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Today's
Stories
October
14, 2003
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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October
14, 2003
State Terror and the
"Brotherhood of Affection"
"Remember
Orr!"
By
PETER LINEBAUGH
"I am no traitor! I die a persecuted
man for a persecuted country." It is the anniversary of
the hanging of William Orr, 14 October 1797. "Country"
can have two meanings, the 'imagined' nation or the rural vicinity.
William Orr, a prosperous young farmer of co. Antrim, a Presbyterian,
and a United Irishman, meant both. Lord Castlereagh ("I
met Murder on the way, He had a mask like Castlereagh" wrote
Shelley) decided an example must be made of a Presbyterian.
Orr was arrested while sowing flax, the
basis of the celebrated Irish linens. In violation of the recent
Insurrection Act he was hanged for swearing an oath for two soldiers
of the Fifeshire fencibles, who were part of the British army
of occupation, only they weren't real soldiers but informants.
It took place in his herdsman's barn. Here is the oath of the
United Irishmen.
In the presence of God, I do voluntarily
declare that I will persevere in endeavoring to form a brotherhood
of affection amongst Irishmen of every religious persuasion,
and that I will also persevere in my endeavors to obtain an equal,
full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland.
The oath is worth remembering because
the phrase "brotherhood of affection" was a concept
of friendship and solidarity that was intended to transcend inveterate
religious divisions (Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian). The second
memorable aspect of the oath was the goal for "equal, full,
and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland"
which not only is democratic and linked with the Parliamentary
franchise reform struggles in Scotland, Wales, and England, but
it is a speech-action whose utterance contradicts that quotation
from Marx which Edward Said quotes three times in Orientalism
(1978), "They cannot represent themselves; they must be
represented." To swear to obtain self-representation was
a hanging offence. Thus terror enforced this particular  aspect of "orientalism."
"All ground of jealousy between us and the catholics is
now done away with," he told "Humanitas" in a
prison interview. The Crown "have denied us reform and them
emancipation; they would not allow them to get arms nor us to
keep ours; they have oppressed THEM with penal laws and US with
military ones; we are all equally subject to the tender, to dungeons,
and to death." The tenders were fiflthy off-shore ship hulks
standing by to immure the disaffected.
A vetted jury, threatened with beating,
deprived of sleep, plied with whiskey, found him guilty, and
vomited as the verdict was rendered. The government offered Orr
mercy if he would confess guilt but he refused. Despite massive
clemency campaign, the Chief Secretary noted "the question
seems to be reduced to one of mere policy." Taken from Carrickfergus
court house to the Gallows Green. Artillery pieces placed on
the roads to the gallows. Several thousand soldiers, on horse
and foot, formed a square around the gallows, to break the spirit
of the people and prevent a rescue. Orr calmly recited Corinthians
15 - "We shall not all sleep, but shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet."
The people refused to attend, silent
and sullen withdrawing. For the funeral thousands crowded the
roads and adjacent hills. People came from many miles around.
Bigger says, "William worked hard for the cause, straining
every nerve in his efforts to unite the people of every creed
and class in their demands for absolute political and religious
equality and freedom."
He left a widow, Isabella, pregnant and
their five children. William Drennan wrote a great poem, "The
Wake of William Orr"
Who is she with aspect wild? The widowed
mother with her child, Child new stirring in the womb, Husband
waiting for the tomb.
A descedant of Jonathan Swift's wrote
in the United Irish Press, "Feasting in your castle, in
the midst of your myrmidons and bishops, you have little concerned
yourself about the expelled and miserable cottager, whose dwelling,
at the moment of your mirth, was in flames: his wife and daughter
then under the violation of some commissioned ravager: his son
agonizing on the bayonet, and his helpless infants crying in
vain for mercy." The next year the redcoats put her house
to flame "with only God's earth beneath her feet and His
sky overhead".
"Remember Orr!" was found written
on the walls, and on the pavements. Tokens bore the words. It
was cut on pike handles. It was engraved on pike handles. It
became the rallying cry of the United Irish before they commenced
the rising of '98 and their watchword once it began. Printers
printed cards, for his cause "the injur'd RIGHTS OF MAN."
In Belfast a printer's premises was destroyed by the militia.
The visiting scholars at Dublin's Trinity College meeting on
the bicentennial of the '98 when the Good Friday Agreement was
signed greeted each other with smiles and solemnity--it was two
hundred years! Remember Orr, they said.
Should we?
The injustice put the justice system
on trial. The hanging pushed the United Irish closer to insurrection.
The goals expressed in the oath are noble, and in some ways they
are realized in much of still-divided Ireland. So, why should
we remember Orr? Referring to the 1790s Marx wrote Engels, "a
class movement can easily be traced in the Irish movement itself."
A small incident occurred as William Orr arrived at the scaffold,
and from it we can trace the "class movement." Three
sources describe it.
First, a letter written from Carrickfergus
on the hanging day: "A small circumstance worthy of note
occurred shortly before his alighting from the carriage. A poor
man who was his tenant, stood weeping by his side, to whom he
stretched out his hat, which he presented to him as a token of
friendship and remembrance, and requested his friends to show
kindness to him, for though he was poor he was honest, which
was more to be respected than wealth." Poor but honest,
the locution is common enough in the gallows literature, but
the rest of the phrase - "which was more to be respected
than wealth"--was bold and uncommon. Something is hinted
at in this phrasing.
William Sampson, a United Irish lawyer,
provides a second version thirty-four years later in Philadelphia.
"The story of his last moments, as I have heard it told
by those who witnessed them, was thus: upon the scaffold, nearest
to him, and by his side, stood a Roman catholic domestic, faithful
and attached to him. Manacles and pinioned, he directed them
to take from his pocket the watch which he had worn till now
that time had ceased for him, and his hours and minutes were
no longer to be measures of his existence. 'You my friend, and
I must part; our stations here on earth have been a little different,
and our mode of worshipping the Almighty Being that we both adore.
Before His presence we shall stand both equal; farewell, remember
Orr.'" This version is melodramatic, consistent with recently
emancipated Catholicism, and it projects into the past a hierarchical
deference (different stations) of the 1830s. As a symbol of manly
honor, the hat provides stature and protection, while the watch
belongs to a later period, a commodity, hidden, and industrial.
The third source is provided by Francis
Joseph Bigger, a Presbyterian lawyer, active in the Gaelic revival,
a scholar and editor of the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, amateur
archaeologist, who accessed Antrim oral tradition and produced
Remember Orr in 1906. He names the poor man. Davey MacQuillin
was a Presbyterian and is so buried. "He doubtless came
of a catholic stock judging by his name, and this may have given
rise to the statement. I also believe that MacQuillins to have
been a remnant of the 'mere Irish' left after the plantation
had swept over the country, and that they clung to their old
patrimony, even as under-tenants." The old patrimony of
the 'mere Irish' refers both to indigenous possessors and to
the community social relations of the clachan and meithal.
Bigger continues, "The MacQuillins
had been lords of Rathmore of Magh-linne and their great rath
is still preserved close beside Farranshane." Orr was raised
in Farranshane, a townland of Gaelic mixed production, agricultural
and bleach grounds, tannery, wheelwright, with husbandry amid
the well ploughed uplands and carns and raths of past heroes.
"William Orr, knowing this, may have had a special affection
for one of the old stock." The "special affection"
Orr may have had towards the MacQuillins was part of the solidarity
expressed by the "brotherhood of affection" of the
United Irish. He was part of the 'underground gentry.' The gesture
of passing the hat could be a symbol for sharing the hegemony
in the land as well as solidarity. Solidarity was essential to
the clachan and social relations of the townland. While Orr was
imprisoned a neighbor organized the corn and potato diggings,
and the ploughing. Hundreds came.
Edward Said took Marx to task, because
the "old Moor" homogenized the Third World in using
the term "Oriental," and well he might. In his letters
on India of 1853 Marx said England's mission was to annihilate
"Oriental mode of production" and lay the foundations
of Western society. But by 1857-8 while Marx was writing the
Grundrisse and the sepoys in India mutinied, the Moor was less
likely to speak of the Oriental mode of production which masked
"tribal or community property" which in most cases
was characterized through a self-sustaining combination of manufacture
and agriculture." This unity could be discovered in Mexico
and Peru, India, and, added Marx, among the Celts.
Davey MacQuillin masks through these
sources a similar community not of utopia or "subterranean
fields" but an actuality of the commons. This, also, is
why we remember Orr.
Peter Linebaugh
teaches history at the University of Toledo. He is the author
of two of CounterPunch's favorite books, The
London Hanged and (with Marcus Rediker) The
Many-Headed Hydra: the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.
He can be reached at: plineba@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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