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Today's
Stories
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
2, 2004
Distant Early Spin
Warning
As
the Top Wobbleth
By DAVID VEST
"Spinning spinning spinning, spinning like a spinning
top," sang the fabulous Little Richard in my youth. Why
does no one abduct Little Richard from California and force him
to return to New Orleans to record one more great album before
we lose him forever? I never tire of hearing The Specialty Sessions,
especially the outtakes. I dearly love the moment when a clueless
white-bread engineer cuts Richard off in mid-song, advising him
that he sounds almost as though he were screaming and that the
band is having to play louder to be heard over him. After a brief
moment of profound silence, Little Richard sighs, "Tired
as I am and I got nothing but soul," addressing no one but
himself and posterity.
"Life is a top which whipping sorrow
driveth," wrote the ever-cheerful Fulke Greville, First
Baron Brooke, the most unjustly neglected poet of the English
renaissance. (His Elegy for Sir Philip Sidney is one of the greatest
poems in the language.)
Rare would be the child today, grown
or not, who has played with the kind of top that Greville had
in mind. Or, increasingly, with any kind of top in this age of
high-tech toys. I was at a  party
recently where no one knew what a yo-yo was. But we are not unfamiliar,
we moderns, with the concept of spin.
From the borrowed flight suit to the
fake turkey in Baghdad, from the staged filming of the Jessica
Lynch rescue to the fabricated-and-quickly-withdrawn "President
Bush sends his regards" at the resurrection of Saddam Hussein,
we are getting used to learning later that what we were shown
and told did not happen "quite that way."
For the U.S. military, bald-faced lying
has become a routine part of "the war effort." Part
of "winning hearts and minds." Simply reporting what
has happened is not good enough. It has to be "presented"
in the "right light."
In a better world, people would be court-martialed
for lying to the American people while wearing the uniform of
the United States. In this one, they are given promotions. Promotion
promotions. And perhaps leveraged into post-combat careers at
Hill & Knowlton or, if all else fails, corporate communications.
Now, at the top of the year, while not
disregarding past efforts to spin reality until it produces something
like butter, it is time to contemplate future spin, contingency
spin, new forms of spin that may be expected to wobble forth
in 2004.
I assure you, it is not too early. The
spinning has already begun. For example:
Should the U.S. experience a major terror
attack later this year (say, anytime after the two majors parties
have effectively engaged each other in the presidential campaign),
the White House will likely portray it as an "attempt to
influence the election" and urge Americans to stand up to
terror by ... guess what?... re-electing Bush.
Can't you hear them now? Dick Armey,
Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, all swearing that we are not going
to let terrorists "dictate the outcome" of this election?
Re-elect the President ... otherwise the terrorists win.
William Safire, ever on the spinning
edge, had already predicted such an attack before the sun went
down on the old year, even casting it as a likely "October
surprise" in his column in the New York Times. You don't
suppose he made that up out of the blue, on a slow day, do you?
Wanna buy a watch?
Merely by associating the concept of
a "terror attack" with the phrase "October surprise,"
Safire makes it sound like something Democrats, not terrorists,
would do. As if to say, if they would benefit from it, they must
somehow be guilty of it.
Doubtless the Democrats are doing contingency
spin planning of their own. I hope so. When I last peeked they
were still spinning the last election, to the effect that you
would think Ralph Nader had been elected.
Meanwhile, the nation waits for the next
mad cow to stagger and fall. When the first case was reported,
did you notice that the Secretary of Agriculture rushed forward
to protect not the American people but the corporate cattle industry?
Whipping sorrow indeed.
Just as the former governor of Texas,
G. W. Bush, had rushed forward the morning after Columbine with
new legislation to protect not our children but the gun industry.
Just as, hours after the Exxon Valdez
ran aground, the chairman of Exxon flew not to Alaska but to
New York, to reassure the financial community that the company's
stock was okay.
And to think we laughed at Baghdad Bob.
Why, come to think of it, did we laugh at him? Was it because
his lies were so outrageous or because he was so pathetically
incompetent at doing what the Karl Roves of our world do so well?
Or was it because even while his country
crumbled around him the spinning continued?
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He and his band,
The Willing Victims, just released a scorching new CD, Way
Down Here.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.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
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
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