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Recent Stories
March 26, 2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush----Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre----emptive War on a Defenseless Country
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz----Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
28, 2003
Don't Look Back
Schlock
and Gawk
By ADAM ENGEL
Again
I saw that goofy puss on enormous screens around Times Square and glossy
magazines and color photo Gab-loids galore peddled alongside “Hustler”
and “Chic” and other clean, honest, American porn at corner
kiosks, and despite myself I laughed and gave Dubya some degree of credit
for his courage. Imagine not merely owning a mug like that, but exposing
it daily to worldwide scrutiny and certain ridicule! On the other hand,
it is a beastly face, both goofy and menacing, the face of an angry
mutt, a punim I’m sure had been pummeled much by the sons of other
oilmen, spooks and politicos during its formative years. Might be the
reason behind all that inarticulate rage.
We Americans must be a craven, sinister lot to “rally round”
such a kisser and follow its hollow eyes to only god knows what circle
of hell. Or maybe we’re just a nation of children. Somebody must
lead the children, since they are obviously not responsible for themselves.
Someone must save us from ourselves.
True, we’re bombarded on all sides with propaganda, but who isn’t?
People the world over pay lip-service to their government’s bullshit,
but they don’t take it SERIOUSLY. Can you imagine showing someone
in that Axis-Of-Evil-To-Be, France/Germany/Russia, USA Today or the
NY Post or TIME? The ridiculous prose, the blazing graphics --
all for about three pages -- then ZAP! right to the celebrities
and how rich and playful they are. Oh, and beautiful and lovelorn and
tormented by TIME and Fame.
I watched the Americans around 42nd Street and Broadway -- Times
Square -- with their heads down like dogs who crapped Mom’s
Persian rug -- close; Iran’s next -- or better yet:
Raskolnikov. They knew they’d done something horribly, horribly
wrong, something that no one, not their lawyers, shrinks, Yoga masters,
dieticians, would help them get away with. But all they could talk about
was the perceived payback, not the crime itself:
“We’re on high alert.”
“Do you think they’ll hit New York again? My Uncle Dom has
a place in the Pocanos..”
“Just stay away from crowds…”
“Oh, what about the children?”
Yeah, what about us, stained as we are with other children’s blood?
Think about that scene in Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,”
when our long-suffering narrator, Alex, takes his ultra-violence kick
a step too far and kills a woman. His erstwhile youth probation officer,
Mr. Deltoid, comes to visit him at the station house and explain some
hard facts. Like for instance, Alex is in a different league now. No
longer under Mr. Deltoid’s cruel, yet familiar, quasi-avuncular
jurisdiction.
“You’re a murderer, Alex. A MURDERER!”
Those damned and damning Gab-loids like flashbulbs in our faces. True,
the “Grey Lady” or “Iron Maiden” or whatever
the hell they call the New York Times peddles as much poop per paragraph
as any other paper, but at least the NYT attempts to make it look real.
They go on at some length, 20 inches and more in those articles, to
mimic objectivity and in-depth analysis, even though they’re going
over the same lurid, Pentagon-approved twaddle and could probably insert
“dummy” sentences, like naughty kids writing “punishment
essays” after school (“This sucks!” in the middle
of a two page essay on “How to Behave Patriotically in Class”
etc.). Really, who would notice?
But do we children believe everything the fourth estate (heavily mortgaged
to what Blanche Dubois delicately dubbed “epic fornications”)
tells us? Hell, even a child -- uh that’s us, I think --
can look at all the keen graphics they’re hawking and see a bunch
of U.S. soldiers bogged down in the sand, fighting an angry native populous
(last time it was mud, not sand; it was mud in Vietnam, was it not?)
or giant mushrooms of fire erupting from a city that from far away looks
very much like LA.
What, are they gonna tell us that no civilians are gonna get hurt, maimed,
killed, obliterated, that perhaps thousands of human beings aren’t
being wiped off the planet by blast waves and fire? Are we stupid? Are
we insane? Have we no grasp of the reality of the situation, or are
we so sensitive to our powerlessness that we lay awake at night plagued
by syndicated Kafkaesque nightmares in rerun (the rights to Franz’s
nightmares are owned by Fox, I think, but I’m not sure)?
It sucks being a kid.
Imagine if, in this nation of 280 some-odd million decorticated zombies
looking for the optimal personal solution and feel-good formula for
weight loss, self-esteem, pine-scented genitals, whatever we’re
supposed to be lacking, whatever essential trait we were somehow born
without, there were ten million committed ADULTS. That’s not even
five percent of the population. Imagine if we were part of this cabal
of Grown-ups. Ten million of us to stop paying taxes, march en masse
to OUR capital to demand an immediate end to this illegal, immoral,
insane war. Ten million MATURE HUMANS who might threaten to really screw
things up by standing up for Truth, Justice and the…uh, the American
(??!!) way. Or even just sit down and do nothing -- in the middle
of our respective town plazas or main streets or whatever. Traffic jams.
Resistance. Rebellion, dispassionate yet absolute. Bartleby the Scrivener:
“I would prefer not to.” How would they clean us up? Kill
us? Throw us ALL in jail?
Possibly.
For instance, what’s with those brilliant colored blast photos
on the cover of every journal, website and magazine? Intended to titillate
or intimidate? I mean, We The People, minors that we are in every sense,
are still SOMEWHAT important, aren’t we? Should we be worried?
They wouldn’t try to shock and awe US, would they? They’re
not trying to scare US with all this high tech military might we paid
for with our hard-earned dollars. Right? Uh…RIGHT?
Oh, fuck it. Who wants to grow up here anyway? Maybe it’s time
for a bunch of us kids to just up and leave. Skeedaddle. Become bona
fide RUNAWAYS. Find a way out of this interminable childhood in some
foreign land. We’ll grace the sides of ten million milk cartons,
we’ll be famous.
Just don’t look back, or you’ll turn into a pillar of salt.
The minute he stops vomiting, Adam Engel’s gonna pick his ass
up off the bathroom floor and high-tail it to the Island of Lost Boys
or Misfit Toys or someplace where “the Main Stream” is wide
and full of fish, plants and clear water. asengel@attglobal.net
Yesterday's Features
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush----Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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