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CounterPunch
September
5, 2002
Beaux Reves, Citoyens!!!
by Gavin Keeney
"We
cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the
whole book in the fire."
--
George Sand
Dinosaurs Among
Us
As Uri Avnery ably points out
in the Labor Day 2002 edition of CounterPunch, "the dinosaurs have
returned".
This is not so much a matter of politics as culture. The risk
to culture of the small-minded and myopic is profound.
In Europe there is a lively debate about culture primarily because
of the expansion of the European Union. This debate takes on
urgency as nation-states undergo the internal dissension between
wanting to open borders and the anxieties of losing one's unique
cultural identity. As a result, the bureaucrats have to fudge
and fiddle with the strictures of integration, not the least
of which includes allowing certain powerful nation-states to
"opt out" of key agreements. The overall package of
EU transnational identity has, since its last metamorphosis into
a trading block, generally been watered down and tweaked to accommodate
both political and cultural queasiness here and there.
In the U.S. there is no such argument. The transnational powers
have complete control. These powers are so well institutionalized
that any debate whatsoever is automatically reduced to a question
of "personal hygiene": Do I buy that product? Do I
hold my nose and vote for that candidate whose rhetoric is calculated
to the one-thousandth degree of demographic polling? Do I refuse
to read that increasingly nasty newspaper or watch television
at all?
There are endless, lovely axioms of the kind that make one smile
-- e.g.,  "Swords
into Ploughshares", "Bread not Circuses", or "Knowledge
is Power". Is there one that has not been reversed in these
bizarre times? "Ploughshares into Swords", "Circuses
not Bread", "Power is Knowledge"? Of the first,
"Swords into Ploughshares", here, in New York, one
may drop by the United Nations compound to see Evgeny Buchetich's
monumental (Social-Realist) statue of this heroic act frozen
in time (in bronze). Quite odd, really, since the U.N. has
been reduced to cleaning up and administering the devastated
lands and people caught in-between "emerging markets"
and the neo-imperial colossi of the First World.
The Super-Greased
Corridors of Power
The obvious condition of debility across the board is
1000 times worse than the 1980s when there was actually an opportunity
to expect something to be done through representative government
to forestall and/or investigate the shenanigans of the
hooligans in the ante-rooms of the White House. No such "avenue"
now offers itself -- Pennsylvania Avenue is now a DMZ. Congress
has become the "loyal opposition" (or a willing accomplice)
and the judiciary is operating in mostly secret or unidentified
locations. The motto of the 1980s, "Greed is Good",
has transmogrified in the new millennium into "Greed is
US".
It would seem that Americans disparaged by this scenario might
decamp to Sweden or Canada, "loving it or leaving it"
being the default action for all dissidents today. If only truly
open borders did exist ... Alas, there is no leaving home. We
are required (and coerced) into inhabiting the fortified cage
set up for us by the usurping armies of Mammon and Reaction.
Our pulse and brainwaves will soon be metered, our every movement
(of body and spirit) monitored. If sleep and sex could be commodified
an Enron-type sleep-and-sex trading scheme would emerge.
The current battle for everything requires that American
citizens think, read, breathe, and observe deeply what
is going on. The newspapers and television will not suffice.
The Internet is full of misinformation and self-serving sniping
and harangues. Just visit Drudge, or Salon ...
It is more important than ever that Americans dream, and,
in dreaming, wake up to demand a new and better world.
The first realization will be that power has been handed to the
most corrupt cabal of self-interested interests in the history
of history. This power includes the power to deny the most
basic freedoms in an instant by manufacturing crises.
This power is blind and knows no bounds. Its daytime smirk is
matched only by its nighttime revels -- deep inside the darkest
sectors of the reptilian core of the brain. Greed and perfidy
unchecked ... Power-mad and happy about it ... Rampant nihilism
passing as faith-based usurpation of everything that might be
exploited to extract monthly payments from an enslaved populace
...
The Dark
Heart of the American Dream
These are but a few of the "pictures" (patterns) that
might appear on an EKG attached to the monstrous brain of the
beast stalking America (and the world). This beast must be driven
back into its swamp ... Clearly, we must take up our pens (and
intellectual cudgels) and act vigorously -- now -- to
reclaim our right to dream.
Aux armes, Citoyens! Bury your senators and representatives in
e-mail, boycott the usual scurrilous suspects of corporate media,
read novels that quicken your pulse, lay in supplies of uncontaminated
works of the human spirit, go see the "new" Godard
film Eloge de l'Amour, speak your mind (and soul), vote
with your feet, and expect the miraculous.
Gavin Keeney
is the author of On
the Nature of Things (Birkhauser, 2000), a survey of
the travails of contemporary American landscape architecture,
and editor of Serious
Real - The Anti-Journal.
Related Documents/Outtakes
URI AVNERY, Return
of the Dinosaurs (CounterPunch)
JEAN-LUC GODARD, In
Praise of Obscurity (Archive-Grotto)
ALAIN GRESH, There
is Another, Better World (Le Monde Diplomatique)
FORUM SOCIAL MONDIAL, Appel
à Initiatives (Alliance pour ...)
FEEL-GOOD NGOs, The
Unbearable Lightness of NGOs (CounterPunch)
BETE NOIRE, The
American Golem (CounterPunch)
THE ANTI-REPUBLICAN PARTY, Go
Tell Karl Rove! (CounterPunch)
LOOSE LIPS, Liberty,
Democracy, and Bush (CounterPunch)
Today's Features
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
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Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
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Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
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Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
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September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
US War Crimes During the Gulf War
Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
for the Right of
Dissent and Due Process
Ruebner /
Turaani
What
is Israel Hiding?
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
Reporters Aren't Prosecutors
Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
Pay Raise Scam
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
Conflict
of Interest?
Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
They Didn't Want to "Criticize" a Popular War
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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