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Today's
Stories
January 5, 2004
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
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for More Stories.
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January
5, 2004
Putting the Neo in the Cons
The Dialectic of the Kristol
Family
By JORDY CUMMINGS
"The worst possible political arrangement"
Irving Kristol on Capitalism
How did you spend your Christmas Holidays? I spent
mine becoming a Straussian. No, I didn't get a coveted gig at
the American Enterprise Institute, in charge of leaks, though
my mustache has certainly taken on a Gaffney-esque anti-gravity.
I was visiting with Family in Vermont and had a bit of an accident
on the ski-slopes, confining me to a country-house bedroom with
a buncha used books stacked higher than a corned beef sandwich.
Among the books were the recently Counterpunch-endorsed memoirs
of Nikita Khrushchev (alternately chilling, humanist and entertaining--worth
hunting down) some old Len Deighton books and what excited me
the most, a series of writings by the controversial political
philosopher Leo Strauss. On the delicately obscure but fascinating
skill of pedagogy, he's up there with the Post-Structuralists
and coming to surprising similar conclusions. That he was also
a Zionist and in favor of religion is essentially a sidetrack,
comparable with Slavoj Zizek's forays into Christian theology.
I also watched a bunch of pulpy, nonsensical
CIA/KGB movies incredibly convoluted B-grade cartoons, in which
intentionally or not, they characters are satires of their national
character. Even Hitchcock made some pretty strange Cold War B-movies,
such as the underrated Topaz. An imaginary setting of mine takes
place in which the CIA, in order to discredit the trade union-left,
which is being helped by the KGB, funds revolutionaries who are
more effective at actually improving life in the United States
while the KGB stooges are so timid that they are labeled CIA
agents, meanwhile in Moscow, the KGB, for finances and in order
to discredit "democracy" funds a dissident movement
that like its Western Obverse, actually helps conditions on the
ground while the CIA stooges are so timid that they are labeled
tools of the Kremlin. Thus a proper understanding of the Neoconservatives,
and the Straussians, must come with a proper understanding of
dialectical materialism, of which t! he Straussians dabble in,
to say the least.
In an apocryphal tale retold recently
in the "culture-jamming" Canadian journal Adbusters,
Strauss's philosophy developed out of him being rebuffed by "the
beautiful Hannah Arendt" who told him that a political system
like his would have "no place for a Jew like him."
Typically of the liberal anti-communists of the time, Arendt
was a true believer, like Max Horkheimer that as bad as Western
Capitalist Liberalism happened to be, the alternatives were worse,
explicating this view in her "Origins of Totalitarianism."
Strauss's differences with Arendt were rooted in his skepticism
over the very possibility of a liberal order. In many ways, this
can be compared with Slavoj Zizek's important book Did Somebody
Say Totalitarianism.
What Zizek, Strauss and even the new
Imperial Apologist Michael Ignatieff, who once quipped that "liberal
democracy is a contradiction of human nature," is a Germanic,
even Talmudic skepticism towards positivist political order.
From Rome to Weimar, "the dialectic of enlightenment"
so to speak, produced its mythological other. By confining a
critique to a "totalitarian" other, one does not recognize
totalitarianism's very western--and sometimes even defensible--qualities.
Let us honestly ask where people have more control over their
political lives, in "totalitarian" Cuba or even Belarus,
where, despite poverty, there are avenues for popular participation,
or the United States where "democracy" masks (or used
to mask) a process where corporate control and reactionary attitudes
towards the general population has been the name of the game
at least since Kennedy was prettier than Nixon on TV. "Liberal
Democracy" is reduced to a choice between cultural conservatives
and cultural liberals, while people in other democracies like
Great Britain or Canada are genuinely relieved that their corrupt
ruling parties are at least not social phillistines. The Straussian
critique of modernity is indeed similar to Adorno and Horkheimer's.
The Arendt "liberal anti-communist"
critique of "totalitarianism" is generally rootless,
providing genuinely vivid pictures of life under the squallidness
of Stalinism or other types of dictatorship, but without any
context as to what material basis led these governments to consolidate
their power in such a method, let alone even a passing glimpse
of economics. While "post-Marxists" and Marxists alike
emphasize the economic, the Straussians have been perhaps alone
(outside of Stalinism perhaps) at grasping the public need for
"character" in their leadership. While anarchists dismiss
this, social democrats and liberals look at focus groups and
most radicals won't allow themselves to admit that charismatic
leadership may not be such a bad thing, some theorists outside
of the Straussian tradition have called for a new glimpse at
the concept of the heroic leader, at the Straussian concept of
"character." Just because Peggy Noonan had a hammer
doesn't mean character is a nail! . Heroism is as human as farting.
Radicals who dismiss this gladly look
up to the Jewish-Arab couple Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf,
for example, or the late Rachel Corrie and Edward Said in terms
of the Palestine Solidarity Movement. We may even admire Castro,
or the man who beat the US-coup, Hugo Chavez. Certainly many
of us look up to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky or even, in spite
of our knowledge of his centrism, Howard Dean. Canadians, even
those who were strong critics of his "war measures act"
that allowed Patriot Act style abuses, still look back fondly
on the Trudeau era, especially in terms of Geopolitics. The Israeli
Left often follows the lead of Uri Avnery and his Gush Shalom
comrades. Yet we still quote Bob Dylan--"don't follow leaders,
watch the parking meters."
The heresy of Strauss, which has relieved
much attention in liberal organs is actually the most interesting--and
arguably realistic aspect of his philosophy--that is his skepticism
of Liberalism, his concentration on strong leadership and his
endorsement of the "noble lie." Unpacking these concepts,
we find either activities that we Radicals proudly engage in,
or more importantly, some things in which we should actually
pay attention. The most important--and one that should be familiar
to Counterpunchers--is the skepticism towards liberalism, if
not liberal democracy. While liberals claim to be great fans
of ambiguity, seeing "both sides of everything," this
in fact paralyzes them into something, well, totalitarian. Liberals
willingly capitulate to their rivals, and in power, often replace
economic freedom with bourgeois cultural liberalism--a good thing
to be sure, but often a salve meant to quiet proletarian discontent
= gay marriage and marijauna decriminalization are great for
Canada but won't do jackshit for the First Nations people.
While some critiqued American Liberals
for defending Bill Clinton even if he had "no one left to
lie to," hell, even if he was a coke-snorting rapist, it
was inarguable that the issue was that of a reactionary attempt
to prevent the country from even being governed by normal bourgeois
standards--and arguably had much to do with Clinton's open attitude
towards Arafat and China. It is this writer's contention that
bourgeois democracy has been overthrown in the United States.
And liberals were among its assassins, not in Florida but in
Waco and Ruby Ridge. Justin Raimundo has written that the most
effective Antiwar opposition has come from "don't tread
on me" conservatives, not the left, and he is partially
right. The real left, socialists, anarchists, quakers, what have
you, had plenty of principled opposition to the war. The liberals
opposed it for political reasons--and may well have developed
along the way a truly radical critique of American power--but
it is doubtful that Al Franken would have marched against a Clinton
war.
Then there is the controversial concentration
on character, critiqued by liberals in the oft-repeated and nonsensical
phrase that Nixon was a virtuous man who ended up pissing on
the American dream while Clinton was a roustabout who was a great
president. The opposite is not true either. Nixon started the
EPA, which Clinton gutted. They both were arguably bigger war
criminals then even George W. Bush, but we sure as hell love
telling the "noble lie" that Bush is a horrible creature
with horns ready to gut the American dream because the more we
say that, the more Bush pulls back and sends Pro-Palestinian
James Baker overseas. In reality, as Gore Vidal trenchantly pointed
out, American politics doesn't pay well enough to attract truly
fine minds. Nixon was brilliant but mentally ill and easily pliable,
Bush seems similar without the brilliance. It does not seem so
coincidental that many of Strauss's neo-platonic critiques of
liberalism seem like passages from Vidal's masterpiece Julian.
In reality, character is important. I
am not a Deaniac, and I think that he has a sense of bufoonery
to him, but his "angry outsider" character is almost
as brilliant as his "Dr. Dean" persona in Vermont.
Clinton became president in 1992 not for reasons of "character"
or because of a righteous progressive onslaught, though the latter
was part of the reasoning. He won like most liberals, by outhawking
Bush Sr. on Palestine, like JFK outhawked Nixon on Cuba. Dean,
on the other hand, does not pretend to be anything he's not,
he pretends to be what he is, but magnified, like RFK or Khrushchev,
cozying up to Cesar Chavez/Artists/Greens while freely admitting
that while he would like to, that there is no way that he will
in any way shape or form be a progressive, telling a left wing
writer that "the fact that I am the most progressive guy
in the race is pathetic."
The good thing about Dean using this
"character" is that unlike how Reagan (and Noonan,
Buchanan and other speechwriters) were able to use this character
to tell ignoble lies, albeit also enabling him to get away with
referring to Gorbachev as someone "returning to Leninism,"
Dean has a base that will hold him to his public persona, both
in its--to again use Straussian terms--"exoteric" and
"esoteric" manifestations. While Dick Gephardt and
arguably even Wesley Clark are more "progressive" in
their economic persona, they don't have the umph or the genuine-seeming
aversion to war that Dean seems to have, one is a Neocon Dream
and the other is an unstable War Criminal. Dean can come in and
promise to e a centrist and budget ballancer which will enable
him, like Reagan leaving Lebanon, to change these policies, under
the right circumstances, without a peep from his base, which
realistically would benefit from Keynesianism more than budget
balancing.
Finally, there is the ultimate "booga
booga," the "noble lie." Anyone who denies that
politics sometimes involves noble lies is an ignoble liar. Bush's
psychedelic contradictions of propaganda were not true noble
lies, they were shoddy and ugly propaganda cooked up by the only
writers willing to work on White House salaries, unstable neocons
like Frum and Christian Evangelicals. Paul Wolfowitz is not a
problem because he is a "Straussian," like Albert Wohlseltier.
Wohlsetier, Wolfowitz and Bill Bennett are problems because they
are the very antithesis of noble liars, their lies so thin that
Bush himself probably wishes he would have just told America
that he wants to break Opec. On the other hand, a truly noble
lie is a lie told in order to maintain something that can honestly
be described as noble, like a Palestinian State, Re-regulation
of corporations and other controversial issues.
Jordy Cummings lives
in Canada and can be reached at: yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca
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
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