Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
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
Hot Stories
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.
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August
30, 2003
The Smearing of Bustamante
The
Far Right and Anti-Mexican Racism
By JORGE MARISCAL
It would be tempting to dismiss the recent media
flap around the candidacy of Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and his
membership in the student organization Movimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) as much to do about nothing.
But for those of us who have been following over the last decade
the political propaganda of anti-Mexican hate groups, the controversy
indicates just how far the rhetoric and tactics of the extreme
right have entered the media mainstream.
As Bustamante's poll numbers began to
rise, his affiliation with MEChA over twenty-five years ago surfaced
as a hot topic on FOX news. Bill O'Reilly used his "No Spin
Zone" to do a spin on MEChA that was straight out of the
far right's playbook. According to O'Reilly, MEChA was a racist
and violent organization that hated the United States and advocated
the ceding of the Southwest back to Mexico. O'Reilly's ideological
great uncle, Rush Limbaugh, had introduced the topic in mid-August.
Lesser neo-con talking heads, columnists, and websites ran with
it and soon the same charges appeared in otherwise reputable
newspapers and across cyberspace.
In fact, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and the
rest were merely sampling the rantings of their slightly loonier
right-wing cousins. Fueled by rapidly shifting demographics,
especially in California but also in the Deep South and Northeast
where there are now sizable Mexican communities, an upgraded
form of white fear has been taking shape for several years. Drawing
upon the repetoire of racist images created by the John Birch
Society and other extremist groups during the Cold War, these
new nativist ideologues sense the impending end of their white
privilege.
Writing for the internet newspaper World
Net Daily in 2001 (home to the media conservatives O'Reilly and
Joe McCarthy apologist Ann Coulter) two months after September
11th, Joseph Farah described a radical Chicano group called "La
Raza." According to Farah: "Activists who see themselves
as 'America's Palestinians' are gearing up a movement to carve
out of the southwestern United States--a region called Aztlán
including all of Bush's home state of Texas--a sovereign Hispanic
state called the República del Norte. The leaders of
this movement are meeting continuously with extremists from the
Islamic world." The fear of a brown planet so muddles the
neo-con mind that Mexican Americans move easily from being radical
separatists to covert al-Queda operatives.
The MEChA student organization has been
a particular obsession of Glenn Spencer, founder and lead storm
trooper for his "American Patrol" and "Voices
of Citizens Together." Spencer has been at the forefront
of leading vigilante groups whose stated objective is to "protect"
the U.S. southern border, and he popularized the idea of MEChA
as a "Ku Klux Klan-type" organization determined to
take back the Southwest.
A Washington Times article reported on
Spencer's words of wisdom delivered to a group of conventioneers
in Virginia in 2002: "With hundreds of Mexicans illegally
crossing the United States' southwest border daily, Mr. Spencer
said, conflict between the U.S. Border Patrol and Mexican authorities
could touch off strikes, protests, and riots by Hispanic militants
in the United States-a combination border war and civil war that
"could happen any day," he said." (Washington
Times, 2/25/02).
The fantasy of MEChA as a key element
of a Mexican American fifth column within the United States found
its way into Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan
2001 bestseller The Death of the West: How Dying Populations
and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization.
MEChA, warned Buchanan, is "a Chicano version of the white-supremacist
Aryan Nation...and is unabashedly racist and anti-American."
When student activists created the MEChA
organization in April of 1969 at a conference at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, it was in the context of educational
reform. Numerous Chicano student organizations had already appeared
as part of an emerging political consciousness among Mexican
youth in the United States. Issues of access to higher education,
racism, sexism, economic injustice, Cesar Chavez and the farm
workers's struggle, and the war in Southeast Asia contributed
to the increase in activism.
Educational reformers decided that MEChA
could serve to consolidate the diverse student groups under one
banner. Today, former mechistas include elected officials,
teachers, attorneys, doctors, publishers of business magazines,
and heads of corporations. Far from being exclusionary and racist,
MEChA chapters have been at the forefront of establishing coalitions
with other ethnic groups (including white folks) on college and
high school campuses across the country.
One month before the Santa Barbara meeting,
at the First Denver Youth Conference in Denver, Chicanos and
Chicanas heard for the first time the "Plan espiritual de
Aztlán." A plan of action that included demands
for bilingual education and appeals to "love and brotherhood,"
the "Plan" was preceded by a lyrical prologue written
by the poet Alurista. As he recounts in the PBS documentary
series Chicano!, Alurista had written the prologue as a poem
designed to instill ethnic pride and hope for the future. Whatever
political claims might have existed in the prologue, they were
imprecise at best.
It is not surprising, however, that the
prologue to the "Plan" is what sends right-wingers
into a frenzy. What the prologue asserts is the basic historical
fact that indigenous and Mexican peoples inhabited the Southwest
before the arrival of the United States. There is no denying
this important detail, and there is nothing that those who would
"seal the border" or foolishly equate MEChA with the
Klan can do to change it.
And so the prologue to the "Plan,"
a poem written almost thirty five years ago in a period of increased
social activism and high-flying rhetoric, is presented as exhibit
number one in the nativists's paranoid attack. One need look
no further than the 2001 campaign for mayor of Los Angeles to
find an early example of the use by Republican operatives of
fringe group slander against MEChA. In that race, candidate
Antonio Villaraigosa, who had been a member of MEChA as a student,
was similarly tarred and feathered.
Now the far right has trotted out the
same ridiculous charges in an attempt to undermine Bustamante
and influence a democratic election with distortion and innuendo.
Whether or not one is a Bustamante supporter, what should concern
every citizen is that the hate literature of the extreme nativist
right is now required reading in the FOX newsroom.
Jorge Mariscal
is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, a
Vietnam veteran, and a former mechista. He can be reached
at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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