A story is told in southern Xinjiang about the first carpet weaver, a princess named Gulem. One day, her father, the king of his realm, was hunting in the forest with his court advisors. A little bird flew from branch to branch following the king and singing into his...
Near the main office of Moqtada Al-Sadr, in the part of Baghdad known as Sadr City, followers of the rebel cleric continue to fight the U.S. military despite suffering heavy losses. While the military claims to have killed more than 800 Iraqis, most of them fighters,...
Conducted by Saul Landau on "Hot Talk" radio Cal Poly Pomona. Check out his other interviews. High Bandwidth (DSL or Cable modem): Low Bandwidth (dial-up modem): Alexander Cockburn is editor of CounterPunch and is the author of the just-published Imperial Crusades.
ARBIL, Iraq (IPS) – And now the United States is running into difficulties in Northern Iraq where it has enjoyed the support of the largely Kurd population. Since the 1991 Gulf War whole swaths of Northern Iraq have been controlled by two Kurdish militias, the...
While a restful experience, driving around the mountains and green fields of Kurdistan did not provide the complete escape from the troubles of Iraq for which we had hoped. The cousin of a friend manages a hotel in Erbil ... one of the nicer lodges in the city. While...
NEW DELHI (IPS) - This week's stunning confessions by two Indian soldiers that they helped stage fake encounters with Pakistani troops on Siachen, often called the world's highest, coldest and costliest battlefield, has renewed calls for demilitarizing the Himalayan...
In my last column, I referenced "the canon," the seven books which, if read in the correct order, take the reader from the First Generation of modern war through the Second and Third Generations and into the Fourth. A number of people responded with requests for a...
Did American soldiers killed and maimed in Iraq, and Israeli soldiers killed and maimed in Gaza and the West Bank, die for nothing? Americans are dying now because of ideologues and zealots. Israeli soldiers are dying for settlements and unattainable goals. Both are...
The Dog Days of the War Party Pat's latest is a cogent and too-brief listing of the unresolved issues facing the current administration – and, of course, the American people. For all of us old Goldwater conservatives the travesty of neocon Republicanism is deeply...
I know it's terribly naive to suggest such a thing, but you might have thought that if even a secondary purpose of the vaunted war on terrorism and the sidetrack into Iraq had something to do with demonstrating the superiority of democracy and the rule of law, that...
