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Today's
Stories
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The Coming Elections and the Future
of American Global Power
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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
March 12 / 14, 2004
Oh, Jesus
It's
the Movie!
By SAUL LANDAU
A man leaving the theater where "The Passion
of the Christ" was playing saw a Jew in line waiting for
the next show and belted him in the chops.
"Why did you do that?" asked
the Jew.
"Because you killed our Lord,"
said the beater.
"But that was 2000 years ago,"
pleaded the bleeding Jew.
"Yeah, but I just found out about
it."
My friend who went with me to see the
film that has broken box-office sales commented that had Anti
Defamation League chair Abe Foxman not publicly identified as
Jews the bearded and robed men in the film who demanded that
the Roman governor crucify Jesus, few people would have known
who  they were and the fear of renewed anti-Semitism
would not have arisen.
Understandably, critics have demanded
of director Mel Gibson a higher degree of accuracy for this big
screen version of a religious snuff film without porn-- than
they did for example the makers of "Amadeus." He admitted
that his father, a holocaust denier and an anti-Semite, exerted
a strong influence on him. Did his father also administer the
lash to young Mel when he misbehaved, much as the sadistic Roman
guards did to Jesus in the film? Did Mel imagine chunks of his
own flesh ripped open, revealing the pink tissue underneath?
In the film, the audience, thanks to
Dolby stereo, hears the crisp sound effects "swish, splat,
crack" and watches artful cutting between burly whip wielders
and close ups of torn flesh, leaking blood. Gibson leaves little
to the imagination. In older Hollywood films a man would get
shot, clutch his stomach and fall down dead. We didn't need shots
of blood and flesh to convince us. The very premise of movie
editing relied on the audiences' imagination.
Not so with Gibson. Indeed, the make-up
department he hired might have gotten an Oscar nomination, except
they forgot to stain all of the actors' teeth the actors who
played Jews, black hats, also had blackened teeth. James Caviezel
(Jesus) had that Ultra Brite commercial look. Later, some creative
"mouth man" inserted colored red dye onto Jesus' dentures
to simulate blood.
Some of the creative art work called
attention to itself, like that done on the self-tortured Judas
before he committed suicide (I hope I'm not giving away too much
of the plot). The parched, cracked quality of the flesh surrounding
the teeth, revealed in extreme close up, actually made me so
thirsty that I reached for the $3.50, 12 ounce bottle of water
I had lodged in the convenient hole in the arm of my reclining
movie chair. God forbid you should actually feel really uncomfortable
while the images, sound effects and music combine to make you
feel virtually uncomfortable! Watching harsh reality while sitting
in a secure chair makes for an ideal vicarious experience.
To achieve the semblance of 2000 year
old reality, Gibson had the actors speaking Aramaic and Latin,
with subtitles. But why didn't Gibson catch the shining white
teeth mistake when he watched the rushes? He could have color
corrected the scene by adding a dash of yellowish-brown stain.
Hey, in pre-dentist days people had gnarly and tarnished bicuspids
despite the absence of refined sugar. The gleaming and perfectly
set of white molars should have alerted the public: "it's
only a film with actors playing parts of the last twelve hours
as Mel Gibson and other writers imagined them; not as they were."
By taking this piece of cinema trash
seriously, critics have helped Gibson quintuple his original
$25 million dollar investment after one week.
Instead of articulating only their own
critical thoughts, some critics engage in speculation as to how
audiences will react to a film. Film distributors, however, diminish
their uncertainty factor by submitting their products to focus
groups before releasing their works of art and then they make
changes according to the dictates of the majority in those groups.
So much for art?
A Hollywood cinematographer described
to me how he had to re-shoot the final scenes of a film after
a focus group decided that the heroes had not submitted the villains
to "enough violence." Other focus groups don't like
unhappy endings and Hollywood producers bend art, integrity and
common sense to these product testing assemblies. Hollywood,
after all, represents the Motion Picture Industry just as Detroit
once represented the Motor Car Industry. Both could claim that
their products shined and gleamed with perfection on the outside.
But don't look under the hood or beneath the makeup too carefully
as to what's in the actual commodities.
If you want to learn biblical history,
don't see Gibson's production. It bears occasional resemblance
to what scholars have unearthed about the crucifixion, but most
of the scenes originate in the imaginations of art directors,
costume designers, makeup veterans and a very skilled cinematographer,
Caleb Deschanel. As history, it is as relevant as the various
versions of The Three Musketeers.
Only once does Gibson present a political
idea in the film. Pontius Pilate actually talks about the greater
chances of a colonial uprising if he doesn't accede to the demands
of the nasty rabbinate. His attractive and humanitarian wife
pulls him to save Jesus on the first round, but then he contemplates
how Caesar will punish him if yet another rebellion occurs under
his command and he finally succumbs to "political logic"
and gives his Roman goons the green light to waste the carpenter's
son.
The film doesn't, however, explore the
politics of Jewish priests or the reasons they feared Jesus.
That little piece of history he presumably relegates to those
who would examine history before the final twelve hours.
Gibson wants the audience to see how
he envisions the pain Christ had to undergo in order to die for
our sins. We've had glimpses in prior Gibson films where Mel,
playing the hero undergoes horrendous torture and does not submit.
Previews of actor Gibson's woes appeared in "Braveheart,"
where Gibson undergoes disembowelment at the end and in one of
the final scenes in one of the "Lethal Weapon" series
where Mel, hung from a wall by his arms, ala crucifixion, and
tortured with electric shocks to reveal information, finally
wraps his legs around the torturer's neck and breaks it. This
is Hollywood grammar applied to Christ: the black hats get beaten
and killed after they try to crucify the white hat.
Indeed, such scenes should remind viewers
that Gibson had a keen interest if not an obsession with suffering
on a cross. Critics have emphasized how the actor's recovery
from alcoholism through a twelve step program colored his vision
of religion, thus leading him to make this film financed with
his own money (which he will recuperate several times over).
Did I just see an example of commercial art as therapy? Or is
Gibson giving AA a bad name?
Bill Maher defended Gibson as "sincere"
("Real Time," HBO February 27, 2004). I agreed, but
New Yorker critic (March 11, 2004) David Denby pointed out that
"saying that Gibson is sincere doesn't mean he isn't foolish,
or worse."
I agree with rabbis and others who predict
that this film will incite anti-Semitism. Almost any event has
proved sufficient to bring on that historic hatred of Jews. But
had the Jews not exacted the cruel and fatal punishment of Jesus,
there might not have been a Christian religion, which is, after
all, based on the events of the last hours of Jesus' life and
the way he died. If that had not occurred, maybe anti-Semites
could have persecuted Jews for not killing Christ. "You
dirty Jew, you denied me and millions of other potential Christians
a religion!"
If people applied logic, a difficult
task when discussing the passions of religion, they would see
that "Christ: The Movie," (a more accurate title) shows
that the Jews made Christianity possible precisely by demanding
that Jesus die in a specific way after undergoing torture. The
many versions of Christianity that today capture the religious
souls and minds of hundreds of millions would have been unthinkable
without the treacherous role of the Jews some two millennia ago.
Imagine Rev. Jerry Falwell, as strong
a supporter of Israel as exists, trying to keep his flock amused
without Jews to scapegoat! "A few of you don't like the
Jews and I know why, he said, "they can make more money
accidentally than you can on purpose" (The Washington Star,
July 3, 1980).
Fundamentalist preachers urge their flock
to see Gibson's film. They may use this piece of crude cinema
rather than complex scripture to re-enforce their anti-Semitism
-- while trumpeting Israel's cause. "An anti-Semite,"
Texas pro-Israel preacher James Roberson once remarked, "that's
someone who hates Jews more than he's supposed to." Would
Jesus have endorsed this line or Gibson's film for that matter?
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just been published
by Pluto Press. His new film is Syria: Between Iraq and a Hard
Place, now available from the Cinema
Guild. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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