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Coming Soon! From Common Courage Press Recent Stories July 17, 2003 Ron Jacobs Sometimes Even the President of the United States Has to Stand Naked Lisa Walsh Thomas Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance Martin Schwarz Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation Watchdogs Heidi Lypps Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced Drugging and the Supreme Court Norman Madarasz Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance Conference Pankaj Mehta Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Marjorie Cohn Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the Boy Who Cried Wolf Hammond Guthrie (Dis) Intelligence Revisited Website of the Day No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism July 16, 2003 Jason Leopold Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims William Cook Defining Terrorism from the Top Down Elaine Cassel Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom Must Not Be Obeyed Jason Leopold How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found? Linda Heard Bondage or Freedom? Raymond Barrett From Detroit to Basra Jeffrey St. Clair Back to the Future in Guatemala: The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt   July 15, 2003 Kathleen and Bill Christison Why We Resigned from VIPS Elaine Cassel Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers: the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack Chris Floyd Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries Jason Leopold CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries Gaius Publius Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please John Troyer The Niger Syndrome Becky Gillette No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David Orrr Uri Avnery The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb Website of the Day Cost of Iraq War   July 14, 2003 Lisa Taraki Hot Days in Ramallah Walter Brasch Bush: the Pretend Captain SOA Watch Training Colombia's Killers in the US Dan Bacher Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Intelligence Unglued Website of the Day Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties July 12 / 13, 2003 Arthur Mitzman The Double Wall Before the Future Standard Schaefer The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson John Feffer A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang Ron Jacobs Shades of Gray in Iran Elaine Cassel Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights Tom Stephens Civil Liberties After 9/11 David Lindorff New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On" Jason Leopold The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11 Lee Sustar What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia? Mickey Z. AIDS Dissent and Africa Sam Hamod Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group Ramzy Baroud Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket Jeffrey St. Clair Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller Adam Engel Parable of the Lobbyist Robert Sanders A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream Poets' Basement Albert, Witherup, Guthrie   July 11, 2003 Conn Hallinan The Coin of Empire Tim Wise God Responds to Bush Mokhiber / Weissman The Two Faces of Bush in Africa Edward S. Herman Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor David Orr Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation? David Lindorff An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary Website of the Day Dead Malls   July 10, 2003 Ron Jacobs Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody Profits of General Dynamics Sean Donahue Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia Yemi Toure Who Outted Bush in Afrika? Robert Jensen Politics and Sustainability: an Interview with Wes Jackson Ali Abunimah US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated Joanne Mariner Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions Website of the Day Electronic Iraq   July 9, 2003 David Lindorff Is the Media Finally Turning on Bush? David Krieger and Angela McCracken 10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons Mickey Z. Why Speak Out? Lee Sustar The Great Medicare Fraud John Chuckman The Worst Kind of Lie Gary Leupp "Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq Website of the Day Hail to the Thief: Songs for the Bush Years   July 8, 2003 Elaine Cassel Bully on the Bench: the Pathological Dissents of Scalia Alan Maass Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor Chris Floyd Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag Linda S. Heard America's Kangaroo Justice Brian Cloughley They Tell Lies to Nodders Charles Sullivan Bush the Christian? Saul Landau The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age Website of the Day Occupation Watch   July 7, 2003 William Blum The Anti-Empire Report Harvey Wasserman The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head Ramzy Baroud Peace for All the Wrong Reasons Simon Jones What Progressives Should Think About Iran Lesley McCulloch Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh Uri Avnery The Draw Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3   July 4 / 6, 2003 Patrick Cockburn Dead on the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass What is Freedom to a Slave? Martha Honey Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation and Neglect Jeffrey St. Clair The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture Standard Schaefer Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004 Lenni Brenner Jefferson is for Today Elaine Cassel Fucking Furious on the Fourth Ben Tripp How Free Are We? Wayne Madsen A Sad Independence Day John Stanton Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War Jim Lobe Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment John Blair Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke Lisa Walsh Thomas Heavy Reckoning at Qaim David Vest Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite Adam Engel Queer as Grass Poets' Basement Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair Website of the Weekend The Lipstick Librarian   July 3, 2003 Patrick W. Gavin The Meaning of Gettysburg Thomas W. Croft There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy David Lindorff Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong and the US John Chuckman Lessons from the American Revolution Jackson Thoreau New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices Stan Goff "Bring 'Em On?": a Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3 July 2, 2003 Diane Christian Good Killing and Bad Killing Richard Falk After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future? Mokhiber / Weissman Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress Justin Podur Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia Reuven Kaviner Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2 July 1, 2003 Sasan Fayamanesh Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and Iran Elaine Cassel Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia and the Sodomy Cops Susan Block A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong to Ourselves Bill Glahn RIAA Watch: No, No Bono David Lindorff Weapons in Search of a Name Gary Leupp Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1   June 30, 2003 Karyn Strickler The Do-Nothings: an Exposé of Progressive Politics in America Col. Dan Smith The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire Tim Wise Race and Destruction in Black and White Neve Gordon The Roadmap and the Wall Chris Floyd The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam" Elaine Cassel Kentucky Woman Uri Avnery Hope in Dark Times Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30 Website of the Day Bush El Hombre   June 28 / 29, 2003 M. Shahid Alam Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry? Jeffrey St. Clair Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside Man Laura Carlsen Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace? Alan Maass You Call These Democrats an Alternative? C.Y. Gopinath Bush and Kindergarten Noah Leavitt Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law Joanne Mariner Rehnquist Family Values Ignacio Chapela Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley Bob Scowcroft Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers Jon Brown Tom Delay: "I am the Government" Kam Zarrabi Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please! Ron Jacobs Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues Julie Hilden Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment Adrien Rain Burke The Anarchists' Wedding Guide Adam Engel US Troops Outta Times Square Poets' Basement Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod   June 27, 2003 Jason Leopold CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq Posed No Threat to US David Vest Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker David Lindorff The Catch and Release of "Comical Ali" Ray McGovern Cheney, Forgery and the CIA Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26 Website of the Day John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy June 26, 2003 Sen. Robert Byrd The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin Jason Leopold Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate Hans Blix Paul de Rooij Ambient Death in Palestine Chris Floyd Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq Elaine Cassel Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner CounterPunch Wire Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops Sheldon Hull Squatting in Mansions Ben Tripp A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone Uri Avnery The Best Show in Town Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25 Website of the Day Ordinary Vistas: The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo   June 25, 2003 Bruce Jackson Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers Mickey Z. The New Dark Ages David Lindorff Indonesia's War on Journalists Dan Bacher Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops Adam Federman "Success is Not the Issue Here" Elaine Cassel "Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing Guidelines Bill Kauffman My America vs. the Empire Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25 Website of the Day You Are Being Watched: Elevator Moods   June 24, 2003 Elaine Cassel Supreme Indemnity Holocaust Denial at the High Court Roya Monajem A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth It to Risk One's Life? John Chuckman The Real Clash of Civilizations David Lindorff WMD Damage Control at the Times Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24   June 23, 2003 Marc Pritzke Washington Lied: an Interview with Ray McGovern Conn Hallinan The Consistency of Sharon Wayne Madsen Commercials, Disney & Amistad Edward Said The Meaning of Rachel Corrie Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23 June 21 / 22, 2003 Alexander Cockburn My Life as a Rabbi William A. Cook The Scourge of Hopelessness Standard Schaefer The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor Ron Jacobs US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets Harry Browne The Pitstop Ploughshares Lawrence Magnuson WMD: The Most Dangerous Game Harold Gould Saddam and the WMD Mystery David Krieger 10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Avia Pasternak The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories CounterPunch Summer Reading: Our Favorite Novels Todd Chretien Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension Maria Tomchick Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids Adam Engel The Fat Man in Little Boy Poets' Basement Guthrie, Albert & Hamod June 20, 2003 Walter Brasch Down on Our Knees Robert Meeropol The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Grannies and Baby Bells Norman Madarasz Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a Quebec Radical Gary Leupp Bush on "Revisionist Historians" Steve Perry Bush's Lies Marathon: the Finale   Hot Stories 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 Elaine Cassel Civil Liberties Watch Michel Guerrin Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" 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.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

July 19, 2003 Beneath the Underdog Sitting in with Mingus By LENNI BRENNER I don't remember the date in 1963 when I met Charles Mingus, but historians will have no difficulty locating the exact spot: I was coming out of Tim Leary's crapper, he was coming in. Although everyone refers to him as Charlie, I don't. He hated the diminutive. At any rate, we met again around Tim's kitchen table. Tim served coffee, and I filled my corncob with Mafia-preferred weed. We and a couple of Tim's young hanger-on's made small talk until the pipe came round to Mingus. He puffed on it, passed it on, and calmly looked at his host: "Tim, you're a very nice person, because the people who got us together only know very nice people. But understand that me, Monk and Miles buy our acid by the jar," the fingers of his left hand making a pint jar. Point elegantly made, he continued: "When we started out we used to do heroin on the lower east side, and we used to say 'Oh man, how hip we are.' But the roaches were climbing up the walls." His right arm pointing to those long dead native Manhattanites as they strolled up their ancestral walls. "Now we're making over a $100,000 a year, each. Miles lives in a renovated Russian Orthodox Church." (I doubt the Bostonians caught his meaning, but that's the ne plus ultra of architectural sophistication.) "You think you've found the philosopher's stone in LSD. But, for all the acid we've done, I had to come to Boston to do a civil rights concert because down South I'm still a nigger." Silence. Ever see a for-real honest-to-God shit-eatin' grin? Tim had sat down at his own table, a very nice guy, with one of the world's great musicians as his very nice guest. Wouldn't you smile? But that silence got to stretching, and that natural little smile froze on his face until someone got up in pity and said something to end that singular scene. Heraclitus said "expect the unexpected" and, by chance, there I was, sitting across from one of the worldliest people on the planet, and one of the stupidest. Why was I there for that extraordinary coven? On October 30, 1962, Stanley Mosk, the Attorney-General of California, spoke on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. I took him on in the question period, and shredded the state's drug laws. That created a sensation on a campus already boiling with civil rights agitation. I announced that I would have more to say the next day at the traditional soapbox spot at Bancroft and Telegraph. When I got there, comrades in the Young Socialist Alliance ordered me to call off the speech. They had no position on drugs. As I was their local oratorical star, anything I said would be taken as their views. I made the speech, and got charged with violating discipline. The executive committee couldn't get the 2/3rds vote needed to expel me, but they got 60% to suspend my voting rights. I had to carry out YSA decisions without objection until they lifted the suspension. Whereupon I resigned in protest. That and subsequent speeches defending the right to use marihuana, peyote and other non-addicting drugs, while calling for medical clinics for heroin-users, attracted substantial student support. We set up a Committee for Narcotic Reform but it ultimately faded out. In spite of our success in organizing good new people, none of the then socialist and communist groupings saw the importance of what all political persuasions now say is one of the major questions of our age. Not one gave us any assistance. Given unreasoning sectarianism on their part, the inexperience of most CNR members, and my failings, that pioneer effort was foredoomed. But I then went east to try to build a national movement. In 1963 Harvard bounced Leary from its faculty over his work on LSD, and that brought me to his table. Mingus had spent the night at Tim's. From everything I'd read about Tim, I felt like Mingus. But that didn't prevent me from wanting to work with him. Building coalitions in defense of people's rights means trying to work with folks holding very different, sometimes very wrong ideas. But his lack of any comeback to Mingus's superb commentary and its implied questions - not a wrong answer, no answer - convinced me, yea unto a certainty, that nothing good could come of any dealings with this ultimate drug-mystic space captain. There was really nothing new about Tim. The starting point of his thinking about drugs, if you can call it that, was Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception, then the Bible of the drug wackos. But if drugs open any door, it is not to any true reality behind what is external to ourselves. They bring to the fore unconscious instincts inside our psyche, normally held down by the junk-yard dog of repression. That allows us to think in new ways and about forbidden things. But it doesn't follow that the new thoughts are necessarily correct. That depends on who you are, and what you are thinking about. As Mingus said, Leary thought he had the philosopher's stone in LSD. Mingus, like most people, understood that if you have real enemies you must beat them, or they beat you. "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" was a hit song during <W.W.II>, and we all knew it. In that spirit, Mingus liked LSD, but for him it was recreational. He knew that all the LSD in the world couldn't end racism. However Leary wasn't Black. He didn't have to end anything. All he had to do was get some LSD, "turn on, tune in, and drop out," and he left the world's woes behind while he contemplated the cosmos. While Sandor Rado's classic Freudian work on intoxicants, The Psychoanalysis of Pharmacothymia, was correct in focusing on the narcissistic component of drug use and abuse, it is important to remember that intoxicants are 1st off a form of oral gratification. Oral fixation underlies a vast spectrum of human expressions, including religion, especially in its fanatic forms. Indeed Leary had been reading oriental religions. In 1965 he went to India and became a Hindu. His LSD-induced narcissism 'confirmed' the oriental notion of spiritual oneness of the universe behind the material world and its conflicting appearances. To update Marx, if religion is the LSD of the people, LSD became Leary's religion. When our table-talk broke up, Mingus went into the front room. I came in a minute later. I had caught Thelonius Monk, Max Roach and other jazz greats, but at that time I was more interested in folk music than jazz. Though I knew of Mingus's reputation as a great bassist, I had never heard him, even on records. Now he played beautifully at an upright piano. I listened for about 45 wonderful minutes. He took a break and we got to talking about racism, Black nationalism and Malcolm X, and civil rights. He had no time for nationalism. "People think the white race and the black race are their teams. Those are the colors of their jerseys." In context, he meant that, whatever the masses thought, everybody did their individual thing. Subsequent readings about him explained why that was so important to him. He studied for five years with Herman Rheinschagen, formerly principal bassist with the New York Philharmonic. And he had whites in his bands, among others, Don Butterfield, a tuba player, and so what?: "He's colorless, like all the good ones." He went back to the piano. I listened for a bit, said goodbye to him and Tim, and never saw him again. Preparatory to writing this, I've listened closely to some of his records. He accurately evaluated his music. "Tijuana Moods" is his best work. He was a good, not great, composer in the European sense. However he most assuredly was the ultimate bassist and, as his intimates knew then, and as I assure you now, a masterful pianist. Mingus started his 1971 autobiography, Beneath The Underdog, with a discussion between him and his shrink. He explained that he was three people. Two of them were idiots but "one man stands forever in the middle, unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two." By chance, I had the unbelievably good fortune to catch the guy in the middle, a great and modest person, as realistic about life as he was serious about music. Did I learn from him? Yes. But not enough. Lenni Brenner is editor of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis and a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism (AK Press). He can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com Weekend Edition Features for July 12/13, 2003 Arthur Mitzman The Double Wall Before the Future Standard Schaefer The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson John Feffer A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang Ron Jacobs Shades of Gray in Iran Elaine Cassel Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights Tom Stephens Civil Liberties After 9/11 David Lindorff New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On" Jason Leopold The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11 Lee Sustar What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia? Mickey Z. AIDS Dissent and Africa Sam Hamod Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group Ramzy Baroud Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket Jeffrey St. Clair Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller Adam Engel Parable of the Lobbyist Robert Sanders A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream Poets' Basement Albert, Witherup, Guthrie   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /