Iraq and say Get Out! 06.19 The Reign of the Tyrants is at Hand 06.19 Democrats in Congress: The Wheels are Coming Off 06.13 America's Fragile Republic 06.12 Congressional Failure and the Democrats' Last Chance 06.12 The Neocon Threat to World Peace and American Freedom 06.12 Sic Semper Tyrannis: A Slap in the Face of the Crawford Caligula 06.11 Everything They Say About Promoting Democracy Is, And Always Has Been, A Damnable Lie 06.09 Losing Iraq, Nuking Iran 06.07 Last Plamegate Worry for Bush-Cheney 06.06 Some democracy, America Economics
07.02 Thinking Upside Down 06.20 Reader response: Inflation? You'd Better Believe It! 06.18 THINKING INFLATION 06.11 Losing the Economy to Mythology 06.04 Thinking About Budgets—the “La-La” Land of Governmental Accounting Africa
06.13 'Kill Anyone Still Alive': American Special Ops in Somalia Middle East & Asia
07.02 Killing Time: Countdown Quickens for Bush War on Iran 06.30 The New Bush-Blair Vanity Play 06.19 Newly Discovered Nuances to the Camp David Accords 06.19 Crocodile Tears 06.07 Brothers in Arms: Bandar Bush Took a Billion in Bribes to Push UK Weapons Deal We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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WILL MAN EVER LEARN?War ForetoldMark Twain and the Sins of EmpireTwain on war: "...Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not shamed of it, but proud."
When I resorted to Mark Twain's writings I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror. But his "The Mysterious Stranger", although published in 1916, still left me with an eerie feel. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs that we hold as a "matter of course" ? a favorite phrase of his. It summons the awful tendencies of "our race": our irrational drive for violence, be it burning 'witches' at the stake or engaging in wars that only serve the "little monarchs and the nobilities."As the Iraq war rages on, Twain's words ring truer by the day: Twain, whose genius undoubtedly surpasses time and space, wrote the above passages nine decades before the world's leading statesmen, President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair forged their case for war, based on falsities and refused to examine any refutations; they rallied millions, investing on their ignorance and blind patriotism to carry out a war whose outcome is akin to genocide. The text was also written long before the thousands who stood for human rights, rallied and organized against the war, defended the constitution and civil liberties were "shouted out" and "stoned from the platform"; thousands of those "fair men" and women have endured such a fate, the latest being Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved American mother who lost her son, Casey, in Bush's war for oil, strategic repositioning of the empire and the neoconservatives' ceaseless hunt for Israel's illusive 'security'. She too was shouted out, and in a heart-wrenching letter, she reached the conclusion, most difficult for any mother to reach, that her son, Casey died for nothing. But Bush is adamant to carry on with his costly endeavor that has espoused so many new chasms within his country, and in the world at large: religious contentions and political turmoil, damage that neither Mr. Bush, nor his most luminous advisors have the will nor the brains to remedy. "But what does it amount to?" says Twain, using one of his story's characters, an angel to convey the idea: "nothing at all. You gain nothing. You always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously re-performing this dull nonsense - to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not shamed of it, but proud." Sheehan couldn't get an answer for why Casey was killed; many more might want to live with the illusion that their loss didn't go in vain; but dead American bodies continue to arrive back to US soil only at night; the wounded are maltreated and hidden from the public eye, only occasional courageous reports manage to break the silence and the perfected propaganda. In Iraq, the sheer number of dead and dying defies belief; the entire country is now gripped in an endless strife that shall define the cultural and social disposition of future generations; it's often easy to comprehend and come to terms with a total number of deaths when they are presented in a neatly packaged chart or a website, no matter how harrowing; but once you learn of the individual stories, you wonder whether the days of burning witches at the stake were better times: a young girl raped before her own family and later killed with her own baby; entire families massacred in broad daylight; militants chopping off limbs and ears and noses under the watchful eye of the Iraqi police, for their victims belonged to the wrong sect and stood on the wrong side of the war. "The Mysterious Stranger" ended up being a figment of a little boy's imagination - or was it? - its meaning is overreaching and very much real. The war is real and frightening and hurtful; it's not an intellectual argument; it cannot be reduced to a few images and captions and editorials; nothing can ever capture a moment where a mother receives the corpse of a son or the scene of a father kneeling before the shattered body of a daughter. It's all real, and it's all our own doing, whether by supporting, financing and fighting the war, or by staying silent as it rages on. Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. His latest volume, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London), is available from Amazon and other book venues.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on June 12, 2007. |
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