|
August 1, 2002
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
July 30, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Branding September 11
PS Burton
Financial
Journalism:
A Very Small Cog
Tom Stephens
Hypocrites in the House:
Fast Track After Midnight
Dave Marsh
Censorship
Goes Global
July 29, 2002
Linda Belanger
Why Do They Do It?
Alfredo Castro
Colombia's
Disappeared
Anne Brodsky
Inside Pakistan and
Afghanistan with RAWA
Andrew George
The Fires
of Summer:
Don't Blame the Greens
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
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
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
August
1, 2002
Staffing
the Latest War
Draft Picks
by Anthony Gancarski
It's axiomatic that if you watch enough O'Reilly
Factor, you'll be treated to the sight of a Nabokovian Nymphet
in a thong, as his program "exposes" the immorality
of youth run amok. Mr. O'Reilly, like many of his ideological
cohorts who have never met a form of oppression they weren't
willing to give at least equal time to, invariably is shocked
or even appalled by the base amorality of young, attractive white
boys and girls. Certainly, goes the implication, there's no cultural
provocation whatsoever for children to not live up to the standards
of youth on Father Knows Best or even Dennis The Menace. We are
the most moral, safe, and free nation ever, goes the chorus,
the same chorus that echoes hollow delusions that the IDF and
the Mossad are somehow on God's side in the impending apocalypse
and that it is somehow God's work to displace [if one is a "dove]
or obliterate [if one is more predisposed to a hawkish perspective]
the Palestinian people.
The kids are supposed to somehow take
seriously a system of justice that is more likely to have someone
spend time in lockdown for possession of an ounce of weed than
for embezzlement of millions or even billions of dollars. Tough
but fair, one supposes they should say, as they sit home zoned
out on OxyContin watching Limp Bizkit videos with their meth-dealer
boyfriend. The kids are supposed to understand that guns and
ammunition equal power, and that every moment of every day is
an invitation to be taken hostage. Not interested in visiting
your local unannounced police roadblock? Don't turn around, to
quote Ace of Base, or you may be surrounded by love in the form
of a phalanx of police cars with paramilitary officers and the
like. By way of a national security precaution, it goes without
saying.
It's enough to make you wish someone
solid, like Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia, were president.
But I digress.
We are about to reinstitute a military
draft, in spite of very little being said in mainstream media
on the subject. Consider the war in Afghanistan. Only those familiar
with ancient history, like the Vietnam experience, will understand
the implications of US soldiers standing guard around the home
of the president imposed on the traditional regional power brokers
via high-altitude bombing and a sham loya jirga. Yet again, the
United States is in the position of imposing an external, corporatist
order on a region whose every instinct runs against such artificially
linear mechanisms of vertical coercion. Yet again, we need players
for our team, and just like your favorite professional athletes,
YOU TOO can be a team player on the BEST TEAM OF ALL
All of this to play the Great Game. To
build an impregnable empire. One of the saddest parts of this
spectacle of the US facing economic collapse even as we are led
into global war and into a domestic police state is that the
pawns in the game -- those boys and girls who played the video
game, watched the video, et al -- have precious little clue about
what motivates our war planners to plan wars without cease.
And why should they have any idea? Educated
in so-called public schools where emergent citizens learn that
they really have no Constitutional rights after all, they come
home to mothers who Botox so that their faces show no character.
Fathers, if they have them, are brainwashed into thinking that
Pfizer has just the thing to cure problems with their sex lives.
If these kids have any "adjustment" issues, Ritalin
or some such is used to make them compliant.
It shouldn't surprise anyone, given the
narcotization endemic in our culture generally but especially
in our young, that our President's approval ratings have been
slow in falling. If you accept opinion polls as legitimate, the
slow decline from those days after 9/11 when we were fighting
evildoers appears to be carefully managed. By the time people
realize that they aren't the only ones who don't want to be watched,
locked up, and terrorized by the US government's sham war on
drugs or some other war on or for some other commodity that said
government is interested in controlling, the laws will be passed
and our greatest fears will have become faits accompli. There
will be many bodies in soldier suits. Some will walk proudly
on the streets of a foreign city, or perhaps -- if we are to
be especially safe and free -- the streets of our own towns.
There will be other soldiers, as well, headed home in sacks,
knowing about as much in death as in life as to why he was willing
to kill and die for some other man's pleasure.
Anthony Gancarski is the author of UNFORTUNATE INCIDENTS,
a collection of fiction and poetry. He is currently is a student
at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, Washington. He can be reached
at: Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com
Today's Features
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|