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Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
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
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Weekend
Edition
December 13 / 14, 2003
On Getting Stabbed
Dueling
for Democrats
By BEN TRIPP
Getting stabbed is like eating a live hog-nosed
bat: it's nasty, gruesome, and not worth doing twice. First
thing, your clothes get ruined (I mean by stabbing, although
I'm sure the bat would make a mess). Not just the garment transfixed
by the offending instrument, but also all garments south of that
position, and your shoes. Blood goes everywhere. Try this experiment:
drain a cup of blood out of your arm. Merely nick a vein and
insert a bendy straw (so you can direct the flow). Now splash
that cup of blood around your kitchen. It will cover every surface
from floor to ceiling with an unbroken coat of gore. You will
think you stepped onto the elevator set of 'The Shining'. One
cup of blood covers 200 square feet. If they could figure out
how to do it, the folks at Sherwin-Williams would probably use
human serum for all their interior finishes. I'm going somewhere
with this, so don't vomit yet. I got stabbed when I was a rash
stripling of 17 years, and the first thing that went through
my intoxicated mind upon seeing my raiment incarnadine was "oh
shit, Mom is going to notice".
Aside from the volumes of blood that
ruin your clothes and spatter anything that will hold a stain
up to 300 feet away, there's the discomfort. It kind of creeps
up on you. When I did my stuck pig imitation (followed by a
yodeling medley worthy of Slim Whitman), I made an important
philosophical connection. We are large bags of guts. These
guts are defended by a light armature of bones and a sheath of
muscular material. Anything longer than it is wide will go straight
through all that. The problem with guts is they are full of
terrible poisonous stuff and bacteria and (on this occasion)
about three quarts of Joe Ortlieb's finest. I was very lucky
that none of my guts got holes in them, so I didn't leak anything
nasty into my interior. Raised hell with my sheath of muscular
material, though-and golly, it hurt like heckfire.
The third big response I had to getting
stabbed is, I think, a universal one. It went roughly as follows:
you win. Okay, so maybe I deserved it for pissing in
the guy's Camaro, although an argument could be made that I warmed
the seat up for him. But after that first jab, I figured we
were at least even. He could stop now. I'd go back into the
bar and get some paper towels. He could have some for his car
and I could stuff the remainder in what I was pretty sure was
a sucking chest wound. Then everybody could go home. But when
there's a guy with a knife, nobody goes anywhere until he's finished
with it.
It was one of those broad, short blades
concealed in a belt buckle. Back then everybody was wearing
huge belt buckles-it was the wane of the long-distance trucker
craze. You could hide a knife in the damn things (the buckles,
not the truckers). He (my assailant) whipped it out (the knife)
like a Puerto Rican thug from Starsky and Hutch. I guarantee
you he'd never done it before, except in front of a mirror in
his parents' basement. Scared the hell out of himself. He didn't
look real sure of himself. I might have run, or taken a swing
at him, except A) I was too drunk, B) my pecker was hanging out,
and C) my initial response to the knife was "no fucking
way", which is probably what a lot of dead people thought
in that instant they could have taken control of the situation
but didn't because they were so damn surprised. Et tu, Brute?
Too late. This guy figures he pulled the knife, he better use
it, and anyway he may have mistaken my penis for a shotgun.
So being a leftie, he gives me a thump across the right side
of my chest. Feathers come out of my jacket (it was mid-winter
in New Hampshire and I was either wearing a down-filled parka
or I hadn't moulted yet, I don't recall). Then blood starts
leaking down my pants from under the jacket and the guy with
the knife about faints. He's as drunk as I am, and I'm worried
he's going to puke on my wounds. At last he croaks, "get
the fuck out of here motherfucker," and I figure, why not?
So I got out.
You win.
It was a powerful moment for me. He stabbed me and I lost,
but only on points. If he wanted to, he could have kept on stabbing
me and made a proper job of it. Lots of people do. They get
into the spirit of the thing and start hacking away like Gramps
carving the Christmas goose, and the next thing you know you're
all out of stuffing. The phrase stove lengths springs
to mind. But this guy was no killer. He was just some punk
with a Camaro into which some other punk urinated following an
altercation in a bar (the bar is still there; I won't name names
but it's in Rindge, NH, if anybody wants to put up a plaque:
minor American writer stabbed here, 1984). If this cat
had wanted to finish the job, I was all his. My hands were locked
over my huevos. I would have died in that position.
What lesson does this rambling confessional screed promote?
Simply this. There are two kinds of men in a fight: men who
will cut you once for honor, and men who will stab you to death.
Maybe this is why I rant about the Bush
cabal. I didn't set out with the Republican lepershit leadership
as an idée fixee I just had to bitch and moan about.
I didn't like Clinton, either. But over the last couple of
years, every subject of public import comes back to what the
ruling junta is up to. Other people can talk about international
steel tariffs and the Gaza Strip and so forth, and I do try on
occasion. But I just can't take my eyes off the gang who stole
my country. Because they're not the kind that draw blood and
consider honor served. They will stick the knife in and drag
it around. They will redistrict their opponent's vital organs.
They will not stop hacking, not even after their enemies are
lying on the ground gasping like beached groupers.
The kid with the Camaro-I wish I could
recall what we were arguing about, but I guarantee you it was
nothing important-was a gentleman, despite his mullet. He knew
when to quit. Whether I was a gentleman or not (not, as it happens)
isn't germane to the discussion. Because only the nature of
the guy with the knife matters at all. For years and
years the Democrats on the hill were gentlemen (or gentlewomen
in the case of female representatives and Tom Daschle). They
had decisive power. They were in command. And yet to accommodate
their belligerent opponents they moved to the center, which was
well to the right of any reasonable center, but these Democrats
were accommodating people (pussies). The Democrats had the knife
and the forbearance not to use it.
I think failing to comprehend that their
Republican counterparts are not gentlemen is at the root of the
failure of the Democratic opposition: the Dems have never been
stabbed by a punk in a parking lot. I learned a valuable lesson
that night, and they didn't (although Ted Kennedy was probably
on the premises). My opponent must have been a Democrat. He
gave me a jab and decided his stabbing career was finished.
If he'd been a Republican, I would probably have perished there,
mistaken by passers-by for a quantity of pastrami. The Democrats
just don't get this subtle difference. They're standing in Washington
with their hands over their privates as the knife goes in again
and again, slashing asunder every bit of progress this nation
has made in a century-slitting the throats of our allegiances,
disemboweling the treasury, gutting the infrastructure, ripping
our Constitutional rights a new one, jamming grue-slick poniards
through the thin armor of our environmental, industrial, and
social safeguards. The Democrats are still, despite a thousand
wounds, laboring under the illusion that this a gentleman's fight.
Unless they learn the difference, it's not just them that will
die a political death. It's the America we all used to believe
in that will die--not just metaphorically.
I got lucky and met a short knife with
a fifth rib. Facing a saber charge, can the Democrats really
imagine they'll enjoy the same good fortune? After all, without
a spine, how can you have ribs?
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
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