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What You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter Blood Diamonds: the Inside Story An amazing expose by T.R. Naylor: How the "Blood" or "Conflict Diamonds" Myth peddled by NGOs Helped a Vicious Mining Company Shore Up Its Monopoly, Made a Pile of Money for A Washington Post Reporter and Leonardo di Caprio, Served As A Propaganda Myth in the "War on Terror" and had Nothing to Do With Osama Bin Laden. Pinochet is gone, and the world is a cleaner place. JoAnn Wypijewski recalls 1988 in Santiago, when Chile lost its fear. And yes, here they are in charge of Congress again, ready to facilitate a troop hike in Iraq. Alexander Cockburn re-introduces an old acquaintance: the Democrats--Party of War. Remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Get CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year

Today's Stories January 3, 2007 Kathy Kelly Wrapped Around a Bullet January 2, 2007 Michael Watts Oil Inferno Amina Mire Return of the Warlords: Death and Destruction for Somalis James Brooks Pushing the Wedge in Palestine Alevtina Rea The Tyrant is Dead! Long Live ... ? Al Krebs Global Food Security: a Call to Action Peter Rost Invitation to a Hanging: the Saddam Hussein Execution Video Niranjan Ramakrishnan A Deadly December John Stanton Appetites for Destruction Website of the Day Out Now: Petition   January 1, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Iron Man, Tin God: the Meaning of Saddam Hussein Uri Avnery What Makes Sammy Run? Joshua Frank Eliot Spitzer's Constitutional Hang Up: Architect of New York's Patriot Act   December 30 / 31, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn 2006, Hard to Call It Vintage, But 2007 Could Finally Be Bobby Byrd's Year Patrick Cockburn Iraq 2006: a Nation Soaked in Blood Tears Itself Apart Paul Wolf Dying for Our Sins: A Lawyer for Saddam Describes How His Execution on the First of Eid May Transform Him Into a Martyr Manuel Garcia, Jr. Executing Saddam, Protecting the Rackets Tariq Ali Saddam at the End of a Rope Paul Craig Roberts The New Dark Age: Official Lies, Dogma and Unaccountable Power Douglas Valentine At the End of My Rope: Hanging With Saddam Brian M. Downing The New Iraq Policy: Escalation Michael Donnelly Injustice in Black and White: the Duke Non-Rape Case Stephen Lendman Did Sharon Order the Assassination of Arafat? The Revelations of Uri Dan Fred Gardner Comes Now the Ghost of "Decrim:" Nixon and Marijuana Bailly / Caudron / Lambert Who Owns Ikea?: the Opaque Legacy of Ingvar Kamprad Ralph Nader The Prospects for Progressive Politics Nick Dearden The War on Terror Hits Africa Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg The Third Degree: an Interview with AC Thompson on the Origins of the CIA's Secret Rendition Flights Missy Beattie In Harm's Way: How Our National Coward Describes War Ron Jacobs Sigh of the Oppressed: Religion and Politics Dan La Botz Defend Illegal Immigrants: Help Them! Harbor Them! Andrew Wimmer An Act of Contrition: the Peace Movement in 2007 Dr. Carol Wolman, MD Psychiatrist: Impeach Bush for Good of Country Martha Rosenberg New Year's Resolutions for Big Pharma Dick J. Reavis News Before It Happens: Bush's 2007 MLK Day Speech Jeffrey St. Clair Listening to James Brown and His Followers Poets' Basement Grima, Curtis, Davies, Orloski and Engel Website of the Weekend Charlie Fowler's Photolog: a Life at Altitude Music Video of the Weekend "We're Winning the War on Drugs!" December 29, 2006 Bill Quigley A Tale of Two Sisters: Why is HUD Spending Tens of Millions in Katrina Money to Bulldoze 4,534 Public Housing Apartments in New Orleans? Norman Finkelstein The Dershowitz Treatment John Borowski Curb Your Environmentalism: Laurie David and Me Abid Mustafa The Re-Talibanization of Afghanistan Greg Moses World Responds to Palestinian Family's Jailing Despite Media Blackout Uri Cohen Stand Up for Herod: a Seasonal Story of Ancient Palestine Bailly / Caudron / Lambert The Secrets in Ikea's Closet Website of the Day Justice for New Orleans   December 28, 2006 Norman Finkelstein The Ludicrous Attacks on Jimmy Carter's Book Anthony Cowell Highway Robbery: Privatizing New Jersey's Toll Roads John Ross Gateway to the Next Mexican Revolution? Hilaria Cruz I'm Going to Stay Right Here: Story of a Oaxacan Prisoner Greg Moses Palestinian Immigrant Jailings in Texas Brittany Bond The Blood Trail of Luis Posada Carriles, Washington's Preferred Terrorist Website of the Day Godfather of Soul and Father of Funk   December 27, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Farewell to Our Greatest President: Adieu, Gerald Ford Faruq Ziada Is There a Sunni Majority in Iraq? Christopher Brauchli Burning EPA's Books: What They Don't Want You to Read Might Save Your Life Michael Ortiz Hill Journey to Vietnam: Dare We Not Say Genocide? Nikolas Kozloff Saving Caracas Mark Schneider Why Hope? Reasons for Optimism December 26, 2006 Peter Stone Brown James Brown: Please Don't Go Tito Tricot Chile: the Ghosts of Torture Gary Leupp Cowboys Differ on Iran Attack: Cheney/Bush vs. the Baker Commission John V. Walsh Dershowitz vs. Carter in Beantown: Peace Movement AWOL, Again Reza Fiyouzat Red Christmas: Why Santa Was Hot in China This Year Ron Jacobs The Golem: a Conversation with Marc Estrin Website of the Day JB: Prisoner of Love December 25, 2006 Saul Landau A Jeep Trip with Fidel Lang / McGovern To Surge or Not to Surge? Michael Dickinson Should Stupid Thoughts Be Crimes?: Deny Santa If You Will, But ... Website of the Day James Brown, RIP December 23 / 24, 2006 Marjorie Cohn What's Going On? Jeffrey L. Gould The Capital of Salvadoran Memory: El Mozote After 25 Years Diane Christian The Rape of Iraq William Loren Katz From the Raid on "Fort Negro" to Iraq: Lessons from the First US Invasion Greg Moses This War Can't be Made Right by Winning M. Shahid Alam An Islamic Civil War: Chaos by Design? Fred Gardner Exposé as Inoculant: HRT, Zyprexa, Lilly and the Press Dave Lindorff Crime of the Century Azmi Bishara Ways of Denial Ralph Nader The BCS: a Monopoly on College Football Seth Sandronsky Fiscally Imperiled Social Security? William Hughes Cop Assaults Activists at Lockheed Protest Ron Jacobs Making Stones Weep Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to on New Year's Eve   December 22, 2006 David Rosen Bush's Foreign Sex Policy: Imperialism's Second Front Christopher Brauchli When the Secret is the Question: Secret Prisons, Top Secret Interrogations John Ross Flashlights in the Tunnel of Hate J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Political Sell-Outs in Black and White Rahul Mahajan Dennis Kucinich: Maverick or Stalking Horse? Arthur Neslen Provoking Civil War in the Occupied Territories Peter Rost, MD The Secrets of His Success: Fired Pfizer CEO Walks Away with $198 Million Website of the Day 10 Ways to Change the World in 2007 December 21, 2006 Rosa Mariam Elizalde An Interview with Gore Vidal: "I am Jealous of Cuba" Arundhati Roy Breaking the News Brian Cloughley Poppies Rising: Afghanistan's Drug Catastrophe Daniel White Jimmy Carter in Austin: Time to Come Clean on the Shoot Down of That Itavia DC-9 John V. Whitbeck On Israel's Right to Exist Sam Smith Still Smearing Ralph Nader for 2000 Paris Reidhead GM Ice Cream: Something's Fishy in Your Good Humor Bar Kevin Wehr Denying Disaster: Katrina and the Case for Impeachment Website of the Day Pesticides and Amphibians: a Vital New Database December 20, 2006 Gabriel Kolko Rumsfeld and the American Way of War Winslow T. Wheeler The Pentagon Measures the Chaos in Iraq Tariq Ali The War is Lost Saree Makdisi Israel, Apartheid and Jimmy Carter Bruce Jackson Saying "Oh!": John Mohawk and the Power to Make Peace Dave Lindorff Democrats Walk Into a Bush Trap on Iraq Leslie Radford The Winter Harvest of the South Central Farmers Dave Jansson Divided We Stand, United We Fall: Secessionists Confront the Empire Johnny Barber Jesus is a Terrorist Website of the Day Is It for Freedom? December 19, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Democrats Prepare to Fund Longer War Jonathan Cook End of the Strongmen Greg Moses Globalized Gulag: Palestinian Refugees and Children Held in Hutto, TX Jail Sean Penn Georgie, There's a Crowd Downstairs Dave Lindorff Innocents Abroad: Cracking Down on Gitmo Detainees Despite Overwhelming Evidence Most Are Not Terrorists Ralph Nader Going Postal Laura Carlsen Latin America's Pink Tide? Carlos Villarreal The Well is Poisoned: Victory Requires an Immediate Pull-Out Website of the Day Chuck Spinney on the Pentagon December 18, 2006 Luis J. Rodriguez En Lak Ech: Chicanos, Mayans and Mel Gibson Norman Solomon Washington Refuses to End the War: Powell, Baker, Hamilton--Thanks for Nothing! Uri Avnery Lebanon: War Without a Plan Ron Jacobs More Troops, More Body Bags Phil Gasper Afghanistan: Bush's Other War Unravels Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Iran's Elections: The World Isn't Florida and Bush Isn't Its Supreme Leader William Blum The United States of Punishment Jim Goodman So What's the Big Deal If Wal-Mart Makes a Mistake? James Brooks Talking Surge: Let's Kill Some More Before We Go Maria C. Khoury Walking Into the Art World: Designing a Palestinian Academy for the Arts Website of the Day Got Powell December 16 / 17, 2006 Weekend Edition Vijay Prashad A Perilous Way to Socialism Saul Landau Filming Fidel Anthony Arnove The US Occupation of Iraq: Act III of a Tragedy of Many Parts Paul Cantor The Puppet and the Puppeteer: Pinochet and Kissinger Annie Nocenti Baluchistan's Fight: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes Nicole Colson Hard Times on the Killing Floor: Smithfield's Rotten Record Stephen Gowans Tehran's Holocaust Conference Jordan Flaherty A Catastrophic Failure: Foundations, Nonprofits and the Second Looting of New Orleans Fred Gardner Dustin Costa Faces 15 to Life P. Sainath There's No Such Thing as a Free Cow Seth Sandronsky The Democrats and Social Security: Watch What the Party Says and Does Nadia Hijab An AIPAC Shot Across Baker's Bow? Deb Reich Dear Santa, (Or Someone): Greetings from the Occupied Holy Lands Susie Day Cops Shoot Another Rich White Man! Albert Wan Why Does It Take 50 Bullets? Missy Beattie Will the Next Leader Stand Up? Please! Martha Rosenberg Kicking the Wyeth Habit Saves Women's Lives Lee Ballinger The Devil's Highway: Clinton, Border Checkpoints and the Deaths of the Yuma 14 Michael Dickinson Kingdom of Fear Jeffrey St. Clair Live/Evil: Listening to Miles Davis Poets' Basement Davies, Buknatski and Ford Website of the Weekend "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"   December 15, 2006 Eliza Ernshire Palestinian "Civil War" and the Israeli Chocolate Ration Virginia Tilley What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel? Mike Ferner Roll Call for the Choir: If They Vote for War, Occupy 'Em! John Ross Mad Mel's Mayan Apocalypse Fred Wilhelms The Flip Side of Ahmet Ertegun: Where Did You Get Those Shoes? Kevin Zeese Dennis Kucinich's Strange Mission: Can You Be a Real Anti-War Candidate in a Pro-War Party? David Severn Social Engineering Begins at Home: Jeffrey Skoll, Billionaire Philantropist Dave Lindorff Sen. Tim Johnson Death Watch: Senate Gridlock May Be Best Outcome Sunsara Taylor As American as Shopping and Torture Website of the Day June 2, 2004: When Iraq Was There For The Looting   December 14, 2006 Jonathan Cook The Recognition Trap Riz Khan An Interview with Jimmy Carter Jason Hribal Kasatka, the Sea World Orca Pennick / Gray The Plight of Black Farmers: Racism in the US Farm Program Richard Levins That Embezzled Anti-Castro Money Pat Williams The College Crisis: Universal Access, Student Loan Debts and Pell Grants Peter Rost, MD Simply Irresistible: Do Women Prefer Bad Boys? Website of the Day The Sound of Rummy   December 13, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Iraq is Beyond Repair Greg Moses The Dixie Chicks Come Home to Roost Elizabeth Schulte Hungry for the Holidays Joshua Frank Death By Coke Debra Eschmeyer Corporations Control Your Dinner Leon Hadar Baker's Rescue Mission: Too Little, Too Late Peter Rost, MD I've Been a Very Bad Boy Margaret Knapke Mow bé and Malachi, Presenté! Reza Fiyouzat Are Cows Free? Fred Wilhelms A Last Minute Appeal: If You Know One of These Musicians Let Them Know They Are Owed Money--By Friday! Website of the Day The Crimes of Augusto Pinochet December 12, 2006 Fernando A. Torres The Last Man of the Junta: an Open Letter to Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners Paul Craig Roberts America's Injustice System is Criminal Stephen Soldz Abusive Interrogations Uri Avnery Baker's Cake William S. Lind Knocking Opportunity: From Vulcans to Vultures in Iraq Missy Beattie Convicted for Our Convictions: Trespassing for Truth at the UN Dave Lindorff The 35-Year Long Scream: Torture, Impeachment and a Vietnam Vet's Tears George Pyle Our Perverse Farm Plan: Where Christmas Comes Every Five Years Norman Solomon Is the USA the Center of the World? Website of the Day Citizens' War Tribunal   December 11, 2006 Virginia Tilley Banning Mandela Roger Burbach The Condor Model: the Atrocities of Pinochet and the US Col. Douglas MacGregor There's Only One Option Left: Leave! Fawwas Traboulsi Lebanon on the Brink Ron Jacobs Death of a Pig: Poetic Justice for Pinochet Gideon Levy The Cruel Line into Gaza: Elbow to Elbow, Like Cattle Mary McGrane Burning Books at Harvard Law Bernardo Ruiz The Disappeared of Oaxaca: a Message from One of the Actors in Apocalypto Website of the Day La Cancion de la Unidad Video of the Day Killing Castro: Congresswoman as Contract Killer?   December 9 / 10, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn Liberal Consensus for More Troops in Iraq Sen. Gordon Smith Out of Iraq: Cut and Run or Cut and Walk Greg Grandin Jeane Kirkpatrick, Mid-Wife of the Neo-Cons Paul Craig Roberts How Many More Will Die for Bush's Ego? Col. Dan Smith The Vietnamization of Iraq: Inside the Military Training Program Ralph Nader The Man from NAM: John Engler's Trail of Destruction Behrooz Ghamari The Donkey and the Date: Iran's Upcoming Municipal Elections Rev. Willliam Alberts Doing Unto Others: Pastor Haggard and President Bush James T. Phillips The James Gang: "Did You Kill Her?" Bennis / Leaver A Bi-Partisan Occupation Dave Lindorff A Congress of Hucksters and Pipsqueaks Nikolas Kozloff Robert Gates and Venezuela: Another Saber Rattler in Latin America Seth Sandronsky Activating White Racism Lucinda Marshall McKinney and Karpinsky: Silenced for Telling the Truth Mike Whitney Something's Gotta Give: James Baker vs. the Lobby John V. Whitbeck Recommendation No. 80 Faisal Kutty Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Merely a Western Construct? Hugh Sansom Smearing Jimmy Carter: an Open Letter to the New York Times Robert Gold My South American Journey: Impunity in Colombia Boots Riley Crash and Burn: an Urgent Message from The Coup Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Engel & Buknatski Website of the Weekend Alive in Mexico December 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn The Iraq Study Group's Cautious Appraisal Leutisha Stills Just How Progressive is the Congressional Black Caucus? Norman Finkelstein The Media Lynching of Jimmy Carter Will Youmans Mr. Lieberman Comes to Washington: Brookings Hosts an Ethnic Cleanser Peter Rost, MD What Went Wrong at Pfizer? Jonathan Demme My Friend Bruce Langhorne: a Great Musician Needs Your Help! Ray McGovern Senate Democrats Give Gates a Free Pass Lucinda Marshall What She Wore Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn The Lost John Lennon Interview Website of the Day John Lennon's FBI Files   December 7, 2006 Alex Friedman Rev. Phelps' Hate-Fueled Fanatics Find a Home in the Kansas Prison Industry Maureen Webb Risk Scoring and the National Insecurity State Paul Craig Roberts Catastrophe Still Awaits Dave Lindorff Prosecutor Admits: Mumia Abu-Jamal Had "No True Defense" Matt Vidal Drug Pushers, Inc.: Power and Profit in the Legal Drug Trade Yifat Susskind Looking for a Few Good Principles: What Should be Done in Iraq Rodriguez / Jones NYPD's Death Squads: From Diallo to Sean Bell Website of the Day 2006, Remixed December 6, 2006 Robert Bryce Omitting the Obvious with James Baker: From the S&L Crisis to the Iraq Study Group William S. Lind The Boomerang Effect: When Will the First IED Strike Cincy? Zoe Blunt The Clearcut Truth About the Great Bear Rainforest Corporate Crime Reporter The New Conventional Wisdom: Prosecute Individuals, Not Corporations Amira Hass A Regrettable Indifference: Israel's Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners Richard W. Behan The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War Sophie McNeill Why Hezbollah is Broadcasting Sunday Mass December 5, 2006 Virginia Tilley Apartheid Israel: a Beacon of Hope? Sharon Smith The New Washington Consensus: Blame the Victims in Iraq Joe Bageant Somewhere a Banker Smiles Ron Jacobs A War Washington Can't Win Norman Solomon Media Consensus, Stay in Iraq! Mike Whitney Rumsfeld's Final Snowflake: "I Was Just About to Change Everything ... " Derrick O'Keefe Regimes Unchanged: Chavez's Victory Strengthen's Cuba Julian Assange The Road to Hanoi Missy Beattie Bush, the Unhappy Helmsman Website of the Day Lessons of Suez and Iraq   December 4, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Gaza and Darfur George Ciccariello-Maher Tears of the Escualidos: Election Diary, Venezuela Ray McGovern Lame Ducks, Hold That Nomination!: a CIA Insider's Take on Gates John Ross Repression on the Menu in Mexico Walden Bello Hurricane Milton: Friedman, Bayonets and Markets Peter Rost, MD Pfizer's Clueless Executives Stephen Lendman The Withering of the Bush Dynasty Gideon Levy This Ceasefire will Go Up in Flames Website of the Day The "Babes" of Hizbullah?   December 2 / 3, 2006 Weekend Edition Barucha Calamity Peller The Dirty War of Oaxaca Paul Craig Roberts Is Bush Sane?: When Denial Goes Pathological Ralph Nader The Big Boys of Financial Crime Winslow T. Wheeler Committee of Enablers: Is Gates Fit to Serve? Are the Senators? Amira Hass The Checkpoint Generation Maymanah Farhat Depoliticizing Arab Art: Christie's and the Rush to "Discover" the Arab World Dave Lindorff Fighting the Iraq War--At Home Fred Gardner Dr. Jimenez Defends His Practice Methods Col. Dan Smith The Semantics of Civil War Raed Jarrar Maliki's Monopoly of Power Seth Sandronsky US Prison Nation: Locking Up Surplus Labor K.-Y. Taylor The Bride Wore Black: the Shooting of Sean Bell and the Resurgence of American Racism Yifat Susskind Greed, Dogma and AIDS David Rosen Made in China: the Global Trade in Sex Toys Ron Jacobs All Hands on Deck!: the New Pirates of the Caribbean Nikolas Kozloff Venezuela Prepares to Vote Talli Nauman Fighting La Choya: the Secret Toxic Dump on the Border Alan Gregory Shadow Trout: Why Hatchery Fish Aren't Real Joe Allen RFK and Hollywood Mythmaking: Emilio Estevez's Beatification of Bobby Kennedy St. Clair / D'Antoni Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Davies, Engel, Ford and Orloski Website of the Day Demo for Oaxaca   December 1, 2006 Greg Grandin Midnight in Mexico: Calderón's Inauguration Behind Closed Doors Linn Washington, Jr. The Mumia Case After 25 Years: Still More Keystone Kops Antics George Ciccariello-Maher Sleeping with the Enemy: At Home with the Anti-Chavistas Brian J. Foley Taking Responsibility for Iraq Dave Zirin Rebel Athletes: Organizing the Jocks for Justice Joshua Frank The Montana Formula: Jon Tester's Neopopulism Chris Floyd Hideous Kinky: Thomas Friedman Comes Undone Ingmar Lee Atomic Porker Strikes Indian Point Nuke Plant Manuel Garcia, Jr. Dark Fire: the Fall of WTC 7 Website of the Day No Gun Ri Revisited Video of the Day Drunken Hack Goes Ape at Aussie "Pulitzers"     Subscribe Online

January 3, 2007 The Devil's Fine Red Tongue Dispatch from the Chinese Landfill By JOE BAGEANT Despite the bad name he has with liberals these days, Jesus did have the right idea. He'd get right down there on the street and grunt with the people, feeling them all over and healing their boils, feeding them and preaching his ass off while everybody hollered and saw the light as blind men popped open their eyes and lame folks started doing the Dead Sea Macarena. No maintaining a professional distance, no opinion polls for that guy. He just went out there and "got 'er done" in plain sight of everybody. Including the Jewish religious mafia ands the Roman super-state thugs of the time -- which is why he got whacked. But he left the world impressed enough that an influential book about his exploits is still on the best seller list today, dispelling publishing industry wisdom that people will not read a book over 300 pages. Jesus seems to have left no heirs to receive royalties, contrary to the speculations of Da Vinci Code readers, The Da Vinci Code being the middle-class equivalent of the Left Behind series. Anyway, Jesus ain't on my shit list and I surely hope I am not on his. Two thousand years later, the public expects more from their miracles than leprous hides instantly infused with the pink blush of health, or Lazarus dragging his rigor mortis locked bones into a fully upright position, then strolling off down the street as if death itself was no more than a bad case of the flu. Computer animation rendered all that passé decades ago, thus we seculars remain unimpressed. A wardrobe malfunction by Mary Magdalene might punch up the New Testament a little, but it's never going to budge the Neilson numbers, except at Easter and Christmas, and never going to register unless we see it on television or in the cinema, where Jesus on a pole is acceptable, providing he spills enough blood a la Mel Gibson while he is up there. Call it consumer conditioned numbness, which it is. But it is safe to say most Americans give not a happy damn about the rest of humanity, starving infants, the homeless and whatnot, so long as the unhygienic swarms stay the hell out of our yards and don't bring up that tired commie stuff about our lifestyle being based upon armed global theft and sweatshop misery. In that way, we all test positive for the Devil's hickey. Republicans may flaunt their hickeys like high school kids in the locker room, but guilt-plagued Democrats, feeling the smart of the mark of the beast, console themselves that they can banish it at the ballot box, if only they close their eyes and wish upon a star. Thus their comfortable self-delusions that the Tiger Woods of the Democratic Party, the technically black Barack Obama, is somehow blessed with an inner moral compass lacking in the rest of society, and therefore does not bear the damnable mark. Wiser souls, aware that Obama possesses a net worth of several millions, a Harvard law degree and a career born in that venerable political whorehouse called Chicago, assume the Devil's mark is probably located on his posterior where we cannot see it. Another political wish upon a star is that Hillary Clinton, a woman marked by so many hickeys that she looks like a victim of massive hemangioma -- but with botox -- will reform our brutal health care system without pulling up her skirt for the insurance industry. Like she says, there is "no possible governmental solution that does not include the insurance industry." Of course not. Industry is our government. Our votes merely decide which industries have front spots at the public trough for the next four to eight years. Lately it has been Big Pharma and the credit industry, and what a run they've had. Mandatory mental health screening in schools stuffs more prescription drugs into children. The credit card industry's new bankruptcy laws wring the last drop from consumers, instead of giving them the fresh start our forefathers had in mind when they established debtor's laws. But in a new twist on incarceration, they make one's home the new debtor's prison, a place where we sleep while we work off usury interest payments on debt. Meanwhile, out there in the vast looms of our government-as-corporation, the fast food industry weaves the Cheeseburger Bill, giving itself immunity to lawsuits as it fattens a nation of steers whose sole purpose is to consume, never to be butchered, except in the wars that protect the corporate cheeseburger. Even on the battlefront, it turns profit on millions of burgers and fries that are served to those who fight the oil and cheeseburger wars. American consumers watch this on TV and see it as comfortably familiar. We cannot possibly be doing so badly in Iraq if a soldier can get a Fishwich, a Red Bull, and a Puff Daddy CD on the battlefield. Right? Which is true enough, if you have been conditioned to see a Fishwich and a CD as a symbol of liberty and the utmost accomplishment of the republic -- if you see it as "our way of life." And indeed it is that. Oblivion with an order of fries. Children of the landfill When it comes to such oblivious pursuit after senseless commerce, the sheer turnover of goods and consumption as happiness, we cannot blame the Devil's hickey entirely on capitalism. America was not even a capitalist country during its early years, yet people still chased the same illusions. By 1848 we seem to have had the disease. Alexis de Tocqueville -- that damned guy holds up well, doesn't he! -- observed that Americans seemed to live for the chase after transactions, after change, consistently throwing away satisfaction in the process: "In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men, placed in circumstances the happiest to be found in the world; yet it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung on their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad even in their pleasures. Maybe it's the price you pay for living in a society based round not happiness per se, but its pursuit." -- Alexis de Tocqueville Toqueville pointed out that Americans no more than got a nice family home built, than we turned around an immediately sold it for no apparent reason, other than the joy of the transaction. Then they were off to pursue some other transaction. I cannot help but think about the house I am trying to sell right now, the fifth one I have owned and sold. It was all so unnecessarily wasteful and destructive of creativity and thought in every way, the home owning lifestyle being what it is (you never own it, just rent it from our monolithic extractive financial system.) In any case, we seem to have found what we were pursuing -- the anesthetic of consumer capitalism. Lots of transactions, lots of goods, with the directions for pursuit televised so we don't even have to get off the couch -- just lie there and watch house hunting shows and lifestyle shows on Home and Garden Television, which are classified as "education/learning" by the rating system. The couch is a reasonable place to be these days, given that there is no real work left in America for sane functioning human beings. There is just survival (although the upper 20% of Americans safely isolated from the perspiring classes seem to think they are thriving because they more resemble the people pictured in slick lifestyle advertisements than most people. But it is still just a more elaborate form of survival amid the pointless and thin joy of consumerism, and the inherent material and spiritual wastefulness of life in here in the designated global landfill of that next rising empire, China. We are nowhere near rich, we are just conditioned to buy and throw away more expensive stuff. Not that we are entirely alone; Western Europeans are about a gnat's ass behind us in our wretched consumer excesses. But not being alongside or leading the pack, they are quick to point up our gluttony. When America's population drops dead from morbid obesity, Europeans will scale the mountain of our fallen porcine ranks, then jump into their newly inherited SUVs and drive off in search of a mall. But until then, they are left with a relatively equitable, sane society as a consolation prize, for a while longer at least. Here in China's global landfill, tens of millions of Americans are prisoners -- including me. And that is not counting the quarter of the world's incarcerated population who are America citizens physically held in US prison system. The rest of us serve a life sentence, released on personal recognition to pull our time in our own homes, processing goods for the Great Asian Goods Landfill Culture, here at the end of their new globalized Silk Route of Confucian capitalism. At this end of the electronics Silk Road we are prisoners of consumption, rather like those caged French geese that are force fed corn so as to produce fatty livers for pate. But in a marvelous marriage of psychology, psychometric marketing and the gulag, our system imprisons its people from the inside out. We even punish ourselves without supervision -- to doubt the system is its own punishment, purely for the social and personal anxiety it causes. Given enough insight, a thoughtful person can nearly question himself or herself to death. (Does the Department of Homeland Security really need access to my medical records and grocery receipts, or am I just paranoid? Will being uncircumcised put me on the no-fly list?) I do it every day and so do many of you. The system counts on that. On the whole though, our infantilized citizenry is having too much fun to question itself. In the drive for a harder hard-on, faster everything, and round the clock stimulation, we have created an artificial and frivolous citizenry, one that is incapable of serious thought or deeper humor -- a nation of children completely happy to stay that way. America's childish material gratification is so grotesquely satisfying that it smothers the most basic sort of reason, much less philosophical thinking. Fuck it all. Nietzsche and Rimbaud are too goddamned hard to read anyway. Beyond that, western philosophical tradition is based on grief and suffering. So is most great literature. I've never been a fan of the Van Gogh's ear school of creativity, but I have to admit that the few truly great American writers I've met wrote with at least one foot planted in pain. Who wants to read that, when entertainment of every imaginable sort, sparkles in the great hologram of our national illusion-delusion, right there for the plucking? For that matter, who can pull themselves away from such brilliant distraction? Not me. The only way to beat it is to leave it. Get outside the hologram. More thoughtful Americans are left facing the dilemma of a senseless life of senseless work, insensate sex, Oprah's flaccid moralizing books, cinema as high culture, fast food, guns and Jaaayzus. It is irrational that any culture born in the Age of Reason would turn out to be so irrational -- so completely in unquestioned contradiction it cannot be persuaded by argument, no matter how compelling. It seems doubtful that reason will ever provide the answer to this dilemma. I can tell you from experience that standing up in a KFC holding a "Buffalo Snacker" and yelling "Do you people really eat this shit?" is not taken as a call to reason. Meanwhile, the boys in corporate are cooking up a thousand fresh hells for us, including a 24/7 Pentagon TV channel and The Superbowl, KFC's new Chicken Potato Cheese Gravy Wad o' Food -- ample proof in itself that civilization is about done for. Hurricanes and boneyard gin I poop in a bucket ... and when the sun comes out I grab a shovel and bury it under the guava trees behind my house, where fallen passion fruit litter the ground like huge yellow Easter eggs. Poop out, passion fruit in, ancient organic system. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is the Idea of the Week. Every week, for fifty-two weeks, I think about one idea. One idea that is never discussed in American society. And the idea we need to pursue right now is: wouldn't we get more respect and cooperation from the rest of the world if we gave the world food, not bombs, medicines, water purification technology, and grains? Wouldn't we? -- Rich Zubaty, "The Rude Guy," a homeless person living in his truck in Maui, Hawaii I am here to tell you, dear hearts, this is one ole boy who does not intend to see the next fresh hell served up. Indeed I ain't! Why in the hell not turn off the television, park the car and just walk away? Why would anyone care to remain part of such a sorry-assed system, a government of war criminals ruling over a fearful nation of fattened livestock that probably will not change until the economy collapses, and then only after trying to kill half the planet in a desperate effort to preserve the Olive Garden lifestyle and 116 cable channels? What kind of citizenry consistently sneers at a candidate like Kucinich who openly declares for world peace to the most militarized nation on earth? (Hell, it's no crime to be three feet tall.) Or stands up against corporate ownership of our government like Nader does (It is no crime to be smart like Nader either, just don't be so damned smart you bore everyone to death, like Al Gore.) Simple action is available. Non-action really. If a quarter of Americans did not pay their bills for one month the hologram would come crashing down. The government would either come crawling on its knees, or expose itself for the police state it really is. For me, salvation is at hand, as the preachers say. After more three years of ups and downs and setbacks, I am finally off to Central America to eat rice and beans, and to do a little more good in the world than just process and deposit toner cartridges, beer bottles and triple AAA remote control batteries into the landfill. And do a little writing by the sea to boot. Perhaps I'll be lucky enough to eventually die there and be washed out into that great god-created soup from which life sprang. I ain't gonna kill myself to do it, but it is the preferred scenario at this late age. I do not expect it to change. However, this being America, any move on the board is at a cost. We must pay. The system makes sure of that. So I risk losing family and social position (ha!) and an economic stake in present American society. (Which is fine by me, but please, oh lord, don't let the Republicans steal the Social Security kitty too -- I can make do on half the SS I paid for and smoke ditchweed pot, but good gin is a price stable commodity.) I've already thrown away health insurance by quitting my magazine editorial job, and am happily left to figure out how to conduct the rest of my breathing hours, no small issue for a COPD victim such as myself. So hell, why not go to Belize? Or Madagascar for that matter? Or sleep forever on the beach in Mexico. Sure, sun and sand are the easy paint-by-numbers notion of paradise for Americans, but it depends upon where said sand is located. Cancun and Aruba ain't everybody's idea of heaven. Personally, I can live with a few lizards in my kitchen and the occasional hurricane if the people around me are decent. In truth, I'll be thrilled pissless if this little adventure in aging lets me spend half the year out of the country. Any escape from the hologram is an empowering thing, if you can possibly find a hole in its shroud. None of this requires much money by American standards -- at least not until the dollar, in its present descent, starts hovering somewhere next door to the Bengladeshi taka. Which appears to be sometime next week. But when I stop to consider that it was money and the things it will buy that got our asses in this jam to start with, well, it seems like a good idea not to have too much of it around. So why not live on about $4000 to $5,000 a year? I picked the number as globally equitable, based upon the advice of a couple of very good economists. Obviously, neither of them were American. And guess what? They over estimated the cost of happiness, because my first choice was squatting by the burning ghats of India. Almost no cost at all. Bring your own firewood. Just the godhead in your eyes every waking hour. Delusional? Naw, it's just a matter of one's goals and tastes. It is quite true that writers care only for themselves and their art in the end -- especially in the end. I've seen good people rendered madmen and hermits by our system and I do know this: It will destroy me if I keep living inside its machinery, dally too long on the landfill. It's more than a hunch. Too many days my nerves are shot if I think about it very long. Call me weak, but I'm calling time out -- an end to trying to buy material security in a nation so addicted to it there can never be enough. We all carry our own asses down the path to the bone yard. The question is whether to drag your feet as you go, by spending your life in meaningless employment hell just so you can have health insurance (thereby living longer so you can spend more time in employment hell) or jog the path. Grim as this may be to the young'uns reading, I can hear the old fucks laughing along with me. In any case, there are plenty of paths to the boneyard. There are flourescent lit fitness centers, so you can die in top condition, there is the American "career path," chasing the buck in harness with untold millions so you can engorge your carcass with fine wine and cheese and have a koa wood casket with gold fittings. Liquor is another path. For the morally and financially challenged writer, there is the classic combination of booze, nerves and cigarettes. My wife's anguished voice asks "Why did you start smoking again? Didn't the doctor tell you it would kill you?" Kill me, for fuck sake? There have been times when I asked myself how many sedatives purchased online constitute an overdose. Looking back, I consider that progress. As Kafka said, when you find yourself considering suicide, you are beginning to understand the human race. And it becomes obvious that the death of one individual by smoking pales against the mass sacrifice of 300 million American's humanity to the post modern god whose scripture is the spread sheet and the P&L statement. Ah, but this is America and every individual consumer ass is solid gold, even if as a nation, we are a throng of numb obese killers on its way to the gym for a workout. Has everybody lost all sense of proportion and sheer gravity in this country? How can we continue to make jolly amid the escalating wars and death from which we all profit? What is this? The damned German interwar cabaret society of diversion? Fortunately, just like everywhere else, darkness and sleep comes to the glittering landfill, ending unpleasant arguments about smoking and the cabaret society alike. I awoke last night to the warm odor of fluffy baby chicks filling the bedroom. My grandfather used to raise chicks when I was six, and by some nocturnal alchemy the long trapped childhood ecstasy of putting a handful of them to my face in the warm brooder house came flooding back. Upon closing my eyes again, an image of the blackish red spilled blood of a gunshot wound puddled on a blue tile floor in some desert place. The cabaret music rises, drowning the muffled screams from our empire's far flung network of "black sites," and all those other unpleasant things that happen in the dark rippling wake of our happiness. Joe Bageant is the author of a forthcoming book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, from Random House Crown about working class America, scheduled for spring 2007 release. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found at: http://www.joebageant.com. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.

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