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Today's
Stories
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
September 30,
2004
Ralph Nader
10
Ways to Beat Bush: a Gift to the Kerry/Edwards Campaign
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnap Capital of the World: Iraq's One Growth Industry
Gideon Levy
When You Have Breast Cancer in Gaza
Joshua Frank
Presidential Debates? Pass the Remote
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
I Dreamed They Had a Debate
Ali Khan
Dershowitz's
Jihad: Inventing Exceptions to International Law
Steve Perry
An Interview with Sibel Edmonds
September 29,
2004
Behrooz Ghamari
Playing
Politics with Nukes: A Collision Course with Iran?
Ray McGovern
More
Troops to Iraq...After the Election
Walter Brasch
Tinseltown
Traitors?: Applauding Only the Right Entertainers
Chris Floyd
The
Deceivers: Chronicle of a Quagmire Foretold
Stacey Reynolds
The Story of a Mercury-Poisoned American
M. Junaid Alam
Disrupting America's Fateful Non-Debate on the Roots of Terrorism
John L. Hess
They've Already Called It
Paul Craig
Roberts
Delusion
Rules: War, Outsourcing an Debt
September 28, 2004
Mike Whitney
Kerry's
Moral Compass
Fred Gardner
Pot
Shots: the Civics Teacher
Dan Meek
How Democrats Kicked Nader Off the Oregon Ballot
Greg Bates
Choking on Progressives for Kerry
Alan Farago
Jeanne in Haiti: Where is the World?
Lori Berenson
The Cajamarca Protest
Wayne Madsen
Where
is the Florida National Guard?
Robert Fisk
Why Have We Suddenly Forgotten Abu Ghraib?
September 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Expulsion of Cat Stevens
Patrick Cockburn
As British Muslims Plead for Bigley's Life, US Airstrikes Pound
Fallujah
Sam Husseini
The Problem with Public Opinion Polls
Lee Sustar
Putting Bosses First: Latter Day Democrats and Labor
Dave Lindorff
A Progressive Case for (Gag) Kerry?
Norman Madarasz
Talking International: Contra Kerry
Kevin Pina
The Tragedy of Gonaives, Haiti
September 25
/ 26, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
C'mon
Ralph, You've Got Nothing to Lose
Dave Zirin
The Courage of the NBA's Etan Thomas:
"I Am Totally Against This War"
Saul Landau
The Reality of Empire and Campaign Rhetoric
Dave Lindorff
Our Heroic Baby-Killers
Brian J. Foley
Bush at the UN: the Sound of No Hands Clapping
William Blum
Progressives and the Election
Alan Maass
Why is Kerry Running Such a Lame Campaign? You Can't Blame It
All on Bob Shrum
Lucson Pierre-Charles
Haiti: Another Lost Story
Solange Echeverria
An Interview with Kevin Pina on the Floods in Haiti
Nicole Colson
What About the Supreme Court?
Justin Smith
The New Sparta
Joshua Frank
Iraq: From Clinton to Bush
Karyn Strickler
Momma, Don't Let Your Babides Grow Up to be Cannon Fodder
Michael Donnelly
Rather Disingenuous: "Remember in November"
Greg Bates
The Politics of Nader's Republican Support
Todd Chretien
Lesser Evilism: We Are Living in the Logical Conclusion
William Loren
Katz
Dire Warnings from the Past: From Wilson to Bush
Omar Barghouti
Americans, You've Lost Your Alibi!
Poets' Basement
Holt, Clarke, Albert, Laymon and Ford
Website of the Weekend
Carnival of Chaos
September 24,
2004
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Value of One Life: Keeping Up Appearances and Leaving Hostages
to the Wolves
William S.
Lind
Destroying
the National Guard
Mike Whitney
The Bush Tent Show
Nancy Welch
What's
at Stake for Women in 2004?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Logical Limbo
Joshua Frank
Fear Mongering 101
Victor Kattan
An Interview with Afif Safieh
Ben Terrall
Kerry and Haiti: Will He Stand Up?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
"Finally
It Broke My Heart": Random Impressions from Palestine
September 23,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Are They Still Holding "Mrs. Anthrax?"
Christopher Brauchli
Ashcroft's "Distressing Lack of Care": Hamdi and the
Phony War on Terrorism
Derek Seidman
Fighting for a Union at Starbucks: an Interview with Daniel Gross
Michael Neumann
Three
Years and Counting? How Time Flies
September 22,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Zarqawi's
War: the Mysterious Sadist from Jordan
Neve Gordon
The
Wall, the Court and Sharon
Joshua Frank
History Repeating: New York, 1832 and Now
Ron Jacobs
Stormy Seas on the Citizen Ship
Jack Random
Defending Dan? Rather Not
Tarif Abboushi
Kerry's Final Straw: Confessions of a Despairing Voter
Mickey Z
Stupid White Guy Quiz
John L. Hess
Faking the Difference: a Serious Debate?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: The House Rules
September 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
"We
Are Not Secure": Kerry's "Unwavering Commitment"
to Securing a Middle East Realm
Robert Jensen
Large
Dams in India: Temples or Burial Grounds?
Elaine Cassel
Fourth Circuit to Moussouai: Ask Your Questions; Prepare to Die
Stanley Heller
Reagan and the Killing Fields of Lebanon
Adam Federman
America Will Disappoint the World, Again
David Whitehouse
What's Behind the Horror in Darfur?
M. Junaid Alam
How to Avoid Becoming an Anti-American
Paul Craig
Roberts
Attention
Deficit America
Website of the Day
True American War Heroes: the Iraq Refuseniks
September 20,
2004
Cockburn /
Buncombe
Get
Fallujah
David Price
Relying
on Phonies: What If The Problem with Phone Polls is That They
Are Phone Polls
Dave Lindorff
How
Dems Fight: Tigers Against Nader, Pussycats Against Bush
Harry Browne
Pre-Nup at Leeds: Talked Out, But Does IRA Give Up?
Mark Wesibrot
Bush's
Ownership Society: No Taxes for Owners, Only Workers
Karyn Strickler
The Keys to the White House v. the Shrum Curse?
Uri Avnery
The Temple Mount Bombers
September 18
/ 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
Septemeber
17, 2004
Ray McGovern
Gossing
Over the Record
Patrick Cockburn
The New Iraqi Economy: Baghdad's Thriving Kidnapping Industry
Lee Sustar
The State of Working America: an Autopsy of the American Dream
Mike Whitney
John Kerry: 195 Lbs. of Political Helium, Not an Ounce of Sincerity
Victor Kattan
Black September
Ray Hanania
Israel's Demographics
Greg Bates
Nader's Victories: a Mid-Campaign Assessment
Website of
the Day
The Road to Hell
September 16,
2004
Landau / Hassen
Meet
the New Villain: Syria
Joanne Mariner
Inside
Darfur: a Photo Essay
Patrick Cockburn
US
Offers Conflicting Accounts of Baghdad Bloodbath
Greg Moses
Four Million Children Might Be News
Joshua Frank
Nader in the Battleground States
Christopher Brauchli
The Bush Drug Lottery Flops
David Himmelstein
Folke Bernadotte: a Rosh Hashonah Remembrance
Website of the Day
The Abu Ghraib Index
September 15,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Hell
on Haifa Street
Ron Jacobs
Oppose War, Not Just Bush
David Lindorff
Blanking Out Dissent
Joanne Mariner
Talking About Darfur: Is Genocide Just a Word?
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
An Open Letter to Madonna: Please Don't Support Israeli Apartheid
Dave Zirin
Is the NFL Ready for Us?
Yigal Bronner
"They
Are Building Walls Around Us"
September 14,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Problem of Chechnya
Jennifer van
Bergen
What's
Wrong with Torture?
Stan Goff
Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot
Patrick Cockburn
The
Punishment of Fallujah: US Precision Strickes...on Ambulances
Anis Memon
Nader
in Michigan
Michael Donnelly
The Nuance Comes Off: Former Naderites Beg for Kerry Votes
Werther
Zell Miller: the Peckerwood Pericles
Website of
the Day
Osama Bin Forgotten?
September 13,
2004
Gabriel Kolko
Elections,
Alliances and the American Empire
Phillip Cryan
How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's
War
Patrick Cockburn
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm
Dying! I'm Dying"
Noah Leavitt
The War on Civil Liberties
Robert Jensen
Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
Mike Whitney
Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy
John Chuckman
Stop Talking About the "Election"
Mike Burke
Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine
Issues
CounterPunch
Wire
The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes
I Get"
Website of the Day
Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
Fred Gardner
Yet Another Prozac Scandal
Saul Landau
When Our Assassins Go Free
Jennifer Van Bergen
How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American
Roger Burbach
/ Jim Tarbell
The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire
Christopher Reed
9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to
Worldwide War Casualties
Francisc Catalin
An ABC of American Interventions
Carl Estabrook
Big Science and Government Terror
Bernard Chazelle
Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study
Sharon Smith
Third Party Blues
Dave Lindorff
Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority
Mike Whitney
Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan?
Frederick B.
Hudson
Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith
Mickey Z.
Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11
Ron Jacobs
Redneck Music for the New Century
Greg Moses
Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
Benjamin Dangl
/ Andrew Kennis
An Interview with Leslie Cagan
Poets Basement
Del Papa, Albert, Gelman
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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,
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Weekend Edition
October 9 / 10, 2004
Of Pynchon,
Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
Weapons
of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq
By
WALTER A. DAVIS
I. Laugh
In Brings You the News:
Jake Gittes: "Why do
you need it? You've got enough money."
Noah Cross: "The future, Mr. Gittes. The future."
Chinatown
The US CODE, TITLE 50,CHAPTER
40 Sec. 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows:
"The term 'weapon of mass destruction" means any weapon
or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death
or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through
the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous
chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C)
radiation or radioactivity."
Depleted uranium (DU) is a
waste product of the uranium enrichment process that fuels both
our nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power programs. In fact,
over 99% of the uranium enrichment process results in this waste
product, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years. DU is both
a toxic heavy metal and a radiological poison. The U.S. currently
has over 10 million tons of DU. As we all know, the disposal
of nuclear waste is one of the unintended consequences or blowback
of the development of nuclear power. A solution to the problem
of DU has, however, been found. DU is now used in virtually every
weapon employed by the U.S. in Iraq (and in Afghanistan and in
Kosovo). To cite the most conspicuous example: every penetrator
rod in the shell shot from an Abrams tank contains 10 pounds
of DU. DU is selected for weapons for three reasons: it's cheap
(was made available to arms manufacturers free of charge and
is easy to develop); it's heavy, 1.7 times the density of lead
and thus most effective at killing because it penetrates anything
it hits; it's pyrophoric, igniting and burning on contact with
air and breaking up on contact with its target into extremely
small particles of radioactive dust dispersed into the atmosphere.
The result: permanent contamination of air, water, and soil.
[1]
DU was first used by the U.S.
in Desert Storm. The amount used was between 315-350 tons. Five
times as much was used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Over
a third of the U.S. soldiers who served in the first Gulf War
are now permanently disabled. VA reports indicate 27,571 U.S.
soldiers already disabled from the current war and occupation..
The Department of Energy and the Department of Defense of course
continue to deny that DU has any harmful effects. A U.N. sub-commission
on Human Rights has ruled that DU, which fits the definition
of a "dirty bomb," is an illegal weapon. [2]
Huge chunks of radioactive
debris full of DU now litter the cities and countryside of Iraq.
Fine radioactive dust permeates the entire country. The problem
of clean-up is insoluble. The entire ecosystem of Iraq is permanently
contaminated. The Iraq people are the new hibakusha. Their
fate, like that of the "survivors" of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, is a condition of death-in-life. The long term health
effects of DU on the Iraqui people (and on our own troops) are
incalculable. There is no mask or protective clothing that can
be devised to prevent radioactive dust from entering the lungs
or penetrating the skin. Moreover, DU targets the DNA and the
Master Code (histone), altering the genetic future of exposed
populations. Because it is the perfect weapon for delivering
nanoparticles of poison, radiation, and nano-pollution directly
into living cells, DU is the perfect weapon for extinguishing
entire populations. The Iraqi's are not alone. Vast regions of
the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans have been permanently
contaminated with radioactive dust and debris [3]
These facts are worth bearing
in mind the next time we are told what has now become a bipartisan
article of faith: the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam
Hussein gone. Or as Bill Maher put it on his show of Sept. 24th
"Eventually they're better off."
A footnote to the above, the
shape of things to come. Recently a takeover was engineered transferring
the no bid University of California management contract (of 61
years duration) for the US nuclear weapons program at the nuclear
weapons labs at Berkeley, Livermore, and Los Alamos to the University
of Texas where the Carlyle Group ( an investment conglomerate
that specializes in Defense Developments and whose members include
George H.W. and George W. Bush, James Baker, the bin laden family
and John Major) will assume control over it. A ramping up of
the nuclear weapons program is now underway with funding at the
highest level ever-even higher than during the Cold War. These
developments are the first yield of the top secret meeting of
150 top U.S. officials and military contractors (chaired reportedly
by Dick Cheney) held at the U.S. Strategic Command Center in
Nebraska on Aug. 6th 2003 as an official commemoration of the
58th Anniversary of Hiroshima and to plan the weaponry of the
nuclear future. [4]
We need a new term to describe
our actions in Iraq. Genocide is inadequate. Thus: Ecocide
[from Gr oikos, house; and cide, the
destruction of] Ecology has two referents. It refers to the branch
of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms
and their environment; and the branch of sociology that deals
with relations among human groups with reference to material
resources and the consequent social and cultural patterns. The
destruction of both is the goal of Ecocide. Ecocide is the
deliberate production of a condition of permanent radiological,
biological, and chemical contamination whereby death comes to
inhabit an entire ecosystem. A condition of ecocide exists
when life itself and all possibilities of its renewal are being
systematically destroyed in an identifiable geographical area,
which is also defined in terms of specifiable racial and religious
characteristics. As is now known, the cumulative result of such
actions may bring about this condition for the entire planet.
The condition of homo sacer as described by Giorgio Agamben.
[5] The European Council on Radiation Risk, for example,
calculated the damage to human health of low level radiation
thusfar released into the atmosphere from nuclear weapons testing
to be 61,600,000 deaths by cancer alone. Moreover, in our wars
since 1991 the U.S. has now released in terms of global atmospheric
pollution the equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki Bombs. [6]
II.
Appointment in Samarra
"-the little lower layer.
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in
each event-in the living act, the undoubted deed-there, some
unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of
its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike,
strike through the mask."
Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick
Does the situation described
above offer us an intimation of what Sigmund Freud had in mind
when he spoke of a pure culture of thanatos, the death drive?
It's always a good idea when
seeking an explanation of the human motives behind actions to
stick with the empirical. With stated intentions and official
rationales. Otherwise we give ourselves over to psychobabble.
Despite official denial by the Department of Defense that DU
is harmful, a series of explanations have been put in
place to account for the development and use of DU weapons. DU
is cost effective, militarily efficient, and turns to productive
use a waste product we'd otherwise have to dispose of at great
cost. With motives and intentions thus circumscribed the decision
to use DU in weaponry need not raise the spectre of anything
dark in the psyche. It's all a matter of pragmatic efficiency
with a little capitalist profit motive thrown in for good measure.
There's only one thing wrong with this explanation. It leaves
out the basis for the calculus. There's every reason to use DU
and no reason not to use it if, and only if, one rationale informs
all decisions. How to maximize death, regardless of consequences
or alternatives. Introduce any countervailing motives and
the entire chain of decisions is blocked by questions of conscience.
Conscious, stated intentions then reveal themselves as functions
of something else that has been conveniently rendered unconscious.
What looks like a purely pragmatic matter involving nothing disordered
in the psyche now reveals the opposite: the fact that thanatos
so inhabits the system and everyone in it that its hegemony and
the absence of anything opposed to it "goes without saying."
It has become what Wittgenstein called a "form of life."
[7] So deeply rooted is the force of thanatos in us that
it operates automatically, habitually, and of necessity. It has
become a collective unconscious. And as such is no longer accessible
to those whose intentions conceal and reveal it. The reason for
sticking with the empirical is now clear. Alethia. There
is something insane in the empirical. It is what the historian
must uncover.
Before we ask ourselves how
this situation came to pass we need to ask another question.
For it's easy to claim we don't know about such things because
the media refuses to tell us about it. There's another reason
for our ignorance, however, and it's the one we need to learn
about. I refer to the possibility that we choose our ignorance
because otherwise we'd lose the system of guarantees on which
we depend for our identity and our understanding of history.
As Barbara Bush put it in telling Diane Sawyer why
she doesn't watch the news: "Why should we hear about body
bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and
how many this or what do you suppose. Or, I mean, it's, it's
not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something
like that?" [8] It would be easy to deride Mrs. Bush,
to congratulate oneself on not sharing her attitude. What I hope
to show , however, is that on an essential level, one that is
determinant in the last instance, we are in full agreement with
her and delude ourselves as long as we think otherwise.
III. The
Fatality of Guarantees
"The purpose of thought is to eliminate the contingent."
Hegel
Three weeks ago my mother died.
At the end of her funeral the priest left us with these words
as a final reminder of what had been said repeatedly in a variety
of ways for the past two days: "We who leave here in sorrow
know that we will one day be reunited with her in joy."
My concern here is not with the truth or falsity of this preposterous
belief, but with its psychological function as a guarantee that
offers human beings a way to deprive death of its finality. And
of the terror that prospect entails. The function of guarantees
is to enable human beings to bear events and contingencies that
would otherwise be too traumatic. There is much that we can face
apparently only when we can deny it through the working of what
we'll soon see is an entire system of guarantees. Such perhaps
is one accurate estimation of what it means to be a human being,
to remain a child of one's needs and desires disguising that
fact in the form of ideas and concepts.
The primary purpose of religion,
philosophy, and culture is to provide conceptual, psychological,
and emotional guarantees so that traumatic events become part
of a larger framework that assures the realization of our hopes
and dreams. Most people simply find life unlivable without such
supports. Through the ministry of the guarantees we overcome
or banish thoughts and feelings that we are convinced would deprive
life of meaning, plunging us into despair. Experience accordingly
becomes the movement from and to the affirmation
of the guarantees through their imposition on events. The main
line of Western philosophy can most profitably be seen as a series
of efforts to provide a ground for the guarantees. That effort
achieves one of its culminations in Hegel who defined the purpose
of philosophy as the elimination of the contingent. As father
of the philosophy of history, he offered that new discipline
a single goal: to show that the rational is real and the real
rational; that history is the story of progress, liberty, the
realization of a universal humanity. Or, to put it in vulgar
terms, democracy and civilization are on the march and will soon
sweep the entire Middle East.
In order to triumph over the contingencies of existence-- doubt
about oneself, one's place in the world, and one's final end
-- many guarantees are needed. Moreover, they must form a system
of reinforcing beliefs such that if one guarantee is threatened
other guarantees come in to fill the breach. Thereby the function
of the system as a whole is assured, the triumph of the guarantees
over the central contingencies of existence.
Within the system of guarantees
one guarantee is superordinate. The belief that human nature
is basically good. Animal rationale. We are endowed with an ahistorical
essence that cannot be lost. Evil is an aberration. Consequently
there is always reason for hope and the belief that no matter
how bad things get we'll always find a way to recover everything
that the guarantees assure.
What follows is a brief and
by no means exhaustive description of the basic system of guarantees.
One need not believe all of it for the system to hold. Guarantees
are superfluous. If they collapse at one point, their hold becomes
even stronger at another. That is one reason why the death of
God gave birth to so many secular religions. The way to read
what follows accordingly is for each reader to locate the guarantees
that have the greatest hold over them. They identify what controls
one's response to traumatic events. Or, to put it in other terms,
they identify what one must overcome in oneself in order to know
the ontological force of existence, contingency, and history.
Perhaps one only begins to know, to think, and to respond appropriately
to events once one has eradicated the entire system of guarantees.
Here then a list of some of
the central planks in that edifice.
Religious: a loving creator
with a redemptive purpose assures us of the triumph of goodness
and the rewards of eternal life.
Philosophic: rationality gives
meaning, direction, and pragmatic efficiency to the human mind
and all the purposeful activities in which we engage.
Scientific: science is the
fulfillment of reason and through its development we will harness
nature to our needs. That guarantee gives birth to another: the
technological imperative, which teaches us that all technological
developments are good. In any case, the die is cast since all
technological problems require for their solution the development
of new technologies. [9]
Historical: History is the
story of progress, of the development of those universal values
through which eventually the real becomes rational and the rational
real. Through that long march all contingencies are eventually
overcome. A Political corollary: the democratic ideal as realized
in the United States is an ultimate good; globally its benefits
should be extended to all humanity.
Economic: capitalism, which
is nothing but the economic realization of human nature, is the
global principle that will bring the greatest good to all. Therefore,
any actions required to advance it are both necessary and good.
The deepest guarantees, of course, address us on a far more personal
level.
Psychological: We have an identity,
a self, that is strong and once attained can never be lost. Trauma
is but the occasion for its recovery. We are not haunted by anything
dark or disordered in our psyche, nor do our actions derive from
such forces. The intentions we give offer a full account of our
actions, and thus the term and limit of our responsibility.
Emotional: The innermost need
of human beings is to feel good about themselves. Whatever threatens
that feeling must be exorcised. Health, normalcy, and productivity
depend on avoiding negative feelings. Hope and optimism are not
only healthy attitudes, they are requirements of our nature.
Biologically wired. We cannot remain for long in trauma. Recovery,
moreover, must restore our faith in the guarantees and our hopes
for the future. The need for hope is the capstone of the entire
system of guarantees. Yet it too apparently has a history. Today
over 10 million of our children are on prescription drugs to
prevent depression and anxiety. Informed of this fact by Bill
Maher, the French actress Julie Delphy spoke the spontaneous
wisdom of an archaic culture: "Don't they know that depression
is a good thing; that it's something you have to go through in
order to grow?" Not anymore.
The key to understanding the
power of the guarantees is to understand the fears that they
exorcise. Thanks to religion death, suffering, and evil are deprived
of their power. Through the attainment of reason all other forms
of consciousness and their objects are put in their place. Poetic
knowing is deprived both of its legitimacy and its terror. Science,
as fulfillment of reason, assures us of domination over nature.
What Heidegger termed technoscientific rationality becomes the
measure of the real. [10] Belief in historical progress
banishes the recurrent suspicion that history may be unmoored
or may be moving to the darkest of ends. The condition is thereby
set that makes it impossible for us to experience traumatic events
such as 9-11 except as occasions to take whatever actions are
needed to reaffirm our goodness and restore our guarantees. It
is in the personal order, however, that the guarantees do their
deepest work. Psychologically, belief in the self or self-identity
exorcises the most frightening contingency: that there is a void
at the center of the American psyche with panic anxiety and its
corollary, compulsive consumption, the proof of a desperate non-identity.
That spectre brings us before the greatest fear: that our psyche,
not our conscious, deliberative intentions, is the author of
our actions, an author who will readily do anything in order
to feel safe, secure, and righteous. All of our emotional needs
then stand forth under the rule of a single necessity: the need
to feel good about oneself at whatever cost and to sustain hope
by banishing anything that would trouble us. Resolution, catharsis
(i.e., the discharge of painful tensions or awareness), and renewal
emerge as the needs that bind us with an iron necessity to the
guarantees and all that they make it impossible for us to know.
It is easy to deprecate Bush and, apparently, to hold onto the
idea that he's a temporary aberration. But the problem goes deeper.
To revive a battle cry from the 60's, insofar as one is wedded
to any one of the guarantees one is part of the problem and not
of the solution. For the grandest function of the system of guarantees,
as a whole and in each one of its parts, is to blind us to history.
[11]
And so to take up again the
question stated previously, how did the situation now being created
in Iraq come about? The next three sections constitute an attempt
to answer that question by tracing a repressed history.
IV. The
Nuclear Unconscious
"he begins to expand,
an uncontainable lighthero and horror, engineer and Ariadne consumed,
molten inside the light of himself, the mad exploding of himself."
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's
Rainbow
To recapitulate a historical
fact that took over 50 years to rescue from myth: the United
States did not bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki "to end the war
and save countless lives." It did so for four reasons (and
in the knowledge that a defeated Japan was pursuing terms of
surrender through several diplomatic channels): (1)to avenge
Pearl Harbor, (2) to justify the amount of money spent developing
the Bomb, (3) to create a laboratory whereby our scientific,
medical, and military personnel could study its effects, and
(4) to impress the Russians and the world-with this opening
salvo of the Cold War. In short, Hiroshima was the first act
of global terrorism. That story couldn't be told, however, and
still encounters strenuous resistance from most Americans, because
it exposes too many of the guarantees we want to have about our
Nation and its actions in history. [12]
Those actions also gave birth
to another myth and another history. The story of the development
of "the peaceful atom." No sooner were the tidings
of the Nuclear Age broadcast to a terrified world than we heard
promises of a nuclear Utopia. Through those promises a collective
fantasy was created about the assurances that the peaceful atom
gave us about the future. Entire cities would have all
their energy needs met for the cost of a nickel. Etc. Now fifty
years later we find that we can't get rid of the stockpiles of
nuclear waste we've created. We find that nuclear technology
is the least cost effective and most environmentally destructive
source of energy ever developed. What it provides -less that
20% of our electrical energy comes at a cost of trillions
of dollars and at the expense of the safe and clean technologies
(wind, solar) that we must soon develop if there is to be
a future. What we now know is that nuclear power was a mistake
from the start and should have been aborted in its inception.
Also that the cost in lives to those living near or downwind
of our reactors now well exceeds the combined loss of life in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[13] But to know these things we'd
also have to come to know that the peaceful atom was always a
fantasy, created after the fact for motives that have nothing
to do with official proclamations.
Robert Oppenheimer made two
prescient observations. "The use of the Bomb was implicit
in its invention." "We [the scientists] did the devil's
work." His error was the belief that by calling on the guarantees
it would be possible to reverse the process we thereby set loose.
Thus the humanistic reflections that preoccupied his final years,
one of the clearest examples of the effort to reassert essentialistic
ahistorical guarantees as a way of cleansing his own and our
collective hands of history. What Oppenheimer thereby hoped to
exorcise was the spectre that there are certain actions that
are irreversible and that give history a totally new direction,
permitting no return to the way things once were. Perhaps there
are events in history that mark fundamental turning points in
which the human psyche with no essential, ahistorical nature
to protect it makes a quantum leap into a new way of being. In
doing so it embraces a logic that will propel it to move in new,
unseen, and unwanted directions.
Oppenheimer offers us a picture
of the Los Alamos scientists that exposes the official ideology
of science. He and his colleagues know what their discoveries
will lead to but dissemble that knowledge. Hiding it from their
consciousness they thereby, as Freud teaches, empower it. The
rush to the Bomb that seized them fulfilled a desire that has
little to do with value free objective inquiry. Devil's work
is of a different order and draws on something else in the psyche.
Here briefly is one way to constitute its meaning. In inventing
the Bomb the scientists of Alamogordo realized the two sublime
motives that have informed the history of science: the effort
to know the secrets of nature and to harness them to our will
so that its power will become an extension of our power to overcome
any and all limitations, moral as well as physical. [14] (The
belated effort of Leo Szilard and others to draw up a petition
banning the use of the Bomb and Oppenheimer's reminder that doing
so overstepped their role as scientists is merely the comedy
of a reaction formation, the effort to restore the a priori cleanliness
of hands that are already dirty, the nostalgic attempt to arrest
a historical process that has already broken free of them, and
of Oppenheimer too as Edward Teller would soon reveal.)
Once the Bomb was used the
consequences of devil's work announced themselves. Nuclear fear
became condition general in the United States, producing for
the first time a collective national psyche. What we did to the
other we could expect in return. Projection and denial assumed
command over both consciousness and policy. Globally. The only
way to make ourselves safe from ourselves was through the production
of more nuclear weapons. Like Macbeth we had to repeat our deed,
increasing its scope each time, as if somehow this would undo
the original error. Teller's Hydrogen bomb promises omnipotence
to a quest for power fueled by the engines of guilt and fear.
The whole world became a prisoner to the logic of Mutual Assured
Destruction. Bush's recent actions in Iraq merely ratify once
again the basic truth: the only way to prevent U.S. aggression
is to develop one's own nuclear arsenal. M.A.D. offers the only
certitude, security, and "peace of mind" that is now
possible. A psychotic peace. Devil's work thereby evolves the
condition inaugurated by the thanatos that the Bomb released
in the psyche. Death has cut itself loose from anything that
could restrain it. What began as a fantasy of unlimited power
ends in the assurance of total annihilation.
While we've resisted this knowledge
there is another knowledge fatally tied to it that we've resisted
with even greater fervor. Namely, the true story of "the
peaceful atom." As a continuation of the same thanatopic
process under the guise of a prolonged search for a felix
culpa. For expiation and redemption. To expel any lingering
(unconscious) guilt over having dropped the Bomb. How else but
by finding in the atom a new guarantee. Which would enable us
to claim that everything we did from the start stemmed from good
motives and served finally to bring about a greater good. Technoscientific
rationality as secular theodicy. The peaceful atom as Messianic
historiography. Our faith in this new faith, like our rush to
the Bomb, could not be questioned. And the two primary dogmas
of this faith gave birth to a historical process that could not
be halted since any negative results could only lead to a further
investment in the process: (1) Technoscientific rationality,
the new logos which will finally reveal the truth of everything,
always produces good results in the end. All we have to do is
develop the appropriate technology. (2) Moreover, we must do
so. Technological development is the only thing that can save
us.
All technical problems require
new technological developments for their solution. Like the rush
to the Bomb there is no way to halt or question the technological
imperative no matter how troubling the results nor how great
the ensuing technological problems they pose; i.e., how to contain
or clean up the vast amount of nuclear waste and the radiation
that now poisons the atmosphere. Having committed ourselves to
"the peaceful atom" in order to deny and repress guilt
we found ourselves wed to the development of civilian nuclear
power because it fulfilled both a psychological necessity and
what had become a technological imperative. Like the logic of
nuclear weaponry leading of necessity to M.A.D., the peaceful
atom was wedded to a logic that could not prevent the development
of the situation we now face. We've been promised the benefits
of the peaceful atom for over 50 years. Since 1945 Dr. Strangelove
has operated simultaneously on two fronts. The results are now
in. The production of what we now see as massive piles of shit
we have no place to dump or bury. (And try sometime devising
a warning sign that can be immediately deciphered 4.5 billion
years from now.) Such is the nature of "devil's work."
Every step you take to try to get out of it only leads you deeper
into it.
Hegel found in "the cunning
of reason" a way to redeem any and every historical situation:
all evils are but apparent; even the darkest events serve the
course of progress. 1945 inaugurates a different logic, calling
for an antithetical understanding. That history lets loose consequences
that cannot be controlled, consequences both for a psyche that
finds itself fatally wedded to its actions with no way to return
to the way it was, the guarantees it had, before those actions;
and in the destructive results produced by the subsequent actions
( both military and peaceful nuclear technologies) taken to make
that agent safe from its own destructiveness and the terrors
its actions have unleashed or to expiate those actions by somehow
turning the entire process to a good end. There was no way to
forsee or prevent the situation that pursuit of the peaceful
atom would create because belief in it derived from the same
grandiosity that fueled the Bomb. Its task was in fact even more
grandiose. Utopian and Messianic. Otherwise the unthinkable:
history would have to be conceived in a radically different way.
But that idea is even more terrifying than the magnitude of the
nuclear pollution that now confronts us because it reveals that
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