home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

New Print Edition of CounterPunch:
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!

New for Spring and Summer: CounterPunch Sweatshop-Free T-shirts!

Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available!
Other Lands Have Dreams:
From Baghdad to Pekin Prison
by KATHY KELLY

Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly!

Today's Stories

May 11, 2005

Kevin Zeese
The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day

May 10, 2005

Richard Drayton
The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check

Dave Zirin
Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP

Jackie Corr
The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall

Dave Lindorff
Silence of the Scams: Economists on China

Michael Donnelly
From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory

Reza Fiyouzat
Nomadic Abstracts

Scott Parkin
Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton

Stephen Babcock
The Burden of Knowing Better

Alan Farago
Florida, Water and Lobbyists

Michael Neumann
Naomi's Courage

Website of the Day
One Nation Under Plagiarism

 

May 9, 2005

Louis Proyect
Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher

Robert Fisk
"Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two

Kevin Zeese
Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman

Joshua Frank
Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage

Sasha Kramer
A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons

Andrew Wimmer
Create and Resist

Jeffrey Webber
Back to the Streets in Bolivia?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Straight to Bechtel

May 7 / 8, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Who Beat Hitler?

Gary Leupp
Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism

Saul Landau
Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups

Joe DeRaymond
Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega

Daniela Ponce
Seeing Chile in Nepal

Heather Williams
Hollywood Does Enron

Gregory Elich
Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice

Anis Memon
To Cuba and Back

John Chuckman
The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism"

Mike Whitney
Hard Right Rage Against the Truth

Ron Jacobs
Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On

Colin Kalmbacher
Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont.

Lance Selfa
Uprising in Mexico City

Fred Gardner
"Getting High is a Little Like Cuba"

Ben Tripp
Letters on Wittgenstein

Mickey Z.
The Mother of All Days

Richard Joseph
Those Patriotic Magnets

Dr. Susan Block
Come As You Are: Masturbation 101

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert

 

May 6, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood

Erin Yoshioka
Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison?

Sam Husseini
Talking with Syrians

Dave Lindorff
Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters

Kevin Zeese
Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty

Joshua Frank
An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War

Dan Bacher
Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid

P. Sainath
India's Bloody Water Wars

 

May 5, 2005

Carles Mutaner
Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?"

Carl G. Estabrook
Is There Any Hope for the Pope?

Farrah Hassen
The US's Syrian Obsession

Kevin Zeese
"Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta

Michael Leonardi
May Day with an American Soldier in Rome

Bennett Ramberg
The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You

Ray McGovern
The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit

Norman Solomon
Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran

Nicole Colson
The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Clearing the Fences in Haiti

 

 

May 4, 2005

Colin Kalmbacher
Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested

John Walsh
Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War

Greg Moses
Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation"

Ali Khan
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart

Chris Floyd
Ring Them Bells

Linda S. Heard
D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics

Dave Zirin
The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle

William S. Lind
Fool's Paradise

Gary Leupp
Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution

Website of the Day
Kent State, May 4, 1970

 

 

 

May 3, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice

Brian Cloughley
Halliburton's War Loot

Ira Kurzban
Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers

Seth Sandronsky
Towards Debtors' Prisons?

Gilad Atzmon
The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More

Michael Donnelly
Branding Eco Collapse

Alex Sanchez
Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush?

Peter Linebaugh
Magna Carta and May Day

 

 

May 2, 2005

Ron Jacobs
Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement

Stan Goff
The Case of Hasan Akbar

Karyn Strickler
Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics

Joshua Frank
Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly

Kevin Zeese
Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam

Vicente Navarro
Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician

 

 

April 30 / May 1, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility"

Gabriel Kolko
Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later

Jennifer Loewenstein
The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood

Lee Sustar
City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago

Saul Landau
The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power

T.W. Croft
The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy

Nikolas Kozloff
Fox News v. Hugo Chavez

William Blum
Never-Ending Double Standards

Dave Lindorff
Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly

Joshua Frank
The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls

Doug Giebel
Saving Jane Fonda

Steven Erlanger
A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Fred Gardner
Washington State Doctor Harassed

Mike Whitney
Another Mad Bush Press Conference

Kurt Nimmo
Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine

Joe DeRaymond
A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania

Michael Dickinson
Flags

Mickey Z.
May Day at Yankee Stadium

Justin Taylor
The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy

Poets Basement
Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Save Barbados's Cowpastor

 

April 29, 2005

W. John Green
Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death Squads?

Luke Brothers
Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT

Norman Solomon
War, Aid and Public Relations

M. Junaid Alam
The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption

Jackie Corr
The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens

Hunter Greer
Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally, a Use for Standardized Testing!

Sharon Smith
The New Assault on Women's Rights: Why are the Democrats Silent?

Website of the Day
Tony Blair's Election Rap

 

 

April 28, 2005

Omar Waraich
Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview

Kevin Zeese
Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off?

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Torture Tort Reform

Greg Moses
Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes

Toni Solo
Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums

Werther
George Will Revises the Vietnam War

 

 

April 27, 2005

John Ross
Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death

Joshua Frank
DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias

Ray McGovern
The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets the Eye

Mark Donham
Government Pettiness and Wetland Destruction

Dan Smith
Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?

 

 

April 26, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder

Alevtina Rea
Magic of the Yellow Emperor

Greg Moses
The Senator and the Narc Pirates of Highway 281

Joshua Frank
Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards on Ruzicka

Diana Johnstone
The French are At It Again

 

 

April 25, 2005

Uri Avnery
The Persecution of Vanunu

Alison Weir
The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT Minimizes Palestinian Deaths

Lee Sustar
Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life of Dave Yettaw

Leonardo Boff
A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger: a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power?

Gary Leupp
Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 23 / 24, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Time's Buried Hitler Cover

Gary Leupp
The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in China

James Petras
Elections for Democracy or Empire?

Harry Browne
Springsteen's "Devils and Dust"

Fred Gardner
The Custody Threat

Ron Jacobs
The Desterrados of Colombia: They are not Collateral Damage

Elizabeth Schulte
Why Backing Democrats is Pulling the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right

Chris Floyd
Oil, Guns and Banks

 

April 22, 2005

Saul Landau
The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries Forever

Kevin Zeese
Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation

Joshua Frank
Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature

Mike Whitney
God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses

Michael Flynn
Wolfowitz on Top of the World

Lee Sustar
The One-Sided Class War

Website of the Day
Bitter Greens

 

April 21, 2005

Bill Quigley
The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger

Dave Lindorff
Bush's X-Files

Jason Leopold
Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse Than the Exxon Valdez?

Kathleen Christison
Sharon's 92 Percent Solution: How the Misperceptions Roll On


April 20, 2005

 

April 20, 2005

John Ross
Lopez Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two)

Kevin Zeese
Halliburton: Poster Child of the War Profiteers

Uri Avnery
The 100 Days of Abu Mazen

Website of the Day
The House that Jack Built

 

April 19, 2005

Jean-Guy Allard
An Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for the White House?"

Dave Lindorff
What's Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight

Neve Gordon
Before the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories

Brian Concannon, Jr
Immaculate Evasions in Haiti

Murray Hudson
Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides

Frank B. Ford
Poem for Marla Ruzicka

Monty Python
Memo to Pope Rat

Michael Dickinson
Cardinal Sins

Paul Craig Roberts
Outsourcing the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism

Website of the Day
Strindberg and Helium


April 18, 2005

Linda Schade / Kevin Zeese
The Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest

John Ross
Mexico's Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness

Brian McKenna
Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan

Mike Whitney
The NYT in Fallujah

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Peace in Tatters

Dave Zirin
Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop

Eli Stephens
The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson

Harry Browne
War and Elections in Britain and Ireland

Website of the Day
A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest

 

April 16 / 17, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Message in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada

Mark Dow
The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag

Omar Waraich
Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain

Robert Buzzanco
How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq

Sherry Wolf
Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation?

Fred Gardner
The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana

Ron Jacobs
Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities

Mark Weisbrot
CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages

John Pardon
The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen

Yoshie Furuhashi
Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit Industry

Mike Roselle
Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism?

Ralph Nader
Scientists or Celebrities?

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair

Jackson Thoreau
Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter

Michael Dickinson
"Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul

Richard Neville
Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney

Website of the Weekend
Rebel Angel

 

 

April 15, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Diplomacy, Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice

Bill Glahn
No Child Left a Dime

Mickey Z.
One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich

Stephanie McMillan
Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit

Josh Mahan
Victoria's Dirty Secret

David Russitano
Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up?

Jorge Mariscal
Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales
"I am Joaquin"

Tom Reeves
Students Rise Again in Québec

 

April 14, 2005

Karyn Strickler
Red States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act

Pat Williams
The Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West

Jessica Pupovac
What You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy

Joshua Frank
Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt.

Jerzy Mankowski
Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland

Talli Naumann
Right-to-Know in Mexico

Antony Loewenstein
The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch

Virginia Rodino
Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
Bush's Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports

Website of the Day
The 13th Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland

 

 

April 13, 2005

Maria Carrión
Bolton in the Western Sahara

Mike Whitney
Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando Botero

Terry Jones
Let Them Eat Bombs

Dave Lindorff
A Sickening Error

Nathaniel Livingston, Jr.
Ethnic Cleansing at Air America

Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran

Don Fitz
Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative to Pesticides

Tom Crumpacker
Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences

JG
The Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34

Jack McCarthy
Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee

Kevin Zeese
Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions

 

April 12, 2005

John Wheat Gibson
The Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot Act

Kevin Zeese
The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now

Alan Farago
The Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida

Dave Lindorff
Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to White Alabamans

Ron Jacobs
Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

Nelson P. Valdes
Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie

Dave Zirin
War Games and War Names

Website of the Day
Parents Against the Draft

 

 

April 11, 2005

Tom Barry
Negroponte and the Eclipse of the CIA

Saul Landau
Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead: Contempt for the Rest Us

Monique Dols
Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad

Phil Gasper
Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt

Mike Whitney
See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media

Edwin Krales
The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry

Paul de Rooij
Undermining Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects

Website of the Day
Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition

 

 

April 9 / 10, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Torture Air, Incorporated

William A. Cook
Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights Abuses

Gary Leupp
My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru

Alan Maass
Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary

Laura Carlsen
Democracy Sinking in Mexico

Joe DeRaymond
Death and Displacement in Colombia

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again)

Dave Lindorff
The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar

Greg Moses
Growling at Hallliburton

Fred Gardner
Southern Station Session

Justin Smith
The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as Bad Old Days

Ron Jacobs
George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones

M. Junaid Alam
No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US

Ira Kay
West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the World

Elizabeth Schulte
From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left

Jackie Corr
Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana

Christopher Brauchli
From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment

Leslie A. Fiedler
On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is Over"

Ben Tripp
Pocket Furniture

Poets Basement
Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Military Free Zones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Subscribe Online

 

May 11, 2005

Students Refuse to Stand for Pledge in Arabic

Anti-Arabic Week in a Southern High School

By Dr. TERESA WHITEHURST

'In March, two 16-year-old Muslim girls were imprisoned by the FBI on the assertion (no charges, mind you) that they are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." The FBI stories unraveled as fast as they were created

"As Muslims decried the treatment of the young girls, many voices from the patriotic front were heard approving and justifying the same. This support was usually mixed with ill-concealed bile toward Muslims and Islam; how violent they are and how hateful their religion. They restate the 9/11 tragedy and cast the present in an "us-or-them" situation where it becomes the Muslims' fault that the United States is "forced" to take such actions."

Muslims are Targets of Paranoid US, CommonDreams, 5/6/05

At last the two Muslim teenagers have been freed. (not surprisingly, we now learn that the 16 year olds presented no threat to America or to the world as we know it). But before we rejoice at their release, we should ask how the United States ever became such a paranoid, weird, mean-spirited and increasingly un-super power.

Whatever happened to "looking out for the other guy", "we're all in this together", "the minority must always be protected" and "innocent until proven guilty"? These and other once-familiar sayings, reflective of democracy and fairness, are beginning to fade from our collective memory. Since 9/11, or so we're told, we can no longer "afford" such indulgences in individual justice and human rights. Now's the time for fear-and with fear comes its handmaiden, hatred.

Paranoia and hatred of all things Arab (of which Muslim is but a subset) have become staples of adult Bushians. But, as the saying goes, children must be taught to hate. Furthermore, they must be taught whom they can hate openly, without the risk of censure or disapprobation.

Following is a letter I received last month from a 17-year-old high school student from Virginia. What I find especially disturbing about this incident is (1) its "microcosm" reflection of the larger culture's increasingly bold expressions of bigotry and (2) the large brush with which a language, spoken by millions the world over, was painted as some sort of monolithic threat to America:

"In my college-level honors English class, there are several highly competitive kids who try to show everyone how funny, witty or super-patriotic they are by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as loudly as they can. The rest of us just grimace and cover our ears as they show off at 7:45 am by shouting the lines in a military "sound-off" cadence: "I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE! TO THE FLAG! OF THE UNITED STATES! OF AMERICA!". But during Foreign Language Week, when the pledge was read over the loudspeaker in various languages, we had even more reason to dread this raucous ritual.

"Things went fine on the first day when Spanish was the featured language. But when the pledge was recited in French, the loudmouths made it clear that they weren't pleased, with sarcastic remarks and groans of irritation.

"But the biggest protest occurred on Friday, the final day of Foreign Language Week, when a student read the pledge in Arabic. The loud kids complained, "Oh please!" and "How could they do this?" Some students even sat down and refused to participate, including the same students who yell the pledge at the top of their lungs every other day.

"My friends and I looked over at those popular people---the class clowns--in disgust. Isn't it good that we have some diversity? Isn't it good when an Arab student recites the Pledge of Allegiance in his own language? Doesn't this refute the assumption, so pervasive among students in our ROTC-focused school, that all Arabs are "against us"?

"Not everybody acted like the class clowns, but they are loud and plentiful enough to give the message that the Arab student was not worthy of reciting the pledge. His language makes him guilty of something-somehow affiliated with terrorists. I was amazed to see that these kids, preppy high achievers considered by many the crème de la crème of our school system, could be so openly and proudly hostile and bigoted. These are the popular kids, the ones who set the example for all the rest. And that's what's really scary."


Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, What You Say Is What You Are

"'Symbolic conduct' is the term coined by David Perkins, PhD of Harvard University to describe how our behaviors communicate our attitudes, assumptions and valueschildren read between the lines of your behavior-your symbolic conduct-to discover your true values and priorities." Jesus on Parenting: 10 Essential Principles that Will Transform Your Family

Time and again I've heard Bush-supporting "conservatives" claim that prejudice towards Arab-sounding and Arab-looking people is justified "by 9/11" and/or "terrorism", and that this bigotry cannot be compared to the anti-Semitism that percolated in pre-Nazi Germany. They don't see any danger to innocent people in permitting anti-Arabism to run rampant, subtly and otherwise, across America. Disappointed by the new prohibition against executing children convicted of violent crimes, they certainly don't think that 16-year-old Muslim girls should be excluded from draconian "anti-terror" measures.

Bushians trust in their little god to keep them safe, as long as they adopt his attitudes toward "the Enemy" and hate all the right people. White Bushians are quick to say that racism against blacks is off-limits, but do a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" when racist remarks are made about Arabs-whether American or foreign, Christian or Muslim. What they forget (or are, like old Klansmen and NeoNazis, pleased to know), the children are listening.

Bushians can't imagine how a little racial profiling here and there could do any harm, or that traumatizing young girls for the sake of "national security" could possibly set a dangerous precedent.

I hope they're right, but I doubt it: Fascism rarely goes into remission without serious attention and treatment-especially in its earliest "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" stage.

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst is a clinical psychologist and writer. Her most recent book describes the nonviolent guidance of children,Jesus on Parenting: 10 Essential Principles that Will Transform Your Family, Baker Books, 9/2004.

You can contact her at DrTeresa@JesusontheFamily.org