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Today's
Stories
January 5, 2004
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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January
5, 2004
Chewing the Fat Down
on the Farm
Mad
Human Disease
By FRAN SHOR
Meanwhile back at the corporate cattle ranch,
rumors of mad cow disease are circulating among the cattle. One
group of four seem to be ruminating upon serious matters. Let's
listen while they chew the cud.
Daisy:
Did you hear that poor Melvin went down and, instead of burying
the poor slob, those ranchers just shipped him off to the slaughterhouse?
Gabby:
Yup, I heard talk of a few others in that condition that are
on their way to the meat market. But what happened to Melvin
to make him so sick that he couldn't even stand on his own anymore?
Blackie:
Where you been, Gabby? Don't you know that Melvin and probably
all the rest of us have been feedin on the carcasses of other
animals. You know, that scrappie stuff made of dead sheep?
Daisy:
Why I thought that that government agency, the FAA..
Doc:
No, the FDA..
Daisy:
Yeh, that one. Didn't they order a halt to that animal cannibalism
back in 1997.
Blackie:
Yeh, and cowpies have been sellin at Pies-Are-Us.
Doc:
Now, wait a second, Blackie, Daisy's right about the FDA ban
on dead animals in feed, but...
Blackie:
Yeh, there's always a big but....You mean who is watchin out
that those big feed corporations don't stick that stuff in the
feed, or these big operations, like this corporate ranch, don't
smuggle whatever road kill they find into our food supply?
Gabby:
Now hold on there, dadnabbit. Why would they try to hornswaggle
us cows and get us sick? Wouldn't it just hurt their profits?
Blackie:
Listen, old-timer, you seem to think that these corporate farmers
have some sort of code of ethics that prevents them from gettin
away with whatever.
Gabby:
Well now, you young whippersnapper, I just don't think these
humans would risk hurtin themselves both monetarily and physically.
Blackie:
Well, you don't know nothin, you oreo spotted Uncle Moo.
Daisy:
Hey now, Blackie, there ain't no call to get riled up about all
of this. I'm sure it was just a mistake that will be quickly
corrected. I mean we're an important investment. Why we wind
up on the dinner tables around the world.
Blackie:
Do you just accept your fate so blindly, Daisy? Don't you think
we should organize and fight back. Dammit, I want my freedom
instead of being penned in here. If I gotta die, I want to be
up on all fours, not goin down on my knees to ask for some sympathy.
Gabby:
Now where will your militant moos get you other than killed before
your time?
Blackie:
We're already marked cows. Can't you see that?
Daisy:
Doc, are we marked? Is there no way out but the kind of revolutionary
suicide that Blackie seems to want?
Doc: You
know for those of us on these big coporate cattle ranches, there
isn't really any hope. I guess you could say it's our lot in
life to put up with these insults and injuries. Why if it's not
the scrappie, it's the hormones that are pumped into us.
Hell, I overheard one vet say that 80%
of us cows in the USofA have bovine leukemia. And all the antibiotics
that are pumped into us to prevent the spread of other viruses
and diseases only compound the problems, as well as compromising
the health of those humans stupid enough to eat us.
Daisy:
But we are bred to be eaten. We know that's the way it's always
been and will continue.
Doc:
Not so, Daisy. Why in the old days, our ancient cousins, the
buffalo, just roamed these plains, grazing on the abundant grasses
and trying to outrun those red natives who would stampede whole
herds off cliffs.
Blackie:
Yeh, they been wasted us all the way back till the ancient time.
Doc:
Well, not exactly. Those buffalo herds were thinned out over
time, but always used by those red natives. It was the coming
of those white people with our direct ancestors that created
the first of the problems. Why those white people, first working
for the railroad just slaughtered the buffalo herds, leaving
good meat to rot. They killed off the grazing cultures of the
Plains and penned up the red natives. Then, they had lots of
fights with other ranchers, particularly those with sheep, over
who would get the grazing rights to the vast western territories.
Gabby:
Yeh, I heard tell of those ranch wars. What stopped it?
Doc:
Why just giving everybody big ranches with special feed so that
territory could be neatly divided. So they surrounded us with
fences and called it taming the west.
Blackie:
Yeh, they tamed our booties.
Daisy:
But why have some of us been getting sick with the BS?
Doc:
That's BSE, Daisy. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. It's a degenerative
brain disease that can be transferred through the blood, tissues,
and organs. Humans get an equivalent of it, called Creutzfeldt
Jakob disease, from eating diseased meat. And there are other
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE's) in the whole
food chain. Some human doctors think there are even connections
to diseases like Alzheimer's.
Blackie:
I heard that those honkies are so stupid that they would rather
risk getting the disease than spending the money to prevent BSE.
I don't know why they call it "mad cow" disease; it
should be called "mad human" disease!
Gabby:
Now hold on a dadgoneminute, there. Surely, they got some of
them legislators from the people's party, the Dummycrats, that
would want to prevent this.
Blackie:
Hah, you touched in the head already, Gabby. Don't you know that
there's Dummycrats that voted with the Repukicans to stop any
extensive testing of livestock. I never understood why they call
it a two potty system since it seems like one big shithole to
me.
Gabby:
Well, dadblastit, I'm gonna light out of here and head off to
some safe warm spot in Central or South America.
Doc: Not
much chance of that, Gabby. In fact, the humans in those places,
like Honduras and Brazil, are just clearing out the rainforests
to turn more land into cattle farming corporations. Why some
people in those countries are starving and all of the land and
calories that it takes to keep us fed could be better used to
feed those poor people with corn, rice, and beans.
Daisy:
Now wait, Doc. You're soundin like one of those turncoat vegetarians.
I mean what will become of us if humans won't hunger for our
meat.
Doc: Look,
Daisy, it's estimated that as much as 1/4 of the land mass on
earth is devoted to cattle raising. And all of the shit and urine,
pardon my French, is contibuting to massive pollution. Why we're
soiling our own nests, so to speak. I think we've become a plague
that humans invented out of greed and protein obsession. So,
we need to find some balance in all of this.
Blackie:
Balance, my hindquarters. There cain't be no balance as long
as capitalism rules. It's time to pick up the gun, metaphorically
speaking. I mean those humans with their opposable thumbs and
too big brains think they can continue to lord it over us. There's
a day of reckoning ahead for them. We gotta get wild and that's
no bull.
Gabby:
Cain't go backwards.
Blackie: Well,
I ain't goin to eat no more of that feed even if I starve myself
to death. I ain't gonna wind-up in the fast-food place of that
clown, Ronnie Mac.
Daisy:
So, Doc? Where do we go? What can we do?
Doc:
I wish I had the answers. But the real solutions, unfortunately,
have got to come from humans themselves. And you know you irrational
and unreliable they are!
At this, the gang of four turned towards
the shed. They seemed resigned to some terrible fate. Fortunately,
we're not stupid animals who rely on some herd instinct. But
then, it's too big an issue for one person to worry about. I'll
have to do my ruminating at an udder time.
For those who may want to ruminate on
these matters, try reading Jeremy Rifkin's Beyond
Beef; Howard Lyman's Mad
Cowboy; Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's Mad
Cow USA; and Eric Schlosser's Fast
Food Nation.
Fran Shor
teaches at Wayne State University and is a peace and justice
activist. He can be reached at: aa2439@wayne.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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