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Five Days That
Shook The World:
The Battle for Seattle
and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
with Photos
by Allan Sekula
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Published on February 18
BEAST IN GOLD
BRAID:
GENERAL PINOCHET
The General Turns
Out to Be a Coward.
When Police Knock
at His Door and Threatended to Slap Cuffs on him, Pinochet Fainted
EMINEM:
A Hired Gun from the
Poor Part of Town, Who Preys on the
Powerless, Extorts
Money from the Poor
and Celebrates a
Thuggish Brand of
Gangster Capitalism
BOVE OF MILLAU:
If There's One Organizer
Symbolizing the Worldwide Counterattack on Corporate Agriculture
It's Jose Bove
Published on January 30
THE TERRORIST'S
RETURN:
THE CRIMES OF SHARON
From Qibya to
Beirut:
Ariel Sharon's
Bloody Record
FAKING IT
Democrats Roll
Over on Ashcroft
COUNTERPUNCH
SERIES
ON BUSH/CHENEY
CABINET CONTINUES
They All Love
Anne Veneman
OUR LITTLE SECRETS
Gore Gets More
Votes, Doesn't Care
What William Carlos
Williams Really
Thought About
The Beats
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Al
Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the Press
by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
New Stories:
CounterPunch Coverage
of Election 2000
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February 27, 2001
Blair's Deadly
Double Standard
New Labor, New Bombs
By Tariq Ali
As the future ripens in the past, so
the past rots in the present. American leaders have long been
used to treating the cracked British vase as a pisspot, but
Attlee and Wilson, while dutifully kissing ass in the White House,
did , at least, attempt to restrict and restrain the United States,
albeit with little success. Blair and Cook and the rest of this
dreadful gang seem to be only too delighted with any new opportunity
to bark their support for the imperial war-monger in the White
House, bombing Baghdad to show his toughness to electors at home
and recalcitrants abroad. Blair's argument that the new bombing
was necessary to protect the lives of British pilots is incredible.
What the hell are these pilots
doing in Iraq in the first place? Why have they been bombing
Iraq for the last ten years? Over the last two years alone, the
USA and Britain have dropped over 400 tons of bombs and missiles
on Iraq. Blair has been raining down deadly explosives at a rate
twenty times greater than Major. No other country in Europe supports
this fire-storm. The bombardment of Iraq has now lasted longer
than the US invasion of Vietnam. Blair, Cook and the entire
Government are so used to the stench of their own hypocrisy
that they can justify anything. No doubt Lord Macdonald will
soon be telling viewers that the bombing raids were necessary
to defend the democratic rights of the military-industrial complex
to maximise profits, without which nothing can work and, therefore,
if we want a better system of privatized transport in Britain
we must understand the bombs are necessary. The brazen opportunism
of New Labour culture appears to be reflected in the Labour Party
as a whole and has affected its capacity to think critically.
The orthodox casuistry among
loyal columnists and courtiers is to justify inconvenient realities-Israeli
possession of nuclear weapons and colonial brutalities inflicted
on the Palestinians, Turkish oppression of the Kurds, the clerical
dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, etc.-with a breathtaking cynicism.
Thus Blair's Personal Assistant for Foreign Affairs, ex-diplomat
Robert Cooper writes in his book of The Post-Modern State and
the World Order" that: "We need to get used to the
idea of double standards." He also informs us casually that
"the reasons for fighting the Gulf War were not that Iraq
had violate the norms of international behaviour", but the
need for the West to keep a tight grip on "vital oil supplies."
Together with the bombing,
the sanctions regime kept in place by Clinton and Blair ands
now Bush and Blair, has cost the lives of, taking the lowest
estimate, 300,000 children. As the jets take off again for yet
another bombing raid on the shattered and famished remnants of
a Third World Country, why is the Labour Party so silent. A country
mobilized for war by shameless demagogy can in a more disillusioned
mood become vulnerable to other and more consistent demagogues.
Dissent that refuses to be a spectator, but insists on wedging
itself into the forbidden zones of modern politics is vital
as a physic for any functioning democracy.
Dissent in Britain has become atomized.
It reflects a hostility to all traditional politics and is confined
to single-issues related to the environmental and animal rights.
Most of these deserve support and yet something was missing.
I wonder whether those who were extremely upset a few years
ago by the cramped living conditions in which calves were shipped
to slaughter-houses in France ever spared a thought for the number
of children who died in Iraq from malnutrition and lack of medicine
as a direct result of the inhuman sanctions policy imposed by
Washington and London. Time to wake-up. CP
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