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Recent
Stories
May
23, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits?
Ron
Jacobs
Long Live People's Park!
Michael
Greger, MD
Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply
at Risk
Elaine
Cassel
Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt."
Sam
Hamod
The Shi'a of Iraq
Christopher
Greeder
After the Layoffs
Alexander
Cockburn
Derrida's Double Life (poem)
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23
May
22, 2003
Mark
Gaffney
Christian in Name Only
Carl
Estabrook
Republic of Fear
Carl
Camacho, Jr.
Reason for Hope
Ben
Granby
What Rates a Headline from the Middle
East?
Vanessa
Jones
Terror Alerts in Australia
Mickey
Z.
Instant Understanding
Don
Monkerud
Snowballs in a Soggy Economy
Barry Lando
The Nether-Nether World of G.W. Bush
Steve
Perry
Total Information
Awareness: Secret Shadow Program?
May
21, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
are Everywhere
Brian Cloughley
The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz
Saul
Landau
Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush
Larry Kearney
Two Morning Poems, May 2003
Steve
Perry
Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Justice Comes to Iraq
May
20, 2003
Tariq
Ali
The Empire Advances
Ahmad
Faruqui
Whither American Nationalism?
Ben Tripp
Dialysis with Osama
Linda
Heard
The Cage of Occupation
Cynthia
McKinney
Toward a Just and Peaceful World
Edward
Said
The Arab Condition
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest Long Ago
Stew
Albert
Yale Men
Steve Perry
The New Face of Al-Qaeda
May
19, 2003
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Matt
Vidal
Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market
Michael
S. Ladah
The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map
Robert
Fisk
Bush's Eternal War Backfires
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
May
16, 2003
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
Hot Stories
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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May
24, 2003
John Brown and Dutch Bill
Thin
Is In, But Fat Was Where It Was At
By LENNI BRENNER
All historians acknowledge John Brown's towering
stature. Yet few modern Americans recognize May 24-25 as the
night of his 1856 execution of five pro-slavers at Pottawatomie
Creek in "bloody Kansas." It was Pottawatomie which
brought him to world attention. Truly, it was Act I, scene 1
of the oncoming Civil War.
Under the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
Kansas was to be a slave or free state when the white residents
wrote their state constitution. Accordingly, abolitionists and
pro-slavers flocked there. During the 1855 territorial legislature
election, armed Missouri "border ruffians" illegally
voted. The sham majority expelled the abolitionist delegates
and set up a pro-slaver regime in Lecompton. Anti-slavery forces
organized a rival government in Lawrence. The ruffians then stormed
Lawrence, burning its newspapers. Brown and other Creek abolitionists
rushed to Lawrence, to be told to halt by their timid leaders,
who feared that defending the town would unleash further attacks.
We know what happened next thru the Autobiography
of August Bondi. A Jew, at 14 he had been the youngest military
participant in the failed 1848 revolt in Austria. He came to
Kansas to oppose slavery, and was with Brown on the 23rd.
John Grant raced into their camp. Dutch
Bill Sherman, a German immigrant, an infamous local pro-slaver,
came to Grant's cabin while he was plowing, to assault his sister.
She screamed, he rescued her. "Dutch Bill left, cursing
and vowing utter extermination of all free state men." Brown
knew that Dutch Bill's gang, excited by Lawrence, meant it.
Brown "made a short speech, telling
us that for the protection of our friends and families a blow
must be struck on the Pottawatomie Creek to strike terror into
pro-slavery miscreants who intended pillage and murder."
Four sons, a son-in-law, Henry Thompson, wagoner James Townsley,
and Theodore Wiener, Bondi's general store partner, followed
Brown into history. Brown told August to meet them later. He
was "not so well known ... so you will attend to bringing
news to us."
Bondi describes Wiener, a German Jew
from Prussian Poland. Pro-slavery, he came to Kansas solely to
make money, trading with both sides. But the previous winter,
Dutch Bill, 6'3," 250 lbs, thinking Wiener shared August's
politics, came into their store and attacked him. Wiener, 5'10,"
250 lbs, looked an easy victim. However Brown's son, Salmon,
described him as "big, savage, bloodthirsty." He "could
not be kept out of any accessible fight." Wiener knocked
the German down, pulled his revolver out of his holster, fired
it and threw the gun after him. But now he had to go to the abolitionists
for protection.
Bondi had been sick in St. Louis. On
return, he was stunned: "For nothing however did I admire
John Brown as much for as for the conversion of my friend Theodore
Wiener from a rank Pro-slaveryman to an uncompromising Abolitionist....
Judge of my surprise when Wiener conversed with me as a radical
Free Stateman."
Bondi was a majority Free-Stater. "We...
did not sanction an increase in the colored population north."
For them, radical meant Brown's then unique racial egalitarianism.
Later, Boston Christian abolitionists saw Brown as Oliver Cromwell.
Wiener never heard of the Puritan warrior. But he knew an armed
Hebrew prophet. Brown had the rightful message, Wiener understood
it.
Brown divided his men into two units.
They took 5 ringleaders out from their families. Military silence
required them to be put to the sword. Out of mercy, he shot one,
still quivering. But Salmon Brown attests that "Henry Thompson
and Wiener killed [Allen] Wilkinson and Sherman."
Smiting foes with executioners' swords
indeed terrified Biblical-minded soft abolitionists and ruffians
alike. His reputation racing before him, slavers feared him.
He was a skilled skirmisher. The June 2nd battle at Black Jack
showed that the ruffians could be defeated in the field. Success
converted abolitionist opinion re the night executions. One later
wrote that he "did not know of a settler in 1856 but what
regarded it amongst the most fortunate events in the history
of Kansas." Days later the slayings were reenacted on Broadway.
Later writers are of mixed minds on every
aspect of Brown's career. Many agree with Brown's contemporary.
But the March 16, 1998 Wall Street Journal saw "reckless
and barbaric actions at Pottawatomie." Ken Chowder, in the
February 2000 American Heritage, had a more complex take: "Maybe
Pottawatomie was insane, and maybe it was not."
Serious moderns see the slavery conflict
as the inexorable struggle between two incompatible economic
systems. But the historical protagonists rarely thought in our
sociological manner. Most radical abolitionists and slavers thought
they were carrying out the will of the Almighty. By our scientific
standards, either their premises or their actions, or both, were
fanatic.
In 1860, Lincoln, the ultimate moderate,
repudiated Harpers Ferry: "That affair ... corresponds with
the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of
kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression
of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to
liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little
else than his execution."
Brown frequently cited Numbers 35:33,
"the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein,
but by the blood of him that shed it." When Kansas abolitionists
realized they had to fight or lose, Brown, the enthusiast, was
necessarily seen as a realist and a hero. When Lincoln finally
realized that compromise with slavery was impossible, the practical
politician proclaimed the same doctrine. If "every drop
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with
the sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so still
it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether." Given the limitations of that age,
the ends justified the extremes. In its time, Pottawatomie was
realism and at Harpers Ferry fanaticism rose to heroic martyrdom.
History is correct in seeing Brown as great. Yet, when the hour
of truth arrived, two of his sons refused to kill their captives.
If Wiener hadn't been there, the raid would have failed. When
he "unleashed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift
sword," he dealt the 1st blow in the "terrible sublime"
tragedy we call the American civil war.
An unforeseeable event, the crazed attack
by Dutch Bill, turned a greedy pro-slaver into someone ripe for
conversion by Brown. So to, in our day, events will turn Americans
now on the right into the boldest champions of social justice.
Lenni Brenner,
editor of 51
Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, can
be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com
Today's
Features
Standard
Schaefer
Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits?
Ron
Jacobs
Long Live People's Park!
Michael
Greger, MD
Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply
at Risk
Elaine
Cassel
Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt."
Sam
Hamod
The Shi'a of Iraq
Christopher
Greeder
After the Layoffs
Alexander
Cockburn
Derrida's Double Life (poem)
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23
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