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Today's
Stories
August 7 /
8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 6, 2004
Joshua Frank
David
Cobb's Soft Charade: the Greens and the Politics of Mendacity
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Stan Goff
Mike Whitney
The
Arbitrary Imprisonment of Jose Padilla
William S. Lind
Corruption in the Marine Corps
David Price
In
the Shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 5, 2004
Mike Ferner
The Kerry Show: When Peace is Off
Message
Bruce Anderson
Two
Rejections
Robert Fisk
The Tale of Saddam's Cameraman
Todd Chretien
Florida
Comes to California: the Democrats' Plot Against Nader
Peter Linebaugh
Doing Time for Political Crime:
Paul and Silas, Bound in Jail
August 4, 2004
Mickey Z.
Two
Traditions: WMD and Disinformation
Justin Huggler
The Hunt for Bin Laden
John Ross
Mexico's
Dirty War Never Ended: Inside Puente Grande Prison
August 3, 2004
Uri Avnery
The
Oligarchs
Ray McGovern
The 9/11 Commission Chimera
Jack McCarthy
Sexual Politics in Jeb's Florida
Eric Ruder
Meet Barak Obama: the Democrats' New Liberal Star
John L. Hess
Crying Wolf: Orange Alert!
Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Elections: 1800 v. 2004
Jules Rabin
The Man Who Didn't Walk By
Website of the Day
No Wall
August 2, 2004
Robert Jensen
Kerry's
Hypocrisy on the Vietnam War
Joshua Frank
Greens, Kerry and the Politics of Mendacity
Mike Whitney
The 9/11 Commission and Civil Liberties: "We Need an American
Police State"
Gary Leupp
Beyond
Good and Evil: Some Thoughts on Invasions
July 31 / Aug.
1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
July 30, 2004
Kolhatkar /
Ingalls
Shattering
Illusions: Kerry's Speech Tells Anti-War Activists They're Not
Wanted
Dave Lindorff
Murder
Not So Foul?
Bruce Jackson
Walt Whitman on the Sound of Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Fidel Castro
The
Pathology of George W. Bush
Maximilien Robespierre
Memo to Kerry and Bush: Why They Resist
Saul Landau
Bush
Charges Castro with Sex Tourism; JFK Rolls Over in His Grave
July 29, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Hail,
the Conquering War Criminal: What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
Frank Bardacke
What
Michael Moore Left Out of F9/11
Tom Barry
Shallow and Formulaic: Kerry's Latin America Plan
Ron Jacobs
Kerry
and Lennon: Hawking the CounterCulture
Robert Fisk
The Unreported War
Lichtman /
Kellis-Borok
What Kerry Must Do to Win (But Probably Won't)
William S. Lind
The 9/11 Commission Report: Cashing in on Failure
CounterPunch
Wire
Doonesbury Onto John Kerry in 1971!
Website of
the Day
Jabbing JibJab: Copyright Madness
July 28, 2004
Robert Fisk
The
Occupation at 114 Degrees: Baghdad is Swamped in the Smell of
the Dead
Kevin Mink
Kerry's Misperception of Palestine
Ray McGovern
Israel and the Iraq War: How the 9/11 Report Soft-Pedals Root
Causes
United for
Peace & Justice
An
Open Letter to John Kerry: Winter Soldiers and Summer Patriots
Mike Ferner
Vets Demand End to Occupation: "Pull the Troops or Face
Impeachment Mvt."
Imraan Siddiqi
Turning Tricks with Ann Coulter
Alexander Cockburn
Candidate
Kerry
Website of
the Day
Iraq Vets Against the War
July 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Why
the Democrats Deserve Nader
Dave Lindorff
Back to the 19th Century: Globalization's Coming!
Mike Whitney
Control Room: Inside Al Jazeera
Ali, Anderson, Bello, et al.
If We Were Venezuelan, We'd Vote for Chavez
Stefan Wray
Texas Plan to Grab Los Alamos Takes Hold, as DOE Shuts Down Labs
Louis Proyect
Reflections on Nicaragua: First Came the Contra Butchers, Then
the Sweatshops
Rick Giombetti
Faith in Freedom: the Challenge of Thomas Szasz
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
The
9/11 Report and Its Weak-Kneed Consensus: Dogding Israel/Palestine;
Blinkered on Causes of Terrorism
July 26, 2004
Todd Chretien
Green
Resistance: a Reply to Normon Solomon & Medea Benjamin
Robert Fisk
Terror
by Video
Richard Forno
Security
Theater in Boston: Security Expert Harrassed by DHS for Exposing
Flaws at the Fleet Center
Mitchel Cohen
Report from a Boston Demo: Arresting the Curious
Richard Moreno
Rockers
for Justice: an Interview with Tom Morello and Serj Tankian
Alexander Cockburn
Boston
Awaits a Dead Party
July
24 / 25, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Democrats and Their Conventions:
Part One
Dennis
Hans
Those 16 Words Still Smell, Mr. Bush
Patrick
Cockburn
The Struggle for Iraq is Only Beginning
Josh
Frank
The War Path of Unity: Dems Reject
the Peace Movement
Justin
E.H. Smith
Christianity and the Left: the Latin
American Experience
Tariq
Ali
What's at Stake in Venezuela
Fred
Gardner
The Politics of Pot: Year of the
Antagonist
Mark
Scaramella
There's Dope and There's Dope
Ron
Jacobs
The Weather Underground's Prairie
Fire Statement...35 Years On
July
23, 2004
Lee
Sustar
Revolution in Nicaragua: 25 Years
On
Dave
Lindorff
Battle for NYC: Bush 1, Protesters
0
Saul
Landau
Zaniest President in US History: Bush
Beats Reagan
Mike
Whitney
The 9/11 Whitewash: Blaming No
One
Mickey
Z
Get On the Bus: 150 Years After Elizabeth
Jennings
Gary
Leupp
The 9/11 Commission and the Looming
War on Iran
July
22, 2004
M.
Junaid Alam
Ten Ways to Build a Better Democrat
Brian
McKinlay
Rusted On Down Under: Howard, Bush and Sharon
Jason
Leopold
Cheney Lobbied for Easing of Sanctions on Terrorist Regimes While
CEO of Halliburton
Chris
Floyd
Mob Rule: Ripping the Lid Off of America's Pious Myths
Uri
Avnery
Chirac v. Sharon
July
21, 2004
Paula
J. Caplan
The Emotional Casualities of War:
Psychologists Can't Heal All the Damage
Joshua
Frank
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy? Let's
be Fair
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Reza
Ghorashi
The Elections, Iran and al-Qaeda
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go
On and On
July
20, 2004
Stan
Cox
The Bush / Kerry War Ticket
Chris
Randolph
An Open Letter to Dr. Ehrenreich: It's Over, Barb!
Forrest
Hylton
The Ghosts of Gonismo: "Popular
Patricipation" and Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Mark
Scaramella
It's Official! Mendocino County is Crazier and Fatter Than the
Rest of California
Sam
Bahour
The World is Knocking on Israel's Door
George
Reiter
A Defense of David Cobb
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
John
L. Hess
Girlie Stuff: Media Tolerance of Arnold & Co.
Website
of the Day
This Land is Your Land
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of
Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition
to Iraq War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything
Wrong with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...
July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire
July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
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.
|
August
7 / 8, 2004
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts"
Meet
the Mandarins of Abu Ghraib
By
JAMES PETRAS
After reading hundreds of books and
articles and listening to scores of speeches and interviews by
experts on terrorism and terrorists from the US, Canada, Israel,
Europe, Latin America, Asia and South Africa, I have come to
recognize eerily predictable patterns.
They use a common language
to describe their subjects and their environment; they are extremely
ideological under a thin veneer of scientific jargon; they possess
a keen sense of selective observation; they always pretend to
possess a psychological understanding though few if any have
dealt close up with their subjects in any clinical sense except
perhaps under conditions of incarceration and interrogation.
Their style is self-righteous,
highly moralistic, vitriolic, hyperventilating and yet slippery
with euphemisms when it comes to dealing with the violence of
their partisan states. Their analysis is almost always filled
with highly charged personal invective. Psychobabble provides
a "legitimate" sounding channel for expressing deep-seated
hostility, a way of assuming a state of civilized superiority
in the face of their dehumanized subjects. Indeed, the dehumanization
process is central to the whole terrorist-political-academic
enterprise for the purpose is to present "the terrorist"
with no redeeming features, with no "place" in the
world, no "time" to exist in other words worthy
of physical extermination.
The Terrorist Experts are the
"set-up" people, the motivators.
They project the violence of
the rulers, their ambitions to conquer, their greed to seize
land and resources, their destructive impulses on to their victims.
The responses of the victims are evoked in the rhetoric of pathological
behavior. Of course the truly clinical pathologies are found
in the minds of the verbal assassins who cannot distinguish
the savageries committed by their patron-states from the desperate
cries of the excluded, displaced and exploited.
Almost all the terror experts
have a chronic psychological blindness to the systematic and
comprehensive violence inflicted by the West and Israel on particular
groups. Today it is the "Arabs", at others times it
is all insurgents who respond to imperial violence with violence.
The all-pervasive practice
of torture is a means of breaking and converting militants, and
then infiltrating resistance movements. The techniques of torture
receive ideological justification and moral support from the
Terror Experts. In their writings insurgents or 'terrorists'
are described as beyond the human pale as sub-human.
Their leaders are presented as cynical profiteers and manipulators
who have no human values. Their communities are "lawless
pockets". Once committed, they know no law, no justice
only death, murder and martyrdom. They live in failed
states. They have no history or culture (or at best one inferior
to 'Western', 'Judeo-Christian' civilization). In a word, the
world will be better without them. To the torturers this means
their work is in the best interest of civilization. Of course
the Terror Experts are offended when the practitioners are exposed,
their handicraft of brutality photographed and published. The
Terror Experts are grieved, not for the acts of moral degradation,
but because it confirms what the "terrorists" have
been saying. They revolt out of the outrage and humiliation they
suffer in the hands of their US/Israeli/European torturers, soldiers,
mercenaries and bosses. Terror Experts protest at the public
exposure: that the dirty secrets absent from their analysis have
become public knowledge. They attribute feelings of "anger",
"humiliation" to the personality disorders, childhood
or family or cultural/religious dysfunctions of the "terrorists".
The statements of the Terror Experts become less convincing
when confronted by the publicized facts of physical humiliation
by the armies and states of the civilizers.
The Terror Experts operate
and see themselves on two levels: as 'scholarly researchers'
and as political prosecutors and 'security' advisors.
As 'experts' their work is
of dubious quality despite the self-declared wealth of sources
they claim to have consulted.
Many of the alleged "terrorists"
interviewed were in jail where they were most likely tortured,
drugged and their conversations monitored. The Terror Expert
can be expected to edit out any excerpts that provide a political
context for their actions: they are likely to pay more attention
to their own jaundiced "impressions" of how the 'terrorist'
looks, speaks or listens, usually fixing on their own preconceived
"meanings" of particular facial expressions or body
movements.
The Terror Experts excel in
selecting the worst case sample as "representative"
of the leadership of the terrorists, the boastful, the moneygrubber,
the affluent. They omit the norm of persecuted resistance fighters
who are modest, sacrificing, in solidarity with their people,
upon whom they have many times to depend for food, medical care
and refuge.
There are "fundamentalist"
Moslems who pursue modern professions, use Western critiques
of colonialism and imperialism; but who seek self-determination,
majority rule and the freedom to practice their religion.
There are fundamentalist Muslims
who are pietistic they seek solace in spiritual practices,
who live in a narrow circle of work, mosque and family, who have
experienced the violent disruption of their lives and who respond,
not only because the imperialists have transgressed the sacred,
but because they have destroyed the family network and intergeneration
codes of existence
In the midst of the chaos,
violence, dislocation, pillage and occupation of a country, a
whole people are adversely affected. As they reach out to respond,
to protest, to survive, they seek movements and institutions
that have some resources, a modicum of power. In the past there
were powerful nationalist, socialist and communist parties, dynamic
trade unions and peasant movements. In a few countries they
are still active and a force to be reckoned with. In many regions
however, they have been decimated by US client regimes, local
secular or religious dictators, and by the disintegration of
the old Communist Parties. Under harsh conditions requiring
clandestine activity and mass support, many secular activists
have jointed politically-oriented religions movements, which
embrace anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and social warfare programs.
The secular "conversion" to Muslim-inspired movements
is based on politics, not religion. Leon Trotsky once advised
his followers during the Nazi occupation of Europe that it might
be necessary to join the Catholic Church if that was the only
space available for political action. Given the mass base of
the Muslim movement, given its engagement in the anti-colonial
struggle, it is no surprise that many secularists (who may be
leftists, nationalists and democrats) have joined these movements
and may later turn to other political movements.
To subsume the rich mosaic
of resistance fighter to one ideological formula because of formal
affiliations as these Terror Experts do, is an egregious error.
They are eager to prescribe an overall repressive solution to
the "terror" problem, truckling to the political interests
of their paymasters in the big foundations or state apparatus.
They repress inconvenient complexities, diverse motivations,
conjunctural convergences between secular and spiritual. Terror
Experts evoke the emotive phrase 'Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists'
to end debates and considered analysis which might require the
public to reconsider their support for imperial wars, Israeli
conquests and their opposition to Iraqi nationalists and Palestinian
resistance fighters.
Interrogation:
Questions for the Terror Experts
Terror Experts claim that
objective conditions, or what they refer to disparagingly as
"exploitation", "oppression" or "imperialist"
(equipped always with quote marks), are only a veneer covering
some deeper "personal need". The Terror Experts then
proceed to "unmask" the "true" motives
with a stream of psychobabble. In fact the resort to crudely
conceived and applied psychological categories, are the principle
method that the Terror Experts use to suppress the "objective
" world, which impinges on the action of the resistance
fighter.
The external world, in which
violent resistance movements emerge are by any measure very hostile.
The US and Israel, for example, are recognized the world over
as aggressive actors considering themselves unaccountable to
any and all international laws. The Terror Experts can avoid
this fundamental 'fact' impinging on the resistance fighters'
behavior by focusing on their supposed "inner world",
and "immediate" face to face relations. This allows
the Terror Experts to avoid the unpleasant aspects of their own
state loyalties.
The Terror Experts were horrified
by the photographs of US torture in Iraq not the acts.
The revelations unmasked the savagery of their accomplices,
the practitioners of their prescriptions, the whole underworld
of crime and punishment that is logically derived from the totalitarian
pseudoscience of the Terror Experts. It brings the Terror Experts
of Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Johns Hopkins closer to the savage
scenes of homo and heterosexual rape, mass sequential genital
violence. The Terror Experts , of course, assume a posture of
indignation at the brutal guards, interrogators, the military
commanders. They are silent as their current paymasters are
pilloried Rumsfeld, Bush knowing full well that the
next President will also employ their services. In any case
who is going to look deep and far form the scenes of torture
and identify the torture accomplices among the Terror Experts?
The TE simply pronounce their
diagnosis of the armed resistance fighters: incurable psychopaths,
extremely dangerous when at large. The politicians dictate the
commands: capture, confine, torture or kill. The Special Forces
break doors in the middle of the night, cut throats or take prisoners.
The prison commandants establish the rules of "interrogation".
The guards torture. This is s very coherent international division
of labor, in which the Terror Experts play an important part
in elaborating the rationale, a morally and scientifically justified
war-unto-death on the the "inferior" peoples, the
"fundamentalist Arab Muslims", the "suicide bombers",
the "Terrorists". A common language is spoken between
the Terror Experts and their state patrons, and then promoted
in and by the mass media.
Questions for the Terror Experts:
(1) Why do the imputed terrorists' "personal needs"
find expression through politics (and not in a thousand and one
personal, cultural, familial, civic channels)? Why do the terrorists'
"personal needs" find expression against a certain
enemy (the dominant power) rather than a host of other objectives,
less dangerous, easier to access, more direct? Why do the terrorists'
"personal needs" express themselves in favor of a particular
group (family, neighborhood, nation or class) and not another
(foreign powers, exclusive elites, etc?) Why do the terrorists'
"personal needs" find expression at a particular time
(during invasions, occupations, etc.) and place (locus of imperial
power, military and political institutions, mercenary police
stations)?
Obviously the "personal"
has multiple forms, objects, places and times for expression.
To explain specific political actions one must examine the political,
ideological, class relations, state and international configuration
of power.
The second question is a refinement
of the first: Why do "personal needs" not express
themselves in other non-violent forms of political action such
as elections, for example, instead of as a guerrilla, suicide
bomber, etc.? More specifically what political obstacles or
literal or figurative walls prevented other than violent forms
of political action? We can hypothesize that the greater closure
imposed on the political system (colonial and neo-colonial rule,
long-term military occupation, racist exclusive ideology and
practice, systematic widespread torture of "suspects"),
the greater the degree of uprooting or ethnic purging, the more
likely the choice posed by the ruling power: subject yourself
or revolt. Under the circumstances there is a greater likelihood
of violent resistance, individual or collective.
Terror Experts attempt to denigrate
the politics of popular resistance by attributing the struggle
to the manipulation by leaders with unworthy motives. This overlooks
all mass movements, which have by their nature a whole range
of leaders, activists and sympathizers. Terror Experts imagine
leaders who are in search of "money, "status",
"power", "jobs" etc. Once again the "unmasking"
technique fails to explain obvious facts.
Overwhelming evidence throughout
the world, past and present, demonstrates that those who struggle
against a dominant colonial, imperial power suffer severe material
losses of life, family, jobs, income, houses and property. In
the case of the Palestinians, the Israeli Jews punish the whole
extended family, steal personal belongings and heirlooms and
destroy generations of old orchards and cultivated fields. With
resistance movements ,it is very rare that "leaders"
enrich themselves in the midst of a life and death struggle.
Most leaders who do enrich themselves usually do so after the
struggle has ended, especially if they turn to embrace the neo-colonial
paymasters of the Terror Experts. In fact it is the Terror Experts'
closest collaborators and their informants who enrich themselves
by spying and turning in the patriots who the experts call 'terrorists'.
The selective vitriolic libeling
of a subject prepares the Western reader to accept the emotionally
charged imputation of pathologic behavior. Harvard academic,
Jessica Stern provides us with a typical example almost
a parody of these polemical ejaculations. She describes
the purpose of her study "to identify some common themes
that might help to explain how violent Islamic nihilism continues
to spread beyond the lawless pockets and failed states where
terrorists tend to thrive and into the cities of the west".(Jessica
Stern, How Terrorists Think, Financial Times, June 12/13, 2004).
Nihilism presumes no goals, no values, and no alternatives.
Most observers would disagree, based on a simple reading of
most of the Islamic revolutionary or radical web sites: they
have goals replace Western dominance with nationalist Islamic
rulers. Their values include both traditional religious and modern
variants and their alternatives to submission is guerrilla, mass
or individual resistance. The neighborhoods, cities, and communities
where the putative "nihilists" originate are far more
stable, norm-guided and law-abiding before the forceful intrusion
of imperial and colonial power, which tear asunder the networks
that bind collectivities. "Lawless pockets", to the
degree in which they exist, are products of the unwillingness
or incapacity of the conquering powers and their proxies to establish
a just and stable social order. Moreover, one can observe in
many cases that "lawlessness" is selective: occupied
peoples disobey colonial 'laws', 'edicts' or 'fiats' while abiding
by the laws or rules declared by their legitimate authorities.
Moreover, it is generally the case that newly liberated areas
run by guerrillas are more lawful than under previous military
or colonial occupation with their drugs, brothels and bars.
The notion of "failed
states" has achieved a certain notoriety among Western pundits,
academics and especially the Teror Experts. Its exponents use
the phrase to describe the collapse of nations, which have been
devastated by surrogate pro-Western militarists, pillaged by
Western banks under the tutelage and protection of the IMF and
the World Bank. No doubt there have been gangster rulers in
the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Third World
but they have more often than not been trained by Western foundations
or universities and send their ill gotten fortunes to off shore
banks and kindred sanctuaries. In labeling their former progeny
as failed rulers, the Terror Experts disown their own offspring.
What imperial ideologues mean by "failed states" is
the failure of clients to establish a stable neo-liberal regime,
necessitating "successful" Euro-US imperial intervention
to create "prosperous democracies", as in post-invasion
Kosova, Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti where white slavery, drug
trafficking, warlords, death squads rule with the aid of US helicopter
gunships hovering over and firing into unruly neighborhoods.
Stern and other verbal assassins
strip the victims of their humanity ("nihilists"),
denigrate their place of birth ('lawless pockets"), deny
the historical authenticity of their nations ("failed states"),
all the better to oversee their extermination, their ghettoization,
their torture.
Through the eyes of the Terror
Experts Euro-US and Israeli bombing of population centers is
seen as doing "humanity" a great favor: preventing
the 'spread' of terrorists into the cities of the West.
The fanatic anti-Arab/Muslim
rhetoric of the Terror Experts encourages 'moderate', Western
politicians to impose more rigid and humiliating administrative
and legal measures against Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian
travelers, immigrants, visitors, religious leaders, academicians
and businesspeople.
Targeted by and subject to
systematic denigration by the Western mass media, state functionaries,
immigration police, hostile embassy personnel, academic terror
experts, the secret police and special assassination teams, oppressed
people are forced to transform themselves to meet a chronic "national
emergency". Ruler-ruled relations are a series of perpetual
impositions, unwelcome visits by colonial operatives granted
license by the imperial Terror Experts. Faced with a systematic
effort to lower their self-esteem, the oppressed people "find"
themselves in their own organizations, public and clandestine,
religious and secular. This reaffirmation finds expression in
a reassertion of a religious or secular identity, embodied in
a mosque, church, political movement or resistance organization.
Colonial/imperial power disrupts
the daily routine of the general population: 'going to work'
faces roadblocks, work places are destroyed, fruit trees are
uprooted. "Taking care of the family" becomes a daily
life and death struggle of securing food at black market prices,
facing unpredictable hostile fire in the marketplace. 'Enjoying
leisure' becomes a memory of the pre-colonial/pre-imperial past.
Now there is 'forced leisure' jobless, policed, futureless
in the street, where individual discontent is socialized
by local opinion leaders who provide a focus for action. Taking
sides, addressing the oppression, the hardening of attitudes
is a fundamental effort to recover the 'daily routine'.
The complex interweaving of
powerful spiritual loyalties, family responsibilities and workplace
displacement leads to a commitment to direct action and a political
movement. This is a rational and complex process. The Terror
Experts' colonial preconceptions blind them to this reality.
For example, Stern sees the committed resistance fighter as
being in a "kind of trance" irrational, dogmatic
and simplistic.
The Terror Experts repeat ad
nauseam that the "terrorists" join their organizations
in their search for strength a common response of all those
who engage in politics and social action. The Terror Experts
thus turn a commonplace observation which has a lineage of over
3,000 years or more into a particular feature of "terrorists".
The resistance fighters do have a sense of altruism and an idea
of the public good which the Terror Experts refuse to take
serious. To do so would require a profound re-examination of
their loyalties, and collaboration with imperial/colonial powers,
and a deep critical self-examination of their institutional location
and motives. This would be a difficult psychological and material
experience for Terror Experts since their prestige, income, status,
and influence might be threatened. Their critical introspective
analysis might lead them to question their paymasters, their
institutions, their colonial/imperial states. What foundations
would pay to have a 'renegade' Terror Expert bear witness to
their prejudices, falsifications and close ties to politicians
who sanction torture and murder? Would their former colleagues
describe the renegade as being in a "kind of trance",
"victim of the Stockholm complex" (accepting the views
of their captors)?
The colonial practitioners
and their academic experts specialize in verifying each other's
stereotypes of resistance fighters. They oversimplify their
motives, decisions and commitments. They rely on blanket categories
that obscure deeper structural realities in favor of subjective
labeling. Above all they banish any objectivity. Relations of
power and dominance, state violence, violent intrusions into
Arab, Muslim, Latin American countries, towns and villages are
described as "defensive", "retaliation".
As the limbs and body parts of Palestinian babies, women and
grandparents are exploded over the ruins of homes and neighborhoods,
Harvey Morris , the Bureau Chief of the Financial Times in Israel
writes of Israeli "retaliation", after killing dozens
of children and old people. Banishing objectivity means the
incapacity to empathize with the human condition of the colonized
victims for that reason the experts must present the victims
as sub-human. Because the Terror Experts are condemning the
most abused victims in the name of the most vicious powers, they
convince themselves that their vitriolic diatribes are merely
a service to truth and science.
The Terror Experts are masters
of euphemism, especially in dealing with the muck and gore of
empire building. Imperialists become "one worlders".
Colonial occupation is called "nation building".
Murderous offensive wars become "humanitarian interventions".
Above all the Terror Experts
celebrate triumphal imperialism: the defeated colonial peoples,
we are told , are "resentful" "those who
feel they can't keep up". Of course with a hood over their
head and shackled legs and feet and a cattle prod burning their
genitals they can't keep up, they can't turn around and
express gratitude to their torturers.
How is a Palestinian farmer
going to "keep up" with a Jewish settler who seizes
his land, water and , supported by local thugs and Israeli soldiers,
blocks his access to the market? Anything short of "resentful"
would be masochistic. Is it any wonder that the deraccinated
and dispossessed risk their lives to convert resentment into
resistance? By all means. When the tanks roll into Iraqi neighborhoods
after shelling homes and mosques, is it any wonder that furious
neighbors swarm around an ambushed tank and dance on the shards
of smoking metal and corpses? Is it a frightful spectacle of
pitiless terrorists or jubilant neighbors, who have silenced
the sound of shells bursting over their heads and into some neighbors'
homes?
The Terror Experts existed
before the Iraqi resistance and they will exist after it. Wherever
the oppressed rise and effectively resist imperial rule there
will be academic chairs, foundations grants and Centers for International
Studies for the ambitious upwardly mobile Terror Expert. The
Imperial state will demand their services, the prestigious Councils
of Foreign Relations will offer membership and universities will
reward them with distinguished professorships. They will be
celebrities the mass media talk shows will feature them.
They will be far from the killing fields but their spirit will
be there, on the front lines and in the torture chambers, guiding
the hands that place the hoods over the unredeemable, nihilists,
Muslims, Marxists or national patriots.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at
Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in
the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless
in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization
Unmasked (Zed). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jessica Stern, "How Terrorists
Think", Financial Times Weekend, June 12/13, 2004 W1-2.
Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism
Works, R.R. Donnelley and Sons, 2002
Scott Altran, "Genesis
of Suicide Terrorism", Science March 7, 2003 p. 1534
Rafael Patai, The Arab Mind,
WW Norton and Co., 1973 with preface by Norvell B. De Atkine
Harvey Morris, "The State
They're In", Financial Times Weekend, July 3-4 p. W1-2.
D. Long, The Anatomy of Terrorism,
Free Press, New York, 1990.
E. Stout (ed), The Psychology
of Terrorism, Praeger, Westport CT, 2002
Hector Qirko, "'Fictive
Kin' and Suicide Terrorism", Science, April 2, 2004 p 49.
"The Sociology and Psychology
of Terrorism" , Federal Research Division, Library of Congress
Washington DC, Sept. 1999.
Weekend
Edition Features for July 31 / August 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
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