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50 Years After The Flight of the Dalai Lama, Where is Tibet Today?
Half a century ago this month the Dalai Lama fled Tibet as the People’s Liberation Army seized control of Lhasa. Today Beijing orders official rejoicing for the anniversary of “emancipation day for a million serfs”, even as Tibetans chafe under Beijing’s boot. In a brilliant report Chaohua Wang reports on the struggle for the future of Tibet. ALSO, Alexander Cockburn addresses the big question: How prepared is the left with ideas and programs in these days of crisis? It has the opportunity to change the face of America, down to the shopping malls. Is it ready? 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 gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories March 13 / 15, 2009 Peter Lee Diana Johnstone March 12 , 2009 Sharon Smith Christopher Ketcham Mike Whitney Ray McGovern Eric Toussaint / John Ross M. Reza Pirbhai Chris Floyd Steve Early Quentin Gee Website of the Day March 11 , 2009 Mike Roselle Paul Craig Roberts Henry A. Giroux Nikolas Kozloff Norm Kent Mitu Sengupta Ludwig Watzal David Macaray William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day March 10 , 2009 Franklin Spinney Vijay Prashad Stan Cox Zoltan Grossman Reuven Kaminer Jonathan Cook Dave Lindorff Brian McKenna Harvey Wasserman Corey Pein Website of the Day
March 9 , 2009 Pam Martens Ralph Nader Peter Lee Mike Whitney Peter Morici Dean Baker Steve Ault Stephen Lendman Farooq Sulehria Belén Fernández Website of the Day March 6-8 , 2009 Alexander Cockburn Chris Floyd Uri Avnery Dave Lindorff Mark Weisbrot David Ker Thomson Phil Aliff Rebekah Ward Tracey Briggs Dean Baker Daniel P. Wirt, M.D. Carl Finamore Wajahat Ali David Michael Green David Macaray Michael Dickinson Susie Day Bob Sommer Ben Sonnenberg David Yearsley DC Larson Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend March 5 , 2009 James G. Abourezk Kathleen and Bill Christison Robert Weissman Patrick Cockburn William Blum Robert Fantina Saul Landau Benjamin Dangl Christopher Brauchli Website of the Day March 4, 2009 Marjorie Cohn Mike Whitney Ron Jacobs Ashley Smith Joanne Mariner Dan Bacher Mark Engler Franklin Lamb Cal Winslow David Mandelzys Website of the Day March 3, 2009 Conn Hallinan Fawzia Afzal-Khan Brian M. Downing Robert Larson Daniel P. Wirt, MD Russell Mokhiber William Loren Katz Kathy Sanborn Pauline Imbach Christopher Ketcham Website of the Day March 2, 2009 Andrea Peacock Paul Craig Roberts Peter Lee John Blair Peter Morici Uri Avnery Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Sonia Nettnin Andrew Lehman Website of the Day
Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Harry Browne Anthony DiMaggio Sasan Fayazmanesh Mischa Gaus Felice Pace Mike Whitney Lee Sustar Peter Lee Nicole Colson Roger Burbach Rannie Amiri Missy Beattie Dave Lindorff Robert David Steele Vivas John Ross Ralph Nader Yves Engler Alan Farago Zulfikar Majid David Yearsley Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend February 26, 2009 Dave Lindorff Jonathan Cook Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Eamonn McCann Tim Wise Tom Barry Harvey Wasserman Adam Turl David Macaray James McEnteer Website of the Day
February 25, 2009 Chris Sands M. Shahid Alam Chris Floyd Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Rachel Godfrey Wood Niranjan Ramakrishnan Ron Jacobs Nadia Hijab Dennis Loo Website of the Day February 24, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Peter Morici Jonathan Cook Paul Fitzgerald / Andy Worthington Brian Horejsi Julia Stein Norm Kent Rachel Smolker / Dennis Loo James McEnteer Website of the Day February 23, 2009 Michael Hudson Mike Roselle Patrick Cockburn Franklin Spinney Einar Már Guðmundsson Ralph Nader Jordan Flaherty Helen Redmond Dennis Loo Harvey Wasserman Terry Lodge Website of the Day February 20 / 22, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Michael Neumann / Ismael Hossein-zadeh Paul Craig Roberts Linn Washington Jr. Saul Landau Marjorie Cohn Binoy Kampmark Dave Lindorff David Yearsley David Macaray James McEnteer Rick Salutin Wayne Clark Richard Rhames Stephen Martin Mitu Sengupta Charles R. Larson Richard Morse Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend February 19, 2009 Norman Finkelstein Harry Browne Robert Bryce Brian M. Downing Fred Gardner Andy Worthington Wajahat Ali Laura Carlsen Deb Reich Christopher Ketcham Website of the Day February 18, 2009 Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney M. Shahid Alam Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Gareth Porter Eric Hobsbawm Christopher Brauchli Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day February 17, 2009 Michael Hudson Mike Whitney Ralph Nader Joanne Mariner John Ross Belén Fernández Mats Svensson David Macaray Gregory Vickrey M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Michael Dickinson Website of the Day February 16, 2009 Patrick Cockburn Oscar Guardiola-Rivera Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery P. Sainath Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown Carla Blank Patrick Irelan Dan Bacher Fidel Castro Harvey Wasserman Website of the Day February 13 - 15, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Joshua Frank Mike Whitney George Ciccariello-Maher Nikolas Kozloff Brian M. Downing Paul Craig Roberts Christopher Ketcham Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Alan Maass Chuck Spinney Phil Gasper Stephen Lendman Charles Thomson Kathy Sanborn Saul Landau Len Wengraf Harvey Wasserman David Macaray Tom Stephens Seth Sandronsky David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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March 13 / 15, 2009 The Musical PatriotMusic TortureBy DAVID YEARSLEY The human ear is defenseless. Unable to keep sound out, it must take in all it hears.Selective hearing is common phrase, but meaningless. History’s most infamous musical assault exploited the defenslessness of the ear: the massively distorted music blasted at the Branch Davidians in Waco in 1933 by the FBI wore down the compound dwellers over the seven week siege like a battleship pounding shoreline battlements. The final firestorm was prepared not only by sleep-preventing decibel levels but because of its horrifying aesthetic crimes, the most heinous being Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” Early proponents of world music, the G-men varied their play-list with sing-along Christmas carols in saccharine 1950s style arrangements, Tibetan chants and cavalry bugle blasts. Just how seriously perpetrators of sonic violence take their music can be judged by the care with which they assemble their repertoires of destruction and despair. Cult leader David Koresh, himself a failed pop singer, had begun the high-decibel musical exchange in Waco by first bombarding them with recordings of his own happy-clappy pop. This siege-busting tactic ceased when the federal forces cut the compound’s power supply. Waco was by no means the first instance of musical warfare. A few years before, the U. S. had tried to ferret out opera-lover Manuel Noriega from Panama City redoubt with a non-stop heavy metal bombardment: Madame Butterfly and La Traviata were no match for Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. The sonic assault was finally halted under pressure from the Vatican. In Gauntanamo Bay and other prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq the British rights group Reprieve has claimed that interrogation techniques have involved the uses of extremely loud music by AC/DC, and Metallica as well as theme songs from children’s televison shows like Barney & Friends. These horrors were detailed by Andy Worthington in Counterpunch back in December of last year. Unfettered by earplugs, anti-noise headphones or other defensive technologies the ear is helpless to protect itself. The eyes have lids, the ears don’t. In A Clockwork Orange when the anti-hero the violent sociopath and Beethovenian fanatic Alex is re-programmed to harmless passivity, his eyes must be propped open so he can be forced to witness acts of violence on the screen while being infused with a nausea-inducing drug. By contrast, the glorious sounds of Alex’s beloved 9th symphony of Ludwig Van accompany the images but enter unimpeded into his soul. In the increasingly loud and intrusive modern world maybe the human earlobes will begin to evolve to become like eyelids that can be closed when things get unbearable out in the aural universe. But even this evolutionary advance wouldn’t have neutralized the sub-woofers of Waco. One of the great advantages of using music as an implement of torture is that it leaves no physical mark. As Plato and many other writers have known, music works directly on the soul. There is nothing more uplifting nor potentially devastating. Over the past few years New York University professor of music Suzanne Cusick has been lecturing far and wide on the United States’ use of music in interrogation and as a battlfield weapon. The soft-spoken, incisive Cusick came to Cornell in the spring of 2006 to deliver the year’s principle music lectured, named after Donald J. Grout. Grout was one of the great music historians of the 20th century, and a deeply conservative man who would have hated every word Cusick uttered that afternoon in a corner seminar tucked in an upper floor of Cornell’s music building looking out over the campus’s Arts Quad and to Cayuga Lake below. Her talk concerned itself neither with the kinds of music nor the art’s exalted purposes one usually discusses in the Ivory Tower. The original title for Cusick’s lecture had promised a tedious internal investigation of the discipline of musicology: “Buying (Back) the Farm, or Thoughts the Cultural Work of American Musicologies.” But she changed her topic unannounced and delivered instead sixty minutes on “Music as Weapon / Music as Torture.” (For a version of the paper go to http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm) Much of Cusick’s talk let the chilling facts speak for themselves: “On November 18, 1998, now-defunct Synetics Corporation [was contracted] to produce a tightly focused beam of infrasound–that is, vibration waves slower than 100 vps–meant to produce effects that range from ‘disabling or lethal.’ In 1999, Maxwell Technologies patented a HyperSonic Sound System, another “highly directional device ... designed to control hostile crowds or disable hostage takers”. The same year Primex Physics International patented both the “Acoustic Blaster”, which produced “repetitive impulse waveforms” of 165dB, directable at a distance of 50 feet, for “antipersonnel applications”, and the Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generator, which produces ‘high intensity impulsive sound waves by purely electrical means.’” She went on to describe the American Technology Corporation’s development beginning some ten years ago of the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a weapon “capable of projecting a ‘strip of sound’ (15 to 30 inches wide) at an average of 120 dB (maxing at 151 dB) that will be intelligible for 500 to 1,000 meters (depending on which model you buy), the LRAD is designed to hail ships, issue battlefield or crowd-control commands, or direct an “attention-getting and highly irritating deterrent tone for behavior modification.” (http://www.atcsd.com) Wielded by the 361st PsyOps company, the LRAD was deployed to “prepare the battlefield” in the siege of Falluja in November of 2004. The device was armed with Metallica’s “Hells’ Bells” and “Shoot to Thrill.” As Cusick repeatedly pointed out, one of the great advantages of sonic weapons and torture is that they leave no mark on the victim. Gauntanamo captive Binyam Mohamed, who was returned to England in February after his long years of imprisonment and torture, claimed in an interview London’s Mail on Sunday how his sonic torture began already in a Kabul prison in 2002 where he was held for eighteen months in complete darkness before his transfer to Gauntanamo in 2004. His body can convey no direct physical of this horrendous abuse, probably in contrast to the other forms of torture he suffered as in the scalpel he claims was used to sliced his genitals. In the Mail on Sunday interview Mohammed relates how “There were loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out a deafening volume, non-stop, 24 hours a day. They played the same CD for a month, The Eminem Show. When it was finished it went back to the beginning and started again. I couldn't sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night.' As the Daily Mail is reporting today pressure from members of parliamentary and rights groups is mounting on British Foreign secretary David Milliband to hold a judicial inquiry into Mohamed’s claims that MI5 knew about the illegal torture. Indeed, U. S. crimes against international law threaten now to engulf their coalition partner on the other side of the Atlantic. In early February details of Mohamed’s torture were excised from the dossier submitted to England’s High Court after Miliband asserted that not doing so might be detrimental to shared U. S. and UK intelligence efforts and could “cause real and significant damage to the national security and international relations of the [UK].” On February 22nd Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted that there was no “cover-up” and two weeks ago Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith refused to answer questions on torture in front of the House of Commons’ Joint Committee on Human Rights.” Yesterday, Miliband issued a blanket denial, one which bodes ill the political future of the stonewalling foreign secretary: “We abhor torture and never order it or condone it.” In the 1980s Miliband was a student at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. While there he was elected Junior Common Room President and as a result got a prime rooms which happened to be located next to those of my wife, Annette Richards, similarly given housing preference because she was the college’s organ scholar, discharging those duties though reading for a degree in English literature. In her rooms was a piano. Many were the nights when the studious Miliband would graciously request that she or her music-making guests stop playing because of the lateness of the hour. These were Anglican anthems or Buxtehude organ preludes not super-loud Eminem. It is now time for Miliband to face a different music. David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Spell Albuquerque: Waiting for
Lightning
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