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Ron Jacobs
The
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August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
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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
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
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Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
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Steve
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Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Wendell
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CounterPunch
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Cindy
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A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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William Blum
Myth
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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
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August
22, 2003
The Marquis of Mendacity
A
George Will Follies Review
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
I used to read George Will occasionally just to
see how strange words bent to political purpose could become.
No political commentator in America is better able to use large
words to say something at times indescribably odd. I don't ask
you to take this from me on faith. I offer examples, although
none is recent since my tolerance for this sort of stuff has
worn thin.
By outward appearance, George is the
eternal American schoolboy. I imagine George's conception of
himself and the career he would follow may have been fixed when,
as a reticent, dour twelve-year old with cowlick and glasses,
he achieved an early social success blurting out a big word he
had read, startling his teacher and breaking up his class. He
has been repeating the same trick for decades to the applause
of intense, pimply-faced boys in starched white shirts with dog-eared
copies of Ayn Rand tucked under their arms.
America's plutocrat-Junkers do have courtiers
serving them just as the great princes of antiquity had. However,
the pop-culture tastes of these modern great eminences do not
employ the likes of Walter Raleigh or Francis Bacon. Instead
we have Rush Limbaugh as one of the court jesters, still doing
frat-boy jokes about physical differences between men and women
forty years after college, and we have George as one of the sages,
who appears from all the sage-like figures of history and literature
to have selected Polonius as his model for style.
A few years ago, George nearly choked
over plans to move a statue of some women to the Capitol Rotunda
in Washington. He was upset about an expense, as he gracefully
put it, to "improve the representation of X chromosomes."
The statue is of suffragists. George couldn't resist passing
along a demeaning nickname, "The Ladies in the Bathtub,"
he picked up somewhere, perhaps at one of Trent Lott's good-ol'-boy
get-togethers down on his plantation.
George tried to make the nickname an
issue of artistic merit. Artistic merit? The sculpture of the
Capitol Rotunda is as uninspired a collection of stolid, state-commissioned
hulks as ever graced a giant marble room. Aesthetics have never
played a role.
George said he'd "stipulate"
the women were great Americans--an interesting choice of words,
"stipulate," the arid language of lawyers allowing
one to proceed in court or settle a contract without further
discussion of some (usually minor) point. He then observed "the
supply of alleged greatness long ago exceeded the supply of space
for statues in the Rotunda."
Well, clearly, choices do have to be
made. And could it be news to anyone, apart from survivalists,
huddled in abandoned missile silos, savoring George by candlelight
as they bolt down freeze-dried snacks, that politics play a role
in every choice in Washington? My God, members of the U.S. Congress,
overwhelmingly male, actually have the flag that flies over the
Capitol changed about every thirty seconds to provide a steady
supply of authentic relics for interested, influential constituents,
almost the way tens of thousands of true splinters of the Cross
were fashioned as princely gifts in the Middle Ages. American
presidents sign laws with fists full of pens, one for each loop
of the signature and as gift for each key supporter. Politics
just doesn't get more ridiculous anywhere.
What's annoying about a statue to the
movement that gave (slightly more than) half the nation's people
the right to vote? The importance of what it symbolizes equals
any democratic advance in the nation's history. Why should a
symbol for this achievement be the target of scorn?
The Rotunda collection already had highly
ambiguous symbols that never upset George. Garfield was an undistinguished
Civil War general and an undistinguished politician, ennobled
only by a frustrated office-seeker assassinating him. Grant,
despite his importance in the Civil War, was one of the most
dangerously incompetent presidents before Bush. Jackson was a
violent backwoods madman and unrepentant slave-holder, colorful
and interesting at a safe distance, but America would have been
a far better place without most of his presidential accomplishments.
Hamilton, a truly great figure in American history, was nevertheless
a man who had absolutely no faith in democracy.
It would be unfair to draw conclusions
about George's prejudice only from his opposition to the statue,
but in writing about it, he managed, over and over, to use words
of scorn and derision.
How do you explain a squib that the possible
removal of a reproduction of Magna Carta in favor of the statue
"might displease a woman" (Queen Elizabeth II, whose
gift it was)? Wouldn't you say it might displease the British
people whose representative the Queen is? What explains his calling
the statue one "less to past heroines than to present fixations"?
Why his belittling description of the campaign for the statue
as "entitlement mentality"?
George attacks one national symbol but
is especially protective of others. He is especially protective
of the reputation of the Sage of Monticello, patron saint to
America's militia and survivalist crowd. Thomas Jefferson, much
to the surprise of people who know him only as a giant, worthy
head on Mount Rushmore, provided the prototype for two centuries
of American shadow-fascism: use fine words about freedom in your
correspondence while living off the sweat of a couple of hundred
slaves; a man who never hesitated to stretch presidential authority
to its very limits, always seeking to extend American empire.
Jefferson was a secretive, suspicious, and vindictive man. He
was not a friend to the spirit of Enlightenment.
Conor Cruise O'Brien, Irish scholar,
published a biographical study called "The Long Affair,"
in 1996, about Thomas Jefferson and his peculiar admiration for
the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. Well, the Sage
for Archer Daniels Midland went into a word-strewn fit over the
book.
Perhaps, the single thing about the book
that most upset George was O'Brien's comparison of a statement
of Jefferson's to something Pol Pot might have said. Jefferson
wrote in 1793, at the height of the Terror, "...but rather
than it [the French Revolution] should have failed, I would have
seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve
left in every country, and left free, it would be better than
as it now is." George wrote off Jefferson's brutal statement
as "epistolary extravagance," and attacked O'Brien
for using slim evidence for an extreme conclusion about an American
"hero."
George went so far as favorably to compare
the work of Ken Burns with that of O'Brien, calling Burns "an
irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," as
compared to one who "panders" to "leave our national
memory parched." Whew! See what I mean about words?
I mean no disparagement of Ken Burns,
but he produces the television equivalent of coffee-table books.
O'Brien is a scholar, the author of many serious books. The very
comparison, even without the odd language, tells us something
about George.
But language, too, is important. The
irony is that George's own words, "irrigator of our capacity
for political admiration," sound frighteningly like what
we'd expect to hear from the Ministry of Culture in some ghastly
place (dare I write it?) such as Pol Pot's Cambodia.
But George should have known better.
This letter of Jefferson's is utterly characteristic of views
he expressed many different ways. Jefferson quite blithely wrote
that America's Constitution would not be adequate to defend what
he called liberty, that there would have to be a new revolution
every 15 or 20 years, and that the tree of liberty needed to
be nourished regularly with a fresh supply of patriot blood.
Jefferson's well-known sentimental view
of the merits of sturdy yeomen farmers as citizens of a republic
and his intense dislike for industry and urbanization bear an
uncanny resemblance to Pol Pot's beliefs. Throwing people out
of cities to become honorable peasants back on the land, even
those who never saw a farm, was precisely how Pol Pot managed
to kill at least a million people in Cambodia.
Jefferson is not now revered for his
understanding of the economics of his day. He truly had none,
a fact which enabled the brilliant Alexander Hamilton to best
him at every turn. However this is not a mistake Jefferson's
intellectual heirs make, since money and power no longer come
from plantations and slaves. They understand money and pursue
the principles of economics narrowly often to the exclusion of
other important goals in society. Jefferson is only of value
to them because of the powerfully-expressed words he left behind
belittling the importance of government, the only possible counterbalancing
force to the excesses that always arise from great economic growth.
What is it about many of those on the
right relishing the deaths of others in the name of ideology?
You see, much like the "chickenhawks" now running Washington,
sending others off to die, Jefferson never lifted a musket during
the Revolution. While serving as governor of Virginia, he set
a pathetic example of supporting the war's desperate material
needs. He also gave us a comic-opera episode of dropping everything
and running feverishly away from approaching British troops in
Virginia (there was an official inquiry over the episode). Jefferson
turned down his first diplomatic appointment to Europe by the
new government out of fear of being captured by British warships,
a fear that influenced neither Benjamin Franklin nor John Adams.
But real heroes aren't always, or even
usually, soldiers. Jefferson, despite a long and successful career
and a legacy of fine words (expressing thoughts largely cribbed
from European writers), cannot be credited with any significant
personal sacrifice over matters of principle during his life.
He wouldn't give up luxury despite his words about slavery. He
never risked a serious clash with the Virginia Establishment
over slave laws during his rise in state politics. And in his
draft of the Declaration of Independence, he lamely and at length
blamed the king of England for the slave trade, yet, when he
wrote the words, it was actually in his interest to slow the
trade and protect the value of his existing human holdings.
Unlike Mr. Lincoln later, who had none
of his advantages of education and good social contacts, Jefferson
did not do well as a lawyer. He never earned enough to pay his
own way, his thirst for luxury far outstripping even the capacity
of his many high government positions and large number of slaves
to generate wealth. Again, unlike Mr. Lincoln, Jefferson was
not especially conscientious about owing people money, and he
frequently continued buying luxuries like silver buckles and
fine carriages while he still owed substantial sums.
Jefferson spent most of his productive
years in government service, yet he never stopped railing against
the evils of government. There's more than a passing resemblance
here to the empty slogans of government-service lifers like Bob
Dole and Newt Gingrich who enjoy their government pensions and
benefits even as they still complain about government. Jefferson's
most famous quote praises the least possible government, yet,
as President, he brought a virtual reign of terror to New England
with his attempts to enforce an embargo against England (the
"Anglomen" as this very prejudiced man typically called
the English).
Jefferson, besides having some truly
ridiculous beliefs, like those about the evils of central banks
or the health efficacy of soaking your feet in ice water every
morning, definitely had a very dark side. Any of his political
opponents would readily have testified to this. Jefferson was
the American Machiavelli.
It was this side of him that put Philip
Freneau on the federal payroll in order to subsidize the man's
libelous newspaper attacks on Washington's government--this while
Jefferson served in that very government. At another point, Jefferson
hired James Callender to dig up and write filth about political
opponents, an effort which backfired when Callender turned on
Jefferson for not fulfilling promises. Callender famously dug
out and publicized the story about Sally Hemings, Jefferson's
slave-mistress, his late wife's illegitimate half-sister (slavery
made for some amazing family relationships), a story we now know
almost certainly to be true (by the way, dates point to Sally's
beginning to serve Jefferson in this capacity at 13 or 14 years
old). It was this dark side of Jefferson that resulted in a ruthless,
years-long vendetta against Aaron Burr for the sin of appearing
to challenge Jefferson's election to the presidency.
George charged O'Brien with wronging
Jefferson on his racial views by quoting from Jefferson's youth
and ignoring a different statement years later. But history really
doesn't support George. Jefferson was challenged by others over
the years on this issue, and, rather than argue a point on which
he knew he was vulnerable, he tended to keep quiet, but there
is no good evidence he ever changed his views, despite bits of
writing, twinges of his own conscience undoubtedly, that sound
sympathetic about how blacks might have arrived at their then
piteous state.
Jefferson expressed himself in embarrassingly
clear terms about his belief in black inferiority. And it is
important to note that in doing so, he violated one of his basic
principles of remaining skeptical and not accepting what was
not proved, so this, clearly, was something he believed deeply.
There is also reliable evidence that on one occasion he was observed
by a visitor beating a slave, quite contradicting Jefferson's
public-relations pretensions to saintly paternalism.
When Napoleon sent an army attempting
to subdue the slaves who had revolted and formed a republic on
what is now Haiti, President Jefferson gave his full consent
and support to the bloody (and unsuccessful) effort.
Hero? I have no idea how George defines
the word, but by any meaningful standard, Jefferson utterly fails.
In another flight of fancy some years
ago, George equated honest efforts to limit campaign contributions
to attacks on the First Amendment, about as silly an idea as
claiming the Second (well-ordered-militia) Amendment defends
the right of every household to own tanks and missile-launchers.
America restricts many forms of commercial
expression deemed destructive or dangerous. Liquor advertising
on television, certain forms of cigarette advertising, pornography,
and racist propaganda are among these. Are these attacks on the
First Amendment? Well, if they are, concerns for the Amendment
are trumped by concerns for protecting children from noxious
substances.
I'm not sure I can think of a more noxious
thing than the complete twisting and distorting of democracy
by money in Washington. Restrictions on things like liquor advertising
testify that people recognize the suggestive, manipulative nature
of advertising, yet America's national elections have pretty
well been reduced to meaningless advertising free-for-alls between
two vast pools of money.
No one objects to informative discussions
of liquor, cigarettes, or racism on television, yet any thoughtful
person knows that advertising for the same products or ideas
is something else altogether. Do the most fundamental issues
of a nation deserve the debased treatment they receive in election
advertising campaigns? The Lincoln-Douglas Debates cost little
but supplied voters with real information, something that cannot
be said for any money-drenched campaign of the 20th Century.
When a particular aspect of free speech,
as the right to give and spend unlimited amounts of money on
elections, undermines democracy itself, it is not just one Amendment
at stake, it is the whole evolution and meaning of the American
Constitutional system.
Further, large amounts of campaign money,
in economic terms, represent barriers to entry against newcomers,
outside the two money-laden, quasi-monopoly parties. Try marketing
a new product against a firm with the market position of a Microsoft
or a Coke without tens of millions to spend, no matter how good
your product, and you'll see what I mean by barriers to entry.
This is something many find instinctively repellent and unfair
in their most ordinary, everyday shopping and business dealings.
How much more so where it directly affects the entry of candidates
and new ideas into government?
Apart from the sheer ugliness of watching
members of Congress grovel for money, we have many examples of
money's pernicious influence on elections. The CIA has spent
God knows how many millions of dollars influencing elections
in other countries, yet observe America's great touchiness a
few years back over even a hint that China may have played the
same trick. This only shows how well Americans understand what
money does to politics, yet whenever someone tries to do something
to improve a rotten situation, George and other courtiers switch
on their word processors and start felling trees.
My last citation from George concerns
his regret over the coarseness and lack of civility in America,
what George called "Dennis Rodman's America," or in
another place, "a coarse and slatternly society" jeopardizing
"all respect...."
Unfortunately, George's historical errors
gave him a false basis for measuring moral decline. He wrote
that the youthful George Washington was required to read "110
Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior." The fact is the
highly ambitious Washington chose the small book and forced himself
to copy out the rules in longhand so that he might become more
acceptable for advancement in British colonial society.
Young Washington was heavily influenced
by associating with families from the cream of British colonial
society, people not at all characteristic of average colonial
Americans. Most of America then was a rude, rough place. Newspapers
regularly libeled and abused with a ferocity we can scarcely
imagine today. Drunkenness and brawling were common. Fights often
included such grotesque practices as gouging out eyes. And, of
course, the filthy brutality of slavery was normal, on exhibit
in many streets.
It is simply wrong to say that American
behavior has gone downhill from a golden age. Europeans in the
19th century noted with horror the way Americans spit tobacco
juice everywhere--even on the floors and carpets of the most
elegant hotels. Visitors to the White House used to clomp around
in muddy boots, pawing and even walking on furnishings, cutting
souvenir swatches from the drapes and carpets and grabbing anything
small enough to stuff under a coat--often leaving the place a
shambles after a large public gathering.
At times there have been rules or practices
that might now be cited as exemplifying a lost age of gentility,
but citing these in isolation misrepresents the general tone
of the past. While George cited the clean language used in movies
under the Production Code in the 1940s, he neglected to mention
that, while Hollywood worried about sexual innuendo in scripts,
in any American city a policeman might freely and openly address
a black citizen as "niggah." And while Hollywood fussed
over suggestive words in "Casablanca," it was still
possible in some parts of the country to lynch a black man and
suffer no penalty.
But George is more concerned about sexual
coarseness than violence. This happens to be a characteristic
America's Puritans. It has also been characteristic of tyrant-temperaments.
Hitler did not permit off-color or suggestive stories told in
his presence. Lincoln, on the other hand loved a good off-color
joke.
Now, again consider George's words about
"a coarse and slatternly society" jeopardizing "all
respect...." Slattern? Just what century does he think it
is?
In fact, it is easily observed that people
who use foul language are expressing anger and frustration, and
there are lots of angry people in America: the pressures of the
society do that to you. Trying to get at the cause of the anger
would raise a discussion of civility to something worthwhile,
but George seemed simply to want to "tut tut!" a bit
like some marquis in the late 18th Century worrying about the
niceties just before the deluge.
Weekend
Edition Features for 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
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