Coming
in September
From AK Press
Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
8, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
Hot Stories
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
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
8, 2003
What
the US Says Goes
The Painful Horrors
of Political Autism
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
I've read that severe autism involves receiving
a storm of sensory perceptions, literally assaulting a mind unable
to properly sort them out. It is a terrifying experience, driving
sufferers to avoid human contact.
That description of autism resembles
what I briefly sometimes experience from the passing parade of
political events.
A Canadian citizen of Syrian origin,
a man with a family and career in Canada, was arrested and deported
last fall on his way to Europe while simply changing planes in
New York. In an act of aggressive stupidity, despite his travelling
on a Canadian passport, he was deported by American authorities
to Syria. His family has not heard from him since. Now, we have
received reports that the man has been severely tortured. After
all, Syria is a closed society, and he would be wanted for avoiding
military service if nothing else, the very thing that motivated
millions of people to migrate to America from Europe during the
late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The American Secretary of State announced
in his dignified baritone that the U.S. will indeed pay its promised
blood-money of $15 million dollars each for the lives of Hussein's
sons. I thought this a fitting cap to Mr. Powell's career in
the State Department. Apparently, he thought so, too, for not
long after, he let it be known he would retire after Bush's next
inauguration. I guess he felt he had to get this out before it
became clear to the whole world that Bush's crowd was as likely
to re-appoint him as give up root-beer socials over smoldering
cows down at the ranch.
There will almost certainly be a second
inauguration, despite all those desperately silly count-down
clocks on the Internet telling us how long Bush has left. This
most inarticulate President in American history, a man who has
set in motion policies we will all live to regret, remains fairly
popular. I don't know which is the more appropriate analogy,
the vast ship that takes a very great time to swing into a turn
or the lab critter that learns only by banging its head into
the walls of a maze, to best describe America's capacity for
political advance, but it is painfully slow.
General Ricardo Sanchez, America's Boss
of Bosses in Iraq, has ordered occupying troops to lighten up
a bit, recognizing what the whole world understands, that spraying
a crowd of civilians with automatic fire does not win hearts
and minds. I think he does need, however, to speak with the troops
who ripped Iraqi flags from the graves of Hussein's sons and
stomped the rough graves with their boots. If Iraqis themselves
did this, it would be a fair expression of past hatred, but American
soldiers doing it is nothing short of stupid.
Bush's distinguished Attorney General,
John Ashcroft, who believes both in speaking in tongues and in
stepping on them when they don't agree with him, has directed
federal prosecutors to report judges giving light sentences.
So much for the idea of respecting judicial independence, but
judges have always been targets for America's crypto-Nazis. The
only good high-court judge is one who interprets the Constitution
as though it were still 1789, rather than 2003, and the only
good lower-court judge is one who packs the prisons.
Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he will
run for governor of California. This would not be notable since
California's list of past governors includes Ronald Reagan, former
pitchman for Chesterfield cigarettes and Boraxo soap powder,
Jerry Brown, fast-talking mystic, and Richard Nixon, the Republican
gift that just kept giving. What is notable is that Hollywood's
aging, dyed-hair, action-figure hero started his campaign with
words resembling those of now-forgotten whiner-billionaire, Ross
Perot. Remember, how Perot was going to clean out the stables
in Washington? Arnold is going to "clean house in Sacramento,"
California. He'll squeeze it in between three-hour sessions in
the gym and appointments with his hair dresser, manicurist, and
body-waxing team. What a fresh and inspiring theme, cleaning
house, offered to the people of the nation's largest, wealthiest
state. He'll probably be elected.
Al Gore is making a much-promoted speech,
a clear hint that interest in running still flickers in the breast
of this ineffectual politician whose annoying campaign helped
give the world Bush. It is not even a slight exaggeration to
say that something is very, very wrong with America's political
system when Bush and Gore are the best candidates 280 million
people can field.
A small disturbance quivered through
the press over the proposal for a futures market in terror attacks
advanced by John Poindexter, convicted felon given new life by
Bush as one of those Republican government-haters who never in
his life has done anything but work for government, a public-service
lifer. While I find his futures-market idea repulsive, I cannot
quite grasp the wide disapproval. The truth is that America is
coming almost to be defined by lotteries. Apart from state lotteries
everywhere and whole communities living off the avails of casinos,
many companies selling almost anything you care to name have
shifted their advertising spending to running lotteries in the
mail. You would think from their promotional material that they
weren't selling anything but were just in the business of making
strangers happy by winning big. It's the same for much of the
telephone soliciting that plagues America: they're only calling
to give you something. And it is a crap shoot in America whether
your employer even continues to offer a decent health insurance
policy.
Bush's efforts in the Middle East certainly
are paying big dividends. Israel released 340 carefully-selected
Palestinian prisoners, and the act was front-page news as though
something important had happened. Never mind that Israel holds
about 6,000 such prisoners, and never mind that all of them were
improperly arrested and imprisoned by the Middle East's "only
democracy." The release of less than 6 percent of them is
advertised as a step towards peace by the contemporary Prince
of Peace, Ariel Sharon. Meanwhile, the world's biggest slab of
reinforced concrete, complete with machine-gun towers and razor
wire, Sharon's mere "fence" (ah, what's in a name!),
continues to rise on the West Bank, severing the natural relationships
of centuries and demonstrating Sharon's conception of a Palestinian
state resembling a zoo exhibit of dangerous animals secure in
their natural habitant.
I received my 437th e-mail accusing me
of anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism? You might think that is
the name for some dreadful heresy, opposing the sacred official
religion. Perhaps, it is the political equivalent of following
anti-Christ? Religion and nationalism do get very confused in
America. That's certainly the attitude such writers display.
The simple truth is that if being critical
of the arrogant, thoughtless, and abusive aspects of American
society sometimes earns you this epithet, it may come to be regarded
it as an honorable distinction. This kind of unimaginative labeling
shows no awareness of a critical tradition embracing Swift, Voltaire,
and Johnson, and extending back to Isaiah and Jeremiah. A critical
tradition that included those like Tom Paine who worked to stoke
the embers of revolution in America more than two centuries ago,
but then, missing, too, is any awareness that America's armies
now resemble the nasty Redcoats and Hessians excoriated in every
grade-school history text.
The e-mail came from an American--they
always do--undoubtedly someone deeply affected by his high-school
experiences of watching cheer leaders flipping to reveal what's
under their skirts to the sounds of out-of-tune brass bands and
intermittent prayers for home-school victory. These early cultural
experiences regrettably often permanently fix future understanding
and behavior.
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|