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October
4, 2001
Robin Blackburn
Road
to Armageddon
Noam
Chomsky
Chatting
with Chomsky
Tony
Blair
The
Dossier on bin Laden
Norman
Madarasz
Canada
Kow-Tows to US
Lorenzo Ervin
No Palestinian
Ever
Called Me Nigger
October
3, 2001
Peter Bell
Hitchens
and Coulter:
Love at Last?
Patrick
Cockburn
Waiting
Is the Hardest Part
Jeff
Chang
Clear
Channel Fires
Davey D!
John Chuckman
War
on Terror:
Crusade Without a Definition
Mahajan/Jensen
Tough
Talk Won't Solve
Problems of Terrorism
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
Carl
Estabrook:
Stop Bush's Killing
Mahajan/Jensen:
Food,
Fear and War
Patrick
Cockburn:
Ready
to Strike
Cockburn/St.
Clair:
Things
Could Be Worse
Terry
Allen:
Early
Profit-taking and 9/11
September
29, 2001
Steve Perry:
The
Pentagon's Blueprint
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 3, 2001
8-Page Special
Issue
Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on
Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
God
Nostrodamus
Jam-maker
Search
CounterPunch
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
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
Al
Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
New Stories:
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October 5,
2001
Where The Grapes of Wrath
Are Stored
By Dave Marsh
The government's choice of "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic" to close the National Prayer
Service, the first Friday after the WTC attack, shocked me. I
was more shocked when it closed the peace-mongers' mass we attended
that Sunday.
Could I have been the only
one who heard that stirring melody and sang in my heart,
John Brown's body lies a-molderin'
in the grave
But his soul goes marching on?
"Don't they know who John
Brown was?" I asked a friend. "He was a terrorist--maybe
our first terrorist.".
John Brown took rich slaveowners
as hostages, he planned a military action solely to disrupt civilian
business-as-usual practices in the slave society, many people
including his own children dying as a result. In Kansas, he committed
brazen acts of murder--he'd have said war--against slavers. Although
the Civil War didn't break out until 1861, it was Brown's 1859
attack on Harper's Ferry that presaged the kind of war it would
be. That's why the Union soldiers took as their anthem a song
whose first verse was "John Brown's body" and which
came to its point with "John Brown died that the slaves
might be free." No matter what other pretexts the historians
and politicians come up with, the soldiers knew what they were
fighting for, and they knew where it started, too.
Soldiers set those words to
a camp meeting song with the "Glory, glory hallelujah"
chorus. When Julia Ward Howe, a respectable abolitionist, heard
it at a Union Army camp in Virginia a few months after the war
officially began, the lyrics included verses like "They
will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree." The camp chaplain
suggested, according to the story currently at The
Atlantic magazine website, that Howe might write "new
verses more appropriate to the Civil War effort." In fact,
the suggestion must have been quite the opposite--come up with
something less bloody and committed to the war's most radical
agenda: overturning the slaveocracy and freedom for all black
people.
Howe's verses, published in
The Atlantic in February 1862, became the official version. So,
130 years later, the most powerful people in our nation proclaim:
He has sounded forth the trumpet
that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat.
This after having spent the
previous week condemning religious fanatics. (John Brown was
a religious fanatic who believed slavery was a sin worse than
murder.)
Singing the "Battle Hymn"
at the prayer service reflected the complete ignorance of context
typical at all levels of a society where knowing history ranks
as an oddity if not an impediment. I've since decided it was
far better to be reminded that American history contains its
own terrorists than to be subjected to "God Bless America"'s
gruesome rendition of Manifest Destiny, ramrodded into our brains
on the hour whenever we're in earshot of a radio.
The first time "God Bless
America" became a hit, around 1940, Woody Guthrie grew annoyed
at the sanctimonious jingoism and wrote an answer song "God
Blessed America for Me." Soon, though, he came up with a
better chorus and title: "This land is your land."
He wrote some great verses, too, and the best is the last:
One sunny morning in the shadow
of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering If this land was
made for you and me.
Nobody's singing that one at
prayer services, not while greed remains good, the unemployment
rate climbs back to double digits and asking questions is grounds
for suspicion.
But if, having blasphemed against
the orgiastic patriotism of my own day, I am entitled to a prayer
here, let it be that some other songwriter becomes equally inspired
and that that inspiration arrives soon. CP
Dave Marsh is the editor of Rock
and Rap Confidential.
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