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Today's
Stories
April
16 / 18, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the World:
Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes Reporting
in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion Story: We Rule; You
Die
April
13, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Ill, Old and Young of Fallujah Ask:
"Do We Look Like Fighters?"
Stan
Goff
The Bridge: a Rant
Dave
Lindorff
The Real Lessons of Vietnam
April 10
/ 12, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick
Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other Delicacies
Robert
Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview with Lee
Evans
Brandy
Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon
Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website
of the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9,
2004
Robert
Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L.
Hess
The
Non--Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick
Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas
Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7,
2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick
Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali
Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert
Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William
Blum
The
Anti--Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan
Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al--Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert
Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
|
Weekend
Edition
April 16 / 18, 2004
Dead Babies
Fallujah's
Collateral Damage
By BRANDY BAKER
Mainstream
media reported that many Iraqi civilians were outraged over the US Marines’
claims that most of the hundreds of casualties in Falluja were insurgents.
Actually, mainstream media did not; Patrick Cockburn here on CounterPunch
did. The mainstream media is paying little to no attention to any of
the Iraqis who have perished in the occupation. They use lifeless language
such as “stability”, “effort”, “situation”,
“civil defense”, “new assaults”, and “elements”
to describe “the situation.” Colin Powell recently employed
the term, “reconstruction activity”; Halliburton is now
an “energy-services firm.”
Who dropped those
bombs and who killed the “gunmen”? Oh no, the passive voice
must be used to cover these active atrocities: bombs were dropped and
“gunmen” are killed. There. Such cold, ambiguous words and
fuzzy phrasing in a time of so much death. Government institutions and
corporations count on their own vagueness and verbosity to misplace
the truth and assure their own survival.
Baby: pronounced
bay-bee. The word itself is a delight to utter; it lives. Baby brings
forth the feeling of a baby’s fleshy, tender cheek touching mine
as I try to burp her. When you hold a baby up in front of you and you
smile at her, you can see that she is smiling back at you even if her
pacifier is covering her mouth. Her eyes scrunch and get bigger at the
same time. If she gets too excited, the pacifier will fall out her mouth
as she coos with bliss. When I say the word baby, I see green, yellow,
blue, and pink pastels that make up the color of the rooms in their
nurseries, their stuffed animals, and their clothes.
I worked
the night shift at a discount retailer last summer that sells more baby
products than any parent would ever need. My job was to unpack and hang
the tiny attire up for display. The infants department was quite small,
but there were many clothes. Awww, look at these little pants, shirts,
shoes, socks on the tiny hangers or packaged in the petite plastic containers,
I would gush. And some of my co-workers would do the same if they saw
a particularly cute pajama set, raincoat, or hat. Sometimes, they would
put a specific piece aside and buy it in the morning after work, when
the store opened. Almost all of the other women had children, some had
grandchildren. Some of the women were coming from their first jobs to
work their second while their babies were home sleeping. Watching a
sleeping baby is in itself euphoric. This baby looks like he is in peaceful
slumber: http://english.aljazeera.net/
The last time I
saw a picture of a dead baby was also the first time that I ever saw
a picture of a dead baby; it was after Timothy McVeigh, among others,
bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma.
One could convince
herself that this baby was indeed sleeping if it were not for the burns
on his face and the fact that, though covered up, he is laying on the
ground. His skin still looks soft, doesn’t it? Did this baby laugh
the morning before his death? An hour before his death? And what do
Iraqi babies wear? Are their clothes miniatures versions of what Iraqi
adults wear? And did his parents survive? If not, how did his relatives
feel when they saw his clothes at home after his death? Is the home
still standing? What color was the last blanket that was bought for
him? I do not know the answers, but I do know that when all babies make
tight little fists, they have a strong grip. What was the last thing
this baby gripped? And when babies see something of interest, the first
place it goes is in their mouths. I remember my aunt holding my cousin’s
baby when he was four months old; he was trying to bite the bright patterns
off of her shirt. When a baby is laughing, she sounds like she is up
to no good, and those around her start laughing. And my friend told
me several years ago that when her son was a baby, he was easier to
take care of before he could walk; she could leave him in his carseat
and go use the phone or wash the dishes. But when he started walking,
she could not leave him unattended. This baby does not look like he
was old enough to learn how to walk.
The US media will
not say the word baby in their reporting on Iraq, but you will hear
the word baby on Oprah, Dateline, and Friends because American babies
on TV “produce revenue.” Bush did not utter the word baby
in his recent address to the nation. The US media will not show the
picture of this dead baby or the pictures of many more babies, children,
mothers, and the elderly who have died in this occupation. The White
House could not explain away more than one image of a dead baby, whether
Iraqi, Afghani, Palestinian, Canadian, or American. No matter what her
ethnicity, a baby’s aura is more powerful than white supremacy.
Show the pictures and you will have an angry public. If they show these
babies’ pictures as many times as they have said that dead phrase
“weapons of mass destruction”, the occupation would end.
I have never held
a dead baby. I hope that I never have to. But if a baby near me was
killed, I would want to. I would wrap him in a blanket to make sure
that he stayed warm, tenderly rock him, and keep telling myself that
he was sleeping. And I would wonder who would do such a thing and why?
Brandy
Baker can be reached at: bbaker@ubalt.edu
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