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Today's Stories

November 2, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Holy Alito!: Not as Crazy as Scalia, But Just as Bad

November 1, 2005

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Kent State's Dave Airhart

Gary Leupp
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome

John Ross
Days of the Dead on the Border

Bill Quigley
Why Are They Making New Orleans a Ghost Town?

Joseph Nevins
From a Boundary of Death to One of Life

Dave Lindorff
Thinking About Impeachment

Linda S. Heard
Bashing Syria: Another Trojan Horse from the UN?

Heather Gray
Thank You, Mrs. Parks

Michael Dickinson
To Di For: Charlie and Camilla Cross the Pond

Jeffrey St. Clair
Kent State: Wise Up and Back Off

 

October 31, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Libby's Lies

Mark Weisbrot
Pop Goes the Bubble: Bernancke and the Fed

Mike Whitney
Carry On, Patrick Fitzgerald

Norman Solomon
After the Libby Indictment, the Press Acquits Itself

Farooq Sulehria
Trading Weapons While Kashmir Burns

Nicole Colson
Scapegoating Immigrants

Madis Senner
Dhafir Sentenced to 22 Years: Another Erosion of Civil Rights

Paul Craig Roberts
Scooter and the Neocons


October 29 / 30, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?

Peter Linebaugh
The Wedges of Hephaestus

Tim Wise
Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media

John Chuckman
Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words

Steven Higgs
Green Hoosiers: Forging a New Democracy in the Heartland

Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War

M. Shahid Alam
Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness

Nikki Robinson
Crack Down at Kent State

Ralph Nader
Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives

Joe DeRaymond
Requiem for Bethlehem Steel?

Joshua Frank
Karl's Great Escape: Did Rove Rat on Scooter?

Laura Santina
Tongue-Tied on Iraq: Why Aren't the Dems Screaming Bloody Murder?

Fred Gardner
Death of an Organizer

Michael Dickinson
Insult Your Country

Ron Jacobs
Autumn in America

Dr. Susan Block
Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting

Vanessa S. Jones
Self-Portrait, 1994. Bronte Beach

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Marbet, Gardner, Ford, Albert, Engel, Krieger & St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Red State Update

 

October 28, 2005

Jared Bernstein
Inflation Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record

Virginia Tilley
Embracing the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine

Phil Gasper
The Race to Execute Tookie Williams

Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!

Manual Garcia, Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?

Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice

Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald Focuses on the Forgeries

Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials


Otober 27, 2005

Saul Landau
The Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War

Stuart Hodkinson
Bono and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!

Ingmar Lee
Stop the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq

Lila Rajiva
License to Bill: Gates Does India

Ilan Pappe
The Last Moment of Hope

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald

Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury

Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo

Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown

 

October 26, 2005

Kathy Kelly
For Whom They Toll

Gary Leupp
Dialectics of the Plame Affair

Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial

Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation

Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks

Website of the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index

 

 

October 25, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President?

Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn
Attack on the Palestine Hotel

Conn Hallinan
Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings

Jackie Corr
Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros

Robert Day
Talk to Strangers

John Sugg
Judith Miller and Me

 

October 24, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Revoke Judy Miller's Pulitzer

Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra

Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial

Mike Whitney
Apres Rove

Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...

Bill and Kathleen Christison
US Foreign Policy and Palestine

 

October 22 / 23, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
When Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller

Billy Sothern
Letter from the Circle Bar, New Orleans

Saul Landau
Bush, an Assessment

Ralph Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers

Behrooz Ghamari
Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve?

Brian Cloughley
Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory?

Diana Barahona
Venezuela's National Workers' Union

Fred Gardner
Dershowitzed!

Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About

Patrick Cockburn
Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer

Laura Carlsen
Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake

James Petras
China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness

Joshua Frank
Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Disasters are Us

Michelle Bollinger
When Abortion Was Illegal

Missy Comley Beattie
CSI: Iraq

Kona Lowell
Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun

Ben Tripp
Tanks for the Memories

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening To This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel

Website of the Day
Indictment Watch

 

October 21, 2005

Dave Lindorff
The Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense Budget

Col. Dan Smith
The Destruction of the National Guard

Norman Solomon
Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph

Madis Senner
Abusing Katrina

Michael Donnelly
Richard Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots


October 20, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Comes to NYC

Ray McGovern
16 Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost

Jeremy Brecher /
Brendan Smith

Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right?

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court

Kevin Zeese
Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?

Ross Eisenbrey
Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment

Randy Shields
James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton

Justine Davidson
Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory

After Lucas Cranach
Judy and Holofernes

Joe Allen
The Scandalous History of the Red Cross

 

October 19, 2005

Christopher Reed
Koizumi and the Rape of Nanking

Stephen Soldz
Bush and Avian Flu: the Excuses Begin to Fly

Chet Richards
War and Intelligence

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam on Trial

Scott Richard Lyons
Multicultural Columbus?

Ralph Nader
An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin

Website of the Day
Shocking Video: Why Birds May Be Taking Viral Vengeance on Humans

 

October 18, 2005

Chet Flippo
Merle Haggard: "Let's Get Out of Iraq"

Ron Jacobs
Dual Devotions: the Catholic Church and the US Flag

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
A Tale of Two Cities: From DC to Toledo

Dave Lindorff
Judy Miller: Little Miss Run Amok

Virginia Rodino
A Winter Patriot: Reflections on the Antiwar Movement

Thomas Healy
The Weather in Goshen: Still Radical After All These Years

Ralph Nader
A New New Orleans

Stephen Lendman
The Sorrows of Haiti

Patrick Cockburn
On the Eve of Saddam's Trial: a Divided Iraq

 

October 17, 2005

Peter Linebaugh
Spinoza and the Black Limos

Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State

Cockburn / Sengupta
"If the Sunnis Don't Like It, That's Their Problem"

Mike Whitney
Miller's Confession: Last Gasp Before Indictments?

Uri Avnery
Iraq Now: What Awaits Samira?

Harold Pinter
Torture & Misery in the Name of Freedom

Website of the Day
Al Joudi v. Bush

 

October 15 / 16, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ayatollahs of the Apocalypse

Patrick Cockburn
"This Constitution Won't Get Me a Job"

Saul Landau
Two Terrorists and a Lush: Osama, Posada and Bush's Drinking

Neve Gordon
"Beyond Chutzpah": Exposing Grave Moral Distortions

Moshe Adler
Poverty in New York City

Christopher Brauchli
Lynndie England's Burden

Diane Farsetta
The Emperor Doesn't Disclose: the Fight Against Fake News

Sam Husseini
Notes on Current Reporting About Judith Miller

Monica Benderman
From Chaos to Conscience to Peace

Mickey Z.
POW Abuse by US: Nothing New Going On Here

Douglas C. Smyth
George W. Bush, the Honorius of Our Time

Lee Sustar
Will Delphi Bust the UAW?

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoids Arrive in Realm of Established Fact

Elizabeth Schulte
A Former Panther's Georgia Campaign: an Interview with Elaine Brown

Joshua Frank
Will the Democrats Save Harriet Miers?

David Vest
Down with Formalism! Up with Values!

Ben Tripp
Epistle II: the Reawakenign

Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, Ford and Louise

Website of the Weekend
The Hidden Canyon

 

October 14, 2005

Farrah Hassen
A Somber Ramadan in Syria

Ron Jacobs
The Black Panthers: They Haven't Forgotten; Neither Should We

Sasha Kramer
USAID and Haiti: the Friendly Face of Imperialism?

Katrina Yeaw
The Student Struggle in Italy

Nicole Colson
Bird Flu: Militarizing Health Care

Raúl Zibechi
Survival and Existence in El Alto

Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez and the Politics of Race

Website of the Day
LA Filmmakers Cooperative


October 13, 2005

Jeremy Scahill
Mr. Bush Goes to Tikrit (Sort Of)

Jeff Birkenstein
A Thoreau for Our Time: Why Cindy Sheehan Matters

Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher
Harriet Miers: Bush or the Constitution?

Stan Cox
Did You Know This About Iraq?

Anis Memon
The Curious Case of Russ Feingold

Gary Leupp
Miller, Libby and the June Notes

Dave Zirin
A Tribute to August Wilson

Matthew Koehler
America's Endangered Forests

Werther
The Two-Headed Monster

Website of the Day
Hurricane Song


October 12, 2005

Omar Waraich
Britain and the Quake: Mean and Stingy

William Cook
Voices Behind the Entombment Wall

Phil Gasper
Countdown to a Legal Lynching

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls

Matt Vidal
Capital, Power and Class

John Gautreaux
New Orleans will Never be the Same

Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War

Mark Weisbrot
The IMF Has Lost Its Influence

Brian J. Foley
Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety

Website of the Day
Columbus Day Lies

 

October 11, 2005

Roger Morris / Steve Schmidt
Strategic Demands of the 21st Century

Lila Rajiva
Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib

Bill Quigley
New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again

Paul Craig Roberts
Natural Born Liars

Dave Lindorff
Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Suspect Thy Neighbor

Mitchel Cohen
Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese

Tariq Ali
Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror

Website of the Day
L'Heure Americaine

 

October 10, 2005

Cindy and Craig Corrie
Rachel's Words Live

Joshua Frank
Washington's War Dems

Gideon Levy
The Beautiful Life Without Arafat

Alan Wallis
The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square

Mickey Z.
In Defense of Liars

CounterPunch News Service
Vermont Independence Convention

Paul Craig Roberts
The Police State is Closer Than You Think

Website of the Day
Dylan's Chronicles

 

October 8 / 9, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People

Ralph Nader
Katrina and the Growls of Greed

Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case

Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream

Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas

Lenni Brenner
The Millions More Movement and Zionism

Nikolas Kozloff
Bird Flu and Bush

Brian Cloughley
Training Soldiers in Iraq

Alice Slater
A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl?

John Gautreaux
A View from Cajun Country

Fred Gardner
Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Leveethan Approach

M.G. Piety
Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard

Tom Gorman
The Hitchens Doctrine

Mike Whitney
Bunker Days with George

Aseem Shrivastava
Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan

Ben Tripp
Religion, an Epistle

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Ford

 

October 7, 2005

Larry Johnson
The Plame Case: the Real Issues

Will Youmans
Why Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus

Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?

Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison

Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle

Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs

Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir

Website of the Day
FBI Witchhunt


October 6, 2005

P. Sainath
"Take That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal Idol Again

Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged

Paul Craig Roberts
Blundering into Syria

Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion

Dave Lindorff
Easy Money in the Big Easy

Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell

M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason

Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot

Robert Pollin
Is the Dollar Still Falling?

 

October 5, 2005

Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines

Robert Jensen
Is Bush a Racist?

Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire

Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad"

Dave Zirin
Barry Bonds Laughs Last

Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over

Alan Maass
Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work

 

October 4, 2005

Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.

Mike Roselle
Houston, You've Got a Problem

Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers

John Chuckman
War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say

Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys

Mickey Z.
An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski

Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims

Gary Leupp
An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History

Website of the Day
Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan

 

October 3, 2005

Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi Rice: Gunslinger

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Seth Sandronsky
The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 2, 2005

Lies of the Neocons: From Leo Strauss to Scooter Libby

The Philosophy of Mendacity

By JOHN WALSH

All governments lie as I. F. Stone famously observed, but some governments lie more than others. And the neocon Bush regime serves up whoppers as standard fare every day. Why this propensity to lie? There are many reasons, but it is not widely appreciated that the neocons believe in lying on principle. It is the "noble" thing for the elite to do, for the "vulgar" masses, the "herd" will become ungovernable without such lies. This is the idea of the "noble lie" practiced with such success and boldness by Scooter Libby and his co-conspirators and concocted by the political "philosopher" Leo Strauss whose teachings lie at the core of the neoconservative outlook and agenda, so much so that they are sometimes called "Leocons."

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was a Jewish-German émigré from the Nazi regime who eventually landed at the University of Chicago where he developed a following that has achieved enormous prominence in American politics. Among his students were Paul Wolfowitz who has openly acknowledged that he is a follower of Straus as has the godfather of neconservatism, Irving Kristol. Irving Kristol begat William Kristol, the director of operation for the DC neocons, editor of the Weekly Standard and "chairman" of the Project for the New American Century, which laid out the plans for the Iraq War. (PNAC also opined in 2000 that a Pearl Harbor-like event would be necessary to take the country to war, and one year later, presto, we had the strange and still mysterious attack of September 11.) For his part Paul Wolfowitz begat Libby, in the intellectual sense, when he taught Libby at Yale. Others stars in the necon firmament are Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and lesser figures like Abram Shulsky, director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created by Donald Rumsfeld. Shulsky, also a student of Strauss, was responsible for fabricating the lies masquerading as intelligence that were designed to get the U.S. into the war on Iraq. While the neocons have a passion for the Likud party and Zionism, they also count among their number not a few pre-Vatican II Catholics and an assortment of cranks like Newt Gingrich and John Bolton and crypto fascists like Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The list goes on and Justin Raimondo has documented it in great detail over the years on Antiwar.com. But it is enough to note that Cheney's alter ego was Libby, and Rumsfeld's second in command until recently was Wolfowitz. So both Cheney, the de facto president with an apparently ill perfused cerebrum, and the geezer commanding the Pentagon have been managed by younger and very prominent Straussians for the past five years.

A superb account of the ideas of Strauss, his followers and his influence is to be found in The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (hereafter PI) and Leo Strauss and The American Right (hereafter AR), both by Shadia Drury, professor of politics at the University of Calgary. Her account of Strauss's ideas and the prominence they play in American politics today will give you chills or nausea, perhaps both. As she says in PI (p.xii), "Strauss is the key to understanding the political vision that has inspired the most powerful men in America under George W. Bush. In my view men who are in the grip of Straussian political ideas cannot be trusted with political power in any society, let alone a liberal democracy. This book explains why this is the case." For those who wish to understand the neocon agenda, Drury's books are essential reading. She is clear and thorough.

Of pertinence to "Scooter's" case and the pack of lies he was concealing is Strauss's idea that a "philosopher elite" (i.e., Straussians) must rule. Moreover they must do so covertly. As someone remarked before last Friday, "Who ever heard of I. Lewis Libby?" a man who shunned the spotlight and operated behind the scenes. The reason for such covert rule, or cabal, is that the "vulgar" herd, as Strauss liked to call the rest of us, cannot appreciate "higher truths" such as the inevitability and necessity of wars in relations between states and even the utility of wars in governing a state. So the covert elite must be certain that myths like religion or the glory of the nation are not weakened for these are among the best ways to rule over the ignorant herd and lead it into war. (Note that the Straussians themselves are not religious. They are "above" religion, capable of dealing with tough truths like man's mortality. But in their view, religion is a crucial factor in governing in their view. Irving Kristol, following Strauss, tells us that religion is "far more important politically" than the Founding Fathers believed and that to rescue America it is necessary "to breathe new life into the older, now largely comatose religious orthodoxies." (AR, p. 148). Any religion will do ­ except perhaps Islam, which is more or less verboten, given the affinity of all leading neocons for Israel. Hence the neocons readily embrace the ideology and leadership of Christian fundamentalism which can keep the crowd under control and get them to march off to war and death. The neocons are mainly interested in foreign policy, as was Strauss, but in exchange for the support of the religious Right in foreign affairs, the neocons line up behind the domestic program of the fundamentalists. It's a win win situation, from their point of view

But useful lies of the grand sort like religious myth or blind nationalism need support by lesser lies at crucial moments. And so we go to the "smaller" lies like "weapons of mass destruction," the "smoking gun that comes in the form of the mushroom cloud." And here too the elite has a role to play. They are to use their "superior rhetorical skills" to make the weak argument seem stronger. In other words the cabal not only has to protect myths and manufacture lies but go to work in selling them. What Strauss called "rhetoric," we call spin.

All of this comes down to one word: lying. But for Strauss, these lies are necessary for the smooth function of society and triumph of one's own nation in war. Hence for Strauss, the lie becomes "noble." This phrase Strauss borrows and distorts from Plato who meant by a "noble lie" a myth or parable that conveyed an underlying truth about morality or nature. But in Strauss's hands the "noble lie" becomes a way of deceiving the herd. Strauss's "noble lies are far from "noble." They are intended to "dupe the multitude and secure power for a special elite" (AR, p. 79).

One other idea of Strauss's bears on the situation of "Scooter" Libby. How is the Straussian philosophical elite going to get from the halls of academe to the corridors of power? This depends on good luck and the "chance" encounter between the powerful and the Straussian. Here the contemporary neocons go beyond Strauss and leave nothing to chance. It would even appear that they look for the stupid, gullible or those who are mentally compromised. So William Kristol becomes Vice President Quayle's chief of Staff, and Libby becomes the right hand man to the addled Cheney as well as assistant to the Quayle-like Bush. And there are many more.

Finally, Drury makes the point the Strauss and the neocons are not really conservative at all. They are radicals, at war with the entire modern enterprise which makes them turn to the ancients for their inspiration ­ and even there they need to distort the teachings of Socrates or Plato to make their case. But the Enlightenment comes to us with the advance of science to which Strauss is also hostile. He says that he is not against science as such "but popularized science or the diffusion of scientific knowledge.Science must remain the preserve of a small minority; it must be kept secret from the common man" (PI, p. 154). But this is impossible. Science by its very nature is a vast social enterprise requiring the widest possible dissemination of its findings. Any society that puts a lid on this will fail, and so by natural selection, the Straussian project is doomed to fail.

But before that happens the Straussians can do a lot of damage. As Drury says, they "cannot be trusted with political power." But we can learn from them the importance of boldness, not in the pursuit of the "noble lie" but of the truth. And we must be certain that we are vigorous as we hunt them down and get them out of power. In that effort Shadia Drury has done us a great service.

John Walsh can be reached at jvwalshmd@gmail.com.

He thanks Gary Leupp a regular on CounterPoint.com for pointing him to Shadia Drury's books.





 

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