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Today's
Stories
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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Hitchens
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January
15, 2004
The Silk Road
Random
Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
By GARY LEUPP
The very term "Silk Road" is rather
magical, evoking images of camel caravans, oases, saffron-clad
missionary monks. Silk is the strongest of natural fibers; maybe
that's why China has labeled one of its missiles, exported to
Iran among other countries, the Silkworm missile. The fabled
road (actually a web of routes), by which silk traveled the ancient
world, produced strong ties between cultures. In the second century
BCE, Han China began trading with the kingdom of Bactria (Afghanistan).
Eventually roads linked Xian, in China, all the way to Antioch
on the Mediterranean coast. One might say the Silk Road in a
broader sense extended to Nara, Japan in the east, and to Rome
in the west.
The ancient Roman aristocracy was enthralled
by Chinese silks, and other commodities from the East as well,
notably pepper and cinnamon. This ensured that Rome ran a substantial
trade deficit with Asian countries as Roman silver flowed to
the latter. Huge caches of Roman coins have been found all over
India. Along with commodities, ideas flowed via the Silk
Road. Buddhism spread into Central Asia and China from India,
and into Afghanistan and Iran by the first few centuries of the
Common Era. Christianity traveled the road (and maritime routes)
to India and beyond, disseminated by missionaries and merchants.
The two faiths may well have crossed paths in Syria; non-Biblical
features of Catholicism, such as a celibate clergy, monks and
nuns, clerical vestments, rosaries, worship of saints, reverence
for relics, and use of incense in masses, were all to be found
in Buddhism before Christianity existed.
St. Clement of Alexandria (Egypt) was
aware of Buddha as an historical figure; he mentioned him in
a homily delivered about the year 200. In 393 St. Jerome, in
Bethlehem, wrote in a work defending the doctrine of Christ's
virgin birth that Buddha, according to the Indians, had also
been born of a virgin (from her right side). He treated it as
a plausible story. When you study the Silk Road, you become aware
of very interesting links between peoples, ideas, mythologies.
Now, along this Silk Road there was a
town called Bam, in what is today Kerman province in the Islamic
Republic of Iran. It was a flourishing marketplace by the third
century if not earlier; at some point, a great fort (the Arg-e-Bam
or Citadel of Bam), the largest adobe building in the world,
surrounded by moats, high walls and circular guard towers, was
constructed here. In its long history, Bam must have been the
scene of Zoroastrian rites, Buddhist missions, Nestorian Christians'
proselytizing activity, and Manichean preaching, before the arrival
of Islam. Alexander the Great's troops conquered the region,
maybe before the town was established. But because Bam has been
continuously inhabited for at least 2,200 years, it is an historical
treasure, for Iran and the world. Maybe 100,000 tourists, Iranian
and foreign, visited Bam last year.
This Bam, you may know, was recently
flattened by an earthquake, 6.6 on the Richter scale. Buildings
of sunbaked bricks and straw crumbled; the walled metropolis
collapsed. About 30,000 (out of 182,000 townspeople) died. International
aid has poured in, including assistance from the United States,
which has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since the revolution
in 1979. Washington even agreed to lift sanctions on Iran for
a 90-day period. This happens just at the time that U.S.-Iranian
relations are somewhat improving, and the neocons hell-bent on
regime change in Tehran are suffering setbacks in intra-administration
debate. Just as Richard Perle and David Frum publish a new "manual
for victory" against Iran and other evils, Colin Powell
praises Tehran for signing a special protocol of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). His deputy Richard Armitage told
Congress in October that the U.S. does not, in fact, plan to
affect regime change in Iran. On the other hand, President Bush
has demanded that, as a condition for better relations, Iran
turn over al-Qaeda members apprehended in Iran to the U.S. He
fails to note that Iran has its own quarrels with al-Qaeda, and
its own right to deal with any members fleeing Afghanistan, according
to its own laws. (Perhaps one should recall here that after the
Iranian Revolution, the U.S. refused to turn over the Shah, who
had fled to the U.S., to the new Iranian regime headed by Abol
Hassan Bani-Sadr, despite the fact that the Shah had committed
crimes against the Iranian people comparable to those committed
against the Iraqis by Saddam Hussein. Outrage at such refusal
prompted the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the "hostage
crisis," and the enduring climate of enmity.)
An early report suggested that Sen. Elizabeth
Dole, former Red Cross head, might visit Bam as part of a U.S.
delegation to explore ways to help. The Iranians politely declined,
apparently, but they have gratefully accepted U.S. medical personnel,
such as the 60 sent from Boston-area hospitals.
There could be some ping-pong diplomacy in the works. But such
diplomacy will be complicated by the fact that both the U.S.
and Iranian power structures are divided. Religious fundamentalists
hold great influence in both, and seeing the world in simplistic,
Good vs. Evil, Manichean terms (did I mention Manicheanism started
in Iran, then spread along the Silk Road in all directions?)
they are inclined to march towards Armageddon, confident that
God is on their side. "Realists" (or "internationalists"
as some call them, although I think it a misuse of the noble
term), on the other hand seek the resolution of bilateral problems,
and normalization of relations, through negotiated compromise.
The U.S. is an advanced imperialist country;
Iran is a middling capitalist country dependent for its development
on international capital. Relations as "normal" (as
"normal" can be under the current international system)
are surely possible. The mullahs call the U.S. "the Great
Satan," partly because they are revolted by American culture,
but mostly because they remember the vicious rule of the U.S.-backed
Shah. But many thousands of Iranians in their forties and fifties
studied in the U.S. (in 1980 Iranians were the largest foreign
college student contingent in the country); they probably have
good feelings for the American people, if bad feelings for the
U.S. government. If the U.S. can have normal relations with Saudi
Arabia, whose clerics (and perhaps the majority of whose people)
also despise much about the U.S., and have huge economic dealings
with that oil-rich country, the U.S. can do so with Iran.
But the neocons don't want to settle
for normalized relations. Even if Iran submitted to all their
demands (nuclear inspections, al-Qaeda handover, end to support
for Hamas and Hezbollah) they wouldn't be satisfied. They want
victory over Evil, dammit, and settling for anything less
constitutes a "loss of will." Victory means toppling
regimes (like the U.S. did in Iran in 1953) and building
up new ones dedicated to good American values and democracy.
But their vision of democracy is idiosyncratic. As we see in
Iraq, it doesn't mean free elections (which could empower Islamists),
or the right to freely demonstrate, or the right to freely criticize
the imperialist enterprise. It means occupation, military bases,
and hand-picked leaders. Long term, it means exclusion from the
"democratic" political process of anyone challenging
the imperialist-dictated program. It entails adherence to the
globalization agenda, and non-hostile if not fully normalized
relations with Israel. It means an end to Islamism as a threatening
political phenomenon. But to make Muslims (or other normal people
for that matter) think like Richard Perle would require years
of occupation, and the sort of thought-remolding methods that
people throughout the Muslim world would likely resist.
So on the modern Silk Road (linking Iraq
to North Korea), Iran, the central cog in the Axis of Evil, mourns
its losses while the world in general feels cause to mourn, with
Iran, its human and cultural tragedy. Colin Powell wonders how
to use the Bam tragedy to produce a breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian
relations. So does Iranian President Khatami. Meanwhile, neocons
wonder how to use it to facilitate regime change; they dearly
hope it won't lead to any mellowing of relations with the current
regime, a regime of Evil. The mullahs similarly hope it won't
alter Iran's hostile stance towards "the Great Satan."
These two latter complement one another; as I mentioned, there
are very interesting links between people, ideas, and mythologies
the world over.
Changing the subject: this evil Satan
figure is another Iranian product trafficked down the Silk Road
for centuries. The Jews in Babylonian exile (586-538 BCE) encountered
the Iranian, Zoroastrian concept of an evil being nearly equal
in power to the good God (these called Angra Mainyu and Ahura
Mazda respectively), and developed the character of Satan, which
means "adversary" in Hebrew. He accompanied the exiles
back to Judea. In later Judaism, Satan becomes insignificant,
but in Christianity, as well as Islam, he of course remains quite
important. Christian, Manichean, and Islamic missionary efforts
and trade (and in the Islamic case, military conquest) brought
belief in Satan into India, Central Asia and beyond. In the original
Zoroastrian conception, the two deities, Evil and Good, war upon
one another throughout the history of the cosmos until the whole
process culminates in the triumph of Ahura Mazda over Angra Mainyu.
Thus, however difficult times may seem, people (at least the
most gullible, and there are many) can always have hope, knowing
that good will ultimately triumph.
But in the real world, the centuries
roll on, and people in power cynically exploit these very, very
old, simple ideas (which they themselves often do not believe)
to organize support for their own, merely mundanely evil, objectives.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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