Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 25,
2005
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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
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Corrie
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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January 25, 2005
Making Tolerance a Sin; Intolerance a Virtue
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
By
Dr. TERESA WHITEHURST
In a story titled "Survey Finds
Church-Going Americans Less Tolerant" (Reuters, 1/22/05),
Michael Conlon writes:
Church-going Americans have
grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians
making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights,
according to a survey released on Saturday. At the same time,
those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their
beliefs on others -- even at the risk of offending someone.
The trends could indicate that
religion has become "more prominent in American discourse
... more salient," according to Ruth Wooden, president of
Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research organization which released
the survey.
It could also indicate "more
polarized political thinking. There do not seem to be very many
voices arguing for compromise today," she said in an interview.
"It could be that more religious voices feel under siege,
pinned against the wall by cultural developments. They may feel
more emboldened as a result."
This analysis is correct in
terms of the results of intolerance-the refusal to compromise,
pushing one's beliefs on others, an emboldened willingness to
offend-but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter: what causes
today's conservative Christian to be so intolerant.
I've noticed that liberal and
moderate writers make the same mistaken assumption about what's
causing rightwing Christians to become more actively intolerant
towards people who are different from themselves: that intolerance
and persecution fly in the face of Christian teachings, hence
represent hypocrisy. And if that's all it is, then we need only
alert them to this fact and they, being Christians, will be horrified
to realize that they've been led astray, repent, and change their
ways.
My friend, the truth hurts:
Intolerance has become a standard "Christian" teaching
in conservative circles and is now a badge of honor. When Antonio
Scalia exhorted conservative Christians to "Be a fool for
Christ!", he was speaking in the longstanding tradition
of sacrificing one's pride and risking ridicule with gratitude
for Christ's ultimate sacrifice for us (even semi-atheistic Mark
Twain once wrote, "I'm God's fool"). But Scalia was
also alluding to the proud-to-be-intolerant theme.
Scalia was urging his listeners
to hold onto their intolerance even when others (liberal Christians
included) accused them of being persecutory, hostile, or bigoted.
They must remain intolerant because intolerance has been given
a makeover: It's now the most readily observable hallmark of
the virtuous and courageous conservative Christian. While intolerance
was considered a grave sin back when America was marching towards
civil rights instead of away from them, today that vice has become-presto!-a
virtue. This means that conservative Christians must become increasingly
intolerant in order to demonstrate their faith, and the more
in-your-face the intolerance is, the better.
No room here for wishy-washy-"Well
I don't like gay marriage but I guess it doesn't bother me; I
don't even know any gay people"-if you want to win God's
approval and that of your conservative Christian friends, by
golly you'd better start letting gay people know you mean business:
Change the Constitution, boycott
business that market to gay people. Keep gays out of public schools,
or ban books about them at the library. For Pete's sake, just
do something! Don't let your worldly desire to be liked
or your ungodly desire for peace keep you from working in the
Lord's service! Didn't Christ die for your sins? Didn't he say
he was coming to earth with a sword? Onward Christian soldiers!
The fight is not for the weary, nor the lazy! You must die to
your "self", your sinful pride, and sacrifice all for
the moral betterment of our great nation! Now get out there and
put those gays back in the closet where they belong-tell them
they're an abomination, and show them whose nation this is!
Paradiastole:
Making Tolerance a Sin and Intolerance a Virtue
This is how the thinking-and
the preaching-goes, I'm sad to say. So what's to be done about
it? Some progressive Christians are trying to win the hearts
and minds of conservative Christians, believing that with just
the right words and scripture they can be won back from this
new antagonistic, highly political version of Christianity. I
hope they succeed, and perhaps they will-but there are no guarantees.
Because intolerance is now
a virtue to be acquired rather than a vice to be cast away, there
is nothing that you or I can say to awaken the conscience
of conservative Christians. They're too far gone, for their beliefs
have changed radically over the last few years. They worship
a different God than the one we grew up with; perhaps it's more
accurate to say that they worship the Old Testament God, without
the moderating influence of Jesus, who's considered symbolic
and sweet and nice-but nobody whose teachings must be obeyed.
Ask a conservative Christian
about Jesus' teachings, and you'll be told that they're wonderful
spiritual teachings-for the inner life, not the outer.
Conservative Christians have
adopted the warrior mentality of Onward Christian Soldiers, and
intolerance is nothing to be hidden under a white robe and pointed
white hood: it's to be waved proudly as a flag demonstrating
Christian rigor and personal rightness. Indeed, their conscience,
their moral values, and their spiritual priorities have been
altered, but not by hypocrisy. They've been reversed.
What was wrong is now right.
What was down is now up. What was evil is now good. As one writer
has pointed out, rhetoricians of Hobbes' day called this reversal
of values "paradiastole": the method of rhetorical
redescription by which what had been defined as vices could be
redescribed as virtues, and vice versa. The radical right has
turned paradiastole into an art form.
And in case you think this
situation is all George W. Bush's doing, think again. Christians,
even conservative ones, can't be swayed by politicians unless
preachers pave the way first. Being more authoritarian than liberal
Christians, conservatives are all the pickier about learning
only from those who are considered respectable church authorities
by other conservative Christians.
This is not to say that they
won't learn from a Rush Limbaugh or an Ann Coulter-they certainly
do, and with uncritical enthusiasm-it just means that they must
hear those same views endorsed, specifically or generally, by
a proper member of the clergy. That's why you can watch Fox News
or listen to the rightwing kingdom of talk radio, then watch
the TV preachers (all conservative, of course) on Sunday morning,
without hearing a single contradictory word.
The Intolerance
Code: Priming Christians for Action
Do you consider intolerance
a bad thing? A sin or a hostile trait, perhaps? Something that
sounds like the opposite of Jesus' loving, thoughtful attitudes
and behaviors as he talked, feasted and prayed with prostitutes
and shady characters? Did you take from the parable of the Good
Samaritan the lesson that you should be tolerant and accepting
of, even go out of your way to help, those who don't believe
as you do?
If you answered yes to these
questions, you're in for a rude awakening. Conservative Christianity
has morphed into Old Testament rigidity and eternally enforced
morality, not guided nor even tempered by the interpersonal acceptance,
tolerance of social outcasts, and deeper spiritual understanding
that Jesus taught and modeled.
Rather than throw up our hands
at this ominous glorification of intolerance in conservative
churches, sometimes preached on a spiritual level but nearly
always enacted at the physical/political level, we'd better discover
and understand how their leaders are persuading people to promote
curbs on freedom and perpetual "culture war". Only
then can we appeal to the moderates within those churches who've
gotten swept up into a tide of political antagonism with which
they're not really comfortable.
There's a new code for intolerance,
and it's not always in-your-face the way James Dobson so often
is. Here's an example from the promo for a book by his son Ryan
(whom I always pitied after reading about the terrible whippings
he endured at the hands of his father, who whipped their tiny
dachshund with a belt, as well): Featuring an angry-looking white
man on the cover, it's titled simply, Be Intolerant:
Are there times when Christians
shouldn't be tolerant? Dobson says yes---if "tolerance"
means "willing to accept any version of right and wrong
because there is no absolute truth." Find out why this impassioned
youth speaker believes Christianity and moral absolutes go hand-in-hand---and
why the church must communicate this to the up-and-coming generation.
But Christians can be taught
to flip tolerance into a sin and intolerance into virtue through
words far more subtle than these. There's no need to spell out
what's to be not-tolerated; one can simply prime the pump, readying
the troops for action when the time is right.
Here's a good example from
a highly persuasive and widely revered authority figure. This
piece never names a target group to oppose or a political action
to take, but effectively reverses the way we think about the
words "tolerance" and "intolerance", leaving
us more negatively disposed towards the former and more approving
of the latter:
"The word 'tolerant' means
'liberal,' 'broad-minded,' 'willing to put up with beliefs opposed
to one's convictions' and 'the allowance of something not wholly
approved.' Tolerance, in one sense, implies the compromise of
one's convictions, a yielding of ground upon important issues.
Hence, our tolerance in moral issues has made us soft, flabby
and devoid of convictions. We have become tolerant about divorce;
we have become tolerant about the use of alcohol; we have become
tolerant about delinquency; we have become tolerant about wickedness
in high places; we have become tolerant about immorality; we
have become tolerant about crime and we have become tolerant
about godlessness."
From The Sin of Tolerance by
Rev. Billy Graham
To be continued Why Conservative
Christians Fear Tolerance, Part II: Those Liberal Southern Baptists
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst is a clinical psychologist and writer.
Her most recent book describes the nonviolent guidance of children, Jesus on Parenting,
Baker Books, 9/2004.
You can contact her at DrTeresa@JesusontheFamily.org
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