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February
13, 2002
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
February
4, 2002
Eric Miller/Beth
Daley
Five
Weapons Systems
That Bilk the Taxpayers
Kenneth
Roth
Dear
Condoleezza,
You've Misstated the
Geneva Convention
Robert
Jensen
The
Occupation Must End
Shahid
Alam
How
Different Are
Islamic Societies?
David
Vest
Everybody
Says I Loathe You
John Chuckman
American
Politics of Grief
February
3, 2002
Zoltan
Grossman
War
and New Military Bases
February
2, 2002
Francis
Schor
Carlucci's
Strange Career
February
1, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
The
Great Ashcroft Cover Up
Jeremy
Voas
Why
We're Suing Ashcroft
David
Vest
10
Things I Know About Him
January
31, 2002
Rahul
Mahajan
The
State of the Union:
A New Cold War
Dave Marsh
Miles
Copeland, War
and the Future of Music
John Pilger
The
Colder War
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Killer Dog, Weird Couple
Dr. Susan
Block
Blowback
and Daniel Pearl
January
30, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Linda
Lay, Hill and Knowlton and the Tears of a Clown
Jack McCarthy
Free
Noelle Bush!
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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February 13,
2002
American Journal
Banning The Koran
(and the Talmud, and The Bible)
By Alexander Cockburn
Call it another skirmish in the war on terror,
which is translating these days as more or less anything deemed
unpalatable to social harmony. Los Angeles school officials are
pulling an edition of the Koran from the district's libraries
because of complaints that the footnotes are anti-Semitic. This
particular edition of Islam's Good Book dates from 1934.
An example of one such offending footnote:
"The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and
all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. But there
were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in their
philosophy. Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."
This doesn't seem so bad, but I suppose
you can never be too careful. A story in the Los Angeles Times
reports that copies of "The Meaning of the Holy Quran"
were donated in December to the Los Angeles Unified School District
by a local Muslim foundation. A school district official told
the Times that the books, a goodwill gesture in response to
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were distributed to the schools
last week "without the usual content review."
It surely won't be long before the Bible
is pulled of school library shelves as well, since the Old Testament,
is rough on the Palestinians and the New Testament rough on the
Jews. Try the Book of Numbers, chapter 25, which has sentiments
on racial harmony I assume to be different from those of the
Los Angeles School District. God is furious about sexual intermingling
between the children of Israel and the hosts of Midian. Phineas,
son of Eleazar, having risen up with a javelin, "went after
the man of Israel into the tent and thrust them both through,
the man of Israel and the woman through her belly." God
is well pleased and signifies his approval by visiting a pestilence
on the Midianites: "So the plague was stayed from the children
of Israel. And those that died in the plague were twenty and
four thousand."
Also joining the anti-Bible coalition
will presumably be the National Organization of Women, unless
its officials are swayed by the fact, apparent in the passage
just quoted, that Phineas was pro-choice, albeit in a somewhat
drastic manner. Here's St Paul on the status of women: "The
head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is man;
and the head of Christ is God."
Though my basic view is that any childish
mind not innoculated by compulsory religion is open to any infection,
by all means let us sweep the Jewish Bible, the Christian Bible
and the Koran off every bookshelf whither might stray the hand
of impressionable youth. Such a cleansing act would return us
to the very roots of the European enlightenment.
An interesting review by Jonathan Ree
appears in a recent edition of the London Review of Books, discussing
the origins of the European enlightenment, specifically a pamphlet
originating in the Netherlands and circulating in manuscript
form around Europe in the 1680s. It was called the Traite des
Trois Imposteurs (Treatise on Three Impostors), arguing that
all the above mentioned Holy Scriptures were, as Ree puts it,
"fabricated by conspiracies of priests who somehow managed
to pass them off as the word of God."
The first impostor was Moses, educated
by Egyptians, who pulled the wool over the eyes of the credulous
children of Israel; the second was Jesus who learned Moses' political
astuteness, picked up some mangled ideas from Plato and other
Greek philosophers and in Ree's words, "surrounded himself
with a troupe of voluble imbeciles who were prepared to believe
everything he said, even when he claimed his mother was a virgin
and his father a holy ghost." The third impostor was Mohammed
who learned everything he needed to know from the other two charlatans.
The authors of the pamphlet have never
been identified, but according to Margaret Jacob in her very
influential 1981 study, The Radical Enlightenment, if they had
a philosophical tutor it would have been Spinoza, a Dutch Jew.
The way things are headed, even that identification will probably
construed as being anti-Semitic, prompting worried school board
officials in sensitive school districts to ban the London Review
and Spinoza and the Enlightenment, along with the Talmud, the
Holy Bible and the Koran. Hell, the kids can get probably get
by without them. Let them read Martha Stewart and learn something
useful about material things.
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