Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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
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Corrie
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I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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|
Weekend Edition
February 26 / 27, 2005
The Children's Revolt
Reflections
on the Eve of Fatherhood
By
JIM B.
I.
What we are fighting for is
not radical.
This is one of the first lessons
my son, due to be born any day now, has taught me.
I never would have imagined
it was possible to feel this much love, this intensity of care
and adoration, for someone you haven't even met yet. It's crazy.
There is nothing else in the world I desire even-remotely-close-to-as-much
as I desire his safety, health and happiness -- that he have
a good life.
These sentiments are, I'm sure,
to anyone who is already a parent, familiar, universal, even
trite. "Yep, that's how we all feel."
And that right there is the
lesson my unborn son, grown big in the belly of my strong and
radiant wife, has been teaching me over the course of these final
weeks of pregnancy and preparation: what I want for my son is,
more or less, what all parents want for their kids. I can't find
anything radical in the belief that they all should have it.
There's nothing radical, for example, in the desire for none
of my son's brothers and sisters, all the many other children
born into the world this year, to die of hunger. The desire is
nothing more or better than decent. Its principle virtue would
have to be called sanity, not radicalism.
I want my boy to have a reasonable
degree (that's all we can legitimately expect in a world that's
got uncertainty and some degree of suffering built into it, I
believe) of safety, health and happiness. That's the good life
I want for him. It has some fundamental components: roof, food,
parents who love him, healthcare, education, a society that gives
him respect. That's mostly it. Art, hopefully, too.
And those of us who call meeting
those needs the most important thing, who seek to build societies
founded upon that basic decency and dignity -- socialists, along
with folks in various other groupings on the left -- somehow
have become labeled as extremists, wackos, fools, haters.
II
These are shitty times. I hear
the question in some of my friends' silences, though they don't
ask it directly: is it really such a good idea to bring a child
into this world?
It is, obviously, a serious
question.
I'm young, one of the first
of my peers to have kids, so the choice to do so is itself seen
by some as a bit extremist. It raises big questions. How am I
going to keep fighting, working, putting in my share of the struggle
-- I ask myself this too -- when I'm fixated on my kids (we're
hoping to have more than one), when my life begins to revolve
around them?
This child could have been
born on the day of Bush's inauguration into a second term or
on the day of his State of the Union address. (He wasn't, praise
God.) He'll be four years old -- that sounds impossibly big --
when Bush leaves the White House. As you well know, we're headed
down an ugly road -- bold and unchecked projection of U.S. military
power, the dismantling of the last surviving institutions of
our New Deal, no end to embedded white supremacy in sight, repression
of dissent (just wait till the aftermath of the next attack on
U.S. soil), global impoverishment on a completely inconceivable
scale -- and the repercussions of all that these bastards are
doing are likely to be reverberating back on all of our lives
for decades to come. Is it right to bring a child into such a
world?
Hell yes.
(You'll pardon the occasional
resort to profanity, I hope; these things kind of cut to the
core.) The last goddamn thing we should ever let them take from
us is the joy of life.
That would be the ultimate
defeat, the last battlefield ceded to the forces of destruction,
profit, empire. I've had the honor of getting to know a lot of
folks whose organizing work puts their lives and those of their
children in peril -- a condolence card and flowers for your ten
year old's death arriving in the mail one day, for example, to
get you to shut the fuck up, stop agitating, stop educating.
A stack of photographs left on your door, showing your six year
old daughter as she left school each day for the last year. It
took me a while to understand the logic driving many of these
folks' decisions to stand their ground in the face of such threats,
to assume that awesome risk. To give up the joy of raising a
family would be to concede a very final defeat.
Precisely and completely, what
we are fighting for is life. Joyful and dignified life, for everybody.
What could be more natural, more sane and human? I repeat: there's
nothing radical about it.
The radicalism is in the wingnut
alternative model being imposed, maintained, expanded a sangre
y fuego (with blood and fire) in our world today. A powerful,
radical faction of humanity is having its fucking day right now.
Capital rules -- and these folks are along for the ride, clearing
paths for it, taking their generous percentages, having a grand
old time. They're cutting down every last protection and impediment
to capital's free reign (and their own immense, even monstrous
enrichment). They're enshrining the global "race to the
bottom" in structures and law. Breaking unions -- mocking
the whole idea of unions. Locking up an entire generation of
our nation's young black men. Extracting oil and other resources
from every corner of the world at the cost of countless human
lives. You know the list. The best metaphor for it all, in the
end, is one of Marx's own: like vampires feeding on human life.
(And likewise feeding on our planet's life, its delicate and
resplendent wealth -- they hadn't realized this part yet back
in the 1860s).
This radical faction of "Economic
Freedom" crusaders has been kicking our collective asses
lately, to tell the truth. It's pretty sad and embarrassing how
well they've borrowed models from the organized left and used
them to advance such a sweeping, ambitious project of capital
and empire with so little successful organized resistance. (They've
been winning, in my view, ever since we lost a unified vision
of what we're fighting for, thanks both to their successes and
some huge errors and wrong ideas on our side. What we desperately
need, as a mentor told me when I was first getting woken up,
is to discover and rally around "the daughter of socialism":
our new positive vision for societies where everyone's life is
valued, everyone's basic needs met; a world with dignity). These
folks who have been relentlessly advancing and advancing, seizing
every inch of the field, represent forces of extremism. If our
kids' minds were able to comprehend how much malevolence and
injustice actually exist in the world (which of course, praise
God, they can't quite do, believing still to some degree in the
world as a sensible place (or, for my still-in-the-womb boy,
experiencing still a world where all needs are met, where a self
has not even formed...)) -- if we told them and they understood
what's being done to them and to the planet they're to inherit
-- there would be a massive children's revolt. They'd find a
way to do all us 'adults' in.
Meanwhile, this extremist faction
on the right has got a whole lot of people confused and subdued,
particularly here in the U.S.A. People drugged up, dreaming,
asleep. Fattened on tiny slices of the profits reaped by the
few. Convinced, even, by an impressively orchestrated ideological
onslaught over many years, that freedom is somehow deeply related
to the elimination of government and the omnipotence of markets.
A staggering percentage of college-educated people, liberals
along with the conservatives, has bought in completely to the
paper-thin, cockamamie propaganda line that the pursuit of "enlightened
self-interest" by the privileged few somehow benefits everybody!
This claptrap runs so contrary to human experience and common
sense that its widespread acceptance -- its true hegemonic status,
even -- provides maybe the clearest single indicator of how colossally
successful the U.S. right has been over the last three decades.
(Just 25 years ago, someone as far from the left end of the political
spectrum as George H.W. Bush was proclaiming such economic theories
"voodoo" on the national stage. Today you'd be hard
pressed to get a self-described progressive Democrat on the record
with a statement half that strong.)
III
Fortunately, globally things
are moving in the opposite direction. The moms and dads of my
boy's brothers and sisters, of everyone born in this year of
2005, are, across all their differences, practically unanimous
and increasingly mobilized and vocal on a few things:
1) the United States of America
is an empire;
2) the U.S. war in Iraq is
the most flagrantly immoral, obscene use of imperial military
power to secure wealth in anyone's memory;
3) the empire is threatening
to wipe us all out, not just with its "War on Terrorism"
but with its economic policies forced on the rest of the world
at the barrel of its guns; and
4) this all must be resisted.
"One day you're gonna
rise from your habitual feast / And find yourself staring down
the throat of a beast / They call the revolution." (That's
Bruce Cockburn, singing a number of years ago about the IMF.)
The children's revolt -- fought through their surrogates and
protectors, their parents -- may not be so far off.
While this anti-imperialist
trend bodes well for the world -- as long as people keep the
reins of the change, don't end up ceding them to another aspiring
empire -- it makes me scared out of my mind for my little 'Merican
boy. This country is likely to be attacked repeatedly over the
years and decades to come.
And after this last election,
it's hard to fault folks in other countries for missing some
of the subtleties of U.S. demographics and thinking we're all
responsible, complicit -- whether they think we're actively reactionary
or just drugged or dumb doesn't matter much.
In response to attacks, it's
very likely the PATRIOT ACT model will expand, the room blasted
open in our legal system for basically saying "fuck you"
to habeus corpus will grow, there will be more indefinite detentions,
all the rest of it: our society will become increasingly 'Israelized.'
And our elected leaders' strategy for preventing the ever increasing
attacks? You know it: "More bombings, more war." No
variation, just expansion of this "National Security Strategy"
as the violence rises. In times of increasing fear, it'll be
pronounced with a macho swagger, of course -- what candidate
Kerry tried to channel with the "We will track them down
and we will kill them" line. (It all makes me fantasize
about a new Constitutional amendment -- for the next 229 years,
say, in restitution: Only females shall hold the office of
President of these United States....)
I don't know, honestly, what
to do with the fear of all the attacks to come, the mutual reinforcement
and escalation between the "War on Terrorism" and the
acts of violence it supposedly opposes. It all gives me shivers,
thinking about what it might mean for my son. But I do know one
thing: the only way we're going to have a prayer of heading off
such a situation is by building up armies of conscious, committed,
sensitive, strong folks here that can challenge and contain the
empire from within -- and then start taking ground back politically,
and then actually take power. We need a whole lot of folks, and
in the uncertain, alchemical business of consciousness-raising
and organizing and movement-building, what better chance do you
get to bring someone into a committed revolutionary mindset --
into seeing the world's injustices with clear eyes and caring
enough about people and about their own integrity that they have
to do something, do everything they can, to make things better
-- than by raising them, loving and nurturing them from (well
before, even) the day they are born?
The last thing we need is to
deprive ourselves of the sorts of kids conscious, caring people
raise. The last thing we need is to let the bastards on the right
-- and all their Kool Aid-drinking foot soldiers -- outbreed
us too.
IV
So I'm praying today, as I
wait for this miraculous boy to be born. Praying for him, and
for every other baby born the day he is -- in Bangalore, Bogotá,
Nairobi, Chungking, Riyadh, St. Louis, Soweto, and thousands
of other places: hundreds of thousands of immaculate, cherished,
vulnerable, beautiful little initiates into our world -- to have
good food and housing, education, care for their health, love,
and a society that gives them respect.
My prayer is not for children's
rights. That concept introduces an extra layer, separation, an
intermediary between all these children and the actual conditions
of their living, their dignity. I don't want everyone to have
the right to decent housing, good food, healthcare, and all the
rest. (In fact they already have these rights, thanks to many
good struggles of years ago which produced and provided some
elements of solidity and decency in the U.N. Unfortunately, the
few who are fucking the vast majority of our species (not to
mention planet) over have no interest in actually fulfilling
these rights, and have long since figured out that granting their
existence on paper does not actually represent much threat that
they will be fulfilled.) Instead, I want everyone -- just like
my boy, including my boy -- to have these things. And
I'm not willing to compromise on that need, nor on its urgency.
It can be done and so it should be done. There can be no moral
excuse for failing to do it. It is, simply, what the vast majority
of us, nearly every person on the planet, wants. The only people
who don't, that little faction on the right, is made up just
about exclusively of people who have never in their lives experienced
or even come close to (tasted fear of) experiencing the lack
of all these basic conditions for dignified life.
V
It's early morning now and
my wife has started labor!
VI
And now I'm a dad. There's
no time to digress here, as I'd like to, into a reflection on
the wonder of what women's bodies do, the reverence I feel after
witnessing a long, painful labor and birth. That'll have to find
its way into writing some place else. There's no time to give
voice to all the joys, challenges and amazement of getting to
know our boy.
Our son is a miracle, an angel,
a unique and beautiful soul -- as all babies are to their parents.
The depth of love I feel for him, of the desire to protect and
nourish him and raise him well, are indescribable. Primal. Tackling
political reflection of any kind seems sort of impossible now,
just a few days after his birth -- all my energy is devoted to
figuring out the basics of his care, coping with sleeplessness,
reveling in the many delights of time spent with him, marveling
at all the transformations in my sense of self and purpose. But
one thing is clear.
It had my wife and me weeping
in each other's arms, our little angel swaddled snug between
us, just a few hours after his birth: all the reasons we've ever
had to fight injustice and try to help build a sane world --
to be socialists -- seem almost feeble or inconsequential by
comparison.
We want our son to become an
adult in a world that we're not horrified by, that we're not
ashamed to hand over to him.
We want him to feel pride not
shame at the history of his people -- and, as white folks from
the United States, that's going to take a tremendous amount of
work.
We want him to feel united
with all the other precious, beautiful children born this year;
and to struggle for their well-being and dignity as though his
own integrity depended on it -- because it does.
There could be no greater reason
to join and rejoin the struggle, to fight the capitalist radicals
with every bone and breath, than the simple, universal, and utterly
miraculous gift of the responsibility to raise a child well in
this world.
Jim B. is an agitator and educator living in Brooklyn.
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