Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
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.
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May
19, 2004
Doubting the
Shadows
Out of Iraq
and Plato's Cave
By GARY CORSERI
"What is reality anyway?
Nothing but a collective hunch."
--Lilly Tomlin
It's all about images, hype and our
salesman's culture.
A week before the pictures
of Abu Ghraib exploded, killing American credibility with the
sudden wonder of a suicide bomb, I picked up a few gems in a
talk by Howard Zinn: "Sometimes you know something vaguely,
but it's brought home to you powerfully." And, "When
you make a war against a tyrant, you kill the victims of the
tyrant." And, "If you have the right to overthrow or
abolish the government, as our Declaration of Independence asserts
you do, you have the right to disobey it." And, finally,
something like this: Our form of government can overcome any
kind of opposition, except embarrassment.
I thought a long time about
that last one. It was like coming out of Plato's cave and seeing
the sun for the first time. I thought about it again when the
pictures gushed in the national psyche, opening a geyser wound
that will not heal.
In a salesman's culture, in
a culture based on the pitch, the hype, the image, the sound
bite, the celebrity spokesperson, "staying on message,"
"talking points," pundits, talking heads, revolving
doors, mergers-it's all about Hollywood and TV-land and this
silly-putty world of cardboard food and tin-star heroes which
we sustain like a dream because it is our inheritance, we have
banished history, and the dream is all we know.
Plato's allegory of the cave:
A tribe born and raised in a cave, see shadows projected on a
wall of the cave. Perhaps they are the reflections of themselves.
Along the winding trails of the cave, there is enough water and
they have scorpions and bugs and vermin to eat. They are satisfied
and they love the play of shadows on the wall.
One day, a poet, an adventurer,
a crazy person, is born, and as he grows up he questions, he
wonders, but everyone says, leave it alone, don't go there. But
when he's older, the challenger follows a chink of light to the
mouth of the cave, pushes aside a boulder, squeezes through and
beholds the sun and everything lit by the sun-valleys, fields,
mountains, sky, water, birds, the world. After a dazzled day,
he returns to the cave to tell the others. But they don't want
to hear. They kill him. They bury the bones deep.
We Americans have been like
the people of the cave, isolating ourselves from the world, enjoying
our projected images of ourselves, blind to the world's beauty-and,
increasingly, its pain and horrors.
They say 9/11 came as a wake-up
call. Maybe it was the caller from beyond the cave, demanding
we join the world, telling us what he'd seen. In bafflement we
asked, "Why do they hate us?" Over and over, we watched
the falling towers, again and again were reassured by fraudulent
"leaders." "Don't worry," the self-appointed
ones said. "We know best. We'll take care of things. Go
back to doing what you were doing. Shop for scorpions. Watch
television. Send your children to dumb and dumber movies. Sleep.
Sleep with your eyes open."
It's true: one can sleep with
the eyes open. Marshall McLuhan explained the phenomenon decades
ago: a beam of light moves across the television screen, lighting
dots here and there, making patterns. Our minds must join in
the image-making, connecting the dots, discerning faces, etc.
But the mind is in low gear. It's all lower-function stuff, pleasantly
addictive, getting the Alpha waves going. We're taking it in,
but not editing, not redacting.
You have to get outside to
see how it's working. On a dark night, you pass an apartment
house and you see soft lights flashing inside the dark rooms.
It's all the televisions, and people sitting quietly, unthinkingly
before them, connected to neighbors only with flashing lights.
Let's update Plato's allegory.
Let's say the people in the cave have been thinking about the
poet's world outside the cave. The poet is gone, but the tribal
leaders convince the others that they need the resources outside.
Further, they've convinced the cave-people that the Shadows are
the Truth, and that they must bring the Truth to the outsiders,
for the sake of the outsiders, so the Truth will triumph.
It all works for a while, but
then something awful happens. Shakespeare says that all that
a poet can do is hold the mirror up to Nature, and something
like that happens, the mirror is held up to human nature and
the people of the cave finally see what they are.
And they don't like it. They're
embarrassed. They begin to question and challenge. They begin
to doubt the Shadows.
And the people in the world
don't like it either. The people in the world stop buying the
products of the Shadow people. They stop buying the scorpions
and the vermin, and, especially, they stop buying the Shadows,
the image, the hype, the pitch.
And the people of the Shadows
awaken, finally, cast off the lies that have enchained them,
the fantasies that have bound them.
They see that they are a naked
human being on a leash surrounded by snarling dogs. They cry
for help. And they hold out a helping hand.
Gary Corseri can be reached at: corseri@mindspring.com
Weekend
Edition Features for May 15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
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