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Recent
Stories
May
23, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits?
Ron
Jacobs
Long Live People's Park!
Michael
Greger, MD
Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply
at Risk
Elaine
Cassel
Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt."
Sam
Hamod
The Shi'a of Iraq
Christopher
Greeder
After the Layoffs
Alexander
Cockburn
Derrida's Double Life (poem)
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23
May
22, 2003
Mark
Gaffney
Christian in Name Only
Carl
Estabrook
Republic of Fear
Carl
Camacho, Jr.
Reason for Hope
Ben
Granby
What Rates a Headline from the Middle
East?
Vanessa
Jones
Terror Alerts in Australia
Mickey
Z.
Instant Understanding
Don
Monkerud
Snowballs in a Soggy Economy
Barry Lando
The Nether-Nether World of G.W. Bush
Steve
Perry
Total Information
Awareness: Secret Shadow Program?
May
21, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
are Everywhere
Brian Cloughley
The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz
Saul
Landau
Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush
Larry Kearney
Two Morning Poems, May 2003
Steve
Perry
Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Justice Comes to Iraq
May
20, 2003
Tariq
Ali
The Empire Advances
Ahmad
Faruqui
Whither American Nationalism?
Ben Tripp
Dialysis with Osama
Linda
Heard
The Cage of Occupation
Cynthia
McKinney
Toward a Just and Peaceful World
Edward
Said
The Arab Condition
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest Long Ago
Stew
Albert
Yale Men
Steve Perry
The New Face of Al-Qaeda
May
19, 2003
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Matt
Vidal
Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market
Michael
S. Ladah
The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map
Robert
Fisk
Bush's Eternal War Backfires
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
May
16, 2003
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
Hot Stories
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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May
23, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
Jacques
Derrida's Double Life;
How Susan Sontag Turned Things Around; The Woman J. Edgar Hoover
Called " Bitch"; Nora Ephron and JFK: Maybe She Never
Noticed; Why Jayson Blair Fell Short; How Dangerous Are Prof
McDonald's Hips; Should We Kill POWs: Euripides Joins post 9/11
Debate
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Jacques Derrida: Talking
Out Of Both Sides of His Mouth
This weekend the noted French philosopher
Jacques Derrida will be getting an honorary doctorate from Hebrew
University. Philosophers are notoriously agile at squaring moral
and political circles, a necessary skill in Derrida's case, since
his name can also be found on the Birzeit Appeal, signed by scores
of prominent writers and academics round the world, protesting
the Israeli military and civil authorities for deliberately paralysing
all Palestinian institutions of higher learning in the occupied
territories, most notably Birzeit.
Since March 2001, so the Appeal states,
the working life of the university has been severely disrupted
by an intimidating Israeli military checkpoint on the Ramallah-Birzeit
road, which is part of the expanded network of roadblocks preventing
communication between all Palestinian towns and villages in the
West Bank.
Since March 2002, the situation at the
checkpoint has deteriorated further and access to the University
has on the majority of days been totally impeded. Following Israel's
military re-occupation of West Bank towns (including Ramallah)
in mid-June 2002, all Palestinian educational life within the
re-occupation zones has been brought to a grinding halt by a
blanket curfew imposed on the civilian population. The majority
of Birzeit students and faculty are confined to their homes with
dwindling hope of returning to their academic lives in the foreseeable
future.
"The cumulative effects of these
measures over the past 18 months," the Appeal concludes,
"have put the future of Birzeit University at grave risk.
Sadly, these actions are indicative of Israeli policies towards
Palestinian civil society and its institutions as whole Therefore,
we urgently call upon Israel to take immediate action to restore
the right of education to Birzeit University students and all
students in the Palestinian territory by removing all military
obstacles to free and safe access to educational institutions
and work places.
"The international community to
assume its responsibility under humanitarian law by taking real
and concrete steps to provide protection to the Palestinian civilian
population."
The Appeal doesn't mention the situation
in other Palestinian universities, but it's similar. Their names:
Quds university, Arab American University Jenin, Bethlehem
Bible College, Bethlehem University, Hebron University, Ibrahimieh
College, Islamic University.
So why, Given that Derrida is a signatory
on the appeal, together with many other distinguished scholars,
has he decided to receive an honorary doctorate in Israel, particularly
considering the last sentences of the appeal, about the "responsibility"
of the international community.
Here at CounterPunch our problem is not
with Hebrew University. Within Israeli universities there is
still academic freedom -- i.e., freedom of speech -- and there
are many scholars who speak out against the occupation. No, our
problem is with Derrida, just as it was with Susan Sontag when
she went to Jerusalem to get a literary prize. By traveling Israel
amid its government's horrifying crimes against Palestinians,
Derrida offers Israel legitimacy.
The same applies to Michael Walzer of Princeton, who received
an honorary doctorate from Tel-Aviv University last week. Yes,
He's the one that is an expert on "just" wars. Unlike
Derrida he did not sign the Birzeit appeal.
Now a friendly and respectful word about
Susan Sontag. Since her excursion to get that prize, for which
I railed at her in prodigious fashion, she's spoken up very strongly,
as for example in her splendid speech in the Rothko Chapel this
last April 26,on the occasion of the awards in the name of Archbishop
Romero. Sontag paid eloquent tribute, among others, to Rachel
Corrie and to the Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the
Occupied Territories.
"We are all conscripts in one sense
or another," Sontag said, For all of us, it is hard to break
ranks; to incur the disapproval, the censure, the violence of
an offended majority with a different idea of loyaltyHere is
what I believe to be a truthful description of a state of affairs
that has taken me many years of uncertainty, ignorance and anguish,
to acknowledge.
"A wounded and fearful country,
Israel is going through the greatest crisis of its turbulent
history, brought about by the policy of steadily increasing and
reinforcing settlements on the territories won after its victory
in the Arab war on Israel in 1967. The decision of successive
Israeli governments to retain control over the West Bank and
Gaza, thereby denying their Palestinian neighbors a state of
their own, is a catastrophe - moral, human, and political - for
both peoples. The Palestinians need a sovereign state. Israel
needs a sovereign Palestinian state. Those of us abroad who wish
for Israel to survive, cannot, should not, wish it to survive
no matter what, no matter how."
A Pearl Among Pigs
Just like Helen Thomas, only even feistier,
the Texan reporter Sarah McLendon spent years getting under the
skin of politicians and government flacks across Washington.
Now this from the FBI's Sarah McClendon File, excavated by FOIA
investigator Michael Ravnitzky, who tells us he's just been supplied
under FOIA with a brief note from Bureau chief J Edgar Hoover
in journalist Sarah McClendon's file,: "What are the true
facts which this 'bitch' alleges? H."
Also the file discusses how as a result
of Sarah McClendon's efforts in 1953 to get access into the regular
Friday afternoon press conference held by Attorney General Brownell
(women reporters in general were unwelcome at most such events
at that time), Brownell ceased holding the press conference.
But the Friday afternoon get-togethers with the press continued
secretly, according to the file "but that Sarah McClendon
is not to know about this."
Nora Ephron and JFK:
Maybe
Yes, as a 19-year old White House intern,
she did have a fling with JFK. So recently disclosed Mimi Beardsley,
later Fahnestock. Spurred by this revelation the writer and director
Nora Ephron promptly described her own relations with the satyric
President of Camelot. She was a White House intern a year earlier
than Beardsley, in Pierre Salinger's press operation. Since the
White House press interns back in those more carefree days didn't
even have the figleaf of a desk to work at, Nora drifted through
the corridors. Finally she had a fateful encounter with JFK as
he was hastening towards the presidential helicopter. She claims
he made no advances; that she couldn't even hear what he said
to her over the whirl of the helicopter blades. Then he was gone.
Apropos possible reasons why JFK didn't
put the make on her, Ephron does say that the ample roster of
his partners doesn't disclose too many, or maybe any Jewish girls,
nice or nasty. But Nora doesn't mention something about which
she made her name many years ago with a sensational article in
either New York or Esquire, I forget which, on the topic of what
it was like to grow up not having big boobs.
Of course Jackie didn't have big boobs
either, but then JFK seems to have lost interest in her pretty
rapidly and didn't marry her for carnal reasons in the first
place. And I always thought Judy Exner was Jewish, but I could
be wrong there. I'm sure Sam Giancana, the lover Exner recalled
as being a hundred times more sensitive and caring than the First
Knight of Camelot, had no prejudices in that regard.
Another theory, given recollections by
at least one of JFK's conquests on his amatory tempo, (Angie
Dickinson did say her time with him was "the most memorable
30 seconds I ever spent") might be that JFK did have a whirlwind
thing with Nora on the way out to the helicopter and she didn't
even notice.
Jayson Blair: How
He Fell Short
Subscribers to our newsletter can enjoy
my extended comments on Jayson Blair and the New York Times,
but here let me say, Thank God for fakers! Matchless as deflaters
of human and institutional pretension, they furnish us rich measures
of malicious glee at the red-faced victims. Remember Konrad Kujau
whose forged Hitler diaries burst upon the world twenty years
ago, fooling the editors of Stern, and of Newsweek.
Kaujau churned out the diaries in longhand in the back of his
shop in Stuttgart, slopping tea over the pages to lend the requisite
touch of antiquity, spurring his weary imagination to such daily
entries as "Meet all the leaders of the Storm troopers in
Bavaria, give them medals. Must not forget tickets for the Olympic
games for Eva. Because of the new pills I have violent flatulence,
and --says Eva--bad breath."
Kujau couldn't did get his Gothic lettering
right, because the local art store didn't have the requisite
Letraset for the Gothic A. He had to sign the diaries F.H., instead
of A.H. It didn't make any difference. Stern's experts pronounced
them genuine and so, to his lifelong embarrassment, did the late
Lord Dacre aka Hugh Trevor Roper who, as the designated expert
hired by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times, gave them his
scholarly endorsement.
Faker du jour is Jayson Blair, the disgraced
New York Times reporter. I give him an F for lack of ambition
in the faker's arts. He exhibited the caution of the tyro: A
faked quote here, an imagined description there, a paragraph
or two of sedate plagiarism. In its heyday, half a century ago,
Time magazine reinvented the world in a weird elliptical style.
Blair's timid inventions are testimony to the banality of today's
journalese in which our own Gothic world is tamed in the interests
of corporate capital on a daily basis.
Circumspectly ambitious as only a Times-man
can be, Blair served just the sort of fare that would please
his bosses, not least the Times' executive editor Howell Raines.
His finest hour, fabricating background, unattributed quotes
from cops and prosecutors amid the media maelstrom after the
arrests of the Washington snipers, came, a Friend of CounterPunch
tells us, because Raines sent him down from New York, hoping
that scoops from Blair would upstage the Times's Washington bureau
and thus advance Raines' intrigue to replace its current chief
with one of his own circle, Patrick Tyler. Blair obediently rose
to the occasion.
How Blair must be chafing at the unfairness
of it all! Why him? He made up a few blind quotes from high FBI
officials and prosecutors and the skies fall in. He even has
to endure the indignity of having William Safire, unindicted
besmircher of a thousand reputations, pontificating about journalistic
integrity. Where are the whole special supplements of the New
York Times that would be required to apologize for its baseless
insinuations against Wen Ho Lee (a Jeff Gerth special, co-written
with James Risen), or the Clintons for their real estate dealings
in Whitewater (another Jeff Gerth special).
The Times went overboard with its four
pages on Blair's deceptions but the overkill, as no doubt Sulzberger
and Raines knew, has played to the Times' long-term advantage,
(though there are rumors of another scandal in the offing). The
more voluminous the sackcloth, the more nobly impressive the
sinner and the profuse deployment of sackcloth and ashes serves,
albeit on a grander scale, the same function as the daily "corrections"
box, which notes minor errors. The unstated implication with
these corrections is that everything else that appeared in those
editions of the New York Times was true.
There's been a campaign to get Walter
Duranty's Pulitzer rescinded because he averted his eyes from
Stalin's crimes. This is a move I oppose because such a rescission
would have the same effect as that Corrections box, insinuating
that all other Pulitzers were deserved. I do make an exception
in the case of Thomas Friedman, whose three Pulitzers do have
the utility of reminding us that he's at least three times more
of a blowhard than any other pundit in the field.
May 21 was a day like many other days
when I turned to the front page of the New York Times and find
yet one more article by Judith Miller on the search for weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq. The words "official" and
"officials" are used 19 times, not once with an actual
name attached. There are military officials, intelligence officials,
White House officials, but never a human actually identified
by Miller.
On the one hand we have Blair, a humble toiler in the Times'
vineyard, now branded as the great traducer; on the other, we
have the unchastened Miller who has been a major, interested
player in what's one of the greatest disgraces in the history
of American journalism, to wit, its complicity in the fomenting
of pretexts to invade Iraq.
A footnote: our friend Bill Dobbs, the
radical gay constitutionalist, called this week to say that he
had been quoted by Jayson Blair correctly. As we told him, you
can't ever out-Dobbs Dobbs!
Marianne McDonald's
Dangerous Hips: Paranoia At Airport Security; Euripides on Treatment
of POWs
Marianne McDonald, distinguished classicist
at the University of San Diego and a respected friend of CounterPunch
sends us this note about civil liberties in the post 9/11 context.
"In Chicago, May 18 , at O'Hare
Airport I was returning to San Diego and was beeped at the first
arch. Then I beeped the hand held device. They frisked me and
then they took me to a barely screened area and had me raise
my skirt and two women felt down my hip scars, no doubt apprehensive
that I might slice myself open and use my newly installed hips
as weapons to take over the plane.
"I'm 66 years old. My father was
Commander Eugene Francis McDonald, Jr, the founder of Zenith
and Commander in Naval Intelligence in World War II, He was a
host to presidents (when they came to his lodge in Canada), and
was offered the ambassadorship of his choice. His daughter is
strip searched because of her hips, even though she has a card
from her doctor that said she had them replaced!
"They are victimizing us who are
a new form of handicapped. They had us fit our feet into feet
drawn on a map. For those with replaced hips it's difficult.
I feel like Medea. I never thought I would live to see our fundamental
freedoms so eroded. When are Americans going to wake up to what
is happening? We were once proud of our Democracy."
Prof McDonald has seen her fine new translations
of Antigone and other plays by Sophocles and Euripides performed
around the world. Upcoming, for Grass Roots Greeks and the 6th
@ Penn Theater in San Diego is her translation of The Children
of Heracles by Euripides, commissioned expressly for the theatre
by owner Dale Morris.
Much discussed recently because the production
by Peter Sellars, The Children of Heracles was written somewhere
around 430 B.C. in response to the murder by Euripides' own Athenians
of two envoys from Sparta during the early days of the Peloponnesian
War between the two Greek superpowers. Like so much of Euripides'
work, it's as modern as can be. Sample this argument over whether
to kill a POW in the name of national security, and national
revenge.
Enter Servant with Eurystheus
and Guards.
Servant
Lady, you can see for yourself,
but I'll tell you anyway.
We have come with Eurystheus as our prisoner,
something you never thought you would see or thought that would
happen.
He never dreamed he'd be your prisoner,
when he set out from Argos armed with his fighting soldiers
and high-flying ideas, thinking he'd destroy Athens.
Fate had other plans for him, and his luck changed.
Hyllos and brave Iolaus set
up a victory statue
to Zeus. Then they ordered me to bring this man
to you to make you happy. There is nothing sweeter than
to see an enemy's good fortune turn to misery.
Alcmena
(to Eurystheus, she could be standing by the body of
Macaria as she begins her speech.)
So Justice caught up with you
at last, you monster.
Turn around and look at me, look into the face
of your living enemy, and your first dead victim (indicating
Macaria). Your power is useless; now
you are in my power. Are you really that terrible man
who was arrogant enough to set my son
so many impossible tasks,
chasing him off to kill Hydras and lions? 950
I won't list the other miseries you inflicted on him.
I'd never end. What outrage didn't you dare, even
sending him alive into the jaws of Hades.
And that wasn't enough for you.
You had to drive me and these children
away from any place in Greece
where we had come as refugees to
ask for help from both the citizens and the gods.
We who were in charge, were too old for this,
and some of the children were still infants.
At last you found citizens and a free city
who weren't afraid of you. You will now die
as you should, your coward's death.
But that's too good for you.
You shouldn't die one time, but many times
for all the suffering you caused us. 960
Servant
You have no right to kill this
man.
Alcmena
Then we made him prisoner for
nothing.
Is there a law that forbids us killing him?
Servant
That's the decision of our
country's leaders.
Alcmena
We're not supposed to kill
our enemies?
Servant
Not a prisoner you captured
alive.
Alcmena
Did Hyllus agree to this?
Servant
Shouldn't he obey the law?
Alcmena
This man has no right to live
a moment longer.
Servant
It was a mistake not to kill
him right away. 970
But we don't have that choice now.
Alcmena
Shouldn't he pay the penalty?
Suffer the consequences of his actions?
Servant
It's too late. No one will
kill him.
Alcmena
What about me? I'll do it.
Servant
If you do, you won't get away
with it.
Alcmena
I love this city, I won't deny
it, but since
I have this man in my power now,
I won't let anyone take him from me.
Say what you like about me
as a woman,
call me a bitch if you like,
but if there's anything I do before I die, it's this. 980
Chorus
Your anger towards this man
is terrible, I know,
but quite understandable.
Eurystheus
You should know I won't crawl
to you
or beg for my life. That would be cowardly.
This quarrel is not my fault.
I know that I'm your cousin,
and related to Heracles.
I wasn't a free man: a god made me do what I did.
Hera drove me mad. 990
When I began fighting with Heracles,
and realized that was my mission in life,
I devised lots of clever plans,
mulling them over late at night,
trying to figure out how I could get rid of him,
and kill all my enemies, so that I would not
have to live in fear for the rest of my life.
I took the measure of the man
and realized your son's worth.
He was my enemy, but I will sing
his praises: he was a good and brave man.
He's dead now. I knew his children 1000
hated me, remembering what I did to their father.
What was I to do? That's exactly what I did.
I tried every way I could to kill them
or at least keep them permanently on the run.
That's how I would be safe.
If you were in my place, you might say
you would have made these dangerous lion cubs into pets,
and let them live peacefully in Argos.
No one would believe you. I don't.
No one killed me on the battlefield
when I wanted to die. 1010
Now, according to Greek law,
the man who kills me will be cursed.
The city was wise to let me go
respecting the gods more than their anger.
You have spoken, and I have answered you.
You can choose to be cursed, or to be blessed.
That's how it stands. For myself,
while I don't want to die,
I don't consider death a great loss.
Chorus
Alcmena, I have a bit of advice
for you.
Let this man go since that's what the city wants.
Alcmena
What if we give the city what
it wants, and he also dies? 1020
Chorus
That would be best of all.
What do you have in mind?
Alcmena
Easy. I'll kill him and turn
his body over to his friends
who come for him. I shall not disobey the city,
because I'm handing over his body.
This way I get what I'm owed.
Eurystheus
Go ahead, kill me. You won't
get any objections from me.
He turns to the chorus.
But this city, because it let
me go and spared my life,
I shall give it the gift of an ancient oracle,
more valuable for their future than you can ever know.
Bury me before the shrine of Athena. 1030
I shall be your guardian hero, your friend,
and savior of your city. I shall protect you
against the descendents of these children here
when they come with a large army and
betray the kindnesses you have shown them.
These are the "good friends" you fought for.
How do I know this? Why did I come here
when I knew this oracle? I trusted Hera,
and thought she was stronger than any oracle.
Don't forget to pour offerings over my grave 1040
and let it drink the blood of animals.
These children won't have an easy homecoming.
You gain two things from me if I die -
I'll be a friend to you and harm your enemies.
Alcmena, also speaking to
the chorus
You've heard him, so what are
you waiting for?
Kill him quickly.
This way you get protection for the city,
and for your descendents.
He's shown us the best way out.
He's an enemy, but his death is good for us.
Take him away and kill him.
Throw his body 1050
to the dogs. Don't think you are going
to get the chance to rob me of my own country again!
Chorus
To guard.
That's right. Take him away.
This way our hands are clean.
Guard leads off Eurystheus.
Exeunt the funeral procession with Alcmena following.
To the audience:
Zeus walks beside me so I have
no fear.
Zeus rightly shows us mercy.
I shall never say the justice of the gods
Is inferior to that of men.
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