Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
Recent Stories
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
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
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.
|
September
13, 2003
The
Matrix of Ignorance
Unplugging
the Sixty-Nine Percent
By GARY LEUPP
"[The sponsor of Sept. 11] was Saddam
Hussein. Ever since the Gulf War, he's been trying to get back
at us. Maybe it was Osama bin Laden's people, but my feeling
is it was Saddam Hussein behind it. He footed the money."
Spc. Clint Brookins (23, Clio, Michigan),
fighting back in Baghdad (AP,
Sept. 8)
In late August, the number of US troops killed
since May 1 reached 138, the same number that had died between
the attack begun March 20 and Bush's triumphant declaration that
the war was over. This was a depressing statistic (and it of
course rises every couple days), but the Washington Post
reported an equally depressing one September 6. Two years after
9-11, 69% of Americans surveyed said they believed that it was
at least likely that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
I shouldn't be surprised. National
Geographic reports that 85% of young Americans (18-24) cannot
identify Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel on an unmarked map. 56%
cannot find the Indian subcontinent, dangling there so conspicuously
into none other than the Indian Ocean. Only
19% can name four countries that acknowledge having nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, a whopping 70% can identify the Pacific Ocean, but
that's probably just because it's the biggest thing on the planet.
These numbers are not just embarrassing but dangerous, because
in such a sea of ignorance swim Bush's neocons, buoyed by it,
empowered by it to send U.S. troops to their deaths in a war
to conquer and occupy a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing
to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing
to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing
to do with 9-11. Repeat: nothing
to do with 9-11.
But the only way to maintain adequate
domestic support for the ongoing war in Iraq is to promote that
fiction, which means to deliberately and cynically exploit
ignorance. Worse, to exploit racism and religious intolerance,
in the form of "essentialism," the notion that all
members of a particular community (in this case Muslim Arabs
and anyone the benighted thinks might look like one) are essentially
the same, for all practical purposes. All working together, collectively,
"to get back at us," as the good soldier puts it. All
culpable for the sins of their members.
Ignorance, racism and Islamophobia are
linked; those who can't find Iraq on a map are unlikely to know
that the Arab and Muslim worlds are highly complex, or that to
vent post-9-11 emotions on those whole worlds just doesn't make
any sense. But their ignorance is of course not altogether their
own fault; when Lou Dobb so stupidly told them last year that
Iraq was a "radical Islamist" country, he sounded convincing
enough, and most CNN viewers weren't prone to go onto the Internet
or to the local library to check his facts and realize that Saddam
was ideologically poles apart from al-Qaeda. Fact is, such "Islamists"
as bin Laden hate Saddam, who for better or worse forbade
religious proselytizing, funded Christian, Shiite, and Sunni
religious establishments (and even the Baghdad synagogue) and
pursued a policy of strict separation of religion and state.
Innocent of such details, which the mass
media inadequately supplies and which thus must be obtained by
efforts at self-edification, ordinary folks wind up influenced
by the insidious influence of anti-Arab racism (received subconsciously
and by osmosis from Hollywood stereotyping, religious bigotry,
and political propaganda). Who did 9-11? That's a no-brainer,
right? ARABS, of course. MUSLIMS. 'Nuf said. Let's roll!
How many of those who took the National
Geographic survey, or the Washington Post poll, would
answer the following correctly?
Which of the following best indicates
the relationship between Arabs and Muslims?
1. All Muslims are Arabs.
2. All Arabs are Muslims.
3. Most Muslims aren't Arabs.
4. Most Muslims are Arabs.
In which Muslim countries do Christian
churches and Jewish synagogues operate legally, as well as mosques?
1. Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq.
2. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Somalia.
3. Pakistan, Sudan, United Arab Emirates.
4. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan.
According to the U.S. government (which may or may not be
accurate in its report), the nineteen 9-11 hijackers were of
what nationalities?
1. 15 Saudis, 4 Iraqis.
2. 14 Iraqis, 3 Saudis, 2 Yemenis.
3. 15 Saudis, 1 Egyptian, 1 Lebanese, 2 from union of Arab Emirates.
4. 14 Iranians, 2 Afghans, 2 Lebanese, 1 Iraqi.
The answers, as most Counterpunch readers
know, are 3, 1, and 3. But the Counterpunch readership that understands
all this is, alas, not (yet) representative of the American public,
which lacking a "fair and balanced" and genuinely informative
mainstream press, and a government eager to present the facts
objectively, falls mercy to the attractions of Bush's simplistic
approach to the world. His "for us or against us" mentality
too easily generates a "ragheads vs. us" mentality.
Those ragheads? Well, you know: al-Qaeda,
Palestinians in kaffiyeh, the turbaned Sikh gas station attendant
down the street, the chador'd immigrant lady waiting for the
bus And then the ones who leave their heads bare but work with
the ragheads: protesters, Quakers, North Koreans, and so on.
Again, the ignorance that fuels idiotic stereotyping and rage
isn't really the ignorants' fault, nor is it that of our much-maligned
schoolteachers. It is deliberately cultivated by those whom it
best serves, and unfortunately, two years after 9-11, it continues
to serve the Bush administration as it pursues its war on all
those who, not being "for us," are "against us."
In the very thought-provoking film The
Matrix, Morpheus shows Neo that the masses of humankind are
plugged
into a computer program that is as anti-human as it is falsely
reassuring and comfortable. "The Matrix is everywhere,"
he tells him. "It is all around us You can see it when you
look out your window or when you turn on your television. You
can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when
you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over
your eyes to blind you from the truth."
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That
system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around.
What do you see? Business people, teachers, lawyers, carpenters.
The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until
we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that
makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people
are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert,
so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to
protect it."
To unplug ourselves we need to swallow
the red pill that lets us see the matrix for what it really is.
To unplug the comfortably misled 69%, we need to show them the
matrix that is the world map; and let them see who controls it,
and them. "What are you trying to tell me," asks Neo,
when told of the special role he has to play, "that I can
dodge bullets?" "No, Neo," replies Morpheus, "I'm
trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to."
The above-mentioned soldier, plugged
into the system and its mythology regarding Saddam and al-Qaeda,
fighting for that system in Iraq, should not have to dodge bullets.
When the American people are ready, he won't have to.
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor in the Department of History at
Tufts University and coordinator of the Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
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