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July 27, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
July 17, 2002
Philip Farruggio
The
New Role Model:
Remember Jesus, George?
Zara Gelsey
Who's
Reading Over
Your Shoulder?
Behzad Yaghmaian
9/11 and
Fotress Europe:
the Drama of the New
Moslem Diaspora
Mike Ferner
War, Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith--based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al--Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti--Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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Weekend
Edition
July 27, 2002
The New Mahler,
Seattle Style
by Ian Daoust
Three weeks ago I attended a surprisingly wretched
performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, at Benaroya Hall,
in Seattle, Washington. Conducting--to call it by that otherwise
noble word--was Seattle's own version of Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta,
and Leonard Bernstein all rolled into one, a man of such consummate
talent that his deep wisdom cannot be bound by his music, and
who must express with prefatory words what the more prosaic maestros
of the world express through mere trumpets and catgut: Seattle's
very own Gerard Schwarz.
My grievance? That before the performance,
Maestro Schwarz explained that Mahler wrote his second symphony
to commemorate the fate which befalls us all, death, and that
we too, as Americans, had now a special opportunity all our own
to ponder this mysterious phenomenon. Schwarz told us that Mahler
had written a five minute silence into the score, and that the
Seattle Symphony would, in a stunning interpretive flourish,
honor this silence. Schwarz then invited the audience to stand
during that pause, and to consider the "tragedy" of
9/11 while the orchestra waited.
After the first movement, Schwarz turned
to the audience, and like our third-grade elementary-school teachers,
gestured to us to stand while he led us in his own version of
the flag salute. His mostly white, mostly bourgeois, mostly obedient
and mostly middle-brow Seattle audience dutifully obliged. I
did not.
I secretly hoped that one of the other
parishioners might shoot me a nasty look, or in some way prod
me into creating an incident, perhaps offering me a chance to
express my hope that one of their sons might sacrifice his blood
and conscience to make some barren piece of Iraqi soil forever
America, (or at least to make Iraqi oil forever America's), but
alas, they were all polite, like me. My protest was most genteel.
I thought about many things during that
silence, while I sat. I thought about the 3,700 or so Afghan
civilian deaths that have resulted from American bombing in that
country, as reported in the European press and mostly ignored
in the U.S., and about the effects on Iraqi civilians of the
American bombing of water-treatment plants after the Gulf War
(i.e. widespread civilian disease and deaths), and of the long-ago
and long-forgotten CIA bribing of military officers in the countries
of the middle east, in an attempt to get them to turn against
their governments, which they overwhelmingly refused to do, and
thereby sealed their fate as enemies of the U.S., which resulted
in widespread...you get the idea. That's what I thought about.
I also, during that silence, wondered
but was unable to determine whether Schwarz referred to Shakespearean
tragedy, Wagnerian tragedy, or perhaps Hegelian tragedy, all
of which imply an inevitable conflict born of noble will, as
tragedy (in the proper sense of the word) arises less from choice
than from necessity, a confrontation born of principles intrinsic
to our humanity, and which form the stuff of life. I wondered
exactly what Schwarz intended by this stunt, and I speculated
that his complete ignorance of what tragedy means might provide
one explanation. (I can theorize only: Schwarz has refused to
answer my query, as has Larry Tucker, SSO's director of what
they call "Artistic Planning"). But my first theory
was unsatisfactory. Too simple, too dismissive.
I therefore suggest the following: that
Schwarz's jingoistic mischief that afternoon represents the scope
of his interpretative genius. More precisely: that Schwarz's
inability to place into his conducting any semblance of learning,
knowledge, vision, imagination or taste, that his conspicuous
failure to evoke through music any hint of word-transcending
humanity, any distinct stamp of his own, resulted in a desperate
attempt to sentimentalize his audience, that we might in the
depths of our patriotism overlook his own aesthetic mediocrity.
Schwarz appropriated Mahler's humanitarian symphony to the causes
of the most shallow variety, and thereby helped to strengthen
that irrational American self-righteousness that may yet rip
this country, along with a few others, to pieces. That is the
extent of Schwarz's artistry.
Perhaps for his next trick, Schwarz will
encourage us to think about neck injuries and quadriplegia among
American soldiers returning from a land invasion of Iraq, before
conducting Ravel's "The Gallows." But I doubt it. He
hasn't the knack.
Ian Daoust
can be reached at: iandaoust@yahoo.com
Today's Features
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
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