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Recent
Stories
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/12
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
Hot Stories
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
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June
14, 2003
Consider the Terrain
Where We Are
By MICKEY Z.
Every seven seconds, an American is diagnosed
with cancer. The response to this preventable reality is war--the
war on cancer. Blast it with radiation. Engage in a full frontal
chemotherapy assault. Eradicate the tumor through a surgical
strike. Rather than examining the terrain that facilitates immune
dysfunction, Western medicine usually chooses to focus on the
destruction of the disease (or, worse, just the symptoms). It's
small picture vs. big picture.
Is it the terrain or the germ? In the
social sciences, this question morphs into: is it the person
or the situation? When investigating behavior, too often the
emphasis is placed upon who the subject is and what they did.
But what about where they are?
"Don't assume that people who commit
atrocities are atrocious people, or people who do heroic things
are heroic," declares Professor Lee Ross of Stanford. "Don't
get overly carried away; don't think, because you observed someone
under one set of discrete situational factors, that you know
what they're like, and therefore can predict what they would
do in a very different set of circumstances."
Ask yourself this: Where was that person
when I observed him or her? What was the landscape that spawned
the result?
Sometimes, even, it's not enough to just
ask what the terrain was. Instead, consider the possibility of
artificial topography. For example, the concept of animal experimentation
is not just morally unjustifiable; it is scientifically fraudulent.
Since testing done on any species can vary widely from individual
to individual, it is unsound to seek useful conclusions from
tests performed on another species entirely. We're talking about
 distinctly unique terrains
here. In addition, you must take into account the circumstances
under which animals are tested. Placed in cages and laboratories
with little effort made to replicate a natural environment will
inevitably lead to abnormal animal behavior. The same holds true
for humans. Think of the conduct displayed in prisons. The uniqueness
and artificiality of the setting provokes new responses and new
behaviors-many of which immediately cease upon release from the
prison or cage.
How about war? Edgar L. Jones, a former
World War II war correspondent in the Pacific, asked in the February
1946 Atlantic Monthly, "What kind of war do civilians suppose
we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out
hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians,
finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole
with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls
to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones
into letter openers."
Did these returning "heroes"
continue such behavior when they got home? The vast majority
did not, and anyone who did would have been viewed with horror
and outrage because of the soldier's new backdrop. Boiling the
flesh off a human skull somehow became "acceptable"
during war yet would garner sensationalized media coverage if
it took place under "normal" circumstances.
The dramatic media response to such events
is not only an excellent barometer of terrain, it is also a fine
illustration of mistaking what Ross called "discrete situational
factors" for the norm. Newspapers reserve headlines for
the parents who, for example, tie their starving child to a radiator.
These headlines often imply that this occurrence may hint of
a larger trend. Humans are aggressive and selfish and lack "family
values," just might be the tacit message. However, a larger
sampling would quickly demonstrate how humans rarely choose aggression.
Parents regularly share their resources with their familiesSeven
with family members who do not contribute to the household. In
other words, it is one's climate or terrain that can help nurture
the anomalies that sell newspapers.
Ignoring the role of terrain leaves us
with a medical paradigm that focuses on symptoms and alleged
cures; a justice system designed for punishment; and foreign
policy aimed at military and corporate intervention.
Marcel Proust wrote, "The real voyage
of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having
new eyes." We need new eyes to change this paradigm; we
need a new focus to find solutions. Under the right circumstances,
says Ross, people could be led to do "terrifically altruistic
and self-sacrificing things that we would never have agreed to
before we started."
The right circumstances = terrain.
"If it is correct, as I believe
it is," says Noam Chomsky, "that a fundamental element
of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry,
and for free creation without the arbitrary, limiting effects
of coercive institutions, then of course, it will follow that
a decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental
instinct to be realized."
If it's truly "where we are"
that counts, a decent society is one that fosters situations
and environments that bring out the best in humans, not the worst.
Mickey Z.
is the author of The
Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet
and an editor at Wide Angle.
He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.
Yesterday's Features
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
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