How
the Press &
the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career
Today's
Stories
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Meaning
and Meaninglessness in the Tsunami
December 31,
2004
Farrah Hassen
The
Palestinian Right of Return: a View from Syria
Dave Lindorff
US Air's Bold New Idea: Work for Your Boss for Free!
George Capaccio
Tsunami Hits Iraq
Mike Whitney
Iraq v. Tsunami: Media Duplicity
Peter Phillips
The Tsunami and the Corporate Media: Waves of Hypocrisy
Christopher
Deliso
War
and the Tsunami: Putting It in Perspective
December 30,
2004
Lila Rajiva
Unnatural
Disaster? Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Nuclear Testing
Robert Fisk
The
Ghosts of Vietnam
Roger Burbach
Argentina
v. the IMF
Stan Cox
9/11 and 12/26: How to React
Walter Brasch
Bush and Tsunamis: Heartless in Crawford
Christopher Brauchli
Empire of the Misers
Alexandra Spieldoch
NAFTA Through a Gender Lens: "Free Trade" Pacts and
Women
Paul Kincaid Jameison
Grief, Relief and the Stingy West
Dan Bacher
The Water Kings of California
Paul Craig
Roberts
Unbecoming
Conduct
December 29,
2004
Dave Lindorff
Us,
Stingy?: It's All Relative
M. Shahid Alam
America
and Islam: Seeking Parallels
Ronald D. Hoffman
Tsunamis
and Nuclear Power Plants
Sam Bahour
/ Todd May
Elections
Without Democracy
Fred Gardner
Ricky Does 60 Minutes
Ali Khan
Who's Feeding the Bin Laden Legend?
John Hansen
Family Farms Are Being Fed to Corporate Sharks
Sam Lewin
How the Justice Department Continues to Screw the Sioux
Richard Oxman
As Time Goes By With Andy Goldsworthy
Mickey Z.
A Wave of Questions: Putting a Disaster in Context
Website of the Day
Banking While Muslim
December 28,
2004
Brian Cloughley
The
Chief Weirdo at the Pentagon: Rumsfeld Must Go
Joshua Frank
Privacy Piracy? What Howard Dean May Bring to the DNC
Jessica Leight
The
Chilean Miracle: Less Than Meets the Eye
Dave Lindorff
A
Shameful Response to Disaster
John Walsh
Disappearing the Anti-War Movement at the NYTs
Dave Zirin
The Death of Reggie White: an Off the Field Obituary
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Be Careful Not to Get Too Much Education: It's Happened to a
Lot of Good Christians
Ron Jacobs
Iran
2004: The Resistance and the Western Anti-War Movement
December 27,
2004
M. Junaid Alam
"Civilization
v. Barbarism": an Interview with Noam Chomsky
Michael Donnelly
Greens and Greenbacks: How Nonprofit Careerism Derailed the "Revolution"
Greg Moses
Texas Election Scandal: Forty Faxes and a Whisper
Toni Solo
Colombia's Appalling Vista: Justice With Eyes Wide Open
Brian Kwoba
Blaming the Victims of the 2004 Elections
Genna Goodman-Campbell
Honduras Validates Its Banana Republic Status, Again
Mike Whitney
Disappearing Act: Fallujah and the Media
Ari Shavit
"Zionism Has Exhausted Itself": an Interview with Amos
Elon
Richard Oxman
Reflections on a Handful of Activists
Saul Landau
James
Cason's Cuban Delusions
December 25
/ 26, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Yup,
It's Moral Outrage Time
Diane Christian
The Christmas Christ
Dr. Susan Block
Faith-Based Sex
Gary Leupp
Rumsfeld, His Critics and the Draft
Ron Jacobs
Music in Wartime
Elaine Cassel
Articles I Didn't Write
Jim Minick
Beyond Organic
Poets Basement
Louise, Landau, Orloski, Albert
and Collins
December 24,
2004
Diane Christian
Winning:
Rummy and John Milton
Chad Nagle
Ukraine's
Real Underdog
Saul Landau
My Friend Richard Barnet
Greg Moses
Ramsey Muniz Speaks
Joe DeRaymond
The Endless War in Colombia: a View From Within
Borzou Daragahi
Iraq's Christians: Tolerated by Saddam; Targets Under Occupation
Mike Whitney
Rummy's Quagmire of Lies
Francis A. Boyle
O Little Town of Bethlehem: Another Christmas Under Occupation
William Loren
Katz
Florida 1837: Christmas Eve Resistance to the First US Occupation
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
December 20,
2004
Gary Leupp
Japan
in Iraq
Robert Fisk
An
Army Without Compassion
Uri Avnery
The Mountain and the Mouse
Francisco Letelier
My Case Against Pinochet
Patrick Cockburn
The Polls of Fear
Bill Conroy
Charles Bowden on the Legacy of Gary Webb: "He Drew Blood"
Yoshie Furuhashi
Chokeholds of a Giant: Attacking Wal-Mart's Supply Chain
David Swanson
Media Blackout of Bush's War on Labor
Chad Nagle
Did Yushchenko Poison Himself?
December 18
/ 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Why
They Hated Gary Webb
Saul Landau
Gen.
Pinochet Should Also Face Charges in DC
Patrick Cockburn
Losing
Mosul: Once They Called It a Model for the Occupation
Douglas Valentine
Wolves
and Revolution in Venezuela: a Caracas Romance
Ray McGovern
Laughing Dragon, Dancing Bear: the New China / Russia Alliance
Fred Gardner
DEA Upholds Grower's Marijuana Monopoly
Jean-Guy Allard
Locked Up Naked in a Hole Within a Hole: Have the Cuban 5 Been
Tortured in US Prisons?
Ron Jacobs
Drifters Escape, Again: Encounters with Berkeley's Police
Raymond G.
Helmick, S.J.
The Law and Peace in the Middle East
Sean Sellers
Values Voters, Desperate Housewives and Sweatshop Tacos
Lee Sustar
Christmas
on the Picket Line at CNH: "They Want to Break Our Unions"
Richard Thieme
Webb's Wife: "Gary Was Never the Same After They Attacked
Him"
Sam Bahour
WANTED:
Middle East Negotiator
Joshua Frank
The
Spin Doctor: an Interview with Mickey Z.
Dave Lindorff
A Man Who Confers with God Should Have Good Hearing
Stan Cox
What Kids Cost: Dallas v. Delhi
Chris Frasier
Farming By Numbers: More Poets, Fewer MBAs
Poets' Basement
Katz, Melek, Harley, Albert and Ford
December
17, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
CounterAttack:
How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career
Dave Lindorff
Racism:
Philly Style
Dan Bacher
Bush Abandons Salmon Restoration
Marisa Jacott
NAFTA and the Environment: Trade Still Runs Roughshod
Francis Thicke
How Now, Industrial Cow?
Rupert Cornwell
The Inuit Strike Back
Website of the Day
Franz Boas Unrolls Over in His Grave
December
16, 2004
Michael
Neumann
How We Became Barbarians
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Ralph Nader
Gabriel
Espinoza Gonzales
The Dubious Career of John Bolton
Christopher
Brauchli
Louis Freeh's New Gig: Usurer
Patrick
Cockburn
Allawi's Pre-Election Ploy: Putting "Chemical Ali"
on Trial
Mike
Whitney
Gearing Up for a Draft?
Walter
Brasch
Hillbilly Humvees and Rumsfeld's New Physics
Bill
Conroy
How Gary Webb Saved My Ass from the FBI
Website
of the Day
Saturday Memorial for Gary Webb
December
15, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Who Killed Baha Mousa?
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Monster Under the Bed
Heather
Gray
Will the Real Christians Please Stand?: a Personal Testimony
Dave
Lindorff
The DNC, Albright and the Iraq Elections
Luis
Hernandez Navarro
To Die a Little: Migration and Coffee
in Mexico and Central America
Joshua
Frank
The Ohio Recount: an Exercise in "Dumbocracy"
Greg
Moses
Eighty-Sixing Civil Rights in Ohio?
George
Caffentzis
The Petroleum Commons
December
14, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
DNC Meddling in the Ukraine Elections
Larry
Birns / Seth DeLong
Haiti is Unraveling and No One is Saying
Anything
Richard
Thieme
My Last Talk with Gary Webb: "I Knew It Was the Truth and
That's What Kept Me Going"
Patrick
Cockburn
A Year After Saddam's Capture, Iraq
is Getting Worse
Chris
Floyd
Client State: Moral Values and Voluntary Servitude in Bush's
America
Akiva
Eldar
A One-time Hanukkah Miracle
Burbach
/ Cantor
The Legacy of Pinochet: Kissinger
and the Teflon Tyrant
December
13, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Gary Webb: a Great Reporter, Trashed
by the CIA's Claque
David
Phinney
"Contract Meal Disaster" for Iraqi Prisoners: Rancid
Food Sparked Abu Ghraib Riots
Paul
Craig Roberts
A Dose of Non-Delusional Reality
for Douglas Feith
M.
Junaid Alam
The War is the War Crime
Robert
Jensen
The US Has Lost the Iraq War...and That's a Good Thing
Richard
Oxman
Kafkaesque Lessons for the Left
Greg
Moses
Send No Messengers of Defeat
Douglas
Lummis
The Pentagon's Neurosis: Fallujah
Gulag
December
11 / 12, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Running an Empire on the Cheap
Ron
Jacobs
The Drugs of War: Getting High in the Green Zone?
Saul
Landau
Listening and Talking to God About
Invading Other Countries
Gary
Leupp
Bush's Capital
Sharon
Smith
The Horrible Toll on US Troops
Dave
Lindorff
Deja Vu All Over Again: 5,000 Desertions and Counting
Uri
Avnery
The Boss Has Gone Crazy
Jude
Wanniski
The Neo-Con Smear on Kofi Annan: What Food-for-Oil Scandal?
Heather
Gray
How the South Became Republican: an Interview with John Egerton
Patrick
Cockburn / Ken Sengupta
Fallujah: the Homecoming and the Homeless
John
Pilger
Return to Kosovo: Calling the Humanitarian Bombers to Account
Joshua
Frank
All the Rage: Mr. Solomon, Say You're Sorry
Ben
Tripp
O Canada!: the Truth About the Election of 2004
John
Stanton
God Speaks!
Laura
Nathan
Porn Stars are People, Too: a Talk with Christi Lake
Poets'
Basement
Capaccio, Davies, Louise, Ford and Albert
Website
of the Day
Fallujah Photos: Killed in Their Beds
December
10, 2004
Ralph
Nader
President Bush, Stop Destroying the
Mosques of Iraq
Greg
Moses
Whitewashing Voter Fraud
Nicole
Colson
Rebellion in the Ranks: Grunts Are Resisting Stop-Loss Orders
Frederick
B. Hudson
"They Still Got Those Dogs": A New Book Probes Old
Civil Rights Lessons
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Insurgents Oppose the Occupation, Not the Elections
Kathy
Kelly
From Haiti to Iraq: Burying Water
December
9, 2004
Greg
Moses
Ask Not Who Bankrolled Fallujah
Joshua
Frank
Cobb and the Ohio Recount: Vote Fraud as Fundraiser!
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush: It's Time to
Disclose the Real Casualty Figures
Lee
Sustar
Bhopal: the Making of a Disaster
Tom
Barry
Restrictionist Resurgence
Mickey
Z.
Sander Hicks and the 9/11 Truth Movement
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush in the Bubble
Mark
Donham
Why are House Democrats Trying to
Deny Cynthia McKinney Seniority?
Gary
Corseri
On the Anniversary of John Lennon's Death, 2012
Paul
de Rooij
The Voices of Sharon's Little Helpers
December
8, 2004
Ralph
Nader
Will the Real Michael Moore Ever Re-Emerge?
Ann
Harrison
The Ohio Recount: Reluctant Officials
and Few Rules
Paul
Craig Roberts
War Crime
Dave
Lindorff
They've Got a Secret: Inside the $40 Billion Black Budget for
Spying
Patrick
Cockburn / Andrew Buncombe
CIA Warning on Iraq: Fallujah Did Not Break the Back of the Insurgency
Col.
Dan Smith
Rules of Engagement in Iraq
Emily
Alves / Michael Johnson
Paradise Lost: Corruption and Clientelism in Costa Rica
Richard
Oxman
The Dylan Bob Wouldn't Mention: Up With Dylan Thomas
Ron
Jacobs
In Fallujah, Freedom Isn't Free
December
7, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Running Battles in Baghdad
Behrooz
Ghamari
Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent
Dave
Lindorff
American Fantasies: Psst! Hey Buddy,
Did You Hear How Well the War's Going?
Joshua
Frank
Dean at the DNC?
Richard
Oxman
Down with Dylan: the Insufferable Interview
Ray
McGovern
All Mosquitoes, No Swamp
John
Chuckman
The Invasion of Hallifax: The Imperial Wizard Visits Canada
James
Petras
Latin America: the Empire Changes Gears
Website
of the Day
ToxMap: Who's Poisoning You
December
6, 2004
Paul
Craig Roberts
Paranoia and Pre-emption: Is the
Bush Administration Certifiable?
December
4 / 6, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to
be Kidding
Joe
Bageant
Dining with the Rhinos
Alan
Maass
Reporting from the Ground in Iraq: an Interview with Patrick
Cockburn
Brian
Cloughley
Democracy, Bush-style, in the Gulf
Laura
Carlsen
Latin America Shifts Left
Lenni
Brenner
Jefferson, Madison, Bush and Religion
Anna
Ioakimedes
Brazil's Haitian Mission: Doing God's Work or Washington's?
Uri
Avnery
Widow of Opportunity?
Fred
Gardner
Supreme Court Hears Medical Pot Case
Dave
Zirin
Steroids to Heaven
Jackie
Corr
Mining Camp Blues: the Red State Variation
Don
Fitz
Will Greens Abandon IRV?
Lucy
Herschel
"Art can be a Weapon of the Oppressed": an Interview
with Artist Anthony Papa
Richard
Oxman
No Angels in America: Bashing the Gay Play
Ron
Jacobs
Holiday Greeting Card
Poets'
Basement
Collins, Albert, LaMorticella
December
3, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate
Ben
Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a
Time of Crisis
Joe
Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer
Gilberto Soto
Matthew
B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson
Meir
Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins
Bob
Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran
December
2, 2004
Tito
Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture
Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free
Behzad
Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration
Dr.
Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes
Frank
/ Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds
Lee
Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt
Patrick
Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq
Mark
Engler
Seattle at Five
Michael
Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham
Nate
Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds
Saul
Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson
December
1, 2004
Phillip
Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias
in Wire Coverage of Colombia
Dave
Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?:
Budweiser's Racist Commercial
Ghali
Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation:
200 Children Die Every Day
Donna
J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"
Patrick
Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency
Nick
Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan
Mike
Ferner
The Battle of Toledo
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising
Kathy
Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes
of the UN in Iraq
November
30, 2004
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy
Toni
Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence
Patrick
Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq
Chuck
Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization
Movement
Adam
Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana
Gregory
Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for
North Korea
Website
of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!
November
29, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of
the CIA?
Omar
Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine:
Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint
Mike
Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to
Market a Siege
Uri
Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me
Some Credit!"
Matt
Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers
Patrick
Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign
Minister
Alan
Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters
Justin
Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later
Antony
Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy
Gary
Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real
Issue
Website
of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone
November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
November
26, 2004
Peter
Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?
Greg
Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry
of Immigration
Dave
Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the
Way
Gary
Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...
Paul
Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?
Website
of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch
November
25, 2004
Willliam
Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks
to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"
Mitchel
Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving
Mike
Ferner
An Uncommon Mom
November
24, 2004
Gila
Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence
is Set by the State
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The
Other Mess in Congress
Christopher
Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay
Dave
Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony
Ron
Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem
Ken
Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah
Diana
Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader
John
L. Hess
Safire the Shameless
Jason
Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear
War
Map
of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860
November
23, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
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.
|
Weekend Edition
January 1 / 2, 2005
Beyond the Myth of Ritual Sacrifice
The
Erotics of Nonviolence
By
SEAN DONAHUE
In the spring of 2000, a Dutch subsidiary
of the Bechtel corporation re-routed a stream that flowed through
a village near Cochabamba, Bolivia. The people had enough wells
to keep their homes and farms supplied with water, but when the
stream was diverted the trees which once grew along its banks
began to wither and die. When the trees died, the birds stopped
coming, and the people lost the beautiful music that once brightened
their mornings. And so these campesinos and factory workers took
to the streets, confronting soldiers armed with rifles and teargas
grenades, putting their bodies on the line to fight for the right
to hear birds sing at dawn. (See "Oscar Olivera: Spokesman
for the People" by Amy Casada-Alaniz, Narco News, August
23, 2004.)
There is something ecstatic
and alive in this struggle of the poorest of the poor for the
right to beauty and dignity. There is nothing symbolic or contrived
here -- the people of the village weren't playing out roles scripted
for them by history or culture or ideology, their resistance
was a spontaneous and organic reaction to seeing the land that
they loved threatened by people who had no understanding of or
connection to their lives. It was an act of love, an act of
passion, something visceral that required no translation or explanation.
All of this points to what
is lacking in many of the resistance movements in the U.S. today.
We have become too enamored of the abstract and the symbolic.
We know what we are resisting, but we have lost any real connection
to that which we want to liberate, preserve, or bring into being.
Perhaps most disturbingly, we have become caught up in a morality
play, in which our victories are defined by how much suffering
we can endure, where the intensity and integrity of an action
are defined by whether or not the police are provoked into firing
teargas and rubber bullets, or by how much jail time the judge
hands down, or how quickly the court shuts down our attempts
to talk about nuclear weapons and international law.
Consciously or unconsciously
too many of us have bought into the idea of a mystical economy
of suffering, in which our own physical sacrifice will somehow
reduce someone else's pain, somehow transmute a violent system.
But this very economy of suffering requires and embraces violence
ñ even romanticizes it.
One of the central tenets of
Western nonviolence is that "unmerited suffering is redemptive."
But is there anything fundamentally redemptive in the rape of
a child or the poisoning of a river?
Suffering is suffering, and
by proclaiming that it is redemptive, we deny its reality. We
can embrace suffering as a teacher, and recognize it as an essential
characteristic of our constant process of birthing and rebirthing
ñ but neither is possible without facing head on the real
and essential nature of that suffering.
Somewhere along the line the
willingness to endure suffering in order to defend life, which
is inherently connected to a deep and vibrant love, became distorted
into a belief that the amount of suffering we were willing to
endure was a measure of our love. This is inextricably linked
with a puritanical denial of pleasure, sexuality, and the self
that marks both the Christian and the Gandhian traditions that
have shaped most contemporary Western thinking about nonviolence.
I once heard a Plowshares activist
speak about how we must "crucify our desires." The
crucifixion of desire is not a renunciation of violence, but
a choice to turn that violence inward. Empathy and compassion
are rooted in understanding the shared desire of other beings
for liberation and for life. When we deny our own desires, our
own passions, our own flesh, we lose that empathy and compassion
and replace them with moralistic abstractions.
The feminist psychoanalyst,
Julia Kristeva, writes about the chora, the pulsing core of pure
desire that drives all our actions from the moment we emerge
from the womb. Early in childhood, the chora is subjected to
a "symbolic order" which restricts and limits its expression.
But sometimes there is a rupture in that order, something emerges
that is so sublimely beautiful that the symbolic order has to
be reshaped in order to accommodate its reality, and if the order
fails to bend and change it will be shattered. This is the site
of poetry, of art, of orgasm, of magick.
Truly nonviolent resistance
comes not from suppressing these moments, not from attempting
to sublimate what is already sublime, but from riding their wild
and undeniably erotic energy. The only love that has the power
to transform is the visceral, primal love at the core of our
being, that recognizes the pulsing chora at the center of all
life, and wants to shatter the symbolic order and set that chaotic
force free into the universe.
This kind of nonviolence also
demands that we do away with abstractions and connect with the
direct experience of other people's lives. When we do this we
begin to recognize the pervasiveness of violence in every day
life. In her profile of Oscar Olivera, one of the leaders in
the struggle against the privatization of water and natural gas
in Bolivia, Amy Casada-Alaniz wrote that:
"The 'Wars' for water
and gas, Oscar says, are so termed by the people in general who
in reality live in struggle and 'war' daily. He asks: is it not
violence to wake up every morning in a state of anxiety, unsure
of how the day will play outÖ vulnerable to employers whom
he testifies force birth control on female workers, threatening
them with the loss of their jobs in no uncertain terms if they
should ever become pregnant? He says that some factory working
women here are told that they must accept a copper apparatus
that will prevent pregnancy, an IUD, if they wish to keep their
jobs, and that they must keep this secret from their husbands.
'Is this not violence?' asks Oscar. [ . . . ] This is war every
day; it is essentially violent. It is in this context that the
resistance of the people empowered with a voice and given an
ear, name their collective struggle: WAR."
It was in this same spirit
that Diane DiPrima wrote that "The only war that matters
is the war against the imagination." The daily repression
that denies people the ability to be fully alive is as real and
as violent as the war in Iraq. If our resistance ignores, or
worse yet replicates, this repression, we are complicit.
Conversely, resistance that
is rooted in real compassion, real empathy, born of living passion,
is liberating in and of itself ñ a revolution both in
its end and in its means. In Linda Hogan's beautiful novel, Solar
Storms, the narrator, an Indigenous woman resisting the construction
of hydro-electric dams that would destroy her ancestral homeland,
says that:
"For my people, the problem
has always been this: that the only possibility of our survival
has been resistance [ . . . ] To fight has meant that we can
respect ourselves, the Beautiful People. Now we believed in ourselves
once again. The old songs were there, came back to us. Sometimes
I think the ghost dancers were right, that we would return, that
we were always returning."
Its time for us to return to
the erotic passion for life that inspires our resistance, to
claim our own power fully and use it to awaken other people to
the knowledge of their own power to be free.
Sean Donahue is a poet, journalist and nonviolence
trainer living in Gloucester, MA. He wrote the chapter on Rand
Beers, Kerry's top foreign policy advisor, for CounterPunch's
new book on the 2004 elections, Dime's
Worth of Difference. He can be reached at: wrldhealer@yahoo.com
Weekend Edition
Features for November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
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