home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
|
|
CIA's Overthrow Plans for Iran Agency musters Swiftboat vets, pumps funding into destabilization program aimed at Teheran. Trish Schuh reveals how White House approves race-baiting smears of Islam. Remember how Leadbelly got ripped off by Lomax, how Louis Armstrong's agent got richer than his most famous client? The rip-offs never die. Fred Wilhelms narrates how artists and musicians are being shafted in the age of the internet. Meet the real Judge John Roberts, serf for big business. Cockburn and St Clair dissect the Court's new nominee. Tailhook vet and self-proclaimed Tom Cruise model bites dust in Pentagon scandal: a defense industry parable. St. Clair on Duke Cunningham's Crash Landing. 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! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
|
Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly  Today's Stories August 17, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn
August 16, 2005 Greg
Moses Thomas
Larson Diana
Barahona Dave
Lindorff Rep.
Cynthia McKinney Elisa
Salasin David
Krieger Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
August 15, 2005 Greg
Moses Paul
Craig Roberts Mike
Whitney Robert
Jensen CounterPunch
Wire Norman
Solomon Kathleen
Christison
August 13 / 14, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair William
Blum Gary
Leupp Jack
Z. Bratich Brian
Cloughley Ron
Jacobs John
Farley Dave
Lindorff Tim
Wise J.L.
Chestnut, Jr. John
Gershman Felice
Pace Fred
Gardner David
Krieger Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement
August 12, 2005 Christopher
Brauchli Greg
Moses Ramzy
Baroud Norman
Solomon Chris
Genovali Chris
Floyd Tariq
Ali
August 11, 2005 Saul
Landau Dave
Lindorff Ralph
Nader Talli
Nauman Gary
Leupp Sharon
Smith Paul
Craig Roberts
August 10, 2005 Tim
Wise Ron
Jacobs Joshua
Frank Cynthia
McKinney Rick
Wilhelm Stan
Goff
August 9, 2005 Mike
Ferner Monica
Benderman Mike
Marqusee Rep.
Cynthia McKinney Paul
Craig Roberts
August 6-8, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Jason
Leopold Ray
McGovern David
Krieger Sharon
K. Weiner / Robert Jensen Fred
Gardner
August 5, 2005 Bill
Christison Paul
Craig Roberts Alexander
Cockburn
August 4, 2005 Tom
Barry Lila
Rajiva Greg
Moses Alexander
Cockburn August 3, 2005
August 3, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Paul
Craig Roberts William
A. Cook Dave
Zirin Dave
Lindorff José
Pertierra
August 2, 2005 Ramzi
Kysia William
A. Cook Paul
Craig Roberts Mike
Whitney Ron
Jacobs Norman
Madarsz Tim
Wise
August 1, 2005 Virginia
Rodino Diana
Barahona Joshua
Frank Mike
Whitney Norm
Dixon Norman
Solomon James
Petras
July 30 / 31, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn JoAnn
Wypijewski Sheldon
Rampton Jack
Z. Bratich Greg
Moses Jordan
Green Patrick
Cockburn Brian
Cloughley Justin
Taylor Saul
Landau John
Walsh Joshua
Frank Ron
Jacobs Fred
Gardner John
Chuckman Liaquat
Ali Khan Remi
Kanazi Naveen
Jaganathan Richard
Heinberg Max
Watts Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement
July 29, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair P.
Sainath Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Dave
Lindorff J.L.
Chestnut, Jr. Pat
Williams Norman
Solomon Sen.
Russ Feingold
July 28, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts William
S. Lind Gilad
Atzmon Joshua
Frank Lila
Rajiva Amina
Mire Website
of the Day
July 27, 2005 Roger
Morris Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Jackie
Corr Mike
Whitney Dave
Zirin Christopher
Bradley Norman
Solomon Website
of the Day
July 26, 2005 Suren
Pillay JoAnn
Wypijewski Patrick
Cockburn David
Anderson Joshua
Frank Lenni
Brenner David
Swanson
July 25, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts M.
Shahid Alam Uri
Avnery Stan
Cox Norman
Solomon Ramzy
Baroud Mickey
Z. Website
of the Day
July 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Tariq
Ali Robert
Fisk Dave
Lindorff Ricardo
Alarcón Col.
Dan Smith Brian
Cloughley Kevin
Zeese Bill
Quigley Fred
Gardner Rep.
Ron Paul Joshua
Frank Shivali
Tukdeo Gilad
Atzmon James
Petras Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 22, 2005 Heather
Gray David
Domke Lance
Selfa JoAnn
Wypijewski
July 21, 2005 Rose
Ann DeMoro William
Blum J.L.
Chestnut, Jr. Christopher
Brauchli Joshua
Frank Brian
Concannon, Jr. Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
July 20, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz Ray
McGovern Chris
Floyd Uri
Avnery Dave
Lindorff Norman
Solomon Bill
Quigley
July 19, 2005 Tariq
Ali John
Ross Davey
D. Greg
Weiher Brian
McKinlay Norman
Solomon Dave
Lindorff Bill
Christison Joshua
Frank
July 18, 2005 Joshua
Frank M.
Shahid Alam Jude
Wanniski Ron
Jacobs Mike
Whitney William
MacDougall Seth
Sandronsky Richard
Lichtman Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Weekend
July 15 / 17, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Jeffrey
St. Clair Paul
Craig Roberts Harry
Browne Uri
Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron Andrew
Rubin Patrick
Cockburn J.L.
Chestnut, Jr. Fred
Gardner Christopher
Brauchli Chris
Floyd Ben
Tripp Col.
Dan Smith Jason
Leopold Jack
Random Norman
Solomon George
Ochenski Website
of the Weekend
July 14, 2005 Jeffrey
St. Clair Subcomandante
Marcos Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Jude
Wanniski Dave
Zirin Kevin
Zeese Robert
Jensen Reza
Fiyouzat Carol
Norris Website
of the Day
July 13, 2005 Brian
Cloughley George
Galloway Carlos
Fierro Sarah
Knopp Norman
Solomon Mickey
Z. Jim
Minick Pat
Williams Andrew
N. Rubin Website
of the Day
July 12, 2005 Laith
al-Saud Kara
N. Tina William
A. Cook Jack
Bratich Amina
Mire Dick
J. Reavis Kevin
Zeese Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Uri
Avnery Sheldon
Rampton Bill
Christison Robert
Fisk Stephen
Winspear Saul
Landau Behrooz
Ghamari Karl
Beitel Brian
Concannon, Jr. Fred
Gardner John
Whitlow Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Lila
Rajiva Laura
Carlsen Jackie
Corr Dave
Lindorff N.
D. Jayaprakash Seth
Sandronsky Norman
Madarasz Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 8, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Tariq
Ali Monica
Benderman Rick
Jahnkow Christopher
Brauchli Kim
Peterson Joshua
Frank Norman
Solomon Website
of the Day
July 7, 2005 Cockburn
/ St. Clair John
Walsh Mike
Marqusee Gilad
Atzmon Nicole
Colson Jack
Random Norman
Solomon Len
Colodny Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
Subscribe Online
|
August 17, 2005 Second of Four Parts of a Short, Meat-Oriented History of the World, From Eden to the MattoleThe March to PorkopolisBy ALEXANDER COCKBURN Start with God. Now continue with Empire. In a three-week period in May 1806, as Lewis and Clark moved through Montana in the course of their survey, they and their party-the Corps of Discovery-killed 167 animals, about eight a day. Reviewing their entire itinerary, Donald Worster reckons that over twenty-eight months they probably shot-for their needs as opposed to random slaughter-'something between five and ten thousand.' [14] But there was plenty of random slaughter as well. They killed grizzlies, mountain lions, wolves, bobcats, marmots and of course buffalo. They could pick and choose because the western plains displayed a richness of animal life that overwhelmed many travelers. Writing a decade into the twentieth century, when this richness had all but gone, the nature writer Ernest Thompson Seton reckoned that near the end of the eighteenth century the 'primitive' population of buffalo had been 75 million. By 1895 there were eight hundred buffalo left, mostly within the borders of Yellowstone Park. Grizzlies, through the mountain and western states, Canada and Alaska had, in the earlier period, amounted to some two million on Seton's estimation. By 1908 they had dwindled to 200,000, almost entirely in Alaska and Canada. Seton reckoned there were maybe eight hundred in the Lower 48, again mostly around Yellowstone. In mid-1995 there were still about eight hundred in the Lower 48, though the Fish and Wildlife Service was planning to pull the grizzly off the endangered species list after twenty years, under the pretense that Ursus horribilis was no longer imperilled. Translation: without the pesky bear inhibiting industrial and extractive activities, mining, oil and timber companies can get on with the business of drilling and chopping, just as God intended for them to do. [15] On Seton's calculations, elk had dropped from ten million to 70,000 by 1919. Mule deer did best, with 500,000 left by the time Seton was writing. (He may have exaggerated the original numbers before the white man came. One later reckoning had the number of buffalo on the continent in 1830 as forty million. But the variety and number of species lost were still immense.) By the end of the 1870s, the
buffalo was nearly gone. Colonel Richard Dodge, himself a keen
hunter, reckoned that hunters killed over four million in the
mid 1870s alone: 'Where there were myriads of buffalo. . .there
were now myriads of carcasses. The air was foul with sickening
stench and the vast plain. . .was a dead, solitary, putrid desert.'
The plains, mountains, valleys And with these creatures went the Indians' food and way of life. When he was ten years old, Plenty-Coups, chief of the Crow in Montana, had a dream that the white man came with his cattle and destroyed the natural life of the plains. He was right: 'When the buffalo went away, we became a changed people. . .The buffalo was everything to us.' Three centuries earlier, the First Viceroy of New Spain had written to his King: 'May your lordship realize that if cattle are allowed, the Indians are destroyed.' The buffalo went. Indian time ended. The only place to get food was on the reservations, courtesy of the Indian agent. For a while the Indians made a few dollars gathering up the buffalo bones, shipping off the skeletons, a year or two after the hides. In the buffaloes' stead came the white men's cattle.
They came up from Mexico, west through the Appalachians, or from the Florida panhandle. In 1850, with the exception of coastal California and east Texas, there was barely a cow or a steer west of the Mississippi. There were more cattle-nearly a million-in New York State than anywhere else. In the whole of the United States the number of cattle-excluding milk cows-added up to almost 11.5 million. By 1870 the total was up to 15 million and by 1900 that had more than doubled again, to 35 million. Texas alone had 6.5 million, and Kansas, Iowa and Oklahoma had some 2.5 million each on the range or in feedlots. In that half-century, industrial meat-eating came of age. [17] From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries-when reliable records began to be kept-to the mid nineteenth century, the European diet varied little. Grains took up about 90 per cent of a family's food budget: rye, buckwheat, oats, barley, maize. [18] From the moments that the victuallers and provisioners in the Napoleonic wars pioneered the organization of the mass-production line and also modern methods of food preservation, the stage was set for the annihilation of both time and space in matters of food consumption. The vast cattle herds that began to graze the pastures of the western United States, Australia and Argentina signalled the change. The speed with which the rhythms and sensibilities of a pre-industrial time were abandoned may be judged by descriptions of Haussmann's famous 'La Villette' abattoir, modelled on the old 1807 design approved by Napoleon, and by accounts, virtually contemporaneous, of the Union Stockyards in Chicago. La Villette was opened in 1867. Siegfried Giedion describes it in Mechanization Takes Command:
Giedion's omission here is the feedlot, where the midwestern farmers were able to take the two-year old 'stockers' from the range, then convert their corn into the weight that the 'feeders' swiftly put on, before being dispatched on the final stage of their journey through life.
By 1850 the slaughterhouses of Cincinnati-'Porkopolis'-had been refining the continuous production line for over twenty years. Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape and park designer, visited Cincinnati in the 1850s:
But, by later standards, Cincinnati's hog butchers at that time were not as organized as their successors in the Union yards in Chicago. Much of the hog-head, neck-pieces, backbones-was thrown into the Ohio River. [21] Many a nineteenth-century traveller stopped in Cincinnati or, later, Chicago to marvel at the efficiency and heartlessness of this unending, furious dispatch of animals to feed New York, Boston, Paris, London and the increasing industrial armies, and military armies too, that desired to eat meat. In these years between 1807 and 1865-the opening of the Union Stockyards in Chicago-was perfected the production-line slaughter of living creatures, for the first time in the history of the world. At one end of the trail lay the prairies, the open range, the boisterous pastoral of the cattle drive, where the cowboys sometimes spared a longhorn: 'Reed Anthony, Andy Adams' cowman, tells how he and other Confederate soldiers guarding a herd of Texas steers saved the life of one because he would always walk out and stand attentive to the notes of "Rock of Ages" sung by his herders.' [22] Spared were two or three or ten or a hundred or a thousand from among the millions and millions of creatures that plodded to railheads like Abilene, and thence eastward, or to abattoirs nearer at hand and then bought up by government agents to be sent to the reservations to feed Indians who no longer had buffalo to hunt.
'Cows and cowboys', William Cronon writes in Nature's Metropolis, in his chapter about Chicago's stockyards, 'might be symbols of a rugged natural life on the western range, but beef and pork were commodities of the city. Formerly a person could not easily have forgotten that pork and beef were an intricate, symbiotic partnership between animals and human beings. One was not likely to forget that pigs and cattle had died so that people might eat, for one saw them grazing in familiar pastures, and regularly visited the barnyards and butcher shops where they gave up their lives in the service of one's daily meal. In a world of farms and small towns, the ties between field, pasture, butcher shop, and dinner table were everywhere apparent, constant reminders of the relationships that sustained one's own life. In a world of ranches, packing plants, and refrigerator cars, most such connections vanished from easy view.' Cronon emphasizes the consequences of this distancing from killing and commodification of meat: 'In the packers' world, it was easy not to remember that eating was a moral act inextricably bound to killing. Such was the second nature that a corporate order had imposed on the American landscape. Forgetfulness was among the least noticed and most important of its by-products.' Another description of the packing plants of Chicago came in Upton Sinclair's 1905 novel, The Jungle. His hero, Jurgis, watches pigs being slaughtered: '
Tomorrow: part 3, From Nazi Vegetarians to Blitzkrieg of the Ungulates This essay appears as part of Dead Meat, presenting Sue Coe's record, in the form of paintings and diaries, of slaughterhouses in the United States. Dead Meat is published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press, in New York, and paintings in it may be seen at the St. Etienne Gallery, 20 West 57th St, New York. Footnotes [14] Donald Worster, An Unsettled Country. Changing Landscapes of the American West, Albuquerque 1994. See particularly the chapter, 'Other People, Other Lives.' Seton's calculations, cited below, are discussed by Worster. [15] See Alexander Cockburn, 'Grisly Fate of Ursus horribilis', The Nation, July 1995. [16] See Worster, An Unsettled Country. [17] Edward Everett Dale, The Range Cattle Industry. Ranching on the Great Plains from 1865 to 1925, Norman 1960. [18] Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, Oxford 1994. [19] Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, New York 1948. [20] Cited in William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis. Chicago and the Great West, New York 1991. Cronon's chapter, 'Annihilating Space: Meat' is a spectacular piece of work. [21] 'One native son, from over in the neighbourhood of Licking Hills, started the yarn about the efficiency of the Cincinnati packers. 'Speaking of sausage,' said this humourous neighbor, 'those connecting links between hog and dog almost remind me of an affecting incident that occurred some years ago at a brisk village below the mouth of Deer Creek on the Ohio called Cincinnati. An ancient maiden friend of ours was taking a stroll on the outskirts of town one pleasant summer morning, accompanied by a favorite black poodle dog-her only protector. Walking leisurely along the flowery banks of Deer Creek, her cheek fanned by "gentle zephyrs laden with sweet perfume" , she at length came to the residence of a fat and furious German, which, it was hinted, had been the scene of many an inhuman butchery. At the front corner of the house she noticed a fresh pork hanging at the end of a large copper pipe which seemed to communicate with the interior of the house. Her poodle made a jump at the treasure, but no sooner had he reached the spot than he was caught under the ear by a steel hook and suddenly disappeared from the sight of his doting mistress. She, poor soul, horror-stricken by the mysterious disappearance, rushed frantically into the house in search of him. But alas! Like Distaffiana, she might have well exclaimed, "Oh wretched maide-O miserable fate. I've just arrived in time to be too late!" For by the time she had reached the back part of the premises, all that remained of her ill-fated poodle was a blue ribbon which she had tied around his neck, seventy-five links of fresh sausage, and a beautiful black woolly muff.' T.D. Clark, 'Kentucky Yarn and Yarn Spinners', The Cincinnati Times-Star, Centennial Edition, vol. 10, no. 100, 25 April 1940, 'Business, Industry, Kentucky Section', p. 6; from B.A. Botkin, ed., A Treasure of Mississippi River Folklore, New York 1955. [22] This story is told by
J. Frank Dobie, in The Longhorns, Bramhall 1941, a vivid
evocation of this breed. The pastorals included stories of escape.
A steer called Table Cloth had dodged the shipping pens for
over a decade: 'After returning from marketing the last fall
shipment, the boss proposed that certain men take their Winchesters
and bring in Table Cloth's hide and carcass. He thought he was
offering an opportunity for big sport. He was surprised at the
opposition that rolled up. 'Hadn't Table Cloth fairly won life
and liberty? For fifteen years now the whole Shoe Sole outfit
had been after him-and he was still free. He was getting old.
He had never really tried to kill a man. He had simply outplayed
his opponents. He could not be called mean. . .By God, he deserved
to live among the cedars and canyons he loved so well-and the
boss agreed.' Dobie was a wonderful writer. His description of
the Texas brush country in Chapter 17 is a particular gem of
landscape literature. Worster writes, 'Domesticated creatures
like cattle and sheep have. . .been vital to the western experience,
and we have hundreds of books and articles on the industries
that raised those animals for slaughter. The animals themselves
have seldom if ever appeared in that literature as anything resembling
Black Elk's "Four-legged people" . . .The shining
exception to the general cowlessness of the range histories is
J. Frank Dobie's The Longhorns, which gives a full, appreciative
account of that breed's instinct, habits and psychology-an animal,
Dobie writes, that refused to be 'dumb driven cattle' but insisted
on following 'the law of the wild, the stark give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death
law against tyranny', a behaviour that got them labeled 'outlaws'
and replaced by more docile Herefords. Worster adds, 'Even Dobie
has trouble maintaining any interest in cows that are not so
wild or so much a maverick.'
|
