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Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories May 4, 2005 Gary
Leupp May 3, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Brian
Cloughley Ira
Kurzban Seth
Sandronsky Gilad
Atzmon Michael
Donnelly Alex
Sanchez Peter
Linebaugh
May 2, 2005 Ron
Jacobs Stan
Goff Karyn
Strickler Joshua
Frank Kevin
Zeese Vicente
Navarro
April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gabriel
Kolko Jennifer
Loewenstein Lee
Sustar Saul
Landau T.W.
Croft Nikolas
Kozloff William
Blum Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Doug
Giebel Steven
Erlanger Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Kurt
Nimmo Joe
DeRaymond Michael
Dickinson Mickey
Z. Justin
Taylor Poets
Basement Website
of the Weekend
April 29, 2005 W.
John Green Luke
Brothers Norman
Solomon M.
Junaid Alam Jackie
Corr Hunter
Greer Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 28, 2005 Omar
Waraich Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Greg
Moses Toni
Solo Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Werther
April 27, 2005 John
Ross Joshua
Frank Ray
McGovern Mark
Donham Dan
Smith
April 26, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Alevtina
Rea Greg
Moses Joshua
Frank Diana
Johnstone
April 25, 2005 Uri
Avnery Alison
Weir Lee
Sustar Leonardo
Boff Gary
Leupp
April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp James
Petras Harry
Browne Fred
Gardner Ron
Jacobs Elizabeth
Schulte Chris
Floyd
April 22, 2005 Saul
Landau Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Mike
Whitney Michael
Flynn Lee
Sustar Website
of the Day
April 21, 2005 Bill
Quigley Dave
Lindorff Jason
Leopold Kathleen
Christison
April 20, 2005 John Ross Kevin Zeese Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard Dave Lindorff Neve Gordon Brian Concannon, Jr Murray Hudson Frank B. Ford Monty Python Michael Dickinson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese John Ross Brian McKenna Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Dave Zirin Eli Stephens Harry Browne Website of
the Day
April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Mark Dow Omar Waraich Robert Buzzanco Sherry Wolf Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Mark Weisbrot John Pardon Yoshie Furuhashi Mike Roselle Ralph Nader Ramzy Baroud Jackson Thoreau Michael Dickinson Richard Neville Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Bill Glahn Mickey Z. Stephanie McMillan Josh Mahan David Russitano Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales Tom Reeves
April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Pat Williams Jessica Pupovac Joshua Frank Jerzy Mankowski Talli Naumann Antony Loewenstein Virginia Rodino Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen Website of the Day
April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Mike Whitney Terry Jones Dave Lindorff Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Kurt Nimmo Don Fitz Tom Crumpacker JG Jack McCarthy Kevin Zeese Jeffrey St.
Clair
April 12, 2005 John Wheat
Gibson Kevin Zeese Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Nelson P. Valdes Dave Zirin Website of the Day
April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Saul Landau Monique Dols Phil Gasper Mike Whitney Edwin Krales Paul de Rooij Website of the Day
April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair William A. Cook Gary Leupp Alan Maass Laura Carlsen Joe DeRaymond Nikolas Kozloff Dave Lindorff Greg Moses Fred Gardner Justin Smith Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Alam Ira Kay Elizabeth Schulte Jackie Corr Christopher
Brauchli Leslie A. Fiedler Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 8, 2005 Rob Eshelman Hom Raj Acharya
/ Sally Acharya Felice Pace Neve Gordon Mike Whitney Don Monkerud Adam Engel Vicente Navarro Website of the Day
April 7, 2005 Joshua Frank Yitzhak Laor Alan Maass Steven Sherman Dave Lindorff Gerry Adams John Chuckman Michael Dickinson John Ross Website of the Day
April 6, 2005 Peter Camejo Kevin Wehr Matt Vidal Robert Creeley
/ Bruce Jackson Nikolas Kozloff Sea Shepherd Crew Brenda Child Terry Eagleton David Swanson Cindy Ellen
Hill Website of
the Day
April 5, 2005 Jim Connolly Paul Craig
Roberts Gary Leupp Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Dan Smith Mark Engler Richard Oxman Greg Moses Website of the Day
April 4, 2005 Kevin Zeese Paul Craig Roberts Larry Birns
/ Sarah Schaffer Karyn Strickler Joshua Frank Michael Dickinson Surendra R.
Devkota Derrick O'Keefe Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 2 / 3, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Stan Goff John Ross Saul Landau Robert Creeley Mike Roselle Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Greg Moses Fran Quigley Kurt Nimmo Nicole Colson Chris Genovali Alan Farago Lawrence Reichard Ben Tripp Avantika Regmi Lee Sustar Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 1, 2005 Tom Barry Rahul Mahajan Charlie Cray
/ Jim Vallette Dave Lindorff Zeynep Toufe Suzan Mazur Michael Dickinson Stan Cox Ra Ravishankar Daniel Wolff
March 31, 2005 Sharon Smith Ron Jacobs Tariq Ali Michael Dickinson Kanak Mani
Dixit Mitchell Zimmerman Xuan-Trang
Ho Dave Zirin Joe Bageant Jeff Halper Website of
the Day
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
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May 4, 2005 Vigilante WedgeSchwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation"By GREG MOSES Austin, Texas Since this is the season for intensive pre-election-year planning, we have to be worried about the public relations victory achieved by the Minuteman Project in Arizona. In five weeks time, they have gone from "vigilante" to "brave and caring." And in the process they have staged a powerful wedge issue for 2006. The public relations success of the Minuteman Project shows up in a poll from Arizona that reports 57 percent approval for the border action, but please note first of all how nicely the question is asked: "The Minuteman Project is a group of citizen volunteers who have been patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border to watch for people coming into the United States illegally and reporting them to the U.S. Border Patrol. Do you support or oppose the Minuteman Project?" The first line of challenge to the public relations victory of the Minuteman Project is to ask how the organization is best described: as a group of "citizen volunteers" or a group of "armed vigilantes"? Standing next to the President of Mexico on March 23 -- one week before the Arizona border action began -- USA President George W Bush was asked about "those people who are hunting migrant people along the border" and he answered: "I'm against vigilantes in the United States of America. I'm for enforcing law in a rational way. That's why you got a Border Patrol, and they ought to be in charge of enforcing the border." Never mind for the moment how Bush's appeal to the principle of "rational law" along the USA border is a blatant contradiction to his dismissal of "rational law" everywhere else. Does the President this time have good reason to make his claim? Is the Minutemen Project a threat to "rational law"? One way to determine if a person is acting as vigilante or volunteer is to see if the person is coordinating his or her law enforcement activities with relevant law enforcement agencies. Neighborhood Watch Committees for example operate under supervision of local police. Is this the same relationship we find between the Minuteman Project and the USA Border Patrol? "The Border Patrol administration chose to have no contact with our project other than quickly responding when we reported an illegal crossing," said one Minuteman vigilante in an interview with Sher Zieve. "To be 100% straight up with you and your readers," said another Minuteman vigilante in an interview with La Shawn Barber, "some of our folks are going to be armed. This is something that is really hard to understand if you have not worked near the border. Having a weapon is not only legal, itís stupid not to have one. Most of the ranchers donít go out without a pistol on their belt." So we have it from the horse's mouth: the Minutemen (unlike your average neighborhood watch committee) were not operating under supervision or control of the relevant law enforcement agency, yet they were carrying weapons in an organized effort to enforce criminal law. Now what part of vigilante do we not understand? To be sure, the Minutemen have so far operated a very disciplined vigilante activity, confining themselves strictly to observation and reporting. But they are armed vigilantes nevertheless, not simply "citizen volunteers" as characterized in the Arizona poll. It is strange to google news reports about Minutemen and find so many headlines that reinforce their well-crafted "volunteer" image. It is doubly strange to wonder why the media behave this way in clear dismissal of the President's preferred "vigilante" language. If we consider the media's widespread disregard for the President's framework when he discourages vigilantism along the USA border yet recall their nearly unanimous adoption of his language when he called upon vigilantism in global arms inspection, we get a brand new theory for media bias. It was never the President himself that the media favored all those years, it was simply the vigilante attitude. When it comes to selling news, media love lawlessness best. Indeed, if world audiences did not respond well to images of rogue tough guys taking law into their own hands, we would not have the current Governor of California to consider, who made a movie career playing to vigilante appeal and who now hopes he can achieve the same star power as an elected powerhouse. On that score alone, how could we argue that he is wrong? Yet when Hollywood celebrates a vigilante for movie entertainment, they usually make sure that the hero is an underdog type who is beset by forces more powerful, well connected, and deadly. Therefore, in order for Schwarzenegger to trade on his image as vigilante hero along the Mexican border, dramatic formula requires him to adopt the Minuteman characterization of Mexican immigration as deadly foe. And this is where the moral structure of Minuteman vigilantism collapses into racist pandering, exploiting fearful images of collective evil on the move. In Hollywood terms, Schwarzenegger the politician is no Terminator. Instead he now offers a reprise of Birth of a Nation, the movie where the Klan rides in to save the USA from Negro rule. When the Arizona poll asked what people thought about the Army reservist who held seven illegal immigrants at gunpoint at a highway rest stop, the results returned a significant wedge with 44 percent approving, 41 percent disapproving. Again, the phrasing of the question raises difficulties. When a person is described as an Army reservist, was he on duty or off? If he was off duty, what relevance is his status as a reservist? But if he was on duty why was HE arrested for aggravated assault? So we wonder why the question must describe the alleged perp as an "Army reservist"? Both questions in the Arizona poll are phrased in ways that tend to pre-legitimize vigilante actors as either "citizen volunteers" or "Army reservists." Yet responses to the question about the obviously criminal activity of the rest stop vigilante demonstrates that armed confrontation with illegal immigrants in America is capable of producing a significant wedge. So we must attend to this incubator of ugly politics before something more terrible grows. An April 29 report from the Associated Press signals that Minuteman politics is being tested for Texas. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is widely rumored to be considering a run for Governor says of the Minuteman Project that, "these people have shown a commitment and a caring that should be acknowledged here in the United States Senate." As Damu Smith counseled a gathering of Texas peace activists in February, these wedge issues work against progressives only when we lose our grip on the larger agendas. If progressives fail to meet people with comprehensive responses to the experience of common life, then the wedge issues begin to look like they are causes of political weakness, although they are only symptoms. Crime and security are palpable issues, but they need not generate politics of criminalization, suspicion, or crackdown. Do progressives have inclusive answers when it comes to policies that will help workers and citizens feel better about their chances in the world? Do Texas progressives have something more significant to offer than the retirement of Republican hammer Tom DeLay? Finally, it will be interesting to see if political passions for vigilante actions persist now that the Minutemen have announced plans to go after employers who hire illegal immigrants. What this means, I fear, is not some transformative confrontation with corporate power, but busloads of workers heading South. Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights
Review and author of Revolution
of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of
Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and
Bush appears in Dime's
Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey
St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net
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