Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January 6, 2004
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Notes on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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.
|
January
6, 2004
How It Reads from
the Midwest
A
Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
By THACHER SCHMID
Milwaukee, WI.
America is a big, gorgeous country. Thank the
heavens, also diverse. If the fate of all Americans is intertwined
in some way, it's also a good bet that the world looks different
from Wisconsin than from New York.
Now, this is no diatribe on the evils
of the East Coast or the insular politics of the D.C. "beltway."
Here in the land of Brett Favre and Ahman Green, we embrace our
friends on the coasts, in the south and in the mountains. But
honesty and directness are particularly Midwestern virtues, and
it's about time someone--even a Cheesehead--took the New York
Times to task.
Let us then take a closer look at Sunday's
Times, for therein the battle for truth is being waged, and lost.
Again and again, despite meticulous wordsmithing, dangerous assumptions
become impossible to ignore. And if these words run to sarcasm,
forgive me as I forgive Times writers.
Eric Schmitt's big front page article
on American G.I.s in Iraq describes Iraqi guerrillas as a "shadowy,"
"criminal" "insurgency," engaging in "hit-and-run
strikes." Schmitt's use of terms like "gangs"
and "attackers" makes Iraqis sound like caricatured
gangstas on a drive-by, only with mortars and explosives instead
of Uzis.
The article quotes military personnel--without
refuting falsehoods or providing perspective--rhapsodizing about
how to maintain the "continuing welcome" of "ordinary"
Iraqis who are now "accusing [U.S.] soldiers." There
is no indication that the U.S. military, the most powerful fighting
force in world history, is in fact an occupying power which invaded
a sovereign nation in violation of international law. Schmitt
merely quotes soldiers saying things like "We're not God.
But we signed up for this," or "Things ar! e a lot
better here [since the invasion]." Our troops, we learn,
are frustrated that "Iraqis are not taking the lead"
and say "it doesn't seem like [Iraqis] want to help themselves."
The article concludes by praising a lieutenant for ordering his
men to "tidy up" and giving $120 to a household whose
door was just blasted off its hinges with shotguns, then ransacked,
based on the mistaken belief that the occupants were part of
the "insurgency."
In the "Week In Review" section,
we find an interesting piece by Daniel Okrent, "The Public
Editor," who, we are told, "serves as the readers'
representative." Okrent lets two Times reporters off the
hook for their "elision" (omission) of two crucial
words in quoting President Bush, who said he would support gay
marriage "if necessary." The newspaper's unwillingness
to acknowledge the importance of the "innocent misstep,"
Okrent admits, might make some readers think the "simple
mistake" was a "willful misdeed."
Maybe readers are ready to indict the
"Gray Lady" because she fails to maintain her objectivity;
as we are told in an interesting review of Marianne Moore's poetry
in the Book Review, "omissions are not accidents."
In recent memory, the Times has run transparent front-page articles
by Judith Miller on Iraq's nonexistent "weapons of mass
destruction," greatly amplifying the Bush Administration's
war drums. (We won't even start on Jayson Blair.) Or maybe readers
simply find it hard to believe that not one but two of what ought
to be very competent reporters somehow missed a crucial qualif!
ier, inexplicably assuming President George W. Bush capable of
voicing outright support for gay marriage. The Times remains
this country's most intelligent and comprehensive daily, a source
of information a writer based in a northern outpost like Milwaukee
can ill afford to ignore. But if "skepticism is the status
quo" when it comes to "the government in Washington,"
as two-thirds of Americans expressed in last week's Times/CBS
poll (Week In Review), why is the Times so indifferent to its
own mistakes?
Is it simple arrogance? The paper's ad
for itself, on page 12, lauds its readers as "the world's
most influential, affluent and educated consumers, business leaders
and decision makers." On the Op-Ed page, editors throw out
adjectives like "scandalous" and "shocking"
when talking about north African, Middle Eastern or Asian nations'
efforts to acquire the Bomb (Iran, North Korea, Libya, Algeria
and Iraq are mentioned). Meanwhile, the U.S. has been the world's
biggest arms merchant for a half-century, yet our mistakes, like
arming Saddam and the Taliban, go unmentioned. And why would
small countries not fight mightily to ensure their own survival
when a gorilla like the United States of America is kicking ass
on five continents?
One might as well ask William Safire,
who writes a column in the Times magazine, why he refers to himself
in the third person.
What about mad cow? Any words of wisdom?
Here's a timely post-holiday article ("Jumble of Tests May
Slow Mad Cow Solution") on how restaurant chains are designing
menus for millions on low-carb (high-beef) diets such as Atkins
or South Beach. Did you think mad cow disease was a hot topic
just because many other countries stopped buying our beef, because
we tested only 20,000 out of 35 million head slaughtered last
year, or because Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman's response
to the crisis has been minimization? Whoops--yesterday's news.
Writer Sandr! a Blakeslee adroitly points out that "the
universe of testing for this elusive disease is murky."
And "conventional testing methods are cumbersome" ("but
a greater problem lies in the mysterious course of mad cow disease").
In truth, the greatest problem lies in government's response
to the problem, and mainstream media's failure to cover the story
adequately.
"The United States invaded Iraq
to install its vision of democracy, based on free speech and
equal opportunity," Edward Wong postulates in Sunday's "Week
In Review." Besides revising (updating) history, Wong asks
whether of not Iraq should be split into several nations, a question
that assumes we have the right to do that. (Well, we did do that
to Central America once.) Wong writes that "American officials
are focusing on how to create a working democracy" (that's
one of the things they're focusing on). Remember, Mr. Wong, the
first thing our troops secured upon entering Baghdad was oil
infrastructure. (Meanwhile, the world-famous Koranic Library
and National Museum were being looted under our noses.)
In an essay titled "Naked Terror"
in the Times magazine, Jeffrey Rosen writes "cable TV isn't
the only institution of democracy that has an incentive to exaggerate
risks.The vicious cycle at this point should be clear,"
Rosen writes. "The public fixates on low-probability but
vivid risks [like terrorism] because of images we absorb from
television and from politicians." Newspapers like the Times,
then, are innocent?
We come across an interview (one page,
huge photo) with Tom Kean, head of the "independent"
commission investigating 9/11, by Deborah Solomon. Any tough
questions--say, about the well-established Bush--Bin Laden family
connection, or White House efforts to stall the investigation?
Solomon gives us "Do you feel the 9/11 commission has had
full access the the documents you need?" The answer--duh--is
"yes."
Such cream puff treatment of the very
real questions as to why the President and other neoconservatives
are trying to slow down an investigation into 9/11, or why all
information related to 9/11 has been so closely held, is a prerequisite
for articles like James Traub's "The Things They Carry,"
the Times magazine's cover story. Traub analyzes why Democrats
are such a bunch of scared rabbits in foreign policy. "The
attacks of 9/11 ended the brief post-cold-war interval and recreated
elements of both the psychological and the strategic environment
of the cold-war 1960s," Traub writes. If questions about
how 9/11 happened and who has gained from it are irrelevant and
best left to complaint bureaucrats lik! e Kean and wink-wink
writers like Solomon, we should be discussing the strategies
of Democrats for dealing with the "new" landscape.
If, on the other hand, the 9/11 attacks were convenient and dug
the Bush Administration out of a crisis--if (shh, shh) the events
of 9/11 were actually precipitated by neoconservatives, (the
Project for a New American Century detailed the necessity of
just such a "Pearl Harbor" event) Well. Historians
accept today that Nero set Rome afire so he could rebuild it,
though such thought was anathema during Nero's time. Traub says
the 9/11 "attacks" transformed our e! nvironment, but
it would be just as true to say that our government's "war
on terror" has transformed things, yet we won't read that
in the Times.
The title of Traub's article is borrowed
from a 1986 short story by Tim O'Brien that tells, unforgettably,
the horrors of the Vietnam War. Traub, or whoever titled the
story, should read O'Brien again before using his genius to scold
the Democratic Party for losing the impetus to war and proffering
baloney such as "Hawkishness or dovishness on Iraq thus
does not correlate with some larger difference in worldview,
as, for example, the left and right views on Vietnam once did."
I'd like to respond to Traub's obfuscations with less circuitous
profanities at this point, but my New Year's Resolution stops
me. (Traub writes a sentence later that "And yet it sure
feels as if it does.") Tim O'Brien would never mention,
as Traub does, Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in killing
300,000 people and not write that those very same weapons were
supplied by--guess who--us.
Did I mention that, all sarcasm aside,
I still really like this newspaper, in all its 28-page glossy
ad section glory?
In the magazine's Style column, "The
Quicker Fixer-Upper," by Mary Tannen, we learn that "serenity,
like everything, has its price." ($300 plus extra for "seaweed
salad and green tea and other stuff.") "Reconnected
to ki, the energy that makes up and underlies the universe,"
Tannen tells us, "you leave with a bag full of lotions,
serums and soaps." Actually, I find inner peace in yoga
exercises (free), sitting meditation (free) and volunteering
at a local homeless shelter, Casa Maria--where, truth be told,
I sometimes leave with generic soaps donated by Target. But that's
just me, and I don't write for the New York Times.
The SundayStyles section always offers
a few new words. This week, it's "eiderdown," which
Webster tells me is a comforter filled with the fine soft down
used by female northern sea ducks to lining their nests. Guy
Trebay reveals his neurotic side while taking on an easy target,
self-help books: "just when it is obviously time to draw
a healing yoga breath or pause for that moment of mindfulness
or relax my tongue to ease tension in my jaw, neck and face to
break into spontaneous song so that music can fill my heart,
something else happens. A whiny voice starts whispering in my
inner ear." In "To Tranquillity, Cabbie, and Step on
It," Trebay reviews a book entitled 1,001 Ways to Relax,
and his "little whiny inner voice wants to know how the
co! mma in the title of the book got there." Like all Times
writers, Trebay uses the proper but antiquated qualifier "Mr."
to refer to the book's author, Mike George, even while ridiculing
him. Poor Mr. George.
Moving on to the Arts & Leisure section,
Michael Azerrad informs us of a new movement in rock music: "therapy
rock." Azerrad's article, "Punk's Earnest New Mission,"
is interesting, but its subject is so, well, safe. Good Charlotte
is, of course, pure MTV, middle class and white, but the real
question is, why do other artistic movements, say, hip-hop's
provocative leanings toward anarchy, never get covered? To be
fair, ninety percent of the section's 40 pages is movie ads anyway,
so there's no space.
In Travel the truth of the story is hiding
in plain sight: a half-page, exquisitely colorful photograph
of a Papua New Guinea tribesman in full regalia. The story is
summarized below: "Traditions still exist in Papua New Guinea,
but they take some searching." Traditions still exist? Are
they sure? Did they ask any actual natives? Let me take a shot:
"Objectivity still exists in the New York Times, but it
takes some searching."
Just to be fair, I'll send these musings
to the Times. However, as I am not (going down the list) a Princeton
professor, WNYC talk-show host, Executive Editor of the New York
Times Almanac or professor at the University of Virginia, I won't
hold my breath.
Thacher Schmid
lives in Wisconsin. He can be reached at: thacherschmid@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|