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Today's
Stories
January 7, 2004
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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January
7, 2004
The New Meaning for
"Neo"
Planet
Chomsky in the Times
By MICHAEL LEON
The limits of column inches can constrain reasoned,
subtle argumentation that refutes one's favorite author from
being housed in the op-ed columns and book review sections of
a daily newspaper.
But this week's New York Times demonstrate
again that ideological constraints are the most powerful force
thwarting honest disputation, at least in the newspaper of record.
A review by Samantha Power in the Sunday
New York Times Book Review (Jan. 4, 2003) of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony
or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan
Books/Henry Holt & Company) constitutes the most sympathetic,
comparatively fair and balanced discussion of Chomsky's political
writing in years appearing in these pages, with only a hint of
Chomsky bashing.
A reader might understand how this comes
about now. After all, Bush and neocons have suffered the peace
movement's and alternative media's devastating rebuttal to the
administration's stated reasons for war with Iraq--no weapons
of mass destruction and no connections to al-Qaeda--to their
embarrassment before the entire world.
Yet, reading Power you can almost feel
the compulsion to abuse Chomsky somehow, someway, lest someone
reads the review and gets the impression that Power is somehow
sympathetic to Chomsky's writing; Power seems on guard against
this.
After noting Chomsky's growing celebrity
as a "global phenomenon" and best-selling author, Power
reasonably sums up "Hegemony or Survival" as "...a
raging and often meandering assault on United States foreign
policy and the elites who shape it." Chomsky is an indignant
writer, what a Brit might call "overheated;" although
I do not agree that the book is meandering.
As Power implies the scholarly Chomsky
insists upon using evidence to back his conclusions, "Drawing
upon case after historical case of violent meddling (Iran, Cuba,
Vietnam, Nicaragua, Kosovo, etc.)"
So far, so good as can be expected, although
"violent meddling" is a ridiculous euphemism for the
millions killed and the societies destroyed in the cases that
Power cites.
But at this point, no more Ms. Nice Girl
for Samantha Power:
"For Chomsky, the world is divided
into oppressor and oppressed. America, the prime oppressor, can
do no right, while the sins of those categorized as oppressed
receive scant mention. Because he deems American foreign policy
inherently violent and expansionist, he is unconcerned with the
motives behind particular policies, or the ethics of particular
individuals in government. And since he considers the United
States the leading terrorist state, little distinguishes American
air strikes in Serbia undertaken at night with high-precision
weaponry from World Trade Center attacks timed to maximize the
number of office workers who have just sat down with their morning
coffee."
Chomsky is a good empiricist, and he
does insist on an evidence base for his conclusions. The overwhelming
evidence does suggest that American foreign policy has directly
or indirectly done a lot of harm in the world, and that this
policy can lead to utterly catastrophic consequences. That seems
abundantly clear, and honestly I do not see why or how Power
can object to this, or even why Chomsky is "Revered"
for pointing this out. Seems obvious.
And, as American citizens, we and Power
bear responsibility for what our government does; so citizens,
intellectuals, artists and writers should concentrate of what
they are responsible for and not so much on "the sins of
those categorized as oppressed." Again, though this sentiment
has been expressed by Chomsky time and again, one must question
how Power can object to this principle, or why Chomsky is revered
for pointing this out. Seems obvious.
As for Power's assertion that Chomsky
sees a black and white world of oppressor and oppressed, it is
revealing that Power does not cite anything. And, "It is
inconceivable, in Chomsky's view, that American power could be
harnessed for good," writes Power.
I have never read such text or suggestion
from Chomsky in anything. Why does Power make it up? Chomsky's
view is simply that privileged sectors of states will likely
influence foreign policy in their own interests, often irrespective
of who gets hurt. Power almost admits the point in writing "And
it is essential to demand, as Chomsky does, that a country with
the might of the United States stop being so selective in applying
its principles." Careful there, Ms. Power, you said something
good.
Power concludes that "Chomsky is
wrong to think that individuals within the American government
are not thinking seriously about the costs of alliances with
repressive regimes..."
The best thing about Chomsky as a scholar
is that he a bottom-line, results-oriented guy--seemingly obsessed
with such matters as evidence and measurable phenomena -- like
number of deaths, number of wounded, systematic cases of torture,
number of starving, press freedoms prevented, civil liberties
suffering generally; and how our country's policies sustain and
cause such phenomena -- irrespective of our government's "profession
of noble intent (Hegemony of Survival),'' or Power's divining
how scrupulously "individuals within the American government
are...thinking seriously about the costs of alliances with repressive
regimes." Chomsky's seems like a level-headed approach that
reaches reasonable conclusions, and Power has to goes out of
her way to find fault.
The Times reverts to the not-so-fair-and-balanced
commentary in today's editorial page in David Brooks' "The
Era of Distortion" (Jan.6, 2003) who gets back to good old
Times-Chomsky bashing.
You who point out that following:
That neocons Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle, Doug Feith, Bill Kristol and others have advocated invading
Iraq for years
That many neocons are in policy-making
or influential positions in the administration
That we did invade Iraq even though no
weapons of mass destruction and no connections to al-Qaeda have
been found (Brooks does not mention this) are, well read this
description of you neocon critics who are "unhinged from
reality":
"You get to feed off their villainy
and luxuriate in your own contrasting virtue. You will find books,
blowhards and candidates playing to your delusions, and you can
emigrate to your own version of Planet Chomsky. You can live
there unburdened by ambiguity."
Elsewhere, Brooks notes that:
. "(con is short for 'conservative'
and neo is short for 'Jewish'),"
. "...there are apparently millions
of people who cling to the notion that the world is controlled
by well-organized and malevolent forces. And for a subset of
these people, Jews are a handy explanation for everything"
. and "...anti-Semitism is resurgent.
Conspiracy theories are prevalent. Partisanship has left many
people unhinged"
"Welcome to election year, 2004,"
concludes Brooks.
Neocon critics are unhinged or anti-Semitic,
proliferating because of the 2004 election year. Welcome to Planet
Brooks in the Times.
Michael Leon
is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His writing has appeared
nationally in The Progressive, In These Times, and CounterPunch.
He can be reached at: maleon@terracom.net.
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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