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Calling All CounterPunchers!
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Barack Obama came into office preaching hope and promising change. Nine months later, hope is diminishing and change has yet to arrive. From the cratering economy to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from warrantless wiretaps to a fatally compromised health care plan, from banker bailouts to ongoing rendition flights, this new administration governs a lot like the old. In spite of this, many progressive outlets have gone soft on Obama. We haven't. That's why so many of you have found a refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We appreciate the support and are prepared for the fierce battles to come.
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Today's Stories October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009 Jeffrey St. Clair / October 29, 2009 Michael Neumann Mike Whitney Gary Leupp Conn Hallinan Marshall Auerback Laura Flanders Eamonn McCann David Macaray Mark Weisbrot Stephen Soldz Christopher Brauchli Website of the Day October 28, 2009 Moshe Adler Dave Lindorff Frank Joseph Smecker Alexandra Early M. Shahid Alam Vijay Prashad John Ross Franklin Lamb Gregory Travis Susan Galleymore Website of the Day October 27, 2009 Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Stewart J. Lawrence Alan Farago Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Bouthaina Shaaban Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around Iain Boal Carl Finamore Jayne Lyn Stahl Website of the Day October 26, 2009 Bill Quigley / Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Mike Whitney Michael Snedeker Shamus Cooke David Michael Green Martha Rosenberg Patrick Bond Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day October 23-25, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Christopher Ketcham Jeff Gore Gareth Porter Jayne Lyn Stahl Saul Landau Mike Whitney Nikolas Kozloff Ron Jacobs Russell Mokhiber Missy Beattie Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Stephen Lendman David Ker Thomson Rannie Amiri Ronnie Cummins Norm Kent Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Ben Sonnenberg Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 22, 2009 Dan Pearson / Jonathan Cook Paul Craig Roberts The US as Failed State Mark Engler Johann Hari Brian M. Downing Eric Toussaint Tom Mountain Israel Shamir Charles Thomson Website of the Day October 21, 2009 Pam Martens Linn Washington, Jr. Liaquat Ali Khan D. K. Wilson Franklin Lamb Norman Solomon Stephen Fleischman Patrice Higonnet Binoy Kampmark Kevin Coval / Website of the Day October 20, 2009 Sharon Smith Tariq Ali Mark Brenner Bouthaina Shaaban Michael D. Yates Dean Baker Dave Lindorff John Ross Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Kevin Zeese Gilad Atzmon Website of the Day October 19, 2009 Mike Whitney Greg Moses John Ross Michael Donnelly Jayne Lyn Stahl Eric Walberg Russell Mokhiber Barbara Rose Johnston John V. Whitbeck Christopher Ketcham Website of the Day October 16-18, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Carl Ginsburg Ralph Nader Nikolas Kozloff Carlo Galli Dave Lindorff Catherine Rottenberg
/ Neve Gordon Marshall Auerback Nicola Nasser Windy Cooler James L. Secor Ron Jacobs Wes Jackson Jesse Lerner-Kinglake David Ker Thomson Against Leaders Missy Beattie Emily Ratner Stephen Martin Michael Snedeker Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Peter Stone Brown Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 15, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Brian M. Downing Ramzy Baroud Danny Weil M. Idrees Ahmad Margaret Kimberley Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Harvey Wasserman Nirmal Ghosh Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 14, 2009 Michael Neumann M. Reza Pirbhai Gareth Porter Paul Craig Roberts John Strausbaugh Fortress Moon Ralph Nader Dean Baker Charles Modiano Nadia Hijab Walter Brasch Website of the Day October 13, 2009 Peter Linebaugh Shamus Cooke John Ross Brendan Cooney Frida Berrigan Yves Engler David Macaray Dave Lindorff Mark Weisbrot Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day October 12, 2009 Pam Martens Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg Jessica Arents Eamonn McCann Bill Hatch Sen. Russell Feingold Niranjan Ramakrishnan Gideon Levy Iyad Burnat Alan Cabal Dan Bacher Website of the Day October 9-11, 2009 Alexander Cockburn James Bovard Kathleen and Bill Christison Andy Worthington Marc Levy Tariq Ali Mike Whitney Paul Craig Roberts Alan Nasser Jack Z. Bratich Steve Breyman David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Paul Buchheit Jim Goodman Missy Beattie Michael Leonardi Nadia Hijab Mel Packer David Macaray James T. Phillips Charles R. Larson Michael Donnelly David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 8, 2009 Saul Landau Paul Fitzgerald / Linn Washington, Jr. Marshall Auerback Dave Lindorff David Rosen Chris Darimont / Misty MacDuffee John V. Walsh Stewart Lawrence Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 7, 2009 Brendan Cooney Paul Craig Roberts Dean Baker Jonathan Cook John Stanton Joanne Mariner Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada Stephen Lendman Sen. Russell Feingold Mary Lynn Cramer Website of the Day October 6, 2009 Mike Whitney Gareth Porter Jonathan Cook Boris Kagarlitsky Iain Boal Ron Jacobs John Ross Michael Dickinson Stephen Fleischman Ira Glunts Missy Beattie Website of the Day October 5, 2009 Pam Martens Mike Whitney Paul Craig Roberts Harry Browne Sara Mann Omar Barghouti Shamus Cooke Brenda Norrell Fred Gardner Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap Website of the Day October 2-4, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Diana Johnstone Greg Moses William Blum Brian Cloughley Russell Mokhiber John Ross Ellen Brown David Ker Thomson David Macaray Gary Engler Robert Fantina Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer Anthony Papa Joe Allen Harry Browne Ron Jacobs Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Weekend Edition A Review of Richard North Patterson's "Exile"One Man's Truth, Another Man's LiesBy RON JACOBS Truth, it is said, is often stranger than fiction. The converse this adage is another that states that in fiction one often finds the truth. When one is dealing with history, both of these can be true and usually are. This is equally true when it comes to politics and war. And sometimes love. Richard North Patterson's 2007 novel Exile provides pertinent examples of all of these possibilities. Set in the very recent past, the novel opens with the story of a love affair between an essentially secular US Jewish man and a Palestinian woman during his last semester at Harvard Law School. The affair itself is complicated from the beginning because the woman, Hana Arif, is already betrothed to another Palestinian through an arrangement between the two Palestinians families. While the reader considers the stories of Hana and David Wolfe's interludes of lovemaking, the politics and history of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples make their appearance. Mr. Wolfe has little connection to his people's past while Ms. Arif lives with her people's history as an essential part of her being. Despite David's best attempts to force a transcendence of that history and to convince Hani to stay with him instead of going back to Palestine and marry the spouse already chosen for her, Saeb Khalid, he fails and leaves Cambridge. Meanwhile, the movements of two suicide bombers are related as they make their way to San Francisco thirteen years later. The rest of the narrative moves ahead thirteen years. Wolfe is a successful defense attorney in San Francisco. He becomes engaged to a Jewish woman whose father was in Auschwitz and whose history defines his torment and his life. In addition, he has staked his emotional survival and his people's survival to the state of Israel. So has his daughter, Carole Short. Wolfe, quintessentially American, still doesn't understand what he obviously considers an unhealthy obsession. Of course, the Short's connection to their history and the suffering of the Jewish people reminds Wolfe of Ms. Arif's similar connection. Indeed, the words the Shorts use to describe their need to define their lives through the fate of Israel can't help but remind Wolfe of Arif's similar need to define hers through the fate of Palestine. As fate would have it, the Prime Minister of Israel is visiting San Francisco and the Shorts, being respected embers of the city's Jewish upper echelons, are hosting a dinner party for the man. This isn't Benjamin Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon, mind you, but a reasonably progressive Israeli politician who is negotiating with Fatah to trade land and prisoners for peace and is also promising some kind of return for those Palestinians still living who were driven from their homes by the Israelis in 1947 and 1948. Of course, these ideas are not popular with certain Israelis and certain Palestinians, so the threat of assassination is omnipresent. Of course, the Prime Minister is murdered and a bomber is arrested. The day before his murder, Wolfe received a call from Hani Arif, who was traveling with her husband Saeb and daughter Munira. Saeb has traded in his Marxist ideology of his Harvard days for a fundamentalist Islamist one. Arif has moderated her views, yet she resigned from the team negotiating with Israel because she lacked trust in their words after settlements were built in the West Bank when the Israelis promised none would be constructed. Not long after the assassination, Hani Arif and her family are forbidden to leave the country because the FBI believes Arif is connected to the case. She calls Wolfe and asks him to be their attorney. Despite misgivings, he agrees. Not long afterwards, Arif is arrested as the mastermind of the assassination and Wolfe continues to serve as her attorney. He discovers that his feelings for her remain although now they are mixed with misgivings as to their guilt and her motivations. His fiancée and her father, along with most of the rest of his friends and acquaintances begin to distance themselves from him. This is when the novel begins to move into a realm where truths are defined by one's connections to the past and the nature of that past. A realm where there are no certitudes except those held by individuals that refuse to acknowledge the certitudes of their enemies. It is a place where people's commitments to the past prevent them from seeing the present clearly and thereby define their actions in the future. The history of the Jewish Holocaust is as much a part of this realm as is the story of the Palestinian diaspora under the guns of the Israelis and their US supporters. Wolfe's journey into this world where everything is true and everything is false is defined by two element--his refusal to let Arif die at the hands of the state and the embers of his love for her that still smolder in his heart. His journey takes him to Israel and the West Bank. It leads him into the netherworlds of Israeli and Palestinian politics and their military components. He finds himself acting as both attorney and spy and witnesses death and despair beyond any thing he might have imagined. There are many twists and turns in this story, some expected and some quite surprising, and all of them work. In Exile, Patterson presents the hatreds, fears, and the conspiracies of humans and history that abound in the Middle East. His descriptions of Wolfe's journey into the world of zealots and politicians portrays the consequences of the truth of true believers and their intransigence. His primary protagonist Wolfe has his own truths based on assumptions that are not those of the extremists on either side, but are instead those held by many (if not most) US residents. They are not extreme except in their inability to understand the assumptions of those they consider to be extremists. This makes them extreme in their desire for what they consider to be moderation. At the same time, they tend to give more credence to Israel's claims than they do to those made by the Palestinians. Underneath it all is a fear of Iran and its intentions. This uniquely red, white and blue understanding, claims Patterson again and again through the voices of his characters, can be reached only by those who erase their past as soon as it is created. It's a dangerous understanding, too, especially when the power of that red, white and blue nation tries to force a similar understanding on nations and people whose history began centuries before its own. The current war in Iraq is a prime example of the results of this understanding which understands little. This is a book about women, too. Many of the most interesting characters are Patterson's female ones. Hani Arif is a complicated woman whose politics, history and loves define who she is and how she acts. Her friend Nisreen is equally so. Her cousin Sausan lives in her mother's village in Israel, the Muslim daughter of a Christian and grandfather of a Jew who can not live on the other side of Israel's barrier because of her heritage. These women are some of the strongest personalities in this novel. Transcending the restrictions of their culture and the scandalous whispers of their peers, they live lives defined more by who they are than by what they aren't. Legal and political thrillers abound on the best seller lists these days. Mr. Patterson is no stranger to those lists, either. On occasion, a book will come along in this genre that transcends a well woven story of deceit, dealmaking, and conflict that make this type of novel such a good read. When that happens, the novel in question is no longer just a good read. It is an exploration of the human condition and a discussion of humanity's different way of perceiving that condition. Many of John LeCarre's works exist in this stratum, as do the novels of Neil Gordon and Graham Greene (among others). Mr. Patterson's Exile should be included as well. Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Obama and Black America Ten months into Obama-time, the plight of black Americans is terrible. Yet overwhelmingly they rally behind the president. In a powerful report from the Deep South Kevin Alexander Gray asks the question: what should the black political agenda be? Mark Rudd counterposes “organizing” with “activism” and describes what it will take to build a movement. H. Bruce Franklin gives a chronology of the march into Afghanistan. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and t-shirts make great presents.Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Yellowstone Drift:
"Powerful and shocking ..
Waiting for
Lightning
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