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Today's
Stories
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go
On and On
July
20, 2004
Stan
Cox
The Bush / Kerry War Ticket
Chris
Randolph
An Open Letter to Dr. Ehrenreich: It's Over, Barb!
Forrest
Hylton
The Ghosts of Gonismo: "Popular
Patricipation" and Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Mark
Scaramella
It's Official! Mendocino County is Crazier and Fatter Than the
Rest of California
Sam
Bahour
The World is Knocking on Israel's Door
George
Reiter
A Defense of David Cobb
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
John
L. Hess
Girlie Stuff: Media Tolerance of Arnold & Co.
Website
of the Day
This Land is Your Land
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of
Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition
to Iraq War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything
Wrong with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...
July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire
July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
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
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
July
21, 2004
Bush
May Lose, But His War Will Go On
Burying
Iraq, Burying Bush (Part Two)
By
JOHN ROSS
MEXICO CITY
Bush's body posture betrays him. As
he steps away from the podium after scrimmaging with reporters
at a late June White House press conference, his shoulders slump
precariously as if he were carrying a great burden and doesn't
know where to park it. The correspondents' questions had been
timid darts but the President is thin-skinned these days and
they stung and turned off his brain so that he had appeared inarticulate
yet again. How had this happened to him, the commander in chief
of the worldwide crusade against terror?
Bush can't help but feel a
bit like Joe Btfsplk, "the world's worst jinx" - remember
the little guy who was always shadowed by a black cloud in Al
Capp's ornery strip "Little Abner"? His main man Kenny
Boy Lay, the moneybags of his 2000 campaign, has just been handed
an 11 count criminal indictment that could salt him away for
the next 145 years. The news from Iraq is bleak (see "Burying
Iraq, Burying Bush I") and the June dip in job creation
guarantees that Bush will be the first president since Herbert
Hoover to preside over a net job loss.
While Kerry the War Hero flashes
his Vietnam credentials in TV commercial, no one believes the
President when he alibis that the military accidentally destroyed
the last shred of evidence that might have vindicated him on
charges of desertion from the Alabama National Guard at the nadir
of that evil war.
Even declaring victory in the
Terror War has blown up in Bush's face after the State Department
"inadvertently" issued numbers that sought to prove
incidents of terrorism had decreased to their lowest level since
the 1970s when, in fact, such attacks were at a record high.
We got the numbers wrong apologized Colin Powell whose capacity
for public humiliation is pathological, underscoring once again
that the brightest and biggest liars amongst the Bushites have
no regard for human lives.
The scrawls on the wall are
writ large. When the Democrats took two special House seat elections
deep in rock-solid Republican turf and the margin of victory
in both ballotings was attributed to the winning candidates'
opposition to the Bush war, Karl Rove woke up, caught a whiff
of the coffee, and circled the wagons.
At the war council, one question
led to another. The President was coming apart in public. He
was like a man in a hole trying to dig his way out and with each
shovelful only digging himself in deeper. Bush was digging his
own  grave, burying himself alive.
The White House gang desperately needed to change the subject.
In the month I slept on North
American mattresses during a recent West Coast promo tour for
my latest literary opus "Murdered By Capitalism", Bush's
ratings plummeted into the low 40s. 60% of those polled said
the war in Iraq wasn't worth it and a shade over 50% gave the
President poor marks as commander in chief in the War on Terror.
Overall, Bush had lost 13 points since April, one of the cruelest
months for U.S. losses in Iraq. At this pace, simply by standing
still, two white guys named John are moving into the White House
next November.
How to staunch this hemorrhage?
The Bush brain trust studies its options: trot out Osama on election
eve? (Unpredictable.) Steal the election again, maybe this time
in California where Arnold runs the circus and the voters cast
their ballots electronically? (Two Bush election heists in a
row strains credibility.) A fresh terrorist strike? (Could work
- after all, Al Qaeda supports the U.S. president because "his
stupidity and religious fundamentalism will benefit Islamic causes.")
Moreover, such an attack would allow the White House to call
off the November elections until such time as the Fear Factor
swells Bush's majority, a brilliant strophe! Can we pin down
the how to on this one, Dick "Fuck you!" Cheney urges?
While the legal beagles scope
out the constitutional mechanisms to put the November election
on hold, the war council decides on a short-term ploy to drive
the wolves from the White House door: switching off Ronald Reagan.
"My father's funeral provided
some relief for the American people who were growing tired of
seeing naked men on leashes on television" Ron Reagan Jr.
optimized. The younger Reagan, a Buddhist, then asked the Sunday
Times Magazine writer who she thought Jesus would have tortured?
Reagan's death presented Bush
with a platinum opportunity to recover his leaking credibility.
Looking appropriately presidential for once, Bush hovered over
the coffin laid out on the Capitol rotunda like a bereaved grandson
as the flag dipped to half mast in national mourning for the
amiable, Teflon-plated butcher of Central America (ask my friend
Carlos Mauricio just how amiable Reagan's hired killers were.)
But despite the hoopla, the
Bushites have a hard time convincing a conspiracy-minded nation
of much these days. Electronic rumors were soon swirling on the
lunatic fringe that Rove and his boys had kept the ex-prez, reported
brain dead in 2003, on ice for a year awaiting just such a crisis
to spring his cadaver loose on an unsuspecting public.
We will never know the truth.
Immediately after the Washington protocols, Reagan (if it was
really Reagan inside that box) was flown back to southern California
and sealed up in a hilltop crypt on the grounds of the presidential
library. The only witnesses were several Secret Service agents
and Duke Blackwood, the director of the Reagan Presidential Library
which is located in Simi Valley, a suburban community populated
entirely by Caucasians in whose superior courtrooms 12 years
ago the cops who pulped Rodney King were declared innocent, thereby
igniting the L.A. riots.
Whenever he died, Ronald Reagan
was now dead again and burying his corporeal remains had provided
only transient relief for a besieged administration. The war
hangs like Coleridge's albatross around the President's neck,
weighting him down, hunching him over. "We did the right
thing," he repeats at every campaign stop but he keeps having
this sinking feeling. "We did the right thing" Now
the parents of dead G.I.s are beginning to attend his rallies
to ask what it was their kids died for?
John Kerry concurs wholeheartedly
that "we did the right thing" in Iraq--both he and
his running mate voted to allow Bush to invade that evil empire.
Although the Johns now claim they were duped by CIA fakery,
they both once again voted to prolong the war this June when
the Senate unanimously approved a supplemental $25 billion USD
Pentagon appropriation to sustain the slaughter in Iraq.
We just can't turn tail and
run, Kerry blurts up on the stump -"it would be unthinkable
now for us to retire in disarray" exclaims the Vietnam war
hero (translation: he mowed down a lot of Vietnamese) turned
anti-war vet turned Senate political boss who has married his
own considerable fortune to that of billionaire ketchup heiress
Teresa Heinz to construct the most well-heeled candidacy ever
foisted upon the Democratic party.
John Kerry has no intention
of tamping down the bloodshed in Iraq. What he wants instead
is a better, cleaner, wider (a real multilateral coalition) war,
a "victory" to be followed by "peace with honor."
Oops, sorry! Another Vietnam flashback.
Now the Kerry-Edwards war mongering
will be set in concrete in Boston when the "Democratic"
Party platform will back the Bush war, call for 40,000 more troops
for Iraq and 16 more months of bloody occupation. Where have
we heard this before? (Try 1968 in Chicago.)
As Bill Clinton successfully
argued with Amy Goodman in a telling 2000 election morning interview,
there are significant distinctions on domestic policy between
the two heads of the American Cyclops--but when it comes to Iraq,
both heads agree that the murder must go on. Am I having yet
another Vietnam flashback?
Under the Democratic war plan
and extrapolating Vietnam as a model, we can anticipate ten years
more of G.I. body parts littering the Baghdad streets. If the
coalition dead total a thousand now, they will total ten thousand
then. If either Kerry or Bush is selected to govern these United
States in November, the war will go on and on and on.
The U.S. Left has two fundamental
tasks: (1) to effectively oppose Washington's aggressions against
the rest of the planet and its peoples, and (2) to build an alternative
to the bi-cephalic monster that passes itself off as the party
system in our country. In 2004, we have failed abjectly on both
counts.
In our frenzy to beat Bush,
we have frittered away what political capital we had accrued
from 2000 when the Dems falsely perceived that the Greens had
stolen the election for Bush. In truth, Nader may have damaged
Gore in New Hampshire but Gore crushed him in Florida and would
have won the state if his party had not allowed the Supreme Court
to shut down the vote count.
Whether or not the Greens actually
stole the election from the Democratic Party is moot--what's
pertinent is that the Democratic Party believes this fantasy,
and such a perception, under threat of further damage this November,
could have been used to club delegates in Boston like so many
baby harp seals into accepting an anti-war plank in exchange
for the retirement of a Nader candidacy. Indeed, securing such
a plank was the only justification for yet another Nader candidacy.
Under such a scenario, Green
votes could then have been honorably blended into the much-hoped
for Democratic landslide which, even if it sustains capitalist
exploitation, at least will allow the planet and its people a
little breathing room for the near future.
But it was not to be. In mid-June,
the Left, or at least the green part of it, convened in a Milwaukee
convention center and denied the Great Nader and his just-announced
running mate Peter Camejo, a California Green bigwig, ex-Trot,
and "responsible" investment broker (comrades at table
recently startled me by complaining about all the money they
had lost to his responsible investments) who had pledged to carry
the anti-war spear across the nation.
The eventual selection of David
Cobb, not a Texas lawyer at all as he was touted to be but rather,
one more refugee from Ecotopia (Eureka California) as Green Party
presidential candidate, nullified any leverage the party might
have had over the Democratic platform. Cobb's "safe states"
strategy, Svengalied by Code Pink's Medea Benjamin under the
baton of facilitator Matt ("four letters that will turn
back the darkness") Gonzalez, San Francisco's one-time almost
Green mayor, is sort of like safe sex. Under Cobb's scheme,
Green voters in swing states where Kerry is endangered would
be free to don full-body condoms soas not to be infected by the
virus of expediency and cast their suffrage for the war party
of their choice. This is how the U.S. Left lost the presidential
election of 2004.
Meanwhile, his petition drives
obstructed by Democrat and Republican militias trying to keep
him on and off the ballots in Arizona and Oregon, Nader, the
only Arab candidate for U.S. president, has been reduced to appearing
on just six state ballots as the standard bearer of the Reform
Party. Created in 1992 by H. Ross Perot to battle NAFTA, the
Reform Party stole the election from the first Bush for Clinton
when the pipsqueak Texas billionaire pulled 19% of the popular
vote, a third party effort you never hear the Democrats grousing
about. Nader, who took a measly 3% in 2000, inherited the shell
of the Reform machine from the Buchananites, racist rats who
sacked the party and then abandoned ship after 2000. No wonder
Michael Moore has decided to put clothespins on his schnoz and
vote for warmonger Kerry.
Although Moore is often so
full of himself (and that is a lot to fill) that he never seems
to notice the U.S. is not the center of the universe, "Fahrenheit
9/11" (Ray Bradbury charges the cineaste stole his title
"and couldn't even get the numbers right") performs
an important service--if only for the final line of the screen
credits urging the viewer to "do something." The movie
truly incites one to go out and kick some ass--I saw the flick
at the venerable Minor Theater in Arcata California and my first
impulse was to kick out every window in that north coast town's
boutique-ridden plaza.
Some of the most valuable footage
recovered by Moore, along with the Bushites' blunders and Saudi
Arabian peccadilloes, was that of members of the congressional
black caucus pleading fruitlessly for a single senator to sign
their petition protesting disenfranchisement of black voters
in the Florida election that gave the state and the presidency
to Bush as Al Gore gaveled them down one by one.
The wannabe Wahabis' protests
that "9/11" is racist because it speaks ill of the
Saudi royal family is so patently absurd that it merits mention
here. The Bush Saudis put on a full court press to keep the
film in the can until after the November elections, pushing their
pals at Disney to put a hammerlock on Miramax which wanted this
potential election summer blockbuster so bad it formed a separate
company and gave up 60% of the profits to white bread charities,
in its lust to distribute it.
Thirsting for revenge, the
Bush Saudis had Jack Valenti slap an R rating on "Fahrenheit"
to keep 17 year-olds about to be sucked up by both the military
and/or the voting booth from seeing the awful truth. Sneak into
the theaters, Moore advised the kids, steal the DVD! (an update
of St. Abbie's Steal This Book!)
Despite the giveaway, 21 million
Americans stormed more than 500 screens the first weekend "9/11"
was out, whipping "White Chicks" handily for the top
gross ("Spiderman II" buried Moore the next week.)
"Fahrenheit 9/11"
won the Palme de Oro at Cannes as a gesture of worldwide aberrance
for Bush and his mafia but weathers critical appraisal on its
own merits. The San Francisco Chronicle even extolled it as
"Red Dawn" in reverse, comparing Moore's docudrama
with that Reagan-era neo-con classic in which Soviet ogres invade
the U.S. across the Mexican border and are ultimately repelled
by Colorado high school jocks turned guerrilla freedom fighters--only
this time around, we are the Soviet ogres.
Sadly, Moore's flag-waving
dulls his blade and "9/11" becomes a maudlin lament
for our boys and girls in uniform who have volunteered to kill
and be killed in the name of Yanqui imperialism. In the end,
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is all about converting those 21
million admissions into votes for the war candidate John Kerry.
The Left loses again.
Now the convention madness
is upon us and Tom Ridge is warning that the terrorists could
strike in Boston and, more pertinently, at Madison Square Garden
where the Bushwas will convene on the eve of the third anniversary
of 9/11 in the shadow of the World Trade Center to commodity
a national tragedy for which their president shares maximum responsibility.
The color-coded terror alerts will be a green light for mass
police suppression a la Chicago '68 that will turn Manhattan
at the end of August into a remake of another neo-con classic,
"Escape From New York." I wouldn't miss it for the
world.
Whether Al Qaeda strikes during
the conventions or before or after the November election or never,
the Islamic militants have already hijacked the first Tuesday
in November. They are now calling the shots, defining the agenda,
dominating the content, and deciding the winner.
What does Osama want? U.S.
troops out of the Muslim world? I'm for that. A free Palestinian
state? I'm really for that. In fact, I think we ought to cut
our losses, sue for peace, and turn tail and run although saying
so will get my face bashed in in any red-blooded redneck bar
from California up to Maine these days.
Eerily, at the Arcata showing,
Moore's docudrama was accompanied by a trailer for another classic
of the genre--"The Battle of Algiers", a movie that
changed my life the first time around.
Last year, as the occupation
began to encounter resistance, the Pentagon launched weekly lunch
hour showings of this monumental work. The idea I think was
to teach officers a lesson about winning and losing the hearts
and minds of an occupied Muslim population but the showings did
little good. Bush has lost the hearts and minds of the Iraqi
people hands down just as he has lost the hearts and minds of
my fellow Americans. John Kerry, unfortunately, does not fill
the vacuum.
On or about twilight this past
July 4th, a handful of spectators milled about the flag-bedecked
parking lot of the Patriot mini-mall between the all-you-can-eat
Chinese buffet and the Greyhound depot in Eureka California.
The fog was opaque. The fireworks down on the docks lifted into
the gloom, disappeared with a dull thud in the thick soup, and
were lost forever in the fog of war blanketing America in the
summer of 2004.
Like Bush, I too have this
sinking feeling. We will bury him in November but his war will
go on and on and on.
John Ross will be on the spot in Mexico City
for much of July and August before sallying forth to do maximum
mischief at the Republican National Convention in Manhattan from
where he will launch the intergalactic tour of his latest instant
cult classic "Murdered
By Capitalism--A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the
U.S. Left".
Weekend
Edition Features for July 10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
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