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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
The
Trouble with E-Bombs and the Predator; Don Young Fools Greens
with Straw Man; Hitchens as Ganesh? The Electoral College, Is
It in the Constitution
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
E-Bombs
and Predators
Remember the late Carl Sagan's Nuclear
Winter? Over in Rumsfeld's empire they've been working on Winter
Lite. the "e-bomb," a high-powered microwave designed
to fry the circuits of enemy equipment. It's been hailed as the
new "wonder weapon" in the forthcoming Iraqi conflict.
As described by Robert Williscroft, in
DefenseWatch, (cited on the sparky DefenseTech site) "a
properly constructed E-bomb can effectively "fry" everything
electric and electronic within several miles of the point of
detonation. And the pulse is not the end. During the next fifteen
minutes or so, collapsing electrical systems and communications
grids will distribute the pulse, and create their own smaller
pulses, analogous to an earthquake aftershock. The entire affected
electrical and communications system will tear itself apart--self
destruct."
But Williscroft goes on to describe Pentagon
fears that "the use of the experimental weapon could burn
out electronics on U.S. military equipment in the vicinity. Electronic
circuitry on most Air Force systems hasn't yet been redesigned
to survive a concentrated onslaught of electromagnetic pulses,
according to a February 2000 report by Air Force Col. Eileen
Walling. DefenseWatch argues that a simple version of the "e-bomb,"
constructed outside the refinements of the Iron Triangle's budgetary
requirements, with about $400 worth of materials, would serve
as an almost ideal terrorist weapon against a high-tech target
like the United States.
Williscroft also cites concerns among
Rumsfeld's men that destroying all urban communications in Baghdad
might somehow alienate the locals. (You believe that?) And "it
would significantly raise the financial cost of rebuilding Iraq's
economy once a conflict is over." But that's what makes
life so delightful for the postwar construction industry. Ask
Dick Cheney how Halliburton makes its money.
Oh, and talking of fizzles, this just
in, also from DefenseTech, about another miracle from the folks
bringing you RMA, the Predator, touted as so perfect a piece
of unmanned flying equipment that soon it might be requisitioned
to GUARD THE HOMELAND'S SHORES. " Too bad," says DefenseTech,
they're so slow, dumb, noisy, and near-sighted that almost anything
stronger than a peashooter could take them down. Nearly half
of the military's 60-or-so plane Predator fleet has crashed or
been taken out. On Wednesday, the Iraqis claimed to have destroyed
their second American drone in a month. Two more have gone down
in Pakistan since the start of the New Year.
Rituals
in the Tongass
Rep Don Young of Alaska, the hammer of
the greens, is chuckling proudly after successful completion
of a time-honored ploy: the straw-man threat. Here's how it worked,
and how it always works. Details courtesy of Sam Bishop in the
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Young's Mission: to protect future logging
in the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest.
Means to achieve this objective: Passage
of a bill put up by Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens, which would
exempt from lawsuits a Forest Service decision, soon to become
law, against establishing any more official wilderness areas
in the Tongass.
The Straw-Men: Language inserted by Young
into the House version of the bill that would lift a ban on logging
and other development in roadless areas greater than 5,000 acres
in Alaska's national forests. Young also proposed to exempt
the entire Tongass Land Management Plan, completed in 1997, from
further legal challenge. And he proposed language that would
have forced the Forest Service to sell all the timber the industry
would take.
Greens Torch Straw Men: Environmental
groups and Democratic members of Congress battled furiously to
keep Young's Tongass "riders" out of the final version
of the omnibus bill
Finale: The dreaded "riders"
are dumped, but the Forest Service kept its immunity from suit
"What we ended up with was what
Ted put in," Young said. "We ended up with what
we wanted at first." Young said he would have liked to
lift the roadless rule, too, but it made a fine straw man.
It's a great little parable about how
a lot of green politics actually work.
Hitchens
as Ganesh
CP Diary's discussion of the Barstool
Bombardier's admonitions in Vanity Fair on how to make drink
your slave, not your master, elicited some amusing notes, plus
a few indignant squeaks from the genteel element about how we
should stick to the big issues of war and peace and not dally
amid trivia like Christopher Hitchens' drinking habits.
Here's "CZ", a lady of evident
refinement : "Re your words quoting C. Hitchens describing
himself as possessing , "... a near-godlike physique which
is the envy of many of my juniors." Who's kidding whom?
The last time I saw Mr. H., on the conservative PBS television
program, Uncommon Knowledge, he was approaching Jabba-the-Hut
proportions, his skin was an unhealthy, slightly blue-grey color,
and he had sickly dark circles under his eyes. Perhaps this is
some ancient Hindu god to which he is referring? One of the blue
ones? Ganesh, perhaps?"
Ganesh, we recall, was the god with an
elephant's trunk, which in CH's case would be useful for downing
bumpers of claret while keeping both hands free for typing rationales
for dropping cluster bombs on kids in Baghdad.
Against this, there is a deadly tradition
of pwog high mindedness abroad in the land, of which the following,
from JF, is a good example:
To Jeffrey & Alex,
First I would like to explain, in my
attempt to write about my feelings you have towards Hitchens,
I must say I love Counterpunch. I believe it to be one of the
most aggressive radical sites on the web, simply top notch.
You do more than a great job putting it all together. Hitchens
truly is a sell out. But I must question the postings Counterpunch
puts up proposing, accurate or not, that Hitchens is an alcoholic
loser [JF's words, not ours]. Personal attacks may draw an audience,
or piss off the accused, but I ask, what good does this do for
the Left? Debating Hitchens's arguments is one thing- personally
attacking him is another- even if warranted."
To which Jeffrey St Clair sent this high-minded
reply."Hitchens' essays aren't State Dept. white papers.
& we're not dry pages of The Washington Monthly. Hitchens
never really was on "our team." The fact that so many
seem to think he was is a measure of his PERSONAL rhetoric of
deceit. He is now a leading advocate of war, as he was in the
war on Serbia, and runs cover for the entire Bush regime. Why
shouldn't he be attacked as mercilessly as we would Bush, Rove,
Gale Norton or Limbaugh? Hitchens, in a way, is much more dangerous
than the "big fat idiot" Limbaugh. Plus, its fun.
We all need a little sleaze and levity in our daily routine."
We'll all drink to that.
Trust Ben
Tripp on The Constitution?
From Joanna Graham:
Ben Tripp says the electoral college
isn't mentioned in the Constitution. This is a grave misunderstanding
of the Constitution and of our electoral system. Our founding
fathers (FF), distrusting the masses, intended only the House
of Representatives to be directly elected.Originally, both the
President and Senators were to be picked by members of the Electoral
College who were selected by the state legislatures.
Let's get this clear: voters in each
state (determined by the laws of each state) voted for the state
legislature, which in turn made the rules about how to select
members of the electoral college (probably their friends) and
the members of the electoral college picked the senators and
the president. We changed to direct election of the Senate by
constitutional amendment in the early
twentieth century (1916?) but the original plan has never been
changed re the presidency (can also only be changed by amendment).
The reason we (usually) remain unaware
of this is that eventually state legislatures selected statewide
voting by all eligible voters as their way of instructing their
electoral college members how to vote. But even today, only
in some states are these members actually bound by the outcome
of the popular vote, which is why the Florida legislature in
2000 could, perfectly legally, threaten to put forth the name
of their own candidate.
One interesting feature of this system
is that since the FF feared this process with respect to the
presidency would result in endless gridlock, each state or region
backing a favorite son (they thought they would be able to avert
political parties), they designed in a menu of "if you
haven't got a president yet, go to this step...."
Basically, if the electoral college is so logjammed no candidate
can be selected, then the House of Representatives gets to appoint
still another committee, which will make the final choice.
This is what did happen in the contested
election of 1876. Obviously, with the stakes so high and the
decision being a backroom one, all kinds of threats, cajolery,
bribes, etc. come into play. What Hayes traded away in order
to beat Tilden (who had won the popular vote) was the safety
of the former slaves. The federal troops left the former Confederate
states and Reconstruction ended. So in many ways today we are
still paying for that bad outcome. In the election of 1824, Andrew
Jackson had the most votes in a four-way contest but not a majority,
so the choice went to the House of Representatives. Candidate
Henry Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams and was rewarded
by becoming Secretary of State.
Eighteen twenty-four was the first presidential
election in which MOST of the electors were chosen by popular
vote. The old guard must have had apoplexy when Andrew Jackson
did so well. Four years later he won handily, ushering in the
era of "Jacksonian democracy." I didn't really know
any of this until the election of 2000. Then I studied my Constitution
diligently on a daily basis.
There's nothing like a constitutional
crisis to clarify what the Constitution actually says. I discovered
we don't actually have direct election of the president at all
(it's on a piecemeal, state-by-state basis; exists only
to instruct the members of the electoral college how to vote;
and can be taken away from us at the whim of our state legislatures,
as Florida's threatened). I also learned that, playing by the
system, you don't actually need to name a president until inauguration
day, leaving plenty of time for the Congress to do their backroom
bargaining.
Everything else aside, the Supreme Court
should have known this backup system was in place and it wasn't
up to them to intervene. And there was no need for the media
to whine about "closure," either, except of course
that it was totally humiliating to have the true nature of our
presidential electoral system revealed to the entire world.
What I actually meant to say in this
e-mail is that if Tripp got such an important fact wrong, why
should we believe that any of the rest of his article is factual?
It's a fascinating one, but I must say I doubt his credibility.
Best regards,
Joanna Graham
From Alexander Cockburn:
Dear Joanna: "You write: What I actually meant to say in
this e-mail is that if Tripp got such an important fact wrong,
why should we believe that any of the rest of his article is
factual? It's a fascinating one, but I must say I doubt his
credibility." Acu rem tetigisti, as the Latin tag goes.
You've hit the nail on the head.Tripp is a notorious fantasist,
with a long and shameful record of deception. The byways of this
great land are littered with bewildered vagrants who, on being
asked the reason for their pitiable condition, mumble, "I...
trusted...Ben Tripp." The editors of CounterPunch take
no responsibility for the maunderings of this farceur, whose
latest claim is that he was Halle Berry's first husband, and
the only man she's ever truly loved.
On the other hand, he makes us laugh
a lot, and he gets most of it right most of the time. Who among
us can say more?
From Joanna Graham:
How did Ben Tripp get into CounterPunch
online if he is "a notorious fantasist"?
From Alexander Cockburn:
Joanna, I was being light-hearted. We
think Ben is a wonderful, very
funny writer. Something the left is definitely short
on; the mix of satire and reality.
Yesterday's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
In
a Land Where Justice is a Game: Killing Amos King
Anne Gwynne
Raid
on Nablus: a Hero in the Midst of Horror
Nelson P. Valdés
Why Americans Can't Travel to Cuba
Jason Leopold
Martin Peretz to Bush: Bomb Iraq
Alan Maass
"A Revolutionary Spirit in a Hostile World":
The Real Martin Luther King, Jr
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens and Booze
Sonia Ebron
Why
Black Americans Should Oppose Bush's War
Russell Mokiber and Robert
Weissman
12
Reasons to Oppose Bush's War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Chomsky's Power and Terror
Website of the Day
Bush
AWOL
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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