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Today's
Stories
February 20 / 22, 2004
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
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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Weekend
Edition
February 20 / 22, 2004
Slave Power and the
Origins of the Republic
Jefferson,
Slaves, Haiti and Hypocrisy
By FREDERICK B. HUDSON
SLAVE POWER. Two hundred years before Stokely
Carmichael called for black power, the black slaves in the United
States elected a President. How? The much hailed blueprint of
justice, the American Constitution, gave each of them, man, woman,
or child, status in the political arena as three-fifths of a
person. Hence they formed a voting bloc which elected Thomas
Jefferson as our nation's third president.
But how could they elect a President?
They couldn't cast ballots on the plantations. It didn't matter.
The Constitutional Convention allowed the counting of slaves
as part of the apportionment process for determining the vote
allotment for each state's Electoral College representation as
well as for the number of seats in the House of Representatives.
This set into motion not only the election of Jefferson but made
sure that until the Civil War the concerns of southern slaveowners
steered national politics.
Critics of Jefferson's policies called
him "the Negro President." One opponent even jibed
at the third President's siring of five children by the slave
Sally Hemings as continuing to weigh future elections towards
the interest of Southerners. The couplet read: "Great men
can never lack supporters Who manufacture their
own voters."
These historical dimensions are laid
bare and explored in a new book by Pulitzer-prize winning author
Garry Wills in a new book appropriately titled "The
Negro President." The vested interests and the benefits
reaped by Jefferson and other Southerners who made domestic and
international policy decisions conform to a mold of continual
oppression and exploitation of blacks have vital importance in
the current debate over reparations for black Americans.
Slaves, while mere chattel legally, played
a crucial role not only in the economic production of the building
blocks of wealth for the plantation system, but indeed were the
linchpins for the statecraft which held them as captives. Even
before blacks were "free" and forced to pay taxes with
equitable representation after Emancipation, they still had a
legal status which empowered important decisions that grew a
darkness over their own futures.
This darkness elongated, in the words
of Randall Robinson, the "long impenetrable shadow of slavery
(which)â¤|.covers our national society still, leaving
one community with false gods and another with no gods at all."
Randall Robinson wrote in The
Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, his memorable treatise
published in 2000 which stakes out reasons for reparations, of
his alienation when he stared up at the paintings that surround
the Capital Rotunda that supposedly depict American history.
The former head of Transafrica saw no representations of black
life in the monumental fresco which covers 4,664 square feet.
But how many school children who visit
the building are told that the very existence of that building
and others in the seat of government in Washington, D.C. is a
testament to slavery? Our seat of government was built on land
drained from the swamps of Virginia and Maryland because Jefferson
and other slaveowners wanted to rule from a place where slavery
was legal! Washington, Jefferson, and James Madison fought very
hard to locate the nation's capital far from the seats of commerce
and culture in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston since it would
be very hard to force free states to return escaped slaves. When
the national government moved to the Potomac, over a fifth of
the District of Columbia's residents were slaves, many of whose
masters were public officials.
Jefferson wrote of blacks that they could
scarcely be capable of "comprehending the investigations
of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and
anomalous." The reference to Euclid, the purported Greek
father of geometry, is striking since the streets of the District
of Columbia were designed by Benjamin Bannekar, a free black
mathematician from Maryland who sent Jefferson a copy of an almanac
he had compiled. Jefferson greeted the almanac with scorn, writing
to a friend that he was sure that the black had a mind of a very
common stature and was surely helped in his efforts by a white
neighbor.
Jefferson's fear of black liberation
influenced international relations as well. He refused to grant
diplomatic recognition to the new nation of Haiti in 1804. This
posture contradicts his posture as Secretary of State in 1792
when he defended the recognition of the revolutionary French
government(whose birth he had witnessed first hand as Ambassador
to France with the fourteen year-old Sally Hemings with him as
"companion"). Jefferson supported the recognition of
the revolutionary French government, saying that "every
nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms
it pleased." Yet when former slaves in Haiti proclaimed
a republic in 1804 , Jefferson displayed an immediate hostility
towards it. The fear was that the Haitian Revolution would create
a "great disposition to insurgency among American slaves."
Jefferson was terrified that "ten thousand recollections
by the slaves of the injuries they have sustained(would)...never
end but in the extermination of one or the other race."
The federal government prohibited the
African slave trade in 1808; now there were new economic considerations
that affected decisions related to the Missouri and Louisiana
purchases. Slave owners could, in many instances make more money
by breeding and selling slaves to farmers who were tilling the
more fertile lands gained in these acquisitions than by cultivation
of their own crops. Hence the slaveowner lawmakers had ample
impetus to have the newly annexed lands designated as slave states.
It is extremely important to note that the move by the South
to secede from the Union was the fuse which lit the Civil War-not
a desire to free the slaves-a historical misconception which
runs through many textbooks today.
A new history of the Democratic party,
"Party
of the People" by Jules Witcover, stresses that black
suffrage was anathema to northern Democrats. A Union general,
George W. Morgan, made the point graphically in a Fourth of July
speech, saying northern Democrats had agreed "to sacrifice
life and limb in defense of the Constitution and Union, but not
for the nigger."
Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment was
hailed by northern Democrats who felt that the blacks would no
longer be counted as three-fifths of a person, but each now could
be counted as a whole vote. Hence, the exploitation by northern
carpetbaggers who came to post-civil war black voters to further
exploit them occurred. Institutions such as schools and courthouses
did not exist which could nurture and protect brothers and sisters
of a darker hue. Even after his death, "the Negro President"
still held forth his image of contempt and exploitation for generations
not yet born. Sally Hemings' children still had no power in their
father's homeland.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
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