Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 28, 2003
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Website of the Day
Pot TV
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
28, 2003
Moore's Monument
Cement
Shoes for the Constitution
By DAVID VEST
California be damned. Every rich moron and pathetic
doofus in the Golden State may be running for governor these
days, but a howling mob of good Christian people in Alabama is
doing its level best to turn them all into yesterday's news.
Their leader, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme
Court, has made it clear that the Heart of Dixie will brook no
competition in the race to rock bottom.
Thanks to him, the Alabama Taliban thinks
it can walk on water.
Wearing two-and-a-half-ton granite shoes.
In Rome they threw Christians to the
lions. In Circus Maximus Mongomericus, they throw red meat to
Christian fundamentalists.
A couple of years ago I went online and
checked out an Alabama politics newsgroup. "Increase Your
Child's IQ by up to Eight Points!" screamed one poster.
Another called for public  executions of school kids
who are violent.
Moore's Monument may have been rolled
away, but how long do you think it will stay in the closet before
he rolls it out again? Pity the road crew if he takes the thing
on tour.
When I was at Birmingham-Southern College,
the SAEs had a couple of stone lions guarding the frat house.
Another fraternity would cover them in paint from time to time.
On one occasion the lions disappeared entirely, only to be recovered
from the bottom of the Cahaba River. Rumor had it that the next
stage in the fraternal escalation would involve dynamite.
It was fun to image the offending fraternity
rival going to a job interview in later years: "Yes sir,
well, I've had some experience dynamiting lions..."
The part of Montgomery where Alabama
governs itself was originally known as Goat Hill. Long before
George Corley Wallace (or Jefferson Davis) climbed it, politicians
railed against "the Tariff of Abominations" and other
betes-noires. On one memorable day they passed legislation making
it a capital offense to put salt on a railroad track. (The law
is still on the books.) This was before candidates discovered
that campaigns are most successfully waged when they are about
nothing, nothing at all.
Uncomfortable discussing taxes, NAFTA
and the Tariff of Abominations? Relax, just talk about the Ten
Commandments, flag burning, gay marriage, prayer in the schools.
The last anybody outside the South heard
of Alabama state politics before Judge Moore came along was when
Lt. Gov. Steve Windom, Republican, was caught relieving himself
under the podium in a water-cooler jug so he wouldn't have to
relinquish the floor during a filibuster. The receptacle became
known as the Confederate Battle Jug.
Then there was former Gov. "Fumblin'
Fob" James, who was overheard cursing in the legislature
-- in support of school prayer. "No one has a greater appreciation
for a classical education as I do, " declared Gov. James
on one occasion. He also said, "I didn't descend from an
ape."
Which was almost as good as the time
Lester Maddox of Georgia said, "If elected, I will disintegrate
the schools."
Judge Moore reminds many people of that
other little banty rooster from Alabama, George Corley Wallace,
who stood famously in the schoolhouse door, founded the American
Independent Party and ran for president with Gen. Curtis "Bomb
'em Back to the Stone Age" LeMay stalking at his side.
The similarities between Moore and Wallace,
while striking, are superficial. The differences are profound.
True, both Moore and Wallace are products
of Alabama, have defied federal law and led populist revolts.
It is hard to imagine either of them smiling. But George Wallace's
appeal was never especially religious. He showed little interest
in setting up a quasi-theocracy and did not routinely claim to
be defending the Almighty.
Nor, at the same time, has anyone heard
Roy Moore intimate, as Wallace daily did, that he sees "not
a dime's worth of difference" between Democrats and Republicans.
Judge Moore's antics seem more closely
related to the infamous Brooksville Experiment and the impetus
behind it than to the Wallace movement.
In the northern part of the state, near
Decatur, some people wanted to carve a new town out of Priceville
a few years ago. The few houses and trailer homes scattered along
a stretch of road were henceforth to be called Brooksville. According
to stated plan, the only law would be the Ten Commandments and
the teachings of Jesus, as set forth in the Authorized King James
Bible. The town would have a volunteer mayor and no other officials.
Everybody would just get a gun and protect one another.
A Probate Judge shot down the idea on
technicalities. Brooksville was quickly forgotten after an amusing
paragraph or two in the New York Times. However, the impetus
behind it did not simply fade away.
Brooksville is the nation in miniature
in the eyes of religious fundamentalists, who have been trying
to take over local, state, and national institutions for a long
time -- almost 400 years as a matter of fact, ever since Governor
William Bradford and the Puritans of Plymouth Colony apoplectically
objected to non-fundamentalists taking the day off from work
to observe Christmas, an event Puritans regarded as a pagan if
not popish holiday.
Among the abominations America's founding
fundamentalists couldn't stand was, of course, the King James
Bible (named in honor of the flaming homosexual monarch who "authorized"
it -- i.e., put up the money for the translation). Did the would-be
founders of Brooksville know King James once fell in love with
a page boy in the kitchen and created him Duke of Buckingham?
Does Judge Moore?
Alas, if you think the idea of modern
fundamentalists forming their own little town is funny, try laughing
about this: they already control a great many school boards,
giving them the power to decide what our children will and won1t
be taught. They have elected hundreds of judges. Politicians
everywhere must placate them daily. "Moderate" religious
"leaders" are loathe to confront them in public. They
are the loudest voice in many state legislatures, and no Republican
presidential candidate would dare repudiate them. Instead, we
get George W. Bush, who ran for office lecturing the poor on
their responsibilities, proclaiming that the American people1s
hearts aren1t right and campaigning at Bob Jones University.
The character Miles Brand (played by
Lawrence Harvey) in the camp classic film "Darling"
was said to be "impotent everywhere but in bed." Judge
Moore, who is articulate everywhere except when speaking or writing,
evidently intends to make a public appearance or hold a press
conference about every ten minutes for the rest of his life.
The energy expended on setting up and tearing down his many-microphoned
podium could have removed that granite monstrosity a dozen times
by now.
This is all happening at a time when
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, another Republican, is trying to pass
a $1.2 billion "tax and accountability package." The
bill, 594 pages long, will be voted up or down in a statewide
referendum on Sept. 9. Meanwhile, the monument may be gone for
now, but the Alabama Taliban is no more defeated than its Afghan
counterpart.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He and his band,
The Willing Victims, just released a scorching new CD, Way
Down Here.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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