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Today's
Stories
April
16 / 18, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the World:
Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes Reporting
in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion Story: We Rule; You
Die
April
13, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Ill, Old and Young of Fallujah Ask:
"Do We Look Like Fighters?"
Stan
Goff
The Bridge: a Rant
Dave
Lindorff
The Real Lessons of Vietnam
April 10
/ 12, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick
Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other Delicacies
Robert
Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview with Lee
Evans
Brandy
Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon
Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website
of the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9,
2004
Robert
Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L.
Hess
The
Non--Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick
Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas
Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7,
2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick
Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali
Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert
Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William
Blum
The
Anti--Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan
Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al--Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert
Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
|
Weekend
Edition
April 16 / 18, 2004
A Beautiful Mindset
The
Left Attacks from the Right
By MICKEY Z.
"Why
should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's
gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful
mind on something like that?"
-Barbara
Bush, on ABC/Good Morning America, March 18, 2003
Barbara
Bush, a woman responsible for the profound observation that "war
is not nice," may perceive her mind as beautiful...but it's more
of a state of mind she's talking about (and the concept of beauty need
not apply).
As
South African activist Steven Biko said: "The most potent weapon
of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" and this mindset
of denial pervades both Right and Left these days. How else can we explain
all the beautiful minds bestowing importance upon doublespeaking distractions
like the 9/11 Commission hearings and the infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential
Daily Briefing (PBD)?
Even
if we were to assume for a moment that Richard Clarke was telling the
truth, there is absolutely no reason why his book or testimony should
offer any solace to the Left. Blaming Bush in an election year is convenient
but hardly relevant...and to support Clarke is to support more military
and less civil rights. It is support for pre-emptive strikes and increased
power to U.S. secret police. Somehow, this hasn't stopped lefties from
exploiting the hearings to push their Anyone-But-Bush (ABB) agenda.
Writing
in The Nation, John Nichols narrows the 9/11 focus down to Condoleeza
Rice being asked about "the title of President (sic) Bush's daily
briefing document for August 6, 2001." Nichols explains: "After
several inept attempts to avoid the question, Rice finally answered,
'I believe the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the
United States.'"
Fellow
Nation writer, David Corn jumped on the same issue: "Rice's handling
of this dicey topic undermines her credibility," he wrote (as if
she ever had credibility in genuinely progressive quarters). "In
May 2002, the White House, responding to a CBS News report, acknowledged
that Bush had received this PDB and that the briefing had noted that
bin Laden was interested in hijacking aircraft. This news caused a brief
media and political frenzy. Had Bush ignored a warning that 9/11-like
attacks were coming?"
At
Alternet, where the ABB mindset has effectively forced out any opposing
viewpoints, David J. Sirota, Christy Harvey, and Judd Legum scold the
Bush White House for not endorsing "F.B.I. requests for $58 million
for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts
and 54 additional translators" and vetoing "a request to divert
$800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism."
These
beautiful minds seem to have forgotten that calling oneself a progressive
usually requires one to espouse progressive viewpoints. In their frenzy
to assail Republicans, some on the Left are actually attacking Bush
from the right. This beautiful mindset makes it possible for purported
progressives to hate Bush for going overboard after 9/11 and hate him
for not going overboard before 9/11.
Convenient,
huh?
Richard
Clarke offered nothing of relevance at the hearings and time spent analyzing
his testimony is essentially time wasted. The important questions were
never asked...the important witnesses never called. Hands were wrung
over Condi Rice but why would anyone expect her to provide any context
or historical perspective? Why is it worth the time or effort to dissect
her comments when, for example, Nobel Peace Prize winner (and Democrat)
Jimmy Carter was nowhere to be found? Why not start by holding him accountable
for U.S. actions in the late 70s that helped create the very terror
networks (and blowback) Clarke feared? The Left will make hay over Bush's
handling (or mishandling) of pre-9/11 warnings and make it an "issue"
in the presidential race but who will demand answers from Zbigniew Brzezinski
who, started the $6 billion effort at Carter's behest? When asked about
this effort in 1998, Brzezinski replied: "What was more important...a
few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end
of the Cold War?" Perhaps that group of 9/11 widows would like
to ask the same question, but the Left is too busy frying Rice and burning
Bush.
"The
history of Afghanistan and the U.S. involvement in it provide a stark
example of the costs of using countries as pawns and of elevating control
of resources such as oil over human rights," writes Mark Zepezauer
in his brilliant book, Boomerang. "The consequences, as we suddenly
learned on September 11, have hit home."
The
consequences hit home but the connections are not being made. The beautiful
mindset wants John Kerry in the White House...not a history lesson on
U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.
Speaking
of Afghanistan, another offshoot of this let's-pretend approach is the
much-trumpeted "movement" to oppose the occupation of Iraq
while the U.S. taxpayer-subsidized occupation of Afghanistan garners
little notice and, in case of subversives like Tim Robbins, is greeted
with support. (Then there's always the occupation of North America...but
I digress). Hell, some of today's radicals are even blaming Dubya for
not going after Afghanistan before the planes hit the towers...as Richard
Clarke might have preferred (even though 15 of the19 hijackers came
from Saudi Arabia and none came from Afghanistan).
"It
is much easier to be against the blatantly illegal Iraq war," says
Sonali Kolhatkar (http://www.uprisingradio.org).
"But Afghanistan was another situation. How could we argue that
the U.S. should not bomb a country that was harboring terrorists who
attacked innocent U.S. civilians? Perhaps activists have avoided Afghanistan
because of its obvious links to Al Qaeda and the tempting promise by
Bush to deliver freedom for the most oppressed women in the world."
Perhaps
it's also because too many of those same activists live in a make-believe
world where issues are reduced to simplistic slogans and false solutions...and
hatred of Republicans blinds them to reality.
Reality?
Did I foolishly mention reality? As Barbara Bush might say: "It's
not relevant...why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like
that?"
Mickey
Z. is the author of two upcoming books: "A Gigantic Mistake:
Articles and Essays for Your Intellectual Self-Defense" (Prime
Books/Library Empyreal) and "the Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the
Lies Behind War Propaganda" (Common Courage Press). He can be reached
at mzx2@earthlink.net.
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