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June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/12
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
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CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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June
14, 2003
Voices Carry
Metaphysics
as a Guide to Murder
By CHRIS FLOYD
We meant no offense to any Christian readers with
our recent blast at the crude fundamentalism now riding herd
on the American government and large swathes of American society
as well ("Devil's
Advocate," Counterpunch, May 31, ). We realize that
it is not the fault of Jesus Christ or even the Apostle Paul--that
seminal master of marketing who repackaged Jesus' harsh and quirky
parochial ascetism into a handy one-size-fits-all panacea for
existential ills--that fanatics like Bush and Company believe
there is only one immutable Truth about reality, which they just
happen to possess.
It is, of course, the fault of Plato,
whose poetic fantasy of a changeless Perfection behind the messiness
of physical existence infected the Western mind with the germ
of ideological intolerance. For if Perfect Truth exists, then
it can be known, and once known, it must necessarily be acknowledged
as the sole measure, explanation and arbiter of "all of
life and all of history," as Mr. Bush likes to say.
With Plato begins the slow death of the
old gods: those powerful evocations who in their conflicts and
contradictions, their lusts and doubts, their recklessness, sorrows,
tempers--and manifold imperfections--surely embodied the seething
chaos of human reality far better than the degraded Platonic
idealism adopted by the Pauline Christians. We leave aside here
Jesus' ethical teachings, which despite millennia of lip service
have never been adopted or even taken seriously by any society
throughout history--although a few of Paul's more cranky notions
about sex and obedience (especially his ever-popular injunction,
"Slaves, obey your masters!") have been enthusiastically
embraced by Western rulers since the days of the murderous Constantine
the Great down to our present age, presided over by the warmongering
Christian Coalition of Bush and Blair.
Paul's simplified Platonism was wedded
to a few particular strains of Jewish Messianism. The result,
of course, was a complete travesty of ancient Jewish thought,
which centered on the primacy of their God ("Thou shalt
have no other Gods BEFORE Me" is not exactly the same thing
as "There are no other Gods BUT Me"), and on cultivating
correct behavior within the national group itself--but never
on the universal application of their particular rites and customs.
This was a "gift" of Platonic Christianity.
Thus began the break-up of a natural
religious order that had held since prehistoric times, made up
of communities of differing moralities. Each human grouping--nation,
city-state, tribe, clan--had their different gods, different
faiths (or none at all), different ideas of correct behavior;
and this difference was accepted as a simple fact of nature.
It was an order where, for example, homosexuality would be abhorred
in Israel and celebrated in Sparta; where conflicting "gospels"
of the Olympian gods would be told in Crete and Athens (or even
within Crete and Athens); where religious war--or even the concept
that any one belief-system can and should be imposed on all humankind--was
virtually unknown. This order (which was often brutal in its
own particular ways, of course) disintegrated under the pressure
of a monomanical insistence on the universal application of a
single belief-system: that of an unchanging Perfect Truth animating
all of existence.
The Arab world preserved much of the
heritage of Classical Antiquity after it had been lost in the
West due to the twin ravages of state-sponsored Christian extremism
and barbarian invasion. Naturally, the Platonic myth was part
of that inheritance, and was incorporated into Islam from the
start. Indeed, Islam "improved" on its borrowings from
Judaism and Christianity in this regard. The basic Muslim tenet,
"There is no God but God," did away with the ambiguity
in ancient Judaism's formulations of deity, while the rigor with
which Islam prosecuted the Christian idea of the exclusivity
of a single belief-system nearly shattered the Christian West
itself.
Many writers have noted that "secular"
movements such as Marxism, National Socialism, and the harsh
"market fundamentalism" that now dominates the global
economy are all off-shoots of this principle: the universal application
of a single, unassailable truth. (Mr. Bush, for example, calls
his own rapacious brand of crony capitalism "the single
sustainable model of national success" in the world.) The
"war on terror" now engulfing the planet is not a "clash
of civilizations"; it's more of a civil war within Platonism.
Fellow believers in Perfect Truth are seeking to impose their
particular interpretation of their common faith on each other,
and the rest of us as well. And for possessors of Ultimate Truth,
there is no price too high to pay--or to impose--in the service
of their ideal.
"On the ground," of course,
the Terror War is still largely a matter of loot and ape-like
power-lust. But looters and lusters--the Bushes, Saddams and
bin Ladens of the world--are not driven solely by base impulses;
they are also motivated by their ignorant and addled understanding
of "higher" concepts. For make no mistake, they all
believe themselves to be vessels of a higher truth, strivers
after Perfection, servants of the Eternal.
So as these delusionaries shroud the
world in blood and darkness, we would do well to remember the
origin of their metaphysics. Much like Paul, Plato refashioned
the earlier teachings of a more rough-hewn, contradictory figure:
the philosopher Socrates. It was Socrates, so Plato says, who
gave us the idea of a changeless, Perfect Truth that stands outside
physical reality and transcends all other values. And where did
Socrates obtain this wisdom, which has cost so many, many millions
of lives down through the centuries?
From his daimon, as he called
it: an unconscious "inner prompting" that acted as
his guide.
He got it from a voice inside his head.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Yesterday's Features
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
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