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Today's
Stories
June
3, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
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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June
3, 2004
First
in the World in the Deranged
Insanity
in America
By
JOHN CHUCKMAN
It's always satisfying to have a pet
theory supported by new data. A large and authoritative study,
just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
confirms a favorite hypothesis of mine, that there is more mental
illness and insanity, far more, in America than you find in other
advanced societies.
The study, led by a Harvard
Medical School researcher, found evidence of mental problems
in 26.4% of people in the United States, versus, for example,
8.2% of people in Italy. The researchers were concerned with
matters such as lack of access to treatment and under-treatment,
but for those concerned about a safe and decent world, I think
the salient finding is simply America's high percentage. The
world is being led by a nation where more than one-quarter of
the people have genuine mental problems.
The finding is strangely both
comforting and disturbing.
It is comforting because it
helps explain why Americans continue supporting a man proven
wrong every time he opens his mouth, a man who has de-stabilized
parts of the world in the name of creating stability, a man claiming
sound business principles who has pitched the United States into
deficit free-fall, and a man who arouses suspicion and fear throughout
the world.
The study is comforting, too,
because it helps explain an opposition candidate like John Kerry.
How can liberals generate excitement over this stale, fly-buzzed
doughnut of a candidate? I suppose the same way they get excited
every time Bush's polls dip by something little more than statistical
noise. Perhaps the same way a man like Michael Moore - who makes
gobs of money playing to the suspicions and prejudices of the
paranoid segment of America's great political market - could
so eagerly embrace a crypto-Nazi like General Wesley Clark as
"his candidate"?
The finding is comforting in
explaining all those Americans shocked and appalled over The
New York Times' recent apology for its drum-beating, pre-invasion
coverage of Iraq's non-existent weapons. Here is a newspaper
that, more often than not, comes down on the wrong side of human
rights, always protects Establishment interests, always ignores
abuses until they can no longer be ignored, and yet it somehow
retains a reputation in America as guardian of treasured values
and as the nation's newspaper of record.
Well, the "record"
part is easily explained, since The Times often takes one position
before an event and another after, adjusting its emphasis according
to shifts in public opinion or facts discovered by someone else.
With that kind of coverage, you surely do qualify as some kind
of paper of record.
But nothing could be a bigger
nonsense than The Times' reputation as guardian of values in
a free society. Just ask Wen Ho Lee, or Richard Jewell, or the
woman who accused a Kennedy of rape, or all the people who died
unnecessarily at the Bay of Pigs. Go back and examine The Times
at key points in the communist witch hunts or at the outbreak
of the Korean War. Go back and examine its views and emphasis
when President Johnson offered his Hitler-like lies about the
Gulf of Tonkin. Go back and see how often The Times has done
any real investigative journalism - when it mattered, not in
retrospect - about subjects as vital as the FBI's huge abuse
of power during the 1960s or the shameful backgrounds of many
of the country's leading politicians. Just examine the statements
of the paper's signature columnist, Thomas Friedman, who sounds
like Henry Ford condemned to bizarre re-incarnation as one the
Jews he so hated.
But the finding also is quite
disturbing. America, for many years to come, will dominate world
affairs. The world will continue to be treated as though it were
the backyard sandbox of the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Liebermans,
Kerrys, Albrights and other privileged, selfish, and not particularly
well-informed American Establishment figures.
I explain American insanity
by a gene pool fouled with the heavy early migration of Puritans,
mentally disturbed fanatics if we accept the rather detailed
historical record in Europe, plus the immense stresses of a society
run along strict principles of Social Darwinism. An almost unqualified
admiration for greed now dominates American culture. Yes, Adam
Smith's "invisible hand" involved self-interest, but
go back and read that thoughtful and compassionate philosopher
and compare what he says to the chimpanzee screams we hear from
America.
As to the stresses in American
society, I refer not only to the struggle of individuals to survive
there, but to the fact that the whole story of America has been
one of unremitting aggression. It is the story of "a pounding
fist," as Tennessee Williams' Big Daddy described himself.
Had America somehow come to
be in Europe, its story would most closely parallel that of Germany
and its long, belligerent effort to dominate the continent. It
is only because so much of America's aggression has been against
what seemed lightly settled places - the Ohio Valley, the Great
Plains, Canada, Mexico, and Hawaii - that people think any differently
about it. Other places were not so lightly settled, and opposition
in places like the Philippines was crushed with great bloodshed.
My criticism of the United
States is not concerned with how it wishes to order its own society,
but about how its activities spill over into the rest of the
world. Its actions in the world too often resemble those of an
ugly drunk pushing his way into your living room and puking all
over the carpet.
Iraq provides a textbook example.
The net effect of the invasion of Iraq is a badly de-stabilized
country, now full of people who resent Americans for their brutality
and arrogance, where once there were undoubtedly many who dreamily
admired America at a distance. Saudi Arabia also has been de-stabilized,
as many warned Bush that it would be before he set his crusaders
marching. Many old friends and allies, like France or Canada,
have been stupidly abused for offering sound advice and declining
to join the march to hell. Tony Blair's pathetic rag of a government
hangs by threads after working against the clear wishes of the
British people, and Blair has found the voice he thought he had
earned in the councils of war arrogantly dismissed by Bush and
his fanatics. Israel's state-terror in the West Bank and Gaza,
cheerily accepted by Bush (and Kerry), has risen to nightmarish
levels, and if you think that has no connection with all the
hatred for America in the world, you are either foolish or qualify
as part of the more than one-quarter of Americans who need professional
help.
Oil prices are high and unstable,
as are American deficits. International security arrangements,
those things so loved by police-mentalities but which have never
been known to stop real bad guys, are becoming stupidly cumbersome
and heavy-handed. Yet America still supports Bush, no matter
what its small tribe of liberals chooses to believe. Knowing
America's record on small tribes, I suppose it's healthy self-interest
to pretend enthusiasm for tiny dips in Bush's polls and for an
alternative as insipid and meaningless as John Kerry.
While I am glad for the confirmation
of my hypothesis, I can't help feeling, as with so many studies,
this one does little more than confirm the painfully obvious.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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