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Today's
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January 3 / 4, 2004
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
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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Weekend
Edition
January 3 / 4, 2004
Revolution
Guided by Feelings of Great Love
Learning
from Che Guevara
By MITCHEL COHEN
Che Guevara was not overly concerned about elections
as a means for transforming a capitalist or authoritarian state.
But he was extremely concerned about finances, and how to fund
the revolution. There is a piece in the film, "Ernesto Che
Guevara: The Bolivian Diary," which is eerie in that it
shows Che as part of a Cuban delegation in Moscow begging for
funds for Cuba. In the film, the 34-year old Che Guevara is barely
able to bite his tongue and check his scathing sarcasm for the
Russian bureaucrats, in order to gain funding from them.
Che hated the Cuban revolution's reliance
on the Soviet Union, and went on to devise other means for obtaining
funds and dispersing them. As the only one among the victorious
guerrilla leadership in the Cuban revolution who had actually
studied the works of Karl Marx, Che despised the bureaucrats
and party hacks in the USSR as well as in Cuba.
I.F. Stone revealed that how, as early
as 1961, at a conference in Punte del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara
-- born in Argentina and a student of medicine there -- was huddled
in discussion with some new leftists from New York. A couple
of Argentine Communist Party apparatchiks passed. Che couldn't
help shouting out: "Hey, why are you here, to start the
counter-revolution?"
Like many in the emerging new left around
the world, Che had first-hand experience with party apparatchiks
and hated their attempts to impose their bureaucracy on indigenous
revolutionary movements.
Indeed, contrary to the conceptions of
many in the U.S. today, the revolution in Cuba was made independent
of, and at times in opposition to, the Cuban Communist Party.
It was only several years after the revolution succeeded in taking
state power that an uneasy working relationship was established
leading to a merger of the revolutionary forces and the Party
-- a merger that provided no end of problems for Che, and for
the Cuban revolution itself.
We can learn something for our situation
in the US today by examining Che's approach in Latin America.
One such problem: Cuba's increasing dependence
upon the Soviet Union (in some ways similar to radical organizations'
increasing dependence on Foundation grants and other hoop-providing
jumpsters). In its desperation for currency to buy needed items,
the government -- after strenuous debate -- decided to forego
diversification of Cuba's agriculture in order to expand its
main cash-crop, sugar, which it exchanged for Soviet oil, using
some and reselling the rest on the world market. Despite Che's
(and others) warnings, Cuba gradually lost the capability to
feed its own people -- a problem that reached devastating proportions
with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Similar crises had beset the Soviet Union
and other avowedly socialist countries when they pursued industrial
models of development and tried to pay for it by producing for
and competing in the world market. Che's response: Don't produce
for the world market. Reject cost/benefit analysis as the measure
for what gets produced. A truly new society, Che believed, must
aspire to and implement immediately, in the here and now, what
its people dream for the future. And to get there, REAL communist
revolutions must reject "efficiency" and nurture communalistic
attempts to create a more humane society instead.
Che's contempt for the officials of Marxdom
(while considering himself a marxist) and bureaucrats of every
stripe broke with the numbing mechanistic economics that Marxism
had become. With Che and the new left inspired by him, "Revolution"
was placed back on the historical agenda.
Che's internationalism and identification
with the poor and downtrodden every-where, his refusal to recognize
the sanctity of national boundaries in the fight against U.S.
imperialism, inspired new radical movements throughout the world.
Che called upon radicals to transform OURSELVES into new, socialist
human beings BEFORE the revolution, if we were to have any hope
of actually achieving one worth living in. His call to begin
living meaningfully NOW reverberated through an entire generation,
reaching as much towards Sartre's existentialism as the latter
stretched towards Marx. Through action, through wringing the
immediacy of revolution from the neck of every oppression, of
every moment, and by putting one's ideals immediately into practice,
Che hammered the leading philosophical currents of the day into
a tidal wave of revolt.
For Che, Marx's maxim: "From each
according to their ability to each according to their needs,"
was not simply a long-range slogan but an urgent practical necessity
to be implemented at once. The harrowing constraints of developing
a small country (or radio station!!!!) along socialist lines,
particularly in the context of continued attacks by U.S. imperialism
(including a blockade, an invasion, a threatened nuclear war,
and ongoing economic and ideological harrassment), on the other
hand, militated against Che's vision and boxed-in the revolutionary
society into choosing from equally unpalatable alternatives.
In a sense, many of our organizations
face similar "alternatives" today.
It was amid such contradictory pressures
that Che tried to set a different standard for Cuba, and for
humanity in general. As Minister of Finance, he managed to distribute
the millions of dollars obtained from the USSR to artists, and
to desperately poor farmers who in the U.S. would have been considered,
shall we say, "poor risks."
The Russian bureaucrats, like any capitalist
banker, were furious with Che's "Take what you need, don't
worry about paying it back" attitude. They leaned on Fidel
to control Che and to regulate the "proper" dispersal
of funds, just as twenty years later under Brezhnev, and apparently
having learned nothing, the Soviet state leaned on Poland to
pay back its inflated debt to the western banks, causing cutbacks
and hardship and leading to the working class response: the formation
of Solidarnosc. Indeed, the Soviet Union at that time was the
best friend Chase Manhattan ever had! And in so doing it paid
the ultimate price.
In 1959, the guerrillas, headed by Fidel
Castro, swept into Havana having defeated the military dictatorship
of Fulgencio Batista. Although the U.S. government armed and
funded Batista, the CIA had its agents in Fidel's guerrilla army
as well.
One lieutenant in the guerilla army,
Frank Fiorini, was actually one of several operatives of the
Central Intelligence Agency there. Fiorini would surface a few
years later as a planner of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba,
two years after that as one of three "hobos" arrested
in Dallas a few moments after President Kennedy was assassinated
and immediately released (one of the other "hobos"
was none other than CIA-operative E. Howard Hunt), and again
as one of the culprits involved with the dozens of CIA assassination
attempts on the life of Fidel Castro.
Fiorini became quite famous again in
1973 as one of the burglars at the Democratic Party Headquarters
at a hotel known as the Watergate, under the name Frank Sturgis.
Indeed, it was precisely when the Watergate hearings were on
the verge of raising serious questions about the Bay of Pigs
and U.S. covert operations in Cuba that, suddenly, the existence
of secret White House tapes was "unexpectedly" revealed.
From that moment on, all we heard was what did Nixon know and
when did he know it, and the potentially explosive investigation
on the verge of revealing the secret history of illegal CIA interventions
in Cuba, the murder of John F. Kennedy and attempted assassinations
of Fidel were effectively sidetracked.
And yet it was under the constant threat
of warfare by the U.S. -- overt as well as the ongoing covert
operations -- that the Cuban revolution, especially under the
instigation of Che, took some of its boldest steps in introducing
"socialism of a new type."
Contrast that with the erstwhile "communist"
states, as they sacrificed whatever visionary socialist features
they had in order to lure capitalist investment, so that they
could compete on the world market. As head of the Cuban national
bank, Che going against the tide, as always -- made Cuba's new
banknotes famous by signing them simply "Che." The
first question Che asked of his subordinates when he took over
the bank was "Where has Cuba deposited its gold reserves
and dollars?" When he was told, "In Fort Knox,"
he immediately began converting Cuba's gold reserves into non-U.S.
currencies which were exported to Canadian or Swiss banks. (1)
Che's concern was not so much with developing
"solvent" banking institutions in Cuba, but with two
things: fighting U.S. imperialism, in this instance by removing
the revolution's gold from the clutches of the United States
government (which could all too easily invent an excuse to confiscate
it, as it later did with other Cuban holdings. Che was prescient
in understanding that this would happen); and, of equal importance,
finding ways to foster and fund the creation of a new socialist
human being without relying upon capitalist mechanisms, which
he understood would end up undermining the best of efforts. Che
best put forth his outlook, which came to be that of the new
left internationally as well, in a speech, "On Revolutionary
Medicine":
"Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo,
I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American
countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled,
first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact
with poverty, hunger, and disease; with the inability to treat
a child because of lack of money; with the stupefication provoked
by continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father
can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs
often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And
I began to realize that there were things that were almost as
important to me as becoming a famous scientist or making a significant
contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.
"How does one actually carry out
a work of social welfare? How does one unite individual endeavor
with the needs of society?
"For this task of organization,
as for all revolutionary tasks, fundamentally it is the individual
who is needed. The revolution does not, as some claim, standardize
the collective will and the collective initiative. On the contrary,
it liberates one's individual talent. What the revolution does
is orient that talent. And our task now is to orient the creative
abilities of all medical professionals toward the tasks of social
medicine.
"The life of a single human being
is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest
man on earth. ... Far more important than a good remuneration
is the pride of serving one's neighbor. Much more definitive
and much more lasting than all the gold that one can accumulate
is the gratitude of a people.
"We must begin to erase our old
concepts. We should not go to the people and say, `Here we are.
We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you
our science, to show you your errors, your lack of culture, your
ignorance of elementary things.' We should go instead with an
inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn at that great source
of wisdom that is the people.
"Later we will realize many times
how mistaken we were in concepts that were so familiar they became
part of us and were an automatic part of our thinking. Often
we need to change our concepts, not only the general concepts,
the social or philosophical ones, but also sometimes our medical
concepts.
"We shall see that diseases need
not always be treated as they are in big-city hospitals. We shall
see that the doctor has to be a farmer also and plant new foods
and sow, by example, the desire to consume new foods, to diversify
the nutritional structure which is so limited, so poor.
"If we plan to redistribute the
wealth of those who have too much in order to give it to those
who have nothing; if we intend to make creative work a daily,
dynamic source of all our happiness, then we have goals towards
which to work." (2)
Che's love for the people took him first
to the Congo and then to Bolivia, where he organized a band of
guerrillas to serve, he hoped, as a catalyst in inspiring revolution.
Che once again had to battle Official Marxdom: He struggled with
the head of the Bolivian Communist Party for leadership of the
guerrillas. The question: "Who should set policy for the
guerrillas, Che and the guerrillas themselves or the head of
the Bolivian Communist Party?" The guerrillas voted for
Che perhaps the only election Che was ever involved in. NOT anybody
was allowed to vote, not those who happened to live in the area,
for example, but only people who were actively engaged in the
struggle. Once Che won that election against the Communist Party
attaché -- an election that was not only about the individuals
but a plebiscite on completely different revolutionary strategies
-- the Communist Party abandoned the guerrilla movement.
Would we view Che's decision today as
the correct one if the Bolivian CP had not been so heavy-handed,
irresponsible and doctrinaire? (On the other hand, can there
be a vanguard party that does not act in such a manner?) The
question still haunts: To whom is the guerrilla responsible?
Who sets the framework?
Such questions are not any easier to
resolve. In Vietnam, for example, contary to Che's guerrilla
army, the National Liberation Front's military took their policy
from the party's political bureau, not the other way around.
This was not the case with Che in Bolivia.
The relationship of organization to mass-movement is a problem
that has always plagued radical movements when they get to a
certain stage. To whom is the affinity group, for example, responsible?
Or, for that matter, the artist? The radio network?
On the one hand, decentralization is
attractive, allowing for the greatest small-group autonomy, individual
freedom and creativity. (One's individual radio show, perhaps.
One's need for a paying job to support the family.) On the other
hand, the larger movement must not only be able to coordinate
the activities of many local groups but frame the actions of
smaller groups who purport to be part of the same movement within
a larger collective strategy, thus in some sense limiting their
autonomy.
In Bolivia, failure by the guerrillas
to be part of a many-pronged social movement led to their demise.
Indeed, Che in his last days was rueful and frustrated at the
lack of working class uprising in the mines, which he had hoped
to incite. (The Communist Party was powerful among mine workers
in Bolvia.) An uprising would have enabled the guerrillas to
have had much greater impact. Eventually, the miners did overcome
the CP reticence and did go on strike, but it was too little,
too late. The guerrillas were depleted, Che wished for just 100
more guerrilla troops; that rather small number (he believed)
would have made the difference.
These are serious and complicated questions
that apply to our social movements today. Resolving such matters
is not helped by demagoguery or grand-standing. It COULD BE helped
by a transformation at the station itself, into one that consciously
tries to develop a revolutionary culture and sees itself as such,
and not simply a "job". Tricky stuff. Not easily reconciled.
The world or at least OUR world depends upon whether we are able
to resolve (or at least live with) the contradictions implied
therein.
In Bolivia in the Summer of 1967, the
guerrillas were picked off one by one. Without additional revolutionary
forces Che and the others were forced to deal with the reality
that, at least in Bolivia at that moment, their strategy for
catalyzing a mass-based revolutionary uprising has failed. With
the U.S. government under the presidency of the Democrat, Lyndon
Johnson, sending military "advisers" and arms to the
Bolivian junta, it became only a matter of time, a few months,
before the struggle was defeated and the guerrillas wiped out.
A true picture of Che is not that of
the flamboyant posters, nor the hagiography of both Hollywood
and Stalinism, but of a man dedicated to the poor internationally,
trying with a small band of guerrillas to spark a revolutionary
uprising of peasants and workers to create a better life for
themselves, and meeting frustration after frustration, with only
some small successes apart from the tremendous victory of the
Cuban revolution itself.
In America, we portray heroes as all-knowing
exceptions to the rule, thereby reinforcing our dependence upon
the myth of the heroic individual and maintaining the impotence
of the multitude. In our culture, we are taught that change takes
place not through mass-action but through a single moralistic
or righteous figure (think of how Dr. King or Malcolm X is portrayed
today) who is able to make the system respond positively to the
importance of his or her argument.
We should hold no such illusions. The
Bolivian peasants who are still alive and living in the areas
in which Che and his guerrilla band were operating were clearly
touched by the brush of history. In the film "Ernesto Che
Guevara: The Bolivian Diary," the filmmakers found that
many of them were still alive, and interviewed them. They movingly
recounted that one world-historic experience of their lives,
their encounter with Che. Some remembered his kindness towards
them. One peasant woman was an apolitical young teenager in 1967
and had risked her life to bring Che food and look after him
in his last hours. Now around 50 years old, she remembers Che's
kindness towards her, and how this profoundly affected her life.
Although no one in the film says it in so many words, clearly
Che was something of a Christ figure to them, even to those who
betrayed him or fired on him. It's quite a comment on our present
condition that human touches that were once quite ordinary seem,
in today's world, exceptional.
As Che put it, in his most famous quote:
"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that a true
revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."
But back in the Autumn of 1967, Che was
thrown increasingly into doubt. He began to question his strategy
of the "foco" for Bolivia, which in Cuba had worked
so effectively. The guerrillas were faced with the failure of
the peasants to join the revolt, contrary to the guerrillas'
expectations. This had a huge demoralizing effect on the guerrilla
army, as well as upon Che's state of mind.
Che was captured, tortured and murdered
in Bolivia under the direction of the CIA on October 9, 1967.
Thirty-six years have passed. Still Che is remembered, not as
some ancient and barely remembered patriarch, but as one who
exemplifying the spirit of the times. He inspired so many ordinary
people to commit themselves to their vision of a different world,
even in the face of bureaucratic intransigence and the enormous
power of US imperialism, against all odds.
That such a vision seems extraordinary
today, that acting out of one's love for humanity is almost inconceivable
in the US today only makes yesterday's commonplace behavior seem
beyond comprehension. And yet, people act in such ways ALL THE
TIME. We just don't see it, or report it. It's what makes us
human in an era of robots. It's what enabled the new Bolivian
revolution to actually win state power, much to the chagrin of
the US government. That, too, is part of Che's legacy.
And, hopefully, its what inspires us
to continue "risking ridicule," regardless of where
it comes from, to make our radical efforts today successful.
For many of us, it's not only the end result that matters, it's
the way we live, living a meaningful life.
Notes
1. John Gerassi, "Venceremos! The
Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara," Introduction, Simon
and Schuster, p. 14.
2. ibid. This is an edited and abbreviated
extract from a 1960 speech by Che Guevara, "On Revolutionary
Medicine." The entire speech can be found in the Gerassi
book, pp 112-119.
Mitchel Cohen
is co-editor of "Green Politix," the national newspaper
of the Greens/Green Party
USA. He can be reached at: mitchelcohen@mindspring.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 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
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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
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