Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
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
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
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.
|
February 9, 2005
"Didn't We Get Rid of Those People Years Ago?"
Reflections
on Empire and Uppity Indians
By
TIM WISE
I should have known better than to listen
in to the conversation immediately to my left, sitting as I was
in the Northwest Airlines World Club, in Detroit. Unlike most
of the folks who have paid their $450 for an annual membership--which
entitles one to little more than some free booze, cheese, crackers
and coffee, along with a comfy chair between flights--I am hardly,
after all, the typical "business traveler." I usually
spend my time in such places, hastily composing one or another
radical screed (like this one), while waiting to fly somewhere
to deliver a speech that will, in some small way, move forward
the cause of social transformation.
This is not the purpose for
which the guy talking about mutual funds in the cubicle next
to me, is here.
But this time, I couldn't avoid
hearing the discussion between the two men, appropriately white
and with matching blue suits and red power ties, whose familiarity
with a bottle of scotch had apparently reached intimate proportions.
They were ruminating on the
recent goings on at the University of Colorado, where Ethnic
Studies professor, Ward Churchill is under siege for an article
he composed back in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; an essay
in which Churchill sought to explain that a nation really ought
not be surprised when its policies abroad--which have resulted
in the slaughter of millions of innocent civilians--cause some
in those nations to "push back" and seek to exact a
similar collective death upon the people of that first country.
While Churchill's essay was
indelicate in places, it was hardly more so than any of the bloodthirsty
things said by representatives of the state or the denizens of
talk radio around that same time--folks who were itching to level
Afghanistan, turn the Arab world into a parking lot, or, as Bill
O'Reilly put it, put a bullet to the heads of any Afghans who
weren't sufficiently supportive of our ousting the Taliban for
them.
I remember reading Ward's missive
at the time, and being bothered by the "little Eichmanns"
reference (for those who worked in the World Trade Center), not
because I thought Churchill actually believed these folks deserved
to die, but because I knew the statement would be taken out of
context and used to smear not only him, but the larger left of
which we are both a part. In other words, Ward was perhaps guilty
of naiveté, assuming that people are far more capable
of discerning nuance and irony than they really are.
But to the two men in the World
Club, he was guilty of a lot more than that. To them, Churchill's
most egregious crime was not having died, "like all the
other Indians."
I shit you not. One of the
men, fuming about the article that now has Ward facing down the
barrel of a Board of Trustees looking for any reason to fire
him, despite tenure, turned to the other and said: "Just
when you thought we'd killed all the Indians, one pops up talkin'
some shit like this, and reminds you that we didn't finish the
job after all."
White guy number two laughs,
in fact, damn near spits Dewar's and soda all over the leather
barca lounger he's plopped down in, finding this affable romanticizing
of genocide to be the funniest fucking thing he has apparently
had the luxury of hearing, at least since the last time he and
his buddies sat around in a sports bar, farting, and trading
jokes about fags, or some such thing.
I was stunned, because just
one day before, I had speculated, only half-seriously, during
an interview with KPFK in Los Angeles, that this anti-Indian
sentiment might lay beneath some of the vitriol aimed Ward's
way. After all, the attacks on him have seemed so personal, so
vicious, so much worse than even the histrionics normally leveled
at white leftists like Chomsky, or Parenti, or Zinn, who said
much the same thing about 9/11 after that fateful day. The bombast
has seemed to include an unhealthy dose of racial resentment--absolute
rage--at the notion that a person of color and an Indian no less,
should dare to condemn the American empire.
"Didn't we get rid of
those people years ago?" One can almost hear the refrain,
as if broadcast from a loudspeaker.
"Goddamit, be silent,"
comes the stare from others, or the words themselves.
"Don't make us go all
Trail of Tears on your ass. Don't make us send out those smallpox-infected
blankets again. Remember, we still got some of that stuff in
a vial at the Centers for Disease Control. Do NOT make us break
that shit out, 'cuz we'll do it."
"Oh the ingratitude! Here
we are, honoring your ancestors by naming sports mascots after
your people, and this is how one of yours repays us? Oh, hell
no, not today Chief!"
Even having concluded that
racism was part of the reason for the overwrought reaction to
Churchill, I was utterly unprepared to hear my suspicions confirmed
in such a manner; probably because I've grown so accustomed to
white people lying about their racist views, going out of their
way in fact to deny them, at least around others. As such, I
couldn't even think of what to say. My inclination was to ask
for the guy's business card, pretending to have liked his comment,
and then send his address and phone number to the American Indian
Movement, so they could harass his pretty white ass for a few
months. But in the end, all I did was glare, a gesture the meaning
of which I'm sure was lost on them both, lubricated as they were
on second-rate blended whiskey.
And while these two guys might
not be representative of the masses of people so driven to distraction
by Churchill's commentary, I have little doubt but that, like
the rest of the teeming hordes out to see him fired, they regularly
shrug off comments about civilian deaths being justified, when
made by representatives of their own side. More to the point,
they glibly accept, as a consequence of war, the deaths themselves
(not merely talk about them) as justified, as in Iraq, where
even the lowest of low-ball estimates places the numbers of these
around 15,000, and where the highest reach above 100,000.
So what? they might say, in
a tone and manner little different from that echoed in the caves
of Afghanistan that have served as a home for bin Laden all these
years.
They surely are not bothered
by pundit Ann Coulter's recent comments, to the effect that we
should "nuke North Korea," so as to "send a message"
to the rest of the world, and because it would be, in her words,
"fun."
They are not bothered by the
comments of nationally syndicated talk show host Jay Severin
last year, to the effect that the U.S. should tell the Arab world
that unless "they" stop killing our troops in Iraq,
we will drop nuclear weapons throughout the region, destroying
all of the holiest sites of Islam, and killing ten million people,
without batting an eye.
They were not bothered when
former Secretary of State Madeline Albright rationalized the
deaths of a half million children in Iraq as a result of Western
sanctions, by saying that those deaths had been "worth it."
Dead people of color, the world
over, or right here in the U.S., whose ashes they step over every
time they walk out the door of their homes, mean nothing to them.
Their deaths are cause for no tears, no contrition, no recompense,
and certainly have never served to disqualify those responsible
(or those who applaud the carnage) from positions of authority,
in colleges, or government. Nor will schools now move to block
dear Madame Albright from speaking on their campuses, as happened
to Ward; nor will Ann Coulter find herself a pariah for fantasizing
about the incineration of folks whose only crime was to be born
North Korean.
But Ward Churchill, who has
merely laid out the facts about America's murderous ways around
the globe--facts that have not been disputed even once by any
of his critics--is to be silenced. Those who do the deed are
cheered, re-elected and get buildings named after them. Those
who merely tell of their exploits and suggest that perhaps there
may be consequences, get crushed.
This is what happens, in a
nation built on lies from the beginning; whose empire has been
constructed on the sands of self-delusion; whose inability to
tell the truth about itself has now become the stuff of farce.
Our lack of self-awareness, not to mention the way in which Americans
pride ourselves on how little we know about the world, and how
reflexively patriotic we can be, would all be funny were it not
so miserably pathetic, and ultimately so dangerous.
The sickest irony of the entire
episode with Churchill is this, of course: namely, if there is
anyone whose views and actions lead to the inevitable conclusion
that the civilians in the World Trade Center were legitimate,
if unfortunate targets, it is the President of the United States.
It is he, whose doctrine of "preventative" warfare,
assumes by definition that it is acceptable to target buildings
that house offices tied to the government and military apparatus
of one's enemy, which, indeed the WTC did, and which of course
describes the Pentagon in its entirety.
It is Bush whose "shock
and awe" invasion of Iraq was planned, even though all agreed
that thousands of civilians would die in the process. And if
such a mentality is acceptable for Americans--one that reduces
innocent civilians to mere collateral damage and shrugs at their
untimely demise as if they were the sad but inevitable consequence
of modern warfare--then surely we must extend the same courtesy
of barbarism to every nation or group on earth with a bone to
pick.
So the squealing of those on
the right when it comes to Churchill--persons who wholeheartedly
endorse the notion of America's right to bomb other nations,
even if innocents will be killed, and knowing full well that
they will be--does nothing so much as call to mind the line from
Shakespeare, that "methinks the lady doth protest too much."
Or perhaps the psychological concept of projection, whereby the
patient displaces their own sickness onto others, finding in
them the very flaws and pathologies to which the patient him
or herself has been given over.
We're sort of like the national
equivalent of a child, whose mommy and daddy are trying desperately,
against all hope, to maintain the child's belief in Santa or
the Easter Bunny, or even the tooth fairy. And we rage against
any who seek to dispel the myths out of a desire to protect our
children's "innocence." While such deceptions are perhaps
excusable when dealing with the fantasies of real children, one
would hope that a nation run by full-grown men and women would
ask a bit more of itself; would find truth more valuable a commodity
than innocence; would recognize that, as James Baldwin explained,
"Those who insist on maintaining their innocence, long after
that innocence has died, turn themselves into monsters."
And so we have: a monster that
sees no evil and hears no evil, unless it comes from the despised
"other," and who in the process perpetrates its own
version of the thing daily.
Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White
Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft
Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative
Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge:
2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com
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