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March
18, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Middle
East for Dummies
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
When
Business Men
Make Boo-Boos
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
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
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March 18, 2002
Child-Murderers and Madness
By Fran Shor
Over the last few weeks stories about parents
murdering their children have received prominent attention in
the media. In the United States and Canada these family tragedies
have contended for front-page and lead items in competition with
on-going global crises. In their sanctimonious rush-to-judgment,
mainstream media have severed any connection between family and
state violence, individual and collective madness. However,
for the children of the world who suffer daily from intentionally
aggressive policies or benign neglect, such collective madness
pursued by the ruling cliques of various states is a more devastating
victimizer.
While the Andrea Yates matter has garnered
the most attention of the recent incidents, it is still the case
that men and fathers wreck more lethal havoc on family life than
women and mothers. However, beyond whatever contributing factor
her husband's neglect played, Andrea Yates was tormented and
goaded by another man, a so-called religious adviser. Representing
the worst side of punitive and patriarchal religion, this man
condemned Yates's children to hell-fire and damnation. Reinforcing
the paranoia and isolation Andrea Yates already felt in the madness
of her nuclear family, this rabid preacher administered an even
stronger drug than those Yates was taking for her diagnosed psychological
condition.
On the other hand, when those who exercise
such critical influence abuse their power and promulgate mad
policies whether on a personal or political level, we need to
re-consider how to judge them. Moreover, we need to shake off
the stupefication induced by sensationalized media in their recent
obsession with family violence and turn our attention to the
continuing madness practiced by those in power, specifically
the militaristically-minded policy-makers who have shaped US
foreign and nuclear policy over the last half century. What
underscores the madness of their policies beyond any paranoid
aggression is the self-conscious effort to assert power, irrespective
of the deaths of innocent children.
Of course, US nuclear policy during the
Cold War was notorious for developing what was known as Mutual
Assured Destruction (MAD). Developed by the technological whiz-kid,
Robert McNamara, during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations,
such policy was predicated on spending billions to build-up nuclear
stockpiles that would provide a supposed deterrence to any attempt
by the Soviets to achieve even parity. As a boondoggle to the
military-industrial complex, that nuclear policy perpetuated
a crazed arms build-up that squandered resources and wasted lives.
Now the Bush Administration is proposing
an even greater arms race without any real competition, promising
to spend more than the next 9 or 10 nations combined on a military
budget. In addition, with the recent leak of a government document
dealing with nuclear policy, it is abundantly clear that Bush
and the Pentagon want to expand an already crazy first-strike
nuclear policy to a variety of potential clashes. While the world
has recoiled in horror to these paranoid threats and cowboy madness,
US citizens have yet to rise up with the same degree as outrage
as voiced during the Andrea Yates trial. Texas justice at home
and abroad seems committed to neglecting compassion and carrying
out its punitive agenda.
If nuclear madness continues at a potentially
more lethal rate under the Bush Administration, one needs only
to remember how previous Administrations have relied on other
self-conscious irrational and aggressive positions. Nixon often
boasted about his madman conduct of the war in Southeast Asia.
He confided to his aide, Bob Haldeman, concerning the "Madman
Theory." "I want the North Vietnamese," Nixon
asserted, "to believe I've reached a point where I might
do anything to stop the war." Of course, what Nixon did
was to expand the war. Claiming that "you couldn't be completely
predictable...you had to strike out savagely from time to time,"
Nixon and his henchman prosecutED the war for five additional
years of massive bombing and murder of children throughout Southeast
Asia, a murder that continues through the residual effects of
bombs and toxic waste in the region.
Even though Nixon is gone, a version
of his "Madman Theory" was endorsed in a 1995 study
by the US Strategic Command. In this study, entitled "Post-Cold
War Deterrence," it was noted that it "hurts to portray
ourselves as too fully irrational and cool-headed." Hence,
the US could "become irrational and vindictive if its vital
interests are attacked." And irrational and vindictive
was exactly the response of Secretary of State Madeline Albright
to being challenged about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
children dying and suffering under the US perpetuation of sanctions.
Claiming the sanctions policy was "well worth it,"
Albright demonstrated tens of thousands of times over how much
more lethal she could be than Andrea Yates was.
Those who have occupied and continue
to occupy seats of power in Washington covet their authority
with a belief in their own rationality and carry-out policies
that, at best, represent the sort of "crackpot realism"
that C.Wright Mills lampooned during the Cold War years. Disregarding
the harm they perpetrate on innocents here and abroad, their
madness, now carried to new heights of looniness by the Bush
Administration, leaves a terrible toll of death and destruction.
Perhaps it's time to take preventative measures to forestall
those child-murderers who daily take the lives of thousands of
children around the world. Just as removing Andrea Yates or
those mad fathers from their families might have saved the lives
of their children, we need to remove those who exercise their
mad authority before more children die.
Fran Shor
teaches at Wayne State University. He is a member of the Michigan
Coalition for Human Rights and an anti-war activist. He is also
the proud father of three daughters. He can be reached at: f.shor@wayne.edu
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